06.07.17

Links 7/6/2017: KaOS 2017.06, Mesa 17.1.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 3 alternatives to LibreOffice Writer

    Even though I write for a living, I rarely use a word processor these days; I do most of my work in a text editor. When I do need to use a word processor, I turn to LibreOffice Writer. It’s familiar, it’s powerful, and it does everything that I need a word processor to do.

    It’s hard to dispute LibreOffice Writer’s position at the top of the free and open source word processor food chain—both in popularity and in the number of features it has. That said, Writer isn’t everyone’s favorite word processor or their go-to application for writing.

  • Learn the Secrets of Building a Business with Open Source

    Today, if you’re building a new product or service, open source software is likely playing a role. But many entrepreneurs and product managers still struggle with how to build a successful business purely on open source.

    The big secret of a successful open source business is that “it’s about way more than the code,” says John Mark Walker, a well-known voice in the open source world with extensive expertise in open source product, community, and ecosystem creation at Red Hat and Dell EMC. “In order to build a certified, predictable, manageable product that ‘just works,’ it requires a lot more effort than just writing good code.”

  • Open Source Comes of Age

    I am sure that the line would have continued rising toward the sky if Google hadn’t tired of scanning books in 2008.

    Anyway, we succeeded. As both an concept and a practice, open source is embedded in technology, business, culture, government—you name it. In fact, it is so widely uttered, you might even call it mature.

    But it’s not, because making full sense of open-source development is still an uphill struggle, especially if you’re an organization trying to manage it—especially in a world that still doesn’t fully understand it, even though it gets talked about constantly.

  • Contributing to Open Source Projects Is Key to Igalia’s Business

    Igalia is an open source development company offering consultancy services for desktop, mobile, and web technologies. The company’s developers contribute code for several open source projects, including GNOME, WebKit, and the Linux kernel.

    The company was founded in September 2001 in A Coruña, Spain, by a group of 10 software professionals, who were inspired by Free Software and shared the goal of creating a company based on cooperation and innovation.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • New Mozilla Poll: Americans from Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality

        There’s something that Americans of varied political affiliations — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — largely agree on: the need to protect net neutrality.

        A recent public opinion poll carried out by Mozilla and Ipsos revealed overwhelming support across party lines for net neutrality, with over three quarters of Americans (76%) supporting net neutrality. Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 73% of Republicans are in favor of it.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The Past, Present and Future of the GPL in Open Source Software

      The GNU General Public License, or GPL, played a key role in the development of free and open source software. Today, however, many programmers and companies are passing on the GPL in favor of alternative open source licenses. Are they relegating the GPL to the past?

      The GPL is designed to ensure that the source code of a program will always be available. It also requires that programmers who make changes to a GPL-licesned program and release that program publicly share the source code of their modifications.

    • US Court Upholds Enforceability Of GNU GPL As Both A License And A Contract

      Free software dominates modern computing, from smartphones to supercomputers — only the desktop remains a stronghold of proprietary code. Most of that free software has the Linux kernel at its heart, and a key element in the success of Linux — and of thousands of other coding projects — is the GNU General Public License. Although the first version of the GNU GPL was released by Richard Stallman back in 1989, and version 3 was issued in 2007, there have been surprisingly few court cases examining it and other open source licenses, and whether they are legally watertight.

      A key case is Jacobsen v. Katzer from 2008. As a detailed Groklaw post at the time explained, the US appeals court held that open source license conditions are enforceable as a copyright condition. Now we have another important judgment, Artifex v. Hancom, that clarifies further the legal basis of open source licenses. It concerns the well-known Ghostscript interpreter for the PostScript language, written originally by L. Peter Deutsch, and sold by the company he founded, Artifex Software. Artifex was a pioneer in adopting a dual-licensing approach for Ghostscript. That is, you could either use the software under the GNU GPL, or you could avoid copyleft’s redistribution requirements by taking out a conventional proprietary license.

    • The GNU GPL Is An Enforceable Contract At Last [Ed: Misleading headline; it was always valid and enforceable, tested in US courts too.]
    • Artifex Software v Hancom: Guidance from US District Court on enforcement of open source software licences

      Open source software is regularly used as a way of leveraging the collective knowledge of the software development community by allowing anyone to improve and contribute to the code, provided they ‘pay it forward’ and allow their improved code to be used by the community. Open source software is often incorporated into proprietary software to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ – why develop from scratch what has already been prepared and improved upon by the collective wisdom of developers worldwide? This can, however, create a risk of “infection” (requiring the proprietary software to be released on open source terms) – the risk varies based on the terms of the open source licence under which the software is released.

  • Programming/Development

    • Why Women Devs Are Hard to Recruit and Even Harder to Keep

      It’s no secret that the tech industry has long had a problem attracting women employees. Oddly, this has been even more of a problem in open source (I know, you’d think with all that sharing we’d be a bunch of kumbaya tree huggers), where the problem is compounded by the fact that women who do join projects tend leave very quickly.

      Not only is this not good for career minded women, it’s not good for the business of tech. Good developers are in short supply — and since women make up somewhere around 50 percent of the population, they represent a huge demographic that’s not being properly leveraged.

      The results of a recent survey conducted by GitHub sheds light on this problem, by putting some numbers on already known issues.

    • The open source community is nasty and that’s just the docs

      The open source community is nasty in many ways, according to a survey of over 6,000 contributors to open source projects.

      The 2017 Open Source Survey was hosted on GitHub, which “collected responses from 5,500 randomly sampled respondents sourced from over 3,800 open source repositories” and then added “over 500 responses from a non-random sample of communities that work on other platforms.” The questionnaire was also made available in Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian.

      The full data dump is available here.

