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05.17.16

Links 18/5/2016: ReactOS 0.4.1, KWayland in KDE Frameworks

Posted in News Roundup at 11:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Sweden’s insurer: open source maximises IT efficiency

    Open source’s inherent flexibility maximises IT value, says Mikael Norberg, CTO at Sweden’s Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan). Thanks to free software licences, information technology can be used effectively. Last year, Försäkringskassan completed its transition to open source in its data centre in Sundsvall, “driving down costs while increasing IT value”, the CTO says.

  • SL Adds Docker, MongoDB and Node.js to Open Source Monitoring Portfolio
  • RethinkDB’s Horizon Will Shave Months Off Your Development
  • RethinkDB unveils open-source JavaScript platform, Horizon

    RethinkDB, an open-source database, wants to help developers prototype and build cross-platform, real-time Web, mobile and IoT apps. The company announced Horizon, a new open-source JavaScript platform, is coming out of a closed developer preview today.

  • Leveraging IoT & Open Source Tools

    Though the data regarding connected devices is anything but cohesive, a broad overview of IoT stats affords a clear picture of how quickly our world is becoming a connected ecosystem: In 1984, approximately 1,000 devices were connected to the Internet; in 2015, Gartner predicted 4.9 billion connected things would be in use; and by 2020 analysts expect we’ll have somewhere between 26 and 50 billion connected devices globally. Said Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Cisco, “In 1984, there were 1,000 connected devices. That number rose up to reach a million devices in 1992 and reached a billion devices in 2008. Our estimates say… that we will have roughly 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020.”

  • ReactOS 0.4.1 Released To Advance “Open-Source Windows”
  • ReactOS 0.4.1 Operating System Released with Initial Read/Write Btrfs Support

    Ziliang Guo from the ReactOS project today announced the availability for download of the first maintenance release of the ReactOS 0.4 open-source operating system.

    While not a GNU/Linux distribution, ReactOS is an open source project whose main design goal is to offer users a computer operating system built from scratch that clones the design principles of Microsoft Windows NT’s architecture.

  • Google open sources its ‘most powerful’ AI SyntaxNet
  • Has Google’s Parsey McParseface just solved one of the world’s biggest language problems?
  • Google ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Free Update: Google Introduces ‘Parsey McParseface’ As Open Source Natural Language AI Tool [VIDEO]
  • Amazon Joins Tech Giants in Open Sourcing a Key Machine Learning Tool

    Among technology categories creating sweeping change right now, cloud computing and Big Data analytics dominate the headlines, and open source platforms are making a difference in these categories. However, one of the biggest open source stories of the year surrounds newly contributed projects in the field of artifical intelligence and the closely related field of machine learning.

  • Amazon opens up its product recommendation tech to all
  • VR for Good, Amazon open-sources DSSTNE, and the Google Spaces app—SD Times news digest: May 17, 2016
  • Amazon’s DSSTNE Is Now Open Source Software
  • Amazon’s DSSTNE machine learning tech is now open source
  • After Google, now Amazon open sources its machine learning engine DSSTNE
  • Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Open Sources Deep Learning Software

    The software is now available on Github where the tech giant hopes developers and researchers will expand its functionalities.

  • Blockchain open sources Thunder network, paving the way for instant bitcoin transactions

    Blockchain, the company behind the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet, has been quietly working on an interesting project called Thunder. The Thunder network is an alternative network of nodes that lets you make off-chain bitcoin payments in seconds and settle back to the bitcoin blockchain every now and then. And it makes me excited about bitcoin all over again.

    This sounds complicated but it’s quite neat and could be a powerful innovation for bitcoin transactions. But first, let’s take a step back.

    If you’ve ever tried sending a couple of bitcoins from one wallet to another, you know it can take ten or twenty minutes before the blockchain confirms the transaction.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Expands Its National Gigabit Project to Austin, TX

        When you couple lightning-fast Internet with innovative projects in the realms of education and workforce development, amazing things can happen.

        That’s the philosophy behind the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund, our joint initiative with the National Science Foundation and US Ignite. The Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund brings funding and staffing to U.S. cities equipped with gigabit connectivity, the next-generation Internet that’s 250-times faster than most other connections. Our goal: Spark the creation of groundbreaking, gigabit-enabled educational technologies so that more people of all ages and backgrounds can read, write, and participate on this next-generation Web.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • OSOps Gives Operators a Powerful Tool to Poke OpenStack Developers

      For JJ Asghar, senior partner engineer of OpenStack at Chef, there is one issue that continues to hamper OpenStack’s success: Operations. It’s no secret in the Ops community that there is a large barrier to entry involved in becoming a part of the OpenStack community. When it comes to submitting bugs, reporting issues, and ensuring one’s OpenStack cloud runs smoothly, operations teams find themselves facing an uphill battle.

    • Cisco’s Embrace of OpenStack Pays Network Dividends [VIDEO]

      When Lew Tucker, vice-president and CTO of cloud computing at Cisco first got Cisco involved with OpenStack, networking wasn’t even a separate project, it was just part of the Nova compute project. OpenStack has since evolved with the Neutron networking project and more recently, a large focus on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) with some of the world’s largest carriers supporting the effort.

    • OpenStack Player Platform9 Rolls Out Channel Partner Program

      As the OpenStack arena consolidates, there are still many business models evolving around it, and OpenStack-as-a-Service is emerging as an interesting choice. Platform9, which focuses on OpenStack-based private clouds, has announced a new release of its Platform9 Managed OpenStack, which is a SaaS-based solution with integration for single sign-on (SSO) solutions. The company also updated its private-cloud-as-a service offering from OpenStack Juno to OpenStack Liberty.

  • DevOps

  • CMS

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

    • Why VCs Have Invested More Than $200M in Container Tech

      Last week alone, investors—aiming to profit from the new approach to building, deploying and managing apps—poured $63M into container vendors.
      The evolving market for application containers isn’t just about developer adoption anymore; it’s now very much about investors, too.

      The week of May 9, in particular, highlights the intense interest that venture capitalists (VCs) have in containers and the potential to profit from the new approach to building, deploying and managing applications at scale.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 10.3′s new features

      FreeBSD is a venerable operating system, often deployed on servers due to the project’s focus on performance and stability. At the beginning of April the FreeBSD project released version 10.3 of their operating system. The release announcement for FreeBSD 10.3 mentioned several features and improvements which caught my attention. Specifically the availability of ZFS boot environments, 64-bit Linux compatibility and jail improvements were of interest to me. I was especially eager to try out FreeBSD’s new jails technology using the iocage front-end. The iocage software has been presented as an improvement on (and replacement for) Warden, a friendly front-end for handling jail environments.

      I already reviewed FreeBSD 10.0 when it was launched and so I plan to skip over most aspects of the new 10.3 release and focus on the key features I listed above, along with the notable changes I encounter. The new release is available in many different builds, ranging from x86 and ARM, to SPARC and PowerPC. For the purposes of my trial I downloaded the 2.6GB DVD image of FreeBSD’s 64-bit x86 edition.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Smartphone-based Robotic Rover Project goes Open Source

      The chassis is made to cradle a smartphone. Fire up your favorite videoconferencing software and you have a way to see where you’re going as well as hear (and speak to) your surroundings. Bluetooth communications between the phone and the chassis provides wireless control. That being said, this unit is clearly designed to be able to deal with far more challenging terrain than the average office environment, and has been designed to not only be attractive, but to be as accessible and open to repurposing and modification as possible.

    • “Participatory budgeting: a silent democratic revolution”

      Citizens with a say — or even a vote — in their municipal budgets are part of a silent democratic revolution. Participatory budgeting started 25 years ago in Brazil and, since then, has been spreading slowly but steadily from South America to cities all over the world. At the moment, more than 1,500 municipalities involve their citizens in the budget-making process, according to an article on participatory budgeting recently published in the Dutch online newspaper ‘De Correspondent’.

    • Fifty shades of open

      Open source. Open access. Open society. Open knowledge. Open government. Even open food. Until quite recently, the word “open” had a fairly constant meaning. The over-use of the word “open” has led to its meaning becoming increasingly ambiguous. This presents a critical problem for this important word, as ambiguity leads to misinterpretation.

    • Open Data

      • “Panama Papers pushing open government”

        The publication of the so-called Panama Papers will only help to further the discussion on open government. “Things like hidden company ownership and strict secrecy have fuelled questions on links between world leaders and offshore jurisdictions,” write Koen Roovers, and Henri Makkonen, EU Advocacy Lead and EU Advocacy Intern, respectively, at the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC).

      • “Governments need to enable the data-driven economy”

        Big Data is a game changer for businesses, Alla Morrison, International Development Specialist, Digital Economy and Solutions at the World Bank, recently wrote in a blog posting. She quoted Harvard professor Michael Porter, a globally recognised authority on competitiveness, who said: “Data now stands on par with people, technology, and capital as a core asset of the corporation and in many businesses is perhaps becoming the decisive asset.”

      • Open Government Research Exchange (OGRX) launched

        Earlier this month, the Open Government Research Exchange (OGRX) was launched. The portal brings together research on on government innovation, and already indexes hundreds of publications (though many of them are only available for purchase).

      • Central Greece creates dashboard to increase citizen awareness

        Basically, Smart Sterea can be seen as a set of technological tools. Central Greece deployed a data visualisation portal, which mixes data for budgets, political projects and public consultations. This “Open Dashboard of Central Greece” makes use of Open Data to allow citizens to monitor public revenue and expenditure, political programs and their progress, and allocations – among other types of information. Data are updated in real-time.

    • Open Access/Content

      • A call for open source textbooks

        Ninety dollars, sometimes over a hundred, even. Walking away from the bookstore with a full set of math textbooks for a calculus course can easily set a student back by over two hundred. Add in online components, and that number only grows. The College Board estimates that the average full-time student would have to spend $1,200 alone in books and materials. The textbook industry costs already financially overburdened students massive amounts of money, and the solution is clear: Open source textbooks must become commonplace in De Anza classrooms.

    • Environment

      • Moja Global: Creating Open Source Tools to Help the Environment

        To understand and address issues such as land degradation, deforestation, food security, and greenhouse gas emissions, countries need access to high-quality and timely information. As these challenges have become more urgent over the past decade, the need for more information has also increased. At the recent 2016 Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, we introduced a new open source project called moja global, supported by the Clinton Foundation and the governments of Australia, Canada and Kenya, that aims to provide the tools necessary to help address these issues.

      • Open-Source Fabbing Gives Plastic Waste New Life

Leftovers

  • When TV Ads Go Subliminal With a Vengeance, We’ll Be to Blame

    For decades the annual television industry ritual known as the upfronts has gone the same way.

    Thousands of advertising and television executives trudge between New York’s great cultural centers — Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center — where network executives screen premieres of their hottest new shows (“24: Legacy” on Fox! “Designated Survivor” on ABC!); trot out their biggest stars (Jennifer Lopez! Kerry Washington!), and disclose which programs will go where on the prime-time schedules being set for the fall.

    After successive nights of upscale hedonism — steaks at Peter Luger, mango chili martinis at Tao and Nicki Minaj at Terminal 5 — the ad people and the TV people get down to the real business of cutting deals for the 30-second spots that run during prime time’s commercial breaks.

    But when the whole shebang kicks off in earnest on Monday morning, there will be an underlying sense of seasickness because of the inexorable, existential question that now faces television this time of year: How long can it go on like this?

    This queasiness was your doing.

  • Dear Politicians: At Least Close Those Porn Tabs Before Sending Out Your Campaign Screenshots

    We all know the internet is for porn, right? But the implication in that age-old internet commandment is that it’s for porn and nothing else. But that’s not true! The internet is also for cats, for business-ing, for Techdirt, and for political messages. But what you really shouldn’t do is mix any of those formers with the latter, which it appears is what congressional candidate Mike Webb did on his Facebook page.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • No, the UN has not given glyphosate a ‘clean bill of health’

      News headlines today suggest that a UN report on glyphosate residues has given the controversial herbicide a clean bill of health, writes Georgina Downs. But that’s seriously misleading: the panel concludes that exposure to the chemical in food is unlikely to cause cancer. But that does not apply to those exposed to it occupationally or who live near sprayed fields.

    • New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup

      John Sanders worked in the orange and grapefruit groves in Redlands, California, for more than 30 years. First as a ranch hand, then as a farm worker, he was responsible for keeping the weeds around the citrus trees in check. Roundup, the Monsanto weed killer, was his weapon of choice, and he sprayed it on the plants from a hand-held atomizer year-round.

    • US Beekeepers Lost 44 Percent of Honey Bee Colonies in 2015, and More

      US beekeepers lost 44 percent of honey bee colonies in 2015; microplastics might be contaminating the air we breathe; an atmospheric measuring station is picking up CO2 levels that are on the verge of breaking 400 parts per million for the first time in human history; and more.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday
    • The Truth about Linux 4.6

      As anticipated in public comments, the Linux Foundation is already beginning a campaign to rewrite history and mislead Linux users. Their latest PR release can be found at: https://www.linux.com/news/greg-kh-update-linux-kernel-46-next-week-new-security-features, which I encourage you to read so you can see the spin and misleading (and just plain factually incorrect) information presented. If you’ve read any of our blog posts before or are familiar with our work, you’ll know we always say “the details matter” and are very careful not to exaggerate claims about features beyond their realistic security expectations (see for instance our discussion of access control systems in the grsecurity wiki). In a few weeks I will be keynoting at the SSTIC conference in France, where a theme of my keynote involves how little critical thinking occurs in this industry and how that results in companies and users making poor security decisions. So let’s take a critical eye to this latest PR spin and actually educate about the “security improvements” to Linux 4.6.

    • Major Remote SSH Security Issue in CoreOS Linux Alpha, Subset of Users Affected

      A misconfiguration in the PAM subsystem in CoreOS Linux Alpha 1045.0.0 and 1047.0.0 allowed unauthorized users to gain access to accounts without a password or any other authentication token being required. This vulnerability affects a subset of machines running CoreOS Linux Alpha. Machines running CoreOS Linux Beta or Stable releases are unaffected. The Alpha was subsequently reverted back to the unaffected previous version (1032.1.0) and hosts configured to receive updates have been patched. The issue was reported at May 15 at 20:21 PDT and a fix was available 6 hours later at 02:29 PDT.

    • Let’s Encrypt: The Good and the Bad

      By now, most of you have heard about the “Let’s Encrypt” initiative. The idea being that it’s high time more websites had a simple, easy to manage method to offer https encryption. As luck would have it, the initiative is just out of its beta phase and has been adding sponsors like Facebook, Cisco, and Mozilla to their list of organizations that view this initiative as important.

      In this article, I want to examine this initiative carefully, taking a look at the good and the bad of Let’s Encrypt.

    • SourceForge Tightens Security With Malware Scans

      After taking down the controversial DevShare program in early February, the new owners of popular software repository, SourceForge, have begun scanning all projects it hosts for malware in an attempt to regain trust that was lost by Dice Holdings, the site’s previous owners.

    • Mozilla Issues Legal Challenge to FBI to Disclose Firefox Flaw
    • Judge In Child Porn Case Reverses Course, Says FBI Will Not Have To Turn Over Details On Its Hacking Tool

      Back in February, the judge presiding over the FBI’s case against Jay Michaud ordered the agency to turn over information on the hacking tool it used to unmask Tor users who visited a seized child porn site. The FBI further solidified its status as a law unto itself by responding that it would not comply with the court’s order, no matter what.

      Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing any FBI officials tossed into jail cells indefinitely for contempt of court charges. The judge in that case has reversed course, as Motherboard reports.

    • Judge Changes Mind, Says FBI Doesn’t Have to Reveal Tor Browser Hack

      In February, a judge ordered the FBI to reveal the full malware code it used to identify visitors of a dark web child pornography site, including the exploit that circumvented the protections of the Tor Browser. The government fought back, largely in sealed motions, and tried to convince the judge to reconsider.

    • Symantec antivirus security flaw exposes Linux, Mac and Windows

      Security holes in antivirus software are nothing new, but holes that exist across multiple platforms? That’s rare… but it just happened. Google’s Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in Symantec’s antivirus engine (used in both Symantec- and Norton-branded suites) that compromises Linux, Mac and Windows computers. If you use an early version of a compression tool to squeeze executables, you can trigger a memory buffer overflow that gives you root-level control over a system.

    • Apache incubating project promises new Internet security framework

      The newly announced Apache Milagro (incubating) project seeks to end to centralized certificates and passwords in a world that has shifted from client-server to cloud, IoT and containerized applications.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Top Hizbullah Commander in Syria killed in Explosion; Radical Salafis blamed

      Mustafa Badreddine, the Hizbullah commander responsible for Syria, was killed Friday in an explosion near Damascus. It wasn’t clear whether he was hit by artillery fire or what.

      The US now has a tacit alliance of convenience with Lebanon’s Hizbullah against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), but continues to keep the organization on a terrorism list.

    • Organized Misery is Fascism

      Just about one half of the year 2016 is in the world’s history books. The 16th year of the 21st Century, a century that was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy, opportunity, “green thinking”, and income for all, has thus far been a bust for much of the citizens of the world. Some 40.8 million displaced people roam the continents of the world due to the effects of climate change and the fallout from varying degrees of conflict/war ranging from the War on Terror and War on Drugs, to covert-overt regime changes in Brazil, Ukraine, Egypt, Paraguay, Iraq, Libya and Honduras. Syria remains a work in progress.

    • NATO & the Humanitarian Dismemberment of Yugoslavia

      The popular narrative is that is that the Western powers dropped these bombs out of humanitarian concern, but this claim falls apart once the distorted lens of Western saviourism is dropped and actual facts are presented. In truth, NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was predicated on the imperialist, colonialist economic and ideological interests of the NATO states, masquerading for the public as a humanitarian effort, that in fact served to dismantle the last remnant of socialism in Europe and recolonize the Balkans. This becomes apparent when the economic interests and actions of the NATO bloc in the decades leading up the breakup are analyzed, when what actually occurred during the intervention is further explored, and when the reality of life in the former Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the ‘humanitarian’ intervention is more closely examined. It becomes clear that the most suffering endured by the Yugoslav people since Nazi occupation was the result of the actions of NATO with the United States at its helm.

    • Wonky welds keep West Coast submarines stuck in port

      Canada’s troubled submarine fleet has been hit with another headache: hundreds of potentially dangerous welds

    • Hillary Clinton Wasn’t Always This One-Sided on Israel

      The text of Hillary Clinton’s speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in March runs 3,301 words, almost every one of them praising Israeli policy in one way or another, and expounding on taking the “U.S.-Israel alliance to the next level.”

      Only a single sentence — 15 words to the effect that “everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements” — could possibly be interpreted as criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing government.

    • [Older, reposted] Muslim Memories of West’s Imperialism

      A century ago, Britain and France secretly divided up much of the Mideast, drawing artificial boundaries for Iraq and Syria, but Muslim resentment of Western imperialism went much deeper, as historian William R. Polk described in 2015.

    • Behind the Veil of Chinese Politics

      The first story concerns President Xi Jinping’s warning of cabals, cliques and conspirators which came to light in the first week in May. The speech, delivered in January, confirmed what many suspected.

      Xi chose his words carefully. “Some officials have been forming cabals and cliques to covertly defy the CPC [Communist Party of China] Central Committee’s decisions and policies,” which risked “compromising the political security of the Party and the country’’.

    • The Danger of Demonization

      As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream U.S. news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry.

    • Donald Trump vs. Sadiq Khan

      Donald Trump is on the record calling for the ban of all Muslims entering the United States until U.S. representatives can figure out what is going on. London’s new Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, says Trump is ignorant about Islam and assures that mainstream Islam and Western liberal values are compatible.

    • “Please Free Us”: EU’s Outsourcing of Refugees Drives Crisis to New Low

      Conditions for refugees seeking asylum in Europe descended to new depths this week, as residents of a Greek refugee camp launched a hunger strike to protest inhumane living conditions, the United Nations warned Greece to stop imprisoning refugee children in police cells, and deported Syrian refugees said they were being illegally detained in Turkey and stripped of their rights.

    • Brazil’s New Conservative Leadership Quietly Readies Neoliberal Onslaught

      Following the suspension of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff last week—in what some called a coup by conservative opponents—her supporters warned that the interim government, led by Vice President Michel Temer, may use the opportunity to push through neoliberal legislation.

      According to the advocacy group the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers (ALERT), they were right.

      The Brazilian Committee of the Constitution, Justice, and Citizenship on April 27 “quietly” passed an amendment known as PEC 65, which would ban any public works project from being cancelled or suspended, as long as the contractor has submitted an environmental impact study. Amid the political uproar, the measure is now poised to pass.

    • Noam Chomsky: Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff “Impeached by a Gang of Thieves”

      As protests continue in Brazil over the Legislature’s vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial, Noam Chomsky notes that “we have the one leading politician who hasn’t stolen to enrich herself, who’s being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so. That does count as a kind of soft coup.” Rousseff’s replacement, Brazil’s former vice president, Michel Temer, is a member of the opposition PMDB party who is implicated in Brazil’s massive corruption scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras, and has now appointed an all-white male Cabinet charged with implementing corporate-friendly policies.

    • Noam Chomsky: The True ‘Center of Radical Islamic Extremism’ Is Close American Ally Saudi Arabia

      In an interview with Democracy Now, Chomsky says that Saudi Arabia is a “a source of not only funding for extremist radical Islam and the jihadi outgrowths of it, but also, doctrinally, mosques, clerics and so on, schools, you know, madrassas, where you study just Qur’an, is spreading all over the huge Sunni areas from Saudi influence.”

    • Senate Passes Bill Allowing Families of 9/11 Victims to Sue Saudi Arabia

      he Senate defied a veto threat by the Obama administration Tuesday, passing the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which if signed into law would allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center that killed almost 3,000 people.

    • Undeterred by Obama’s Veto Threat, Senate Passes 9/11-Saudi Bill

      Setting up a likely veto fight and opening a potential Pandora’s Box, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that allows victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia for any role the government may have played in the attacks.

    • ‘Operation Popcorn’ Explores How U.S. Vietnam War Policy Shaped Allies’ Identities

      Although it sounds like something straight out of Hollywood, the story behind “Operation Popcorn” is not fiction. It is, in fact, a tale of violence and desperation spanning several generations.

      The feature-length documentary, directed by David Grabias, follows businessman-turned-activist Locha Thao as he embarks on a quest to help Hmong communities in Laos, eventually working with an arms dealer and a retired U.S. Army officer to supply weapons for a rebellion. Eventually, Thao, the Army officer and 10 other Hmong-American community leaders, including renowned Hmong war hero Gen. Vang Pao, are indicted on charges of conspiracy.

    • My cultural revolution: a child’s memory

      The purge of Mongolian ‘nationalists’ stopped in 1969. The official death-toll among Mongolians is 50,000, but many Mongols believe the true figure is much higher. To pacify the discontent of the Mongol victims of the purge, the authorities at the time gave various forms of compensation to their families. My parents received a family trip to Beijing and Shanghai for a health check and treatment. I spent a few months living with them in a hotel in Shanghai, where we met many other long-term resident guests, many of whom who, permanently maimed in industrial accidents, were on medical trips paid by the state. At the time, Shanghai was the only big city where the radical leftists had taken complete control, while in other places they were checked by the army. I remember walking past the Shanghai workers’ militia headquarters and seeing militia sentry standing outside holding automatic rifles with shiny bayonets.

    • Israeli mishap in Latin America?

      A diplomatic incident between Brazil and Israel shows how Netanyahu is prisoner of his extreme-right and ultra-nationalists coalition friends.

    • Elon Musk Just Exposed Billions in Corrupt Pentagon Spending to Weapons Monopoly — Here’s How

      Perhaps Elon Musk’s innovative venture into the cosmos through SpaceX finally exposes excessive waste so common in the Pentagon’s bloated budget — an enormous chunk of which remains unaccounted for. A report last June found the Pentagon has essentially ‘lost track’ of around $8.5 trillion — yes, trillion — in taxpayer funded programs granted by Congress, just since 1996. As it turns out, the Pentagon has simply never complied with audits required by the government since that time; but as its fealty to ULA’s bloated space contracts shows, taxpayers are getting the shafted at every turn.

    • 5 lessons America has failed to learn from the Iraq War [Ed: reposted again]
    • Obama is bullish on war, no matter how you spin it

      Barack Obama has now been at war longer than any president in United States history, as the New York Times pointed out on Sunday. Barring some sort of peace miracle in the next six months, he will be the only president who ever served two full terms in office while constantly being at war. And given how he has transformed how the US fights overseas, his wars will likely continue long after he leaves office.

      Anytime the media writes about Obama and war, it’s apparently a rule that the author must mention that Obama supposedly fights his wars more reluctantly than his predecessors. But in many contexts, this is misleading. Obama hasn’t attempted to avoid war; he has merely redefined it. In some ways, he has fought them in a far more aggressively than any president before him, just with different tools.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Sources: Arianna Huffington wants to find leaker of embarrassing Uber-related email

      In an early May meeting with top Huffington Post managers, founder Arianna Huffington expressed an interest in finding the person who leaked a troubling email relating to the website’s coverage of Uber, according to three informed sources. Leaking internal documents is unacceptable and doesn’t comport with company values, Huffington argued. Also: Those who do such things must be malcontents who would be better off leaving their jobs.

      The impression that Huffington imparted was that she was already pursuing the leaker and urged her colleagues to be mindful of problem employees, according to the sources.

      On April 28, this blog reported that Huffington Post executive features editor Gregory Beyer had killed a story pitch about an Uber driver who had turned over the controls to a passenger while he took a nap. The substitute driver then led police on a highway chase. The pitch came just after the Huffington Post had consummated a partnership with Uber to combat drowsy driving, of all things. “Let’s hold on this one please as we’re partnering with Uber on our drowsy driving campaign,” Beyer wrote in an email secured by this blog.

      Colleagues of Beyer later received this apology: “Hi everyone, just wanted to bump this because a few people have asked me about this email and I realize it gave off the wrong impression. Obviously our partnerships never affect our coverage, and I was moving quickly in the moment and sent the wrong message as I read it in hindsight. For any confusion or concern I caused with my note, I apologize.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Obama Mocks Politicians Who Think Cold Weather Disproves Global Warming

      It was unseasonably cold in New Jersey when President Obama delivered his commencement speech at Rutgers University in Pitscataway on Sunday. It was so cold that in some areas of the state, small pellets of ice fell from the sky.

      The cold weather, however, didn’t stop Obama from devoting a portion of his speech to human-caused global warming. In fact, Obama actually spent part of his speech rebuking politicians who deny climate science on the basis that sometimes it’s cold outside.

    • Can Green Banks Turn Renewable Energy Into A Financial Attraction?

      Last month, dignitaries from 175 countries applied the final seal of approval to the Paris Climate Agreement, setting a course for a low-carbon future. Experts say that, to meet the goals laid out in the pact, investors will need to funnel $1 trillion a year into clean energy and energy efficiency.

      It should come as no surprise that clean energy companies have become such hot properties. Last year saw historic investment in renewables worldwide. Tesla’s recently-announced Model 3 broke records by garnering $14 billion in promised sales in a single week.

    • Congress should pass much-needed Chemical Safety Bill

      In what seems like an earlier life, I majored in Chemistry in college. I enjoyed the subject but as it sometimes happens, my life took a different direction and I became a writer.

      But my Chemistry days taught me, among other things, the extent to which everything in and around us has a basis in Chemistry. What are our bodies but exquisitely balanced chemical factories (of sorts) under our skin? As science advances, we discover that our bodies, organ systems and mental faculties are sensitive to the chemicals we’re exposed to in our daily lives.

    • When Nuclear Plants Expire: Stick the Taxpayers With the Bill (and the Waste)

      Aging and dangerous nuclear power plants are closing. This should be cause for celebration. We will all be safer now, right? Well, not exactly.

      US nuclear power plant owners are currently pouring resources into efforts to circumvent the already virtually non-existent regulations for the dismantlement and decommissioning of permanently closed nuclear reactors.

      And sad to say, many on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the industry’s ever compliant lapdog, are trotting happily by their side.

      [...]

      Using Vermont Yankee (a relatively small 620 MWe reactor) as an example, the decommissioning cost estimate in 2015 was $1.2 billion and rising. At the same time, Entergy, the plant’s owner, had just $625 million on hand.

      In early May, Entergy was reprimanded (but not fined) by the NRC for violating “federal regulations last year when it prematurely took money out of the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund to cover planning expenses associated with the handling of spent nuclear fuel at the closed reactor”, the Times Argus reported.

      Another factor in the current struggle to pay for decommissioning is rooted in a decades-long practice by utilities of omitting the costs of decommissioning from electricity bills in order to artificially lower rates and stay competitive in the market.

      Rather than preserve decommissioning trust funds for actual decommissioning work, utilities are now asking the NRC to let them raid the funds for activities outside the parameters of the reactor decommissioning process. These activities include the payment of taxes and the protracted management of orphaned nuclear waste left on site.

    • Tar Sands Operations Shut Down, Work Camps Evacuated as Fire Jumps North

      Major Alberta tar sands facilities have been shut down and 19 work camps are under a mandatory evacuation order, after weather conditions caused Canada’s uncontrolled Fort McMurray wildfire to surge northward on Monday.

      The order, which covers about 8,000 people and was issued late Monday evening, came due to the “unpredictable nature” of the fire and the fact that those camps could be isolated if the road was jeopardized, said Scott Long, executive director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.

      The evacuation zone, stretching about 30 miles north of Fort McMurray to just south of Fort MacKay, included Syncrude and Suncor facilities, along with several smaller operations. As such, the Wall Street Journal reported, the order “is a setback for large oil-sands producers such as industry leader Suncor Energy Inc., which had said last week that it was in the process of planning to resume production at its oil sands sites.”

    • Everything You Need To Know About Why The DC Circuit Delayed Arguments On Obama’s Climate Plan

      The Clean Power Plan will get its day in court, but in September, not June — and by the full en banc D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, not the court’s normal three-judge panel that was scheduled to hear it in just over two weeks.

      West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency is one of the most important environmental cases in almost a decade. The case will decide whether the EPA violated the law when it finalized its carbon rule to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector under the Clean Air Act.

    • Koch Candidates? Where Is the Koch Machine Spending in 2016 So Far

      Recent articles in the national media, such as yesterday’s piece in the National Review, suggest that Charles and David Koch are less interested and less involved in national politics in the 2016 election cycle than in previous years.

      This latest PR effort comes despite the fact that $400 million of the $889 pledge by the Kochs through their “Freedom Partners” network has already been invested in the outcome of the 2016 elections, with more money to be spent.

      A close examination of recent campaign finance disclosures and other data reveals that Team Koch has already identified some of their candidates for 2016 and in many cases has already started spending big on behalf of candidates in races for the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, state Governorships and state Attorney General races–as the presidential tickets remain unsettled and controversial.

      For example, the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch (CMD) looked at disclosed donations by Koch Industries’ KochPAC. This is limited to the donations that are required to be disclosed under federal and state law but, as the Nation and others have documented, Koch Industries also attempts to indoctrinate its employees on who and what to vote for or against, as documented here.

    • Declining Deer Population: Blame the Mountain Lions?

      This is the time of year with Spring in full bloom that here in Colorado, we are likely to see more wildlife. It has been my good fortune to see a fair amount these past few weeks – beaver (which I had never seen until now), muskrat, avocets and then a few days ago a herd of seven mule deer grazing on the side of a slope above Clear Creek just beyond the entrance to Clear Creek Canyon. We had been hiking. Nancy went on a bit; as usual, I waited behind and took a seat on an inviting rock, looked up; there were all seven of them making their way down along a stream bed not far from me.

    • There’s No Time to “Debate” Climate Change: We Need Global Transformation

      Corporate mainstream media outlets are missing something very important as the general election draws closer and both Democrats and Republicans start freaking out that it’ll be the end of the world if the other party gets into the White House. Media are completely ignoring the fact that unless we do something right now to fundamentally change what fuels our economy, it actually will be the end of the world as know it.

    • Kochs’ Grassroots Leadership Academy Training Astroturf Army

      With no clear favorite in the 2016 U.S. presidential primary race–following Gov. Scott Walker’s early exit and Trump’s march toward the nomination–the Koch brothers have turned their attention (and opened their wallets) to races for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state governorships.

      But with the Kochs having already spent at least $400 million of $889 million committed to the 2016 election cycle, according to news reports, where is that money being spent?

      An under-covered arm of the Koch political operations is a likely recipient of some of that cash and it’s called Americans for Prosperity’s “Grassroots Leadership Academy.”

    • Exxon Gets Sued by Conservationists and Legal Help from Conservatives

      As attorneys general of Texas and Alabama pledge to assist oil giant with fraud probe, conservation group files first lawsuit since cover-up revealed

    • Texas Thinks The Investigation Into Exxon Is ‘Ridiculous’

      If you didn’t know better, you might think the State of Texas favors oil companies.

      On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed for the second time in two weeks on the side of an oil company — this time Exxon, which is challenging a subpoena in the Virgin Islands’ Attorney General’s investigation over what the oil and gas giant knew about climate change, and when.

      Paxton called the Virgin Islands’ investigation “ridiculous” in a statement Monday.

    • Massachusetts Court Sides with Teenagers in ‘Historic’ Climate Victory

      ‘This is an historic victory for young generations advocating for changes to be made by government,’ said 17-year-old plaintiff Shamus Miller.

    • Youth Climate Advocates Secure Victory in Massachusetts Climate Change Lawsuit

  • Finance

    • Protests Rise Against World Economic Forum’s Implausible ‘Africa Keeps Rising’ Meme

      As reality dawns, even the continent’s oldest retail bank, Barclays, has just announced it will sell its African operations.

      The most gloomy reason to fear Africa’s for future, climate change, was distorted beyond recognition at the Kigali WEF last week. Referring to the December 2015 UN climate summit in Paris, the director of the Africa Progress Panel (founded by Blair in his prime a decade ago), Caroline Kende-Robb, pronounced that the “COP 21 in Paris was an unambiguous success [because] African nations seized the chance to shift the climate narrative from one of dependence to one of opportunity and transformation.”

    • Investigators Target Dangerous Housing Finance Practice With Deep Ties To America’s Racist Legacy

      Investigators in New York will probe the resurgence of a dangerous housing finance practice that was historically used to target low-income black families who dreamed of owning their own home, the state’s Department of Financial Services announced Monday.

      Investigators have sent subpoenas to at least four separate companies that are helping drive a boom in a long-dormant alternative to a traditional mortgage, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    • New York Banking Regulator Investigates ‘Seller-Financed’ Home Sales

      Financial regulators in New York have opened an investigation into housing deals marketed by investment firms to low-income buyers who don’t qualify for mortgages.

    • EU referendum: Boris Johnson accused of ‘dishonest gymnastics’ over TTIP U-turn

      The grandson of Winston Churchill has accused Boris Johnson of “fundamentally dishonest gymnastics” for reversing his position on the planned multibillion-pound TTIP trade agreement between the US and the EU.

      The former Mayor of London had previously called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership “Churchillian” in its brilliance.

    • Challenging a Wall Street Giant on Pay

      A prominent shareholder activist is fed up with money manager BlackRock over the firm’s practice of rubberstamping obscenely large executive compensation packages at thousands of U.S. corporations.

    • Privatizing America’s Public Land

      It goes without saying that in a democracy everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. The trouble starts when people think they are also entitled to their own facts.

      Away out West, on the hundreds of millions of acres of public lands that most Americans take for granted (if they are aware of them at all), the trouble is deep, widespread, and won’t soon go away. Last winter’s armed take-over and 41-day occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon is a case in point. It was carried out by people who, if they hadn’t been white and dressed as cowboys, might have been called “terrorists” and treated as such. Their interpretation of the history of western lands and of the judicial basis for federal land ownership — or at least that of their leaders, since they weren’t exactly a band of intellectuals — was only loosely linked to reality.

      At least some of them took inspiration from the notion that Jesus Christ wrote the Constitution (which would be news to the Deists, like James Madison, who were its actual authors) and that it prohibits federal ownership of any land excepting administrative sites within the United States — a contention that more than two centuries of American jurisprudence has emphatically repudiated.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Chomsky: Today’s Republican Party is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History

      We speak with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky about the Republican party, the rightward shift in U.S. politics and the 2016 election. “If we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects,” Chomsky says, “but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally.”

    • This Man Can’t Vote Today Because Kentucky’s GOP Governor Reversed A Major Voting Rights Victory

      “Seeing the struggle of those folks to vote, I was reminded of my dilemma and not being able to vote,” he said, referring to the film and the movement that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

      Malone is one of more than 140,000 Kentuckians who are permanently disenfranchised because of felony convictions. The commonwealth is one of three states with the strictest felon disenfranchisement laws. Just over five percent of Kentucky’s voting-age population cannot vote because of a felony convictions, but for African Americans, that number is 16.7 percent.

    • Top Aide Explains Why Sanders is Fighting the Good Fight
    • Sanders Urges Democrat Leaders to Welcome ‘Real’ Fighters for Change

      ‘The Democratic Party has a choice,’ says senator. ‘It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change… Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure.’

    • Bernie Sanders Looks for High Turnout to Fuel Kentucky, Oregon Upsets

      “Needless to say, what I hope we’ll be seeing is a very large voter turnout,” Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders told an Oregon newspaper over the weekend ahead of the state’s closed primary on Tuesday.

      It seems the Vermont senator may get his wish, with Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins saying Monday that voters are on track to cast more than one million votes in a primary election for only the second time in state history. The first time, according to The Oregonian, was in 2008 and “was driven most acutely by Obama-crazed voters wanting a say in the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama primary show-down.”

    • Live Blog: Both Parties Hold Oregon Primaries, Democrats in Close Race in Kentucky
    • Hillary and the Corporate Elite

      “Mainstream” U.S. media is struck by the “strange bedfellows” phenomenon whereby a number of right wing foreign policy neoconservatives and top business elites – including at least one of the notorious hard right-wing Koch brothers – are lining up with Democrat Hillary Clinton against the Republican Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race. But what’s so strange about it? Trump is off the elite capitalist and imperial leash. He channels some nasty things that have long been part of the Republican Party playbook: frustrated white nationalism, racism, nativism, and male chauvinism.

      At the same time, however, he often sounds remarkably populist in ways that white working class voters appreciate. He has been critical of things that elite Republicans (and elite corporate Democrats) hold dear, including corporate globalization, “free trade’ (investor rights) deals, global capital mobility, cheap labor immigration. He questions imperialist adventures like the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the destabilization of Syria, and the provocation of Russia. He’s a largely self-funded lone wolf and wild card who cannot be counted to reliably make policy in accord with the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire. And he’s seizing the nomination of a political organization that may have ceased to be a functioning national political party.

    • The Conservatives Will Be Protected From Their Election Fraud

      It is hard to think of bigger news than that the Electoral Commission is taking the governing party to court over alleged fraud in its election accounts, with possible disqualifications that could cost the government its majority. Yet the issue has received remarkably little coverage apart from the very dogged work of Channel 4 News. Why is that?

      There are a number of reasons. The first is that the media has a major pro-Tory bias and minimises bad news for the Tories as a matter of course. The most remarkable example of this is the continual playing down of divisions within the Conservative Party over Europe, which run to extreme levels of personal hatred and abuse. But you do not see that hatred and abuse reflected, whereas divisions within the Labour Party are reported daily in extreme detail.

      If you doubt what I say, consider the fact that it is quite openly acknowledged that, under pressure from No.10, the media are organising the televised debates for the EU referendum so that Conservatives are never seen to be debating each other. That is the most extraordinary piece of media connivance, and even entails the media excluding the official Leave campaign from at least one national debate. What is deeply worrying is that the UK has become a country where nobody is surprised or concerned at this kind of blatant state propaganda manipulation.

    • The Mainstream Media and Its Discontents

      Throughout the 2016 primary elections season to date, the “mainstream media,” both “liberal” and “conservative,” along with the establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties, have been desperately working — at times in a state of barely-concealed panic — to contain, divert, coopt and otherwise neutralize a tsunami of discontent among the “uneducated,” “working class” masses, many of whom are “stubbornly” refusing to cooperate with the extremely expensive simulation of democracy that the corporate plutocracy is forced to stage for us every four years.

      These “discontents” have already handed the Republican presidential nomination to Donald Trump, a buffoonish billionaire real estate mogul whose incoherent demagogic ramblings make George W. Bush sound articulate in comparison, and are “childishly” dragging out the coronation of Democrat Hillary Clinton by continuing to vote for a 74-year-old self-proclaimed “socialist” who has had the audacity to talk about Clinton’s shady ties to Wall Street, and the rest of the transnational corporate elite that more or less rules the world at this point, and things like that.

    • British PM Cameron’s tiff with Trump over Muslims: The Hypocrisy Factor

      When Donald Trump announced his monstrous and yet daffy plan to exlude Muslims from the United States (what with being, himself, both monstrous and yet daffy), British Prime Minister David Cameron called him out. The plan, he said, is “divisive, stupid and wrong.”

      Trump gave an interview with Piers Morgan on British TV on Monday in which he threatened the United Kingdom with retaliation.

      [...]

      But what shouldn’t be lost in all this is that Cameron himself hasn’t exactly been good on Muslim issues in the UK. He’s been supercilious, condescending, and tone deaf. And he’s made some stupid and divisive proposals, as well.

    • More Mexican Immigrants Are Returning to Mexico Than Coming to the U.S.

      If you listen to Donald Trump and his legions of supporters—a task you undertake at your own peril—you will inevitably hear about hordes of invading Mexicans arriving in the United States daily, and the border wall the billionaire presidential candidate has proposed to keep them out. Variously described by Trump as a “gorgeous wall,” a “great, great wall,” and the “greatest wall that you’ve ever seen,” this magnificent would-be eighth wonder of the modern world has become a cornerstone of the GOP presidential contender’s campaign, a majestic concrete testament to America’s renewed Trumpian greatness.

    • The BBC White Paper show

      The run up to last week’s government white paper was filled with scare stories about a war against the BBC. The final document could scarcely have been more pleasing for the corporation.

    • Poll: Trump Closing in on Clinton, as Sanders Remains Formidable

      Donald Trump has reduced Hillary Clinton’s national lead to just three points—down from five last week—underscoring the grim prospects of the presidential election, a new poll released on Tuesday reveals.

      The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll finds that Clinton now leads Trump nationally 48 to 45 percent, an unsettling development as the candidates enter their final stretch of primaries, two of which are taking place Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon. Last week, Clinton and Trump were found to be in a dead heat in three swing states.

    • Poll: Trump narrows Clinton’s lead nationally to 3 points

      In the Democratic primary, Clinton leads Sanders nationally by 14 points, 54 percent to 40 percent. But it’s the Vermont senator who beats Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head by a wider margin, 53 percent to 41 percent.

    • Establishment Democrats and the Next March of Folly

      The March of Folly Defined: In 1984, Barbara W. Tuchman wrote the much acclaimed book, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam in which she documented four cases where governments pursued policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, and despite evidence that the chosen courses of action would have devastating consequences.

      Still Marching Toward Folly: Since 1984 we have piled up a lot more marches of folly – the Iraqi invasion and regime change in general; the deregulation of banking leading to the Great Recession of 2008; an anti-terrorist strategy that generates more terrorists; an energy policy that advocated an “all of the above energy strategy” and discounted the threat of climate change; and a trade and tax policy that shifted wealth to the very few at the expense of the many, to name a few. (Extra credit question – which Democratic presidential candidate supported all of these follies)?

    • Donald Trump’s Trick Spokesperson Play

      The mystery of whether Trump masqueraded as his own spokesman while owner of the New Jersey Generals endures.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Teacher fired from Christian school after reporting shocking rape of her daughter

      A former teacher at a private Christian Science high school in St. Louis claims she was fired from her job as part of a cover-up after reporting to police that her underage daughter had been sexually assaulted multiple times by a school employee.

    • CIA ‘Mistakenly’ Destroys Torture Report
    • Appeals Court Declines to Release Full ‘Senate Torture Report’

      The D.C Circuit Court today ruled against releasing the entire contents of the so-called “Senate torture report,” which describes the Central Intelligence Agency’s controversial post-9/11 interrogation and detention program.

      A three-judge panel decided unanimously to deny a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act requesting release of the 6,000-plus page investigative report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

    • CIA Watchdog “Mistakenly” Destroys Its Sole Copy of Senate Torture Report

      The years-long battle to force the Obama administration to release the nearly-7,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee’s report detailing the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program just took an absurd new turn.

      According to exclusive reporting from Yahoo News correspondent Michael Isikoff, the CIA inspector general’s office says it “mistakenly” destroyed its sole copy of the mass document “at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved.”

    • Senate report on CIA torture is one step closer to disappearing

      The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved, Yahoo News has learned.

      While another copy of the report exists elsewhere at the CIA, the erasure of the controversial document by the office charged with policing agency conduct has alarmed the U.S. senator who oversaw the torture investigation and reignited a behind-the-scenes battle over whether the full unabridged report should ever be released, according to multiple intelligence community sources familiar with the incident.

    • Leaked NSA newsletter says working at Guantanamo Bay is fun and awesome

      There’s little to laugh about in the 166 documents from Edward Snowden’s treasure trove of NSA leaks The Intercept released to the public on Monday. As one might imagine, there’s a lot in there about how our government knowingly committed horrific human rights abuses and violated international law. But connoisseurs of the absurd could do worse than to read the leaked NSA newsletter from 2003 that made working at Guantanamo Bay sound like a fun Caribbean vacation. SCUBA diving and torture: Two great tastes that taste great together?

    • Kidnapped and coerced: this is Liliana’s story

      Many women who end up transporting drugs are co-opted by networks that use similar methods to those employed in human trafficking crimes. That is what happened to Liliana, a Venezuelan woman with two children who agreed to transport drugs under the threat that her family would be harmed if she refused. She is incarcerated at an Argentine federal prison and her children remain in Venezuela.

    • Red Hat is the Winner of Mintigo’s Data Super Hero Award

      Iran has arrested eight people working for online modelling agencies deemed to be “un-Islamic”, the prosecutor of Tehran’s cybercrimes court has said.

      The arrests are part of an operation that has seen women targeted for posting photos showing them not wearing headscarves on Instagram and elsewhere.

      Women in Iran have been required to cover their hair in public since 1979.

      The eight unnamed people were among 170 identified by investigators as being involved in modelling online.

      They included 59 photographers and make-up artists, 58 models and 51 fashion salon managers and designers, according to a statement from the court.

    • Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, feds say

      US federal prosecutors urged a federal appeals court late Monday to keep a child-porn suspect behind bars—where he already has been for seven months—until he unlocks two hard drives that the government claims contain kid smut.

      The suspect, a Philadelphia police sergeant relieved of his duties, has refused to unlock two hard drives and has been in jail ever since a judge’s order seven months ago—and after being found in contempt of court. The defendant can remain locked up until a judge lifts the contempt order.

    • Michael Ratner, Champion for Human Rights

      Michael Ratner, who died last week, was a champion on behalf of the world’s oppressed, giving the phrase “human rights” real meaning and defying its current propaganda application to justify endless war, as Marjorie Cohn explained at Truthdig.

    • In Sweden, Children are Citizens… Not Overheads

      We all know about the obvious examples of Swedish social democracy in relation to kids, such as the generous parental leave and the subsidized daycare. Loved or hated, these aspects are almost always discussed (at least in popular terms) in relation to the parents and how they enable successful careers or boost the economy. Rarely, however, do we think of how these programs send a long-term message to children that they are valuable members of society who, at this precise moment in time, simply cannot fend for themselves. So, the state steps in to make sure that their rights and well-being are respected, just as the rights and well-being of their larger fellow citizens are respected.

    • Left Cover for Hoffa? The Rise and Fall of a Model Teamsters Local

      After Hoffa was jailed in 1967 for jury tampering, attempted bribery, and fraud, he left Frank Fitzsimmons in charge of the IBT. Gibbons did not fare well under Fitz, as he was known. To Gibbons’ credit, he was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War and played a key role in Labor for Peace, hosting its founding conference in St. Louis. He even joined a trade union delegation to Hanoi during the war, met with top North Vietnamese officials, and conducted Washington briefings on his trip when he returned.

    • What does the newly announced Euro 2016 team tell us about the state of multicultural England?

      The backpages will be full of hopeful optimism after the announcement of England’s provisional squad for Euro 2016. A squad full to bursting with youthful promise, it is the England fan’s lot to believe for 50 years it can never be as bad as the last time, but never as good as the first and only time either.

    • African American Unemployment, Hillary Clinton and Political Insanity!

      In reality, the black unemployment rate topped out at 30…

    • France erupts in defiance of employer-friendly labour reforms

      France is continuously rocked by debates around the meaning of the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality and solidarity that predate the French Revolution.

      Some important notions are widely shared. Most French citizens expect governments to meet the basic needs of all and promote individual expansion of talents and abilities.

      It is generally agreed France should offer educational, cultural and recreational facilities to every child.

      How the Enlightenment ideals should apply in the workplace is a matter of fierce dispute.

      Unlike Canada, the U.K. or the U.S., France has not consistently favoured employers over labour.

    • ‘An Entire Neighborhood Was Defamed’

      Few events have gone from fact to fable as quickly and decisively as that of the 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese. For decades we’ve heard references to the poor young woman stabbed again and again on a New York City street while some 38 people—Genovese’s neighbors—watched from their windows without making a move to help. In some tellings, some of them pulled up chairs for a better view. But in all tellings, the community’s apathy was the reason for Genovese’s death, almost as much as her killer, Winston Moseley, whose death in prison last month brought the story briefly back into the headlines.

    • Women and Children First: Homeland Security Targets “Family Units” for Deportation in May and June

      After January’s raids that tore teens from their families and plucked them off buses on their way to school, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is about to embark on a renewed quest to arrest and deport Central Americans who applied for refugee status in the United States in the summer of 2014. According to sources reported by Reuters on May 12, 2016 and confirmed by DHS a day later, the agency is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents out on a second wave of raids against immigrants, this time with the specific aim of apprehending and imprisoning Central American women and their children, or “family units”, and unaccompanied minors.

    • Iran Arrests Models Over Instagrams Without Headscarves, Alleges Kim Kardashian Is A Secret Agent

      In a crackdown on “un-Islamic dress,” Iranian authorities arrested eight individuals involved in Instagrams of women without headscarves. A former model was also questioned by the authorities on live state television as part of the operation which “targets Iran’s fashion elite for their use of social media.”

      Prosecutor Javad Babei made the arrests public on TV, saying the operation was zeroing in on “threats to morality and the foundation of family.” A total of 29 people were notified about their allegedly problematic social media presence, but most had modified that behavior and, as a result, “did not face any judicial action,” Babei said. According to the BBC, the eight people who were arrested were among 170 identified by investigators as “being involved in modeling online”; in their ranks were 59 photographers and make-up artists, 58 models and 51 fashion salon managers and designers.

    • Private Groups, Not Government, Lead the Charge on Prison Issues

      The ethics panel of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is considering prohibiting members from designing “execution chambers and spaces intended for torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

      Although no final decision has been announced, the proposal has been lauded by Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), an architectural ethics and human rights group, as a huge leap forward on human rights,

      A ban would reverse the AIA’s position from 2014, when it rejected a similar proposal, and put it in line with other professional groups’ decisions related to human rights.

      The American Pharmacists Association and the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists, for instance, voted last year to prohibit members from “providing medical drugs to be used for executions.”

      More dramatically, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Friday that it would ban the sale of drugs that could be used in executions, and the American Psychological Association (APA) recently voted to prohibit member psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. The United Nations has declared the practice of solitary confinement in the United States a form of torture.

    • For Second Year in a Row, HPSCI Tries to Gut PCLOB

      As I reported, during the passage of Intelligence Authorization last year (which ultimately got put through on the Omnibus bill, making it impossible for people to vote against), Congress implemented Intelligence Community wishes by undercutting PCLOB authority in two ways: prohibiting PCLOB from reviewing covert activities, and stripping an oversight role for PCLOB that had been passed in all versions of CISA.

    • Make America Less Smart Again! We Know Words! Obama Is A Joke! Sad!

      Oh man. We can’t even. So Obama gave a commencement speech at Rutgers where he actually praised “Facts. Evidence. Reason. Logic. An understanding of science,” claiming, “These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.” He went on, “So class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: in politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness, that’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.”

    • France Rises Up Against Anti-Labor Reforms

      Union members joined pro-democracy activists in widespread protests against new law that makes it easier to fire workers and move jobs offshore

    • Donald Trump faces June deposition in restaurant lawsuit

      Expected Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appears likely to be forced off the campaign trail in June to be deposed under oath in at least one of two lawsuits he filed after prominent chefs backed away from plans to open restaurants at the luxury Trump International Hotel under development in Washington.

      A D.C. Superior Court judge approved a plan Tuesday to briefly extend court deadlines to allow Trump to give testimony June 16 in the case Trump’s development company filed against a firm set up by restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian to open a dining establishment called “The National.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Cable Lobbying Group Claims More Competition Would Hurt Consumers

      The FCC recently voted 4-1 to approve Charter’s $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The agency just released its full order (pdf) pertaining to the deal, outlining the various conditions the FCC hopes to enforce to keep Charter from simply becoming another Comcast. Among them are a seven-year ban on usage caps, a seven-year ban on charging for direct interconnection (the heart of the telecom industry’s battle with Netflix last year), and a ban on any attempt to pressure broadcasters into refusing deals with streaming video providers.

      [...]

      If history is any indication the ACA really doesn’t need to worry all that much. Traditionally in telecom, FCC conditions requiring that an ISP “expand to X number of additional homes” are usually conditions that the merging companies volunteer themselves. Why? It’s most frequently because that expansion either already happened (and the paperwork hasn’t been filed yet) — or was slated to happen as a matter of course. Or it may not happen at all; such expansion promises are usually never really independently audited by the FCC, which lets companies string the FCC along with an endless flood of expansion promises that more often than not aren’t even real.

      In other words, the ACA’s decision to insult the intelligence of an already annoyed customer base by pretending competition would be bad for them — only adds insult to injury. Instead of whining about competition, how about just competing? Better yet, how about competing with Charter using a strange, outdated idea known as better customer service?

