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tinyshe · 3 years

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Story at-a-glance

In October 2019, mere months before the pandemic was announced, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted Event 201, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, funded by billionaire technocrat Michael Bloomberg. This tabletop exercise simulated the global response to a fictional coronavirus pandemic

Event 201 confirms that even if the virus itself wasn’t preplanned, the unprecedented and draconian response to it was

The goal of this pandemic is to usher in the Great Reset, a strategy developed and promoted by the World Economic Forum. Previously referred to as the New World Order, this “reset” of the global economy and society as a whole has been carefully planned for decades

A key component of this agenda is the transfer of global wealth and assets into the hands of the wealthy

source please go to source for video

In this video, Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, and I discuss “The Truth About COVID-19 — Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal,” which we co-wrote.

The book was released yesterday. If you preordered, thank you! If you didn’t, you can now pick it up without delay.

Thanks for all your support with the book. This is going to be an overwhelming best seller, and likely No. 1 in the U.S. We preordered 50,000 copies, but Amazon told us a few weeks ago that they needed 100,000 copies, which only happens a few times a year for any new book. The orders were placed weeks ago, but this pandemic has massively disrupted the printing industry so it is taking far longer to print books than it used to.

For that reason, your books will be delivered just a bit later than anticipated. However, if you are like me and only read Kindle books, you can get the book now! The good news is that at least 50,000 of you will get the book next week and start to understand the deep web of deception you have been led into. I deeply appreciate all your support on this book and the project to educate the masses about the truth about COVID-19.

As mentioned by Cummins, the COVID-19 pandemic surprised a lot of people, but in researching this book, we learned that vaccine companies and their investors had been anticipating a scenario like this for a very long time.

Event 201 — A Prescient Foreshadowing

Interestingly enough, in October 2019, mere months before the pandemic was announced, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted Event 201, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, funded by billionaire technocrat Michael Bloomberg. This tabletop exercise simulated the global response to a fictional coronavirus pandemic.

Amid predictions that 65 million people were dying, mass lock downs and quarantines were implemented around the world, and alternative viewpoints were suppressed through censorship under the guise of fighting “disinformation.” They even discussed the possibility of incarcerating people who question the pandemic narrative.

The need for radical censorship was perhaps one of the most striking foreshadowing in that exercise. In my view, Event 201, as a whole, confirms that even if the virus itself wasn’t preplanned, the unprecedented and draconian response to it certainly was, and Gates is a key figure in this scheme.

He may not be the mastermind, and he’s certainly not the only person involved, but he appears to be one of the front men for the technocratic elite who are using this pandemic to further their own agenda, which is nothing short of world domination through subjugation of the people.

Science and Facts Tossed by the Wayside

Many of the containment measures employed during this pandemic have never been used before, ever. Among them are the shutting down of businesses and forcing people to self-isolate at home for weeks and months on end — around the whole world! It’s quite unbelievable, and few would have thought it possible.

Clearly, it would not have been possible were it not for having spent long periods of time grooming the right people, infiltrating the right organizations and government agencies, influencing politicians and granting nongovernmental bodies global influence.

We’ve also never quarantined healthy people before. Usually, you isolate the sick and contagious. This is standard practice. But you don’t isolate non-sick people. This is a brand-new idea that has never been tried before and has no scientific basis whatsoever.

They were able to do all of this because the World Health Organization is the de facto ruler when it comes to global pandemics. What they say is what member nations will follow. And who’s the primary funder of the WHO? Not any nation, but Gates. He has, by the way, been involved with the WHO for over a decade, so this is not something he or anyone else dreamed up over some weekend event.

The End Goal Is to Usher in the Great Reset

As we describe in the book, the goal of this pandemic is to usher in the Great Reset, a strategy developed and promoted by the World Economic Forum. Previously referred to as the New World Order, this “reset” of the global economy and society as a whole has been carefully planned for decades.

A key component of this agenda is the transfer of global wealth and assets into the hands of the wealthy. According to a September 2020 economic impact report1 by Yelp, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed their doors as of August 31, 2020, and of those, 60% — a total of 97,966 businesses — were permanent closures.2

Meanwhile, between March 18, 2020, and April 12, 2021, the collective wealth of American billionaires increased by $1.62 trillion — 55% — from $2.95 trillion to $4.56 trillion. One-third of the total wealth gains by billionaires since 1990 occurred in the last 13 months!3

As noted by Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands.”4 The primary benefactors of the pandemic measures include the finance and tech industries and the pharmaceutical and military-intelligence sectors.5

Vaccine Passport Is Your Ticket to Tyranny

As you’d expect, vaccine companies have been able to exploit this pandemic, in large part due to the heavy censoring of any and all preventive and early treatments. Without that censoring, I don’t believe as many people would be lining up to get these shots, seeing how they are experimental gene therapies miscategorized as vaccines.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market has been licensed. They are all being used under emergency use authorization, and a condition for an EUA is that there are no other effective treatments available. This, I believe, is the real reason why effective prevention and alternative treatments were so heavily suppressed. They, quite simply, would have rendered the vaccine moot.

In the book, we also detail how inaccurate tests, used inappropriately, created the illusion of a highly infectious pandemic and served as the basis for the fearmongering spewed by the media. In reality, the vast majority of “cases” actually weren’t. They were false positives and/or people being counted multiple times because they kept being retested, and instead of counting people, they were counting tests.

Fatality statistics were also grossly inflated by suddenly changing how death certificates are filled out and marking any person who died having had a positive PCR test within the last month, or who was simply suspected of being positive, as a COVID-19 death. Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted that 94% of COVID-19 deaths were people who died with the virus, not from it. The real cause of death was another underlying, often long-term chronic condition.

All of these statistics were artificially manipulated to make it appear we are in a sufficiently deadly and horrible situation to warrant vaccine passports, without which you won’t be allowed to participate in certain social activities or travel.

The irony is that the COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to prevent infection or spread of the virus, so being vaccinated won’t do a thing for public health. At best, it may protect the vaccinated individual from having a more serious case of COVID-19 if or when they do get infected. They encourage everyone to get vaccinated in order to ensure we reach herd immunity, yet these “vaccines” aren’t designed to provide immunity!

Since vaccination won’t prevent viral spread, the vaccine passport will fulfill but one purpose, and that is to usher in a digital surveillance mechanism that can then be expanded to encompass many other areas of life, including financial data. So, the vaccine certificate is not a passport to freedom. It’s your ticket to tyranny.

How to Take Control of Your Health

I believe your best bet, moving forward, is to address your foundational health, starting with your metabolic flexibility. You want to be metabolically flexible. What does that mean? It means that your body can seamlessly transition between burning fat and burning carbohydrates as its primary fuel. This is important, because when your body can do this, it means you are not insulin resistant.

When you’re insulin resistant, you’re more likely to have complications such as immune insensitivity, obesity, high blood pressure and distorted cholesterol patterns. Your risk for severe COVID-19 will also be dramatically increased. Thankfully, many of these issues can be simply reversed for no cost with time-restricted eating.

Secondly, you need to have enough vitamin D. For optimal health, you’ll want your vitamin D level, which you must measure using a simple blood test, to be between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (100 nmol/L and 150 nmol/L).

My peer reviewed published study6 on the “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity” is available for free on the journal’s website. In the book, we go into more specific details about these strategies, and many others.

Freedom of Speech Is Officially Dead

“The Truth About COVID-19” will become all the more important to own and share in days to come, as I was recently forced to permanently remove all articles on vitamins D, C and zinc, as well as most articles on COVID-19, from my website. This book will now be a primary source of such information.

Over the past year, I’ve been researching and writing as much as I can to help you take control of your health, as fearmongering media and corrupt politicians have destroyed lives and livelihoods to establish global control of the world’s population, using the COVID-19 pandemic as their justification.

Through these progressively increasing stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these relentless attacks. I have been willing to defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of the best attorneys in the country.

Unfortunately, threats recently became very personal and intensified to the point I could no longer preserve much of the information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them.

Politicians in January 2021 managed to pass the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act.7 This piece of legislation was hidden in a 2,100-page bill8 that now provides the government with enormous legal authority to prosecute anyone for “crime” of disagreeing with the official narrative that the vaccine is the ONLY approved approach to treat or prevent COVID-19. Here is the relevant portion of this Act:

This Act makes it unlawful under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act for any person, partnership, or corporation to engage in a deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation, or diagnosis of COVID-19 or a government benefit related to COVID-19.

Remember, Hitler and Mussolini came to power LEGALLY, because they subverted the legal structures of their country. Folks, you are now seeing the same kind of subversion happening in real time in the U.S. It is obvious that this is the first assault, designed to remove your personal freedom and liberty. This law essentially abolishes the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with respect to ANY dialog on COVID-19.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

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In serving big company interests, copyright is in crisis

Copyright rules are made with the needs of the entertainment industry in mind, designed to provide the legal framework for creators, investors, distributors, production houses, and other parts of the industry to navigate their disputes and assert their interests.

A good copyright policy would be one that encouraged diverse forms of expression from diverse creators who were fairly compensated for their role in a profitable industry. But copyright has signally failed to accomplish this end, largely because of the role it plays in the monopolization of the entertainment industry (and, in the digital era, every industry where copyrighted software plays a role). Copyright's primary approach is to give creators monopolies over their works, in the hopes that they can use these as leverage in overmatched battles with corporate interests. But monopolies have a tendency to accumulate, piling up in the vaults of big companies, who use these government-backed exclusive rights to dominate the industry so that anyone hoping to enter it must first surrender their little monopolies to the hoards of the big gatekeepers.

Creators get a raw deal in a concentrated marketplace, selling their work into a buyer's market. Giving them more monopolies – longer copyright terms, copyright over the "feel" of music, copyright over samples – just gives the industry more monopolies to confiscate in one-sided negotiations and add to their arsenals. Expecting more copyright to help artists beat a concentrated industry is like expecting more lunch money to help your kid defeat the bullies who beat him up on the playground every day. No matter how much lunch money you give that kid, all you'll ever do is make the bullies richer.

