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Links 25/11/2021: Proton 6.3-8 and Linux Mint Compared to Ubuntu



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Full Circle Weekly News #237

        AlmaLinux 8.5 is available: https://almalinux.org/blog/almalinux-os-85-stable-now-available/

        Release of Lakka 3.6: https://www.lakka.tv/articles/2021/11/14/lakka-3.6/

        LF Decentralized Storage Migrated to Open License: https://github.com/zerotier/lf/releases/tag/1.1.0.0

        SeaMonkey 2.53.10 Released: https://www.seamonkey-project.org/news#2021-11-16

        Fedora Linux 37 intends to end support for 32-bit ARM architecture: https://www.mail-archive.com/devel-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/msg02684.html

        Release of Proxmox VE 7.1: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-ve-7-1-released.99846/

        Oracle Linux 8.5 Released: https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/announcing-the-release-of-oracle-linux-8-update-5

        Cinnamon 5.2 desktop environment released: https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/releases/tag/5.2.0

        Ubuntu Touch 20th Firmware Update: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-20-release-3790

      • The Planck EZ Keyboard. 47 Keys Are All You Need! - Invidious [Ed: Possibly paid-for spam, but it's hard to be entirely sure]

        I love the two previous keyboards that purchased from ZSA, which were the ErgoDox EZ and the Moonlander. But I noticed that ZSA has another keyboard called the Planck EZ, which a tiny keyboard with just 47 keys. Is such a keyboard even usable? YES!

      • FLOSS Weekly 657: Web 3.0 and Beyond - WordPress Breach, SCO vs IBM lawsuit

        What never stops and what's barely started are the topics debated by our panel of co-hosts: Doc Searls, Katherine Druckman, Aaron Newcomb and Simon Phipps. We start with the SCO vs. IBM (and before that, many others) lawsuit, which was reportedly settled. What really happened with the GoDaddy and WordPress breach? It's been 25 years of PHP and then look forward to the time when we're all in Web 4.0 talking about what failed in Web 3.0.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • The magic one-line ImageMagick 7 AppImage installer

        To install ImageMagick 7 on any distribution that supports AppImage, copy and paste this one-line script into your favourite shell:

      • PAM SSH agent authentication (with Ansible)

        Specifically for use with Ansible, I’m known to recommend adding NOPASSWD: ALL to the sudoers entry and be done with it. No mucking about with sudo passwords (in essence users’ login passwords), no -K option, no passwords in clear-text files because people are unwilling to use Ansible vault, etc. It makes lives easier all around, and yes, I am aware that there are people who get the screaming heebie-jeebies when I say NOPASSWD:. So be it.

        There is an alternative to authenticating use of sudo using SSH agent forwarding instead of login passwords. If you’re new to agent forwarding, I recommend you read the Illustrated Guide to SSH Agent Forwarding, which explains the concept and its pitfalls very well.

      • Jenkins

        In this article, you will learn more about how Jenkins’s deployment stages and pipeline tools can be used to help automate software development. You will learn how to leverage Jenkins’s deployment phases and Pipeline features to help automate your software development. You’ll leave with a better grasp on what a Jenkins Pipeline is and you’ll know how to set up Jenkins and the Pipeline plug-in.

      • So long and thanks for all the disks!

        Free (as in libre) was a tradition that would continue until the very end of the disk series: one of the last floppies compiled contained a version of the touch command. Fish helped bring about wider knowledge of open source, GNU, Unix and its related command line tools to the Amiga user base, preparing a generation of young computer enthusiasts not only for the systems they might encounter at universities and workplaces but also for the coming of Linux. Thus, he contributed to building a foundation for the continued use and growth of free software after both the demise of his disk series and the Amiga platform, a legacy of which the effects are still highly tangible.

        Fish would go on to release a thousand disks before switching to distribution on CD-ROMs in 1994. However, the then imminent arrival of dial-up Internet (giving us commoners access to Aminet) meant that only a few of these CD:s were made. Though he and his disk series will live on in memory for as long as there are Amiga users, his real achievement was bringing the joy and philosophy of free software to a world-wide user base outside academia, long before free software itself helped build the Internet that made his disks obsolete.

        Here's to you, Fred, 35 years later. So long and thanks for all the disks!

      • I wish systemd logged information about the source of "transactions"

        Modern Linux doesn't work this way, especially with systemd involved. Systemd has a D-Bus interface that people can use, there's hardware events that may trigger a reboot, there are various programs that may decide to ask systemd to reboot the system, and under some circumstances systemd itself can decide that a particular, harmless looking process failure or 'systemctl' transaction actually will trigger a reboot through some weird chain of dependencies and systemd unit settings. These days, it's entirely possible to have a system go through an orderly shutdown and reboot with no clues in the logs as to what actually did it or why it happened.

        However, systemd also has all of the information it needs to log a summary of this. Every time systemd starts a "transaction" (a set of changes to units), it knows what the starting request is and generally who asked for it (and how). It could routinely log this, which would make it much easier to trace back mysterious events later.

      • How to Recover Deleted Files in Linux

        Losing data is one of the most unsettling and harrowing experiences that any user can go through. The prospect of not ever finding precious data once it is deleted or lost is what usually inspires anxiety and leaves users helpless. Thankfully, there are a couple of tools that you can use to recover deleted files on your Linux machines. We have tried out a few data recovery tools that can help you get back your deleted files and one that stood out among the rest. This is the TestDisk data recovery tool.

        TestDisk is an opensource and powerful data recovery tool that, apart from recovering your data, rebuilds and recovers boot partitions and fixes partition tables. It recovers deleted files from filesystems such as FAT, exFAT ext3, ext4, and NTFS to mention just a few, and copies them to another location. TestDisk is a command-line data recovery tool, and this is one of the attributes that sets it apart from other data recovery tools.

        In this guide, we will demonstrate how you can recover deleted files in Linux using the Test disk utility tool. We will demonstrate how TestDisk can recover deleted data from a removable USB drive in Ubuntu 20.04.

      • How to Install Gtop System Monitoring Tool in Linux

        System monitoring is an important aspect of Linux administration as it helps a Linux user or administrator identify and later investigate the performance statuses of various operating system software and hardware elements related to the system’s disk usage, CPU utilization, and main memory consumption.

        Gtop is an ideal candidate for Linux system monitoring due to its rich and graphical monitoring dashboard/interface. Its graphical display accounts for the operating system’s disk usage, CPU, and main memory info. Gtop’s visual layout also projects running processes statistics like how much resource is being utilized or overused.

      • How to install Python 3.10 on Debian 11? - Unixcop the Unix / Linux the admins deams

        Hello friends. In this rather short post, we will help you to install Python 3.10 on Debian 11.

        Debian 11 has Python, do I have to upgrade?

        The answer to this question depends on the needs of each user. Some users are developers in this language and therefore need to take advantage of the latest features of this; On the other hand, there are also the testers who with their expertise help the growth of the language and the applications that use it.

        There is also a third group more focused on server administration. These are more careful at the moment of making any new installation, but they can also be forced to instate it in favor of some scripts, libraries, or programs that require it.

        On the opposite side are the desktop users who are not forced to do this. If you are an occasional system user or do not belong to any of this group then it is not strictly necessary leaving the decision up to you,

        So, let’s go for it. The process is fast and secure.

