Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

05.10.16

Links 10/5/2016: Zorin OS in Italy, CoreOS Funding

Posted in News Roundup at 7:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Ones to watch: Influential women in open source

    Don’t let the technology gender gap fool you; there are many outstanding women in open source. Some founded companies, some are leading major projects and many are among the most interesting and influential figures in the open source world.

    Here, in alphabetical order, are the ones to watch. (This list is ever growing so if you know someone who should be on it, let me know.)

  • What’s New in the First Open Source CUBA Platform Release?

    The major update is the new licensing policy: the main part of the platform is now open source under the Apache 2.0 license, the optional components such as BPM, Charts and Maps, Reporting and Full-Text Search are available by per-developer subscription. The CUBA Studio is free for small projects with up to 10 entities and requires the subscription for bigger projects.

  • Demand for open source talent on the rise

    According to the latest 2016 Open Source Jobs Report, 59 percent of hiring managers will increase the number of open source talent in their organization within the next six months.

  • Announcing The Journal of Open Source Software

    The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is a new take on an idea that’s been gaining some traction over the last few years, that is, to publish papers about software.

    On the face of it, writing papers about software is a weird thing to do, especially if there’s a public software repository, documentation and perhaps even a website for users of the software. But writing a papers about software is currently the only sure way for authors to gain career credit as it creates a citable entity1 (a paper) that can be referenced by other authors.

    If an author of research software is interested in writing a paper describing their work then there are a number of journals such as Journal of Open Research Software and SoftwareX dedicated to reviewing such papers. In addition, professional societies such as the American Astronomical Society have explicitly stated that software papers are welcome in their journals. In most cases though, submissions to these journals are full-length papers that conflate two things: 1) A description of the software and 2) Some novel research results generated using the software.

  • Journal of Open Source Software helps researchers write and publish papers on software

    With so many public software repositories and places for documentation, it can be difficult for developers to write and publish credible papers that others can reference. The newly announced Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) wants to tackle this problem of software papers and help authors gain the credibility they deserve.

  • On Open Source Laws and Licensing
  • Talk about contributing to FLOSS
  • Google Pushes A Ton More Chromebook Device Code Into Coreboot

    Over night Google engineers landed a bunch more code in Coreboot for supporting new Chromebook devices.

    Elm was added as a derivative of Oak. This family is for devices with a MediaTek SoC.

  • The Cloud Foundry Way: Open Source, Pair Programming and Well Defined Processes

    Cloud Foundry is a unique open source software project. Actually, it’s a collection of projects that all together make a product that helps organizations run applications on an industry standard, multi-cloud infrastructure. A whole bunch of developers and product managers, who believe it should be easier to develop, deploy and maintain apps in the enterprise, have gotten together to make this possible. Cloud Foundry helps organizations run applications across languages and clouds.

  • Opening up networks to choice, at last

    To wit, Networks Function Virtualization (NFV) was merely a concept just three years ago. But in those three years, the networking world has seen a remarkable evolution, and choice has never been more available. Software is now king, and its first order of business is to open up the networks and break down the limitations of proprietary and box-centric software to give network operators the opportunity to make the network more flexible through programmability.

  • SDN and NFV for Network Automation – Promises of Network Transformation

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Want the best employees? Let them hire themselves

      Drupal is a mature open source project that a non-profit organization, called the Drupal Association, steers. The project’s use of Gratipay was a skunkworks initiative by two core contributors, who intended to eventually hand the reins to the Association. These two contributors defined criteria for adding and removing others from revenue sharing on Gratipay, and then they recruited fellow Drupal community members to the pilot program. Roughly 200 people were eligible to participate.

      Like most successful open source projects, Drupal already has clearly documented onboarding procedures. Anyone may start contributing to the project, without asking permission or going through a hiring process first. From there, establishing criteria for someone’s work to grant them revenue-sharing privileges is a natural step.

      [...]

      With Drupal, we caught a glimpse of open source evolving into open hiring. To truly see take-what-you-want compensation in action, we will have to look elsewhere: to Gratipay itself.

  • Microsoft and its proxies

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Intel’s Clear Linux Distribution Switches Over To GCC 6.1 By Default

      Intel’s Clear Linux operating system is now one of the first to be re-built under GCC 6 with using GCC 6.1 as its default compiler.

      Most distributions won’t be migrating from GCC 5 to GCC 6 until later in the year, but this daily-updating Linux distribution out of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center that continues to be focused on delivering optimized performance has already re-based from GCC 5.3 to GCC 6.1.0.

    • gNewSense 4.0 Promises a Solid Debian-Based Linux OS with 100% Free Software

      The gNewSense 4.0 GNU/Linux operating system has been released at the beginning of the month, and today we take a closer look at its new features and technologies.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • What is an open source program office? And why do you need one?

      The open source program office is an essential part of any modern company with a reasonably ambitious plan to influence various sectors of software ecosystems. If a company wants to increase its influence, clarify its open source messaging, maximize the clout of its projects, or increase the efficiency of its product development, a multifaceted approach to open source programs is essential. Having viewed the operations of many such teams, I have summarized six common characteristics of successful open source programs….

      [...]

      As engineering efforts go, these were smashing successes. Intel’s contributions to Linux and other open source ecosystems are well-known. IBM is still famous for its “$1 Billion investment in Linux” and the “Peace, Love and Linux” marketing campaign, not to mention its own efforts around establishing the Eclipse Foundation and significant contributions to the Apache Software Foundation. Both companies also armed themselves quite well with attorneys who were well-versed in intellectual property law, especially as it pertains to copyright and trademark laws that affect open source software. These efforts paved the way for a wider understanding of IP law in an open source context.

    • Open Data

      • Why open data matters today

        The main factor in any change first begins with observation. The data we collect allows us to analyze complex human patterns and behavior. Without data, there’s nothing to be observed.

        For some time, the government has been gathering large amounts of data. But now, they’re officially making that data accessible to the citizen. When President Obama recently announced the launch of The Opportunity Project, it set off a new initiative that seeks to improve economic mobility for all citizens with the use of digital tools and data sets.

      • What can you do with open data?

        Play a word association game and the word “open” will almost surely be followed by “source.” And open source is certainly an important force for preserving user freedoms and access to computing. However, code isn’t the only form of openness that’s important.

  • Programming/Development

    • What Are Microservices and Why Should You Use Them?

      Traditionally, software developers created large, monolithic applications. The single monolith would encompass all the business activities for a single application. As the requirements of the application grew, so did the monolith.

      In this model, implementing an improved piece of business functionality required developers to make changes within the single application, often with many other developers attempting to make changes to the same single application at the same time. In that environment, developers could easily step on each other’s toes and make conflicting changes that resulted in problems and outages.

    • Progress announces NativeScript 2.0 for native mobile app dev with Angular 2

      Progress announces the latest releast of NativeScript enabling developers to build native mobile apps in JavaScript running on all major mobile platforms.

Leftovers

  • Greece looks to international justice to regain Parthenon marbles from UK

    Greece has not abandoned the idea of resorting to international justice to repatriate the Parthenon marbles and is investigating new ways in which it might bring a claim against the British Museum.

    As campaigners prepare to mark the 200th anniversary of the antiquities’ “captivity” in London, Athens is working at forging alliances that would further empower its longstanding battle to retrieve the sculptures.

    “We are trying to develop alliances which we hope would eventually lead to an international body like the United Nations to come with us against the British Museum,” the country’s culture minister, Aristides Baltas, revealed in an interview.

  • Revenge Porn Creep Kevin Bollaert’s Appeal Underway… And Actually Raises Some Important Issues

    Let’s start with the basics: Kevin Bollaert is a creep who did some really horrible and shady stuff. He was something of a latecomer to the revenge porn space, basically copying a few of the more popular revenge porn sites that came before him in creating “YouGotPosted.” He also copied at least some of the “business model” of Craig Brittain’s “IsAnybodyDown” website, which purported to work with a third party (the fictitious “lawyer” “David Blade III”) who you could pay to take down those naked pictures someone leaked to the site. In the case of YouGotPosted, Bollaert set up a companion website, called ChangeMyReputation, where you could pay and that site would magically get images taken down off YouGotPosted (there is some dispute over how clear it was that the two sites were connected).

    [...]

    Not surprisingly, California relies heavily on the infamous Rommates.com ruling, a rare case where a service provider lost its safe harbors by having a drop down menu that was seen as asking a discriminatory question about roommate preferences, violating fair housing laws. California is arguing that, by requiring uploaders to post user information, YouGotPosted is similar to Roommates.

  • Science

    • Why It’s Not Academia’s Job to Produce Code That Ships

      At the heart of the frustration is a legitimate accusation*: that academics care more about producing papers than about producing anything immediately (or close to immediately) useful for the real world. I have been hearing some variation of this criticism, from academics as well as industry people, for longer than I have been doing research. But these criticisms are equivalent to saying that TV writers care more about making a good show than being technically realistic. While both are correct observations, they should not be complaints. The real problem here is not that academics don’t care about relevance or that industry does not care about principles, but that there is a mismatch in expectations.

      It makes sense that people expect academic research results to work in companies right away. Research that makes tangible, measurable contributions is often what ends up being most popular with funding sources (including industry), media outlets, and other academics reviewing papers, faculty applications, and promotion cases. As a result, academic researchers are increasingly under pressure to do research that can be described as “realistic” and “practical,” to explicitly make connections between academic work and the real, practical work that goes on in industry.

      In reality, most research–and much of the research worth doing–is far from being immediately practical. For very applied research, the connections are natural and the claims of practicality may be a summer internship or startup away from being true. Everything else is a career bet. Academics bet years, sometimes the entirety, of their careers on visions of what the world will be like in five, ten, twenty years. Many, many academics spend many years doing what others consider “irrelevant,” “crazy,” or “impossible” so that the ideas are ready by the time the time the other factors–physical hardware, society–are in place.

    • China Closes the Innovation Gap

      While the U.S. expands spending on wars and “regime changes” – and slashes its budget for science and infrastructure – China is making different choices, now rapidly closing the gap on scientific innovation, writes John V. Walsh.

    • Watch John Oliver Dismantle the Stupid Way the Media Covers Every Scientific Study

      Does coffee cause cancer—or help prevent it? What about red wine? These are some of the vital questions that scientists have long struggled to answer, with journalists by their side to misreport the findings.

      For the media, scientific studies can be a great source of stories: Someone else does all the work on reaching a conclusion that appears to directly affect something your audience cares about (often their health). What’s more, that conclusion comes with a shiny gloss of indisputable factuality: “This isn’t just some made-up nonsense—it’s science! It must be true.” We’ve all seen how scientific conclusions that were carefully vetted by other scientists can be reduced or distorted beyond recognition for the sake of TV ratings or story clicks. I’m sure I’ve done it myself.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • There Could Be Lead in Your Water at Home. Here’s What You Can Do About It.

      Since news broke of the Flint crisis, lots of readers have asked for tips on how to avoid lead contamination in their own water. And for good reason: Lead pipes and plumbing are still relatively common in America, and water testing for the contaminant is notoriously spotty.

      Until the mid-1900s, lead was a go-to material for plumbing and service lines—the pipes that connect the city’s main pipes to each home. It wasn’t until 1986 that the US Environmental Protection Agency, recognizing the element’s disastrous effects on kids’ brains, mandated that all new lead solder, plumbing, and service lines be “lead-free.” The catch is that the rule didn’t apply to buildings constructed before 1986, and “lead-free” was defined as 8 percent lead until 2014, when a new policy kicked in that lowered that number to 0.25 percent.

      Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities are supposed to test water for lead each year—and if more than 10 percent of homes have higher levels than the federal standard of 15 parts per billion, utilities have to notify customers and take action. But until this February, when the EPA clarified its policy, many utilities had protocols in place that misrepresented the results, says Erik Olson, a senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Some avoided testing older homes that likely had lead plumbing or discounted high results that skewed the average. Some would tell customers to flush out the water, releasing particulate contamination before the sample was taken. Some collected water in sample bottles with narrow tops; when the sample is collected at a trickle, it is less likely to carry particulates with it. In response to the crisis in Flint, the EPA clarified its water testing protocols in February, though the guidance is not legally binding.

    • People may be breathing in microplastics, health expert warns

      Environmental health professor says microparticles of plastic, known to damage marine life, could be entering the air

    • White Americans Are Dying Younger as Drug and Alcohol Abuse Rises [Ed: older]

      Life expectancy declined slightly for white Americans in 2014, according to new federal data, a troubling sign that distress among younger and middle-age whites who are dying at ever-higher rates from drug overdoses is lowering average life spans for the white population as a whole.

      The new federal data, drawn from all deaths recorded in the country in 2014, showed that life expectancy for whites dropped to 78.8 years in 2014 from 78.9 in 2013. Men and women had declines, but because of statistical rounding, the decline did not appear as sharp among men.

      Life expectancy for women fell to 81.1 in 2014 from 81.2 in 2013. The average life span for men also fell, but not enough to sink below 76.5 years, their life expectancy in 2013.

      “The increase in death in this segment of the population was great enough to affect life expectancy at birth for the whole group,” said Elizabeth Arias, the statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who analyzed the data, referring to whites from their mid-20s to their mid-50s. “That is very unusual.”

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Why study the ‘bad guys’?

      Researchers have historically avoided getting up close and personal with ‘bad guys’ such as warlords or criminals. This aversion is not particularly surprising. Fieldwork in difficult and dangerous locations is challenging from both methodological and ethical perspectives. Yet face-to-face research with ‘bad guys’ is important if we want to understand the root causes of major social and political problems. In order to understand how injustice is produced and experienced by individuals, we have to take seriously the perpetrators of violence from a methodological standpoint.

    • Toddlers Have Already Shot 23 People This Year And It’s Only May

      According to a report via the Washington Post, American children aged three and under have shot at least 23 people in 2016 which is a five person increase since last year. In an analysis from October 2015 conducted by reporter Christopher Ingraham, the nation’s toddlers were shooting people at an average rate of one per week. These numbers are most likely on the low side, too. While sometimes it certainly feels like every week brings another story of a child stumbling upon a gun and shooting another person, consider the fact that the stories that get the press are the ones in which the victims suffer grievous harm. That means that toddlers have shot 23 people this year…that we know about.

    • Toddlers have shot at least 23 people this year

      This past week, a Milwaukee toddler fatally shot his mother after finding a handgun in the back seat of the car they were riding in. The case drew a lot of national attention given the unusual circumstances: Little kids rarely kill people, intentionally or not.

    • Cuba Will not Fall!

      I am not sure who has invented those rumors that Cuba is now facing a mortal danger, that it has lost its bearings, and that it could collapse at any moment, after just one lethal visit by US President Barack Obama. The rumors and speculations are snowballing, and in some circles of the North American and European Left, they are already being confused with reality.

    • How war trauma is passed down through families

      After VE Day, a look at how trauma can transcend generations, and the need for peacebuilding work to overcome the consequences of conflict.

    • Neo-fascists, racists, and misogynistic people are finding new voice with Donald Trump’s presidential bid
    • Voting for Empire is the Sole Option for Democrats and Republicans

      The presidential primaries offer a single choice for both Democrats and Republicans to vote for empire and permanent war. This year’s entertainment spectacle, what we call democratic elections, is a particularly gross circus of meaninglessness, misinformation, sound bites, and lies. Both parties are in support in the continuation of the US/NATO global empire of permanent war and the protection of the capital of the global 1%. Even Bernie Sanders calls for drone strikes and continued war on Isis and other evil terrorists.

      Neo-fascists, racists, and misogynistic people are finding new voice with Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Neo-conservatives and fundamentalists found hope with Ted Cruz. Moderates, liberals and women see Hillary Clinton as a chance for Supreme Court balance and gender equality, and left-leaning liberals are cheering for democratic socialist Sanders to save our economy by breaking up big banks and restoring trust in government.

    • Sufi preacher latest victim of Bangladesh killing spree

      A 65-year-old Muslim Sufi preacher was hacked to death by unidentified machete-wielding assailants in northwest Bangladesh, two weeks after a liberal university professor was killed in a similar attack claimed by the dreaded ISIS.

      Shahidullah was found dead with gashes on the right shoulder and a slit throat in a mango orchard in Rajshahi city’s Tanor upazila, in an attack that bears the hallmark of previous murders of intellectuals, bloggers and minorities by Islamists in the country.

    • Pakistani activist murdered after praising London for electing first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan

      A Pakistani activist has been murdered by gunmen hours after hailing Londoners for electing Sadiq Khan as the new mayor of the city.

      Khurram Zaki, a former journalist and activist, was shot and killed by gunmen riding motorcycles in the southern port city of Karachi, according to Pakistani police officer Muqaddas Haider.

    • Seven people shot dead as polls open in the Philippines

      Seven people were shot dead and another was wounded when a convoy of vehicles was ambushed in the Philippines Monday just hours before polls opened for national elections, police said.

    • The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison

      Having returned from his cherry picking expedition with a basket full of rocks, Ferguson told us of the structural violence to which Kissinger has been subject at the hands of “the conspiracy theorists of the left.” “In his People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn argues that Kissinger’s policies in Chile were intended at least in part to serve the economic interests of International Telephone and Telegraph,” Ferguson writes. As we saw last time, Zinn argued nothing of the sort — and neither did the section of the Senate committee report that Zinn had actually been closely paraphrasing, which merely provides examples of ITT’s involvement without making any suppositions about anyone’s motivations whatsoever. This didn’t stop Ferguson from rather weirdly going on to denounce Zinn’s dry restatement of the Church Committee’s findings as numbering among the “diatribes” in which Zinn and his ilk provide “gratuitous insults” against Kissinger “in place of evidence;” the “insult” in question turned out to have been made years later, in another book. Then he did some other odd and dishonest things as well, all in the space of a single paragraph. Go back and read the full account if you haven’t already; I’ll be sitting here worrying about the New Republic, for without TNR, where will our nation’s center-left hawks hammer out dynamic new solutions to the Arab Question?

    • Kenya To Close Refugee Camps Citing Economic Issues And Fear Of Terrorism

      The Kenyan government announced plans last week to shut down all its refugee camps — including the world’s largest camp — in a decision that will affect more than 600,000 people already displaced by famine and war.

      The move will affect two major camps in Kakuma and Dadaab. The Kakuma camp holds about 190,000 refugees, mostly from South Sudan. The camps in Dadaab hold around 300,000 people, primarily Somali refugees fleeing from Al Qaeda-linked Shabaab insurgents in their war-torn country.

    • Turkey: Border Guards Kill and Injure Asylum Seekers

      Turkish border guards are shooting and beating Syrian asylum seekers trying to reach Turkey, resulting in deaths and serious injuries, Human Rights Watch said today. The Turkish authorities should stop pushing Syrian asylum seekers back at the border and should investigate all use of excessive force by border guards.

    • German kills one in ‘Islamist motivated’ knife attack

      A man killed one person and wounded three others in a knife attack at a German railway station Tuesday that prosecutors said had “an apparent Islamist motive”.

      It is Germany’s third knife attack with an apparent Islamist motivation since September.

      Police said they had arrested a 27-year-old German man who had slashed four people around 5 am (0300 GMT) at the station in the small town of Grafing, east of Munich.

      One of the victims, a 50-year-old man, later died of his wounds in hospital, said Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

      The others wounded were men aged 43, 55 and 58, Heidenreich said.

      “Around 5 am this morning a 27-year-old German attacked four people with a knife,” Heidenreich told AFP.

    • Man held after Germany knife attacks

      A knife man’s been arrested after a rampage at a train station in Germany that’s left at least one dead and wounded others. Paul Chapman reports.