One of the biggest problems with copyright in the digital era is that we expect people who aren't in the entertainment industry to understand and abide by its rules: it's no more realistic to expect a casual reader to understand and abide by a long, technical copyright license in order to enjoy a novel than it is to expect a parent to understand securities law before they pay their kid's allowance. Copyright law can either be technical and nuanced enough to serve as a rulebook for a vast, complex industry...or it can be simple and intuitive enough for that industry's customers to grasp and follow without years of specialized training. Decades of trying to make copyright into a system for both industrial actors and their audiences has demonstrated that the result is always a system that serves the former while bewildering and confounding the latter.

But even considered as a rulebook for the entertainment industry, copyright is in crisis. A system that is often promoted as protecting the interests of artists has increasingly sidelined creators' interests even as big media companies merge with one another, and with other kinds of companies (like ISPs) to form vertical monopolies that lock up the production, distribution and commercialization of creative work, leaving creators selling their work into a buyer's market locked up by a handful of companies.

2019 was not a good year for competition in the entertainment sector. Mergers like the $71.3B Disney-Fox deal reduced the number of big movie studios from five (already a farcical number) to four (impossibly, even worse). The Hollywood screenwriters have been locked in a record-breaking strike with the talent agencies—there are only three major agencies, all dominated by private equity investors, and the lack of competition means that they increasingly are negotiating deals on behalf of writers in which they agree to accept less money for writers in exchange for large fees for themselves.

On top of that, the big entertainment companies are increasingly diversifying and becoming distribution channels. The Trump administration approved the AT&T/Time-Warner merger just as the Obama administration approved the Universal/Comcast merger a decade earlier. Meanwhile, Disney has launched a streaming service and is pulling the catalogs of all its subsidiaries from rival services. That means that the creators behind those works will no longer receive residual payments from Disney for the licensing fees it receives from the likes of Netflix—instead, their work will stream exclusively on Disney Plus, and Disney will no longer have to pay the creators any more money for the use of their work.

To top it all off, the DOJ is working to end the antitrust rule that bans movie studios from owning movie theater chains, 70 years after it was put in place to end a suite of nakedly anti-competitive tactics that had especially grave consequences for actors and other creative people in the film industry. Right on cue, the already massively concentrated movie theater industry got even more concentrated.

The most visible impact of the steady concentration of the entertainment industry is on big stars: think of Taylor Swift's battle to perform her own music at an awards show where she was being named "Artist of the Decade" shortly after rights to her back catalog were sold to a "tycoon" whom she has a longstanding feud with.

But perhaps the most important impact is on independent creators, those who either cannot or will not join forces with the entertainment giants. These artists, more than any other, depend on a free, fair and open Internet to connect with audiences, promoted and distribute their works and receive payments. The tech sector has undergone market concentration that makes it every bit as troubled as the entertainment industry: as the New Zealand technologist Tom Eastman wrote in 2018, "I'm old enough to remember when the Internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four."

The monopolization of the online world means that all artists are vulnerable to changes in Big Tech policy, which can see their livings confiscated, their artistic works disappeared, and their online presences erased due to error, caprice, or as collateral damage in other fights. Here, too, independent artists are especially vulnerable: when YouTube's Content ID copyright filter incorrectly blocks a video from a major studio or label, executives at the company can get prompt action from Google -- but when an independent artist is incorrectly labeled a pirate, their only hope of getting their work sprung from content jail is to make a huge public stink and hope it's enough to shame a tech giant into action.

As online platforms become ever-more-central to our employment, family, culture, education, romance and personal lives, the tech giants are increasingly wielding the censor's pen to strike out our words and images and sounds and videos in the name of public safety, copyright enforcement, and a host of other rubrics. Even considering that it's impossible to do a good job of this at massive scale, the tech companies do a particularly bad job.

This is about to get much worse. In March 2019, the European Union passed the most controversial copyright rules in its history by a razor-thin margin of only five votes—and later, ten Members of the European Parliament stated that they were confused and had pressed the wrong button, though the damage had already been done.

One of the most controversial parts of the new European Copyright Directive was Article 17 (formerly Article 13), which will require all online platforms to implement copyright filters similar to Google's Content ID. The Directive does not contain punishments for those who falsely claim copyright over works that don't belong to them (this is a major problem today, with fraudsters using fake copyright claims to threaten the livelihoods of creators in order to extort money from working artists).

Article 17 represents a bonanza for crooks who victimize creators by claiming copyright over their works—without offering any protections for the artists targeted by scammers. Artists who are under the protective wing of big entertainment companies can probably shield themselves from harm, meaning that the heavily concentrated entertainment sector will have even more leverage to use in its dealings with creators.

But that's not all: Article 17 may have snuffed out any possibility of launching a competing platform to discipline the Big Tech firms, at least in Europe. Startups might be able to offer a better product and lure customers to it (especially with the help of Adversarial Interoperability) but they won't be able to afford the massive capital expenditures needed to develop and operate the filters required by Article 17 until they've grown to giant size—something they won't get a chance to do because, without filters, they won't be able to operate at all.

That means that the Big Tech giants will likely get bigger, and, where possible, they will use their control over access to markets and customers to force both independent creators and big media companies to sell on terms that benefit them, at the expense of creators and entertainment companies.

To see what this looks like, just consider Amazon, especially its Audible division, which controls virtually the entire audiobook market. Once a minor sideline for publishing, audiobooks are now a major component of any author's living, generating nearly as much revenue as hardcovers and growing much faster.

Amazon has abused its near-total dominance over the audiobook market to force creators and publishers to consent to its terms, which include an absolute requirement that all audiobooks sold on Audible be wrapped in Amazon's proprietary "Digital Rights Management" code. This code nominally protects Audible products from unauthorized duplication, but this is a mere pretense.

It's pretty straightforward to remove this DRM, but providing tools to do so is a potential felony under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, carrying a penalty of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense (EFF is suing the US government to overturn this law). This means that potential Audible rivals can't offer tools to import Audible purchases to run on their systems or to permit access to all your audiobooks from a single menu.

As Amazon grows in scale and ambition, it can, at its discretion, terminate authors' or publishers' access to the audience it controls (something the company has done before). Audiences that object to this will be left with a difficult choice: abandon the purchases they've made to follow the artists they love to smaller, peripheral platforms, or fragment their expensive audiobook libraries across a confusion of apps and screens.

Copyright was historically called "the author's monopoly," but increasingly those small-scale monopolies are being expropriated by giant corporations—some tech, some entertainment, some a weird chimera of both—and wielded to corner entire markets or sectors. In 2017, EFF lost a long, bitter fight to ensure that a poorly considered project to add DRM to the standards for Web browsers didn't result in further monopolization of the browser market. Two years later, our worst fears have been realized and it is effectively impossible to launch a competitive browser without permission from Google or Microsoft or Apple (Apple won't answer licensing queries, Microsoft wants $10,000 just to consider a licensing application, and Google has turned down all requests to license for new free/open-source browsers).

Copyright has also become a key weapon in the anticompetitive arsenal wielded against the independent repair sector. More than 20 state-level Right to Repair bills have been killed by industry coalitions who cite a self-serving, incoherent mix of concerns over their copyrights and "cybersecurity" as reasons why you shouldn't be able to get your phone or car fixed in the shop of your choice.

All this is why EFF expanded its competition-related projects in 2019 and will do even more in 2020. We, too, are old enough to remember when the Internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four. We know that, in 2020, it's foolish to expect tech companies to have their users' back unless there's a meaningful chance those users will go somewhere else (and not just to another division of the same tech company).

(Crossposted from EFF Deeplinks)

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/22/in-serving-big-company-interes.html

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onlinetrustworld · 4 years

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Professional for Upwork Freelancers

If I were a additional suspicious person, I’d marvel why a number of the foremost known school corporations within the America and their equally known leaders, area unit accidentally however actively encouraging their best talent to shift from regular employment to freelancer.

Four factors area unit at play:The plunge in extremely competent foreign employees is driving additional freelance work. Axios rumored on the results of movement the door on extremely competent foreign employees. in keeping with their reportage, “temporary visas for those with "extraordinary" ability (O visas), specialty job skills (H-1B, H-4, L visas) or UN agency area unit trade professionals or investors (E, TN, TD visas) fell considerably.” In Jan, 61,000 foreign consultants were granted visas, which range born to but five hundred in Apr because the pandemic set in and consulates closed. Axios primarily based its analysis on a study by the Migration Policy Institute. whereas the amount rose to over two,000 in Gregorian calendar month, and also the State Department recently supplementary exemptions in August, that’s still so much but five-hitter of the Jan numbers.

Moreover, underneath different Trump policies, denial rates for the favored high-skilled H-1B visas tripled compared to the tip of the Obama administration at twenty ninth, the National Foundation for yankee Policy found. Remember, the work doesn’t stop as a result of visas aren’t granted. What’s the consequence? Well, unless there area unit America voters able to wrestle the work needed of our school corporations, the businesses area unit additional typically than not turning to freelancers within and outdoors the America. And in some high demand areas, like AI, the demand is considerably larger than current offer. Ironically, the school professionals compact most area unit those from India, UN agency were the most important beneficiaries of temporary knowledgeable visas. Guess what country provides the America with the best range of remote school freelancers? in keeping with one analysis, 2 thirds of active Indian school freelancers support corporations within the America or UK.Penalizing remote employees UN agency remote outside the Bay space. simply Bastille Day of staff trust CEOs or senior managers to steer the come back to figure, in keeping with Associate in Nursing Edelman survey. solely 0.5 believe their offices area unit safe, and lots of area unit seriously considering a move outside geographic area. In line with this trend, VMware became the most recent leader UN agency has, on the one hand, offered staff the chance to figure remotely and move to a less costly a part of the country than geographic area and, on the opposite hand, conceive to put in force a cut. VMware’s head of human resources, created the purpose that the corporate adjusts pay supported the “cost of labor” in numerous regional zones and benchmarks pay variations among companies competitive for its employees. He adds that, whereas some staff can see pay cuts, Lang same others might get a raise if they selected to maneuver to a bigger or dearer town. As Associate in Nursing example, staff deed Palo Alto and moving to capital of Colorado, should settle for Associate in Nursing eighteen pay reduction, and la or urban center means that relinquishing 8 May 1945 of their annual pay.