      • How To Install RPM Fusion on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RPM Fusion on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, RPMFusion is a massive third-party software source for Fedora Linux. RPM Fusion is not a standalone repository but an extension of Fedora’s default packages that could not be included due to Fedora being bound by the same legal restrictions as Red Hat. The RPM Fusion repository comes in two flavors, Free and Non-Free. The free repository contains a free version of the software that is open source and non-free, which have mostly almost all free software but are closed source and mainly proprietary.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of RPM Fusion on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.

      • How to install Funkin' Post-Mortem Mixup (Vs. King) on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Funkin' Post-Mortem Mixup (Vs. King) on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How to install Viber on Elementary OS 6.0

        Firstly we run an optional command, this command is only needed if you cant launch Flatpak applications like your default browser on your system. For some reason, we couldn't, so if you can, you can skip the first command.

      • How to Install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Kali Linux - Linux Nightly

        VirtualBox Guest Additions will help you get the most out of your Kali Linux virtual machine. It gives you automatic resolution scaling, a shared clipboard between the host and VM, and drag and drop ability. The step by step instructions below will explain how to install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Kali Linux.

        Kali Linux will ordinarily install the Guest Additions software automatically, as long as it successfully detects that the operating system is installed inside VirtualBox. If you want to reinstall Guest Additions because it’s not working, or just upgrade to the latest version, the instructions below will also help you.

      • How to get the active title of an X program | Definite's Extractor



        I have scripts that will utilise the SFDC case number, but why type it manually when the computer can do it?

        Firstly, you need to have xdotool installed, for RHEL or CentOS Stream, it is in EPEL. I have tried xprop and xwininfo, but they do not accept search with WM_Class

        Secondly, get the WM_Class of the X program, usually it is just the program name. If you are unsure, open that X program, then run xprog and click at the X program, then search WM_CLASS amongst the output.

    • Games

    • Distributions

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • AWS embraces Fedora Linux for its cloud-based Amazon Linux | ZDNet

          By and large, the public cloud runs on Linux. Most users, even Microsoft Azure customers, run Linux on the cloud.

          In the case of market giant Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud provider will let you run many Linux distros or their own homebrew Linux, Amazon Linux. Now, AWS has released an early version of its next distro, Amazon Linux 3, which is based on Red Hat's community Linux, Fedora.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux Mint vs Ubuntu In Less Than 10 Minutes

          Who wins a battle between Linux Mint vs Ubuntu? Which one is better?

          Ubuntu is the most famous Linux distribution in the world. Its development started back in 2004. It is based on Debian distribution, which is why Ubuntu also uses the dpkg packaging system (And .deb package format) along with the apt packager manager.

          Linux Mint, on the other hand, is based on Ubuntu. Its development started in 2008. Hence, Mint by extension is also based on Debian, and uses the same package manager and packaging system.

          There are many key and minor differences between Linux Mint and Ubuntu. But often, the question comes to: Which Linux distribution should a new Linux user use on daily basis? Ubuntu or Linux Mint?

          To answer that, we will be comparing both distributions by many different criteria in this article.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Education

        • Email Netiquette

          We needed email but people got stressed out and they started flocking to these silo sites like Facebook and Twitter which have a more codified interaction pattern that enforces or rewards brevity, picture tagging, and event scheduling.

          If we wanna get people back into email then we can’t be all shamey and gatekeepy about it.

      • Programming/Development

        • Using AWK with CSV Files

          Unfortunately, things get more complex from there.

          CSV files can contain commas, line-breaks, and delimited quotes within the quoted values, which is great for storing data in a CSV file, but is something that AWK is just not well suited to handle: [...]

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: nanotime 0.3.4 on CRAN: Maintenance Update



          Another (minor) nanotime release, now at version 0.3.4, arrived at CRAN overnight. It exports some nanoperiod functionality via a C++ header, and Leonardo and I will use this in an upcoming package that we hope to talk about a little more in a few days. It also adds a few as.character.*() methods that had not been included before.

          nanotime relies on the RcppCCTZ package for (efficient) high(er) resolution time parsing and formatting up to nanosecond resolution, and the bit64 package for the actual integer64 arithmetic. Initially implemented using the S3 system, it has benefitted greatly from a rigorous refactoring by Leonardo who not only rejigged nanotime internals in S4 but also added new S4 types for periods, intervals and durations.

        • Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.10.7.3.0 on CRAN: Bugfix, New Features

          Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 928 other packages on CRAN.

          I somehow missed to blog and tweet about the recent release based on the Armadillo 10.7.3 upstream release. Conrad is in “long-term support mode”, and 10.7.* is meant to provide fixes and stability relative to the most recent release which we did on September 30. We did actually find a regression when checking reverse-dependencies requiring an upstream move to 10.7.3. At the same time, we folded pull request #352 in. It addresses an old bug of ours where Armadillo fields types were not converted correctly in all dimensions.

        • PHP Established New Non-Commercial Organization PHP Foundation

          The reasons behind the establishment of the PHP Foundation is that one of the key contributors, Nikita Popov, has decided to switch his focus away from PHP to LLVM.

          You might think that large open source projects are well-funded, but this is not true. In fact many of them rely on a small group of maintainers, as is exactly the case with PHP.

          Despite being used by 78% of the web, PHP only has a few full-time contributors.

          Nikita Popov, a well-known long-time PHP ecosystem contributor, is the author of generators, variadic functions and argument unpacking, engine exceptions, uniform variable syntax, and many other PHP contributions. He is also known for PHP Parser which laid the groundwork for many other tools.

          Popov started working on PHP in 2011 and worked on PHP at JetBrains with the PhpStorm team, making significant contributions to three major releases there – PHP 7.4, PHP 8.0, and PHP 8.1.

  • Leftovers

    • Toward an Undiscovered Country

      Hamlet, himself, was uneasy. After all, his dead father’s ghost told him he was murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. What was Hamlet to make of this accusation? And what was he to make of this apparition? Was it a ghost, a demon of some kind, or some other manifestation? Of course, the story does not end well for Hamlet or his royal family, but the quote is powerful because, like all good quotes, it stands alone. It has a presence that transcends context and the literary work itself. Indeed, this one has endured centuries, if only now relegated mostly to the province of memes.

      I have been thinking a lot about that quote lately. If one is being honest, to take even a minute to try and comprehend the scale and complexity of this universe is overwhelming. Certainly, it cannot be done in this unit of time we call a minute. It cannot be done in any measure of human time or with the mere five senses we are told we are limited to. But there is a space that is beyond this one that our corporeal selves inhabit. I can sense it. Many can.

    • Who Killed Thomas Sankara?

      Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso—Yamba Elysée Ilboudo, a 62-year-old former driver and presidential bodyguard, sat behind a wooden dock that framed his small form. An illiterate soldier who started and ended his military career as a private, Ilboudo is among 14 men accused of participating in the assassination of President Thomas Sankara—a celebrated pan-Africanist and Marxist political leader—and 12 other men more than 34 years ago. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

    • The North is No Yellow Rose of Texas, However...
    • Diane di Prima and the Dream of the East Village Avant-Garde

      Freddie was running late. He was supposed to be in the East Village at the Poets Theatre, where his closest friend, the poet Diane di Prima, was hosting a night of dance performances. Recently, the friends had lost one of their number, to drugs or suicide, they weren’t sure which. Freddie was going to dance in their memory. As the audience waited, di Prima paced the lobby, worried that something similarly awful had happened to Freddie; she could tell amphetamines were starting to unravel him. But then he appeared, in black tights, a black leotard, toe shoes, and a mask painted on his face. “Kill all the lights,” he told di Prima. It was the spring of 1964, and the dance, For Sergio, had begun.

    • Linus Tech Tips, The Time Has Come To Say Sayonara

      Now as for the video it's an even bigger cluster fuck than the last one. I'm not going to go through everything I hated about it, because I just don't have that kind of time. However the general theme of the video seems to be that everything that doesn't work in Linux must be the fault of Linux. For example, at some point Linus blames Linux because downloading a script from Github was hard. Github has fuck all to do with Linux and is a proprietary Microsoft product. He also blames Linux because Discord screen sharing doesn't work in Linux and the proprietary Nvidia drivers suck on Linux and the manufacturer of his exotic streaming equipment, like his GoXLR, doesn't support Linux at all.

      I'm tired of this riff. I realize LTT makes their nut on views so I understand that generating this kind of drama is going to create more views which in turn puts more money into Linus' pocket. That's fine. I'm a realist and realize that we live in a world where ultimately greed reigns supreme.

      However, let's not pretend for a second that this is a fair view of whether or not Linux can work for a gamer. Let's also not pretend that the fact it requires actual effort, makes it an invalid choice. Lots of things in life require an effort but are not automatically invalidated. For example, driving a car.

    • Science

      • This Thanksgiving, I’m Grateful for a President Who Believes in Science

        I’ve been pretty critical of the Biden administration—as I promised I would be on Inauguration Day. I believe that my job is to tell the truth, even to my own “team.” Maybe especially to my own team. But even if I didn’t believe that, I’ve largely resigned myself to dying a bitter old man who was never once satisfied by the pace of progress. Dub me unforgiven.

      • Consecutive squareful numbers

        On Saturday I was thinking about how each of !!48, 49, 50!! is a multiple of a square number, and similarly !!98, 99, 100!!. No such sequence of four numbers came immediately to mind. The smallest example turns out to be !!242, 243, 244, 245!!.

        Let's say a number is “squareful” if it has the form $$a\cdot b^2$$ for !!b>1!!. The opposite, “squarefree”, is a standard term, but “non-squarefree” sounds even worse than “squareful”. Do ten consecutive squareful numbers exist, and if so, how can we find them?

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

      • Did Big Pharma Buy Senator Sinema a Fluff Piece in the Washington Post?
      • Whatever Passes for "Normal" Amid COVID Is About to Take Yet Another Hard Turn
      • Health Sector Has Outspent All Others on Lobbying for Nearly 3 Years in a Row
      • Protect Yourself From Salmonella This Thanksgiving

        Thanksgiving is just a few days away, and I regret to inform you that there’s a multidrug-resistant salmonella outbreak running rampant in the nation’s poultry industry.

        I know that’s daunting, but something to be thankful for this year is the ProPublica reporters who spent the past several months uncovering that the outbreak never abated and looking into how fragmented food safety rules left the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration ill-equipped to stop it. I know I am.

      • Cuba's Homegrown Covid-19 Vaccines Poised to Protect Millions in Poor Nations

        Despite the added challenges created by a six decade-long U.S. blockade, Cuba's public biotech sector has developed two highly effective vaccines and its universal healthcare system has inoculated four-fifths of its population.

        Additionally, the island has begun exporting its homegrown doses and is on the verge of sharing its recipes with impoverished nations abandoned by Big Pharma and wealthy countries.

      • How antivaxxers weaponized an abstract by a Goop doctor against COVID-19 vaccines

        As the pandemic has progressed since the introduction of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 nearly a year ago, we’ve seen antivaxxers resurrect old tactics and trope over and over again. Public health officials, scientists, doctors, and the media seemed rather surprised at these ideas and have struggled to deal with them, not so much because they are that hard to refute but because they had never seen them before. After all, before the pandemic, most scientists and doctors were “shruggies” about medical pseudoscience and antivaccine conspiracy theories, not really thinking or caring much about quackery and the harm it caused. Some were even openly dismissive and contemptuous, thinking such misinformation too obviously wrong to be worth their spending any intellectual firepower addressing. So, although skeptics were not surprised at how rapidly antivaxxers weaponized the VAERS database to portray COVID-19 vaccines as deadly (a tactic that even doctors who should know better have fallen for), claimed they are full or toxins or “permanently alter you DNA,” or render women infertile, all while donning the mantle of “health freedom” and claiming that “natural herd immunity” is the way to end the pandemic, the rest of the world sure did seem surprised and unprepared. So it is with another favorite tactic of antivaxxers, the weaponization of bad studies and scientific abstracts.

      • What’s One of the Most Dangerous Toys for Kids? The Internet.

        We all know how difficult it can be to close our social media apps and walk away from our devices. Just one more scroll, we tell ourselves. Just one more peek at a link. And then, suddenly, we’re deep down the rabbit hole of yet another feed.

        These apps are addictive by design. We know this. And we know full well who’s making a bundle off our weaknesses. (Howdy, Mark Zuckerberg!) But we still can’t help ourselves.

        So, if we adults are seemingly powerless in the face of such digital temptation, where does that leave our kids?

      • Why Lush Cosmetics is exiting the 'dark and dangerous alleyway' of social media

        Lush Cosmetics will deactivate its social media accounts later this week in a bid to get tech companies to make online platforms safer.

        The U.K. retailer, which sells bath and body products and has a large footprint in Canada, announced its plan Monday to cease posting on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat accounts by Friday.

        The company, which likened social media to "a dark and dangerous alleyway," said the deactivation decision is meant to address consumers' mental health challenges and will not be reversed unless the platforms are made safer.

      • Study Finds Link Between Far Right and High Corona Rates in Germany

        An interdisciplinary team at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion and a researcher from Munich systematically investigated the connection between the election results and the spread of the pathogen. The experts’ findings are clear: The higher the number of votes the AfD got in a region in the 2017 election, the faster the coronavirus spread there in 2020.

        The researchers say there is no other party represented in the German parliament whose election results correlate so strongly and systematically with coronavirus infection rates.

        The researchers’ calculations are so precise that they can quantify the correlation to within a single decimal place. "If the AfD gained one percentage point more in a district, then the incidence there was higher there by an average of 2.2 percentage points in the phase of the first wave when numbers rose," says Christoph Richter, a sociologist who studies right-wing extremism at the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil Society. Mathematically, that means: If the party received one in 10 votes in one district and twice as many in another, the level of infection in the two regions differed on average by a healthy 22 percent.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Why it matters to us if exploits are available for security issues

        In general, the more that plug and play exploits exist for something, the more chances are that low-skill people can use the exploit against you casually. They might be running an exploit they found on the web, or it might be part of a broadly available canned toolkit they're using. But either way, the easier it is to get the exploit in some usable form, the more you're exposed to casual people who would never write their own exploit but who are perfectly happy to run someone else's to break into your system (or just to break it).