    • Mock terror attack: ‘Suicide bomb’ at Trafford Centre

      A mock terror attack, featuring a bomber simulating killing and injuring shoppers, has been staged at one of England’s largest shopping centres.

      It was part of a terrorism training exercise at the Trafford Centre, Greater Manchester overnight to test the emergency response to an attack.

    • Dramatic pictures of anti-terror exercise at Trafford Centre

      Emergency services have been taking part in a major anti-terror exercise overnight at the Trafford Centre.

      Armed with machine guns, officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit are testing their response to a potential attack.

      Around 800 people will take part in the exercise which continues tonight and ends at a disused community home in Newton le Willows.

    • How Schooling Leads to War

      How did we become so manipulable and herd-like? So easily spooked into hysterical stampedes? So docile and ready to be driven by our government herders over the precipice of war?

    • America’s Two-Faced Policy on Iran

      The Obama administration seeks to demonize Iran — along with Russia and China — while also demanding their help in areas of U.S. interest, an approach that is both disingenuous and dangerous, as British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.

    • A Gift of Culture to Battered Palmyra

      Even those with a limited knowledge of Russia may be credited with having heard of St. Petersburg being called the Venice of the North. This is a title it must share with a variety of other claimants famed for their canals, such as Bruges in Belgium, although St. Petersburg has more justification than competing cities given its common architectural roots with the Venice of the South, namely the leading Eighteenth Century Italian architects who contributed greatly to forming its appearance.

    • The World Through Trump’s Eyes

      With his proposals for a registry of Muslims, a ban on their entry into the country, building a wall to prevent illegal immigration, and the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants, Donald Trump, if he were elected president, might trend the country domestically toward fascism. (His election is possible but still unlikely, because the Democrats have an intrinsic advantage on the electoral college map, and President Obama’s approval rating has begun to exceed fifty percent, traditionally a key determiner for the outcome of the election of a president’s successor.) But what would the world look like if Donald Trump actually became president?

    • Trump’s empty administration

      As presumptive nominee takes first steps on transition, GOP policy veterans say they’re not interested.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Top palm oil producer sues green group over deforestation allegations

      One of the world’s largest palm oil producers is suing the green body that suspended its sustainability certification last month because of allegations it had deforested Indonesian rainforests.

      The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body set up by industry and NGOs to address environmental concerns about the commodity’s production, confirmed it had been served with a lawsuit by the Malaysian palm giant, IOI.

    • In Wake of Cáceres Murder, Dam Funders Pull Out—But Repression Continues

      One day after a Honduran judge charged four suspects in the murder of renowned activist Berta Cáceres—including one executive of the Honduran company DESA, a developer of the Agua Zarca dam Cáceres opposed so passionately—European financiers said they “seek to exit” the controversial project that likely got her killed.

      According to Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), the European development banks FMO and FinnFund said Monday that they “will organize a mission to Honduras, to take place as soon as possible, comprised of independent experts, to develop a strategy for exiting the project.”

      In the wake of Cáceres’ March 3rd assassination, both FMO and FinnFund temporarily suspended all disbursements towards the Agua Zarca project, located in Western Honduras. Prior to the killing, COPINH, the Indigenous rights group Cáceres co-founded, had “repeatedly contacted” both institutions, “insisting that they should not fund the Agua Zarca project, as the project sponsor had not obtained the required free, prior, informed consent of the indigenous Lenca people, and because land titles had not been properly obtained,” FOEI notes.

    • The 4th Largest Economy In The World Just Generated 90 Percent Of The Power It Needs From Renewables

      On Sunday, for a brief, shining moment, renewable power output in Germany reached 90 percent of the country’s total electricity demand.

      That’s a big deal. On May 8th, at 11 a.m. local time, the total output of German solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass reached 55 gigawatts (GW), just short of the 58 GW consumed by every light bulb, washing machine, water heater and personal computer humming away on Sunday morning. See the graph below, courtesy Agora Energiewende, a German clean energy think tank. (It’s important to note that most likely, not all of that 55 GW could be used at the time it was generated due to system and grid limitations, but it’s still noteworthy that this quantity of power was produced.)

    • India Seeks to Shut 12% of Power Capacity in Anti-Pollution Move

      India plans to shut aging coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 37 gigawatts to cut emissions and reduce the use of fuel and water.

      The plants are more than 25 years old and have turned uneconomical, said S.D. Dubey, chairman of the Central Electricity Authority, the planning wing of the country’s power ministry. They will be replaced by super-critical units, which are more efficient, at the same sites, he said, without giving a timeline.

    • India Wants To Kick Its Dirty Coal Habit
    • Exclusive: Emails Reveal Navy’s Intent to Break Law, Threatening Endangered Wildlife

      When it comes to getting its way with war-gaming in the Pacific Northwest, nobody is better at the concept of “distributed lethality” than the US Navy. In 2015, the Navy introduced this concept “that promised to add more fire power to all manner of Navy vessels and operate them in a way that would spread thin enemy defenses.” The Navy seems determined to move forward with planned military activities like increasing jet dogfighting, electromagnetic warfare training and other actions, regardless of how many animals it kills. Internal emails show how the Navy has been working to manipulate the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) biologists into bending the law, then proceeded to break the law, whilst the consultations between the two entities are ongoing.

    • Why Predator-Friendly Beef Isn’t So Friendly, After All

      While non-lethal means of protecting livestock are desirable, one should never conclude that this makes livestock production “predator friendly.” It’s like suggesting that electronic cigarettes are “safer” than smoking a regular cigarette. The best thing that anyone can do who wants to help predators, the environment ,as well as their personal health, is to eat less meat.

    • Break Free or Burn in Hell: a Message From the Canadian Tar Sands

      Some time ago, the environmentalist “Break Free” movement planned a number of protest actions around the world during the first two weeks of May. The protests have a simple and basic message: burning fossil fuels is unsafe and those resources must be left in the ground.

    • Tar-ma is a Bitch!: the Real Tragedy of Fort McMurray

      The myth then perpetuated by the government was that the Tar Sands could undergo “reclamation” whereby the land is dug up after the oil is extracted and then to be returned to its original state. No mention was made of the strip mines and tailings ponds that are, in reality, left behind. No mention is made of the damage caused in detail by these tar sands which is a constant toxic pollution which functions as a very slow-motion oil spill affecting the region’s rivers and ground water (experts estimate that this could be far worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill); those people living downstream (notably First Nations) have already chronicled the deformations of pickerel and walleye in Lake Athabasca, game animals and fish have being found covered with tumours and mutations and since the early naughts, there has been observed in humans cancers and autoimmune diseases in Fort Chipewyan.

    • Wildfire: Syrian Refugees in Canada Donating to help climate Refugees

      Syrian refugees in Canada are using Facebook and web sites to raise donations for climate refugees from the massive tar sands fire that has destroyed much of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada and forced the evacuation of 80,000 people living in the city and its surroundings.

      The worst fire disaster in the North American west coast in a century is expected to become even bigger in coming days, fanned by heavy winds. It will threaten further communities.

    • Will Climate Change make the Mideast Uninhabitable & trigger mass exodus?

      Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and their scientific partners have found that even with just a 3.6 degree average rise in global temperatures, parts of the Middle East could become too hot to live in.

      Warming won’t be even around the world. Some places will warm more and faster than others. The Middle East is such a place. Summer temperatures are expected to increase twice as fast as the world average.

    • Rural Paraguayans fight for land amid corruption, poverty and violence

      This fight centres on land ownership. According to a 2008 census, 1.6% of Paraguay’s population controls 80% of its agricultural land. At the same time, 300,000 family ‘farmers’ live without access to any land at all. This shapes a situation in which a third of the rural population lives in extreme poverty.

      Such inequity is a legacy of the country’s long years of dictatorship. During his 35-year rule, General Stroessner tortured his opponents in bathtubs, threw them out of planes, or parcelled them in barbed wire before dumping their bodies in the River Paraguay.

      As part of the clientilist networks through which he maintained power, Stroessner divided public land among the country’s military and political elite. 10 million hectares – 25% of all the land in Paraguay – were given away or sold at negligible price

    • These States Don’t Want You to Get Solar Power

      A lot has been said already about the success of the states that are leading the adoption of solar energy. There’s plenty to celebrate, as solar installations smash records and as the industry grows 12 times faster than the U.S. economy. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that many people live in places where the government is either not facilitating a solar market or is actively smothering it.

    • Indigenous leaders from three continents are touring Europe begging people to boycott palm oil

      Willian Aljure bangs his hand on the table. He’s speaking in Spanish, trying desperately to make a roomful of quiet, laptop-focused London journalists absorb his point:

      “It cannot be a coincidence,” he says, anger rising in his voice, “that four countries are talking about the same damage.”

      Aljure represents indigenous communities in Colombia that he says have been decimated, their lands grabbed and their forests cut down, by large agribusiness operations planting biofuels and palm oil. Nine members of his family have died as a result of the companies’ aggression and destruction, Aljure says, and the last was his mother. His voice cracks. He passes the mic, drinks from a glass of water, and covers his eyes.

      On his right are community leaders from Indonesia. On his left, representatives from Peru and Liberia. All have similar stories.

      So far, so painfully familiar.

    • WWF seal cam draws 225K watchers

      The World Wide Fund for Nature began streaming live video of a rock in Saimaa lake known to be a favourite spot for the ultra-rare Saimaa ringed seal. More than 200,000 viewers have tuned into the new service and been treated to live footage of the animal.

    • Sea Level Rise Is Here, And Is Gobbling Up Islands

      Sea level rise isn’t a distant threat: It’s already swallowing islands, according to a recent study.

      The study, published Friday, found that sea level rise and coastal erosion has caused five low-lying coral atolls in the Solomon Islands to disappear into the ocean. These islands were vegetated — once densely-so, the Washington Post reports, with palms, oaks, mangroves, and other trees — but weren’t populated.

  • Finance

    • Newspaper chain sending IT jobs overseas

      The McClatchy Company, which operates a major chain of newspapers in the U.S., is moving IT work overseas.

      The number of affected jobs, based on employee estimates, range from 120 to 150.

      The chain owns about 30 newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee, where McClatchy is based; The Fresno Bee, The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., The State in Columbia, S.C. and the Miami Herald.

      In March, McClatchy IT employees were told that the company had signed a contract with Wipro, an India-based IT services provider.

    • Microsoft Revenue Quietly Surpasses $1 Trillion [Ed: while evading tax]

      As Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat expressed shock that Boeing’s tax breaks saved it $304 million last year, I noted that the legislature’s actions here are saving Microsoft approximately $776 million in 2016 (I’ve been reporting on Microsoft’s Nevada-based tax dodge since 2004.)

      According to my data, Apple surpassed $1 trillion in revenue 2015 but selling pricier hardware has given it a historical advantage. Still, Apple’s cumulatively earned only $261.6 billion in profit to Microsoft’s $265.2 billion. Google’s earned $96.3 billion cumulatively.

    • Trump Completely Contradicts Himself On Taxes For The Wealthy In Two Interviews Hours Apart

      Within hours, Republican presidential candidate and presumptive nominee Donald Trump took two very different stances on taxes for the wealthy.

      On Sunday, speaking with ABC’s “This Week,” Trump insisted that although analyses show that the detailed tax plan he released earlier in the campaign cycle would give the wealthy an enormous tax break, overwhelming the relief he would give to the poor and middle class, that that’s not what the final outcome will be. Instead, he insisted, the rich will pay more in taxes under President Trump.

      “They will go up a little bit,” he said of the taxes paid by the wealthy. “In my plan they’re going down, but by the time it’s negotiated they’ll go up.”

      When host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that is a different position than outlined in his plan, he responded, “It’s not a change, George. It’s a negotiation,” adding, “If I could get my plan approved the way it is now I’d be very happy. But it’s not going to happen… By the time it gets negotiated it’s going to be a different plan.” His plan is “just a concept,” he said. “We’re putting in policy. We’re putting in a statement. It’s just a concept.”

    • Yes, Voters Really Are Angry and Anxious About the Unfairness of the Economy

      There is a growing amount of contrarian analysis these days suggesting that Americans really aren’t so angry about the economy after all, that what appears to be economic populism is really just a cover for racism, sexism or other cultural issues, and that ultimately the only thing the majority of voters really want is a stable technocrat who will keep the good times rolling while fixing some social issues. Some of my colleagues have written pieces in this vein, including Nancy LeTourneau yesterday, and Harold Pollack in March. Washington Monthly alum Kevin Drum hammers away at this theme again and again. John Sides at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage uses consumer index statistics to argue that Americans are really happier about the economy than they’ve been since “Morning in America,” which in turn was picked up by Matt Yglesias at Vox.

    • Scientology leader’s father slams son as ‘military strongman’ living large while followers slave away [Ed: Ponzi scheme dressed up as "religion" to dodge law]

      The father of the leader of the Church of Scientology ripped into his own son for living high on the hog while followers of the cult-like religion eke out a meager existence, often giving back their earnings to buy presents for the church leader.

    • So Sue Them: What We’ve Learned About the Debt Collection Lawsuit Machine

      ProPublica spent years gathering data to shed light on how debt collectors use the courts. Today, we run through the most important lessons we learned about a tactic that affects millions.

    • Puerto Rico Has Become America’s Version of Greece

      Puerto Rico has now firmly established itself as America’s analogue to Greece. To get back to fiscal sanity, Puerto Rico is going to need some combination of debt forgiveness, political reform, and privatization. Congress may be in a position to help, but it will have to face down powerful special interests to do so.

      After missing relatively small bond payments last August and this January, Puerto Rico’s public sector defaulted on at least $367 million of principal due May 1. As a consolation, investors did receive $9 million in interest from the defaulting entity, Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank.

      The fact that Puerto Rico even has a Government Development Bank should raise an eyebrow. State-owned banks are not a major feature of the mainland US economy, perhaps because failures of state banks contributed to a number of state bond defaults in the 1840s. Since the US didn’t take over Puerto Rico until 1898, the island was not around to learn that lesson. The GDB is one of over fifty public corporations dominating Puerto Rico’s economy. Others control the island’s electricity, water, and sewer services.

    • Protests Threaten Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal

      An unprecedented protest movement of a scope not seen since the Iraq war in Germany has pushed negotiations over the TTIP trans-Atlantic free trade agreement to the brink of collapse. The demonstrations are characterized by a level of professionalism not previously seen.

    • Ireland’s tax arrangements are as clear as a pint of Guinness

      Ireland has repeatedly been in the spotlight for its favourable and controversial tax incentives – which have attracted numerous large tech companies to its shores.

      However, the country has also been accused of being less than transparent in some of its tax arrangements.

      The European Commission is currently investigating the emerald isle over allegations it cut a sweetheart deal with Apple, claiming the arrangement amounts to “state aid”. The investigation, which began in June 2014, was expected to conclude earlier this year. The commission said it is waiting for Ireland to submit further information.

    • The Collapse of the Middle-Class Job

      Our middle-income jobs are disappearing. That fact may be disputed by free-market advocates, who want to believe Barack Obama when he gushes, “We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private sector job creation in history.”

      But the evidence shows that living-wage, family-sustaining positions are quickly being replaced by lower-wage and less secure forms of employment. These plentiful low-level jobs have padded the unemployment figures, leaving much of America believing in an overhyped recovery.

    • Wall Street Donors Flocking to Clinton

      Now that Donald Trump has secured his position as the presumptive Republican nominee, Wall Street donors are fleeing the party and throwing their support behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

      A Wall Street Journal analysis published late Sunday found that the former secretary of state “has raised $4.2 million in total from Wall Street, $344,000 of which was contributed in March alone.”

      In fact, Clinton has seen a surge in financial sector donations since business-friendly Republican candidates—namely former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio—dropped out of the race. According to the newspaper’s reporting on fundraising data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, “the former secretary of state received 53 percent of the donations from Wall Street in March, up from 32 percent last year and 33 percent in January through February, as the nominating contests began.”

      WSJ notes that “Trump, by contrast, hasn’t garnered more than 1 percent of Wall Street contributions in any month through March,” although the New York billionaire is expected to be much more active in soliciting donations for the general election.

      The report further cites an analysis by the nonpartisan crowdfunding resource Crowdpac, which found that “more than 500 donors, including many Wall Street executives, who gave more than $200 to a Republican who later dropped out, including Messrs. Bush and Rubio, have since given to Mrs. Clinton,” WSJ wrote.

    • Sue your bank! Why it’s better to go to court than to arbitrate in the long run

      In plain English, that means you’re losing your right to join together with other bank customers who have been hit by the same kind of fees and push back against the policy in a class-action lawsuit. A lawyer isn’t likely to represent just you – unless you’re really wealthy, in which case, the bank probably would be waiving all those fees anyway, right?

    • Clinton Campaign to Republican Donors: Hillary Shares Your Values

      Late last week, Politico reported that Clinton operatives have initiated efforts to “peel off establishment Republicans who might otherwise grudgingly support Trump,” demonstrating their eagerness to win over big money donors previously wedded to the conservative establishment.

      Specifically, Clinton supporters have been targeting the donor base of Jeb Bush, whose main super PAC raised a striking $121 million, much of it before the race for the Republican nomination began to heat up. We know how that ended.

      But the Clinton camp sees opportunity lying in the rubble of the former Florida governor’s failed campaign.

    • Trump Picks Former Goldman Partner And Soros Employee As Finance Chairman

      In an oddly ironic twist, today Donald Trump announced that he has picked as chairman of his newly launched fundraising operation none other than a former employee of the bank he has repeatedly criticized in the past, and which he used as a foil to criticize Ted Cruz: Goldman Sachs.

    • Trump Sells Out

      Jameson’s thesis and the antithesis in Trump demonstrate hypotheticals that can give one a moment for contemplation. Our political discourse has moved in a phenomenal direction over the past eight years. When Obama came around, calling him a socialist was a slur, now most mainstream voters born after the end of the Vietnam War who remember the end of the USSR as a childhood news item are willing to describe their politics as social democratic. Mainstream Republicans like Matalin are now embracing an isolationist platform. The collapse of these insurgent populist candidacies could give the opening for a midterm election wherein Greens and Libertarians would have an honest shot at Congress, though I think the Libertarians are for too trusting of Gary Johnson. Nevertheless, the Vote Pact Sam Husseini advocates for is a step towards a true parliamentary order.

    • LuxLeaks court case against two whistleblowers and a journalist

      As Luxembourg strives to mend its tarnished image with a ‘Nation Branding’ scheme, a lawsuit against two whistleblowers and a journalist puts the small country back into the international spotlight.

    • Panama Papers Goes Live with Searchable Database of Tax Evaders

      It also follows the publication of a manifesto last week written by the whistleblower, who still goes by the anonymous name John Doe, which slammed “America’s broken campaign finance system” and denounced capitalism as “financial slavery.”

    • Panama Papers database dump reveals 200,000 secret offshore account details

      The “Panama Papers” database went live on Monday – the largest ever release of secret offshore companies and the people behind them.

      The data, collated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), comes from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and includes information about companies, trusts, foundations and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens, from Hong Kong to Nevada in the United States.

    • Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership Turn Silicon Valley Into Detroit?

      The proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) like to describe it as a free-trade deal for the 21st century. That might be a good sales pitch, but it’s not accurate. The TPP has little to with reducing trade barriers, which in most cases were already low. The TPP can more accurately be described as a piñata that is chock full of special deals for the corporate interests who negotiated it. It will likely do more to impede trade than promote it, and in the process it creates rules that potentially override democratic decision-making at all levels of government.

