● 03.02.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 02/03/2023: Arti 1.1.2 and Guile-CV 0.4.0

Posted in News Roundup at 12:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Games

=> ↺ New Steam Games with Native Linux Clients, with Lumencraft and Basements and Basilisks – 2023-03-01 Edition

• Between 2023-02-22 and 2023-03-01 there were 22 New Steam games released with Native Linux clients.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ What is Podman Desktop? A developer’s introduction

• I’m a developer. Well, I like to think that I am; I spent twenty-odd years as a software engineer before joining Red Hat ten years ago, and since then, I’ve been evangelizing the company’s tools and products from a developer perspective. I’ve seen the agile revolution and the rise of containers, and I was there when Kubernetes crawled out of the sea and into our hearts.

• But for the last four or so years, I’ve found developing containers locally a bit of a challenge. I’m used to being able to just log onto an OpenShift cluster and do my builds, normally through Source-2-Image or just by pointing the system at a Git repo with a Containerfile. But this isn’t an option for a lot of developers.

• I also used Docker a lot in the early days, but had a problem when I switched to developing on my Mac instead. To get around that problem, I actually hosted a Fedora virtual machine (VM), amusingly named ‘builder’, on which I did all my Docker builds. I would prepare all my source, create a Git repo, fire up the VM, ssh into it, clone the repo, build, test. Any problem I had, I would have to drop back to my Mac desktop, fix the code, git add, git commit, rinse and repeat.

• Then along came Podman. Podman is, put simply, Docker with some security enhancements—it solves the old problem of having to run your containers as root, which was always a worry for me when using Docker. The Podman project actually defines Podman as “a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Containers can either be run as root or in rootless mode.”

Red Hat ☛ How a manual intervention pipeline restricts deploymentIt is important to consider multiple factors when deploying production code. Later on, we will deploy, such as securing permission, pulling requests, testing the robustness of the application, and making sure it is tested thoroughly. Deployments will occur in the production cluster after a manual intervention step is added for management approval.The advantages of manual intervention are avoiding accidental deployments and achieving governance over the production environment and security. Our goal in this article is to create a manual intervention pipeline. In the middle of the pipeline are the CI and CD.We are creating a series of articles about complete CI/CD pipelines on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform using Jenkins and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. This 3-part series will cover the following topics:Part 1: Continuous Integration with Jenkins on OpenShiftPart 2: Continuous Deployment using Ansible Automation Platform on OpenShiftPart 3:  Restricting a production deployment on OpenShift with Jenkins and AnsibleAn overview of the architecture and workflowThis article is the third installment of the series. Assuming you have already read the previous articles on continuous integration and continuous deployment, proceed with the demonstration.The architecture diagram in Figure 1 illustrates the multiple clusters we will use in this demonstration. Adding manual intervention in CI/CD flow restricts the deployment on production. The purple line represents the production workflow. The workflow triggers when the release manager logs in to the Jenkins dashboard and clicks on approval. Then the Ansible Automation Platform triggers and fetches the playbooks from Git to do the deployment on the production cluster using the token and certificate of that cluster.Red Hat ☛ How to employ continuous deployment with Ansible on OpenShiftIn our previous article, we learned how to create a continuous integration pipeline on Red Hat OpenShift using Jenkins. In this article, we will learn how to perform continuous deployment on OpenShift using the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.Follow the series:Part 1: Continuous integration with Jenkins on OpenShiftPart 2: Continuous deployment using Ansible Automation Platform on OpenShiftPart 3: How a manual intervention pipeline restricts deploymentThis article assumes that you have basic knowledge of Jenkins, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform. You will need administrator privileges for your Openshift cluster to execute this blog.The CD pipeline architectureThe architecture diagram in Figure 1 illustrates all actions that occur after developers push and when Jenkins detects the changes to help with polling or webhooks. When Jenkins triggers the Ansible Automation Platform, continuous integration will occur. The Ansible Automation Platform fetches the playbook and configuration files over Git, which are required for the deployment of game applications. With the help of a template, Ansible Automation Platform deploys the application to the OpenShift cluster.Red Hat ☛ How to use continuous integration with Jenkins on OpenShiftIn this article series, we will set up a CI pipeline to compile and package a JavaScript game application into a Docker image using Jenkins on Red Hat OpenShift. Once we build the image, it will be pushed to the external Red Hat Quay container registry, Quay.io. When the developer pushes the changes into the Git repository, all these actions trigger.This is a series of complete CI/CD pipelines on OpenShift using the Jenkins and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. We will cover the following topics:Part 1: Continuous integration with Jenkins on OpenShiftPart 2: Continuous deployment using Ansible Automation Platform on OpenShiftPart 3: How a manual intervention pipeline restricts deploymentThis article is based on the assumption that you have basic knowledge of Jenkins, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform. You will also need administrator privileges for your Openshift cluster.The CI pipeline architectureThe developer commits and pushes the changes after initiating the action, as shown in the architecture diagram (Figure 1). Jenkins will detect the changes with the help of polling or webhooks. We build the image in the OpenShift cluster and push it to the Quay.io container registry using buildconfig.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ How to name your smart home devices in the age of Matter

• Now that the official Matter rollout has come and gone, more and more new devices will start to support the multiplatform standard. So too will some older smart home products, with software upgrades.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Aaron Christophel Brings DOOM To Payment Terminal

• Payment terminals might feel intimidating — they’re generally manufactured with security in mind, with all manner of anti-tamper protections in place to prevent you from poking around in the hardware too much. But [Aaron Christophel] thinks that level of security isn’t aren’t always in practice however, and on his journey towards repurposing devices of all kinds, has stumbled upon just the terminal that will give up its secrets easily. The device in question is Sumup Solo terminal, a small handheld with a battery, LTE connection and a payment card slot – helping you accept card payments even if you’re on the go.

=> ↺ Recreating a century-old Argentinian rainmaking machine

• You’ve heard about the many different snake oil concoctions shilled by con men over the centuries, but did you know that inventors created a variety of machines for similar purposes? The most well-known example is probably the belt vibrator, which purported to induce weight loss.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Arti 1.1.2 is released: HsDir groundwork and cell handling improvements

• Arti is our ongoing project to create a next-generation Tor client in Rust. At the start of this month, we released Arti 1.1.1. Now we’re announcing the next release in its series, Arti 1.1.2.

• Since our last release, our primary focus has been preparation for onion service support in Arti. Since the last release, we’ve implemented the parsing logic for the various layers of onion service descriptors, and the various computations needed to maintain a directory ring to decide where to find those descriptors.

=> ↺ The Results Are In: Furthering Our Mission In The Global South

• In 2017, the Tor Project developed and launched its Global South Strategy (GSS) which was conceived as a means to establish closer ties and build better relationships with at-risk communities in the Global South and to understand how we can remove common barriers to the adoption of our services. The goal is to empower people to be more secure on the internet by prioritizing a user-centric approach for the development of Tor technologies and products.

• Following the success of the first five years of the program, we engaged Firetail, a strategy consultancy working to achieve social progress, to conduct a thorough assessment of our approach. We wanted to track and measure progress towards the above goals. Today, we are pleased to share this evaluation report, its findings and recommendations with our community.

=> ↺ Giving Voice to the Future: Support OpenVoiceOS in establishing a non-profit association.

• OpenVoiceOS (OVOS) is a collective of programmers and hardware enthusiasts who produce an open-source voice assistant. We formed in 2019-2020 as an offshoot of the Mycroft community, bringing a handful of third-party projects under one roof. Our projects have been an extension of MycroftAI projects and core technologies itself, which slowly became independent of its parent.

• Over the years, We’ve been operating in a manner of an soft fork and a non entity for over two years without giving the arrangements much thought.

=> ↺ Nheko | Matrix Client written in Qt on openSUSE

• Matrix is a secure, decentralised, real-time, communication protocol that allows you to send messages and pictures free from the encumberments of a centralized authority. You can look at Matrix as an alternative to using Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, etc. Confusingly, Matrix is a protocol not a client.

