News Snapshot: The Decline of Civility
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-28 20:40:57 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-28 20:40:57 UTC
Summary: News from the past fortnight, for the most demonstrating lack of civil rights and sometimes disregard for human life
NDAA Indefinite Detention
-
TAC, which describes itself as “a national think tank that works to preserve and protect the principles of strictly limited government through information, education, and activism,” has drawn up model resolutions for any state, county, town or other political subdivisions whose leaders want to officially state their displeasure with federal military policy during the “war on terror.”
-
Although some self-described “conservatives” now claim that nullification is unconstitutional, others view nullification as a proper and constitutional approach for checking federal overreach and are working to apply this approach through state legislatures. Taking notice, the Wall Street Journal published an article on its website sketching the various efforts across the country to nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government.
-
The controversial provision authorizes the military, under presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security threat to the United States.” - See more at: http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_34724.php#sthash.2MqOqgzr.dpuf
Rape
-
A 20-year-old Indian woman said she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council because she fell in love with a man from a different ethnic group, police said Thursday.
Police
-
Astonishingly, infuriatingly, two former Fullerton, California cops have been acquitted on all charges after savagely beating to death Kelly Thomas, 37, a mentally ill homeless man who died five days after being set upon by Manuel Ramos, Jay Cicinelli and four other officers. The attack, caught on surveillance video, led to days of protests, the recall of three City Council members and the resignation of a police chief whose department has a long history of violent abuse. Thomas' father Ron, a former deputy sheriff, said the defense "lied continuously" during the trial and the family will likely pursue civil charges in the death of his son, who a year after his death was cleared of the stupid bogus charges - trying to get into locked cars in a bus parking lot - police came up with in a pathetic attempt to justify their cold-blooded, fist-punching murder. Since the verdict, people have held vigils and protests at a makeshift memorial where Thomas died; one sign carries Thomas' picture before the beating and proclaims, "No one can hurt u now." Also, the FBI has said it will review the evidence for federal civil rights violations. There is both raw and shorter, edited video of the attack: It captures Ramos snapping on rubber gloves, smacking his fists together and sneering to Thomas, "See these fists? They're gonna fuck you up," followed, many vicious punches later, by Thomas writihing on the ground repeatedly crying out for help and his father. Warning: stomach-churningly graphic and heart-poundingly disturbing, all of it.
-
Houston resident Greg Snider claims he was arrested and held for more than an hour after local police mistakenly targeted him as a criminal, all for giving a homeless man a few quarters.
Snider said he had pulled into a local parking lot in order to make a phone call when a homeless man came up to him and asked for some spare cash. Snider claims he gave the man 75 cents and left to continue on his way.
"I had no idea at all what was about to happen," he told KPRC Local 2 News.
As soon as Snider merged onto a local freeway, however, police followed him with flashing lights and sirens, ordering him to pull over.
-
Oddly enough, cops (and lawyers for cops) from halfway around the world are no different than our local variety. This isn't solely an "American" problem. Excessive force is used, the victim complains, and once the court battle ensues, the justifications for the use of force are presented, which often sound completely insane to those not well-versed in the art of defending abusive cops.
Ukraine
-
Riot police brutally dispersed protesters from central Kiev in the largest operation since the latest outbreak of violence. Almost 200 officers have been injured over four days of scuffles. Two people were reportedly killed amid the crisis.
Surveillance
-
The security firm that conducts 45% of all background checks for potential U.S. government employees may have falsified hundreds of thousands of background checks over a four-year period.
UK
-
The question of whether or not citizens should be compelled to give up their passwords to law enforcement is not going to go away. What with different agencies in different countries attempting to do more searches of technology at borders, on the mainland, and around the world, the law is eventually going to have to settle whether these kinds of searches and forced compliance are in good standing with the fourth and fifth amendments of our constitution or the governing laws of other nations.
-
The Chief Inspector of UK Prisons has accused a privately run UK Immigration Detention Centre at London’s Heathrow Airport of ‘a shocking loss of humanity’ after a terminally ill dementia sufferer died in hospital, restrained in handcuffs.
Alois Dvorzak, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease spent the last five hours of his life in handcuffs, and passed away still wearing them. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, write in his report:
-
The Department of Health has launched an investigation into claims that illegal abortions of female foetuses are taking place among some families living within ethnic communities in Britain who seek to ensure that they have sons.