    • A Reality Check for ‘Charter School Week’

      For education observers in the U.S., every week seems like Charter School Week. As billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, and others put millions of dollars per year into a “reform” movement that undermines and supplants truly public education, the government diverts more and more of taxpayer money to charters and other variations of “choice.”

    • Putinism won’t end with a bang, but a warrant

      New charges concerning several leading Russian officials reveal the greatest threat to the Kremlin’s hold on power — elite corruption.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Hillary is Trump’s dream opponent: Clinton is exactly the “limousine liberal” his coalition distrusts the most

      Two images have electrified American politics for the last half century. One is quintessentially sophisticated, goes about in bespoke clothing, and comes equipped with the most imposing social credentials of fame, fortune, higher learning and prestige. The other is lacking in all that, dresses in non-designer jeans and polyester, is of modest means, employment, and education, and flies well beneath the radars of social visibility. Both images were invented at more or less the same moment. Both were strategically deployed by political elites running the Republican Party to vanquish their Democratic Party foes. However, those creatures have now turned on their creators. The Grand Old Party is in shambles as a result.

    • Hillary Clinton Versus Bernie Sanders: Taking Election Fraud Allegations Seriously (Part 1)

      Joshua Holland’s editor at The Nation apparently did not think much of his work to debunk election fraud allegations in the contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Instead, Holland put the half-baked column out at Raw Story after giving a softball interview, replete with a textbook example of circular reasoning, to the sole exit pollster for this election cycle. As with his since debunked debunking of a federally coordinated crackdown on the Occupy movement, Holland afterward went on his merry mocking way. Here, even though he acknowledged that he’d been alerted by dozens, if not hundreds of people, that a citizens group gave sworn testimony to irregularities in Chicago’s audit of electronically cast ballots between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Holland did not bother with so much as a phone call to Chicago’s Board of Elections to ask about those allegations.

    • Why I’m out at the Las Vegas Review-Journal

      In the five months since the Las Vegas Review-Journal was sold to the family of Sheldon Adelson for an obscene amount of money, I’ve watched my colleagues put their jobs on the line time and again in the name of journalistic integrity.

    • Trump Says He Likes Bernie’s Ideas, but Hillary Appears to be Running Away From Them

      Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s paying attention to Bernie Sanders’ sharpest critiques of Hillary Clinton and plans to use them if she’s the nominee—just as he has mimicked other Sanders stances. So why isn’t Hillary embracing Bernie’s best ideas?

      That question came into sharper relief in this past week, after Trump secured the GOP nomination after Indiana’s primary and Sanders upset Clinton and pledged to keep running despite her large lead in delegates. With the prospect that Clinton will be attacked by both Trump and Sanders as the primary season continues, one wonders why she is not doing more to embrace his best ideas.

    • On World Stage, Clinton and Trump Present Different, but Serious, Dangers

      The best that can be said of this political season is that the fixed framework of American politics appears to be fracturing. This will be a fine thing if it proves to be so, and I view this development as especially important in its medium-term potential on the foreign policy side. The question is whether things will truly fall apart, or at least begin to do so. Two policies hang in the balance above all others—the relationship with Israel and our fomented confrontation with Russia—and I will return to them.

    • The Left Is Winning the Debate Around the World: So Now What?

      Nobody—least of all Corbyn—assumed that he would win the debate, let alone the election, with one of the largest majorities of any Labour leader.

    • Donald Trump is Destroying My Mind

      The thugs with whom Trump has increasingly surrounded himself ought to be the cause of major concern and investigation. Forget Cory Lewandowski, whose lashing out at people (physically, not only rhetorically) is a concrete extension of Trump’s statements at that protestors at his rallies ought to be thrown out or roughed up, rather than escorted out of these events without bodily harm. Since Trump has proposed the hit-them-back method numerous times, is that how he will treat people who oppose his agenda should he become President? That used to be known as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” which is frightening as hell. Yet Lewandowski pales in the face of Paul Manafort, who has propped up some of the vilest Eastern European dictators of our time with dirty tricks and false information. Shouldn’t we all cringe now that Trump has been provided with Secret Service information and that highly secure information may be shared with Manafort?

    • The Distortion of American Politics

      Consequently, it must have come as an unpleasant shock to the Times Union’s editors when, in the April 19 New York State Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders emerged victorious not only in the city of Albany, but in the entire capital region. Indeed, Sanders garnered 53.3 percent of the Democratic vote in New York’s 20th Congressional district (an area comprising all of Albany and Schenectady Counties, as well as portions of Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Montgomery Counties). Having defeated Hillary Clinton by a healthy margin of almost seven percent, Sanders won four out of the seven delegates allocated to the district by the New York State Democratic Party. The outcome of the race was a reversal of the results in the 2008 Democratic primary, when Clinton handily defeated Barack Obama in the capital region.

    • Ian Warren, the Nuneaton Charlatan, or How to Fabricate Front Page News

      Firstly, the whole sample is 16 people. That is right, 16 people. They are supposed all to be ex-Labour, though there is little evidence of that in the transcripts. What is not in dispute is that they are all Tory voters.

      So you have 16 Tory voters, in two groups male and female. But out of 16 people there is not one retired person. Not one young voter. Not one person unemployed. And every single one is in a nuclear heterosexual relationship with children. Every single one is a homeowner.

      Furthermore their sources of information are (by order most mentioned) the Daily Mail, Sky, the BBC and the Sun. Only one out of 16 mentions the internet as a source of political information.

      People who voted Tory constitute already just 24% of the general population. Exclude retired, tenants, single, childless, gay, young and internet savvy people as well, and you get down to a deliberately chosen 5% of the population from which to choose your sample. You then get these 16 carefully chosen, blinkered right wing bigots into a room. Nevertheless something still goes wrong for your research. Two of the 16 (in the female group) state a firm intention to vote Labour next time (while a larger number state they would consider it).

    • The Need for Progressive Voices

      Changing the corporate media for the better is easier than you think.

    • Why are Russia’s journalists so prone to conspiracy theory?

      “A coincidence? I don’t think so!” – the calling-card response of Dmitry Kiselyov, host of Russia’s prime-time news show and director of Russia Today, has long become a conspiracy meme on the Russian internet. It also reflects the rise of conspiracy theory in Russian media.

      Nowadays, Russian state television channels frequently expose the “criminal” activities of domestic NGOs, the “foreign agents” working to subvert the Russian state. Prominent anti-corruption campaigner and opposition politician Aleksei Navalny is declared to be agent of all western security services. Russia, it seems, is being forced to defend itself from the “information war” unleashed by Washington and Brussels. Talk shows and news bulletins constantly rotate a cast of experts who explain, their voices faltering with emotion, how the US is secretly controlling the world.

    • This Election Inspired a John Grisham Novel. Now It Just Got Even Weirder.

      “If Don Blankenship drops $3 million into an election years ago with a shadow group called And for the Sake of the Kids,” says Bailey, the plaintiff’s attorney, “and [now] the Chamber and the Republican Party drop in $2 million on a nonpartisan, one-shot primary type deal, you tell me what improvement we’ve had.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • In Syria’s rebel areas, journalists complain of new censorship

      Journalists in Syria’s opposition or rebel-held areas say they are being censored and violently intimidated, sometimes as badly as under the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

      Many Syrians in these areas where the government has been cast out had hoped the Syrian uprising would bring all sorts of freedoms, including press freedoms. However, those hopes have been dealt a severe blow over the past several years.

    • European Parliament Orders MEP To Take Down A Video About His Attempt To Visit The ‘Reading Room’ For Trade Documents

      We’ve written many times about the insane levels of secrecy around various trade agreements, including the TTIP agreement that is being worked on between the EU and the US. Basically, everything gets negotiated behind closed doors — though certain lobbyists get full access — and then it will be presented as a final document when it’s too late for the public to actually weigh in. It’s the ultimate in corrupt processes. In the past the USTR has admitted that it demands such secrecy because if it had to reveal its positions publicly, the public wouldn’t support the agreement. In the US this has led to ridiculous situations like such as when Senator Ron Wyden, who at the time was the chair of the Senate’s subcommittee on international trade, was not allowed to bring a staffer of his, who is an expert in international trade, with him to read the latest text of a trade negotiation. Because that went against the rules.

      And it’s been standard practice in the US that if a politician does want to see the documents, they can’t bring anything with them (not just no staff, but no electronics, no way to write anything down). They can just “read and retain.” The EU has been following the US’s lead on this, with special “reading rooms” for elected officials where someone watches over their every move. Again, they’re not allowed any electronics. They are allowed a pen and are given paper to write on, which is a modest improvement on the USTR’s system, but still ridiculous.

    • The Long Arm of Chinese Censorship Reaches South Korea

      In recent months, incidents of Communist Party restrictions on free expression extending beyond China’s borders have occurred across Asia. Now South Korea, a leading democracy in the region, has joined this disturbing trend.

      On May 4, a court in Seoul issued a last-minute ruling canceling a series of classical Chinese dance and music shows by Shen Yun Performing Arts, scheduled to take place at KBS Hall over the weekend. The ruling explicitly cites threats by the Chinese embassy aimed at the theater owner, including implicit references to financial reprisals if the shows go on as planned.

    • Erdogan, Turkish President, Seeks to Gag German Media Boss
    • Turkish Government Censors Video Projection and Youth Biennial Artworks

      This year hasn’t been particularly easy for members of the arts community in Turkey, as they have come increasingly under fire, facing growing censorship and cancellations of exhibitions. It’s an uncertain, tense environment in which there is little tolerance for artistic dissent. This past New Year’s Eve, members of the arts community were arrested during the peaceful demonstration “Barış İçin Yürüyorum (I Am Walking for Peace)” in Diyarbakır, and while they have been subsequently released they might be eventually charged like hundreds of others have been in the aftermath of the Gezi Park protests, including minors and the elderly. In February, the exhibition Post-Peace, curated by Russian curator Katia Krupennikova, to be held at the cultural nonprofit Akbank Sanat, was cancelled a week before the opening because of the delicate situation in Turkey in the aftermath of the Ankara bombings. In March, ARTER, one of the city’s leading institutions, cancelled the opening reception for its major exhibitions of the season, also in response to recent bombings.

    • Censorship Never Works

      Initially the campaign against the Jews involved burning its books. Almost three quarters of all Hebrew books written and printed in Europe were either destroyed or confiscated. The Jews responded by having more copies of its core books printed beyond the reach of the Inquisition. Yet the Church also initiated a formidable campaign of censoring and altering Jewish texts, whether the Talmud, commentaries on the Bible, polemics, or prayerbooks it considered offensive to Christianity or heretical. A specific publication was issued, called Sefer Hazikkuk, which gave detailed instructions on what to look out for and how alterations had to be made in order to satisfy the censors before a text could be released.

    • Comment: ‘Jew’ is right word, but sounds wrong

      I tried to explain that to say one is a Jew is not offensive in the slightest, but she was adamant.

    • Unfair Attack on UK’s Labour Party

      The British Labour Party is under attack for “anti-Semitism” because a few of its members have made remarks critical of Israel and Zionism, but this assault is an abuse of a very serious accusation, says Lawrence Davidson.

    • South Africa’s new Internet censorship law – FPB will force ISPs to block online content

      Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions has provided an overview of the Film and Publication Board’s new Online Regulation Policy.

    • Africa’s “worst internet censorship law” gets updated, and it’s not that bad

      South African online users received a bit of a shock last year, when the Film and Publications Board (FPB) released its Draft Online Regulation Policy, a document designed to bring the FPB’s powers up-to-date for an age of digital distribution.

      The organisation maintained its primary purpose was to protect children by regulating the availability of inappropriate content online, but because the language of the original document was so broad reaching the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called it “Africa’s worst new internet censorship law.”

    • Reddit’s Technology Subreddit Ponders Banning Wired & Forbes For Blocking Adblock Users

      Over the last year there has been a growing number of websites that have decided to “deal” with the rise of ad blockers by blocking ad blocking users entirely. Blocking the blockers was the recently recommended course of action by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which suggested the best way to have a “conversation” about ad blockers was to try and prevent them from being used. And while sites like the New York Times, GQ, Forbes and Wired have all happily pursued this course of action, their actual implementation has ranged from frustrating to downright comical.

    • Adelaide censorship film vies for awards

      Young Adelaide filmmaker Henry Thong’s mission to create a short film exploring free speech and censorship was prompted by two international events: the terrorist attack on French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo and the hacking of Sony Pictures data.

    • New artists emerge as religious censorship eases: Iran

      Iran is open for business.

      Nuclear sanctions are being lifted.

      Its leaders are hoping for tens of billions of dollars in investment.

      And behind the scenes in the back streets and cafes… a different sort of opening is under way.

      Musicians have found religious censorship is also easing.

      That’s led to a new wave of artists coming to light.

      But how far will they be allowed to go?

      Middle East correspondent, Matt Brown, has been speaking to musicians in Tehran.

    • Obama slams campus censorship (and calls out anti-Trump protestors?) [VIDEO]
    • Obama Advises Students Against Disrupting Political Campaign Rallies
    • Japanese vagina kayak artist found guilty of obscenity
    • After Apple and Disney, China’s Censorship Crackdown Goes After More Than 7,000 Foreign NGOs

      The recent shutdowns of iTunes, iBooks and DisneyLife are keeping foreign companies on the edge of their seats.

      The censorship ruckus had CNN asking: After heavyweight firms Apple and Disney felt the wrath of China’s online media crackdown, who’s next?

    • RNC Chairman Reince Priebus demands that Facebook answer censorship allegations

      Republicans are reacting to a Gizmodo story that Facebook routinely suppressed conservative news.

    • The RNC Pounces, Rails Against Facebook for ‘Conservative Censorship’
    • Facebook says it doesn’t permit censorship in Trending Topics
    • Liberal lies feed Facebook’s censorship of conservative content
    • Facebook Responds To Allegations Of Conservative Censorship
    • All 3 Networks Ignore Report Revealing Censorship of Conservatives on Facebook
    • Limbaugh blows lid off ‘Fakebook’ censorship ‘surprise’
    • Facebook accused of censoring conservatives, report says
    • The Algorithm Is Gonna Get You

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • DOJ Confirms One or More Agencies Acted Consistent with John Yoo’s Crummy Opinion

      There’s a whiff of panic in DOJ’s response to ACLU’s latest brief in the common commercial services OLC memo, which was submitted last Thursday. They really don’t want to release this memo.

      As you recall, this is a memo Ron Wyden has been hinting about forever, stating that it interprets the law other than most people understand it to be. After I wrote about it a bunch of times and pointed out it was apparently closely related to cybersecurity, ACLU finally showed some interest and FOIAed, then sued, for it. In March, DOJ made some silly (but typical) claims about it, including that ACLU had already tried but failed to get the memo as part of their suit for Stellar Wind documents (which got combined with EPIC’s suit for electronic surveillance documents). In response, Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, noting a lie DOJ made in DOJ’s filings in the case, followed by an amicus brief asking the judge in the case to read the secret appendix to the letter he wrote to Lynch. In it, Wyden complained that DOJ wouldn’t let him read his secret declaration submitted in the case (making it clear they’re being kept secret for strategic reasons more than sources and methods), but asking that the court read his own appendix without saying what was in it.

    • Senate Judiciary Committee Begins Review of Mass Surveillance Statute

      The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act Tuesday May 10. The Act, passed in 2008, created what is now known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

      Section 702 is used for mass spying, and government surveillance conducted under the law unconstitutionally searches and seizes Fourth Amendment-protected communications. Indeed, in 2011, a judge on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) acknowledged the programs store more than 250 million communications annually in NSA repositories and that tens of thousands of wholly domestic emails were being collected under the statute. A report by the Washington Post revealed more: hundreds of thousands of Americans’ emails were being collected and nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations were not the intended surveillance targets. The section is one of the core statutes at issue in our lawsuit against the NSA.

    • Petition Calls For James Comey To Hang Up His Anti-Encryption Hat And Resign As Head Of The FBI

      James Comey continues to cut himself adrift from the encryption debate, taking a hardline stance not reflected by others in the intelligence community. While he has a few voices in his echo chamber (mainly Manhattan DA Cy Vance and… well, that’s really about it), for the most part, Comey has become a street corner doomsayer, alternately crying out against the going-darkness and mumbling about “smart people” at “tech companies” and their unwillingness to carve government-sized doors in their encryption.

      His testimony before Congress– during the heated battle with Apple over the unlocking of a dead terrorist’s iPhone — was mostly composed of things he couldn’t talk about and things he didn’t know. At times, it was difficult to distinguish between the two.

    • Facebook—More Dangerous than the NSA

      A while back, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on our National Security Agency. They’re spying on all our digital devices, have been for years. Our privacy has vanished.

    • NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden featured on techno song

      Nearly three years after rocking the world with his unprecedented leak of documents about classified, top-secret government surveillance programs, Edward Snowden is finally making his dance music debut.

      Hey, weirder-sounding things have happened on the musical front.

      But before you start calling the NSA whistleblower an EDM beat-dropper, it’s important to note that Snowden isn’t just up and abandoning his information privacy work to become a recording artist.

    • Privacy and the New Math

      Among the countless essays and posts I’ve read on the fight over crypto that’s been going on between Apple and the FBI, one by the title above by T.Rob Wyatt in Medium stood out so well that I asked if he’d like to help me adapt it into an article for Linux Journal. He said yes, and here it is.—Doc

      In the Apple vs. FBI case, the real disputes are between math and architecture, and between open and closed. Linux can play an important role in settling those disputes, because it is on the right side of both.

    • India claims to have tool to defeat iPhone encryption

      Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s communications and IT minister, said Friday that a tool for mobile forensics has been developed that can handle smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, according to the New Indian Express. Prasad didn’t reveal details about how the tool works.

    • SEC And Chuck Grassley Still Trying To Stop Email Privacy Act That Got UNANIMOUS Support In The House

      Hey, remember last week, when lots of folks were super excited about the US House of Representatives unanimously voting in favor of the Email Privacy Act? They voted 419 to 0. That kinda thing doesn’t happen all that often. I mean, sure it happens when condemning ISIS, but they couldn’t even make it when trying to put sanctions on North Korea. Basically, something needs to be really, really screwed up to get a unanimous vote in the House. And the Email Privacy Act, which goes a long way (though not far enough) towards fixing ECPA (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) that makes it way too easy for the government to snoop on your electronic communications, actually got that unanimous vote.

      So it should be moving forward and well on its path to becoming law, right? Right?!? Well… about that. You see, as we’d mentioned in the past, the SEC has been the main voice of opposition to the Email Privacy Act, since it (along with the IRS), kinda like the fact that they can snoop through emails without a warrant. Never mind that it’s probably unconstitutional, it makes their jobs so much easier. And, really, isn’t that the important thing?

    • New cyber security qualification on offer at HoW College [Ed: making espionage sound academic]

      HEART of Worcestershire (HoW) College has teamed up with a cyber security organisation to start offering a recognised qualification in the subject.

      HoW College is working with Cyber Security Challenge UK and City & Guilds to offer the qualification through an e-learning platform, offering students a three month long course on the basics of cyber security.

      The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) is equivalent to an AS Level, and can be worth as much as 70 UCAS points. It’s aimed at giving students an understanding of the entire cyber domain, covering everything from risk management to digital forensics.

    • Scottish teens recruited by government spy agency GCHQ [Ed: another timely puff piece]

      SCOTTISH teenagers are being encouraged to take part in a summer camp – run by the government’s secretive spy agency GCHQ.

      Dozens of 16 and 17-year-olds are expected to sign up to the four-day course, which hopes to produce the country’s next generation of online crime fighters.