Events

=> ↺ FOSDEM 2023: An Open-Source Conference, Literally

• Every year, on the first weekend of February, a certain Brussels university campus livens up. There, you will find enthusiasts of open-source software and hardware alike, arriving from different corners of the world to meet up, talk, and listen. The reason they all meet there is the conference called FOSDEM, a long-standing open-source software conference which has been happening in Belgium since 2000. I’d like to tell you about FOSDEM because, when it comes to conferences, FOSDEM is one of a kind.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ EDB boasts ‘five nines’ uptime in new Postgres database version

=> ↺ Database Cryptography Fur the Rest of Us

• An introduction to database cryptography.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ guile-cv @ Savannah: Guile-CV version 0.4.0

• This is a maintenance release, which introduces new interfaces.

• For a list of changes since the previous version, visit the NEWS file. For a complete description, consult the git summary and git log

Leftovers

=> ↺ ‘Be your own rockstar’: Entrepreneurs and influencers explore social tech

• Entrepreneurs and innovators gathered at Stanford on Feb. 23 for APARC’s conference on social tech futures. Keynote speaker YOSHIKI, leader of rock bands The Last Rockstars and X Japan, encouraged members of the Stanford community to pursue their dreams and make a positive impact.

=> ↺ At least 32 dead, 85 injured as trains collide in Greece

• At least 16 people have been killed and 85 injured after two trains collided near the city of Larissa in Greece late Tuesday night, Reuters reported, citing authorities.

=> ↺ Updated earthquake toll in Türkiye is 45,089

• Over 11 thousand aftershocks followed the February 6 earthquakes according to the announcement made by AFAD.

=> ↺ Death, Destruction, and Lars Von Trier

• In the first episode of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom Exodus, there’s a gag that hews closely to The Office (the Danish show’s distant relative in cringe-inducing workplace comedy) at its worst. Stig Helmer Jr. (Mikael Persbrandt), the imperious new surgeon at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, condemns the neurosurgical ward’s all-white staff, calling its lack of diversity “beneath contempt.” But wait—the Black doctors are simply running behind. The other lead surgeon, Pontopidan (Lars Mikkelsen), sends for two Black custodians, who are given lab coats and no explanation for their sudden promotion. They look confused. Helmer Jr. grumbles. On to the next item on the agenda.

=> ↺ The War on Positivity

• The populist left seems to think cancel culture, rather than environmental catastrophe is our biggest threat to freedom. While I certainly do not support the editing of Roald Dahl’s books it is worth looking into what his defenders get wrong when they try to paint our modern world.

• First of all there is a narrative out there that body shaming is out. It isn’t. It’s in and it has never been more in. Look at the suicide rates of young girls. Anyone who defends people of all body types is canceled. One author who writes about fat or ugly people gets his words changed a little and the Prime Minister comes to his defense.

=> ↺ Soft armour, mythical figures and ripped jeans – Hungarian brands showcased at Milan Fashion Week

=> ↺ Morse Code Clock For Training Hams

• It might seem antiquated, but Morse code still has a number of advantages compared to other modes of communication, especially over radio waves. It’s low bandwidth compared to voice or even text, and can be discerned against background noise even at extremely low signal strengths. Not every regulatory agency requires amateur operators to learn Morse any more, but for those that do it can be a challenge, so [Cristiano Monteiro] built this clock to help get some practice.

Science

=> ↺ The Die Is Cast!

• We all know the basics of how metal casting works, a metal is heated up to melting point and the resulting liquid metal is poured into a mold. When the metal sets, it assumes the shape of the mold. It’s a straightforward way to reliably replicate a metal item many times over, and the basics are the same whether the metal is a low-temperature alloy in a silicone mould or a crucible of molten steel poured into a sand mould.

Education

=> ↺ Ron DeSantis’s War on Florida Students

• Empty bookshelves in classrooms. Teachers afraid to display rainbow flags. School board members subjected to ideological purity tests. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s ongoing assaults on the K-12 education system provide a look not just at what is becoming a statewide dystopia for those of us who live here but also at how he would lead the nation.

=> ↺ New College of Florida Students and Faculty Protest DeSantis’ Right-Wing Assault on Education

• Roughly 300 students and faculty at the New College of Florida, along with their supporters, gathered before a board of trustees meeting on Tuesday to demonstrate against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ takeover of the small public liberal arts college and his broader attack on public education.

=> ↺ Gov. DeSantis: You’re a History Grad. Tell Me When Systemic Racism Ended?

• When Ron DeSantis was asked by a Fox News host two years ago if the United States is “systemically racist,” the Florida governor quickly responded: “It’s a bunch of horse manure.” He went on to boast that he had banned such ideas in Florida’s schools.   

• Boisterously banning books, educational curricula and college programs that address racism or LGBTQ dignity – or both (with added bigotry toward writers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde) – DeSantis is building his national “anti-woke” profile as he seems to be readying a presidential campaign against his former hero Donald Trump.   

=> ↺ New DeSantis-Endorsed Florida Bill An Outright Attack On The 1st Amendment And Free Speech

• Florida governor Ron DeSantis likes to proclaim himself a defender of free speech, but time and time again he’s looked to stifle, suppress, and silence speech. He’s done it with his social media bill that limits the 1st Amendment rights of social media sites, with his Stop WOKE Act which literally bars speech, and with his various retaliation bills against Disney for daring to criticize him. And a few weeks ago he made it clear that he wanted to undermine a core bedrock 1st Amendment Supreme Court case, arguing that the finding in NY Times v. Sullivan should be done away with. We’ve already explained why that ruling is so important, because without it, powerful politicians like DeSantis would be able to constantly tie up critics in court with SLAPP suits.

=> ↺ DeSantis Pivots Right on Abortion, Laying Groundwork for Presidential Primary

=> ↺ Burning Books and Education on the Path to Fascist Dictatorship

• Widening the lens on the escalating assault on education and those who teach it offers chilling thoughts on the future of U.S. democracy.

=> ↺ Black History Isn’t One Month

=> ↺ Acceptance rate drops to 3.62%, majority enrolled are non-white students

• The Class of 2026 had the lowest acceptance rate in the University’s history, dropping from 3.95% in the previous year. The newly admitted class consists of more female, FLI, and non-white students compared to previous years.

Hardware

=> ↺ A More Expressive Synth Via Flexure

• Synthesizers can make some great music, but sometimes they feel a bit robotic in comparison to their analog counterparts. [Sound Werkshop] built a “minimum viable” expressive synth to overcome this challenge. (YouTube)

=> ↺ Brand New Colecovision Console – On A Breadboard

• The Colecovision console from the early 1980s is probably not the most memorable platform of its era, but it retains a retrocomputing following to this day. The original hardware can be a bit pricey in 2023, so [nanochess] has built one of his own on a breadboard. It’s fully functional from original Colecovision cartridges, and we see it in the video below the break running Frogger.

=> ↺ Arc Overhangs In PrusaSlicer Are A Simple Script Away

• Interested in the new hotness of printing previously-impossible overhangs? You can now integrate Arc Overhangs into PrusaSlicer and give it a shot for yourself. Arc overhangs is a method of laying filament into a pattern of blossoming concentric rings instead of stringing filament bridges over empty space (or over supports).

=> ↺ AliExpress anime and electronics comments

• AliExpress can useful for buying certain components I can’t get from anywhere else, but the comments are the real gems. You’ll see people complaining that heatsinks get too hot, that a function generator couldn’t “detect” anything, and that a MiniPRO IC tester didn’t come with any EPROMs.

• I suspect if the site sold electric cars, people would complain that all the petrol spilled out when they tried to pour it into the charging port, or that a DIMM stuck to the side of their phone didn’t offer any additional capacity. I suppose you self-select for such people when you compete so aggressively on price over anything else.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ It’s Time to Realize the Farm Bill’s Transformative Potential

• When the Farm Bill appears for debate in Congress every five years, most of the public pays little attention.

=> ↺ ‘Brilliant PR Move’: Advocates Skeptical as Eli Lilly Vows 70% Insulin Price Cut

• Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical giant that has become virtually synonymous with the sky-high cost of insulin in the United States, pledged Wednesday to cut the list prices for its most widely used insulin products by 70%, a move that advocates and experts met with deep skepticism even as they welcomed its potentially significant benefits for some people with diabetes.