VMware isn’t the sole company aiming to penalise school and different employees members UN agency attempt to work remotely outside the bay space. Facebook and Twitter area unit considering similar pay policies. Facebook told staff in could that the corporate would presently transition additional for good to remote work, even when Covid-19 subsides. staff UN agency leave high-ticket areas like urban center or ny can ought to take a cut, however, betting on wherever they live as of Gregorian calendar month. 1, 2021. Chief military officer Mark Zuckerberg same he expects the maximum amount five hundredth of Facebook’s international personnel to be remote within the next 5 to ten years.

What’s the matter with this: the work isn’t completely different and that’s what the corporate ought to be paying for. What’s seemingly to happen? Well, in keeping with Upwork’s most up-to-date report: Freelancing in America, sixty fourth or nearly 2 thirds of respondents believe “professionals UN agency area unit the highest in their trade area unit more and more selecting to figure severally.” And, in keeping with Edelman’s Trust measuring device, worker trust in their company leadership typically is each low and steady therefore. Gallup finds the same lack of trust in leadership. the mix of actions – an absence of confidence in leaders, a distant work relocation policy that takes the maximum amount or over it offers, and also the confidence high staff have in their ability to succeed as freelancers - is probably going to push several of a company’s best school staff to contemplate the freelance various. you'll bet that where high school freelancers like better to live, their rate is unchanged. Employees area unit annoyed with however their company shows up around social values and priorities. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg face a continuing backlash from staff unwilling to just

accept poet Friedman’s picture defense of capitalism: “There is one and only 1 social responsibility of business – to use its resources and interact in activities designed to extend its profits see you later because it stays at intervals the foundations of the sport.” staff within the school sector area unit more and more in public criticizing their corporations for refusing to require action over contentious and incontrovertibly false and incendiary statements by President Trump, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and different black and brown America voters, and permitting the publication of biased, intolerant and dangerous posts. Zuckerberg has defended Facebook’s position as — in his words — “an establishment committed to free expression.” But, people like mythical being nob, UN agency joined Facebook as a director of product management a year agone, pointed to a broader upsurge of worker policy within the corporate. “I work Facebook and that i am not happy with however we’re exposure,” he announce on Twitter. “The majority of associates I’ve spoken to feel an equivalent manner. we have a tendency to area unit creating our voice detected.” Saint Andrew Crow, head of style for Facebook’s Portal videoconferencing device, announce on Twitter: “Censoring info which may facilitate individuals see the entire image is wrong. however giving a platform to incite violence and unfold misinformation is unacceptable.”

Facebook isn’t alone. school staffers have protested at Google, Microsoft and Amazon over problems as well as work conditions, temperature change and military contracts. What’s the affiliation to freelancing? Here’s what Gallup says:“In our recent work with organizations across numerous industries, we have a tendency to discovered one thing very fascinating and somewhat unsettling: extremely proficient staff UN agency don't seem to be engaged were among people who had the very best turnover in every organization — on par with low talent, disengaged staff. In different words, once your best staff don't seem to be engaged, {they area unit|they're} as seemingly to depart your organization as your staff UN agency tend to own performance problems and are sad. “Why do they leave therefore quickly? we have a tendency to speculate that your most proficient staff area unit additional seemingly to own high expectations of their workplaces. they're additionally additional seemingly to own different opportunities out there to them. They hunt down higher opportunities wherever they'll grow and develop their skills. Or they'll simply wish to travel wherever their gifts area unit appreciated and rewarded additional typically.”Remember, several of your high school consultants area unit already half answer the door. we all know that staff area unit more and more resembling freelancers in their demand for larger flexibility and autonomy. As a recent article of mine in Forbes pointed out:“Millennial and Gen-Z employees area unit increasing treating jobs as gigs, not career destinations, and ever-changing jobs additional oftentimes than the other recent generation. These days, ninety one of Millennials arrange on staying in their current job for no over 2 years.

“The reason staff offer for job ever-changing is additional and additional “freelance-ish.” Freelancers generally purpose to four vital attractions of a freelancing career: be one’s own boss, additional selection and suppleness, and larger selection. the explanations staff offer for moving on area unit strikingly similar: a troublesome boss, work that doesn’t interest them or aid them in growing professionally and learning new skills, or Associate in Nursing structure culture that doesn’t offer flexibility.”

With high school professionals recognizing the expansion of chance in freelancing, this is often no time for company leaders to require the loyalty and engagement of their high technical talent without any consideration, or assume that they're simply replaced. neither is it a time to relinquish with one hand however take with the opposite. Retention of your best individuals is all regarding trust. So, it’s not in the slightest degree stunning that if trust is destroyed, the simplest school consultants in your organization could move to regular freelancing or to a different company whose values they respect. Upwork could be a trustworthy leader remodeling ancient staffing, and their new report could be a crucial trendsetter. The Freelance Forward Report providing insights from over half-dozen,000 U.S. workers, found that some fifty nine million Americans freelanced within the past twelve months, representing one year of the U.S. workforce.Nancy Van Brunt: produce an in depth and thorough profile. Be terribly specific regarding your space of experience to face out and create it easier for purchasers to seek out you. My second tip is to point out, don't tell. Build out a portfolio of your style work; keep it up so far, and ensure it emphasizes the kind of labor you are presently seeking. purchasers wish to examine what you've got accomplished — and what you'll do for them. Last however not least, assume long-run. In my expertise, the foremost undefeated freelancers read every job as a stepping stone towards repeat work. once Associate in Nursing enterprise consumer offers alittle job, ensure they are excited with the ultimate outcome to urge your foot within the door — ideally, it'll result in in progress comes. married woman Montañez: If somebody is stressed or on the verge of burnout, what is one issue to be aware of with freelancing? Nancy Van Brunt: whereas freelance work definitely has its advantages, as well as selecting your comes, dominant your rate and maintaining your own schedule, it isn't while not its challenges. it is simple to require on an excessive amount of work or get overpowered by work considering the terribly nature of freelancing is that the additional you're employed, the additional you earn. it is important to figure on a schedule and do not retreat from speech no to things that do not align along with your interests.If you follow my work, you recognize i am all regarding approaching our careers through a holistic lens. we have a tendency to can’t have effective career conversations while not concerning eudaemonia. Stress impacts however we have a tendency to weigh risks and rewards, and what you're feeling on the within comes get into however you approach your career. begin steering the ship and do not sleep on market trends – freelancing could be a massively positive one.

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kinoalyse · 5 years

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10 Photography Tips for Bloggers

LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY BASICS

There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there that offer the basics of photography but the reason this stands out is because there is a surprising lack of quality photography across travel blogs. Therefore, one way to shine among the crowd is by showcasing your photography. First, explore the "Exposure Triangle," which is the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. There's no shame in using automatic but sometimes a scene needs your assistance, such as a bright sky against architecture or a prop (wine bottles, ice cream, etc.).

Perfect Sky But... This isn't a terrible mid-range exposure but if you point your lens to the sky (or "expose for the sky"), the sky will be prefect but your architecture might be too dark for us to recover in post.

Perfect Interior, But... With an automatic camera, if you point your lens at the interior, this is what it will produce: perfect interior with a blown out sky that's impossible to recover. An automatic camera automatically exposes for where your lens is pointing. For the advanced, if you move your exposure square, it will expose where that square is when you lightly press the shutter. By learning how to use your camera more effectively, you can produce better work that stands out. If there's demand, I'm happy to write a quick and easily digested blog about photography basics. Leave a comment below or Tweet me if that would be helpful.

EXPLORE DIFFERENT GENRES

Second, what is the theme of your blog? If it's quite specific, such as food around the world, consider the different angles you can take to tell the story of that food. What of the chefs, the building, where the food comes from? To illustrate, a typical food blog features the food and wine placed on their table: food photography. However, if you want to tell a different story and, again, offer a fresh perspective, start exploring different genres of photography. In order to photograph the chefs, one would want to dabble in portraiture or street photography. Furthermore, to tell the story of a restaurant with a history, consider architectural photography.

Night Changing the time that you shoot can completely diversify your portfolio and is more visually interesting.

Portraiture Portraiture helps blogger to pull readers into their story. See Using Human Elements for more information.

Architecture Architecture connects readers to where you are and the people who inhabit the location. Always tell a story.

Take Notes

Travel takes a lot out of us. As you shoot, remember to take notes of your experiences, especially as you move: one city contains any number of photographic features in different sectors and you may not realize you've changed locations. Take notes of your surroundings to make sure you aren't misleading your readers and especially in case you decide to make money with stock photography in the future. https://vimeo.com/286921266

Tell a Story

Telling a story requires creativity and a willingness to explore different shooting methods. For example, street photographers use a method called "shooting from the hip." Instead of shooting from a standing position, the camera is placed near their hip to not only give their photos a different angle, but the camera is less obvious. In this photo, I had visited a city with a couple of famous landmarks and decided to skip them entirely in favor of exploration. I later realized that this town had been devastated by an earthquake years prior. At first glance, this is just an archway with a window reflecting the sunset. I wanted to invite the viewer to look closer for the story, the acorns littering the ground, unkept foliage, cracks in the stone. It becomes quite clear that this section of the city hasn't been maintained by citizens in years.

Leave White Space

White space is empty space within your photo, perfect for banner backgrounds because it lacks 'business' against your font. Play attention to white space while you shoot. skeleton plans, open schedules

plan flexibly

The rewards for patience is often worth the story itself. Be patient if your sunrise isn't incredible. Stay another half-hour in case the rain lets up. Flexibility in photography means using the unexpected to your advantage. Planning a vacation and having an open mind is totally different from patience in photography. When you plan your locations, remember that the weather, people, situations are not always as expected. Use these 'problems' to tell a story.

