Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Hermit-The-Prog

Hermit-The-Prog's Journal
Hermit-The-Prog's Journal
March 31, 2018

Florida school shooting survivors march on unfazed by personal attacks

In the week since the March for Our Lives student activists have rebuffed claims of a secret plan to repeal the second amendment

Lois Beckett in New York
Sat 31 Mar 2018


In the week since they organized a worldwide protest against gun violence, student survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, have faced personal attacks and accusations that they want to repeal the second amendment.
'Haunting' school shooter drills become the new normal in US schools
Read more

The organizers have stayed focused on their goal: making an impact on the 2018 elections. Less than 48 hours after the March for Our Lives ended, David Hogg, one of the most prominent Marjory Stoneman Douglas student activists, announced a plan to hold town halls across American on 7 April to hold members of Congress accountable for their positions on gun laws. By Friday, they had confirmed events in 30 districts, with a goal of 535, one for every member of Congress.

Gun rights advocates and Donald Trump were quick this week to accuse the student movement of wanting to repeal Americans’ constitutional right to own guns. Trump and the National Rifle Association seized on an op-ed written by the 97-year-old former supreme court justice John Paul Stevens, which argued that activists should organize to “get rid of the second amendment” entirely, thus depriving the NRA of “a propaganda weapon of immense power”.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/31/florida-school-shooting-survivors-march-personal-attacks

March 31, 2018

Trump distracts America from the task of facing three existential threats

As Trump forces America’s attention span to shrink, we are unable to address the threats that could fundamentally endanger American national security

Michael H Fuchs Fri 30 Mar 2018


Donald Trump’s daily assaults on American democracy and the pillars of America’s role in the world are disastrous – and they are also distracting America from even bigger global challenges. At just the moment when the United States must be joining together with the rest of the world to confront three existential threats – climate change, challenges to democracy, and the rise of China – Americans are forced to spend every waking minute mitigating Trump’s damage.

In Trump’s America, it’s hard to keep up. The news and controversies come so quickly they eat into each other’s news cycles. Actions by the Trump administration that previously might have brought down a presidency (or at least merited a congressional inquiry) pass in a matter of hours as the next jaw-dropping scandal explodes.

As Trump forces America’s attention span to shrink (was that even possible?), we are unable to address the three threats that could fundamentally endanger American national security.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/30/trump-distracts-america-three-existential-threats

March 31, 2018

Appeals Court Overturns Google's Fair Use Victory For Java APIs (Techdirt)


Techdirt reports that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has resurrected Oracle's copyright claim against Google for its use of the Java APIs in Android. "Honestly, the most concerning part of the whole thing is how much of a mess CAFC has made of the whole process. The court ruled correctly originally that APIs are not subject to copyright. CAFC threw that out and ordered the court to have a jury determine the fair use question. The jury found it to be fair use, and even though CAFC had ordered the issue be heard by a jury, it now says 'meh, we disagree with the jury.' That's... bizarre."

https://lwn.net/Articles/750228/



[Posting link to LWN summary because of the insight in the comments there. Follow link for original report at Techdirt.]

[In the past, the Supreme Court has chastised the Fed. Circuit court, which never saw a software patent it didn't like, for overreach. That might not continue to save us. This little issue could have an effect on every programmable or programmed device we use.]
March 29, 2018

EPA accused of urging staff to downplay climate change after memo leaks

Scientists say an internal Environmental Protection Agency document encourages the use of misleading statements about scientific certainty

Oliver Milman in New York

Thu 29 Mar 2018 13.03 EDT
First published on Thu 29 Mar 2018 12.22 EDT


Scientists have accused the US Environmental Protection Agency of distributing misleading statements about climate change, following the leaking of an internal email advising agency staff to downplay the certainty of the science.

The email, sent to EPA communications staff by Joel Scheraga, senior climate adaptation adviser to the agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, acknowledges that communities face “challenges” in dealing with the consequences of climate change.

However, the email, obtained by HuffPost, also sets out ambiguous talking points favoured by Pruitt, such as: “Human activity impacts our changing climate in some manner. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue.”

The email adds that “while there has been extensive research and a host of published reports on climate change, clear gaps remain including our understanding of the role of human activity and what we can do about it”.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/29/epa-climate-change-memo-downplay-scientists


March 29, 2018

Desperate mom seeks refuge in Manhattan church to avoid deportation

BY Edgar Sandoval
Updated: Wednesday, March 28, 2018


An immigrant mother of two is hoping the separation of church and state keeps immigration agents from tearing her away from her two little ones.

Aura Hernandez, a 37-year-old from Guatemala, watched her 15-month-old daughter take a few bouncy steps in front of an altar at Fourth Universalist Society Church at W. 76th St. and Central Park West Wednesday afternoon and picked her in her arms.

The toddler smiled, but her mom was unable to smile back. Hernandez said the little girl and her 10-year-old son Daniel is the reason she ran into this non-denominational church about a month ago for fear an order of deportation may separate her from them.

Both children were born in the U.S. and are American citizens, she said.

“That is my worst nightmare, to be separated from them,” Hernandez said softly. “They are born here. They have rights. I came here looking for sanctuary when I reached the end of the rope,” she said softly.

[...]

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/desperate-mom-seeks-refuge-church-avoid-deportation-article-1.3902124

March 29, 2018

Life for Residents Near Hog Farms Just Got Much, Much Worse

It just became much easier for large livestock operations to pollute near people’s homes.

Tom Philpott Mar. 28, 2018


In the midst of last week’s, um, stormy news cycle, the meat industry quietly scored a pair of legislative coups, both of which bolster corporate power to impose the downsides of factory-scale animal farming on communities.

One victory will affect people who live near these large operations. In North Carolina alone, 160,000 people reside within a half mile of vast open cesspools full of manure from thousands of confined hogs. If you lived in such conditions, you’d probably want to know what pollutants you and your family were breathing from the foul-smelling air wafting from these operations.

Folded into the omnibus spending bill signed by President Donald Trump last week is a rider that will prevent such knowledge from reaching public view. It’s based on a bill called the “Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act” (get it? FARM), which proposed to free most livestock operations from having to report the air-borne toxins emitted from the manure they accumulate. These gases, which include ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, can trigger ill health effects in neighboring communities, including eye irritation, chronic lung disease, and olfactory neuron loss. The pork, beef, and chicken trade groups all hotly supported the measure, which is now the law of the land.

[...]

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/03/life-for-residents-near-hog-farms-just-got-much-much-worse/

March 28, 2018

Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look

By Dylan Curran Wed 28 Mar 2018


Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google knows where you’ve been

[...]

Google knows everything you’ve ever searched – and deleted

[...]

Google knows all the apps you use

[...]

Google has all of your YouTube history

[...]

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google …

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day …

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy



[The article continues with similar sub-headings for Facebook. Each shows a link by which you can check or download your own data. These corporate tracking systems are not your friend.]
March 28, 2018

Trumps legal team is in shambles. The timing is terrible.

Mueller’s Russia investigators want to talk to the president right as his legal team is falling apart.
By Zachary Fryer-Biggs Updated Mar 27, 2018


President Trump’s legal team is in shambles at one of the worst possible moments in the Russia investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is heating up, and Trump is facing a big decision about whether to sit down for an interview with Mueller. But because of the staffing chaos that seems to have plagued the rest of his administration, the president now finds himself with virtually no qualified attorneys left to defend him in the Russia probe.

Trump’s top personal lawyer, John Dowd, resigned on Thursday. Reports say he’d grown frustrated with Trump’s unwillingness to heed his legal advice, including his view that an interview with Mueller would be too risky.

And less than a week after announcing that Trump was adding two new lawyers to his legal team, personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow had to walk back the announcement, saying the two wouldn’t be working on the special counsel investigation after all because of “conflicts” with their other clients.

White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Don McGahn work for Trump on issues tied to the Russia investigation, but both are on the taxpayer payroll, meaning they are responsible for protecting the office of the presidency, not Trump personally. McGahn and Cobb are both reportedly considering leaving as well.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/26/17164766/trump-russia-sekulow-legal-team

March 27, 2018

Democracy Now: One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America

[Full headline:]
“One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America”: Students Demand End to Violence at March for Our Lives


In a historic day of action, more than 800 protests were held Saturday urging lawmakers to pass gun control. In Washington, organizers say 800,000 took part in the March for Our Lives, which was organized by students who survived the February 14 shooting massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In New York, another 150,000 took to the streets; 85,000 rallied in Chicago; 55,000 marched in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands also rallied in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. In Washington, D.C., survivors of gun violence—from Parkland to Chicago—shared the stage to decry the power of the National Rifle Association and to demand an end to the violence. We air highlights of the speeches.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/26/one_life_is_worth_all_the

[Transcript and video at link]


[There's over 4 hours of coverage in their special report at Democracy Now, plus individual speeches and interviews.
I finally managed to watch and listen to some of the students instead of just reading transcripts of their speeches. Didn't make it through even the first one dry-eyed, though. So I'm soft. Sue me.]
March 27, 2018

Guardian: Six victories for the gun control movement since the Parkland massacre

Days after the March for Our Lives, the movement continues to see successful efforts – here are six victories since the Florida shooting

Amanda Holpuch in New York
26 Mar 2018


Two days after the largest demonstration against gun violence in the US, the movement to prevent gun violence continues to build momentum – this time in New Jersey, where lawmakers are voting on a stack of stricter gun control laws on Monday.

Teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school have reinvigorated the movement after 17 people were killed at their school last month.

On Monday, New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, vowed to sign into law six pieces of gun control legislation, including a ban on armour-piercing bullets and a bill to make it tougher to obtain a handgun permit, if they are passed by the state legislature.

“Today we marched in memory of Parkland,” Murphy said on Saturday. “But we will act in the name of every family and every community in our state that has been touched by gun violence, and the many more who wish to remain safe.”

Here is a look at other successful efforts to curb gun violence since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/26/gun-control-movement-march-for-our-lives-stoneman-douglas-parkland-builds-momentum

Profile Information

Member since: Fri Jan 26, 2018, 02:50 PM
Number of posts: 33,342
Latest Discussions»Hermit-The-Prog's Journal