=> ↺ An attack on the entire Hungarian medical profession – reactions to bill on medical chamber

=> ↺ Fidesz-KDNP majority adopts bill on medical chambers – one day after it was submitted

=> ↺ Stanford professor Jef Caers discusses addiction, mental health, sexuality and stopping fossil-fuel-funded research

• Professor Jef Caers shared intimate stories from his life in and out of academia at a Feb. 24 event organized by the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability and Scientists Speak Up.

=> ↺ China Moves to Erase the Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’ to Deter Dissent

• The ruling Communist Party is waging an ambitious propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of its handling of the pandemic, which included some of the harshest restrictions in the world.

=> ↺ China Dismisses Latest Claim That Lab Leak Likely Caused Covid

• The response came after the Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the coronavirus emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China.

=> ↺ Latvia works on establishing joint Cancer Center

• Latvia is currently developing a national Cancer Center for a joint framework for the treatment of oncology patients. Preparations show how deep-rooted the issues in oncological care are, Latvian Radio reported on March 1.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Chat GPT Gets Real

=> ↺ Rovio Delists Last Paid ‘Angry Birds’ Game Because The Free Version Is More Profitable

• You have to love a story that comes full circle after all these many years. For a long, long time, we at Techdirt have been advocating for business models that make use of free content. The idea, which can certainly be counterintuitive, is that if you make parts of your product free to the customer, particularly the parts that are reproducable at zero marginal cost, then you can build in value-adds one way or another that you can charge for. Whatever you lose in not charging for some content, you can make it up via an increase in reach and/or market share, assuming you do it well. At this point, the examples of such business models are ubiquitous, but it wasn’t all that long ago that you would hear executives from various industries flatout state publicly that “nobody can make money from ‘free’.”

=> ↺ Principle of Shared Responsibility in Cloud-Native Applications

• Using the cloud means you can focus on your application and use a third party for most of your infrastructure. The cloud provides virtual interfaces that abstract away the details of operating infrastructure. That’s great for convenience, but what about security? Who is responsible for keeping your cloud-native application safe

=> ↺ VMware Extends Kubernetes Reach to Bare Metal Platforms

• At the Mobile World Congress conference, VMware today extended its Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework to make it possible to run disaggregated and virtualized radio access network (RAN) functions directly on a bare metal server using the VMware Tanzu distribution of Kubernetes. The extension, available as a technical preview

Security

=> ↺ LastPass says malware used to hack DevOps engineer in 2022 password vault breach

=> ↺ APOPS 1 at APRICOT 2023 / APNIC 55

• Attacks on DNS infrastructure, Space Division Multiplexing, and last mile connectivity at APRICOT 2023.

=> ↺ Cortex XSOAR Tips & Tricks – Leveraging dynamic sections – number widgets

• Introduction Cortex XSOAR is a security oriented automation platform, and one of the areas where it stands out is customization. A recurring problem in a SOC is data visualization, analysts can be swarmed with information, and finding out what piece of data is currently both relevant and significant can become hard. O

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Twitter Outages Are on the Rise Amid Elon Musk’s Job Cuts

• Elon Musk’s repeated job cuts are stoking new fears that there aren’t enough people to triage Twitter’s problems.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Western Balkans test field: Frontex already operates in four non-EU states

• Frontex was once established to support EU Member States with an external border in their surveillance. The tasks of this European Border and Coast Guard have always included improving controls on land and at EU airports and seaports. However, with the increasing externalisation of European migration defence from 2015 onwards, this scope of responsibility soon proved to be too narrow. In 2016, the governments therefore decided with the EU Parliament to allow „operations on the territory of third countries“ in the Frontex Regulation for the first time – subject to the consent of the government there.

=> ↺ German Court Places Limits On Mass Surveillance Enabled By Peter Thiel’s Palantir Software

• Big data has always been big business but, in recent years, it’s also become big government business. The stuff advertisers like is also stuff the government likes. Millions of tax dollars have been fed to private companies offering government agencies a wealth of information they’ve never had access to before. Everyone carries a computer in their pockets these days, and the always-on nature of the internet creates a wealth of data that can be obtained, stored, and analyzed for less than pennies on the byte.

=> ↺ Legislation Aiming To Give Law Enforcement Access To More ALPR Data Dies In Virginia

• Legislating from the bench is always problematic. People who like what courts have decided will claim this was the right thing to do. People who don’t like the decision will claim this is an overstep.

=> ↺ Denmark Justice Minister Approves Secret Charges Against Former Defense Minister Who Discussed NSA Spying With The Press

=> ↺ Win for Government Transparency and Immigrant Privacy Rights at Second Circuit

• As government agencies increasingly use digital tools to track citizens and immigrants, we need to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make that surveillance transparent. But while the government opens its databases to public scrutiny, it must also protect individual privacy.

• Late last month, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must be transparent and respect privacy by producing deidentified data on how it arrests, classifies, detains, and deports immigrants. The court agreed with plaintiff American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that ICE must also replace Alien Identification Numbers (A-Numbers), exempt from FOIA because they would identify individual immigrants, with unique but random identifiers.

=> ↺ Poland: the government declares no further extension of data retention obligation

• Data retention obligation will not be further extended in Polish law on electronic communication. However, the current, unlawful scope of telecommunication data retention remains unchanged.

=> ↺ European Commission must have greater ambition in combating sexual violence

• Last year, the European Commission made a far-reaching proposal to protect children against sexual violence. But a study by Delft University shows that there is a lot wrong with the substantiation of the proposal.

=> ↺ EDRi-gram, 1 March 2023

• In this edition of the EDRi-gram, we celebrate the success of EDRi’s member in the Czech Republic against the use of Google analytics in state services.

• We are also exploring the consequences of internet restrictions for people imposed by the Turkish government to silence criticism. You will also find the Stop Scanning Me movement’s recently launched petition enabling people to fight against the European Union’s attempt to scan every move we make online.

=> ↺ The secret services’ reign of confusion, rogue mayors, racist tech and algorithm oversight (or not)

• Have a quick read through January’s most interesting developments at the intersection of human rights and technology from the Netherlands.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Conservative US Jewish Groups Issue Rare Rebuke of Israeli Settler Violence

• The leading Conservative and Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States on Monday issued rare condemnations of Sunday’s deadly rampage by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank, joining U.S. and Israeli human rights groups in decrying the violence.

=> ↺ End the War with an Armistice

• President Joe Biden needs to start saying no to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But it’s not easy and it’s complicated.

• The adversaries in the Russo-Ukrainian war, and I include the United States and its allies in their proxy superpower conflict, seem determined to carry on the conflict to its bitter end, whatever that will be. At least that’s what they say publicly. It’s Ukraine, not Russia, that’s being physically destroyed.

=> ↺ The Cost of the Nation’s Endless Wars

• Oh, the hypocrisy.

• To hear President Biden talk about the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, you might imagine that Putin is the only dictator bent on expanding his military empire through the use of occupation, aggression and oppression.

=> ↺ The US Navy is More Than Just Broken, Careerism is Tearing It Apart

• Last year, Major General John Ferrari, US Army (Ret.), a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute penned an article titled “The Navy is broken. Congress must launch a commission to find the path forward” in which he described the Navy as being beset by very serious problems caused by several factors:

• Furthermore, “As a result of all these factors, the Navy has broken people, broken ships, and broken readiness — and now faces an inflation crisis, once again echoing the Army of the late 1970s.”

=> ↺ Welcome to the Predator State

• To residents of Memphis’s resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction.

• On the night of January 7th, Tyre Nichols was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). Five Scorpions, all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons.

=> ↺ Lessons Not Learned From the Pentagon Papers

• In June 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, a US government military analyst with the Rand Corporation and senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg[1], released to the New York Times and Washington Post what became known as the “Pentagon Papers”, 47 volumes of confidential records comprising some 7000 pages of secret government reports that documented the US involvement in “dirty tricks” and illegal actions under the Presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.  The documentsdemonstrated that successive US Presidents had lied to the American people, that false flags had been organized, “fake news” disseminated, phoney narratives issued by successive Secretaries of Defense.  As a New York Times editor wrote, “the Johnson administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress about a subject of transcendental national interest”[2].

