This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2016/07/23/dolphin-emulator/.

● 07.23.16

● Links 23/7/2016: Leo Laporte on GNU/Linux, Dolphin Emulator’s Vulkan Completion

Posted in News Roundup at 7:09 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

=> ↺ A Grand Experiment

• The latest debacle over the “forced” upgrade to Windows 10 and Apple’s increasingly locked-in ecosystem has got me thinking. Do I really need to use a proprietary operating system to get work done? And while I’m at it, do I need to use commercial cloud services to store my data?

• I’ve always used Linux since the first time I tried installing Slackware in the mid-90s. In 1998 we were the first national TV show to install Linux live (Red Hat). And I’ve often advocated Ubuntu to people with older computers. I usually have at least one computer running Linux around, in the past couple of years Dell XPS laptops have been great choices. And a couple of months ago I bought a 17″ Oryx laptop from System76, an Ubuntu system integrator, for use in studio.

• But as time went by, even Ubuntu began to seem too commercial to me, and I’ve migrated to community supported Debian testing and the Arch-based Antergos distros for everything. (i use Antergos on my Oryx on the shows.)

=> ↺ Microsoft lays off remaining handful of Microsoft Press staff

=> ↺ Microsoft is dying with layoffs

• I’ve heard from a couple of my contacts that the “entire Microsoft Press team” (minus one remaining person charged with working with outside suppliers) totaled six people. Microsoft officials wouldn’t confirm how many individuals were cut when I asked.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ Vulkan-Hpp Launches, Official C++ API For Vulkan

=> ↺ Indigo 4 Lets You Have Full Graphics Rendering Over OpenCL

=> ↺ Dave Airlie has been working on an AMD Vulkan driver

=> ↺ Looks like the open source Mesa driver has hit OpenGL 4.5 support with Intel

Applications

=> ↺ QEMU 2.7 To Support New ARM Boards, Intel Graphics VFIO & More

• s QEMU 2.7.0-rc0 was released yesterday as the first test version of this next feature release.

=> ↺ It Looks Like Systemd 231 Will Soon Be Released, Adds MemoryDenyWriteExecute

• It’s been a while since the last systemd release (230 in May) while it looks like the systemd 231 release is imminent.

• Over the past day, systemd developers have begun updating the NEWS entry for the v231 milestone. The systemd 231 release hasn’t happened quite yet, but here’s a look at some of the functionality that’s coming.

=> ↺ A final post about the lua-editor.

=> ↺ 7 Best Markdown Editors for Linux

• In this article, we shall review some of the best Markdown editors you can install and use on your Linux desktop. There are numerous Markdown editors you can find for Linux but here, we want to unveil possibly the best you may choose to work with.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Replacing a failed RAID drive

=> ↺ Send/receive text messages to buddies

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Dolphin Emulator’s Vulkan Back-End Is Now Feature Complete

=> ↺ Vulkan backend for the Dolphin emulator is now feature complete

• On the github pull request to bring in the Vulkan backend for the Dolphin emulator, it now reads as feature complete.

• For those that don’t know what Dolphin is, it’s an emulator for playing GameCube and Wii games on your PC.

=> ↺ The Wine Development Release 1.9.15 Is Now Available

• The Wine team released today another development release of their software. Version 1.9.15 has many small changes including 22 bugfixes.

Games

=> ↺ Hidden in Plain Sight, a local multiplayer game that sounds hilarious is now on Linux

• Hidden in Plain Sight is a rather amusing sounding local multiplayer game. You have to blend in with a crowd on NPCs and do various things.

• Note: It has no single-player or online play, local multiplayer only.

=> ↺ Knights of the Sky and Dungeon Souls are now available DRM free on GOG

=> ↺ The Living Dungeon developers looking to see if there’s interest for a Linux version

• The Living Dungeon developers have posted on Steam requesting to see how much interest there is for their game on Linux.

• You can find the post on Steam here, so if it looks like a game you would buy and play on Linux be sure to let them know.

=> ↺ openFrameworks C++ toolkit now has a Vulkan backend that supports Linux

• I’m going to be honest, I had never heard of openFrameworks until today. It claims it’s a C++ toolkit that glues together several commonly used libraries to help you work quickly. They are working on a Vulkan backend that now supports Linux.

• They just in the last day posted an update on their progress, and they claim they have their Vulkan backend working on Linux and Windows, apparently Linux is faster too.

=> ↺ Sinner’s Sorrow, a grim looking action adventure is coming to Linux

• I don’t have a freaking clue what’s going in the teaser trailer for Sinner’s Sorrow, but wow am I interested.

• It’s the second game from the developer who gave us “Zenzizenzic”, and it’s a rather different game indeed.

=> ↺ Trying The Vulkan Dota 2 & Talos Principle With Intel’s Mesa Driver (July 2016)

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Call for GNOME.Asia Summit 2017 Host Proposals

• GNOME.Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss the present technology and future developments.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

Finance

=> ↺ Friday Session Wrap-up for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Zacks EPS Estimates For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Is this Large Market Cap Stock target price reasonable for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)?

=> ↺ Red Hat Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Given Average Recommendation of “Buy” by Brokerages

=> ↺ Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Reports $-74.449 In Comprehensive Income

=> ↺ Friday Session Wrap-up for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

=> ↺ Stock Performance Rundown on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

Fedora

=> ↺ New “remi-php71″ repository

=> ↺ PHP on the road to the 7.1.0 release

=> ↺ First round of Fedora 24 Updated Lives now available. (torrents expected later this week)

• As noted by my colleague on his blog the first round of F24 Updated Lives are now available and carry the date 20160720, Also as mentioned last week on his blog F23 Respins are not going to be actively made, however we and the rest of the volunteer team will field off-off requests as time and resources permit. We are considering a new/second tracker for the Updated Spins but as of today there are only .ISO files available at https://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins [shortlink] F24 Live-Respins . The F24 respins carry the 4.6.4-200 Kernel and roughly ~500M of updates since the Gold ISOs were released just 5 weeks ago. (some ISOs have more updates, some less)

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ Snappy Packaging Happenings In The Fedora, Arch Space

• This week Canonical hosted a Snappy Sprint in Heidelberg, Germany where they worked to further their new package management solution originally spearheaded for Ubuntu Touch. This wasn’t an Ubuntu-only event, but Canonical did invite other distribution stakeholders.

• Coming out of this week’s event were at least positive moments to share for both Arch and Fedora developers. The Arch snaps package guy made progress on snap confinement on Arch. Currently when using Snaps on Arch, there isn’t any confinement support, which defeats some of the purpose. There isn’t any confinement support since it relies upon some functionality in the Ubuntu-patched AppArmor with that code not yet being mainlined. Arch’s Timothy Redaelli has got those AppArmor patches now running via some AUR packages. Thus it’s possible to get snap confinement working on Arch, but it’s not yet too pleasant of an experience.

=> ↺ PhantomJS 2.1.1 in Ubuntu different from upstream

• At the moment of this writing Vitaly’s qtwebkit fork is 28 commits ahead and 39 commits behind qt:dev. I’m surprised Ubuntu’s PhantomJS even works.

=> ↺ Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS released

• Ubuntu 16.04 is a LTS version of Ubuntu.Now Ubuntu team has announced the release of it’s first point release,Ubuntu 16.04.1.This first point release includes many updates containing bug fixes and fixing security issues as well and as always what most of users want from a distribution and most of distributions tries to perform,Stability.This release is also well focoused on stabilty as Ubuntu 16.04.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ COM and Pico-ITX dev kit run Linux on dual-core Cortex-A7

• iWave has launched a rugged, SODIMM-style COM and Pico-ITX form factor carrier board that run Linux on the Renesas dual-core, Cortex-A7 RZ/G1E SoC.

=> ↺ Tough Skylake box PC has four GbE and eight USB ports

• Adlink’s Linux-ready MXE-5500 fanless industrial computer offers 6th Gen Core CPUs, 4K support, dual SATA bays, four GbE ports, mini-PCIe, USIM, and more.

Phones

Android

=> ↺ How “Superbook” Turns Your Android Phone Into A Complete Laptop

=> ↺ Android Wear: Should Manufacturers be Given More Freedom?

