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● 12.16.22

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● Links 16/12/2022: Much About Raspberry Pi and Steam Deck

Posted in News Roundup at 10:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ PineTab2 powered by Rockchip RK3566 SoC

• Pine64 revealed today some details about the successor of the original PineTab released in 2020. The PineTab2 is featured in a metal chassis powered by a 2.0GHz Rockchip RK3566 SoC in addition to a detachable keyboard, dual cameras and other peripherals.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Updated Linux Kernel 6.1 Makes Rust the Greatest Programming Language

=> ↺ FOSS Weekly #22.47: Kernel 6.1, Xfce 4.18, ArchBang and More Linux Stuff

• The holiday season is about to begin. Several distributions and open source projects have released their final version of the year 2022. A few remaining ones will do it around Christmas before going for the year-end holidays.

Applications

=> ↺ Linux Candy: ctree – Christmas tree on your terminal

• Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open-source software in this series.

• As we’re fast approaching Christmas, it seems only appropriate to start decorating the desktop. ctree offers a Christmas tree right on your terminal.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Get started with Raspberry Pi in The MagPi magazine issue #125

• You’ll get solidly to grips with Raspberry Pi using our gigantic starter guide this month. Discover the strengths of each Raspberry Pi computer and all the official accessories. Newcomers can use our QuickStart guide to setting up Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi OS; experiment with Python code and basic electronics; Linux and the Command Line. We’ve got everything you need for your Raspberry Pi journey.

=> ↺ How to Add Linux Host to Nagios Monitoring Server Using NRPE Plugin

• In the first part of the Nagios series article, we’ve explained in detail how to install and configure the latest version of Nagios Core and Nagios Plugins in RHEL-based distributions such as CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and Fedora.

• In this article, we will show you how to add a Remote Linux machine and its services to the Nagios Core Monitoring host using NRPE (Nagios Remote Plugin Executor) agent.

=> ↺ What is TTY and PTY in Linux?

• If you have been using Linux for a while, then you have definitely heard the terms TTY (and PTY), but what are they, how do they affect the Linux user, and their sweet little history will be covered in this article.

=> ↺ How to Switch Between TTY Screens Using the Chvt Command in Linux

• This article requires knowledge of TTY in Linux. If you are unfamiliar with this term, check out our recent article on TTY and PTY in Linux, then come back to continue this article.

=> ↺ Introduction to policy as code with automation | Enable Sysadmin

=> ↺ Launch your own micro cloud with one command | Ubuntu

• If you are looking for a small-scale cloud deployment suitable for the edge, chances are you came across Canonical’s Micro cloud solution. These are small-footprint clusters of compute nodes with distributed storage and secure networking, optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. We are happy to announce that with the help of snaps and some clever engineering, we have significantly simplified the deployment process and now you can deploy your own micro cloud with a single command in just a few minutes. We invite users to test it out and give feedback. Read on for more details or skip to the video to see it in action.

=> ↺ Out-Tridging Tridge

• Most servers don’t change a great deal on a day to day basis, so transferring just the differences is a very smart way to perform nightly incremental backups. You just copy yesterday’s image and update the small parts that have changed, and rsync is the perfect tool for this.

• A newer development in our backups is use of the btrfs filesystem, which we talked about a little earlier this year. One of btrfs’ killer features is copy-on-write snapshots, which effectively give you copies for free and only stores the changes when you modify data. In normal usage, rsync makes a new copy of the file with the changes applied, but this defeats btrfs’ copy-on-write benefits. To make this right, we use the

• –inplace

• option, which tells rsync to write directly to the original file, letting btrfs work its magic.

Games

=> ↺ Valve just gave away another bunch of Steam Decks so check your email

• During The Game Awards 2022, Valve were giving away a Steam Deck every minute and it seems they loved throwing hardware at people so much they just did it again.

=> ↺ Immortals Fenyx Rising now on Steam but quite messy on Steam Deck

• Immortals Fenyx Rising is another from Ubisoft as they continue putting their games back on Steam, and sadly this release seems a bit messy on Steam Deck.

=> ↺ Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translator VKD3D-Proton version 2.8 out now

• Valve and their open source contractors sure are a busy bunch. VKD3D-Proton, which translates Direct3D 12 to Vulkan version 2.8 is out now.

=> ↺ Valve hit a home run with the first year of Steam Deck

• What an absolutely exceptional first year Valve had with the Steam Deck, and it continues to be my main way to play games now. From playing lots of indie games, to plenty of AA / AAA that work surprisingly well on it even right at release, the Steam Deck has opened up PC gaming to many new ways to play.

=> ↺ Proton Hotfix from Valve gets The Witcher 3 next-gen DX12 working on Steam Deck

• Well, that certainly didn’t take long did it? Valve have already put up an update to Proton Hotfix, that works around the crashing issue in DirectX 12 in The Witcher 3 next-gen on Steam Deck.

=> ↺ We may get a Steam Controller 2, plus fun updates coming to Steam Deck

• The Verge managed to speak to a couple of developers at Valve on the Steam Deck, and while most of it was already known and largely covered here on GOL already (go through our Steam Deck tag) there’s a couple of interesting bits to pick out. ICYMI: see my end of year Steam Deck article.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ 5 reasons to love Linux GNOME Files

• The GNOME desktop is a common default desktop for most Linux distributions and, as with most operating systems, you manage your data on GNOME with software called a file manager. GNOME promotes a simple and clear naming scheme for its applications, and so its file manager is called, simply, Files. Its intuitive interface is simple enough that you forget what operating system you’re using altogether. You’re just using a computer, managing files in the most obvious way. GNOME Files is a shining example of thoughtful, human-centric design, and it’s an integral part of modern computing. These are my top five favorite things about GNOME Files, and why I love using it.

=> ↺ Better Late Than Never! GNOME’s File Picker Adds Thumbnail View After 18 Years

• Nowadays, the user interface of a program is extremely important; even the simplest of interactions can make or break the user’s experience. The GNOME file picker lacked a proper thumbnail preview for viewing files, instead relying on a plain list view. This may have been unintuitive for many. The lack of this feature was also the topic of many memes and debates over the years. But now, finally, after 18 long years since the original feature request was put out, GNOME is set to receive support for a proper thumbnail view. Let’s look at this upcoming change to GNOME’s file picker.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Remi Collet: PHP version 8.1.14RC1 and 8.2.1RC1

• Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS / Alma / Rocky and other clones) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

=> ↺ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 50 2022

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat.

• We provide you both infographic and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

=> ↺ 10 articles IT hiring managers must read before 2022 ends

• Along with other challenges, The Great Resignation has demanded that IT hiring managers be on top of their game. We’ve published a ton of advice for hiring and retaining IT talent this year. Check out our top 10 articles from 2022 and brush up on the in-demand jobs, skills to build a strong team, and advice for retaining high-performing talent.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian vs. Arch Linux: Which is Better for You?

• Debian and Arch Linux are two of the most popular open source Linux distributions available. They offer users a wide range of advantages, but each is better suited for different types of users. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Debian vs. Arch Linux to help you decide which is right.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ The Right Lubricant

• Your choice depends on a large degree on your willingness to take a risk. On safety critical or mission critical applications, I’d recommend Stabilant 22. For data bearing machines, I’d recommend Stabilant 22, ProGold G100, or else tuner spray. All three are made for electronics. Perhaps in the future you’ll find out for sure that another lubricant does an excellent job on connectors, but you’ll need to use it and watch the machine’s performance for several years.

• The place to experiment with other lubricants is on less important machines — experimental machines and the like. That’s where you’ll use lubricants like transmission oil, gun oil, white grease, or dialectric grease.

• That being said, I’m currently using Break-Free CLP on my entire fleet of computers, with excellent results so far.

• The following is a list of lubricants I’ve tried or heard of, and my observations: [...]

=> ↺ Supporting KiCad open source design automation software

• Today I am pleased to announce that Raspberry Pi Ltd is helping KiCad with their end-of-year funding drive by matching donations made on KiCad’s website up to $5000.

• KiCad is a free, open source suite of CAD tools for schematic capture and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. It allows you to draw your electronic circuits in schematic form, using graphically represented components and wires, and then transfer this data into a PCB editor which is used to place the components and draw the copper tracks and vias that connect them. The tools know what is connected to what, and also what design rules must be followed (such as what is the smallest width of copper track you can use), and they therefore help the designer make sure that the design is manufacturable. Once a design is completed, the tool will spit out data that a PCB manufacturer can use to make a physical PCB.

=> ↺ How to build a Raspberry Pi cluster

• Why would you build a physical cluster? Today you can go to Amazon, or Digital Ocean, or any of the other cloud providers, and spin up a virtual machine in seconds. But the cloud is just someone else’s computers: a Raspberry Pi cluster is a low-cost, versatile system you can use for all kinds of clustered-computing related technologies, and you have total control over the machines that constitute it. Building something from the ground up can teach you lessons you can’t learn elsewhere.

=> ↺ Pico W IoT with Anvil: Mood lamp | HackSpace #62

• With built-in wireless connectivity, Pico W is ideal for creating Internet of Things (IoT) projects. To make it even simpler, Anvil has released a Pico W IoT toolkit to enable you to connect easily, and securely, to web apps you create on the Anvil platform. There’s a drag-and-drop web UI builder, built-in database, user authentication, email integration, HTTP APIs, and more – and it all talks to your Pico W.