      • Proprietary

        • WhatsApp users beware; do not answer video calls from unknown callers [here's why]

          "It was around 2 a.m. when I received a call from an unknown person on Facebook Messenger. When I received the call, I saw a nude girl on the other end. I disconnected the call immediately. However, before I could figure out what exactly happened, I received a few screenshots of my video call on Messenger," a shaken professor told IANS on the condition of anonymity.

          Starting to panic, he immediately blocked the user. After an hour, the professor got an audio call where another man asked him to pay Rs 20,000 via a digital payment app within five minutes, else he would post these screenshots on Facebook for his friends and family community to see.

        • Apple suing 'hacker-for-hire' firm NSO that Canadian cyber watchdog Citizen Lab warned them about

          The move by Apple comes after cybersecurity watchdog group Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto, warned Apple of a vulnerability in its software that could allow a type of spyware called Pegasus to infect Apple devices without the user doing anything or knowing about it.

        • Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

          Apple’s legal complaint provides new information on NSO Group’s FORCEDENTRY, an exploit for a now-patched vulnerability previously used to break into a victim’s Apple device and install the latest version of NSO Group’s spyware product, Pegasus. The exploit was originally identified by the Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto.

        • Security

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Helicopter Footage Obtained By The ACLU Shows Pervasive Surveillance Of Peaceful Anti-Police Violence Protests

              Thanks to a trove of public records, the ACLU can provide some insight on how the California Highway Patrol engaged in surveillance of anti-police brutality protests. While one would expect police helicopters to fly over protests to keep an eye out for any illegal activity, it appears the officers manning the surveillance cameras were more interested in trying to identify protesters who weren't breaking any laws.

            • Why We Should Reject Mark Zuckerberg's Dehumanizing Vision of a "Metaverse"

              We’ll all be hearing a lot about the metaverse in the guises of cleverly crafted tech language over the months and years ahead. Technical descriptions such as the one found in€ Wikipedia€ can be confusing and lacking in “big picture” implications. It’s useful to note that this is a seismic shift, comparable to the Internet in scope and scale, and it’s planned to become the dominant paradigm for human communications, transitioning our business, social, and cultural life from physical to online environments.

              But I want to be careful not to mince words in describing what this technology coup is really all about: nothing less than an attempt to fabricate an alternate “reality” other than the physical one we now inhabit. This new reality can be accessed, of course, only by paying customers and those in a position to afford and understand it. It is a technology designed by elites and for elites and implicitly leaves behind much of humanity in its wake.

            • Amazon has Been Lobbying Hard Against Privacy Protections – Mostly with Success; Who's Smiling Now?

              The Amazon department tasked with spreading that fear grew from two dozen employees in 2015 to around 250 today. As well as wielding sticks, Amazon offers carrots. For example, to encourage politicians to support an Amazon-drafted privacy bill in Virginia, the company increased its political donations from $27,750 in 2016 to $277,500 last year. According to the new report, consumer advocates were not consulted, and only found out about the bill shortly before it was passed. In addition, Amazon has registered at least 180 lobbyists in 44 US states.

            • HS: Finland’s [SUPO] calls for greater intelligence powers

              Statements submitted to the Ministry of the Interior, which is preparing a report on the functioning of the intelligence laws adopted in 2018 to the Finnish Parliament, reveal that the concerns are related to the vague nature of the existing laws and the lack of statistical data on violations of the secrecy of communications of citizens.

              The Parliament has obligated intelligence authorities to keep record of any communications intercepted and opened accidentally.

              [SUPO] in 2018 was granted basically all of the clandestine intelligence gathering powers it requested. The powers can be wielded without concrete suspicions of criminal activity if national security is deemed to be under threat.

            • Irish DPC demanded noyb to sign a "non-disclosure agreement" or remove noyb from Facebook procedure. noyb files criminal report against DPC.

              The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has taken the unheard-of move, to demand noyb to draft and sign a "non-disclosure agreement" (NDA) within one working day. In absence of such an NDA for the benefit of the DPC and Facebook, the DPC would not comply with the duty to hear the complainant anymore. Schrems: "The DPC engaged in procedural blackmail. Only if we shut up, the DPC would 'grant' us our legal right to be heard. We have reported the incident to the Austrian Office for the Prosecution of Corruption. This is a regulator clearly asking for a 'quid pro quo' to do its job, which likely constitutes bribery in Austria."

              Facebook would especially benefit from the NDA, as new documents indicate that EU regulators may find Facebook's "GDPR bypass" illegal — possibly declaring Facebook's use of personal data since 2018 unlawful, with major implications for Facebook's business model in Europe.

            • Do no harm? How the case of Afghanistan sheds light on the dark practice of biometric intervention

              In August 2021, as US military forces exited Afghanistan, the Taliban seized facial recognition systems, highlighting just how a failure to protect people’s privacy can tangibly threaten their physical safety and human rights. Far from being good tools which fell into the wrong hands, the very existence of these systems is part of broader structures of data extraction and exploitation spanning continents and centuries, with a history wrapped up in imperialism, colonialism and control.

            • Big brother at the Prague airport. The state refuses to explain how the biometric camera system works

              When Václav Mach, collaborator of the Czech digital-legal organization, an EDRi member, Iuridicum Remedium (IuRe) and law student at the University of Olomouc, asked the state for more detailed information on the use of smart biometric cameras at Prague's Václav Havel Airport, he obtained just general phrases. "They kept secret what they could. Their non-transparency doesn’t add to their credibility,“ he says in an interview with HlídacíPes.org. The article below is a summary of the more extensive interview, translated from Czech into English by EDRi member IuRe.

            • Why chat control is so dangerous

              According to a legal opinion by Prof. Dr. Ninon Colneric (PDF) automated scanning could indeed be illegal. Surveillance without a specific reason or reasonable suspicion is prohibited in the EU due to the fact of its violation of fundamental rights. The European Court of Justice has repeatedly confirmed this view and, for example, reproved the retention of data on a number of occasions.

              Nevertheless, attempts to revive the data retention zombie with legal tricks have not died down. The demand can be found regularly in council papers of various EU countries. Thus, this type of mass surveillance is still part of the German Telecommunications Act („Telekommunikationsgesetz“), although being currently suspended.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • Undoing Cricket Imperialism

        The cricket geophenomenon, much more captivating than the cricket game, fuels complex enchantment globally, most notably in South Asia. The phenomenon wrestles with cricket formats, racism bouts, and fights over advertisement revenues. Yet, international cricket generates white, black, and brown megastars to everyone’s delight amidst match boycotts, match-fixing, and national rivalries. In numbers of the global audience, cricket is second only to football (soccer) and gaining ground. The 2019 Men’s Cricket World Cup attracted a cumulative average of 1.6 billion viewers. In 1900, cricket debuted as an Olympic sport with only two teams competing, England and France (which knew nothing about cricket). In 2028, after 128 years, cricket will return as an Olympic sport with a wide-reaching competition.