-
The tobacco industry does it, the US Air Force clearly wants to ... astroturfing – the use of sophisticated software to drown out real people on web forums – is on the rise. How do we stop it?
-
The BBC seems happy to be used as a covert propaganda outlet by tobacco, fossil fuel and other controversial companies
-
Perhaps the most depressing aspects of the Snowden affair has been not the fact that everything we do online is being spied upon, but the fact that few people in the UK seem to care. That's partly because the UK is in it up to its neck, thanks to the complicity of GCHQ in most of the NSA's crimes, and partly because the UK government has been so mealy-mouthed in its response. Its claims that everything it has done has been lawful is based on the fact that the only law that regulates such online spying activity - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - dates back to 2000, and is so utterly out of date that it is trivially easy to circumvent its puny safeguards.
[..]
Again, you can see just how bold and specific the recommendations are. Moraes and his colleagues are to be congratulated for pulling together such a high-quality report, on a such a complex and evolving situation, in such a short time. Let's hope the European Parliament supports the conclusions, and the European Commission agrees to work towards their implementation.
War on Dissidents
-
One year ago this month, the young Internet freedom activist and groundbreaking programmer Aaron Swartz took his own life. Swartz died shortly before he was set to go to trial for downloading millions of academic articles from servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based on the belief that the articles should be freely available online. At the time he committed suicide, Swartz was facing 35 years in prison, a penalty supporters called excessively harsh. Today we spend the hour looking at the new documentary, "The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz." We play excerpts of the film and speak with Swartz’s father Robert, his brother Noah, his lawyer Elliot Peters, and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger.
[...]
"It’s just incomprehensible, the notion that Aaron should be a felon and go to jail for something that was clearly not illegal, and he did nothing wrong. He was innocent. And to be railroaded on this basis was a complete distortion and corruption of the criminal justice system."
-
An internal Walmart memo was leaked yesterday, describing how to discourage workers from coming together for action. This document, leaked by Anonymous “Hacktivists” demanded absolute loyalty to Walmart. It further instructed that any and all signs of worker discontent be reported to supervisors immediately.
Prohibition
-
The chief of operations at the United States Drug Enforcement Agency said only last week that increased efforts as of late to legalize marijuana across the country is scaring his fellow officials at the DEA. Others, however, have a much different take.
-
So, the state of Ohio conducted a little experiment Thursday: Can you execute someone using just two drugs?
And the result? Why, yes you can. But it wasn’t quick, and it may not have been painless.
First, a little background.
The executed man, Dennis McGuire, was convicted in 1994 of raping and murdering Joy Stewart, 22, who was eight months' pregnant. And he eventually confessed to the crime. So there’s no doubting his guilt.
Bahrain and Turkey
-
Out of the 745 “sporadic protests” recorded by the Liberties and Human Rights Department in Al Wefaq Society (Bahrain’s major opposition party), more than a half were suppressed by security forces, according to the organization’s report released Thursday.
Crackdowns on protests were accompanied by arrests, with 183 rally participants ending up behind bars, including 31 children.
-
A Turkish police officer who sprayed tear gas in the face of a woman wearing a red dress at an anti-government protest faces prosecution and a possible jail term, a legal source has said.
-
The one person and movement that continues to baffle the U.S. government is a powerful Turkish Muslim cleric who is a threat to the current Turkish government -- from his 26-acre retreat in Pennsylvania, WikiLeaks recently revealed.
WikiLeaks
-
Recently, Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times, and Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer/blogger/journalist who broke the Snowden NSA story discussed opinions on the ethics and methods of journalism.