• By using Anvil’s special UF2 firmware image, you can code programs on Pico W in MicroPython as normal, with a few extra lines to connect to Anvil, then create a web app on the Anvil site which can send and receive data to/from your Pico W program. In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to control the colour of an RGB LED using sliders in an Anvil web app.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Google enables Matter across Nest Home and Android devices – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Google spotted beta testing state ID cards in Android Wallet in Maryland – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ How Android phones are making learning easier in schools

=> ↺ 10 Android tips you shouldn’t miss from 2022 | Computerworld

=> ↺ Realme V23i Android phone unveiled – Geeky Gadgets

=> ↺ Spotify is catching up to Android 13’s redesigned media player

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ A new generation of tools for open source vulnerability management

• Product security incident response teams (PSIRTs) are teams of security professionals that work diligently behind the scenes to protect software products and services of companies. A PSIRT is a different breed than a computer security incident response team (CSIRT), those that tend to be called Information Security. The difference is simple but stark: a CSIRT focuses on responding to incidents that affect a company’s infrastructure, data or users. A PSIRT focuses on responding to incidents that affect products a company builds, the most common being the discovery of a vulnerability or security defect, and subsequent actions to manage or remediate.

Education

=> ↺ FSFE holds 2nd edition of Legal Education Day at the SFSCon 2022 – FSFE

• The 2nd Legal Education Day (LED), organized by the FSFE, took place in Bolzano to help Free Software developers understand legal topics on a basic level, so that they can avoid common pitfalls, allowing their software projects to reach full potential. The LED track featured sessions on the basics of copyright law, licenses, and other legal topics.

=> ↺ SpinQ quantum computers target the education market – CNX Software

• Quantum computing promise a leap in the performance of applications relying upon parallelism using the properties of quantum physics like superposition, interference, and entanglement to perform computation instead of flipping “0” and “1” like traditional transistors. It will be used in scientific simulations, cryptography, machine learning, computational biology, and more.

• So far, I had seen massive quantum computers in research labs, but companies like Intel and IBM are working on providing quantum processors with hundreds and thousands of qubits that should eventually be found in supercomputers. It’s unclear to me whether we’ll ever see “quantum accelerators” in embedded processors, and in any case, it would be many years away. But if you are interested in better understanding the technology and playing around with quantum computing, SpinQ is selling 2-qubit and 3-qubit quantum computers for the education market: Gemini Mini, Gemini, and Triangulum.

Leftovers

=> ↺ 35 Years of the Last Emperor

• The Bertolucci of 1900—where the liberated peasants of Emilia dance beneath a great red banner, and the director seems to be tracing his own radical progress—has moved on, outliving so much hope and disappointment. -David Thomson

• Opening with Thomson’s 2008 essay, originally published with the Criterion Collection edition of the picture, seems especially appropriate given our political moment. With the ascendancy of China and the reactivation of Cold War antagonism as a result, we have seen a vigorous debate, oftentimes in Counterpunch, about the nature of their governance, their aims on the world stage, and the “meaning” of political developments like the seemingly-endless tenure of President Xi.

=> ↺ Can Contemporary Art Displays Outside of the Art Museum Matter?

• There is a real desire for these many otherwise diverse institutions to expand temporarily or permanently outside of the museum walls. Because a great deal of present day art makes political statements, it’s desired that these works be set in a public space in order to reach the larger public. And so, just now when I published my review of the important local survey exhibition, the 58th Carnegie International “Is it morning for you yet?,” I realized that I had missed something. It include some drawings and works on paper by James “Yaya” Hough which I had seen in the museum, and also his painted mural A Gift to the Hill District (2021-22) on a billboard outside the Carnegie. Just a couple of miles from the museum, it is installed opposite a vacant lot in an impoverished Black neighborhood. That site is close to the childhood home of the famous Pittsburgh playwright, August Wilson, whom the poster quotes. A Gift, which is a lively painting, is different from most of the art in the museum. As its title says, it is a visually straightforward celebration of the local life.

• As the website of the Carnegie explains, Wool’s statement “in the painting is lifted from Greil Marcus’ social commentary, Lipstick Traces, and is a definition of nihilism as quoted by situationist Raoul Vaneigem: The show is over.” This good art world painting was not a successful public work, for its clever comment on the commonplace 1980s art world belief that the history of painting had ended hardly meant anything to the men (or woman) on the street. If you have not read the Guy Debord’s situationists, the meaning of this statement will elude you. By contrast, Hough’s quotation of Wilson, “Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone’s disbelief” speaks in a straightforward positive way to the Black community. As the artist, who grew up nearby says: “I want people to really start believing in this community, I want people to start engaging in this community, and I want people to start sharing, you know, themselves.” For art from the museum to be effective in a public space it needs to speak to the larger audience. Most museum art does not aspire to achieve that goal; A Gift would look out of place installed in the Carnegie’s galleries.

=> ↺ Multiple Breadbasket Failures as Radicals Stop Private Jets

• This article explores the impact of “multiple breadbasket failures” as defined by UN research. As well as a discussion of angry radicals that stop private jets, thus challenging in direct fashion a source at the pinnacle of climate issues, discussed in the final 7 paragraphs.

• But first: (1) What will stop global warming? (2) Will global warming get worse even as countries go to net zero by 2050, which will continue adding CO2 every year for the next 27 years? (3) Therefore, does net zero by 2050 imply loss of commercial waterways like the Danube and loss of major water reservoirs like Lake Mead, both of which nearly failed in 2022? (4) Is net zero by 2050 a ruse?

=> ↺ Dylan: An Old Box of Basement Tapes

• Anyway, I took the plunge. I laid down the hard e-cash. I downloaded the PDF from Kobo. Then, as it was my kid’s birthday, I ordered the hard copy. Then I noticed that there was an accompanying audiobook that you could purchase, if you want to hear a galaxy of stars–Jeff Bridges (Big Lebowski), Steve Buscemi (Happy Gilmore), John Goodman (O Brother Where Art Thou!), Helen Mirren (Caligula), Rita Moreno (Carnal Knowledge), Sissy Spacek (Carrie)–read chapters from Philosophy, so I bought that, too. So the total splash out for this kit was close to $AUD 150. I almost upped the ante and purchased some of that 12-year-old whiskey from Dylan’s Heaven’s Door–the distillery he opened up a few years ago, presumably with his Nobel Prize money.  Based in Tennessee, where still waters run deep. Woulda been a nice set of drops to read or listen to Dylan by. It’s good stuff, and the critical conclusions drawn on the wall aren’t half wrong:

• Right?  But that would have set me back another set of C-notes, what with international shipping included. So, I didn’t cave on that impulse. (Maybe at Christmas, I winked to myself.)

=> ↺ Retrotechtacular: A 1960s Look At The 21st Century Home

• If you only watch the first 60 seconds of 1967’s “At Home, 2001,” you’ll be forgiven for thinking that the film is riddled with missed predictions. And to be sure, the cold open is rife with them, from disposable paper furniture to seashell-shaped houses that look like they’re extruded from concrete. Really, the only clear winner from that first tranche of predictions is the rise of the microwave oven, which given the expense of magnetrons in 1967 and the complexity of the electronics needed to drive them was a non-obvious development.

=> ↺ Hungary’s top meteorologist, dismissed after canceled fireworks called back to his old position

=> ↺ The Blast

• It’s a hard-boiled story, a yarn worthy of Dashiell Hammet or Chester Himes.  Its prose is as down and savvy as Rachel Kushner or Jonah Raskin, as brilliantly local as Rebecca Solnit or Chris Carlsson. Like any hard-boiled American story this is a story of class struggle, no holds barred.  The blast in question was a bomb exploded at the San Francisco Preparedness Parade of 1916.  The bombers had met here at this restaurant.

• Alexander Berkman came to SF in January 1916 after finishing a fourteen year bid in the state penitentiary for having attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick of Carnegie Steel in 1892.  Politicos justified it as propaganda-by-the-deed while anarchist political science deemed it an attentat.  As soon as he arrived free in San Francisco, Berkman began publishing the semi-monthly magazine, The Blast, from which Matthews takes his title.

=> ↺ The Gonzo Playbook

• This is the new normal of Gonzo Governance that has emerged from our communication order featuring digital media that provide instantaneous, personal, and visual information. This entertaining conflict-ridden media logic promotes evocative reaction rather than referential and reflective communication.  Gonzo, or breaking the mold of a conventional activity, was popularized by Hunter Thompson’s deviant-drugged-edgy lifestyle and approach to journalism. Sociological and communication researchers argue that a key feature of a Gonzo perspective is that individual actors use media performances to rail against a fearful disorder that needs drastic correction. Politicians cultivate and pursue the emotional appeals to audiences and potential constituents.  Gonzo is justified by a perceived crisis and a breakdown in institutional and conventional means of dealing with a problem or issue, whether in journalism, criminal justice sentencing, or social organization. A dramatic resolution is offered that resonates with an audience who shares the sense of disorder. The solution is extraordinary—even deviant, illegal or immoral– breaking boundaries and violating the parameters of social and discursive participation within a community of actors, typically promoting raw emotional meanings and symbols. Gonzo rhetoric requires attention-grabbing bold action that only the savior can provide, such as Kari Lake or Donald Trump.  Gonzo Governance is becoming institutionalized as routine resistance to the election process and the rule of law.