Use A Human element

Thank you to CrossroadAdventure for the question! A human element adds relatability to your scene. First, let's observe an ice cream cone in front of a famous landmark. keep to your tone

Photographer: WeNeal's Photography and Retouching Alongside the right blog tone, this is a genuinely effective photo. Additionally, there is consideration for the framing and elements: they've gone with pastel nails and vibrant ice cream colors along with framing the fountain behind them. Coupled with the correct tone of a blog, this photo can be especially effective: it communicates a story in front of a famous destination and two people enjoying their cloudless afternoon. A human element also adds scale. Without the photoshopped man in the background would you look twice at this photo? A viewer has no concept of how large the driftwood and bushes are nor the rock in the background. Further, it was shot wide angle so scale is already an illusion. Placing a human element psychologically brings the viewer in. Simultaneously, a human element invites them to look again, even search for more easter eggs (hidden elements). This also means people stay on my website longer. My visitor retention skyrockets when I add something relatable. I have a lot to say about props: for more depth, Using Human Elements discusses more on the stereotypes of photography and how you should plan your own photos. Create Scale

Edit consistently

In addition to sticking to your tone, you should edit your photos within one blog post identically and within the blog itself, similarly. In the gallery below, two of the photos match styles. The other two were edited as I continued to learn and, as such, lack a cohesive style. Look specifically at the blues. The first and second photos were edited with the same saturation and hue of blue in Lightroom. The third has intense, saturated cyan and more rusty yellows. Finally, the last photo has darker blues and far less vibrant than the others. Much like the tone of your text, don't stray from a specific style in a single post.

get creative with props and people

perspective Change the angle. Crouch, look up/down, creative placement that isn't from a standing position

light Look for interesting light such as bokeh, light filtering through the trees, and soft reflections off glass.

composition Find interesting foreground and background placement where your subjects can interact.

BEST CAMERAS FOR BLOGGERS

Until I am blue in the face: the camera does not contribute to the artistry of photography until the mind behind it understands how to use their camera as an intended tool. However, some cameras do make layman lives easier. Here is what I recommend for different types of bloggers - thank you to Dancing Pandas for the question! Cheap powerhouse: Canon G7 X Mark II

This is my vlogging camera, nearly four years old and is still kicking after moving around the US and overseas multiple times. Not only is the camera itself small and lightweight, the batteries and chargers are as well. It takes gorgeous photos, has stabilization for video, and a wide range of automatic features, such as timelapses and night photography. For the layman and especially for the price, this camera is a dream. Compact DSLR: CANON REBEL T6

My first DSLR camera was the Canon Rebel T2i, my first truly daunting purchase. The T6 is a better camera and less expensive. It takes quality photos and has features like wifi connectivity, creative tools like HDR, and great autofocus. It has similar power to more expensive cameras without the weight and complexity, although the crop censor is something to consider. The Rebel line continues to impress. ACtion Camera: GoPro Hero 7 BLack

The GoPro is a huge contender. For action without quality sacrifice, 4k video, voice commands, automatic HDR photography, timelapse and hyperlapse photography, wifi-enabled... I envy you if you've got this mounted. I can't wait to see what they do next: GoPro created one smart camera for any situation I could dream of finding myself in. The best part: it's relatively cheap compared to any other cameras on this list. Best mirrorless: Sony A7 II

Although there is a newer Mark III model out, I think it has an overwhelming amount of bells and whistles. This version remains one of the best mirrorless, lightweight cameras on the market. It is able to automatically shoot simple, automatic photography but the moment you decide to really get into shooting, it also comes ready with professional features. It's the middle ground between professional and hobbyist. Phone photography: Samsung Galaxy S10+

At the end of the day, the best camera is the one you have with you. Camera photography is no joke. Samsung's Galaxy S10+ features a wide angle lens (equivalent to 12mm) and crazy manual control you usually only get from a paid app otherwise. This also means control over your focus. Want dreamy backgrounds? You got it. Insane zoom? Comes standard. It also takes full 1080 60FPS video for that extra bang for your buck. BEST DRONE: DJI Mavic Air

If you don't have a drone can you even come to the photographers' table these days? DJI has made droning more accessible than ever through their Spark and Mavic Air. I recommend the Air specifically for professional bloggers as it is lightweight and compact, contains a wealth of features (timelapse, tracking, full HDR, even filters!), and comes with everything you need to get started. Quality drone photography and video? Look no further. DJI Mavic Air. If you want more of me or my work: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Art Industry Read the full article

#Adobe #tutorial

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endenogatai · 3 years

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UK publishes draft Online Safety Bill

The UK government has published its long-trailed (child) ‘safety-focused’ plan to regulate online content and speech.

The Online Safety Bill has been in the works for years — during which time a prior plan to require age verification for accessing online porn in the UK, also with the goal of protecting kids from being exposed to inappropriate content online but which was widely criticized as unworkable, got quietly dropped.

At the time the government said it would focus on introducing comprehensive legislation to regulate a range of online harms. It can now say it’s done that.

The 145-page Online Safety Bill can be found here on the gov.uk website — along with 123 pages of explanatory notes and an 146-page impact assessment.

The draft legislation imposes a duty of care on digital service providers to moderate user generated content in a way that prevents users from being exposed to illegal and/or harmful stuff online.

The government dubs the plan globally “groundbreaking” and claims it will usher in “a new age of accountability for tech and bring fairness and accountability to the online world”.

Critics warn the proposals will harm freedom of expression by encouraging platforms to over-censor, while also creating major legal and operational headaches for digital businesses that will discourage tech innovation.

The debate starts now in earnest.

The bill will be scrutinised by a joint committee of MPs — before a final version is formally introduced to Parliament for debate later this year.

How long it might take to hit the statute books isn’t clear but the government has a large majority in parliament so, failing major public uproar and/or mass opposition within its own ranks, the Online Safety Bill has a clear road to becoming law.

Commenting in a statement, digital secretary Oliver Dowden said: “Today the UK shows global leadership with our groundbreaking laws to usher in a new age of accountability for tech and bring fairness and accountability to the online world.

“We will protect children on the internet, crack down on racist abuse on social media and through new measures to safeguard our liberties, create a truly democratic digital age.”

The length of time it’s taken for the government to draft the Online Safety Bill underscores the legislative challenge involved in trying to ‘regulate the Internet’.

In a bit of a Freudian slip, the DCMS’ own PR talks about “the government’s fight to make the internet safe”. And there are certainly question-marks over who the future winners and losers of the UK’s Online Safety laws will be.

Safety and democracy?

In a press release about the plan, the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) claimed the “landmark laws” will “keep children safe, stop racial hate and protect democracy online”.

But as that grab-bag of headline goals implies there’s an awful lot going on here — and huge potential for things to go wrong if the end result is an incoherent mess of contradictory rules that make it harder for digital businesses to operate and for Internet users to access the content they need.

The laws are set to apply widely — not just to tech giants or social media sites but to a broad swathe of websites, apps and services that host user-generated content or just allow people to talk to others online.

In scope services will face a legal requirement to remove and/or limit the spread of illegal and (in the case of larger services) harmful content, with the risk of major penalties for failing in this new duty of care toward users. There will also be requirements for reporting child sexual exploitation content to law enforcement.

Ofcom, the UK’s comms regulator — which is responsible for regulating the broadcast media and telecoms sectors — is set to become the UK Internet’s content watchdog too, under the plan.

It will have powers to sanction companies that fail in the new duty of care toward users by hitting them with fines of up to £18M or ten per cent of annual global turnover (whichever is higher).

The regulator will also get the power to block access to sites — so the potential for censoring entire platforms is baked in.

Some campaigners backing tough new Internet rules have been pressing the government to include the threat of criminal sanctions for CEOs to concentrate C-suite minds on anti-harms compliance. And while ministers haven’t gone that far, DCMS says a new criminal offence for senior managers has been included as a deferred power — adding: “This could be introduced at a later date if tech firms don’t step up their efforts to improve safety.”

Despite there being widespread public support in the UK for tougher rules for Internet platforms, the devil is the detail of how exactly you propose to do that.

Civil rights campaigners and tech policy experts have warned from the get-go that the government’s plan risks having a chilling effect on online expression by forcing private companies to be speech police.

Legal experts are also warning over how workable the framework will be, given hard to define concepts like “harms” — and, in a new addition, content that’s defined as “democratically important” (which the government wants certain platforms to have a special duty to protect).

The clear risk is massive legal uncertainty wrapping digital businesses — with knock-on impacts on startup innovation and availability of services in the UK.

The bill’s earlier incarnation — a 2019 White Paper — had the word “harms” in the title. That’s been swapped for a more anodyne reference to “safety” but the legal uncertainty hasn’t been swapped out.

The emphasis remains on trying to rein in an amorphous conglomerate of ‘harms’ — some illegal, others just unpleasant — that have been variously linked to or associated with online activity. (Often off the back of high profile media reporting, such as into children’s exposure to suicide content on platforms like Instagram.)

Instagram’s Adam Mosseri to meet UK health secretary over suicide content concerns

This can range from bullying and abuse (online trolling), to the spread of illegal content (child sexual exploitation), to content that’s merely inappropriate for children to see (legal pornography).

Certain types of online scams (romance fraud) are another harm the government wants the legislation to address, per latest additions.

The umbrella ‘harms’ framing makes the UK approach distinct to the European Union’s Digital Service Act — a parallel legislative proposal to update the EU’s digital rules that’s more tightly focused on things that are illegal, with the bloc setting out rules to standardize reporting procedures for illegal content; and combating the risk of dangerous products being sold on ecommerce marketplaces with ‘know your customer’ requirements.

Understanding Europe’s big push to rewrite the digital rulebook

In a response to criticism of the UK Bill’s potential impact on online expression, the government has added measures which it said today are aimed at strengthen people’s rights to express themselves freely online.

It also says it’s added in safeguards for journalism and to protect democratic political debate in the UK.

However its approach is already raising questions — including over what look like some pretty contradictory stipulations.

For example, the DCMS’ discussion of how the bill will handle journalistic content confirms that content on news publishers’ own websites won’t be in scope of the law (reader comments on those sites are also not in scope) and that articles by “recognised news publishers” shared on in-scope services (such as social media sites) will be exempted from legal requirements that may otherwise apply to non journalistic content.

