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● 03.05.22

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● Links 5/3/2022: XScreenSaver 6.03 and KDE Progress

Posted in News Roundup at 4:56 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Server

=> ↺ Oracle creates new form of free Solaris • The Register

• Oracle has created an additional version of the Solaris operating system it acquired in 2009, when it bought Sun Microsystems.

• The new cut of the OS is called a Common Build Environment (CBE). As explained by Oracle senior software engineer Darren Moffat this week, a CBE is akin to a beta because it includes prerelease builds of a forthcoming Solaris release.

• Those releases are called Support Repository Updates (SRUs) and now arrive each month. Any security fixes delivered in Oracle’s quarterly Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) are delivered in SRUs.

• All SRUs apply to Solaris 11.4 – the current and probably last version of the OS.

• Oracle’s license for Solaris already permits free use for test and development, or personal use.

Applications

=> ↺ Motrix: A Free and Open-source Download Manager for Linux

• Downloading a file was once a very boring and unpleasant task. Nowadays, users are blessed with lots of download managers to use on Linux. When you will download something and want to manage them proficiently, a download manager will be your best helping hand. However, recently, I have used an open source and effective download manager for Linux. It is Motrix.

• Motrix comes with a lot of useful features, and while using this app, I have found some surprising facts in it. That’s why I planned to write about it so that people who are looking for an efficient download manager can learn about it. Let’s start with a proper introduction to Motrix. And then, I will continue disclosing every single fact of this application.

=> ↺ I Tested The New Maui Shell On My Linux Phone. Here’s What I Found! – It’s FOSS News

• Just over a month ago, we got our first glimpse of Maui Shell. Developed by the team at Nitrux Linux, I was quite impressed with its smooth visuals, and especially its convergence features.

• At the same time, I concluded my year of daily driving the PinePhone, which meant that it was free to experiment on again. As a result, I soon found myself installing Maui Shell, which I spent quite a few hours testing.

• Here’s what I found!

=> ↺ Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Apple KeyNote

• KeyNote is a presentation software application developed as a part of the iWork productivity suite.

• There’s a lot going for KeyNote, it’s a simple, elegant tool for creating high quality presentations. But it’s proprietary software that’s not available for Linux. What are the best free and open source alternatives?

=> ↺ XScreenSaver 6.03 out now

• And on X11, by popular demand, holding down backspace in the password entry field will clear it. For some reason the XInput2 extension does not send keyboard auto-repeat events, so I had to special case this in the client, like an animal.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Understanding a thing with ZFS on Linux, kernel versions, RPMs, and DKMS

• I use ZFS on Linux on my office and home Fedora desktops. It’s installed with RPM packages using the ‘zfs-dkms’ option, where the ZoL RPMs install a DKMS module that DKMS then builds for whatever kernels. The advantage of the DKMS approach is that I don’t need to somehow pre-build new kernel module RPMs before I upgrade my kernel; instead DKMS rebuilds things automatically. Recently I went to install a Fedora kernel upgrade to 5.16.11 and as part of the upgrade DNF said it was going to remove the ‘zfs’ and ‘zfs-dkms’ RPMs as incompatible. Of course I said no to that, and when I looked at the ‘META’ source file that controls kernel version compatibility (among other things) I saw that ZoL currently only supports up to 5.15.

=> ↺ On overwriting disks

• When overwriting disks with little storage capacity, the lack of progress bar isn’t a pressing issue because the operation doesn’t take a long time. For larger disks, an ETA proves invaluable. I like pv for this task.

=> ↺ Why self-host/use FLOSS?

• People often don’t understand why I choose to be my own provider and use libre software, or why I won’t (re)install Windows or macOS for someone.1

• Allow me to explain my reasoning/proselytize. Libre software has these benefits among others: [...]

=> ↺ Nftables – Demystifying IPsec expressions

• In this article I like to take a look at the expressions provided by Nftables for matching IPsec-related network packets. The common situation is that you need to distinguish packets from normal traffic, which either have been received through a VPN tunnel and already have been decrypted or packets which are to be sent out on a VPN tunnel, but have not been encrypted yet. Those kind of packets can be matched by these expressions within packet filtering rules. I’ll explain how these expressions work, what they use as back-end, what their limitations are and how you can use them to get your intended behavior. Further, I take a short glimpse at the Iptables equivalent of these expressions.

=> ↺ Infinite loop ssh Using sleep, ssh

=> ↺ How to Install Spotify on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• Spotify is a digital music streaming service with both free and paid features. It is the world’s largest music streaming service provider, with over 381 million monthly active users, including 172 million paying subscribers, as of September 2021. Spotify can give you instant access to a vast online library of music and podcasts, which is very popular as you can listen to the content of your choice whenever you feel like it.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Spotify on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using the official Spotify repository or alternative snap and flatpak installation managers.

=> ↺ How to Install Gedit on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• Gedit is the default text editor and part of the GNOME Core Applications that are installed generally as part of the GNOME Desktop Environment on various Linux systems. The text editor is designed to be a general-purpose lightweight editor with a clean, simple GUI similar to the notepad application from Windows.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Gedit on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish using the Ubuntu default repository or alternative snap and flatpak installation managers.

=> ↺ Install i3 Windows Manager on Ubuntu 22.04 – kifarunix.com

• Welcome to our tutorial on how to install i3 windows manager on Ubuntu 22.04. i3 is a tiling window manager for X11. “A tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more popular approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects (windows) that tries to fully emulate the desktop metaphor.”

=> ↺ How to Install Brasero on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

• Brasero is a free and open-source disc-burning program for Unix-like systems that comes with various features for burning your data, audio, or video discs. Brasero serves as a graphical front-end to cdrtools, cdrskin, growisofs, and libburn and is efficient and straightforward for users to use by keeping things simple.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Brasero on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish disc-burning utility software using the APT package manager.

=> ↺ How to fix worker connections are not enough error on Nginx

• Nginx is very popular as a web server, but as always, it is not perfect and can give us some errors. Today, in this post, you will learn how to fix worker connections are not enough error on Nginx. So, you can avoid a headache while managing a server. Let’s go for it.

=> ↺ How To Install PowerShell on Manjaro 21

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PowerShell on Manjaro 21. For those of you who didn’t know, PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation solution made up of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. PowerShell runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• 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 the Microsoft PowerShell on a Manjaro 21 (Ornara).

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ This week in KDE: Firmware security page

• Unfortunately we didn’t get any 15-minute bugs fixed this week, and overall activity was lower than usual. I suspect at least part of the reason is fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has affected several prominent Ukrainian KDE contributors and also cut off Russian contributors from many of their usual internet resources. Some humanitarian aid and media organizations that you can donate to may be found here. Let us all hope for peace, and remain united in our pursuit to build the finest and most humane software.

• Nevertheless, back in KDE land we did accomplish quite a bit, including a fancy new “Firmware Security” page in Info Center!

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ 10 Awesome Apps to Improve Your GNOME Desktop Experience [Part 5]

• We showcase the next set of 10 GNOME Apps that will supercharge your productivity while using GNOME Desktop.

Distributions

Debian/Rockchip

=> ↺ Firefly is working on a Rockchip RK3588 Mini-ITX motherboard (ITX3588J) – CNX Software

• After Radxa ROCK5 Pico-ITX SBC and Banana Pi RK3588 SoM and devkit, Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard is the third hardware platform we’ve seen with Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor.

• The board will be interesting to people wanting an Arm PC or workstation as the mini-ITX form factor will allow the board to be fitted to a standard enclosure, and there’s plenty of resources and I/Os with up to 32GB RAM, four SATA ports, multiple 8K/4K video outputs and inputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and more.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Are Apple Trying To Patent The Home Computer 45 Years Too Late?

• In our recent piece marking the 10th anniversary of the Raspberry Pi, we praised their all-in-one Raspberry Pi 400 computer for having so far succeeded in attracting no competing products. It seems that assessment might be premature, because it emerges that Apple have filed a patent application for “A computer in an input device” that looks very much like the Pi 400. In fact we’d go further than that, it looks very much like any of a number of classic home computers from back in the day, to the extent that we’re left wondering what exactly Apple think is novel enough to patent.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Is Google testing the return of an iconic Android icon or was its appearance just a bug? – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Android app deals of the day: Vengeance RPG, more – 9to5Toys

=> ↺ Android Circuit: Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Secrets, Honor’s Premium Performance, Android’s Brighter Future

=> ↺ How To Stay Safe Online And Use Android 12 Privacy Dashboard Feature

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Avoiding Source Code Spoofing

• The problems here are not solely a security issue: text with different writing directions or confusable characters can be hard to work with. Finding a solution here is important from both security and usability points of view. Developers of source code editors or compilers should not be required to have a deep knowledge of Unicode to provide good user experience and robust security mitigations.