• Changes are due to a new set of practices that I refer to as the Gonzo Playbook. The basic premise of this new order is that one side will win unless there is cheating in the entire election, counting, and certification process. The Gonzo Players support: 1. Attempting to destroy some target and promote a false narrative about a higher moral and civic order. This is done by simultaneously mobilizing an emotional constituency by connecting with their anger, resentments, envies, and hatred. Pulitzer Prize winning sociologist, Paul Starr, identifies the challenge to entrenched American values and taken-for-granted forbearance about authoritarianism, voting rights, and progressive change; 2. Denying the legitimacy of major institutions, including education, science and journalism, and denial of basic facts; Targets include officials, workers, and particularly day-to-day operations involving elections at federal, state, and local levels;  3. Disrupting with legal and extra-legal means many governmental activities by elected and appointed officials; 4. Suppressing and discouraging voting through regulations, additional eligibility requirements, and certification processes; 5. Promoting mistrust with massive propaganda and disinformation through media and particularly social media platforms; 6. Encouraging supporters to protest, harass election workers, and threaten violence.

=> ↺ Supercon 2022: Sam Mulvey Shows You How To FM Radio

• Sam Mulvey built his own radio station in Tacoma, WA. Is there a better way to meld ham radio practice with a colossal number of DIY electrical and computer projects? Sam would say there isn’t one! This 45-minute talk is basically the lessons-learned review of setting up KTQA 95.3 – the radio station on the hill.

=> ↺ The Mythology of George Balanchine

• Jennifer Homans is a dance historian and critic. Her first book, Apollo’s Angels, traces the origins of classical ballet, from Louis XIV’s performances as the Sun King in Renaissance France to its arrival in New York in the 20th century. Ballet, she writes, is rarely transcribed or recorded through text. Instead, it is passed down from dancer to dancer. A trained dancer herself, Homans’s work demonstrates how ballet exists within both the mind and the body while also revealing how retelling ballet’s history is another way of illuminating the history of empire.1

=> ↺ Tears on My Pillow

=> ↺ Conning the desperate How scammers exploit the information vacuum around Russia’s missing soldiers — Meduza

Science

=> ↺ Phase 1 of the NIH Preprint Pilot: Testing the viability of making preprints discoverable in PubMed Central and PubMed

• The National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched a pilot in June 2020 to 1) explore the feasibility and utility of adding preprints to PubMed Central (PMC) and making them discoverable in PubMed and 2) to support accelerated discoverability of NIH-supported research without compromising user trust in NLM’s widely used literature services.

=> ↺ Fusion. Really?

• “This is a landmark achievement,” declared Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Her department’s press release said the experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California “produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it” and will “provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy.”

• “Nuclear fusion technology has been around since the creation of the hydrogen bomb,” noted a CBS News article covering the announcement. “Nuclear fusion has been considered the holy grail of energy creation.” And “now fusion’s moment appears to be finally here,” said the CBS piece.

Hardware

=> ↺ 3D Printed Gadgets Make Lab Work Easier

• If you’ve worked in a bio or chem lab, you’ve probably found yourself handling all manner of plastic. Test tubes, fixtures, clamps — there’s a cavalcade of this stuff that fattens up the order books of lab suppliers every quarter. Sometimes, though, the commercial solutions aren’t quite what you need. For [AtomicVirology], the solution was to 3D print custom lab accessories to make work easier.

=> ↺ Sonos Speakers Free To Sing Again

• Over at the EEVBlog, [Dave Jones] takes a second look at the Sonos Play 5 Gen 1 that he rescued from the dumpster recently. Despite being solidly built, [Dave] discovered that even the stereo line-in jack can’t be used without registering an account with Sonos. Not to be defeated, he hacks these speakers to make them work standalone.

=> ↺ Top Up Your Teapot In Time With This E-ink Tea Timer

• Whether you’re a tea aficionado or just a casual drinker, it’s important to pay attention to your brewing times: too short and you’re just drinking hot water, too long and your brew becomes bitter and astringent. [Bob] wanted to help his parents avoid the latter scenario, and made them a convenient little tea timer that displays the time when they last replenished the pot.

=> ↺ A Kid’s Toy Guitar Turned Into An Electric Ukulele

• With the holiday season fast approaching, there’s a good chance that some well-meaning friend or relative might buy a toy musical instrument for your children, safe in the knowledge that they’ll never have to listen to the results! The sound from these cheap toy guitars is pretty terrible, partly because they’re just too small to tune to a pleasing guitar tuning, so [joekutz] decided to see if one could be turned into an electric ukulele instead.

=> ↺ Building A Chain Drive Differential From Junkyard Parts

• A differential is a very useful thing for a vehicle. It allows two driven wheels to rotate at different speeds, such as when going around a corner. [Workshop From Scratch] needed a chain driven differential, so set about building one from a salvaged automotive unit.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Line Between Medicine, Politics Blurred at Chicago Hospital

• In 2013, Roseland Community Hospital was looking for a new leader. Its former chief executive had alienated the Illinois governor and other lawmakers amid a messy fight over the hospital’s funding.

• The small nonprofit facility on Chicago’s South Side turned to Tim Egan, a longtime hospital executive who had begun to make a name for himself as a political operative and fundraiser with an ability to navigate the insular circles of state and local government.

=> ↺ Government Admits Its Ortho-Toluidine Exposure Limit Is Too High

• Before his shift at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Niagara Falls in May 2021, a worker peed in a cup.

• Before he clocked out, he did it again.

=> ↺ This country has passed world’s first law to ban smoking for next generation

• Future generations of New Zealanders will be banned from purchasing tobacco as part of a package of new anti-smoking laws that passed parliament on Tuesday and are among the most strict in the world.

• The suite of new laws include bans on selling tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, punishable by fines up to NZ$150,000 ($95,910). The ban will remain in place for a person’s whole life.

=> ↺ New Zealand bans young people from buying cigarettes for life

• The legislation will also reduce the amount of nicotine allowed in smoked tobacco products and cut the number of retailers able to sell tobacco by 90 per cent.

• Retailers licensed to sell tobacco will be cut from 6,000 to 600 by the end of 2023.

=> ↺ The final puff?

• Unveiled in December 2021, the plan features three radical interventions. One, called the smoke-free generation strategy, will make it illegal to ever sell combustible tobacco products to those born in 2009 or later. The goal is to create an ever-growing cohort that never picks up the smoking habit. A second provision calls for reducing the number of tobacco retailers by as much as 95%, to make cigarettes harder to get. The boldest proposal in the eyes of experts is reducing cigarettes’ nicotine content to below addictive levels. This “cuts right at the heart of why people smoke in the first place,” says Geoffrey Fong, head of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Waterloo. It’s potentially a “true game changer in the battle against smoking.”

=> ↺ New Zealand To Be Smokefree By 2025, Passes World-First Law To Ban Smoking For Next Generation

• The smoking rate in New Zealand is already low, with only 8% of adults smoking daily, down from 9.4% a year and a half ago and half the rate compared to ten years ago.

=> ↺ Born after 2008? You’ll never be able to buy cigarettes in New Zealand.

• “This bill will create generational change, and it will leave a legacy of better health for our youth,” Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said Tuesday.

• Under the new changes, retailers who sell tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009 — those around 13 years old or younger today — will face fines of up to 150,000 New Zealand dollars, or around $96,000. The ban will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027, when those born in 2009 will start turning 18.

=> ↺ ‘Smoke-free by 2025’: NZ imposes lifetime ban on buying cigarettes

• The bill was first introduced a year ago. Then Verrall said more needed to be done to stop young people from taking up smoking in the first place and to make it less addictive and appealing.

=> ↺ New Zealand bans tobacco sales for next generation

• The legislation – the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill – will also reduce the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco products, aiming to make them less addictive.

=> ↺ UK Nurses Kick Off Largest-Ever Strike by NHS Workers After Negotiations Fail

=> ↺ ‘Nurses Have Had Enough’: Largest-Ever NHS Strike Kicks Off in UK Over Low Pay

• Tens of thousands of nurses across the United Kingdom are set to walk off the job Thursday in what’s been described as the largest-ever strike by National Health Service workers, who said they were forced to act after the government refused to negotiate over pay amid painfully high inflation.

• The walkout represents NHS nurses’ first national strike, and it comes as U.K. rail and postal workers are also taking major labor actions in response to falling real pay, meager benefits, and worsening conditions.

=> ↺ Warning of Winter Surge, White House Revives Free At-Home Covid Test Program

• Amid rising fears of various illnesses going into the winter, the Biden administration on Thursday resumed its program for mailing four free at-home Covid-19 tests to every U.S. household that requests them.

• “Starting today, every household can order four free Covid tests to be shipped straight to your door.”

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Linux teams up with partners to overthrow Google Maps’s dominance

=> ↺ Linux Foundation is oppressing Linux or allowing hostile companies to manipulate its development for the worse

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ “The Right to Privacy”

• That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the new demands of society. Thus, in very early times, the law gave a remedy only for physical interference with life and property, for trespasses vi et armis. Then the “right to life” served only to protect the subject from battery in its various forms; liberty meant freedom from actual restraint; and the right to property secured to the individual his lands and his cattle. Later, there came a recognition of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. Gradually the scope of these legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term “property” has grown to comprise every form of possession — intangible, as well as tangible.

=> ↺ FERPA and Higher Ed Should Prioritize the Safety of Students’ Private Data – Censored Notebook

• Around the time of Richard Nixon’s presidency—a low point for public trust in government—families of K–12 students and adult college students raised concerns regarding the volume of sensitive, personally identifiable student information that schools, colleges, and universities were collecting and storing. Fifty years on, educational institutions still routinely collect and store Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as students’ birthdate, gender, ethnicity, race, economic status, debt load, special needs and abilities, enrollment standing, grades, ID numbers, photos, contact information, and medical records. But today some or all of that sensitive data may be stored in databanks administered by third parties, such as the National Student Clearinghouse and Parchment.