• In the world of Android, we’ve become accustomed to the myriad of different brands and manufacturers putting their own twist on Android. While this has caused some friction in some circles, it has given certain devices a unique sense of identity and now that most of these skins have been toned down somewhat, they often add a little more value, too. The case is no more clear than it is with Android tablets, stock Android might be just fine and dandy for a lot of users on smartphones, but on tablets it can feel stark and limited. The added features from the likes of Samsung and Sony often make an Android tablet a hell of a lot more useful out of the box, but in the world of Android smartwatches, there’s none of this. The only thing that device manufacturers can realistically change with their Android Wear watches is the different watch faces they include and include some different apps. Is it about time that this changed?

=> ↺ $99 Superdock turns Android phones into laptops — but why?

• Stop me if you’ve heard this idea before: Imagine turning your smartphone into a laptop just by plugging it into a laptop “shell.”

• Yeah… it’s not a new idea and yet Superbook, a product that promises to turn your Android phone into a laptop, has already smashed its Kickstarter campaign goal of $50,000 with more than $398,000 pledged as of this writing and 28 days left to go.

=> ↺ BlackBerry Hamburg Android phone release date soon, FCC now

• This week the folks at BlackBerry have had their latest Android device revealed by the FCC. Re-revealed, we might say, as the device was first leaked several weeks ago with its partner, both BlackBerry smartphones running Android. This device is being shown by the FCC this week with model name STH100-2 (RJD211LW) with GSM quad-band, UMTS penta-band, and LTE deca-band connectivity technology inside. We will very likely see this device released inside the United States very soon.

=> ↺ This smart shell can turn your Android smartphone into a complete laptop

• A US-based startup has launched a smart laptop shell that turns your Android smartphone into a complete laptop — making it more convenient and affordable for people in developing countries like India and South Africa to carry their office in their pocket, literally.

• The shell, called Superbook by Andromium, makes an Android smartphone output look very much like a desktop environment. It is essentially a “dumb terminal”– a notebook without a processor but with a keyboard, battery, trackpad and display, TreeHugger reported on Saturday.

=> ↺ SamsungOne is the new font for all things Samsung

=> ↺ Nokia set to make a comeback with two Android devices by the end of year

• Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia is all set to make a smartphone comeback with two new Android 7.0 Nougat devices by the end of this year, a media report said on Saturday.

• The two unnamed devices will have premium metal designs complete with IP68 certification, which means they will be as water resistant as Samsung’s Galaxy S7, The Inquirer reported.

• The smartphones may come up with 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch QHD screens, along with fingerprint scanner and “innovations” in the camera, the report noted.

=> ↺ Cyanogen Inc. reportedly fires OS development arm, switches to apps

• Cyanogen Inc. seems to be in trouble. A report from Android Police cites “several sources” that say the three-year-old Android software house will be laying off 20 percent of its workforce. One source said the company would “pivot” to “apps” and away from OS development.

=> ↺ Cyanogen is chopping its staff after its alternative Android has failed to catch on with phone makers

=> ↺ When Will Android Users Get Prisma App?

=> ↺ This week’s top stories: New Android phones, Nougat details, best Android apps for July, & more

=> ↺ Android Nougat Update Schedule & Release Date: When’s It Coming To Your Android Phone?

=> ↺ Karbonn confirms Android One smartphone(s) launching in Q1 next year

• In an interview with TOI Tech, Karbonn Mobiles has confirmed it will be introducing new Android One-based smartphone(s) early next year. Karbonn’s Managing Director Pradeep Jain said the company is in talks with Google for Android One, and we might see some Android One smartphone launch(es) in Q1 of next year.

=> ↺ Android, Chromebook Make a Sweet Couple

• Running Android apps on a Chromebook gives the Chrome OS added functionality. It has the potential to morph the Chromebook into a portable computing device that offers the best of two Linux worlds.

• Still, Google engineers have some tinkering to do before Android apps and the Chrome OS are fully implemented and functional. This transition will not be complete until the Google Play Store works out of the box on new Chromebooks without users having to “upgrade” through Developer’s Mode.

Free Software/Open Source

Events

=> ↺ Workshop on Open source and standardization: legal interactions

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

=> ↺ GNU Parallel 20160722 (‘Brexit’) released

• GNU Parallel 20160722 (‘Brexit’) has been released.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

=> ↺ Splice Machine community edition, European Commission open source audits, and more news

Open Data

=> ↺ Poland finalising its national open data program

• The Polish Ministry of Digitisation is currently finalising its open data program. From 16 May to 16 June, it ran a public consultation, resulting in fourteen parties providing feedback on the proposed program and expressing their willingness to cooperate on its implementation.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ The world’s first graphene car is unveiled in Manchester

• The BAC Mono has been road-tested and is being displayed at the National Graphene Institute in Manchester as part of the Science in the City festival from July 22-29.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Monsanto Tries to Build a Society of GMO and Pesticide Devotees, One Child at a Time

• On October 14, 2015, the International Food Information Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation released a free, 38-page, downloadable lesson plan called “Bringing Biotechnology to Life: An Educational Resource for Grades 7-10.”

• The International Food Information Council is a front group funded by some of biggest names in biotech and junk food: Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Nestle and more. The American Farm Bureau Federation, according to SourceWatch, is a “right-wing lobbying front for big agribusiness and agribusiness-related industries that works to defeat labor and environmental initiatives, including climate change legislation.” The organization is adamantly against GMO labels, and even spoke out against Roberts’ and Stabenow’s deal for being too lenient.

• The lesson plan created by the International Food Information Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation is deceptively innocuous until Lesson 7, which includes the theme, “Where would we be without ‘GMOs’?” In the “discussion prompt” section, students are asked to choose between planting magical, problem-solving GMOs or allow people to get sick, go hungry or exploit the environment by not planting GMOs.

=> ↺ Indigenous Villages in Honduras Overcome Hunger at Schools

• A 2012 report by the World Food Programmme (WFP) indicated that in Central America, Honduras had the second worst child malnutrition levels, after Guatemala. According to the WFP, one in four children suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the worst problems seen in the south and west of the country.

=> ↺ Commentary: Identifying the “bad actors”— new challenges for the evaluation of endocrine disrupting chemicals

• The European Commission has proposed new criteria to identify and classify endocrine disrupting chemicals.

=> ↺ Rio 2016: Sympathy for clean Russian athletes – Mo Farah

• Double Olympic Champion Mo Farah says he feels sympathy for the clean Russian athletes unable to compete at the Rio Olympics but says countries have to follow the rules.

• Russian track and field athletes will remain banned from the Olympics following claims the country ran a state-sponsored doping programme.

Security

=> ↺ Ransomware Gang Claims Fortune 500 Company Hired Them to Hack the Competition

• Ransomware—computer viruses that lock a victim’s files and demand a payment to get them back—has become so common that experts believe it’s now an “epidemic.”

• Security experts have always assumed that ransomware hackers are in it for the ransom. But a shocking claim made by one ransomware agent suggests there may be another motive: corporate sabotage.

• In an exchange with a security researcher pretending to be a victim, one ransomware agent claimed they were working for a Fortune 500 company.

• “We are hired by [a] corporation to cyber disrupt day-to-day business of their competition,” the customer support agent of a ransomware known as Jigsaw said, according to a new report by security firm F-Secure.

=> ↺ How and why to verify your Twitter account

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Munich gunman acted alone, say police

• A gun attack at a Munich shopping centre which left nine people dead was carried out by one gunman who then killed himself, police have said.

• A huge manhunt was launched following reports that up to three gunmen had been involved in the attack at the Olympia centre.

• The body of the suspect was found about 1km (0.6 miles) from the shopping centre in the Moosach district.

• The motive for the attack, in which 10 people were wounded, is unclear.

=> ↺ Shooting rampage in Munich: At least 10 dead in shopping center attack

• Police treat the incident as a terrorist attack.

=> ↺ Nice – 14th July – Lie Propaganda in Overdrive – Murder Is the New Normal

• TeleSur reported that MLB’s brother in Tunisia was surprised having received a sudden transfer of € 100,000 from his brother, as compared to the former small transfers corresponding to MLB’s previously reported poverty and debt. Is this a hint to make us believe that he got paid a lot of money to carry out this mass-murder on behalf of Daesh?

• France as a country and through NATO is supporting ISIS-Daesh with training, weapons and money, along with Washington and Washington’s other European and Mid-Eastern vassals. Why would Daesh attack France?