=> ↺ Using files with browsers, in reality

• This is a post about new APIs that browsers have to read & write files, and how I’m using them in Placemark.

Python

=> ↺ A Python program can be outside of a virtual environment it uses

• A while ago I wrote about installing modules to a custom location, and in that entry one reason I said for not doing this with a virtual environment was that I didn’t want to put the program involved into a virtual environment just to use some Python modules. Recently I realized that you don’t have to, because of how virtual environments add themselves to sys.path. As long as you run your program using the virtual environment’s Python, it gets to use all the modules you installed in the venv. It doesn’t matter where the program is and you don’t have to move it from its current location, you just have to change what ‘python’ it uses.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Antidote to Terror: Art-making at the End of the World

• The answer is no, we can’t. Not, that is, until we free ourselves individually from the inner compulsion to replicate the old order that, although we can criticize it, even rebel against it,  will never allow us to defend the more inclusive, in-common good.  The in-common good, nice as it sounds, is death to our “first world,” centralized, technology-dependent, anti-social way of life. Although the “first world” crisis is for-real – i.e., either our needs change (i.e., our way of life) or we lose the  future –  our  reality, a media-fed bubble, effectively prevents awareness of real crisis, at the same time keeping us fixated on  “the spectacle.”  The only way this death trance can be broken is voluntarily, by following the path of individual delight, desire, “bliss,”  which is the path of art-making, of “being your own work of art” as if this were one’s duty which, metaphysically speaking, it is!  

• For this reason, like kindness, dignity, justice, and communality, art-making is not optional for social human beings.  Though prized for its expression of individuality, though we look to the great ones – 

Hardware

=> ↺ Glassblowing For The Lab

• There was a time when ordering some glassware from a distributor meant making a sizable minimum order, sending a check in the mail and waiting weeks for a box full of — hopefully intact — glassware to arrive. In those days, blowing your own glassware from glass tubes was fairly common and [Wheeler Scientific] has been doing a series on just how to do that. Even if you aren’t interested in building a chemistry lab, you might find the latest episode on making a gas discharge tube worth a watch. There are several videos and you can see a few of them below.

=> ↺ Automated Chess Board Plays You

• If you’ve ever played chess or even checkers, you’ve probably thought about making a board that lets a computer play you without having to enter your moves and look at the board on a screen. [Greg06] not only thought about it, but he built it.

=> ↺ Hydrofoils Love This One Simple Trick

• Earlier in the year, [rctestflight] created an active hydrofoil RC craft but found the actual performance very lacking. Luckily for him and for us, he continued to tweak it and one tweak suddenly turned it from a nightmare to a dream.

=> ↺ Al Williams Tells All In The Logic Simulation Hack Chat

• The list of requirements for hosting one of our weekly Hack Chats is pretty short: you’ve got to be knowledgeable, passionate, and above all else, willing to put those two quantities on display for a group of like-minded strangers. Beyond that, we’re not too picky. From industry insider to weekend hobbyist, high school dropout to double doctorate, if you’ve got something interesting to talk about, we’re ready to listen.

=> ↺ Hackaday Podcast 158: Phased Array Physics, CRTs Two Ways, A Micro Microcontroller, And A Surgically Implanted Red Herring

• Join Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney as they take a look at the week’s top stories, taken straight off the pages of Hackaday. What happens when you stuff modern parts into a 90’s novelty PC case? Nothing good, but everything awesome! Is there any way to prevent PCB soil moisture sensors from being destroyed by, you know, soil moisture? How small is too small for a microcontroller, and who needs documentation anyway? We also cast a jaundiced eye — err, ear — at an electronic cheating scandal, and if you’ve ever wondered how phased arrays and beam steering work, gazing into a pan of water might just answer your questions. We also share all our soldering war stories, and hey — what’s with all these CRT projects anyway?

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ “Debate” and “censorship” vs. quality control

• About a month ago, I wrote about how COVID-19 minimizers, deniers, cranks, antivaxxers, and grifters had been ramping up their demands for “debates” about COVID-19. Of course, I’ve long been pointing out how a favorite tactic of such cranks is to challenge a scientist or science advocate to a “live public debate” about the topic in question, whether it be the claim that vaccines cause autism (they don’t), whether HIV causes AIDS (it does), regarding “integrative medicine” or “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or antivaxxers trying to trap me. Longtime readers know why quacks, cranks, pseudoscience-promoters, and conspiracy theorists almost always have a near-insurmountable advantage in these debates—”Gish gallop” anyone? —but, as I explain every time, there are other reasons why science deniers gravitate towards this particular tactic. Sometimes the motivations are dishonest, but more often they are not, being based instead on the false idea that such “debates” are a fair and democratic method to settle a question, whether there is a real scientific debate or not. (Almost always, there is not.)

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

=> ↺ Why the Steam Deck might be too “open” for Fortnite and Destiny 2 | Ars Technica

• In our recent review of the Steam Deck portable console from Valve, we noted that continued updates to the company’s Proton compatibility layer would help many games designed for Windows run well on the system’s Linux-based SteamOS. For a handful of popular online multiplayer games, though, inherent limitations to anti-cheat support on Linux may prevent compatibility with SteamOS (and the vanilla Steam Deck) indefinitely.

• That certainly seems to be the case for Destiny 2. In a recent update to the game’s help page, developer Bungie notes that “Destiny 2 is not supported for play on the Steam Deck or on any system utilizing Steam Play’s Proton unless Windows is installed and running.” Since Windows installation is currently not an option on the Steam Deck (due to some lingering driver issues), Destiny 2 players are simply left out of the Steam Deck party for the time being.

=> ↺ This Week In Security: Ukraine, Nvidia, And Conti

• The geopolitics surrounding the invasion of Ukraine are outside the scope of this column, but the cybersecurity ramifications are certainly fitting fodder. The challenge here is that almost everything of note that has happened in the last week has been initially linked to the conflict, but in several cases, the reported link hasn’t withstood scrutiny. We do know that the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine put out a call on Twitter for “cyber specialists” to go after a list of Russian businesses and state agencies. Many of the sites on the list did go down for some time, the digital equivalent of tearing down a poster. In response, the largest Russian ISP stopped announcing BGP routes to some of the targeted sites, effectively ending any attacks against them from the outside.

=> ↺ Conti Ransomware Group Diaries, Part III: Weaponry

• Part I of this series examined newly-leaked internal chats from the Conti ransomware group, and how the crime gang dealt with its own internal breaches. Part II explored what it’s like to be an employee of Conti’s sprawling organization. Today’s Part III looks at how Conti abused popular commercial security services to undermine the security of their targets, as well as how the team’s leaders strategized for the upper hand in ransom negotiations with victims.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Interview With Chris Mayers – Citrix

• Chris Mayers: It’s a workout for the brain. Every day is different, and there’s a huge span of issues: from the technical detail of cryptography at one end, to business strategy at the other. And quite often, you’re dealing with both in the same day: macOS security configuration in the morning, and business risk analysis in the afternoon.

=> ↺ Many more Cookie Banners to go: Second Wave of Complaints underway

• This week, noyb launched the second round of its action against deceptive cookie banners, following a first batch in May 2021. Another 270 draft complaints were sent to website operators whose banners don’t comply with the GPDR. noyb offers guidelines for companies on how to comply and only files formal GDPR complaints against those who remain non-compliant after a 60-day grace period. The first wave has already proven to be successful: As a reaction to our first batch in 2021, more and more websites have implemented compliant banners. In an obvious “spill over” effect, even websites that were not targeted by noyb have changed for the better.

=> ↺ EU Actions Must Match Words As DSA Negotiations Enter Endgame

• Another critical proposal made by MEPs is to strengthen Article 24, which regulates targeted online advertising. The current online advertising industry is built around harvesting people’s personal data, like age, location, religion, political leanings, and even sexual orientation, in order to tailor advertisements to each user. Most often, people do not knowingly consent to this data harvesting, making it a clear violation of their privacy and the General Data Protection Regulation.

=> ↺ Open Letter: Abolish manipulative dark patterns and creepy online ads, ask 72 civil society organisations

• Ahead of the upcoming Digital Services Act (DSA) trilogue meeting on 15 March, EDRi, Liberties and Amnesty International and 69 other civil society organisations have sent a joint open letter to 20 ministers and state secretaries in 9 EU Member States. On Tuesday 1.03.2022, several organisations in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Croatia delivered the letter to relevant decisionmakers responsible for their country’s position in the EU negotiations.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Fire Is Out at Nuclear Plant Seized by Russian Forces, Officials Watch for Leaks

=> ↺ Supreme Court Reinstates Boston Marathon Bomber’s Death Penalty Sentence

=> ↺ Biden, EU Urged to Welcome ‘All People Fleeing Violence, Persecution, and War’

• Human rights activists on Thursday celebrated moves by the Biden administration and Council of the European Union to protect Ukrainians fleeing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of their country—but advocacy groups also highlighted that rich nations have failed to offer the same hospitality to people from other conflict zones seeking safety.