Leftovers

  • Hear Bob Dylan Recite His Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture

    Recorded June 4th in Los Angeles, Dylan’s lecture finds the rock legend discussing both his musical influences like Leadbelly and Buddy Holly alongside literary works that informed his songwriting, including Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and Homer’s The Odyssey.

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The California Senate Just Passed Single-Payer Health Care

      The California proposal still must be approved by the California state Assembly and, eventually, by Governor Jerry Brown. Budget plans must be developed. The fight is far from over. But a hurdle has been cleared and DeMoro is right to say that: “This is a banner day for California, and a moral model for the nation.”

    • Poisoned Water: “NOVA” science series broadcasts segment on Flint water crisis

      On Wednesday evening, the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) weekly science program “NOVA” aired a segment on the Flint water crisis, titled “Poisoned Water.” An hour-long format, the program roughly follows the chronological sequence of events after the button was pushed three years ago to switch the city’s water supply from treated water provided by the Detroit system to water from the heavily polluted Flint River, treated by the local, archaic water treatment plant.

    • Muslim man sues Little Caesars over ‘halal’ pepperoni

      A Muslim man is suing Little Caesars Pizza for $100 million after he said he was given and accidentally ate a pizza containing pork pepperoni, despite ordering halal pepperoni.

      Islamic law prohibits Muslims from eating pork.

      The class action lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court on Thursday claims the restaurant violated Michigan State Law 750.297f, which it referred to as the “Wayne County Halal and Kosher Anti-Fraud and Truth-in-labeling ordinance.”

    • New WHO Essential Medicines List: Antibiotics, Hepatitis C, Leukaemia, TB

      The World Health Organization’s new list of essential medicines, those which should be available to everyone, anywhere, was issued today. To answer the rising concern about antimicrobial resistance, the antibiotics on the list have been divided in three groups, the last of which are to be used as a last resort. The list includes the first combination therapy to treat all six types of hepatitis C. However, no second line treatment for breast cancer has been added this year.

    • NHS chiefs are told to secretly draw up more cuts – with wards, A&Es and funding of IVF at risk of being scrapped

      Hospitals face further ward closures, job losses and axed operations after cash-strapped bosses were secretly ordered to draw up yet more cuts.

      NHS chiefs have been warned to “think the unthinkable” in a bid to slash costs as the Tories continue their assault on health.

      Proposed measures also include shutting A&Es, theatres and maternity units, scrapping funding for certain treatments such as IVF and drawing out waiting times for planned care.

  • Security

    • Why you must patch the new Linux sudo security hole

      If you want your Linux server to be really secure, you defend it with SELinux. Many sysadmins don’t bother because SELinux can be difficult to set up. But, if you really want to nail down your server, you use SELinux. This makes the newly discovered Linux security hole — with the sudo command that only hits SELinux-protected systems — all the more annoying.

    • Kaspersky sues Microsoft over claims Windows 10 is ‘incompatible’ with third-party AV

      In a sensational claim, Kaspersky says that a customer in France was told by a Microsoft representative that “Windows 10 is incompatible with third-party antivirus. It’s a shame that you’ve spent money on a Kaspersky Lab product, but you can’t reinstall it without running the risk of the appearance of new bugs.”

    • Microsoft Targeted by Kaspersky Antitrust Complaint to EU

      Kaspersky sent a formal complaint to European Union and German antitrust regulators, saying “hurdles” created by Microsoft limit consumer choice and drive up the cost of security software.

    • If hacking {sic} back becomes law, what could possibly go wrong? [iophk: "any Windows machines even sending stray packet will then receive the full force of vault7+"]

      Representative Tom Graves, R-Ga., thinks that when anyone gets hacked {sic} — individuals or companies — they should be able to “fight back” and go “hunt for hackers {sic} outside of their own networks.” The Active Cyber Defense Certainty (“ACDC”) Act is getting closer to being put before lawmakers, and the congressman trying to make “hacking {sic} back” easy-breezy-legal believes it would’ve stopped the WannaCry ransomware.

    • Ransomware attack will count as data breach: security pro

      Ransomware attacks will be regarded as data breaches under Australia’s new data breach legislation that comes into force on 22 February next year, according to the chief cyber security adviser at RSA.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • After a Terrorist Attack, Spain Rejected Its Hawks. Will Britain?

      Spanish voters turned against the incumbent conservative party after the 2004 Madrid bombings.

    • Seizing of Philippines city by Islamist militants a wake-up call for Southeast Asia

      It was a brief moment of cheer, but over the next few hours the militants took control of most of the city, attacked the police station and stole weapons and ammunition, and set up roadblocks and positioned snipers on buildings at key approaches. The assault has already led to the death of almost 180 people and the vast majority of Marawi’s population of about 200,000 has fled.

    • The Latest: Police Name Gunman in Melbourne Hostage-Taking [iophk: "prisons are incubators now"]

      Victoria state Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said on Tuesday the gunman had been implicated in a thwarted suicide attack at a Sydney army barracks in 2009.

    • Melbourne siege: Police shoot gunman dead after explosions and hostage situation
    • Theresa May should blame herself, not the Internet

      To nobody’s surprise also the London Bridge assassins were known to the authorities. One of them has been in a tv-documentary about jihadism. And he was reported trying to convert children he met in a park to Islam. According to himself, he would be prepared to kill his own mother in the name of Allah.

    • London Bridge terrorist ‘was in Channel 4 documentary about British jihadis’

      Alongside two notorious extremist preachers, the man was seen unfurling the ‘black standard of Isis’ in public. The preachers were already well known to police and intelligence officials because of their extremist views.

    • Four nations cut diplomatic ties with Qatar as Gulf rift deepens

      The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s oldest Islamist movement, and adds accusations that Doha even backs the agenda of regional arch-rival Iran.