    • EU proposes Minority Report-style facial recognition for refugees

      In its attempts to bring the refugee crisis to heel, the European Commission wants to expand its fingerprint database, introduce facial recognition software, store the information for even longer than before and include minors in the process. EurActiv Germany reports.

      The EU is planning wholesale changes to the bloc’s asylum law. In addition to a “fairer” distribution system for refugees and an extension of border controls within the Schengen area, the Eurodac fingerprint database, which is currently used to identify asylum seekers and irregular migrants, is to be enlarged.

      The system is set to be supplemented with facial recognition software and personal data will be stored for a longer period of time, with the aim of ensuring that irregular migrants stay on the authorities’ radar; the information of underage refugees will also be kept. The upgrade will cost some €30 million.

    • Stingray Memo From FBI To Oklahoma Law Enforcement Tells PD To Engage In Parallel Construction

      The concept of “checks and balances” kind of takes a beating when one branch of the government says it’s ok to lie to another branch. We’ve already seen the FBI tell law enforcement agencies — through extensive NDAs it makes them sign before they can deploy cell site simulators — that it’s better to let suspected criminals walk away from charges than risk allowing details on Stingray devices to make their way into the public domain via submitted evidence.

      Many law enforcement agencies appear to be doing exactly that. More than one agency has misled judges with applications for pen register orders and requests for cell site location data — neither of which provide details on the technology actually being used.

    • David Patraeus, Who Leaked Classified Info To His Mistress, Says Snowden Should Be Prosecuted

      That’s a pretty good summary of the “high court” situation that lets powerful people like Petraeus get away with passing on such information that could have legitimately put people at risk.

      So, it was interesting, just days later, to see a long interview in the Financial Times with David Petraeus, in which he’s asked about Snowden (warning: the link may be paywalled).

      [...]

      First, it’s bullshit because Petreaus himself got off with barely a wrist slap for his own activity, which had nothing to do with whistleblowing and appeared to be much more dangerous than what Snowden did. Second, as Petreaus absolutely knows, the intelligence community does not treat whistleblowers well. Previous whistleblowers, including Thomas Drake, basically had their lives destroyed as punishment for using the “appropriate” channels for whistleblowing. Hell, just last week, we wrote about yet another case of an intelligence community whistleblower, who used the “appropriate” channels, suddenly having her home raided and her career in shambles.

      Third, it’s bullshit because even in using the “appropriate” channels, as an NSA contractor, Snowden was not protected from direct retaliation for whistleblowing. Fourth, it’s bullshit because the “proper channels” would just be to run it up the line of people who thought it was hunky dory to lie to the American public to reinterpret the PATRIOT Act to enable them to spy on everyone’s communications data. That wouldn’t have done anything. Fifth, it’s bullshit because once the information actually did get out through the press — which never would have happened through “appropriate channels,” it has set in motion a number of changes, among companies, individuals, Congress and the intelligence community. That’s the point of whistleblowing, to actually change the behavior through alerting more people to what’s going on.

    • Facebook to sponsor GOP convention despite Zuckerberg’s veiled dig at Trump

      In April, Zuckerberg talked of ‘fearful voices building walls’ – but Facebook insists that sponsorship of Republican convention is not an endorsement

    • One Swede Will Kill Cash Forever—Unless His Foe Saves It From Extinction [iophk: "continuing to leverage the long, ongoing Swedish crime wave to eliminate cash and anonymity"]

      Nothing is more ordinary than a Monday morning at a Swedish bank.

      People go about their business quietly, with Scandinavian efficiency. The weather outside is, more likely than not, cold and gray. But on April 22, 2013, the scene at Stockholm’s Östermalmstorg branch of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken got a jolt of color. At 10:30 am, a man in a black cap burst into the building. “This is a robbery!” he announced, using one arm to point a gun at the bankers and the other to hold out a cloth bag. “I want cash!”

    • NSA employees watching an ‘unbelievable’ amount of child porn

      Some of the same folks who have access to all of our digital communications data are using equipment at the National Security Agency to view child porn— and the agency can’t even explain how widespread the sickening behavior is among its employees.

      That’s according to remarks made by Daniel Payne, director of the Defense Security Service, and Kemp Ensor, NSA security director, at a conference last week in Virginia.

      “The amount of child porn I see is just unbelievable,” Payne said.

    • Illinois residents can sue Facebook for photo tagging, judge says

      Last week, a Northern California District Judge ruled that Facebook will have to face a class action lawsuit (PDF) from Illinois Facebook users who are unnerved by the site’s photo-tagging feature that relies on facial recognition to suggest people to tag.

      The plaintiffs argue that the feature runs afoul of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which was passed in 2008 and restricts how private companies are allowed to collect biometric data.

      The lawsuit had been transferred from an Illinois court to one in California at Facebook’s request. The social media company then asked the judge to dismiss the case, saying that the plaintiffs had no grounds to sue given that Facebook’s Terms and Conditions have stipulated since 2015 that claims against the company must be litigated according to California law, where no such provision against biometric tagging exists.

      The judge denied the request to dismiss the case, ruling that dismissing the case because California has no such prohibition against the collection of biometric data is “contrary to a fundamental policy of Illinois.”

      The ruling notes that Illinois’ lawmakers were concerned because “Biometrics are unlike other unique identifiers . . . [and] are biologically unique to the individual; therefore, once compromised, the individual has no recourse, is at heightened risk for identity theft, and is likely to withdraw from biometric-facilitated transactions.”

    • Judge OKs suit accusing Facebook of violating Illinois privacy law with its photo-tag technology

      A federal judge has given a green light to a class action lawsuit contending that deployment of a Facebook feature using facial-recognition technology to tag photographs violates an Illinois privacy statute.

      Initially filed in Illinois and since transferred to California, the suit alleges that Facebook violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by failing to inform the plaintiffs about the collection of biometric information, as BIPA requires.

    • The day we discovered our parents were Russian spies

      Tim Foley turned 20 on 27 June 2010. To celebrate, his parents took him and his younger brother Alex out for lunch at an Indian restaurant not far from their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both brothers were born in Canada, but for the past decade the family had lived in the US. The boys’ father, Donald Heathfield, had studied in Paris and at Harvard, and now had a senior role at a consultancy firm based in Boston. Their mother, Tracey Foley, had spent many years focused on raising her children, before taking a job as a real estate agent. To those who knew them, they seemed a very ordinary American family, albeit with Canadian roots and a penchant for foreign travel. Both brothers were fascinated by Asia, a favoured holiday destination, and the parents encouraged their sons to be inquisitive about the world: Alex was only 16, but had just returned from a six-month student exchange in Singapore.

    • Why the NSA’s Incidental Collection under Its Section 702 Upstream Internet Program May Well Be Bulk Collection, Even If The Program Engages In Targeted Surveillance

      Section 702 surveillance, which comprises the Prism and Upstream 702 programs, is still shrouded in mystery, despite the Intelligence Community’s post-Snowden pledge to provide more and better transparency.i A lengthy 2014 study by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), declassified legal documents and three DNI transparency reports reveal nothing about the total number of communications the NSA acquires through the Section 702 program, nor about how many American and foreign bystanders might get swept up in the 702 surveillance net. The government consistently has presented Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which targets selected foreigners outside the United States, as a model of targeted, discriminate, selector-based surveillance, the exact opposite of indiscriminate bulk collection. The relatively small “estimated number of targets” affected by Section 702, listed on the DNI’s annual transparency reports (89,138 targets in 2013; 92,707 in 2014, 94,368 in 2015), are cited as proof that the NSA doesn’t broadly access customers’ data, but only collects “a minuscule fraction of the over 3 billion Internet users worldwide.” Over-collection of domestic communications happens rarely, is merely incidental, and hence lawful, as ODNI General Counsel Robert Litt has argued.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Super Manly Book Clubs Are The Latest In Fragile Masculinity

      There’s nothing innately wrong with having a book club focused on manliness—and certainly nothing wrong, of course, with men joining book clubs. But there maybe is something wrong with framing the idea of men reading, or joining book clubs, as some sort of exercise in outré anthropology or goofy cultural excavation. Okay, you’ve got a book club with a bunch of guy friends; that’s nice, more power to you. The NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club sounds lovely, and they’re reading James Baldwin—can’t fault that.

    • Compared to Rest of World Americans are Delusional, Prudish, Selfish Religious Nuts: Study

      That said, if all the world’s a stage, America is a prime player: a rich, loud, attention-seeking celebrity not fully deserving of its starring role, often putting in a critically reviled performance and tending toward histrionics that threaten to ruin the show for everybody else. (Also, embarrassingly, possibly the last to know that its career as top biller is in rapid decline.) To the outside onlooker, American culture—I’m consolidating an infinitely layered thing to save time and space—is contradictory and bizarre, hypocritical and self-congratulatory. Its national character is a textbook study in narcissistic tendencies coupled with crushing insecurity issues.

    • Breaking News: ‘There Is No Migrant Crisis’

      In fact, the world is facing ‘a crisis of global injustice caused by war, poverty, and inequality,’ says Global Justice Now

    • Ivy League Professor Doing Math Equation on Flight Mistaken for Terrorist

      An Ivy League professor said his flight was delayed because a fellow passenger thought the math equations he was writing might be a sign he was a terrorist.

      American Airlines confirms that the woman expressed suspicions about University of Pennsylvania economics professor Guido Menzio. She said she was too ill to take the Air Wisconsin-operated flight.

    • South Yorkshire Chief Constable steps down after one day

      Deputy Chief Constable Dawn Copley, who was appointed acting chief constable of South Yorkshire Police after the suspension of David Crompton following the Hillsborough inquest findings, has “offered to step back to her substantive role” while another temporary chief constable is sought, South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner said.

    • David Miliband exposed as being behind cover-up of Britain’s secret involvement in torture of terror suspects

      Nothing could be clearer. David Miliband, then Labour’s Foreign Secretary, laying claim to the moral high ground, proclaiming: ‘I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it’s perfectly clear to me it is torture.

      ‘I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.’

      His uncompromising comments came in an interview in the New Statesman magazine in 2009.

    • A whistleblower directive for Europe!

      Tomorrow, together with my group in the European Parliament, I will present a draft for a new EU directive on whistleblower protection. The draft directive, which has been launched coinciding with the trial of LuxLeaks whistleblower Antoine Deltour, aims to provide the basis and further impetus for a proposal to this end from the European Commission.

      The protection of trade secrets may not take precedence over the protection of whistleblowers. People who reveal questionable business practices and tax evasion should not be criminalised but encouraged.

    • Thai Activist’s Mother Faces Prison Term for One-Word Facebook Reply

      The mother of a pro-democracy activist faces up to 15 years in prison after acknowledging that she had received a private message on Facebook that the police say insulted Thailand’s monarchy.

      The activist’s mother, Patnaree Chankij, 40, who works as a maid, will be tried by a military court under Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, which makes it a crime to insult the long-reigning King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the queen or the crown prince.

      On Saturday, human rights activists called Ms. Patnaree’s arrest a day earlier a “new low” for Thailand, which has increased prosecutions under the lèse-majesté law since the military took power in 2014.

      Poonsuk Poonsukcharoen, a lawyer advising Ms. Patnaree, said Ms. Patnaree had sent only a one-word reply, “Ja,” acknowledging receipt of the Facebook message, similar to saying “Yeah,” but had not expressed agreement with it or commented on its content. The message was not made public, so as not to repeat the alleged insult, as is typical in such cases. The sender of the message, Burin Intin, 28, was arrested last month.

    • Israel’s General Golan Compares Modern Israel to 1930s Germany

      Shir Hever of the Alternative Information Center says Golan is an elite member of the military and his statements on Holocaust Remembrance Day is sparking a national debate

    • Judaism and Racism

      In its recent responsum concerning the status of non-Jews in Jewish law and lore, the Rabbinical Assembly, representing Masorti/Conservative rabbis throughout the world, has made an attempt not only to counter the racist pronouncements of extremist rabbis that echo the doctrines of Meir Kahana and have led to violence and hatred against non-Jews, but also to rectify those laws within rabbinic literature that are discriminatory in nature.

    • Secret Service Handcuffs The First Amendment

      Thomas Jefferson said that an informed citizenry is critical to a democracy, and with that as a cornerstone the Founders wrote freedom of the press into the First Amendment to the Constitution.

      The most basic of ideas at play is that the government should in no way be allowed to control what information the press can report to the people, and cannot place restrictions on journalists. One of the principal characteristics of any fascist state is the control of information, and thus the press is always seen as a check on government power that needs to be stomped on. Ask any surviving journalist in North Korea, or Saudi Arabia.

    • Civil Rights Activists Seek Justice for Racial Violence in the Name of Emmett Till

      On the day of her death, Mamie Till Mobley was scheduled for a call with Mississippi assistant attorney general Jonathan Compretta, civil rights activist Alvin Sykes, and Keith Beauchamp, a filmmaker working on a documentary about the August 1955 lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till. The two white men who kidnapped and murdered Till were acquitted within weeks of the killing, and Mobley spent the rest of her life fighting to have the case reopened. On that day, almost 48 years later, it seemed that events might finally bend towards some form of belated justice.

    • Laurel Krause

      The guests are Laurel Krause, sister of shooting victim Allison Krause, and founder of the Kent State Truth Tribunal, and activist-attorney Michael Kuzma. They discuss recently-discovered evidence, as well as Kuzma’s FOIA lawsuit to obtain documents which could illuminate the FBI’s involvement.

    • Long-Serving Intelligence Executive: Sure, Government Has Been Thoroughly Pawned But What about Ordinary Citizens?

      Now, if the government is a cybersecurity sieve, then why is Shedd bitching that there’s nothing in Obama’s policy for “ordinary citizens” or the private industry companies that aren’t getting pawned? Shouldn’t locking down the nation’s nuclear secrets — a point I’ve emphasized — be a higher priority than saving Target from liability when its customers get their credit card data stolen (besides the fact, for customers who can afford an iPhone, as Shedd pointed out, Apple is already doing something)? In a purportedly capitalist society, should the government free private industry of all responsibility for its own security?

      Crazier still, Shedd — who worked in Bush’s National Security Council until 2005, then moved to Director of National Intelligence, then in 2010 moved to DIA — is bitching that no one (aside from Katherine Archuleta) got fired for the OPM hack. In several of those positions, Shedd was in a place where he should have been one of the people asking why the security clearance data for 21 million people was readily available to be hacked — though no one in his immediate vicinity thought to ask those questions until 2013 and even then not including the non-intelligence agencies that might be CI problems. He was in a position when he may have — probably should have — reviewed some of the underlying database consolidation of clearance databases, including (at ODNI) identifying them as a counterintelligence threat.

    • Mining a Heart of Gold? Slave Wages and Humanitarianism in Africa

      What do you call people who try to make people believe what they say but ignore the results of what they do? How about spin-sploiters?

      After a few years of research I have come to realize that there is a long and ignoble history of Westerners exploiting Africans while touting humanitarian objectives. Unfortunately, this practice is not confined to the distant past.

      A leading Canadian NGO official, who then founded Québec’s largest mining company, provides a recent example.

    • France to set up a dozen deradicalisation centres

      Plan to combat home-grown terrorism aims to establish early warning system to pick up would-be extremists

    • Pushing the envelope through intentional provocation and factual presentation

      Political apathy among the youths in Singapore is prevalent, and I must admit, after the dismal GE2015 results, I have almost lost faith that things will ever change in our small little island. But with a young teen like Lhu silently creating works of this level on the sidelines, maybe there is this tiny, tiny glimmer of hope after all.

    • ‘Forget The Laws On Human Rights’ Says Likely Winner In Philippines Presidential Elections

      Populist demagoguery isn’t unique to the U.S. presidential elections, as 71-year-old Rodrigo Duterte, a man known as the ‘Punisher’ for his propensity to advocate lethal extrajudicial solutions to crime problems, leads the polls in the Philippines.

    • Duterte rival concedes in Philippines presidential election

      Rodrigo Duterte, whose outspoken commentary — including joking about the rape of a missionary — drew international attention to the Philippines’ national elections, appeared poised to win his country’s presidency Monday after a top rival conceded.

      [...]

      Sen. Ferdinand Romualdez “Bongbong” Marcos, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, is running for vice president.

      [...]

      Dubbed “Duterte Harry” and “the Punisher” by the local press for his exploits, Duterte is a colorful and controversial figure known for his inflammatory comments on a gang rape, his sexual conquests and tough stance on crime.

      In Davao City, where Duterte has held office for decades, he has long been dogged by allegations of ties to death squads and extrajudicial killings.

      He has vowed to execute 100,000 criminals and dump them into Manila Bay. He’s also suggested that he has killed people before.

      In April, a YouTube video surfaced appearing to show him joking about the 1989 rape and murder of an Australian missionary in Davao City. He later described it as “gutter language” but refused to apologize.

      In his last campaign stump Saturday, Duterte played his role to the hilt and again vowed to butcher criminals as he told thousands in central Manila: “Forget the laws of human rights.”

    • Ferguson’s New Police Chief Is Inheriting A Mess

      Before joining the Ferguson Police Department, Moss worked for the Miami Police Department for 32 years. A black officer, Moss told the New York Times that he is acutely aware of historical tensions between police and African Americans, as well as racism within law enforcement itself. To better reflect the municipality, one of the major reforms he wants to make is diversifying the department with more women and black officers. He also wants to build trust between officers and youth through a mentor program.

    • Are US Courts Going Dark?

      Now that the cell phones in San Bernardino and Brooklyn have been unlocked (no thanks to Apple), FBI warnings about “going dark” in the face of advancing digital encryption seem less urgent than before. Perhaps there are other ways — buying exploits in the zero-day market, plea bargaining pressure — to skin the encryption cat, after all. Are privacy advocates correct that a “Golden Age of Surveillance” has arrived, and the real question is whether law enforcement has too many tools, rather than too few? Or will unchecked encryption enable criminals and terrorists to wreak havoc via the Dark Web, as Director Comey fears? Although an interested spectator, I am in no position to judge that technical debate.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Crunch time for net neutrality rules, says EU digital rights warrior

      The next few months will be a critical time for net neutrality in the EU, according to the chief of Europe’s digital rights’ lobby group.

      Joe McNamee, executive director of EDRi, told Ars that it was crucial to engage people about the issue over the course of the next few months. Draft net neutrality guidelines are due to be presented by the European Commission on June 6, followed by a consultation for 20 working days on those proposed rules.

      “The next four months are equivalent to the moment when the big successes were achieved in the US and India,” he said.

    • Netflix Settles Throttling ‘Controversy’ By Letting Mobile Users Throttle Themselves (Or Not)

      Last month, you might recall that Netflix found itself at the center of some “controversy” after it admitted it was throttling AT&T and Verizon customer Netflix streams to 600 kbps. At the time, the company stated it was only doing so to help out customers on metered usage plans. Netflix also stated that it wasn’t throttling the streams of Sprint and T-Mobile users, since “historically those two companies have had more consumer-friendly policies” (read: still offer unlimited data plans).

      The cable industry and net neutrality opponents quickly tried to claim Netflix’s admission meant the company was a hypocrite on net neutrality, with some even calling for an “investigation.” The telecom industry’s PR push was short lived however, given most people realized that Netflix was actually trying to help consumers out, and it’s kind of odd to punish a company for technically throttling its own service. At the end of the day, the consensus was that the only real thing Netflix did wrong was not being fully transparent about what it was doing, and why.

      [...]

      Net neutrality rules are only necessary in telecom due to the lack of competition.

  • DRM

    • Save iTunes!

      I remember the launch of iTunes in 2001. Hurrying home from the MacWorld conference in San Francisco, downloading the app, making a stack of CDs next to my Powerbook, ripping them as fast as my machine would go. Rip, Mix, Burn, baby!

