Mexico’s Congress OKs new national guard championed by Lopez Obrador

March 14, 2019

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s Congress on Thursday approved President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s plan to create a national guard, a key piece of the government’s strategy to rein in gang violence that has cost tens of thousands of lives over the past decade.

With approval in hand from both the lower house and Senate, the constitutional reform to create the national guard will now head to Lopez Obrador for his ratification and then be published in the official gazette to become law.

The government said initially that in a first phase, the guard would consist of some 50,000 members transferred from military and federal police forces. Mexican Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said recently the ranks of the national guard would grow to some 80,000 by the end of the year.

The guard will also fall under civilian control, after critics protested that military leadership could increase Mexico’s militarization.

Security forces in recent years have been accused of extreme rights abuses, further worsening Mexico’s reputation for violence. Since former President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to take on drug cartels in late 2006, gang violence has been blamed for more than 250,000 killings.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Anthony Esposito and Peter Cooney)

Thousands of Algerians take to streets to demand Bouteflika quit

March 5, 2019

By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Thousands of Algerians took part in renewed protests in the capital and other cities on Tuesday, calling on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down and rejecting his offer to not serve a full term after elections in April.

“Game over” read one poster. “System – go away”, said another.

The protests appear to lack leadership and organization in a country still dominated by veterans of the 1954-1962 independence war against France, including Bouteflika.

But the unrest still poses the biggest challenge to the ailing leader and the ruling elite made up of the ruling party, businessmen, the military and security services.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied in cities around Algeria in the largest protests since the 2011 Arab Spring, calling on Bouteflika, 82, not to submit election papers for the April 18 election. The papers were filed on Sunday.

On Tuesday, hundreds of students protested in cities including Constantine, Annaba and Blida.

Bouteflika, in power for 20 years, has not spoken in public since suffering a stroke in 2013.

Young Algerians who are at the forefront of the protests want a new generation of leaders and have few attachments to the old guard.

After a decade-long Islamist insurgency that Bouteflika crushed early in his rule, Algerians generally tolerated a political system that left little room for dissent as a price to pay for relative peace and stability.

But Algeria’s mostly young population, almost 70 percent of whom are aged below 30, are agitating for jobs, better services and an end to rampant corruption in a country that is one of Africa’s largest oil producers.

Bouteflika’s opponents say he is no longer fit to lead, citing his health and a lack of economic reforms to tackle high unemployment, which exceeds 25 percent among people under 30.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Microsoft Workers Revolt Over $480 Million Defense Contract

18 years after Microsoft’s Halo began training kids to shoot bad guys using a heads-up display (HUD), dozens of Microsoft employees have signed a petition against the development of Halo-esque augmented reality HUDs for the US Army, reports CNBC

HoloLens is one of the leading consumer-grade headsets, however with only 50,000 units sold as of last November, it has yet to find a large-scale consumer application. 

The contract, awarded last November, could eventually lead to the military purchasing more than 100,000 headsets that project holographic images into the wearer’s field of vision in order to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy,” according to a government description of the program. 

“Augmented reality technology will provide troops with more and better information to make decisions. This new work extends our longstanding, trusted relationship with the Department of Defense to this new area,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a November statement to Bloomberg

The U.S. Army and the Israeli military have already used Microsoft’s HoloLens devices in training, but plans for live combat would be a significant step forward. –Bloomberg

The contract was awarded to Microsoft through a 25-company bidding process designed to encourage the Army to ink deals with companies that aren’t longstanding defense contractors. Other companies interested in the deal were Booz Allen Hamilton (of Edward Snowden fame), Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. 

An attendee wears a HoloLens headset at SXSW. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Microsoft employees doth protest

“We are a global coalition of Microsoft workers, and we refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression,” reads a letter signed by more than 50 Microsoft employees after it began to circulate on Friday. 

We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the US Military, helping one country’s government ‘increase lethality’ using tools we built. We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used,” the letter goes on to say. 