=> ↺ Dangerous “Kids Online Safety Act” Does Not Belong in Must-Pass Legislation

• The bill’s sponsors have made last-minute changes to the bill in an attempt to assuage concerns, but these edits don’t resolve its fundamental problems. We’ve spoken about the harms KOSA will cause at length, and they remain in the current version. 

• To recap: KOSA’s main provision contains the vague requirement that online services act “in the best interests of a user that the platform knows or should know is a minor,” by taking “reasonable measures” to prevent and mitigate various enumerated harms. These harms include mental health disorders, including (to name a few) the promotion or exacerbation of suicide, eating disorders, and substance use disorders; physical violence, online bullying, and harassment of the minor; and sexual exploitation and abuse.  

• KOSA’s latest text still contains this glaring and unconstitutional flaw at its core. 

=> ↺ Privileged Conversations | Jan 2023 – Public Knowledge

• Bedoya was the founding director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was also a visiting professor of law. He has been influential in research and policy at the intersection of privacy and civil rights and co-authored a 2016 report on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement and the risks that it poses to privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights. He previously served as the first Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law after its founding in 2011, and as Chief Counsel to former Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota. Prior to that, he was an associate at the law firm WilmerHale.

=> ↺ America Online: A Cautionary Tale

• Brandee Barker was having a great time in the back of an Uber as her driver entertained her. It was November 2016, and the former Facebook executive and Lean In flack had just arrived in Ohio to canvass for Hillary Clinton.1This article is featured in The Nation’s blockbuster special issue, “The ’90s: Cradle of the Present,” a fascinating look at the ways that the decade forged the current moment. From food to crime to gender to exercise to music to technology to activism to foreign policy to environment to politics, the period set the stage for the turmoil of today.

=> ↺ The DPDPB, 2022 does not meet Puttaswamy standards

• The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) released the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (Data Protection Bill, 2022) for public consultation on November 18, 2022. Feedback has been solicited on the Data Protection Bill, 2022 by MeitY through the MyGov website by December 17, 2022. We have analysed the Data Protection Bill, 2022 and found that it does not meet the standards of privacy that have been laid down by the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy matters. At its core, the Data Protection Bill, 2022 forms a scheme for the interaction of persons, companies or other entities (called Data Fiduciaries in the Bill), who collect, store, index, share etc., personal data of their users (called Data Principals in the Bill) with each other.

• [...]

• In Justice K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1 (Puttaswamy-I), a nine-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the status of the right to privacy as a fundamental right guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution of India. The Court held that privacy is an integral part of Articles 14,15, 19 and 21.

• The Court held that informational self-determination and informational privacy constitute an integral part of the right to privacy. Chandrachud J. held that information control empowers individuals to use “privacy as a shield” to retain control over personal information. Nariman J. held that informational privacy relates to a person’s mind and therefore individuals have “control over the dissemination of material that is personal” to them. Kaul J. held that “the right to control dissemination of personal information” is a part of the right to privacy.

• Though the case arose in the context of the constitutional challenge of the Aadhaar Act, the Court recognised that data protection is closely intertwined with informational privacy. The Court notes that a robust data protection law must be formulated by the State by “carefully balancing” individual privacy and legitimate concerns of the State.

=> ↺ Greek Government Responds To Domestic Surveillance Controversy By Making Things Worse

• Malware and exploit developers are generating a seemingly endless number of headlines, thanks to misuse of their products by government entities. Israel’s NSO Group has made the most headlines, but other Israel-located malware purveyors have made the news as well. Candiru, another Israeli exploit developer, was hit with the same sanctions the US Commerce Department leveled against NSO Group.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ He wanted to avenge the Prophet and punish Switzerland, so he stabbed a man to death shouting “Allahu Akbar”

• Before the attack, he allegedly walked past the pub eleven times. The victim, who had been dining with his family in the pub on that Saturday evening, died at the scene. The perpetrator fled, but was arrested the following day. This is said to be the first fatal knife attack in Switzerland with a jihadist background.

=> ↺ Qatar Is Reported To Be Funding Radical Islamic Centers All Over Italy

• A muscular Belgian police dragnet has exposed widespread corruption linked to the World Cup host nation.

=> ↺ What the West Gets Wrong About the Rwandan Genocide

• In early April 1994, when the genocide began in Rwanda, the meetings started in Washington. “They couldn’t say we were not going to do anything, because that’s b

=> ↺ The Truth About Afghanistan’s Zero Unit Night Raids

• This story contains graphic descriptions and images of war casualties.

• On a December night in 2018, Mahzala was jolted awake by a shuddering wave of noise that rattled her family’s small mud house. A trio of helicopters, so unfamiliar that she had no word for them, rapidly descended, kicking up clouds of dust that shimmered in their blinding lights. Men wearing desert camouflage and black masks flooded into the house, corralling her two sons and forcing them out the door.

=> ↺ What Is the Leahy Law?

• For more than two decades, the U.S. military has been barred from providing training and equipment to foreign security forces that commit “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

• The law, named for its author, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, applies to military assistance for foreign units funded through the Defense or State departments. Lawmakers including Leahy, a Democrat, acknowledged that it does not cover commando outfits like Afghanistan’s Zero Units.

=> ↺ Leahy Calls for Expanding Human Rights Law to Cover US Intelligence Agencies

=> ↺ See No Evil

=> ↺ Jewish Groups Say GOP, Not Ilhan Omar, Is Pushing Antisemitism

=> ↺ Talking Anti-Semitism

• There may be more than three – Jew-haters have been at it for a long time — but these are the most obvious:

• 1. Judeophobia – individual or community animus toward Jews. Arising from multiple sources, including the medieval blood libel that Jews kill Christian babies, Judeophobia has persisted for centuries. It can be obnoxious (disparagement) or murderous (pogroms), and quickly change from one to the other. Because some ideas are just too stupid to die, the blood libel persists today. QAnon, for example endorses it, though their roster of baby killers now also includes liberals, socialists, journalists, queers, and of course, the Clintons. The man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in San Francisco, was a QAnon follower and Judeophobe. A poll of QAnon believers published in Morning Consult reveals that about half think liberal Jews are actively seeking to control the world. (Jews are .02 percent of global population.) Just as disturbing, about a third of “right-leaning” Americans (aka Republicans) believe the same thing.

=> ↺ ICC Wanted to Investigate Israeli War Crimes. Now It’s Caving to US Pressure.

=> ↺ The Yemen Yes-Men Ride Again

• Promises, promises.

• Every time Congress rattles its war powers saber against continuing US support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, presidents simultaneously threaten to veto such resolutions, and pretend they’re just about ready to end that support, if only Congress will back off. And it does.

=> ↺ On Justice for Kashmir

• 1947 was a momentous year for South Asia as British colonial rule came to an end, followed by a partition of India that resulted in much bloodshed throughout the process of establishing the Muslim state of Pakistan alongside the secular Hindu majority state of India. At this time, Kashmir was one of 560 ‘princely states’ in India, governed by a Hindu Maharajah while having a population that was 77% Muslim. The partition agreement reached by India and Pakistan gave the peoples of these ‘states’ a partial right of self-determination in the form of a free choice as to whether to remain a part of India or join their destiny with that of Pakistan, and in either event retaining considerable independence by way of self-rule. It was widely assumed that these choices would favor India if their population was Hindu and to Pakistan if Muslim. In a confused and complicated set of circumstances that involved Kashmiris and others contesting the Maharahah’s leadership of Kashmir, India engaged in a variety of maneuvers including a large-scale military intervention to avoid the timely holding of the promised internationally supervised referendum, and by stages coercively treated Kashmir more and more as an integral part of India. This Indian betrayal of the partition settlement agreement gave rise to the first of several wars with Pakistan, and it resulted in a division of Kashmir in 1948 that was explicitly not an international boundary, but intended as a temporary ‘line-of-control’ to separate the opposed armed forces. It has ever since given rise to acute tension erupting in recurrent warfare between the two countries, and even now no international boundary exists between divided Kashmir. The leadership of Pakistan has always believed that Kashmir was a natural projection of itself, treating India’s behavior as occupying power as totally unacceptable and illegitimate as have the majority of Kashmiris.

• The essence of India’s betrayal was to deny the people of Kashmir the opportunity to express their preference for accession to India or Pakistan, presumably correctly believing that it would lose out if a proper referendum were held. Back in 1947 the Indian secular, liberal leadership did itself make strong pledges to the effect that Kashmir would be allowed to determine its future affiliation in an internationally supervised referendum or plebiscite as soon as order could be there restored. The two governments even agreed to submit the issue to the UN, and the Security Council reaffirmed the right of Kashmir to the agreed process of self-determination, but India gradually took steps clearly designed to prevent this internationally supervised resolution of Kashmir’s future from ever happening. It appears that India sought control of Kashmir primarily for strategic and nationalist reasons associated especially with managing Kashmir’s borders with China and Pakistan, and in doing so converting Kashmir into a buffer state of India, giving it the security that supposedly accompanies strategic depth of a ‘Great Power.’ Unsurprisingly, Pakistan reacted belligerently to India’s failure to live up to its commitments, and the result for Kashmir was a second level of partition between India occupied Kashmir and a smaller Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. In effect, India’s unilateralism poisoned relations between these two countries, later to become possessors of nuclear weapons, as well as producing a Kashmiri population that felt deprived of its fundamental rights with accompanying atrocities (including torture, forced disappearances, sexual violence, extrajudicial killing, excessive force, collective punishment, the panopoly of counterinsurgency crimes), which amount to Crimes Against Humanity, in a manner somewhat resembling the deprivations associated with Palestine and Western Sahara.