    • La Quadrature du Net leaves the state of emergency

      When faced with a wall, you need to know when to stop banging your head against it. After years of legal violence, defeats and steady erosion of fundamental rights, and confronted with an elected political body whose only logic is to reinforce the security apparatus, La Quadrature du Net has decided to stop wasting time trying to appeal to the reason of those who won’t listen, and is now taking a new direction for its actions.

    • Add Philadelphia To The Long List Of Cities That Think Verizon Ripped Them Off On Fiber Promises

      Verizon’s modus operandi has been fairly well established by now: convince state or local leaders to dole out millions in tax breaks and subsidies — in exchange for fiber that’s either only partially delivered, or not delivered at all. Given this story has repeated itself in New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York City and countless other locations, there’s now a parade of communities asking somebody, anybody, to actually hold Verizon’s feet to the fire. Given Verizon’s political power (especially on the state level) those calls go unheeded, with Verizon lawyers consistently able to wiggle around attempts to hold the telco to account.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Extra-Territorial Application of the Defend Trade Secrets Act

      The Economic Espionage Act (EEA) includes a provision regarding its “applicability to conduct outside the United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 1837. Section 1837 was left unchanged with DTSA’s amendments to EEA, but seemingly applies to the new private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The provision offers important insight on how the new cause of action can be applied in the foreign context. Most importantly, a (1) U.S. corporation or citizen can be held liable for trade secret misappropriation under the DTSA regardless of whether the misappropriation occurred abroad; and (2) an entity can be held liable under the DTSA for foreign misappropriation if “an act in furtherance of the offense was committed in the United States.”

    • Alibaba membership of IACC suspended amid turmoil

      The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) board of directors sent a letter to members on May 13 saying it would like to address an anonymous letter that has been recently circulated that expressed concerns about the IACC President Bob Barchiesi, and the organisation’s operations and governance.

    • Trademarks

      • Earnhardt Family Fighting Over Whether One Earnhardt Son Can Use His Own Last Name

        You may not be aware of this, but apparently Teresa Earnhardt, widow of Dale Earnhardt Sr., the NASCAR driver who died mid-race in 2001, is a staunch protector of her deceased husband’s name. I was one of those not aware of this, primarily because NASCAR is every bit as foreign to me as curling (hi, Canadians!). Her latest attempt to block the use of the Earnardt name is particularly interesting, since those she is opposing are her dead husband’s son and his son’s wife.

        [...]

        It’s also a strain to understand how much confusion is going to be caused by Kerry using his last name for a home and furniture business. Teresa’s filing attempts to assert that there will be plenty, but the USPTO didn’t buy it.

      • “Simply” invalid: French trade mark win for M&S in the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris

        M&S responded that there was no likelihood of confusion, and counterclaimed for invalidity of both trade marks, and requested that both trade marks be revoked for lack of use.

      • Belmora seeks en banc reconsideration in Flanax trade mark case

        In March, the Fourth Circuit reversed the Eastern District of Virginia’s dismissal for lack of standing and found that use of the Flanax mark is not a prerequisite to sue for unfair competition or false advertising under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act or for cancellation under Section 14(3). The case was remanded to the district court.

    • Copyrights

Links 17/5/2016: Wine 1.9.10, ChaletOS 16.04

Posted in News Roundup at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux, the GPL and the Power of Sharing

    Yes Virginia, there is a Linux community. It’s alive and well in just about every place you want to imagine. And it’s doing quite well for itself. Quite well.

  • End of Apple, maddog Recovering, PCLOS Drops 32-bit

    Top new today in the Linux world is the recovery of Jon “maddog” Hall. Hall, a staunch supporter of Linux and Open Source, recently suffered a heart attack and is now recovering comfortably at home. PCLinuxOS announced the end of the 32-bit versions and Dimstar blogged the latest in Tumbleweed. Elsewhere, Paul Venezia said Apple is on the ropes and Neil Rickert said Microsoft clearly doesn’t even care about security.

  • Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog: I give my heart to you

    One last thing. I would like to give a heartfelt (no pun intended) “Thank you” and my admiration for Dr. Berry and the entire staff of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Nashua, New Hampshire. How do you thank people for saving your life?

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • CoreOS Fest Showcases New Projects to Advance Containers

      CoreOS held its second annual CoreOS Fest event May 9-10 in Berlin, with a satellite event simulcast in San Francisco. CoreOS originally got its start in 2013 as an optimized delivery platform for Docker containers but has evolved to become one of Docker Inc.’s primary rivals, building out its own rkt container runtime. CoreOS also has become a leading contributor to the Kubernetes open-source container orchestration platform, originally built by Google. CoreOS’ commercial tectonic platform is a fully supported Kubernetes distribution that aims to provide organizations with a Google Infrastructure for Everyone Else (GIFEE) platform. At CoreOS Fest, the company announced a new $28 million round of funding to help advance its technologies and marketing efforts. Also at the event, Tigera, a new company that will oversee the commercialization of the Canal open-source effort, officially launched. Zachary Smith, CEO of Packet, used his time on the CoreOS Fest stage to detail how his cloud hosting company is enabling trusted cloud computing on a bare metal platform. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the CoreOS Fest event.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Some new Breeze app icons in Frameworks 5.22

        Some icons I made, you can find them in KDE Frameworks 5.22

        The QOwnNotes icon became the official one. Give to this app a try, it’s super.

      • The initiation

        What will I be doing you ask? Well, as some people know Krita on Mac OS X is not quite there yet. Some of the new cool functionality added to Krita 3.0 is forcefully omitted from the OS X release. Deep down in the depths of Krita painting we paint decorations using Qt’s kindly provided QPainter class. This class allows us to make pretty lines and shapes very easily, and is perfectly suited to drawing all of the overlay functionality (such as grids, cursors, guides, etc.). What could possibly go wrong there? Well, even though we are grateful to have such easy rendering functionality, the backend of those functions haven’t exactly kept up with the times.

      • QtCon Call for Papers Extended!

        What have you been working on lately that you’d like to share at a QtCon talk? The Qt Community of developers wants to hear from you! Submit your proposal by Friday and get a chance to contribute to this one-off, unique Event in Berlin.

      • Care to help test Plasma 5.6.4?
      • Compiling all of Qt5, KF5, Plasma5, kdepim5, apps…

        I see a very high value in compiling my own Qt, and on top of it all the KDE-made software that I use. This makes it very easy to fix bugs and add improvements to the software I use on a day to day basis. Nowadays I think many developers use distro packages for Qt or KF5 or even the whole environment except for the one app they’re working on, but in my opinion this leads to “silo” thinking, with workarounds in upper layers rather than fixing issues at the right place.

        So, here’s a working and easy recipe for compiling all the Qt-based software you use.

      • Transmission in QML?

        One of the hardest parts of actually doing something is the action to do it. I spend quite a while saying to myself “I’ll start learning QML”, then I discovered that there is a Qt version of Transmission, the one used on Windows and also a few linux flavors. Unfortunately it’s not polished as I hoped to run unmodified on Mac, Gnome and such (it runs fine on Plasma, my DE of choice, but I wanted to make it work nice anywhere).

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • New features in GNOME To Do

        GNOME To Do is an application that manages a simple set of to-do lists. To Do was built by Georges Stavracas, a frequent contributor to GNOME software including Calendar and Nautilus, during Google Summer of Code. It’s designed to be the best tool to manage what you want to achieve with your projects and daily life.

        GNOME 3.20 (available in the upcoming Fedora 24 release) brings many new enhancements, some of which expand the functionality of GNOME To Do. I spoke with Georges about what these changes bring, and what the future holds for To Do.

      • Orca Screen Reader Updated for GNOME 3.20.2 with Performance Improvements

        The Orca open-source screen reader and magnifier software used by default in numerous GNU/Linux operating systems has been updated today, May 16, 2016, to version 3.20.2.

      • Reviving the GTK development blog

        The GTK+ project has a development blog.

        I know it may come as a shock to many of you, and you’d be completely justified in thinking that I just made that link up — but the truth is, the GTK+ project has had a development blog for a long while.

      • GNOME.Asia Summit 2016

        While I was going through news.gnome.org, a piece of news flashed on my screen stating that GNOME.Asia summit 2016 is to be held in Delhi, India which is my own place. Though at that time I was completely unaware about what happens in a summit, what it is meant for and all that sort of questions. But for once, I decided to atleast attend it, if not participate. I told about this news to my mentors Jonas Danielsson and Damian Nohales. Initially i was quite reluctant to participate there, but Jonas pushed me a lot to present a lightning talk about my outreachy project in the summit. Damian too motivated me to go for the summit. Therefore I decided to submit a lightning talk proposal about my project : “Adding print route support in GNOME-Maps”. Within few days i got the confirmation regarding the acceptance of my talk and also the approval of travelling sponsorship.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Review: Rebellin Linux v3 GNOME

        Last week, I finished and passed my generals! This not only means that I can continue doing research here with a roof over my head and with money to feed myself; it also means that I now have the time to get back to doing reviews and posting about other things here. I’m starting this week by reviewing Rebellin Linux.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Arch Family

      • Manjaro Linux 16.06 Release Candidate 1 Is Out with Linux Kernel 4.6 Support

        Today, May 16, 2016, Philip Müller proudly announced the availability of the first Release Candidate (RC1) build of the highly anticipated Manjaro Linux 16.06 “Daniella” computer operating system based on Arch Linux.

        Early adopters can now jump into the Manjaro Linux 16.06 RC bandwagon and take the upcoming for a test drive on their personal computers, as the team of skilled developers led by Philip Müller have done a great job in the past few months to make the Arch Linux-based distro as stable and reliable as possible.

      • Arch Linux and SparkyLinux Are Among the First Distros to Offer Linux Kernel 4.6

        Linux kernel 4.6 was officially announced, as expected, on May 15, 2016, by Linus Torvalds, and we were just wondering which GNU/Linux distributions will be the first to adopt it.

      • Manjaro 16.06 RC1 Polishes Xfce 4.12, Linux 4.4 LTS

        The first release candidate to the upcoming Manjaro 16.06 “Daniella” release is now available.

        Manjaro’s flagship desktop continues to be built upon Xfce 4.12, for which they’ve worked on more polishing and improvements this release cycle. Manjaro 16.06 for the KDE spin will feature Plasma 5.6 and KDE Applications 16.04.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • LetsEncrypt on openSUSE Leap

        I’ve been running my personal blog on rootco.de for a few months now. The server is a minimal install of openSUSE Leap 42.1 running on a nice physical machine hosted at the awesome Hetzner, who offer openSUSE Leap as an OS on all of their Physical and Virtual server hosting. I use the standard Apache available in Leap, with Jekyll to generate this blog. You can actually see the source to this Jekyll blog on GitHub. And to manage it all I use the awesome SaltStack and keep all of my Salt configuration in GitHub also so you can see exactly how my system is setup.

    • Red Hat Family

      • 5 rules for avoiding burnout

        Recently, I was asked to fly to India to help some new teams at Red Hat learn a bit more about how to approach the ideas underpinning Agile effectively. Impulsive me wanted to respond, “Yes, I will absolutely travel to India to meet people and share what I know.” However, reasonable me followed up with, “OK, so you are going to fly to India. That’s almost a two-day trip, you will only be there for around a day, and then you have to fly back for two days. You have a class that week, are teaching the following week, and somewhere in between all of that you are supposed to organize a yard sale. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, you need a visa.”

      • Fedora

        • Single sign-on improvements in Fedora 24

          How many times do you wish everything around you was a tiny bit smarter? A door opens automatically when you come in with bags of groceries. A light switches on when you step in. Entering a password twice in a row isn’t required to unlock your email after you logged in into your desktop.

          Home automation has improved greatly in the last decade. Numerous sensors and smart switches are cheaper and more accessible every year. For example, offices and shopping malls in Finland have had automatically opening doors for years. Lights in my office switch off to conserve electricity when I’d get too deep into coding or a debugging session. Darkness is a result of me not moving much in my chair, as if I froze or need to be kicked out for a run.

        • Fedora 24 alpha – Twine software.

          Today I tested teh Twine open-source tool with Fedora 24 alpha. I used virtual box software the last version.

    • Debian Family

      • ZFS comes to Debian, thanks to licensing workaround

        The ZFS file system has come to popular Linux distribution Debian, but in a way the distro’s backers think won’t kick up another row over compatibility of open source licences.

        Ubuntu 16.04 added ZFS, despite pre-release grumblings from Richard Stallman to the effect that anything licensed under the GNU GPL v2 can only be accompanied by code also released under the GNU GPL v2. ZFS is issued under a Common Development and Distribution License, version 1 (CDDLv1).

      • Skirting The Hole In The Ice Of ZFS

        The muddy part is how building and running a ZFS module with Linux is not a violation of copyright when a combined derivative work of Linux+ZFS is created. Making even one copy is probably a violation of both CDDL and GPL., so keep on skating.

      • What does it mean that ZFS is included in Debian?

        Petter Reinholdtsen recently blogged about ZFS availability in Debian. Many people have worked hard on getting ZFS support available in Debian and we would like to thank everyone involved in getting to this point and explain what ZFS in Debian means.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi Zero, the $5 Computer, Now Ships with a Built-in Camera Connector

      Approximately half a year after its launch, during which time every single copy was sold, the $5 computer, Raspberry Pi Zero, makes a comeback with a built-in camera connector.

    • New Arduino Srl SBC merges Arduino, WiFi, and Linux

      Arduino Srl’s new “Arduino Industrial 101” SBC includes Arduino circuitry and I/O, along with a soldered-on WiFi module that runs Linino Linux.

      Last November, Arduino Srl promised an Arduino Industrial 101 carrier board for Dog Hunter’s WiFi-enabled Chiwawa module, which is supported by the OpenWrt-based Linino Linux distribution. Arduino has now unveiled the resulting product: a $40, sandwich-style single board computer with a soldered-on, Arduino-branded version of the Chiwawa module, along with Linino Linux support.

    • BeagleBone Green Wireless adds WiFi, BLE, USBs

      The module also includes Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy (BLE) with support for Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) for stereo-quality audio control in automation projects. The Green Wireless SBC also supports Node-RED for wired IoT, and it integrates with the MRAA library, “so users can program with more Grove modules,” says the company.

      Features borrowed from the BeagleBone Green and Black include the ability to run Linux on a 1GHz, Cortex-A8 TI Sitara AM3359 SoC with an Imagination PowerVR SGX530 GPU and a programmable PRU subsystem for industrial I/O. The 3.4 x 2.1-inch SBC similarly supplies 512MB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB of eMMC flash, and a microSD slot.

    • Open, Linux-based platform simplifies wireless IoT

      Sierra Wireless and Element14 unveiled an open-spec Arduino compatible “mangOH Green IoT Platform” based on Sierra’s 3G, GNSS, and WiFi modules running Linux.

      Sierra Wireless announced a beta release of its AirPrime WP module and open-source “mangOH” carrier board last June. Now, the company has formally released the products with the help of Element14, which appears to have built the new mangOH Green IoT Platform carrier board.

    • The Raspberry Pi Foundation released

      The Raspberry Pi Foundation released a new version of the Raspberry Pi Zero with a camera connector and the same $5 price.

    • 91% of IoT developers use Open source

      Did you know that 91% of IoT developers use open source technology in their projects ? Our latest Premium report in the IoT series –Open source in the Internet of Things -not only confirms the figure but also sheds light to a number of tools and strategies that developers employ for open source, open hardware and open data.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • The need for Open source skills in Africa

    Despite the fact that OS skills development is nothing new, the subtle changes in business requirements over the years mean the need has progressed beyond foundational skills. Today, companies are looking for people who have more advanced OS skills reflecting a more dynamic, connected business landscape.

  • How Fuzzing Can Make A Large Open Source Project More Secure

    Emily Ratliff of the Linux Foundation explains the considerations to take when planning to fuzz your open source project

    One of the best practices for secure development is dynamic analysis. Among such techniques, fuzzing has been highly popular since its invention and a multitude of fuzzing tools of varying sophistication have been developed.

  • Despite New FCC Rules, Linksys, Asus Say They’ll Still Support Third Party Router Firmware

    The apocalypse for those who like to tinker with their router firmware may be postponed.

    Last year we noted how the FCC updated router and RF device rules for safety reasons, stating that some illegally modified router radios operating in the unlicensed bands were interfering with terminal doppler weather radar (TDWR) at airports. The rule changes prohibited tinkering with the just the RF capabilities of devices. But some sloppy FCC language worried tinker advocates and custom-firmware developers, who feared that because many routers have systems-on-a-chip (SOC) where the radio isn’t fully distinguishable from other hardware — vendors would take the lazy route and block third-party firmware entirely.

    And, at least with some companies, that’s exactly what happened. TP-Link for example stated that it would be preventing custom router firmware installations with gear built after June 2016, blaming the FCC for the decision while giving a half-assed statement about respecting the hobbyist community’s “creativity.” Again: the rules don’t mandate anything of the kind; TP-Link just decided to take the laziest, most economical route.

  • Conflict resolution: A primer

    People are pretty incredible. The open source community is a great example of this: hundreds and thousands of people passionate about building new things, collaborating together, and helping each other succeed. Good people deliver great results, time and time again.

    There is though, always going to be conflict. Sometimes people will disagree on ideas, on perspectives, on approaches, or ideologies. Sometimes you can’t point your finger at the source of conflict easily and it seems people just don’t get on.

    Conflict doesn’t just happen in open source projects though. It happens at work, in our families, in our groups of friends, and elsewhere. So, when you have two people who rub each other up the wrong way, how do you help to resolve it? Today I want to share some things I have learned that might help.

  • Amazon goes open source with machine-learning tech, competing with Google’s TensorFlow

    Amazon is making a bigger leap into open-source technology with the unveiling of its machine-learning software DSSTNE.

  • Events

    • OPNFV’s Inaugural Plugfest Hosted by CableLabs

      OPNFVs first Plugfest was held at CableLabs facility in Louisville, CO. This event, which focused on deployment and integration of OPNFV as well as Virtual Network Function (VNF) applications, was open to both OPNFV members and non-members.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla and Linux Foundation Advance New Trends in Open Source Funding

        Who pays for open source development? Increasingly, large organizations like Mozilla and the Linux Foundation. That’s the trend highlighted by recent moves like the expansion of the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) project.

        The Mozilla Foundation has long injected money into the open source ecosystem through partnerships with other projects and grants. But it formalized that mission last year by launching MOSS, which originally focused on supporting open source projects that directly complement or help form the basis for Mozilla’s own products.

      • Mozilla Extends its MOSS Program, Providing Funding for Open Source Projects

        Mozilla isn’t alone in funding open source development outside its own purview. The Linux Foundation and other organizations are well known for providing such funding. Mozilla is now spreading its MOSS effort even wider, though. It is adding a second track for MOSS called “Mission Partners” which is open to any open source project in the world which is undertaking an activity that meaningfully furthers Mozilla’s mission.

      • The FBI and the Mozilla Foundation Lock Horns over Known Security Hole

        The Mozilla Foundation and the FBI recently have clashed over security weaknesses. The FBI is aware of a weakness in the Tor browser that may affect Firefox—it’s a weakness the FBI has exploited during an investigation.

        Mozilla wants the FBI to reveal the details of the exploit ahead of the trial, but the FBI is playing its cards close to its chest. Because of the potential risk to its users, Mozilla has turned to the courts to force the FBI to reveal its information.

        It’s just the latest of several high-profile cases this year concerning security and privacy. Each of these cases has involved the Federal government and software firms or communities. For the average guy on the street, it’s just business as usual. But for those who keep an ear to the ground, it’s hard not to read between the lines.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • AtScale, Focused on BI and Hadoop, Bags Another $11 Million in Funding

      In recent months, tools that demystify and function as useful front-ends and connectors for the open source Hadoop project are much in demand. Hadoop has been the driving technology behind much of the Big Data trend, and there are many administrators who can benefit from simplified dashboards and analytics tools that work with it. In fact, as we covered here, MapR’s CEO predicted that IT will embrace self-service Big Data to allow developers, data scientists and data analysts to directly conduct data exploration.”

  • CMS

    • My two cents about Jekyll

      WordPress is mainly about WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get), but you can also go the WYSIWYW way if you prefer (What you see is what you write). In other words, you can write your posts in plain HTML, or Markdown (thanks to the Jetpack plugin). The latter is what I used to do, but the downside is a slower productivity: you need to click the Preview button to get a preview of the resulting page.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • First impressions of FreeBSD 10.

      The BSD family of operating systems is typically reputed to be conservative, stable and dependable. FreeBSD typically embodies these characteristics quite well, showcasing reliability and offering few surprises. That being said, the latest release of FreeBSD, version 10.0, introduced a few important changes which I felt deserved a look. Some of the new features shipping with FreeBSD 10.0 included support for ZFS on the root file system, TRIM and LZ4 compression support for ZFS, virtualization improvements and a new package manager. The latest version also swaps out the venerable GNU compiler for the Clang compiler on supported architectures. The 10.0 release is available for several architectures, including x86, Power PC and Sparc. I was interested in the x86 releases which can be downloaded in 32-bit or 64-bit builds. We can further narrow our selection by downloading either a CD-sized ISO or a 2.2 GB ISO image. I opted to try the larger image for my trial.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • HSA IL Front-End Proposed For GCC

      HSA stakeholders are hoping to mainline their HSA IL front-end for the GCC compiler stack. In particular, BRIG, the binary form of the Heterogeneous System Architecture Intermediate Language.

      The HSA Foundation has been maintaining their repository with the HSA IL front-end on top of GCC 4.9 while now the developers are hoping to see this code mainlined. The development appears to be done primarily by Parmance, a company specializing in parallel performance engineering.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • The end of Apple? The early signs may be in

    No matter how much of a force a company might seem, all good things must come to an end. That’s not to say that today’s juggernauts will vanish overnight, but the tech world is littered with the corpses of powerful, even massive companies that failed to adapt to changing times and were either marginalized or became the dust of ages — Wang, DEC, Tandy, SGI, Compaq. More recently we witnessed the collapse of Sun into the murky depths of Larry Ellison’s ego. No matter how significant a corporation might become, it is not immortal.

    A few have more staying power and diversified well enough that they have a (possibly) longer lifespan than most. IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple appear to be in this category.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Glyphosate in the EU

      On 13 April, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to restrict certain permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation. Glyphosate was last year determined to be “probably carcinogenic” by the WHO.

      The parliament’s resolution called for no approval for many uses now considered acceptable, including use in or close to public parks, playgrounds and gardens and use where integrated pest management systems are sufficient for necessary weed control.

      The resolution, however, fell short of calling for an outright ban. Due to the various political maneuverings, a disappointing compromise was reached that called for the renewal of the licence for glyphosate to be limited to just seven years instead of the 15 proposed by the Commission.

      The resolution and the vote to re-approve glyphosate for seven years are non-binding, and, on Wednesday 18 May, the European Food Standard Authority Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed will meet to decide whether glyphosate is to be re-registered for use in the EU.

    • Zika Hysteria Spreads Faster than Zika Itself

      Despite the fact that viruses and mosquitos will attack humans regardless of how fancy their car is, poor communities suffer more from mosquito-borne illnesses. Communities of poverty have inadequate infrastructure that leads to a variety of ways that water can pool and mosquitoes can breed. Without running water, people are more likely to store water in basins and tanks. Shoddy, makeshift architecture creates areas where water can pool. Additionally, without glass windows and air conditioning, there are no barriers to mosquitos entering crowded dwellings.

    • Light Years Ahead of the US on Drug Reform, Canada Will Allow Prescription Heroin

      Health Canada announced Friday that it is proposing new regulations to allow access to prescription heroin under its Special Access Program (SAP). That program allows for emergency access to drugs for serious or life-threatening conditions when conventional treatments have failed or are unsuitable.

    • One Way To Help People Stay Out Of Jail? Sign Them Up For Health Insurance.

      For the thousands of incarcerated Americans, prison may be the first place they’ve ever received comprehensive health care. But what happens after their sentence is up?

      At least half of the inmates in America’s prisons and jails have some form of mental illness. Sixty-five percent have an substance abuse addiction. Behind bars, they may be able to get into rehab or start taking needed medication for the first time in their life.

    • Scalia’s Death Just Saved Thousands Of Women’s Access To Birth Control

      Zubik v. Burwell was supposed to be an epic showdown over the power of religious objectors to limit the rights of others. A sequel to the Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Zubik involved regulations expanding women’s access to birth control that the conservative justices appeared to endorse in Hobby Lobby — even as they struck down a more direct method of providing contraceptive coverage to working women.

    • Sanders Has It Exactly Right: Majority of Americans Want ‘Medicare for All’ System

      Bernie Sanders’ call to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a single-payer healthcare system is a policy that a strong majority of Americans agree with, according to a new Gallup survey released on Monday.

      Fifty-eight percent of all U.S. adults favor replacing the ACA with a federally-funded healthcare program, such as Sanders’ Medicare for All.

      This is compared with 48 percent who prefer to keeping Obama’s healthcare system in place, a policy which has been a cornerstone of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform.

    • ‘Train NHS staff’ to plug doctor gaps, bosses say

      Nurses, paramedics and pharmacists should be trained to fill in for doctors and help the NHS in England cope with demand, bosses say.

      Management body NHS Employers has given the plan the green light after advisers said there were a range of extra tasks they could do with more training.

      A Nuffield Trust review found examples of nurses filling in for hospital doctors and pharmacists for GPs.

    • Oklahoma GOP Does an About-Face on Medicaid Expansion

      In a surprising about-face, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) and the state’s GOP leaders are considering embracing a key tenet of Obamacare and expanding Medicaid to offer health insurance coverage to additional low-income Americans.

      The state’s overwhelmingly Republican state lawmakers are considering the Oklahoma Health Care Authority’s proposal to move 175,000 people off Medicaid and into Obamacare’s subsidized private insurance markets, making room for new Medicaid enrollees. If state lawmakers and the Obama administration approve the plan, the federal government will cover 90 percent of the cost — reviving the state’s struggling Medicaid program with an influx of federal Obamacare dollars.

    • In surprising turnabout, Oklahoma eyes Medicaid expansion

      Despite bitter resistance in Oklahoma for years to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, Republican leaders in this conservative state are now confronting something that alarms them even more: a huge $1.3 billion hole in the budget that threatens to do widespread damage to the state’s health care system.

  • Security

    • Security will fix itself, eventually

      Here’s my prediction though. In the future, good security will be cheaper to build, deploy, and run that bad security. This sounds completely insane with today’s technology. A statement like is some kook ten years ago telling everyone solar power is our future. Ten years ago solar wasn’t a serious thing, today it is. Our challenge is figuring out what the new security future will look like. We don’t really know yet. We know we can’t train our way out of this, most existing technology is a band-aid at best. If I had to guess I’ll use the worn out “Artificial Intelligence will save us all”, but who knows what the future will bring. Thanks to Al Gore, I’m now more optimistic things will get better. I’m impatient though, I don’t want to wait for the future, I want it now! So all you smart folks do me a favor and start inventing the future.

    • Does Microsoft care about security? [Ed: no, because leaks show it gives back doors to governments]

      On Wednesday, I also booted my laptop to Windows. I had not used the laptop for several days, so the AV definitions were three days old. It updated after around 3 hours. But the Vista system still has not updated.

      This is the third consecutive month when I have had problems with updating MSE, at around the time of patch Tuesday. The previous two months, I attempted to manually update. On the manual update, it did a search for virus updates, then seemed to hang there forever not actually downloading. It did eventually update, after repeating this for two days. This month, I decided to allow it to update without manual intervention, with the results described above.

      It seems pretty obvious that, recently, Microsoft has worsened the priority for updates to Windows 7 and to Vista. The priority worsening is greater for Vista than for Windows 7. It affects monthly patches as well as MSE virus table updates.

      The message to malware producers is loud and clear. Malware producers should distribute their malware on patch Tuesday, and Microsoft will give them a free run for several days.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • To Halt ISIS’s Spread In North Africa, UN Considers Lifting Arms Embargo Of Libya

      The White House is backing a United Nations plan to ease the arms embargo to Libya in an effort to counter the volatile spread of ISIS.

      The UN Security Council initially placed an arms embargo on Libya during the 2011 revolution. Libya’s then-leader Moammar Qaddafi was trying to violently repress the popular uprising. Since Qaddafi’s fall, the country has been divided and subject to violent clashes by militias, and a growing ISIS presence. Control over Libya was split between a secular fighting force in control of the country’s east and Islamist militias with hegemony over Tripoli and the west. But a UN-backed unity government arrived in Tripoli this past March, giving world powers new hope that a peaceful resolution can be reached to the country’s infighting.

    • Obama Disastrously Backed the Saudis in Yemen, Now He’s Deploying US Troops to Deal with the Fallout

      The Obama administration has said little about its fresh deployment of American troops to Yemen, where the U.S. has spent the past year backing the ruthless Saudi Arabia-led military intervention by shipping weapons, identifying bomb targets and sending its warships to assist the naval blockade.

    • Old Trafford bomb error a ‘devastating mistake’

      The boss of the firm that left a fake bomb at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium has apologised for making a “devastating mistake”.

      Chris Reid of Security Search Management & Solutions Ltd (SSMS) said he wrongly logged the item as found on Wednesday.

    • Manchester Mayor Shows Discontent Over Old Trafford Bomb ‘Fiasco’

      Following the recent bomb scare that happened at Old Trafford which caused the whole stadium to be evacuated the mayor, Tony Lloyd, expressed disappointment and has called for a full investigation on the issue and has made it known that someone has to be held accountable.

    • Owner of security firm blamed for Man Utd Old Trafford bomb scare blunder worked on Olympics and Rugby World Cup

      The owner of the security firm being blamed for with the Manchester United bomb scare blunder worked on the London Olympics and last year’s Rugby World Cup, Telegraph Sport can reveal.

      Chris Reid, a former counter terrorism (CT) advisor for the Metropolitan Police, also has an “ongoing” relationship with the Rugby Football Union, according to his LinkedIn page.

      The 62-year-old, of Biggin Hill, Kent, is the owner of Security Search Management & Solutions Ltd (SSMS), which were allegedly involved in the training exercise at Old Trafford last week that left behind a fake bomb, sparking a terror alert at United’s final Premier League match of the season.

    • Heartbroken Manchester United fan from Sierra Leone given FA Cup final tickets after Old Trafford fiasco

      The majority of Sunday night’s capacity Old Trafford crowd would have been completely devastated to hear that Manchester United’s home game with Bournemouth would have to be abandoned.

    • ‘This idiot’s in for a right kicking’: Fans’ fury at bungling security firm that left fake bomb in Old Trafford toilets as Man United face £3MILLION bill for replay after game was scrapped
    • Manchester United will increase Old Trafford security for rescheduled Bournemouth clash on Tuesday

      Manchester United will increase security for tomorrow’s rescheduled final Premier League game of the season against Bournemouth at Old Trafford.

      United’s game against Bournemouth was called off on Sunday following a terror alert after a suspect package – later revealed to be a dummy device left in error following a training exercise – was discovered inside the stadium.

      The game will now go ahead at 8pm on Tuesday and senior United sources have confirmed to MirrorFootball that enhanced security measures will be in force in and around Old Trafford.

    • 63 Thoughts Everyone Who’s Accidentally Left A Fake Bomb In Old Trafford Has Had
    • Pellegrini: I told City players to ignore Old Trafford drama

      The Chilean head coach admitted it was vital for the Etihad club not to miss out on a place in the Champions League on the final day of the season

    • April 17, 2016: The Day of Men

      On April 17, 2016 everyone across Brasil glued themselves to the television to watch Congress vote on the impeachment process against Partido das Trabalhadores (PT) president Dilma Rousseff. It was a historic moment, not just for the fragile Brasilian democracy that was installed in 1985, but also as one of the few opportunities for Brasilian citizens to watch the Congressmen they elected in 2014 on live TV.

      Political polarization was at its highest in São Paulo, the city where I was born and live in to this day. As much as the capital of São Paulo state seems to be a cosmopolitan city with rich cultural diversity it has a strong tradition of conservatism which still drinks from the fountain of the slavery era. Therefore, the state became one of the epicentres of right wing movements against the federal government since 2014 when they began to exclusively occupy Avenida Paulista, one of the most well-known streets in the city, during their protests.

    • North Korea, Following China and India, Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons–So Could Obama

      North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea hasn’t got one usable nuclear warhead. The New York Times did admit, “US and South Korean officials doubted that North Korea has developed a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile that would deliver a nuclear payload to the continental United States.”

    • Seeing Humanity in ‘Enemy’ States

      Official Washington’s propagandistic view of the world sees “good guys” and “bad guys,” a simplistic and dangerous dichotomy that ignores the common human elements, as ex-State Department official Matthew Hoh observes.

    • Inciting Iran’s ‘Bad Behavior’

      Psychologists have observed that most of us favor a self-serving way of explaining the good and bad conduct of others with whom we interact. While we are quite comfortable with attributing some of the good to our own benign influence, we attribute all of the bad to the other person’s character and refuse to accept that our own conduct may have influenced what the other person is doing.

      This phenomenon arises frequently in foreign affairs. It is common with, for example, American perceptions of anti-U.S. international terrorism. The dominant popular concept is that terrorists do what they do because of their own malign nature. To the extent that terrorists focus on the United States, we like to think this is because, as former President George W. Bush put it, they hate our democratic values.

    • Kurd Fighter in Iraq Destroys U.S.-Made Turkish Helo With Russian-Model Missile

      There’s no past in Washington. There is no sense that actions taken today will exist past today, even though in reality they often echo for decades.

      A video making the rounds online shows a fighter from a Kurdish group known as Kurdish Workers Party, or, more commonly, the PKK. Using what appears to be a Russian model shoulder fired portable air-to-air missile, the fighter is shooting down a Turkish military, American-made Cobra attack helicopter.

      The attack helo is made by the United States and supplied to NATO ally Turkey;

      The missile is of Russian design but could have been made and could have come from nearly anywhere in Eastern Europe. However, such weapons were flooded into the Middle East after the United States deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Many such weapons simply entered the black market when the Libyan army more or less dissolved, but many appear to have been sent into the Middle East by the CIA as part of a broader anti-ISIS strategy. Some say one of the functions of the CIA station overrun in Benghazi was to a facilitate that process.

    • Evaluating Obama’s Foreign Policy Record

      Obama’s foreign policy has been long on progressive rhetoric and (engagement with Iran and Cuba excepted) short on substantive accomplishment. To be sure, we need to make allowance for the backward-looking Congress with which he has had to contend; and we should give more than a little credit to Obama for going over its head on Iran, Cuba, and climate change. But we had come to expect more, much more, from him, especially on issues of war and peace. After all, he was supposed to have learned from the George W. Bush years that you “don’t do stupid shit” and get yourself bogged down in hopeless foreign adventures. But he hasn’t learned. A foreign-policy legacy that includes a costly and irremediable quagmire in the Middle East as well as hostile relations with Russia, considerable contention with China, and very modest advances on climate change is not much to crow about. The most positive prediction I can make is that by 2020, another Clinton presidency will make us feel much better about Barack Obama’s foreign policy record.

    • Brazil: Coup or Fiasco?

      The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has been suspended from her office while she goes on trial by the Senate. If convicted, she would be removed from office, which is what is meant in Brazil by “impeachment.” Anyone, even Brazilians, who have been trying to follow the last several months of political maneuvering may be excused if they are somewhat confused by the many turns this process has taken.

    • Daniel Berrigan Through the Eyes of a 1960s Ithaca Mom

      It was the everyday life of people in Ithaca, N.Y., the everyday life of me, my family and my neighbors.

      Jesuit priest, scholar, philosopher, poet and servant of justice Daniel Berrigan had arrived in town and thoroughly awakened anyone willing to wake, and a few who were not so willing. Many had already opened their eyes, of course, but had not yet gotten out of bed and stood up.

      At the time, there was very little anti-Vietnam War sentiment anywhere in the country, and, as with other progressive towns, Ithaca tended to wear its radicalism when convenient. We held a rally, and in addition to Berrigan, who looked like just a pleasant priest to the newspaper, we had to come up with another speaker, and finally found an anti-war professor who wore a suit and a crew cut.

    • Terrorist group Al-Qaeda threatens to murder Microsoft founder Bill Gates [Ed: recall this article]

      When Al-Qaeda destroyed two World Trade Center buildings, it felt like everything changed. Seemingly overnight, the citizens of the USA went from being fairly care-free to having to constantly look behind their collective backs. It is now 2016 and when I go to Penn Station in New York City, I still see military people with assault rifles. Sadly, this is apparently the new reality.

      Now, that same terrorist group is threatening business men and women in America. It is particularly sad that a person must live in fear because of their success. One particular person being threatened is Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates.

    • Al Qaeda’s online magazine tells terrorists to target U.S. business leaders in their homes
    • Australian police authorities buying up sound weapons

      They can break up protests with loud, piercing sound, but Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) can also cause permanent hearing damage. Australian law enforcement agencies are now investing in the technology, but sound and law experts say their potential use is extremely concerning.

    • Minh Quang Pham: FBI Continues Creating Terror Stories Assisted by Unrecorded Interviews

      Minh Quang Pham, whom I dubbed AQAP’s “graphic artist of mass destruction” because he was busted for providing graphic design skills to AQAP, got sentenced today; neither FBI nor SDNY have announced his sentence but it will be between 30 and 50 years in prison.

      The government, as it tends to do, has submitted a bunch of documents as part of the sentencing process to inflate the magnitude of Pham’s acts, which largely consist of carrying a Kalashnikov he wasn’t really trained to use and helping Samir Khan make Inspire look prettier. With the documents, DOJ suggests Pham might have attacked Heathrow if he hadn’t been stopped when he was.

    • Anti-war Is Pro-American

      Thomas Jefferson declared the American way of interacting with the world to be “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.” However, over the course of at least the past seven decades, the US government has turned this admonition on its head.

      Peace? The US government has waged wars of choice almost constantly since the end of World War II. It has distributed death and destruction around the world for nearly 70 years straight in overt wars, covert wars, coup d’états, assassinations, cold wars, drone wars, etc.

    • Argentina after kirchnerismo: Populism’s defeat and Macri’s counter-hegemonic project

      Current political change in Argentina is of great trascendence, as it intends to undo fundamental policies of the Kirchner’s era. In this sense, Macri is as radical as its predecessors.

    • Our Military Needs to Defend the Country, Not Undermine American Security

      As President Obama visits still-communist Vietnam, a former American rival, in his “pivot to Asia” to recruit more countries to shelter against a rising China, the trip only serves to illustrate the global American Empire’s overextension. At the same time, he is opening missile defenses in Europe, quadrupling U.S. military spending there, and deploying more military forces near Russia – all of which will have the effect of continuing to provoke that already insecure country. Also, Obama has failed to withdraw US ground forces from Afghanistan, inserted them into Iraq and Syria to battle the terror group ISIS, and continued his accelerated air wars over Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. Finally, the president sent the top general in the Army to Africa to showcase US efforts to train 38 countries to battle terror groups that could attack Europe, including affiliates of ISIS and al Qaeda. These US military forces may be valiantly battling threats to the Empire, but most of them pose very little threat to America.

    • Super Heroes Collide in Post-Traumatic America

      This long bout of emotional crisis was kicked off by the indelible visuals of 9/11, and then aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis. The terror attacks have not stopped and the job market has not recovered, and so America’s post-traumatic stress disorder has been chronic.

      The new wave of blockbuster super-hero movies began with Iron Man(2008). That film’s very first scene was saturated with trauma ripped from the headlines. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is shown as a tech billionaire and devil-may-care playboy: a veritable personification of the go-go nineties, blissfully ignorant of the turmoil to come. Then his whole world is jarringly thrown into upheaval, as the U.S. military convoy taking him through Afghanistan is attacked. His escorts, mostly wide-eyed youngsters overawed by their celebrity passenger, are all massacred. Before he passes out, he finds himself lying in the dirt with a chest full of shrapnel.

    • Silence Is Not An Option: ADL Breaks With Israel – and U.S. – To Acknowledge Armenian Genocide

      Breaking with Israel’s decades-long insistence that Jews hold a monopoly as victims of mass murder, the Anti-Defamation League has for the first time declared the 1915 massacre by Turkish forces of over 1.5 million Armenians “unequivocally genocide,” and called on the US government to recognize the killings as such. The precedent-breaking move by new ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt – which came on the occasion of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, shortly after the 101st com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Armenian tragedy, and shortly after Palestinians marked Nakba Day – was seen by some as a rebuke to the denial of not just Turkey, but the US and Israel, of their respective crimes.

      In his statement, Greenblatt stressed the 103-year-old organization’s historic task to fight against all forms of big­otry, to “edu­cate and take action against hate in our own time (as) we vow, ‘Never again.’ Our mis­sion reflects the words of the Jew­ish Sage Hil­lel from 2,000 years ago: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be? And, if I am only for myself what am I?’” Citing both a moral and practical responsibility, he went on, “The first genocide of the 20th century is no different. What happened in the Ottoman Empire to the Arme­ni­ans begin­ning in 1915 was geno­cide.” Citing the awful progression from arresting and executing intellectuals to expulsion of families to death marches, torture, starvation and massacre – and a failure to act by too much of the world – he proclaimed, “We must edu­cate each gen­er­a­tion about the tragedies of the past. Silence is not an option.”

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Obama defends leak prosecutions

      President Barack Obama is defending the record number of leak prosecutions launched under his administration, arguing that some of the cases were really the work of the Bush administration and that others involved unusually serious disclosures of classified information.

      “I am a strong believer in the First Amendment and the need for journalists to pursue every lead and every angle. I think that when you hear stories about us cracking down on whistleblowers or whatnot, we’re talking about a really small sample,” Obama said in an interview published Thursday by the Rutgers University student newspaper, the Daily Targum.

      [...]

      One prominent lawyer for whistleblowers said it was hard to assess the pace of leak prosecutions under Obama as anything but a significant increase.

      “This is not a really small sample. This is a tremendous uptick in whistleblower prosecutions,” said Jesselyn Radack of ExposeFacts.

      Radack also noted that, despite Obama’s embrace of the First Amendment, prosecutors have not been willing to permit alleged leakers to mount a defense that they were performing a public service by disclosing important information to the press.

      In many of the leak cases, “the government filed a motion to preclude any mention of the First Amendment,” she noted.

    • Not Just Hillary: State Department As A Whole Pretty Careless With Handling Of Classified Communications

      In their defense, State Department officials say they often can’t control how classified communications will be routed. After all, they have no control over receipt of messages from foreign government officials that might be considered classified. And they routinely use other insecure channels to communicate, like normal phone systems.

      For that matter, it’s difficult to determine what the government will consider classified at the point the communications are sent and received. In the case of Clinton’s emails, the investigation (which James Comey recently confirmed is an investigation, not a “security inquiry” as Clinton has portrayed it) and response to FOIA requests have prompted an after-the-fact classification review of State Dept. communications contained in the FOIA response.

    • An Unintended Side Effect of Transparency

      In 2013, ProPublica released Prescriber Checkup, a database that detailed the prescribing habits of hundreds of thousands of doctors across the country.

      ProPublica reporters used the data — which reflected prescriptions covered by Medicare’s massive drug program, known as part D — to uncover several important findings. The data showed doctors often prescribed narcotic painkillers and antipsychotic drugs in quantities that could be dangerous for their patients, many of whom were elderly. The reporters also found evidence that some doctors wrote far, far more prescriptions than their peers for expensive brand-name drugs for which there were cheaper generic alternatives. And we found instances of probable fraud that had gone undetected by the government.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Florida Proposes Tripling Amount Of Benzene That Can Be Polluted Into State Waters

      For the first time in over 25 years, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is proposing to revise its restrictions on what toxic chemicals can be discharged into surface water — but environmentalists worry that the proposed standards, which would triple the amount of a toxic chemical called benzene allowed to be discharged into surface waters like rivers and lakes, are meant more to entice fracking companies than keep Floridians safe.

    • Revealed: Prominent oceans scientist fails to disclose funding from fishing industry

      An outspoken marine scientist who rejects claims of overfishing in the world’s oceans has failed to disclose millions of dollars in funding from the fishing industry, a Greenpeace investigation has revealed.

      According to documents obtained by Greenpeace USA via the Public Records Act, Dr Ray Hilborn, a professor at University of Washington’s School Aquatic Fisheries Science, received at least $3.5 million from 69 fishing, seafood and other industry groups over the last 12 years.

      Hilborn – whose research has been published by reputable journals such as Science, Nature and Marine Policy – has only mentioned corporate funding from 21 industry groups in 26 instances.

    • Cities face flash flood hazards

      Scientists in Australia warn that global warming will lead to more intense and concentrated summer storms seriously testing city drainage systems already struggling to cope.

    • Halted Oil Trains, Arrests, And Crowds Of Thousands Spread Across 6 Continents In ‘Break Free’ Protest

      Thousands of people around the country protested over the weekend to stop fossil fuels and demand a just transition to an economy that uses 100 percent renewable energy. More than 50 people were arrested in the Pacific Northwest and five others were arrested in upstate New York, where protestors stopped trains carrying crude oil.

      Meanwhile, demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Albany, and Los Angeles drew thousands more to the Break Free movement, which brought a coalition of environmental groups together over 12 days of global action and civil disobedience.

    • April 2016 Hottest on Record as ‘Climate Emergency’ Grows

      This April was the hottest on record—and the seventh month in a row to break global temperature averages—setting up 2016 to be the hottest year ever, NASA has reported.

      April was 1.11°C hotter than previous averages between 1951 and 1980, which NASA uses as a barometer for measuring climate change, according to figures the agency released over the weekend. NASA also found that April was the third month in a row that the record-breaking jumps in temperature were reached by the largest increases yet.

      In fact, 2016 may not only be the hottest year in recorded history, but also by the widest margin, scientists say.

    • Navy Allowed to Kill or Injure Nearly 12 Million Whales, Dolphins, Other Marine Mammals in Pacific

      What if you were told the US Navy is legally permitted to harass, injure or kill nearly 12 million whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea lions and seals across the North Pacific Ocean over a five-year period?

      It is true, and over one-quarter of every tax dollar you pay is helping to fund it.

      A multistate, international citizen watchdog group called the West Coast Action Alliance (WCAA), tabulated numbers that came straight from the Navy’s Northwest Training and Testing EIS (environmental impact statement) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Letters of Authorization for incidental “takes” of marine mammals issued by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

    • The Koch Brothers Stop Pretending

      In recent years, Charles and David Koch — the billionaire brothers who run Koch Industries — have sought to cast themselves as selfless patriots, pushing policies that were against their own interests for the good of the nation. The argument was part of a gauzy and extensive public relations campaign intended to blunt attacks from liberals highlighting their outsized influence on the political system.

    • Canadians Propose ‘Elegant Solution’ for Country’s Runaway Emissions

      The Canadian chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL Canada) on Monday launched a petition calling for the government to implement a carbon tax known as the fee-and-dividend, a measure environmental advocates say would help the country meet its climate promises without burdening citizens with the costs.

      Under a fee-and-dividend plan, the government would gradually increase taxation on fossil fuels at their entry point into the marketplace, which would help make alternative and renewable energy more economically competitive, spurring investment and innovation in the field, the lobby says.

      And the money collected from the fees would be redistributed among citizens to help offset the costs of transitioning to clean energy.

    • Renewables Are Leaving Natural Gas In The Dust This Year

      The renewables were primarily wind (707 MW) and solar (522 MW). We also added some biomass (33 MW) and hydropower (29 MW). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” reports that no new capacity of coal, oil, or nuclear power were added in the first quarter of the year.

    • Chomsky: Hillary Clinton Fears BDS Because It Counters Decades of U.S. Support for Israeli Aggression

      Chomsky says, “You can understand why Hillary Clinton is frightened” of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

    • Chomsky on Trump’s Climate Denialism: He Wants Us to March Toward the Destruction of the Species

      World-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky weighs in on Trump’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, particularly his denial of climate change and push for greater militarization. “Trump is saying, ‘Yeah, let’s make the global warming problem as dangerous and imminent as possible. Let’s march towards destruction of the species, like we’re destroying everyone else. And let’s escalate militarization and, at the same time, sharply cut down resources by radical tax cuts, mostly for the rich,’” Chomsky says. “This is a really astonishing moment in human history, if you look at it.”

    • “Water Is Our Life”: How a Mining Disaster Affected the Navajo Nation

      In the midst of the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, it is not surprising that the World Health Organization recently released a report documenting that the environment is responsible for almost a quarter of deaths and disease in the world.

      But this is not news to the Diné (Navajo) people, who believe that all parts of nature — the water, fish, trees and stars — are equal members of society and are so intricately connected that an imbalance in one member may impact another.

  • Finance

    • Shift Away From Traditional Pensions Contributes to Inequality, and More

      A report from the US Government Accountability Office shows the shift away from traditional pensions to 401(k)-like plans contributes to inequality; Bernie Sanders endorsed a citizen-led initiative to fight soaring drugs prices in California; the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement has resulted in more than 95,000 lost US jobs; and more.

    • Rich people have access to high-speed Internet; many poor people still don’t

      Ever since Curtis Brown Jr. got his first Star Wars toy as a toddler, he has been fascinated by action figures. So much so that he has built a business customizing action figures for clients worldwide. But what could be a lucrative career has turned into an exercise in futility that traps Brown and his family in poverty.

    • Corrupt Elites and the Looting Machine

      The mechanics and dire consequences of this system are easily explained though often masked by neo-liberal rhetoric about free competition.

      In authoritarian states without accountability or a fair legal system, this approach becomes a license to loot. Corruption cannot be tamed because it is at the very heart of the system.

    • #PanamaPapersNZ – Long John Key Silver And His Treasure Islands

      I warned that New Zealand would be used as a tax haven on October 26th, 2011, if the National government was reelected.

      I wasn’t the first.

      Never did I expect we would be proven right in such a spectacular fashion as via the Panama Papers leak.

      A leak that has shone light on an agenda to use New Zealand as a port of safe harbour for vast swathes of foreign cash. An agenda that does not stem solely from the ruling Party. It comes from on high.

    • Donald Trump’s Pledge to Defend Spending for Old and Poor Belied by Staff Picks

      Throughout his campaign, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has advocated for building two walls: one between the U.S. and Mexico, and another around America’s public retirement programs.

      For more than a year, Trump has regularly assailed his rival candidates for “attacking Social Security… attacking Medicare and Medicaid.” He boasted that he was the one “saying I’m not gonna do that,” instead saying that he’d focus on economic growth so that we’d get “so rich you don’t have to do that.”

      At the Miami GOP presidential debate in March, he said he would “do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is; to make this country rich again.”

      But that second wall now appears to be crumbling.

    • RushCard Customers Can Finally Look Forward To Getting Paid For Being Locked Out Of Their Accounts

      Late last year, hundreds of customers who store their money not with a traditional bank but with a prepaid debit card from the company RushCard suddenly found themselves completely cut off from their funds, thanks to a technical problem. Customers reported that they ran low on food, had to resort to scrounging loose change out of their couch cushions, and even faced eviction, getting their water shut off, or losing their cars.

    • State Legislatures Attacking Community Wealth Building

      Meanwhile, a similar fight is unfolding in Louisiana. With over half of African-American men unemployed in New Orleans, local job creation has been a key priority for Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration. Already unable by state law to set local hiring quotas, the city instead opted in its Hire NOLA program to establish ambitious local hiring targets for projects receiving public subsidies, building an inclusive job training and hiring pipeline infrastructure that could help the construction industry meet these targets. But all of this is threatened by a proposed state law that would nullify the city’s policy. For Ashleigh Gardere, senior adviser to Mayor Landrieu and director of the Network for Economic Opportunity:

    • Bernie Sanders Gives a Very Important Speech on Poverty (Video)

      The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet 47 million Americans are living in poverty.

      Bernie Sanders spoke about the issue at the the Five Loaves & Two Fishes Food Bank in Kimball, W.Va., on May 5.

    • What’s Killing the American Middle Class?

      The great American middle was never large enough, even at its height. It always excluded too many people – sometimes, shamefully, merely for their skin color. And now, instead of growing and becoming more inclusive, it’s fading away instead.

    • Sanders Blasts ‘Vulture Capitalists’ and Colonialism in Puerto Rico

      Campaigning in Puerto Rico on Monday, Bernie Sanders railed against the “colonial-like relationship” that has allowed Wall Street “vulture capitalists” to profit off the debt-stricken territory’s economic crisis and demanded that Congress and the Obama administration grant immediate relief.

      “It is unacceptable to me for the United States government to treat Puerto Rico like a colony during a time when its people are facing the worst fiscal and economic crisis in its history,” the presidential hopeful declared in a rousing speech at a packed town hall in San Juan.

      Currently in the midst of economic free-fall, the territory defaulted earlier this month after the U.S. government—at the urging of hedge fund lobbyists—failed to take action on restructuring its $70 billion debt. Consequently, the island has had to slash many essential services while calls grow for even more cuts.

      “What vulture funds on Wall Street are demanding is that Puerto Rico fire teachers, close schools, cut pensions and abolish the minimum wage so that they can reap huge profits off the suffering and misery of the children and the people of Puerto Rico,” Sanders said. “We cannot allow that to happen. We will not allow that to happen.”

    • New series: Anti-Austerity and Media Activism

      Eight years after the emergence of a renewed global crisis of capitalism, there is no evidence of a wholehearted return to economic growth. The economic stagnation has been such that the IMF has had to consistently revise downwards its predictions of growth. The policies attributed to a politics of austerity have been presented as virtually the only solution out of this crisis.

    • UK media and the legitimisation of austerity policies

      On the 30 April 2015, during a Question Time Election Special, the Labour leader Ed Milliband was challenged by a member of the audience over the previous Labour Government’s economic record. “How can you stand there and say you didn’t overspend and end up bankrupting this country?” the man complained. “It’s absolutely ludicrous you are frankly just lying’. Research carried out after the 2010 and 2015 elections confirmed that Labour had indeed lost both contests in large part because the public believed that Labour had overspent and crashed the economy. Yet both these beliefs were false.