      The other thing I remember is how the media industry viewed iTunes: they hated it. They hated people using iTunes to rip CDs, they hated mixing and burning. The only reason they let the iPod/iTunes ecosystem live was because when they sued the company that made the first MP3 players, they lost.

      The record companies thought that anything that let listeners do more with their music had to be illegal. After all, they had big plans for the future of music and those plans hinged on being able to control how you and I used our music. They’d made big money selling cassettes to LP owners, and CDs to cassette owners, and they viewed selling digital versions of those same songs to us as their inalienable right. If we could rip our own CDs, how would they sell us that music again?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • White House on Non-Competes and Trade Secrets

      While still apparently fully on-board with ramping-up US trade secrecy law through the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), the White House has also released a new report that criticizes non-compete agreements and state laws that over-zealously enforce those agreements. Although the report recognizes that non-compete agreements are wrapped-up with trade secrecy enforcement, but suggests that a large number of non-competes are not used for that purpose.

    • As Patients Wait, WHO Members Chip Away At Decision On Medical R&D Funding

      A number of World Health Organization member states attended a meeting last week aimed finding ways to sustainably finance research and development for medical products, especially those for poor populations lacking means to pay high prices. According to the outcome document and a WHO official, they heard many viewpoints from experts and made progress but much was left for the World Health Assembly later this month.

    • Trademarks

      • The Saratoga Conundrum: Is It Water, Or Is It Juice

        So many of the trademark disputes we talk about here involve stories centered around the questions of customer confusion and like-market competition. These are two tests central to the question of whether trademark infringement has actually occurred: are the two entities competing with one another for the same customers and are those customers, or could those customers be, confused by the alleged trademark violation. Quite often, the markets and products in question aren’t of the basic-needs variety, perhaps creating some wiggle room in the minds of some as to whether there is a like-market issue to consider.

        But to create a truly absurd trademark accusation, the accusing side should really be a producer of one of the basic necessities of life, while the accused does not. Take, say, water. In Saratoga, for example, a large bottled water company is going after a chain of juice bars because both include the word “Saratoga” in their respective trademarks.

    • Copyrights

      • The Pirate Bay And KickassTorrents Uploader Slapped With €7,500 Fine

        You might have heard and read the news of big piracy fish like The Pirate Bay facing bans. However, this doesn’t mean that the individual uploader and users of these websites don’t face any consequences. Along the same lines, an illegal torrent uploader has been hit with a fine of €7,500.

      • The Fight Over Copyrighting Klingon Heats Up, And Gets More Ridiculous

        Last year, we wrote about a somewhat speculative article by Charles Duan from Public Knowledge, connecting the ridiculous result of the Oracle/Google fight on the copyrightability of software APIs, to the idea of trying to claim copyright in a language, with a particular focus on Klingon, the made up language from the Star Trek universe. And, then, of course, back in March, that speculative hypothetical became much more real, when Paramount’s lawsuit against a Star Trek fan film did, in fact, argue that Klingon was covered by copyright, and that the fan film violated that copyright.

        A bunch of things have happened since then, as this mess careens towards trial, and we wanted to catch you up. First, the lawyers for the fan film, put together by Axanar Productions, challenged many of the claims made by Paramount in its amended complaint, noting that many of the things listed as copyright infringing, clearly were not — including the language of Klingon.

      • Why Your Browser Is Warning You About Pirate Bay

        Access to torrent site The Pirate Bay appears to be blocked by most major browsers, users noticed on Saturday.

        Typing in the web address brings up phishing warnings blocking The Pirate Bay on mobile and desktop versions of Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. The Chrome warning tells users, “Deceptive site ahead: Attackers on Thepiratebay.se may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information.” It elaborated in the details: “Google Safe Browsing recently detected phishing on thepiratebay.se. Phishing sites pretend to be other websites to trick you.”

        Similarly, Firefox warned: “Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial information by imitating sources you may trust. Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud.”

      • Italian court says that rightholders do NOT have to indicate URLs when submitting takedown requests

        When does a hosting provider become liable for third-party infringements? Does an internet service provider (ISP) have an obligation to monitor the information it stores at the request of third parties? Do rightholders need to indicate the precise location of allegedly infringing works by means of URLs? Where can one sue for alleged online copyright infringement?

        These are questions which both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and national courts have addressed over the past few years (although not always answered clearly).

05.09.16

European Digital SME Alliance: Unified Patent Court (UPC) “Unconstitutional”, Harms SMEs, Brings Software Patents to Europe, “Should be Based on EU Law and Not on an International Agreement.”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Another TTIP- or TTP-style behind-closed-doors agreement which infuriates those potentially affected (once they actually find out about it)

European Digital SME AllianceSummary: Position paper from a legitimate (not fake) group of SMEs blasts the Unified Patent Court (UPC) for being little more than a conspiracy of powerful businesses and other opportunists to work around the law, misrepresent SMEs, and undermine Directive 2009/24/EC (effectively a ban on software patents)

EARLIER this morning we wrote about the UPC in relation to misleading new propaganda from patent lawyers. The EPO has been lying to everyone, insisting that the UPC is legitimate and that it’s somehow “for SMEs” when the reality is exactly the opposite, as a recent scholarly paper about SMEs served to show. Patent lawyers who play along with the EPO’s propaganda are doing a lot of damage, but then again, remember that it’s “damages” from which they profit. They want patent war. The more, the merrier. As for the EPO, it now pays obscene amounts of money to a PR firm from the US, which in turn pays to organise UPC propaganda events in the US (definitely not for European SMEs). It takes extreme gullibility/ignorance to fail to see what’s happening here.

“It takes extreme gullibility/ignorance to fail to see what’s happening here.”When talking about SMEs we must remember that there are fake (AstroTurfing) lobbying groups of Microsoft, pretending to be fronts of SMEs (e.g. Association for Competitive Technology), but European Digital SME Alliance is not a fake one (members listed at the bottom of the statement below). As the statement states clearly: “The European Digital SME Alliance aims to ensure that ICT SMEs get talked to rather than just talked about.”

The latter is what has been happening for quite some time. We mentioned this. The European Digital SME Alliance is based in Brussels and Benjamin Henrion, who is also based in Brussels (the EPO increases/maintains lobbying presence there), paraphrased [1, 2] the European Digital SME Alliance as saying “An EU wide patent system should be based on EU law and not on an international agreement [...] UPC rules of procedure are illegal, undemocratic, no parliaments, even unconstitutional in DE” (not exact words).

Here is the statement in full, extracted and edited based on the original PDF:

European Digital SME Alliance

4 April 2016

Position Paper on Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Insufficient legal protection for digital SMEs

The European DIGITAL SME Alliance is concerned that the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) will undermine the legal protection of software developers against lawsuits based on possibly invalid software patents.
Under this agreement, companies may be convicted for an alleged patent infringement without first proving whether the patent in question is valid or not.

Threats to digital SMEs

The European software market is loaded with tens of thousands of software-­related patents1. Patents can cover several features in a computer program. For small and medium sized software developers it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid those patents by using alternative means. The existence of software-­‐related patents is per se questionable: software is sufficiently protected directly or indirectly by the copyright law for computer programs under Directive 2009/24/EC.

More in general, the validity of software patents is quite uncertain when looking at the overall patent collection. More than 50 % of all oppositions or nullity procedures against software patents lead to a partial or total revocation of patents2. Thus, there is no basis for trust on the reliability and completeness of the patent granting procedure.

All SMEs in the software sector can be accused of patent infringement and receive an injunction by a court. This poses a constant threat to the companies. The defence against a patent infringement lawsuit is costly and can take years. This situation is worse in countries like Germany, where the proceedings for patent infringement can lead to an injunction even though the lawfulness of the patent in question has not yet been determined. Injunctions
_______________
1 The search for patents in the German Patent and Trademark Office containing the phrase „computer program“ in the patent claims led to 20.278 Hits on 10.11.2015.

2 http://www.epo.org/about-­‐us/annual-­‐reports-­‐statistics/annual-­‐report/2014/statistics/searches.html: In 2014, in opposition procedures at the European Patent Office in 31% of the cases, patents were totally removed and in 38% of the cases at least partially removed

force companies to withdraw their product from the market. Years after such injunction, when the SME has accumulated huge losses, a court may judge invalid the patent in question. Hence, companies that own large patent portfolios can use the threat of patent infringement lawsuit to undermine the competition of SME software developers in the market.

Creating a long-­‐lasting legal uncertainty

According to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, when ruling on an alleged patent infringement, the local and regional chambers of the Unified Patent Court will be empowered to decide in their own discretion, whether an objection for nullity of the patent shall be taken into account. The chambers will have different options:

(a) They can decide about a counterclaim for revocation together with the question of patent infringement;
(b) they can suspend the patent infringement process until the nullity proceeding is ruled or
(c) they can decide about a patent infringement without considering the question of nullity.

Thus, the agreement fails to establish a legal precedence for the clarification of the validity of patents. Should the agreement come into force, it would extend the German approach of a conviction without prior clarification of the legal situation to all participating countries. Worryingly, the choice of an international agreement as operational tool will make it very difficult to review the content of the agreement over the next decades, thus worsening the consequences and perpetuating the damage to SMEs in the digital sector.

Unconstitutional rules of procedure

According to the agreement, an administrative committee composed by representatives of the signatory countries will be alone responsible for setting up the rules of procedure of the new Unified Patent Court. The rules of procedure deal with numerous matters of the procedure that concern the procedural rights of the parties.
The definition of this set of rules that regard the basic rights of the parties without democratic legitimation by the parliaments is, for countries like Germany, even unconstitutional.

Fragmentation of legal positions

Croatia, Poland and Spain are not signatories of this agreement.

The requests of the European DIGITAL SME Alliance

Digital SMEs need a European patent system that protects them from the attacks of owners of extensive portfolios often based on unlawful software patents. For small and medium sized software companies it is essential that the patent system prevent the implementation of questionable patents. Thus, the procedural law should ensure a complete examination of the patent, prior to the decision on conviction for an alleged patent infringement. An EU wide patent system should be based on EU law and not on an international agreement.

About the European DIGITAL SME Alliance

The European Digital SME Alliance (former PIN SME) is an association formed in 2007 to represent the interests of Europe’s ICT SME sector. Currently ten national and regional associations are members, representing tens of thousands ICT SME companies in Europe. The European Digital SME Alliance aims to ensure that ICT SMEs get talked to rather than just talked about. It provides a voice for ICT SMEs in the policy and business arenas and is already represented in several EU expert groups and taskforces.

Membership

BASSCOM – Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BULGARIA), CNA -­‐Comunicazione e Terziario Avanzato, Confederazione Nazionale dell’Artigianato e della Piccola e Media impresa (ITALY), UKITA, United Kingdom IT Association (GREAT BRITAIN), CONETIC – Confederación Española de Empresas de Tecnologias de la Información, Communicaciones y Electrónica (SPAIN), BITMi – Bundesverband IT-­‐Mittelstand (GERMANY), GPNI – Groupement Professionnel National de l’Informatique (FRANCE), it-­‐forum midtjylland (DENMARK), SwissMedia – Swiss IT & Multimedia Association (SWITZERLAND), Belgrade Chamber of Commerce, IT Association (SERBIA), Vojvodina ICT Cluster (SERBIA), STIKK – Kosovo Association of Information and Communication Technology (KOSOVO), Balkan and Black Sea ICT Clusters Network (ALBANIA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, BULGARIA, GREECE, MONTENEGRO, ROMANIA, SERBIA, KOSOVO, TURKEY, REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA, UKRAINE)

The UPC basically mirrors what we find in TPP and TTIP. It’s a corporate attack on democracy itself and it is falsely advertised to the public (if it’s advertised at all). Protests may be needed and more antagonism from those affected is now imperative. █

Corporate Imperialism in Europe Through the UPC, the Horrible Patent Deal Almost Nobody Heard of

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Battistelli and his ilk hope to keep it under the wraps, without any public backlash/flak like TPP and TTIP have received

A statue

Summary: The coup d’état of the EPO, large applicants (massive global corporations), and their patent lawyers continues with shameless lobbying, new unsubstantiated rumours, and the self-fulfilling prophecies strategy (to depress the opposition and lower its morale)

THERE is virtually no open debate or investigative journalism in the corporate media about the UPC (when it’s mentioned at all, if it’s ever mentioned, it’s corporate propaganda), the corporations-leaning deal which patent lawyers and their largest clients are crafting and drafting with help from clueless politicians, national patent offices, and EPO officials such as Battistelli. This is a travesty because if the public knew about it (especially the broader impact), there would be riots and protests in the streets.

“This is a travesty because if the public knew about it (especially the broader impact), there would be riots and protests in the streets.”While patent law firms keep us distracted with puff pieces like “Protecting software inventions in Europe” or “EPO developments on patentability of biotechnology inventions” (April 11th [1, 2, 3]) much bigger things are happening (not the openwashing of UPC, as seen in [1] below), which can serve to legitimise software patents in Europe and also bring patent trolls to the entire continent and beyond it (Britain gets them already).

Proponents of software patents already start to insinuate that it will be easier to be granted software patents in Europe than in the Unites States. As one of them put it a few days ago [1, 2, 3], “Message from the EPO to US Software Applicants: Give us your rejected, your software applns in 3600 yearning to be granted; The Alice-rejected inventions of your teeming shore, Send these, the disrespected, tempest tossed software inventions to us: We lift our lamp beside the Golden Door to issuance and validation in Europe.”

“What about the option of blocking it altogether?”Sadly, under the regime of the clueless Battistelli there is already some truth to it and this closer look by Merpel suggests that a wholly horrible package is expected to come with UPC. To quote: “Of course there are a number of things that need to be resolved as the clock starts ticking down on the UPC opening its doors, the Code of Conduct being one of them. However, while there is still time, it is important that the uncertainty and issues outlined in CCBE’s letter should be fully considered and addressed, with the current draft being a launching off point. Further, Merpel hopes that the current draft is circulated more widely so that the larger European profession, who will be bound by the Code, is given an opportunity to comment.”

What about the option of blocking it altogether? And why does Merpel assume that this is inevitable and that “the clock starts ticking down on the UPC opening its doors”? There are all sorts of great barriers which remain. The Bristows colleague of Merpel, a longtime proponent of software patents and the UPC, would probably have Merpel and others aware only of the ‘good’ news about UPC, not the rest. This booster has been meddling in UPC affairs for quite a while, this time omitting any of the negative publicity around UPC and instead latching onto this speculation from Italy. Italy opposed this package vigorously and rejected it strongly half a decade ago when it was called “EU Patent” [1, 2, 3]. It still hasn’t consented to it. “After a sunny lunch this afternoon,” the Bristows employee writes about herself in third person narrative, “the AmeriKat returned to her desk to find some very exciting news from her friends at leading Italian IP firm, Trevisan Cuonzo, about the status of Italy’s UPC ratification process.”

They would wish so, wouldn’t they?

“They hope that by giving the impression that nothing can stop the UPC the UPC will eventually defeat the antagonists, having lowered their morale.”So a law firm hears from another law firm about something and now they hope to give Italians the impression that their language and interests are being abandoned and there’s nothing they can do to stop it? Seems like yet another go at self-fulfilling prophecies. They hope that by giving the impression that nothing can stop the UPC the UPC will eventually defeat the antagonists, having lowered their morale. For shame. Those propagandists have been doing a lot of damage and Bristows played a significant role in this propaganda for quite some time, often taking advantage of IP Kat as a platform (because almost nobody bothers with Bristows’ own platform, even when they opportunistically — for marketing purposes — call it “Bristows UPC”).

Here is one comment posted in response to the rumour mill:

My guess is that the Netherlands will try to be with the first implementing countries at all cost… It passed the stage Italy currently is in months ago, and presented the agreement (well: the law approving the UPC Agreement) to parliament 2 months ago and is currently busy answering the first round of written questions by the responsible parliamentary committee. The government also requested the legislation to be fast-tracked.

However, there seems to be trouble with the advice of the Council of State (Raad van State) on the implementing legislation. The implementing legislation was thus not accompanying the approval of the agreement, when it was presented to parliament (which was the plan from the beginning), and the government has requested additional advice from the Council of State on “a new European patent system” (which is very special).

My guess therefore: NL will be nr 13, but the implementing legislation will come later….

Well, it’s a de facto coup; the UPC keeps changing names, which makes effective public criticism difficult and also misleads/confuses the public. EPO officials are not traveling to nations that wish to leave the EU and push the UPC down their officials' throats to bypass the referendum (or equivalent process). Not a coincidence. Bristow wants London to become a patent litigation hub and many other patent firms also look after their own interests, irrespective of what the general public wants and deserves. Watch how the London-based IAM tries pushing a similar meta-industry (patent feuds) into Asia, making it sound like a contest again (preaching and shaming, not objectively reporting):

Authorities in Shanghai have made fresh calls for the city to become an IP centre in recent months. The plans include efforts to improve IP rights enforcement, in both the judicial and administrative spheres, which is surely a prerequisite to having any sort of transactional activity. But like past blueprints, it also calls for building an ecosystem for IP trading, for example by attracting services providers that can facilitate and advise on deals, and professionals with the requisite expertise. The head of the Shanghai IP Office says that an IP ‘trading centre’ will be established within the year.

For a long time, Singapore and Hong Kong have been the most prominent jurisdictions vying for the hub mantle. The Lion City’s efforts have been decade-long and wide-ranging, and resulted in significant changes to the IP environment; the drive has seen it introduce a positive grant patent system, train its own patent examiners and other IP professionals, and open up the market to competition from foreign patent agents. Hong Kong’s plans, by contrast, have been more narrowly focused on IP trading, premised on its combination of a common law legal system and easy access to mainland China. Malaysia joined the fray about three years ago, pledging $65 million towards an IP financing plan that emphasised the collateralisation of patents, especially by SMEs.

Asia has been a lot more pacific on the patent front, but patent lawyers in Europe and the US obviously want to change that. They profit from making a mess. IAM itself is more of an advocacy site (for patent trolls, lawyers etc.) and it previously used shame tactics to pressure European officials to adopt the UPC, as we repeatedly showed here. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. European Unified Patent Court goes Open Source

    Using Private Cloud and Drupal as a starting point together with small expert partners and agile management the new platform for the European UPC has been shaped to the exact requirements and quickly adapted while more needs surfaced. The only ready to use Open Source tool used has been Zarafa Collaboration Platform which integrated with the Case Management System will provide secure email, instant messaging, file sharing and video conferencing to the platform’s users.

    The result is that, thanks to Open Source based platform and by working with SMEs, the UK IPO team has been able to deliver to the Unified Patent Court team the project earlier than planned and under budget.

Australian Recommendation Against Software Patents is Still in the News

Posted in Australia, Patents at 2:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Australian mapSummary: Even though much of the Australian and the international media focused on copyright-related findings of Australia’s Productivity Commission, the findings against software patents continue to be mentioned to this date

At the start of this month and end of last month we wrote about an Australian recommendation to abolish software patents for good. Some corporate media came to cover it several days later (even over a week later), under the headline “Australian Gov’t. Body Recommends Banning Software Patents”. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Australia’s Productivity Commission wants to exclude business methods and software from patentable subject matter under that country’s laws.

The APC’s draft report on Australia’s “Intellectual Property Arrangements” called for a patent law amendment to explicitly exclude those types of inventions from patent protection.

There is a “clear case” to disallow the patenting of software and business methods because there’s evidence that patents in those areas don’t encourage new or valuable innovation, the draft issued April 29 said. What’s more, such patents can impede competition.