-
The Sam Adams Asso€ci€ates for Integ€rity in Intel€li€gence (SAAII) have voted over€whelm€ingly to present the 2014 Sam Adams Award for Integ€rity in Intel€li€gence to Chelsea (formerly Brad€ley) Manning.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft Windows Falls to 19% in Congo, Only About 1 in 8 Windows Users (or 2-3% of Web Users) Are on Vista 11
- The estimated share of Vista 11 fell sharply this past month
- Twitter as X-Rated Hatred: Criticising Microsoft is Not OK, Calling for Beheadings (With Bounties on People's Heads) is OK
- Twitter automation missed 'hit job' advertising
-
- Another Case Study Regarding Edge's Death
- people adopt Chrome and a lot more people use obscure browsers than adopt the latest Edge
- [Meme] A Question of Interests
- 'The Internet? We are not interested in it.' -Bill Gates, 1993
- In the Romanian Browser Market, Microsoft is the 2% (Edge Down to 2.3%)
- the Wintel era has ended
- Gemini Links 17/08/2024: Selfishness and Offline BBSing
- Links for the day
- Frans Pop & Debian Day 2024: 31 years of deception and modern slavery
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 16, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, August 16, 2024
- Links 16/08/2024: YouTube Bans and Surveillance Expanded
- Links for the day
- We Were Right All Along and the Collaborators of Microsoft Helped Competition Crimes of Microsoft
- Once again vindicated regarding UEFI "secure boot"
- [Meme] The New Windows Slogan
- stat me up
- Addendum: Associate's Notes on Free Software as a Labour Issue and the Connectivity Swindles
- these are related issues/causes
- Microsofters Infiltrating Roles of Authority and Government Positions to Protect Microsoft and to FUD Microsoft's Competition
- friends of Microsofters who bully me and my wife
- Links 16/08/2024: UK Skills Deficit and Kim Dotcom to be Extradited to the US (for Doing the Same Stuff GAFAM Does)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 16/08/2024: Overgeneralisation and Games
- Links for the day
- Russia's Yandex 5 Times Bigger Than Microsoft... in Ukraine
- They'd rather rely on the Kremlin than on Microsoft
- [Meme] Gemini is Different, So What?
- different, not worse
- Now It's "Official": Over 4,000 Known Gemini Capsules in Lupa
- For the first time ever
- Clown Computing
- Reprinted with permission from Dr. Andy Farnell
- [Meme] What Freedom Means to IBM
- Free labou
- Balancing Activism Against (or With) Basic Necessities and Daniel Cantarín on Our Collective Battle for Software Freedom Around the World
- "I'm VERY angry about lots of stuff happening here in Argentina, all of it shielded behind the word "freedom"."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 15, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, August 15, 2024
- From 99% in 2012 to 27% in 2024: How Microsoft Lost Georgia
- What we're seeing is a migration from Windows to other platforms, notably GNU/Linux
- To Understand Cisco's Mass Layoffs Look at the Company's Soaring Debt (Same at Microsoft)
- Look what's happening to Intel - down almost 60% since the start of the year, 57% to be precise
- Windows Flying Low at 25%
- It's another all-time low
- [Meme] Long Texts You Never Bother Reading (Because Life is Too Short, Unlike Those Texts)
- The devil is in the terms of service
- Links 15/08/2024: Monkeypox Hysteria and Modern Homesteaders Living Off the Grid
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/08/2024: Confession of a Convention Game Master and Some Release nostalgia
- Links for the day
- Congratulations to Romania, Where Windows is Now "Minority Market Share" Platform
- Time will tell if GNU/Linux can pass 5% on the desktop/laptop "form factor" there
- Why It Matters That 4,000 Gemini Capsules Are Known to Lupa and Why Gemini Protocol Matters to Us
- I have no doubt Gemini Protocol will continue to expand because it solves a real problem
- Links 15/08/2024: Avast Surveillance Scandal Unsolved and Facebook Still Censors Terror Sympathisers
- Links for the day
- Daniel Cantarín's Response to Alexandre Oliva's Talk on Achieving Software Freedom in the Age of Platform Decay
- Soylent News caught up with the series
- 4,000 Gemini Capsules
- it's basically one capsule short of 4,000
- "Microsoft is a Sponsor of The New Stack."
- Many articles turn out to be just ads
- New Highs for Android in Russia, But It's Reportedly Working on Its Own Linux-Based Operating Systems (GAFAM-Free)
- statCounter isn't equipped to properly parse user agents or to keep up
- Upcoming Series: Terms of Service (TOS) Under the Microscope, FSF Party, GitHub Scandals, Clowns, and More
- Right now we have way more material than we have time to cover. But that's a good thing.
- Gemini Links 15/08/2024: Lies of Therapy and Web Applications
- Links for the day
- Software Freedom in Perspective - Part 5 - When Richard Stallman Came to Argentina
- It might seem a bit harsh, but a discussion at the end of this series will tie things together and explain why those things were said
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 14, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 14, 2024