=> ↺ Nice Attacks, Destroying Evidence at Crime Scene: French Government Orders Destruction of CCTV Video Footage

• The explanation given by the French Ministry of Justice is that they don’t want ‘uncontrolled’ and ‘non-authorised (non maîtrisée) diffusion of the images of the terrorist attacks. The Judicial Police have noted that 140 videos of the attacks in their possession show ‘important pieces of the inquiry’ (éléments d’enquête intéressants). The French government claims it wants to prevent ISIS from gaining access to videos of the attacks for the purposes of propaganda. They also claim that the destruction of evidence is intended to protect the families of the victims. The comments section of the Le Figaro article is replete with outrage and disgust by the fact that the French government, instead of preserving evidence for the purposes of a thorough, independent investigation, is in fact behaving rather more like the chief suspect in the attack – ordering the destruction of vital evidence.

=> ↺ Germany Preparing for War Against Russia

• According to a report issued on June 6th in German Economic News (Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or DWN), the German government is preparing to go to war against Russia, and has in draft-form a Bundeswehr report declaring Russia to be an enemy nation. DWN says: “The Russian secret services have apparently thoroughly studied the paper. In advance of the paper’s publication, a harsh note of protest has been sent to Berlin: The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted the Twitter message: ‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’”

=> ↺ It’s all connected

• Anger and fear drove Brexit just as Donald Trump fans the flames of a disenfranchised America, which as Baton Rouge proves, is as racially and ethnically divided as Europe, which is dealing with mass immigration, an attempted coup in Turkey and seemingly relentless terrorism borne out civil war-torn Syria. Mark MacKinnon reports on the relationship between seemingly unconnected events across the globe

=> ↺ Nice authorities turn down police request to delete footage of fatal truck attack

• The request was sent by Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate (SDAT), a special police division battling extremism, to the mayor of Nice’s office on Wednesday, according to the paper.

• Le Figaro managed to obtain the copy of the document in which SDAT, citing articles of the criminal and penal codes, demands the city authorities delete “completely” nearly 24 hours of the attack captured on cameras on the Promenade des Anglais.

• “Delete the recordings between July 14, 2016 22:30 and July 15, 2016 18:00,” the documents demands.

• The anti-terrorist police named six cameras which recordings should be “particularly” deleted. Plus the city authorities should delete any footage from any camera “that captured the crime scene”, the paper added.

=> ↺ Will NYT Retract Latest Anti-Russian ‘Fraud’?

• In covering the new Cold War, The New York Times has lost its journalistic bearings, serving as a crude propaganda outlet publishing outlandish anti-Russian claims that may cross the line into fraud, reports Robert Parry.

=> ↺ Trump Blasts Clinton in a Foreign-Policy Fight Where Both Have Strayed From Their Parties

• Thursday night, Americans were treated to the longest Republican National Convention acceptance speech in decades when Donald Trump spoke for an hour and 15 minutes. The tone of his speech was dark and warlike as he focused on threats both domestically and abroad.

• Declaring that he would “defeat the barbarians of ISIS,” he used his time on stage to attack Hillary Clinton’s legacy as secretary of state. “America is far less safe—and the world is far less stable—than when Obama made the decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of America’s foreign policy,” Trump said. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”

=> ↺ We May Be at a Greater Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe Than During the Cold War

• “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War,” warns William Perry [former U.S. defense secretary], “and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”

=> ↺ The Big Boom: Nukes And NATO

• Perry has been an inside player in the business of nuclear weapons for over 60 years and his book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” is a sober read. It is also a powerful counterpoint to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) current European strategy that envisions nuclear weapons as a deterrent to war: “Their [nuclear weapons] role is to prevent major war, not to wage wars,” argues the Alliance’s magazine, NATO Review.

• But, as Perry points out, it is only by chance that the world has avoided a nuclear war—sometimes by nothing more than dumb luck—and, rather than enhancing our security, nukes “now endanger it.”

• The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is generally represented as a dangerous standoff resolved by sober diplomacy. In fact, it was a single man—Russian submarine commander Vasili Arkhipov—who countermanded orders to launch a nuclear torpedo at an American destroyer that could have set off a full-scale nuclear exchange between the USSR and the U.S.

• There were numerous other incidents that brought the world to the brink. On a quiet morning in November 1979, a NORAD computer reported a full-scale Russian sneak attack with land and sea-based missiles, which led to scrambling U.S. bombers and alerting U.S. missile silos to prepare to launch. There was no attack, just an errant test tape.

=> ↺ Indonesia’s Mass Killings of 1965 Were Crimes Against Humanity, International Judges Say

• An international panel of judges has declared that Indonesia committed crimes against humanity during the 1965–66 mass killings and that the U.S., the U.K. and Australia were complicit in the crimes.

• Eight months after the International People’s Tribunal on 1965 Crimes Against Humanity in Indonesia (IPT 1965) held November in the Hague, presiding head judge Zak Yacoob — a former South African Constitutional Court Justice — read its findings on Wednesday.

• “The state of Indonesia is responsible for and guilty of crimes against humanity … particularly by the military of that state through its chain of command, of the inhumane acts detailed below,” Yacoob said via video link from South Africa that was broadcast to Indonesia, Australia, the Netherlands, Cambodia and Germany. He listed the brutal murder of an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 people; inhumane imprisonment of around 600,000 people; enslavement in labor camps; torture; forced disappearance; sexual violence; and depriving hundreds of thousands of citizenship.

=> ↺ Munich Shooting: Lone Gunman Reportedly Obsessed with Mass Killings

• Perpetrator may have lured some of victims to their deaths by enticing them with free meal

=> ↺ US says airstrikes on Syrian city Manbij to continue despite civilian deaths

• The US will not pause airstrikes in Syria despite appeals from opposition activists after what appears to be the worst US-caused civilian casualty disaster of the war against the Islamic State.

• Anas Alabdah, president of the Syrian National Coalition, has called on the US to suspend its airstrikes until it performs a thorough investigation into the attack near the contested northern city of Manbij on Tuesday that Syrian activists say killed at least 73 civilians – and possibly more than 125.

• Alabdah, in a statement, insisted on “accountability” for those responsible for the devastating airstrike, “revised rules of procedure” for future strikes, and warned that continuing the aerial bombardment would deliver the hard-fought region back into the hands of Isis.

• More strikes at the moment will drive Syrians “further into a spiral of despair and, more importantly, will prove to be a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations,” Alabdah said.

=> ↺ UNICEF on Syria: “Absolutely nothing justifies attacks on children”

• “This week in Syria, more than 20 children were reportedly killed in air strikes in Manbij and a 12-year-old boy was brutally murdered on-camera in Aleppo.

• “Such horrific incidents confront parties to this conflict with their shared responsibility to respect international humanitarian laws that protect children in war.

• “According to UN partners on the ground, families in the village of al-Tukhar near Manbij, 80 kilometres to the east of Aleppo, were preparing to flee the village when the air strikes hit.

• “UNICEF estimates that 35,000 children are trapped in and around Manbij with nowhere safe to go. In the past six weeks, and as violence has intensified, over 2,300 people were reportedly killed in the area, among them dozens of children.

=> ↺ US to Keep Bombing Syria Despite Civilian Deaths and Humanitarian Pleas

=> ↺ 29 Pages Revealed: Corruption, Crime and Cover-up Of 9/11

• First and foremost, here is what you need to know when you listen to any member of our government state that the newly released 29 pages are no smoking gun — THEY ARE LYING.

• Our government’s relationship to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is no different than an addict’s relationship to heroin. Much like a heroin addict who will lie, cheat, and steal to feed their vice, certain members of our government will lie, cheat, and steal to continue their dysfunctional and deadly relationship with the KSA — a relationship that is rotting this nation and its leaders from the inside out.

=> ↺ Backlash Against Turkey’s Coup Plotters Takes a Toll: Chart

• The backlash against Turkey’s alleged coup plotters has been swift and severe. More than 53,000 people have been either suspended, fired or stripped of their professional accreditation in the past week, the vast majority of them even before the country declared a state of emergency. That doesn’t include the 246 people killed in fighting related to the coup, the almost 15,000 detained or arrested in the counter-coup operations or the 3.4 million public employees who face travel restrictions.

=> ↺ Government quietly admits it was wrong to say Saudi Arabia is not targeting civilians or committing war crimes

• Ministers have quietly issued reams of corrections to previous ministerial statements in which they claimed that Saudi Arabia is not targeting civilians or committing war crimes

• The autocratic petro-state is currently engaged in a bombing campaign in Yemen where it has blown up hospitals, schools, and weddings as part of its intervention against Houthi rebels.

• Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, has said that “carnage” caused by certain Saudi coalition airstrikes against civilian targets appear to be war crimes.

=> ↺ Isis claims responsibility for Kabul fatal bomb attack on Hazara protesters

• At least 80 people have been killed and hundreds injured after two suicide bombers struck a peaceful protest in Kabul by a Shia minority group.

• Responsibility for the attack, which appears to have targeted a demonstration by the Hazara minority, was claimed by Islamic State via the group’s news agency, Amaq. If true, it would mark the first attack by Isis in Kabul, and its largest ever in Afghanistan.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Huge toxic algae bloom sickens more than 100 in Utah amid heatwave

• A huge toxic algae bloom in Utah has closed one of the largest freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi river, sickening more than 100 people and leaving farmers scrambling for clean water during some of the hottest days of the year.

• The bacteria commonly known as blue-green algae has spread rapidly to cover almost all of 150-square-mile Utah Lake, turning the water bright, anti-freeze green with a pea soup texture and leaving scummy foam along the shore.

=> ↺ Oil Lobby Paid Washington Post and Atlantic to Host Climate-Change Deniers at RNC

• At the award-winning seafood restaurant in downtown Cleveland that The Atlantic rented out for the entire four-day Republican National Convention, GOP Rep. Bill Johnson turned to me and explained that solar panels are not a viable energy source because “the sun goes down.”

• Johnson had just stepped off the stage where he was one the two featured guests speaking at The Atlantic’s “cocktail caucus,” where restaurant staff served complimentary wine, cocktails, and “seafood towers” of shrimp, crab cakes, oysters, and mussels to delegates, guests, reporters and, of course, the people paying the bills.

=> ↺ U.S., Mexico, Announce Climate Collaboration The Day After Trump Becomes GOP Nominee

• A man who openly vilifies Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday in Cleveland. He has said that “Mexico is not our friend” and promised to make Mexico pay for a border wall. His supporters chanted “build that wall” during his acceptance speech.

• He also has claimed that climate change — which threatens the communities and integrated economies and ecosystems of North America — is a hoax.

• The next day, President Obama and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took a moment to show what is possible when allies work shoulder-to-shoulder to address the common problem of climate change.

=> ↺ Scorching Middle East Beats All-Time Heat Records for Eastern Hemisphere

• Thermometers in Kuwait and Iraq reached record-shattering temperatures this week, with Weather Underground reporting that the measurements could be the hottest ever seen in the Eastern Hemisphere.

• According to Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters, the temperature in Mitribah, Kuwait climbed to an “astonishing” 54°C (129.2°F) on Thursday. And on Friday, Basrah, Iraq International Airport reported a high temperature of 53.9°C (129°F).

=> ↺ Increased Asthma Attacks Tied to Exposure to Natural Gas Production

• New study in the heart of Pennsylvania’s fracking region shows increase in severity of asthma among residents exposed to most active wells.

=> ↺ Mary Bottari: Koch brothers’ fingerprints can be found all over GOP convention

• Though the Kochs have indicated they are staying out of the presidential election and Charles Koch has even had kind words for the Clintons, their fingerprints are all over the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week in the form of candidates and the extreme RNC platform.

=> ↺ A Bridge Too Far: How Appalachian Basin Gas Pipeline Expansion Will Undermine U.S. Climate Goals

• Oil Change International; Appalachian Voices; Bold Alliance; Chesapeake Climate Action Network; Earthworks; Environmental Action; Sierra Club (national); 350.org; Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League; Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (Virginia & West Virginia); Sierra Club West Virginia Chapter; Friends of Water (West Virginia)

=> ↺ As Major Parties Embrace Fracking, Report Shows Natural Gas ‘Bridge to Climate Disaster’

=> ↺ Now the proof: permafrost ‘bubbles’ are leaking methane 200 times above the norm

• The swelling pockets in the permafrost – revealed this week by The Siberian Times – are leaking ‘alarming’ levels of ecologically dangerous gases, according to scientists who have observed this ‘unique’ phenomenon. Some 15 pockets have been found on the Arctic island, around one metre in diameter.

• Measurements taken by researchers on expeditions to the island found that after removing grass and soil from the ‘bubbling’ ground, the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration released was 20 times above the norm, while the methane(CH4) level was 200 times higher.

• One account said: ‘As we took off a layer of grass and soil, a fountain of gas erupted.’

=> ↺ Scorching Temperatures Just Set the Middle East’s Heat Records on Fire

• Unless you’ve been catatonic for the past seven months, you know that temperatures in 2016 have continuously skyrocketed. And now, I’m terrified to report that our planet is well on its way to becoming an actual inferno, as record-breaking heat records seem to indicate.

• Yesterday, temperatures in Mitribah, Kuwait smashed through the Middle East’s already scorching heat records. As Weather Underground meteorologists note, Mitribah got as hot as 129.2°F (54°C) on Thursday, according to the weather information service OGIMET. If confirmed, this would be the hottest-ever temperature on Earth documented outside of Death Valley, California, which reached an astonishing 129.2°F (54°C) on July 10, 1913.

• Earlier this week, Motherboard editor Kate Lunau wrote about the unprecedented climate anomalies that have been plaguing 2016. According to NASA, “in 2016, every month from January through June has set a record for the warmest month, globally, in modern recordkeeping—stretching back to 1880.” And as the climate in Kuwait underscores, we’ve reached an atmospheric tipping point. If you haven’t already, now would be a reasonable time to panic.

Finance

=> ↺ Brexit and the phenomenon of intra-European bigotry

• Nigel Farage, the face of Brexit victory, has been responsible for fuelling a strong anti-Eastern European sentiment for many years in the UK.

=> ↺ Erasmus scheme may exclude British students after Brexit

• Under the Erasmus scheme, British students can study at European universities for up to a year, and European students in the UK. But after Brexit, says the scheme’s UK director, Ruth Sinclair-Jones, “we face a sad moment of uncertainty, after 30 years of this enrichment of so many lives”.

• The potential end of British participation in the scheme would be “a devastating tragedy”, according to those who founded and administer it.

• Exclusion from Erasmus would also have what one vice-chancellor called “a stunning impact” on university finances, alongside the crisis facing funds for science, research and other grants. There are 120,000 students from EU countries at UK universities, of which 27,401 are through Erasmus, fees paid by the EU.

=> ↺ Kaine praised TPP as recently as Thursday

• Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) reportedly told Hillary Clinton he would oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership before she selected him as her running mate – but as recently as Thursday, the Virginia senator was praising the massive trade deal.

=> ↺ From Occupy Protests to the Platforms

• A lawyer-activist reflects on the significance of the Occupy Wall Street call for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall appearing in both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms.

=> ↺ Kaine comes out against Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal

• Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, has gone on record saying he cannot support the Trans-Pacific Partnership in its current form— a stance calculated to make him more appealing to supporters of Bernie Sanders who revile the deal.

=> ↺ As Trump backers praise Brexit, UK and US are nations united in rage

• Donald Trump’s noisy, shambolic and furious convention in Cleveland broke every rule in the US campaigners’ handbook – including the relatively esoteric one that says British politics never, ever gets a mention. Deemed both obscure and irrelevant, the affairs of the UK have been reliably invisible in the US political argument since 1945.

=> ↺ Shell takes Malampaya tax dispute vs PH to int’l arbitration body

• The local unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC wants an international arbitration body to settle its tax dispute with the Philippine government involving the former’s Malampaya deep water gas-to-power project.

• Data from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) showed that on July 20, Shell Philippines Exploration BV filed a request for an arbitration case against the Philippine government over “taxation [on] hydrocarbon concession].”

• The request is still pending before ICSID.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Wikileaks Proves Primary Was Rigged: DNC Undermined Democracy

=> ↺ Leaked Democratic Party Emails Show Members Tried To Undercut Sanders

=> ↺ DNC treatment of Sanders at issue in emails leaked to Wikileaks

• Nearly 20,000 emails sent and received by Democratic National Committee staff members were released Friday by Wikileaks, and some messages are raising questions about the committee’s impartiality during the Democratic primary.

• One email appears to show DNC staffers asking how they can reference Sanders’ faith to weaken him in the eyes of Southern voters. Another seems to depict an attorney advising the committee on how to defend Clinton against an accusation by the Sanders campaign of not living up to a joint fundraising agreement.