    • This is what Theresa May refused to tell you in her schoolyard sermon on terror

      Was that really the best Theresa May could do? It was the same old tosh about “values” and “democracy” and “evil ideology”, without the slightest reference to the nation to whom she fawns – Saudi Arabia, whose Wahhabist “ideology” has seeped into the bloodstream of Isis, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

      Tony Blair used the same garbage language when he claimed – untruthfully, of course – that the 7/7 London bombings had nothing to do with Iraq. He, too, like George Bush, claimed that they were perpetrated because the bombers hated our values and our democracy, even though Isis would have no idea what these values were if they woke up in bed next to them.

      And then there was the patronising monomorphic language that our wretched Prime Minister used, as if everything she says is false. Which it is.

    • Our response to the London and Manchester Attacks

      As Londoners, we are relieved that we do not know anyone who has been directly affected. It is also genuinely shocking, as it was for some of us during the 2005 bombings, to have personal connections with the places involved in brutal terrorist killings. It is a reminder of the personal trauma that is also being felt by our friends and colleagues in Manchester. Many of us feel very exposed in the face of terrorism and violence.

    • Double Colonisation: West Papua in the Pacific

      As part of the agreement, the people of Papua were to be given an Act of Free Choice at the end of seven years of Indonesian rule.

      [...]

      So 65 years on, what has happened? It depends who you ask.

    • New Zealand support for West Papua grows after ‘historic declaration’ signed

      Several politicians from across four political parties signed the Westminster Declaration, which calls for West Papua’s right to self-determination to be legally recognised through a vote.

    • Land of apple orchards, Kashmir’s Kulgam and Shopian now hotbed of militancy

      Kashmir has been in turmoil in recent months, but what is worrying security forces in particular is the emergence of south Kashmir as the hotbed of home-grown militants.

      Intelligence inputs suggest the presence of 200 active militants in the Kashmir Valley comprising 10 districts. Ninety of these militants are from south Kashmir.

    • Jeremy Corbyn calls for ‘difficult conversations’ with Saudi Arabia and Gulf states over extremism funding

      Jeremy Corbyn has said the “difficult conversations” Theresa May wants to have about Islamist extremism should start with “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states [which] have funded extremist ideology”.

    • Here We Go. Trump Destabilizes Middle East. Foments War In The Gulf.

      He’s a draft-dodger and the grandson of a draft-dodger. It’s always someone else who has to suffer for Trump’s stupid choices.

    • This is the reality of Theresa May’s record on terror as Home Secretary

      When Theresa May moved to the Home Office in 2010, she was its sixth occupant in six years. It was a political graveyard for others, but she lasted six years, making her the longest-serving Home Secretary in modern times, before becoming Prime Minister 11 months ago.

      Most media reviews then about her record as Home Secretary were positive. But now it has been cast in an unflattering light after moving to the centre of the election agenda following the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London.

    • Theresa May is morphing into Donald Trump – and she won’t be making Britain great again anytime soon

      “What would Donald Trump have to say for you to criticise him?” a room of frustrated journalists asked Theresa May.

      Not everyone is ready to rename Theresa “Trumpesa”, but there are good reasons to do so: the package is different, but the contents are the same.

      He screams that greed is good. She whispers that gluttony is a sin. He’s Wild West. She’s Middle England. But, just like he wants to “Make America Great Again” she wants to “Make Britain Strong and Stable Again”.

    • WaPo Fails to Note Raytheon, Saudi Funding of Advocate for Raytheon Arms to Saudis
    • How Maha ATS weaned 8 women off Islamic State clutches

      Sources told DNA that during this period, eight women from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and neighbouring areas in the state, many of whom are converts to Islam, have gone through the ATS’s deradicalisation programme. They were finally weaned away from the clutches of the terror outfit, but continue to be watched by security agencies.

    • Pregnant Muslim woman burned alive by family in India for marrying a Dalit man
    • The Qatar Conundrum

      Qatar is the most politically liberal of the Gulf states (admittedly a low bar). It hosts Al Jazeera TV and the Doha Debates. You can drink in its hotels and women can walk around uncovered, drive cars, and associate comparatively freely. Its universities are western in feel and appearance. There are of course many things to criticise, above all the treatment, conditions and lack of rights of migrant workers, lack of women’s and LGBT rights and freedom of speech, and the absence of meaningful democracy. But Saudi Arabia it isn’t.

      For Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Co-operation Council states to claim Qatar is the main sponsor of state terrorism, and put it under potentially crippling blockade, is the most monstrous example of the pot calling the kettle black. Qatar has indeed financed violent groups in the Middle East and participated in the war in Yemen, but in both cases on a far less grand scale than Saudi Arabia.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Can the world come together in defense of oceans?

      Overfishing and depleted fish stocks? The answers are relatively clear, and in many places, we’re already headed in the right direction.

      Marine pollution and plastics? Trickier, and we’re farther from enacting solutions.

      Warming seas and increased acidification? Complex, daunting, and impossible to solve without addressing climate change itself.

    • World leaders warn Trump: ‘Paris agreement cannot be renegotiated’
    • John Kerry: Trump Plan for Better Climate Deal Is Like O.J. Search for “Real Killer”

      Former Secretary of State John Kerry harshly criticized President Donald Trump for taking the United States out of the Paris climate deal and mocked the commander in chief’s vow to negotiate a better agreement for the country. “When Donald Trump says, well, we’re going to negotiate a better deal, you know, he’s going to go out and find a better deal? That’s like O.J. Simpson saying he’s going to go out and find the real killer,” Kerry said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Everybody knows he isn’t going to do that because he doesn’t believe in it.”

