23 January 20
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22 January 20
Andy Borowitz | Susan Collins Takes Hours to Decide on Lunch Before Ordering Exactly What Mitch McConnell Is Having
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "On the first day of the impeachment trial in the United States Senate, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, spent hours trying to decide what she would have for lunch before ultimately ordering exactly what Senator Mitch McConnell was having."
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Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "On the first day of the impeachment trial in the United States Senate, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, spent hours trying to decide what she would have for lunch before ultimately ordering exactly what Senator Mitch McConnell was having."
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Journalist Glenn Greenwald. (photo: Leo Correa/AP)
Edward Snowden Says Greenwald Charges Are 'Existential Threat' to Journalism in Brazil
Michael Safi, Guardian UK
Safi writes: "Press and internet freedom advocates - including Edward Snowden - have criticized a decision by Brazilian federal prosecutors to charge the journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes as a blatant abuse of power and an existential threat to investigative reporting in the country."
Michael Safi, Guardian UK
Safi writes: "Press and internet freedom advocates - including Edward Snowden - have criticized a decision by Brazilian federal prosecutors to charge the journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes as a blatant abuse of power and an existential threat to investigative reporting in the country."
EXCERPTS:
The leaked messages formed the basis for several stories published on Intercept Brazil, which Greenwald co-founded, and exposed what appeared to be collusion between then judge Sérgio Moro and prosecutors.
The prosecutors’ investigation resulted in the jailing of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s highest-polling presidential candidate at the time, and the subsequent presidential election was won by the far-right Jair Bolsanaro, who appointed Moro as his justice minister.
Snowden, who leaked files to Greenwald and others that became a Pulitzer prize-winning series of Guardian stories exposing illegal spying by US intelligence agencies, said the reporter’s arrest was an “absolute red alert”.
“This is unbelievably naked retaliation for revealing extreme corruption at the highest levels of Bolsanaro’s administration, and an existential threat to investigative journalism in Brazil,” he said on Twitter.
Lula, who was released from prison in November to appeal against his conviction, also voiced support for Greenwald. “All my solidarity to journalist @ggreenwald who was a victim of another blatant abuse of authority against freedom of press and democracy,” the former president tweeted.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, an internet freedom group, said it was dismayed to learn of the charges. “Computer crime laws should never be used to criminalise legitimate journalistic practice,” it said. “Prosecutors must not apply them without considering the chilling effects on the free press, and the risk of politicised prosecutions.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said Donald Trump’s attacks on the press in the US had softened the ground for the prosecution of American journalists abroad. “The United States must immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press,” the group said in a statement.
“These sham charges are a sickening escalation of the Bolsonaro administration’s authoritarian attacks on press freedom and the rule of law. They cannot be allowed to stand.”
Jeff Bezos and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016. (photo: Bandar Algaloud/Getty)
UN Ties Phone Hacking of Bezos to Washington Post's Coverage of Saudi Arabia
Marc Fisher, The Washington Post
Fisher writes: "United Nations human rights investigators have concluded that an account belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent an infected video to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, triggering a massive extraction of data from the billionaire's cell phone."
Marc Fisher, The Washington Post
Fisher writes: "United Nations human rights investigators have concluded that an account belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent an infected video to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, triggering a massive extraction of data from the billionaire's cell phone."
EXCERPT:
The 2018 hack of Bezos’s phone took place five months before Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who was under contract with The Post’s editorial department to write opinion columns, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Five Saudi nationals were sentenced to death last month in connection with the Khashoggi killing after a secret trial in Saudi Arabia.
According to the report, Bezos and Mohammed exchanged phone numbers at a dinner in Los Angeles about a month before the hack. The dinner took place the day after The Post published a column by Khashoggi that blasted the prince’s regime, saying that “replacing old tactics of intolerance with new ways of repression is not the answer.”
Four weeks later, on May 1, 2018, the prince sent the billionaire entrepreneur a WhatsApp message containing a video that, according to a person familiar with the investigation, was a promotional piece about economic success in Saudi Arabia. Inside the video file, the forensic report concludes, was malicious code that allowed the sender to extract information from the phone.
The report says that “within hours of receipt of the MP4 video file from the Crown Prince’s account, massive and (for Bezos’ phone) unprecedented exfiltration of data from the phone began.” The flow of data out of Bezos’s phone jumped suddenly by 29,156 percent and the “spiking then continued undetected over some months,” according to the investigation.
The infecting technology did not require Bezos to click on the video, but rather instantly created a channel for remote extraction of data from the phone, according to the person familiar with the investigation.
Students in a private school. (photo: Shutterstock)
Upcoming Supreme Court Ruling Could Starve Public Schools - in Favor of Religious Ones
Alice Herman, In These Times
Herman writes: "Through voucher programs and tax relief for private school donors, more than 20 states are already redirecting public funds into private education."
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Alice Herman, In These Times
Herman writes: "Through voucher programs and tax relief for private school donors, more than 20 states are already redirecting public funds into private education."
READ MORE
Immigration detention center. (photo: Reuters)
Immigrant Detention Centers Really Are Inhumane. This Trial Will Prove It
Raúl Grijalva, AZ Central
Grijalva writes: "Under President Trump's orders, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding a detention system that routinely deprives people of due process, basic human rights and human dignity."