• The revelation threatened to shatter the uneasy peace between the Clinton and Sanders camps and supporters days before the Democratic convention kicks off next week.

=> ↺ Sanders Camp Says Someone Must Be ‘Accountable’ for What DNC Emails Show

• Bernie Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said his team was “disappointed” by the emails from the Democratic National Committee leaked through WikiLeaks, which seemed to reveal staff in the party working to support Hillary Clinton.

• “Someone does have to be held accountable,” Weaver said during an interview with ABC News. “We spent 48 hours of public attention worrying about who in the [Donald] Trump campaign was going to be held responsible for the fact that some lines of Mrs. Obama’s speech were taken by Mrs. Trump. Someone in the DNC needs to be held at least as accountable as the Trump campaign.”

• Weaver said the emails showed misconduct at the highest level of the staff within the party and that he believed there would be more emails leaked, which would “reinforce” that the party had “its fingers on the scale.”

=> ↺ Jeremy Corbyn has more than double the support of Owen Smith, poll shows

• Jeremy Corbyn is the overwhelming favourite to win the Labour leadership contest, according to the latest Opinium/Observer poll, which shows he has more than twice the level of support among party supporters as his challenger, Owen Smith.

=> ↺ Emails Released by WikiLeaks Appear to Show DNC Trying to Aid Hillary Clinton

• Just days before the Democratic National Convention, Wikileaks has released emails from top DNC officials that appear to show the inner workings of the Democratic Party and what seems to be them attempting to aid the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primaries.

• Several of the emails released indicate that the officials, including Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, grew increasingly agitated with Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, and his campaign as the primary season advanced, in one instance even floating bringing up Sanders’ religion to try and minimize his support.

• “It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Brad Marshall, CFO of DNC, wrote in an email on May 5, 2016. “Does he believe in God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My southern baptist peeps woudl draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

• Amy Dacey, CEO of the DNC, subsequently responded “AMEN,” according to the emails.

• During the primary battle, Sanders and his supporters accused both the party and Wasserman Schultz of putting their thumb on the scale for Clinton and these emails may indicate support for those allegations.

=> ↺ Hillary and Bill Clinton: Specialists in Black Misery, Foreign and Domestic

• In Haiti, the Clintons rigged elections and preached that poverty is a competitive advantage.

=> ↺ Yes, The Democratic National Committee Flat Out Lied In Claiming No Donor Financial Info Leaked

• You may recall, from last month, that a hacker (who many have accused of working for the Russian government) got into the Democratic National Committee’s computers and copied a ton of stuff. All of the emails that were obtained (a little over 19,000, from seven top DNC officials) are now searchable on Wikileaks, so there are tons of stories popping up covering what’s been found. The Intercept, for example, appears to be having a field day exposing sketchy behavior by the DNC.

=> ↺ DNC email leaks, explained

• Perhaps as important as the email’s contents is who may have leaked them. The leak is believed to be the fruit of a network intrusion that was discovered last month by the DNC. According to security firms who spoke to the Washington Post, that was the work of hackers associated with the Russian government, raising the possibility that a foreign government is trying to manipulate the US election.

=> ↺ Hillary and Tim Kaine: a Match Made on Wall Street

• Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders warned that Hillary Clinton’s eventual vice presidential pick must not be someone from the milieu of Wall Street and Corporate America. And while Sanders is still fighting to win the Democratic Party nomination in what many have argued is a rigged system with a foregone conclusion, it appears that Sanders is also intent on influencing the course of the Clinton campaign and the party itself.

• In a thinly veiled demand that Clinton embrace the core principles of the Sanders campaign in order to secure the support of Sanders’s political base, the insurgent Democratic candidate hoped aloud “that the vice-presidential candidate will not be from Wall Street, will be somebody who has a history of standing up and fighting for working families, taking on the drug companies…taking on Wall Street, taking on corporate America, and fighting for a government that works for all of us, not just the 1%.”

• And while that description may sound positive for its sheer idealism, it does not seem to account for the fact that banks and corporations effectively own both major parties, and that nearly every top Democrat is in various ways connected to the very same entities. In any event, it is useful still to examine a few of the potential Clinton running mates in order to assess just what sort of forces are going to be put in motion to help deliver a Clinton presidency.

=> ↺ Clinton Inflames Progressive Base with Choice of Tim f as Vice President

• Reporting in recent days increasingly signaled that Kaine was Clinton’s top choice, but the official announcement confirmed the worst fears of progressives who warned such a pick would be taken as “a pronounced middle finger” to the millions who voted for Sanders during the primary season. At stake, many critics of the choice indicate, are pressing issues—including reproductive rights, climate change, financial regulation, and corporate-friendly trade agreements—where Kaine holds positions far to the right of where they think the party, and the country, should be headed.

=> ↺ If Trump’s Speech Sounded Familiar, That’s Because Nixon Gave It First

• Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president on a Thursday night in the long hot summer of 2016 with a speech that signaled his determination to exploit fears of violence as part of crusade to seize the White House from the Democrats.

=> ↺ Trump/Nixon: the parallels are startling

• As Donald Trump’s own advisers said this week that Trump would use Richard Nixon’s famous “law and order” rhetoric during his 1968 campaign as his inspiration for his Republican nomination speech on Thursday, many have begun comparing Trump to the disgraced former president. The parallels with a man who presided over another era in which there were widespread allegations of police brutality and killings of unarmed African Americans seem compelling.

=> ↺ CNN’s Revolving Door of Political Hackery

• Widespread outrage erupted in late June over CNN’s hiring of Corey Lewandowski, just four days after he was fired as Donald Trump’s chief of staff. Lewandowski is a controversial figure, and not merely because he was heading up a campaign fueled by bigotry and fear. In March he was charged with simple battery for making physical contact with a reporter (though these charges were later dropped). Moreover, his utility as a CNN contributor is clearly limited — if not worthless — since he is reported to have signed a non-disclosure agreement that bars him from saying anything disparaging about Trump or discussing anything he did during the campaign.

• CNN staffers were said to be enraged — but within a week, CNN’s newest contributor was on television using his soapbox to explain away another one of Trump’s very public and obvious appeals to bigotry. That CNN felt it needed to hire an election commentator who can’t say anything critical about Trump may seem strange, but it corresponds with CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker’s stated desire to push CNN to the right. Even Fox News has taken the moral “high ground” in this situation: It has blasted CNN and the decision at least twice.

=> ↺ Mike Pence May Be a Friend to Trump, But He’s No Friend to Workers

• Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence should have workers worried.

=> ↺ Trump and the Enablers of American Authoritarianism (2/2)

• Scholar Henry Giroux in conversation with Paul Jay says ‘lesser evilism’ is the wrong way to frame the elections – it’s about what’s better for the strategic interests of an independent people’s struggle

=> ↺ What’s on Display in Cleveland? The Republican Id

• The triumph of Trump has demonstrated the cost of the devil’s bargain that party elites — and the media — have accepted over the years.

• What is on display at the RNC in Cleveland is the Republican id. We always suspected it would look something like this. But even though it reared its ugly head on occasion on Fox News or in Congress — on the lips of some right-wing preacher or billionaire hedge-fund manager. They would compare gays to Satan, progressive taxation to Naziism and people of color to criminals at best, animals at worst — but the more polite, polished folks who spoke for the party would always regretfully shake their well-coiffed heads and explain that wasn’t what the party was really about.

=> ↺ How Can This Be Happening in America? International Journalists Reflect on Rise of Donald Trump

• On Wednesday, Democracy Now!’s Deena Guzder and Hany Massoud spoke to members of the international press covering the Republican National Convention to find out how other countries view Donald Trump.

=> ↺ Leaked Docs Reveal DNC Determined to Undermine Sanders Campaign

• WikiLeaks on Friday published roughly 20,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

• The whistleblowing organization describes the trove, which includes over 8,000 attachments, as “part one of our new Hillary Leaks series,” and is just the latest in a series of document dumps that show the DNC—which, as the The Intercept notes, “isn’t supposed to favor one Democratic candidate over another until they receive a nomination”—seeking to bolster the candidacy of the former secretary of state and working against that of rival Bernie Sanders.

• It is unclear at this point whether the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, who claimed responsibility for two previous leaks from the DNC servers, provided the latest documents to WikiLeaks.

• The new leaks span from January 2015 to May 2016, and come from what WikiLeaks describes as “the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3095 emails), Finanace Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1472 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails).”