Indeed, platforms will have a legal requirement to safeguard access to journalism content. (“This means [digital platforms] will have to consider the importance of journalism when undertaking content moderation, have a fast-track appeals process for journalists’ removed content, and will be held to account by Ofcom for the arbitrary removal of journalistic content,” DCMS notes.)

However the government also specifies that “citizen journalists’ content will have the same protections as professional journalists’ content” — so exactly where (or how) the line gets drawn between “recognized” news publishers (out of scope), citizen journalists (also out of scope), and just any old person blogging or posting stuff on the Internet (in scope… maybe?) is going to make for compelling viewing.

Carve outs to protect political speech also complicate the content moderation picture for digital services — given, for example, how extremist groups that hold racist opinions can seek to launder their hate speech and abuse as ‘political opinion’. (Some notoriously racist activists also like to claim to be ‘journalists’…)

DCMS writes that companies will be “forbidden from discriminating against particular political viewpoints and will need to apply protections equally to a range of political opinions, no matter their affiliation”.

“Policies to protect such content will need to be set out in clear and accessible terms and conditions and firms will need to stick to them or face enforcement action from Ofcom,” it goes on, adding: “When moderating content, companies will need to take into account the political context around why the content is being shared and give it a high level of protection if it is democratically important.”

Platforms will face responsibility for balancing all these conflicting requirements — drawing on Codes of Practice on content moderation that respects freedom of expression which will be set out by Ofcom — but also under threat of major penalties being slapped on them by Ofcom if they get it wrong.

Interestingly, the government appears to be looking favorably on the Facebook-devised ‘Oversight Board’ model, where a panel of humans sit in judgement on ‘complex’ content moderation cases — and also discouraging too much use of AI filters which it warns risk missing speech nuance and over-removing content. (Especially interesting given the UK government’s prior pressure on platforms to adopt AI tools to speed up terrorism content takedowns.)

“The Bill will ensure people in the UK can express themselves freely online and participate in pluralistic and robust debate,” writes DCMS. “All in-scope companies will need to consider and put in place safeguards for freedom of expression when fulfilling their duties. These safeguards will be set out by Ofcom in codes of practice but, for example, might include having human moderators take decisions in complex cases where context is important.”

“People using their services will need to have access to effective routes of appeal for content removed without good reason and companies must reinstate that content if it has been removed unfairly. Users will also be able to appeal to Ofcom and these complaints will form an essential part of Ofcom’s horizon-scanning, research and enforcement activity,” it goes on.

“Category 1 services [the largest, most popular services] will have additional duties. They will need to conduct and publish up-to-date assessments of their impact on freedom of expression and demonstrate they have taken steps to mitigate any adverse effects. These measures remove the risk that online companies adopt restrictive measures or over-remove content in their efforts to meet their new online safety duties. An example of this could be AI moderation technologies falsely flagging innocuous content as harmful, such as satire.”

Another confusing-looking component of the plan is that while the bill includes measures to tackle what it calls “user-generated fraud” — such as posts on social media for fake investment opportunities or romance scams on dating apps — fraud that’s conducted online via advertising, emails or cloned websites will not be in scope, per DCMS, as it says “the Bill focuses on harm committed through user-generated content”.

Yet since Internet users can easily and cheaply create and run online ads — as platforms like Facebook essentially offer their ad targeting tools to anyone who’s willing to pay — then why carve out fraud by ads as exempt?

It seems a meaningless place to draw the line. Fraud where someone paid a few dollars to amplify their scam doesn’t seem a less harmful class of fraud than a free Facebook post linking to the self-same crypto investment scam.

In short, there’s a risk of arbitrary/ill-thought through distinctions creating incoherent and confusing rules that are prone to loopholes. Which doesn’t sound good for anyone’s online safety.

In parallel, meanwhile, the government is devising an ambitious pro-competition ex ante regime to regulate tech giants specifically. Ensuring coherence and avoiding conflicting or overlapping requirements between that framework for platform giants and these wider digital harms rules is a further challenge.

UK sets out safety-focused plan to regulate internet firms

UK Online Safety Bill, coming next year, will propose fines of up to 10% of annual turnover for breaching duty of care rules

The UK’s plan to tackle big tech won’t be one-size fits all

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rbbox · 4 years

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The much awaited flick, Tenet, released in the USA yesterday on September 3 and hit theatres in China today. Directed by Christopher Nolan, it has now been released in almost all the major markets of the world and has done a very good business, surprising many cynics. After all, it is the first big film to release in the post-pandemic world. There were fears that audiences might not turn up in cinemas because of the fear and that collections won’t be at the maximum because of the social distancing measures. However, despite all these limitations, Tenet has managed to draw in audiences, thus proving that there’s indeed tremendous pent-up demand among the audiences.

However, fans of Nolan in India would have to wait a little longer to catch the adventure thriller. The central government has opened up many sectors but not cinema halls. However, Bollywood Hungama has exclusively learnt that Warner Bros India is fully ready with the release of the film. They even obtained a censor certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) on August 13. A source close to the studio reveals, “The CBFC has given a U/A certificate and hasn’t asked for any visual or audio cut. This will be a treat for all the Indian fans, as often CBFC recklessly makes cuts in films. Tenet, however, is an exception!”

There have been instances of studios self-censoring the film, relieving it of all so-called objectionable content and then submitting it to the CBFC. Last year’s much-loved flick Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was one such flick which had taken this route. The source, however, assures, “We have neither self-censored nor has the CBFC done any edit. Indian audiences will see the same version which is being screened elsewhere in the world.”

With the certificate in place, will Tenet be the first film to release once restrictions on cinemas are lifted? The source tells, “In our discussions with the exhibitors right now, it seems like it’ll be the first film to hit cinemas. However, we’ll release the film only if 70% of the country has opened theatres, especially the lucrative centres like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi etc. Our apprehension is that even if the central government gives the permission to cinemas to resume operations, the government in some states might not adhere to it and continue the restriction. Also, besides Hindi, we are dubbing it in Tamil and Telugu; so we need those markets as well.”

With no other film running in cinemas, Tenet can release in as many screens as possible. The source shares, “We are looking at releasing it in 100% of the screens, provided certain terms and conditions are met. Meaning, whichever theatres are open, we plan to release Tenet there. Even theatres that don’t show English films are welcome to show Tenet. So we are planning to go as wide as possible with the release. The intent is for audiences to come back to cinemas and understand that it’s safe and not as risky as presumed. For 6 months, audiences have consumed content on mobile or television or a tab. It has become tiring for many. They are missing the theatre experience. In that regard, Tenet is the apt film. Nolan always believes in the big screen experience. And his film has to be seen in theatres; it is meant for a large screen!”

However, there’s a catch. Hollywood films generally don’t release in non 2K cinemas. The source states, “The rule of not releasing in a screen which is not 2K stands. It is a Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) rule and it’s strictly followed by all studios for quality purposes and to curb piracy.”

The big question is when will Tenet release in India? There’s no clarity on it as the government has not announced the date when cinemas can finally start showing films again. The source says, “The government has to inform. Once that happens, we’ll discuss with our cinema partners and once they get ready, we’ll announce the release date. On our part, we are completely ready and can’t wait to bring the film to cinemas in India.”

Besides Tenet, Warner Bros India is also looking forward to release another highly awaited biggie, Wonder Woman 1984. It’s scheduled to release worldwide on October 2. With Tenet expected to release around the same time in India, Wonder Woman 1984 will arrive here a few weeks later. “We’ll space out the release of Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984,” says the source and signs off.

September 04, 2020 at 12:53PMEXCLUSIVE: Tenet passed by CBFC with ZERO cuts; Warner Bros India prepared to release it in 100% of the screens! https://ift.tt/2Z5JVhP

#tech news #bollywood #hollywood

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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New story in Politics from Time: How Far-Right Personalities And Conspiracy Theorists Are Cashing In On The Pandemic Online

On the evening of Feb. 6, as U.S. news networks reported the death of a doctor in Wuhan, China, who had warned of a deadly new virus, thousands of Americans were tuning in to a different kind of show.

“The good news is I heard actually that you can’t get this if you’re white,” Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator, told viewers on his “America First” channel on the streaming platform DLive. “You’re only really susceptible to this virus if you’re Asian,” Fuentes continued. “I think we’ll be O.K.”

Fuentes, 22, a prolific podcaster who on his shows has compared the Holo-caust to a cookie-baking operation, argued that the segregation of Black Americans “was better for them,” and that the First Amendment was “not written for Muslims,” is doing better than O.K. during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s part of a loose cohort of far-right provocateurs, white nationalists and right-wing extremists who have built large, engaged audiences on lesser-known platforms like DLive after being banned from main-stream sites for spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories.

The model can be lucrative. Viewers pay to watch the livestreams through subscriptions and donations, and the platform allows the content creators to keep most of the revenue. Fuentes appears to have earned more than $140,000 off his DLive streams, cementing himself as the most viewed account on the platform, according to calculations provided to TIME by a livestreaming analyst who was granted anonymity because of their work tracking these accounts. Fuentes is hardly alone. Eight of the 10 top earners on DLive this year as ranked by Social Blade, a social-media analytics website, are far-right commentators, white-nationalist extremists or conspiracy theorists.

The social disruption and economic dislocation caused by the virus–as well as the nationwide protests and civil un-rest that followed the death of George Floyd in late May–has helped fuel this growing, shadowy “alt tech” industry. As public spaces shut down in March, millions of Americans logged online; the livestreaming sector soared 45% from March to April, according to a study by software sites StreamElements and Arsenal.gg. As people became more socially isolated, many increasingly turned to pundits peddling misinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech. And even as mainstream platforms cracked down on far-right propagandists, online audiences grew. Over the past five months, more than 50 popular accounts reviewed by TIME on sites like DLive have multiplied their viewership and raked in tens of thousands of dollars in online currency by insisting COVID-19 is fake or exaggerated, encouraging followers to resist lockdown orders and broadcasting racist tropes during the nationwide protests over police brutality. Many of these users, including Fuentes, had been banned by major social-media platforms like YouTube for violating policies prohibiting hate speech. But this so-called deplatforming merely pushed them to migrate to less-regulated portals, where some of them have attracted bigger audiences and gamed algorithms to make even more money. In addition, clips of their broadcasts on less-trafficked sites still frequently make it onto YouTube, Twitter and other mainstream platforms, essentially serving as free advertising for their streams elsewhere, experts say.