The letter, addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and president and chief legal officer Brad Smith, notes that the company has previously licensed technology to the military – including HoloLens for use in training – but has never before “crossed the line into weapons development”.

It adds that the program, officially called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, turns “warfare into a simulated ‘video game,’ further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed.” –CNBC

The employees have demanded that Microsoft cancel the IVAS contract, cease all work on defense technology and create a public policy clarifying these commitments. The letter also demands an independent ethics review board to ensure compliance. 

“A lot of people feel uncomfortable about being involved in war-related business or producing weapons that hurt other people,” said one Microsoft employee who was not authorized to speak on the record. “To me, it’s a basic violation of Microsoft’s mission statement to empower every person and organization on the planet to do more.”

“Although I believe in security and military action for a morally justifiable cause, I take issue with the language of ‘lethality’,” said software developer Monte Michaelis – who worked on HoloLens for two years before leaving Microsoft in 2018.

There are appropriate applications for mixed reality in a military setting, but I would not want to be designing an experience where my goal was to more efficiently kill people.”

As CNBC notes, the letter comes just days before Microsoft is expected to roll out HoloLens 2 – which is expected to be lighter, more comfortable, and contain an upgraded display. 

Last June, over 100 Microsoft employees protested the company’s project for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – demanding that the company immediately stop working with the agency. 

Presidents Day protests decry Trump’s emergency declaration

February 18, 2019

By Robert Chiarito

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Activists in Washington, Chicago and dozens of other U.S. cities protested on Monday’s Presidents Day holiday against President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Calling Trump’s declaration an abuse of power and usurpation of Congress, organizers with the nonprofit advocacy group MoveOn.org and other participants said it was important to let the outrage over the move be heard.

“We disagree with the state of emergency declared by the president and stand with our immigrant colleagues and friends,” said Darcy Regan, executive director of Indivisible Chicago, which co-hosted the protest there.

Trump invoked the emergency powers on Friday after Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall that was his signature 2016 campaign promise. His move aims to let him spend money appropriated by Congress for other purposes.

The Republican president says a wall is needed to curb illegal immigrants and illicit drugs coming across the border. Democrats and opponents of the wall say it is unnecessary.

The protests in Chicago and Washington each drew a few hundred people on Monday afternoon.

Protesters gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza carried signs that read “Dump Trump” and “Fake Emergency” and chanted “No wall, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”

Cheryl Krugel-Lee, a 32-year-old student, said she brought her 4-year-old daughter to the protest in freezing weather to set an example for her.

“This was a power grab by the Trump administration, and it’s immoral and illegal,” Krugel-Lee said.

Organizers said 250 events were planned, including in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Democrats have vowed to challenge the national emergency declaration as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. California state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in television interviews that his state and others would sue the Trump administration on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Sports store is forced to close after owner’s Nike-Colin Kaepernick protest backfires

Source:

Nike’s 2018 “Just Do It” campaign, which featured Colin Kaepernick, drew competing reactions from both sides of the political spectrum when it debuted last fall.

For Colorado Springs’ Prime Time Sports owner Stephen Martin, it meant dropping all Nike gear. Now, his store is closing.

Martin told koaa.com that he will close the sports apparel store after 20 years because he can no longer afford his lease. He blamed his protest of Nike for playing a major part in the store’s closure.

“Being a sports store without Nike is kind of like being a milk store without milk or a gas station without gas. How do you do it? They have a monopoly on jerseys,” Martin told koaa.com.

Martin said he’s the only full-service, licensed fan shop between Castle Rock and the New Mexico border. Despite having all 32 NFL teams’ apparel in his store, he doesn’t have any current players’ jerseys because of his decision to drop all Nike apparel.

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Prime Time also canceled an autograph signing with Brandon Marshall after the Broncos linebacker protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem in 2016.

Martin told koaa.com he realized that Kaepernick and Marshall have a lot of supporters who can shop elsewhere.