=> ↺ “Build Bridges, Not Walls”: Medea Benjamin on How She Disrupted Donald Trump’s Speech

• CodePink’s Medea Benjamin disrupted Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention by holding up a banner reading “Build bridges, not walls!” Her protest diverted cameras away from Trump’s speech. Benjamin was removed after the disruption and says she was later interviewed by the Secret Service. Democracy Now! spoke to her on the street afterwards.

=> ↺ Stewart To the Ugly Madman In the Castle: This Country Isn’t Yours

• Where to begin with the GOP’s upstart vulgarian and his portrait of an apocalyptic hellscape of America, all fear and lies and venom? Maybe start with revisiting Norman Mailer and his prescient 1968 view of that “psychic island” of “an insane Republican minority with vast powers of negation and control.” Then to Jon Stewart, briefly back in his glorious righteous rage to remind Trumpsters, “This country isn’t yours. It never was.”

=> ↺ We Finally Have A Candidate That Speaks To ‘White Males,’ GOP Congressman Says

• The Trump campaign made efforts to broaden the GOP presidential nominee’s appeal last night. As unmoored from reality as it was, Ivanka made a case her father would be a champion for women. During his own speech, Trump made an appeal to the LGBT community, despite providing little indication to date he’d actually do anything on their behalf.

• Trump’s base, however, continues to be white men. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released early last month showed Trump with a huge 60 percent to 26 percent advantage among that demographic. It might not be enough for Trump to secure a general election victory — thanks to his unpopularity with others groups, Trump trailed Clinton overall in that same ABC poll — but it was enough to secure the Republican nomination.

• During a CNN interview this morning, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) acknowledged the Trump phenomenon for what it is — identity politics for white men.

=> ↺ Leaked DNC emails reveal secret plans to take on Sanders

• Top officials at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) privately planned how to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, according to a trove of emails released by WikiLeaks on Friday.

• The Sanders campaign had long claimed the DNC and Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had tipped the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton during the party’s presidential primary.

• The email release will reignite that controversy just days before Democrats gather in Philadelphia for their convention to officially nominate Clinton for president.

• Guccifer 2.0 told The Hill he leaked the documents to Wikileaks.

• In one May 21 email, DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach writes to communications director Luis Miranda about planting a narrative to the media that Sanders’s “campaign was a mess.”

=> ↺ WikiLeaks trove plunges Democrats into crisis on eve of Convention

• On the eve of the convention at which Hillary Clinton is to be confirmed as presidential candidate, the Democratic Party has been plunged into crisis – the US media is brimful of ugly and embarrassing stories from within the party’s head office, all based on 20,000 emails dropped on Friday evening by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

=> ↺ Understanding Trump

• Consider Trump’s statement that John McCain is not a war hero. The reasoning: McCain got shot down. Heroes are winners. They defeat big bad guys. They don’t get shot down. People who get shot down, beaten up, and stuck in a cage are losers, not winners.

=> ↺ WikiLeaks: Democratic Party officials appear to discuss using Sanders’s faith against him

• Internal Democratic National Committee emails appear to show officials discussing using Sen. Bernie Sanders’s faith against him with voters, with one saying “my Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” The emails were published by WikiLeaks.

• Someone who answered the media line at the DNC on Friday afternoon said they weren’t available to comment immediately.

=> ↺ DNC Official Mulls “Fuck You Emoji” in Response to Fox News

• A new leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee includes one in which communications personnel share their considerable fury over a reporter’s question about Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.

• In May, Fred Lucas, a freelance reporter who said he was working for FoxNews.com, emailed the DNC press office with a question. Donald Trump had called Hillary Clinton an enabler of Bill Clinton’s alleged misconduct with women, and Lucas wanted to know what the Committee thought of the attack strategy.

=> ↺ The Best Reporting on Tim Kaine Through the Years

• But Kaine also has been criticized as insufficiently progressive on banking and global trade issues by some in the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, which Clinton needs to energize this fall.

=> ↺ Trump’s Midnight in America

• “Thanks for joining our live coverage of the RNC. This concludes democracy.”

=> ↺ Vice Presidents: What Are They Good For?

• Anyone who paid close attention in 2008 knew that Wall Street and corporate America vetted Barack Obama thoroughly, and that he passed their tests with flying colors.

• For everyone else, he was, for all practical purposes, a Rorschach inkblot upon whom the hopeful, the desperate, and the gullible projected their dreams.

=> ↺ On Watching Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech

• I watched the Republican convention last night.

• Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka was light-hearted, loves her father, and gave a good introduction to a man whom few know well.

• Watching Trump give his speech was an out of body experience.

• I suddenly felt fearful. I felt fearful for myself, my community, my family, my country. Only he has the strength to save and protect us. Only he knows how to fix everything that is broken. Only he can bring back the happiness and prosperity that was once there for everyone. Remember the Good Old Days? Only he has the tenacity and courage to restore the American dream. Everyone else is too weak, too politically correct, too timid. He can do it. He said so.

=> ↺ The Lopsided Political Dialogue With the Working Class

• Democrats need to get comfortable with using the term “working class,” or risk losing those voters to Trump, who at least gives voice to their anxiety.

=> ↺ Donald Trump’s Dark and Scary Night

• The GOP presidential nominee’s acceptance speech was a litany of fear and resentment, a dog whistle to disaffected white Americans.

=> ↺ Melania’s Plagiarism Caps Really Weird Day One at RNC

• It was the perfect capper to a day that failed to disappoint, kicked off with talk of pee-pee and false flag operations at the pro-Trump America First Unity rally convened by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and political dirty trickster Roger Stone, who told rally-goers that he was “Italian from the waist down.” He also apparently mistook himself for Hillary Clinton when he described her as “a short-tempered, foul-mouthed, greedy, bipolar, mentally unbalanced criminal.” The rally from Planet Out There was followed by a bit of verbal mayhem on the convention floor when anti-Trump delegates were denied a roll call vote for an amendment they had put forward that would have unbound delegates from their pledges to vote for Trump as the Republican presidential nominee when that formality takes place on Thursday night. That’s one way to unify the party.

=> ↺ RNC Descends into Chaos as “Never Trump” Movement Attempts Revolt on Convention Floor

• Thousands of Republican Party delegates are here in Cleveland, Ohio, for the 2016 Republican National Convention, where the party is expected to formally nominate Donald Trump as the party’s presidential nominee. But not all delegates are happy about Donald Trump, and on Monday the RNC briefly descended into chaos as members of the Never Trump movement launched a revolt by demanding for a roll call vote—a lengthy process that would allow every state to have their vote count. However, when the time came to present the proposed rules to the full convention, the Trump campaign and Republican Party leadership quashed the rebellious faction by instead opting for a voice vote—quickly declaring the opponents lacked enough votes. Pandemonium erupted on the floor, with shouts for a roll call vote being drowned out by Trump supporters chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Democracy Now!’s Deena Guzder filed this report.

=> ↺ Trump and the Fascistization of America (1/2)

• Scholar Henry Giroux tells Paul Jay that Donald Trump is not an eccentric populist, but the representative of a neofascist politics that ignores evidence, believes truth is merely an opinion, and says dissent is unpatriotic

=> ↺ Russian journalism’s double white lines

• A recent leak from a leading Russian media outlet has sparked a bitter debate about censorship and professional ethics, exposing how fragmented Russia’s journalist community truly is.

=> ↺ Exclusive: Hillary Clinton exchanged top secret emails on her private server with three aides

• Hillary Clinton exchanged nearly two-dozen top secret emails from her private server with three senior aides, the State Department revealed in documents released to VICE News late Friday.

• The 22 emails were sent and received by Clinton in 2011 and 2012. Clinton discussed classified information with her deputy chief of staff, Jacob Sullivan, her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. A majority of the top secret emails are email chains between Sullivan and Clinton.

• This is the first time the State Department has revealed the identities of the officials who exchanged classified information with Clinton through her private email server.

• The new disclosure by the State Department comes three days before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Philadelphia, where Clinton will formally accept her party’s nomination for president, and minutes before Clinton announced her vice presidential pick, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Mapping Media Freedom: A disastrous week for Turkish journalism

• Turkey has faced severe turmoil since last Friday’s attempted military coup. While it was ultimately thwarted, 290 people were left dead as of 18 July with many more injured. In response, the government has since cracked down on dissent and suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, with more than 50,000 people rounded up, sacked or suspended from their jobs.