• “By restricting that assistance principally to Ukrainians fleeing conflict, the council has… exposed the limitations of Europe’s solidarity.”

=> ↺ State Secrets Ruling By US Supreme Court Helps CIA Conceal Torture At Black Site Prison

• This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter Newsletter. Take 25 percent off and become a monthly subscriber.The “state secrets privilege” stems from a 1953 case known as United States v. Reynolds, where the government essentially lied and claimed if relatives of victims of a military plane crash were informed of how their loved ones died it would compromise “secrets.” U.S. Air Force documents declassified decades later showed accident reports and witness statements contained no secrets, and victims’ families were wrongly deprived of their day in court. Yet more than a half century after the Reynolds case, the U.S. Supreme Court continues to expand the state secrets privilege and help U.S. military and national security agencies conceal their crimes and abuses of power. On March 4, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled [PDF] the FBI may invoke the state secrets privilege to prevent the disclosure of information on the illegal surveillance of Muslims. The Supreme Court ruled the day before that the CIA may invoke the state secrets privilege and conceal information related to the torture of Abu Zubaydah, even though key details are already in the public domain. Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring from the Supreme Court, authored the 7-2 opinion [PDF]. “We conclude that in this case the state secrets privilege applies to the existence (or nonexistence) of a CIA facility in Poland,” Breyer declared. “We agree with the government that sometimes information that has entered the public domain may nonetheless fall within the scope of the state secrets privilege.”Breyer contended the CIA provided a “reasonable explanation” of why James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two architects of the CIA torture program, should not be permitted to confirm or deny the information Zubaydah seeks because it could “significantly harm national security interests, even if that information has already been made public through unofficial sources.”

• Zubaydah remains in indefinite detention at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. He was the first detainee subjected to what the CIA described as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The Supreme Court recognized that he was tortured. Despite the Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture, testimony from Mitchell and Jessen, Mitchell’s memoir, and findings from the European Court of Human Rights, Breyer maintained, “The CIA itself has never confirmed that one or more of its clandestine detention sites was located in any specific foreign country.”“Neither, as far as we can tell from the record, have the contractors Mitchell and Jessen named the specific foreign countries in which CIA detention sites were located.” “Although at least one former Polish government official has stated that Poland cooperated with the CIA, to our knowledge, the Polish government itself has never confirmed such allegations,” Breyer added.

=> ↺ Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the GOP

=> ↺ January 6 Committee to Start Public, Likely Televised, Hearings Next Month

=> ↺ “Let Them Kill as Many as Possible”: United States Policy Toward Russia and its Neighbors

• A February 25 op-ed in The Los Angeles Times by Jeff Rogg, “The CIA has backed Ukrainian insurgents before- Let’s learn from those mistakes,” cites a CIA program to train Ukrainian nationalists as insurgents to fight the Russians that began in 2015 and compares it with a similar effort by Truman’s CIA in Ukraine that began in 1949. By 1950, one year in, “U.S. officers involved in the program knew they were fighting a losing battle…In the first U.S.-backed insurgency, according to top secret documents later declassified, American officials intended to use the Ukrainians as a proxy force to bleed the Soviet Union.” This op-ed cites John Ranelagh, a historian of the CIA, who argued that the program “demonstrated a cold ruthlessness” because the Ukrainian resistance had no hope of success, and so “America was in effect encouraging Ukrainians to go to their deaths.”

• The “Truman Doctrine” of arming and training insurgents as proxy forces to bleed Russia to the peril of the local populations that it was purporting to defend was used effectively in Afghanistan in the 1970s and ‘80s, a program so effective, some of its authors have boasted, that it helped bring down the Soviet Union a decade later. In a 1998 interview, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski explained, “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention… We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.”

=> ↺ The Mad Man Theory May Have Its Mad Man

• Ironically, Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War, introduced the theory in his lectures in 1959 to Henry Kissinger’s Harvard seminar on the conscious political use of irrational military threats.  Ellsberg, who started out as a Cold Warrior, called the theory the “political uses of madness,” arguing that any extreme threat would be more credible if the person making the threat were perceived as not being fully rational.  Ellsberg never imagined that an American president would ever consider such a strategy, but he believed that irrational behavior could be a useful negotiating tool.

• Ten years later, Kissinger, who became Nixon’s national security adviser, stated that he “learned more from Ellsberg than any other person about bargaining.”  In “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” he advocated a “strategy of ambiguity” in discussing the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and presumably believed that the “madman theory” related to his belief that power wasn’t power unless one was willing to use.  During the October War in 1973, Kissinger chaired a meeting of the National Security Council that raised the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces in order to signal the Soviets that they should not intervene unilaterally in Egypt to stop Israeli violations of the cease fire.

=> ↺ Biden Urged to Prevent ‘Catastrophe’ by Reversing Seizure of Afghan Funds

• A coalition of more than 80 humanitarian groups implored U.S. President Joe Biden this week to revoke his executive order that would permanently seize $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets and split the money between the families of 9/11 victims and an ill-defined trust fund ostensibly formed to benefit the people of Afghanistan.

• “We call on the administration to rescind the order and take immediate steps to alleviate the pain and suffering in Afghanistan.”

=> ↺ Russia Accused of ‘Nuclear Terror’ After Fire at Zaporizhzhia Power Plant

• Russian forces reportedly seized control of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant on Friday shortly after a fire broke out at the facility, intensifying global fears of a massive and unprecedented radioactive disaster.

• “Fallout doesn’t respect borders. This would be an international war crime by Putin.”

=> ↺ An Antiwar Primer

• In October 1969, I attended my first protest against war. I was a fourteen year old high school freshman attending a small Catholic school in the DC suburbs. Some of the nuns who taught at the school had organized a teach-in together with some juniors and seniors at the school. After some speeches for and against the war followed by discussion, some of us followed the antiwar nuns and upper classmen and women to a corner a couple blocks from the school. We joined a small vigil for peace there. The other attendees included college students and some townspeople. We held signs, flashed peace signs, and listened to the names of the US war dead being read. The reaction from the cars driving by was mostly apathetic. Some people called us commies and gave us the finger and some flashed peace signs, but most tried not to look. The protest was part of the first National Moratorium Day that year.

• My protesting against the US war on the Vietnamese continued all the way up to the day Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City in May 1975. This included numerous protests in Frankfurt am Main, Germany called by antiwar students and groups there and a couple smaller protests in Manhattan when I lived there for a few months. The latter were smaller because Nixon had removed almost all of the US combat troops from the country and Kissinger had signed a peace agreement. History tells us the war continued for two more years with major US funding and bombardment. As the years went on since my first protest my politics became more radical. I gained an understanding of imperialism and applied that understanding to what I saw in the world. When the Vietnamese finally won in Vietnam, I took a breather.

=> ↺ The War-Profiteering Gangsters Will Kill Us All Unless We Unite Against Them

• It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces.

• Would that the General Assembly had a mandate to govern, sadly it doesn’t, which means it’s even more beholden on all us freedom-loving, law-abiding anti-war activists to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world, irrespective of race, religion, or nationality, in pursuit of elusive peace. That of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.

=> ↺ Putin’s Republican Sympathizers

=> ↺ On Watching Ukraine Through Palestinian Eyes

• Tanks rolling through city streets. Bombs dropping from fighter jets onto apartment buildings. Military checkpoints. Cities under siege. Families separated, fleeing to seek refuge and not knowing when they will see each other or their homes again.

=> ↺ This war is giving us all an opportunity to realize what truly matters

=> ↺ Orbán’s weekly radio interview: NATO will only protect us if we protect ourselves

• Every Friday, Hungary’s prime minister gives an interview on one of the state-owned radio stations. Since the independent media has not had a chance to interview him for many years, these weekly radio interviews are the only opportunity to find out what the leader of the country thinks about current events, how he sees his opponents and any issues at hand. From now on, every Friday, Telex English will bring you a 3-point summary of the main issues discussed that morning. This week’s three points are: The EU and crisis management, how the war in Ukraine is affecting Hungary and Europe, and what Orbán thinks about EU sanctions against Russia.