=> ↺ The Pentagon Audit: Assets Gone Missing

• When I say they “failed” their audit, I don’t mean they put a 9 instead of a 7 on one of the balance sheets, causing two soldiers to get accidentally left in Antarctica freezing their asses off. I mean, they really failed their audit. As The Hill put it, “The Defense Department has failed its fifth-ever audit, unable to account for more than half of its assets, but the—” Hold up. Hold up. Did ya catch that? They can’t account for over half their assets! This is the largest murder machine on the planet – nearly a trillion dollars spent every year – and they don’t know where half their shit is?! How is this not criminal?

• If you worked at a shoe store, or a hardware store, or a daycare, and you couldn’t locate half your inventory, you’d be locked up right now! But apparently, if you’re simply responsible for more killing on the planet earth than any other modern organization, no one’s held accountable for anything.

=> ↺ Work of National Importance

• Akst’s new book, titled War by Other Means: The Pacifists of the Greatest Generation who Revolutionized Resistance, is a fascinating and detailed history of this movement. By focusing on the best known organizers, Akst tells the story of pacifism in the United States from the 1930s up through the 1960s. Those names–Dorothy Day, David Dellinger, Dwight McDonald and Bayard Rustin among others–are as important to twentieth century US history as any politician or general that ever convinced others to go to war. His narrative highlights the role of peace churches like the Quakers and Mennonites in the expansion of conscientious objector status and the shortcomings of that expansion. More importantly, he details several acts of resistance in the camps, farms, hospitals and prisons by those who refused to fight. Likewise, he discusses the good works that the resisters performed in hospitals and mental health facilities and their development of an idealized community that transcended their confines. That community ultimately set the stage for the antiwar and anti-racist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It was their moral outrage, philosophical justifications and organizing approaches that would form the basis for one of the most popular movements against a nation’s war in human history.

• The resisters portrayed here–and the thousands of others whose names are known mostly to their family and friends–were heroes in a manner beyond the comprehension of most human beings. I would argue, based on my experience, that incomprehension is especially true when considering citizens of the United States. After all, in the minds of most US residents, their military has never lost a war. Furthermore, it is a nation founded and sustained by continuous expansion fueled by war. Consequently, war seems to work to their benefit. The current time is certainly no exception. Indeed, the past fifty years has seen Washington engaged in some kind of military conflict with nary a pause.

=> ↺ Why Has Qatar Jailed a World Cup Whistleblower? The Brother of Abdullah Ibhais Speaks Out

• As the world’s attention turns to the World Cup final on Sunday between Argentina and France, we look at the case of imprisoned World Cup whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais, a former communications director for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organizers, who has been imprisoned since November 2019. Ibhais, a Jordanian national, was given a five-year sentence in Qatar on what his family says are trumped-up charges after he raised concern over working conditions for migrant workers who’d gone on strike over months of unpaid wages — including workers building stadiums for the games. Ibhais’s sentence was later reduced to three years, but his family recently said in an open letter that he was subjected to torture after he contributed footage to the ITV documentary “Qatar: State of Fear?” Ibhais’s family has also blasted FIFA, calling it complicit in his imprisonment. For more, we speak with Abdullah’s brother Ziad Ibhais and Nick McGeehan, co-director and co-founder of the human rights organization FairSquare, where he advocates for migrant workers.

=> ↺ Brother of World Cup Whistleblower Imprisoned in Qatar Speaks Out

=> ↺ EU Qatar Corruption

• How utterly fitting that it should happen at this time. The Qatar FIFA World Cup is coming to a close, a tournament nakedly bought by a state keen to be a standard bearer, not merely of the Arab world, but the world of shameless sportswashing. Despite being criticised for its human rights record, its laws against sexual minorities and its shabby treatment of migrant labourers, Doha will be delighted at yet another tournament passing without effectual criticism.

• The tournament has certainly seen a number of converts to Qatar’s increasingly large tent of the uncritical. The French President Emmanuel Macron, for one, is telling us that “sport shouldn’t be politicised.”

=> ↺ The Kremlin’s Cold War with the Modern World Has Become a Russian Tragedy

• Imbeciles on the right have long condemned this form of politically incorrect critical thinking as sympathizing with terrorists and dictators but sadly, increasingly, once wise people on the left have joined these imbeciles in rejecting the hard work of asking ‘how the hell did it come to this?’ When I was first initiated into the antiwar movement as a pissed-off teenage dirtbag, I was enlightened by left-wing firebrands like William Blum and Ward Churchill who dared to put themselves in the uncomfortable shoes of the men who hijacked four planes on September 11th to initiate a holy war.

• They weren’t justifying such clearly despicable violence; they were attempting to provide context on how it became inevitable. Now, whenever I attempt to do the same thing by comprehending the equally despicable actions of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, I get accused of being an apologist for authoritarianism and, all too often, the person hurling this insult at me is a fellow self-described anarchist.

=> ↺ Opinion | The Madness of Nuclear Warfare Is Alive and Well

• Hey, cheer up because it truly is a beauty! I’m talking about this country’s latest “stealth bomber,” the B-21 Raider, just revealed by Northrop Grumman, the company that makes it, in all its glory. With its striking bat-winged shape and its ability to deliver a very big bang (as in nuclear weapons), it’s our very own “bomber of the future.” As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin put it at its explosive debut, it will “fortify America’s ability to deter aggression, today and into the future.” Now, that truly makes me proud to be an American.

=> ↺ The Madness of Nuclear Warfare, Alive and Well in America

• And while you’re at it, on this MAD (as in mutually assured destruction) world of ours, let that scene, that peculiar form of madness, involving the potential end of everything on Planet Earth, sink in. As a retired Air Force officer, it reminded me all too vividly of my former service and brought to mind the old motto of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), “Peace Is Our Profession.” Headed in its proudest years by the notorious General Curtis LeMay, it promised “peace” via the threat of the total nuclear annihilation of America’s enemies.

• SAC long controlled two “legs” of this country’s nuclear triad: its land-based bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. During the Cold War, those Titans, Minutemen, and MX “Peacekeepers” were kept on constant alert, ready to pulverize much of the planet at a moment’s notice. It didn’t matter that this country was likely to be pulverized, too, in any war with the Soviet Union. What mattered was remaining atop the nuclear pile. A concomitant benefit was keeping conventional wars from spinning out of control by threatening the nuclear option or, as was said at the time, “going nuclear.” (In the age of Biden, it’s “Armageddon.”)

=> ↺ Russia Warns of ‘Unpredictable Consequences’ If US Sends Patriot Missiles to Ukraine

• Responding to reports that the Biden administration is finalizing plans to send Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine as the country endures waves of deadly Russian missile strikes, a top Kremlin official said Thursday that such a move would be viewed as an escalation in hostilities.

• Citing anonymous sources, CNN reported Tuesday that a Pentagon plan to send an unknown quantity of Raytheon MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems is awaiting approval by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before being sent to President Joe Biden’s desk. 

=> ↺ Opinion | Bring on the Labor Movement Militancy!

• The public doesn’t usually warm to the notion of labour militancy—until reminded that, without it, weekends would be a lot shorter, or maybe not exist at all.

=> ↺ Russian pounds Ukraine with missiles, prompting emergency power shutdowns in multiple regions — Meduza

• Ukrainian authorities reported Friday that Russia had launched a series of missile attacks on multiple regions through the country. An air raid alert was declared on all of Ukraine’s territory.

=> ↺ Employees of Voronezh university were asked to donate wages to Russian army — Meduza

• A sample form, which employees could use to request that one day’s worth of their wages be directed instead to the Russian military, was sent around departments at Voronezh State University. The publication 7×7 Gorizontalnaya Rossiya published photos of the template form.

=> ↺ Ichkeria dreamin’: A new Chechen separatist army is being formed in Ukraine, but beating Russia in the Donbas is easier than deposing Ramzan Kadyrov — Meduza

=> ↺ Ads seeking trench diggers in Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Belgorod regions appear on Russian job sites — Meduza

• Job postings seeking workers to build fortifications and dig trenches in the occupied parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk regions as well as in Russia’s Belgorod region have begun appearing on Russian social media and job sites.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ US Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale’s Case Is ‘Exactly What The Pardon Power Is For,’ Says Ilhan Omar

Environment

=> ↺ Lessons on Resistance From a Child of the First Climate-Change Generation

• On a visit to a Black woman healer that I see often, I heard the sounds of climate change wafting down the corridor—warnings of storms and fires, rising temperatures, ruptured ecosystems, and broken supply chains. I turned to her, perplexed. “Is that your baby?” She nodded: it was, in fact, her seven-year-old child watching videos on YouTube. “That doesn’t scare them?” I asked. “It doesn’t give them nightmares?” No, she assured me. In fact, the information in the videos empowered them: it helped them understand how to plan for disasters, when and where to evacuate. The videos told the truth, after all: Climate change is here and it is getting worse. Predictability is but a mirage.1

=> ↺ A Soundtrack for the Climate Emergency

• This story is part of “Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration cofounded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation strengthening coverage of the climate story.

=> ↺ The Rise of the Year-Round Wildfire

• Mike Savala’s boots scuffed the edge of a singed patch of forest littered with skinny fingers of burnt ponderosa pine needles. Nearby, an oak seedling sizzled as a yellow-shirted firefighter hit it with a stream of water. Spurts of smoke rose from blackened ground the size of a hockey rink. A 100-foot Ponderosa pine towered overhead.