• In addition, the country has seen an increase in violations against media workers, with journalists murdered, held hostage, arrested and physically attacked, as well as having equipment confiscated or destroyed. These violations have raised concerns from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose representative on freedom of the media, Dunja Mijatović, has said: “Fully recognising the difficult times that Turkey is going through, the authorities need to ensure media freedom offline and online in line with their international commitments.”

=> ↺ Jersey City, Censorship and ‘Hypersensitivity’: An Interview With Monopoly Mural Artist Mr. AbiLLity

• In May, the Jersey City Mural Arts Program commissioned local artist Gary Wynans, aka Mr. AbiLLity, to create a 33-foot floor mural on the busy pedestrian plaza at Newark Avenue. A creative riff on the traditional Monopoly board game, Wynans’ mural uses Jersey City street names and local icons, harnassing the game’s focus on money and real estate to bring attention to income disparities and gentrification in real-life Jersey City.

=> ↺ We are far from powerless against the quiet horror of censorship at the SABC

• I WAS in Hong Kong when I first felt the quiet horror of media censorship.

• It was 2012 and I had just returned from the Canton Fair in Guangzhou-China’s industrious import and export mecca on the mainland. A friend of my father asked for my opinion on Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese human rights activist who had lit a diplomatic firestorm by escaping his house arrest and fleeing to the US embassy in Beijing. At the time it was a prominent, unfolding story covered by most of the major media outlets available in Hong Kong. But on the mainland, where the Communist Party of China (CPC) controls the media far more tightly, I saw nothing on any news station. I had no idea what my father’s friend was talking about.

• The chilling realisation that governments can use the media to manipulate their citizens is a driving force behind the constitutional freedoms afforded to the press. In many progressive constitutions, ours included, these rights are made explicit. A tragic irony is that China does in fact have a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, and of the press. Many Chinese are not even aware that in 1982, all previous constitutions were superseded by 138 articles designed to protect the civil rights of individuals and lay the groundwork for state governance.

=> ↺ Publisher of Shuttered Liberal Magazine Says Censorship Not Work of Xi Jinping

=> ↺ Court Rejects Lawsuit From Besieged Liberal Journal

=> ↺ Chinese court rejects lawsuit filed by outspoken journal over sackings

=> ↺ ‘Political censorship’: Gov’t sends email asking for election candidate’s stance on HK independence

=> ↺ Pro-independence Hong Kong candidate pleads for more time to explain stance

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Spotify will play ads based on your playlists

• Your age, gender and song picks will determine the commercials you hear.

=> ↺ Obama Wants To Give The British Permission To Read American Emails

• According to the Wall Street Journal, the plan, proposed by the Obama administration, would allow the US government to search corporate computers in the UK while allowing the UK to do the same in the US. The major caveat being that searches could only be related citizens of the country doing the searching. So the UK could not peer into Trump’s private missives and the US could not take a gander at whatever was spewed forth from Boris Johnson’s keyboard.

• There are quite a few barriers to the Obama administration’s plans, however. First is the aforementioned ruling. In April, Microsoft sued the Department of Justice to keep the US government from serving secret search warrants to retrieve data held overseas. It won the case last Thursday, and the Department of Justice is now considering filing an appeal to appear before the Supreme Court.

• Beyond clearing that hurdle, the DoJ will also need the approval of the US legislature (the UK will need approval from its legislature as well). And things could get tricky there. The tech lobby, including Microsoft, Apple and Google, are opposed to expanded abilities by governments to search computer data overseas. When a powerful lobby is that opposed to a plan, it makes passing said plan difficult.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ ‘The Public Is Viewed Not as Someone to Be Helped, but as an Enemy to Be Contained’

• Had the US gotten serious about racist police violence every time media have announced we were, we presumably would no longer wake to stories and images of black or brown men, women and children killed by police officers who will not face punishment. Certainly there has been strong critical reporting on the issue, but for all the supposed soul-searching, media’s conversation about what to do about racist law enforcement doesn’t stray far from a few general ideas about “reform.” Activists and others say we have to go deeper, and ask bigger questions about the role law enforcement plays in the country.

=> ↺ Bipartisan Caucus Launches in the House to Defend Fourth Amendment

• On matters implicating privacy, such as mass surveillance or the powers of investigatory agencies, Congress has too often failed to fulfill its responsibilities. By neglecting to examine basic facts, and deferring to executive agencies whose secrets preclude meaningful debate, the body has allowed proposals that undermine constitutional rights to repeatedly become enshrined in law. In last week’s launch of a new bipartisan Fourth Amendment Caucus in the House, however, the Constitution has gained a formidable ally.

• Every Member of Congress swears an oath to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Yet the most significant threats to our Constitution include the powers of U.S. intelligence agencies, enabled by Congress’ faith in the agencies’ willingness to respect legal limits on their powers.

=> ↺ A Young Woman Seeking an Abortion Needs Compassionate Care, not Unnecessary Hurdles

• Today, the Alaska Supreme Court found unconstitutional a law requiring physicians to notify a parent, guardian, or custodian of a minor seeking an abortion. In its decision, the court found the law unjustifiably burdens only minors seeking an abortion – violating the equal protection guarantees of the Alaska Constitution.

• The decision comes less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt–the most significant abortion-related ruling from the Court in more than two decades.

=> ↺ Senate Bill Would End Tax Breaks for Private Prison Companies

• Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) introduced legislation last week that would make it tougher for private prison companies to take advantage of federal rules that provide massive tax breaks for special real estate firms, a move that racial justice and prison divestment activists say is an important step toward confronting the corporations that control around 8 percent of the nation’s prisons and immigrant jails.

• As Truthout has reported, the nation’s two largest prison firms, GEO Group and Corrections Corporations of America (CCA), avoided a combined $113 million in federal taxes in 2015 alone. Large portions of the companies are allowed to file with the IRS as Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, which enjoy a special tax status designed to encourage real estate investment.

=> ↺ Trump Promises Law and Order for an America He Says Is in Crisis

• The $60 million display of police force, which resulted in only a dozen or so arrests over three days, fit right into the night’s proceedings, which ended with a remarkable speech by the Republican nominee for president, who painted a dark picture of America in crisis and pledged to be America’s “law and order candidate.”

=> ↺ Turkey’s Erdogan, using emergency decree, shuts private schools, charities, unions

• President Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip on Turkey on Saturday, ordering the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and other institutions in his first decree since imposing a state of emergency after the failed military coup.

• A restructuring of Turkey’s once untouchable military also drew closer, with a planned meeting between Erdogan and the already purged top brass brought forward.

• In the decree, published by the Anadolu state news agency, Erdogan extended to a maximum of 30 days from four days the period in which some suspects can be detained. It said this was to facilitate a full investigation into the coup attempt.

• Erdogan, who narrowly escaped capture and possible death during the July 15 coup attempt, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday he would restructure the armed forces and bring in “fresh blood”.

=> ↺ Appeals Court Says DOJ Can Keep Its Evidence-Production Guidelines To Itself

• Brady evidence — possibly exonerating evidence that prosecutors are required to turn over to the defense — is far too frequently withheld and/or buried. The punishments for violating this requirement are almost nonexistent. The prosecution hates to see wins become losses. And the government in general — despite declaring fair trials to be the right of its citizens — hates to play on a level field.

• A federal judge withdrew from a forensic evidence committee because the government told him it wasn’t his job to point out the severely-flawed pre-trial forensic evidence discovery procedures deployed by prosecutors. Judge Rakoff called the government out in his resignation letter.

=> ↺ Administration’s One-Year Experimentation With Reining In Police Militarization Apparently Over

• The administration’s brief flirtation with converting occupying forces back into police departments is apparently over. In the wake of the Ferguson protests, the administration announced its plan to rein in police departments which had been availing themselves of used military gear via the Defense Department’s 1033 program. This itself was short-lived. A year later, the administration mustered up enough enthusiasm for another run at scaling back the 1033 program, but it has seemingly lost some steam as Obama heads for the exit.

• The images of police greeting protesters with assault rifles, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and officers who appeared to mistake the Midwest for downtown Kabul apparently was a bit too much. It looked more like an occupation than community-oriented policing — something every administration has paid lip service (and tax dollars) to over the past few decades while simultaneously handing out grants that turned police officers into warfighters.

=> ↺ Exclusive: White House to review ban on military gear for police – police leaders

• The White House will revisit a 2015 ban on police forces getting riot gear, armored vehicles and other military-grade equipment from the U.S. armed forces, two police organization directors told Reuters on Thursday.