    • L.A. Car Wash Workers Turn Up Pressure

      In Juan Hernandez’s first car wash job, he and his co-workers used to put in nine-hour days for $40 in cash. Workers would often arrive at 8 a.m.—but have to wait three or four hours to start working, with no fixed schedule.

    • The United States Needs to Realize FDR’s Dream and Adopt the “Nordic Model”

      Life is nice in the Nordic countries — especially for those who are part of the white majorities in these countries. The five Nordic nations (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland), rank at or near the top of almost every single Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development human development index, and their citizens consistently poll among top 10 happiest in the world.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • How ‘Sanders Could Still Win the Nomination’
    • Extraordinary Stitch-Up at Nevada Democratic Convention

      I had heard much about the way that Hillary was able to use control of the Democratic Party machine to suppress the challenge of Bernie Sanders. I had not fully understood it until I saw this truly shocking video of the Nevada Democratic Convention, a stage in the awarding of that state’s delegates to Hillary or Bernie. After the announcement of a narrow win for Hillary, which to many seemed improbable, the chairwoman of the Convention, Roberta Lange, a member of the National Democratic Committee, absolutely refused demands for a recount. She then closed the Convention after calling for a voice vote, again uncounted, on a rules change to allow her to do that.

      Twice as many Sanders delegates to the Convention were disqualified by the Committee,for “administrative reasons”, as the supposed majority for Clinton, which even after those disqualifications did not appear to reflect the apparent balance of delegates present.

    • When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?

      The Nevada Democratic convention was overwhelmed by utter turmoil on Saturday after the chair adopted a controversial set of new rules and disqualified 56 Bernie Sanders delegates from participating, handing rival Hillary Clinton a majority of the state’s delegates.

      This occurred after the Democratic frontrunner lost the state’s county level caucuses in April.

      The chaotic convention, organized and run largely by Clinton supporters, was yet another instance of what many observers have decried as the party’s rigging of the primary process in favor of the establishment candidate.

    • Clinton Does Best Where Voting Machines Flunk Hacking Tests: Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders Election Fraud Allegations

      At the end of the climactic scene (8 minutes) in HBO’s Emmy nominated Hacking Democracy (2006), a Leon County, Florida Election official breaks down in tears. “There are people out there who are giving their lives just to try to make our elections secure,” she says. “And these vendors are lying and saying everything is alright.” Hundreds of jurisdictions throughout the United States are using voting machines or vote tabulators that have flunked security tests. Those jurisdictions by and large are where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is substantially outperforming the first full wave of exit polling in her contest against Senator Bernie Sanders.

    • The Coming Democratic Crackup

      Though the mainstream media is focused on Republican divisions, a more important story could be the coming Democratic crackup, as anti-war Democrats resist Hillary Clinton’s pro-war agenda, writes Robert Parry.

    • Most Of Oregon’s Newly Registered Voters Won’t Be Able To Particpate In The State’s Primary

      For decades, Oregon has been at the forefront of making it easier to vote. Two decades ago, the state began offering each and every eligible resident the option to vote by mail. Oregon later became the first to conduct all its elections by mail. Then, in 2015, Oregon became the first state in the nation to automatically register voters every time they visit a Department of Motor Vehicles.

      The new “Motor Voter” policy has added more than 67,000 new voters to the state’s voter rolls, and officials are hoping Tuesday’s primary will have record turnout. The new system has especially been a boon for young voters; since September, the number of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 has increased 21 percent.

    • The Dangerous Insecurity of Donald Trump

      Donald Trump’s opponents in the primaries were right to call him a con artist, a narcissist and a pathological liar. Just ask “John Miller.”

      That’s one of the names Trump used with journalists to burnish his status as a bold-faced Manhattan celebrity; he also called himself “John Barron.” Both personae were supposedly publicists who just wanted to explain what a wonderful guy Mr. Trump was and how beautiful women seemed unable to resist his charms.

      Last week, The Washington Post ran a story about the “Miller” and “Barron” ruses, which took place years ago, and posted a 1991 recording of “Miller” explaining why Trump was dumping Marla Maples. “He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially,” the imaginary publicist says to a reporter from People magazine. “Actresses just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna is ostentatiously name-dropped as someone who “wanted to go out with him.”

    • Chomsky: Today’s GOP Qualifies as Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History—Part 2

      In Part 2 of our wide-ranging conversation with the world-renowned dissident Noam Chomsky, we talk about the conflict in Syria, the rise of ISIS, Saudi Arabia, the political crisis in Brazil, the passing of the pioneering lawyer Michael Ratner, the U.S. relationship with Cuba, Obama’s visit to Hiroshima and today’s Republican Party. “If we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects,” Chomsky says, “but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally.”

    • Vox’s CIA-Backed ‘Democracy’ Standard Is OK With Slavery and Women Not Voting

      Defining democracy is a notoriously difficult thing, but much is revealed by how media outlets choose to do so.

      One popular metric is called “Polity IV”—a methodology created by the Center for Systemic Peace, headed by Dr. Monty G. Marshall of Georgetown University, which has been cited in prestigious outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times. But few outlets have embraced the method as enthusiastically as the “news explainer” site Vox.

    • Copp’s Plea for You and Me

      The plain-spoken, public-spirited former Federal Communications Commissioner, Michael Copps, is indignant—and for good reason: The FCC is not enforcing the law requiring the “dark money” super PACs and other campaign cash conduits to reveal, on-the-air, the names of the real donors behind all political advertisements, which are now flooding the profitable radio and television airwaves.

    • Feminism is Bigger Than Gender: Why I’ll be Happy in Hell Without Hillary

      Are you a Bernie supporter and wondering if you will or can vote for Hillary if he loses the nomination? Or have you already decided that you’re for Hillary – either because she’s a woman or because we have an obligation to do anything we can to keep Trump out? Do you believe that it’s your obligation to vote and you would not be upholding your responsibility as a citizen if you didn’t vote?

      [...]

      Madelyn Albright has announced that there is a special place in hell reserved for women who don’t help each other – meaning women who don’t vote for Hillary. Let’s see, Sarah Palin, Madelyn Albright, Margaret Thatcher are all women. Is voting for women, because they re women, feminism? Can feminism be reduced to gender? Looks like hell is going to be pretty crowded for all of us women who won’t be voting for Hillary.

    • Corporate Idiocracy and the Manufacturing of ProducTrump

      There is no need for content, a stable platform, concrete policies, real issues or even reality (which worries some members of the establishment). There is also no need to think. The dummy can just spout off insipid inanities—spiced up with a ‘signature’ mix of bravado, strongman populist rhetoric, misogyny, racism and xenophobia—and be assured that the paparazzi will catch every last drop of mindless drivel and immediately export it to the four corners of human consciousness.

    • The End of Ideology: What Kind of Democracy is This?

      You are not alone. I watched in disbelief as Fair Trade champion and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown endorsed Clinton. I watched in disappointment as Elizabeth Warren remained on the sidelines. Either and both could have made a huge impact in exposing the duplicity of Hillary on trade policy and Wall Street reform. What were you afraid of? What were you waiting for? What did they promise you?

      It is frankly hard not to feel alienated. It is hard not to feel disenfranchised.

      We have an election in which I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate and yet there is one candidate I am compelled to vote against.

      What kind of democracy is this?

      A week ago I reregistered as a Democrat for one reason and one reason only: To vote for Senator Bernie Sanders in the California primary. There’s still a slim chance this thing isn’t over. Six months ago there was no chance Trump could be nominated. In any case it may be a long time before I can cast a meaningful vote for a candidate again.

    • I Apologise Yet Again, and Another Request

      A hostile message I received from a fierce advocate of Israel, interested me because when I checked him out I noted he spent much time attacking Bernie Sanders. This led me to wonder what correlation there is between those individuals currently accused of anti-Semitism, and particularly those suspended from the Labour Party, and support of Bernie Sanders.

      It occurs to me equally that many of those most ardently throwing around the accusations of anti-Semitism, particularly mainstream journalists and MPs, are those most hostile to Sanders or supportive of Clinton.

      If I am right, the irony that the alleged “anti-Semites” support the excellent Jewish candidate for POTUS, and the witch-hunters oppose him, would be obvious.

    • BBC to drop online recipes as part of slimmed-down website

      Approximately 11,000 online recipes are to be dropped following a review of the BBC’s online output that promises to save £15m a year by cutting back on magazine-style content as well as local news.

      The recipes are being “archived or mothballed”, a source said, and will “fall off the face of the internet” after the food site is closed, with no live links.

      The broadcaster will archive the recipes on its food site although recipes from television shows will remain online for a 30-day period after transmission and the plans will not affect commercial services such as BBC Good Food. Other text-based online offerings are also expected to be hit. A number of travel articles are also expected to be taken offline.

      Although the recipes will still exist online they will be hard to find. One BBC source said: “The website will be closed and viewers will have to make a concerted effort to access the archive.”

    • Sharing the licence fee could reinvigorate the BBC

      Last week the government released its white paper on the forthcoming renewal of the BBC Charter. Prior to that event, many viewed the Corporation as under threat from a disapproving government and, in the person of John Whittingdale, a hostile Secretary of State. Only a week earlier footballer and national treasure Gary Lineker had tweeted how Whittingdale was a ‘chump’ after it was reported he had joked about privatising the BBC to a Tory student society. And yet, despite all that, the reforms it will now be subject to are relatively minor.

    • What does contestable funding mean for children’s TV in Britain?

      The government’s proposals for the BBC include creating a public service fund to prop up children’s content.

    • Let’s not shatter the fragile ecology of British broadcasting

      While the government’s plans for the BBC are under scrutiny, the future of Britain’s hugely successful system of public service broadcasting is at risk.

    • Obama Didn’t Birth Trump’s Movement

      Blaming President Obama for the rise of Donald Trump is popular among Republican leaders. They don’t want to take responsibility for the choices made by their own voters or their complicity in tolerating and even encouraging the extremism Trump represents.

      They also don’t want to face the fact that many Trump ballots were aimed at them.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • China’s “leftover women” and the left-out system

      Can a skin brand “change your destiny” in a socially empowering way? A video titled ‘Marriage Market Takeover’ seems to have done a good job, but not without an underlying agenda.

    • F.B.I. Director Says ‘Viral Video Effect’ Blunts Police Work [Ed: accountability "Blunts Police Work"]

      The director of the F.B.I. reignited the factious debate over a so-called “Ferguson effect” on Wednesday, saying that he believed less aggressive policing was driving an alarming spike in murders in many cities.

      James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.

    • Three years after Rana Plaza: why Bangladeshi workers need trade unions

      Martin Luther King once said, “all labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and status and should be undertaken with meticulous excellence”. This sentiment has been largely lost in our world of global supply chains and bargain-basket prices, but I would see it revived. As good a place as any to start such a project is in Bangladesh, where millions upon millions of people work under harsh conditions to supply multinational companies with the goods westerners want to buy – yet there is little concern for ensuring their rights as labourers in return. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ready-made garment industry.

    • Trump’s Politics of Whiteness and the CIA tip that Jailed Nelson Mandela

      The revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency provided the tip to the Apartheid South African government that led to Nelson Mandela’s arrest should come as no great shock, though the public confirmation is perhaps surprising.

      Nor is it unconnected to the popularity of Donald Trump, who is proposing a new Apartheid regime with regard to American Muslims.

    • SC Man Who Shot and ‘Slow-Cooked’ Two Men out on Bail Thanks to ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law

      James Edward Loftis, 39, is facing murder charges in the deaths of taxi driver Guma Oz Dubar, 46, and his friend James Cody Newland, 32, on March 5 after they demanded he pay his fare following a ride home from a strip club.

      While Loftis has given police varying accounts of what happened that evening—once saying he invited the men in, while another time saying they barged into his home—several facts are not in dispute.

    • Quantitative data in human rights: what do the numbers really mean?

      Quantitative researchers have been sweeping a pervasive “dirty little secret” under the rug for decades: the written reports we use to generate cross-national datasets of governments’ (lack of) respect for human rights are a record of alleged violations, not a census of actual violations. They represent a small fraction of governments’ violations of rights. Yet using these data as if they were actual measures of performance has become standard operating procedure.

    • Could a union do anything to protect Russian journalists?

      Physical attacks and management interference have put Russian journalists’ safety — and their ability to work freely — back on the table. A new union will have to survive in an increasingly hostile environmen

    • I’m Not Your Shorty

      More important than criminalizing catcalling, however, is changing the way men are taught to view and talk about women. We need to teach young men that hollering at women just isn’t OK. That a genuine compliment is always nice, but a litany of adjectives to describe women’s anatomy shouted from across the road is not. That they might feel quite cute when they compete with each other to offer up new harangues, but that women do not find them at all witty for doing so. We need to teach young men that true power isn’t about making women fear you. Such conversations need to happen in homes, schools, churches, and other institutions. And they need to happen often, starting at a young age. It’s time we put some more focus on the daily microaggressions that women must endure, rather than treating them as if they’re an inevitable fact of life if you were born with a vagina.

    • ‘Like most of my friends, I baptised my children so they could go to school’: The anger of Ireland’s non-religious parents

      IN SEPTEMBER OF last year, just over a week after the country’s primary schools had returned from the summer break, a parent of a five-year-old sat down in exasperation to write a letter to the Department of Education.

    • A Catholic School’s Weirdly Self-Defeating Push To Turn ‘Religious Liberty’ Against A Student

      Nevertheless, a Texas appeals court held on Thursday that the school enjoys broad constitutional immunity from its obligation to obey its own contracts because of the school’s status as a “religious institution.” That’s a decision the school — and many other religious institutions — could come to regret in the long run.

    • Duterte vows to kill criminals and reintroduce hanging in Philippines

      Philippines’ president-elect Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to reintroduce capital punishment and give security forces the power to “shoot-to-kill” criminals.

      In his first press conference since winning the 9 May elections in a landslide, Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern of Davao, warned his campaign threats to kill were not rhetoric.

    • What’s the Best Way to Weed Out Potential Killer Cops?

      For generations, conventional wisdom has held that every cop—from prowl-car partners to sector sergeants to top-floor executives at headquarters—is acutely aware of which officers are dangerous powder kegs.

    • CIA Achieves a Whole New Scale of Torture Evidence Destruction

      I once made a list of all the evidence of torture the CIA or others in the Executive Branch destroyed.

      [...]

      Two key parts of this story: Sharpley appears to have no idea who decided to nuke the report off the IG server. Hmmmm.

      And DOJ has been suppressing this detail in filings in the FOIAs for the Torture Report itself (which may be what led Dianne Feinstein to make an issue of it last week).

      Click through if you want a really depressing list of all the ways Richard Burr is trying to disappear the report.

      I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the entire report got disappeared. But destroying the whole thing is rather impressive.

    • The Bitter Consequences of Corporate America’s War on Unions

      Last week, Oxfam America published a report in which it was revealed that, across the United States, workers at giant poultry factories are being denied basic human dignity in the name of productivity and corporate gain.

      Among other abuses, Oxfam found that some workers have been “reduced to wearing diapers while working on the processing line” after their requests to take bathroom breaks were repeatedly denied.

      American poultry workers, furthermore, “incur injuries at five times the national average” without compensation that justifies such risk; workers subsist, as a result, in a state of perpetual anxiety, resentful of their situation but powerless to do anything about it.

    • Michael Ratner’s Death Is a Loss for Freedom, Peace and Justice

      Legendary human rights lawyer Michael Ratner died Wednesday. His pathbreaking legal and political work on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world is unmatched. His death is an incalculable loss for the cause of freedom, peace and justice.

      The last time I saw Michael was shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. We were in New York for the annual dinner of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Both of us had served as NLG presidents, he during the Reagan years, I during the George W. Bush administration. When we met in New York, Michael had just returned from Cuba, where he had a wonderful visit with Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five. I was about to leave for Cuba, where I would meet with René González and Antonio Guerrero, two other members of the Cuban Five.

    • Private Prisons: American Slavery, Under New Management

      With U.S. crime down yet prisoners up, and private prisons raking in billions off their labor, it’s becoming increasingly clear that American slavery has returned with a new name.

    • CIA’s Idea of Digital Innovation: Attempt (and Fail) to Buy an Existing News Service

      Which raises even more questions for me about the timing of the request, and of these misleading claims from anonymous intelligence officials. Why go public now? It’s not like CIA is any more popular than it was six months ago (though it’s possible the pressure is tied to CIA’s reorganization).

      As far as the request, it’s interesting CIA never made this demand after the Arab Spring, which CIA missed entirely because it was listening to Omar Suleiman rather than watching social media like the rest of us. That would have been the moment to make this case (I assume CIA and FBI both use more targeted tracking of ISIS Twitter).

      Instead, the request seems more likely tied to the roll out of the larger organization, CIA’s new McKinsey-recommended Directorate of Digital Innovation last October. I would have thought that a claimed commitment to developing digital expertise would have led CIA to set up its own scraping system, rather than trying to purchase the same service news outlets use (to questionable value, according to some people commenting on this). Unless, of course, CIA’s goal is Dataminr’s “firehose,” including all Americans’ Twitter.

    • North Carolina Police Chief Implores Officers To Stop Arresting Addicts

      In a sharp turn away from the War on Drugs, the chief of police in Nashville, North Carolina announced in February that drug addicts in the small town would be taken to rehabilitation centers instead of jail. Now, in response to a growing opioid crisis, the chief is calling on other law enforcement officers across the state to do the same.

      Three months ago, following an “alarming” spate of prescription drug overdoses in Nash County, Thomas Bashore of the Nashville Police Department unveiled the HOPE Initiative to help addicts find treatment and divert them away from the criminal justice system. In lieu of arresting and imprisoning addicts, the initiative encourages them to go the department voluntarily and meet with a community volunteer who can connect them to counseling and treatment facilities. Addicts who have drugs or paraphernalia when they enter the department aren’t penalized

    • Strike Supporters “Adopt” Verizon Wireless Stores to Picket in New York City

      At the base of three escalators, tucked in a corner of a Brooklyn mall, striking Verizon workers and their supporters said they’re standing up to the company’s corporate greed.

      The workers, joined by about a dozen supporters, formed a picket line outside a Verizon Wireless retail store in the Atlantic Terminal Mall near downtown Brooklyn on Sunday, calling for job security, a fair union contract and an end to outsourcing.

    • Populism – the eternal ideology

      Populism – once associated mainly with Latin America – is now part of the political mainstream in western and eastern Europe. What’s behind this surge?

    • ‘Stunning’: CIA Admits ‘Mistakenly’ Deleting Copy of Senate Torture Report
    • CIA Destruction of Senate Torture Report ‘Stunning’ – Reprieve
    • CIA Inspector General Claims It Accidentally Deleted CIA Torture Report After Being Asked To Retain It

      The saga of the CIA torture report continues to get stranger and stranger. As we noted, last week, the appeals court shot down a FOIA lawsuit from the ACLU to get the full report released. If you remember, only the heavily redacted ~500 page executive summary of the report had been released, with another ~6,500 pages or so still locked away. And we do mean locked away. The Justice Department has basically told the entire executive branch not to open the report, and Senate Intelligence Committee boss Richard Burr has been demanding the report be sent back to the Senate so it can be destroyed. Senator Feinstein had actually distributed copies fairly widely throughout the administration, with the goal being that the full report would get read and, you know, the US government wouldn’t torture people again.

      Part of the reason why the DOJ instructed everyone in the executive branch not to read it was to play a game with the whole FOIA process. Only documents held by the executive branch are subject to FOIA requests. Things in Congress are exempt. So Burr has been making sure that everyone believes the report is “a Congressional record” and the DOJ is arguing that by not opening the report, the executive branch doesn’t run the risk of accidentally making the document subject to FOIA requests. But, as part of that, the DOJ also told everyone in the executive branch not to destroy their copies either — asking it to “preserve the status quo” during the course of the FOIA lawsuit.

    • Very Classy Donald Trump Challenges London’s New Mayor To An IQ Test

      Trump initially said he was “happy” at Khan’s victory — and that the mayor could be an exception to his proposed Muslim ban. In addition to Khan, Trump has previously said that his rich Muslim friends would also be exempted from the ban, and even that the ban was “just a suggestion.” When first describing the illegal and controversial proposal, however, Trump insisted it would apply to “everyone” — even Muslim Americans currently living abroad.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast Now Trying To Claim That Delivering Just TV To Third-Party Set Top Boxes ‘Not Feasible’

      We’ve talked a lot about how the FCC is trying to open up the set top box market to additional competition, breaking open cable’s monopoly control of the hardware, while driving down set top prices and improving gear quality. Given this would kill $21 billion in annual set top rental fee revenue and expose customers to more streaming options than ever before, the cable industry has been engaged in raging histrionics to try and shut down the effort and protect the status quo.

      So far, this plan has involved whining, urging lawmakers (most of them about as well-liked as the cable industry) to also whine, while pushing an endless ocean of incredibly misleading editorials in news outlets nationwide claiming the FCC’s plan is going to hurt puppies and rip gigantic holes in the space-time continuum.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

05.16.16

Links 16/5/2016: Linux 4.6, Geary Email Client is Back

Posted in News Roundup at 3:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • How Herbalife’s Gospel of Health and Wealth Fuels a Billion-Dollar Deception

    For the past couple years, Herbalife has been trying to convince the Federal Trade Commission that this is multi-level marketing—not a pyramid scheme. Drawing that line, though, is a fickle and complicated affair.

  • This 14-Year-Old Boy CEO Rejected $30 Million Offer For His “RecMed” Innovation

    Rosenthal launched his startup RecMed in 2015. He has already gained $100,000 in angel investments. This first aid dispensing machine was started as an eighth-grade project when he was a part of a Young Entrepreneurs Academy class.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • As Opioid Epidemic Continues, Steps to Curb It Multiply

      The overdose death toll from opioids, both prescription drugs and heroin, has almost quadrupled since 1999. In 2014 alone, 28,000 people died of opioid overdoses, more than half from prescription drugs.

    • Our Failure to Invest in Infrastructure Is Literally Making Us Sick: #JusticeforFlint

      The residents of Flint have gone without clean water for 748 days, and counting. That’s more than two years: long enough for toddlers to become preschoolers, for infants to graduate from lead-tainted formula to lead-tainted Kool-Aid. When you think of school kids subjected to lead poisoning for years in the supposedly greatest country on earth, it’s hard not to feel sick. It’s not my kid. But it could be.

    • Where do we go from here? The drug policy debate continues
    • “Our children are dying”: meet the activists saying ‘no more’ to the ‘war on drugs’

      Last month, openDemocracy was in New York to meet the Caravan Activists, a remarkable group of men and women, who have lost loved ones to the ‘war on drugs’. Now they campaign to change the system.

    • Impasse or turning point for the ‘war on drugs’? UNGASS 2016, explained

      The global drug control regime was established to bring state control over, and eventually eradicate, illicit drug markets. But it is not going well. The last UN drug summit, in 1998, met under the slogan “A Drug Free World – We Can Do It”. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that, 18 years later, we can’t do it. The challenge facing the member states gathered in New York last month was to acknowledge that basic truth, acknowledge that repressive approaches had actually created many of the problems we now face, and agree a programme of action that could at least reduce the harmful impacts of a globally established commodity market with high demand, and multiple supply options.

    • Who Gets to Drink From the Great Lakes?

      Water has become the 21st-century equivalent of oil, and a plan to divert water from the Great Lakes to surrounding areas is raising questions about the possibility of future water grabs from far-flung water-sparse regions.

      While plans to divert water from the Great Lakes basin date back to the early 1900s, modern-day attempts have become increasingly extravagant. In 1982, Congress directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of using Great Lakes water to irrigate farmland on the Great Plains. (Not so feasible, said the Corps.) Fifteen years later, a businessman in Canada secured a permit from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to transport 158 million gallons of water each year from Lake Superior to Asia in tanker ships. (He withdrew his proposal in 1998 under pressure from Canadian officials.) And in 2007, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, in his presidential bid, suggested piping Great Lakes water to the arid Southwest. (Richardson’s campaign foundered and his trial balloon burst.)

    • How to avert a Great Lakes catastrophe

      A pair of 63-year-old underwater pipelines (collectively, Enbridge Line 5) spanning the Straits of Mackinac carry about 23 million gallons of crude oil and liquid hydrocarbons a day.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The Ugly Consequences of the U.S. Military Having Immunity to Commit War Crimes in Afghanistan

      “The U.S. bombing of the hospital was a war crime. But the United States can bomb any place it wants—a school, refugee camp, hospital—and they will not be held accountable,” said Hakim, a physician and mentor to the grassroots organization Afghan Peace Volunteers. “U.S. immunity is atrocious. It’s intolerable. They should be held accountable like every other human being.”

      Hakim, who requested his last name and city of residence be withheld for security reasons, spoke with AlterNet from Afghanistan just weeks after the Pentagon released a heavily redacted internal investigation in which it exonerated itself of war crimes for its October 2015 bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz that killed 42 civilians. The 16 U.S. service members immediately responsible will face administrative consequences but not court martial, and the high-level architects of U.S. policy in Afghanistan will remain untouched. The military provided the fallacious justification that the massacre did not amount to a war crime because it was unintentional.

    • Surprise! Despite Syria-Iraq Turmoil, Major Mideast Economies growing 3-4%

      When you only hear bad news from a place, you form a negative opinion of it. But when I went looking for news about the economies of the most populous Middle Eastern countries, I was surprised to find that the IMF and/or World Bank is seeing between 3.5 and 4% growth in 2016.

      You would think Turkish President Erdogan’s renewed conflict with Kurds in the country’s southeast, along with the occasional bombings in Ankara and Istanbul that have hurt tourism, plus the Russian cancellation of some joint projects, the fall in Russian tourism, and the cancellation of fruit and vegetable orders– that all these things would have hurt economic growth. Well, maybe they did, but the Turkish economy is still set to grow 4% this year. Of course, you could argue that the economy might be growing 7% if Erdogan hadn’t picked all those fights. And, it is not as if the profits are being equally spread around the population.

    • Top 3 Signs Bill Clinton didn’t kill himself to “give” the Palestinians a State

      Former President Bill Clinton on Saturday claimed “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state,” and maintained that he secured an agreement, which the Palestinians turned down. In fact, no such text was ever presented to the Palestinian side, and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak kept flaking out on commitments previously made, leaving the Palestinian negotiators with nothing to agree to. Negoatiator Aaron Miller later admitted, “There was not a formalized, written proposal that covered the four core issues. There was no deal on the table. None of the issues were explained enough in detail to make an agreement, though the Israelis made an interesting argument on Jerusalem.”

      No time here to go into the paternalist and colonial language about “giving” the Palestinians a state. They are a stateless people because they are unrecognized; they would get a state by recognizing them as such, not giving them anything.

    • Refugees from ‘Endless’ War

      Policymakers in Official Washington talk piously about waging “humanitarian” wars, but the real-life consequences of these interventions play out in squalid refugee camps far from U.S. shores, as Ann Wright witnessed.

    • Why, and How, Congress Should Enact an AUMF

      Just as bad was how Congress approached the resolution, enacted in October 2002, authorizing the offensive war in Iraq. This time there was no consideration at all of the resolution in committee—only a cursory floor debate. Republicans were mostly observing party loyalty to their president. Democrats were anxious to get the vote out of the way as quickly as possible to maximize the time between the vote and the elections in November. Political pusillanimity prevailed. One of the few members to lament this shoddy and rushed performance of Congress’s duty was Senator Robert Byrd, who said on the Senate floor a few weeks before the invasion, “This chamber is for the most part ominously, dreadfully silent. You can hear a pin drop. Listen. You can hear a pin drop. There is no discussion. There is no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.”

    • Eyewitness Odessa: Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine

      At the end of World War Two, the city of Odessa in present-day Ukraine was declared a Hero City by the Soviet Union for its determined resistance to Nazi occupation. It’s a designation still valued by the people of this multicultural metropolis of a million people on the western shore of the Black Sea.

      On May 2, 2016, Odessans once again showed their great capacity for courage. Defying threats by local and national fascist organizations, thousands of city residents, accompanied by international monitors from across Europe and the United States, gathered to pay their respects to the victims of a fascist massacre and press their demand for an international investigation.

    • SCS for South China Sea aren’t the scariest letters in the world … they’re CPEC

      Don’t make the mistake of regarding the CPEC as another South China Sea, an opportunity for a budget-fattening play date for the US and PRC and other regional militaries, one carefully constrained and choreographed between several high-capacity partners within a relatively stable political and security matrix…

    • The Assassination Complex: A Long-Overdue Window into America’s Vast Killing Machine

      Based on dramatic revelations from a post-Snowden whistleblower and written by Jeremy Scahill and other Intercept writers, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program provides a long-overdue window into America’s vast killing machine: who makes the decisions on who will be killed; how those decisions are made; how the strikes are carried out; most of all, in a thoughtful foreword by Edward Snowden and afterword by Glenn Greenwald, the implications for a democratic society of all this due-process-free, non-battlefield killing.

    • Suspect device in Old Trafford controlled explosion was dummy left behind after training exercise
    • Norwegian Ryanair flight to Manchester delayed after hoax security alert

      Police in Norway evacuated a Ryanair aircraft due to fly to Manchester and after a hoax security alert.

      Officers writing on an official Twitter account said they had arrested two passengers due to suspicious behaviour.

      Officials searched bags and quizzed other passengers from the flight, as the ‘bomb squad’ headed to the airport

      Reports suggest only the Ryanair flight FR3225, was due to take off at 18.55 from Rygge Airport near Oslo, was affected.

      Police, writing on Twitter in Norwegian and translated into English, said: “Due to suspicious behaviour on two passengers who were flying into Manchester police have evacuated the aircraft control mechanisms.”

    • Watch worried fans climb fences after Old Trafford evacuate following suspect package find

      Fans and police have been praised for the swift and orderly evacuation of the stadium but a few supporters in the North West quadrant of the stadium were reportedly confused about their exit route.

    • Bomb threat at Manchester United’s Old Trafford after training device left behind

      An embarrassing security blunder brought chaos and disruption to the final day of the English Premier League soccer season on Sunday, as tens of thousands of fans at Manchester United’s iconic Old Trafford stadium were evacuated by police due to a suspected bomb threat.

      United, one of the most famed and successful teams in the world, was due to host Bournemouth to conclude its league campaign. After an “incredibly lifelike” package, including a taped device made up of a cell phone and protruding wires, was discovered, the game was cancelled and supporters ordered out of the 75,635-seat venue.

    • Old Trafford ‘bomb’ was left behind after security training at Manchester United

      Some 50,000 supporters were evacuated from the ground when the alarm was raised about 15 minutes before the kick-off.

      United players were warming up on the pitch when they were told to leave.

      The club and the police have now revealed the device had been accidentally left behind by a private company following a security training drill.

    • Old Trafford ‘dummy bomb’ has happened before

      Many around the football world have been left astounded by the events at Old Trafford on Sunday, as Manchester United’s match with Bournemouth was abandoned by what was thought, at the time, as a suspicious package.

      Then, with fans evacuated and bomb disposal experts sent to the stadium, it transpired that the device was a dummy, giving rise to the theory that the ‘bomb’ was a hoax. But in a remarkable twist, it has now emerged that the so-called bomb was a training device left over from safety excercises earlier in the week.

      And perhaps even more remarkably, this is not the first time such a scenario has presented itself in English football, with Wolverhampton Wanderers having to evacuate part of their Molineaux stadium in 2014 while police investigated what turned out to be a training device left over in the Steve Bull Stand.

    • Manchester United Game Canceled Over Fake Explosive From Training Exercise

      Manchester United’s game against Bournemouth was canceled after a suspicious package was found at the Old Trafford stadium, the club said Sunday, but police later said the package was actually a training device left behind during an earlier security exercise.

    • Old Trafford security alert – statement
    • Manchester United bomb scare was caused by security blunder after dummy device was left in Old Trafford toilet BY MISTAKE
    • Imperial Designs? Current US Ambassador to Brazil Served in Paraguay Prior to 2012 Coup

      The U.S. ambassador to Brazil previously served in Paraguay in the lead up to the 2012 coup against Lugo, who was ousted in a manner similar to Rousseff.

      The possible role of the United States government in the ouster of the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff is being scrutinized after it emerged that Liliana Ayalde, the present U.S. ambassador to Brazil, previously served as ambassador to Paraguay in the lead up to the 2012 coup against President Fernando Lugo.

      In a case very similar to the current political crisis unfolding in Brazil, Lugo was ousted by the country’s Congress in June 2012 in what was widely labeled a parliamentary coup.

    • American Horror Story: The Shameful Truth About the Government’s Secret Experiments

      Fool me over and over and over again, shame on both of us.

      Shame on every politician, bureaucrat and technician who is a shill for the U.S. government’s abuses and lies, and shame on every gullible American who keeps buying into the government’s propaganda, believing that it has our best interests at heart.

      Unfortunately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government has seldom had our best interests at heart.

      The government didn’t have our best interests at heart when it propelled us into endless oil-fueled wars and military occupations in the Middle East that wreaked havoc on our economy, stretched thin our military resources and subjected us to horrific blowback.

    • The Real Story of Our Decades-Long Foreign Policy Disaster That Set the Middle East on Fire

      The brilliant Andrew Bacevich explains why our massive march to folly in Middle East has to be seen as one war.

    • The Civil War Inside the US Military

      In early April, a battalion of senior military officials appeared before a Senate panel and testified that the US Army is “outranged and outgunned,” particularly in any future conflict with Russia. Arguing for a much bigger budget for the Army, they claimed that, absent a substantial increase in funding, the Russians would overtake us and, even scarier, “the army of the future will be too small to secure the nation.”

    • Poof! It’s Forgotten

      Five Ways the Newest Story in Iraq and Syria is… That There Is No New Story

    • Defense Bill Coming This Week: A Boost for War and Tyranny

      For many of us concerned with liberty, the letters “NDAA” have come to symbolize Washington’s ongoing effort to undermine the US Constitution in the pursuit of constant war overseas. It was the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012 that introduced into law the idea that American citizens could be indefinitely detained without warrant or charge if a government bureaucrat decides they had assisted al-Qaeda or “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” No charges, no trial, just disappeared Americans.

      The National Defense Authorization bill should be a Congressional mechanism to bind the president to spend national defense money in the way Congress wishes. It is the nuts and bolts of the defense budget and as such is an important oversight tool preventing the imperial executive from treating the military as his own private army. Unfortunately that is no longer the case these days.

    • Human rights activists project ‘Daesh Bank’ onto Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Berlin

      Human-rights activists have projected the Isis flag and the phrase “Daesh bank” onto the side of the Saudi embassy in Berlin.

      The “guerrilla light project” was organised by artist Oliver Bienkowski, who wanted to highlight the country’s relationship with the extreme Islamist movement and its much-criticised human rights record.

      Saudi Arabia has been accused of indirectly creating Isis through the propagation of its fundamentalist Wahhabist interpretation of Islam.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Hillary Clinton, the Conveniently Negligent Queen

      Hillary Clinton should have known that. At least according to her own spin, which she previously used to indict Edward Snowden. Now these words may come back to haunt her; “When I would go to China or I would go to Russia…we would leave all my electronic equipment on the plane with the batteries out, because this is a new frontier and they’re trying to find out not just about what we do in our government, they’re trying to find out about what a lot of companies do and they were going after the personal emails of people who worked in the State Department. It’s not like the only government in the world that is doing anything is the United States.”

      Considering agency rivalry, the FBI may not bother to ask the NSA whether foreign intel successfully hacked into the subterranean server (the NSA certainly knows). And even if they asked, the NSA notoriously does not share data with other federal agencies.

      So here’s a solution. The FBI should politely ask Beijing and Moscow for copies of all Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • China April coal output down 11.0 pct on year – stats bureau

      May 14 China produced 268 million tonnes of coal in April, down 11 percent on the year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday, with producers cutting back in a concerted effort to shore up prices.

      Output over the first four months of the year reached 1.081 billion tonnes, down 6.8 percent compared with the same period of last year.

    • National Park Service Stands Up For Grizzly Bears, Yet Again

      On May 10, among the thousands of comments to US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on its proposal to strip Endangered Species Act protections from Yellowstone grizzly bears and allow a trophy sport hunt, was a brief letter from the National Park Service (NPS) that packed a big punch: don’t hunt the bears that wander close to Park boundaries (link).

    • Our Fossil-Fuel Economy Destroys the Earth and Exploits Humanity

      Whether or not we care to admit it, our current economy is extractive—that is, it’s built on the exploitation and extraction of human labor and the earth’s resources. It relies on corporations that force workers to work long hours in unsafe conditions for insufficient wages and benefits. It exists by the continual removal of nutrients from the soil, minerals from the mountains, and fossil fuels from underground. This system isn’t working for us today, and it isn’t going to work for us tomorrow. We know that infinite growth is not possible, but this economy depends on it.

    • Volunteers for the Long Haul

      Good old Knoxville, Tennessee — this scruffy little town that I love — will host the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a dismal bureaucracy, on May 26, 2016. BLM is heading to the vibrant, plush Tennessee Theatre in the heart of downtown to take comments on how “public” lands are utilized for coal mining. Specifically, strip mining will be under the microscope. Moreover, taxpayer-funded, corporate welfare-ridden, landscape-plunderingstrip mining will be examined.

      Though King Coal is in decline it is still a major industry. An estimated 40% of coal extracted in the United States comes from land managed by the BLM. We taxpayers fund the BLM and thus the mining on these landscapes. We then have to watch as the black rock is sold at bargain prices to industry giants. It’s American capitalism. Risk and cost are socialized while profit is privatized. It’s nation against country. State against our lands.

    • Climate Democracy for Rural Communities

      In early March, farmers and rural residents of southeast Minnesota gathered for three intensive days of presentations, discussion and deliberation around the thorny issue of climate change. The Winona, Minnesota Climate Dialogue participants, most of them in shirts and jeans, were a blend of ages, cultural backgrounds and jobs. Some had lived in the community their whole lives, while others had moved to the area recently. All said they loved where they lived and cared about its natural beauty—ideally positioned where fertile farmland meets the deeply carved Mississippi River Valley. But, all certainly did not come to the table with any shared view of climate change or common political perspective.

      [...]

      The dialogue process is far more than an exercise in community decision making; it’s the opportunity to rebuild democracy. Democracy requires informed citizens. Without positive, pro-rural voices or proposals on the table, climate change deniers have been able to focus on the additional burdens that new regulation or taxation would bring to rural America while ignoring all of the ways in which climate change itself will negatively impact rural America—and the opportunities for economic development in a new, clean energy economy.

      Climate change can make people feel powerless. Therefore, democracy in action requires more than an informed citizenship. People also need to have agency—the feeling and actual power to do something about the problem, not just individually, but as a collective.

      The Rural Climate Dialogue process is three-fold: through peer to peer collaboration it enables us to understand the climate challenge for the community; it builds an amplified on-the-ground network of cooperation to implement both policy and non-policy solutions; and then it reforms the political process so that our leaders (and the policies they pass) are influenced and include a more diverse network of citizens.

    • ‘Not a Symbol, A Signal’: Wave of Direct Actions Points to Fossil-Free Future

      Mass arrests took place during the weekend’s Break Free actions around the world, and more demonstrations were happening on Sunday, the final day of a global wave of actions calling for a just transition away from fossil fuels.

    • For Inspiring ‘A New Agenda,’ Naomi Klein Wins 2016 Sydney Peace Prize

      Author and activists says award ‘comes at a time when the impacts of the climate crisis are being acutely felt’ around the world

    • A Song Of Fire And No Ice: We Just Had Our Fourth Record-Breaking Hottest Month In A Row

      A record fire-storm in Canada fueled by record warmth. Record ice-melt in Greenland and the Arctic sea, driven by off-the-charts warmth in the far north. And, NASA reported Friday, we’ve just been through the hottest April and the hottest January-April on record — by far.

    • April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs

      April 2016 was the hottest April on record globally – and the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records.

      The latest figures smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever recorded.

    • Shell creates green energy division to invest in wind power

      Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, has established a separate division, New Energies, to invest in renewable and low-carbon power.

      The move emerged days after experts at Chatham House warned international oil companies they must transform their business or face a “short, brutal” end within 10 years.

      Shell’s new division brings together its existing hydrogen, biofuels and electrical activities but will also be used as a base for a new drive into wind power, according to an internal announcement to company staff.

      With $1.7bn of capital investment currently attached to it and annual capital expenditure of $200m, New Energies will be run alongside the Integrated Gas division under executive board member Maarten Wetselaar.

    • Revealed: New Zealand’s enormous 60-year, 25 million tonne illegal fishing lie

      Michael Field, whose book The Catch helped expose the labour and human rights abuses in New Zealand’s fishing industry, says a report out today reveals a decades-long abuse of our much-vaunted quota system, with more than twice as many fish caught as declared.

      New Zealanders know the power of national utterances; we live by “clean and green” and “a great place to raise kids”.

  • Finance

    • What Recovery? In Cities All Over America, the Middle Class Is Drastically Declining

      Since the year 2000, more than 80 percent of metropolitan areas saw their household incomes decline, pointing to a shrinking middle class that’s fueling economic insecurity.

      According to the Pew Research Center, which previously documented a national trend of middle class decline, “the changes at the metropolitan level … demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country.”

    • Pataphysical Conditions on the Ground

      Pace Hillary and Trump but manufacturing jobs once again creating a solid middle class and a moveable feast of economic mobility will not return. Walls, embargoes, penalty taxes, passport revoking, and resurrection of unions will not do it. “Low pay married to high profits in much of the service economy is contributing to a widening income chasm that is rending society in all sorts of ways. Used to the prosperity once delivered by manufacturing, American workers are rebelling against the changing tide.” (Eduardo Porto, “Moving On From Farm And Factory,” The New York Times, April 27, 2016.)

      A postindustrial tomorrow is the ticket. We are all a service economy now with a sharp distinction between serving “on the ground” and serving in cyberspace. Flipping a burger or delivering a pizza, mowing a lawn or cleaning a pool, walking dogs or baby carriages are “on the ground” services. In cyberspace, brokers and investors practice their dark derivative arts, marketers and advertisers huckster products and services, the outraged blog and tweet, and the overworked and not working surf for personally chosen brands of anesthetics and distractions, sports, porn, gambling, and shopping high on the list. Those still in school preparing for the service economy network socially, updates on Facebook, videos on Instagram, occasion marking selfies, keeping up on Twitter, and rushing at nano speed beyond all things analog, where, as Baudrillard expresses it, “the whirligig of representation goes mad.”

    • If You’re Low-Income, America Is Still an Oligarchy

      At least that’s the argument in a recent article by Vox’s Dylan Matthews. Matthews cites new research finding that the rich and middle class agree on about 90 percent of bills that come before the United States Congress.

      [...]

      What’s more, policies favored by the middle class and poor, who together comprise a majority of Americans, passed just 20.4 percent of the time, while those favored by only the rich passed 38.5 percent of the time. In other words, the rich had more success getting their policies enacted than the middle class and poor combined—which is the very definition of an oligarchy.

    • Tricky Timing for the Class of 2016

      This year’s high school graduates were 10 years old when the economy hit the skids in 2008. Many college graduates in the class of 2016 were 14. Yet, their economic prospects remain darkened by the enduring effects of the Great Recession.

      That is not to say there has been no improvement. The class of ’16 has more and better-paying job opportunities than earlier post-crash graduating classes, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. But for the most part, today’s graduates still face employment conditions that are worse than in 2007, the year before the recession, and are much worse than in 2000, when the economy was last at full employment.

      The recent unemployment rate for college graduates ages 21 to 24 was 5.5 percent, compared with 4.3 percent in 2000. Their underemployment rate — which includes the unemployed, those who have briefly left the work force and those stuck in part-time jobs — was recently 12.3 percent, compared with 7.1 percent in 2000. And in 2015, nearly 45 percent of college graduates ages 22 to 27 were in jobs that did not require a college degree, compared with 38 percent in 2000. Over the same period, student debt has soared, which means that many of today’s graduates are trying to pay off more debt with less secure jobs.

    • Reinvention and Whiplash: Bernie, Hillary, and “Strange Bedfellows” in the Democratic Party

      Meanwhile, beneath and beyond the seemingly interminable electoral extravaganza, the profits system’s ever- accelerating real-time assault on livable ecology pushes life on Earth ever closer to an apocalyptic cliff.

    • TTIP vs Europeans: A wake-up call for the Commission

      The massive opposition to TTIP in Europe should convince the EU to listen to its citizens, as the issue has the potential, in conjunction with other factors like Brexit, to bring the whole idea of the Union into question, writes Nomi Byström.

      Nomi Byström is a postdoctoral researcher in computer sciences at Aalto University, Finland.

      In all corners of Europe, opposition to TTIP has swept like wildfire since the deal was announced in 2013. Huge demonstrations in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Helsinki, Vienna, Warsaw, Ljubljana and Prague show no sign of ending. In its first year alone, 3,263,920 people signed a petition against TTIP by a London-based charity. Not only do Dutch voters seek a referendum on TTIP, opinion polls make sobering reading on where most Europeans stand. Only a few days ago, it was revealed that some 70% of Germans see TTIP as bringing “mostly disadvantages”.

    • TPPA shines light on constitutional shortcomings

      The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has been before Parliament since February of this year.

      As the Green MP on the relevant committee, I attended the hearings the committee held, reading the 3000 written submissions and listening to the 255 oral submissions presented in person.

      In eight years in Parliament, I have not witnessed such passion from New Zealanders as in these hearings. Whatever the substantive issues of the treaty, and we all have our views, the fact is that people harbour deep concern over the general nature of this particular agreement.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Bernie or Bust will save us: The foul stench of “lesser evilism” has made our politics useless

      For months now, my Facebook feed has been clogged with inspirational posts about Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders getting arrested at a civil rights rally. Bernie Sanders’s modest tax returns. Bernie Sanders with a bird. Now that the delegate math is stacked against him, my Facebook feed is full of panicky moralistic posts about how Bernie or Bust is going to ruin everything, that it’s time for Sanders supporters to give up on ideological purity and unify behind the presumed nominee.

      But the case for giving up on Sanders is turning out to be as difficult to make as the one for nominating him. Could it be that the Bernie or Bust movement, however righteous or quixotic, is not about Sanders at all, but another symptom of a high-rolling advertising-driven culture that has eroded all our trust in the social contract? I mean, if you’re looking for someone to blame, Edward Bernays is your man, not Sanders—and certainly not anyone who plans to write in Sanders’s name on a general election ballot.

    • Trump’s Dangerous Strategy: How Inciting His Supporters Could Backfire

      When Donald Trump tells his supporters that if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination: “It’s a rigged system; it’s a corrupt system, it’s 100% crooked,” he is resurrecting a theme that created some of America’s darkest hours. Trump is trying to solidify his support by attacking the legitimacy of the political system. While Movement Conservatives since Newt Gingrich have attacked the legitimacy of Democrats in Washington, Trump is going further: delegitimizing the government itself. Americans have been in this place before. In the late nineteenth century, when the nation’s economic and political tensions looked much like today’s, unpopular politicians trying to overcome overwhelming odds did the same thing.

    • Nevada Democrats defend exclusion of Bernie convention delegates that led to explosion of anger

      Nevada’s Democratic State Committee defended excluding 58 Bernie Sanders’ delegates at their convention Saturday night, saying they failed to register properly as Democrats before the final caucus.

      At the contentious convention, held in the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, scuffles broke out as Sanders’ supporters claimed that the state party subverted the will of the voters by awarding more pledged delegates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

      According to the Las Vegas Sun, Clinton took 20 of the 35 pledged delegates Nevada will send to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this summer.

    • Ben Carson Lets Drop That Sarah Palin Is on Trump’s VP Short List

      On a day when the New York Times dropped a bombshell of a piece about Donald Trump’s long history of crude comments and disgustingly sexist treatment of women, Trump surrogate Dr. Ben Carson detonated a little bombshell of his own.

    • Here’s what happened at Saturday’s dramatic Nevada Democratic convention

      The people who attend the Democratic convention this weekend were chosen during voting in early April. At that point, Sanders out-organized Clinton, getting 2,124 people elected to the state convention (according to the tabulation at the always-essential delegate-tracking site the Green Papers) to Clinton’s 1,722. That suggested that voting at the state convention would flip: Sanders would win those 4-to-3 and 3-to-2 contests, giving him a 7-to-5 victory at the convention and making the state total 18-to-17 for Clinton instead of 20-to-15.

      [...]

      On Friday, Sanders’s campaign released a statement (apparently after a conversation with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid) thanking his supporters in the state and saying that working together “respectfully and constructively on Saturday at the Nevada Democratic convention” would help the party beat Donald Trump in November. On Saturday morning, though, there was tumult.

    • Tensions Flare, State Chairwoman Flees in Delegate Dispute at Nevada Democratic Convention (Video)

      Sanders supporter Rachel Avery posted video of the point in the evening when Paris Hotel security made it clear that the conference, as far as they were concerned, was officially over…

    • To Leave the Future Open: On the False “Choices” of Election 2016

      Not long ago, I promised to say more about my own choice, so I offer this reflection. I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind, and I’m not trying to. But this is no ordinary election year; political, financial, and ecological systems are all in various stages of crisis and collapse. I hope what I say here is useful to some as we think not only about specific candidates and the election but also beyond them.

      The violence I’m speaking of here is the “normal” violence of mainstream American institutions. Michael Bronski and I have recently written a book about such violence (Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics) which is widespread and massive. It kills swiftly and through the systemic diminution of life chances for Black, Indigenous, and Latino/a communities, and for working class and poor people of all races.

      Rooted in ideologies that are, interdependently, white supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist, this violence is a predictable structural feature, not an aberration, of the entire criminal legal system, including prisons and policing. It is a feature of many forms of custodial care. It is found within public and private educational institutions; the health care system; corporations and many workplaces; the military. This violence usually gets little attention; when it does come into public view, usually as the result of crisis and the accompanying sensationalized media coverage, there is a flurry of activity to produce cosmetic public ceremonies, commissions, or even token policy reforms that do little or nothing to get at its root causes. A designated “bad apple,” disciplined or prosecuted, often serves as the scapegoat for systemic harm.

    • Russia’s Diversity of Opinion

      The usual U.S. depiction of Russian media is that all you get is Kremlin propaganda, but prime-time talk shows actually offer wider diversity of opinion and more substantive debates than what appears on American TV, says Gilbert Doctorow.

    • You Can’t Distract Us Forever: a Note to Justin Trudeau

      The revenue agency’s investigation into KPMG’s tax scheme has been stalled for more than three years, and no one will explain why. According the CBC’s investigation, “In February 2013, a federal court judge ordered KPMG to turn over a list of unidentified multimillionaire clients who placed their fortunes in an Isle of Man tax shelter scheme.” KPMG has still not complied and the fact that the CRA has not requested a court date to enforce its court order has been described as “mysterious.” Maybe not.

      [...]

      If Justin Trudeau can’t deal with the rot in his own rogue agency, his carefully crafted political persona will be permanently tainted. What will remain is the same old Bay Street Liberal Party unashamedly serving the rich and powerful.

    • Electoral Folly: No Matter How Good the Candidate, Business as Usual Rules Elected Office

      2016 is shaping up to be a year of social movements: Black Lives Matter, trans-equity, teachers and workers struggles. It is also an election year, and one candidate, Bernie Sanders, has activists and organizers across the country “feeling the bern.” But is the enthusiasm justified, will electing good politicians lead to substantial change?

      “The question is,” according to Kshama Sawant, Seattle’s socialist city council member, “How can we build a public movement that would counter business opposition?” This was Sawant soon after her historic victory where she and her party, Socialist Alternative, defied expectations and won a tight race against an entrenched incumbent Democrat, Richard Colin. Her major legislative agenda, “$15Now,” a substantial minimum wage hike for workers, faced hostility from business interests. Sawant recognized that they couldn’t do it alone, that it would take a movement of regular people to make change.

      But how far did the minimum wage law go given the tremendous support Sawant’s campaign generated, and did her repeated electoral success help build social movements as she often claims? This article wants to go back to Sawant’s central question posed in 2014 – how can we build social movements to counter business power?

    • What’s Left?

      Sanders says he is campaigning for a “political revolution”. Sawant and other genuine socialists have embraced this call and taken it up as their own. This is indeed strange since the expression has historically been used to describe a change at the top that is distinct from a fundamental change of the whole. The expression “political revolution” was popularized by Leon Trotsky in his fight against Stalinism in the Soviet Union. In that context, it was a call to replace the murderous, bureaucratic regime at the head of the Soviet state with a form of workers democracy, while retaining the socialized economy and property relations that had been won in the Russian revolution. The idea was to replace the rot at the top without reverting to capitalism.

      [...]

      What’s needed is not some new party in the abstract, but a new tool that can be used by working people to fight for political power as a class, with the ultimate aim of replacing the rule of the capitalist minority with the democratic rule of the working class majority. Along the way, in our zeal to build the movement we know is needed to set the world right, we should remember: success is not measured by how many people you have marching behind your banner, but by the number of people marching behind your banner in the right direction.

    • Conservatives bash the Beeb for advertisers

      Distinctiveness is the keyword running through the BBC White Paper but to understand the proposals we need another word: advertising. We can speculate on the driving motivations, from grandstanding free-market ideologising to petty political point-scoring, but one explanation stands out: the White Paper delivers to those commercial media and advertising interests wanting to get more of us to switch from BBC services to services that carry advertisements.

      It does not deliver everything the advocates of immediate dissolution of the BBC want, of course, but it accepts and advances the commercial case to cut competition for audiences in lucrative markets. The majority commercial view is that the BBC is a tolerable if not advantageous presence, as long as they can enjoy the greatest commercial opportunities that the political system can deliver from BBC reform.

    • RNC Chair: Nobody Cares How Awful Trump Has Been To Women

      In its effort to rally behind Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee, the Republican Party is embracing a new messaging strategy: None of the terrible things Trump has said or done matter to anybody.

      Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said as much Sunday morning. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Priebus about the Saturday New York Times story cataloging multiple times Trump has mistreated women in private. “Does that bother you?” Wallace asked.

