Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

These corporations backed the politicians who will murder women by banning legal, safe abortions - http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/U99XBYIgRIc/never-again-2.html

Growing up high: Neurobiological consequences of adolescent cannabis use

About one in five Canadian adolescents uses cannabis. Neuroscientists have been researching the effects of cannabis on the adolescent brain. Adolescence is associated with the maturation of cognitive functions, such as working memory, decision-making, impulsivity control and motivation, and the research presented suggests cannabis could have long-lasting, but possibly reversible effects on these.

I’m looking for a consultant regarding EU funding for MNT Reform (open source hardware portable computer/platform), maybe in the context of Horizon 2020 or similar. Please RT

#1yrago Comcast's $1.2b/year modem-rental scam picks your pocket, then exposes you to hackers, stalkers and identity thieves https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/corrupt-connectivity.html

The @purism Librem 5 smartphone will run GNU/Linux.

Why will it succeed, when others did not? Is it the hardware kill-switches?

Yes, but mostly it is the all-out privacy and security. The time is right. This era calls for it.

https://puri.sm/

Move 9 women freed after 40 years in jail over Philadelphia police siege

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/25/move-9-black-radicals-women-freed-philadelphia

Delta is union busting — try flying with these unionized carriers instead | News Hits - https://m.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/05/24/delta-is-union-busting-try-flying-with-these-unionized-carriers-instead

‪It’s Been One Year Since GDPR Scared the Crap Out of Silicon Valley, What’s Next? https://gizmodo.com/it-s-been-one-year-since-gdpr-scared-the-crap-out-of-si-1834978929?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_campaign=top #privacy

You Could Get Prison Time for Protesting a Pipeline in Texas—Even If It’s on Your Land

This story was originally published by Grist and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.  The fight against a Texas pipeline just got a little more challenging. On Monday, the Texas Senate passed legislation that makes interfering with pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure a crime punishable by up to a year in prison and $10,000 in […]

It Came From 2019!

Widespread permafrost degradation seen in high Arctic terrain

Rapid changes in terrain are taking place in Canada's high Arctic polar deserts due to increases in summer air temperatures.

“Here We Go Again”: A Federal Judge Just Blocked Mississippi’s Six-Week Abortion Ban

“Here we go again.” So begins the preliminary injunction by US District Judge Carlton Reeves, who on Friday blocked a six-week abortion ban from going into effect in Mississippi. Six months ago, Reeves also found a 15-week ban passed by the state Legislature unconstitutional, a bill that he called “pure gaslighting.” Mississippi’s only remaining abortion clinic […]

Socialists and Labor Share the Same Goal

This article was first posted by Jacobin.

Sara Nelson in her own words on building a fighting labor movement, the proud history of democratic socialism in America, how workers ended the shutdown, and how they'll stop Trump, too.

Donald Trump May Spend Memorial Day Pardoning War Criminals

How are you spending Memorial Day? Ordinary people may attend parades, host cookouts, or take the long weekend to visit loved ones.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, may pardon a few war criminals.

The president recently requested the files of several accused and convicted U.S. war criminals, a possible step toward expedited pardons for individuals who’ve done unspeakable things.

There’s SEAL chief Edward Gallagher, who senselessly shot to death a teenage girl and an elderly man in Iraq. Gallagher also brutally stabbed a wounded 15-year-old to death — and then posed for photos with the body, which he texted to friends.

Trump also requested the files of Nicholas Slatten, a Blackwater contractor convicted of shooting dozens of Iraqi civilians in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square massacre, and of Mathew Golsteyn, who confessed to murdering an unarmed Afghan captive U.S. soldiers had released.

Trump has already pardoned Michael Behenna, who took an unarmed Iraqi captive into the desert, stripped him naked, and shot him in the head and chest. Behenna was supposed to be returning the man to his home village.

The president may present these pardons as a show of patriotism — his own Rambo-worshiping way of “supporting the troops.” But several veterans have objected, pointing out that many soldiers do their best to uphold the laws of war even under considerable stress.

“They should treat the civilians as they would neighbors,” combat veteran Waitman Wade Beorn recalled telling his platoon in Iraq, arguing that the cues commanders set make all the difference. Beorn, a Holocaust scholar, warned that one could draw some dark (if inexact) parallels between Trump’s cues and Hitler’s.

During the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he wrote, “soldiers were literally told that they would not be tried for behavior that would be a crime anywhere else in Europe.” Similarly, “when Trump champions war criminals as brave patriots … he seems to push for a climate that condones unethical and criminal behavior.”

Gary Solis, a retired military judge and Vietnam veteran, complained Trump was undermining the entire military justice system. “These are all extremely complicated cases that have gone through a careful system of consideration. A freewheeling pardon undermines that whole system.”

That’s likely the point. The truth is that Trump is pandering to the most atavistic segment of his base. It echoes the Vietnam years, when war supporters turned William Calley, convicted for his role in butchering hundreds of villagers at My Lai, into a folk hero.

Today, Gallagher’s cause is celebrated on "Fox and Friends," the president’s favorite TV show, and Trump has praised Gallagher “in honor of his past service.”

Trump’s recent moves are plainly calibrated to encourage war crimes, not prosecute them. But glorifying serial killer-type behavior most service members would find appalling is a strange way to honor them — particularly when some have taken enormous risks to stop massacres like these.

For instance, seven of Gallagher’s own men reported him repeatedly, even after being warned by superiors it would hurt their careers. Behenna’s fellow soldiers, apparently disturbed by his behavior, testified against him as well. At My Lai, Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson landed his chopper in between marauding U.S. troops and cowering civilians, training his guns on his own comrades and forcing an end to the massacre.

Honoring these heroes would be more fitting, particularly in the present climate. Recent reports have documented alarming rates of U.S.-inflicted civilian casualties in Somalia, Syria and Afghanistan. In the latter case, Trump’s extremist national security adviser John Bolton made brutish threats to get the International Criminal Court to back off investigating U.S. abuses.

Meanwhile, egged on by Bolton, Trump is considering sending 120,000 or more troops into another purposeless bloodbath in the Middle East. And he’s made no plans to fill the 45,000 or so vacant VA jobs backlogging veterans’ health care.

Under these circumstances, do we suppose the troops — or loved ones who’ve lost them — will take a few pardons for war criminals as a compliment? I don’t know. But the real lesson may be that the worst war criminals wear suits, not fatigues.

Happy Memorial Day.

Originally published in Foreign Policy In Focus.

Facebook is actively complicit in the destruction of democracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/24/facebook-leaves-fake-nancy-pelosi-video-on-site

Yep, Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan to Clean Up the Pentagon

One month after Sen. Elizabeth Warren formally launched her campaign for president, she leaned forward during a Senate hearing with senior Pentagon officials and said something you probably won’t be seeing on a bumper sticker: “Let’s dig in a little bit then on OCO.” Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, was asking about “overseas contingency funding,” another […]