• Shortly after the recent shooting deaths of police officers, President Barack Obama agreed to review each banned item, the two law enforcement leaders said.

• That could result in changes to the ban imposed in May 2015 on the transfer of some equipment from the military to police, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

=> ↺ Killer Robots Pose Potential Problems for Future Policing

• What if you got pulled over while driving and a humanoid robot walked up to your car and asked for your license and registration? That may be the future of American policing.

• When the Dallas police used a “killer robot” to kill Micah Johnson after he fatally shot five police officers earlier this month, many felt it was an alarm, suggesting the takeover of police departments by lethal robots.

• However, we’re not quite at that point yet.

• “What happened in Dallas was the use of an explosive affixed to a remotely controlled drone, but it was called a robot because in their inventory the Dallas police were calling it a bomb robot,” Mary Wareham, who works for the arms division of Human Rights Watch and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, told Truthdig.

=> ↺ Black Activists Occupy Police Union Offices in NYC & D.C., Demand End to Protection for Brutal Cops

• Activists in several cities are attempting to shut down the offices of two major police unions: the Fraternal Order of Police and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. In Washington, D.C., activists with Black Youth Project 100 and Black Lives Matter have locked themselves to the steps of the Fraternal Order of Police with chains. In New York City, activists with Million Hoodies and BYP 100 have locked themselves to each other using PVC pipes at the entrance to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. The activists are demanding police officers stop paying dues to the private unions, which they accuse of defending officers accused of brutality. We go to Washington, D.C., for a live update from the scene with Samantha Master, member of BYP 100.

=> ↺ Young Black Protesters Blockade Police Facilities Across the Country

• During a week when political coverage has been dominated by the absurd spectacles of the Republican National Convention (RNC), the movement for Black lives raged on in the streets, with young Black people shutting down and disrupting police facilities in multiple cities on Wednesday. Individual cases of police violence and abuse were highlighted in some cities, while other protests zeroed in on the role of police unions in preventing accountability for police violence.

=> ↺ Feminism Slowly Gaining Support at United Nations

• “Being a feminist is a complete no-brainer. It’s like having to explain to people that you’re not racist. But clearly the word is still controversial so we have to keep using it until people get it,” she said.

=> ↺ Ailes Resigns—With $40M—But Will Fox’s “Cesspool of Sexism” Change?

• Rupert Murdoch, who owns 21st Century Fox, the news network’s parent company, will step in as acting chairman and CEO.

=> ↺ Pakistan burned teacher’s death was ‘not suicide’, investigation says

• A female Pakistani teacher who died of severe burns last month did not take her own life, as local police had claimed, a fact finding mission says.

• Maria Sadaqat’s family say she was attacked and set on fire at her home in Murree after turning down a suitor.

• Local police arrested four men – but later said the case was a suicide and released the men on bail.

• The investigation was “flawed” and the death had been painted “as suicide rather than murder”, the mission said.

• Ms Sadaqat, 19, suffered severe burns on 29 May, with local media reporting she had sustained 85% burns.

=> ↺ TSA agent took upskirt photos of women at Seattle airport, prosecutors say

• A Transportation Security Administration agent was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of taking upskirt photos of female passengers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

• Nicholas James Fernandez, 29, was detained as part of a voyeurism investigation. He’s been suspended indefinitely without pay pending the outcome of the case.

• King County, Wash., prosecutors say Fernandez left a TSA checkpoint during a break at 11:15 a.m. and rode an escalator to a lower level of the airport where he stood behind a woman wearing a skirt and began videotaping beneath it with his mobile phone, according to a probable cause statement.

=> ↺ Police Officers are Creating 3D Printed Finger Dummy Of A Murder Victim’s Finger

• An MSU professor Anil Jain has been approached by the law enforcement officers for the creation of 3D-printed fingerprint moulds of the victim of a murder case. The finger dummies will be used to unlock the smartphone of the victim for any traces of the murderer.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Lawsuit Claims Frontier Misused Millions In Federal Broadband Stimulus Funds

• If you want to see what the U.S. broadband market really looks like, you should take a close look at West Virginia. Historically ranked close to dead last for broadband access and quality, the state has been a perfect example of what happens when you let the incumbent telecom monopoly incestuously fuse with state regulators and politicians. For years now the state has been plagued by news reports of unaccountable broadband subsidies, money repeatedly wasted on unnecessary hardware, duplicate consultants overpaid to do nothing, and state leaders focused exclusively on ensuring nobody is held accountable.

• Frontier acquired Verizon’s phone and broadband networks in the state back in 2010, and while jumping from an entirely apathetic incumbent monopoly ISP to a barely competent one netted some slight improvements initially for users, the lack of competition continues to keep serious advancement at bay. In an attempt to improve access to neglected areas of the state, Frontier that same year received $126.3 million in federal stimulus funds to provide high-speed Internet to such areas, including 1,064 public facilities such as schools, courthouses and first responders.

• Roughly $40 million of that money was supposed to be used to build an “open-access middle-mile network” intended to help multiple, competing West Virginia ISPs improve last-mile connectivity to roughly 700,000 homes and 110,000 businesses. But it didn’t take long for allegations to surface that Frontier had used that money solely to shore up its broadband monopoly in the state, building fiber connections that only benefited itself. Allegations also surfaced that Frontier had manipulated just how much fiber was actually laid, with state investigations and audits, as they’re wont to do, going nowhere fast.

=> ↺ Verizon will cut off unlimited data users who use too much unlimited data

• Verizon’s continuing its ongoing mission to pare down the number of customers on unlimited data plans by migrating them to ones with hard limits. Recently, the company came up with a way to get rid of its biggest data hogs.

=> ↺ Verizon to Disconnect Unlimited Data Users Who Use “Extraordinary” Amounts of Data

• Verizon Wireless customers who have held on to unlimited data plans and use significantly more than 100GB a month will be disconnected from the network on August 31 unless they agree to move to limited data packages that require payment of overage fees.

DRM

=> ↺ EFF to DMCA: ‘Drop Dead’ & More…

• EFF’s sue you sue me blues: On Thursday the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against several U.S. government agencies to address First Amendment issues around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Being questioned is Section 1201 which contains the so-called “anti-circumvention” clause that makes it a crime to circumvent DRM.

• One of the major points the organization will make is that the section is a road block to “fair use,” which the Supreme Court has ruled is necessary for copyright protections to be constitutional.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ KickassTorrents Comes Back, Again! This Time As KAT.am

• KickassTorrents is back, again. This time, as KAT.am.

=> ↺ Digital Citizens Slam Cloudflare For Enabling Piracy & Malware

• Consumer interest group Digital Citizens Alliance has published a new report highlighting the connection between pirate sites and malware delivery. The group says that as many as one in three pirate sites are engaged in the practice, assisted by US-based companies including Cloudflare.

=> ↺ The KickassTorrents Case Could Be Huge

• Authorities arrested Vaulin, who is Ukrainian, in Poland, where he now awaits extradition. The Department of Justice seized seven domains affiliated with KAT, all of which are currently down. Law enforcement used a warrant to obtain an email and IP address associated with Vaulin that showed up in multiple iTunes purchases, and was used to log into the official KAT Facebook account. That, combined with a Whois and GoDaddy search, a financial trail, and messages that identified Vaulin’s known alias as “KAT’s purported ‘Owner,’” left investigators with little doubt as to his role in the site.

=> ↺ How Apple and Facebook helped to take down KickassTorrents

• It turns out that a couple of purchases on iTunes helped to bring down the mastermind behind KickassTorrents, one of the most popular websites for illegal file sharing.

• Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S. in its investigation of 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the torrent directory service. Vaulin was arrested in Poland on Wednesday, and U.S. authorities seized seven of the site’s domains, all of which are now offline.

• KickassTorrents was accused of enabling digital piracy for years, and investigators said it was the 69th most visited website on the entire Internet. It offered a list of torrent files for downloading bootleg movies, music, computer games and more, even as governments across the world tried to shut it down.

=> ↺ Best KickassTorrents Alternatives — Top 10 Torrent Websites Of 2016

• We have been regular in publishing the lists of best torrent websites on the internet for the last two years. The year 2016 reached has its second half, so we thought to update the list with any latest additions. Continuing the legacy further, we are now writing about the top 10 most popular torrent websites of 2016 which are also the alternatives to the dead KAT.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.