• The rational implications of the Pentagon Papers were succinctly articulated to the then President Richard Nixon by his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman.  Bottom line was that through such disclosures the American people would feel that “ You can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; …the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that … the president can be wrong.”[3]

=> ↺ March To Iraq War, 20 Years Later: March 1, 2003

=> ↺ Fifty Years of Resistance

• If only for a short time, the forces of good and evil and all of the shades in between came together. The protester and Yippie cofounder Abbie Hoffman was right about symbolically jumping on the Earth in the 1960s and the Earth jumping back in answer and that it would never happen again. The epoch of the great changes is now so far behind that even a distant look over a person’s shoulder can’t exactly bring it back again the way it really was. We were there as a segment of the generation of baby boomers when all of the forces coalesced and for the briefest of moments we made a difference. Many in the generation of baby boomers knew the distinction between a just war and a just cause in war and the wars in Southeast Asia were neither.

• July 2023 will mark 50 years since my arrest by the FBI for my resistance to the Vietnam War. A search of the Internet yields the result of the first attempt to have the record of my arrest expunged. Yet no record exists of the successful expungement of the FBI arrest record. If a search is completed today, the unsuccessful attempt with its pejorative description of my military status in 1973 remains. It’s like an endless, though pretty much ineffective, reminder of all of the horror and negativity of those days, except for the resistance. The issue of two attempts at appealing for an expungement of my record was stymied by incorrect advice about what federal court jurisdiction in which to file the case, which is not the fault of the government. As a former chaplain at Brown University observed: “I can’t believe this is still going on.” Once the government has a hold on a person, it generally won’t let go.

=> ↺ NATO enlargement: President Novák urges Parliament to make a wise decision

=> ↺ Drones and closed airspace A close succession of UAV strikes against oil and gas facilities deep inside Russia could mark a new phase of the war — Meduza

• Multiple drone strikes have occurred across Russia since Monday evening, in what some sources say is one of the more extensive air attacks on the country in the past year. While there is no conclusive evidence of coordination among these incidents, the pattern of military drones crashing near Russia’s oil and natural-gas facilities has already led many to speculate about Ukraine’s involvement. Neither Russia’s Defense Ministry nor the Ukrainian authorities have yet issued any statements about the extensive pattern of attacks, however. Here’s what we know, so far.

=> ↺ Podolyak: Drones crashing around Russia signal internal ‘panic and decay.’ Peskov: ‘We don’t believe him.’ — Meduza

• Following a series of isolated drone strikes around Russia on February 27–28, Mykhailo Podolyak, publicity advisor to the Zelensky administration, tweeted that Ukraine has nothing to do with these incidents, since it’s only defending its own territory in the war with Russia.

=> ↺ C-4 explosive reportedly found on drone that crashed outside of Moscow on Tuesday — Meduza

• The Russian FSB reportedly found the explosive plastic compound C-4 affixed to the drone that crashed in the village of Kolomna, about 75 kilometers (about 47 miles) from Moscow, on Tuesday.

=> ↺ Russia’s Defense Ministry reports its air defense prevented ‘massive drone strike’ in Crimea — Meduza

• In its Wednesday briefing, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that an “attempted massive drone strike” had been prevented by Russia’s air defense forces in the annexed Crimea.

=> ↺ M23 Aiming Brutality Along Ethnic Lines

• ADF STAFF Violence in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to rage, as rebels are trying to exploit ethnic divisions. Recent reporting by international advocacy organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) revealed attacks by the group known as the M23 Movement were intended to exacerbate ethnic tensions…

=> ↺ Wagner Mercenaries Remain a Barrier to Peace in Libya

• ADF STAFF Nearly five years after they first arrived in Libya, Wagner Group mercenaries show no signs that they’re willing to leave the country, despite a joint demand by representatives of Libya’s rival governments for them to do so.

=> ↺ ISS Report: Iran Funnels Weapons that Arm Horn of Africa Extremist Groups

• ADF STAFF For years, Iranian weapons have wound up in Somalia, where they are sold to violent extremist groups such as al-Shabaab and the Islamic State. Through financial incentives, Iran established a proxy network in Somalia and has used the country to funnel weapons to the Houthi militia in Yemen since around 2016.

=> ↺ Silent anti-war movements offer hope and solidarity for protesters

• Flowers, plush toys, silence, mourning people and green ribbons are not usually associated with a protest. However, anti-Russo-Ukrainian War protesters have embraced this silent rebellion in the face of strict censorship from the Russian government. Protesters no longer take to the streets and gather with marches, signages or oral advocacy. 

=> ↺ Putin signs New START nuclear treaty suspension into law — Meduza

• Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that officially suspends Russia’s cooperation with the New START Treaty, the sole nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the U.S.

=> ↺ Russia’s vanished combatants: Thousands of Russian servicemen are MIA in Ukraine. Most of them are likely dead, but their families can neither bury them nor file for state compensation. — Meduza

• Russia’s wartime casualties in Ukraine include a large class of personnel who are missing. Most of these troops have likely been killed, but their families can neither get ahold of their bodies nor file for the compensation promised by the state. Often, they try to find their loved ones through dedicated social media groups, and by querying hospitals, morgues, and the Defense Ministry. Novaya Gazeta Europe has analyzed 9,905 posts on the popular social network VKontakte (VK), discovering references to 1,365 Russian troops whose relatives are fruitlessly trying to locate them. Although this is only a fraction of all the missing army personnel, this limited data points to systemic problems in Russia’s military record-keeping.

=> ↺ Could Lula Help End the War in Ukraine? Brazil’s President Vows to Pursue Diplomacy, Won’t Arm Kyiv

• We speak with Celso Amorim, the foreign adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, about how Brazil could play a key role in peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. Lula recently met with President Biden, who has unsuccessfully pushed Brazil to send weapons to Ukraine. Lula says he told Biden, “I don’t want to join the war, I want to end the war.” “If you only talk how to defeat Russia, how to enfeeble or weaken Russia, that will not come to a positive conclusion,” says Amorim, who also previously served as Brazil’s foreign minister, as well as its defense minister. “You have to talk to everyone, including your adversaries.”

=> ↺ Recruiters on social media seek attendees for ‘concert-rally’ to mark ninth anniversary of Crimea annexation, promising speech from Putin — Meduza

• Recruiters have begun searching on social media for potential attendees for an upcoming “concert-rally” at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium to mark the ninth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, according to the Telegram channel Sirena.

=> ↺ ‘A civilization war’: Ukrainian leaders discuss a year of Russian invasion

• A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, four Ukrainian political and civic leaders discuss Ukraine’s future.

Environment

=> ↺ Sales of SUVs—Responsible for More Carbon Pollution Than All But 5 Countries—Still Rising

• Although the total number of automobiles sold globally fell slightly last year, worldwide sales of sport utility vehicles rose significantly, with 330 million SUVs now on—and off—the world’s roads emitting more planet-heating greenhouse gases than all but five nations, an analysis published Monday revealed.

=> ↺ Earth on the verge of crossing critical climate thresholds, Stanford study finds

• Artificial intelligence provides new evidence for global warming thresholds, with temperatures projected to cross 1.5 degrees Celsius in 10-15 years. Further warming beyond 2 degrees is possible even with significant emissions reductions, according to the Stanford study.

=> ↺ Extinction Rebellion Protesters Target Law Firm for ‘Defending Climate Criminals’

• Dozens of protesters on Tuesday gathered at Eversheds Sutherland offices in four U.K. cities—Birmingham, Cardiff, London, and Nottingham—to call out the corporate law firm’s work for major polluters fueling the climate emergency.

=> ↺ French NGOs Sue BNP Paribas, Europe’s Largest Financier of Fossil Fuel Expansion

• French environmental organizations Notre Affaire à Tous, Friends of the Earth France, and Oxfam France last week filed what they say is the world’s first climate lawsuit against a commercial bank, suing BNP Paribas over its continued funding of fossil fuels. The lawsuit is part of a burgeoning movement to pressure financial institutions to end their funding of the fossil fuel sector due to the climate emergency. And if these funders refuse to stop their polluting investments, the movement aims to hold them accountable through strategies such as direct action and litigation.