“As much as I hate to admit this, perhaps there are more Brandon Marshall and Colin Kaepernick supporters out there than I realized,” he said.

Martin expects to close the store next month.

Eeat Libyan force stops plane in campaign for south

February 10, 2019

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – A jet from Khalifa Haftar’s east Libyan military forces intercepted a civilian plane on Sunday as part of its push to control the oil-rich south of the riven nation, the faction said.

Libya has been in turmoil since the NATO-backed toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with parallel administrations and armed groups carving the nation into swathes of control.

Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) began an offensive in the south last month to fight militants and take control of oil installations, and this week banned flights without its permission.

In a statement, the LNA said it scrambled a jet after a plane took off from the El Feel oilfield without permission, and forced it to land near Sabha, the largest town in south Libya.

It was allowed to continue to Tripoli, seat of the internationally-recognised government, after inspection.

The Tripoli government protested against the interception, saying the Libyan Airlines plane was carrying oil workers.

The LNA, which is allied to a parallel government in the eastern city of Benghazi, wants to secure the El Sharara oilfield, Libya’s largest, and occupied a pumping station 20km (12 miles) away on Wednesday, according to a field engineer.

The Tripoli government, striving to reassert its former control of El Sharara, has sent troops there, a source from the administration said.

El Sharara has been shut since December when local tribesmen and state guards seized it.

(reporting by Ayman Werfali and Ahmed Elumami; writing by Maher Chmaytelli and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Andrew Cawthorne)

Sears Lives: Judge Approves Lampert’s $5.2BN Bid To Keep Bankrupt Retailer Alive

Having been taken to the brink of liquidation, bankrupt retailer Sears will live to fight another quarter or two, after Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain on Thursday approved Chairman Eddie Lampert’s $5.2 billion bid to keep the once-iconic retailer alive.

The court decision, which had been challenged by Sears’ creditors, assures that Lampert’s quest to preserve about 425 stores and 45,000 jobs will continue for the foreseeable future. Drain said on Thursday he will enter the order on Friday, making it official.

For Sears, which filed for bankruptcy in October, Lampert’s bid was the only option that could have saved it. The deal though, has been protested by its unsecured creditors, which have lambasted the deal as a “scheme to rob Sears and its creditors of assets.” They accused Lampert of using his unique position as Sears’ longtime chairman, CEO and largest shareholder to orchestrate deals that unduly benefited him.

As CNBC notes, in a trial that spanned three days and two courtrooms within the White Plains, New York courthouse, Drain overheard a litany of concerns from Sears’ unsecured creditors, who pointed to flaws in ESL’s business plan and its previous failures running the retail giant. It attacked the bankruptcy sale that Sears ran as it looked for a buyer and argued that ESL’s bid was deficient.

Unsecured creditors also hammered home the uncertainty over Sears’ future and applied skepticism to the rigor with which it put together its business plan. Sears has yet to hire a number of key executives for the new company, including its CEO – a role Lampert held until he stepped down when Sears’ filed for bankruptcy. ESL has an optimistic and profitable view of Sears’ future, despite it not having turned a profit since 2010.

“I do recall us missing our plan for every year were I was the board,” conceded Kunal Kamlani, president of ESL, who has served on the board since March 2016. Still, Kamlani outlined the vision the company has for its resurgence: it plans to build out smaller stores focused on selling its most popular products like appliances and mattresses. It also expects to operate more profitably by only running 425 of its profitable stores, rather than its roughly 700 stores it was running when it filed for bankruptcy in October.

When Drain inquired whether a smaller footprint also meant for decreased operating clout with suppliers, Sears’ Chief Financial Officer Rob Riecker said he believed a smaller scale will help the company “optimize” its inventory, rather than “starving” its unprofitable stores.

In approving Lampert’s bid, Drain rejected the creditors’ arguments that the sales process was unfair. Lampert countered that his hedge fund has been a constant source of financing for Sears, which kept the retailer alive long after many said the company was due to file (which it did eventually), and that all of his transactions were proper.