      Throughout the interview, Kerry repeatedly criticized Trump for the decision, saying the president “unilaterally ceded global leadership on this issue” that had bipartisan consensus in the past. He even pointed out that his successor at the State Department, Rex Tillerson, also wanted to keep the United States in the agreement. “I mean, what does Donald Trump know that Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, doesn’t know?” he asked.

    • Coral bleaching on Great Barrier Reef worse than expected, surveys show

      Surveys taken throughout 2016 show escalating impact from north to south, with 70% of shallow water corals dead north of Port Douglas

    • Ann Jeannette Glauber of World Bank: ‘Indonesia’s 2015 fires cost twice as much as tsunami clean-up’

      Indonesia’s fire and haze crisis in 2015 not only produced emissions on a daily basis exceeding that of the entire EU economy, but it also cost the country 16 billion USD in terms of damages to its economy.

    • Veteran big game hunter crushed to death by elephant in Zimbabwe

      A well-known South African big game hunter died last week after he was crushed by an elephant during a hunt in Zimbabwe.

      Theunis Botha was leading a group of hunters when they happened upon a herd of breeding elephants near Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe — the same park where Cecil the Lion was killed in July 2015. Three elephants charged the group, and Botha opened fire on them. But a fourth elephant caught the group by surprise and rammed Botha from the side, picking him up with her trunk, according to the South African outlet News 24.

      One of the other hunters in the group fatally shot the elephant, which then collapsed and fell on top of Botha.

    • When you may experience higher than normal tides from June through August 2017.

      The rising and falling of the sea is a phenomenon upon which we can always depend. Tides are the regular rise and fall of the sea surface caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun and their position relative to the earth. There are some factors that cause the tides to be higher than what is “normally” seen from day to day. This bulletin tells you when you may experience higher than normal high tides for the period of time between June and August 2017.

  • Finance

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Leaving Social Media Taught Me How Broken The News Cycle Is

      My reading was no longer deliberate but curated by external forces that may or may not have aligned with my interests. I’d ceded control of my most valuable currency: my attention.

    • Trump’s blocking of Twitter users violates U.S. Constitution: rights institute

      Alex Abdo, the institute’s senior staff attorney, likened Twitter to a modern form of town hall meeting or public comment periods for government agency proposals, both venues where U.S. law requires even-handed treatment of speech.

    • Trump’s Twitter Blocking May Violate First Amendment

      By blocking certain people on Twitter, President Trump has made it impossible for them to speak directly to him. They can’t see his Tweets. He can’t see theirs. And they can’t participate in the reply threads that are open to the general population. But the biggest issue, Fallow says, is that Trump is specifically blocking people based on how critical they are of him. Other people on Twitter may do that regularly, but when you’re a government official, Fallow argues, different rules apply. “One of our major missions is to be committed to free speech in the digital age and make sure traditional First Amendment principles apply to new technology,” she says.

    • When Trump blocks Americans on Twitter, that may violate the Constitution

      The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York wrote to Donald Trump demanding he unblock a number of users, because when the President blocks a citizen of the United States it’s a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment protecting freedom of speech.

    • Noam Chomsky on Trump: The worst is yet to come

      “It’s a phenomenon unknown apart from war and pestilence,” Chomsky said. “They have an updated current analysis where they attribute the increase in mortality to despair and loss of status of working people under the neoliberal miracle, which is concomitant [with] heightened worker insecurity.”

    • US government contractor arrested after NSA leak report

      The Intercept’s leaked document alleges Moscow’s military intelligence services attempted cyber-attacks on at least one US voting software supplier days before last November’s US presidential election.

      It also accuses them of sending spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials.

    • Leaked NSA report says Russians tried to hack {sic} state election officials

      Within an hour of the story’s publication, the FBI announced the arrest of the alleged source of the leaked report. Reality Leigh Winner was arrested at home in Augusta, Georgia, after an NSA audit identified her as the person who printed and removed the report from a secure facility. The Intercept had turned over a copy of the report to the NSA to verify its provenance while asking for comment. After analysis of the document showed that it had been folded up, suggesting it had been printed, the NSA determined only six employees had access to the document, and only Winner had been in e-mail contact with The Intercept.

    • Reality Leigh Winner, 25, arrested and charged with leaking top-secret NSA docs on Russia hacks {sic} to The Intercept

      Reality Leigh Winner, 25, has been arrested over charges she leaked top secret National Security Agency documents referenced in this Intercept story about Russia’s cyberwar on U.S. voting infrastructure. She is identified as an NSA contractor.

    • Leaked NSA docs: Russian military hacked {sic} US voting software company, spearphished 122 election officials

      An anonymously leaked Top Secret NSA report on Russian state hackers interfering with the US elections has been published by The Intercept, which had the documents independently analyzed by a who’s-who of America’s leading security experts.

    • NSA report claims Russian role in US elections

      A top-secret NSA report claims that Russian military intelligence carried out a cyber attack on a US voting software supplier and sent phishing emails to 100 local election officials shortly before the US presidential elections in 2016.

    • Feds Charge NSA Contractor Accused of Exposing Russian Hacking {sic}

      Leakers of classified material and national security journalists alike know that publishing government secrets carries risks. But rarely have the revelation of a bombshell leak and the criminal charges against its source come in such quick succession—in the latest exposé of Russian election hacking {sic}, not much more than an hour apart.

    • Social media users accuse CNN of ‘fake news’ over ‘staged’ London attack protest

      CNN has denied staging a crowd of protesters for a news shot in the wake of the London Bridge attacks, after conservative Twitter users accused the broadcaster of manufacturing “fake news”.