    • Purged, Hacked, Switched: On Election Fraud Allegations in Hillary Clinton vs Bernie Sanders

      According to Gonzalez, “the suppression of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters” was a violation of the Voting Rights Act as it had a “disproportionate affect on Latino” voters. “Typically, Latino voters vote more heavily on election day” rather than in early or absentee balloting. Seventy percent of Latino voters in the state are in Maricopa county, according to Gonzalez, and the Democratic (and Republican) party should not seat delegates from Arizona: “Those delegates should be thrown out, the awarded delegates based on a fraudulent vote should not be allowed. Either that delegation should be disqualified in total at the party convention or you have to have a new election.”

      Unless Democrats or the New York City Board of Election can provide compelling evidence contrary to Election Justice USA’s findings, New York’s delegation also should not be seated at the Democratic Convention in July.

    • Why Trump Can Lie and No One Seems to Care

      The GOP candidate gets away with outrageous, contradictory statements because the mainstream media and the public let him.

    • Understanding the Republican Insurgency: the Donald Trump Phenomenon

      Donald Trump is no champion of the poor – he is a billionaire born into money, a crude, predatory capitalist in the mold of Silvio Berlusconi. The similarities between these two figures are striking, and give one an indication of the absolute rotten depths to which a national politics must fall before the working classes start to embrace these kinds of figures in their electoral preferences.

    • Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton’s Five Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives

      Thomas Frank, author of Listen, Liberal, discusses the Hillary Doctrine’s basis in neoliberalism, how the Democratic Party stopped governing on behalf of the working class and how President Bill Clinton’s major achievements actually enacted conservative goals, and ultimately hurt working people.

    • WATCH: Fox News’ Vile Jesse Watters Gets Humiliated by the Very People He’s Trying to Humiliate

      “This country has become a joke,” one victim said, “and Donald Trump is the punchline.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • President Obama Just Said He Opposes Campus Censorship. Here’s How He Can Prove It.

      The plague of political correctness infecting every corner of life on American college campuses has grown so ubiquitous that even President Obama—by no means a conservative or contrarian on education matters—is bemoaning student-initiated censorship.

      [...]

      The Vox piece on Obama’s comments is largely positive; it certainly doesn’t criticize the president for observing that college students are too narrow-minded and censorship-driven. Perhaps that’s not so surprising—Vox has actually run at least two pieces from professors lamenting that the preferences of a few irate students have made teaching much more difficult and less rewarding. Indeed, many on the intellectual left are supportive of the idea that college administrators are all-too eager to humor the demands of the hyper-offended minority.

      But I’m skeptical that any amount of public pressure from intellectuals can inspire campuses to change so long as the federal government continues issuing guidance to universities that obligates them to censor. If Obama is actually opposed to the new scourge of political correctness on college campuses, he could prove his dedication to the cause by directing the Education Department to relax its relentless Title IX inquisition.

    • Can we face away from Facebook?

      Facebook remains uncontested as the social media champ of Wall Street. Its stock recently hit an all-time high while Twitter’s hit its low. As an enrollee in both, I can tell you why — and the why of it is reason for concern.

      Beneath those warm visuals of Thanksgiving pies and bulldogs playing with canaries lies a data-gathering megalopolis focused on gathering one’s personal information and selling it. Facebook knows your social connections, your shopping habits and your likes. It does offer privacy settings, but they take effort. Meanwhile, users are under constant assault to ”give it up” in the name of some convenience or pleasure.

      Facebook’s genius is in its ability to hide this machinery. It seems a safe place. Users must reveal their identities, which cuts down on the careless hurling of snark.

    • Olivier gala: Mike Ward the big winner

      Humorists in solidarity say freedom of expression is the basis of their work

    • Gala les Olivier: Comedy and controversy
    • Canadian Comedy Sketch Canceled…About Freedom of Expression

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area

      Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.

      Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it.

      Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.

    • Lack of Online Privacy Has Chilling Effect, U.S. Department of Commerce Says

      The constant threat of breaches, surveillance, and online data collection stopped almost half of American households from doing business and expressing opinions online last year, according to a new survey from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

      Using 2015 census data, a new analysis from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) finds that out of 41,000 internet-using households (representing a total of around 19 million), 45 percent claimed they’ve refrained from banking, buying stuff, posting on social media, or talking about controversial topics online over the last year. The reasons people gave for the chilling effects vary, but a significant majority (63 percent) cited identity theft, followed by credit card fraud, corporate data collection, government surveillance, and other factors.

    • Feds Will (Finally) Mine Social Media for Background Checks

      After years of development, the US government has come up with an official policy to mine the public social media accounts of potential employees during background checks.

      The policy was signed on Thursday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. It allows intelligence agencies to collect “publicly available social media information,” so it doesn’t cover anything that’s not public information already, and expressly forbids agencies to request passwords or create fake or real social media accounts to interact with the applicants “in order to bypass privacy controls.”

      Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, and an expert in government secrecy, said that this policy has been in the works for 8 years.

    • Needed: More Snowdens – Ex-intel analyst

      I was an active duty Marine working in signals intelligence in 2013 when Edward Snowden exposed the mass surveillance programs of the National Security Agency. Snowden’s alleged espionage had a lasting effect both on my work and on my attitude toward it.

      As a cryptologic linguist and intelligence analyst, my day-to-day activities were directly compromised when I was suddenly unable to use certain methods and tools due to the leak. Not only that, Snowden’s action created a moral dilemma for me as a member of the intelligence community. I began questioning the morality of my work. If the public was outraged by what Snowden leaked, will they be outraged by how the U.S. is fighting terrorism?

    • Snowden derides ‘traitor versus hero’ media coverage

      Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor now hiding in Russia from U.S. espionage charges, Thursday chided the media for making too big a deal of him.

      “I was very forceful in my first interviews: I am the least important part of the story,” he said on a secure video channel to a packed audience at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.

    • Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area

      Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.

      Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it.

      Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.

    • Japanese firm introduces privacy visor that confuses facial recognition software

      According to a report in Inverse, Japan’s Nissey Corp. is set to release a privacy visor that the company claims will scramble digital facial recognition software.

      “This is a way to prevent privacy invasion through the many image sensors in smartphones and other devices that can unintentionally photograph people in the background,” commented National Institute for Informatics researcher and a visor developer Isao Echizen.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Lesser of Two Evils Vote is Counterproductive and Morally Corrupt

      If you vote for Clinton as the lesser of two evils, you’re compromising your moral values, you’re condoning the Democratic Party’s shoddy treatment of millions of progressives, and you’re sabotaging future real change. You’re virtually guaranteeing the Democratic Party elites will put you in this position again and again. If you refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils, maybe you’ll help elect Trump (or maybe your write-in or third party choice will win). But you’ll certainly send a very clear message to Democratic Party elites that you’ll no longer tolerate being ignored, marginalized, or shamed with false lesser of two evil choices.

    • Police called in to investigate David Cameron letters as election fraud probe grows

      Police have been asked to investigate whether letters sent by the Conservatives to voters in David Cameron’s name broke election laws.

      In the latest twist to the investigation into the party’s election spending, a former Liberal Democrat MP told police that mail-outs by the Tories were not properly recorded as local election expenses and may have broken spending limits.

      Conservatives say the letters, which were signed by David Cameron, did not count as local campaign expenditure because they did not mention the name of the Tory candidate in the area.

    • White Cop Brutally Beats Black Teen for Riding Her Bike—Then Charges Her with Assault (Video)

      A Tacoma, Washington family is suing over the brutal beating in 2014 of then-15-year-old Monique Tillman, who a Tacoma Police officer pulled off her bicycle, choked and then shocked with a Taser.

      The Free Thought Project reported Saturday on the attack, which was recorded by security cameras.

      Monique Tillman and her brother were bicycling home on May 24, 2014 when they cut through the parking lot of the Tacoma Mall. Officer Jared Williams, a uniformed white officer of the Tacoma Police Department, was working mall security that day. He pursued the two teenagers — who are black — and informed them that they were trespassing on mall property.

    • “Take it off! This is America!”: North Carolina man pleads guilty to federal crime after yanking Muslim woman’s headscarf off during flight

      A North Carolina man pleaded guilty Friday to forcibly removing a Muslim woman’s head scarf during a flight between Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, late last year.

    • Chomsky: The Majority of Today’s Elected Democrats Are Moderate Republicans

      The majority of Democrats have shifted to the right so far that the two-party system is almost unrecognizable, according to Noam Chomsky.

      “There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans—and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right,” Chomsky told RT America’s Anissa Naouai.

    • A Tribute To Radical Human Rights Lawyer Michael Ratner

      Michael Ratner spent the last half century steadfastly fighting for human rights. He was a radical lawyer, who led the Center for Constitutional Rights. He was an outspoken advocate for civil liberties and truth-telling, as he represented WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. He was instrumental in winning due process rights for Guantanamo Bay prisoners, and he died on May 11.

      In a sober statement celebrating the work of Ratner, the Center for Constitutional Rights declared, “For 45 years, Michael brought cases with the Center for Constitutional Rights in U.S. courts related to war, torture, and other atrocities, sometimes committed by the U.S., sometimes by other regimes or corporations, in places ranging from El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala, to Yugoslavia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Israel.”

    • British-Based Cubans Face US Blockade in Piano Project

      As a sign of just how punitive the blockade remains, earlier that month a group of Cuban musicians based in Britain had their money withheld by Eventbrite, a US website-based company. Cuban pianist Eralys Fernandez, who lives in London, had used the ticket sales website for a classical music concert held in an East London church in mid-March.

    • Trumping Up Torture

      Calculated production of suffering, as much as capricious, is known as barbarism, yet should become US policy according to Donald Trump. He specifically aims to institute “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

      Barbarism, it goes without saying, is what makes terrorism bad, and no confidence is warranted that either of them produce much besides pain, indignation and escalation.

      Yet there is a clear difference between Trump and ISIS in that the latter has an actual strategy of escalation. Trump just thinks that the harsh extraction of words will serve most captives right and is bound to be worthwhile even if it doesn’t provide useful intelligence (though he assures us it does). His pitch is simple: Our enemy is brutal so we must be too.

      To know the first thing about logic is to know that doesn’t follow. It is virtually equivalent to saying that our enemy is evil so we should be evil too.

    • Turkey’s Creeping Authoritarianism: Is the Resistance Enough?

      Turkey’s march towards authoritarianism took another dangerous turn this past week with the forced resignation of moderate Islamist Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, apparently at the insistence of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

      Though constitutionally the Turkish prime minister wields executive authority and the president is largely a figurehead, Erdoğan—who served as prime minister for eleven years before term limits forced him to step down in 2014—appears to still be in charge.

    • CIA admits: We sent Mandela to jail

      A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela, which led to the future South African president’s trial and imprisonment for almost 28 years.

      The bombshell disclosure led yesterday to a demand for the CIA to come clean about putting behind bars a figure who became one of the world’s most revered statesmen.

      A veteran political associate of Mandela called it a “shameful act of betrayal” that “hindered the struggle against apartheid”.

    • Philippine president-elect Duterte vows to kill criminals

      “What I will do is urge Congress to restore (the) death penalty by hanging,” Duterte, 71, told a press conference in Davao.

    • The Supreme Court Is at Stake: Why the Presidential Election Matters

      It is no secret that the makeup of the US Supreme Court will be a major issue as the fall election campaigns unfold. And yet, many voters will choose not to vote. “It’s too much effort. I forgot to register when I moved. My vote won’t matter.”

    • Voices from UK Detention Centers

      The pregnant detainee was writing back in March. It’s not clear how she spent Mother’s Day, but in all likelihood she spent it in detention or was deported, and in either case, would be spiraling deeper into mental instability at this point. Wherever she and her child end up, they might never escape the sense of being “controlled by somebody.” When protesters rallied on May 7, trying to break the silence around detention across Europe and the North America, they brought their voices to an often ignored human rights issue. Yet it is even rarer to hear the people who live in the immersion of that silence every day speaking out in their own words.

      This is what the isolation of detention does, forcing us to forget what we sound like, and eventually to forget how to speak.

    • My Acceptance Speech for the 2016 Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize

      I keep fighting to survive and thrive. I am fighting my court-martial conviction and sentence before a military appeals court, starting this month. I am fighting to make the full investigation by the FBI public. I am fighting to grow my hair beyond the two inch male standards by the U.S. military.

    • Are our smartphones afflicting us all with symptoms of ADHD?

      When was the last time you opened your laptop midconversation or brought your desktop computer to the dinner table? Ridiculous, right? But if you are like a large number of Americans, you have done both with your smartphone.

  • DRM

05.15.16

Links 15/5/2016: Gaming on Linux, LinHES R8.4

Posted in News Roundup at 3:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Follow Up: Linksys WRT Routers Won’t Block Open Source Firmware, Despite FCC Rules

    Is the suggestion that the Doppler weather radar in use at airports is less important than getting cat pictures from the comfort of your couch and not having to run an extra Ethernet cable? Because Delta Flight 191 is why these airport Doppler weather radar systems exist at all. Do we punish before or after the crash? As well I don’t think there is an appreciation for just how hard it is to find malfunctioning transmitters: it can be done but with significant amounts of work. The FCC is not funded for this level of enforcement right now. Everyone must share the very finite electromagnetic spectrum. I don’t have a problem giving life and safety critical systems priority over cat videos.

    As a quick experiment locate your WiFi router and check the verbiage. I’m sure everyone has seen the part 15 text but probably never paid attention to it. You will find This device may not cause harmful interference as well as this device must accept any interference received. That’s because the weather radar, by design, gets to break you but you don’t get to break it.

  • Reflections: The ecosystem is moving

    At Open Whisper Systems, we’ve been developing open source “consumer-facing” software for the past four years. We want to share some of the things we’ve learned while doing it.

  • The Evolution of Open Source

    For those who entered the IT industry in the late 2000s, open source software is part of the norm. For them, there isn’t a time when open source software was not free and available to everyone, and permeating through almost every facet of technology.

    But those who have been with open source from the beginning know that such was not always the case. As open source stands at the brink of technological breakthroughs, we remember its past and look forward to its promising future.

    [...]

    By the 1990s to 2000s a new kind of movement emerged. Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel and because of it, more people were able to use open source operating systems and improve them to a level that was competitive with proprietary platforms.

    Unlike the programmers of Stallman’s time, Torvalds and his peers’ primary motivations for moving open source forward were not moral but functional. They viewed it as the more efficient way to code, and way less expensive than its proprietary counterparts. Despite this industry-aligned motivation and the developments that arose from it, open sourcing was still a much debated issue. Many a programmer had to battle with giants like Microsoft for using open source software.

  • Web Browsers/Mail

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • In search of a home for Thunderbird

        For fans of Thunderbird, the repeated back-and-forth from Mozilla leadership can be a source of frustration on its own, but it probably does not help that Mozilla has started multiple other non-browser projects (such as ChatZilla, Raindrop, Grendel, and Firefox Hello) over the years while insisting that Thunderbird was a distraction from Firefox. Although it might seem like Mozilla management displays an inconsistent attitude toward messaging and other non-web application projects, each call for Mozilla to rid itself of Thunderbird has also highlighted the difficulty of maintaining Thunderbird and Firefox in the same engineering and release infrastructure.

  • Databases

    • Enterprise NoSQL Database for the IoT Becomes Open Source

      Riak TS, an enterprise-grade NoSQL database optimized for Internet of Things (IoT), recently upgraded to version 1.3. The Riak TS now has a free open source version for IoT developers, in addition to a more robust Riak TS Enterprise version.

  • BSD

    • Why OpenBSD Is Important To Me

      The US government has chosen to attack everyone’s privacy, US citizen and world citizen alike, in the name of attacking the privacy of terrorists. The government view is that privacy is an impediment to keeping us safe from physical harm. Tragically, they’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater–we want to be safe from physical harm so that we can engage with society as free citizens with the maximum possible liberty…putting us in a digital prison, where all of our communication is subject to the whim of government review is the opposite of keeping us safe, its a devastating attack on our freedom.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Enforcement and compliance for the GPL and similar licenses

      The Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW) is a three-day event held every year for legal professionals (and aficionados) who work in the realm of free and open-source software (FOSS). It is organized by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and, this year, the event was held in Barcelona (Spain), April 13-15. The topics covered during the event ranged from determining what constitutes authorship, how to attribute it, and what is copyrightable, to the complexity of licenses and how to make them more accessible for potential licensees lacking in legal background. In addition, license enforcement and compliance were discussed, with a particular focus on how the GPL and related licenses have done in court.

  • Programming/Development

    • Physicists ≠ Software Developers

      Nevertheless, I really think that being a physicist is not an excuse for not following good programming style and practise when working with others, especially given the large number of learning resources currently available online. I am especially fond of two non-profit projects that focus on providing resources and organizing events to improve computing skills in scientific research. One is lead by Software Carpentry and the other is lead by Mozilla Science Lab. There you can find some nicely curated lessons on basic software development practices.

Leftovers

  • EU Referendum: Boris Johnson compares EU’s aims to Hitler’s

    Boris Johnson has compared the EU’s aims to Hitler’s, saying both involved the intention to unify Europe under a single “authority”.

    The pro-Brexit Tory MP said both the Nazi leader and Napoleon had failed at unification and the EU was “an attempt to do this by different methods”.

    Labour MP Yvette Cooper, from the Remain campaign, accused the ex-London Mayor of playing “nasty, nasty games”.

  • Boris Johnson: The EU wants a superstate, just as Hitler did

    The European Union is pursuing a similar goal to Hitler in trying to create a powerful superstate, Boris Johnson says.

    In a dramatic interview with the Telegraph, he warns that while bureaucrats in Brussels are using “different methods” from the Nazi dictator, they share the aim of unifying Europe under one “authority”.

    But the EU’s “disastrous” failures have fuelled tensions between member states and allowed Germany to grow in power, “take over” the Italian economy and “destroy” Greece, he warns.

  • Sir John Major’s thinly veiled attack on Boris Johnson and Michael Gove: Vote leave campaigners risk ‘morphing into Ukip’

    Senior Conservatives leading the campaign to leave the EU risk “morphing into Ukip” by fuelling prejudices over immigration, Sir John Major is to say.

    In a thinly veiled attack on leading Brexit backing Tories including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the former Conservative prime minister will warn that they are straying into “dangerous territory” by focusing on immigration.

    Sir John will say that the Leave campaign risks “opening up long-term divisions in our society”.

  • Microsoft director, former Amazon director charged in prostitution sting [Ed: not so unusual at Microsoft]

    Charges have been filed against additional men – including a director from Microsoft and a former Amazon director – for promoting prostitution after investigators said they met with victims of sex trafficking at high-end Bellevue apartments.

    One of those charged is Sumit Virmani, the director of worldwide health for Microsoft.

    Using the names “Appy” and “Jaytee,” investigators said Virmani submitted over 70 reviews of prostitutes he had allegedly hired since April 2012, according to investigators.

    When asked about Virmani’s employment status, a spokeswoman for WE Worldwide — Microsoft’s PR company — said she couldn’t comment because it’s a “law enforcement matter.”

    A spokesman later confirmed Virmani is no longer an employee at Microsoft.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The Political Economy of Dead Meat: Why Mad Cows are the Least of It

      Start today with one giant U.S. corporation, Monsanto, which makes chemicals and agribusiness products. It has spent many years and a billion dollars or two developing recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone. The purpose of this product is to increase milk yield in dairy cattle. Inject BGH into cows twice a week and the milk yield goes up by some 10 to 20 percent. But crucially, with the artificially increased milk production, the cows need the infamous protein supplements made from rendered cows and sheep, thus opening the way to diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), which can transfer to humans.

      There are other problems, of course. First, who needs higher productivity per dairy cow when there’s a huge milk glut in the United States? Second, as happened with poultry and now with hogs, BGH accelerates the demise of small producers and the emergence of the industrial dairy conglomerates.

      Like any junkie, cows hooked on BGH tend to get sick, mostly with mastitis, an infection of the udder. Treatment of mastitis requires liberal doses of antibiotics. The antibiotic injected into the cow passes on to the human consumer, and thus contributes to the process whereby more and more bacteria are building up greater resistance to antibiotics. Moreover, BGH also causes cows to produce more Insulin Growth-like Hormone-1 (or IGH-1), which has been linked to a number of disorders in humans, including acro-megaly (gigantism in the form of excessive growth of the head and extremities) and an increased risk of prostate, breast, and ovarian cancer. There is also research to suggest that IGH-1 reduces the body’s ability to suppress naturally occurring tumors.

    • The Dirty Secret Behind Russia’s 2014 Olympic Success

      Over two years ago at the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russian athletes walked away with 33 medals, including 13 golds and 11 silvers, more than any other country. None of these medal winners were caught doping at the time.

      However, an investigation by the New York Times reveals that this success was due in part to “one of the most elaborate — and successful — doping ploys in sports history.”

      Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, is the whistleblower.

    • Flint Residents Told Their Poisoned Water Might Soon Cost Them Twice as Much

      Michigan state officials announced Thursday that Flint residents will not be charged for their water usage in May as part of an effort to help flush the system, but the long-term picture for the lead-poisoned city is far less rosy, according to a new report.

      In fact, the Michigan Department of Treasury analysis presented Friday shows that water rates in Flint, already among the highest in the nation, could double within five years unless changes are made to the crumbling water system.

    • Report: Flint water bills set to double over five years

      The typical Flint resident is currently charged about $53.84 per month on the water portion of their bill, not counting sewer costs, according to the report prepared by Raftelis Financial Consultants of Missouri.

      But current residential rates are not projected to cover future costs, assuming the city purchases Lake Huron water from Detroit through fiscal year 2017 before transitioning to the KWA pipeline in 2018.

      As a result, the typical water portion of a residential bill is estimated to rise to $110.11 per month by fiscal year 2022 “if no action is taken” to address various issues, according to the report.

    • In “Profound Loss for Maine’s Citizens,” Court OKs Sale of Town’s Water to Nestle

      Decision “paves the way for a private corporation to profit from a vital public resource for decades to come.”

    • Hunt and Stevens – leaving their dirty footprints all over the NHS

      Sustainability and Transformation Plans – the biggest attack on the NHS you’ve never heard of.

    • Federal Lawsuit: Farmers Claim Monsanto’s Controversial ‘Roundup’ Weedkiller Gave Them Cancer

      Despite Monsanto’s claim that its Roundup weed-killer is “safe enough to drink,” four Nebraska farmers say the widely used herbicide gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

      The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” but Monsanto has promoted Roundup as “safe enough to drink,” the farmers say in their federal lawsuit.

    • Monsanto’s Cancer-Linked Weedkiller Is Coming to a City Park Near You? Already 2,000+ Locations Sprayed in NYC

      New Yorkers who visit their local parks have likely been exposed to glyphosate, the controversial, cancer-linked main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide Roundup. But the data about herbicide and pesticide spraying projects across the city isn’t adding up.

    • Pesticides, GMOs and Corporate Control: The Poster Child is Monsanto but Neil Young is the Main Act

      Neil Young has a long history of activism. He is a co-founder of Farm Aid, which works to support small and family farmers in North America, while his song Ohio is often considered to be one of the greatest protest songs ever made. Last year, Young pledged a $100,000 donation to Vermont’s legal fight against the GMO-labelling lawsuit, and he has recently been involved in putting together a new website that will help people engage with issues such as GMOs, farming, ecology, justice and climate change (access the site here).

      His new albums The Monsanto Years (2015) and Earth (2016) have a strong anti-corporate theme running through them and feature songs exploring global hunger, pesticides, GMOs, seeds and ecology. Young spent part of 2015 touring the US. The tour was different from the usual concert tour because it was accompanied by an ‘activist village’ comprising a coalition of leading non-profit organisations housed in numerous tents.

    • Leaks Show Senate Aide Threatened Colombia Over Cheap Cancer Drug

      Leaked diplomatic letters sent from Colombia’s Embassy in Washington describe how a staffer with the Senate Finance Committee, which is led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, warned of repercussions if Colombia moves forward on approving the cheaper, generic form of a cancer drug.

      The drug is called imatinib. Its manufacturer, Novartis, markets the drug in Colombia as Glivec. The World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines last year suggested it as treatment not only for chronic myeloid leukemia, but also gastrointestinal tumors. Currently, the cost of an annual supply is over $15,000, or about two times average Colombian’s income.

      On April 26, Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria announced plans to take the first step in a multi-step process that could eventually result in allowing the generic production of the drug. A generic version of the drug that recently began production in India is expected to cost 30 percent less than the brand name version.

    • New bill proposes mandatory donation of unsold food

      Finnish MPs are following in France’s footsteps and introducing legislation that would make it mandatory for potential food waste to be directed to charities and food banks while it is still edible. Coordination of the redistibution would be a challenge.

  • Security

    • Replacing /dev/urandom

      The kernel’s random-number generator (RNG) has seen a great deal of attention over the years; that is appropriate, given that its proper functioning is vital to the security of the system as a whole. During that time, it has acquitted itself well. That said, there are some concerns about the RNG going forward that have led to various patches aimed at improving both randomness and performance. Now there are two patch sets that significantly change the RNG’s operation to consider.

    • Mozilla asks the FBI for details of Tor vulnerability that could also affect Firefox

      Mozilla is fighting to force the FBI to disclose details of a vulnerability in the Tor web browser. The company fears that the same vulnerability could affect Firefox, and wants to have a chance to patch it before details are made public.

      The vulnerability was exploited by FBI agents to home in on a teacher who was accessing child pornography. Using a “network investigative technique”, the FBI was able to identify the man from Vancouver, but Mozilla is concerned that it could also be used by bad actors.

      Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government says that it should be under no obligation to disclose details of the vulnerability to Mozilla ahead of anyone else. But the company has filed a brief with a view to forcing the FBI’s hand. The argument is that users should be kept protected from known flaws by allowing software companies to patch them.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • 9/11 Commissioner Leaks Damning New Info: Saudi Government Officials Supported the Hijackers

      The 9/11 hijackers had support from Saudi government employees, said a former Republican official who investigated the attacks — and he wants the Obama administration to release evidence to prove it.

      John Lehman, an investment banker and Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said his fellow 9/11 commission members had helped to obscure Saudi links to the 2001 terrorist attacks, reported The Guardian.

    • Saudi officials were ‘supporting’ 9/11 hijackers, commission member says

      The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.

    • What the obituaries missed about my uncle, Dan Berrigan

      I moved to New York City in 1998, with an internship, a notion of being a writer, and a way station of sanity and welcome at 98th Street (where Dan and a dozen other Jesuit priests lived). I didn’t need a New York City dream — I had Uncle Dan.

    • Tensions Simmer as Moscow Calls New US Missile Site in Romania a ‘Direct Threat’

      Tensions between the United States and Russia continued this week with Moscow calling the U.S.’s newly activated missile defense site in Romania a “direct threat” to security and part of “the start of a new arms race.”

    • U.S. activates Romanian missile defense site, angering Russia

      The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday that it sees as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but the Kremlin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal.

      To the music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior U.S. and NATO officials declared operational the ballistic missile defense site, which is capable of shooting down rockets from countries such as Iran that Washington says could one day reach major European cities.

    • The Great Leap Backward: America’s Illegal Wars on the World

      Since 1945, America’s Manifest Destiny, posing as the Free World’s Crusade against the Red Menace, has claimed 20 to 30 million lives worldwide and bombed one-third of the earth’s people. In the 19th century, America exterminated another kind of “red menace,” writing and shredding treaties, stealing lands, massacring, and herding Native populations into concentration camps (“Indian reservations”), in the name of civilizing the “savages.” By 1890, with the massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee, the frontier land grab—internal imperialism– was over. There was a world to conquer, and America trained its exceptionally covetous eye on Cuba and the Philippines.

    • Despair and Unrest in Mexico

      The statistics explain the anger. Seven women are killed every day in Mexico. Over the past three decades, over 45,000 women have been killed. The passive voice is appropriate here. Over 95 per cent of these cases have not been properly investigated by the police and judged by the courts. The impunity rate is stunning. Two-thirds of Mexican women above the age of 15 report in surveys that they have experienced some form of physical or emotional abuse or discrimination at work.

    • The Bush Administration, U.S. Nuclear War-Fighting Policy & the War On Iraq

      The purpose of nuclear weapons never has been principally about deterrence or mutually assured destruction (MAD), but rather to serve as a coercive foreign policy instrument designed and intended for actual war fighting. In the words of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rebuttal to Jimmy Carter’s 1976 proposal to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to 200 warheads, “U.S. nuclear strategy maintains military strength sufficient… to provide a war-fighting capability to respond to a wide range of conflict in order to control escalation and terminate the war on terms acceptable to the U.S..”v First strike nuclear weapons, designed to back up military intervention and enforce geopolitical dictates, are seen by Pentagon war planners as the backbone of war-fighting strategy, and in this capacity have been used at least 27 times between 1945 and 1998.vi Daniel Ellsberg, former RAND Corporation nuclear war planner, wrote; “Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, nuclear weapons have been used: …in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.”vii Dominating the most powerful economic system in world history, the U.S. will use any military force necessary, including the use of nuclear weapons, to expand, consolidate and maintain its control.

    • Radical and Anti-Imperialist Art on the Streets of Cuba

      With the recent visit of US President Barack Obama in Cuba and talks of lifting the decades-old embargo (it is still in effect), many Americans are excited at the notion of touring the long estranged Caribbean island. Cuba attracts those fascinated by its complicated history and ardent anti-imperialist modern culture, but it also boasts beautiful beaches, classic cars, colonial architecture, beautiful music and dance, and delicious Cuban cigars complemented by an assortment of Rum drinks. For those literary geeks among us, Cuba offers inspiration in the form of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite hang out spots and watering holes.

      But aside from these marketing clichés, any self-respecting tourist must take time to admire the incredible variety of Cuban art. This can be easily achieved by visiting the truly wonderful Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana and complemented by walking the streets. As a culture led by a staunch and long-time anti-American socialist regime, it should be no surprise that the streets of Cuba’s cities are riddled with political art.

    • Should the U.S. provide reparations for slavery and Jim Crow?

      It continues today. The overwhelming majority of academics studying the issue have supported the calls for compensating black Americans for the centuries of chattel slavery and the 100 years of lynching, mob violence and open exclusion from public and private benefits like housing, health care, voting, political office and education that occurred during the Jim Crow era.

    • Robert Scheer Talks About Disrupting Militarism With Codepink’s Jodie Evans

      In this week’s edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” the Truthdig editor in chief sits down with Codepink activist Jodie Evans to discuss her organization’s efforts to move the United States away from military conflict, as well as the origins of her activism.

    • The Hillary Clinton/Neocon Merger

      Between the mainstream media’s demonization of Donald Trump and the neocons jumping ship to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a Clinton victory might prove grimly inevitable, but that will guarantee more neocon wars, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Political Pressure Stymies US-Iran Ties

      With the Iran nuclear agreement, President Obama opened lines of communications to Iran, but political pressures in Washington prevent a more substantive shift in relations, reports Gareth Porter.

    • Venezuela Accuses US of Plotting Coup, Declares State of Emergency

      Venezuela’s leftist president Nicolas Maduro announced a 60-day state of emergency on Friday evening and accused the U.S. of plotting with right-wing groups within the country to overthrow his government.

      On the same day, unnamed D.C. officials warned of a coming “meltdown” in Venezuela.

    • Brazil Impeachment Brings to Mind Thailand’s 2014 Military Coup

      Q: What’s the difference between the coup that overthrew the elected government in Thailand in Thailand in 2014 and the coup that has now removed the elected government in Brazil?

      A: The coup-makers in Thailand wore uniforms.

      The Brazilian Senate has just voted 55 to 22 to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. She will be suspended for the next 180 days while the same body tries her on the charge of understating the size of the budget deficit before the last election.

      If two-thirds of the senators find her guilty, she will be permanently removed from office. Since they have just voted to impeach her by a bigger majority than that, we may take it for granted that she is a goner.

      As the long evening droned on, it was quite clear that most senators were only interested in the outcome, not the evidence. On several occasions the Speaker even had to tell them to stop talking and put their phones away. This was about politics, not about justice, and the deal was already done.

    • Escalations in a New Cold War

      The Obama administration poked Russia in the eye again by activating a missile defense site in Romania while building up NATO forces on Russia’s borders, acts that could escalate toward nuclear war, notes Jonathan Marshall.

    • NATO’s Reluctant 2 Percenters

      According to the 2014 US-NATO declaration of confrontation with Russia, all member countries are supposed to commit 2 percent of their GDP to military expenditure. But as with most NATO plans and endeavours, this one has failed to meet expectations.

    • Reflections on a Delegation to Imprisoned Palestine

      At the end of March 2016, I was part of a nineteen-member Prisoner Solidarity and Labor Delegation that traveled from the United States, the country with the largest number of prisoners in the world, to Palestine, a nation where 40% of the male population has been imprisoned. (This article focuses on the prisoner solidarity portion of the delegation. To understand the full breadth of the delegation’s trip, see our delegation statement.) Convened by Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, professor at San Francisco State University, this was the first U.S. delegation to focus specifically on political imprisonment and solidarity between Palestinian and U.S. prisoners. We built on a long history of mutual inspiration and exchange dating back to the 1960’s. In 2013, when prisoners at Pelican Bay prison in California undertook an historic hunger strike to protest long term solitary confinement at the same time as Palestinian prisoners were on hunger strike against administrative detention, this exchange was renewed. Khader Adnan, a former Palestinian political prisoner who had waged a hunger strike in Israeli prisons for 66 days, sent a strong message of solidarity to the California hunger strikers, supporting their actions.

    • Pfizer Cuts States Off From Execution Drugs

      After pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced on Friday that it will clamp down on the distribution of its drugs so that they can no longer be used in executions, any state that wants to use lethal injection will now have to resort to getting them on underground markets.

      Pfizer announced that it will restrict seven products — pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide, and vecuronium bromide — that are used in executions. Those products will now only be available to a select group of wholesalers, distributors, and direct purchasers who verify that they won’t resell them to correctional institutions for executions, and any government entity that wants to buy them has to certify that they will only be used for patient care and will not be resold.

    • Scalia’s Death Just Prevented Alabama From Executing A Man

      If Vernon Madison’s case had reached the Supreme Court three months ago, he would almost certainly be dead right now.

      On Thursday, a federal appeals court ordered Alabama to halt its plans to execute Madison, at least temporarily, so that it will have enough time to consider whether killing Madison would violate the Constitution. Almost immediately, the state asked the Supreme Court to vacate this order, and the Court denied that request in an order handed down late Thursday.

    • The Lies Military Recruiter Tell

      As I hinted at before, the US military is one of the few governmental institutions that have overwhelming respect from almost all residents of the United States. This phenomenon is largely due to a very concerted campaign by the ruling elites of this nation to place the Pentagon and its troops above reproach. This can be seen in the ever-constant presence of the military and its advertising at sporting events, civic festivals, and even some music concerts and festivals (especially country music.) As the authors point out, this barrage of advertising, or (let’s be honest) propaganda began almost immediately after the military draft was ended in 1973. As of 2012, direct recruitment advertising by all branches of the military stood at around 667 million dollars. This figure does not include the cost of buildings and staffing of actual military recruitment offices around the country, nor does it include the money spent on recruitment efforts in schools and other places youths congregate.

    • Good-Guy Gunslingers

      The audience believes the gunslinger is a better man than civilization gives him credit for because the gunslinger myth makes them value men differently from how civilization values them. We believe a little wildness is a good thing. The gunslinger sacrifices himself for civilization. Civilization has a problem with him, not he with it. He fights for civilization in spite of its hostility towards him. He acquiesces to his own expulsion. His real problem is running out of wilderness, for he is a civilizing force that cannot live in civilization. He needs to civilize and tame the wilderness although he is a wild creature himself. So he must always use up, move on, and seek more wilderness. He is an attractive loner from nowhere who lives only in his own fame. He comes into town, commits an act of violence or, depending upon your point of view, defends himself, and then leaves. Things are then better, we are told, though we do not see it, for we are moving on with the gunslinger. His fame makes him a role model. As a role model he is a cautionary tale and his effect, when he achieves it, is to inspire the boy to embody the illusion of a lawman without violence. The violence is forgotten in the peace. With the American wilderness gone who knows where he will quick-draw for the sake of civilization next.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • New Rules On Corporate Secrecy Have Glaring Loopholes

      The Treasury Department released a new rule and several proposals last week that they said are intended to address the problem of corruption and dirty money in secret U.S. shell companies.

      A White House news release announced what it called “several important steps to combat money laundering, corruption, and tax evasion, and called upon Congress to take additional action to address these critical issues.” (A White House fact sheet is available here.)

      The new rules at first glance appear strong. But after examining the details, several watchdog groups are warning that the new regulations and proposals leave open several glaring loopholes, and even practically provide instructions for how to get around the regulations.

    • Blind Item: ‘Dishonest Career Politician’ Dishes on D.C. Dishonesty

      A person claiming to be a U.S. lawmaker—one who may or may not still purport to represent American constituents—appears to rip into his congressional colleagues in a new “tell-all” book titled The Confessions of Congressman X.

      “Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them,” the alleged current or former congressman says in the questionable tome.

    • Assassinating Assange’s Character | Interview with Michael Ratner

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Civil disobedience is the only way left to fight climate change

      Right now, thousands of people are taking direct action as part of a global wave of protests against the biggest fossil fuel infrastructure projects across the world. We kicked off earlier this month by shutting down the UK’s largest opencast coal mine in south Wales.

      Last Sunday, around 1,000 people closed the world’s largest coal-exporting port in Newcastle, Australia and other bold actions are happening at power stations, oil refineries, pipelines and mines everywhere from the Philippines, Brazil and the US, to Nigeria, Germany and India.

    • Emissions Limits Will Test Gov. Inslee’s ‘Greenest Gov.’ Claim

      This past Friday, I was in a King County courtroom as history was being made. I am one of eight petitioners under the age of 18 who sued the Washington State Department of Ecology and won – not once but three times! The court not only affirmed that we children have the right to a safe and healthful future under the state constitution, but has just taken the next step by ordering Ecology to make a science-based rule by the end of this year.

    • Judge orders state to move on rules cutting greenhouse gases

      A King County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered the state Department of Ecology to complete by year’s end a new rule regulating greenhouse gases.

    • This Is What It Looks Like When People All Over The World Break Free From Fossil Fuels

      Over the last 9 days a global wave of actions to keep fossil fuels in the ground has been gathering momentum all over the world. Words alone are not enough to describe how powerful this moment of action is.

      If you’ve missed any of it, here’s what’s happened so far in just the first 9 days of Break Free:

      It started in Wales, where over 300 people shut down the UK’s largest open-cast coal mine for a day.

    • Fracking’s Air Pollution Puts Infants and Children at Risk of Developing Heart, Lung Problems: New Study

      A newly published peer-reviewed study concludes that air pollution from fracking puts people’s lungs, hearts, and immune systems at risk – and that the health risks are particularly pointed for young children and infants.

      The study — the first to specifically focus on how shale oil and gas drilling affects children ability to breathe — concludes that starting in the womb, children’s developing respiratory systems are particularly at risk from five airborne pollutants associated with fracking and drilling.

      “We conclude that exposure to ozone, [particulate matter], silica dust, benzene, and formaldehyde is linked to adverse respiratory health effects, particularly in infants and children,” the researchers wrote in the study, titled “Potential Hazards of Air Pollutant Emissions from Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas Operations on the Respiratory Health of Children and Infants” and published in Reviews on Environmental Health.

    • Westerners Bear Witness to U.S. Energy Boom’s Health and Environmental Tolls

      Coal, oil, and natural gas deposits have brought development, jobs, and tax revenue to Western states. But as recounted by locals in a recent storytelling project, fossil fuels have also created vicious boom-and-bust cycles that leave social upheaval, health problems, and environmental destruction in their wake.

    • In Colorado ‘Sacrifice Zone,’ Break Free Protest Escalates Fight Against Fossil Fuels

      Days after the Colorado Supreme Court denied two cities local authority to regulate fracking, hundreds of climate activists descended Thursday on a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction in Lakewood, just outside Denver, kicking off four days of major direct actions against fossil fuels across the United States.

      In addition to the Lakewood demonstration and a larger mobilization elsewhere in Colorado on Saturday, protests and civil disobedience actions are scheduled to take place between Thursday and Sunday in and around Anacortes, Washington; Albany, New York; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C., and Chicago, all under the Break Free banner.

    • Driving Bans Are Spreading As Most Urban Residents Breathe Unhealthy Air

      Most urban lungs around the world are breathing harmful air, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report.

      More than 80 percent of people living in urban areas that monitor air pollution breathe air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, according to the report, which was released Thursday. The report, which evaluated a database encompassing 3,000 cities in 103 countries, also found global urban air pollution levels increased by 8 percent from 2008 to 2013, despite improvements in some regions.

    • One Building Is Saving $1 Million A Year On Energy. What Would Happen If The Whole World Was More Efficient?

      Of course, not everything is intuitive. Take Trane’s work with a theater company in Minnesota, for example. The company wanted to better manage temperatures in their theaters — being too hot or too cold is one of movie-goers top complaints. Trane installed a management system, but wasn’t getting quite the results it was looking for. Now they have added a new data set: ticket sales. Knowing in advance how many people are going to be watching a certain showing allows the company to adjust the heating or air conditioning in advance and with more specificity. Now the theater isn’t over-chilling a a room with very few moviegoers, and they don’t have to over-correct in a room that has gotten too warm. (Trying to cool down a hot room is significantly less efficient — and less comfortable — than getting the temperature right from the beginning.)

    • Yet Another Oil Spill Wreaks Havoc On The Gulf Of Mexico And Nearby Coastal Communities

      A Shell oil facility has leaked nearly 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal authorities. The spill has left a two-mile by thirteen-mile sheen in the Gulf, approximately 165 miles southwest of New Orleans. A helicopter first noticed the spill near Shell’s Brutus platform on Thursday morning, according to Shell spokeswoman Kimberly Windon.

      “There are no drilling activities at Brutus, and this is not a well control incident,” Windon told the Associated Press. Instead, authorities believe the leak came from a release of oil from subsea infrastructure, from a line connecting four wells. According to the Wall Street Journal, Shell had dispatched boats Friday to begin cleaning up the spill.

    • Taking on the Sacred Cow of Big “Green” Energy
    • New RSPCA chief promises less adversarial approach

      Jeremy Cooper says group made mistakes in past and often drifted into political activism rather than supportive, animal welfare society

    • Shock impacts hit Greenland’s ice

      New research indicates that melting of the Northern Hemisphere’s biggest ice sheet is being accelerated by the seismic impact of waves crashing against Greenland’s coastline.

    • Will New Chemical Law Hide the Fracking Industry’s Toxic Secrets?

      The makeup of hydraulic fracturing fluid – the slurry of chemicals, sand and water injected deep underground to free petroleum deposits trapped by bedrock – is a closely guarded secret of the oil and gas industry.

    • Exxon Faces Questions Over Climate As Gates Dumps BP

      The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”.

      Another certainty is that you know that the top executives of controversial companies absolutely hate the one day in the year that they are accountable to their shareholders: the AGM.

      It is a day to be endured under extreme duress. A day when normally aloof executives have to answer awkward questions. There is no escape. There is no spin doctor to wheel out instead. The chief executive and chairman have to go face to face with the public. And it can hurt.

      Often the questions are over ridiculously high pay levels. In addition, Big Oil executives are used to being quizzed on a whole host of other abuses: over the years answering why they were propping up apartheid; polluting the coasts of Alaska; colluding with the military who were murdering their critics in Nigeria; over-stating their reserves; polluting the Gulf of Mexico or spending silly money looking for oil in the Arctic. I could go on.

      And that is before we get to the thorny issue of climate change and stranded assets and pouring invaluable shareholder money down a big black hole.

      The companies are coming under increasing criticism over their flawed long-term business strategy.

      Just last week, the influential Economist Magazine reported that “it has been a grim decade for investors in international oil firms—among them, many of the world’s biggest pension funds. Even before oil prices started to fall in 2014, the supermajors threw money away on grandiose schemes: drilling in the Arctic and building giant gas terminals.”

    • At Break Free Protests Around the World, Climate Activists Put Bodies on the Line

      Fossil fuel projects were blockaded simultaneously on three continents on Saturday—the “crest” of a wave of global actions responding to the growing threat of climate change.

      Through rallies, civil disobedience, and kayaktivism, people around the world stood up to oil and gas interests to say: enough. Additional actions are planned for Sunday.

    • Justice for Berta Caceres Incomplete Without Land Rights: UN Rapporteur

      The murder of Honduran Indigenous woman Berta Caceres is only too familiar to Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

      All around the world, Indigenous peoples are murdered, raped and kidnapped when their lands fall in the path of deforestation, mining and construction. According to the group Global Witness, one Indigenous person was killed almost every week in 2015 because of their environmental activism, 40 percent of the total 116 people killed for environmental activism.

      “We shouldn’t forget that the death of Berta is because of the protest that she had against the destruction of the territory of her people,” Tauli-Corpuz told IPS in a recent interview.

      Caceres, who was murdered at the beginning of March, had long known her life was in danger. She experienced violence and intimidation as a leader of the Lenca people of Rio Blanco who protested the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on their traditional lands.

    • Hillary Takes Millions From Fossil Fuel Industry, Lies About It
    • Proof That Koch-Backed Professors Are Using Universities To Spread Right-Wing Policies

      “Economic freedom centers” — or institutes with conservative, libertarian missions that are backed by the Charles Koch Foundation — are tightly controlled by the interests of the conservative foundation, according to remarks from Koch-backed professors and executives at the Association of Private Enterprise Education’s annual meeting in Las Vegas.

      The remarks were recorded by UnKoch My Campus, a group that focuses on the influence of powerful donors on research and coursework in universities, and shared by Greenpeace staff. At the event, Koch-backed professors and Charles Koch Foundation executives said that students act as “foot soldiers” for free enterprise ideals, deans will take money from anyone, and the slightest mention of the foundation’s legal team can bring universities back in line.

    • How Low-Income Households Can Take Advantage Of Renewable Energy And Efficiency

      Monya’ (pronounced “Monet,” like the French artist) Chapman, 53, lives with her 77-year-old mother in a house she rents in West Baltimore, a neighborhood she describes as moderate- to low-income. She earns about $30,000 a year as a pharmacy technician, which, along with her mother’s monthly social security benefits, covers rent, food, and basic necessities like soap and toilet paper.

    • Anthropocene vs Capitalocene: a Reflection on the Question, “What Have I Done?”

      There are approximately 150-200 species going extinct everyday. The background rate of the normal extinction process is roughly one to five species a year. We are at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate today due to human activities. As far as the last members of a doomed species might be concerned, humans are responsible, not just the capitalist class. To them, it is the Anthropocene. Might your perspective on this issue be determined by which side of the axe you are on?

    • Rancher spots first wolverine in North Dakota in 150 years — so he kills it

      A rancher shot and killed the first wolverine spotted for more than a century in North Dakota — where the animals had been eradicated.

      Researchers had been tracking the omnivorous animal, known as M56, since 2008, when a transmitter was placed under its skin after its capture just south of Yellowstone National Park, reported the Grand Forks Herald.

    • The legend of Arthur – the dog that followed me 100 miles

      I’ve always been a guy addicted to competition. My first love was ice hockey, as it was for anyone growing up in Örnsköldsvik, in northern Sweden, although I never quite made the grade. At 18 I had to do compulsory military service. And boy, was it tough. We were put through endless gruelling exercises in horrendous conditions, but in the middle of it all I suddenly realised I was enjoying myself. I had a strange talent, it seemed, not only for getting through things that would make most people give up, but for getting others through with me.

  • Finance

    • Donald Trump Changes His Mind About Changing His Tax Plan

      Donald Trump can’t make up his mind about what to do about taxes.

      Last year, as a candidate for the Republican presidential nominee, Trump released a detailed tax plan. As soon as all the other Republican candidates dropped out of the race, however, he started to distance himself from it, saying the plan is just a “concept” and the starting place for negotiations. The distancing went so far that he commissioned two well-known conservatives to draft a set of suggestions for changing it, lowering its price tag.

    • Is This The Return Of U.S. ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’ Serving Corporations?

      Colombia is allowing local production of a generic form of a cancer drug that is ultraexpensive because of a government-granted monopoly handed to a giant, multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The U.S. government is stepping in on the corporation’s side with a modern form of “gunboat diplomacy” — even though the giant corporation isn’t even “American.”

    • “Print the Money”: Trump’s “Reckless” Proposal Echoes Franklin and Lincoln

      “Reckless,” “alarming,” “disastrous,” “swashbuckling,” “playing with fire,” “crazy talk,” “lost in a forest of nonsense”: these are a few of the labels applied by media commentators to Donald Trump’s latest proposal for dealing with the federal debt. On Monday, May 9th, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate said on CNN, “You print the money.”

      The remark was in response to a firestorm created the previous week, when Trump was asked if the US should pay its debt in full or possibly negotiate partial repayment.

    • Top 2 hedge fund managers bankroll Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, after making $1.7 billion each in 2015

      James Simons and Kenneth Griffin were the world’s top two hedge fund managers in 2015. Each made $1.7 billion last year alone, and have used their massive wealth to bankroll the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, the Guardian reported.

      Simons is the 50th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. The mathematician has made an estimated $15.5 billion as CEO of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, and is individually richer than many countries.

    • The Declining Taste of the Global Super-Rich

      Today’s “patrons of the arts” are less interested in opera and ballet, and more interested in novelty furniture and enormous sculptures of their own faces…

    • Verizon Strike Exposes Broader Shifts in Telecom Labor Conditions

      The strike by 36,000 Verizon workers — represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) — is about to enter its second month.

    • Verizon Calls in SWAT Team to Keep Exploited Overseas Workers Under Wraps

      Representatives from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union whose members are currently engaged in a weeks-long strike against Verizon for its “corporate greed,” say they discovered this week that the communications behemoth has publicly lied about the extent of its offshoring of jobs.

    • Dilma Out: Brazilian Plutocracy Sets 54 Million Votes on Fire

      Never in modern political history has it been so easy to “abolish the people” and simply erase 54 million votes cast in a free and fair presidential election.

      Forget about hanging chads, as in Florida 2000. This is a day that will live in infamy all across the Global South – when what was one of its most dynamic democracies veered into a plutocratic regime, under a flimsy parliamentary/judicial veneer, with legal and constitutional guarantees now at the mercy of lowly comprador elites.

      After the proverbial marathon, the Brazilian Senate voted 55-22 to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for “crimes of responsibility” – related to alleged window dressing of the government’s budget.

      This is the culmination of a drawn-out process that started even before Rousseff won re-election in late 2014 with over 54 million votes. I have described the bunch of perpetrators of what Brazilian creativity has termed ‘golpeachment’ (a mix of coup – “golpe” in Portuguese – and impeachment) as Hybrid War hyenas.

    • This Is the County With the Worst Childhood Hunger in America

      When Feeding America issued its annual Map the Hunger Gap, Apache and four other counties atop the northern part of Arizona—stretching the full expanse from the eastern state line to the west—were the darkest shade of green included on the map’s legend. The color indicated that more than 30 percent of kids in those areas are food insecure, meaning they live in households that experience limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Apache County, a long, narrow strip in the northeast corner of Arizona, includes parts of the Navajo Nation as well as the Zuni and Fort Apache Native American reservations. There, 42 percent of children—9,050 kids—are food insecure, twice the national rate.

    • Europe and the spectre of democracy: Michel Feher interviews Yanis Varoufakis

      Yanis Varoufakis: Firstly, let’s begin by stating the fact, the historical fact, that there is no new development here. The IMF has been repeating, quite correctly, that the debt is unsustainable since 2011, 2012.

      There was even a time, when Christine Lagarde in 2012, 2013, proposed to the Greek government of the time, the right-wing/PASOK government, to forge an alliance between Athens and Washington DC, the IMF, in the Eurogroup, in order to bring about debt relief. Then, the Greek government rejected that, choosing instead to remain loyal to Berlin. So what you just described is a repetition and continuation of this pattern.

      The explanation for this by Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minster, if you were to put this question to him, would be that the IMF keeps making these noises about the importance of debt relief but only refers to the part of the debt owed to the Europeans. He would tell you that the IMF would never consider debt relief for the part of the debt that is owed to the IMF. So it only puts forward the suggestion of a haircut to other people’s money, and not its own loans to Greece.

      In addition, and far more importantly, the IMF, he would say, sets ruthless and rather horrific conditions in the realm of labor relations and pension cuts. Alexis Tsipras has always held this view, even when I was in the cabinet. This was not my view, it was his, and I was ambivalent about whether we are better off getting rid of the IMF because the IMF’s noises regarding debt relief are insubstantial and hypocritical, and they don’t help much anyway.

      He believed that in order to achieve a better balance between social policies regarding labor markets, pensions, and debt relief, it was best to try to deal with European officials directly. I am of the view that this is a mistake because having the support of the IMF is instrumental to the federal government in Berlin.

    • We All Pay for Low Wages

      When you are paid starvation wages, it’s up to public-assistance programs to make up the difference. That government assistance, costing treasuries billions of dollars per year, is part of the high cost of low wages.

    • A Quiz [Ed: Privatizing the IRS?]

      Here is an additional bit of information: ignoring past experience Congress has decided that in some circumstances the IRS can once again use private debt collection agencies. Go figure.

    • The Washington Post’s Bernie Sanders Bashing

      The Washington Post really, really doesn’t like Bernie Sanders and they miss no opportunity to display this dislike. For this reason, it is not surprising that they had a field day highlighting a report from the Tax Policy Center showing that his program would increase the debt by $18 trillion over the course of a decade. As the folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)noted, this study was good for four different pieces over a seven hour period.

    • Boris Johnson accused of ‘dishonest gymnastics’ over TTIP U-turn

      The former mayor of London, a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign, wrote in his Daily Telegraph column in October 2014 that TTIP was a “great project”. He said: “It is Churchillian in that it builds transatlantic links, it is all about free trade, and it brings Britain and Europe closer to America. The idea is to create a gigantic free trade zone between the EU and the US, or a TTIP – a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

      “There is absolutely nothing not to like about the TTIP. As Churchill might have said, it is altogether unsordid. And yet virtually the only commentary we have been offered is absurdly hostile and misinformed. The debate is dominated by leftwing misery guts anti-globalisation campaigners.”