        21st-century cricket transcends far beyond England, its weather, culture, intentions, language, and rules, though the England cricket team remains a formidable international competitor. However, the game’s format, dynamics, epicenter, money, power, indeed everything about cricket is changing. For centuries, cricket was a single-nation sport, male by gender and white by race, played leisurely, primarily in the summer months. Cricket is now a global phenomenon, electrifying as heck, running nonstop all year round, empowered by male and female teams of variant colors and races, generating millions of dollars in advertisement revenues. Running commentary is no longer just in English, and unofficial Hindi commentary draws millions of more listeners. The ICC hosts several multilateral cricket competition series of “great pitch and moment” — far beyond Shakespeare’s oration, who probably knew cricket more as a grasshopper.

      • The Costs of War (to You)

        Recently, my husband, a naval officer currently serving with the Department of Energy, spent a week with colleagues touring a former nuclear testing site about 65 miles north of Las Vegas. Between 1951 and 1957, the U.S. conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests in those 680 square miles of desert and only stopped when scientists began urging that the tests be halted because of soaring cancer rates among the downwind residents of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.

        My spouse’s trip was a kind of ritual Department of Energy personnel undertake to learn about nuclear weapons as they maintain our country’s vast and still wildly expanding arsenal.

      • The High Stakes of the U.S.-Russia Confrontation over Ukraine

        The People’s Republics of€  Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), which declared independence in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, have once again become flashpoints in the intensifying Cold War between the United States and Russia. The U.S. and NATO appear to be fully supporting a new government offensive against these Russian-backed enclaves, which could quickly escalate into a full-blown international military conflict.

        The last time this area became an international tinderbox was in April, when the anti-Russian government of Ukraine threatened an offensive against Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia assembled thousands of troops along Ukraine’s eastern border.

      • Our Blind Faith in the Military Will Destroy Us

        Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

      • Yemen’s Houthi Rebels Respond to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin

        In 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with other Arab states, attacked Yemen with the objective of restoring the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who the Houthis had overthrown the year before.

        The remarks from Houthi spokesman Mohammad Ali al-Houthi came in response to comments made by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on November 20.€  Speaking at the annual Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain, Secretary Austin reiterated the US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s defense.€  The US, Austin said, was “significantly enhancing Saudi Arabia’s ability to defend itself.€  * * * America’s commitment to helping our friends defend their sovereign space is unwavering.”

      • Vigilantes on Parade: Rightwing Extremism and the Threat of National Implosion

        A dangerous precedent has been set in this ruling, empowering vigilantes who believe they are deputized to enforce “the law” against perceived political enemies. Rittenhouse traveled to a city that he didn’t live in, to a state in which he is not a resident, while illegally possessing an assault rifle he had no right to wield, in the name of “protecting” property he didn’t own, in the process killing two men in violent altercations that would have been avoided entirely if Kenosha police had done their job, corralling vigilantes who looked to commit violence, and separating them from those engaged in protests or destruction of property. Even for those who are fixated on the property damage question, it’s difficult to defend Rittenhouse’s actions when he engaged in vigilante violence, with no training in dealing with conflict situations, and when responsibility for enforcing the law clearly falls on the police.

        The Rittenhouse case shouldn’t be interpreted in a vacuum, as it occurred within a larger political environment in which other rightwing vigilantes seek to justify violence, and even murder, under the guise of “self-defense.” Consider, for example, the Ahmaud Arbery case in Georgia, where three white vigilantes stalked, cornered, and shot a black man who was jogging through a neighborhood – and away from them – under the false premise that he may have been responsible for a local burglary. There is no plausible scenario in which these three men can reasonably claim self-defense, when the altercation was entirely of their own initiation, when the man murdered was unarmed, and when he had nothing to do with the crime in question. And of course, there is the issue of implicit or explicit racial bias related to the defendants, which is also difficult to ignore in a country where research shows that assumptions of guilt related to violent crime are consistently racialized, with black men assumed to be the prime perpetrators in violent and other criminal acts. If the Arbery defendants successfully justify their actions as “self-defense,” then the courts will have effectively criminalized being black in America. An acquittal sends a message that white vigilantes can commit violence and murder at will against people of color who have the nerve to venture out into public, and with black men’s mere existence constituting a “threat” from which white people need “protection.”

      • Dems and GOP Fight About Domestic Spending — But Not About Huge Military Budgets
      • “The War Party”: Jeremy Scahill on How U.S. Militarism Unifies Democrats & Republicans

        As Democrats in Congress struggle to pass the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, there is large bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress to spend over $7 trillion over the next 10 years in military spending. The United States spends more each year on defense than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined. “Democrats have to engage in theater about human rights and international law and due process, but they ultimately, at the end of the day, are just as aggressive as Republicans,” says investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept. His most recent piece is titled, “The War Party: From Bush to Obama, and Trump to Biden, U.S. Militarism Is the Great Unifier.” We also speak with Scahill about the Biden administration’s ongoing persecution of military whistleblowers, including Daniel Hale.

      • Can You Bankrupt White Supremacy? Jury Holds Charlottesville Organizers Liable for $26M in Damages

        A federal jury has ordered a group of white supremacists to pay over $26 million in damages for their role in organizing the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Is bankrupting these organizations, is bankrupting these individuals enough to actually stop the growing threat … of white supremacy and Nazism in the United States?” asks Slate senior editor Nicole Lewis. “I don’t think so.” Lewis also discusses the Ahmaud Arbery murder case and why claims of self-defense from armed white people serve as a “racist dog whistle.” She says it’s inevitably a one-sided trial when “the McMichaels are the only ones [surviving] that get to claim they’re scared.”

      • Dems "Need to Get Thicker Skin," GOP Lawmaker Whines Week After Gosar Censure
      • Defense Minister Says Russia to Boost Military Over 'Increased NATO Activity' Near Border

        After weeks of rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine, along with its Western allies, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday that his country is boosting combat readiness due to NATO activity near its borders.

        "The tense military and political situation in the world and NATO's increased activity near the Russian borders prompt the need to further develop the armed forces qualitatively," Shoigu said, referring to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization made up of 30 member nations including the United States.

      • Rally Organizers Used Burner Phones to Talk With Trump Officials on January 6
      • “Why Are Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers So Scared?”: Self-Defense Claims by White Attackers Seen As Racist

        Update on Nov. 24: Jurors on Wednesday afternoon returned guilty verdicts against all three of the white men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020. Travis McMichael fired the fatal shots and was convicted on all counts, including the charge of malice murder. His father Gregory McMichael, a former police officer, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted of felony murder and other charges.

      • All Three Men Charged in Ahmaud Arbery's Killing Found Guilty of Murder
      • Guilty. Guilty. Guilty: Jury Convicts All 3 Assailants for Ahmaud Arbery Murder

        This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...

        A Georgia jury on Wednesday found three men guilty as charged for the 2020 murder of unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery.

      • Opinion | The Exoneration Club of America Welcomes Kyle Rittenhouse
      • The Disinformation that Got Told: Michael Cohen Was, in Fact, Hiding Secret Communications with the Kremlin

        The details of any disinformation in the dossier — the possibility that Russian intelligence deliberately planted false stories about secret communications Michael Cohen had with the Kremlin — are important because they may have served the overall Russian operation. In some cases, such as the claim that Carter Page was Paul Manafort’s purported go-between with Russian rather than Konstantin Kilimnik, might have provided cover. The claims that Russia had years old FSB intercepts of Hillary they planned to release as kompromat, rather than recently stolen emails from John Podesta, would similarly provide cover. In others, disinformation might have worked in the same way Oleg Deripaska’s double game did, increasing the vulnerability of Trump’s people even while making it more likely they’d do what Russia wanted.