=> ↺ Climate Defenders Celebrate as Manchin’s Dirty Deal Defeated a Third Time

• The U.S. climate movement and people on the frontlines of the planetary crisis celebrated Thursday after the U.S. Senate declined to add Sen. Joe Manchin’s fossil fuel-friendly permitting bill to a military spending package.

• “The Senate’s rejection of this dangerous bill is a resounding win for environmental justice communities and the climate.”

=> ↺ Amid Fight Over Manchin Deal, Climate Justice Groups Offer Roadmap for Green Infrastructure

• As U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin fights to force through fossil fuel-friendly permitting legislation, nine green groups on Thursday offered a roadmap for boosting clean energy infrastructure while also respecting impacted communities.

• “We need a clean energy revolution shaped by justice and equity.”

=> ↺ Biden’s Latest Push for Manchin Dirty Deal Condemned as ‘Disgraceful Betrayal’

• Climate groups and advocates voiced anger Thursday after President Joe Biden reiterated his support for industry-backed permitting changes pushed by Sen. Joe Manchin that would fast-track oil and gas projects, undercut bedrock environmental protections, and drown out the voices of frontline communities harmed by polluting infrastructure.

• In a statement released ahead of a possible Thursday vote on Manchin’s legislation—which Democratic leaders are attempting to add to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) despite opposition from rank-and-file lawmakers and the climate movement—Biden said he supports the West Virginia Democrat’s “permitting reform proposal as a way to cut Americans’ energy bills, promote U.S. energy security, and boost our ability to get energy projects built and connected to the grid.”

Energy

=> ↺ Szijjártó calls on European Commission’s help as Croatia plans to increase transit fee on oil pipeline

=> ↺ The Crypto-Populist Pyramid Scam

• Consider NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. These are collectibles—some might call them art—created by the same block-chain technology as cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, turned an image of his first tweet into an NFT in December 2020 and auctioned it off for $2.9 million a few months later. Dorsey donated the proceeds to charity, but most others have taken the money and run. When the purchaser of his NFT tried to resell it in April 2022 for $50 million, the highest bid was a paltry $280.

• That might just seem like a single appalling financial miscalculation. But consider the fate of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, which are nothing more than cartoon representations of an ape face with various expressions and accoutrements. You might pay $20 max for such a drawing on paper. But the price of these NFTs started to rise when celebrities began to buy them and then promote them to their fans. The collection topped $1 billion in value.

=> ↺ Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Scam Is Business as Usual

• It looked like a set piece straight out of Law and Order: Just a few weeks after he made his surreal star turn before a New York Times DealBook crowd, disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was under arrest in the Bahamas, awaiting extradition to the United States on eight charges alleging rampant fraud at his now-shuttered currency exchange FTX. And only a month after a damning expose from the crypto site CoinDesk triggered a massive selloff at FTX, the newly anointed dark lord of crypto was behind bars. And as a pointed legal addendum, the financial industry’s lead regulatory agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have each launched separate complaints against SBF, as the 30-year-old former billionaire was familiarly known.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Humans Are Weapons of Mass Extinction

• In 2020, a UN report (Global Biodiversity Outlook 5) warned:

• “Humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy it leaves to future generations. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying. None of the… Biodiversity Targets will be fully met…The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of the relationship between people and nature, and it reminds us all of the profound consequences to our own well-being and survival that can result from continued biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems.”

=> ↺ Outlook ‘Grim’ Halfway Through Global Biodiversity Summit, Climate Groups Warn

• Disagreements over financing biodiversity protection, the piracy of natural resources, and commitments to protect at least 30% of the Earth’s land and water by 2030 are some of the top sticking points at the United Nations’ global biodiversity summit in Montreal, which is set to wrap up in just four days.

• Following a walkout early Wednesday by developing nations outraged over the Global North’s opposition to creating a biodiversity fund, one anonymous negotiator at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) wrote in The Guardian that the summit is at risk of amounting to more of what climate campaigner Greta Thunberg has called “blah blah blah.”

=> ↺ Berlin’s giant AquaDom hotel aquarium containing 1,500 fish explodes – BBC News

• “This is not one disease in isolation,” said the president’s Covid-19 response coordinator. “We are very aware that this increase that we’re seeing in Covid is in that context of one of the worst flu seasons in a decade and RSV that was quite bad.”

Finance

=> ↺ After Latest Fed Rate Hike, Housing Justice Activists Demand Biden Act to Fight Soaring Rents

• A grassroots advocacy coalition on Thursday demanded that the Biden administration “address the acute crisis that so many families are feeling today by pursuing rent stabilization policies to stop the skyrocketing cost of housing.”

• “The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes ignore corporate landlords’ role in creating and maintaining this crisis.”

=> ↺ Companies That Illegally Fire Workers Will Now Have to Pay for Debts Incurred

=> ↺ Rents Blast Through the Roof

• Sliding further down the social ladder, we encounter the November 25 news from Invisible People, a group that supports the homeless, that a fire ravaged a village of tiny domiciles designed to shelter unhoused veterans in California. Apparently, such conflagrations are a trend, due to the flammable nature of these miniscule homes. These veterans can’t catch a break. They served their country, many doubtless diagnosed with PTSD as a result, lack sufficient funds for rent, sleep on the sidewalk, finally get some kind of shelter, which Invisible People dubs a flammable prison-sized cell, and it burns down, leaving them lucky to escape with their lives. I suggest the state of Florida confiscate the opulent Fisher Island penthouse and break it up into apartments for some of Miami’s many, many vagabonds, whom one encounters all over the city but most heartbreakingly in the shadow of the luxury high-rises that line the shores of Miami Beach. They migrate to Miami because the warm weather makes sleeping and living outdoors easier. But the city some have called Fascism’s Capital has no use for these human discards, whose shabbiness contrasts so glaringly with the harsh and haughty opulence of its pitiless glittering glass, chrome and steel.

• “Millennials have always lagged behind other generations in homeownership,” the Post informs us. Educational debt is a culprit here. But lately the millennial predicament got worse. That’s because housing costs recently hit an all-time high. For individual buyers, the market stinks. For renters, it’s worse. A full-time minimum wage employee cannot afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States. They have to double up or sleep in their car, assuming they have one. That’s because as of June the average rent reached $2000 per month.

=> ↺ Amtraks Across America: Oswald’s New Orleans

• Early in the morning, on my way to a breakfast diner, I loved riding my beach cruiser bicycle through the French Quarter, which, despite the evening onslaught of the tourist brigades, come sunrise retained its European sensibility.

• I warmed to the wrought-iron balconies (many are actually Spanish) above the sidewalks, and I enjoyed window shopping over my handlebars, despite the voodoo-themed gifts in many galleries.

=> ↺ Workers, Not ‘Stockbrokers and CEOs,’ Will Pay Price for Fed Rate Hikes: Warren

• Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the most outspoken critic of Federal Reserve policy in Congress, said Wednesday that the central bank’s decision to continue raising interest rates into 2023 risks “throwing millions out of work,” a warning that came shortly after Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the U.S. unemployment rate will likely rise in the coming months.

• “Chair Powell has a dual mandate: to bring inflation down and keep unemployment low,” Warren wrote on Twitter. “But his rate hikes risk throwing millions out of work. He should remember that the people who’ll lose their jobs aren’t stockbrokers and CEOs, it’s working people who need that paycheck every week.”

=> ↺ ’Tis the Season to Talk About Student Debt Cancellation

• It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Folks everywhere are getting ready to spend quality time with friends and family for the holidays—perhaps some of their first large gatherings since the Covid-19 pandemic began. As much as everyone is excited to open gifts and dig into their favorite recipes, there is one thing most people are still afraid of: conversations at the dinner table.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Elon Musk Is Dumping Billions in Tesla Stock

• The sale was revealed in an SEC filing submitted by Musk showing that between Monday and Wednesday he offloaded around 22 million shares of the electric vehicle company. The total value of Musk’s Tesla stock sales this year is estimated to amount to around $40 billion.

=> ↺ Twitter has changed its rules over the account tracking Elon Musk’s private jet

• He also threatened legal action against Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore and programmer who started the @elonjet flight-tracking account, and “organizations who supported harm to my family.” It’s not clear what legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.

=> ↺ EU bodies sign digital rights declaration

• Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition, added “this declaration makes it crystal clear that the rights we have offline, we also have online.”

• At the same time, she noted that the EC will “look if we get it right through an annual report on the state of the digital decade” and added that the body will put the declaration “into practice with the EU legislation already in place.”

=> ↺ European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles

• The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission solemnly proclaim the following joint Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade [...]

=> ↺ Neoliberalism and Its Discontents

• There was indeed a vast criminal class coming to full vicious potential in the 1990s: a group utterly vacant of the most elementary instincts of social propriety, devoid of moral fiber, selfish to an almost unfathomable degree. This class appeared in the form of our corporate elite.

• Given a green light in the late 1970s by the deregulatory binge urged by corporate-funded think tanks and launched legislatively by Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, by the 1990s, America’s corporate leadership had evolved a simple strategy for criminal self-enrichment.

=> ↺ Swiss/U.S. Political Partying and Fleeting Loyalty

• Switching parties is not a new phenomenon and has had mixed results. Several years ago an important Geneva figure, Robert Cramer, went from the extreme right to the Greens with considerable success, including election to the national Parliament. His electoral career was not hindered by his fundamental change in orientation. In the United States, Donald Trump was a Democrat in the 2000s, according to New York City voting records. His switch to Republican helped him all the way to the Oval Office. But switching parties does not always guarantee voter approbation. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania changed from Republican to Democrat in 2009 but was not re-elected.