    • [Old] Senators Scold Radio Chain for Tuning Out Dixie Chicks

      The ban came after lead singer Natalie Maines, upset as the White House prepared to invade Iraq, said during a March concert in London that she was ashamed that President Bush was from her home state of Texas.

    • Stephen Hawking announces he is voting Labour: ‘The Tories would be a disaster’

      Stephen Hawking, regularly referred to as the world’s smartest man, has backed Jeremy Corbyn.

      The Conservatives would be a “disaster” for public services, the world-renowned astrophysicist said.

      “I’m voting Labour because another five years of Conservative government would be a disaster for the NHS, the police and other public services,” he said, after a meeting with Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner.

    • Already A Victory

      There has been some drop in Tory support among the elderly in the election, but only in line with the drop in the general population. The abandonment of the triple lock, the dementia tax and the end of winter fuel allowance have not particularly dented the loyalty of the Tory grey army.

      So if younger people want to stop the Tories, they have to get themselves to the polling booth at all costs. As for campaigning, almost certainly more effective than attending rallies or sticking leaflets through strangers’ doors, would be to sit down and have a real heart to hear with elderly family members and acquaintances.

    • Has Theresa May Just Cost Herself the British Election?

      May started the campaign with a 20-point lead and the expectation of gaining a huge majority with which to negotiate Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. But it hasn’t worked out that way. And Britain’s near-term future hangs in the balance.

    • Trump will keep National Institutes of Health director

      Francis Collins, until now a temporary holdover from the Obama administration, will continue to serve as the National Institutes of Health director under President Trump.

      Collins has broad support among Republicans who control the medical research agency’s purse strings. In fact, four key Republicans urged Trump to keep him in his role in a letter in December, writing that “his distinguished scientific experience, effective leadership skills, and long standing relationships with members of Congress, researchers, and advocates will service the nation and your administration well.”

    • [Older] General election poll: Jeremy Corbyn surges ahead of Theresa May in London

      Jeremy Corbyn is now London’s favourite candidate for Prime Minister, according to a newly released poll.

      The YouGov survey for the Evening Standard sees Mr Corbyn overtake Theresa May as the preferred choice to lead the country among Londoners.

      The poll also points to a broader Labour surge in the capital – boosted in large part by young voters – giving Mr Corbyn’s party a 17 point lead over the Tories and potentially condemning a handful of London Conservatives to defeat.

    • [Older] Labour doubles poll lead over Conservatives among voters under 25, new poll shows

      Labour’s lead among voters under 50 is growing, marking an increasing generational divide ahead of June’s election, according to a poll by YouGov.

      The party is 57 points ahead of the Conservatives among voters under 25 years old, according to the poll, compared to 28 points shortly after the snap vote was called in April.

    • Now More Than Ever

      The great question is whether the anti-establishment mood in the country has been irretrievably captured by populist xenophobia masking the intentions of the neo-liberals, or whether a return to an older tradition of genuine social radicalism under Corbyn can halt this trend. So on both sides of the equation this election is pivotal. Britain will become a nasty, uncaring, closed country to an extent I would never have believed possible. Or it will adopt policies of communal solidarity and public provision which I had almost lost hope people would have a chance to vote for again.

    • Nicola Sturgeon says ‘difficult’ Theresa May will struggle with Brexit talks

      The first minister of Scotland, who is also leader of the Scottish National party, said she did not know the prime minister well enough to know “whether I like her or not” but claimed that in professional dealings May compared unfavourably with her predecessor as Conservative leader.

      “Now OK, we’re miles apart politically but then so too were David Cameron and I, but we still managed to find a way of working that respected each other’s positions. We found a way of being civil,” she said.

      Sturgeon said she believed the public were now witnessing the types of frustrations she had felt in recent meetings with May, in which she found the prime minister very difficult to engage with. “You literally go into a one-to-one with her and it’s like she’s reading from a script than having a conversation.”

    • Theresa May threat to rip up human rights laws condemned as ‘cynical attempt to revive flagging campaign’

      Theresa May’s threat to rip up human rights laws to fight terror has been condemned by Opposition politicians as a cynical attempt to revive her failing election campaign.

      Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats insisted there was no evidence that human rights legislation had allowed the Manchester and London attacks to take place – or prevented action against terrorists.

      Instead, Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, accused Ms May of a “diversion” from criticism of huge police cuts – while Nick Clegg said she was trying to revive her “lacklustre, flagging election campaign”.

    • US, UK stole data of Pakistani voters: WikiLeaks

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Julian Assange: Alleged NSA leaker ‘must be supported’

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that a 25-year-old government contracter accused of sharing National Security Agency (NSA) documents with a media outlet “must be supported.”

      “Alleged NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner must be supported,” he tweeted Monday alongside a picture of Winner. “She is a young woman accused of courage in trying to help us know.”

      [...]

      Prosecutors earlier Monday announced that the Department of Justice had charged Winner with sharing top secret material with a media outlet.

      Court documents filed by the government did not specify which outlet received the materials, but NBC News reported Monday that the information went to The Intercept online news outlet.

      The Intercept published a top secret NSA report Monday that alleged Russian military intelligence launched a 2016 cyberattack on a voting software company.

      Details on The Intercept’s report suggest that it was created May 5, 2017 – the same day prosecutors say the materials Winner is charged with sharing were created.

    • What you need to know about Theresa May’s internet regulations: How will Theresa May regulate the internet?
    • Theresa May’s repeated calls to ban encryption still won’t work

      Yet most experts agree that these repeated calls to be tougher on technology are poorly thought through. Undermining cryptography simply could not work.

    • Tim Farron warns of win for terrorists if web is made surveillance tool

      “In the choice between cuts to corporation tax and properly funding our police, we should fund our police,” he said.“Let’s be clear – fewer police on the beat means fewer conversations, less information being passed on and less knowledge about who’s who and who needs to be kept under surveillance.”