As social-media giants like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook target hate speech and misinformation, sites like DLive seem to be turning a blind eye, former users and employees say, recognizing that much of their traffic and revenue comes from these accounts. “They care more about having good numbers than weeding these people out,” a former employee of DLive, who was granted anonymity because he still works in the livestreaming sector, tells TIME. (DLive did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Which means ordinary users on gaming and streaming platforms, many of them teenagers, are often one click away from white-nationalist content. Many of these far-right personalities allege they are being unfairly censored for conservative political commentary or provocative humor, not hate speech. Most of these viewers won’t respond to streamers’ often cartoonish calls to action, like the “film your hospital” movement in April meant to show that no patients were there, thus “proving” that COVID-19 was fake. But this murky ecosystem of casual viewers, right-wing trolls–and the occasional diehard acolyte–creates a real challenge for technology companies and law-enforcement agencies.

And it doesn’t take much to trigger a tragedy. Over the past two years, terrorists inspired by online right-wing propa-ganda have livestreamed their own deadly attacks in New Zealand and Germany. In March 2019, a Florida man who had been radicalized by far-right media and online conspiracy theorists pleaded guilty to sending more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. A month later, a gunman armed with an AR-15 shot four people, killing one, in a synagogue in Poway, Calif., after allegedly posting a racist and anti-Semitic screed on the site 8chan. About three months later, a man killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, after posting a racist manifesto online, according to authorities.

With COVID-19 continuing to surge in parts of the country, ongoing protests over racial injustice and the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, the next few months promise to offer fertile ground for bad actors in unmoderated virtual spaces. Far-right propagandists “are really capitalizing on this conspiratorial moment,” says Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard University Shorenstein Center’s Technology and Social Change Project. “Everyone’s locked inside while there is what they refer to as a ‘race war’ happening outside their windows that they are ‘reporting on,’ so this is prime content for white-nationalist spaces.”

The migration of far-right personalities to DLive illustrates how, despite mainstream platforms’ recent crack-downs, the incentives that govern this ecosystem are thriving. Anyone with an Internet connection can continue to leverage conspiracy theories, racism and misogyny for attention and money, experts say.

The outbreak of COVID-19 arrived during a period of reinvention for far-right propagandists in the aftermath of the white-nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Over the past three years, social-media giants, which had endured criticism for giving extremists safe harbor, have increasingly attempted to mitigate hate speech on their sites. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, as well as payment processors like PayPal and GoFundMe, have all shut down accounts run by far-right agitators, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. In late June, YouTube removed the accounts of several well-known figures, including David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist. Reddit, Facebook and Amazon-owned streaming site Twitch also suspended dozens of users and forums for violating hate-speech guidelines.

But these purges hardly solved the problem. Many online extremists were on main-stream platforms like YouTube long enough to build a devoted audience willing to follow them to new corners of the Internet. Some had long prepared for a crackdown by setting up copycat accounts across different platforms, like Twitch, DLive or TikTok. “These people build their brand on You-Tube, and when they get demonetized or feel under threat they’ll set up backup channels on DLive or BitChute,” says Megan Squire, a computer scientist at Elon University who tracks online extremism. “They know it’s going to happen and plan ahead.”

While the suspensions by social-media companies have been effective at limiting the reach of some well-known personalities like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was banned from YouTube, Facebook and Apple in 2018, others have quickly adapted. “Content creators are incredibly adept at gaming the systems so that they can still find and cultivate audiences,” says Becca Lewis, a researcher at Stanford University who studies far-right subcultures online, describing these efforts as a “game of whack-a-mole.” Many white-nationalist accounts have tied their ban to the right-wing narrative that conservatives are being silenced by technology companies. For platforms like DLive, becoming what their users consider “free speech” and “uncensored” alternatives can be lucrative. “More speech also means more money for the platform, and less content moderation means less of an expense,” says Lewis.

The prospect of being pushed off main-stream social-media, video-streaming and payment platforms has also prompted extremists to become more sophisticated about the financial side of the business. While Twitch takes a 50% cut from livestreamers’ earnings and YouTube takes 45%, platforms like DLive allow content creators to keep 90% of what they make. And as many found themselves cut off from mainstream payment services like PayPal, GoFundMe and Patreon, they began to embrace digital currencies.

DLive was founded in December 2017 by Chinese-born and U.S.-educated entrepreneurs Charles Wayn and Cole Chen, who made no secret of their ambition to build a platform that rivaled Twitch. They described the site as a general-interest streaming platform, focused on everything from “e-sports to lifestyle, crypto and news.” But two things set it apart from its competitors: it did not take a cut of the revenue generated by its streamers, and it issued an implicit promise of a less moderated, more permissive space.

DLive’s first big coup came in April 2019 when it announced an exclusive streaming deal with Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie. In just two months, DLive’s total number of users grew by 67%. At the time, Kjellberg was the most popular individual creator on YouTube, with more than 93 million subscribers and his own controversial history. In 2018, he came under fire for making anti-Semitic jokes and racist remarks, and more than 94,000 people signed a Change.org petition to ban his channel from YouTube for being a “platform for white-supremacist content.” The petition noted that “the New Zealand mosque shooter mentioned PewDiePie by name and asked people to subscribe.”

DLive’s community guidelines theoretically prohibit “hate speech that directly attacks a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.” But it soon became apparent to both employees and users that executives were willing to ignore venomous content. By early 2019, “political” shows were gaining traction on the site. Those programs devolved into “streams dedicated to white pride and a lot of anti-Semitism, entire streams talking about how Jewish people are evil,” says the former DLive employee who spoke to TIME, adding that moderators acted much more quickly when it came to copyright concerns. “Your stream would be taken down faster for streaming sports than saying you hate Jews.”

The employee recalls raising the matter with Wayn, noting how off-putting it was for new users coming to watch or broadcast streams of popular video games. According to the employee, Wayn explained that the company “didn’t want to get rid of these problematic streamers because they brought in numbers.” The founders knew they had to keep viewers because, as Wayn noted in a 2019 interview, if they wanted to “compete with Twitch on the same level and even take them down one day, DLive needs to match its scale.” Wayn did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

By June 2020, DLive seemed to be openly cultivating a right-of-center audience. On Twitter, it briefly changed its bio to read “All Lives Matter,” a right-wing rallying cry in response to Black Lives Matter. The site has increasingly become a haven for fanaticism, says Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “Before, on YouTube, some of these people would do a dance with the terms of service,” she tells TIME. “But on DLive, the gloves are off, and it’s just full white-supremacist content with very few caveats.”

On the night of June 29, Fuentes had 56% of the site’s total viewership at 10 p.m., according to the review of the site’s analytics provided to TIME. An additional 39% was viewers of 22 other extremist personalities streaming their commentary. At one point on the night of Aug. 10, just 176 of the more than 15,000 viewers on the top 20 channels on the site were not watching accounts linked to far-right figures. Popular programming in recent months has included alarmist footage of racial-justice protests, antivaccine propaganda, conspiracies linking 5G networks to the spread of COVID-19 and calls to “make more white babies while quarantined.”

The company may be even more reliant on those accounts now. Some users have left the site, complaining publicly about the virulent racism and anti-Semitism spilling over into regular channels and game streams. “DLive is a safe-haven for racists and alt-right streamers,” one user wrote on Twitter on June 22. “Seems to me DLive is the new platform for white supremacists,” wrote another, echoing complaints that it’s a “literal Nazi breeding ground” and “the place where racists don’t get deplatformed.”

The migration of hate speech to far-flung corners of the Internet could make it harder to track, increasing the risk that it spills into the offline world. Experts say law-enforcement and national-security agencies are still unprepared to tackle right-wing extremism. They lack expertise not only in the rapidly evolving technology but also in the ideological ecosystem that has spawned a battery of far-right movements. The recently repackaged white-nationalist youth movement, with new names like “America First” or the “Groypers,” looks more like “gussied-up campus conservatives,” as Friedberg of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center puts it, “so they are not triggering the same warning bells.”

Recent incidents show how this online environment that blends political commentary and hate speech can be dangerous. An 18-year-old accused of firebombing a Delaware Planned Parenthood clinic in January was identified through his Instagram profile, which contained far-right memes reflecting popular beliefs in the young white-nationalist movement, according to BuzzFeed News. In June, Facebook deactivated nearly 200 social-media accounts with ties to white-nationalist groups rallying members to attend Black Lives Matter protests, in some cases armed with weapons.

Analysts who track extremist recruitment online also warn that the pandemic may have long-term effects on young people who are now spending far more time on the Internet. Without the structure of school and social activities, many children and teenagers are spending hours a day in spaces where extremist content lurks alongside games and other benign entertainment, says Dana Coester, an associate professor at West Virginia University who researches the impact of online white extremism on youth in Appalachia. It’s common, she notes, to see teenagers sharing Black Lives Matter messages alongside racist cartoons from popular Instagram accounts targeting middle schoolers. “So many parents I’ve spoken with say their kids are on devices until 3 in the morning,” she says. “I can’t begin to imagine how much damage can be done with kids that many hours a day marinating in really toxic content.”

Analysts warn that both U.S. law enforcement and big technology companies need to move quickly to hire experts who understand this new extremist ecosystem. Experts say the mainstream platforms’ recent purges are reactive: they patch yesterday’s problems instead of preventing future abuses, and focus on high-profile provocateurs instead of the underlying networks.