=> ↺ Telegram Harm Reduction for Users in Russia and Ukraine

• Telegram has gained a reputation as the “secure” communications app in the post-Soviet states, but whenever you make choices about your digital security, it’s important to start by asking yourself, “What exactly am I securing? And who am I securing it from?” These questions should inform your decisions about whether you are using the right tool or platform for your digital security needs. Telegram is certainly not the most secure messaging app on the market right now. Its security model requires users to place a great deal of trust in Telegram’s ability to protect user data. For some users, this may be good enough for now. For others, it may be wiser to move to a different platform for certain kinds of high-risk communications.

• Right now the digital security needs of Russians and Ukrainians are very different, and they lead to very different caveats about how to mitigate the risks associated with using Telegram. For Ukrainians in Ukraine, whose physical safety is at risk because they are in a war zone, digital security is probably not their highest priority. They may value access to news and communication with their loved ones over making sure that all of their communications are encrypted in such a manner that they are indecipherable to Telegram, its employees, or governments with court orders.

• Channels are not encrypted. All communications on a Telegram channel can be seen by anyone on the channel and are also visible to Telegram. Telegram may be asked by a government to hand over the communications from a channel. Telegram has a history of standing up to Russian government requests for data, but how comfortable you are relying on that history to predict future behavior is up to you. Because Telegram has this data, it may also be stolen by hackers or leaked by an internal employee. 

=> ↺ Ukraine Calls For Video Game Blockade Against Russia To Motivate Its Citizenry

• I’ve banged on for quite a while about how video games have long not gotten the recognition they deserve as a major and growing part of the cultural landscape throughout the world. While there is no doubt that there has been a shift in this as time has gone on, it’s still the case that a hefty percentage of the world, particularly older populations, simply don’t put video games on the same cultural footing as literature, movies, television, and music. Which is ultimately quite silly. Video games represent creative and cultural output and the number of people playing them, and the amount of time those people devote to them, has grown consistently throughout the past several decades.

=> ↺ After Putin

• Vladimir Putin is bound to lose his attempt to take over Ukraine, which is why I thought he wouldn’t do it. Eventual defeat will come for three reasons: the price of any conquest, the need for public support in Russia to ensure the morale of his troops, and the impossibility of long-term occupation.

=> ↺ Russian Police Have Arrested More Than 8,000 Antiwar Protesters in 8 Days

=> ↺ Russia’s Use of Cluster Bombs Should Spur a Global Recommitment to Banning Them

=> ↺ Ukraine Must Not Become World War Three

=> ↺ Russia’s Social Media Propaganda Campaign Is Backfiring, So It’s Banning Facebook In Russia

• Over the last five to six years, The NarrativeTM has been that Russia has built up such powerful propaganda and social media disinformation peddlers that it could effectively drive its own narrative and convince entire populations to go along with its preferred version of reality (i.e., not reality). There have always been reasons to question just how accurate a story that is, but it has been widely believed. That’s why it’s been kind of interesting to see how the narrative on the internet over the past few weeks of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine… has been pretty universally against Russia. Indeed, there’s at least some evidence that Russia is flabbergasted that its own social media propaganda efforts have been a complete and total flop.

=> ↺ Fears of Nuclear Disaster in Ukraine Bolster Push for Renewable Future

• While a fire at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has been extinguished—and the complex reportedly seized by invading Russian forces—overnight fears of a major disaster fueled fresh calls for rapidly building a cleaner, safer global energy system.

• “We are perched on the precipice of catastrophe.”

=> ↺ US Embassy in Kyiv Accuses Russia of ‘War Crime’ for Shelling Nuclear Power Plant

• The United States Embassy in Kyiv on Friday accused Russia of committing a “war crime” following its attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant overnight.

• “It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” the embassy tweeted, using the hashtag #TheHague.

=> ↺ Opinion | ‘Let Them Kill as Many as Possible’: The Roots of US Militarism in Russia and Around the World

• In April 1941, four years before he was to become President and eight months before the United States entered World War II, Senator Harry Truman of Missouri reacted to the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union: “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.” Truman was not called out as a cynic when he spoke these words from the floor of the Senate. On the contrary, when he died in 1972, Truman’s obituary in The New York Times cited this statement as establishing his “reputation for decisiveness and courage.” “This basic attitude,” gushed The Times, “prepared him to adopt from the start of his Presidency, a firm policy,” an attitude that prepared him to order the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with “no qualms.” Truman’s same basic “let them kill as many as possible” attitude also informed the postwar doctrine that bears his name, along with the establishment of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, both of which he is credited with founding.

=> ↺ Opinion | Mercy for Humanity Amid This Nuclear Threat

• As the Ukrainian people endure horrors that are all the worse for being absurdly unnecessary, it is difficult to avoid pondering the most horrific absurdity of all: if Mr. Putin is unhinged enough to launch a barbaric war, would he, in the same deluded spirit of grievance and paranoia, actually consider using nuclear weapons?

=> ↺ HRW Confirms Russia Dropped Cluster Bombs on Kharkiv

• Russian forces used cluster bombs during attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in what may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

• “Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

=> ↺ Opinion | What Is the Path for a Negotiated Peace in Ukraine?

• “Forget the cheese–let’s get out of the trap.” — Robert A. Lovett, U.S. Secretary of Defense 1951-53.

=> ↺ Grijalva Warns Against Fossil Fuel Lobby’s Drilling Push Amid Ukraine War

• U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva on Friday warned that days into Russia’s war on Ukraine, the U.S. fossil fuel industry has launched a misinformation campaign aimed at promoting even more oil and gas drilling as the key to ending the conflict and aiding Ukrainians.

• In an opinion piece at The Guardian, the Arizona Democrat pointed to a list of demands the American Petroleum Institute—the largest lobbying firm for the U.S. oil and gas sector—released just before Russian forces invaded Ukraine last week, including “Release permits for energy development on public lands” and “Accelerate energy infrastructure permitting.”

=> ↺ Opinion | 3 Ways to Promote Peace and Humanitarianism for People of Ukraine

• I am a humane educator, someone who teaches about the cruelties, destruction, and injustices we perpetrate on other humans, animals, and the environment and who helps people cultivate compassion and integrity and become solutionaries able and motivated to build humane, healthy, and just societal systems. It is in this capacity―rather than as an expert in geopolitics or Russian-Ukrainian history, which I am not―that I write about how each of us can be a force for good in the face of the invasion of Ukraine.

=> ↺ Roaming Charges: Hate and War, It’s the Currency

• • At some point, our oligarchs & their oligarchs are going to decide that sanctions on oligarchs are “counterproductive” and return to the tried-and-true sanctions on the poor, the sick, the old and the young. These sanctions will have no effect on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But they will make everyone feel better about themselves that they’ve finally done something. And they’d rather not know the consequences, thank you very much. But be assured that whatever the price–and whoever pays it–the cost will be worth it. Out of sight, out of mind.

• • It strikes me that we’ve entered a stage of history where there’s not one figure of international stature with clean hands who won’t be perceived as acting in bad faith to negotiate a peace settlement: no Mandela, no Tutu, no Hammarskjöld, no Pauling, no Ali, no Bertrand Russell.

=> ↺ Ukraine has Fought Heroically, But Putin will Not Let His ‘Special Military Operation’ Become a Fiasco

• The Russian statement said that it would target the Security Service of Ukraine building and a government information facility “in order to suppress information attacks against Russia” using high precision weapons – shortly before it attacked the capital’s main television tower.

• “We call,” the statement read, “on Ukrainian citizens attracted by Ukrainian nationalists to carry out provocations against Russia, as well as residents of Kyiv living near relay nodes [communications towers] to leave their homes.”

=> ↺ War’s End in Kyiv

• Neither am I under any illusions that the fighting in Ukraine will constitute another war that will be “over by Christmas”. Yes, there are occasionally short wars (the 1969 Soccer War between Honduras and El Salvador lasted 100 hours), but the war in Vietnam went on for more than thirty years, and the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan almost twenty.

• Wars that evolve into insurgencies, as Ukraine’s must, tend to last as long as ammunition supplies hold out.

=> ↺ Economic Collapse Comes to Russia

=> ↺ The Ukrainian Conflict and the Imperial World System

• “Putin must be punished,” the Americans and Europeans insist.  But the forms of punishment now being implemented – severe economic sanctions and military aid to Ukraine – are designed to prolong the military struggle and to cripple the Russian economy, apparently on the theory that Russia’s discontented masses and oligarchs will then replace Putin with a leader more to the West’s liking.  Pardon me, but this makes little sense.  Prolonging the conflict will kill more Ukrainians and Russians, inspire their compatriots and loved ones to seek revenge.  It may also bring the world close to nuclear war.  Moreover, making a whole people suffer usually unites them against their adversary rather than turning them against their leader.