        I have argued in the past that the Trump Tower deal wasn’t important because it showed that Trump was pursuing a real estate deal while running for President. Rather, it was important to the success of the Russian operation because it gave Russia proof, before any hint of the Russian operation became public, that Donald Trump would be willing to work, in secret, with sanctioned banks and a GRU officer to make an impossibly lucrative real estate deal happen.

      • European commission vows to create tools to combat use of people for political purposes

        The proposals include the restriction of activities, suspension of licenses, suspension of permits for refueling, maintenance, stops, transit and overflight over the EU territory. Specific measures will be proportionate and will be determined on a case-by-case basis, the commission said.

      • XTRA GUAC: Here’s Everything Enbridge Is Buying Cops to Fight Protesters

        Hundreds of invoices reveal how Enbridge spent $3 million in reimbursements on Minnesota police to surveil Line 3 protestors.

    • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

      • Why There Are So Few Whistleblowers

        The fact that there are so few whistleblowers points to the failure of the system, particularly the failure of the oversight system.€  The press certainly hasn’t been helpful.€  Chelsea Manning, who provided video evidence of war crimes, was dismissed by€ Washington Post€ oped writer Ruth Marcus as a “cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.”€  Edward Snowden, who provided fulsome evidence of illegal massive surveillance, was dismissed by€ Post€ senior writer David Ignatius as an “intelligence defector,” not a “whistleblower.”€  NBC’s David Gregory accused then€ Guardian€ reporter Glenn Greenwald of “aiding” and “abetting” Snowden, and suggested he could be charged with a crime.€  So whistleblowers cannot count on support from the mainstream media.

        Nor can congressional committees expect military and intelligence officers to “self-report” transgressions, let alone crimes.€  We’ve recently learned that senior military officers and civilian officials have been covering up a war crime that took place in Syria two years ago, taking the lives of dozens of women and children.€  According to the€ New York Times, the military command in Iraq and the Central Command headquarters in Florida participated in the cover-up.€  Even the Department of Defense’s independent Inspector General omitted any reference in his report to the Air Force F-15 attack fighters that dropped three 500-pound bombs.€  The IG was relying on an assessment of the strike that was prepared by the secret unit that carried out the strike.

    • Environment

      • 33 Ways to Celebrate Buy Nothing Day

        Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving, is typically the busiest shopping day of the year in the US. It’s also Buy Nothing Day in North America, a day of protest against consumerism. On November 26 this year, why not skip the online bargain hunting and instead do something good for the planet that’s also good for your soul?

      • Opinion | After COP26 Failures, Major Challenges and Immense Opportunities Ahead

        What is next on the global climate agenda? This year's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow certainly did not fail, but nor was it much of a success. While world leaders entered into some promising new agreements on targets, global greenhouse-gas emissions so far are not being reduced at the pace we need. And while some countries' climate pledges have been strengthened, the lack of concrete measures for achieving them is a real worry. We still see a yawning policy gap.

      • Opinion | How Europe and the US Wasted the Opportunity Presented by the Covid and Climate Crises

        The silver lining in the gloomy cloud of the pandemic was the opportunity it gave the West to mend its ways. During 2020, rays of light shone through. The European Union was forced to contemplate a fiscal union. Then, it helped remove Donald Trump from the White House. And a global Green New Deal suddenly appeared less far-fetched. Then 2021 came along and drew the blackout curtains.

      • 'Unsettling': New Study Reveals Arctic Ocean Warming for Over a Century

        New research published Wednesday revealed the Arctic Ocean has been warming for decades longer than scientists previously understood, raising fresh concerns as the polar region faces the growing threat of a total loss of the seasonal ice that is crucial to the survival of the imperiled marine ecosystem.

        "We're talking about the early 1900s, and by then we've already been supercharging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide."

      • Energy

        • Texas Gas Companies Hit Texas Consumers With 'Whoops You Froze To Death' Surcharge

          If you hadn't noticed, the United States isn't really prepared for climate change. In part because corporations and disinformation mills have convinced countless Americans a destabilizing climate isn't actually happening. But also because we were already perpetually underinvesting in our core infrastructure before the symptoms of an unstable climate began to manifest. It's a massive problem that, as John Oliver highlighted six years ago, doesn't get the same attention as other pressing issues of the day. You know, like the latest influencer drama or the mortal threat posed by TikTok.

        • The EPA Administrator Visited Cancer-Causing Air Pollution Hot Spots Highlighted by ProPublica and Promised Reforms

          Two days after ProPublica published a first-of-its-kind analysis of industrial air pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that its administrator, Michael S. Regan, would visit the communities featured in our reporting. During last week’s “Journey to Justice” trip across the South, Regan toured the Houston ship channel, the Louisiana community of Mossville and a stretch of land along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley — places that we identified as among the largest hot spots of toxic air pollution in the country. Environmental advocates who hosted several different parts of the tour told ProPublica that they first received calls about the visit in late October, two weeks after we sent the EPA questions about their areas’ elevated cancer risk. Longtime residents believed it was the first time that the nation’s top environmental regulator visited Mossville and Cancer Alley.

          Our investigation exposed significant flaws in how the EPA protects vulnerable neighborhoods from hazardous air pollution. We identified more than a thousand hot spots of cancer-causing air across the country and found that, on average, census tracts where the majority of residents are Black experience more than double the level of cancer risk from toxic air pollution as majority-white tracts.

        • KXL Pipeline Company Exploits NAFTA Provision to File $15 Billion Claim Against US

          The Canadian company behind the canceled Keystone XL pipeline filed a formal request for arbitration this week under the North American Free Trade Agreement to seek over $15 billion in economic damages over the Biden administration's revocation of the cross-border oil project's permit.

          In its Monday filing, TC Energy criticizes the permit's cancellation as "unfair and inequitable" and argues the U.S. government should pay damages for the "regulatory roller coaster" the company endured while seeking to build the pipeline.

        • U.S. to release 50 million barrels of oil from reserve in move to bring down prices

          The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve currently holds more than 600 million barrels of crude in stockpile to ensure supply during unexpected natural disasters or other national security events.

          The reserves are stored in caverns created in salt domes along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts.

          More than 32 million barrels will be released in the next few months, while the other 18 million will be an acceleration of the release of barrels that had already been planned beyond that.

        • Hamilton youth charged after $46M in cryptocurrency stolen from U.S. resident

          A Hamilton youth has been charged in the theft of $46 million in cryptocurrency after investigators learned some of it was put toward buying a gaming username.

          Local police worked with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service to investigate millions in missing currency stolen via what's known as a SIM swap attack, said Det.-Const. Kenneth Kirkpatrick from Hamilton Police Service's cybercrimes unit.

          The three agencies started working together in March 2020 after an American reported the loss.