“It Can’t Be Fixed”: ICC Judge Quits Over “Shocking” Interference From Washington

Authored by Alexander Rubinstein via MintPressNews.com,

ICC Judge Flügge said he realized that the “diplomatic world” did not value the independent judiciary that was the ICC.

A senior judge at the United Nations’ International Court in The Hague has resigned in protest of “shocking” interference from the Trump administration into a preliminary war-crimes investigation into U.S. troops.

The judge, Christoph Flügge, who hails from Germany, slammed National Security Advisor John Bolton over his response last year to a preliminary investigation into American soldiers accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. That investigation ultimately found “a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” were committed by U.S. forces, MintPress News reported.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton said in September. He also called for sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and warned the body against pursuing any investigations into “Israel or other U.S. allies.”

Bolton even cited a Palestinian-led effort to bring Israel to the ICC over its human-rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank as a reason for closing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington.

He went on to promise to ban ICC “judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” adding:

We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

“John Bolton, the national security adviser to the U.S. president, held a speech last September in which he wished death on the International Criminal Court,” Flügge said after leaving his post. Flugge continued on Bolton’s declaration:

If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the U.S. or investigate an American citizen, [Bolton] said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted.”

The American security adviser held his speech at a time when The Hague was planning preliminary investigations into American soldiers who had been accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. The American threats against international judges clearly show the new political climate. It is shocking. I had never heard such a threat.

It is consistent with the new American line: ‘We are No 1 and we stand above the law.’”

A supine UN, a dreadful precedent

The attacks from the White House were one of two reasons for Flügge’s resignation, as the judge was left aghast by the UN’s deferential response to Turkey after Turkey arrested Aydın Sefa Akay, another UN judge, over alleged links to Fethullah Gülen, a cleric living in exile in the U.S. whom Turkish President Recep Erdoğan claims is the mastermind behind the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey.

Akay was at the end of his tenure when the charge was leveled by Turkey. “We, the other judges, immediately protested. But his tenure was nevertheless not extended by the UN secretary general. And with that, he’s gone,” Flügge said.

The assaults by Turkey and the U.S. were both undertaken in the summertime. Afterwards, Flügge said he realized that the “diplomatic world” did not value the independent judiciary that was the ICC. The lack of a response by the UN to Turkey for its meddling in ICC matters set a dangerous precedent, according to the judge.

“Every incident in which judicial independence is breached is one too many,” Flügge said.

“Now there is this case, and everyone can invoke it in the future. Everyone can say: ‘But you let Turkey get its way.’ This is an original sin. It can’t be fixed.”

Rockefeller Caught Funding Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal

Rockefeller behind funding of Ocasio-Cortez's Green Deal

The Rockefeller family are one of the biggest funders in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal – an environmental program determined to impose far-left social and economic reforms in America.

The program was devised by the Sunrise Movement, a mysterious environmentalist organization that wields enormous influence in Washington, D.C.

Dailycaller.com reports: Founded in April 2017, the Sunrise Movement is a newcomer among the many green organizations that have already been established for generations. However, the youth-led climate group quickly garnered national attention and high-dollar donations from across the country. Between its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, the group was able to raise just shy of $1 million during 2018 — and members intend to raise $2.5 million in 2019.

Despite growing attention from the media, it’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly who is funding the Sunrise Movement. The group is not legally required to disclose its donors. However, a recent report from Inside Philanthropy, an outlet focused on philanthropic groups and their big donors, shed some light.

The Rockefeller Fund, the Wallace Global Fund and the Winslow Foundation are core funders of Sunrise Movement. The three groups have continued to finance a large portion of Sunrise’s operations, with institutional funders making up 55 percent of the group’s 2018 budget. Thirty-five percent of its budget came from individual donors, and the rest came from non-profit partners.

Sunrise’s core funders have a long history of bankrolling left-wing activities.