• The new lawsuit against BNP Paribas, filed February 23 in the Paris Judicial Court, claims that the French bank is in breach of France’s “duty of vigilance” law. That groundbreaking 2017 law requires large companies to assess risks and impacts of their business activities on human rights and the environment and develop plans to identify and mitigate those risks. The law has been invoked in other lawsuits against corporate polluters including French oil major TotalEnergies and most recently against French food company Danone over its contribution to plastic waste.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ How Nuclear Power Plants Became Tools of War

• In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

=> ↺ Nuclear Power Plants as Dangerous Tool of War

• In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

=> ↺ The Nuclear “War” in Ukraine May Not Be the One We Expect

=> ↺ FTX Co-Founder Nishad Singh Pleads Guilty in Fraud Inquiry

• Nishad Singh, an FTX founder, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating Sam Bankman-Fried.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Elephants in US zoos? Without breeding, future is uncertain

• Over the past year, the Fresno Chaffee Zoo has been pulled into a growing global debate over the future of elephants in zoos. In recent years, some zoos have phased out elephant exhibits due to the complexity of the animals and their needs. Still, others, like Fresno’s zoo, say they are committed to keeping elephants and are turning to breeding, arguing that a sustainable population of zoo elephants will help spur a commitment to wildlife conservation among future generations of visitors.

Finance

=> ↺ South Africa and Nigeria graylisted for money laundering

• The gray listing of Africa’s leading economies—South Africa and Nigeria—by global anti-money laundering and terrorism financing watchdog, Financial Action Task Force (FATF), is expected to present far-reaching setbacks to the two countries’ economic growth.

=> ↺ Is Inflation Out of Control Again?

• The January data on consumer expenditures released yesterday had a lot of people freaking out. The story is that the Fed is going have to get out the big guns to really shoot inflation down.

• For those of us hoping that inflation would come down, without a big jump in unemployment, the report was definitely bad news. It showed strong growth in consumption, and more troubling, a 0.6 monthly increase in both the overall Personal Consumption Expenditure Deflator (PEC) and the core.

=> ↺ Rivian shares fall on mixed earnings and ongoing losses

=> ↺ Rivian Lost $6.8 Billion Last Year as Production Fell Short

• The maker of electric trucks said it expected to double production in 2023 as the supply of parts became more reliable.

=> ↺ Biden is banking on chip makers to further his affordable childcare plans

• US president Joe Biden’s war chest of subsidies for chip manufacturers comes with strings attached.

=> ↺ Latvia’s corruption watchdog wants harsher penalties

• Penalties imposed in some corruption cases could be harsher, Jēkabs Straume, chief of the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) said in the Saeima Defense, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention Commission on February 28, LETA reported.

=> ↺ HP beats earnings targets despite big drop in PC sales

=> ↺ Thoughtworks tops fourth-quarter estimates, but stock tumbles 17%+

=> ↺ Klarna to start charging late fees

• Currently, you aren’t penalised for missing a payment with Klarna as you are with other BNPL schemes such as Clearpay or Laybuy. But for orders placed on or after 16 March, you could face fees of up to £10 if you don’t make your payments in time.

=> ↺ Too long, too complex, too weird: the twisted history of Tubular Bells

• Released 50 years ago this spring, Tubular Bells was a surprise smash that turned its teenage composer into a reluctant, and very wealthy, rock star. The album – which comprises just two vocal-free tracks that clock in at around 25 minutes each – sold 17 million copies, launched Richard Branson’s Virgin Records label, soundtracked the scariest horror film of all time and even had its ‘bent tube’ cover reproduced on Royal Mail postage stamps. It also marked an early fusion of classical music and rock, leading to one of the most logistically-challenging – but ultimately iconic – music performances in BBC television history.

=> ↺ Shareholder Showdown: The Most Important Climate Votes You’ve Never Heard Of

• Today, a coalition of over 240 organizations across North America announced a new campaign on big banks and insurance companies: Shareholder Showdown. This spring, we’re calling for shareholders to step up and push major corporations to start taking the climate crisis seriously.

=> ↺ Russia’s unofficial ‘tsarina’ Investigative journalists say they’ve discovered Putin’s ‘slush fund’ and how he showers his rumored lover in luxury — Meduza

• In a two-part investigative report released in Russian and English on Tuesday, February 28, 2023, journalists at Proekt revealed new details about an alleged “slush fund” used to finance Vladimir Putin’s lavish private life and the lives of his closest companions, including retired gymnast Alina Kabaeva, the rumored mother of at least three children with Russia’s president. The investigation focuses first on a Cyprus-based company called Ermira Consultants (including how it profits off vodka merchandized with Putin’s name) and then on palace constructed outside Valdai. Throughout both stories, readers learn about the enormous entourage of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who serve as nominal owners of Putin’s alleged vast wealth. Meduza summarizes Proekt’s main findings.

=> ↺ Hundreds Rally Outside Supreme Court Amid ‘Baseless’ Attack on Student Debt Relief

• Borrowers, advocates, and lawmakers converged on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday night and Tuesday morning to defend President Joe Biden’s stalled student debt relief plan as justices prepared to consider a pair of right-wing challenges to the popular proposal.

=> ↺ Countdown to the Next East Palestine?

=> ↺ ‘Something Not Always Better Than Nothing’: Experts Warn Against Biden’s Child Care Scheme

• A new Biden administration policy that will reserve federal manufacturing funds for companies that help their employees access childcare will only perpetuate a system in which far too many U.S. families struggle to find care, one expert on the crisis said Monday.

=> ↺ Amazon UK workers are striking for the second time

• Workers staged the second-ever strike at Amazon UK today (Feb. 28) in a fight for higher pay. As many as 380 workers joined the picket line at a Coventry warehouse where the e-commerce giant employs about 1,500 people

=> ↺ How Unchecked Corporate Greed Makes Train Disasters Inevitable

• Stuff happens, right?

=> ↺ Florida Derailment Strengthens Case for Urgently Needed Railway Safety Proposal

• This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates…

=> ↺ “I Am Fired Up”: Sanders, Warren Join Rally for Student Debt Cancellation

=> ↺ Nebraska Democrat Vows to Filibuster All Bills Until Anti-Trans Bill Is Defeated

=> ↺ Justices ‘Cast Doubt’ on Biden’s Student Debt Forgiveness Plan

• President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive more than $400 billion in student loan debt to over 40 million borrowers drew criticism from conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices heard oral arguments in a pair of cases that will decide the fate of one of the president’s signature policies and impact the financial futures of millions of Americans.

=> ↺ Student Debt Relief in Jeopardy as Conservative Supreme Court Justices Question Biden’s Plan

• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in two challenges to the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, which could give tens of millions of federal borrowers up to $20,000 of relief. During arguments, several conservative justices expressed skepticism over the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, while liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the Republican states who brought one of the lawsuits. We’re joined by Eleni Schirmer, who organizes with the Debt Collective and is a writer and postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University’s Social Justice Centre in Montreal. Her new piece in The New Yorker is headlined “How the Government Cancelled Betty Ann’s Debts.”

=> ↺ ‘A Decent Society Would Not Let This Happen’: 30 Million Across US Face Food Aid Cuts

• As of Wednesday, around 30 million people across the United States will have their family’s food assistance slashed, despite high prices and expert warnings about a “hunger cliff.”

=> ↺ 30 Million Across the US Have Their Family’s Food Assistance Slashed

=> ↺ Shareholder Capitalism and the Cruelty of Mass Layoffs

• Ever since Margaret Thatcher famously claimed, “There is No Alternative,” mass layoffs have ripped through Western democracies. In good times and bad, employees are discarded en masse. In the United States during the early 1980s, the axe first fell harshly on industrial workers as manufacturing collapsed.

