Spain’s Ominous Gag Law

On April 10, a group called No Somos Delito or We Are Not a Crime, projected a hologram of protesting marchers filing in front of the Parliament building in Madrid. For the time being, virtual protests in the form of holograms are not illegal in Spain. Incredibly, however, almost every other kind of peaceful protest soon will be if a new law goes into effect as scheduled on July 1.

The law on public security — dubbed the “ley mordaza” or “gag law” — would define public protest by actual persons in front of Parliament and other government buildings as a “disturbance of public safety” punishable by a fine of 30,000 euros. People who join in spontaneous protests near utilities, transportation hubs, nuclear power plants or similar facilities would risk a jaw-dropping fine of €600,000. The “unauthorized use” of images of law enforcement authorities or police — presumably aimed at photojournalists or ordinary citizens with cameras taking pictures of cops or soldiers — would also draw a €30,000 fine, making it hard to document abuses.

The law was introduced in 2013 by the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose conservative party enjoys a majority in both houses of Parliament. The lower house approved the law in December, and, despite pleas from rights groups and the United Nations, the Senate approved it last month.

The law’s main purpose, it appears, is to help the ruling party maintain its hold on power by discouraging the anti-austerity protests that have snowballed into widespread support for the populist Podemos party. Podemos looks set to make major gains in elections this year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/opinion/spains-ominous-gag-law.html?smid=tw-share&_r=3

Kate Middleton's friend holds orgies in sharia hotel

The Duchess of Cambridge's friend has been staging sex parties in the country's first sharia hotel.

Emma Sayle, owner of Killing Kittens, a members-only sex-club, said the Bermondsey Square hotel in London is one of her preferred destinations for the self-styled ‘sexual elite’.

A friend of Kate Middleton's, Miss Sayle, 36, who attended Downe House boarding school with Prince Michael's daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, has used the four loft suites on the seventh floor of the hotel for her parties.

The £220-a-night hotel became the country's first sharia hotel last year, banning the sale of alcohol.

According to Miss Sayle, who is a member of Kate's rowing crew, The Sisterhood, the rules at Killing Kitten events state men can’t approach women at parties unless they know them, everyone wears a mask and single men aren't allowed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/kate-middleton/11547159/Kate-Middletons-friend-holds-orgies-in-Sharia-hotel.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592449/Sextrepreneur-friend-Kate-Middleton-launches-orgies-60-year-olds-plans-attending-despite-three-months-pregnant.html

I don't even know how to feel about this

How the Media Became One of Putin’s Most Powerful Weapons

ladimir Putin is a news junkie.

The Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, didn’t use that expression when we talked by phone, but that’s what he described to me: a man at the center of an ever-churning machine processing vast amounts of news and data at his command.

“Sometimes we’re wondering what is the limit for a human being for absorbing this huge amount of information,” Peskov told me, “but, well, it’s really a very, very, very heavy job.”

Peskov, speaking fluent English, described the operation. “First of all, the information and press department of the presidential administration prepares digests on print media, on Internet sources, on domestic media—federal and regional.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/04/how-the-media-became-putins-most-powerful-weapon/391062/


I know my usual jousting partners want NO FUCKING PART of THIS story, so it would be best to just let it drop...

The Navy's bribery and prostitution scandal is even worse than it looks

A top US Navy lieutenant commander just became one of the highest-ranking military officials ensnared in the "Fat Leonard" bribery scandal.

On April 15, Todd Maliki admitted "that he accepted cash, hotel expenses and the services of a prostitute in return for providing classified US Navy ship schedules and other internal Navy information to an executive of a defense contracting firm," according to a Department of Justice press release.

Maliki became the eighth person to plead guilty to accepting favors from a US Navy contractor called Glenn Defense Marine Asia, making him one of the highest-ranking military officials to be convicted in the lurid scandal that defrauded the US military of $20 million and resulted in the demotion, conviction, censure or punishment of nearly a dozen officials.

The bribery scandal involves a Singapore-based naval company run by Leonard Glenn Francis, which provided various logistical and port-related services for American military vessels operating in Asia. As James Weirick, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and judge advocate general explained in an article for Task and Purpose, "Fat Leonard" eventually "admitted to providing Navy officials with millions of dollars in gifts and expenses, including luxury travel, $500,000 in cash, and prostitutes."

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-navys-bribery-and-prostitution-scandal-is-even-worse-than-it-looks-2015-4#ixzz3XtBjuRq4

Google and eBay Bow to Russian Data Law

Global Internet giants Google, AliExpress and eBay will bow to a controversial new Internet law by storing Russian users' personal data inside Russia, news agency Interfax reported Monday.

The law requires companies that use Russians' personal data to keep that information on servers located within Russia from Sept. 1.

"The new requirements attracted a lot of attention, but [after a series of consultations] companies such as eBay and AliExpress have now agreed to fulfill the requirements of Russian legislation," Interfax reported state media watchdog Alexander Zharov as saying.

"As far as I know, Google also intends to comply with these requirements," he added.

Google declined to comment on Monday, while eBay could not be immediately reached for comment. According to a press release from Alibaba, AliExpress' parent company, AliExpress at a recent meeting with Russian officials expressed its "desire to comply with applicable legal requirements."

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/google-and-ebay-bow-to-russian-data-law/519407.html

(Greenwald and Snowden were unavailable for comment)

The Alemanha is too stronk...