      [...]

      However, in a speech last Monday backing a Brexit, Johnson changed his tune completely, likening the EU’s role in the continuing TTIP talks to a “pantomime horse” in which the 28 member states tried, chaotically, to agree a joint position on venture that was preventing the UK from striking its own, quicker and more effective bilateral trade deals.

      The speech by Johnson, who has written a biography of Churchill, lampooned the entire TTIP process. “As for the argument that we need the muscle of EU membership if we are to do trade deals – well, look, as I say, at the results after 42 years of membership. The EU has done trade deals with the Palestinian authority and San Marino. Bravo. But it has failed to conclude agreements with India, China or even America,” he said.

    • 2 minutes on the TPP

      My sign read:

      TPP is Oligarchy
      Oligarchy is a corruption of Democracy

    • Doubts over Thames garden bridge as Sadiq Khan probes £175m project

      The new London mayor, Sadiq Khan, is investigating his predecessor’s conduct over the procurement process for London’s planned £175m garden bridge.

      Khan, having completed his first week in office, has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. An official report concluded that the process to select a designer for the bridge was unfair and that the office of the previous mayor was “less than honest” about his role in the process.

      A spokesman for Khan said: “He is only in his first days in the role but he is looking in more detail at some of the issues raised about the procurement.”

    • This Letter Exposes The Absurdity Of Donald Trump’s Excuses About His Tax Returns

      Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he won’t release his tax returns so long as they’re being audited. This week, Trump told the Associated Press he probably won’t be releasing any returns before November, which suggests he doesn’t expect the audits to be wrapped up anytime soon. That means Trump could potentially become the first major party candidate in 40 years to not release his taxes.

    • There’s a Way Out of Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis If US Leaders Are Willing to Be as Bold as Alexander Hamilton

      Robert E. Wright, the Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana University and the Treasurer of Historians Against Slavery, is currently seeking a publisher for his eighteenth book, “The Poverty of Slavery: How Enslavers Victimize Us All.” His books include One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe. The views expressed herein are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the above mentioned institutions.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Did the New York Times Just Accidentally Tell the Truth About the Obama Administration?

      Historians so inclined will have a blast when their turn comes to dissect the Obama administration and its people. I do not mean the old-line “presidential historians,” story-telling hagiographers such as Stephen Ambrose or the insufferable David McCullough. Obama will have to wait a while for somebody of this set to embalm him to take what place he might among our mythologized tenants of the White House.

    • Senior Trump Adviser Says Idea That Words Matter Is ‘Ridiculous’

      Donald Trump spent his first two weeks as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee changing his stances on a number of policy issues, sometimes multiple times. That got an interesting defense from one of his senior advisers on Friday.

      Speaking on a panel on CNN, Barry Bennett, a senior political adviser to the Trump campaign, defended Trump’s waffling by saying that anything he puts forward is “a suggestion to Congress,” noting that “he has to persuade Congress to do it and all he can try to do is persuade Congress to go along with him.”

    • Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private

      Donald J. Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes.

    • Truthdigger of the Week: Stephanie Grimes, Former Editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal

      On May 5, Stephanie Grimes uploaded a post to Medium titled “Why I’m out at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.” Grimes, who had been the publication’s features editor, was let go five months after the family of billionaire Sheldon Adelson purchased it for $140 million. Before diving into Grimes’ exposé, it’s important to understand the Review-Journal’s tumultuous recent history.

    • How Our Stone-Age Brains Get in the Way of Smart Politics

      Using science and history, author Rick Shenkman’s new book explains how our brain works in response to manipulative politicians and their appeals.

    • Chicago Election Official Admits “Numbers Didn’t Match”: Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders Election Fraud Allegations

      Jim Allen, Communications Director for the Chicago Board of Elections (BoE), acknowledges that “the numbers didn’t match” initially in the legally mandated 5% audit of voting and tabulating machines after the recent Illinois Democratic primary between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Allen, however, insists that this is simply a “perception issue” and that absolutely no election fraud took place.

      Allen was responding by phone to my questions regarding allegations from citizen vote monitoring groups Who’s Counting? – Chicago and the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP). Dr. Lora Chamberlain is a leader of Who’s Counting, which works with IBIP to credential election day monitors and joined them this year to audit the audit. IBIP was started in Illinois in the aftermath of the 2000 Al Gore versus George Bush Debacle. A total of six members of the two groups gave affidavit-based testimony at the April 5, 2016 Chicago Board of Elections meeting.

    • This isn’t how a democracy should work: How the media boosted Donald Trump and screwed Bernie Sanders

      As this wildly unpredictable primary season heads toward the finish line, the two frontrunners are widely seen as their respective party nominees. Given that presidential elections are typically glorified as proof of our democracy at work, it seems appropriate to ask what kind of democracy has been revealed by this year’s primary season.

      In his book “Democracy, Inc.,” the late, distinguished political scientist Sheldon Wolin has argued that we have a “managed democracy,” that elite “management” of elections is the key to perpetuating the “primal myth” that the people determine the rulers. As Wolin put it, this “antidemocracy” doesn’t attack the idea of government by the people, it encourages “civic demobilization” – conditioning the electorate to be aroused for a brief spell, controlling its attention span, and then encouraging distraction or apathy.

      Obviously the mass media play a central role in the managed democracy. How, exactly, has this played out in this, the “year of the outsider,” when, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, almost two-thirds of voters in both political parties agreed with the statement that “The old way of doing things no longer works and we need radical change.”

    • None of the Bankers Think Hillary Clinton Believes Her Populism, a Financial Journalist Wrote

      As Hillary Clinton has no doubt noticed, the circumstances of 2016 present a striking similarity to the ones that put her husband in the White House in 1992. Again Americans are outraged at the way the middle class is falling to pieces and at the greed of the people on top. The best-seller lists are once again filled with books about in equality. Today Americans are working even harder for even less than when Bill Clinton made “working harder for less” his campaign catchphrase. Hillary Clinton — the way any Democrat — will play such a situation is extremely easy to guess.

    • Obama Endorses Idea of National Voting Holiday

      An enterprising Rutgers student who was at the White House as part of a college journalism program asked President Obama if he would do a one-on-one interview with the Rutgers student newspaper, and Obama said yes, and it happened, and if I’m not mistaken, the interview involves breaking news in the form of Obama, for the first time ever, endorsing the idea that Election Day should be a holiday in order to help improve turnout.

    • Following Sanders’ Lead, Obama Endorses National Voting Holiday
    • One of the Most Successful Right-Wing Myths of All Time: ‘The Limousine Liberal’

      Limousine liberalism is the specter haunting American politics. That has been true and getting truer for the last half century. Nowadays, Hillary Clinton serves as “exhibit A” of this menace.

      She’s an odd choice in some ways. As the metaphor vividly suggests, a thoroughbred limousine liberal should be to the manner born, a patrician of outsized wealth, socially connected, credentialed by the toniest prep schools and the Ivy League, raised to rule, who for reasons sometimes sinister and sometimes of excessive credulity has gone over to the dark side: a limousine liberal is history’s oxymoron, an elitist for revolution, working to undermine the ancient regime—or at least pretending to do so. Hillary Clinton was bred instead in far more modest circumstances. Her father owned a small fabric store outside Chicago. He ran a conservative home, demanding strict devotion to the frugality and work ethic of the respectable middle class. His daughter was politically precocious and had views congruent with her upbringing. Already by age thirteen she was out canvassing for Richard Nixon’s election in 1960. Four years later she volunteered for the Goldwater campaign, inspired by the fervent anticommunism of her favorite high school history teacher.

    • Trump’s past surfaces as GOP looks forward

      As Donald Trump pushed for party unity this week, he offered fresh reminders of the landmines from his past that he is carrying into a general election.
      The political outsider’s unconventional style and resume vaulted him into the role of party standard-bearer, but his unusual background was also exposed repeatedly this week as a major liability, with characters — real, or maybe even fictional — re-emerging to hound him.

    • Listen to This Insane Audio of Trump Pretending to Be His Own PR Guy

      In today’s most bizarre headline, the Washington Post released audio from a 1991 interview between People Magazine reporter Sue Carswell and “John Miller,” an alleged spokesperson for the Trump organization who just so happens to sound a hell of a lot like the reality TV star himself.

    • Fear And Loathing In USA

      This would be funny, fodder for Saturday Night Live funny, if it weren’t true. The GOP’s imminent candidate for POTUS being caught in lies and womanizing while he accuses Hillary of enabling her husband’s philandering… Really, would anyone trust this guy with running a lemonade stand rather than having a hand on the nuclear “button”? USA has a few months to wake up or become the laughing stock of the world. If this guy does any one of the things he promises to do it could well bring ruin to USA and may well cause the world to try to insulate itself from the nonsense. I wonder if Canada could handle the inflow of refugees? I doubt it. We might have to build our own wall.

    • Are Sanders Supporters Ever Going to Vote for Clinton If She’s the Nominee?

      One of the most striking—and disturbing—takeaways from Tuesday’s West Virginia Democratic primary were exit polls that found large numbers of Bernie Sanders supporters saying if not Bernie, they would actually vote for Donald Trump next fall.

      CBS News reported 44 percent said they’d vote for Trump, 23 percent for Hillary Clinton, and 32 percent for neither. These findings—especially Sanders’ supporters shifting to Trump—seem like a stretch, but maybe they’re not.

    • How Trump Gets Away With Lying and the Mainstream Media Colludes With Him

      Broadcast media has helped Trump perpetuate falsehoods like these four blatant lies.

    • The Politics of Triangulation

      “Ending welfare as we know it” was a signature accomplishment of the Clinton White House as well as a priority for Republicans. Both parties lead their attack on the poor with moralistic calls for “personal responsibility.”

      When Democrats protect big banks, Republicans are free to attack unions. When Democrats coddle big oil, coal, and gas, the Republicans resort to climate denial and gag rules. TPP is a bipartisan project of the center.

    • Copp’s Plea for You and Me

      The plain-spoken, public-spirited former Federal Communications Commissioner, Michael Copps, is indignant—and for good reason: The FCC is not enforcing the law requiring the “dark money” super PACs and other campaign cash conduits to reveal, on-the-air, the names of the real donors behind all political advertisements, which are now flooding the profitable radio and television airwaves.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Who is to Blame?

      Xenophobic traditions are truly long-lasting in some minds. Today Muslimophobia is far more useful than anti-Semitism, in older or newer forms, if only for a lack of numbers to victimize. And with next year’s elections approaching, all other parties are hunting for lost voters, frightened by the strength of the AfD in state elections in March, with 12 % and 15 % in two West German states and a startling 24 % in the East German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The changing polls now give the AfD overall 14 %, in third place and ahead of Die LINKE (Left) and the Greens.

    • Iranian animation faces censorship challenge

      Stunning Media has revealed further details of its ambitious Iranian animated feature Release From Heaven – and of the problems the production continues to face with censors in Iran.

    • Zuckerberg investigating Facebook censorship after staff admit deactivating Trending stories

      Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is investigating claims of censoring conservative news reports, following a discussion in the US Senate. Facebook’s Trending Topics has been criticised after anonymous former editors revealed that popular conservative news topics were not given the prominence they were due. A copy of Facebook’s “Trending Review Guidelines” shows how Facebook trained it’s internal employees to curate Facebook’s trending section to “inject” and “blacklist” topics.

      One former anonymous employee told tech news website Gizmodo that Facebook “used external topics, to push more external topics into people’s feeds”. The team of curators had the power to vet topics coming from a series of sources, including organisations such as BBC, the Guardian, NBC News, CNN and Buzzfeed – most of which generally reflect centre-left views – which may lead to the lack of attention to conservative topics, which featured sources such as Fox News.

    • Facebook Investigating Trending Topics Censorship Controversy
    • Milo Yiannopoulos challenges Zuckerberg to debate Facebook censorship [VIDEO]
    • Mark Zuckerberg Will Meet With Conservative Leaders Following Allegations Of Censorship
    • Jeremy Geltzer: Wisconsin played central role in censorship drama

      The First Amendment has come under siege. From free speech zones on college campuses to the battle between Apple and the Department of Justice over digital privacy, media is vulnerable.

      In recent weeks, even movies have been deemed improper. “Deadpool” was banned in Utah, and Houston’s mayor shut down “Vaxxed,” a controversial documentary.

      [...]

      In Madison, a censor board was proposed in 1919, and it was up and running a decade later. Mayor — soon to be governor — Albert Schmedeman led the charge to shut down an edu-exploitation birth control flick called “No More Children” (1929). Other risqué pictures including “What Price Glory” (1926) and “Party Girl” (1930) raised eyebrows in Madison but played on.

    • Publisher’s Facebook page deleted after posting criticism of Turkish government

      Facebook has denied involvement in the deletion of the page of a London-based academic publisher who had published articles that criticised the Turkish government and discussed the outlawed (in Turkey) Kurdistan Workers party.

      The deletion sparked accusations of censorship against the social network, which has often been accused of siding with the Turkish government in battles over free speech. But Facebook says it did not delete the page, and Zed Books has accepted the claim. Both companies say they are trying to discover how the page was removed from the site, and who by.

      Zed Books, an independent publisher founded in 1976, found its Facebook page deleted outright on Tuesday, without any warning or notification. It said its attempts to contact Facebook for an official statement on why its page was removedhad gone unanswered, and that it had been given no timeframe for recovering it. After the Guardian contacted Facebook over the issue, Facebook got in touch with Zed Books, and told the Guardian: “Facebook has not taken Zed Books page down. We are in contact with them to help understand what has happened and to resolve the situation.”

    • Thai exhibit puts spotlight on censorship

      The Nation/Asia News Network–Banning books is a habit with Asian governments, as the art installation “Paradise of the Blind” in Bangkok shows.

      It look like somebody’s shot up all the books in the Reading Room off Silom Road. A second glance reassures you, though, that you’re actually just looking at an art installation.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • This 1 Simple Equation Describes Cybersecurity in a Nutshell [Ed:trying to frame mass surveillance as a science (it’s not)]
    • Privacy fears ‘deterring’ US web users from online shopping

      Almost half of American households with at least one internet user have been “deterred” from online activity recently because of privacy or security concerns, a survey has said.

      Their concerns had stopped them either using online banking or shopping or posting on social media, the survey by a Department of Commerce agency said.

      The study asked 41,000 households about their activity in the past 12 months.

      A US official said mistrust about privacy was causing “chilling effects”.

    • Researchers just released profile data on 70,000 OkCupid users without permission

      A group of researchers has released a data set on nearly 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid. The data dump breaks the cardinal rule of social science research ethics: It took identifiable personal data without permission.

      The information — while publicly available to OkCupid users — was collected by Danish researchers who never contacted OkCupid or its clientele about using it.

      The data, collected from November 2014 to March 2015, includes user names, ages, gender, religion, and personality traits, as well as answers to the personal questions the site asks to help match potential mates. The users hail from a few dozen countries around the world.

    • Pay-for-Privacy Schemes Put the Most Vulnerable Americans at Risk

      The FCC has opened a proceeding on the rules and policies surrounding privacy rights for broadband service. One industry practice called into question in that proceeding could have a devastating impact on our most vulnerable populations.

      Internet service providers charge broadband customers a ton for Internet access. ISPs are increasingly finding new revenue streams too, by taking part in the multibillion-dollar market that’s evolved out of selling users’ personal information to online marketers. As the debate around privacy has heated up, ISPs have tried to placate the public’s growing interest in privacy protections while maintaining revenues they can get when they auction off their customers’ valuable personal information.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The Border That We Keep

      In order to establish a colonial system that would service their interests, the Spanish exploited and oppressed indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. After three centuries of such colonialism, social classes had become firmly institutionalized in Mexico. Class depended on race, birthplace, and also the internalization of racial inferiority. The Spanish even devised different kinds of systems (i.e., Hacienda and Encomienda) so as to regiment social order, marginalize, and subjugate indigenous peoples. One salient point to be made about this time in history, especially given relevance to the state-sponsored racial profiling that occurs along the border today, is that the indigenous persons who appeared to have a more European physiognomy might enjoy some of the elitist benefits that Spanish colonialism had crafted in Mexico. On the other hand, however, those with a more indigenous mien could hardly hope to ascend socially. Instead, they were relegated to what colonial elites considered lesser social classes. Such racism belongs to a five-hundred-year history in which people of Mexican origin, including those along the border, suffered at the hands of the Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Anglo-America and its government. Of course, all of these were foreign powers and had much in common.

    • The New Chauvinists try to defend women – but who will defend us from them?

      Groups such as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have taken up the old banner of chaperoning white womanhood. But nothing about them makes me feel safe.

    • Federal Court Blocks ‘Truth About Torture’ in Ruling on Senate Report

      A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a lawsuit that called for the full release of the U.S. Senate’s report on the CIA’s post-September 11 abuse and torture of detainees.

      The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the report isn’t subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests—ruling against the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit seeking publication of the 6,000-page document.

      “This decision has the disappointing result of keeping the full truth about the CIA torture program from the American public, and we’re considering our options for appeal,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security project.

    • US Planning New Sweep of ‘Reprehensible’ Deportation Raids

      The Obama administration is planning more raids to deport hundreds of Central American mothers and children in May and June, Reuters reported on Thursday.

      It is poised to be the largest sweep this year, following a two-day operation in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina in January. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) said the announcement means the administration “is turning a blind eye to the many serious due process violations” that occurred during previous raids.

    • Is the Pentagon About to Be Forced to Release Damning Torture Photos?

      The Pentagon’s more than decade-long legal battle to continue suppressing a trove of photographs exposing the Bush-era torture at U.S. military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan may have reached a critical juncture on Wednesday.

      During a hearing, the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported, a federal judge expressed frustration over how the Pentagon came to determine that each of 1,800 photos must be suppressed because they supposedly jeopardize national security.

    • Judge criticizes Pentagon suppression of hundreds of Bush-era torture photos

      A federal judge has sharply rebuked the Pentagon for the process by which it concealed hundreds of Bush-era photos showing US military personnel torturing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggesting Barack Obama may have to release even more graphic imagery of abuse.

      Alvin Hellerstein, the senior judge who has presided over a transparency lawsuit for the photos that has lasted more than 12 years, expressed dissatisfaction over the Pentagon’s compliance with an order he issued last year requiring a case-by-case ruling that release of an estimated 1,800 photographs would endanger US troops.

    • ‘Racist McShootface’ Helps Drive Price Of George Zimmerman’s Infamous Gun Up To $65 Million

      George Zimmerman is trying to sell the gun that he used to kill Trayvon Martin to the highest bidder. It’s not going well.

      Zimmerman initially listed the weapon on GunBroker.com. The auction was removed from the site minutes after it began, however. “We want no part in the listing on our web site or in any of the publicity it is receiving,” the site said in a statement.

      [...]

      But Zimmerman’s troubles were just beginning. The bidding on United Gun Group was quickly overwhelmed by trolls including ‘Racist McShootface’ and ‘Weedlord Bonerhitler’ who have helped drive the current price of the gun to over $65 million.

    • Saving the ‘girl child’: the politics of sexual purity and national honour

      Contemporary political activism is frequently geared towards efforts to name and shame nations that ‘fail’ to support and protect ‘their’ girls. This approach emerges clearly in the title of Human Rights Watch’s 2011 report ‘How Come You Allow Little Girls to Get Married?’ Child Marriage in Yemen. Human Rights Watch uses this question, excerpted from a girl’s story in the report, to address and indict the government of Yemen.

    • WATCH: Amy Goodman on CSPAN’s Washington Journal
    • How Orange County Prosecutors Covered Up Rampant Misuse of Jailhouse Informants

      Prosecutorial misconduct and the misuse of jailhouse informants are persistent problems in the criminal justice system. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since 1989 there have been 923 exonerations tied to official misconduct by prosecutors, police, or other government officials,­ 89 of them in cases involving the use of jailhouse snitches. Over the last two years, a scandal involving both has engulfed Orange County, California, exposing systemic violation of defendants’ constitutional rights and calling into question the legality of the prosecution of a number of violent felony cases.

      What makes the Orange County situation particularly troubling is its eerie similarity to another such scandal that unfolded just miles to the north, in Los Angeles County, starting in the late 1970s, and culminated in an exhaustive grand jury report that detailed widespread misuse and abuse of criminal informants and revealed questionable prosecutorial tactics, potentially in more than 200 cases.

    • Success Academy documents point to ‘possible cheating’ among challenges

      Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz did not approve of the finding — made by an “ethnographer” she hired to study her rapidly expanding charter school network — that some teachers at the high-performing network might be responding to the enormous pressure placed on them by cheating.

      So Moskowitz, Success’s combative founder, deployed senior managers to inform the staffer, Roy Germano, that he was banned from visiting schools for the remainder of the year. Moskowitz disparaged Germano to other employees, according to a memo written by Germano in July 2015 and obtained by POLITICO New York, and he was told to halt his research projects immediately.

    • Teachers at New York City’s Biggest Charter School Chain May Be Cheating on Standardized Tests

      “It seems possible if not likely that some teacher cheating is occurring at Success [Academy] on both internal assessments and state exams,” read a memo written last July by Roy Germano, a social scientist who the New York City-based chain hired to assess “questions we never thought to ask” as it was contemplating its continued growth. The memo was obtained byPolitico New York reporter Eliza Shapiro.

    • Six-hour work days do boost productivity. Too bad we can’t try them

      That Americans work too much is something that many Europeans accept as fact. I spent the first 10 years of my career working in the UK and Germany, but often collaborated with coworkers across the Atlantic. My European colleagues and I would raise our eyebrows at emails that we’d receive in the middle of the night from folks who were clearly working well into their evenings. We laughed at voicemails left at 8pm London time, with the preposterous assumption that we’d still be at our desks.

      Relocating to New York at the beginning of 2014, my situation flipped. In a company where the majority of my colleagues were based in Berlin, we did have more vacation days than the average American worker, who gets just a paltry eight. But we sometimes struggled to get work done when my European colleagues would exercise their right to go to the beach for two or three weeks at a time. It felt like those of us who were stateside were doing something wrong.

    • Welcome to 1984

      The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.

      “Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”

    • From the shared futures of the UK & Scottish Labour to the RISE flop, 12 lessons from Scotland’s plodding election

      Labour should have stuck to plan A, but probably would have collapsed anyway. RISE sank. The SNP were dull but solid. The Greens managed to hold it together. And Scotland is still on the road to independence.

    • “More people, more agency”: Turning protests into movements

      It has been almost nine years since we felt the first shockwaves of a meltdown of the global economy triggered by the near collapse of the financial capitalism. In addition, because of the relative decline of the West, including the enduring European crisis – which has mutated from economic to social to political -, re-emerged authoritarian powers like China and Russia are now disputing world hegemony. This can be noticed in different fields, from the commodity trade to land buying in Africa and Latin America, from investments in extractive industries to media swaying through news agencies and global broadcasting networks such as Xinhua or RT. For both powers, crushing any sprout of organised civil society and flexing military muscles have become routine exercises. For citizens living in other places like Turkey and Egypt or now the Philippines, things do not look at all better.

    • These Black Parents Were Charged When Toddlers Shot Themselves—But These White Parents Weren’t

      Comparing those two cases is somewhat problematic, because Indiana — where Shelton lives — and Georgia — where the Coles live — have very different gun laws.

    • Texas Oil Billionaire Jumps on Board With Trump’s Proposal to Ban Muslim Immigrants From the U.S.

      T. Boone Pickens is a billionaire hedge fund manager and oil tycoon whose long-term financial backing of the Bush family included his recent $100,000 donation to the failed campaign of 2016 presidential hopeful Jeb.

      Now, the 87-year-old, who also donated to the campaigns of Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, is emerging as a fervent supporter of fellow billionaire and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, including full embrace of his proposed ban on Muslims.

    • ‘Misconduct, Dishonesty, and Bad Faith’: Joe Arpaio Found in Contempt

      Notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, found guilty in 2013 of racial profiling and violating Latinos’ constitutional rights, has now been found in contempt of court for failing to curtail those practices and in fact flouting the judge’s orders.

      The ruling on Friday from U.S. District Judge Murray Snow “marked one of the biggest legal defeats” in Arpaio’s career, wrote the Associated Press, and was expected to lead to greater court oversight of his office.

    • You Can Get Clearance If You Always Believed in the Fourth Amendment, But Not if You’re a Fourth Amendment Convert

      On Thursday night at 11PM, in advance of an Oversight and Government Reform hearing scheduled at 9AM Friday, James Clapper’s office rolled out a new policy integrating the use of social media in security clearance reviews. Basically, the government can use public social media in making security clearance determinations, but can’t ask for your password, friend you to collect information, or access your non-public social media activity. They additionally claim, implausibly, they won’t keep anything unnecessary to make such determinations.

      Even taking those caveats in good faith, the policy should not be regarded as a risk-free policy, because government bureaucrats don’t have a perfect record with attribution (something National Counterintelligence Director William Evanina admitted in the hearing) and they have a still worse one with irony. Plus, the history of FBI prosecutions of alleged terrorists for RTs suggests they will read certain actions in social media with a certain kind of intent that may not be true.

    • Do You Have Good Posture in the Airport Security Line? Meet the Guy Who Taught the TSA It’s a Clue You’re a Terrorist

      The TSA claims this is “simply the new normal” and blames “record travel volume.”

      According to the Intercept, which obtained a confidential TSA document, the TSA has a list of body language signs that it believes indicates a greater likelihood that a passenger is a terrorist, which include “fidgeting, whistling, sweaty palms …arrogance, a cold penetrating stare, and rigid posture.”

      Behavior Detection Officers are employed to spot these behaviors at airports. The controversial screening program was created by a psychologist, Paul Ekman, who’s been studying behavioral analysis for nearly 50 years.

    • Homeland Security asks for patience as airport security lines grow

      Facing a growing backlash over extremely long airport security lines, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Friday asked fliers “to be patient” as the government takes steps to get them onto planes more quickly.

      Travelers across the country have endured lengthy lines, some snaking up and down escalators, or through food courts, and into terminal lobbies. At some airports, lines during peak hours have topped 90 minutes. Airlines have reported holding planes at gates to wait for passengers to clear security.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • 50 Shades of Grey for Net Neutrality

      This week La Quadrature du Net was invited to participate to a workshop at the ARCEP1 in order to discuss the guidelines in the making by the BEREC and the new regulatory framework concerning Net Neutrality. While stressing the openness of the ARCEP, La Quadrature du Net deeply regrets that on such a crucial subject the negotiations were shadowy, without clear goals and keeping the possibility to by-pass Net Neutrality and thus threaten fundamental liberties.

  • DRM

    • Apple says it doesn’t know why iTunes users are losing their music files

      Apple today acknowledged iTunes users who claim the software deleted their music files, saying it will issue an update to iTunes next week that includes additional safeguards. The company confirmed, in a statement given to iMore, that “in an extremely small number of cases, users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission.” However, Apple was unable to reproduce the bug, indicating it doesn’t really know what’s going on here.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Ex Deep Purple member rocks up 20 years later to register band name as trade mark

        Purple seems to be a popular colour in the world of trade marks. Recently, this Kat reported on Cadbury’s ill-fated attempt to preserve an existing colour mark. Thanks to Katfriend Plamen Ivanov, this Kat has learned of another purple trade mark dispute, this time concerning the word mark ‘Deep Purple’. Deep Purple is the name of a British rock band, formed in 1968. A former member of the band, Richard Blackmore, applied to register ‘Deep Purple’ as a word mark for certain goods and services in class 9, class 25, and class 41. As this Kat will explain, the attempt to register the mark was largely unsuccessful.

    • Copyrights

      • Top programmer describes Android’s nuts and bolts in Oracle v. Google

        The Oracle v. Google trial rolled into its fifth day on Friday, beginning with videotaped deposition testimony from Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Later in the day, a former Sun scientist in charge of open source testified, as well as a key Android programmer.

        The two software giants are in court to resolve a lawsuit that Oracle filed in 2010, accusing Google of infringing copyrights related to 37 Java APIs. An initial ruling was a clean sweep for Google, finding that APIs couldn’t be copyrighted at all, but that result was overturned on appeal. Now Google’s facing a second jury trial, and its only available defense is that its use of Java APIs is “fair use.” Oracle acquired the Java copyrights after buying Sun Microsystems in 2009.

      • MPAA ‘Invests’ Millions in Academic Piracy Research

        Over the course of several years Hollywood’s MPAA has gifted millions of dollars to piracy related academic research. Tax records reveal that most funds have been directed to Carnegie Mellon University, which produced several high-profile studies. According to the most recent filing the university received $1 million in 2014 alone.

      • It’s the 1800s all over again: Free enterprise never really existed before now

        In the years 1791 to about 1850, laws were passed that abolished trade guilds as the permission-givers to run a business. But as we speak of “permissionless innovation” today, and see how these “permissionless” businesses often violate old regulations, we realize that the requirement for a permit to run a business never went away: the government just seized the permission issuance for itself.

      • Here’s a MOUNTAIN of willful-infringement evidence the Oracle v. Google jury won’t see in trial phase one

05.14.16

Links 14/5/2016: GMOME Board of Directors Elections, ZFS Linux Compatibility

Posted in News Roundup at 5:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Linksys WRT routers won’t block open source firmware despite FCC rules

    Linksys has been collaborating with chipmaker Marvell and the makers of OpenWrt to make sure its latest WRT routers can comply with the new rules without blocking open source firmware, company officials told Ars

  • FCC rules won’t kill open source Wi-Fi router firmware after all

    Open source advocates had warned the rules, which require manufacturers to prevent users from using the routers outside of legal frequency and power limits, could spell the end of programmable routers. But Linksys says it will instead store the FCC-regulated parameters outside the reach of configurable firmware.

  • Day of reckoning arrives for BitKeeper’s Larry McVoy

    Eleven years after he rocked the Linux community by withdrawing the non-commercial version of BitKeeper, his source code management system, Larry McVoy has finally been forced to open source the application.

  • Corsa Technology Uses SDN to Traffic-Slice the WAN

    Corsa Technology has been touting its programmable data-plane appliance as a way to implement SDN and OpenFlow. With the introduction of a smaller appliance today, the startup is talking more about a specific use case: virtualization for the metro and WAN networks.

  • Embracing SDN & NFV to Optimize Enterprise Data Center Operations

    Virtualization technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) offer new opportunities for how data centers can manage their IT infrastructures. As networks become more programmable, enterprise data centers can achieve greater agility. SDN and NFV are influencing the convergence of IT, data center, and telecommunications. They give data center managers the flexibility and scalability to anticipate changing market demands and stay ahead of customer expectations.

  • What’s the Difference Between Open-O & OSM?

    It’s ridiculously early in the existences of Open-O and Open Source MANO (OSM), two open source NFV management and network orchestration (MANO) efforts that emerged at almost the same time this year. But it’s not too early to spot differences between the two.

    Specifically, each group hopes to solve different problems. OSM will focus on network service orchestration, which fits on the right-hand (MANO) side of the ETSI NFV MANO diagram (see below). Open-O will expand the scope of its work beyond MANO to include orchestration over the entire network.

  • The Zen of Making: 13 Rules for Creating an Open Source Community
  • Evolution or Revolution? The Impact of Open Source on Communication Providers

    The march toward open source is rapidly turning into an all-out race, with research projects and applications extending to new industry sectors, including communication providers. What started out in the software realm has moved into the hardware space, bringing with it significant changes for providers and vendors alike. Most recently, the Open Compute Project (OCP) and its spin-offs, including the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), have not only reinforced this shift toward open source, but have accelerated the trend.

    The open source approach is about more than just lower costs. Improvements in innovation, reliability, security and flexibility are giving providers greater control of their development roadmap. Importantly, the current roster of projects indicates a strong relationship between the shift to open source and the trend toward virtualization. These projects and initiatives set the stage for communications providers to create new differentiated services and to deploy them quickly.

  • Amazon’s DSSTNE deep learning software now open source

    Amazon has decided to follow in the footsteps of Google and other technology companies by open-sourcing its deep learning software.

    The company has released its deep learning software DSSTNE (pronounced destiny) on GitHub under an open-source Apache license. Deep learning has gained a lot of traction in recent months and many tech companies are currently developing their own software to help teach computers.

    Around five months ago, Google made its own deep learning library TensorFlow open-source as well. Amazon included a frequently asked questions page along with its library to explain why it has decided to open-source DSSTNE: “We are releasing DSSTNE as open source software so that the promise of deep learning can extend beyond speech and language understanding and object recognition to other areas such as search and recommendations. We hope that researchers around the world can collaborate to improve it. But more importantly, we hope that it spurs innovation in many more areas”.

    Amazon’s deep learning software does have its limitations and currently it is unable to support convolutional workloads for image recognition and has limited support for recurrent neural networks. However, the software is able to utilize two graphics processing units (GPUs) simultaneously which other frameworks are unable to do.

  • Cloud Native Computing Foundation to Support Open Source Prometheus Platform

    The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has announced it is adding a second platform to its cloud native technologies initiative. The group’s first hosted project was Kubernetes and now it is adding the Prometheus platform, which offers an open source time series and metrics tool inspired by Google’s internal monitoring tools (Borgmon).

  • Google Opens Up What it Bills as the World’s Best Language Parser
  • Google makes its most powerful language engine ‘Parsey McParseface’ open-source
  • Google Open-Sources Neural Network Framework And Powerful Language Parser For Smarter AI: Meet Parsey McParseface

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

    • All Things Graph: Computing vs. Analytics vs. Transactions
    • Comparing graph with other database technologies

      Today’s cloud applications are intensely multi-faceted where data management is concerned. The data flowing through these applications is complex, ever-changing, large in volume, and highly connected.

      The number of data relationships coupled with the data distribution, scale, performance, volume, and uptime requirements of the application are not a fit for a relational database. However, these requirements are addressed natively by a graph database that possesses scale-out and active-everywhere capabilities.

    • Apache Spark Heavyweights Make Their Next Moves

      Two of the most prominent companies advancing the Apache Spark Big Data toolset are out with new releases. MapR has announced the immediate availability of Apache Spark 1.6.1 on the MapR Converged Data Platform. The company also noted that the free, online Spark On Demand Training (ODT) courses via MapR Academy have achieved the highest course enrollment rate since the ODT program’s initial launch.

  • Databases

    • Fifteen years with phpMyAdmin and free software

      Today it’s fifteen years from my first contribution to free software. I’ve changed several jobs since that time, all of them involved quite a lot of free software and now I’m fully working on free software.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Upcoming Features of LibreOffice 5.2

      The Document Foundation is currently planning on the release of the next major version of the LibreOffice open-source and cross-platform office suite, LibreOffice 5.2.

      And, in the good tradition of our “Upcoming features of” series of articles, and because more new features have been unveiled already for the upcoming LibreOffice 5.2 release, we thought that it will be a good idea to keep you guys in the loop and let you know what is to be expected from the LibreOffice 5.2 office suite.

    • Italian Military Goes LibreOffice, HBO Abuses DMCA & More…

      The Italian military is saving $43 million by migrating to LibreOffice. It’s finally beginning to seem as if the entire world is beginning to understand that in most cases proprietary software is a waste of money. We can now add the Italian military to our list of those who’ve wised up. We learned in September that the military was planing on dropping its use of MS Office entirely in favor of LibreOffice. On Wednesday, we learned that the migration is underway, with 5,000 workstations already running FOSS’ flagship office suite.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC Plugin Infrastructure Still Being Worked On For The Linux Kernel

      As part of the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative, kernel developers continue working on a GCC plugin infrastructure for use by the Linux kernel with this code originally developed by the GrSecurity/PaX maintainers.

      This GCC plugin infrastructure is about providing extra features to the compiler, such as for runtime instrumentation and static analysis. The code they’re working on for the Linux kernel supports GCC 4.5 and newer for this feature of adding extra functionality to the kernel.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Perl 5.24 upgrade
    • Avoiding common hang-ups in DevOps pipelines

      This is not surprising; getting a basic continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) process to work correctly is difficult and takes time. Ideally, there is always some type of source control management (SCM) solution, build server and application platform for app deployment. Hooking these components together can be nontrivial.

    • Ben Rady’s Serverless Single Page Apps (The Pragmatic Programmers)

      Readers of Rady’s book will skip over building an application server, avoid messing around with middle-tier infrastructure and get right to the Web app their customers want. Using a Web browser, a prepared workspace and an editor, readers learn the fundamental technologies behind modern single-page apps and use Web standards to create lean Web applications that can take advantage of the newest technologies.

    • devRant — Here’s The Ultimate App That Every Developer Must Use

      devRants is an app that was created specifically for developers who want to laugh at things happening around them, vent their frustration and move on. I’m sure that you’ll love this different kind of lighthearted community. Happy ranting!

Leftovers

  • I Am His Hands. He Is My Eyes.

    Enough slime this week. Now meet two men from the Chinese village of Yeli who have made the most of it. Jia Haixia is blind; his best friend Jia Wenqi lost his arms as a child. Since 2002, they have spent their days planting trees for the environment and for future generations. Despite their respective hardships, they say, “When we work together, two become one.” At first, the village was skeptical the men could overcome what was “a wasteland.” Today, their over 10,000 new trees guard the village “like green soldiers.” “Planting trees has become an important mission of ours,” says Haixia. “It may be hard financially, but we’re so delighted spiritually.” Humanity may yet prevail.

  • Science

    • Exxon’s Lawyer in Climate Science Probe Has History Helping Big Tobacco and NFL Defend Against Health Claims

      Ted Wells, an attorney hired by ExxonMobil to represent the company against accusations it lied about the climate risks of burning fossil fuels, also represented the tobacco industry in the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, DeSmog has found. Wells also defended the National Football League (NFL) in the infamous “Deflategate” matter as well as in litigation over the far more serious issue of concussions.

      Wells has represented ExxonMobil since at least December 2015, following New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s announcement that his office would probe Exxon’s role in funding climate change denial despite its long-held understanding and pioneering research into climate change.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Is the EPA Being Pressured on Atrazine? New Findings of Environmental Concerns about Syngenta’s Crop Chemical Removed from EPA Site

      The Environmental Protection Agency released a very troubling preliminary risk assessment that the routine use of the chemical atrazine is likely harming animals and our ecosystems.

      Atrazine is manufactured and distributed by Syngenta, a foreign global chemical company, that markets the product in the U.S. to limit plants that may compete with commodity crops or would be considered weeds on golf courses.

      The EPA memo that was released was hand-signed by six scientists in the U.S. government’s Environmental Risk Branch of the Environmental Fate and Effects Division. The 500+ page study was co-authored by Dr. Frank T. Farrugia, Colleen M. Rossmeisl, Dr. James A. Hetrick, and Melanie Biscoe, and was subject to peer review by twelve other scientists.

      Its top-line findings are “based on the results from hundreds of toxicity studies on the effects of atrazine on plants and animals, over 20 years of surface water monitoring data, and higher tier aquatic exposure models.”

    • Ex-Health minister under fire over switch to private healthcare firm

      The Deputy Mayor of Helsinki responsible for Health and social care has quit her job and announced she is moving to a leading role at a private healthcare firm. Laura Räty, who served as a Health minister in the last government, has rejected claims of a possible conflict of interest.

    • Tests in Illinois Town Show Lead Problem Extends Beyond Flint

      This railroad town promotes its ties to Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and the poet Carl Sandburg. But Galesburg’s long history also shows in a hidden way: Aging pipes have been leaking lead into the drinking water for decades.

      Blood tests show cause for concern. One in 20 children under the age of 6 in Knox County had lead levels exceeding the state standard for public health intervention, a rate six times higher than the Illinois average, in 2014.

    • High Lead Levels Found in Water Systems Across Illinois: Report

      Nearly 200 public water systems in Illinois, which serve over 800,000 people, exceeded Environmental Protection Agency lead standards during at least one year since 2004, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

      Federal officials are also encouraging local officials to supply bottled water or filters to affected residents in downstate Galesburg, which has faced repeated problems with lead-contaminated water.

    • You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know Hunt is getting the NHS wrong – this week, everyone does!

      MPs are waking up to the scale of the unnecessary destruction being wrought on the NHS. But with local NHS leaders now told to choose between sacrificing services or their careers, will it be too late?

    • Whistleblower Fired for Exposing Flint Mayor’s Plan to Take Water Donations

      Every time the Flint, Mich., water crisis seems to have finally hit rock bottom, a new development tosses that assumption out the window. A lawsuit filed this week claims Flint city administrator Natasha Henderson was fired by Mayor Karen Weaver unjustly, but why?

      According to Henderson’s lawyer, her dismissal came after becoming aware of allegations that Mayor Weaver had been instructing her staff to redirect donor funds to the mayor’s PAC — not the actual campaign aimed at helping Flint families.

      The suit asserts City Administrator Natasha Henderson was approached by a city employee “in tears” with fears of going to jail. She told Henderson that Weaver had specifically ordered her and a volunteer to show would-be donors, step by step, how to contribute to the “Karenabout Flint” fund, rather than the official Safe Water/Safe Homes charity.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • Friday’s security updates
    • I never imagined a nuclear plant’s control system being online

      Many people think that the web is the internet. They see the Googles, the Facebooks, the Reddits… but the web is something built on top of the internet and so only the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is composed of webcams, power plants, printers… billions of devices.

    • Heart Surgery Stalled For Five Minutes Thanks To Errant Anti-Virus Scan [Ed: Microsoft Windows]

      If you’ve ever had the pleasure of simply asking one medical outfit to transfer your records to another company or organization, you’ve probably become aware of the sorry state of medical IT. Billions are spent on medical hardware and software, yet this is a sector for which the fax machine remains the pinnacle of innovation and a cornerstone of daily business life. Meanwhile, getting systems to actually communicate with each other appears to be a bridge too far. And this hodge podge of discordant and often incompatible systems can very often have very real and troubling implications for patients.

    • How to make containers more secure

      CoreOS’s Matthew Garrett talks about the security risks in containers and how he and others are working to mitigate such risks.

    • Docker Ramps Up Container Security

      Docker this week announced the rollout of security scanning technology to safeguard container content across the entire software supply chain.

    • Jenkins security patches could break plug-ins

      Popular open source automation server Jenkins has fixed multiple security vulnerabilities. The latest version changes how plug-ins use build parameters, though, so developers will need to adapt to the new process.

    • Security From Whom?

      To take advantage of the X11 protocol issues, you need to be able to speak X11 to the server. Assuming you haven’t misconfigured something (ssh or your file permissions) so other users’ software can talk to your server, that means causing you to run evil X11 protocol code like XEvilTeddy.

    • Convenience, security and freedom – can we pick all three?

      Moxie, the lead developer of the Signal secure communication application, recently blogged on the tradeoffs between providing a supportable federated service and providing a compelling application that gains significant adoption. There’s a set of perfectly reasonable arguments around that that I don’t want to rehash – regardless of feelings on the benefits of federation in general, there’s certainly an increase in engineering cost in providing a stable intra-server protocol that still allows for addition of new features, and the person leading a project gets to make the decision about whether that’s a valid tradeoff.

    • Announcing Certbot: EFF’s Client for Let’s Encrypt
    • Signal Return Orientated Programming attacks

      When a process is interrupted, the kernel suspends it and stores its state in a sigframe which is placed on the stack. The kernel then calls the appropriate signal handler code and after a sigreturn system call, reads the sigframe off the stack, restores state and resumes the process. However, by crafting a fake sigframe, we can trick the kernel into executing something else.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • US Army Chaplain Resigns in Protest Over Drones, ‘Policy of Unaccountable Killing’

      An Army chaplain has resigned in protest over the United States “policy of unaccountable killing” through drone warfare and the nation’s continued investment into nuclear weapons, which “threaten the existence of humankind and the earth.”

      In his letter sent April 12, 2016 to President Barack Obama, Rev. John Antal, a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Rock Tavern, New York, wrote, “The Executive Branch continues to claim the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any tie, for secret reasons, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials.”

      Antal served as a chaplain from September 2012 to February 2013 at the Kandahar Airbase in southern Afghanistan. “While deployed,” he wrote in Feb. 2015 a the Times Herald-Record, “I concluded our drone strikes disproportionately kill innocent people.”

    • LBJ’s ‘X’ File on Nixon’s ‘Treason’

      The 1968 election had one shocking turn after another, but its final and arguably worst twist – still largely unknown to Americans – traded untold death in Vietnam for political power in Washington, Robert Parry wrote in 2012.

      By Robert Parry (Originally published on March 3, 2012)

    • The Ghosts of ’68 Haunt the Election of 2016

      A slender, long-forgotten work of fiction foresees the rage and frustration of Donald Trump’s America.

    • Ghosts of ’68 in Election 2016

      In the midst of all this, civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and riots erupt across the cities of the United States. Two months later, Kennedy is murdered in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel just minutes after winning the California primary.

    • The US in Korea: Lessons Lost, Lessons Learned

      With the American public’s limited attention span for international affairs tied up by fears of ISIS (also known as Daesh), intractable wars in the Middle East and unease about Putin’s Russia, Obama’s much-touted Asia-Pacific pivot frequently gets third or fourth billing on the foreign policy marquee.

      The “pivot” (also called the “Indo-Asia-Pacific Rebalance”) is centered on exerting a greater US economic, diplomatic and military influence in the world’s most populous and economically vibrant region.

      But on the Korean peninsula, even as the United States bolsters its military posture with more troops, training and weapons, US politicians and the public view the standoff with North Korea without fully knowing or considering important historical realities and potential opportunities.

    • Apologize for Nagasaki?

      This monumental crime marked the U.S as the only nation to use nuclear weapons on civilian populations. It was perpetrated to demonstrate unassailable U.S. power to the world and especially to the Soviet Union in the post-WWII era. The purpose was clear, as Gar Alperovitz and numerous other historians have shown. with abundant primary source research.

    • U.S. Hypocrisy: Front and Center, as Always

      In its never-ending need to flex military muscle around the world, the United States, not content with creating chaos in the Middle East, has now decided to bait China. If ever a country was itching to start World War III, the U.S. seems to be that country.

      Let us look at the current situation, and see not only the U.S.’s typical saber-rattling, but its astounding hypocrisy as well.

    • The GOP’s Veil of Unity

      McCain’s military service was a profile in courage; what he’s doing now is not. Leaving aside the personal insult, McCain has spent his career advocating a muscular foreign policy. His has been one of the loudest and most persistent voices arguing that more U.S. troops be sent to Syria and Iraq. Trump, by contrast, has proclaimed an “America first” doctrine that focuses resources on solving problems at home. Trump has even expressed deep skepticism about NATO, which has been the cornerstone of the West’s security architecture for more than half a century.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Fires in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula

      Suomi NPP’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument captured a look at the fire and the smoke generated by numerous fires burning over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Actively burning areas detected by VIIRS are outlined in red. February to May is the dry season in this part of the world, and these fires may be intentional agricultural fires set by people to prepare for the upcoming growing season, or they may be accidental forest fires.

    • The Coal vs. Fracking Canard

      It’s not coal versus fracking that we should be debating; it’s fossil fuels versus renewables.

    • Colorado Legalizes Rain Barrels

      Until Thursday when Governor John Hickenlooper signed a bill legalizing rain barrels, it was a crime to catch and use rainwater in the state of Colorado. That’s right — the state legalized recreational use of marijuana before a commonplace water conservation tool.

      Yesterday, Coloradans gathered at the bill-signing event to celebrate this win for water-conscious consumers.

    • Another Reason to Keep It in the Ground: Shell Spills 90,000 Gallons of Oil Into the Gulf of Mexico

      In case you needed another reason to join the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground, Shell Oil is here to give you one. Yesterday, the company spilled nearly 90,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

    • ‘Status Quo’: Shell Spews Nearly 90,000 Gallons of Oil into Gulf of Mexico in Latest Spill

      Royal Dutch Shell’s offshore drilling operations were pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, ultimately releasing nearly 90,000 gallons of oil into the water off the Louisiana coast.

      [....]

      The company said the spill was spotted above an underwater pipeline system, although specific details regarding the leak’s cause were not made public.

    • Break Free from Fossil Fuels for Our Collective Survival

      My name is Arianne Kassman. I am a Pacific Climate Warrior from Papua New Guinea. I want to tell you about why it’s important for my people, and for the Pacific, that fossil fuels remain in the ground.

      I am fourth generation Tatana, a descendent of a strong beautiful woman called Dihanai. I carry the name of her daughter Philomena’s husband and my Great Grandfather Arien. My Great Grandfather worked as a Plantation Manager and together with his eldest son, Allan, he worked in two villages called Pinu and Obo. He was a fair, honest and hard-working man; this earned him great respect among the local labourers from Pinu village, and in turn, was gifted Toutu Village. This is where both my maternal grandparents are laid to rest.

      Last week marked one year since my family laid my grandmother to rest in the village, and so to commemorate that, we travelled to the village to celebrate her life with a Holy Mass. As I sat at their grave sides last Sunday, I was overcome with joy and peace being surrounded by family.

    • Climate Actions Underway Worldwide for Final Days of Break Free 2016

      ‘Climate change is a global problem, and we need global resistance to make sure fossil fuels remain in the ground’

    • No, Humans Are Not Like ‘Slowly Boiling Frogs’

      It’s as hard to kill the boiling frog metaphor as it is to kill an actual boiling frog.

      Even though people keep saying that the slow human response to climate change makes us “like the proverbial frog in boiling water” — or that “the Universal Windows Platform is like Facebook and a boiling frog” — the metaphor/simile is not merely a cliché. It isn’t even accurate.

      Since May 13 is Frog Jumping Day — and since just two weeks ago was “Save The Frogs” Day — it seems like a good time to explain once again why this cliché should be retired.

    • Canadian PM Arrives in Fire-Ravaged Fort McMurray

      Canada’s Prime Minister arrived in wildfire-ravaged Fort McMurray on Friday and after taking a helicopter tour to assess the damage said he doesn’t think most Canadians comprehend yet the scope of what happened in the oil sands capital, where more than 88,000 people were forced to evacuate.

      Just Trudeau arrived in the northern Alberta city almost two weeks after a massive wildfire ignited, tearing through the isolated region and surrounding areas, causing several oil sands operations to shut down. Alberta officials say they will have a plan within two weeks for getting residents back into their homes.

  • Finance

    • Washington Coup in Brazil? Was Incoming President US Embassy Informant?

      Adding to suspicions of a US role in the ouster of independent-minded Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff is a revelation making the rounds today that Michel Temer, the opposition leader who will step in as interim president, had met with US embassy officials in Sau Paulo to provide his assessment and spin on the domestic political situation in Brazil. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have the US embassy cable that resulted from the incoming president’s visit to US political officers.

      Acting president Temer will hold office for up to six months while impeached president Rousseff stands trial in the Brazilian senate. If her impeachment is finalized by a two-thirds vote, Temer will remain in office until elections in 2018.

    • Brazil’s First Female President Has Just Been Suspended, And The New Cabinet Is All Men

      On Thursday, Brazil’s Senate voted after an all-night debate to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and begin an impeachment trial. Rousseff, the country’s first female president, has been replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, who immediately unveiled a new cabinet entirely devoid of women or people of color.

    • With Rousseff Out, Brazil’s Interim President Installs Conservative All-White, All-Male Cabinet

      Brazil’s former vice president, Michel Temer, assumed power as interim president Thursday after the country’s Senate voted to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and begin impeachment proceedings over accusations she tampered with accounts in order to hide a budget shortfall. Rousseff called the move a coup. Temer is a member of the opposition PMDB party and has been implicated in Brazil’s massive corruption scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras. He was sworn in Thursday along with a new Cabinet that is all white and all men, making this the first time since 1979 that no women have been in the Cabinet. We are joined from Rio de Janeiro by Andrew Fishman, researcher and reporter for The Intercept, who discusses the role of the United States in protests against Rousseff, and the background of Temer’s new Cabinet members.

    • Bank Lobby Takes Aim at Last Remaining House Republican Who Backed Dodd-Frank

      The American Bankers Association, a lobby group for the banking industry, this week used a subsidiary called the Fund for Economic Growth to pour $50,000 into campaign advertisements in support of Taylor Griffin, a candidate seeking to unseat Jones in the Republican primary on June 7.

    • MPs Protest against Government’s Decision on Possible Privatisation of Major Companies

      Yesterday’s decision by the government that some companies might be privatised causes strong reactions in Parliament.

      Yesterday’s telephone session of the government, at which the government decided to remove eight companies from the list of strategically important state-owned companies which cannot be privatised, prompted on Thursday many members of Parliament to express their strong disapproval, reports Index.hr on May 12, 2016.

    • Trump Says His Tax Rate Is No One’s Business

      Donald Trump says he doesn’t keep money in Swiss banks or offshore accounts and his tax rate is no one’s business.

    • ‘A Corporate Agenda Is Really What’s Driving the Process’

      Corporate media talk about trade pacts, which have little to do at this point with actual trade, but the coverage is generally pretty thin and vague, perhaps in part because for corporate media, corporate globalization is simply inevitable. If the horse-trading of livelihoods and lives for markets is unseemly, well, let’s not try to take too close a look.

      The leak of a draft of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, by Greenpeace Netherlands may have thrown a wrench in that deal’s inevitability, though media’s interpretation of the document’s meaning will play a role there. So what’s in and what’s not in the TTIP, according to these revelations? We’re joined now by Karen Hansen-Kuhn, director of trade, technology and global governance at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Karen Hansen-Kuhn.

    • Trade Deals and the Environmental Crisis

      With the release of leaked documents from the TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) ‘trade’ deal Greenpeace framed its conclusions more diplomatically than I will: the actions of the U.S. political leadership undertaken at the behest of American corporate ‘leaders’ and their masters in the capitalist class make it among the most profoundly destructive forces in human history. At a time when environmental milestones pointing to irreversible global warming are being reached on a daily basis, the U.S. political leadership’s response is to pronounce publicly that it favors environmental resolution while using ‘trade’ negotiations to assure that effective resolution never takes place.

    • Where’s the corruption Mr Cameron? Look behind you!