The Global Wallace Fund has given nearly $7 million to population control groups since the 1990s. The Rockefeller Family Fund has led a war against ExxonMobil, acknowledging it has colluded with Democratic attorneys general and funded negative media coverage against the oil company, The Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.

“What’s been nice about [the past month] is that our impact is incredibly clear and everybody is seeing it, because of the way we’ve been able to put truly ambitious and truly equitable climate action on the map in a way that nobody expected,” William Lawrence, co-founder and development director for Sunrise, stated. “That’s opened some doors that might have been closed before, because people are seeing the value of movement building.”

Sunrise, which has been an ardent supporter of the Green New Deal, protested outside now-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office late in 2018, demanding she take more action on climate change. Its efforts received widespread attention when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — now a New York Democratic congresswoman — joined them in protest.

The group enjoyed a surge in donations after the protest.

At least some of the salaries for Sunrise Movement staffers, according to Inside Philanthropies, are not based on conventional compensation agreements, but on what members claim they need to support themselves.

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd Wants to Resurrect SOPA, Confirms Secret Negotiations

The Intel Hub By Madison Ruppert April 8, 2012 Many people thought that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was going to be dead for good after it was protested by millions of Internet users and some of the web’s largest entities like Google, Wikipedia, reddit and more. Unfortunately, Chris Dodd, the Chairman and CEO […]

Anonymous Promises Regularly Scheduled Friday Attacks

By Quinn Norton, Wired.com

Anonymous, a group not known for discipline, is giving itself a weekly deadline, a new attack every Friday.

Following the Tuesday compromise of the website of tear gas maker Combined Systems, Inc., the Antisec wing of Anonymous struck a Federal Trade Commission webserver which hosts three FTC websites, business.ftc.gov, consumer.gov and ncpw.gov, the National Consumer Protection Week partnership website.

Claiming this hack in opposition of the controversial international copyright treaty known as ACTA, which had been widely protested around the world for its potential to curtail freedom of expression on the internet, Anonymous continued the political messaging that has marked much of its recent high-profile actions.

Anons claiming responsibility for the attack spoke to Wired.com in an online chat just as it happened, freely admitting that there was nothing technically remarkable in this hack. As one remarked, “own & rm and move on.” (rm being a unix command to delete data.)

But this week’s attacks came with a promise, first articulated in the defacement of CSI, and restated on the FTC websites: Every Friday will bring a new attack against government and corporate sites under the theme of #FFF, or Fuck the FBI Friday.

“We are already sitting on dozens of unreleased targets,” said an Antisec anon, who went on to describe an inventory of already compromised servers that could fill five months or more of #FFF releases.

To read more, visit:  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/anonymous-friday-attacks/

RE Tea Party » Technology

Pakistani Teen who protested drone strikes killed in US attack in Pakistan

(THE NATION)   A Pakistani teenager, who recently joined a protest rally against US drone strikes, was killed in an attack by the CIA-operated spy planes in North Waziristan tribal region, a campaigner against the missile strikes said on Tuesday.
Sixteen-year-old Muhammad Tariq of North Waziristan had joined hundreds of tribesmen in the rally against drone strikes in the Pakistani capital on Friday. The protesters had called for an immediate end to the strikes, saying they killed many civilians, reported Rediff.com.
Tariq was killed with his cousin Waheed, 12, in a US drone strike on Monday night near Mirali, a key town in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency, said Karim Khan, who is leading a campaign against the missile attacks.
Khan, who belongs to Mirali, had lost his son in a drone attack last year.
He filed a case against the former CIA station chief and several top US officials in a police station in Islamabad for what he said was the murder of innocent tribesmen in drone strikes.
At least four people were killed in Monday night’s drone strike on a house and a vehicle, according to local media reports.
It was the fourth strike in Waziristan in five days.
On Sunday, US spy planes fired missiles at a house in North Waziristan and killed at least six people.

http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Regional/Lahore/02-Nov-2011/Teen-who-protested-drone-strikes-killed-in-US-attack

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