One solution may be to follow the money, as content creators migrate to new platforms in search of new financial opportunities. “[White supremacists] have become particularly as-siduous at exploiting new methods of fundraising, often seeking out platforms that have not yet realized how extremists can exploit them,” said George Selim, senior vice president of programs of the Anti-Defamation League, in testimony before a House subcommittee in January. “When a new fund-raising method or platform emerges, white supremacists can find a window of opportunity. These windows can, however, be shut if platforms promptly take countermeasures.”

On the evening of Aug. 11, Joe Biden’s pick of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate dominated the news. “She hates white people,” Fuentes told viewers on DLive. “She is going to use the full weight of the federal government … to destroy conservatives, to destroy America First, anybody that speaks up for white people.” NBC and ABC News–which have a combined 13 million subscribers on YouTube–had an average of 6,100 concurrent viewers watching their coverage. Fuentes’ show had 9,000.

–With reporting by ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA/NEW YORK

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usgag · 4 years

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Microsoft Is in Talks to Buy TikTok, as Trump Weighs Curtailing App

Microsoft Corp. is exploring an acquisition of TikTok’s operations in the U.S., according to a people familiar with the matter. A deal would give the software company a popular social-media service and relieve U.S. government pressure on the Chinese owner of the video-sharing app.

TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that has been under scrutiny from the Trump administration, is in talks to sell itself to Microsoft and other companies as President Trump weighs harsh actions against the business, including forcing TikTok to divorce itself from its parent company, ByteDance, said people with knowledge of the discussions.

The powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, has been examining ByteDance’s 2017 purchase of Musical.ly, an app that eventually morphed to become TikTok. The committee has decided to order ByteDance to divest TikTok, and the government is engaged in negotiations over the terms of the separation, according to a person familiar with the administration’s plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. White House officials have said TikTok may pose a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, who leads the committee, briefed the president on the divestment plan. But it remains unclear what the president will do, including whether the U.S. would apply a divestment order to all of TikTok’s American operations and whether its actions would affect the app’s global business as well.

Mr. Trump is weighing several other courses of action, including an executive order that could use the vast powers of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to bar certain foreign apps from American app stores. The Trump administration has also considered whether to add TikTok’s parent to a so-called “entity list,” which would prevent it from purchasing American products and services without a special license, said people with knowledge of the matter. Discussions are expected to continue into this weekend.

In his comments on Friday, Mr. Trump told reporters that there were “a couple of options” with TikTok, including “banning” it. He added, “But a lot of things are happening, so we’ll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok.”

Later on Friday, Mr. Trump said he planned to take action as soon as Saturday. He added that he was not leaning toward allowing an American company to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations.

It’s unclear how advanced TikTok’s talks to sell itself to Microsoft and other companies are, but changing ownership is crucial for the app. The United States is one of TikTok’s major markets, so continued operations in the country are a priority.

TikTok has discussed other scenarios to alleviate concerns by U.S. officials. In one scenario, non-Chinese investors like Sequoia Capital, SoftBank and General Atlantic could purchase a majority stake in the app from ByteDance, people familiar with the discussions have said.

Any deal would likely be expensive. ByteDance’s valuation recently stood at around $100 billion, according to the research firm PitchBook.

In a statement, TikTok did not address Mr. Trump’s comments or any deal talks. A spokeswoman said the app was confident in its long-term success and that it was committed to protecting the privacy and safety of its creators so they could “bring joy to families.”

Microsoft declined to comment.

The discussions between Microsoft and TikTok were earlier reported by Fox Business. Bloomberg earlier reported that President Trump was poised to announce an order to force ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations.

It’s also possible that other potential buyers could come forward, said another person familiar with the discussions. Microsoft’s industry peers — Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. — fit the profile of potential suitors, though all are under antitrust scrutiny from U.S. regulators, which would likely complicate a deal.

A purchase of TikTok would represent a huge coup for Microsoft, which would gain a popular consumer app that has won over young people with a steady diet of dance videos, lip-syncing clips and viral memes. The company has dabbled in social-media investments in the past, but hasn’t developed a popular service of its own in the lucrative sector. Microsoft acquired the LinkedIn job-hunting and corporate networking company for $26.2 billion in 2016.

Microsoft can point to one acquisition that came with a massive existing community of users that has increased under its ownership — the 2014 deal for Minecraft, the best-selling video game ever.

Other purchases of popular services have gone less well. The 2011 pickup of Skype led to several years of stagnation for the voice-calling service and Microsoft fell behind newer products in the category. Outside of Xbox, the company hasn’t focused on younger consumers. A TikTok deal could change that, though, and give Microsoft “a crown jewel on the consumer social media front,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note to investors Friday.

The developments reflect the increasing pressure on TikTok. For months, lawmakers and the Trump administration have questioned whether the app is susceptible to influence from the Chinese government, including potential requests to censor material shared on the platform or to share American user data with Chinese officials.

“It is well established at this point that apps that have granular access to user data and location and other sensitive personal data are very much on the radar of Cfius and can cause significant national security concerns,” said John P. Kabaelo, a lawyer who represents companies in Cfius reviews.

TikTok generally collects similar amounts of data from mobile phones as other social media apps, said security experts. But Christoph Hebeisen, the director of security intelligence research at Lookout, a company that focuses on the security of mobile devices, said U.S. officials are concerned by the app because “if the parent company is Chinese, which it is in this case, they are under Chinese security law.”

He added, “I don’t think it is a stretch to think if China wanted to access that data they would have a means to do so.”

TikTok is used by more than 800 million people around the world and is especially popular with young people. Users can easily add music and other audio tracks to their videos, which then often travel virally across Facebook and Twitter.

As the app has become more popular, TikTok’s Chinese offices have swollen to thousands of employees. The company has also maintained a U.S. presence, with offices in New York and Los Angeles.

In response to the heightened scrutiny from Washington, TikTok in May hired a top Disney executive, Kevin Mayer to be its chief executive. The app has also pledged to publicly reveal the algorithm that powers its app.

In addition, TikTok has bulked up its lobbying operation in Washington. With help from prominent investors like SoftBank and General Atlantic, it has hired the former head of the Internet Association, a trade group that represents companies like Google and Facebook, and staff members from prominent members from Congress.

The company has signed on more than 35 lobbyists, including David J. Urban, a former West Point classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and an ally of Mr. Trump. The company’s lobbyists have highlighted TikTok’s American investors and Mr. Mayer’s hire.

Sensing weakness, rivals like Facebook have homed in on lawmakers’ distrust of TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has said that American companies like his would suffer if the government put them at a competitive disadvantage against TikTok.

On Wednesday, with the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google testifying in front of Congress about their market power, Mr. Mayer defended TikTok while pledging to do right by the U.S. government.

“The entire industry has received scrutiny, and rightly so. Yet we have received even more scrutiny due to the company’s Chinese origins,” he said in a statement. “We believe it is essential to show users, advertisers, creators, and regulators that we are responsible and committed members of the American community that follows U.S. laws.”

Cfius has previously ordered companies to divest their acquisitions. Congress had expanded the panel’s purview in 2018 to include reviews of transactions involving “sensitive user data,” The change was spurred by concerns that foreign ownership of data gathered by apps and internet sites could threaten national security.

In 2019, the Trump administration ordered a Chinese firm to relinquish its control of Grindr, the gay dating app, concerned that China might use the information to blackmail American officials. The Chinese company, Beijing Kunlun Technology, said it reached a deal with Cfius earlier this year to sell the app to an investment group, San Vicente Acquisition LLC, though Reuters later reported that the buyer had ties to the Chinese owner.

The post Microsoft Is in Talks to Buy TikTok, as Trump Weighs Curtailing App appeared first on The Lastes US & World News - Opinion, Entertainments, Sports,....

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neptunecreek · 5 years

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In Serving Big Company Interests, Copyright Is in Crisis

We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what's at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

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ollies-studyblr · 5 years

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German III: 4.6-4.11

Vocab:

das Drucktop, -s

printed top

die Kette, -n

necklace

das Langarmshirt, -s

long sleeved shirt

der Schal, -e

scarf

die Ledertasche, -n

leather purse

die Weste, -n

vest

der Spagettiträger, -

spaghetti strap

das Spitzentop, -s

lace top

die Strickjacke, -n

knit jacket/sweater

die Cordhose, -n

corduroy pants

die Kapuzensweatjacke, -n

hooded sweatshirt, jacket

der Pullover, -s

sweater

die Cargohose,-n

cargo pants

die Cargohose, die ich gern zur Schule trage,

das Strickkleid, -er

knit dress

der Hosenanzug, -¨e

pant suit

der Ledergürtel, -

leather belt

der Ohrhänger, -

dangling earring

die Ohrhänger, die ich ihr zum Geburtstag gegeben habe,

der Hosenrock, ¨e

pant skirt

das Streifenhemd, -en

striped shirt

der Streifenpullover, -s

striped sweater

der Streifenpullover, in dem du mich hier siehst,

das Armband, ¨er

bracelet

der Rollkragenpullover, -s

turtleneck sweater

der Ledermantel, -¨

leather coat

die Sporthose, -n

athletic pants

die Strickmütze, -n

knit cap

der Samtsakko, -s

silk sportcoat

die Baumwolle

cotton

der Stacheldraht

barbed wire

der Wachtturm, -¨e

watch tower

der Wachtturm, der am Checkpoint Charlie stand,

das Niemandsland

no-mans-land

die Grenze, -n

border

der Grenzpfahl, -¨er

pole marking the border

der Grenzübergang, -¨e

border crossing

der Grenzübergang, den wir immer benutzt haben,

der Soldat, -en

soldier

to divide

die Teilung, -en

division

der Weltkrieg, -e

world war

die Besatzungszone, -n

occupation zone

plötzlich

suddenly

aufgeben. gibt auf, a, e

to give up

die Luftbrücke

airlift

das Luftbrückendenkmal, das die drei Luftkorridore zeigt,

die Heizung

heating

sogar

even

das Denkmal, -¨er

monument

verlieren, o, o

to lose

errichten

to set up, build

der Beton

concrete

der Ehemann, -¨er

husband

die Ehefrau, -en

wife

zensieren

to censor

schießen, o, o

to shoot

das Maschinengewehr, -e

machine gun

der Vopo, -s (Volkspolizist, -en)

East German policeman

die Passkontrolle, -n

passport check

das Visum, Visen

visa

What do you wear...:

When it’s cloudy and cool

Wenn das Wetter bewölkt und kühl ist, trage ich eine Jeans und ein Sweatshirt.