    • US visa applicants may be forced to disclose social media logins

      Visa applicants hoping to travel to the United States of America (aka a Trip to Trumpton) can now be asked for their social media history going back up to five years.

    • How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner
    • NSA document leaker identified by printer dot pattern

      A contractor who leaked a top-secret document to The Intercept was identified because the NSA was able to track who had printed out the document, using the yellow dot pattern that many printers place on documents, giving the time and date when the document was printed.

    • Printer Tracking Dots Back in the News

      Those dots allow the document’s origin and date of printing to be ascertained, which could have played a role in the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, accused of leaking the document. EFF has previously researched this tracking technology at some length

    • How a few yellow dots burned the Intercept’s NSA leaker

      The watermarks, shown in the image above—an enhancement of the scanned document The Intercept published yesterday—were from a Xerox Docucolor printer. Many printers use this or similar schemes, printing faint yellow dots in a grid pattern on printed documents as a form of steganography, encoding metadata about the document into its hard-copy output. Researchers working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation have reverse-engineered the grid pattern employed by this class of printer; using the tool, Ars (and others, including security researcher Robert Graham) determined that the document passed to The Intercept was printed on May 9, 2017 at 6:20am from a printer with the serial number 535218 or 29535218.

    • Privacy International challenge could force ECJ to rule on UK mass surveillance

      Privacy International, which has long fought back against the so-called Snoopers’ Charter, took its argument to court on Monday. It called out the government for failing to implement an ECJ ruling last year. This followed a case brought by Labour MP Tom Watson and Conservative MP David Davis, in which the ECJ ruled that “only the targeted retention of that data solely for the purpose of fighting serious crime” was permissible.

    • Apple’s Tim Cook says firm has been helping with UK terror investigations

      Important metadata has shared to help UK officers

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • America’s Freedom to Protest Is Under Attack

      A UN special rapporteur was shocked to find abusive employers, anti-protest bills, and other signs of a weakening of democracy.

    • Group Molestation Is Not A Substitute For Probable Cause-Based Law Enforcement
    • Hyderabad woman sold for Rs 3 lakh in Oman, beaten with belt

      Cut to June, Rubeena’s trip has metamorphosed into a nightmare not just for her but her family as she has become yet another victim of torture, sexual harassment and forced captivity in an alien land after being allegedly sold for Rs3 lakh.

    • Two out of three Pakistanis favour Sharia: Survey

      Today, only five per cent of those surveyed this year have said that they are not in favour of the Sharia being imposed on society.

    • Ohio State attacker faulted ‘moderate’ Muslims

      A man responsible for a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University last year left behind a torn-up note in which he urged his family to stop being “moderate” Muslims and said he was upset by fellow Muslims being oppressed in Myanmar, The Associated Press has learned.

    • Why do Muslim feminists turn a blind eye to Islamist misogyny?

      But now, thanks to the shaming of girls murdered in a terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert as “whores”, the split has spilled out into the open.

    • Kurdish Refugee Killed by Arabs in Germany for Smoking during Ramadan
    • Trump’s administration is trying to keep the full CIA ‘torture’ report secret
    • Trump administration moves to keep full CIA ‘torture’ report secret

      The Trump administration’s move means it could be more difficult for the full, 6,700-page report to be made public, because documents held by Congress are exempt from laws requiring government records to eventually be made public.

    • Republican refuses to repeal child marriage law allowing girls aged 13 to wed
    • Pakistan village ‘court’ sentences woman to death for adultery for saying she was raped

      A teenager has reportedly been sentenced to death by a village council in Pakistan’s Punjab province for having a sexual relationship with her cousin.

      The 19-year-old denied having consensual sex with him, saying her relative had raped her at gunpoint.

    • After Middle East, Will Islamists Uproot Christians in Europe?

      Make no mistake; these Islamists are very clear in their goal: eradicating Christians not only from Mosul, as they did in 2014, but also uprooting Christians from Manchester, where churches are already converted to Islam. The pumped-up forces who drove Christians out of their ancestral lands rightly thought: Why not continue in the West the work begun so well in the East?

    • Pope: Egyptian Christians Killed After Refusing to Renounce Faith

      The idea that Muslims must first invite non-Muslims to convert to Islam and then only kill them if they refuse is not a twisted, hijacked version of Islam; on the contrary, it is based upon Muhammad’s instructions as recorded in a canonical hadith.

    • Flying without a man: the mysterious case of Dina Ali

      According to a number of people who have spoken to Trending, Lasloom was attempting to escape an arranged marriage. In the video, she claimed the authorities in Manila prevented her from boarding a connecting flight, and took her passport.

    • Even in America, these ‘apostates’ must meet in private.

      In traditional interpretations of Islam, apostasy — the act of leaving one’s religion — is punishable by death or imprisonment. Across the globe, apostasy from Islam remains a capital offense in 13 Muslim-majority countries.

    • Europe: Muslim Atrocities against Women? So What!

      Tragically, Europe, when Muslims are the perpetrators, seems to be adopting the sharia approach to rape.

    • Greek goddess statue removed in Bangladesh after Islamist outcry [iophk: "appeasement"]

      The sculpture of Themis – the goddess of justice – wearing a sari was less than six months old, but Islamist groups demanded its removal by Friday.

    • The Problem With Reforming Islam: It’s Most Likely Impossible

      “As Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir recently put it, “If the West wants to have peace, then they have to accept Islamic rule.””

    • Why Do Coptic Christians Keep Getting Attacked?