=> ↺ Calls to Scrap the Cap Grow as Millionaires Stop Paying Into Social Security for the Year

• On Tuesday, not even two full months into 2023, millionaires will stop paying into Social Security for the rest of the year thanks to a cap on taxable income that progressive campaigners and lawmakers want to raise—or eliminate completely.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ The Cheats’ Election

• It is over ten years since I allowed a guest post on this blog. This is because I never listen to anybody except myself. That way I avoid hearing anything disagreeable.

=> ↺ VK bans fully remote employees from living and working abroad, insists all staff must be in Russia

• In January, independent Russian media reported that VK had decided to fire the employees who had left Russia after Vladimir Putin had announced the mobilization. A company insider said the decision was motivated by information security concerns.

=> ↺ Jagmeet Singh will deactivate TikTok account in response to security, privacy concerns

• Singh has nearly 879,000 followers on TikTok. Singh said his party plans to deactivate the account by the end of the day Tuesday.

• He said he’s not worried the move will cost him political support in spite of his large following on the popular video-sharing platform.

=> ↺ Calling Out ‘Hypocrisy and Censorship,’ Campaign Aims to Prevent US TikTok Ban

• Data privacy and free speech advocates on Tuesday sounded the alarm about “hypocrisy and censorship” as U.S. House Republicans pushed for a bill to effectively ban TikTok, a video-sharing platform created by the Chinese company ByteDance, across the country.

=> ↺ Republicans want to help Biden ban TikTok

• Momentum against TikTok is brewing in Congress, where House Republicans are marking up legislation to empower President Biden to ban the app.

• Why it matters: The U.S. government’s security review of TikTok has dragged on for years, and lawmakers are growing impatient to appear strong against potential Chinese threats.

=> ↺ Our Growing TikTok Moral Panic Still Isn’t Addressing The Actual Problem

• The Biden administration has given all federal agencies 30 days to ensure staffers do not have TikTok on any federal devices. All agency vendors are to adhere to the same rules within 90 days. It’s the latest evolution in a growing planetary moral panic that’s gotten well out ahead of its skis, resulting in often-performative solutions that don’t fix the actual problem.

=> ↺ Canada bans TikTok on government mobile devices as security precaution

• Fortier reiterated the Government of Canada’s commitment to maintaining the security of government information through this ban. While the Canadian government does not have evidence that government information was compromised through the use of TikTok, it says there are clear security risks that arise from TikTok’s data collection methods.

=> ↺ More layoffs at Twitter, and loyalist Esther Crawford isn’t spared

• The layoffs came this weekend after Twitter employees realized they had been cut off from using Slack. While it later came out that Twitter hadn’t paid its Slack bill on time, that’s not why the platform went down. The Platformer reported that someone at Twitter manually shut off access. Many employees worried that this was the first sign of layoffs to come, and while correlation does not equal causation, an entire company being cut off from their main mode of communication as layoffs started dropping like bombs caused confusion and panic all around.

=> ↺ When There’s a Communist Running City Hall

• To get an idea of how Elke Kahr understands her job, you only have to wait at her office. When I visited the communist mayor of the Austrian city of Graz one morning in early February, her two secretaries were busy taking calls from locals. “Would you want an appointment with the mayor?,” one of them asked an apparently upset caller. “What about tomorrow, 6:30 pm?” A few minutes later, the other secretary picked up the phone. “You sent us an e-mail,” she started. “I wanted to ask if you are free later this week.” Graz is no metropolis, but with nearly 300,000 inhabitants, it’s Austria’s second-largest city. As result of her approach to politics, Kahr’s workdays are almost always longer than 12 hours. Nearly every day, she meets with constituents from all backgrounds.

=> ↺ Rejecting Lightfoot, Chicago Picks Progressive to Face School Privatizer in Mayoral Runoff

• Chicago voters rejected Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s bid for a second term on Tuesday, elevating progressive Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson to face conservative candidate Paul Vallas—an ardent school privatization advocate—in an April 4 runoff.

=> ↺ Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Loses Election; Candidates Backed by Police & Teacher Unions Head to Runoff

• Chicago-based Democracy Now! co-host Juan González gives an update on the Chicago mayoral race after incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot failed to advance to a runoff election. The two top candidates are now Paul Vallas, the former head of Chicago Public Schools, who has been endorsed by the local police union, and Brandon Johnson, an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. González says the race pits progressives in the city against centrist and conservative forces and could be a bellwether of where the Democratic Party goes.

=> ↺ ‘You may ask a question, just don’t expect an answer!’

=> ↺ Bola Tinubu is the new president of Nigeria

• After four days of vote tallying, Nigeria has a new president in Bola Tinubu—the All Progressive Congress party candidate who campaigned on the slogan “it’s my turn.”/p>

=> ↺ Russia Fines Wikipedia Over Military ‘Misinformation’

• The Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2 million rubles ($27,000) by a Russian court on February 28 after the authorities accused it of failing to delete “misinformation” about the Russian military from Wikipedia, the courts service said. [...]

=> ↺ Russian court fines Wikipedia over military ‘misinformation’

• Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Russia introduced sweeping new laws restricting what people can report about the conflict, fining or blocking websites that spread information at odds with the Kremlin’s official narrative.

=> ↺ Safety Tech Challenge Fund

• The REPHRAIN research centre are pleased to announce to release of “Towards a Framework for Evaluation CSAM Prevention and Detection Tools in the Context of End-to-end encryption Environments: a Case Study”.

• Through the Safety Tech Challenge Fund, the UK Government awarded funding to five projects to prototype innovative, automated technologies to help keep children safe in E2EE environments, such as online messaging platforms, while ensuring user privacy is respected.

=> ↺ Children deserve a secure and safe [Internet]

• Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) need to hear from you. They are now discussing a law that will endanger everyone’s privacy and safety. The proposed law promises to protect children from sexual abuse by breaking encrypted, secure communications.

• But experts show that breaking encryption will turn the internet into a space that is dangerous for everyone’s privacy, security and free expression. This includes the very children that this legislation aims to protect.

• The United Nations and UNICEF state, online privacy is vital for young people’s development and self-expression, and children should not be subjected to generalised surveillance.

=> ↺ Twitter updates violent speech policy with ‘zero tolerance’ for the worst cases

• It should be pretty obvious that users should not “incite, promote or encourage” other users to commit violence or promote “genocide” or “war crimes,” but the “coded language” Twitter says that is a masked threat is also verboten on the platform. Twitter says users will also face the music if they “glorify, praise or celebrate” acts of violence that have caused someone obvious harm.

=> ↺ ‘Fantastic News for the Country!’ Biden Nominates Julie Su for Labor Secretary

• Progressives on Tuesday applauded as U.S. President Joe Biden nominated Julie Su to succeed outgoing Labor Secretary Marty Walsh—a choice the nation’s largest federation of unions said will “continue the Department of Labor’s historic legacy of pro-union leadership.”

=> ↺ Biden to nominate Julie Su to head Labor Department

• President Biden announced Tuesday that he plans to nominate Julie Su, a longtime advocate for workers’ rights, to lead the Labor Department.

=> ↺ Arizona Child Welfare Director Dismissed Amid GOP Attacks Speaks Out

• Arizona’s newly elected Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has given up on another of her Cabinet nominees in the face of misleading attacks from Republicans in the state Legislature. Matthew Stewart was forced out last Wednesday after serving just a month and a half as Hobbs’ director of the Department of Child Safety, the state child protective services agency.

• When Hobbs selected Stewart in December, she called him one of “the best minds Arizona has to offer” and a leader on racial justice issues who would “transform” a child welfare system that ProPublica and NBC News had found investigated the families of 1 in 3 Black children in metro Phoenix during a recent five-year period.

=> ↺ Republicans Are Working on Making 70 the New Social Security Retirement Age

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Türkiye sentences a journalist under ‘disinformation law’ for first time

• Sinan Aygül had tweeted about allegations of child abuse against security, but deleted the tweets a few hours later, apologizing for sharing unconfirmed information.

=> ↺ The latest from Arte Weekly: Inflation, refugees and propaganda – what the war in Ukraine brought to European countries

=> ↺ Murdoch testified Fox News hosts endorsed idea that Biden stole election

• The recently unsealed documents include excerpts from a deposition in which Murdoch was asked about whether he was aware that some of the network’s commentators –Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity –at times endorsed the false election claims. Murdoch replied, “Yes. They endorsed.”