Having contacted some Australian activists against software patents about this, I was surprised to see that they hadn’t noticed, probably because the media mostly focused on other findings of the Commission, mostly copyright-related. Here are Peter Caporn and Rebecca Hembling from Wrays, an Australia law firm, mentioning this aspect somewhere towards the end of their new analysis:

Business Methods and Software (BM&S)

The Commission suggests that their newly characterised technology subset ‘BM&S’ should be specifically excluded from patent protection. Patents on this technology is said to be ‘unnecessary’, a conclusion bound to inspire a robust response. The Commission has adopted a narrow view of how ip relating to business methods and software is used and the impact it has. It will be particularly interesting to see if the reasoning set out as support for this draft recommendation survives the submissions that it will no doubt attract in response.

It sure looks like much of the media either missed or overlooked this one particular aspect of the findings, which is somewhat of a shame. If nobody notices or takes into account such input, will it have a lasting impact? █

Links 9/5/2016: Linux 4.6 RC7 and Many Distro Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 1:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • EverestIMS Shifts to Open Source Platform

    DMX India, a provider IT enabler, recently shifted their EverestIMS (Everest), an integrated management framework/end-to-end network management system, to open source platform.

  • MATE Desktop Brought Over To Solaris / OpenIndiana

    For those using the Illumos-based OpenIndiana operating system originally derived from OpenSolaris, the MATE 1.14 desktop environment is now available.

    The MATE 1.14 Software Compilation is now available to users of OpenIndiana with three of the OI developers having been working on porting and packaging all of the desktop components for this non-Linux platform. They’ve accomplished their mission, including bringing PulseAudio 8.0.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • A Look Inside Hitler’s Doomed, Failed ‘Supergun’

      The greatest unsolved mystery about World War II is what else television could possibly have to say about it. From the old CBS documentary series The Twentieth Century (11 of the 18 episodes of the inaugural 1957-58 season were devoted to the conflict) to Ken Burns’ 14-hour 2007 opus The War, it sometimes seems that every bullet fired has had its 15 minutes of fame.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Our Best Weapon Is Being Systematically Eliminated

      One of the targets of the Nestle boycott was Perrier water, which Nestle owns. But Nestle also owns over 70 other brands of “designer” water, all over the world, so targeting Perrier is going to do little more than some “public relations” damage, if that.

      Nestle is simply too big and diversified to be hurt by a well-meaning collective action. It owns Arrowhead and Calistoga and San Pelligrino water, as well as Ice Mountain, and Poland Spring, and Deer Park. How do you mobilize a boycott against a company like this?

    • Men more reluctant to go to the doctor – and it’s putting them at risk

      Men can expect to die approximately five years sooner than women, and men are more likely to die as a result of unintentional injury and suicide relative to women.

      These differences are not well explained by physiological differences between men and women. One possible explanation is that men are more reluctant to go to the doctor – and less likely to be honest once they get there.

    • [Old] Internal EPA E-Mail: ‘Not Sure Flint Is the Community We Want to Go Out on a Limb For’

      A Sept. 24, 2015 internal e-mail from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 Water Division Branch Chief Debbie Baltazar suggests that the federal agency might not want to “go out on a limb for” the community of Flint, Mich., which has been suffering from lead-tainted water since 2014 when the city switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River.

    • Was Prince the Latest Opioid Casualty?

      The autopsy results from Prince’s unexpected death are not in yet, but it has been reported that the musical star had the prescription opioid painkiller Percocet in his possession when he died. Unconfirmed reports suggest Prince not only used prescription opioids for pain but may have had an addiction.

    • Racial Life Expectancy Gap Shrinks To Smallest In American History

      The longstanding life expectancy gap between black and white Americans is steadily decreasing, the New York Times reports. Although middle-aged black Americans still have a higher mortality rate than white Americans, the gap in life expectancy between the two groups is at a historic low. In 1990, the difference in life expectancy between blacks and whites was seven years; by 2014, it dropped to 3.4 years.

      According to a new collection of federal data, the rate of suicide for black men decreased between 1999 and 2014, infant mortality rates have been reduced by more than 20 percent since the 1990s, and teenage births have decreased by more than 60 percent since the mid-1990s.

  • Security

    • Security isn’t a feature, it’s a part of everything

      Almost every industry goes through a time when new novel features are sold as some sort of add on or extra product. Remember needing a TCP stack? What about having to buy a sound card for your computer, or a CD drive? (Does anyone even know what a CD is anymore?) Did you know that web browsers used to cost money? Times were crazy.

    • Student Tried to Hack His School Network, Police Calls Him An Anonymous Member

      The State police and school district officials in Pennsylvania are investigating a case that involves a school student trying to hack into the school’s Wi-Fi network. The officials have told a local newspaper that they have found some evidence regarding his association with the hacktivist group Anonymous

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Bashar Assad’s Brutality in Syria Is Matched by U.S. Devastation Across the Region

      Growing numbers of people worldwide are turning their Facebook profile pictures into solid red squares in an attempt to call attention to a new, deadly phase of the Syria war. The latest round of violence was marked by the bombing of a refugee camp near the Syrian border with Turkey, which resulted in 28 deaths. That attack was probably the work of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad or its ally Russia.

      Only days earlier, a horrific bombing took place in the rebel-controlled city of Aleppo, targeting Al-Quds Hospital, which was supported by the Nobel Prize-winning organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. That airstrike, which came in the form of multiple barrel bombs (the Assad government’s signature bomb), killed dozens of civilians, including one of the city’s last remaining pediatricians.

    • North Korea’s New Weapons: Full Speed Ahead?

      North Korea has a long history of militant nationalism in response to external threats, reflected in Kim Jong-un’s quoted remark above and concretely in the speed with which it is developing a sophisticated nuclear and missile capability. Like the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, the DPRK is not going to take orders from foreign powers, friends and adversaries alike, least of all when its leaders believe US military exercises and nuclear weapons pose a threat. Predictably, therefore, Pyongyang treats international sanctions, intended to punish it, as incentives to push ahead with development and production of new weapons for deterrence. It may only be a matter of time before a North Korean missile will be able to reach the US mainland, but Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather, is ever mindful of the fact that North Korea is surrounded by the overwhelming strategic power of the US and its South Korean and Japanese partners. The DPRK also faces a US president who once upon a time called for eliminating nuclear weapons but now is presiding over their significant upgrading, in competition with Russia and China. That upgrading includes miniaturization, which from one angle—the one most likely to have the North Korean military’s attention—increases the possible use of a nuclear weapon in warfare. North Korea’s evident work on miniaturization may hardly be coincidental.

    • President Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors

      Further, Shigeko stated, “I wish President Obama would come to Hiroshima. If he does, I would like to sneak through security and shake his hand, holding on until he says he will eliminate all nuclear weapons.”

      The thought of a kindly, diminutive 83-year old grandmother sneaking through security is amusing, and the president can avoid it by meeting with Shigeko and other Hibakusha to listen to their hard-earned wisdom and passionate desire for peace.

    • Dan Berrigan, 1921 – 2016: “We Haven’t Lost, Because We Haven’t Given Up.”

      About the death of renowned anti-war activist, poet and writer Fr. Dan Berrigan at the age of 94, the Rev. John Dear wrote, in part, that Dan: “inspired religious opposition to the Vietnam war and later the U.S. nuclear weapons industry.”

    • Father Daniel Berrigan, Anti-war Hero With a Huge Blindspot

      Indeed, a person can be the most committed of peace activists and protesters and be firmly on the side of a woman’s right to abortion. One can be firmly opposed to state-sponsored executions and stand in solidarity with women seeking to exercise their human rights and control their own destinies. A leftist can work assiduously for the elimination of nuclear weapons and stand for the right to access medical care without the fear of being harmed by those zealots who wish to maintain that lofty and nonsensical concept of the idealized woman, and not as equals living lives that are meaningful and fulfilling.

    • Price for Witnessing Against War

      Tears welled as I watched Catholic Worker friends drop a large banner with the words from Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. Nations shall make war no more,” a charge lived into by all three brothers Berrigan – Jerry, Dan, and Phil.

      And I thought back on what I learned decades ago at retreats led by Dan on the prophets Isaiah and Amos.

      During the eulogy, Liz McAlister, Phil’s widow, quoted from the “apology” Dan wrote for burning draft cards with home-made napalm in Catonsville, Maryland, in May 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War:

      “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.”

      Liz continued to read from the Statement of the Catonsville 9: “The suppression of truth stops here; this war stops here!” (emphasis added by Liz’s own prophetic voice.) Not stopping was the loud, un-church-like cheering that rattled the rafters.

    • Future Options: From Militarism and Monsanto to Gandhi and Bhaskar Save

      This is because their business models and practices grow out of and drive a political and economic system run by oligarchical interests. These companies are instrumental in pushing for corrupt, anti-democratic trade deals like TTIP and fuel and profit from a model of globalisation that encourages unnecessary massive environmental destruction, the production of bad food, unsustainable farming practices and the use of health-damaging inputs. The system moreover thrives on an urban-centric model of development centred on resource-depletion, over-consumption and an economic neoliberalism underpinned by imperialist wars.

    • Australia-China Relations and the Politics of Canberra’s Submarine Deal

      The shift of the submarine tender from Japan to France can be considered a big win for Chinese foreign policy; if the perception of solidarity with the US consensus in the South China Seas is of any concern. While Beijing is predisposed to view any military upgrade in Australian naval forces, strategically, as a growing appendage of the American 7th Fleet, the threat of 12 new submarines to Beijing’s maritime security is likely not to be taken too seriously. Currently, only half of Australia’s six submarines are manned. The lack of naval personnel for submarine duty is not likely to grow any time soon. What is significant for Beijing rather is the reaffirmation by Canberra that economic instability and political insecurity is likely to continue to drive Australian defence policy, as opposed to security related needs.

    • Al-Qaeda Everywhere: US support for Oppressive Gov’t’s made Bin Laden’s Killing Moot

      The US government has never understood insurgency for the most part. Smart USG officials with whom I’ve interacted have had a firm belief that leadership is a rare quality and that you can attrite an organization by killing its leaders. This theory is patently false. It moreover gives false hope to counter-insurgency officials and fools them into thinking simple tactical steps will be effective.

      When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on whom the Pentagon rather ridiculously blamed 80% of the violence in Iraq in 2005, was killed from the air in spring of 2006, many observers thought that al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, his guerrilla group, was doomed. But his successor, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, renamed it the Islamic State of Iraq and decided to experiment with holding territory in Diyala and other provinces under the noses of the US military.

    • Beyond the Wall: an In-Depth Look at U.S. Immigration Policy

      Political instability in Honduras has also raised concerns about U.S. commitment to democracy in the region. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will likely be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, has been criticized by journalists, international affairs experts and indigenous rights activists for her role in legitimizing the 2009 coup that removed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power. Zelaya clashed with the United States on a number of issues including his drug policy, which directly contradicted the DEA’s regional enforcement strategy. He also proposed a controversial national poll to gauge public interest in modifying the 1982 Honduran Constitution and moved to the left on a number issues, putting him at odds with the country’s media. Despite these controversies, he was democratically elected and assumed office on January 27, 2006, meaning he should have served until January of 2010. Instead, he was kidnapped by the country’s military on June 28, 2009, and taken into exile.

    • U.S. Army Chaplain Resigns In Opposition to Use of Assassin Drones by the United States

      U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain Captain Christopher John Antal resigned from the U.S. Army Reserves on April 12, 2016 in opposition to U.S policies regarding militarized drones, nuclear weapons, and preventive war. Antal stated he could not serve as a chaplain for an “empire” and could not “reconcile his duty to protect and defend America and its constitutional democracy and his commitment to the core principles of his religious faith including justice, equity and compassion and the inherent worth and dignity of every person” with policies of the United States.

    • Obama’s drone war is a shameful part of his legacy

      Father Daniel Berrigan died Saturday at 94. The longtime peace activist gained national attention in 1968 when he and eight others, including his brother Philip (also a priest), burned draft records taken from a Selective Service office in Maryland. Decades later, he remains a powerful example of a man who never wavered in his beliefs, standing up time and again for the poor and oppressed. In his last years, Berrigan no longer had the energy to protest as frequently. But if he had been a few generations younger, can there be any doubt that he would have been at forefront of those protesting the expansion of the drone war under President Obama?

    • U.S. forces now on the ground supporting combat operations in Yemen, Pentagon says
    • An Army Captain Takes Obama to Court Over ISIS Fight

      A 28-year-old Army officer on Wednesday sued President Obama over the legality of the war against the Islamic State, setting up a test of Mr. Obama’s disputed claim that he needs no new legal authority from Congress to order the military to wage that deepening mission.

      The plaintiff, Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, an intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, voiced strong support for fighting the Islamic State but, citing his “conscience” and his vow to uphold the Constitution, he said he believed that the mission lacked proper authorization from Congress.

      “To honor my oath, I am asking the court to tell the president that he must get proper authority from Congress, under the War Powers Resolution, to wage the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” he wrote.

    • Jeremy Scahill: Clinton is Legendary Hawk, But Sanders Shouldn’t Get Pass on Role in Regime Change

      Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald weigh in on comments from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her rival, Bernie Sanders, who have both supported the use of drones. Scahill notes that while Clinton is often portrayed as a more hawkish “cruise missile liberal,” Sanders also supported regime change in the 1990s. “Bernie Sanders signed onto neocon legislation that made the Iraq invasion possible by codifying into U.S. law that Saddam Hussein’s regime must be overthrown,” Scahill says, and “then supported the most brutal regime of economic sanctions in world history, that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.”

    • The establishment is lying about the 9/11 report

      As the push to declassify the 28 pages implicating the Saudis in 9/11 intensifies, the Washington establishment is circling the wagons around our Saudi “friends.”

      On Sunday, CIA Director John Brennan pooh-poohed the credibility of the chapter of the 2002 congressional 9/11 inquiry dealing with foreign sponsorship of the attacks that his boss still, despite repeated promises to 9/11 families, refuses to make public.

    • Amy Schumer’s Skit on Just How Easy It Is to Buy Guns in America Is Hilarious and Horrifying (Video)

      When several callers on Amy Schumer’s faux home shopping show say they can’t buy guns because of silly things such as violent convictions or being on the no-fly list, the comedian puts them at ease. “You can absolutely get a gun if you have several felonies as long as you buy it on the internet or at a gun show,” the “Inside Amy Schumer” host explains. “And caller, guess where you are right now? Bam! You’re at a gun show.”

      And it’s no accident the comedian has decided to deal with the topic of gun control on her show—she’s been an outspoken critic of lax gun laws ever since 2 people were shot at a screening of her film “Trainwreck” in Louisiana.

    • The Untold History of US War Crimes

      In this exclusive interview, Prof Peter Kuznick speaks of: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki; US crimes and lies behind the Vietnam war, and what was really behind that inhumane invasion; why the US engaged a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and how that war and the mainstream media influences the world today; the interests behind the assassinations of President Kennedy; US imperialism towards Latin America, during the Cold War and today, under the false premise of War on Terror and War on Drugs.

    • American Power Under Challenge

      When we ask “Who rules the world?” we commonly adopt the standard convention that the actors in world affairs are states, primarily the great powers, and we consider their decisions and the relations among them. That is not wrong. But we would do well to keep in mind that this level of abstraction can also be highly misleading.

      States of course have complex internal structures, and the choices and decisions of the political leadership are heavily influenced by internal concentrations of power, while the general population is often marginalized. That is true even for the more democratic societies, and obviously for others. We cannot gain a realistic understanding of who rules the world while ignoring the “masters of mankind,” as Adam Smith called them: in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England; in ours, multinational conglomerates, huge financial institutions, retail empires, and the like. Still following Smith, it is also wise to attend to the “vile maxim” to which the “masters of mankind” are dedicated: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people” — a doctrine known otherwise as bitter and incessant class war, often one-sided, much to the detriment of the people of the home country and the world.

    • The Times, They Are a Changin’!

      In short, rebellion is in the air – and, I would even venture to say, the spirit of revolution. Both Sanders and Trump, in their inchoate respective ways, are leading a revolt against the idea that America is and must forever more be the policeman of the world.

    • US Ambassador to Hungary: Overthrow Assad, Let in Refugees, and Fight Russia… or Else!

      If anyone wants a short course on what’s wrong with US diplomacy look no further than US Ambassador to Hungary Coleen Bell’s speech Friday to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament. In typical diplo-speak there was plenty of flowery language about shared values, fish swimming together in the same water (?), sappy poetics like “together, out of that winter, we would force the spring,” and talk of together being “part of the world’s greatest military and political alliance.”

      But make no mistake: Inside Ambassador Bell’s velvet glove is an iron fist, poised to strike should Washington’s annoyingly independent-minded Fidesz-led government step out of line on the big issues. And by “big” issues it should be understood that the US means the issues it considers in the interests of its own foreign policy, not those in Hungary’s interest.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Hacker Guccifer Claims He Broke Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

      The Romanian hacker who first inadvertently revealed the existence of Hillary Clinton’s secret, off-the-books email account back in 2014 now says he directly breached her home server, contradicting claims to the contrary by the Clinton campaign.

    • US Judge: Clinton may be ordered to testify in records case

      A federal judge said Wednesday he may order Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to testify under oath about whether she used a private email server as secretary of state to evade public records disclosures.

    • Federal judge could order Hillary Clinton to testify about private server

      A federal judge is saying he could order presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to testify under oath about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

    • Whistleblowers Praised for Exposing Alleged Pentagon Contractor Fraud

      Two firms contracting with the Pentagon’s massive Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative agreed to pay the government $13 million to settle allegations of overbilling exposed by two whistleblowers, the Justice Department and private attorneys announced Tuesday.

      The California-based companies Menlo Worldwide Services and Estes Forwarding Worldwide agreed to resolve a lawsuit brought in 2013 under the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens bringing forward material information to collect a reward. They were said to have billed the Pentagon the cost of moving freight by air when it was actually shipped by ground, charges that the companies did not admit to.

      The two firms were also alleged to have knowingly submitted inflated charges for air fuel instead of ground fuel, and charges for oversized freight when the freight did not qualify as oversized.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • City at the Heart of the Alberta Tar Sands Burning to the Ground

      The city which serves as the hub of one of the world’s largest climate-wrecking projects, the Alberta tar sands, is burning to the ground due to wildfires sparked by unseasonably dry and hot weather.

      The wildfires began some five days ago in the forests west of the city and then worsened when strong winds carried the fires to the edge and into the city, creating quasi-apocalyptic conditions. The city center is burning, including the city hospital. Flights in and out of the airport were cancelled as of noon on May 4.

    • From Philly to Australia, People Rise Up Against ‘Fossil Fuel Dinosaur Economy’

      The climate movement was out in force on Saturday as demonstrators from Australia to Philadelphia laid their bodies down and raised their voices up to demand a just transition to renewable energy.

      In Newcastle, Australia, over 1,000 kayaktivists and other protesters shut down operations at the nation’s largest coal export port.

      “For the first time in a very long while, no coal came into or left Newcastle Port today,” organizers with climate action group 350 Australia wrote in an end-of-day recap of the dramatic occupation.

      “Kayakers blocked the harbour entrance in the largest flotilla ever seen here. While at the same time over 60 people blocked the only coal transport train line into the port, preventing any coal from getting to port for over six hours,” they said. “Other brave folk suspended themselves from coal loaders and mooring lines of major coal assets.”

    • Tar Sands Boomtown Blaze Still ‘Burning Out of Control’

      The Alberta wildfire that has been dubbed The Beast and described as a post-apocalyptic nightmare is still burning “out of control,” according to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who gave a briefing Saturday afternoon in Edmonton.