• The array of punishments administered and proposed also indicate that many Westerners consider Putin analogous to Adolf Hitler and a return to the negotiating table the equivalent of Munich-style appeasement.  But this betrays a profound misunderstanding of what drives the conflict and who the conflicting parties really are.  Vladimir Putin is not an evil mastermind bent on world domination and the genocidal destruction of “inferior” races.  He is the brutal leader of a once great empire playing the imperial game in a world of competitive empires.  More brutal than Harry Truman in Korea, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, or George W. Bush in Iraq?  Obviously not.  Then why consider his bad character he primary cause of the struggle?

=> ↺ The Battle of Ukraine and the War It’s Part Of

• All-in

• Last week, I wrote that Russia was “on the offensive and impatient” and would “act very soon.” It did, but in a way that far exceeded my expectations. I thought Russia would make a direct military intervention to secure the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics (LDPR) it had newly recognized, and maybe help them to capture the large portion of their claimed territory still controlled by Ukrainian forces—a more offensive and riskier move that, I warned, would make it easier to create a political narrative detrimental to Russia. Unlikely, I thought, that Russia would engage in a military offensive west of Donbass, let alone aimed at Kiev.

=> ↺ Ukrainian American Journalist: Putin’s Unjust War Is Emboldening Ukraine’s Far-Right Movement

• We speak with Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin about the rise of the far right in Ukraine. Golinkin says Russian bombing of the sacred Jewish site of Babi Yar disproves Putin’s claims that the invasion is about “denazification,” and attacks on cities in eastern Ukraine show he does not care about Russian-speaking Ukrainians either. He also speaks about the neo-Nazi presence within his home country, saying, “Ukraine’s far right is the primary benefactor on the Ukraine side of this war because they now get to attract people from all over the world, and they get to be seen as on the frontlines of fighting for white civilization.” He adds the presence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine “does not give Russia any reason, any justification, to invade an inch of Ukrainian territory.”

=> ↺ Russian Environmentalist Speaks Out on Putin’s Attack on Antiwar Protesters & Independent Media

• As the Russian military escalates its invasion in Ukraine, Russian police are cracking down on antiwar protesters at home, arresting more than 8,000 over the past eight days. Meanwhile, Russia’s lower house of parliament has passed a new law to criminalize the distribution of what the state considers to be “false news” about military operations, and remaining independent news outlets in the country are shutting down under pressure from the authorities. We speak with Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair for the leading Russian environmental organization Ecodefense, who won the 2021 Right Livelihood Award — the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize” — for defending the environment and mobilizing grassroots opposition to the coal and nuclear industries in Russia. Slivyak describes Putin’s attempts to shut down independent media within Russia and the “pure propaganda” his regime is spreading on state-sponsored media to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

=> ↺ Russia’s Unprecedented Shelling of Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Raises Fears of Another Chernobyl

• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after Russian forces shelled and subsequently set on fire the largest nuclear power plant in Europe on Friday morning. The fire at the Zaporizhzhia plant burned for hours but reportedly did not spread to any of the plant’s six reactors before the Russians ultimately seized the site. Ukraine heavily relies on nuclear power, with 15 active nuclear power reactors across the country. Targeting any of these reactors — or even deactivated reactors at Chernobyl — could result in a catastrophic nuclear radiation leak that could make the surrounding region, and even most of Europe, uninhabitable. We host a roundtable discussion with Ukrainian energy expert Olexi Pasyuk in western Ukraine, Russian environmentalist and 2021 Right Livelihood Award Laureate Vladimir Slivyak and Greenpeace nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie, author of a new report on severe nuclear hazards at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine. “No state has been invaded with such a large nuclear power program,” says Burnie. “We’re in new territory here.” The report says the only solution is immediate end to war.

=> ↺ ‘I’ll be depressed, and I’ll cut costs’: Meduza readers on how Western sanctions — and Russia’s response measures — have changed their lives

• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in harsh sanctions from the West. The ruble exchange rate crashed, several Russian banks have been cut off from SWIFT, and the Central Bank’s foreign exchange reserves are blocked. We asked Meduza readers what effect sanctions — and Moscow’s response measures — have already had on their lives, and what they plan to do going forward. Here’s what they told us.

=> ↺ The war: day eight: Photos of the human toll of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine

• The war in Ukraine is already well into its ninth day. More than a million people have become refugees, according to the United Nations. Cities still under bombardment are approaching a humanitarian catastrophe. During the second round of Russia-Ukraine talks on March 3, the parties agreed to establish humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and the delivery of medicines and food. The following images are from the eighth day of the war.

=> ↺ We ain’t done yet: The Russian authorities are now blocking Meduza. We’re ready for this, but we need your help.

• On March 1, 2022 — what feels like a century ago — we sent a message to our newsletter subscribers, warning that the Russian authorities planned to block Meduza along with the last remnants of the country’s independent news media. That has now come to pass. Hours ago, we received confirmation that the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies, and Mass Communications (known more commonly as Roskomnadzor) is now requiring Internet service providers inside Russia to block access to Meduza’s website.

=> ↺ Putin’s last stand: How to lose a war simply by starting one

• How did this war with Ukraine even become a possibility? According to Meduza’s Ideas editor, Maxim Trudolyubov, the answer to this question can be found in the political alternate “reality” developed in Russia in recent years on the basis of lies, manipulation, and the production of fakes. This “reality” had seemed so crudely constructed that it was impossible to imagine anyone in charge (especially those who created it) to believe it seriously. As it turns out, however, somebody does believe it. His name is Vladimir Putin.

=> ↺ Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Outing the Iraq War White Washers

• Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has presented a particularly odious grouping, a good number of them neoconservatives, a chance to hand wash and dry before the idol of international law. Law breakers become defenders of oracular force, arguing for the territorial integrity of States and the sanctity of borders, and the importance of the UN Charter.

• Reference can be made to Hitler’s invasions during the Second World War with a revoltingly casual disposition, a comparison that seeks to eclipse the role played by other gangster powers indifferent to the rule and letter of international comity.

=> ↺ Ukraine: A Conflict Soaked in Contradictions and New Patterns in War and Media

• Even as we deplore the violence and the loss of life in Ukraine resulting from the Russian intervention (and the neofascist violence in the Donbas), it is valuable to step back and look at how the rest of the world may perceive this conflict, starting with the West’s ethnocentric interest in an attack whose participants and victims they believe they share aspects of identity with—whether related to culture, religion, or skin color.

• White Wars

=> ↺ Stop the War – on Livable Ecology

• You might think that statement refers to the war in Ukraine. That’s understandable: the Ukraine Crisis raises the specter of World War III more menacingly than any geopolitical conflict of the post-Cold War era.

• Here, however, I’m writing about the capitalist war on livable ecology – still the biggest issue of our or any time.

=> ↺ Climate Youth Fill the World’s Streets to #StandWithUkraine

• Young climate campaigners with Fridays for Future took to the streets across the globe Thursday to stand with the people of Ukraine—whose country was invaded last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin—and call for a world that prioritizes peace and freedom from fossil fuels for all.

• As Ukrainian forces and civilians fought Russian invaders who have been accused of war crimes, members of the youth-led movement—who generally hold school strikes on Fridays, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg—carried signs that said #StandWithUkraine and #NoMoreWars.

=> ↺ Ukraine Officials: Nuclear Plant on Fire After Russian Shelling

• This is a developing story… Check back for possible updates…

• Ukraine officials and news agencies Thursday night report that at least a section of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is on fire following shelling by Russian troops during an ongoing battle for control of the energy complex located in the eastern town of Enerhodar.

=> ↺ NATO Rejects Ukraine No-Fly Zone That Could Spark ‘Full-Fledged War in Europe’

• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that the 30-country alliance will not impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that such a step would draw NATO forces into direct conflict with Russia and potentially spark “a full-fledged war in Europe.”

• “We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous, with even more human suffering,” Stoltenberg said during a press conference following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

=> ↺ Peace Groups to Demand ‘Russian Troops Out’ of Ukraine at Weekend Rallies

• Anti-war protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly assault of Ukraine are set to continue this weekend in cities around the world.

• “Around the world people oppose this catastrophic war.”

=> ↺ Opinion | Putin’s War on Ukraine Could Spark a Nuclear Catastrophe

• Death and destruction have descended on Ukraine as Russia’s invasion continues into its second week. The invasion has killed thousands and created the largest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII, with over one million Ukrainians fleeing to Poland, Romania, Moldova and beyond. Russia’s invasion could trigger further catastrophes, including a meltdown of one of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors, or even the unimaginable, nuclear war.

=> ↺ Media Networks Suspend Reporting in Russia Over Censorship Law

• International media companies and journalists around the world on Friday sharply condemned a new Russian law that effectively criminalizes critical reporting of the war on Ukraine, with some outlets even suspending broadcasts or reporters’ work across Russia.