Russian cyber attackers used two unknown flaws: security company

(Reuters) - A widely reported Russian cyber-spying campaign against diplomatic targets in the United States and elsewhere has been using two previously unknown flaws in software to penetrate target machines, a security company investigating the matter said on Saturday.

FireEye Inc (FEYE.O), a prominent U.S. security company, said the espionage effort took advantage of holes in Adobe Systems Inc’s (ADBE.O) Flash software for viewing active content and Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) ubiquitous Windows operating system.

The campaign has been tied by other firms to a serious breach at U.S. State Department computers. The same hackers are also believed to have broken into White House machines containing unclassified but sensitive information such as the president’s travel schedule.

FireEye has been assisting the agencies probing those attacks, but it said it could not comment on whether the spies are the same ones who penetrated the White House because that would be classified as secret.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/18/us-russia-cyberattack-idUSKBN0N90RQ20150418


(Snowden and Greenwald unavailable for comment)

Snowden revelations just gave China more ammunition against US hacking

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern on Monday after a newspaper reported that New Zealand and U.S. intelligence services planned to hack into a data link between Chinese government buildings in Auckland.

New Zealand newspaper the Herald on Sunday, citing details provided by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, said the project appeared aimed at tapping data between the Chinese consulate and its passport office.

"We are extremely concerned about this report. We strongly urge the relevant countries to immediately stop using the Internet to damage the interests of China and other countries," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily news briefing.

Prime Minister John Key, speaking on Radio New Zealand, said he would not take "literally by any stretch of the imagination everything" said by Snowden and his local supporters.

"[Snowden's] a thief and he stole and you've got a bunch of people who've been out there propagating information that's actually been proven to be incorrect," Key said.

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-seriously-concerned-at-new-zealand-hack-attempt-report-2015-4


In case anyone has the unmitigated gall to be outraged at the Five Eyes hacking into China, let me direct your attention to:

Chinese hackers infiltrated U.S. companies, attorney general says
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/19/justice/china-hacking-charges/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/19/us-accuses-china-of-cyber-espionage/9273019/

Accused Chinese Hacker Of U.S. Systems Arrested In Canada
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/07/13/chinese-hacker-su-bin-us-canada-arrest-richmond_n_5581471.html

Chinese hackers spying on India, South-East Asia for almost a decade: Research
http://www.techienews.co.uk/9727910/chinese-hackers-spying-india-south-east-asia-almost-decade-research/

Meet the team who just exposed China's insanely powerful hacking tool
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-cannon-chinese-hacking-tool-exposed-2015-4

Why do the Chinese Hack? Fear
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/why-do-the-chinese-hack-fear/

Chinese Hackers Defy Apple's New Security
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/10/21/chinese-hackers-defy-apples-new-security

China Is Hacking the US Again
http://gizmodo.com/china-is-hacking-the-us-again-508837615

Why Would Chinese Hackers Steal Millions of Medical Records?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-18/why-would-chinese-hackers-steal-millions-of-medical-records-.html

Major U.S. Weapons Compromised By Chinese Hackers, Report Warns
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/major-us-weapons-compromised-chinese-hackers-report-warns/story?id=19271995

China suspected in major hacking of health insurer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/investigators-suspect-china-may-be-responsible-for-hack-of-anthem/2015/02/05/25fbb36e-ad56-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html

Read those and get back to me...

(long overdue) Military honors planned for Cesar Chavez, Navy vet

Builder 2nd Class Marco Valdovinos has been to many a funeral.

As the funeral guard district coordinator for Navy Operational Support Center Moreno Valley, Calif. where he oversees a team of 35 funeral honor guardsmen, he has rendered honors for veterans, active-duty service members and those killed in action — some 6,500 funerals in the past five years.

But come Thursday, he'll take part in a ceremony that hits close to home. He'll help render final military honors for Cesar Chavez, the legendary labor organizer, civil rights activist and Navy veteran.

Not long ago, Valdovinos went to see the film Cesar Chavez, a biography directed by Diego Luna. It mentioned that Chavez spent two years in the Navy, from 1944 to 1946, hoping to learn skills that would help him later in his civilian life. At the time, however, Mexican-American sailors could only serve as deckhands and painters, and Chavez got out as quickly as he could, calling it "the worst two years of my life."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/19/military-honors-planned-for-cesar-chavez/26042037/

How 'The Guardian' Milked Edward Snowden's Story

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange investigates the book behind Snowden, Oliver Stone's forthcoming film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Nicolas Cage, Scott Eastwood and Zachary Quinto. According to leaked Sony emails, movie rights for the book were bought for $700,000.

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man (Guardian/Faber & Faber, 2014) by Luke Harding is a hack job in the purest sense of the term. Pieced together from secondary sources and written with minimal additional research to be the first to market, the book's thrifty origins are hard to miss.

The Guardian is a curiously inward-looking beast. If any other institution tried to market its own experience of its own work nearly as persistently as The Guardian, it would surely be called out for institutional narcissism. But because The Guardian is an embarrassingly central institution within the moribund "left-of-center" wing of the U.K. establishment, everyone holds their tongue.

In recent years, we have seen The Guardian consult itself into cinematic history—in the Jason Bourne films and others—as a hip, ultra-modern, intensely British newspaper with a progressive edge, a charmingly befuddled giant of investigative journalism with a cast-iron spine.

http://www.newsweek.com/assange-how-guardian-milked-edward-snowdens-story-323480


Assange is still a publicity whoring lowlife in bed with Putin, but it does entertain me so to see two petty men who think they're both God fling shit at each other like a couple of overly-entitled brats...