      Against this backdrop, it’s difficult not to see this attack as having a deeply political purpose: to encourage the exodus of Christian Egyptians from their homeland. Through attacks like these, the perpetrators appear to be indicating that they don’t simply want to make life difficult for Christians—they want Egypt to be Christian-free. In a radical extremist vision for Egypt, it seems, there is no room for this ancient and rooted Egyptian community.

    • Channel 4 News viewers bemused by Manchester bombing interview with Muslim woman wearing a burka with ‘LOVE’ spelled out with guns and grenades

      But viewers were left questioning if the whole thing was some kind of sick joke after noticing her burka was emblazoned with the word “love” – spelled out in weapons.

    • Saudi Arabia to behead disabled man ‘for taking part in protests’ after ‘forced confession’

      Munir al-Adam, 23, was beaten so badly he lost hearing in one ear during demonstrations in the Shia dominated east of the country in 2012.

      [...]

      Mr Adam was sentenced to death in a secretive trial in the country’s Specialised Criminal Court last year. Now, an appellate court has decided the sentence should be carried out, despite international criticism.

    • The REAL cause for Islamic terrorism

      “Islam’s religious texts call upon its followers to commit violence and to fight to a much higher degree than any other religion. The texts in Islam are clearly distinct from those of other religions’ texts as they to a much higher degree call for violence and aggression against followers of other faiths. There are also direct incitements to terror. This has long been a taboo within research in Islam, but it is a fact we have to acknowledge,’ says Tina Magaard.

      During their research Magaard and her team found hundreds of calls to fight against followers of other faiths in the Quran.

      “If it is true that many Muslims view the Quran as God’s own words that can not be rephrased or non-literal interpretted , we have a problem,” Magaard warns.

    • US may withdraw from UN Human Rights Council: report

      The U.S. is likely this week to warn the United Nations Human Rights Council that it may withdraw due to “anti-Israel bias,” Reuters reported Monday.

      U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is visiting Geneva this week for the council’s sessions, where she plans to call for reforms.

      “Our understanding is that it is going to be a message of engagement and reform,” John Fisher, who leads Human Rights Watch in Geneva, said.

    • Tortured Sri Lankan Muslim Child Marriage Victim Dies, Police Soft-Pedals Capture Of Murderous Husband

      Writing to Colombo Telegraph yesterday, Shreen Abdul Saroor, founder member of Mannar Women’s Development Federation and Women’s Action Network said: “She faced serious physical abuse and psychological trauma after the marriage and had reached out to a colleague a month ago asking for information in obtaining a divorce via the Quazi courts, but never came back again. Later it was learnt that she also went to the police who mediated and reconciled she and her husband and sent her back to him, despite grave danger of further abuse.

    • Religious defense planned in landmark Detroit genital mutilation case

      Defense lawyers plan to argue that religious freedom is at the core of the case in which two physicians and one of their wives are charged with subjecting young girls to genital cutting. All three are members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a small Indian-Muslim sect that has a mosque in Farmington Hills.

    • Muslim immigration is leading to brutality against women in the US

      If you think the cases of little-girl genital mutilation that made national headlines last month after a flurry of arrests in Detroit is a one-off event, think again. The CDC estimates that more than 513,000 girls and women — most of them living in New York, DC and Minneapolis — are now at risk of such disfigurement across the country, a threefold increase since 1990. What’s behind the sickening trend? Muslim immigration.

      If it’s “Islamophobic” to say that, blame the US government.

    • Jakarta Governor Withdraws His Appeal From Prison

      Prior to the court’s verdict, Islamist groups called for the governor to be jailed or executed and held large opposition rallies, including one that turned violent.

    • Jakarta’s former governor to drop appeal against jail term

      The fortunes of the once hugely popular Purnama turned last September, when he was seeking re-election. He said his political rivals were deceiving people by using a verse from the Koran to say Muslims should not be led by a non-Muslim.

    • Saudis Greet Trump With Deals Worth Billions of Dollars

      Oil giant Saudi Aramco said it signed 16 accords with 11 companies valued at about $50 billion. One initial deal — worth $15 billion — was signed with General Electric Co. across the power, healthcare, oil, gas and mining industries. The U.S. and Saudi Ministry of Defense also negotiated a package totaling about $110 billion, according to a White House transcript on Friday.

    • Islamabad HC grants Indian woman ‘forced to marry at gunpoint’ permission to return home
    • Women in Paris Protest Against ‘No Go Zones’ Where Immigrant Men Terrorize Them
    • Indonesian police arrest more than 140 men at alleged gay sauna party

      Indonesian police have arrested more than 100 men in a weekend raid on a gay sauna in the capital Jakarta, a day before two men are to be publicly flogged for having same sex relations.

      Authorities raided what they said was a sex party promoted as ‘The Wild One,’ held at a sauna and gym venue in Jakarta’s north on Sunday evening.

    • Religion is fundamentally patriarchal and anti-woman

      In the Bible it says: “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11-14) This is also evident in Hinduism, Buddhism …

      For those who only see the surface, there is an apparent contradiction that is often not understood. On the one hand, Islamic law and states are the beginning of the end of women’s rights. A pillar of Islamist rule is the attempt to erase women from the public space. On the other hand, women are everywhere – making sure they are seen and heard.

    • Filipinos Flee Duterte’s Violent Drug Crackdown

      Every morning before dawn, Rosario Perez checks to make sure her sons are still alive. The three brothers, all in their 20s, sleep at the houses of friends and relatives, moving regularly, hoping that whoever may have been assigned to kill them won’t catch up with them.

      They are not witnesses on a mob hit list, or gang members hiding from rivals. They are simply young men living in the Philippines of President Rodrigo Duterte.

      “How could I not send them to hide?” said Ms. Perez, 47, after peeking in on two of her sons and phoning the third. “We can barely sleep out of fear.”