• “Russian authorities have moved quickly to establish total censorship and control over the free flow of information since Russia invaded Ukraine.”

=> ↺ Forever war in Ukraine or an end to the unipolar world?

=> ↺ How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia

=> ↺ Peers Urged to Sell Shares in Russian Fossil Fuel Companies

• Campaigners are calling on British peers to ditch their shares in Russian oil and gas as Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine stretches into a second week.

• Politicians in both Houses of the UK Parliament have been united in condemning Putin’s actions, which have created over a million refugees. Hundreds of civilians and thousands of soldiers on both sides are reported to have died in the conflict. 

=> ↺ Calling Russia’s Attack ‘Unprovoked’ Lets US Off the Hook

• Many governments and media figures are rightly condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. But in his first speech about the invasion, on February 24, US President Joe Biden also called the invasion “unprovoked.”

Environment

=> ↺ Stay Connected to Nature

=> ↺ “You Can’t Separate People From the Planet”

• As a child, Leah Thomas dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. When she arrived at Chapman University in 2013, her fascination with the animal world expanded to studying ecology and declaring a major in environmental science. But Thomas, now 27, was heartbroken to discover how often the environmental movement sidelined people of color. She writes about it in her new book, The Intersectional Environmentalist. This article originally appeared in Nexus Media News and was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

=> ↺ Opinion | Russia’s War Crime in Targeting Nuclear Plant Makes Clear the Urgency for Renewable Energy

• The Russian tank shelling of the massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the city of Energodar, which set fire to the top three stories of a training building behind the complex, raised alarms about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.

=> ↺ Opinion | IPCC Report Reveals How Inequality Makes Climate Change Impacts Worse—And What We Can Do About It

• Nearly half of the global population—between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people—lives in areas highly vulnerable to climate change. The brief window in which to limit how intense and frequent climate impacts such as stronger storms, droughts, flooding and sea-level rise become and to secure “a liveable and sustainable future for all” is rapidly narrowing.

=> ↺ Climate Breakdown

• The crowning blow of this heavy-hitting report is a chilling statement: “There is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages.”

• Moreover, the IPCC claims that even at current levels dangerous widespread disruptions threaten devastation of swathes of the natural world: “Many areas will become unlivable.”

=> ↺ Energy Transfer Continued Work After Telling Investors Mariner East Pipeline Was Completed

• On February 16, Energy Transfer announced in an earnings call that construction on its long-delayed Mariner East pipeline project, built to carry natural gas liquids across southern Pennsylvania, was “complete.”

• Nine days later, a truck arrived at the Tunbridge apartment complex in Middletown Township, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, carrying lengths of uninstalled pipeline, according to photographs, videos and witness accounts obtained by DeSmog. That truck arrived at a pipeline construction site already humming with activity, photos show, as workers prepared to weld those joints into place — despite Energy Transfer’s statements that Mariner East construction was already over.

=> ↺ How Storied Artist Mel Chin’s ‘Constant Revolution’ Is Tackling Humanity’s Environmental Challenges

• In 2018, NLE partnered with the Queens Museum and produced a citywide exhibition of Chin’s work, which helped me understand his activist streak, especially relating to the environment. Spanning four decades of his career, the sprawling exhibition was a testament to the sheer magnitude of Chin’s curiosity. As an artist, he is tough to pin down. Hence, the 2018 exhibition title “Mel Chin: All Over the Place,” which tapped into the artist’s myriad interests, with newly commissioned projects that explored water rights, New York’s maritime history, and sea level rise. And while he may have a “malleable and wide-ranging approach to [his] artistic practice,” being anchored to a particular “place” is something that informs much of his work; he responds to unique histories and characteristics.

• In the work “Flint Fit,” for example, Chin worked with residents of Flint, Michigan, and Detroit/New York City-based fashion designer Tracy Reese to pilot an innovative economic system that simultaneously addressed the city’s water crisis, plastic pollution, recycling, and labor problems. This “prototype for action” transformed empty water bottles into a woven fabric that was sewn into clothing, ultimately providing new jobs for members of St. Luke NEW Life Center, a Flint-based organization that provides life skills, education, and workplace training. The first “Flint Fit” collection was unveiled at a fashion event at the Queens Museum.

Energy

=> ↺ ‘Historic First’ as Hawaii Court OKs Lawsuit Against Big Oil

• Climate campaigners and local officials this week are celebrating a major series of victories in Hawaii state court rejecting Big Oil’s attempts to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the the City and County of Honolulu.

• “As climate costs for communities continue to soar, Big Oil companies must be held accountable to pay their fair share.”

=> ↺ The Unsustainable Frenzy for Cryptocurrency and NFTs

• Even the much-vaunted idea of decentralized power of crypto exchanges doesn’t really match the reality of crypto ownership—for example, 95 percent of Bitcoin is held by 2 percent of accounts; 80 percent of the NFT market is owned by 12 percent of accounts. This is a picture of centralized power with one telling characteristic: “Every member of Forbes’s 2021 crypto billionaires list is a man. A third of them attended Stanford or Harvard. Out of the 12 listed, only one isn’t white.”

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Protect This Place: Tallahassee’s Towering English Forest Faces Imminent Destruction

Overpopulation

=> ↺ India and the Future of the Planet

• Setting a goal for carbon neutrality and agreeing even to phase down coal were both steps forward for India on climate issues. But the country also absorbed criticism for setting a goal 20 years beyond the 2050 deadline set by negotiators under the Paris climate deal. For climate activists desperate to end the use of coal, the single largest source of carbon emissions, the watered-down language in the final agreement was a crushing disappointment.

• The 2070 date “is clearly inadequate,” observes Basav Sen, the Climate Justice Project director at the Institute for Policy Studies. “A target set so far in the future is a perfect excuse for policymakers not to do anything today.”

Finance

=> ↺ February Job Growth Strong as Private-Sector Hours Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels

=> ↺ Progressives Says Strong Jobs Report Shows Democratic Relief Packages Worked

• Economists and progressive lawmakers alike applauded the monthly jobs report released Friday, which showed hundreds of thousands of jobs added to the economy in February thanks to federal relief that “matched the scale” of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the past two years.

• “Let’s keep up this momentum by making historic investments into lowering the cost of child care, healthcare, housing, and so much more.”

=> ↺ Braxton Brewington on Student Loan Debt, Andy Marra on Trans Youth Rights

=> ↺ What MLB May Need To Do After It Stops Its Player Lockout Bullshit

• If you’re not a sports fan, or not an American, you may not be aware that there is currently an owner’s lockout occurring in Major League Baseball. We’ve talked a bit in the past about some of the bullshit MLB is pulling with all of this, namely its decision to strip out all references to current players from its website. But in those discussions we never really got into what this lockout is or why it’s occurring. Let me give you a quick primer.

=> ↺ Listen to Bernie Sanders and End the Bosses’ Baseball Lockout

• There is war, disease, and the prospect of a nuclear winter, and yet President Joe Biden still wasted an opportunity to raise his voice against the Major League Baseball lockout during Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Baseball ranks low on the list of the anxieties that have colonized our minds of late, but the situation cries out for some kind of intervention, because this sporting tragedy reflects so much about the grotesque inequalities that define this country. Baseball is “the national pastime,” and that pastime is being held hostage by 30 billionaires and their hand puppet Commissioner Rob Manfred. This is not the wrangling of “billionaires vs. millionaires,” a bosses’ narrative that much of the mainstream media has dutifully parroted, but a lockout—not a strike, a lockout: The wealthiest parasites in the sport have unilaterally shut down the game. This is so obviously a “bosses’ strike” that it has baseball insiders sounding like Che Guevara. ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote, “If you went and got the next 1,200 best players in the world, the product would suffer greatly. If you handed MLB teams over to any 30 competent businesspeople, the sport would not suffer. Actually, it might improve.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Inside Bernie’s Mind

• Now into Biden’s second year, we are at a moment where not a single one of Bernie’s policy proposals—from student debt cancelation to expansion of Medicare—came remotely close to fulfillment. Bernie couldn’t even get his beloved hearing, vision, and dental coverage for Medicare recipients through, despite being the Senate Budget Committee chairman! On the occasion of Biden’s predictably jingoistic and delusional SOTU address, in the wake of the Ukrainian “crisis” that Bernie’s party did everything to instigate and inflame, we are back to less than square one, because in addition to the absence of a single progressive policy reform we are also saddled with a rejuvenated empire initiating new exploits wherever it can with whatever it’s got left.