      Cameron’s bizarre pantomime routine with the Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a couple of nervous court jesters having a go at the former colonies was the perfect platform for today’s anti-corruption celebration of British-ness. And he will not be worried about the fallout. He has the force of international (elite) opinion behind him. Despite the panama papers revelations that implicated huge numbers of British-owned shell companies in British Overseas Territories and British Crown Dependencies, he can still plausibly claim that corruption is not Britain’s problem, but the rest of the world’s. After all, he has the league tables to prove it.

      In January of this year it was reported that the UK was now the 10th least corrupt country in Transparency International’s benchmark Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). It was a remarkable rise up the charts from 2010, David Cameron’s first year of office, when Britain was in 20th place. Robert Barrington, the head of Transparency International UK qualified the result by pointing our there “good reasons why people are skeptical about whether Britain really merits a top 10 ranking”.

    • Economic Update: False Economic Recovery, True Journalism

      This episode provides updates on “carrried interest” tax loopholes, state subsidies for businesses, negative interest rates and bank “bail-ins” versus “bailouts.” Finally, we interview reporter Bob Hennelly about the United States’ false economic recovery and dissolving society, and real journalism.

    • Hillary thinks America’s great. Why don’t you?

      How can Hillary Clinton be so out of touch with the concerns of working-class people and be so sure she can run the country?

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Anatomy of a Propaganda Blitz

      We live in a time when state-corporate interests are cooperating to produce propaganda blitzes intended to raise public support for the demonisation and destruction of establishment enemies.

    • Sanders’ Wins In West Virginia, Indiana Prove He Should Fight To The Convention

      Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won a landslide victory in West Virginia on May 10, beating Hillary Clinton by fifteen points. With that victory, Sanders has won 19 state primaries, and his campaign is now in a position to do very well in the remaining primaries.

      West Virginia is a state, where Clinton crushed Obama and won by over 40 points in 2008. This time around she lost by double digits.

      About 18 pledged delegates were awarded to Sanders while 11 pledged delegates were awarded to Clinton. It brought the number of pledged delegates Sanders needs to bypass her in the pledged delegate count down to approximately 280 pledged delegates.

    • Post-truth politicians such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are no joke

      In this era of post-truth politics, an unhesitating liar can be king. The more brazen his dishonesty, the less he minds being caught with his pants on fire, the more he can prosper. And those pedants still hung up on facts and evidence and all that boring stuff are left for dust, their boots barely laced while the lie has spread halfway around the world.

      The proof is on show most visibly in the US, where Republican nominee-to-be Donald Trump enjoys a relationship to the truth that is chilly, occasional and distant. The Washington Post’s fact-checker blog has awarded its maximum dishonesty rating – four Pinocchios – to nearly 70% of the Trump statements it has vetted. And it’s vetted a lot. That doesn’t mean the other 30% turned out to be true. They just earned three Pinocchios rather than the full four, which means the Post found a shrivelled kernel of veracity wrapped inside the thick layers of fraud, distortion and deception.

    • Two very different Donalds, one White House goal
    • Could Trump presidency close down Washington?

      Donald Trump’s campaign for the nomination showed an intimidating style. He attaches ugly labels to those who compete with him — and then announces that the other guy “started it.”

    • Immigrant Advocates Deliver Taco Bowls To GOP Lawmakers Who Support Donald Trump

      The presumptive GOP nominee has made inflammatory remarks characterizing Latino immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. He also favors deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country; stripping away an executive action issued by President Obama that would grant temporary work authorization and deportation relief to certain undocumented immigrants; and banning Muslim immigrants from entering the country. And though Trump’s rhetoric has inspired some of his supporters to become violent toward Latinos and immigrants, the presidential nominee has yet to condemn those acts.

    • Democrats, Too Clever by Half on Clinton

      Indeed, some Democrats reportedly are slipping into panic mode as they watch Clinton’s poll numbers tank and the Republican Party come to grips with the Trump phenomenon. The new storyline of Campaign 2016 is the tale of top Republicans reconciling to Trump’s populist conquest of the party. At least, these GOP leaders acknowledge, Trump has excited both average Republicans and many independents.

    • NYT’s Glass Is Half Full of Half-Truths

      Easterbrook is particularly upset about progressive pessimism. “In recent decades, progressives drank too deeply of instant-doomsday claims. If their predictions had come true…crop failures would be causing mass starvation.” According to the UN World Food Programme, malnutrition kills more than 3 million children a year. I guess that’s not mass enough for him.

    • Why Bernie Sanders Should Stay in the Race—and How He Can Win

      Make no mistake: Settling for Hillary Clinton means abandoning the political revolution that Bernie Sanders has inspired. It means unconditional surrender after overcoming many obstacles in a rigged primary. That’s why the revolution must continue through November and beyond, and the Vermont senator’s supporters must urge him to keep fighting.

    • The BBC may soon be unable to compete

      The requirement for output to be “distinctive”, coupled with the growth of media consortia, could force the BBC out of the game.

    • What is the vision behind the BBC White Paper?

      After weeks of rumour and speculation about an imminent assault on the BBC the publication of the White Paper on the corporation’s future has been seen by some as anti-climactic. But while the headlines have been restrained, the document makes several suggestions that would have a significant impact on the corporation, including major changes to governance, programming and the mission statement. Last night The Media Society hosted a discussion about the paper, unpacking its key points and asking how they might unfold in the long-term.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Yes, Facebook’s Algorithm Is Biased. So Is Literally Everything.

      Facebook news curators elevate stories based on whether the world’s top 10 media organizations — CNN, BBC, Fox News, the Guardian, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Yahoo — are covering them. They follow a style guide and dismiss certain topics or keywords, either permanently or temporarily, if they are redundant or can’t be tied to an actual news event. All of this is done in addition to Facebook using an algorithm to find top trending stories.

    • Zuckerberg: Facebook investigating censorship claim [Ed: mentioned before]

      Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is investigating claims it censored news reports with conservative viewpoints.

    • Is Facebook Lying?

      Did Facebook lie publicly about how it determines which stories to put in its trending news module?

      The company has been under intense fire since a Gizmodo investigation earlier this week that alleged the company has a liberal news bias. In response, Facebook vehemently denied the accusations and released what it says are the current guidelines for its trending news section.

      However these guidelines, and a set of older training documents leaked to The Guardian, appear to show that Facebook lied or misrepresented the truth to journalists.

      The documents appear to conflict with previous statements from the company assuring that algorithms—not humans—select what you see in your news feed, and that its curators never “inject” stories into the trending tool.

    • A long talk with Facebook about its role in journalism

      If consumers’ embrace of the format was easy to predict — who enjoys waiting for a website to load? — publishers’ feelings about Instant Articles were harder to gauge. The run-up to launch was met with tremendous anxiety among some publishers as they grappled with two realities: one, the majority of their audience is consuming news on Facebook; and two, allowing Facebook to host their articles directly meant giving up some control over their appearance and the ads that could run inside them. More than one publisher worried Facebook’s end game was to get publishers “hooked” on the format and then demand an ever-growing share of their ad revenue.

    • Mark Zuckerberg Promises an Investigation Into Facebook Trending Topics

      The social network denies accusations that conservative media is suppressed on its trending list

    • Politician recites bestiality poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in German parliament

      A German politician has ignited a diplomatic row between his country and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by reading out a poem suggesting he likes fornicating with goats.

      Detlef Seif, a backbench member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party, quoted extensively from the controversial poem which also implies Mr Erdogan enjoys child porn, kicking Kurdish people and attacking Christians in his spare time.

      When the poem was first performed by German comedian Jan Böhmermann in April it sparked a diplomatic row between Ankara and Berlin as Mr Erdogan’s demanded he be arrested under the terms of an out-of-date German law which forbids insulting foreign leaders.

      Ms Merkel gave in to the demand and the comedian is now facing prosecution and up to five years in prison.

    • Turkey’s Erdogan Clears Path to Dictatorship

      The ouster of Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu marks another troubling milestone in President Erdogan’s consolidation of dictatorial power, a development that Alon Ben-Meir sees as further enflaming the region.

    • Egyptians Are Using Selfies To Send A Powerful Message About Government Censorship

      Thousands of Egyptian citizens are proving that selfies are more than just fun — they can also send an important political message. In response to crackdowns on political dissent, recent social media posts are asking the government, “Does a mobile phone camera shake you?”

      The protest was sparked by an incident earlier this week in which five members of a satirical group called Atfal al-Shawarea (Street Children) were arrested for mocking the country’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a selfie-style video. The group members are reportedly being investigated for “inciting protests.”

    • Total Croatia News Announces Affiliate Partnership with Index on Censorship

      An interntional affiliate partnership for TCN on May 13, 2016, as we team up with London-based Index on Censorship to cooperate on the documentation of declining press freedom in Croatia.

    • MPAA Signs Anti-Piracy Deal With Large Domain Registry

      The MPAA has signed its first anti-piracy partnership with a domain name registry outside the United States. The Hollywood group will act as a “trusted notifier,” helping Radix, Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant, to prevent pirate sites from using their domain names.

    • Leaked EU Draft Reveals Geo-Blocking Can Stay For Video

      Excitement over the European Commission’s plans to abolish geo-blocking and filtering restrictions across EU member states is in jeopardy following the publication of a leaked draft. The 34-page document proposes exceptions for audio-visual content, meaning that services like Netflix would be excluded.

    • A Document With a Mission

      The introduction is a reiteration of Zionist slogans. It purports to set out the historical facts, and very dubious facts they are.

      For example, it starts with the words “Eretz Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped.”

      Well, not quite. I was taught at school that God promised Abraham the land while still in Mesopotamia. The 10 Commandments were given to us by God personally on Mount Sinai, which is in Egypt. The more important of the two Talmuds was written in Babylon. True, the Hebrew Bible was composed in the country, but most of the religious texts of Judaism were written in “exile”.

    • A Palestinian Perspective on Britain’s ‘Anti-Semitic’ Controversy

      There is a witch-hunt in the British Labour Party. Britain’s Opposition party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is being hounded for not rooting out alleged anti-Semitism in his party. Those leading the charge are pro-Israel Zionists and their supporters within the party, members who are mostly allied with the former Prime Minister, the largely discredited pro-war Tony Blair. The Blairites are quite unhappy that Corbyn, who won the party’s leadership election last September with a landslide victory is a non-elitist politician, with a deep-rooted grassroots activist past, and, yes, a strong stance for Palestinian rights.

    • Censorship Of Media Dampens Burgeoning Filmmakers In Arab World
    • Arab Filmmakers Strive For Wider Audience Reach On Both Local And International Fronts

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Security clearances in the age of social media

      Of the roughly 323 million citizens of the United States, more than four million hold federal security clearances. An even smaller number of these individuals hold the highest clearances. They are simultaneously the most trusted—and some of the most scrutinized—individuals in the world. Until now, that scrutiny generally stopped where the real and virtual worlds coalesce: social media.

    • Prep for next-gen encryption should start yesterday

      The National Institute of Standards and Technology is getting nervous about quantum computers and what they might mean for the cryptographic systems that protect both public and private data. Once seen as far off — if not borderline science fiction — quantum computing now seems a much closer reality.

      A few days ago, IBM announced that students, researchers and “general science enthusiasts” can now use a cloud-based, 5-quibit quantum computing platform, which it calls the IBM Quantum Experience, to see how algorithms and various experiments work with a quantum processor.

    • FBI Questions Veracity Of Emails It Released To FOIA Requester While Defending Refusal To Discuss Hacking Efforts

      The FBI has entered its explanation for its declaration that it won’t discuss the NIT (Network Investigative Technique) in open court or with the defense — no matter what. Its decision to run a child porn website for two weeks while it deployed the NIT has backfired immensely, resulting in successful challenges of the warrant and the evidence obtained. For the most part, the NIT warrant used by the FBI has been declared invalid because it violates Rule 41′s limitations on deployment: a warrant obtained in Virginia can’t be used to search computers located in other jurisdictions.

      The FBI says it will only discuss the NIT with the judge in an ex parte in camera proceeding, cutting the defense entirely out of the loop. It also argues against the defendant’s portrayal of the agency as inherently untrustworthy, what with its long history of hiding information from the courts, starting with its Stingray NDAs.

    • FBI Response To FOIA Request About Whether It Is Hacking Your Amazon Echo: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      We’ve talked in the past about how claims of dangerous silence from certain law enforcement and intelligence groups within the American government are so much the crying of “wolf!” As some will decry the use of security tools like encryption, or other privacy tools, the fact is that the so-called “internet of things” industry has created what is essentially an invited-in army of confidential informants. Domestic surveillance, once a time-consuming, laborious, and difficult task for those doing the spying has since become laughably easy by relative standards. One can imagine J. Edgar Hoover having to change his trousers if he learned exactly to what degree Americans today have accepted hackable or easily-compromised cameras and microphones into our homes, so excited would he be.

      In this era, then, it would seem the public buying these IoT products would have an interest in learning if their government is using those products against them in this way. In large part, it seems that the government ain’t telling. Take the Amazon Echo, for instance, a device with a microphone that is voice-activated to play your favorite music, tell you the weather, read you the latest news, *cough*-let the government spy on you-*cough*, tells you the traffic, and reads you your audiobook– wait, what was that government spying thing? Is that for real?

    • FBI Hid Surveillance Devices Around Alameda County Courthouse

      Federal agents planted hidden microphones and conducted secret video surveillance at Alameda County’s Rene C. Davidson Courthouse for ten months, despite having no court warrant. The surveillance operation was part of an investigation into alleged bid rigging at foreclosed property auctions where thousands of houses and apartment buildings were sold by banks. But defense attorneys for some of the individuals accused say the FBI’s surveillance tactics violated their clients’ constitutional rights, and everyone else whose conversations might have been captured on tape.

      One of the people recorded by the hidden surveillance devices was Michael Marr, the East Bay landlord who is at the center of our feature story in this week’s edition of the Express. Marr and his business associates frequently attended the foreclosure auctions. They bought hundreds of properties, many of them in Oakland, but were indicted in November 2014 on charges that they conspired to rig the auctions. Marr’s case is now being heard in federal court. He has pleaded innocent.

    • FBI Found To Be Harvesting Surreptitious Recordings Around Two Other California Courthouses

      Earlier this year, the FBI was catching heat for some undersupervised and overly-broad surveillance it deployed around the San Mateo courthouse in California. Hoping to catch conversations related to suspected bid-rigging during real estate auctions, the FBI scattered hidden microphones around the courthouse steps where the auctions took place.

      The defendants’ legal representation raised hell, claiming the surreptitious recordings violated their clients’ rights. After all, the Supreme Court had declared in 1967 that closing a phone booth door was not dissimilar to holding a conversation in hushed tones, bringing a limited expectation of privacy to public places.

      The FBI couldn’t have felt all that confident about its secret recordings as it vowed not to enter any of the conversations it captured into evidence. That wasn’t enough for the judge, however, who said he still needed to determine whether other evidence had been tainted by this questionable surveillance.

      Not only was there a question about the legality under the Fourth Amendment, but there were unanswered questions about how many completely irrelevant conversations the FBI’s bugs might have picked up — like privileged discussions between lawyers and clients, both of whom are often at courthouses simultaneously.

    • UK.gov is about to fling your data at anyone who wants it. How? Why? Shut up, pleb

      The government is poised to legislate on how it intends to use your data for public services – but its woefully worded “data sharing” consultation suggests it hasn’t learnt much from the ongoing controversies of Care.data.

      Whitehall is due to publish a response to the consultation, set out in Better Use of Data – Consultation Paper, which recently closed following a two-year series of “open policy” meetings.

      That will feed into the long-rumoured Digital Economy Bill and is expected to get a mention in the Queen’s Speech next week.

      It will create the governance framework for how mandarins share our information between government departments and with third parties, as well as setting out the security principles for using personal information.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • EU mission ‘failing’ to disrupt people-smuggling from Libya

      The EU naval mission to tackle people smuggling in the central Mediterranean is failing to achieve its aims, a British parliamentary committee says.

      In a report, the House of Lords EU Committee says Operation Sophia does not “in any meaningful way” disrupt smugglers’ boats.

    • Alabama Prison Strike Organizer Speaks from Behind Bars: We Are Engaged in a Struggle for Our Lives

      We go behind bars to get an update on the end of a 10-day strike by Alabama prisoners to protest severe overcrowding, poor living conditions and the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery and servitude “except as a punishment for crime,” thus sanctioning the legality of forced, unpaid prison labor. “These strikes are our methods of challenging mass incarceration, as we understand the prison system is a continuation of the slave system, which is an economic system,” says Kinetik Justice, who joins us by phone from solitary confinement in Holman Correctional Facility. He is co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement and one of the organizers of the strike. He says organizers tried petitioning their conditions via the courts and lawmakers, but when they were unsuccessful, “we understood our incarceration was pretty much about our labor and the money that was being generated from the prison system, therefore we began organizing around our labor and used it as a means and a method to bring about reform in the Alabama prison system.”

    • Part 2: Alabama Prison Strike Organizer Joins with Pastor to Achieve Criminal Justice Reform

      We continue our interview with an Alabama prisoner about the end of a 10-day strike to protest severe overcrowding, poor living conditions and the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery and servitude “except as a punishment for crime,” thus sanctioning the legality of forced, unpaid prison labor. We speak with Kinetik Justice, who joins us by phone from solitary confinement in Holman Correctional Facility and is co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement and one of the organizers of the strike, and with Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder and national president of The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS), a faith-based organization focusing on criminal justice reform and rehabilitation of repeat offenders.

    • ‘They Place These Kids on a Superpredator Pedestal’

      New York tabloids didn’t bother with terms like “alleged” in their stories on the early morning raid in the Bronx in which law enforcement—local and federal—arrested more than a hundred people accused of gang membership. There was no need to observe such niceties in a tale of “violent thugs” being “taken down.”

      The New York Times did use the word “accused,” but their depiction of the community involved was no less cartoonish. “For the last ten years,” the Times told readers, “life in the northern Bronx has largely been defined by wanton violence.” One wonders how much the Times knows about what defines life in the northern Bronx, and why they and other media are so ready to cheer uncritically for this style of militarized intervention ostensibly aimed at reducing violence.

    • Marcia Gallo on Kitty Genovese

      This week on CounterSpin: The 1964 New York city murder of Kitty Genovese started as a personal tragedy and a tiny item on a New York Times back page. Within months, it had become an internationally known, emblematic tale—not about Genovese, whose life most reports dispensed with quickly with the phrase “Queens barmaid,” or about her killer, Winston Moseley—but about the neighbors, 38 of them, we were told, who reportedly watched Genovese die in the street but did nothing, didn’t come to her aid or call the police. They just, we heard, didn’t want to get involved. The idea of “urban apathy” struck a deep cultural chord that resonates to this day.

    • How the High Cost of Justice Pushes the Poor into Prison

      In the American justice system, there’s often an assumption that if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you. But thousands of Americans arriving in court each year over family disputes, domestic violence, eviction, foreclosure, denied wages, discrimination on the job, and an array of other civil issues have no right to counsel. If they can’t afford a lawyer, they’re on their own to face a system that is often confusing and riddled with fees. For poorer citizens, the cost of seeking justice often becomes so prohibitive they just give up.

      Even as criminal justice reform and the reduction of mass incarceration gain support across party lines, civil rights advocates warn that the inaccessibility of the civil justice system tends to channel people into the criminal system. Those with no access to the courts are more likely to take justice in their own hands, lose homes, or face incarceration over failure to pay child support or fines they can’t afford. For some, denials of justice in civil cases can lead to crimes of survival.

    • Social Media Fame Shields Dissidents, Until It Doesn’t

      The first time I spoke with Zainab al-Khawaja, in a Skype video conversation in late 2011, the Bahraini dissident explained to me that the popularity of her @angryarabiya Twitter feed — which she used to chart the violent suppression of Bahrain’s Arab Spring uprising that year — seemed to have given her a measure of protection from the authorities.

      I asked why she had not been immediately arrested at a protest the week before, when she stood defiantly in front of the riot police firing tear gas at other pro-democracy protesters — an image of defiance that went viral and embarrassed the Persian Gulf monarchy, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Khawaja replied that she had overheard officers being instructed not to detain or beat her. “One officer kept telling the police, ‘Not this one,’” she recalled.

      Khawaja was detained and briefly interrogated by a female police officer later that day, before being released. “I think the reason is that I am active, I am known, in the country and internationally, not to a big extent, but I have a big following on Twitter.”

      “I wish that every Bahraini was protected the way I am,” she added. “Just because I’ve been speaking out on Twitter and other places doesn’t have more rights.”

    • Appeals Court Shoots Down ACLU, Says Full CIA Torture Report Is Beyond The Reach Of FOIA Requesters

      Unless the Supreme Court chooses to get involved, it looks like we’ll never get to see the full “Torture Report.” We’ll just have to make do with the Executive Summary, which was released at the end of 2014. The summary is just 500 pages out of ~7,000 total. The rest of these pages remain in the hands of the Senate and the CIA, and neither is willing to part with them.

      FOIA enthusiast Jason Leopold’s request for the full document has already been shut down. The ACLU’s request was similarly denied by the DC District Court. The Appeals Court has reached its decision, and it agrees with the lower court.

      The denial hinges on the court’s determination that the full report is nothing more than a collection of Congressional communications and documents, rather than being in the possession of the CIA where they could (theoretically) be accessed via FOIA requests. The court cites a 2009 letter from the Senate Committee to the CIA that spells this out explicitly.

    • Amos Yee arrested, police ransacked his house in ongoing investigations

      A police spokesman said that a 17-year-old has been arrested under Sections 174 and 298 of the Penal Code. Alfred Dodwell has confirmed that the individual arrested by the police is Amos Yee. Amos was convicted at about this time last year for wounding the feelings of Christians and uploading an obscene image. Mr Dodwell, a lawyer, defended him in Court at that time.

      Section 174 pertains to failure to attend a session as ordered by public servant, whereas Section 298 involves uttering words with an intent to wound religious and racial feelings.

    • Who is Amos Yee, teen blogger in Singapore police crosshairs?

      Singapore’s controversial teen blogger Amos Yee has been arrested yet again a year after he was convicted of hurting religious feelings and spending time in the jail.

      Singapore authorities said several reports were lodged against him for allegedly hurting religious or racial feelings deliberately. Yee was ordered to report to a police station a number of times for investigations after the police reports were lodged, but he failed to do so.

    • Local Fox Affiliate’s Reaction To Brutal Police Beating Is A Dereliction Of Its Duty

      What you see is the suspect surrendering, exiting the vehicle, lying upon the ground as instructed, and then being pummeled for a brief moment before the camera quickly zooms out and renders the action indiscernible. Why the camera operator did so remains unanswered, but we know from other footage captured by an NBC affliate that the police spent the next half-a-minute or so beating the shit out of a man who was lying surrendered on the pavement. Were we to need to rely on the Fox footage to determine what had happened, we wouldn’t have this full picture of the beating in our minds. Instead, we’d have a moment or two of the violence, which could quite possibly be excused and waived off by what would be a typical dismissal by the authorities.

    • Massachusetts State Police Beat Man On Live News

      A 50 year old man led police on a chase for a few hours before he decided that enough was enough and pulled over to give up. The news cameras on scene captured the man pulling over and putting his hands outside the window. He then followed orders to lay on the ground. The shocking gang beating that happened next is hard to describe. Watch the video to judge it for yourself.

    • Analyst Uses NYPD’s Open Data To Uncover Millions Of Dollars Of Bogus Parking Tickets

      The following story — sent in by an anonymous Techdirt reader — shows the power of opening up government data for examination by citizens… as well as the reason many government agencies may be reluctant to do so.

      Ben Wellington, a research analyst who has used New York City’s open data to push for policy changes, runs the I Quant NY blog. Looking through the city’s parking ticket data, he found some addresses were listed on an extremely high number of tickets for blocking pedestrian ramps.

    • James Comey Still Trying To Blame Increase In Violent Crime On ‘Viral Videos’

      FBI Director James Comey says we’re “going dark” as more platforms move towards encryption. Nobody’s buying it. Not Congress. Not NSA officials. Definitely not those who have actually researched the subject.

      He also says people with cameras are causing spikes in crime rates by making police officers so self-conscious they can’t do their job. Comey blamed citizens with cameras for escalating crime rates last October. He was immediately contradicted by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Having learned nothing from the experience, Comey has dusted off his 2015 talking points for redeployment in 2016.

    • Undercover Uncovered: Govt. Spy Truck Found Disguised As Google Street View Car
    • Philly Cops Tried To Disguise An SUV With License Plate Readers As A Google Maps Vehicle

      Well, we have a WHO. What we don’t have is a WHY. Of what possible use was this crappy, little fakeout? Anyone stupid enough to believe a hulking SUV with a city parking permit was a Google Maps vehicle is also too stupid to know what the cameras mounted on it are actually used for. For everyone else above that level, the easiest conclusion to draw is that the Philly police are stupid enough to think this would work. If so, they’ve shorted the wrong set of collective IQ.

      A more benign explanation is also possible, though. It could have just been a poorly thought out attempt at a joke. Who sports more cameras and hoovers up more photos than Google’s mapping vehicles? This may have just been a few cops poking fun at themselves, co-opting Big Data’s look for their Big Brother plate scanning: the Google Maps of law enforcement, making sure no obscure side road goes “unmapped.”

    • Barring Prisoners From Voting Undermines Democracy

      For those who have done time in U.S. prisons, punishments often extend beyond the point of sentencing, reaching well into their post-prison lives. From job applications that inquire into one’s criminal background to states throwing people back in prison for failing to pay fees they owe to the state, the penalty decreed by the judge can be more extensive than it initially appears.

      A staggering 5.85 million Americans weren’t able to vote in 2014 because of laws that disenfranchise citizens. While much attention has been given to freed citizens who can’t vote because of a previous felony, less has been paid to those still behind bars who may want to take part in the voting process.

    • Baltimore’s election results decertified, state begins precinct-level review of irregularities

      State election officials ordered the results of Baltimore’s primary election decertified Thursday and launched a precinct-level review of irregularities.

      State election administrator Linda H. Lamone said she became concerned when city officials — who on Monday certified their primary election results — later reported they had found 80 provisional ballots that had never been analyzed.

    • It’s official: employers can’t force you to be happy. Hallelujah

      Rejoice, haters! The law now says that you don’t have to be happy about coming to work.

      In April, the National Labor Relations Board presided over a conflict between T-Mobile and some employees who felt that the company was asking too much by demanding that workers maintain a “positive work environment” at all times.

    • Petition Calls on Progressive Corp. to Pull Its Name From Cleveland Indians’ Stadium

      Amid growing national outcry from activists and sports fans alike who argue that it’s time to change racially charged team names and mascots, the Cleveland American Indian Movement (AIM) has spent decades pushing for the end of the “Cleveland Indians” baseball team name.

    • Michael Ratner, attorney for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, dies at 72

      Civil and human rights lawyer also helped start group representing Guantánamo Bay detainees pro-bono, considered ‘largest mass defense effort in US history’

    • Julian Assange: Michael Ratner was a “Campaigner for Justice” from Guatemala to Palestine

      And so, he was very effective as a lawyer and as a campaigner for justice, because he would do things—for example, seeing that people might be extradited to the United States, take up the battle at the place of extradition—for example, here in the United Kingdom, with one of my other lawyers, both on my case and in relation to some alleged terrorism cases, Gareth Peirce. Other lesser lawyers, lesser human beings, might have gone, “Well, I can get the glory, and I can get the credit, once that person is extradited to the United States, and then can be—the trial can be exploited, and great precedence can be set in the United States.” Michael was much more concerned, at a human level, to take action early in the process, and try and stop grand juries or try and stop extraditions, before the person entered in to a U.S. justice system that has become increasingly difficult to deal with.

    • Noam Chomsky on US Military Presence in Europe and the Case of Edward Snowden

      In this interview with MIT professor, anarchist, philosopher and renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, we discuss US military presence in Europe and the case of Edward Snowden.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • ISPs Are Now Forcing Cord Cutters To Subscribe To TV If They Want To Avoid Usage Caps

      We’ve noted time and time again how broadband usage caps on fixed-line networks are arbitrary, unnecessary, and harm innovation. They’re also a useful weapon against streaming video competitors, and the natural evolution of TV competition. Caps can be used to either punish users who try and cut the cord with higher prices, but they also allow ISPs to exempt their own streaming services from said caps (something currently being done by both Verizon and Comcast), thereby giving these services a distinct and unfair advantage in the market.

      But broadband ISPs are now coming up with a new way of attacking cord cutters: forcing them to subscribe to television if they want to avoid usage caps.

  • DRM

    • Open letter to from EFF to members of the W3C Advisory Committee

      The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has made a sea-change: now, in addition to making open web standards that anyone can implement, they’re creating a video DRM standard designed to prevent people from implementing it unless they have permission from the big movie and TV companies, by invoking the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its international equivalents.

      The committee that’s designing this standard is called the Media Extensions Working Group, and its charter from the W3C runs out in September. When that happens, all W3C members will have a say in whether to renew that charter, and so I’m writing to those organizations and companies on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to get them to pledge to block the charter, unless the W3C takes steps to safeguard web users, security researchers and browser implementers from the DMCA.

    • What Do Customers Think They’re Getting When They Buy Media Online?

      Until recently, it was uncontroversial that you could take books or music from your collection, and lend them, sell them, or give them away.

      Rightsholders, however, have long tried creative ways to restrict your ability to do these things, as they believe it would let them make more money by either charging you for the privilege or simply by reducing “competition” from the sale or lending of used media.

      Of course, making media less valuable for the purchaser would also hurt sales of that same media, but only if the reduction in value is apparent to purchasers. A seller could both maintain high prices and strip away the ability to resell or lend books if enough purchasers don’t notice at the time of sale that they’re getting less for their money.

      Enter the “Buy Now” button. A team of researchers from UC Berkeley and Case Western have published a study showing that customers think they are getting traditional ownership rights when they buy digital media online, even when a vendor’s site includes legal terms (often buried in click-wrap agreements) purporting to limit those rights.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • India Releases New Intellectual Property Policy; Reactions Building

      The Indian government today released its long-awaited new intellectual property policy, and preliminary reactions appear to be that it caters to international pressures while attempting to provide a national focus. A more careful reading with reactions will follow.

      [...]

      Initial reactions from industry suggest that they are happy. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chair and managing director of Biocon Limited, said India has its stood its ground on the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), while respecting genuine innovators and start-ups.

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Sony Pictures Targets Torrent Sites With Preemptive Takedowns

        Copyright holders commonly ask torrent sites to remove links to pirated content, such as the latest blockbuster movies. However, Sony Pictures Networks goes a step further. This week the Indian company sent a stark warning to torrent sites, urging them to keep an eye out for pirated versions of an unreleased film, or else.

      • Former Sun chief says Java APIs were free for use

        The former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, took the stand at the second Google-Oracle trial on Wednesday, testifying that Sun and Google tried to negotiate a deal for the latter to use parts of Java but failed to come to an agreement.

        The trial is trying to decide on what damages, if any, Google should pay Oracle — which became the owner of Java when it acquired Sun in 2009 — for the use of 37 APIs in its Android mobile operating systems.

        Schwartz testified that Java and its APIs were free and open to use when the language was under Sun’s umbrella. But subsequently, APIs have been declared copyrightable following the reversal of a judgement that was made in the first trial in 2012.

        [...]

        In an email that was produced in the 2012 trial, and again on Wednesday, a software engineer from Google, who had been asked by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to evaluate technical alternatives to Java, wrote that everything else sucked and Google needed to negotiate a licence to use Java.

      • Oracle-Google trial over Android has software industry on edge
      • Trial Focuses on Google’s Past Efforts to License Java Software
      • Google, Oracle court battle hinges on rights to brew with Java software
      • Why everyone in Silicon Valley should care about Google-Oracle battle

        Oracle and Google are back in court debating a 6-year-old case tied to the Android operating system. The stakes extend well beyond the walls of the two Silicon Valley giants.

      • Google Foreshadows Legal Strategy in Epic API Copyright Case Against Oracle

        That was the sound of the bell as two titans — Oracle and Google — came out of their corners on Tuesday to duke-out the final round in their epic legal battle over the latter’s usage of Java APIs in the Android operating system. Already, this final round lacked no shortage of star power as Google started by putting its CEO Eric Schmidt on the witness stand. His role? To answer questions about many of the assumptions that Google made at the time it decided to base key parts of the Android operating system on Sun’s Java technology; a technology that now belongs to Oracle.

      • Former Sun CEO backs up Google’s claim, Java was ‘free and open to use’

        The Oracle v Google case continued yesterday with another full day of testimony. It continues today, with former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz taking the witness stand to give his side of the story. During questioning by Google’s lawyers, Schwartz confirmed that Java and its APIs were “free and open to use.” He explained that by making Java free, it allowed the company to expand its reach, allowing Sun to sell its products to a broader client list.

      • Former Sun CEO: Google Is Right, Java Was Free

        The multi-billion dollar legal drama between Google and Oracle regarding alleged infringement of Java-related licenses continues. This Wednesday, the former CEO of Oracle’s defunct subsidiary Sun Microsystems that created the Java language in the 90s – Jonathan Schwartz – testified at court in favor of Google. Schwartz stated that the Java language and its APIs were “free and open to use” since the very inception of the thereof, which was long before he even arrived at the company.

      • Google Engineer Admits Scrubbing Java References in Android

        Google, owner of the Android mobile device operating system, took another set of body blows from Oracle attorneys May 13 on Day 5 of the third Oracle v. Google copyright infringement trial in San Francisco.

      • In Oracle v. Google, a Nerd Subculture Is on Trial

        The problem with Oracle v. Google is that everyone actually affected by the case knows what an API is, but the whole affair is being decided by people who don’t, from the normals in the jury box to the normals at the Supreme Court—which declined to hear the case in 2015, on the advice of the normals at the Solicitor General’s office, who perhaps did not grasp exactly how software works.

      • Mega Ordered to Hand Over Users’ Details to U.S. Court

        Mega, the cloud storage site founded by Kim Dotcom, has been ordered to hand the IP addresses and personal details of some of its users to a U.S. court. The ruling follows the uploading of sensitive documents to Mega following a hack on a foreign government computer system. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mega chairman Stephen Hall expressed concerns over the process.

      • Court Orders Pirate Bay Domains to be Forfeited to the State

        The Swedish Court of Appeal has today ruled that The Pirate Bay will have its Swedish domains confiscated. ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se will both be forfeited to the state but Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij informs TorrentFreak that he will appeal claims that he owns the domains at the Supreme Court.

      • California’s Legislature Wants to Copyright All Government Works

        AB 2880 will give state and local governments dramatic powers to chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain.

        The California Assembly Committee on Judiciary recently approved a bill (AB 2880) to grant local and state governments’ copyright authority along with other intellectual property rights. At its core, the bill grants state and local government the authority to create, hold, and exert copyrights, including in materials created by the government. For background, the federal Copyright Act prohibits the federal government from claiming copyright in the materials it creates, but is silent on state governments. As a result, states have taken various approaches to copyright law with some granting themselves vast powers and others (such as California) forgoing virtually all copyright authority at least until now.

        EFF strongly opposes the bill. Such a broad grant of copyright authority to state and local governments will chill speech, stifle open government, and harm the public domain. It is our hope that the state legislature will scuttle this approach and refrain from covering all taxpayer funded works under a government copyright.

      • User Content Platforms Take the Heat for Artists’ Struggles at WIPO

        All this week, EFF has been at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, debating with delegates from around the world at the 32nd session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). We could write an exhaustive report of the discussions at the meeting (tl;dr: proposals for a broadcasting treaty continue to edge forward, while rich countries remain at loggerheads with users and poorer countries about copyright exceptions for education and libraries). But what’s more remarkable are the persistent themes that are recurring in these discussions, as well as the motivations of regional groups, rightsholders and individual countries that propel them.

      • Hesitant Steps For Broadcasting Treaty At WIPO; Study On Copyright Exceptions Praised

        The protection of broadcasting organisation against signal piracy has been discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization for two decades. However technological advances might have made the draft treaty as it stands obsolete some say, while others maintain that the treaty should stick to its original intent, leading to difficult discussions on core principles. On another subject of the WIPO committee on copyright meeting this week, a draft study was presented mapping the copyright limitations and exceptions provisions for educational activities in most WIPO member states.

05.13.16

Links 13/5/2016: ZFS in Debian, RBS Chooses Red Hat

Posted in News Roundup at 9:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • How Typography Can Save Your Life

    Since 1984 all cigarette packages have been required to include one of four specific health warnings, with the “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING” phrase set in capital letters. In 2009, President Obama signed a new law that would require larger labels with vivid graphics, but the tobacco industry put up a legal fight, and the new labels have been in limbo ever since.

    Companies can (and do) claim that they are trying to “emphasize” the important stuff by putting it in all caps. This is actually the reason so many legal documents and contracts have sections that seem to be shouting. You can blame U.S. law for this one (specifically, the Uniform Commercial Code) which requires that certain sections of a contract be “conspicuous.”

    Usually those guidelines apply to the parts of the contract that sound something like: “COMPANY X DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT WE’LL KEEP ANY OF OUR PROMISES AND EVERYTHING IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.” Makes sense that those sections should be hard to miss.

    Except that in this case, making text “conspicuous,” also makes it harder to read. And that’s because of a historical quirk.

  • Science

    • After Nine Years Of Censorship, Canada Finally Unmuzzles Its Scientists

      It’s important to remember that Canada is not alone in having these muzzling problems. The article notes that during the administration of President George W. Bush, US government scientists complained that inconvenient data was being altered or simply suppressed. More recently, the UK government unveiled plans to forbid its scientists from lobbying for changes in their own field. Although it has now introduced some exemptions from the controversial “gagging clause”, these seem half-hearted and possibly temporary. It obviously needs to pay more attention to Justin.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • UK Russian Embassy tweets screenshot from Command & Conquer Generals

      The Russian Embassy in London has tweeted a screenshot from PC real-time strategy game Command & Conquer: Generals.

      The image, of three green army trucks, was posted with the accompanying text: “Extremists near Aleppo received several truckloads of chemical ammo.”

    • Remembering Michael Ratner, Pioneering Lawyer Who Fought for Justice from Attica to Guantánamo
    • Michael Ratner, Champion of Human Rights and the Oppressed, Dies at 72
    • Michael Ratner Is Gone; You’re Still Here
    • Michael Ratner, Pioneering Civil and Constitutional Rights Lawyer, Dies at Age 72
    • From the Archives: Michael Ratner on American Imperialism
    • Web Exclusive: Reed Brody & Michael Smith Remember Michael Ratner (Part 2)

      The trailblazing human rights attorney Michael Ratner has died at the age of 72. For over four decades, he defended, investigated and spoke up for victims of human rights abuses across the world. In this web-only interview, Reed Brody and Michael Smith pay tribute to their close friend.

    • Michael Ratner, Lawyer Who Won Rights for Guantánamo Prisoners, Dies at 72

      Michael Ratner, a fearless civil liberties lawyer who successfully challenged the United States government’s detention of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay without judicial review, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 72.

      The cause was complications of cancer, said his brother, Bruce, a developer and an owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

      As head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner oversaw litigation that, in effect, voided New York City’s wholesale stop-and-frisk policing tactic. The center also accused the federal government of complicity in the kidnapping and torture of terrorism suspects and argued against the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, the waging of war in Iraq without the consent of Congress, the encouragement of right-wing rebels in Nicaragua and the torture at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war.

      “Under his leadership, the center grew from a small but scrappy civil rights organization into one of the leading human rights organizations in the world,” David Cole, a former colleague at the center and a professor at Georgetown Law School, said in an interview this week. “He sued some of the most powerful people in the world on behalf of some of the least powerful.”

      Mr. Ratner, who majored in medieval English at Brandeis University in the 1960s, was radicalized by the teachings of the New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse and the preachings of a classmate, Angela Davis, who went on to become a leading counterculture activist and American Communist and continues to teach and speak publicly.

    • U.S. Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks

      Is Wallace saying to ISIS they better “buy American?” Is Wallace in the tank for ISIS? I don’t know.

    • Donald Trump Calls Hillary Clinton “Trigger Happy” as She Courts Neocons

      Donald Trump derided Hillary Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy record over the weekend, a glimpse into a potential general election strategy of casting Clinton as the more likely of the two to take the nation to war.

      Just moments after maligning Syrian refugees at a rally in Lynden, Washington, Trump pivoted into a tirade against Clinton as a warmonger.

    • State Department Fails to Vet or Monitor Military Aid to Egypt

      The U.S isn’t sufficiently vetting the sale of weapons to the repressive government of Egypt, and doesn’t know enough about how those weapons are being used – including night vision goggles and riot control weapons.

    • Obama Should Heed Hiroshima’s Survivors

      The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a beautiful, haunting place. The most iconic landmark is the “A-bomb dome,” atop a large building that was not completely destroyed. As we left the memorial, Koji Hosokawa told us to stop. He looked us in the eye and told us not to forget the victims: “People lived here. They lived here.” President Obama should meet Koji Hosokawa and other hibakusha, and hear their stories.

    • Washington’s Military Addiction

      Put another way, in a Washington that seems incapable of doing anything but worshiping at the temple of the U.S. military, global policymaking has become a remarkably mindless military-first process of repetition. It’s as if, as problems built up in your life, you looked in the closet marked “solutions” and the only thing you could ever see was one hulking, over-armed soldier, whom you obsessively let loose, causing yet more damage.

    • Obama Broke Pledge To Demand Syrian Opposition’s Separation From Nusra Front

      The gradual erosion of the cease-fire in Syria over the past month is the result of multiple factors shaping the conflict, but one of the underlying reasons is the Obama administration’s failure to carry out its commitment to Russia to get US-supported opposition groups to separate themselves physically from the Nusra Front – the al-Qaeda organization in Syria.

    • A Need to Rethink Mideast Wars

      The request by a U.S. Army captain to a federal court for a declaratory judgment about his constitutional duties regarding going to war is the latest reminder of the unsatisfactory situation in which the United States is engaged in military operations in multiple overseas locales without any authorization other than a couple of outdated and obsolete Congressional resolutions whose relevance is questionable at best.

    • Army Chaplain Resigns over Drone Wars

      The U.S. government’s reliance on drones to sustain perpetual war in the Mideast is meeting resistance from some assigned to carry out and justify these tactics, including a U.S. Army chaplain who resigned in protest, writes Ann Wright.

    • George Zimmerman and the Long History of Selling “Souvenirs”

      Former neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman’s decision, one he has apparently reconsidered, to sell, as he describes, “the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin” is just an another link in the long chain of America’s historical obsession with selling and owning memorabilia connected with the murder of African Americans.

    • Baghdad gov’t paralysis made capital vulnerable to massive ISIL bombings

      Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) launched a series of suicide car and truck bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday, killing nearly 100 and wounding nearly 200 persons. Baghdad security had improved over the past couple of years, but the Coalition United for Reform blamed political wrangling on sectarian and party bases for the security lapses that allowed the attacks to take place. The president’s spokesman suggested that Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi might need to fire some security officials responsible for the capital’s well-being for this major lapse.

    • Do British international relations scholars question British foreign policy enough?

      Recently I came across a 2006 article that Eric Herring published in the Journal of International Studies titled ‘Remaking the mainstream: the case for activist IR scholarship’. In the article Herring argues that “British IR [International Relations] academics… produce very little primarily empirical work which documents the record of the British state in creating human misery abroad”. In addition he goes onto note “British IR academics engage in very little research exposing the deceptions and self-deceptions deployed by the British state to deny its responsibility for that human misery”.

      A rare self-critical admission from an academic about his own work and that of his profession, Herring’s argument struck me as very important and deserving of a wider audience. Currently a Professor of World Politics and Research Director in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol, I asked Herring about his 2006 article and whether anything had changed ten years later.

    • Drone warfare: the cost of progress

      Hambling argues that although most people think of armed-drones as being large pilotless aircraft such as the Reaper and Predator, their development is being paralleled by much smaller devices such as the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System (LMAMS). The latter is suitable for use by individual soldiers, each of whom would carry small but lethal explosives with a range of several miles.

    • Former 9/11 Commissioner: ’28 Pages’ Clearly Expose Saudi Support

      Revealing serious fractures within the 9/11 Commission, a former member of that panel has called for the immediate declassification of the so-called “28 pages” that detail Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack, saying they expose evidence that Saudi government officials were involved in the hijackers’ support network.

      “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” Republican John Lehman said in an interview with the Guardian published Thursday. Referring to the commission’s final report, issued in 2004, Lehman stated: “Our report should never have been read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia.”

      He said recent claims made by the Commission’s former chairman and vice-chair—that only one Saudi government employee was “implicated” in supporting the hijackers, and that the Obama administration should be cautious about releasing the 28 pages because they contain “raw, unvetted material” but no “smoking gun”—was “a game of semantics.”

    • ‘Saudi Arabian government officials supported September 11 hijackers,’ former 9/11 Commission member claims

      A former member of the independent commission that investigated the September 11 terror attacks has claimed that Saudi government officials supported the hijackers.

      John F Lehman, who sat on the 9/11 Commission from 2003 to 2004, said there was an “awful lot of circumstantial evidence” implicating several employees in the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

      “There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” he told the Guardian.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Climate Disobedience and the New “Public Trust” Laws of Nature

      This ancient idea, applied since Roman days, is pretty straightforward: The government has an affirmative duty to protect natural resources that are shared by everybody. In the past, the doctrine has been used to prevent the selling off of lakefront shorelines or the bulldozing of rare fossil beds. With the clock ticking on the climate crisis, many legal scholars and activists have begun asking whether it’s time to put the public trust to work on climate change.

    • West Virginia Democrats Just Nominated A Climate Denying Coal Baron Billionaire For Governor

      In November, West Virginians will have two choices. A a party-switching, self-funding, brash billionaire who denies climate change and loves coal, and a lawmaker who talks about bringing jobs back to the state.

      And that’s just the gubernatorial race.

      On Tuesday night, Jim Justice easily won the West Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary and will face off against Republican state Senate President Bill Cole in the general election.

    • Obama Just Cracked Down on Pollution From Fracking

      For the first time ever, the EPA will regulate methane emissions.

    • Coal made its best case against climate change, and lost

      Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company (now bankrupt), recently faced off against environmental groups in a Minnesota court case. The case was to determine whether the State of Minnesota should continue using its exceptionally low established estimates of the ‘social cost of carbon’, or whether it should adopt higher federal estimates.

      The social cost of carbon is an estimate of how much the damages from carbon pollution cost society via climate change damages. In theory, it represents how much the price of fossil fuels should increase to reflect their true costs.

      The coal company called forth witnesses that represented the fringe 2–3% of experts who reject the consensus that humans are the primary cause of global warming, including Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen, while their opposition invited witnesses like Andrew Dessler and John Abraham who represent the 97% expert consensus.

    • Brazil prepares to roll back green laws

      Taking advantage of Brazil’s present political turbulence, as the battle to impeach President Dilma Rousseff reaches its climax, reactionary politicians are quietly rolling back environmental and indigenous protection laws in defiance of the country’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.

      Environmentalists say that if the bill known as PEC 65/2012, now at the Senate committee stage, is approved, it means that major infrastructure projects will be able to go ahead regardless of their impacts on biodiversity, indigenous areas, traditional communities and conservation areas.

    • What Brazil’s New President Means For Its Environmental Laws

      As the suspension of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff Thursday triggers a political reshuffling, environmentalists in Latin America’s largest ailing economy worry that powers in the new administration favor infrastructure development and financial recovery over environmental laws.

      As it is now customary in multiple countries, Brazil requires environmental assessments prior to construction projects. But the Senate is now considering a bill that would give fast-track status to projects like roads, dams or ports deemed in the national interest by the president. That would allow developers to move forward simply by saying an environmental impact study is in the works, but bar agencies from halting the project once construction begins. Moreover, there is a proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate environmental licensing altogether. These proposals aren’t new, but their political backing could get a push within Brazil’s new interim government.

    • Dilma Rousseff suspended as senate votes to impeach Brazilian president

      Speaking after the vote, Rousseff remained defiant, denying that she had committed any crime, and accusing her opponents of mounting a “coup”.

    • Brazil Senate Votes for Impeachment Trial as Rousseff Vows to Fight ‘Coup’
    • We Can Stop Searching For The Clean Energy Miracle. It’s Already Here.

      Key climate solutions have been advancing considerably faster than anyone expected just a few years ago thanks to aggressive market-based deployment efforts around the globe. These solutions include such core enabling technologies for a low-carbon world as solar, wind, efficiency, electric cars, and battery storage.

    • Beyond Climate Confusion: Why Both Energy Innovation and Deployment Matter
    • How Anti-Coal Bernie Sanders Won Coal Country

      If you know about West Virginia’s attitude toward coal, and you also know about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) attitude toward coal, then Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential primary results might have come as a bit of a surprise.

      Sanders — a staunch environmentalist pushing for more pollution regulations and a nationwide carbon tax — easily won West Virginia over his opponent Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. His win, some environmentalists said, was proof that you don’t have to be pro-coal to win in coal country.

    • BREAKING: EPA Finalizes Methane Rule For New Oil And Gas Operations
    • Six States Join TransCanada To Sue Obama Over Rejection Of The Keystone XL Pipeline

      Six states have joined with TransCanada to sue the Obama administration over its rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline permit application.

      TransCanada filed the suit in a federal court in Houston in January, alleging that the president had overstepped his constitutionally granted powers. The right to regulate trans-border commerce is reserved for Congress, the suit says.

      But the president denied the permit based on national security grounds, which is well within his rights, Center for Biological Diversity attorney Bill Snape told ThinkProgress.

      “They are basically asking the court to second-guess the president on a national interest decision,” Snape said.

    • ‘We’ll Do What It Takes To Stop It’: Kinder Morgan Pipeline in Crosshairs

      This weekend, hundreds of activists will encircle a Kinder Morgan facility in British Columbia on the ground and on the water, while demanding that Canada break free from fossil fuels, listen to science, and transition to a 100 percent renewable energy.

    • ‘Wholly Inadequate’: Environmentalists Decry EPA’s New Methane Rules

      Following President Obama’s promise to cut toxic methane leaks at oil and gas facilities, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday announced the U.S. government’s “first-ever” set of standards to reduce such emissions—but the new regulations were decried by environmentalist critics as not far-reaching enough.

    • Old species have climate survival skills

      Study of more than 600 vertebrate species shows those that have faced extreme environmental pressures in the past are now best equipped to survive climate change.

    • Agriculture, A Huge Contributor To Climate Change, Is Starting To Clean Up Its Act
    • Bay Area Voters Will Decide Next Month If They Want To Pay To Adapt To Sea Level Rise

      California has long been a leader in tackling climate change. But in June, voters in the San Francisco Bay area will have the chance to take their state’s commitment to addressing the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation a step further.

    • Palm Oil Is Burning Indonesia to the Ground

      Fire is a tool in this part of the world, and every year Indonesian farmers burn down wild forest to make room for more pulpwood, rubber plantations and palm oil. But last year was different. The fires fed on peatland raged beyond control, consuming the timber that burns so easily in the country’s dry season. Indonesia became Hell on Earth, with satellites showing the length of the country swaddled in smoke. Borneo and western Sumatra, the worst-hit areas, glowed like embers. Acid haze poured over the borders and into Malaysia and Singapore and Thailand.

  • Finance

    • Illiberal Hollywood: Unchanged or Worse One Year Later

      Like Disney — two of its seven biggest films over the last decade were directed/written/led by women (Frozen, 2013), or led by a woman (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 2015). Yet its stock is languishing, and its lineup thin of women-directed/-written/-led. Maybe its board needs a shakeup and its stock needs to tank a little further before they wake up and realize an audience composed of +51% of the population shouldn’t be slighted by its hiring practices. Same goes for the rest of the entertainment industry: we expect better, and soon.

    • TTIP leaks highlight the dangers of regulatory cooperation

      TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) has sparked a public outcry in Europe. The recent leak of many parts of TTIP by Greenpeace, allowing us for the first time to read the negotiating position of the US, confirms the most serious concerns.

    • Kill TTIP Now

      The evil of American “democratic capitalism” is total and irredeemable. TTIP gives corporations unaccountable power over governments and peoples. The corporations must be slapped down hard, fiercely regulated, and forced by threat of long prison sentences to serve the public interest, and not the incomes of the executives and shareholders who comprise the One Percent.

    • How A Giant Restaurant Conglomerate Teamed Up With Banks To Stiff Its Workers

      Workers at Darden Restaurants chains are routinely told they must accept prepaid debit cards instead of paychecks, according to a new report from the worker organization Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United. A quarter of workers surveyed said they asked to be paid some other way and were told the cards are their only option.

    • As Wealthy Surge, U.S. Poor and Middle Class Incomes Have Gone Backward

      Middle- and low-income households in the U.S. made less money in 2014 than they did in 1999 as the middle class lost ground in almost 90 percent of the country’s metropolitan areas, a new analysis by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday has found.

      The report looked at 229 of the 381 federally designated “metropolitan statistical areas” in the U.S., from Seattle to Boston, which accounted for 76 percent of the nationwide population in 2014. It found that poorer households saw their income drop from a median of $26,373 in 1999 to $23,811 in 2014, while middle-class incomes fell from $77,898 to $72,919 in that same time period.

      The erosion of the middle class came as household incomes decreased, “a reminder that the economy has yet to fully recover from the effects of the Great Recession of 2007-09,” Pew said—but more than that, it is a reflection of rising income inequality.

    • Another Way the Rich Get Richer: Their Parents Give Them Obscene Amounts of Money Nearly Tax-Free

      It’d be great if we were all self-made men, like Citizen Trump.

      Of course, his self-making, like that of many wealthy people, is based in large part on a wealthy parent giving him a ton of money. Why work for a living when you can just hang around drinking single malt until daddy dies and leaves you his money?

      Trump’s papa left an estate valued at between $100 and $300 million in 1999. A nice start for a career in real estate for Don and his siblings.

    • The London Mayoral Election: a Victory for Whom?