• The Murdoch deposition is the latest filing in the defamation case to reveal concerns at the top-rated network over how it was handling Trump’s claims as its ratings plummeted after the network called Arizona for Joe Biden, angering Trump and his supporters.

=> ↺ Rupert Murdoch Admits Fox Hosts “Were Endorsing” False Election Fraud Claims

=> ↺ Murdoch admits some Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ false election fraud claims

• Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that some Fox News commentators endorsed the false allegations by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that he didn’t step in to stop them from promoting the claims, according to excerpts of a deposition unsealed Monday.

=> ↺ Rupert Murdoch Admits That Fox Pushed Trump’s Election Lies for Profit

• “It’s not red or blue—it is green.”

=> ↺ Trump Melts Down Over Murdoch Admitting Fox Lied About Election Fraud

• In his testimony, Murdoch admits that hosts on the network aired false claims about the election and alleged voter fraud, and that company executives could have intervened to prevent their broadcast.

=> ↺ The Nord Stream sabotage: conspiracy theories, suspicions and silence

• Another reason for the investigations’ secrecy is the intelligence-collecting methods and data being used. Western countries do not want to reveal clues about the technology they use to monitor the Baltic Sea or the sensors and other military equipment they have deployed in a sensitive European security area. This is why a joint inquiry was immediately ruled out, and independent investigations are underway. With war raging in Europe, some information cannot be shared – not even with allies.

=> ↺ Romania Warns Of ‘Fake News’ About It Massing Troops On Moldovan Border

• Russia has falsely claimed that Ukraine is planning to invade Transdniester, raising suspicions that Moscow is looking for a pretext to annex the separatist region, as it did with Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

=> ↺ ‘It’s all a lie’: Russians are trapped in Putin’s parallel universe. But some want out

• Draconian new censorship laws targeted any media still operating outside the controls of the Kremlin and most independent journalists left the country. A digital Iron Curtain was reinforced, shutting Russians off from Western news and social media sites.

• And as authorities rounded up thousands in a crackdown on anti-war protests, a culture of fear descended on Russian cities and towns that prevents many people from sharing their true thoughts on the war in public.

=> ↺ How Russia is losing — and winning — the information war in Ukraine

• Russia’s war in Ukraine isn’t just being fought on the ground and in the air with tanks, artillery and fighter jets. It’s also playing out online, where the Kremlin and its allies are using propaganda, fake social media accounts, forged documents and manipulated videos and images to push false narratives, in an effort to deflect blame from Moscow and undermine support for Ukraine.

• [...]

• Like the claim that Ukraine was developing biological weapons with the assistance of the U.S. government, which was picked up and amplified in the U.S. by far-right online influencers, followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and even Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

=> ↺ A Comic That Captures the Antic Energy of a Post-Truth World

• The Department of Truth is set in a world where, if enough people believe it, a conspiracy theory will manifest and become reality. For example, in one storyline, the characters have to hunt down Bigfoot, who wanders the world as a hazy cryptid because cryptozoologists have spread the word about his existence. The comic book series centers on Cole, an FBI agent recruited into the Department of Truth, a US agency tasked with trying to rein in this alternative reality.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Sensitivity Rewrites: The Cultural Purging of Roald Dahl

• Censorship is never innocent, made worse for its strained good intentions.  For those responsible for setting and policing such policies, the inner judge comes out, stomping on assumed meanings, interpreting and removing things to ensure the masses are not corrupted.  Children’s stories and tales have not been exempted from this train of revision, expurgation and adjustment.

• In modifying the language of children’s texts, a number of agents come into play: concerned parents, worried authorities, and the considerations that reflect the temper and mores of the time.  Publishers, keen to ensure a wider readership, feel pressure to alter the original text to stay modern and trendy.

=> ↺ Journalist Yulia Starostina, who worked to help displaced Ukrainians, fined for ‘discrediting’ Russian army — Meduza

• A Moscow court has fined journalist Yulia Starostina 50,000 rubles ($667) on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army, according to the independent outlet Mediazona.

=> ↺ Taamneh Case Gave Us A Glimpse Of The Horror Websites Would Face In A Post-Section 230 World

• Last week I wrote some initial thoughts on the Supreme Court hearing in Gonzalez v. Google. Of course, as lots of people mentioned, it was tied at the hip with another case, Taamneh v. Twitter, as both were granted cert together. The two cases have been connected for a while, as the decisions in the 9th Circuit on both of them weren’t just released on the same day, but in the same ruling. The fact patterns between the two cases are at least somewhat similar (and similar to a bunch of other ridiculous cases). Someone, somewhere in the world, was killed in a terrorist attack. The plaintiff (who represents the estate of the deceased) sues a social media company. Not because there’s any evidence whatsoever connecting that company to the attack, but because the plaintiffs claim that the social media sites “aided and abetted” terrorists by… letting them use the platform (not for planning the attack, just in general).

=> ↺ Russia moves to criminalize ‘Russophobia’ — Meduza

• Valery Fadeyev, chairman of Russia’s Human Rights Council, is calling for a new law that would criminalize “Russophobia.”

=> ↺ Renowned geologist Ahmet Ercan detained over earthquake comments

• The professor was detained for “provoking the public into hatred and hostility” over a social media post. He was released after spending the night at the police headquarters.

=> ↺ Fenerbahçe fans banned from away game after ‘earthquake’ protests

• Fans of the club protested the government during the last game in their home turf. The club said the decision was “unacceptable.”

=> ↺ Prigozhin asks legislators not to outlaw ‘constructive criticism’ of top military officials — Meduza

• Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin appealed to the State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, asking him to exclude “constructive criticism” of Russia’s top military officials from the draft law that criminalizes “discrediting” the participants of Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Russian government blocks Shutterstock for hosting ‘destructive materials, including suicide and pro-drug content’ — Meduza

• Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, announced Wednesday that it has blocked the website of the stock image provider Shutterstock in Russia, according to state media.

=> ↺ Russian authorities open investigation into university’s Ukrainian culture exhibit, but student council pushes back — Meduza

• The Russian Education and Science Ministry has organized an official investigation into Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) after the institution hosted an international fair with exhibits by students from various countries, including Ukraine, on Monday.

=> ↺ Russian police arrest father charged with ‘discrediting’ army after daughter drew anti-war picture at school — Meduza

• Alexey Moskalev, a single father who became the target of a felony case after his daughter got in trouble at school for drawing an anti-war picture in art class, has been arrested, the independent outlet Spektr reported on Wednesday, citing a person who knows the family.

=> ↺ New video shows one of the ‘violations’ for which jailed politician Alexey Navalny was sent to a ‘punishment cell’: short sleeves — Meduza

• The human rights group Gulagu.net has published a video shot in August 2022 at the prison holding Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny that reportedly shows one of the “violations” for which the jailed politician was subsequently moved to a “punishment cell.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Sanders, Democrats, and a Lone Republican Revive PRO Act to Strengthen Workers’ Rights

• Following a year in which strike activity surged and public approval of unions reached its highest point in nearly six decades, Sen. Bernie Sanders joined Democratic lawmakers and a lone Republican on Tuesday in reintroducing legislation that would strengthen workers’ organizing rights and crack down on corporate union-busting.

=> ↺ Bernie Sanders Reintroduces PRO Act as Labor Activity Is on the Rise

=> ↺ Immigrants Win “Unprecedented” Settlement Over Violent ICE Workplace Raid

=> ↺ Majority of countries guarantee paid paternity leave — but not the U.S.

• Sixty-three percent of countries around the world provide guaranteed paid parental leave for fathers, according to a report out Tuesday morning from the World Policy Analysis Center.

=> ↺ 2023: Important consultations for your Digital Rights!

• Public consultations are an opportunity to influence future legislation at an early stage, in the European Union and beyond. They are your opportunity to help shaping a brighter future for digital rights, such as your right to a private life, data protection, or your freedom of opinion and expression.