      “In no way is this fire under control,” she reiterated.

      Fire officials said Sunday that the fire will soon reach neighboring province Saskatchewan as the blaze is expected to double in size over the course of the weekend due to the high temperatures and gusting winds, growing to an estimated 3,000 square kilometers.

    • People Power Over Corporate Power = Canceled Pipeline Projects

      A long-standing fight for the public’s right to their land and waterways came to an end April 22 when Gov. Cuomo’s New York State Department of Environmental Conservation denied the Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification for the proposed Constitution Pipeline. The pipeline was proposed to run for 124 miles and require the destruction of nearly 700,000 trees.

    • As Climate Deception Investigations Gain Momentum, ExxonMobil Plays the Victim

      With several state attorneys general now investigating whether ExxonMobil misled its shareholders and the public about climate change risks, it was more than a little ironic when the company recently cried foul.

      “Collaboration, collusion, conspiracy,” charged ExxonMobil Media Relations Manager Alan Jeffers, “pick a word.”

      Pick a word? How about nonsense? If anyone could be accused of collusion and conspiracy, it’s ExxonMobil. But more on that later.

      What prompted Jeffers’ ludicrous allegation was a meeting that took place on March 29. My colleague Peter Frumhoff, lead climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and environmental attorney Matt Pawa briefed a handful of state attorneys general, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman, who launched an investigation of ExxonMobil last November. Later that day, Schneiderman and 16 other attorneys general joined former Vice President Al Gore at a press conference to declare their support for more aggressive government action on climate change. During the event, AGs from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Massachusetts announced that they, too, would initiate investigations of ExxonMobil.

    • The PAWS Act Would Protect Animal Victims of Domestic Violence

      Ample research and horrific statistics document a crystal-clear link between animal abuse and domestic violence – one reason the FBI now tracks animal abuse.

      Despite the fact that we understand this link in painfully intimate detail, pets are still at grave risk because they have fewer protections under the law. Abusers view animals as soft and easy targets — and another tool to use in abusing their partners. While some states have enacted additional protections for pets, there’s nothing on the federal level, yet.

  • Finance

    • Trump’s New Finance Chair Led a Bank That Made Millions Off Taxpayer Bailouts

      Donald Trump has slammed Washington insiders, lobbyists, and Wall Street as he has tapped populist anger to snag the Republican presidential nomination. Yet when it came time to pick the top money man for his campaign, he turned to a hedge-funder best known for running a bank that made billions off taxpayer bailouts and, by one account, cost the federal government $13 billion.

    • A 2-Pronged Assault on Women

      The GOP isn’t just taking aim at reproductive rights — it’s after our very economic survival.

    • Why California’s $15 an Hour Minimum Wage Hike Still Isn’t High Enough

      California’s $10 minimum wage will increase to $15 an hour by 2022, but the state’s skyrocketing cost of living is already greater than most in the country.

    • How the Kleptocrats’ $12 Trillion Heist Helps Keep Most of the World Impoverished

      For the first time we have a reliable estimate of how much money thieving dictators and others have looted from 150 mostly poor nations and hidden offshore: $12.1 trillion.

      That huge figure equals a nickel on each dollar of global wealth and yet it excludes the wealthiest regions of the planet: America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

      That so much money is missing from these poorer nations explains why vast numbers of people live in abject poverty even in countries where economic activity per capita is above the world average. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, the national economy’s output per person comes to 60 cents for each dollar Americans enjoy, measured using what economists call purchasing power equivalents, yet living standards remain abysmal.

    • The TTIP and TPP trade deals: enough of the secrecy

      It’s amazing how just a little transparency forced onto the free trade deals the Obama administration been negotiating in secret totally turns the public against them.

      After the contents of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the European Union was leaked and published by Greenpeace a few days ago, the negotiations – already in turmoil – have been thrown into further doubt now that the public has actually gotten to see what is being proposed by both sides.

      As usual with US-negotiated trade deals, the contents were kept completely secret from both ordinary Europeans and Americans, yet was easily accessible if you’re a giant corporation. So naturally, the terms are heavily tilted toward big business at the expense of the environment, health and safety standards.

    • Is Pro-Business Reform Pro-Growth?

      It might at first be puzzling why, given such a robust cross-sectional relationship being the World Bank’s index and per-capita output, that I find no meaningful effects of pro-business reforms. To me, the most reasonable explanation is that the raw cross-country differences in the index probably captures a more meaningful measure of institutions than the jumps in the index, which reflect specific, discrete policy reforms. Countries with illiberal policies towards business probably have other problems that restrain economic development, but countries that change those policies in a sharply pro-business direction don’t necessarily solve all those deeper problems in the same sweep.

    • Why Don’t Entitlement ‘Reformers’ Ever Talk About Military Spending and Tax Shelters?

      Now that Donald Trump seems to be a sure thing for the Republican nomination, a GOP-led “entitlement reform” movement is all but done—for now. The Republicans put “entitlement reform” front and center as a major issue in 2012, but given Clinton’s ostensible opposition and the meteoric rise of Trump, who says he opposes Social Security cuts, the legendary “Grand Bargain” is now on the political back burner. This, predictably, has left some of the “entitlement reform” holdouts very upset.

      First, resident Washington Post fat-trimmer Charles Lane, in “Entitlement Reform, RIP” (4/27/16), lamented that a Trump/Clinton match-up means “entitlement reform” is all but dead. The Weekly Standard‘s Mark Hemingway (4/28/16) incredulously asked, “Whatever Happened to Entitlement Reform?” And the emerging “Never Trump” crowd, which is rushing to find a third party to help bring back the Romney-Ryan reform magic — including Sen. Ben Sasse, who published a call for an independent candidate, based largely on prioritizing “entitlement reform.”

    • We Were Kidding About Donald Trump Literally Taking the U.S. to Bankruptcy Court, Right?

      GOP presumptive nominee discusses renegotiating federal debt, like struggling economies do.

    • Robert McChesney: Capitalism Is a Bad Fit for a Technological Revolution

      In this interview, Robert McChesney, author with John Nichols of People Get Ready, discusses their new book, its challenge to the idea that technological advances always benefit humans and a framework to envision a digital age that will benefit workers over the super-rich.

    • Stories of Mother Love

      More than 5.8 million children are living in households headed by grandparents. Even when parents also live in the home many grandparents assume the parental role. Nearly half of these children are living with grandparents who say they are responsible for their grandchildren, and close to a million have no parent present in the home. More than a third of the 1.6 million grandmothers who say they are responsible for grandchildren are like Mrs. Dees – over 60 years old. So many children have been diverted from the child welfare system to live with a grandparent and sometimes their grandparents are their foster parents or legal guardians.

    • Capitalist Pig Comes Out For Hillary

      “I start with the premise that the only thing that can save the country is capitalism,” writes Capitalist Pig hedge fund manager Jonathan Hoenig in a recent blog post titled “Why Hillary Has My Vote.” The problem, according to Hoenig, is that Donald Trump seems to represent capitalism, while being explicitly anti-capitalist on numerous issues.

    • ‘You Never Know’: Trump Doubles Down On Default

      Hours after locking up the Republican presidential nomination this week, Donald Trump suggested that defaulting on the national debt could be a good thing. Economists and financial observers pointed out that his proposal to buy back U.S. debts for less than what America borrowed would send interest rates soaring and cripple the dollar’s vital status as the world’s safest investment.

      Pressed to explain why he thinks a huge national lender like China would accept a loss on their investment in the United States on Sunday, Trump offered only a verbal shrug.

      “You never know,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulous. “At some point, they might want to get out. Maybe they need their money, they might wanna get out.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Trump diminishes democracy

      How the Americans vote in their presidential election should be only their business. But it cannot be so.

    • They’re Still Not Telling the Real Story: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the Analysis You Won’t Hear on Cable News

      After every presidential primary, we were treated to a new round of conventional wisdom about what things mean for both parties going forward. Yet, there’s every reason to be deeply skeptical of these discussions among people who never saw either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders coming. They represent a chattering class that both expected and normalized a “war of dynasties” between Bushes and the Clintons, then marveled at the “depth” of the Republican bench, and spent months obsessing over whether Joe Biden would run, as if he were a figure of mythic proportions.

    • Why the 2016 Election Could Be the Start of an Authoritarian Strain in US Politics

      Ignoring rule of law is a classic sign of Totalitarian thinking — and that’s exactly Trump’s mindset.

    • Trump Advisor’s Putin Connections Freaks Out Security Establishment (Video)

      Late last year, the world marveled at the budding bromance between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Putin, who is alleged to have ordered the jailing and murder of political opponents and journalists critical of his regime, heaped praise on the “absolute leader of the presidential race,” calling Trump “bright and talented.”

      [...]

      In particular, policy experts are concerned about Trump’s newest political operative, Paul Manafort, who was recruited last month to lead the effort to secure delegates for the GOP convention in July. Manafort has significant experience laying the infrastructure for successful political campaigns, both in the United States and abroad. Slate provides extensive detail of Manafort’s dealings with foreign leaders, summarily stating Trump’s latest hire “made a career out of stealthily reinventing the world’s nastiest tyrants as noble defenders of freedom.”

    • Donald Trump Won’t Self-Fund General-Election Campaign

      Presumptive Republican nominee plans to create ‘world-class finance organization’ to back campaign

    • Trump Dodges on Whether He’s Met With Vladimir Putin: ‘I Don’t Want to Say’

      Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wouldn’t say Wednesday whether he had ever met with or spoken to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

      CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him about Russian fighter jets buzzing U.S. ships, the latest in a series of military provocations by Russia.

      “Lack of respect,” Trump said quickly.

      “Lack of respect?” Blitzer asked. “If you were president, what would you tell Putin?”

      “I would call him and say, ‘Don’t do it again,’” he said. “I would say, ‘Don’t do it again,’ and I think I’ll have a good relationship with him. So far, we’re off to a good start. He said Trump is a genius, OK? I think I’ll have a good relation—”

    • The Trump Train Chugs Along

      The point of Trump’s current lead is that any move at the convention against him will be seen as disastrous. On the other hand, the GOP machine men and women will be wondering if going with Trump will also come with its own destructive promise, a suicide pact that will banish the party into the wilderness. The chalice is being readied.

    • The Story of How Maine’s Governor Got His Dog Will Make You Angry

      The shelter has since admitted to breaking its own rules by giving LePage a chance to adopt the dog a day earlier than the public.

      It remains to be seen if Veto will soon be moving to Washington, DC, as LePage is reportedly gunning for a position in the Trump administration.

    • Obama official says he pushed a ‘narrative’ to media to sell the Iran nuclear deal
    • Why the Ben Rhodes profile in the New York Times Magazine is just gross
    • The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru
    • Millennials’ non-voting habits, explained

      Perhaps more surprisingly, Roberts doesn’t bring up the millennials who’ve already pushed the climate conversation this election into the mainstream, cornering Clinton into a firm rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline and prompting a national conversation about the role of fossil fuel money — including hers — in politics. Also absent are the now hundreds of students who’ve been arrested to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and the over 60 of them jailed this spring for fossil fuel divestment.

    • The Media Myth of the Working-Class Reagan Democrats

      Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, we are likely to get all sorts of mainstream media analysis about how his narrow pathway to Election Day victory runs through white working-class America, the way Ronald Reagan’s did, while the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, must corral young people, minorities and the well-educated.

      In case you haven’t noticed, there is an unmistakable media bias in this – one that was framed perfectly in a Newsweek cover story by Evan Thomas eight years ago. It was about Barack Obama’s alleged “Bubba Gap,” and illustrated with a picture of arugula — and beer. Democrats, naturally, were the arugula eaters.

    • An Honest Man at the BBC @KKeaneBBC

      Yorkshireman Mr Keane’s salary is approximately £170,000 pa less than that of Laura Keunssberg and significantly less than that of Sarah Smith. I am afraid his unfortunate addiction to truth telling is not going to have a positive effect on reducing that disparity. Indeed I fear for his continued employment. But we will ensure he is always welcome in Scotland.

    • This Ain’t the Kentucky Derby, Y’All

      On Sander’s side, as the path to nomination becomes narrower, some of us cry foul with increasing vehemence, blaming Clinton’s success on a rigged contest.

    • Few stand in Trump’s way as he piles up the Four-Pinocchio whoppers

      But the news media now faces the challenge of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Trump makes Four-Pinocchio statements over and over again, even though fact checkers have demonstrated them to be false. He appears to care little about the facts; his staff does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • ‘Upfront’ Gulshan Grover demands censorship on ‘dirty’ web series content

      The bad man of Bollywood Gulshan Grover is all set to make his debut in the world of web series. The actor will soon be seen in Viacom18′s web-film titled ‘ Badman’ that will be showcased as a four part film.

    • Societies with poor literacy rate prone to censorship

      “You can outsmart censorship with learning English and expanding your reading materials.”

      So said a Singaporean literary writer who has encountered many situations showing that censorship is enabled by a poor literacy rate.

      “We’ve seen that the Singaporean government is very fond of censorship and they use the idea of censorship as a way to shape society,” Stephanie Ye said in a discussion entitled “Being Shut Down” at the 2016 ASEAN Literary Festival in Jakarta on Sunday.

      “One reason why censorship doesn’t really work there is because the country’s population is extremely literate. Most people can read in English, so it’s so easy to access foreign media [to find alternative reading material]. You can’t censor every single thing that is in English out there,” she went on.

    • Akasha is a Censorship Resistant Blogging Network

      Akasha Project was unveiled on may the 3rd, created by one of Ethereum’s cofounder Mihai Alisie the venture seeks to create a social network on top of Ethereum’s Blockchain, using a technological stack comprised of IPFS, Electron, React, and Node.js. The goal is to have a censorship resistant Social Network that also prevents the loss of the user’s data.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Navy ‘Spy’ Edward Lin Spilled No Secrets To Taiwan

      A U.S. Navy sailor charged with espionage didn’t provide military secrets to a foreign government, but rather to an FBI informant who was posing as a Taiwanese official, military officials revealed Thursday.

      The latest twist in the case against Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin, 39, came as military officials allowed reporters to listen to a recording from a military pretrial hearing held on April 8. There, prosecutors alleged that Lin was the target of a sting operation that led to his arrest and two-day interrogation at the Honolulu International Airport last September.

    • FBI Wants to Exempt Its Massive Biometric Database from Some Federal Privacy Rules

      The FBI wants to block individuals from knowing if their information is in a massive repository of biometric records, which includes fingerprints and facial scans, if the release of information would “compromise” a law enforcement investigation.

      The FBI’s biometric database, known as the “Next Generation Identification System,” gathers a wide scope of information, including palm prints, fingerprints, iris scans, facial and tattoo photographs, and biographies for millions of people.

      On Thursday, the Justice Department agency plans to propose the database be exempt from several provisions of the Privacy Act — legislation that requires federal agencies to share information about the records they collect with the individual subject of those records, allowing them to verify and correct them if needed.

      Aside from criminals, suspects and detainees, the system includes data from people fingerprinted for jobs, licenses, military or volunteer service, background checks, security clearances, and naturalization, among other government processes.

    • NSA Plan to Trash Employee Complaint Files Raises Concerns for Some

      The National Security Agency plans to immediately discard records containing preliminary workplace complaints raised by employees. The files set to be destroyed are created by the NSA Ombudsman program, a low-profile office that resolves conflicts between personnel. It is not the ombudsman’s job to handle reported abuses of power, rather inspectors general and diversity offices deal with those issues.

      However, amid a legal battle about the potential improper disposal of whistleblower evidence, there are concerns that informal information reported by informants or victims of retaliation could be thrown out under the ombudsman policy.

      “Destroy immediately after case is closed,” state new recordkeeping instructions for working case files produced by the NSA ombudsman.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Dangers from Hating Government

      Even within the private sector, Trump’s background does not extend to the sorts of decision-making situations that would confront, say, the chief executive officer of a large, well-established corporation.

      Instead, Trump’s career, apart from his flings at presidential campaigning, has almost exclusively been about deal-making aimed at personal enrichment and enhancing recognition of the Trump brand name. Against the backdrop of U.S. history and past U.S. presidents, Trump’s personal qualifications are breathtakingly narrow and shallow, and his endeavors inwardly oriented.

    • RISE: New Politics for a Tired Scotland

      The first thing RISE wants you to know is that it isn’t a party, it’s an alliance: formed in August 2015. The second is the acronym; Respect, Independence, Socialism, Environmentalism.

    • No Charges Against Cop Who Got Into a Deadly Struggle After a Door Hit His Foot

      Nicholas Kehagias, a sheriff’s deputy in Harnett County, North Carolina, came to John Livingston’s house in the middle of the night, looking for two people who weren’t there. Ten minutes later, Livingston was lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his porch, mortally wounded by three rounds from the deputy’s gun.

      Last month a grand jury declined to indict Kehagias for second-degree murder in connection with the November 15 shooting. But a recent investigation by the Raleigh News & Observer suggests the deputy’s behavior that night fits a pattern of excessive force and needless escalation of encounters with local residents.

      Kehagias was responding to an assault complaint. The fight did not happen at Livingston’s house, but Kehagias thought two of the people allegedly involved might be there. When Livingston said they weren’t, Kehagias did not believe him. He wanted to come in and have a look around. Not unless you have a warrant, Livingston said, shutting the door, which hit Kehagias on his foot and arm. The deputy viewed that as an assault and barged into Livingston’s house along with his partner, determined to vindicate the affront by handcuffing Livingston and hauling him off to jail.

    • The End of the Bill of Rights is at Our Fingertips

      Unfortunately, the convenience of “biometric” identification comes with a cost.

    • Black and brown boys don’t need to learn “grit,” they need schools to stop being racist

      Everyone seems to think that a lack of “soft skills” is the reason why students of color aren’t ready for college and careers. More schools and after-school programs are teaching students how to have “grit,” compassion and a “growth mindset.” Under the new federal education law, states are encouraged to use “nonacademic” factors to hold schools accountable.

    • Central America Is As Violent As Ever. What Would it Take to Change?

      Thirty years after covering wars in the “Northern Triangle,” a veteran reporter returns to find several reasons for hope amid the violence.

    • A Whistle-Blower Behind Bars

      On January 24, 2013, the Florida Department of Corrections received a grievance letter from an inmate named Harold Hempstead, who had been imprisoned at the Dade Correctional Institution. The letter was brief and its tone was matter-of-fact, but the allegations it contained were shocking, raising troubling questions about the death of a mentally ill inmate named Darren Rainey, who had collapsed in a shower seven months earlier, on June 23, 2012—a case that I wrote about in the magazine this week. According to Hempstead’s letter, the death had been misrepresented to disguise the abuse that preceded it. The reason Rainey collapsed in the shower, Hempstead alleged, was that he had been locked in the stall by guards, who directed scalding water at him. Hempstead’s cell was directly below the shower. That night, he had heard Rainey yelling, “I can’t take it no more,” he recalled. Then he heard a loud thud—which he believed was the sound of Rainey falling to the ground—and the yelling stopped. Hempstead concluded his letter by calling for an investigation.

    • [Last year] The CIA Paid This Contractor $40 Million to Review Torture Documents

      One of the main criticisms leveled by Republicans and CIA supporters about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark five-year study into the CIA’s torture program has been the cost to taxpayers: $40 million.

      The implication by these critics is that the Senate Democrats who led the investigation were responsible for the expenditures associated with the production of their voluminous report, which concluded that the CIA’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” was not effective and did not produce “unique” and “valuable” intelligence.

    • Archivist Won’t Call “Torture Report” a Permanent Record

      Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero last week rebuffed requests to formally designate the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation practices a “federal record” that must be preserved.