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • How to Take Over a Country

        The country is sinking into political quicksand, living in two worlds: the fantasyland of Donald Trump, who insists he won reelection, enveloped in the Big Lie by his loyalists who have set his fable in concrete, and the reality in which President Joe Biden and his Democrats have passed trillions of dollars in legislation intended to help all Americans live better lives.

        Extracting the country from the insidious menace of an all-encompassing far-right packaging of lies and manufactured cultural bull will be difficult, if not impossible, unless Republicans wake up and sideline Trump. The Republican strategy seems intended to stir anger, resentment and bitterness against Biden and “radical liberals” to attract voters to their base in order to retake power.

      • Democrats: Giving Up on the White Working Class Would be Disastrous

        For some Democratic pundits—notably Thomas Frank and James Carville—winning over these voters is the party’s best chance at future electoral successes. Frank, best known as the author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas?, believes there are two impulses at war in “Leftland.” One is that Democrats need to build a broad coalition of working class people. (The other impulse, he says, is “I’m better than you.”)

        For others—Steve Phillips and Sally Kohn among them—appealing to white working class voters is a waste of time and would be akin to making a deal with the devil.

      • Jury Finds "Unite the Right" Organizers Liable for $25.3 Million in Damages
      • UN Human Rights Envoy Slams Racist Voter Suppression in US
      • Opinion | Unaccountable Institutions Are Ruining Democracy—and Your Life

        Three centers of power increasingly dominate our lives, but are less and less accountable: The Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve, and Big Tech.€ 

      • US Legal Observers Report 'Balanced and Transparent' Election Process in Venezuela

        A delegation of observers from a New York City-based progressive legal group on Wednesday pushed back against the Biden administration's claims about Venezuela's recent regional elections in which allies of President Nicolás Maduro's socialist party were largely victorious.

        "We observed a balanced and transparent voting process which voters expressed confidence in."

      • The Secret Speech of Jen Psaki

        White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reaffirmed Joe Biden’s stance that he was not an “old friend” of Xi Jinping before the summit between the two leaders last week.€  This was big news. And the media play it received was quite disturbing to Psaki, as it turns out.

        Seeking to clarify matters, she wrote a statement to read to the press corps explaining her stance on China-US relations.€  She planned to read it to the press during Thanksgiving week. Presidential advisors, however, put the kabosh on the statement – and reportedly tried to put the kabosh on Psaki herself after they saw her draft.€  From reliable sources, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the situation, we have obtained portions of the statement which has come to be known among Washington insiders as the PPP, Psaki’s Psecret Pspeech.€ 

      • Opinion | How Deep Canvassing by Progressives Can Change Rural Politics in the US

        It's Nov. 1, and Precious Cogwell is canvassing in Alamance County, North Carolina, encouraging people to go to the polls the next day. No one answers Cogwell's knock at the front door of a brick ranch house, but she spies a man around back and walks over, a stack of voter guides in her arms.

      • Opinion | We Do Exist: Why the Palestinian Voice Should Take Center Stage

        At a recent New York event, the President of the Foreign Press Association Ian Williams declared, before an approving audience, that it is time "to reclaim the narrative on Palestine".

      • Raids, Arrests and Death Threats: Israel’s Strategy of Silencing Human Rights Defenders

        The Palestinian organizations included in the Israeli order are Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children Palestine, Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

        Considering the significance of these organizations in Palestine and their global networks among like-minded civil society organizations, the Israeli decision provoked a public outcry. One of the many statements of condemnation was a joint statement by rights groups, Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), in which they called Gantz’s move an “appalling and unjust decision”, which represents “an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement.”

      • Noam Chomsky Warns of 'Very Dangerous' US Antagonism of China

        Linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky this week condemned the Biden administration's aggressive anti-China foreign policy, while dismissing the imperialist notion that Beijing poses a threat to the United States and urging a departure from the "provocation" that for decades has characterized the U.S. stance toward the rising giant.

        "There is constant talk about what is called the China threat... What exactly is the China threat?"

      • An activist radio host has put his life on the line for voting rights. Biden, it's your move

        Legendary Black radio host Joe Madison is two weeks into a hunger strike that could become a risk to his health. Madison, 72, is doing it for one reason: To pressure President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress to pass voting rights legislation as the GOP actively works to restrict ballot access.

        As Madison told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday, "Just as food is essential for the existence of life, voting is essential for the existence of democracy."

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Content Moderation Case Studies: Facebook Suspends Account For Showing Topless Aboriginal Women (2016)

        Summary:€ Facebook’s challenges of dealing with content moderation around “nudity” have been€ covered€ many€ times, but part of the reason the discussion comes up so often is that there are so many scenarios to consider that it is difficult to create policies that cover them all.

      • Mobile internet disrupted in Burkina Faso after shooting of protesters

        Network data from NetBlocks confirm a significant disruption to mobile internet connectivity in Burkina Faso from around 10:30 p.m. UTC Saturday 20 November 2021 affecting cellular service. The incident comes amid political unrest and the shooting of protesters by a French military convoy on Saturday.

        Metrics corroborate user reports of mobile data disruptions on providers including Orange (AS37577). The data blackout is ongoing as of Monday and is likely to limit the free flow of information online and suppress news coverage of events on the ground.

    • Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

      • Legal Wrangle Between NYT and O’Keefe Puts Press Freedom at Risk

        Yet Sobchak’s absolutism was overstated. The line is a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers case of 1971, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not restrain the New York Times and the Washington Post ahead of time from publishing classified documents pertaining to the Vietnam War.

      • Lawmakers Ask French Government To Grant Asylum To Assange

        Assange’s father, John Shipton, acknowledged this support, recalling that WikiLeaks also published the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spying on French Presidents Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012), and François Hollande (2012-2017).

      • Rwandan online video reporter given “absurd” seven-year-jail sentence

        Also known as Cyuma Hassan, Niyonsenga had enjoyed eight months of freedom after his initial acquittal before being returned to prison following the high court’s decision on 11 November to convict him on charges of assault, obstructing police officers and practicing journalism without a press card.

        Niyonsenga’s problems date back to 15 April 2020, when he was arrested while on his way to cover the impact of the government’s coronavirus lockdown, and was charged with contravening the lockdown and showing false press cards to the police.

      • Norwegian TV journalists arrested in Qatar

        He confirms that NRK is still waiting for an explaination on why the two journalists got arrested.

      • Norway criticises Qatar over arrest of Norwegian journalists

        Ekeland and Ghorbani were released on Tuesday and left the country shortly after, NRK said. Their equipment had been confiscated however, the broadcaster added. The reporters arrived in Oslo earlier on Wednesday.

      • Khashoggi Fiancé Urges Justin Bieber to Cancel Saudi Arabia Concert

        Hatice Cengiz published her opinion piece in The Washington Post, for whom Jamal Khashoggi was a contributing columnist. Khashoggi was brutally murdered at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by men acting on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

        “Cancel your December 5 performance in Saudi Arabia,” Cengiz writes. “This is a unique opportunity to send a powerful message to the world that your name and talent will not be used to restore the reputation of a regime that kills its critics.”

        “Please know that your invitation to participate in a concert in Jiddah comes directly from MBS, as the crown prince is known. Nothing of significance happens in Saudi Arabia without his consent, and certainly not an event as important and flashy as this. Your face is even featured on the event’s website with his – the executioner of my fiance, Jamal.”