• Who, exactly, is this man, to whom so many gave so much of their time and money? If, two years ago, a psychologist or novelist or documentary filmmaker were to have followed him around, what would he or she have discovered about the nature of this man’s charisma and the purposes to which it was put? More importantly, what does this man’s psyche tell us about those of his followers who were not from the working class and who have chosen to go on an extended brunch break ever since the bogeyman in the White House was de-platformed to their satisfaction?

=> ↺ How Propaganda Shapes the Past, Present and Future

• At the present moment in the United States, this is exemplified by popular responses to two crises. The first involves a majority of U.S. states that are seeking to use political power to control how their past is officially taught and interpreted. This is being done with the hope of forging a unified view among future citizenry—one that returns to perceptions of U.S history, race and gender characteristic of a time before the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. This mindset accepts segregation and discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation and the like as reflections of acceptable traditional values.

• The second crisis involves the revival of Cold War perceptions to shape the present and future U.S. public views concerning Russia and Ukraine. Here, the proffered story is of a bipolar world—one side, led by the United States, is allegedly a “free world” and the other side, led by Russia, is a hostile, dictatorial and expansionist world. These perceptions are characteristic of the time prior to 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would seem this past point of view, like the domestic mindset mentioned above, never went away but only retreated. In this way, past manipulated mindsets reemerge into the present when circumstances are right, and threaten to ideologically skew the future.

=> ↺ Neoliberalism Is Normalizing Extreme-Right Discourse in the UK

=> ↺ The 2022 South Korean Presidential Election: WIll Koreans Choose Pragmatism or Saber-Rattling?

• While the two candidates are nearly neck and neck in South Korea’s highly polarized electoral environment, Lee’s mastery of political affairs has struck an obvious contrast with Yoon’s lack of knowledge and experience. As a result, the majority consensus among voters is that Lee would be better able to handle the challenges facing the country, with polls consistently showing that voters trust Lee over Yoon on issues such as international relations and security policy.  According to the latest poll, 43 percent say that Lee is more capable in the sphere of diplomatic and security policy, while only 31 percent favor Yoon in this category. Regardless of which side wins the election, however, Washington’s redoubled emphasis on China-North Korea containment will severely constrain the foreign policy of any new South Korean administration.

• First, Korea’s geographic location makes it a lynchpin of Washington’s anti-China campaign. The US perceives South Korea as a “force multiplier” whose military assets and personnel will be freely used by the US to supplement its military needs anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region–even beyond the Korean Peninsula. According to Tim Beal, as long as its hegemonic rivalry with China persists, the US will never permit peace in Korea, thereby forcing South Korea to the frontline of a new US-led regional containment coalition.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Court Ignores That Texas Social Media Censorship Law Was Blocked As Unconstitutional: Orders Meta To Reinstate Account

• Remember how Texas passed a social media content moderation law which was then blocked as unconstitutional by a federal court? Apparently people in Texas remember the passing of the law, but not the fact that it was blocked. Incredibly, this includes a judge as well.

=> ↺ Russia Steps Up Censorship With Law Against ‘False Information’

• The Russian Parliament passed a law on Friday punishing the spreading of “false information” about Russia’s armed forces with as much as 15 years in prison, the latest move by the Kremlin to criminalize any political opposition and independent news reporting during its war against Ukraine.

• The law will take effect as soon as Saturday, and could make a criminal offense of simply calling the war a “war” — the Kremlin says it is a “special military operation” — on social media or in a news article or broadcast.

=> ↺ Russia Passes New Censorship Law Over Ukraine War

• Russia’s national parliament, the Duma, passed a new law Friday that will make it a criminal act to call the war in Ukraine a war.

• The move prompted the BBC to immediately suspend the work of its journalists in the country over fears for their safety.

=> ↺ Fear of martial law sparks Russian exodus

• Thousands of Russians are rushing to flee the country ahead of this weekend, as rumors swirl that Vladimir Putin could soon declare martial law, close the borders and crack down even harder on domestic dissent.

=> ↺ Russian lawmakers approve prison for ‘fake’ war reports

• Russians could face prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading information that goes against the Russian government’s position on the war in Ukraine, a move that comes as authorities block access to foreign media outlets.

• The Russian parliament voted unanimously Friday to approve a draft law criminalizing the intentional spreading of what Russia deems to be “fake” reports.

• Russian authorities have repeatedly decried reports of Russian military setbacks or civilian deaths in Ukraine as “fake” reports. State media outlets refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a “war” or “invasion.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Ohio Supreme Court Rolls Back Awful Rulings, Says Cop Must Use His Real Name If He Wants To Keep His Defamation Suit Going

• All the way back in August 2020, a Cincinnati (OH) police officer decided to sue some fellow citizens for defamation. The cop went after the authors of social media posts claiming the officer flashed a “white supremacist sign” during a city council meeting discussing concerns raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. These posts also opined that the officer was a racist and that his Facebook profile was filled with bigoted posts and anti-BLM content.

=> ↺ What’s the problem with the EU regulation on the release of electronic evidence?

• The EU Parliament has accommodated the member states on crucial points, but now demands special attention to fundamental rights. The controversial question is how a state in which a company is based can object to an order.

=> ↺ Court Limits Biden’s Use of Covid Policy to Expel ‘Families Fleeing Danger’

• Human rights advocates on Friday celebrated a key victory in federal court while also pressuring U.S. President Joe Biden to fully end what one critic called a “sham public health order” to expel immigrants seeking safety.

• “Thousands of families at the border can breathe a momentary sigh of relief.”

=> ↺ Precedents of Permissibility

• Some legal experts have evoked the idea of pre-emptive self-defence, which, however, does not exist in international law, and is as invalid here as it was when George W. Bush invoked it to justify his war of aggression on Iraq 2003.  Some observers have suggested a justification based on the concept of vital interests of the state, which Israel invokes from time to time in an attempt to justify its crimes against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and others.  Only apologists would buy these arguments that lack any legitimacy in international law – or natural law.

• Our priority today must be to work for an immediate cease fire, followed by urgent humanitarian assistance and an international conference that would attempt to reach a compromise that would be conducive to durable peace in the region.  A compromise means that there must be give and take.  The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was resolved through a pragmatic quid pro quo, whereby the Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba, and the United States removed its missiles from Turkey.

=> ↺ How One Cooperative Is Trying to Develop an Alternative Economy in Oakland

• In the United States, there are about 500 worker cooperatives or businesses that are owned and operated by the employees, like REI and Alvarado Street Bakery. A recent study shows that U.S. counties with a higher number of cooperative businesses were more resilient during the last economic crisis in 2008, and recovered quicker in the aftermath.

• For those in communities that have endured economic hardships decades before the pandemic or the Great Recession, the cooperative business model has already entered the mainstream.

=> ↺ New York Times Tech Workers Win Union Vote by a Landslide

=> ↺ Biden Offers Protected Status for Ukrainians, Shielding Them From Deportation

=> ↺ Curing the Pandemic of Gendered Violence

• And the disease is pretty awful, as documented in Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie.  This new book lays out the systemic oppression and abuse of minority women and children not only by the police and courts, but by the foster care system and a so-called child protection bureaucracy that criminalizes, inter alia, mothers sleeping in the same bed as their infants! Can you imagine any government agency prosecuting a white middle-class mother for nursing her newborn in bed – or using such a routine, beneficial practice as an excuse to steal the infant from its family? Such a bureaucracy is in fact an icy sarcophagus for maternal love. So it’s no surprise that for the authors of this new book, everything – police, courts, prison, child “protection” bureaucracy – has got to go. And they make their case convincingly.

• Gendered violence is not some marginal annoyance. It is widespread –but regarded slightingly in the wider culture because its victims usually are seen as marginal. It’s on a par with homelessness, a problem that’s always there and lacks an easy fix. The fact that domestic abuse has roots in a social chasm so deep and dark that contemplating it is dizzying consigns the problem to the political wilderness. No politico aims to restructure society. Besides, who would benefit? It’s not as if domestic abuse victims or homeless people are senators after all. But revolutionaries are different. And when they say let’s smash the prison industrial complex, including those parts of it that supposedly aid battered women, they mean it.

=> ↺ Carbon Monoxide Killed a Mother and Daughter. A Firefighter Was Reprimanded After a Delayed 911 Response.

• The Houston Fire Department reprimanded a firefighter for misconduct after an investigation into a delayed 911 response to a case in which a mother and daughter died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

• The department opened the investigation in July, following reporting from ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and NBC News, which revealed that first responders initially decided not to enter a Houston family’s home during the massive winter storm that hit Texas in February 2021, a decision that resulted in a couple and their two children being exposed to the lethal gas for an additional three hours.

=> ↺ The Capitalist Roots of U.S. Racial Oppression

• What follows is an attempt to highlight the contribution of capitalism to racial oppression in the United States.