• Moving from one party to another is not as dramatic in Switzerland with its multiparty system as is a shift in the United States from one of the two major parties to the other or to run as an independent. Sinema will join Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Maine’s Angus King as independents in the Senate; both ran as independents.

=> ↺ Giuliani One Step Closer to Being Disbarred in DC for Trying to Overturn Trump Loss

• A Washington, D.C. Bar committee said Thursday that disgraced attorney Rudy Giuliani violated at least one professional rule when he tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn his 2020 election loss—a preliminary finding that could result in the suspension or revocation of his license to practice law.

• Following a week of testimony from Giuliani and some of his allies, the three-member disciplinary panel agreed that “Giuliani’s rushed effort to file lawsuits to throw out hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania votes without any direct evidence of election fraud… crossed ethical lines,” Politico reported.

=> ↺ Steve Phillips on Sinema and Nelson Lichtenstein on the UC Strike

• The Democrats triumphed in Arizona this November, electing the governor and the secretary of state, and reelecting Senator Mark Kelley—in what used to be a red state. But then Senator Kyrsten Sinema quit the Democratic Party, and progressives moved toward a primary election to challenge her. On this week’s podcast, Steve Phillips explains how the victories happened, and what’s to be done about Sinema. Powered by RedCircle

=> ↺ Opinion | Beyond Razor Wire: A Connected Planet

• “Ducey insists Arizona holds sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot strip the containers rest on and has a constitutional right to protect residents from ‘imminent danger of criminal and humanitarian crises.’”

=> ↺ ‘A Watershed Moment’: House Approves Statehood Vote for Puerto Ricans

• Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two of the four current Puerto Rican members of the U.S. House, were among those who celebrated the passage of the Puerto Rico Status Act on Thursday as lawmakers made history by approving a binding process for a referendum in the territory regarding potential statehood.

• The proposal passed with a vote of 233-191, with 16 Republicans joining the Democratic Party in supporting it.

=> ↺ Peru Civil Society Calls for National Strike as Unelected President Declares State of Emergency

• Organized labor and progressive civil society groups in Peru are calling for a national strike as unelected interim President Dina Boluarte imposes a 30-day state of emergency in a bid to quell protests demanding her resignation and an end to the country’s neoliberal economic model.

• Thousands of Peruvian workers have taken to the streets in recent days to push for the immediate dissolution of Congress, fresh elections, and the creation of a new constitution by a constituent assembly.

=> ↺ Opinion | We Can’t Let Voter Suppression Be Normalized

• Earlier this month, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff election, strengthening the Democrats’ control of the Senate. Historians note that Warnock—first seated following a special election that went to a runoff in January 2021—became the first Georgia Democrat to win reelection to the Senate since Sam Nunn in 1990, and the first Deep South Democrat to win reelection to the institution since Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu in 2008.

=> ↺ Opinion | Republicans Sick of Trump Have a Major Problem: The Trump Base

• As Congress ends its first post-Trump term, the biggest political question hanging over America is this: When will the GOP finally reach its anti-Trump tipping point—when a majority of Republican lawmakers disavow him?

=> ↺ Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists

• Well. Just after finishing that last post about Twitter banning the official Mastodon account on Twitter for tweeting about the ElonJet tracking account existing on Mastodon, it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new “free speech absolutist” Twitter have really come off. In quick succession, a whole bunch of high profile reporter accounts were suspended, including Aaron Rupar (who famously covers and quotes videos of high profile politicians), Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mac from the NY Times, Donie Sullivan from CNN, and Matt Binder from Mashable.

=> ↺ Elon’s Commitment To Free Speech Rapidly Replaced By His Commitment To Blatant Hypocrisy: Bans The JoinMastodon Account

• Oh, Elon. Following on yesterday’s nonsense in banning the ElonJet account that robotically posted the public information regarding Elon’s private plane flights, and then trying to justify it later (after initially promising to keep the account alive to demonstrate his “commitment to free speech”), it appears that Elon’s commitment to free speech continues to dwindle.

=> ↺ ‘There’s plenty of idiots on both sides of the Atlantic’ The decline of Skoltech, Russia’s cutting-edge research institute that once partnered with MIT — Meduza

=> ↺ Trump Continues to Grift Supporters With $99 Trading Card Announcement

=> ↺ China believes the EU could learn from Hungary

=> ↺ Hungary is a modern, democratic state based on the rule of law – the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights says

=> ↺ Hungary’s recovery plan received the same grade as 23 others

=> ↺ Georgia Republican Brad Raffensperger Wants to End State Runoff System

=> ↺ Poll Shows Few Americans Believe House Republicans Will Enact Positive Change

=> ↺ Opinion | State Legislatures Cannot Defy Constitutional Democracy and Destroy Majority Rule

• Are state lawmakers free to ignore the results of a presidential election?

=> ↺ Trump’s Popularity Is at Its Lowest Point Since 2015

=> ↺ ‘Everything we have is here’ In Armenia’s southeast, local residents are still reeling from September’s attacks — Meduza

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ A propaganda sampler Russian state TV hosts mock Ukrainians dealing with aftermath of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure — Meduza

• Months of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left Ukrainian civilians facing rolling blackouts and interruptions to heat, water, and telecommunications services. Russian state television and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels can’t avoid discussing this reality, but they find ways to spin the facts, either making light of the situation in Ukraine or, when that fails, blaming Ukrainians themselves for the destruction. Meduza collected some glaring examples of the Russian mass media propaganda machine at work. A warning: the collected quotes contain derogatory terms for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Project Censored: Hunting the Twitter Files

• Nolan Higdon on how legacy media censors details about censorship.

=> ↺ Russian blogger fined for posting ‘foreign agent’ disclaimer in too-small font — Meduza

• Russian blogger Andrey Alekseyev has been fined 10,000 rubles ($155) for posting the “foreign agent” disclaimer required by the authorities in too small a font.

=> ↺ UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content

• In notes published along with the Bill, the government promised to tackle anonymous abuse by social media platform users by giving users the option to verify their identity, and tools to have more control over the legal content that they see and who they interact with – such as excluding interactions with unverified users.

=> ↺ Top journalists banned from Twitter without notification or explanation—and Mastodon’s account is gone too.

• Wesley Lowery speculates that the suspended journalists may all have linked to an on-the-record statement published today by the LAPD concerning Musk’s report that the car his son was traveling in was accosted by a stalker.

=> ↺ Twitter suspends Mastodon after it tweeted about Elon’s jet

• We don’t know exactly why the account was banned, but it may not have been done entirely out of spite for a rival platform. Instead, it could have been because Mastodon tweeted about @ElonJet.

• The Mastodon suspension happened sometime on Thursday. The Wayback Machine has an archive of the active profile from 12:39PM ET, but an archive from 6:12PM ET shows the suspended page. On the archive of the active profile, there’s a tweet pointing to @ElonJet’s Mastodon account.

=> ↺ Twitter suspends several journalists who shared information about Musk’s jet

• Musk took the highly unusual move of booting journalists from Twitter following a sudden change in policy about accounts that share the travels of private jets using publicly available information.

• Musk tweeted that those who violate Twitter’s new policy will be suspended for 7 days.

• Many of the journalists who were suspended Thursday night had tweeted or written about the rift between Musk and the jet-tracking account.

=> ↺ “The Twitter Files”: It’s Not About Free Speech

• That of course is the point: whatever Matt Taibbi may or may not tell himself, “The Twitter Files” is explicitly intended as right-wing political project. Any potentially significant information it includes doesn’t really matter—not only because the report is singularly meant to bolster one narrative—but also because any meaningfully ameliorative changes to the issues theoretically raised, like publicly and transparently managing Twitter, are not going to happen.

• So it is difficult not to see this as particularly pathetic for Taibbi, if the latest in a years-long downward slide. Of course, it’s not just him (though for more, Yasha Levine’s write-up of Taibbi’s cowardice and willingness to jettison his past collaborators, like Mark Ames—presciently written in 2020—reads as one of the best explanations of what led him here).

=> ↺ Ellsberg, Donziger Among Those Demanding Freedom for Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale

• Anti-war and First Amendment advocates are among those ramping up pressure on President Joe Biden to commute the 45-month prison sentence of Daniel Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst and Pentagon employee who disclosed documents regarding the U.S. drone assassination program and was convicted last year of violating the Espionage Act.

• Human rights attorney Steven Donziger and political activist Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked classified information about the U.S. war in Vietnam to the New York Times five decades ago in what became known as the Pentagon Papers, are scheduled to join Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at a press conference Thursday morning where they plan to appeal to the president and highlight what the congresswoman called Hale’s “courageous” and “patriotic” actions.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ New York Times Strike: From Reporters to Rabble-Rousers

• “We make the paper, we make the profits!” chanted striking workers in a raucous rally outside the Times’ headquarters. Some union members called on the public to show solidarity by refraining from accessing the digital edition of the Times, even in order to play the popular game Wordle. The NewsGuild has also called on subscribers and supporters to sign a petition in support of their demands, saying, “We are the people who deliver groundbreaking journalism and keep the newsroom running every day.”

• The strike is particularly significant given that the Times is arguably the most influential journalistic outlet in the nation, framing political and economic issues for the public. It is considered the “national ‘newspaper of record,’” and its journalists have won more than 100 Pulitzer Prizes. They have leverage over their employer, although their reluctance to use it is apparent given both the rarity of such strikes and the very limited scope of the December 8 action.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ County Benchslapped For Illegally Detaining All Foreign-Born People For Pickup By ICE, Even If They’re American Citizens

• This is some kind of ugly. When law enforcement starts talking about being “proactive,” it’s time to start worrying about your rights. Here’s what happened to Myriam Parada after a routine traffic stop.