      During his election campaign, Khan vowed to be “the most pro-business Mayor London has ever had”; stated his opposition to the “mansion tax”, the nationalisation of banks, and has pledged to work with the Tory government to defeat Corbyn’s push for a “Robin Hood Tax” – a fee on buying stocks, shares and derivatives publicly backed by the Labour leader last summer; and in recent weeks, Khan has described the fact that there are 140-plus billionaires and 400,000 millionaires in London as “a good thing” – echoing the haughty words of Labour’s true blue Tory Peter Mandelson,

    • London Summit: US Must End Tax ‘Hypocrisy’ or Corruption Will Prevail

      If the U.S. does not end its “hypocrisy” and hold itself to the same tax transparency standards as other nations, efforts to reform offshore secrecy will fail, leaders of the UK’s overseas territories warned at the global anti-corruption summit in London on Thursday.

      The comments—from leaders of the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Isle of Man—came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told those gathered at the summit, “Corruption, writ large, is as much of an enemy [as terrorism], because it destroys nation states, as some of the extremists we are fighting or the other challenges we face.”

      The summit follows a massive leak of documents known as the Panama Papers which exposed how the world’s elite use offshore tax havens to hide their wealth, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, who hosted the conference.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Following Censorship Scandals, Obama Commits to ‘Fight Against Corruption’

      This just in from the Obama administration: corruption is bad, m’kay?

      No, seriously.

      Apparently, President Obama’s commitment to fighting corruption is so important that Secretary of State John Kerry actually felt the need to fly to London to reaffirm the United States government isn’t full of dirty rotten scoundrels who are just up to no good.

    • Parliament will fight to protect the BBC

      Today the government will publish a white paper setting out its plans for the future of the BBC. At the BAFTA awards on Sunday the director Peter Kosminsky rightly received a standing ovation. He used his acceptance speech to voice his fear that the White Paper will compromise our precious, independent, world-renowned organisation. He cautioned that the BBC was on a path to evisceration that would leave the broadcasting landscape bereft – and the output of television and radio determined solely by what lines the pockets of shareholders.

    • The BBC White Paper is a recipe for long-term decline

      The government’s proposals would be a blow to both the BBC’s freedom from government interference, and its place at the heart of British popular culture.

    • Decoding the BBC White Paper

      Apocalyptic rumours followed by a row-back and relief. It’s an age-old strategy, but what’s the reality behind the government’s BBC proposals?

    • Laura Kuenssberg Meet Barbra Streisand

      I have cropped this to protect the identity of the sender, but I assure you it is perfectly real and not at all unusual. (This is actually sexist on my part as if it were a man I would not have cropped it. I can only ask you to forgive me, I am old). I am sure Kuenssberg, being vastly more famous, gets more abuse than I do. But the fact either of us receives abuse does not mean we are above criticism. The young woman tweeting above being unpleasant is not evidence I am right about anything. Still less does it mean criticism of me should be suppressed.

      To say that abusers “hijacked” the petition criticising Kuenssberg for her terrible biased journalism, is like saying your car is hijacked by an insect landing on it.

      But the extremely cheerful news is that the furore caused by 38 Degrees removing the petition has meant that tens of millions more people have heard of the petition, than if it had gone ahead. David Cameron standing up in the House of Commons saying Kuenssberg is not biased in itself will have made a million people realise that she is. Laura Kuenssberg, meet Barbra Streisand. The “Streisand Effect”, named after the actress’ attempt to suppress photos of her mansion, is the internet phenomenon whereby attempts to suppress information lead to far more people knowing it.

    • Donald Trump’s Unsurprising Surprise

      Donald Trump’s ascension to the Republican presidential nomination was predictable, paved by years of right-wing fear-mongering and dissemination of anti-knowledge, says former GOP congressional staffer Mike Lofgren.

    • Will Trump’s ‘Man Card’ Play to Women?

      As the presidential election of 2016 unfolds, presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump seems bent on proving a simple aphorism: No one ever went broke overestimating the misogyny of the American people.

      Trump continues to spew rhetoric seemingly designed to alienate women voters, prompting pundits and analysts to search for the strategic significance of such utterances. “Donald Trump has been playing the man card,” Kelly Dittmar of the the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics told NPR’s Asma Khalid in an interview that aired on Tuesday.

      And lately, he seems to be micro-targeting the key domestic-violence constituency. At a campaign stop in Spokane over the weekend, Trump renewed his complaint against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton for playing the so-called “woman’s card.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Anti-virus pioneer John McAfee: Your phone may be snooping on you

      Computer security pioneer John McAfee pulls out his cell phone to stare at a notification on the screen.

      “It says something changed in my account, please press next,” McAfee says. “I have the best (security) habits in the world and I cannot keep my phone secure.”

      McAfee, whose name became synonymous with antivirus protection, says he’s no longer as worried about computer security. Now, he says, the danger comes from the camera and microphones we carry everywhere in our pockets, attached to our smartphones. It’s a “trivial” matter, he says, for a hacker to remotely and secretly turn on a phone’s sensors.

    • Surveillance: Who owns you and your life?

      There are many dimensions to the concept of privacy.

      A fundamental question is: Who owns you and your life?

      If you are not the owner of your person – that will open up for abominations like slavery, organ farming, and some absurd utilitarian concepts.

      But if you are the owner of your person – this must include your body as well as your mind and your faculties.

      So… if you are the owner of your person – does anybody else (a private person or a collective of persons) have the right to look into your mind, your thoughts and your beliefs? Does anybody else have the right to look into your relations to other people, your quest for knowledge or your personal habits and preferences?

    • 45,000 People Ask Netflix to Stop VPN Crackdown

      A letter signed by nearly 45,000 people calls upon Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to reverse the company’s broad VPN ban. To enforce geographical restrictions Netflix started blocking VPN users more aggressively this year, but according to OpenMedia there are better alternatives that respect the privacy of users.

    • FBI Has Sights on Larger Battle Over Encryption After Apple Feud

      After buying a software tool to access a dead terrorist’s encrypted iPhone, the FBI is exploring how to make broader use of the hack while bracing for a larger battle involving encrypted text messages, e-mails and other data, Director James Comey said.

    • While It Is Reauthorizing FISA Amendments Act, Congress Should Reform Section 704

      If it’s not that, then you would think it’d have to be the wacky interpretation, the middle option. After all, Americans are at least as likely to use Gmail as foreigners are, so to get the Gmail of Americans overseas, the NSA would presumably ask Google for assistance, and therefore trigger 703, unless there were a wacky legal interpretation to bypass that. There are things that make it clear NSA has a great deal of redundancy in its collection, even with PRISM collection, which makes it clear they do double dip, obtaining even Gmail overseas and domestically (which is why they’d have GCHQ hack Google’s overseas fiber). It’s possible, though, that the NSA conducts so much bulk collection overseas it is actually easier (or legally more permissive) to just collect US person content from bulk collections obtained overseas, thereby bypassing any domestic provider and onerous legal notice. I suppose it’s also possible that NSA now uses 703 (my proof they don’t dates to 2012 or earlier), having had to resort to playing by the rules as more providers lock up their data better in the wake of the Snowden revelations. (Note, Mieke Eoyang has an interesting FAA suggestion that would require exclusivity when NSA accesses content from US providers, thereby preventing them from stealing Google data overseas.)

    • Your Conversation On The Bus Or Train May Be Recorded

      When you ride on buses or trains in many parts of the United States, what you say could be recorded. Get on a New Jersey Transit light rail train in Hoboken or Jersey City, for example, and you might notice an inconspicuous sign that says “video and audio systems in use.”

      A lot of riders are not happy about it.

      “Yeah I don’t like that,” says Michael Dolan of Bayonne, N.J. “I don’t want conversations being picked up because it’s too Orwellian for me. It reeks of Big Brother.”

    • FBI Doesn’t Want Privacy Laws To Apply To Its Biometric Database

      The FBI has been building a massive biometric database for the last eight years. The Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) starts with millions of photos of criminals (and non-criminals) and builds from there. Palm prints, fingerprints, iris scans, tattoos and biographies are all part of the mix.

      Despite having promised to deliver a Privacy Impact Assessment of the database back in 2012, the FBI’s system went live towards the end of 2014 without one. That’s a big problem, considering the database’s blend of guilty/innocent Americans, along with its troublesome error rate. The FBI obviously hopes the false positive rate will continue to decline as tech capabilities improve, but any qualms about bogus hits have been placed on the back burner while the agency dumps every piece of data it can find into the database.

      The FBI has shown little motivation to address Americans’ privacy concerns by providing an updated Impact Assessment (the one it does have dates back to the program’s inception in 2008), but has wasted no time in alerting legislators about its own privacy concerns.

    • Was NSA surveillance used on refuge occupiers labeled as ‘domestic terrorists,’ lawyer asks

      Oregon standoff defendants want a federal judge to order prosecutors to disclose whether law enforcement intercepted their emails, phone calls or other electronic communications using national security surveillance methods.

      “Defendants are entitled to know how the government monitored their communications and activities and then to test … whether the government’s evidence is derived from that surveillance,” defense lawyer Amy Baggio wrote in a court filing Wednesday afternoon.

    • What former NSA chief Michael Hayden said after watching the new Snowden trailer

      “You’re gonna make me do this?” Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA director, said to Business Insider before watching the “Snowden” trailer for the first time.

      After about 30 seconds, Hayden looked up from the iPad screen and said: “Could we be done?”

      Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” tells the story of NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden who infamously leaked classified information about the NSA’s surveillance activities to journalists in 2013. To Hayden, the portrayal is an “alternative universe.”

    • The NSA’s stunning 9/11 failure: How big-money contractors made us more vulnerable to attack

      On September 12, 2001, Bill Binney snuck back into work at the NSA dressed like cleaning staff so he could try to help understand who had attacked the United States. A top NSA mathematician, Binney had rolled out a sophisticated metadata analysis system called ThinThread, only to have it canceled less than a month before 9/11. Top executives at the agency had decided a clunky program called Trailblazer, contracted out to the intelligence contractor giant SAIC, would be NSA’s future, not the cheaper, more effective and privacy-protective ThinThread.

      While NSA Director General Michael Hayden had sent most NSA staffers home on 9/11 and the day after —hence Binney’s disguise — the contractors were hard at work. As Binney describes in “A Good American“ — a documentary about Binney due for wider release in September — some contractors working in his unit had gotten a warning. “While I was in there trying to look at the material on my computer, the president of the contracting group that I had working on ThinThread came over to me and said that he’d just been in a contractor meeting” with a former top SAIC official who moved back to NSA, supporting Trailblazer. The contractors, it turns out, were warned not to embarrass companies like SAIC, which (the implication is) had just failed to warn about the biggest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. “Do not embarrass large companies,” the former SAIC manager, according to Binney, said to the other contractor. “You do your part, you’ll get your share, there’s plenty for everybody.” Stay quiet about the failures that led to 9/11, and you’ll be financially rewarded.

    • FBI Won’t Say Whether It Bought These Gmail Password Stealing Boxes

      Ever heard of an “app interception system”?

      So-called app interception or cloud interception systems are small physical boxes that steal social media passwords, emails, Dropbox contents and more from smartphones of passers-by, all with no interaction from the target.

      Now, in response to Freedom of Information requests from Motherboard, the FBI has refused to neither confirm nor deny whether the agency has any contracts with two of the main companies selling such devices.

      “The mere acknowledgment of whether or not the FBI has any such records in and of itself would disclose techniques, procedures, and/or guidelines that could reasonably be expected to risk of circumvention of the law. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of any records,” the responses to two requests read.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Prison Telecom Monopolies ‘Evolve,’ Now Rip Off Inmate Families With Shoddy Video Services, Too

      We’ve noted a few times how interstate inmate calling service (ICS) companies have a disturbingly cozy relationship with government, striking (technically buying) monopoly deals that let them charge inmate families $14 per minute. Worse, some ICS companies like Securus Technologies have been under fire for helping the government spy on privileged inmate attorney communications, information that was only revealed after Securus was hacked late last year. Given the apathy for prison inmates and their families (“Iff’n ya don’t like high prices, don’t go to prison son!”) reform on this front has been glacial at best.

      As such, ripping off inmate families and delivering sub-par services continues unabated. As many prisons eliminate personal visits, these ICS firms have expanded revenues by pretending to offer next-generation teleconferencing services. But while slightly more economical ($10 for 20 minutes), apparently companies like Securus with no competitors, a captive audience, and no repercussions for sloppy technology haven’t quite figured out how to make this whole video chat thing work yet.

    • Amos Yee arrested again for charges of hurting religious feelings

      Amos Yee, the teenager who was found guilty for hurting the feelings of Christians and posting an obscene image online last year, was arrested by the police on Wednesday and since released on bail.

    • Amos Yee arrested for two offences

      Teenage blogger Amos Yee has been arrested again for offences under two sections of the Penal Code – a year after he was convicted of wounding the feelings of Christians and uploading an obscene image.

    • Singaporean blogger Amos Yee arrested

      Police told the newspaper that Yee had violated sections of Singapore’s Penal Code after he published a YouTube video in November last year.

    • Blogger Amos Yee arrested again

      Teen blogger Amos Yee has been arrested again, a year after he was convicted of wounding the feelings of Christians and uploading an obscene image.

    • Amos Yee arrested on Wednesday

      Teenage blogger Amos Yee, whose online comments on religion prompted police reports to be lodged against him, has been arrested, his former lawyer Alfred Dodwell confirmed. Yee was arrested on Wednesday (May 11), said Mr Dodwell, who was contacted by Yee’s mother seeking help.

    • Court Denies Immunity To Law Enforcement Officer Who Arrested Crew Sent To Clean Out His Foreclosed House

      Lieutenant Timothy Filbeck of the Butts County Sheriff’s Department found himself in a not-at-all unusual situation: his home was being foreclosed upon. Like many others who have undergone this process, Filbeck was served with a variety of notices explaining the steps of the process and warning him of the consequences of not complying.

      Filbeck moved out of the doomed home and into a family member’s. This would apparently be the last rational thing he would do in response to the foreclosure. The insurance company for the bank inspected the home four times before coming to the conclusion it had been abandoned by Filbeck. The utilties had been turned off and “cobwebs extended from wall to wall in every room.”

      When the company began preparing the house for auction, things started to get interesting. Employees spent a day cleaning the house out and removing any abandoned property inside it. At some point, Filbeck apparently decided to drop by his old house and noticed the things he had left behind were missing. He could have contacted any of the companies involved in the foreclosure proceedings. He could have done nothing after realizing that leaving a foreclosed house abandoned tends to result in the removal of property also considered abandoned. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals notes that Lieutenant Filbeck chose “none of the above.”

    • BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and team expelled from North Korea

      BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team have been expelled from North Korea after being detained over their reporting.

      Our correspondent, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard were stopped by officials on Friday as they were about to leave North Korea.

    • Myth of the Ferguson Effect Is Hard to Kill

      The myth of the widely debunked “Ferguson effect” on policing is hard to kill. FBI Director James Comey once again raised the specter of the impact of protests against police brutality on police effectiveness yesterday, when he made comments suggesting that a spike in violent crime in some cities may be correlated to officers’ fear of doing their jobs because of community hostility and the growing popularity of cop watching.

    • What’s Missing From The Conversation About Education Reform? Student Voices.

      The education law that President Obama signed at the end of last year to replace No Child Left Behind, called the Every Student Succeeds Act, has garnered widespread bipartisan support. The legislation is particularly popular among states and teachers, who hope that ESSA will allow them to play a larger role in shaping the education system.

    • How Obama’s Efforts to Free Drug War Prisoners Are Being Stymied by His Own Bureaucrats

      With the sentence commutations announced last week, President Barack Obama has now cut more than 300 harsh drug war prison sentences, besting the previous six presidents combined. Thousands more could be eligible for commutations, but bureaucratic obstacles inside the Justice Department mean the clock is likely to run out before Obama gets a chance to free them.

    • Ferguson’s New Police Chief Slams Crooked Cops in First Speech

      The Ferguson police department has been in turmoil since the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown—but a newly appointed police chief hopes to correct the deep-seeded wrongs. It starts with clearing the department of crooked cops, which is the new police chief’s goal.

    • U.S. Government Agencies Probe Sexist Hiring Practices In Hollywood

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast, Wireless Industry Using ‘Diversity’ Groups To Oppose Net Neutrality, Fight Cable Set Top Box Reform

      We’ve noted several times how one of the sleaziest lobbying tactics in telecom is the co-opting of minority or “diversity” groups to support policies that actually hurt these groups’ constituents. Such theater benefits large telecom companies by presenting the illusion of broad support for what usually are extremely anti-consumer (or anti-small business and startup) policies. And it’s not just minority groups being used in such fashion; telecom lobbyists have long used “retired seniors,” hearing impaired groups and cattle rancher associations to push bad policy.

      This kind of disinformation is pervasive, incredibly destructive, and common practice in everything from the construction industry to patent reform.

      But telecom lobbyists have long been masters at this particular game. It works something like this: an ISP like Comcast (or some other telecom-affiliated lobbying group) will help fund a group’s new event center. In exchange, these groups parrot any policy Comcast puts forth, be it opposition to net neutrality or support for the latest merger. Quid pro quo obligations are never put in writing, letting these groups claim their positions only coincidentally mirror that of their donors.

    • Germany to Rescind Piracy Liability for Open Wifi Operators

      People operating open WiFi networks in Germany have long risked being held liable for the actions of those using them. However, to the relief of thousands of citizens that position will change later this year after the country’s coalition government decided to abolish the legislation which holds operators responsible for the file-sharing activities of others.

  • DRM

    • An Open Letter to Members of the W3C Advisory Committee

      Dear member of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Advisory Committee,

      You may have heard that over the past year we’ve been trying to insert legal safeguards into the Encrypted Media Extensions project at the W3C, which standardizes streaming video DRM. We’ve previously been opposed to the W3C adopting EME, because of the legal issues around DRM, and because DRM requires user agents to obey third parties, rather than their owners.

      However, we think that there’s a compromise that both DRM advocates and opponents should be able to live with.

      I’m writing today to see if you will support us in an upcoming W3C vote on the charter of the Media Extensions Group, where we will be proposing this compromise.

      This letter briefly describes briefly the problem, our proposed solution, and what you can do to help.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • US President Signs New Trade Secrets Law

      US President Barack Obama yesterday signed into law a measure aimed at strengthening trade secret protection including by allowing federal courts to hear cases involving trade secret theft.

    • At The Behest Of Big Pharma, US Threatens Colombia Over Compulsory Licensing Of Swiss Drug

      As Techdirt readers well know, Big Pharma really hates compulsory licensing of its patented drugs, where a country steps in and allows an expensive drug to be made more cheaply in order to provide wider access for its people. Such massive pressure is applied to nations contemplating this move, that even global giants like India quail. A new story is unfolding that reveals just how far companies are prepared to go in order to prevent it from happening. It concerns Colombia’s possible use of a compulsory license for the drug imatinib, sold under the name Glivec, and used to treat leukemia. Despite the fact that the company holding patents on the drug, Novartis, is Swiss, the US has started to lean heavily on Colombia in order to persuade it not to go ahead with the move.

    • Trademarks

      • Remembering Andy Grove, and maybe just the most audacious trademark ever

        There are two slogans that will be ever-identified with Andy Grove. The first is “Intel Inside”, while the second is “Only the Paranoid Survive”, the title of his 1996 book in which he emphasizes the importance of a company to avoid complacency, if it hopes to stay ahead of its competitors. The Economist magazine, in its remembrance of Andy Grove, could have chosen either slogan as best capturing Grove’s legacy. It chose to entitle the piece– “The man who put Intel inside”.

    • Copyrights

      • New UK copyright enforcement strategy: “Track down” infringers, brainwash kids

        The Intellectual Property Office has outlined harsher approaches towards copyright, trademark, and patent enforcement in the UK over the next few years.

        Rather than the “notice and takedown” approach currently used for handling copyright infringement, the UK government is mulling the idea of advancing it to “notice and trackdown,” although the details are not yet clear.

        Beyond increased enforcement, it appears that the IPO also wants to educate consumers and users of “the benefits of respecting IP rights, and do so.” The IPO wants to get ‘em young, too, by encouraging “greater respect” for copyright among children and students.

        These new strategies are outlined in a new UK government paper called “Protecting creativity, supporting innovation: IP enforcement 2020.” The document sets out how it will make “effective, proportionate and accessible enforcement of IP rights a priority for the next four years.”

      • Gene Kelly’s Widow Claims Copyright In Interviews Done By Gene Kelly, Sues Over Academic Book

        Another day, another story of copyright being used for censorship, rather than as an incentive to create. Here’s the headline: Gene Kelly’s widow is suing to stop an academic book exploring various interviews that were done over the decades with the famed actor/dancer. And here’s the lawsuit, in which Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, who was married to Gene Kelly for the last seven years of his life, claims that she holds the copyright on every interview that Kelly ever did.

      • Techdirt Reading List: Copyfight: The Global Politics Of Digital Copyright Reform
      • Copyright and consequences: Google’s Andy Rubin defends Android to jury

        During hours of unrelenting cross-examination today, Andy Rubin, Google’s former Android chief, was on the stand in the Oracle v. Google trial defending how he built the mobile OS.

        Rubin’s testimony began yesterday. He’s another one of the star witnesses in this second courtroom showdown between the two software giants in which Oracle has said it will seek up to $9 billion in damages for Google’s use of certain Java APIs in the Android operating system. Since an appeals court decided that APIs can be copyrighted, Google’s only remaining defense in this case is that its use of those APIs constitutes “fair use.”

      • Stakes Are High In Oracle v. Google, But The Public Has Already Lost Big

        Attorneys for the Oracle and Google companies presented opening statements this week in a high-stakes copyright case about the use of application-programming interfaces, or APIs. As Oracle eagerly noted, there are potentially billions of dollars on the line; accordingly, each side has brought “world-class attorneys,” as Judge William Alsup noted to the jury. And while each company would prefer to spend their money elsewhere, these are businesses that can afford to spend years and untold resources in the courtroom.

        Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the overwhelming majority of developers in the computer industry, whether they’re hobbyist free software creators or even large companies. Regardless of the outcome of this fair use case, the fact that it proceeded to this stage at all casts a long legal shadow over the entire world of software development.

      • The biggest problem for the Oracle v. Google retrial: Judge Alsup’s reality distortion field

        For purely emotional reasons, this retrial appears rigged to me. Various pretrial decisions didn’t seem evenhanded to me, with Google perhaps benefiting from Judge Alsup’s frustration with the fact that his highest-profile IP ruling was nullified by three higher judges than him. Judge Alsup would, of course, benefit from a final decision in Google’s favor in the sense that his 2012 non-copyrightability blunder would then be deemed inconsequential in retrospect.

      • Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz at trial: Java was free, Android had no licensing problem

        Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand today in the second Oracle v. Google trial, testifying about how the Java language and APIs were used while he was at Sun’s helm.

        After a brief overview of his career path, Schwartz launched into a discussion about Java, a software language that Sun created and popularized. It’s critical testimony in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit, in which Oracle claims that Google’s use of Java APIs, now owned by Oracle, violates copyright law. Oracle is seeking up to $9 billion in damages.

        Was the Java language, created by Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, “free and open to use,” Google lawyer Robert Van Nest asked?

05.12.16

Links 12/5/2016: Qt Creator 4.0.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 45.1.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Apple’s actual role in podcasting: be careful what you wish for

    This New York Times article gets a lot wrong, and both podcast listeners and podcast producers should be clear on Apple’s actual role in podcasting today and what, exactly, big producers are asking for.

    Podcasts work nothing like the App Store, and we’re all better off making sure they never head down that road.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Russians Remember Their WWII Vets

      The West’s propaganda war against Russia filters events there through a prism of cynicism and contempt, but that misses the human component of a country still remembering the deep personal scars of World War II, as Gilbert Doctorow reflects.

    • Amid Embrace of Endless War, Report Shows Epic US Failure to Assist Refugees

      The U.S. is failing to fulfill its “modest pledge” to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees by September 2016, according to the most recent government figures and a damning new report (pdf) from Human Rights First, prompting sharp critique from observers.

    • Al-Zawahiri Supports Syrian al-Qaeda, calls for more global Volunteers

      Some American analysts, partisans of the hard line fundamentalist factions in Syria, saw al-Zawahiri’s instruction to al-Qaeda to let the people choose their leader as a positive. Why haven’t they learned yet that these seedy terrorist organizations play mind games with people, including being passive aggressive? The Nusra Front or al-Qaeda in Syria already holds territory, and it has forcibly converted and stolen from members of religious minorities such as the Druze. Al-Zawahiri’s speech is dishonest tradecraft, not a sign of a mellower al-Qaeda. The Nusra Front controls vast swathes of Syrian territory. My guess is that they won’t relinquish an inch of it as a result of al-Zawahiri’s speech.

    • Ten Ways Israel is Just Like Saudi Arabia

      Israel and Saudi Arabia have been supporting extremist groups in Syria like Al Nusra, which is an al-Qaeda affiliate, as they both are more concerned with overthrowing Assad (who is aligned with Iran) than defeating the Islamic State. The Saudis have sent weapons and money to Al Nusra; Israel has been treating wounded Al Nusra fighters in Israeli hospitals and then sending them back to battle the Syrian army. Israel also killed Lebanese-Iranian advisers who were assisting Assad’s government in fighting against Al Nusra.

    • White House Hiroshima Visit Puts Spotlight on Nuclear Hypocrisy

      Thompson wrote:

      President Obama will end his Presidency pretty much the same way he began it: with a call to the world to rid itself of nuclear arms—this time at Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic weapon used in war.

      Too bad he did so little to reach that goal during the intervening seven years. Instead of bequeathing a smarter nuclear arsenal to his successor, he has launched the most-costly upgrade to the U.S. nuclear arsenal ever.

      [...]

      Kevin Martin, the president of Peace Action, added, “At this point, it’s not enough to repeat the words Obama has said several times since his historic Prague speech calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons. Obama must announce actions he will take in the his remaining months as president that will actually bring the world closer to being free of nuclear weapons.”

    • ‘Allahu Akbar’ cry at terror drill was scripted, police admit

      Greater Manchester police say phrase was not introduced by person playing role of terrorist at Trafford Centre

    • To the Next U.S. President, the Unlimited Power to Spy, Imprison and Kill

      Remember when coups and assassinations were secretive and presidents were obliged to go to Congress, tell lies and ask permission to wage wars? Remember when torture, spying and indefinite imprisonment were illicit, when issuing signing statements to rewrite laws was rare, and when yelling “state secrets” to shut down legal cases was considered abusive?

      For over two centuries, it would have been an outrage for the president to hold a meeting every Tuesday for the sole purpose of going through a list of names and picking out which men, women and children should be killed.

      Those times are gone. By mutual consent of those in power in Washington, D.C., all such resistance and outrage is now firmly in the past. It would now be unfair and violate established bipartisan precedent to deny the powers of unlimited spying, imprisonment and killing to the next president of the United States.

      The fact that this new reality is so little-known is largely a symptom of partisanship, as most Democrats still haven’t allowed themselves to hear about the kill list. But the widespread ignorance is also a function of media, of what’s reported, what’s editorialized, what’s asked about in campaign debates and what isn’t.

    • Obama Should Heed Hiroshima’s Survivors

      The White House announced this week that President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic-bomb attack. He will be the first sitting president to go there, and only the second president ever, after former President Jimmy Carter visited in 1984. Obama’s pilgrimage to Hiroshima, where 140,000 people were killed and another 100,000 seriously injured on Aug. 6, 1945, will not be accompanied by a formal apology. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the trip was to highlight Obama’s “continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Yet the Obama administration also recently revealed its 30-year, $1 trillion plan to modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal.

    • Human Rights Watch Claims Turkish Border Guards Are Killing Syrian Refugees

      Syrian refugees, seeking asylum in Turkey, are being killed and or wounded by border guards, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.

      “During March and April 2016, Turkish border guards used violence against Syrian asylum seekers and smugglers, killing five people, including a child, and seriously injuring 14 others, according to victims, witnesses, and Syrian locals interviewed by Human Rights Watch,” the report reads. “Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry maintains the country has an “open-door policy” for Syrian refugees, despite building a new border wall.”

    • Engaged In Good Causes: Longtime War Criminal Inexplicably, Unconscionably Gets Not Jail Sentence But Award (WTF?)

      Having blithely orchestrated several genocides and the deaths of millions of brown-skinned innocents in the specious, imperial name of the right to bomb neutral countries in order to save them and maybe us – a right that America, despite our ongoing carnage, still claims – Henry Kissinger, our best and brightest war criminal, on Monday won the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Defense Department’s highest honor for private citizens. In a stomach-roiling spectacle at the Pentagon wherein one discordantly unfit Nobel Peace Prize winner honors another, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter called the former Secretary of State’s murderous service “unique in the annals of American diplomacy.” Kissinger, Carter said, “demonstrated how serious thinking and perspective can deliver solutions to seemingly intractable problems.”

    • Taking Responsibility for War

      On May 10, 92-year-old Henry Kissinger was given the Distinguished Public Service Award by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. It does little good to be outraged by this news, in that Kissinger may have the blood of (at least) hundreds of thousands of dead people on his hands, but that seems to bother very few people. Let us at least not take the time to bother being surprised.

      Sure, we can mention former Secretary of State Kissinger, we can seriously debate how many Cambodians, Chileans, and East Timorese he is responsible for killing. But at the end of it all, Kissinger is an old man with a funny accent and even seemingly bold and political (at least when going up against George W. Bush) people such as comedian Stephen Colbert feel comfortable palling around with him. If the man who so memorably trashed a sitting president to his face finds it okay to make cute with Kissinger, yeah, let’s give the man the finest civilian honor (and, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize. But jokes about that have been exhausted for decades).

    • Obama Broke Pledge to Demand Syrian Opposition’s Separation From Nusra Front

      The gradual erosion of the cease-fire in Syria over the past month is the result of multiple factors shaping the conflict, but one of the underlying reasons is the Obama administration’s failure to carry out its commitment to Russia to get US-supported opposition groups to separate themselves physically from the Nusra Front — the al-Qaeda organization in Syria.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Chelsea Manning honored with award, cash prize for WikiLeaks disclosures

      Chelsea Manning, the former Army soldier convicted of the biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, was honored in absentia Monday at a London ceremony for her role in providing Wikileaks with secret documents concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      Manning, 35, was named the winner of this year’s Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize during an event hosted by Blueprint for Free Speech, a Melbourne-based nonprofit, at the London offices of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    • US Court System Just Another Extension Of The Government’s Ongoing Opacity Project

      The same law that gives the government warrantless access to citizens’ electronic communications — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — also gives the government the privilege of preventing service providers from disclosing any information about these requests to targeted users. This blanket opacity is a problem for several reasons (First and Fourth Amendment concerns), not the least of which is no one — not even Congressional oversight — can provide an accurate accounting of these requests and their accompanying gag orders.

    • A Perfect Storm

      As if all this wasn’t enough bad news for Mrs. Clinton in one week, the FBI learned last week from the convicted international hacker, who calls himself Guccifer, that he knows how the Russians came to possess Mrs. Clinton’s emails; and it is because she stored, received and sent them from her personal, secret, non-secure server.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • It’s not just Alberta: Warming-fueled fires are increasing

      Alberta’s unusually early and large fire is just the latest of many gargantuan fires on an Earth that’s grown hotter with more extreme weather.

      Earlier this year, large wildfires hit spots on opposite ends of the world — Tasmania and Oklahoma-Kansas. Last year, Alaska and California pushed the U.S. to a record 10 million acres burned. Massive fires hit Siberia, Mongolia and China last year and Brazil’s fire season has increased by a month over the past three decades.

    • Germany had so much renewable energy on Sunday that it had to pay people to use electricity

      On Sunday, May 8, Germany hit a new high in renewable energy generation. Thanks to a sunny and windy day, at one point around 1pm the country’s solar, wind, hydro and biomass plants were supplying about 55 GW of the 63 GW being consumed, or 87%.

    • Renewable Windfall as Germany’s Green Energy Meets 90 Percent of Demand

      Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world and a leader in renewable energy, produced so much energy this weekend from its solar, wind, hydro, and biomass plants that power prices went into negative territory for several hours. Consumers were being paid to use energy.

      According to Quartz, around 1 pm on Sunday, May 8—a particularly “sunny and windy day”—the plants supplied a combined 55 gigawatts, or 87 percent, of the 63 gigawatts being consumed.

    • The Plan To Revive Big Coal’s Fortunes Isn’t Panning Out

      Six years ago, coal companies like Arch Coal, Ambre Energy, and Peabody Energy had an idea. Domestic demand for coal was slumping, but they saw lifelines between the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, where coal was plentiful and relatively cheap to mine, and Asian markets, where economic growth was expected to drive a 40 percent increase in global coal consumption was by 2030.

      “Coal’s best days are ahead,” Peabody Energy said in 2010. China’s transition from a net-exporter to a net-importer of coal had recently sent prices rocketing, and energy companies were eager to turn profits in a rapidly expanding overseas market. Two years earlier, just 1 percent of the Powder River Basin’s coal production was exported. But if a network of railroads could carry more coal from Montana and Wyoming to the deep water ports of the Pacific Northwest — the cheapest, most direct line to Asia — coal companies could ship the coal to ballooning markets elsewhere.

    • Searing heat may spark climate exodus

      New research predicts that, by mid-century, summer temperatures will stay above 30°C at night and could rise to 46°C during the day. By the end of the century, maximum temperatures could reach 50°C, and this could happen more often. Instead of 16 days of extreme heat, there could be 80 days.

    • 87-Year-Old Billionaire Endorses Trump, Says He Doesn’t Care If It’s A Mistake Since He’ll Be Dead

      T. Boone Pickens, the prominent billionaire investor who made his fortune on fossil fuels…

    • Scientists Just Pinpointed Another Example Of Fracking’s Environmental Impact

      A dumping site for fracking fluids long suspected to be leaching into Wolf Creek, a West Virginia waterway with ties to a county’s water supply, has indeed contaminated the creek with multiple chemicals, a new U.S. Geological Survey study has found.

      The “study demonstrates definitively that the stream is being impacted by [unconventional oil and gas extraction] wastewaters,” Denise Akob, USGS scientist and lead author of the study, told ThinkProgress. Unconventional oil and gas extraction refers to the many processes that involve hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.

      For this study, scientists in 2014 collected water and sediment samples upstream and downstream from Danny E. Webb Construction Inc.’s disposal site, which is still operational. Samples were then analyzed for a series of chemical markers that are known to be associated with fracking. “We were able to see some elements that are known to be associated with [unconventional oil and gas] wastewaters, including barium, bromide, calcium, chloride, sodium, lithium, and strontium,” Akob said.

    • Naomi Klein: Radical Solutions Only Proper Response to ‘Unyielding Science-Based Deadline’

      Climate crisis, argues author and activist, ‘might just be the catalyst we need to knit together the great many powerful movements bound together by the inherent worth and value of all people.’

    • ‘Death sentence’: Climate crisis driving global conflict, poverty & racism – Naomi Klein

      Climate change is driving inequality, conflict and racism as self-serving individuals and actors undercut the potential for a collective response to the crisis, journalist and author Naomi Klein has said.

      The Canadian, who is an avid environmental and political campaigner, made the observation at a memorial lecture dedicated to the late Palestinian political activist and academic Edward Said.

    • The Fort McMurray Fire: ‘Absolutely a Harbinger of Things to Come’

      The devastating wildfire in Fort McMurray, Canada appears to be losing its intensity, as weather conditions improve for firefighters and initial assessments of staggering damage trickle in.

      Meanwhile, awareness of the massive fire’s significance in the context of climate change continues to spread.

      “Alberta’s unusually early and large fire is just the latest of many gargantuan fires on an Earth that’s grown hotter with more extreme weather,” the Associated Press wrote on Wednesday.

  • Finance

    • Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow Today as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed

      In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes.

      In sum, PT has won four straight national elections – the last one occurring just 18 months ago. Its opponents have vigorously tried – and failed – to defeat them at the ballot box, largely due to PT’s support among Brazil’s poor and working classes.

      So if you’re a plutocrat with ownership of the nation’s largest and most influential media outlets, what do you do? You dispense with democracy altogether – after all, it keeps empowering candidates and policies you dislike – by exploiting your media outlets to incite unrest and then install a candidate who could never get elected on his own, yet will faithfully serve your political agenda and ideology.

    • The Hypocrisy Of Trump’s Refusal To Release His Tax Returns

      In an interview with the Associated Press, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump revealed that he will not release any of his tax returns before election day.

      Previously, Trump blamed an ongoing audit for his failure to release returns, an excuse that was questioned by tax experts. As recently as Sunday, Trump pledged to release the returns “as fast as the auditors finish.” Last October, Trump said he would release his tax returns once Hillary Clinton released her emails. Now, Trump adds that he’s not planning to release them because “there’s nothing to learn from them” and voters aren’t interested in the information.

    • Top 25 hedge fund managers earned $13bn in 2015 – more than some nations

      Top earners, Kenneth Griffin and James Simons, made $1.7bn each despite ‘hedge fund killing field’ on Wall Street where many companies lost billions or closed

    • Hedge Fund Managers Are Winning: 2015 Another Year of ‘Outrageous Compensation’

      2015 was a “another year of outrageous hedge fund compensation,” said Robert Weissman, president of advocacy organization Public Citizen.

      Sparking his statement is the latest Rich List published by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which reveals that the industry’s top 25 managers made an average of $517.6 million, and had combined earnings of $12.94 billion.

      The men at the top five spots all earned over $1 billion.

    • BinC Watch: Donald Trump Has Now Changed His Mind on the Minimum Wage Three Times In Three Days

      So what does Trump really think about the minimum wage? There’s no telling. Maybe he really has changed his mind over and over. Maybe he didn’t realize there were separate state and federal minimum wages until someone clued him in on May 8. But his tweet today sure makes it clear that he wants an increase in the federal minimum wage. He even capitalized it to make sure we got the point. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait before he claims he never said this and he really wants the states to decide after all?

    • Elizabeth Warren Mocks Trump on Twitter, and Goads Him Into Striking Back

      Warren also called out Trump University, the real estate magnate’s eponymous “university” that is currently under investigation for allegedly scamming its students, along with his position on Wall Street regulation.

    • Sanders, Sweden and Socialism

      As the 21st century moves forward facing ever increasingly disastrous economic, ecological and military crises, the momentum will increase toward a truly global movement that will permit the billions of working class people to move together in a coordinated fashion. The ruling classes might have the money but we have the numbers. Don’t ever forget that.

    • Why on earth would socialists support the neoliberal, undemocratic EU?

      The EU is a deeply undemocratic institution enforcing austerity and privatisation on its member states. In what strange world is this a progressive institution?

    • The vicious spiral of economic inequality and financial crises

      There is compelling evidence that economic inequality is both a result of, and contributor to, economic crises. A contribution to the openGlobalRights debate on economic inequality.

    • Trump Is Already Working On A Rewrite Of His Tax Plan

      And while Trump’s original plan included massive giveaways to the rich and not a whole lot for everyone else, the rewrite looks like it will keep most relief for the wealthy while reducing it for the poor.

    • The capitalism tribunal

      On the aftermath of the leaks related to the Panama Papers and the secretive TTIP negotiations, an important dialogue is maturing in Europe, with respect to the past, the present and the future economy.

      Many voices are now openly challenge the Union’s neoliberal model, as they witness capitalism’s great unkept promise to make life better for everyone. The current political dynamic is fuelled by a sense that activities stemming of the current mainstream economic system, pose a direct threat to the survival of our and other species.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • A columnist’s work is never done

      For decades, columnists helped form new communities through their journalism. But now, they’re dying out.

    • Trump Picks White Supremacist Leader as California Delegate, Then Blames Selection on Database Error

      Donald Trump’s campaign is facing criticism after it named a prominent white supremacist leader to its list of delegates in California. William Johnson is the head of the American Freedom Party, which has openly backed the creation of “a separate white ethnostate” and the deportation of almost all nonwhite citizens from the United States. Johnson’s name appeared on a list of delegates published by California’s secretary of state on Monday. After Mother Jones broke the story on Tuesday, the Trump campaign blamed Johnson’s selection on a “database error.” But correspondence published by Mother Jones shows the Trump campaign was in touch with Johnson as recently as Monday.

    • To Counter Trump and Far-Right, Labor Leaders call for ‘Global New Deal’

      Notably, Tuesday’s panel placed “a sizable share of the blame” on center-left parties’ embrace of neo-liberalism, HuffPo reports, which has “diminished the public’s faith in the ability of labor unions and progressive politics to deliver for them—paving the way for far-right populism.”

    • Donald Trump’s Scary, 12-Point Legal Agenda

      Whatever additional consequences the upcoming presidential election may have, the vote will determine the future of the Supreme Court. You probably heard this admonition in 2008 and again in 2012, but this time you really should pay attention.

      In fact, with the death of Antonin Scalia in February and the continuing stalemate in the Senate over the nomination of Merrick Garland—a centrist appellate judge—to succeed him, the court’s future is already up for grabs. Assuming that Garland’s nomination dies on the vine, the next president may get to appoint no less than four members of the nation’s most powerful judicial body.

      Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Steven Breyer and Anthony Kennedy will all be 78 or older by August. Ginsburg, the eldest of the trio, will turn 84 next March.

    • John McCain: Arizona’s sellout senator is the godfather of dark money

      U.S. Sen. John McCain wrote the rules on dark money when he sponsored campaign finance reform, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. Now he’s using millions of dollars in dark money in a bid to hold on to his tightly contested Arizona seat.

      An investigation into the various PACs supporting McCain brought to light some stunning conclusions.

      First, the vast majority of McCain campaign donations are not from the Arizonans he represents but from people and corporations outside of Arizona with a vested interest in McCain’s continued support and votes for their interests.

    • FACT CHECK: Did Kelli Ward want to ban the NSA from operating in Arizona?

      Several attack ads have surfaced in the three-way race for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s seat ahead of the Aug. 30 primary.

    • Raining Rockets

      Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. said on CNN, “We have thousands of rockets raining down on our citizens.” In fact, we hear over and over again, “rockets are raining” down on Israel. It makes a strong impression.

      [...]

      Not the image of “rockets raining” that Israel wants. An average of four drops per month hardly qualifies as a rain. When I look out on my front drive and see four drops, I hardly expect to read in the paper that we had a rainy day. If there are not enough drops to wet the street or water my hedges, I don’t expect my neighbor to say, “Wow! What a rainy day.”

    • Democratic Convention Hosted by Republican Donors, Anti-Obamacare Lobbyists

      The Democratic Party’s 2012 platform pledged to “curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests.” But the 2016 convention in Philadelphia will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality.

      Some of the members of the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, whose job is to organize the logistics and events for the convention, are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle.

    • Sanders Wins West Virginia, Keeping the Pressure on Clinton

      Bernie Sanders won the West Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday, once again demonstrating that his campaign retains ardent support despite Hillary Clinton’s significant lead in the delegate count.

    • Bernie Takes West Virginia

      West Virginia really likes Bernie Sanders. He swept the Democratic primary yesterday, winning 51.4 percent to Clinton’s 36 percent, even in the face of the mainstream media essentially declaring the race over.

      Speaking in Salem, Ore., Sanders described the key to his victory: “West Virginia is a working-class state, and like many other states in this country, including Oregon, working people are hurting. And what the people of West Virginia said tonight, and I believe the people of Oregon will say next week, is that we need an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.”

    • Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

      Hillary Clinton wants the American voters to be very afraid of Donald Trump, but there is reason to fear as well what a neoconservative/neoliberal Clinton presidency would mean for the world, writes Robert Parry.

    • WaPo Columnist Urges Paul Ryan to Boast of Positions He Doesn’t Hold

      Marcus used her Washington Post column today (5/11/16) to present the speech that House Speaker Paul Ryan should give to Republicans in order to disassociate himself from Donald Trump. She has Paul Ryan being somewhat less than honest.

    • Washington Post Squeezes Four Anti-Sanders Stories Out of One Tax Study Over Seven Hours

      It’s not news that the Washington Post’s editorial board has been lobbying against Sen. Bernie Sanders since the beginning of his improbable presidential campaign. Sometimes this editorial ethos seems to extend to other parts of the paper, as it did in March, when the Post managed to run 16 negative stories about Sanders in 16 hours (FAIR.org, 3/8/16).

    • ‘Terrifying’ New National Poll Shows Trump and Clinton Statistically Tied

      The Reuters/Ipsos poll did not present a match-up between Bernie Sanders and Trump, but recent surveys, including two released Tuesday, show the Vermont senator holding a more secure national lead against the former reality TV star and real estate mogul, and also doing better than Clinton against Trump in major swing states.

    • True Life Adventures Of A Democratic Superdelegate

      In every election since 1984, the Democratic Party has used a semi-private, semi-public system to choose its presidential nominee — electing more than three-quarters of delegates through open state conventions, but giving a few hundred Democratic elected officials, Democratic National Committee members, and party elites an automatic vote. Unlike the pledged delegates, who must cast their vote for whichever candidate won their state or district, these so-called superdelegates can back whomever they choose.

    • Sanders, Clinton, and the Not-So-Simple Case of West Virginia

      Sanders’s broader message has to do with what he calls the corruption of the political system.

    • Bernie Sanders Could Still Win the Democratic Nomination — No, Seriously

      Last night on CNN, while discussing Bernie Sanders’ landslide victory over Hillary Clinton in West Virginia — which followed a 5-point Sanders win in Indiana last week — Michael Smerconish said that “Democratic super-delegates might have to rethink” their support of Hillary Clinton given how dramatically better Sanders fares in head-to-head match-ups against Donald Trump.

      After Clinton’s Indiana loss, John King had told CNN viewers that “if Sanders were to win nine out of ten of the remaining contests, there’s no doubt that some of the super-delegates would panic. There’s no doubt some of them would switch to Sanders. What he has to do is win the bulk of the remaining contests. Would that send jitters, if not panic, through the Democratic Party? Yes. Yes it would.”

    • What’s the Best Move Bernie Sanders Can Make Right Now to Strengthen the Progressive Movement?

      What should Bernie do? That seems to be the question of the month. Permit me to weigh in.

      Here’s what we know at this point in the campaign. For Sanders to have any chance of winning the support of superdelegates, he must arrive at the convention with more elected delegates than Hillary. To do that, he needs to win about 65 percent of all elected delegates in the remaining electoral contests.

      On March 26, Bernie won three states—Washington, Alaska and Hawaii—by huge margins. They were all caucus states. He has never won a primary in a state where only Democrats are allowed to vote. Five of the remaining 10 are in states with closed primaries. So his chances are infinitesimal. Is this an argument for him to drop out? No.

    • Networks, Major Papers Skip State Department Censorship of Fox News Q&A Video [Ed: right wing site]

      The same only-Fox-cares pattern happened after Fox diplomatic correspondent James Rosen reported that the State Department edited out an on-camera admission by Psaki in 2013 that it was necessary for the Obama administration to lie to reporters about negotating with Iran, since “diplomacy requires privacy to progress.”

    • Questionable Assumptions Behind Critiques of Sanders’ Economic Plan

      It’s “Neoliberals Gang Up on Bernie Sanders Week” along the corridor of Washington establishment think-tanks that include the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute and a Brookings offspring, the Tax Policy Center. Out of this corridor came not one, but two reports this week that give negative reviews to Sanders’ health care and tax plans.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Turkish President Erdogan Now Demands Injunction Against German Media Boss For Saying He Laughed At Anti-Erdogan Poem

      Every time you think that the thin-skinned, insecure freakouts of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t get any more crazy, they do. If you don’t recall, Erdogan has a notrious thin skin, and a long history of censorship of views he doesn’t like. But since becoming President, this has gone into overdrive, with him filing over 1800 cases against people in Turkey for insulting him — including the famous case in which someone passed around an internet meme comparing Erdogan to Gollum.

      That kind of nuttiness jumped international boundaries recently, when Erdogan’s lawyers discovered a long-forgotten German law that made it illegal to insult the head of a foreign country, and demanded that the law be used against a satirical German comedian, Jan Bohmermann, who purposefully read an insulting poem about Erdogan, in order to mock his thin skin. Some might find suing over that poem to be… well… a bit on the nose in making the point the poem was intended to make. But, to Erdogan, it appears that suing over insults is just something he can’t stop doing. More recently, Erdogan discovered that Switzerland has a similar law and went after people there too (while also getting a Dutch reporter arrested).

    • Proof Positive that David Cameron, the BBC, Guardian, New Statesman and Entire Establishment are Peddling Blatant Untruths in the Kuenssberg Affair

      Here are all the comments on the scrapped Kuenssberg petition. You know, the petition David Cameron condemned in the House of Commons today because it was accompanied by a storm of sexist abuse? Well, here are the comments in their entirety and out of 35,000 people who signed, there is virtually nobody whose comment can be seen as remotely sexist. See for yourselves. Can you spot the one sexist comment I found?

      The comments show the petition was overwhelmingly signed by decent, concerned people who were sometimes quite eloquent. Also that the petition supporters are gender balanced and several specifically identify as feminists, and as supporters of the BBC. But neither Cameron, the Guardian and mainstream media nor 38 Degrees itself has any qualm about writing off all these decent citizens as a misogynist rabble.

      [...]

      Now the lies have been thoroughly exploded. Of course the fact Cameron has been involved in peddling the lie may now be leading to some creative design, backdating and history creation in assorted Government establishments.

    • 38 Degrees Refuse to Release Evidence of “Sexist Abuse” of Laura Kuenssberg

      This is the transcript of my conversation with the 38 Degrees Press Spokesman today about the scrapping of the Laura Kuenssberg petition, for which 38 Degrees were praised by David Cameron in the Commons today.

      [...]

      I do not claim the 38 Degrees do not have any evidence to show to “justify” removing this petition. But if they do, I find their attitude absolutely astonishing. It seems to me most probable they did so under establishment pressure with no serious consideration of evidence, and zero concern for the 35,000 people – about half of them female – they have now stigmatised as misogynists.

    • Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Has Declared War on Free Speech

      Our current controversies over free speech on campus actually represent the second set of battles in a culture war that erupted in the U.S. during the late 1980s and that subsided by the mid-1990s — its cessation probably due to the emergence of the World Wide Web as a vast, new forum for dissenting ideas. The openness of the web scattered and partly dissipated the hostile energies that had been building and raging in the mainstream media about political correctness for nearly a decade. However, those problems have stubbornly returned, because they were never fully or honestly addressed by university administrations or faculty the first time around. Now a new generation of college students, born in the 1990s and never exposed to open public debate over free speech, has brought its own assumptions and expectations to the conflict.

    • The way out of the Labour Party’s ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ requires a politics of solidarity

      In recent weeks, the British Labour Party has been accused of suffering from a crisis of anti-Semitism. But the claim only makes sense if anti-Semitism is redefined to include anti-Zionism. To do so obscures the party’s actual history of anti-Semitism, which is rooted in its support for empire and nationalism, not in anti-Zionism.

    • Hillary Clinton Denounces BDS Again in Letter to Jewish Leaders Before Methodist Conference
    • Zionist Israel Hides Its Crimes Behind Its Smears of Truth-Tellers

      “Anti-semite” has lost its sting, because every justified criticism of the Zionist Israeli government is declared to be anti-semitism. The word is so overused and misapplied as to be useless. Indeed, to be declared “anti-semite” by the Israel Lobby is to be declared a person of high moral conscience.

    • Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Sues Gawker For Pointing Out He Didn’t Invent Email

      Oh boy. Remember Shiva Ayyadurai? The guy who has gone to great lengths to claim that he “invented email,” when the reality is that he appears to have (likely independently) written an early implementation of email long after others had actually “invented email.” In the past we’ve called out examples where gullible press have fallen for his easily debunked claims, but he keeps popping back up. He somehow got an entire series into the Huffington Post, which was clearly crafted as a PR exercise in trying to rewrite history. The mainstream press repeated his bogus claims about inventing email after he married a TV star. And, most recently, he decided to scream at the press for memorializing Ray Tomlinson — someone who actually did have a hand in creating email — upon his death.

      [...]

      For what it’s worth, some have disputed the idea that he even added any features not existing in previous discussions. Nevertheless, he’s not the “inventor” of email, no matter how many times he claims he is.

      We, of course, have not been alone in debunking his claims. Back in 2012, a few weeks after we first debunked them, Gawker’s Sam Biddle did a long and thorough takedown of Ayyadurai’s claims. Apparently that story really angers Ayyadurai, and I’m guessing that seeing Hulk Hogan win his crazy lawsuit against Gawker helped Ayyadurai to decide to sue Gawker as well.

      And, in keeping with my belief that this is all one giant PR stunt, the lawsuit filing was accompanied by a press release that repeats the same debunked claims, and selectively quotes the very media he fooled as evidence that he really invented email. The actual lawsuit is a joke. As in the Hogan case, Ayyadurai is suing not just Gawker, but also the company’s founder Nick Denton, along with the author of the articles (in this case, Sam Biddle).

    • Game Of Thrones’ Season 6 Spoilers Restored Online After Failed HBO Censorship Attempt
    • HBO Accused of YouTube Censorship on Game of Thrones Spoilers
    • HBO Abuses The DMCA Process In The Name Of Game Of Thrones Spoilers

      We’ve talked in the past about how HBO has jealously protected its Game of Thrones property. The show, wildly popular to the point of being proclaimed as the most pirated show over certain time spans, has enjoyed success due in part to that piracy, according to the show’s director, who made sure to add how much he hated that piracy that helps his show. Add to that HBO’s insisting that certain fan gatherings and events centered around the show be shut down and we have a picture of a company and property very much at odds with anyone looking to share it in a way outside of their control.

      As a parallel, the topic of spoilers often centers on this show. I happen to hate this topic with the fire of a thousand suns, but there is no doubt that some folks out there see unbidden spoilers as the great scourge of our generation. And perhaps that made some people pause when it came out that HBO had issued a DMCA takedown on a YouTube video that discussed such spoilers.

    • Facebook Censorship: Which Images Passed (And Failed) The Nudity Test?
    • Conservative blogger files legal motion against Facebook

      On Tuesday, conservative blogger Steven Crowder announced that he had filed a legal motion against Facebook. According to the document posted by Crowder, “a petition for pre-suit discovery has been filed in Dallas County, Texas seeking discovery from Facebook regarding the actions of its News Feed curators as well as its billing department.”