Raúl Grijalva, AZ Central
Grijalva writes: "Under President Trump's orders, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding a detention system that routinely deprives people of due process, basic human rights and human dignity."
EXCERPT:
No medical care, hygiene, edible food
Dozens have died in immigration custody on this administration’s watch, already four people in this fiscal year alone. Thousands more are subjected to inhumane conditions on a daily basis, including in Tucson.
Last week, several of those individuals subjected to degrading detention conditions in southern Arizona took the government to trial. In the Doe v. Wolf case, individuals detained by the Border Patrol in Arizona spoke about their experiences of sleeping on cold concrete floors, being denied adequate medical care and access to basic hygiene facilities to clean themselves, and being fed inedible food.
The conditions we’re seeing in Border Patrol facilities in Arizona, Texas, California and other parts of the country are exacerbated by an immigration backlog that this administration created through its counterproductive immigration policies, which criminalize immigrants instead of giving them an opportunity to seek the protection they so desperately need.
This administration doesn’t want to make our system work better, it wants to make the system so intolerable that it deters people from coming altogether.
These horrible conditions are intentional
Criminalizing immigrants has led agencies to detain them for longer periods of time in facilities that aren’t equipped to handle the quantity of people. As a result, asylum seekers and other migrants have been forced to endure inhumane, and even deadly, conditions, despite already making the trek thousands of miles to the U.S. border from their country of origin.
We’ve heard the same recycled excuses from Customs and Border Patrol about what’s led to these conditions. Instead of accountability, the Trump administration’s punitive and inhumane policies have made the situation worse. Under Trump, agencies such as the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operate without any transparency and oversight.
Terry Jones in London in 2012. (photo: Graeme Robertson/Guardian UK)
Terry Jones, Life of Brian Director and Monty Python Founder, Dies Aged 77
Andrew Pulver, Guardian UK
Pulver writes: "Terry Jones, founder member of Monty Python and director of three of Python's celebrated feature films, has died aged 77, his family have announced."
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Andrew Pulver, Guardian UK
Pulver writes: "Terry Jones, founder member of Monty Python and director of three of Python's celebrated feature films, has died aged 77, his family have announced."
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Malaysian environment minister Yeo Bee Yin (front 2nd L) and officials inspect a container containing plastic waste shipment on Jan. 20, 2020 before sending back to the countries of origin. (photo: Getty)
Malaysia Sends Plastic Waste Back to 13 Wealthy Countries, Says It Won't Be 'the Rubbish Dump of the World'
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "The Southeast Asian country Malaysia has sent 150 shipping containers packed with plastic waste back to 13 wealthy countries, putting the world on notice that it will not be the world's garbage dump."
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "The Southeast Asian country Malaysia has sent 150 shipping containers packed with plastic waste back to 13 wealthy countries, putting the world on notice that it will not be the world's garbage dump."
The countries receiving their trash back include the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada.
The government will seek to ensure that "Malaysia does not become the garbage dump of the world," Yeo said in a lengthy Facebook post, as CNN reported.
The UK was responsible for 42 of those containers. Malaysia's Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin insisted that she is taking steps to make sure her country does not become a dumping ground for wealthy countries, as the BBC reported.
The UK government said it was working with Malaysian authorities to take back the waste.
"We continue to work with the shipping lines and Malaysian authorities to ensure all waste is brought back as soon as possible," said an Environment Agency spokesman in the UK to the BBC. The spokesman added that the Environment Agency is "working hard to stop illegal waste exports from leaving our shores in the first place."
Since China banned the import of plastic waste in 2018, shipments of plastic waste have been rerouted to Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. However, Malaysia and other developing countries are standing up to unwanted, imported garbage, as the AP reported.
In addition to the 150 containers that Malaysia sent back to their country of origin, Malaysia expects to send back another 110 containers by the middle of the year, according to Yeo, as the AP reported.
Yeo added that so far success in sending back trash has removed a total of 4,120 tons of waste from Malaysian ports. Authorities there have stepped up enforcement at key ports to block smuggling of waste and closed more than 200 illegal plastic recycling factories, as the AP reported.
While the UK received back 42 containers, that number was one shy of France's 43 containers of illegal plastic waste sent back. Otherwise, 17 went to the U.S., 11 to Canada, 10 to Spain and the rest to Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Portugal, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Lithuania, the Environment Ministry said, according to the AP.
"If people want to see us as the rubbish dump of the world, you dream on," Yeo told reporters during inspection at a port in northern Penang state, as the AP reported.
From the 110 containers that Malaysia will return in the middle of the year, Yeo said 60 are from the U.S. Canada also has 15 more containers, Japan 14, the UK 9 and Belgium 8, as the AP reported.
Malaysia is the latest in a string of countries that have returned waste to Western countries in the last year. The Philippines and Indonesia returned waste in 2019, as the BBC reported. Waste from Canada sent to the Philippines caused a domestic row between the two countries.
Last year, Yeo also singled out British people for their ignorance about where their plastic waste goes.
"What the citizens of the UK believe they send for recycling is actually dumped in our country," she said, as the BBC reported.
A recent Greenpeace report found that plastic waste exported from the U.S. to Malaysia more than doubled in the first seven months of 2018 compared to 2017, as CNN reported.