=> ↺ Longest Alabama Strike Ends as Warrior Met Coal Miners Return. Record Coal Prices Help Break Strike

• In Alabama, hundreds of striking miners are set to return to work Thursday after nearly two years spent on picket lines in the so-called right-to-work state. This was the longest strike in Alabama history. Its end comes after the Warrior Met Coal company successfully used replacement workers to keep its mines running, reporting large profits to shareholders due to the skyrocketing price of coal. At the same time, the company told miners they would only retain their jobs if they agreed to a 20% pay cut and to relinquish various benefits relating to weekend pay and healthcare. We go to Birmingham, Alabama, for an update from independent labor journalist Kim Kelly, who has covered the Warrior Met strike since it began and says many of the workers felt abandoned.

=> ↺ Death Toll from Migrant Shipwreck Reaches 67 While Italy Cracks Down on MSF & Other Rescue Groups

• At least 67 people, including children, died in a shipwreck Sunday off the coast of southern Italy, and rescue workers fear the death toll could climb above 100 as they recover more bodies from the sea. It is believed to be the deadliest migrant shipwreck of its kind in almost a decade. Almost 26,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, but many governments have responded by criminalizing rescue efforts by humanitarian groups. Just days before this latest shipwreck off the coast of Italy, the Italian government of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni approved a new law making it harder for humanitarian aid rescue vessels to carry out their missions. For more, we speak with Caroline Willemen, a search and rescue leader with Médecins Sans Frontières, which has had one of its ships detained by Italian authorities as part of the new measures, blocking it from going to sea to save lives for at least 20 days.

=> ↺ EU states against civilian rescue: Ships should meet higher standards

• The German Federal Minister of Transport wants to tighten the Ship Safety Ordinance and thus put obstacles in the way of sea rescuers. Behind this is a master plan by an EU group in which three German ministries participate

=> ↺ Gee It’s Nice Your State is Blue, the War on Abortion’s Still Coming for You

• Let’s have a look at the latest development in the Christian fascist Amerikaner campaign to re-impose the full pre-Roe v.Wade female bondage of forced motherhood, paying special attention to the sickening “Weimar” role of the Democratic Party and its allied “choice” organizations/NGOs.

• Recall how the dismal Dems and their friends in Indivisible, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood,  and countless mainstream liberals and supposedly left “repro” groups across the country, justified their abject failures to:

=> ↺ Anti-Abortion Activists Are Fighting to Change Election Law

• For decades, lawyers at the Thomas More Society have backed provocateurs and long shot causes in hopes of winning severe restrictions on abortion in the U.S.

• As others in the anti-abortion movement distanced themselves from clinic protestors accused of trespassing, vandalism and sometimes violence, the Thomas More Society defended them in civil and criminal court. The legal nonprofit once sided with a Wisconsin pharmacist who refused to fill a birth control prescription on religious grounds.

=> ↺ “Alone and Exploited”: NYT Exposé Shows Migrant Kids in U.S. Forced into Brutal Jobs for Major Brands

• We speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Hannah Dreier, who revealed in a major New York Times investigation the widespread exploitation of migrant children in some of the most dangerous jobs in the country. In response, the Biden administration on Monday announced it would carry out a broad crackdown on the use of migrant child labor in the United States, vowing stricter enforcement of labor standards and better support for migrant children. “These kids are just on their own in these situations, with very little resources and very few ways out,” says Dreier. We are also joined by Gregory Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, who says migrant children need better protection from unscrupulous employers and others who would seek to exploit them. “Children don’t have any knowledge or understanding of what their legal rights are,” says Chen.

=> ↺ DeSantis Targets Immigrants in Lead-Up to Likely Presidential Run

=> ↺ Be Afraid of Rick Scott’s Reactionary Plan, But Thank Him for Saying It Out Loud

• Florida Senator Rick Scott is perhaps the leading policy voice in today’s Republican Party. His proposed “Rescue America Plan” outlines detailed policies that would supposedly address our shared national challenges and crises. They do not.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Internet restrictions in Turkey violate fundamental rights

• After the major earthquake that took place in Turkey on 6 February, covering 10 provinces and a population of approximately 15 million, bandwidth restriction for social media platforms such as Twitter and Tiktok was implemented. Whenever the current government was criticised for not meeting its obligations, throttling was used as an option to filter and prevent the flow of information.

=> ↺ Newsletter spam… out of nowhere!

• Until this morning, I’d been subscribed to an email newsletter for an event organiser. It was more of an announcement feed than anything else, which probably could have been better serviced by RSS.

• Is there a gmane-like service, but that converts bulk email received in a special inbox to an RSS feed? Now there’s an idea! But I digress.

• Having emailed me one a month, or even once a quarter on occasion, this event organiser decided that escalating this to one to three emails a day was a good idea. This represents a thirty-fold increase at minimum, which is quite the feat given their emails printed on paper could barely achieve a tenth of that. They’ve now cumulatively sent me more email in the last week than the last three years, combined.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ After Backlash From Its Dumb Password Sharing Crackdown, Netflix Lowers Prices In 100 Countries (Just Not In The U.S.)

• So we’ve noted more than a few times that Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a dumb cash grab. The company had already raised prices, it had already monetized the thing it was worried about (it already charges you extra if you want more simultaneous streams), and its hard 180 from encouraging password sharing to demonizing it turned off users just as streaming competition heated up.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ Zombie Patents! Can Expired Innovation Patents Still Be Examined and Certified?

• The Australian Patent Office recently issued two decisions on the examination and certification of innovation patents owned by UK company Diogenes Limited: Diogenes Limited [2023] APO 5 concerning innovation patent no. 2020104437 (‘Diogenes 1’); and Diogenes Limited [2023] APO 8 concerning innovation patent no. 2021103809 (‘Diogenes 2’).

=> ↺ Some light for the sunrise: 5 questions for 5 French UPC Judges

• Although the sunrise period starts today, the UPC remains in the shadows for the moment.

Software Patents

=> ↺ Stupid Patent Of The Month: Clocking In To Work—On An App

• What if we told you the Stupid Patent of the Month has a sponsor, but we don’t know who it is? That would seem shady, wouldn’t it? 

=> ↺ Stupid Patent of the Month: Clocking In To Work—On an App

• This month’s stupid patent, U.S. Patent No. 9,986,435, was brought to you—to all of us, really—from the murky depths of the litigation finance industry. Originally assigned to a shell company linked to giant patent troll Intellectual Ventures, this patent was sold off and is now in the hands of Mellaconic IP LLC, a recently-created Texas shell company. Mellaconic has sued more than 40 companies over claims that a vast array of HR software infringes their patent.

Copyrights

=> ↺ CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | March: Better Sharing, Brighter Future

• Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For March, we’re excited to showcase “Better Sharing, Brighter Future” by Mexican illustrator and cartoonist, David Espinosa. The piece, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Catherine Stihler, Creative Commons CEO:

=> ↺ Charles Riondet — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 4

• Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Charles is the Digital and Open Data Project Manager at Mucem where he works to increase the usability and engagement of the museums collection.

=> ↺ BitTorrent Seedbox Provider Handed Criminal Conviction Over Users’ Piracy

• A man who rented out servers configured for BitTorrent file-sharing use has been handed a three-month suspended sentence in Denmark. Known as ‘seedboxes’, these pre-configured servers are not illegal per se, but when customers used the devices to break copyright law on known pirate sites, rightsholders held the server provider liable.

=> ↺ US Court Denies Bungie’s $2.2m Claim Against UK ‘Ring-1′ Cheat Seller

• Bungie and Ubisoft’s request for default judgment in a prominent cheating lawsuit has been denied by a California federal court. The companies sought $2.2 million in copyright-related damages from a UK defendant they described as a key player in the “Ring-1″ group. The court concluded that the man was little more than a customer support staffer.

=> ↺ U.S. Govt: Omi in a Hellcat Should Serve 15.5 Years For Pirate IPTV Scheme

• Three U.S. government attorneys say that Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka Omi in a Hellcat, should serve 15 years and 8 months in prison for crimes related to his pirate IPTV service, Gears TV. The YouTuber agreed to plead guilty to felony copyright infringement, device fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, among other crimes. Restitution: $30.2 million.

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