• W.E.B. DuBois describes Europeans “scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of Africa to the Good Hope of Gain until for the first time a real commerce was born […] That sinister traffic, on which the British Empire and the American Republic were largely built cost black Africa no less than 100,000,000 souls, the wreckage of its political and social life, and left the continent in precisely that state of helplessness which invites aggression and exploitation.” (“The African Roots of War,” 1915)

=> ↺ No Human is Alien to Us

• One might accurately say that this is merely performative activism that has little to no impact on the real conditions of people suffering from war. And that is correct. But there is more to this than simple virtue signaling.

• In the past few weeks, reporters from various networks have been lamenting the war in Ukraine as different because it is supposedly a “civilized” country. The odious message here is clear: war is not the normal state for “white” countries. But the implication is even more odious: Ukrainians deserve more of our sympathy than Afghans, Palestinians, Rohingya, Somalians, Syrians, etc.

=> ↺ War Torn: Continental Drifters and the Nationless Nation

• More recently, those itinerant continents were carved up by human beings into countries. A couple — China and India — are now home to more than a billion people each. But even modest-sized nations can be massive in their own right. Spain and Canada, neighbors in Pangea hundreds of millions of years ago, now have populations of almost 47 million and nearly 38 million, respectively, making them the 30th and 39th most populous countries on this planet. But together, they’re no larger than a nation-less nation, a state of the stateless that exists only as a state of mind. I’m talking about the victims of conflict now adrift on the margins of our world.

• The number of people forcibly displaced by war, persecution, general violence, or human-rights violations last year swelled to a staggering 84 million, according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. If they formed their own country, it would be the 17th largest in the world, slightly bigger than Iran or Germany.  Add in those driven across borders by economic desperation and the number balloons past one billion, placing it among the three largest nations on Earth.

=> ↺ Whoopi Goldberg, Race, and the Banning of Maus

• Goldberg’s statement set off a national controversy about race and the Jews and got Goldberg suspended from The View for two weeks. But what actually happened in Tennessee is not in sum how The View portrayed it nor was the history of race and the place of the Jews in that history aired in the aftermath of Goldberg’s comments. In this essay, I review both.

• A report on the banning by Jenny Gross in the The New York Times of Jan, 27, 2022 notes:

=> ↺ Schroedinger’s Evidence

• You be the judge.

=> ↺ Is There a Place for Patriotism on the Left?

• There are two good reasons why every American progressive should be a patriot. One is emotional, the other practical—and they reinforce one another.1

=> ↺ The Price of Unpaid Activism

• McKenna Dunbar typically starts her day at 5:30 am. While many of her classmates are still asleep, the University of Richmond junior has begun remote work for her full-time job as a community engagement coordinator at an environmental advocacy organization, the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. By 8:45 am, she has logged off and is heading to four hours’ worth of back-to-back classes, followed by a quick lunch break. Then she drives to the Sierra Club office in downtown Richmond to work in person until 7:30 pm.

=> ↺ Yes, Black Voters Feel Let Down by Biden

• Joe Biden won the Democratic primary thanks to Black voters in diverse states who repeatedly turned to him over the other contenders for the nomination. He won the presidency thanks in part to the overwhelming support he received from Black voters. Then his party was handed control of the Senate thanks to the unprecedented registration and turnout of Black voters in Georgia.

=> ↺ What are Hungarian teachers demanding and why are they practising civil disobedience?

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ It’s 2022 And Bullshit Cable TV Fees Are Somehow Still A Thing

• For years we’ve talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills — a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate — then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then falsely claim they haven’t raised rates.

=> ↺ NTIA Doles Out Another $277 Million In Broadband Grants

• Thanks to the one-two punch of the infrastructure bill and COVID relief, there’s more money sloshing around in the U.S. broadband ecosystem than perhaps any time in history. $46 billion (with a b) is slated to be distributed by the government over the next year, much of it overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).The NTIA this week announced it would be issuing an additional $1 million to Tribal leaders for broadband as well as $277 million in new grants to select communities around the U.S.:

=> ↺ As Biden Looks To Ban Targeted Ads, Activists Look To Use Them To Get News To The Russian People

• At Tuesday’s State of the Union address, one of President Joe Biden’s pledges regarding the internet, was that he wanted to ban targeted advertising. Lots of people cheered this on, because lots of people absolutely loathe targeted advertising — which is sometimes, misleadingly, referred to as “surveillance capitalism.” My own opinion on this is that basically all of it is overrated. I don’t think that targeted advertising even works that well, and think we’d be better off if companies didn’t rely so heavily on it — but also think that even if we got rid of it, people would still be mad over something else these companies did. Also, part of the reason why people hate targeted advertising so much is because it’s just not that good. If it actually worked, I’m not so sure people would be so mad about it.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ US Praised for Plan to Transfer Covid Tech to WHO

• Public health advocates welcomed the Biden administration’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. will share certain medical technologies used to produce Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines with the World Health Organization as part of an effort to combat the global pandemic that continues to kill thousands of people each week.

• “The immediate medical value of Thursday’s announcement will depend on which NIH technologies are licensed.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ Bandcamp bought

• I saw the news that Bandcamp has been bought my Epic Games. I know little about them, but my gamer friends burn with loathing for them which doesn’t bode well. I do know they’re dabbling in NFTs, which illustrates they have no interest in independent creators, instead opting into the redundant, planet-burning grift.

=> ↺ Epic Games is acquiring music platform Bandcamp

• pic Games is acquiring independent music storefront Bandcamp. The companies announced the news today, saying that Bandcamp would “keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community” but use Epic’s resources to expand internationally and continue adding new features.

• An Epic blog post says Bandcamp will play “an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.” An announcement from Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond, meanwhile, emphasized that the core deal for artists won’t change in the near future. “The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model,” Diamond wrote. “You’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site.”

=> ↺ What Bandcamp’s Acquisition by Epic Games Means for Music Fans and Artists

• Yesterday’s news that Epic Games bought Bandcamp for an undisclosed sum sent shockwaves through both the gaming and music industries, with the companies’ official statements raising more questions than answers. To begin to consider how Epic will steer Bandcamp moving forward, it’s important to give the players involved a close look.

=> ↺ Gaming Giant Behind Fortnite Buys Bandcamp, an Indie Music Haven

• On Bandcamp, on the other hand, artists can upload their own work and set the pricing rules for downloads of their own work — pay-what-you-wish pricing is common. During the pandemic, Bandcamp has waived its fees once a month on “Bandcamp Fridays,” bringing the company waves of goodwill. Even more surprising, Bandcamp says it has been profitable since 2012. (Last year, Spotify had $10.7 billion in revenue and lost about $276 million, according to company reports.)

• Epic Games, which is based in Cary, N.C., and is privately owned, said little about its plans for music, and a company spokeswoman declined to answer further questions about the deal. But Epic’s statement on Wednesday indicated that it was interested in Bandcamp as a direct-to-consumer marketplace. “Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist-friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money,” the company wrote.

=> ↺ Epic Games Acquires Bandcamp as ‘Fortnite’ Maker Expands Into Music

• Under Epic Games’ ownership, Bandcamp will operate as a standalone marketplace and music community, and it will continue to be led by CEO and co-founder Ethan Diamond.

=> ↺ What does Bandcamp’s sale to Epic Games mean for independent music?

• Since the announcement on Wednesday that online music distributor Bandcamp, a central hub for independent artists and labels selling digital and physical media, has been sold to Epic Games, the gaming giant responsible for Fortnite, Gears of War and the Infinity Blaze series, musicians and fans have been expressing concern that their beloved platform is on its way to becoming another victim of multinational consolidation.

• “Honestly, this sucks. half the money i make off music comes from bandcamp, and even if things are fine for the next few months, this can only go in worse directions,” wrote singer Mel Stone in one widely quoted tweet.

• The sale was announced on social media by Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond, who wrote that the company would operate as a stand-alone entity within Epic’s ecosystem. Diamond, who did not disclose a sale price, will continue in his role.

=> ↺ BitTorrent is Still the King of Upstream Internet Traffic, But for How Long?

• The latest Internet traffic report from bandwidth management company Sandvine shows that BitTorrent still accounts for the largest share of global upstream Internet traffic. There are quite a few regional differences though. At the same time, BitTorrent’s leading position is threatened by Google and regular HTTP traffic.

=> ↺ Hollywood & Netflix Obtain High Court Orders to Block Dozens of Pirate Sites

• The major Hollywood studios and Netflix, which together form the MPA, have obtained permission from the High Court in London to block dozens of additional pirate sites. The long list includes torrent sites TorrentGalaxy, Zooqle, TorrentLeech, MagnetDL and GloTorrents, plus a selection of unblocking portals and release blogs/DDL sites.

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