=> ↺ Iran booted from UN women’s commission in ‘unmistakable message’

• Iran was ousted from the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women on Wednesday after the world body’s 54-member Economic and Social Council adopted a U.S.-initiated resolution to take that step.

=> ↺ Women’s Rights Activist on Protests Sweeping Iran, the Intensifying Gov’t Crackdown & Executions

• Human rights groups say over 14,000 people have been arrested across Iran since protests began in September following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. At least 400 people have reportedly been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, and multiple people have been executed. The protests are “the longest sustained protests since the start of the revolution,” says Sussan Tahmasebi, a women’s rights activist and feminist from Iran joining us from Brussels, Belgium, who says women and youth are sick of the status quo and are seeking fundamental freedoms. “Iranians voted multiple times for over two decades for some process of reform … but the state has not given in to those demands,” she says. “What we’re seeing now is the result.” Tahmasebi is the director of FEMENA, an organization that promotes gender equality and supports women human rights defenders, and co-founder of the Iran Civil Society Training and Research Center, as well as the One Million Signatures Campaign, a grassroots effort working to end gender-biased laws in Iran.

=> ↺ Fury as Iranian footballer is handed DEATH SENTENCE just for backing women’s rights after girl’s brutal killing by cops

• Nasr-Azadani is not the only athlete being punished for speaking out against Tehran.

=> ↺ Coalition Urges Biden Admin. to Consider Creating US Human Rights Body

• U.S. President Joe Biden declared during a speech last year that the United States must demonstrate that “our commitment to human rights begins at home.”

• That’s how dozens of human rights experts and groups began a Thursday letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, director of the Domestic Policy Council, which “drives the development and implementation of the president’s domestic policy agenda in the White House and across the federal government.”

=> ↺ A Year of Global Displacement

• Even more alarming, this milestone was reached by the middle of the year. Over 50 million people were internally displaced within their own countries, over 30 million were refugees forced to flee their countries, and some 4.3 million were stateless.

• More than 70 percent of all refugees came from five countries mired in violent conflict: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Climate-related emergencies, meanwhile — including severe floods in Pakistan and drought in Somalia — contributed heavily to the growing number of people internally displaced.

=> ↺ Why Not Pay Fine Imposed for Actions Against Nuclear Threats?

• I’ve appealed the convictions to the Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest, which has yet to issue a decision. The appeal complains that expert witnesses in international law — who were prepared to validate my defense of “crime prevention” — were not allowed testify, effectively eliminating my right to present a defense.

• My refusal to pay the fine raises a lot of questions, principally: Why not avoid prison and just pay?

=> ↺ When the United Mine Workers Ousted Their Entrenched Leadership: a Lesson for Today’s Labor Movements

• In national balloting supervised by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Arnold Miller, Mike Trbovich and Harry Patrick ousted an old guard slate headed by W.A. (“Tony”) Boyle, the benighted successor to John L. Lewis, who ran the UMWA in autocratic fashion for 40 years. Boyle’s opponents, who campaigned under the banner of Miners for Democracy (MFD), had never served on the national union staff, executive board or any major bargaining committee. Instead, 50 years ago they were propelled into office by wildcat strike activity and grassroots organizing around job safety and health issues, including demands for better compensation for black lung disease, which afflicted many underground miners.

• Today, at a time when labor militants are again embracing a ​“rank-and-file strategy” to revitalize unions and change their leadership, the MFD’s unprecedented victory — and its turbulent aftermath — remains relevant and instructive. In the United Auto Workers (UAW), for example, local union activists recently elected to national office — and fellow reformers still contesting for headquarters positions in a runoff that begins January 12 — will face similar challenges overhauling an institution weakened by corruption, cronyism and labor-management cooperation schemes. Some UAW members may doubt the need for maintaining the opposition caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), that helped reformers get elected, but the MFD experience shows that such political breakthroughs are just the first step in changing a dysfunctional national union.

=> ↺ Neoliberal Fascism, Cruel Violence, and the Politics of Disposability

• Cruelty has always had a special place in fascist politics. Not only did it embody a discourse of hate, bigotry, and censorship, it also initiated a practice of cruel power in order to eradicate those ideas, dissidents, and human beings considered unworthy. Legacies of fascism in Hitler’s Germany, Pinochet’s Chile, Franco’s Spain, and Mussolini’s Italy, among others, mixed a language of dread, fear, and contempt with wide-spread practices of suppression and the repressive power of the state in order to eliminate any just concept of politics and the structural conditions and ideological possibilities for developing civic and democratic communities.

• Under fascist regimes, however diverse, cruelty and its transformation into extreme violence occupied the very core of everyday life.[1] Cruelty as a form of extreme violence was structured in relations of domination and traded in fear, insecurity, corruption, forced precarity, and the production of what Etienne Balibar calls “death zones.”[2] Under such circumstances, politics and violence permeated each other, and in doing so transformed all vestiges of the social state into a punishing state. Fascist politics represented a war waged not only against democracy, but against the social contract, public goods, and all social bonds rooted in “movements of emancipation aimed at transforming the structures of domination.”[3] The social does not disappear in this context but is simply removed from democratic values and ruthlessly subjected to the workings of capital.[4]

=> ↺ Congress: Fund the Fight Against Union-Busting

• Workers began delaying doctor’s appointments. Others were forced to delve deeply into their pockets — one even put thousands of dollars of chemotherapy charges on credit cards to save his wife’s life.

• Lisa Wilds, president of United Steelworkers Local 152M, assured her colleagues that the company would be held accountable. And it was. This past August, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Tecnocap to reinstate the old health plan and reimburse workers, with interest, for all expenses they incurred.

=> ↺ Congress Is About To Make This Post Telling You When To Celebrate SCOTUS Justice Birthdays Illegal

• The US Supreme Court has a big year ahead with lots of weighty matters to consider in 2023. But the seriousness of their job doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate each justice’s special day! If you would like to know when to fill your heart with warm birthday wishes for your favorite justice, here are all their birthdays in this handy convenient form.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Despite Warnock Win, Gigi Sohn’s Path To The FCC Remains Mired In Dumb, Corrupt Bullshit

• We’ve noted several times how telecom and media giants are running a sleazy year-long smear campaign against Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, in the hopes of blocking her confirmation vote and miring the agency in perpetual consumer protection gridlock. The attacks have been carefully seeded across the US press through various think tanks and nonprofits, and accuse Sohn of everything from hating police to being an enemy of rural America.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ DRM Round-up: IDAD 2022

• Self-published books continue their upward climb, narrowly overtaking Macmillan (which publishes the DRM-free Tor imprint). This year the growth in self-published sales was driven primarily by authors publishing via Amazon.

=> ↺ Patients Are Being Left High And Dry When Medical Implant Makers Implode

• Techirt has long discussed how in the modern era, the things you buy aren’t actually the things you buy. And the things you own aren’t actually the things you own. Things you thought you owned can be downgraded, bricked, or killed off entirely without much notice.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Opinion | California’s New Antitrust Suit Shows How the State Can Lead on Reining In Amazon

• California has been a policy trendsetter for decades, leading the way nationally on issues ranging from environmental policy to online privacy. At a time when gridlock and aggressive industry lobbying threatens antitrust reform in Washington, California can and should lead the way on holding predatory monopolists like Amazon accountable.

=> ↺ Coalition Urges FTC to Ban Employer Non-Compete Clauses, Which ‘Keep Workers Stuck’

• A coalition of 25 progressive advocacy groups sent a letter Wednesday urging the Federal Trade Commission to immediately begin working on a rule to prohibit the use of non-compete clauses in employment contracts, arguing that such agreements disempower tens of millions of workers.

• “Employers’ use of non-compete clauses inflict real and substantial harms on the American worker and the overall U.S. economy without any legitimate justification,” states the letter to the FTC. “By limiting workers’ mobility, non-competes drive down wages, reduce the formation of new businesses, and keep workers stuck in unsafe or hostile workplaces.”

Patents

=> ↺ We Don’t Need Government-Granted Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug Development

• The most obvious example, that really deserves a hell of a lot more attention than it is getting, is the Covid vaccine developed by Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Botazzi at the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. This vaccine was developed using grants in the single digit millions. Unlike the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, it uses a long-established technology. It is also completely open-sourced; the technology is fully public and there are no patents or other restrictions preventing its manufacture anywhere in the world.

• The vaccine, called Corbevax, is cheap and easy to produce, costing less than $2 per shot. By contrast Pfizer and Moderna charged close to $20 a shot for the initial round of inoculations. They are looking to charge considerably more for subsequent booster rounds. This is in spite of the fact that the U.S. government paid close to $900 million for the development and testing of Moderna’s vaccine, in addition to supporting the development of mRNA technology for decades.

Copyrights

=> ↺ Record Companies Hit Optimum With Billion Dollar BitTorrent Piracy Lawsuit

• Record companies, including BMG, UMG, and Capitol, have filed a huge copyright lawsuit against the owners of internet service provider, Optimum. The plaintiffs claim the ISP turned a blind eye to pirating subscribers responsible for millions of infringements. The lawsuit lists thousands of songs and could be worth over a billion dollars in damages.

=> ↺ Pirate IPTV Services Generate Over €1 Billion Per Year in Europe

• New research shows that, in Europe, pirate IPTV services generate over a billion euros in annual revenue. The number of Europeans using illegal IPTV services has increased by 25% in three years, but popularity differs greatly between countries. Unauthorized IPTV services are most in demand among the youth.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: GHITNOK Wordo: LINGS

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. 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

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