      Senators Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy had urged the Archivist to exercise his authority to certify that the Senate report is a federal record.

      “We believe that Congress has made it clear that the National Archives has a responsibility — as the nation’s record keeper — to advise other parts of the United States government of their legal duty to preserve documents like the Senate Report under the Federal Records Act, the Presidential Records Act, and other statutes,” Senators Feinstein and Leahy wrote in an April 13 letter.

    • London’s Muslim Mayor is nothing New: 1300 yrs of Muslims who Ran Major European Cities

      Going back into history, parts of Spain, and often quite a lot of it, were under Muslim rule 711 to 1492. So for example, Abd al-Rahman I was proclaimed Emir of Cordoba in 756. We’re talking major Western European city here. In the 900s Cordoba was the most populous city in the world.

    • Top US Intelligence Lawyer’s Testimony Shows Obama Encouraged Leak Prosecutions

      Recently released testimony from the former top lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence undermines claims by President Barack Obama’s administration that it has had no desire for leak prosecutions. It also renews concerns about the insider threat program implemented and expanded since U.S. military whistleblower Chelsea Manning disclosed documents to WikiLeaks. And it proves the insider threat program is a roundabout way to identify and go after whistleblowers.

      The testimony was delivered by ODNI General Counsel Robert S. Litt on February 9, 2012, during a closed session held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It was obtained by Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

      “This administration has been historically active in pursuing prosecution of leakers, and the intelligence community fully supports this effort,” Litt declares.

      A few months later, “aides” from the Obama administration told Charlie Savage and Scott Shane of the New York Times that Obama “never ordered investigations.” Unnamed current and former officials asserted the record number of prosecutions was “unplanned” and “resulted from several leftover investigations” from President George W. Bush’s administration. These unnamed officials also attributed the increase to a “proliferation of email and computer audit trails that increasingly can pinpoint reporters’ sources, bipartisan support in Congress for a tougher approach, and a push by the director of national intelligence in 2009 that sharpened the system for tracking disclosures.”

    • The Shooting of Dion Avila Damon: A Case of Extrajudicial Killing by the Police?

      Many questions have surfaced following the police killing of 40-year-old Dion Avila Damon on April 12 in Denver, Colorado. Police technician Jeff Motz fired seven shots through the front windshield of Damon’s car, killing him in front of his wife and stepson.

      The Denver Police Department stated that Damon had a warrant for a suspected bank robbery and he was under surveillance. Dawn Aguirre, Damon’s wife, explained that the family had driven downtown to pay a parking ticket when a truck came up and hit the car with Damon in it shortly after she and her son exited the vehicle. Aguirre told reporters that she yelled to the police, “Please don’t shoot, I’m not armed; my husband’s not armed” before the police officer fatally shot Damon multiple times. Aguirre also stated that Damon would have surrendered if the police gave him a chance.

    • Parents of 20-Year-Old Confidential Informant Who Turned Up Dead To Sue Law Enforcement

      Attorney representing Andrew Sadek’s family tells Reason they plan to sue the police for fraud and negligence.

    • Cynthia Dewi Oka: A Conversation With My Six-Year-Old About Revolution
    • A response to Norman Finkelstein’s interview

      As a practical matter, the Zionists and Nazis could therefore find a degree of common ground around the emigration/expulsion of Jews to Palestine. It was a paradox that, against the emphatic protestations of liberal Jews, including sections of the Anglo-Jewish establishment, antisemites and Zionists back then effectively shared the same slogan: Jews to Palestine. It was why, for example, the Nazis forbade German Jews to raise the swastika flag, but expressly permitted them to hoist the Zionist flag. It was as if to say, the Zionists are right: Jews can’t be Germans, they belong in Palestine. Hannah Arendt wrote scathingly about this in Eichmann in Jerusalem, which is one of the reasons she caught hell from the Jewish/Zionist establishment.” Zionism was perfectly capable of inspiring resistance to the Nazis as ‘Antek’ Zuckerman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, makes clear in his massive autobiography, A Surplus of Memory.

      [...]

      This is the context for the truly sinister cat and mouse game the Nazis were playing when they appeared to be supporting the Zionist project in Palestine even if did mean some German Jews, by moving to Palestine with Hitler’s agreement, escaped the death camps. It’s a simple enough proposition but perhaps not as obvious as it should be. If Rommel had won the desert war in the Middle East, Palestine’s Jews would have been deported to those camps.

      Even in its most reactionary form, Zionism, before the second world war, which had no guarantee for its claims on Palestine, was one of the voices of oppressed Jews facing the growth of violent anti Semitism as a mass movement everywhere, though of course in widely differing degrees of intensity. That strand of Zionism which tried to grovel with its tormentor, camouflaged as ‘negotiation’, even to the point of mimicry, remained always at its mercy.

    • The U.S. Government Has Been Outsourcing The Gitmo Trial

      The Defense Department has given a multimillion-dollar contract to one private company — to serve both the defense and the prosecution in the Gitmo terror cases.

    • ‘Suspected Terrorist’ Kicked Off Plane Actually A Professor Working On A Math Equation

      On Thursday evening, Guido Menzio, a successful economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, boarded a flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse. As the 40-year-old professor was waiting for the flight to take off, he began working on a differential equation related to a speech he was slated to give at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Soon after Menzio got to work, his seatmate, who said she was feeling sick, slipped a note to the flight attendant. Surprisingly, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate. Menzio was then escorted off the plane and questioned by an official, who informed him that he was suspected of terrorism.

    • Europe’s day: a reflection

      On Europe Day, let us remember that peace is not achieved simply through an absence of war, but through an end to the very antagonisms and contradictions driving conflict in all its guises.

    • San Francisco Protesters Targeting Police Brutality End Hunger Strike After 17 Days

      Five San Franciscans protesting police brutality and institutional racism against the city’s Black and Brown youths ended their hunger strike after 17 days, despite City Hall rejecting their key demand to fire Police Chief Greg Suhr.

    • Bearing the Cross

      Bearing the cross is not about the pursuit of happiness. It does not embrace the illusion of inevitable human progress. It is not about achieving wealth, celebrity or power. It entails sacrifice. It is about our neighbor. The organs of state security—in Dan’s case, the FBI—monitor and harass you. They amass huge files on your activities. They disrupt your life. And in Friday’s homily, the Rev. Stephen Kelly, evoking laughter, welcomed the FBI agents who had been “assigned here today to validate that it is Daniel Berrigan’s funeral mass so they can complete and perhaps close their files.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Oracle v. Google copyright retrial won’t bring clarification on application programming interfaces (APIs)

        Tomorrow, the Oracle v. Google Android-Java copyright retrial is scheduled to begin. Almost six years have passed since the filing of this lawsuit, and about four years since the first trial, which could have been much more useful if not for Judge Alsup’s sometimes unfathomable (and bad) decisions.

        There’s really no reason to get excited about this retrial with respect to application programming interfaces (APIs). For Oracle it’s more important than for Google to make headway, and for the outside world it’s of very limited interest what happens now (as opposed to what may happen on appeal). During and after the first trial, the copyrightability of APIs was a key issue. In my opinion, the way this played out was merely consistent with what the law had been all along, but admittedly a lot of people took a different position in the public debate, so this had to be settled–and it has been, in Oracle’s (and almost all software developers’) favor.

05.08.16

The USPTO Continues to Snub the US Supreme Court and Issues Software Patents That Are Totally Bogus

Posted in America, Courtroom, Law, Patents at 6:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

US courts are constantly rejecting software patents, but the USPTO doesn’t seem to care and continues to issue them anyway


“LinuxFest Northwest 2016: Software Patents After Alice: A Long and Sad Tail” [via Montana Linux, which says “Deb Nicholson talked about the state of software patents after the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark Alice vs. CLS Bank case.”]

Summary: The ‘production line’ which the USPTO has devolved into (just accepting nearly everything that comes in) passes costs of spurious litigation to the public (externality to be taxed by monopolists, trolls, and patent lawyers) and new information serves to highlight this gross injustice which is motivated by USPTO greed and corporate control (vendor captivity)

Professor Dennis Crouch, still keeping abreast of “Pending Supreme Court Patent Cases” (there are interesting SCOTUS-level patent cases on their way), brings updates about USPTO adaptations to rulings such as Alice, which basically brought the end to a lot of software patents (the USPTO should obey court rulings and end software patents, but it’s too greedy to do so). The articles composed by Dennis Crouch are actually quite informative and they help us track how things are changing (Crouch’s work is academic/scholarly, so he hasn’t much to personally gain from patent maximalism). Writing about the latest in the Fitbit case, a patent lawyers’ site says: “As an update to our April 13, 2016 blog post, US International Trade Commission administrative law judge (ALJ) Dee Lord has granted summary determination that the asserted claims of two of Jawbone’s remaining patents in its Section 337 action against Fitbit are directed to ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.”

“It’s not hard to see why large corporations are up in arms.”This is basically the latest high-profile legacy of Alice, which the USPTO (unlike courts, SCOTUS included) is still trying to ignore. The USPTO is still having discussions about the subject. According to a new bit of text found by Benjamin Henrion a few days ago, the USPTO says “Functions that are not generic computer functions and therefore amount to significantly more than an idea” (PDF therein).

Does the USPTO intend to ever obey court rulings? Or is it too rogue to accept that things have changed? Its former director, David Kappos, is now actively lobbying against the Supreme Court on behalf of huge corporations — a move which contributes to the perception of corruption in this whole system.

“Another new analysis from Crouch reinforces the idea that the patent office should enforce patent boundaries, restrict scope.”It’s not hard to see why large corporations are up in arms. Dennis Crouch, the pro-patents scholar, has done some research and plotted charts which show that what the patent system was created for ain’t so anymore. Crouch’s analysis is showing how large corporations get the lion’s share of patents (first author plus bosses etc. and people who want to get some of the credit), not independent developers (same in Europe) and he adds the following interpretation of the numbers/chart:

The primary goal of the patent system is to encourage innovation – “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” For me, the nature of inventorship is a fascinating pursuit: what are the factors that lead to invention and what are the results of invention?

A major shift over the past few decades in terms of inventors listed on U.S. patents is the rise of team-based inventorship. Back in 1975, the vast majority of U.S. patents were issued to a single inventor. Since that time, there has been a steady trend toward more inventors-per-patent. Around 1990 we reached a point where, for the first time, more than than half of US patents listed multiple inventors. That trend toward more inventors per patents continues today.

Drilling down, the increase is seen in patents with three or more inventors. The chart below shows the percentage of utility patents with either one listed inventor (downward sloping double line) or three+ listed inventors (upward sloping line). The drop in the first almost exactly correlates with the rise in the second. Throughout this time, the percentage of two-inventor patents has remained steady at around 25%.

Another new analysis from Crouch reinforces the idea that the patent office should enforce patent boundaries, restrict scope. But his focus, however, is the number of claims per patent, showing a very sharp decline about a decade ago (patent barriers perhaps falling far too low, allowing virtually every patent application through, or more than 90% of them). He calls this “Right Sized Patents” and adds:

Many progressive policies focus on reducing disparities (income, wealth, education, and opportunities) that reflect some social injustice between those at the top and those at the bottom of our social spectrum. Conservatives often recognize the gaps but disagree about whether the result qualifies as injustice as well as about government’s role in redistribution.

Patent policy is often easier to implement than social policy (especially compared with other property law changes) because a new generation of patents emerges every twenty years and the old generation does not hang-around protecting and directing wealth but instead melds into the Soylent of the public domain.

In some ways though, patents are bucking the social trend and becoming more standardized and less diverse – at least by some outward measurements such as document size, claims per patent, and prosecution pendency.

To rephrase that last sentence (above), patents are bucking the corporate trend and becoming low quality and more trivial. It means that those who are poor will be further impoverished and those who are rich and powerful will have more ammunition with which to marginalise the small guys (or girls). More and more small guys (or girls) are under more threats from more patents and more corporations. This means they lose control; they’re being dominated. Bogus patents that are possible to invalidate in a court are too expensive to invalidate, and those whom they’re asserted against don’t face huge damages which can justify the legal bills (so they settle or close down the shop). Is this what the patent system was created for? Surely the opposite. The saddest thing is that the EPO too is gradually becoming more like that. █

The Economist Says What Patent Lawyers and Other Maximalists Prefer Not to Hear About the Patent System

Posted in Patents at 5:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The EconomistSummary: Responses to a new batch of complaints from The Economist over what’s increasingly perceived as patents excess (due to maximalists who would have us believe that the more, the merrier)

“T

oo much of a good thing” is a famous term we have recurringly seen mentioned in relation to the USPTO, where patent quality has gone downhill and patent numbers skyrocketed, just like in China.

“Too much of a good thing” is the headline of this recent article from The Economist (very influential publication), which angered many patent lawyers when it said the truth about patents some time ago (less than a year). “The Economist is at it again,” IP Kat wrote some days ago, “when it comes to patents” (it’s sort of a rant, as words like “at it again” serve to insinuate).

“The Economist is at it again,” the author starts with (not just in the headline). “This time the issue is not innovation but the decline in market competiveness and the increase in industry concentration, both as embodied in the stickiness of oversized corporate profits. Companies are making too much money and displaying too little competitive instincts, preferring to consolidate their positions, to the detriment of the economy writ-large.”

When excessive, abundant, wide thickets of patents are everywhere, who benefits? It is interesting to see patent scope (or examination lenience) coming under attack from the Establishment media too, more than once even. What we found more interesting than the response from IP Kat are the comments in response to IP Kat, namely:

The Economist attack on patents mentions a number of legitimate problems with the patent system, including reducing the number of unenforced or weak patents. However, some of the proposed solutions, e.g. reducing patent terms and expanding the options for challenging patents without a full blown court case, seem to be unrealistic.

Reducing patent terms is virtually impossible since nearly every country in the world is a party to the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which mandates a 20 year patent term. Amending TRIPS would be far more difficult than amending the US Constitution. Forget it. An alternative solution would be to tinker with maintenance fees payable by patent holders. Before the European Patent Office, maintenance (renewal) fees are payable every year, start the third year after filing an application and reach €2000 by around year 10. If the US adopted a similar system, rather than only charging fees after grant of a patent and making them payable every 4 years, it could have a helpful effect.

As for out-of court options for challenging patents, these may already go too far. Witness the recent activity of Kyle Bass, a well known hedge fund manager, in using Inter Partes Reviews (IPR) before the USPTO to challenge key pharmaceutical patents in order to take advantage of the effects of the challenges on the stock prices of the companies holding the patents. Another way to reduce the number of weak patents would be to raise the quality of examination by making a job as a US Patent Examiner more attractive. This could be achieved by increasing the compensation of Examiners, particularly senior Examiners. The compensation of US Examiners is significantly less than their counterparts at the European Patent Office (EPO). In fact, partners at European law firms have been known to leave their jobs to become Examiners at the EPO. This would be unheard of in the US.

Regrettably, any changes to maintenance fees or significantly impacting the compensation of Examiners would require the most unproductive Congress in history to stir itself from lethargy, which could be an unrealistic proposition.

The part which says “partners at European law firms have been known to leave their jobs to become Examiners at the EPO” (we know about exodus in the opposite direction) triggered this comment: “I have not heard of this at all in recent times.” Neither have we. People don’t want to work for the EPO, which has a serious brain drain problem, as we covered here before.

Here is another (newer) comment that says:

I haven’t read “The Economist” recently, but in points I and II it is absolutely correct, certainly in the fields in which I work. The gaming of the system by big companies is especially egregious. Thankfully the EPO has realised to some extent what’s going on and the Examiners involved (I’ve spoken with some of them) do their limited best to restrict some of the more outrageous cons. However, they are always playing catch-up.

On the far side of the Atlantic, where it sometimes seems that the USPTO selects examiners on the basis of a rather unique blend of incompetence, laziness, stupidity, sheer bloody-mindedness and downright dishonesty, things are often much worse, and these obstructive patents, filed purely for that purpose, block off whole areas of legitimate research and actually impede progress.

The patent system may not be broken, but it is certainly badly distorted and rigged against the little guy.

The part worth emphasising says that “it sometimes seems that the USPTO selects examiners on the basis of a rather unique blend of incompetence, laziness, stupidity, sheer bloody-mindedness and downright dishonesty, things are often much worse, and these obstructive patents, filed purely for that purpose, block off whole areas of legitimate research and actually impede progress.”

Amen to that. “Adding software patents as yet a further mechanism for concentration on top of that makes for a landscape that looks even more worrying,” says a later comment.

Thankfully it’s widely recognised, even in IP Kat circles, that software patents contribute little to competition, economics, innovation and so on. They oughtn’t exist at all. █

IAM ‘Magazine’ Preaching (Patent Maximalism), Not Reporting

Posted in Apple, Deception, Patents at 5:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

IAM: the IP Pravda

PravdaSummary: A look at this past week’s ‘reports’ from IAM and what they teach us about IAM’s agenda

IT is amusing to see how abusive some journalists can get, e.g. when news becomes advocacy or lobbying while still under the guise or cover of “journalism”. Such is the case of IAM, which even receives money from patent trolls, not just patent lawyers (whose interests are widely known). IAM isn’t alone in this category and it’s unfortunate that a lot of self-described ‘news’ sources in this domain are so biased that they have become meaningless tripe. This is where Techrights typically weighs in and attempts to intervene/interfere with the echo chamber.

Last month we wrote about software patents on driving and right now, using Apple’s term ("thermonuclear") IAM underplays the risk or the issue, stating: “My guess is that despite increasing litigation in the sector between operating companies and continued suits launched by NPEs, we are not going to see what we saw in the mobile communications industry.”

“The bottom line is, IAM advocates (not reports) more and more patents, more proprietary, less sharing, less peace, and more patent trolls, patent feuds, etc.”“NPEs” means patent trolls — a term that IAM never uses because it's paid by them. Patents on the act of driving (not a novel thing) are a real problem and after Tesla gave up on many patents pertaining to electric cars IAM ‘magazine’ (patent maximalists in ‘journalists’ clothing) shows that it is upset at this act which changes the climate of fear from patent litigation. It even tells Chinese companies what to think (see the headline “Memo to China’s electric vehicle startups: hope is not an IP strategy”).

What is this? Preaching or reporting? Having borrowed terms from Apple, IAM also plays up design patents, despite them being controversial enough to reach the Supreme Court. “Interest in design patents has increased recently,” IAM says, “particularly following Apple’s success in asserting its design patents associated with the iPhone and the iPad. Apple discovered that a few relatively inexpensive design patents were just as effective against Samsung’s smartphones as its arsenal of utility patents on various phone and tablet functions.”

“Don’t be misled by IAM. It’s not really a news site.”Actually, no. The case still hasn’t been decided. Even the Supreme Court decided to take on the subject and assess this kind of patents, which long ago we claimed are related to software patents (UI plus callback functions). Another new article from IAM wishes readers to believe that Apple woes being due to it being too proprietary aren’t quite so and Tesla is again brought up. Watch them preach again: “It would certainly appear to be the case that LeEco’s ecosystem-oriented, collaboration-based approach has propelled it very rapidly towards the top of China’s high-tech sectors. But rejecting the proprietary strategy characteristic of Apple – among many, many others – altogether could prove to be an unwise choice.”

The bottom line is, IAM advocates (not reports) more and more patents, more proprietary, less sharing, less peace, and more patent trolls, patent feuds, etc.

Don’t be misled by IAM. It’s not really a news site. It just gives its limited audience what it wants. Like a think tank. Leave it for the choir to read. █

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »

Further Recent Posts

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts