Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

A worker owned taxi #coop in Southend has grown from 6 to 70 drivers.

They repaid all their investors and returned £3000 to their members last year. The same year Uber left the area after failing to compete with them.

We need this in every town and city!

https://www.thenews.coop/138486/topic/development/southend-taxi-co-op-launches-operations-neighbouring-rochford/

Trump Ally Sen. Ron Johnson Had a Meltdown on “Meet the Press”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) gave a wild performance on “Meet the Press” Sunday, refusing to answer questions posed by host Chuck Todd, instead peddling unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2016 election. The bizarre interview is a demonstration of how President Donald Trump’s allies have responded to the impeachment inquiry by rallying around debunked theories about […]

The Country’s “Most Polluted Air Basin” Braces for a Trump Plan That Will Make Things Worse

This story was originally published by City Lab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kieshaun White says that he doesn’t like to talk politics when it comes to the environment. He prefers to stick to the data. A year ago, as a high school senior, he launched a network of air-pollution […]

A Second Whistleblower Is Coming Forward in Ukraine Scandal, Attorneys Say

The lawyers representing the first whistleblower, whose complaint about Donald Trump’s behavior provoked an impeachment inquiry, said Sunday that they now representing another whistleblower with knowledge of the Ukraine scandal. The second whistleblower poses a threat to the president’s attempts to downplay the scandal because the second person supposedly has first-hand knowledge of Trump’s dealings […]

Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals?

The Army has faced almost no resistance to bases named for prominent white supremacists.

The post Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals? appeared first on The Intercept.

Yes, we know you're excited; Yes, you can see the anodized chassis we got into this Aspen batch; Yes, we are asking you to be patient as we incrementally ship through tens of thousands of Librem 5 phones over the next handful of months; Yes, you will get yours. Yes, you will be impressed. @purism #librem5

Trolls Are Sowing Discord Between Sanders and Warren Supporters

As the Democratic primaries approach, relationships between supporters of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the two most viable progressive presidential contenders to ever face off in the Democratic primaries, are beginning to fray. Though, in general, goodwill continues to prevail—Warren’s campaign team sent dinner and cookies to Sanders’ campaign staff following his heart procedure—lately tempers have been heating up, ignited by injudicious comments and outright nasty jibes that take on a life of their own in social media. Consider these recent examples.

On CNN in September, Emily Tisch Sussman, a former vice president at the Center for American Progress, attempted to shame progressives who support Sanders: “If you are still supporting Sanders as opposed to Warren, it’s kind of showing your sexism. Because she has more detailed plans, and her plans have evolved.”

On the Bernie side of the fence, you have political commentator Benjamin Studebaker, who, in a critique of progressive media coverage of the race, had this to say about Warren:

She’s as bad as Hillary. She’s worse, because Hillary made it obvious, and she hides it so well that for months, the left press has gone easy on her. No more. Don’t give her an inch, because she’ll take a mile. Be relentless. She’s Harris. She’s Biden. She’s Booker. Make it so.

Aimee Terese, who cohosts the “What’s Left?” podcast with Studebaker, likewise gives Warren no quarter, tweeting: 

Then there was the brouhaha that erupted when the Working Families Party (WFP), which in 2016 backed Sanders, voted in September to endorse Warren.

WFP polled two groups of people, what it described as “tens of thousands” of supporters (party members and/or subscribers to the party’s online newsletter) and the 56 members of the party’s national committee. The votes of each of the two groups, the supporters and the leadership, were weighted, with each receiving 50% stake in the final outcome. Once the votes were tallied, Warren won 61% of the weighted vote. WFP, however, refused to release the vote tallies from each group as it has in past election cycles, leading Sanders supporters to suspect that their candidate was the preferred choice of the members, and Warren the pick of the party leaders (a group who played a role in the selection process analogous to the Democratic Party’s superdelegates).

Some outraged Sanders supporters lashed out on twitter, attacking Maurice Mitchell, WFP’s national director and Nelini Stamp, WFP’s national organizing director, both of whom are black. This prompted more than 100 black leaders to sign a letter decrying the attacks, that read in part:

[Mitchell and Stamp] are being threatened on a daily basis, by self-identified Sanders supporters, with hateful, violent and racist threats. “Uncle Tom.” “Slave.” “Cunt.” These kinds of threats have no place in our movements, and are reminiscent of the threats Black people would receive when daring to vote …

Indeed, according to screenshots of deleted tweets captured by Time magazine, one Sanders supporter, addressing Mitchell, tweeted: “Why not have the balls to respond you cunt. You half man. You corporatist. You SLAVE!” Another pro-Sanders tweeter said of Warren, “She wants to bring you back to incremental slavery of neoliberalism. @SenSanders is the progressive future, you [sic] choice stinks of corruption.”

This disturbed Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, who has not endorsed any candidate. She wrote on Medium:

When a party issues an endorsement, particularly a party that hones its focus on families that are struggling every day to live with dignity, it is right for those of us who care about the same things to interrogate the process. …

But what we cannot do, what we must not do, is devolve into such nastiness that we wish cancer on their families, call them Uncle Toms who are dancing for slave masters, wish that they would be raped, and the like. I cannot say that we are better than that because I’ve seen the tweets. But what I know is that we who long for freedom and safety and dignity and justice will not win if we cannot be distinguished from the Right

Mitchell says he is pleased that there are “two champions of Medicare for All and a wealth tax in this race.” But he is unapologetic about the party’s endorsement:

Senator Warren has an unmatched ability to explain in everyday terms how our economy and democracy got rigged, who rigged them, and how we can unrig them. She’s a fighter for working families who strikes fear into the hearts of Wall Street and Silicon Valley CEOs. We’re so glad there are two leading structural change candidates in this primary, but we’re thrilled to support Warren.

Later that month, attacks against Warren by Sanders supporters again erupted on Twitter after someone with the name @isamuel, a “Catholic American Socialist” with more than 16,000 followers, reposted a video clip of an interview in which Warren spoke about her mother being part Cherokee and part Delaware (a claim she was unable to prove and no longer makes). That video, which went viral, originated from a person with the name @AlytaDeLeon, an “antiwar Mexican American socialist.” They posted it as if it were a recent video, and not one from 2012 that has long been in circulation. Since joining Twitter in March, @AlytaDeLeon has sent out more than 7,000 tweets. We don’t know why most of the recent ones are devoted to attacking Warren. The person who tweets at @AlytaDeLeon did not respond to multiple inquiries from In These Times.

What we do know is that Russia has already deployed a network of bots and fake social media accounts to sow discord among Democratic voters in 2020, just as it did in the 2016 election. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the June and July Democratic Debates:

Hundreds of social-media accounts with bot-like traits promoted misinformation and content aimed at inflaming racial divisions. … The hashtag #DemDebateSoWhite was tweeted Tuesday [July 30] night by an account from a user with the name Susannah Faulkner and then shared by conservative activist Ali Alexander. The hashtag received thousands of interactions, but … a high number of the accounts using the hashtag had bot-like characteristics. The original tweet appears to have been taken down, but the hashtag continued circulate on Twitter.

It is unclear how many of the attacks on Working Families staff were sent by bots or covert agitators, or where they originated from, but Time reports that many of the attacks were “accompanied with the hashtag #BernieorBust,” which was commonly used in 2016 by Russian trolls to sow division between Sanders and Clinton supporters.

That’s not to say policy differences between the candidates shouldn’t be vigorously debated. Progressives need to make an informed decision. Sticking to smart critiques rather than hyperbole and vitriol, however, could also pay political dividends. Warren and Sanders appear set to go to the 2020 Democratic National Convention with substantial numbers of delegates. Should no candidate win on the first ballot, as seems likely, it is hard to see how either could get the nomination without the other’s delegates.

At the debates, Sanders and Warren have stood shoulder to shoulder, defending Medicare for All from tepid centrists. It’s time for their supporters to do the same, and not get baited into flame wars.

Psychotic Reaction (ffo: MC5, The Sword) announce October tour

An acid-laced blues punk quartet out of Norman, OK, Psychotic Reaction has just announced the final leg of their stacked three month tour. Check out those dates below.  

The post Psychotic Reaction (ffo: MC5, The Sword) announce October tour appeared first on Dying Scene.

DS Exclusive: South Class Veterans (Oi) premiere “Squared Away” off upcoming “Hell to Pay” LP

This week has been stacked. Between playing catch-up on premieres and getting my 40 hrs on some remodel, I somehow managed to gain a local community radio DJs favor, who hooked me up with free Bad Religion tickets – then home for a late night writing session, before waking up early to get the kids […]

The post DS Exclusive: South Class Veterans (Oi) premiere “Squared Away” off upcoming “Hell to Pay” LP appeared first on Dying Scene.

We Had the Quid, Now We Have the Quo

Ukraine has gotten its $400 million in military assistance and its visit to the White House, where President Zelensky dutifully reported that he had felt no pressure from the Trump administration to open an investigation into the Biden family. So this, I suppose, is just an amazing coincidence: Ukraine’s new chief prosecutor said Friday his […]

Supreme Court Will Hear Major Challenge to Abortion Rights

The Supreme Court decided Friday to hear June Medical Services v. Gee, a Louisiana case that could greatly restrict abortion access across the country and overturn a previous ruling on the issue.  The case concerns a 2014 Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of […]

Dakota Access Pipeline Activists Face 110 Years in Prison, Two Years After Confessing Sabotage

“You’re talking about somebody who needs to be removed from the gene pool,” said the CEO of pipeline company Energy Transfer.

The post Dakota Access Pipeline Activists Face 110 Years in Prison, Two Years After Confessing Sabotage appeared first on The Intercept.

U.S. Border Officials Use Fake Addresses, Dangerous Conditions, and Mass Trials to Discourage Asylum Seekers

U.S. border officials are putting fake addresses on asylum paperwork. When asylum seekers fail to show up for hearings, they are being deported in absentia.

The post U.S. Border Officials Use Fake Addresses, Dangerous Conditions, and Mass Trials to Discourage Asylum Seekers appeared first on The Intercept.

The Son That Broke the Camel’s Back

Have you supported your favorite open source projects with small donations rcently?

Help out, lots of small donations can make a huge difference! You know those devs deserve a little support!

Populations of #UK’s most important #wildlife have plummeted since #1970 | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/populations-of-uks-most-important-wildlife-have-plummeted-since-1970

#Ecology #Conservation #EndangeredSpecies

The Open Letter from the Governments of US, UK, and Australia to Facebook is An All-Out Attack on Encryption

Top law enforcement officials in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia told Facebook today that they want backdoor access to all encrypted messages sent on all its platforms. In an open letter, these governments called on Mark Zuckerberg to stop Facebook’s plan to introduce end-to-end encryption on all of the company’s messaging products and instead promise that it will “enable law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format.” 

This is a staggering attempt to undermine the security and privacy of communications tools used by billions of people. Facebook should not comply. The letter comes in concert with the signing of a new agreement between the US and UK to provide access to allow law enforcement in one jurisdiction to more easily obtain electronic data stored in the other jurisdiction. But the letter to Facebook goes much further: law enforcement and national security agencies in these three countries are asking for nothing less than access to every conversation that crosses every digital device. 

The letter focuses on the challenges of investigating the most serious crimes committed using digital tools, including child exploitation, but it ignores the severe risks that introducing encryption backdoors would create. Many people—including journalists, human rights activists, and those at risk of abuse by intimate partners—use encryption to stay safe in the physical world as well as the online one. And encryption is central to preventing criminals and even corporations from spying on our private conversations, and to ensure that the communications infrastructure we rely on is truly working as intended. What’s more, the backdoors into encrypted communications sought by these governments would be available not just to governments with a supposedly functional rule of law. Facebook and others would face immense pressure to also provide them to authoritarian regimes, who might seek to spy on dissidents in the name of combatting terrorism or civil unrest, for example. 

The Department of Justice and its partners in the UK and Australia claim to support “strong encryption,” but the unfettered access to encrypted data described in this letter is incompatible with how encryption actually works.