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Our Inflexible, Outdated Constitution

        From the electoral college to gun rights to the hilariously archaic right to refuse to quarter troops in your home and the $20 threshold for a civil jury trial, the U.S. Constitution contains many head-scratching relics of an America we wouldn’t recognize. Living in the age of the musket, James Madison might not be so quick to argue for legalizing the AR-15, assuming that a well-regulated state militia was still a thing.

        A work of genius the U.S. Constitution is not. It is almost impossible to amend—it is in fact the hardest to amend in the world. The immutability of the document is highlighted by the inability of the world’s most powerful democracy to enshrine a right as basic as gender equality, a principle that the vast majority of other countries, even dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, have managed to include (at least in theory) in their founding charters.

      • Those Whiny Nazis Are Now Broke Nazis, Too

        It took three days of deliberation, on top of four weeks of ugly, sometimes racist arguments, for a federal jury in Charlottesville, Va., to find that the loathsome white supremacists who organized the 2017 Unite the Right rally were indeed loathsome and would have to pay more than $26 million in damages to nine plaintiffs because of their conspiracy to commit violence. The jury deadlocked on two counts of violating federal civil rights law, and instead used a Virginia state law to reach their verdict, but the plaintiffs’ attorneys were jubilant nonetheless. “It’s a resounding victory for our plaintiffs,” Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, told me, sitting in the Charlottesville airport on her way home for what should be a happy Thanksgiving.

      • No Immunity For Cops Who Used A Field Drug Test To Turn Stress Ball Sand Into Cocaine

        Getting probable cause is easy, especially when you have accomplices. Law enforcement loves drug dogs, which give them the permission they need to engage in warrantless searches. All a dog has to do is "alert"... or almost "alert"... or be presented in sworn testimony as feeling ways about an odor. Permission obtained. Searches permitted.

      • Most Americans Look Favorably on Global Governance

        This approval of global governance is especially striking in the case of the United Nations. A February 2020 Gallup poll reported that 64 percent of U.S. respondents wanted the UN to play a leading or a major role in world affairs. Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll that summer found that 62 percent of Americans had a positive view of the world organization, compared to 31 percent with a negative one. Respondents gave the UN particularly high ratings for promoting peace (72 percent) and promoting human rights (70 percent), while also according it positive ratings for promoting economic development, taking action on climate change and infectious diseases, and caring about the needs of ordinary people.

        The strong support for the United Nations has continued during 2021. A survey done in early September by Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates found that 84 percent of U.S. respondents believed it important for the United States to maintain an active role in the UN, that 69 percent viewed the UN as a relevant organization needed in the world today, and that 63 percent favored resuming payment of U.S. dues to the UN (which the Trump administration had halted). Although the favorable rating of the UN dropped somewhat (to 56 percent) from the poll’s finding the preceding year, the unfavorable rating also dropped (to 26 percent), leaving the global body with an approval ratio among Americans of more than two to one.

      • Uninformed Juries Produce Incorrect Outcomes

        I was in my early thirties when I reflected upon this wisdom when performing part of his eulogy. It was horrible legal advice, but I know it saved my soul.

        The mistakes I made as a teenager have informed my whole life’s purpose. My doctoral dissertation, on forgiveness, would not have been written if I had not accounted for my own moral failings.

      • Dramatic Video Shows Militarized Canadian Police Raid Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders & Journalists

        We feature dramatic video footage just released that shows a violent raid Friday by Canadian federal police on one of the camps set up to keep Coastal GasLink out of sovereign Indigenous territory. Fifteen people in total were arrested, including two journalists. Wet’suwet’en land defender Sleydo’, also known as Molly Wickham, has now been released. The new footage was filmed by documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano, who was also just released. The raid ended a 56-day blockade of the drilling site. The 400-mile pipeline within Wet’suwet’en land violates both Indigenous and Canadian laws.

      • “Furious and Disgusted”: Teen Survivor Speaks Out After Wealthy White Serial Rapist Gets Probation

        The survivor of a serial rapist who received probation joins us to speak out after a New York judge sparked international outrage when he ruled it is inappropriate to jail the man who attacked her. Christopher Belter pleaded guilty to raping and sexually assaulting her along with three other teenage girls age 15 and 16, but he will avoid serving time in prison, and instead receive 8 years of probation. Belter is white, and from a prominent family who lives in a wealthy neighborhood near Niagara Falls. “This sentencing is telling rapists it’s OK to rape and telling victims that there’s no point in coming forward,” says Mara. Her lawyer Steven Cohen of the HoganWillig law firm notes a non-white defendant who pleaded guilty to these crimes would “absolutely and appropriately be in prison.”

      • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘Colonizer’ By Tanya Tagaq

        The following article was originally published at Ongoing History Of Protest Music.The latest single from Canadian indigenous throat singer Tanya Tagaq’s forthcoming album, “Tongues,” is about accountability. “Oh, you’re guilty,” she sings. “It’s not a question,” a press release from her states.“Tongues” will be released on March 11, 2022, and it€ “speaks not to horrors and crisis, as previous Tanya Tagaq albums wordlessly, powerfully encircled, but directly of these things.” She says the album is Tagaq at “her most explicit and specific.” The music is a balance of “industrial, electronic sounds with poetic passages from Tagaq’s bestselling mytho-biography,€ Split Tooth.”“Colonizer” comes from Tagaq’s improvised live show with Nanook of the North in Manchester,which overlooks New York City’s Columbus Circle. The tune serves as a response to Tagaq’s performing inboth visible and symbolic colonial spaces.Tagaq also released a second version, “Colonizer (Tundra Mix),” which will appear on the album.This mix is a collaboration with producers Saul Williams and Gonjasufi. It is starker andslow-building yet well suited to the song’s theme.“These two mixes of ‘Colonizer’ are so different, but we liked them both equally,” Tagaq wrote onTwitter,€ describing both versions as “a reflection on accountability and action.”Tagaq’s album is an invitation to listeners to “join her in a personal victory over colonization, over those who take without consent.”Listen to both versions of “Colonizer”:

      • Opinion | Democrats May Deliver Some Temporary Relief for Immigrants—But Fight Must Continue

        Following months of sustained protests by immigrant rights advocates, the House of Representatives has finally passed its version of the Build Back Better Act, and with it, a mixed bag of relief provisions for millions of undocumented immigrants.

      • Black Women Matter
      • South Dakota Supreme Court Kills Recreational Marijuana Law Approved by Voters

        The South Dakota Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court's ruling in striking down a voter-approved measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana.

        "Legalization opponents... are now petitioning the courts to overturn the will of the people."

      • Does Biden’s Lower Approval Rating Mean Democrats Should ‘Move to the Center’?

        Recent polls show that President Joe Biden’s approval rating has declined significantly since he took office.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

      • The Next 'Elder Scrolls' Game Will Be A PC, Xbox Exclusive

        Almost exactly a year ago, Microsoft acquired Zenimax Media, a parent company for several video game publishers, including Bethesda. When that occurred, some sizable percentage of the gaming community asked the immediate and obvious question: does this mean games from Bethesda and others would be Microsoft exclusives? Xbox chief Phil Spencer was the first to weigh in on the question by giving a total non-answer.

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