    • The General Running Duterte’s Antidrug War

      Gen. Ronald dela Rosa, chief of the Philippine National Police, knows the value of a public display of remorse. He has been forced to apologize more than once.

      He was wrong, he acknowledged before the Philippine Senate as TV cameras rolled, to have trusted undisciplined policemen who killed a small-town mayor suspected of dealing drugs, as the mayor lay defenseless on a jail-cell floor.

      “I cannot blame the public if they’re losing their trust and confidence in their police,” he told the Senate panel, accepting a tissue from the mayor’s son to wipe away his tears.

    • The Washington Post’s War on the Disabled Continues

      At a time when an ever-larger share of national income is going to the richest 1 percent, and large segments of the working class population are seeing rising mortality rates, the Washington Post naturally turns to the country’s most pressing problem: the number of people receiving disability payments from the government.

      Its second piece on the topic profiled a family with multiple generations receiving disability benefits. It seemed to go out of its way to include every possible negative aspect of their lives in order to give an unfavorable view of the family, and leave readers with the impression that the country has a serious problem of families who do nothing but collect disability checks generation after generation.

    • Woman wearing ISIS bandana charged in knife incident at Toronto mall: source
    • Laid Back Sweden Has No Qualms With Qatar Building Mega-Mosques

      On Monday, the state of Qatar was accused of sponsoring terrorism and is in the process of being completely isolated by its neighbors. In Sweden, though, the Mid-Eastern Monarchy is engaged with building a mega-mosque.

    • A Virginia imam said female genital mutilation prevents ‘hypersexuality,’ leading to calls for his dismissal

      Elsayed’s comments during a lecture on child rearing and family life last month sparked a brief controversy last Friday after a right-wing watchdog group circulated a video clip of his speech online.

    • Michigan ‘genital mutilation’ case will test our country’s political correctness

      I am concerned for the maelstrom which may ensue when the case goes to trial. At that moment, will women’s rights be asserted or will they be diluted in favor of political correctness? In the past, I’ve witnessed the disintegration of women’s rights in favor of political correctness: my film Honor Diaries was censored (in Michigan, actually) when certain groups deemed it “Islamophobic” for bringing up FGM, forced marriage and honor killings. Instead of focusing on the inherent misogyny of these practices, my film was vilified for having difficult conversations about cultural and religious practices.

    • NHS group reveals 20 new cases of FGM in Nottingham

      All 20 victims were pregnant when the FGM was identified by and the majority of cases – 15 – were discovered by a medic carrying out an examination.

      The data shows that all of the victims underwent a surgery called deinfibulation to treat some of the problems associated with FGM.

    • [Older] Why do Islamists fear women who are free?

      Corbyn’s blinkered belief that foreign policy motivates terrorists ignores the ugly strain of misogyny in modern Islam

    • [Older] The top 3 things ISIS fears about ‘dangerous’ women

      Interestingly, a study of Ariana Grande’s lyrics provides insight on what extremists loathe most — particularly about women and sexual freedom

    • Theresa May: Human rights laws could change for terror fight
    • Saudi Arabia: 14 Protesters Facing Execution After Unfair Trials

      Saudi Arabia should immediately quash the death sentences of 14 members of the Shia community for protest-related crimes, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The Court of Appeal of the notorious Specialized Criminal Court upheld the sentences in May 2017, after they were handed down a year ago on June 1, 2016, following a grossly unfair trial of 24 Saudi Shia citizens. The Specialized Criminal Court is Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism tribunal.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Verizon is forced to fix 15,000 “double poles” and other network problems

      Double poles occur when “Verizon has failed to move its equipment from an old pole that was replaced with a new one by another utility (e.g., the electric company),” the CWA said. “In many cases, these are dangerous conditions—poles are falling, leaning, rotting, partially cut off, etc.”

    • Amazon, Kickstarter, Reddit and Mozilla are staging a net neutrality online protest

      On July 12, the companies and organizations are expected to change their websites to raise awareness of the FCC effort, which is aimed at deregulating the telecom and cable industries. Mozilla, for example, will change what users see on their screens when they open a new browser window.

      At stake are the government’s net neutrality rules, which prohibit Internet providers from blocking or slowing websites or charging them special fees in order for their content to be displayed to consumers.

    • On July 12th, the internet is planning a day of action to save net neutrality, just like the SOPA blackout and Internet Slowdown

      On July 12th, Private Internet Access will join other technology companies in a day of action to save net neutrality. Companies supporting the Battle for the Net day of action include Github, Mozilla, Kickstarter, Etsy, Amazon, Vimeo, BitTorrent, and many more. July 12th was chosen because it is days before the end of the first FCC comment period. The day of action is being organized by Fight for the Future (FFTF). FFTF commented:

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • WSJ Ends Google Users’ Free Ride, Then Fades in Search Results

        The Journal’s experience could have implications across the news industry, where publishers are relying more on convincing readers to pay for their articles because tech giants like Google and Facebook are vacuuming up the lion’s share of online advertising.

      • Bad law, not bad luck: Article 13 of new EU Copyright Directive requires general upload filters

        Article 13 effectively makes online services responsible for what users post to them, imposing a new intermediary liability on Internet companies. That’s not just bad news, it contradicts an earlier EU directive on e-commerce, passed in 2000, which laid down that companies acting as a “mere conduit” – that is, simply providing a platform – should not be held responsible for material posted to their sites. The new copyright directive would overturn nearly two decades of law and practice.

      • Cable TV “failing” as a business, cable industry lobbyist says

        The cable TV business is in trouble—in fact, it is “failing” as a business due to rising programming costs and consumers switching from traditional TV subscriptions to online video streaming, according to a cable lobbyist group.

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