      According to Crowder, the petition for information has been in the works for some time. Recent revelations regarding Facebook’s Trending Topics section, however, caused him to accelerate his timeline. As we reported Tuesday, Crowder’s site was one of those allegedly censored and blacklisted by Facebook’s news curators.

      Although allegations of censorship prompted him to act more quickly, Crowder said that “this is an issue regarding transparency and the trust of business clients (as well as users), NOT merely ‘censorship’ which Facebook has the right to do.”

    • Lawmakers Are Right To Demand Answers About Facebook Censorship
    • Facebook Censorship: Why a Federal Fix Could Hurt Free Speech
    • Outcry After Censorship Allegations by Facebook Trends
    • Angry about Facebook censorship? Wait until you hear about the news feed
    • US senator demands answers from Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s alleged news censorship

      “Social networks such as Facebook are an increasingly important source of news for many Americans and people around the world,” wrote Thume, adding: “Indeed, with over a billion daily active users on average, Facebook has enormous influence on users’ perceptions of current events including political perspective.”

    • Congress Questions Facebook About Something It Probably Didn’t Do With A Feature That Barely Matters
    • If Facebook Hides Conservative News, a Senate Inquiry is a Bad Idea
    • Ethereum Based Censorship-Immune Social Media Network “Akasha” Unveiled
    • Google Just Gave Payday Lenders The Boot From Its Massive Advertising Network
    • Google bans ads for payday loans

      As of July, Google will no longer allow ads for payday loans, TechCrunch reports. The banned ads are those that have to be repaid within 60 days, and, in the U.S., those that charge more than 36% annual interest, wrote David Graff, Google’s director of global product policy, in a blog post on the change.

      “When reviewing our policies, research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that,” Graff wrote.

    • No more Google ads for payday loans: consumer protection or censorship?
    • Google to Ban Payday Loans From Its Advertising Systems
    • Google Pulls Plug on Predatory Payday Loan Ads, Huzzah!

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • DOJ Tells Ron Wyden, ACLU, Court That It’s Under No Legal Obligation To Reveal Contents Of Secret Legal Memo

      There’s another secret legal memo that’s been floating around the nation’s intelligence offices for more than a decade that the DOJ won’t let the American public see. The memo’s contents have been hinted at repeatedly by Senator Ron Wyden, who dropped the heaviest hint of all roughly a year ago, during the runup to the passage of the cybersecurity bill. This lends some credence to the assumption that the secret Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo is somehow related to government demands for information and data from tech companies.

    • GCHQ get involved as a programme of Scottish cyber security career initiatives is launched [Ed: puff pieces reach Scotland]
    • Former NSA Chief, EFF Debate Privacy vs. Security
    • Ex-NSA Chief Michael Hayden: ‘Every Foreign Intelligence Service In The World Was Thumbing Through Hillary’s Email Server’
    • Ex-NSA Director Says Clinton’s Email Problems Were Caused by ‘Laziness’
    • Legal Action against the French Surveillance Law

      The Exégètes amateurs, the legal team of La Quadrature du Net, FDN and FFDN, has submitted new legal briefs in its legal challenge before the French Council of State against the 2015 Intelligence Act and its implementation decrees. The briefs detail all the arguments developed against this dangerous law. For the most part, the strategy consists in mobilizing the case law of the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ). A very worrying provision completely overlooked during the parliamentary debate last year is also targeted with a constitutional challenge (so called QPC procedure))

    • FBI director warns that feds will bring more encryption-related cases

      The head of the FBI said Wednesday that the government will bring more legal cases over encryption issues in the near future, according to Reuters.

      Speaking with reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington, FBI Director James Comey specifically said that end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp is affecting the agency’s work in “huge ways.” However, he noted the FBI has no plans to sue Facebook, the app’s parent company.

      He also said that since October 2015, the FBI has examined “about 4,000 digital devices” and was unable to unlock “approximately 500.”

    • James Clapper’s Latest Effort To Fearmonger about Snowden’s Damage

      Clapper provides two pieces of evidence for damage:

      1. Snowden disclosures have made terrorist groups “very security-conscious”

      2. Snowden disclosures have “speeded the move” [by whom, it’s not entirely clear] to unbreakable encryption

      That’s a bit funny, because what we saw from the terrorist cell that ravaged Paris and Belgium was — as The Grugq describes it — “drug dealer tradecraft writ large.” Stuff that they could have learned from watching the Wire a decade ago, with a good deal of sloppiness added in. With almost no hints of the use of encryption.

      If the most dangerous terrorists today are using operational security that they could have learned years before Snowden, then his damage is not all that great.

      Unless Clapper means, when he discusses the use of unbreakable encryption, us? Terrorists were already using encryption, but journalists and lawyers and US-based activists might not have been (activists in more dangerous places might have been using encryption that the State Department made available).

      Neither of those developments should be that horrible. Which may be why Clapper says, “We’ve been very conservative in the damage assessment” even while insisting there’s a lot. Because this is not all that impressive, unless as Chief Spook you think you should have access to the communications of journalists and lawyers and activists.

    • Twitter ‘Blocks’ Intel Agencies From Tweet-Mining Service

      Twitter claims it does not want intelligence agencies using a Tweet-mining service for surveillance purposes. The company recently restated its “longstanding” policy of preventing a company called Dataminr from selling information to intelligence agencies that want to monitor Tweets.

    • Is It Really That Big A Deal That Twitter Blocked US Intelligence Agencies From Mining Public Tweets?

      Over the weekend, some news broke about how Twitter was blocking Dataminr, a (you guessed it) social media data mining firm, from providing its analytics of real-time tweets to US intelligence agencies. Dataminr — which, everyone makes clear to state, has investments from both Twitter and the CIA’s venture arm, In-Q-Tel — has access to Twitter’s famed “firehose” API of basically every public tweet. The company already has relationships with financial firms, big companies and other parts of the US government, including the Department of Homeland Security, which has been known to snoop around on Twitter for quite some time.

      Apparently, the details suggest, some (unnamed) intelligence agencies within the US government had signed up for a free pilot program, and it was as this program was ending that Twitter reminded Dataminr that part of the terms of their agreement in providing access to the firehose was that it not then be used for government surveillance. Twitter insists that this isn’t a change, it’s just it enforcing existing policies.

    • Former NSA chief tells former colleagues frustrated about increasing encryption: “Get over it!”

      Michael Hayden, who headed the CIA and the NSA during the Bush administration, is refreshingly blunt about the limits of government efforts to rein in encryption.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The Secret NSA Diary of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator

      After working as an interrogator for a U.S. military contractor in Iraq, Eric Fair took a job as an analyst for the National Security Agency. When he went to the NSA, Fair was reckoning with the torture of Iraqi prisoners, torture he had witnessed and in which he had participated.

      Fair would go on to write a memoir detailing his experiences in Iraq; the book, Consequence, was published last month to strong notices, including not one but two positive reviews in the New York Times. But Fair actually wrote about his time as an interrogator more than a decade earlier in an internal NSA publication.

    • Book Notes: ‘Consequence’ an odd mix of warrior, worshipper

      When the New York Times editor of the Sunday Book Review mentioned, during a recent panel discussion at The Times, that Eric Fair regretted publishing his memoir “Consequence,” I thought I could understand why. The book about torture he had seen and inflicted in Iraq had to have been hard to write and harder still to live with, despite the many essays Fair had already published on the subject.

    • Abu Ghraib prisoners deserve, finally, their day in court

      Twelve years ago American citizens and the rest of the world were rocked by the graphic photographs of the sexual and physical torture at Abu Ghraib. Once seen, the images are impossible to forget: the terrified prisoners, wide-eyed, mostly naked; the pyramids of bodies; the dog-collared man on all fours led on a leash; the hooded man standing on a box, arms spread as if crucified, electrical wires dangling from his fingertips. And, in almost every picture, the guards, looking on with a smirk.

    • Will These 2 Court Cases Finally Hold Our Torturers Accountable?

      They may confirm that since torture is a war crime, it can never be a policy option.

    • Alleged 9/11 plotter’s lawyers ask prosecutor, judge to quit trial over destruction of evidence

      Lawyers for the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, are asking the Pentagon prosecution team and the trial judge to step down, saying they were involved in the secret destruction of evidence in the death-penalty case.

      Attorney David Nevin said by telephone Wednesday that under the rules of war court secrecy he cannot describe the evidence that was allegedly destroyed. He added that a court filing on Tuesday seeking the recusal of the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, and the prosecution team led by Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, does not describe it.

      “It was destroyed under circumstances where we were left with the impression, based on a ruling of the military judge, that the evidence would not be destroyed,” said Nevin.

    • Poor People Don’t Stand A Chance In Court

      Your landlord has decided to evict you and your family has nowhere to go. Or you’re in an abusive relationship and need a restraining order and probably a divorce and custody order for your children. Or you’re a homeless veteran trying to get VA benefits and navigate the complicated claims process. Or you’re being hounded by a collector for a debt you can’t pay who’s threatening to take away all of your income.

    • RIP Michael Ratner, Radical Attorney & Human Rights Crusader

      Michael Ratner, the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, died today in New York City. For the past four decades he has been a leading champion of human and civil rights, from leading the fight to close Guantánamo to representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to holding torturers accountable, at home and abroad.

    • Michael Ratner, RIP (Rest in Power)

      Michael Ratner, a friend of EFF who dedicated his life as a human rights attorney to fighting for justice, passed away earlier today.

      Michael was a staunch defender of civil liberties, forging new pathways for using the court systems and advocacy to fight for justice. As the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a formidable social justice attorney, Michael crossed paths with EFF around Wikileaks and related whistleblower cases, among others. CCR was our co-counsel in the early NSA spying cases. But more importantly, Michael was one of our legal heroes, unafraid to use law and lawsuits to try to address human rights problems in the U.S. and around the world. We have modeled our EFF litigation approach, in part, on the strong work he did. Michael’s many-decades career was colored by his commitment to human dignity, and he fought to ensure that we had a government accountable to the people—and that those who opposed government overreach would be protected and defended.

    • ‘This is History’: Police Officer Indicted on Federal Charges in Walter Scott Killing

      A federal grand jury has indicted former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager for the fatal shooting of Walter Scott.

      The April 4, 2015 shooting was captured on film by a bystander who later said, “I knew the cop didn’t do the right thing.”

      A statement issued Wednesday from the Department of Justice says that the three-count indictment includes charges for a federal civil rights offense for the shooting, excessive force without legal justification, and obstruction of justice for making false statements to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigators.

      Slager, who is white, initially pulled over Scott, who is black, for having a broken tail light on his car. As Scott attempted to run away, the North Charleston officer shot the unarmed 50-year-old Navy veteran and father of four five times from behind.

    • Majorities of Muslim Arabs in N. Africa want a Separation of Religion and State

      It turns out a lot of Muslims want a separation of religion and state, according to a new poll by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Arab Observatory. They polled people in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

    • Your Tax Dollars At Work: Cops Use Stingray To ALMOST Track Down Suspected Fast Food Thief

      According to the Capital News Service investigation, in the seven counties closest to Baltimore and Washington DC, agencies have spent nearly $3 million on Stingray equipment. While the word “terrorism” often appears on applications for funding grants, there’s no evidence the devices have ever been deployed in terrorism investigations. Instead, the most popular use for the devices is to fight the drug war.

      Law enforcement spokespeople will often point to the handful of homicide or kidnapping investigations successfully closed with the assistance of cell site simulators, but they’ll gloss over the hundreds of mundane deployments performed by officers who will use anything that makes their job easier — even if it’s a tool that’s Constitutionally dubious.

      Don’t forget, when a cell site simulator is deployed, it gathers cell phone info from everyone in the surrounding area, including those whose chicken wings have been lawfully purchased. And all of this data goes… somewhere and is held onto for as long as the agency feels like it, because most agencies don’t seem to have Stingray data retention policies in place until after they’ve been FOIA’ed/questioned by curious legislators.

    • Even non-police agencies are misusing the Police National Computer

      The Police National Computer (PNC) and access to the information held on it has always been a hotly debated topic. The PNC stores data on individuals who have been subject to a conviction, caution, reprimand, warning or arrest.

      Over the years countless stories have shown that the database has been misused time and again by some police officers and that thousands of entries are incorrect; leading to mistakes or miscarriages of justice.

    • Sadiq Khan and the End of Islamophobia

      To win the election, Goldsmith could have focused on all the work he’d done on the environment, as a journalist and former editor of the magazine The Ecologist. To further woo liberals, he could have highlighted his considerable international experience and his support of the rights of indigenous peoples. Conversely, he could have cemented his popularity among conservative populists by emphasizing his skeptical attitude toward the European Union. If he’d played it safe, Goldsmith could have translated an early lead in the polls into a victory at the ballot box.

      Instead, the Goldsmith team prompted a huge backlash by suggesting that his opponent, the Labor Party’s Sadiq Khan, was a Muslim extremist because of his associations and his political bedfellows. The rhetoric from the Conservative camp was nothing so blatant or ugly as some of the proposals in the Republican presidential primary, such as prohibiting Muslims candidates from entering the Oval Office (Ben Carson) or prohibiting Muslims immigrant from entering the country (Donald Trump).

    • Facing the facts: a progressive strategy for 2020

      Labour has never secured a convincing majority from opposition and implemented a progressive programme. To believe it can this time is absurd. It’s time for a different approach.

    • Arkansas Judge Resigns After Thousands Of Pictures Of Nude Defendants Found On His Computer

      An Arkansas judge resigned from his seat this week when thousands of photos of naked male defendants were found in his possession.

      The state’s Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission (JDDC) discovered approximately 4,500 photos on Judge Joseph Boeckmann’s computer, amid allegations that he coerced multiple defendants into performing sex acts for court favors. An investigation of the Cross County judge was launched when several men came forward with stories that Boeckmann offered them “community service” options to get their charges and fines reduced, as well as time extensions to pay off those fines.

    • FBI Is Manufacturing Terror Plots Against Jewish-Americans, Driving Divisions Between Jews and Muslims

      Since 9/11, the FBI and NYPD have solved dozens of terror plots that its own agents and assets manufactured, including some against synagogues. Even if the plots were less than real, the foiled “attacks” have greatly impacted both the defendants and their alleged victims, spreading fear among Jewish-Americans and triggering panicked reports about heightened threat against Jews.

      The arrest this April of James Medina, a recent convert to Islam with an extensive criminal history, may be the latest evidence of the disturbing practice. An FBI affidavit showed an FBI source suggesting that Medina bomb the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in Hollywood, Florida on a Jewish holiday.

      The source even encouraged Medina to claim the attack in the name of ISIS—a group he had no affiliation to. “Yeah, we can print up… something and make it look like it’s ISIS here in America,” Medina said, one of a series of statements evincing an erratic mental state.

      “Aventura, watch your back,” he continued. “ISIS is in the house.”

      The FBI ultimately gave Medina a fake bomb and arrested him. He is now on trial for planning to commit an act of terror with a weapon of mass destruction, a charge that could land the 40-year-old in prison for life.

    • Tortured, Killed & Driven to Suicide: Whistleblower Exposes Abuse of Mentally Ill in Florida Prison

      A shocking new exposé in The New Yorker magazine documents how prison guards at the Dade Correctional Institution in Florida have subjected mentally ill prisoners to vicious beatings, scalding showers and severe food deprivation. Journalist Eyal Press notes the guards act with near impunity since prison staff, including mental health workers, often fear reprisals for speaking out. He writes that prisons have become America’s dominant mental health institutions. The situation is particularly extreme in Florida, which spends less money per capita on mental health than any state with the exception of Idaho. We speak with Eyal Press and one of his sources, George Mallinckrodt, a psychotherapist and whistleblower who lost his job after reporting on abuse of his patients in the Dade Correctional Institution’s Transitional Care Unit in 2011.

    • Slowly Abolishing Solitary Confinement for Children

      Children are still being held in isolation in detention and correctional facilities across the United States. Children can be found curled up on cement floors in bare cells for 22 hours a day, and for days at a time. In order to use bathroom facilities in Los Angeles County Jail, young people must bang on their cell door and hope that someone comes to escort them to a bathroom.

    • American Sheriff

      Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.’s podcast, The People’s Sheriff, begins with a slide-guitar and a boot-stomp beat before segueing into the rich baritone of the sheriff himself. Over the next 40 minutes, Clarke holds forth on the topics of the day: Planned Parenthood is “what I call ‘Planned Genocide.’” Public schools are so dangerous “there should be a body camera on every teacher.” Higher education has become “a racketeering ring.” The sheriff is also a big fan of presidential candidate Donald Trump: “He gets us. He understands us.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Germany: open WiFi after all?

      Following the opinion of Attorney General Szpunar in the pending McFadden case (C-484/14, IPKat post), the German coalition government has decided to abandon the “Störerhaftung” of providers of open WiFi Networks for illegal use of the Internet access by users of the hot spot.

    • Germany to abolish provider liability law, open path to more free WiFi

      The German government has cleared the way for open and private WiFi hotspots. A provider liability law that makes hotspot providers responsible for users’ activity has long limited public WiFi and is set to be scrapped.

  • DRM

    • Save Firefox!

      The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), once the force for open standards that kept browsers from locking publishers to their proprietary capabilities, has changed its mission. Since 2013, the organization has provided a forum where today’s dominant browser companies and the dominant entertainment companies can collaborate on a system to let our browsers control our behavior, rather than the other way.

      This system, “Encrypted Media Extensions” (EME) uses standards-defined code to funnel video into a proprietary container called a “Content Decryption Module.” For a new browser to support this new video streaming standard — which major studios and cable operators are pushing for — it would have to convince those entertainment companies or one of their partners to let them have a CDM, or this part of the “open” Web would not display in their new browser.

      This is the opposite of every W3C standard to date: once, all you needed to do to render content sent by a server was follow the standard, not get permission. If browsers had needed permission to render a page at the launch of Mozilla, the publishers would have frozen out this new, pop-up-blocking upstart. Kiss Firefox goodbye, in other words.

      The W3C didn’t have to do this. No copyright law says that making a video gives you the right to tell people who legally watch it how they must configure their equipment. But because of the design of EME, copyright holders will be able to use the law to shut down any new browser that tries to render the video without their permission.

      That’s because EME is designed to trigger liability under section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which says that removing a digital lock that controls access to a copyrighted work without permission is an offense, even if the person removing the lock has the right to the content it restricts. In other words, once a video is sent with EME, a new company that unlocks it for its users can be sued, even if the users do nothing illegal with that video.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016: Markup and Commentary

      President Obama has signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA) into law. The new law creates a private cause of action for trade secret misappropriation that can be brought in Federal Courts and with international implications.

      I have created a mark-up (with commentary) of the new law that shows how the DTSA’s amendments to the Economic Espionage Act (EEA).

    • India’s Proposed ‘Geospatial Information Regulation Bill’ Would Shut Down Most Map-Based Services There

      It’s obvious that technology changes our lives, but alongside the expected developments, there are some strange and unexpected ones, too. For example, half a century ago, who would have predicted that boring old copyright would have such a massive impact on everyday life, even to the extent of redefining what ownership means? Similarly, when mobile phones first appeared, few realized later iterations that included powerful computers would elevate another dry and dusty area — cartography — into a key aspect of modern technology.

    • Trademarks

      • Facebook Wins Trademark Case In China Over Chinese Beverage Company

        You should be aware by now that Facebook has taken a rather extreme stance when it comes to protecting its trademark. This stance has essentially evolved to consist of this: it will dispute pretty much anything else on the internet that has the word “book” in it. Examples include Designbook, Lamebook, and Teachbook. And, because trademark bullying isn’t something that should be done half-way, the company also disputed the name of Faceporn, because why the hell not?

        This has continued to this day, which is not news worthy. But what is news worthy is when Facebook gets one of these wins in a trademark dispute in China, where trademark disputes haven’t typically gone the way American companies would wish.

      • Merpel visits the EU IPO

        The first problem came with the new OHIM website in December 2013. Setting aside some issues of poor quality content, there was a catastrophic failure of the online filing search functions (see IPKat posts here and here). Users reported regular problems with online filing of designs thereafter, sometimes the system working perfectly well, and other times crashing irretrievably (a bit of a problem when you have just uploaded the representations for 50 designs). OHIM’s technical assistance frequently concluded that there was no issue at their end, so the problem must be with the user.

    • Copyrights

      • On the stand, Google’s Eric Schmidt says Sun had no problems with Android

        Alphabet Chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt testified in a federal court here today, hoping to overcome a lawsuit from Oracle accusing his company of violating copyright law.

        During an hour of questioning by Google lawyer Robert Van Nest, Schmidt discussed his early days at Google and the beginnings of Android. Everything was done by the book, Schmidt told jurors, emphasizing his positive relationship with Sun Microsystems and its then-CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

        Schmidt himself used to work at Sun Microsystems after getting his PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1982. Schmidt was at Sun while the Java language was developed.

        “Was the Java language released for anyone to use?” asked Van Nest.

      • Stakes Are High in Oracle v. Google, But the Public Has Already Lost Big

        Attorneys for the Oracle and Google companies presented opening statements this week in a high-stakes copyright case about the use of application-programming interfaces, or APIs. As Oracle eagerly noted, there are potentially billions of dollars on the line; accordingly, each side has brought “world-class attorneys,” as Judge William Alsup noted to the jury. And while each company would prefer to spend their money elsewhere, these are businesses that can afford to spend years and untold resources in the courtroom.

      • YouTube’s Copyright Robots Help Sony Shake Down Bluegrass Educators

        The Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbors protect websites like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and many others against runaway copyright lawsuits. They also protect people’s fair use rights when they post their own creations online, by ensuring that online platforms don’t have to assume the risk of a user’s fair use case going the wrong way. But automated filtering and takedown systems on platforms like YouTube—systems that the DMCA doesn’t require—flag obvious fair uses as potential infringement, including educational work around the history of music itself. That’s why it’s alarming that major entertainment companies want Congress to scrap the DMCA’s safe harbor and make automatic filtering the law.

      • Fake Copyright Arguments at the FCC on Set-Top Boxes

        As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continues working on breaking up the TV set-top box monopoly, the onslaught by large companies who have zero interest in promoting a competitive open technology environment has been fierce. Cable companies, the movie industry, the recording industry, and their parakeet allies are regularly misrepresenting the bounds of copyright law to Congress and the FCC in an attempt to secure powers that copyright law does not provide them.

      • Google took our property—and our opportunity, Oracle tells jury

        Oracle is making its case to a jury that Google should be forced to pay massive copyright damages, due to the search company’s use of 37 Java APIs in its Android operating system. It’s the second courtroom face-off for the two software giants. Google argued that APIs shouldn’t be copyrighted at all, but lost on appeal. Now Google’s only hope is that the jury finds that its use of the APIs was a “fair use.”

      • At WIPO, Music Industry Points Fingers At YouTube For Hiding Behind Safe Harbour

05.11.16

Links 11/5/2016: Docker Security, Cinnamon 3.0.2

Posted in News Roundup at 8:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Milestones in Free and Open Source Software History, 1969-2015

    In the fall of 1983 Richard Stallman, a veteran of MIT’s AI Lab who was unhappy with the increasingly closed nature of software source code, announced the GNU project. His goal was to build a clone of Unix using only code that could be freely shared and would always be publicly available. Many parts of the GNU operating system, which Stallman began building in early 1984, remain central to the free and open source software ecosystem today.

  • I am your user. Why do you hate me?

    Leslie is a developer engagement strategist who works at Red Hat and sits on several key nonprofit boards. In addition to running her own company, Donna also sits on many boards and does much of the thankless work to put on excellent open source events in Australia. They each bring over a decade of experience with open source to their work, and their upcoming talk at OSCON titled, I am your user—why do you hate me?

  • DIY : Open Source Software for your very own IoT
  • Nominations for the 2016 New Zealand Open Source Awards open

    Nominations for the 2016 New Zealand Open Source Awards are now open.

  • Four Ways for Developers To Open Source Their Next Big Idea

    The open source movement is transforming technology in many respects, and its fundamental stance toward collaboration can be used to transform the inspiration process for developers as well.

  • Amazon open-sources its own deep learning software, DSSTNE

    Amazon has suddenly made a remarkable entrance into the world of open-source software for deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence. Yesterday the e-commerce company unceremoniously released a library called DSSTNE on GitHub under an open-source Apache license.

    Deep learning involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data and then getting them to make inferences about new data. Several technology companies are doing it — heck, it even got some air time recently in “Silicon Valley.” And there are already several other deep learning frameworks to choose from, including Google’s TensorFlow.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • You Can Help Build the Future of Firefox with the New Test Pilot Program

        When building features for hundreds of millions of Firefox users worldwide, it’s important to get them right. To help figure out which features should ship and how they should work, we created the new Test Pilot program. Test Pilot is a way for you to try out experimental features and let us know what you think. You can turn them on and off at any time, and you’ll always know what information you’re sharing to help us understand how these features are used. Of course, you can also use Test Pilot to provide feedback and suggestions to the teams behind each new feature.

        As you’re experimenting with new features, you might experience some bugs or lose some of the polish from the general Firefox release, so Test Pilot allows you to easily enable or disable features at any time.

        Feedback and data from Test Pilot will help determine which features ultimately end up in a Firefox release for all to enjoy.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • On the Multi-Cloud Future

      Do you run multiple operating systems? It’s not uncommon for the answer to that question to be yes. You may run Linux on a laptop and Android on a phone, for example. In the same fashion, many experts surveying the cloud computing scene predict that the growing trend toward hybrid cloud deployments will make it extremely popular for enterprises to run many cloud platforms and tools concurrently.

    • The Open Cloud, Demystified

      In this post, you’ll find several of the best free guides to popular cloud-centric tools, ranging from ownCloud to OpenStack, that can help boost your efficiency. We have updated this collection of documentation with a valuable overall guide to the open cloud platforms that you can choose from, and some brand new guides.

    • Bexar, Mitaka, Newton: Behind OpenStack release names

      Mitaka is not only the latest release of the OpenStack cloud infrastructure service, it’s also a city in Japan.

    • OpenStack Mitaka aims to make open source easy-peasy

      The newest release of the OpenStack cloud infrastructure is designed to be easier to install, easier to use and easier to manage.

      That could be big news for CIOs. The cloud platform is delivering flexibility and processing power at lower cost to big-name companies such as AT&T and eBay. But calling for lots of installation, maintenance and development support, OpenStack has come to be known almost as much for its DIY-style complexity as it has for its innovative potential.

    • OpenStack, SDN, and Container Networking Power Enterprise Cloud at PayPal

      This architecture has four layers. The Infrastructure & Operations layer at the bottom provides computer, storage, and network and is powered by OpenStack. On top of that is the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) layer — the core technology and analytics platform that provides services like messaging, logging, monitoring, analytics, etc. to be leveraged across all PayPal applications. On top of that is the Payments Operating System (POS), which is the foundation for all payments-related microservices and which serves all customer-facing experience through mobile and web apps. Finally, the top layer comprises customer-facing applications.

    • Lenovo’s Highly-Available OpenStack Enterprise Cloud Platform Practice with EasyStack

      In 2015, the Chinese IT superpower Lenovo chose EasyStack to build an OpenStack-based enterprise cloud platform to carry out their “Internet Strategy”. In six months, this platform has evolved into an enterprise-level OpenStack production environment of over 3000 cores with data growth peaking at 10TB/day. It is expected that by the end of 2016, 20% of the IT system will be migrated onto the Cloud.

    • SDN, NFV Can Make You Money
    • NEC/NetCracker’s NFV Platform Dives Into DevOps

      In a world of plentiful OpenStack offerings and NFV orchestrators, NEC/Netcracker looks to differentiate by “filling the gaps” in NFV, for example by providing integration with operations support systems (OSSs) and business support systems (BSSs). The platform also promises to deliver tools that enable technology vendors and service providers to collaborate on application and service design using a DevOps model.

    • Intel Debuts CIAO for OpenStack Cloud Orchestration [VIDEO]

      The new Go based project is s called CIAO, Cloud Integrated Advanced Orchestrator and is a potential replacement or optional component for existing orchestration in OpenStack

    • Tech spending priorities to shift with DevOps transition

      IT organizations should get ready to cede some budgetary control to business units, as software — and software developers — become key agents of commerce.

    • On the Rise: Six Unsung Apache Big Data Projects

      Countless organizations around the world are now working with data sets so large and complex that traditional data processing applications can no longer drive optimized analytics and insights. That’s the problem that the new wave of Big Data applications aims to solve, and the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has recently graduated a slew of interesting open source Big Data projects to Top-Level status. That means that they will get active development and strong community support.

    • An introduction to data processing with Cassandra and Spark

      So, what is Apache Cassandra? A distributed OLTP database built for high availability and linear scalability. When people ask what Cassandra is used for, think about the type of system you want close to the customer. This is ultimately the system that our users interact with. Applications that must always be available: product catalogs, IoT, medical systems, and mobile applications. In these categories downtime can mean loss of revenue or even more dire outcomes depending on your specific use case. Netflix was one of the earliest adopters of this project, which was open sourced in 2008, and their contributions, along with successes, put it on the radar of the masses.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • How BSD was built, and how it lost the lead to Linux

      BSD has been eclipsed by the popularity of Linux over the years. But how did BSD get started? And why did Linux overtake and surpass it? Salon has a detailed article that charts the creation of BSD, and why it eventually lost out to Linux.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Estonian finance ministry seeks OSS service provider

      The Estonian Ministry of Finance is looking for a service provider to host, maintain and support its open-source-based portal infrastructure. The framework contract runs for three years and has an estimated value of 300,000 Euro.

  • Programming/Development

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Happiness and children

      Depression and anxiety are rising rapidly among young people: what’s going on?

    • All Angles Covered: Is the EU Completely in the Pocket of the Biotech Industry?

      On 9 May, Corporate Europe Observatory posted an article on its website that described how Genius, a lobby consultancy firm based in Germany, has been employed to distort the debate on glyphosate in favour the biotech industry.

      Research linking the use of glyphosate to various diseases is well documented, and the World Health Organisation has declared the substance as “probably causing cancer to humans.” Despite this, the European Commission is seeking to grant glyphosate re-approval for another ten years. The re-authorisation is being sought by the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF), an industry platform uniting producers of glyphosate-based herbicides, whose members include Monsanto, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta, and Barclay Chemicals. Genius was used to run its website.

    • The EPA’s Ties to Monsanto Could Be Disastrous for the US

      Conservative politicians love to talk about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only issues “job-killing regulations,” especially if they’re taking campaign contributions from fossil fuel billionaires like the Koch brothers or from agrochemical giants like Monsanto.

      Republican Chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee Lamar Smith, for example, has spent years trying to stop the EPA from conducting any real research about climate change or passing any real regulations in general. But apparently it’s true that every once in a while, even a blind mouse finds cheese; it seems like Lamar Smith might actually have a legitimate complaint about an EPA report.

    • Doctors Agree With Sanders on Universal Health Care

      Sen. Bernie Sanders thinks it should be replaced with a single-payer health plan of the kind Europe and Canada have. This federally administered universal health care program would eliminate copays and deductibles. There’s currently a move afoot in Colorado to have such a plan.

    • Targeting Big Pharma Price Gouging, Sanders Backs California Ballot Fight

      Backing a citizen-led initiative to combat soaring drugs prices in California, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Tuesday endorsed a ballot proposal designed to curb what he described as a corporate “rip-off” of the state’s sick and vulnerable.

  • Security

    • IE and Graphics head Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday critical list

      There’s 15 flaw fixes covering 36 vulnerabilities in this month’s patch bundle from Microsoft.

      Microsoft’s browsers need a lot of work – Internet Explorer gets five fixes and the new Edge code has four. Both applications’ patches have been named as critical by Redmond. There’s also a five-fix bundle for Microsoft’s graphics component and seven flaws found in Windows kernel drivers, mainly for 32-bit versions of the operating system.

    • Exploits gone wild: Hackers target critical image-processing bug
    • ImageMagick’s ImageTragick: Exploits Not Yet Widespread

      Part of the reason for this may well be because of the nature of the vulnerability, which requires upload permissions. “These are generally restricted to subscribers and administrators,” Cid notes, “which by design negatively impacts the ability to perform a mass exploit across the web. Additionally, there aren’t that many open-source and public Content Management Systems (CMS) that use ImageMagick by default, which drastically reduces the potential attack surface – something required to see mass attacks.”

    • GnuTLS 3.5.0

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The (Il)legality of UK Drone Strikes

      It was reported in The Guardian newspaper today that the UK parliamentary joint committee on human rights was questioning the legal framework underpinning the use of British drone strikes against terrorist suspects.

    • CIA-NSA Supported Brazilian Coup Back On, Rousseff Ousted Wednesday?

      One day after the Brazilian people breathed a sigh of relief after the lower house impeachment vote was annulled, that decision was unheroically walked back, creating what may become a gory constitutional crisis.

    • Brazilian Senate set to launch Rousseff impeachment

      Brasilia: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was only hours from possibly being suspended at the start of an impeachment trial Wednesday in a political crisis paralysing Latin America’s largest country.

    • Brazil Impeachment: Rousseff Appeals To Supreme Court

      Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, has made a last-ditch appeal to stop the impeachment process against her by asking the supreme court to block the proceedings, hours before a crucial Senate vote.

      Ms Rousseff’s lawyers alleged the process is fraught with bias and irregularities but similar attempts have been rejected by the court.

      Ms Rousseff could be suspended for up to 180 days if the Senators vote for a full trial today.

      [...]

      The President is accused of illegally manipulating finances to hide a growing public deficit ahead of her re-election in 2014.
      She denies all the charges.

    • Daniel Berrigan’s Enduring Fight for Peace

      As Campaign 2016 almost ignores the vital issues of war and peace – despite the reality of perpetual war – Daniel Berrigan, one of America’s great voices for peace, has gone silent, writes Michael Winship.

    • President Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors, and Heed Their Call To Ban the Bomb

      President Obama is considering a visit to Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit in Japan later this month. Hiroshima is an impressively rebuilt, thriving city of a million people. The city was obliterated by the first atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

      Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

    • Masters of Mankind: the Costs of Violence

      Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of someday intending to harm us — an impressive contribution by a constitutional lawyer on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is the foundation of civilized law.

    • Exploiting Global Warming for Geo-Politics

      When a severe drought hit Syria a decade ago, the U.S. government chose not to help but rather exploit the environmental crisis to force a “regime change,” a decision that contributed to a humanitarian crisis, writes Jonathan Marshall.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • After Only Nine Months On The Job, Administration’s New FOIA Boss Calls It Quits

      Depending on where you sit, Holzer was either the perfect pick for FOIA work or the worst.

      For FOIA requesters, Holzer was anything but. His former (and now current) agency has a terrible FOIA track record. That this background would somehow result in his promotion to a position meant to facilitate FOIA requests was inexplicable.

      Unless you’re the White House, in which case, he was the best man for the job.

      This administration doesn’t care much for transparency. Elevating someone from an agency with a history of ineptness and recalcitrance only makes sense — if what you want is for “facilitation” to mean little more than looking busy while status remains quo.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Dangerous New Normal as 400 ppm Carbon Baseline Expected Within Days

      Australian Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said the landmark ‘should act as a global wake-up call’

    • The Oil Industry Just Backed Out Of A Multi-Billion Dollar Investment

      ConocoPhillips, ENI, and Iona have relinquished all their leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the coast of Alaska, according to new documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by advocacy group Oceana.

    • Network Newscasts Ignore Global Warming’s Role in Canada’s Wildfires

      As fast and furious as trailers for a Hollywood disaster movie, network news coverage of the massive fires ripping through Canada’s tar sands hub has missed opportunities to provide real information about the heavily polluting tar sands industry and global warming’s role in adding fuel to the flames.

    • GPS Tracking Devices Catch Major U.S. Recyclers Exporting Toxic E-Waste

      A two year investigation of electronics recycling using GPS tracking devices has revealed that policies aimed at curtailing the trade in toxic e-waste have been unsuccessful, with nearly one third of the devices being exported to developing countries, where equipment is often dismantled in low-tech workshops — often by children — endangering workers, their families, and contaminating the surrounding environment.

    • Almost Everything You Know About Climate Change Solutions Is Outdated, Part 1

      Almost everything you know about climate change solutions is outdated, for several reasons.

      First, climate science and climate politics have been moving unexpectedly quickly toward a broad consensus that we need to keep total human-caused global warming as far as possible below 2°C (3.6°F) — and ideally to no more than 1.5°C. This has truly revolutionary implications for climate solutions policy.

    • Nigeria Oil Well Protest Spotlights ‘Destroyed Livelihoods and Betrayed Hopes’

      Activists in Nigeria gathered at the site of the country’s first oil well on Tuesday as part of the global Break Free movement, to show what happens “when the oil goes dry, and the community is left with the pollution and none of the wealth.”

      Black gold, or oil, was discovered in Oloibiri in 1956 by what was then known as the Shell Darcy corporation—Nigeria’s first commercial oil discovery. The site has since been declared a national monument.

    • The U.S. Can’t Afford To Keep Losing Honeybees Like This

      On Tuesday, the Bee Informed Partnership released its annual report on total losses of managed honeybees — those kept by beekeepers — across the country. The survey, which asked beekeepers about bee losses between April 2015 and April 2016, showed that U.S. beekeepers lost 44 percent of their colonies in that timeframe. That means that total losses worsened compared to last year’s survey, which reported losses of 42.1 percent.

    • First Nation Wins Historic Victory Over Mammoth Coal Export Terminal

      In a move being hailed as a landmark victory for the climate movement, Pacific Northwest communities, and tribal members alike, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday denied federal permits for the largest proposed coal export terminal in North America.

      “This is big—for our climate, for clean air and water, for our future,” declared Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

    • Army Corps Denies Permits for Biggest Proposed Coal Export Terminal in North America

      This is big—for our climate, for clean air and water, for our future. It’s also big because the U.S. government is honoring its treaty obligations. After a five-year struggle that engaged hundreds of thousands of people, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a landmark decision Monday to deny federal permits for the biggest proposed coal export terminal in North America—the SSA Marine’s proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, a coal export facility at Xwe’chi’eXen (also known as Cherry Point), Washington.

    • National Parks to Seek Out, Recognize Corporate Funding Under New Plan

      The National Park Service (NPS) is proposing a relaxation on rules governing corporate partnerships in a move that could see parks increasingly commercialized and dependent on the whims of private donors.

      Some park superintendents will be asked to help raise up to $5 million in individual gifts, according to the NPS proposal.

  • Finance

    • Panama Papers Source Offers Documents To Governments, Hints At More To Come

      The anonymous whistleblower behind the Panama Papers has conditionally offered to make the documents available to government authorities.

      In a statement issued to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the so-called “John Doe” behind the biggest information leak in history cites the need for better whistleblower protection and has hinted at even more revelations to come.

      Titled “The Revolution Will Be Digitized” the 1800-word statement gives justification for the leak, saying that “income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time” and says that government authorities need to do more to address it.

      Süddeutsche Zeitung has authenticated that the statement came from the Panama Papers source.

    • ‘The Revolution Will Be Digitized’: Panama Papers Leaker Speaks Out

      No surprise, then, that the Panama Papers whistleblower would really like more legal protection for those who leak information in the public interest. What is more surprising is the anger that permeates this statement, and how well it is articulated. A striking recent development in the world of whistleblowing is the way in which Edward Snowden has become one of the most acute commentators on the digital sphere, as his extended essay “Whistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance” underlines. What’s most remarkable — and encouraging — about the Panama Papers whistleblower’s essay is that it indicates we may be about to gain another valuable voice in the same way.

    • Clinton Commits: No TPP, Fundamentally Rethink Trade Policies

      As reported in The Hill, in “Clinton opposes TPP vote in the lame-duck session,” Clinton replied to a questionnaire from the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, which consists of more than 25 labor, environmental and human rights organizations. When asked, “If elected President, would you oppose holding a vote on the TPP during the ‘lame duck’ session before you take office?” she replied, “I have said I oppose the TPP agreement — and that means before and after the election.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Government called to answer urgent question on the future of the BBC

      Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs and George Osborne’s evidence to the Treasury committee about the EU referendum

    • Safe States, Inside-Outside, and Other Liberal Illusions

      Faced with that demoralizing prospect, some Sanders supporters are recycling failed old strategies in an attempt to salvage Sanders’ “political revolution” without opposing the Democratic Party.

    • The Establishment Rallies Around Kuenssberg

      The petition to sack Tory propagandist Laura Kuenssberg from her role as BBC Political Editor has been scrapped by 38 Degrees after it gained over 35,000 signatures. The reason given is sexist comments and tweets.

    • Member of BBC Election Night Team Writes Crude Anti-Sturgeon Slogan

      “Professor” Rob Ford of the University of Manchester was a member of Professor John Curtice’s election night results team at the BBC. But he is also a very active anti-Corbyn and anti-SNP propagandist.

      Indeed just the day before the election, which he was covering for the BBC as a “neutral and independent psephological expert”, Ford posted this nasty attack on Nicola Sturgeon. Please note that this is not a retweet – the slogan “All Hail Supreme Dear Leader, Daughter of Great Helmsman Sal-Mon” is all Ford’s own brilliant witticism.

    • Trump Gave $150,000 To Charity That CNN Head’s Wife Helped Lead

      The donations were for the private school that Trump’s son attends. The candidate and the media mogul have not publicly disclosed the connection.

    • Sanders Wins West Virginia Primary (And No, It’s Not Inconsequential)

      ‘Regardless of what the mainstream media would like you to believe, these victories matter.’

      [...]

      Though the mainstream and corporate media continue to push a narrative suggesting the race for Democratic nomination is essentially over, polling released in the last twenty-four hours shows that Sanders continues to do better nationally in a hypothetical general-election matchup against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

      Karli Wallace Thompson, a campaign manager for Democracy for America, an advocacy group backing Sanders’ campaign, said Tuesday’s win in West Virginia should not be downplayed.

      “Regardless of what the mainstream media would like you to believe, these victories matter,” said Thompson, “and not just because each win gets us closer to overtaking Hillary Clinton in the delegate count.”

      Sanders’ latest victories matter, argues Thompson, “because they send a clear message to the Democratic Party that we refuse to give up on our values. Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, some pro-corporate Democrats are sensing an opportunity to move the party even further to the right in order to win the votes of ‘Never Trump’ voters. They’re ignoring the fact that modern presidential elections are always won by candidates who motivate their base and speak to their values.”

    • Ralph Nader: Sanders Should Stay in Democratic Race, Is Only Losing Due to Anti-Democratic System

      Polls have opened in West Virginia, where Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are vying for the 29 delegates up for grabs. Eight years ago, Clinton won West Virginia in a landslide, beating Barack Obama by 40 percentage points—but many polls project Sanders will win today. We speak to longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who argues that Sanders would be winning the primary race if every state had open primaries.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hackers Attempt to Hold Capitol Hill Data for Ransom

      The House is under attack by hackers hoping to infiltrate congressional computers, encrypt their contents, and then force users to pay a ransom to get their access back.

      “In the past 48 hours, the House Information Security Office has seen an increase of attacks on the House Network using third party, web-based mail applications such as YahooMail, Gmail,” the House’s Technology Service Desk wrote in an email to House staffers on April 30.

      According to the email obtained by The Intercept, the hacked emails impersonate familiar people and invite staffers to download an attachment laced with malware—what’s known as a “phishing” attack.

    • Lauri Love and the potential civil law “backdoor” for obtaining encryption keys

      Today’s decision: Today the presiding judge District Judge Tempia will make a decision on whether Lauri Love be “directed” at this stage to provide an encryption key as part of the civil claim, and before the trial.

      This is because the National Crime Agency, the “defendant” in this claim, is insisting that the key be handed over before the application be tried and a decision made to return the equipment.

    • British Hacker Wins Court Battle Over Encryption Keys

      A British court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by security agents to force an alleged hacker to hand over his encryption keys.

      Thirty-one-year-old Lauri Love has been accused by U.S. authorities of hacking into U.S. government networks between 2012 and 2013, including those of the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and NASA.

    • The US Person Back Door Search Number DOJ Could Publish Immediately

      The Senate Judiciary Committee had a first public hearing on Section 702 today, about which I’ll have several posts.

      One piece of good news, however, is that both some of the witnesses (Liza Goitein and David Medine; Ken Wainstein, Matt Olsen, and Rachel Brand were the other witnesses) and some of the Senators supported more transparency, including requiring the FBI to provide a count of how many US person queries of 702-collected data it does, as well as a count of how many US persons get sucked up by Section 702 more generally.

    • Next NSA Fight Begins With Semantics: ‘Backdoor Search’ or ‘U.S. Person Query’?

      The practice is on the chopping block as lawmakers consider reauthorization of a pre-Snowden surveillance law.

    • The Next Big Surveillance Debate Has Arrived
    • Madison at Fort Meade: Checks, Balances, and the NSA
    • Privacy Advocate Tells Lawmakers Surveillance of Americans ‘Has Exploded’ Under Expiring FISA Law

      Lawmakers, privacy advocates and members of the intelligence community convened on Capitol Hill Tuesday to debate the renewal of the most divisive surveillance authority since the National Security Agency’s phone metadata program, potentially capable of sweeping up the communications of millions of Americans.

    • Edward Snowden says this one thing would save more lives than any NSA surveillance program

      On May 10, experts are gathering before the US Senate to debate a few of the NSA’s most robust internet surveillance programs.

    • Snowden: I had a ‘minor’ role in the NSA leak

      Edward Snowden said he is “staggered” by the reaction to his 2013 leak of National Security Agency documents detailing the extent of American government surveillance, and sees himself as having played a minor role in the revelation which shocked the defense community and continues to reverberate in Washington.

      “I’m really optimistic about how things have gone, and I’m staggered by how much more impact there’s been as a result of these revelations than I initially presumed,” Snowden told the Columbia Journalism Review. “I’m famous for telling [former Guardian editor-in-chief] Alan Rusbridger that it would be a three-day story. You’re sort of alluding to this idea that people don’t really care, or that nothing has really changed. We’ve heard this in a number of different ways, but I think it actually has changed in a substantial way.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Security researcher arrested for disclosing US election website vulnerabilities

      David Levin was later released on a $15,000 bond after reporting the SQL vulnerabilities.

    • David Cameron Is Absolutely Right!

      Of course when the Tories describe somewhere as “fantastically corrupt”, they mean “brilliant personal enrichment opportunity for me.” And not just the Tories. Tony Blair will be in there like a shot.

    • Airline Pilots Should Not Have to Choose Between Their Jobs and Breastfeeding Their Babies

      I’m a commercial airline pilot, and I love my job. As a kid, I was obsessed with airplanes. My parents encouraged my passion for flying, and in spite of the odds — women currently make up only six percent of commercial pilots — I became a pilot.

    • Striking Prisoners in Alabama Accuse Officials of Using Food as Weapon

      Alabama prisoners who have been on strike for 10 days over unpaid labor and prison conditions are accusing officials of retaliating against their protest by starving them. The coordinated strike started on May 1, International Workers’ Day, when prisoners at the Holman and Elmore facilities refused to report to their prison jobs and has since expanded to Staton, St. Clair, and Donaldson’s facilities, according to organizers with the Free Alabama Movement, a network of prison activists.

    • From a non-Jewish Left-Zionist: an open letter to Ken Livingstone

      It is, also, intellectually offensive to suggest that because they advocated transfer before ‘going mad’ and opting instead for genocide, the Nazis were Zionists. Peter Beaumont has already amply illustrated the crassness of this fallacious equation of agency and intention so I will let the case rest with him. Suffice it to say that a more ludicrous reading of Nazi anti-Semitism it is hard to imagine. But then, your piece of radio sophistry was not meant to illuminate history, rather to damn Zionism by innuendo.

    • Farm Workers Sue Over Labor Rights in Landmark Case for ‘Dignity and Humanity’

      Farm workers have sued New York for the right to organize in a groundbreaking lawsuit that demands they receive the same rights as “virtually every other worker,” the New York chapter of the ACLU said on Tuesday.

      The lawsuit claims that laborers are being forced to work in “life-threatening, sweatshop-like conditions” and are prevented from organizing under threat of retaliation.

      It also charges that the State Employment Relations Act is part of a Depression-era measure meant to enact protections for workers but which excluded farm workers, who were majority black at the time, to accommodate segregationist policies of racist Congress members. That exclusion has held, impacting laborers who are now largely Central American and Mexican immigrants, the lawsuit states.

    • ‘Days of Revolt’: Chris Hedges, Israeli Peace Activist Miko Peled Discuss the Devolution of Israel

      On this week’s episode of “Days of Revolt,” Truthdig’s own Chris Hedges sits down with Miko Peled, a Israeli peace activist and author of “The General’s Son: The Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.” The two discuss current events in Israel and Palestine, looking back on decades of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

      Peled, who was born in Jerusalem, notes that while past generations of Israeli politicians presented a civil facade while committing atrocities, current figures like Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett “don’t understand why they have to pretend, because they’re getting all the money and all the support they need from America and from the Europeans.”

    • Detroit Teachers Are Determined To Stop This Legislation. Here’s Why.

      Detroit teachers are organizing to prevent a bill from passing the state legislature that they say would underfund schools and limit teachers’ rights.

      There are two competing bills in the legislature aimed at resolving Detroit Public Schools’ current financial mess. The school system was at risk of going bankrupt because school officials said the district was “running out of money” in April, but the state provided $48.7 million in emergency funding to keep the district running. Now, as the end of the school year approaches, there are questions about long-term solutions.

    • Why Teachers Matter in Dark Times

      Americans live in a historical moment that annihilates thought. Ignorance now provides a sense of community; the brain has migrated to the dark pit of the spectacle; the only discourse that matters is about business; poverty is now viewed as a technical problem; thought chases after an emotion that can obliterate it. The presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, Donald Trump, declares he likes “the uneducated” — implying that it is better that they stay ignorant than be critically engaged agents — and boasts that he doesn’t read books. Fox News offers no apologies for suggesting that thinking is an act of stupidity.

    • Louisiana is Number One… in Incarceration

      Louisiana first became number 1 in the nation in 2005 when it was imprisoning 36,083 people. Louisiana remained number 1, in 2010 with 35,207 in prison, an incarceration rate of 867 per 100,000 people, over 200 points head of the next highest state Mississippi.

    • Interview: Singapore blogger Amos Yee on press freedom, feminism, and protest

      If he arrests me, the entire world, the press and all that [would] know, it’ll highlight a lot of flaws like what happened with the Lee Kuan Yew video. If they don’t arrest me, then I make even more videos that criticise them and break even more laws. It’s a pretty good position I’m in.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Budweiser Is Making a Truly Ridiculous Name Change

        According to AdAge, which has confirmed with company officials, 12-ounce cans and bottles of Budweiser—owned by a company based in Belgium—will now bear the brand name America. You can look for the change as of May 23, and expect it to last straight through summer, aka “the high beer season.” But it won’t end there! The new look will stretch onward through the election season, because why not make your rebranding as ridiculous as our presidential campaign has been.

      • ‘Make Amerikkka Great Again’ trademark application filed

        A trademark application has been filed for the term ‘Make Amerikkka Great Again’, in what appears to be a dig at US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.

        The trademark was applied for on March 30 at the US Patent and Trademark Office by a company based in Los Angeles called 47 / 72 Inc.

        The slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ has been used in Trump’s campaign. The term is also a registered trademark owned by Trump and covers political campaigns as well as hats and t-shirts.

      • Facebook wins trademark dispute in China

        A Chinese court has ruled in favour of Facebook in a trademark dispute centring on the transliteration of the term ‘face book’.

        The Beijing Higher People’s Court backed the social media website in its dispute with Zhujiang Beverage, based in Zhongshan.

        Zhujiang sells products including milk-flavoured drinks and porridge.

      • Minnesota’s Broad Publicity Rights Law, The PRINCE Act, So Broad That It May Violate Itself

        We’ve written many posts on the area of so-called “publicity rights” laws. These are state laws that try to create a newish form of intellectual property around someone’s “likeness” or other identifying features. A few years ago, Eriq Gardner wrote the definitive piece detailing the rise of publicity rights as a new way to try to lock down “protections” for things that don’t really need to be protected. The initial intent behind many of these laws was to avoid a situation where there was a false endorsement — basically to stop someone from putting an image or likeness of a famous person in an ad to imply support. But the law has (not surprisingly) expanded over time, and there have been many, many crazy battles over publicity rights — including ones concerning Marilyn Monroe, Manuel Noriega, Katherine Heigl, Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan.

      • Minnesota Legislators Go Crazy, Pushing Dangerous PRINCE Act

        Just a few weeks after his death, some Minnesota legislators are using Prince’s name to ram through a dangerous publicity rights law that will give his heirs – and the heirs of any other Minnesotan – broad and indefinite rights to shut down all kind of legitimate speech and activities in perpetuity.

    • Copyrights

      • EFF at Copyright Office Roundtable Thursday and Friday in San Francisco

        On Thursday and Friday, May 12-13, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry will participate in public roundtable discussions about the effectiveness of safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) at the United States Ninth Circuit James R. Browning Courthouse in San Francisco. The discussions are hosted by the U.S. Copyright Office, which is studying how the provisions impact copyright owners, internet service providers (ISPs) and users—including the ongoing problem of takedown abuse.

      • Judge Says Copyright Case Against Star Trek Fan Film Can ‘Live Long’ And Possibly ‘Prosper’

        Just yesterday we filled you in on the latest in the copyright fight over a professional-level “fan film” in the Star Trek universe, dubbed “Axanar” (along with a short film “Prelude to Axanar.”) The makers of that film tried to get the case dismissed, arguing that Paramount Pictures and CBS failed to state an actual claim of copyright infringement. Specifically, they were arguing that Paramount/CBS highlighted a bunch of things related to Star Trek, some of which they may hold a joint copyright over, but failed to state what specific copyright-covered work the Axanar productions were infringing. And, of course, there was a side note in all of this that one of the many things that Paramount and CBS tossed against the wall claiming copyright was the Klingon language itself.

        This morning, the court released two short rulings, with the first one dumping the amicus filing over whether or not there was a copyright in the Klingon language. That one was short and sweet and just said that at this stage of the game the court has no reason to explore whether or not languages can be covered by copyright and “therefore, none of the information provided by Amicus is necessary to dispose of the Motion to dismiss.”

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