When it’s hot and sunny

Wenn das Wetter heiß und sonnig ist, trage ich Shorts und einen Top mit Spaghettiträgern. Ich trage auch einen Hut.

When it’s cool and windy

Wenn das Wetter kühl und windig ist, trage ich eine Cargohose, einen Streifenpullover und eine Strickmütze.

When it’s a cold winter

Wenn es im Winter kalt ist, trage ich eine Cordhose, eine Kapuzensweatjacke und Stiefel.

When it’s hot

Wenn es 32 Grad ist, trage ich Shorts und ein Kurzarmshirt.

When it’s freezing

Wenn es friert, trage ich eine Jeans, einen Rollkragenpullover und einen Ledermantel.

On an island

Wenn ich auf der Insel bin, trage ich Shorts und ein T-shirt.

In a forest

Wenn ich im Wald bin, trage ich einen Schal, eine Weste und eine Jeans.

In the city

Wenn ich in der Stadt bin, trage ich einen Sakko, ein Polohemd und eine Hose.

On a mountain

Wenn ich in den Bergen bin, trage ich eine Sporthose, ein T-shirt und eine Kapuzensweatjacke.

In the country

Wenn ich auf dem Land bin, trage ich eine Stretchjeans und einen Pullover.

On the beach

Wenn ich am Strand bin, trage ich einen Hosenrock und ein Drucktop.

With your grandparents

Wenn ich bei den Großeltern bin, trage ich ein Streifenhemd, eine Jeans und einen Ledergürtel.

Relative Pronoun Practice:

A relative pronoun gets its gender from the antecedent and its case from its own use.

Cases-

Masculine

der -N

den -A

dem -D

dessen -G

Feminine

die

der

deren

Neuter

das

dem

dessen

Plural

die

denen

deren

Practice-

Die Frau, mit der meine Mutter arbeitet, trägt gern rot und lila.

Fem, dative

Die Mutter und Tochter, die ins Restaurant gehen, tragen beide Kleider.

Plural, nominative

Die Schuhe, die ich meiner Nichte geschenkt habe, sind rosa.

Plural, accusative

Meine Lieblingsjeans, auf der ich einen Fleck habe, haben mir meine Eltern geschenkt.

Fem, dative

Der Junge, dessen Pulli zu groß ist, heißt Jochen.

Masc, genitive

Der Schal, den ich im Winter trage, ist gestreift.

Masc, accusative

Der Pool, in dem ich diese Badehose trage, ist nicht weit von meinem Haus.

Masc, dative

Der Junge, der diese Baseballmütze trägt, ist mein Bruder.

Masc, nominative

Mein Bruder, dem ich dieses T-shirt gekauft habe, heißt Max.

Masc, dative

Der Sakko, den mein Vater fast jeden Tag trägt, ist grau

Masc, accusative

Der Hut, den die Frau trägt, ist rot und lila.

Masc, accusative

Das Restaurant, in dem wir essen, ist nicht sehr teuer.

Neut, dative

Die Schuhe, die meine Nichte trägt, sind rosa.

Plural, accusative

Meine Lieblingsjeans, die mir meine Eltern geschenkt haben, hat einen Fleck.

Fem, accusative

Die Mädchen, mit denen die Jungen getanzt haben, sind Schwestern.

Plural, dative

Die Bluse, deren Ärmel zu lang sind, ist auch zu teuer.

Fem, genitive

Das Haus, das er kaufte, war ziemlich weit weg.

Neut, accusative

Der Junge, dessen Baseballmütze das ist, ist mein Bruder.

Masc, genitive

Mein Bruder, für den ich dieses T-shirt gekauft habe, ist 2 Jahre jünger als ich.

Masc, accusative

Mein Vater trägt fast jeden Tag einen Sakko, der grau ist.

Masc, nominative

Imperfect Tense:

Endings-

ich --> none

durfte

konnte

mochte

musste

sollte

wollte

du --> -st

durftest

konntest

mochtest

musstest

solltest

wolltest

er, sie, es --> none

durfte

konnte

mochte

musste

sollte

wollte

wir --> -en

durften

konnten

mochten

mussten

sollten

wollten

ihr --> -t

durftet

konntet

mochtet

musstet

solltet

wolltet

sie/Sie --> -en

durften

konnten

mochten

mussten

sollten

wollten

Interview:

Interviewer: I'm talking to Mr. Jung from Berlin. He lives in Berlin since his childhood and tells us something about his experiences. ° Thank you very much, Mr. Jung, for talking to us. Mr. Jung: Please. I think American students should learn more about our history. I: So you have been living in Berlin since childhood? HJ: Yes. I: Where were you on the night of August 13, 1961? HJ: I was in my dorm room. I studied math at Humboldt University. I: That was East Berlin at the time. Was the dormitory also in East Berlin? HJ: Yes. But my parents lived in West Berlin. I: Your parents were in West Berlin? HJ: Yes. I wanted to visit her, but I was not allowed to. I: How often have you been allowed to visit them throughout the GDR? HJ: Never, but they were allowed to visit me a few times. That was certainly worse for her than it was for me. I was young and started a new life slowly.

I: How was life in the GDR? There was so much propaganda at the time, and we in America heard only bad things about the GDR. HJ: Yes, that was the Cold War. We also heard only bad things about the USA. But there were good things about life in the GDR. There was no unemployment °; Everyone had work and life was not expensive. Food and clothes were very cheap, and the rent for a flat or room was not expensive either. Also, there was almost no crime. I: That sounds good. Was life really that good? HJ: Well, everyone had a job, but often there was nothing to do because we did not have the materials. The food and clothes were cheap, but the quality was not good and there was almost no choice. ° You just had to buy what was in the shop and that was mostly just stuff from other communist countries. If there was something special (oranges, for example), you had to queue for 2-3 hours and hope that they were not all ° when it was your turn. I: Excuse me, Mr. Jung, but what does "queue" mean? HJ: Wait. I think Americans say "stood in line."

I: And how about freedom °? We always heard there was almost no freedom. HJ: Yes, that's right. The worst thing was that you could not talk freely. We were also not allowed to travel to the West and read books or newspapers from the West. You could not always block West TV, but the programs had so much criminality that they simply told us, "That's typical in the West." Also, there was no post at the beginning with the West and almost nobody was allowed to have a phone , We had to wait seven years to buy a Trabi. (That was a DDR car.)

I: Well, Mr. Jung, do you miss anything from the GDR era? HJ: Yes, yes, I miss the little crime. Also, life was actually much easier. Everything is so hectic now. I: Would you like to have the GDR again? HJ: Oh, no. No way! I: Thank you very much, Mr. Jung. We are taking a break now. But later I would like to talk to you about your life after the fall of the Wall. HJ: Please. With pleasure.

Fun Facts:

Top supermodel Claudia Schiffer is a native German. She was born in the city of Rheinberg and reached her supermodel status in the 1990s. Her career started in 1987 when she was spotted at a night club in the city of Düsseldorf. Within weeks of that encounter, she appeared in Elle magazine. Since then, she has also modeled for many other magazines, as well as Chanel and Guess jeans. She has also appeared in about 10 motion pictures.

When World War II ended in 1945, Germany was divided into four zones of occupation, and its capital Berlin was also divided into 4 Sectors. The USA occupied most of Southern Germany, which may be why so many Americans equate Bavaria with Germany, something non-Bavarians resent. The three Western Allies wanted to rebuild their zones as fast as possible and thus eliminate the temptation for oppressed people to fall prey to another dictatorial government of any kind. With tremendous aid from the Marshall Plan, they accomplished this. The Soviets, on the other hand, could not (and probably would not) provide this kind of aid, so an ever-increasing difference in the standard of living arose between the two parts.

The Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD, "Westdeutschland") developed its own constitution (Grundgesetz) and currency (Deutschmark or D-Mark), and in 1955 became politically independent, although closely tied economically to the West. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, "Ostdeutschland") was part of the Communist Bloc, which allowed very little independence politically or economically. The East German currency (Mark, but commonly called "Ostmark") and most of its products had little value outside its own borders. Some quality items were produced for export only, because the country needed "hard" currency from the West.

The increasing disparity in the standard of living lead quite naturally to a drain in workers from East to West, most of whom used the city of West Berlin as their route. The Soviets did not like this little enclave of western prosperity in their midst and set up a blockade of all land and water routes to West Berlin. They hoped to force the West Berliners to accept only their leadership.

The Western Allies, however, were not willing to give up this chance to show the marked difference in lifestyles between Communist and non-Communist countries. An airlift was organized that brought in everything West Berlin needed for survival, from food, clothing, and medicine to the building materials for runways, so more and bigger planes could land.

Some of the pilots felt they should also do something to help lift the children´s spirits as well as feed them. They started making little parachutes (out of handkerchiefs that could then be used) and attaching things to them: little boxes of raisins, chocolates, etc. These planes became know as the Rosinenbomber ("raisin bombers"). The most famous of the pilots was Gail Halvorsen. He knew the children couldn´t tell one plane from another, so he told them he would wiggle his wings before dropping the parachutes. As the planes came in for a landing, the children were ready, and when they saw "Uncle Wiggly Wings" they ran to get the gifts. Children and groups across the U.S. made up these parachutes, some of which also contained nylon stockings for the women.

At the height of the blockade, planes were landing and taking off at the rate of more than one a minute! The Soviets finally gave in, and goods could once again reach West Berlin by land and water. (Fortsetzung folgt)

The end of the blockade did not stop the exodus of people from East to West, so the Soviets resorted to the only measure left: a wall around all of West Berlin to shut off this route of emigration. What started out early on a Sunday morning (August 13, 1961) as rolls of barbed wire became a concrete wall with more and more specialized methods of preventing "flight," which was considered treason. Those attempting it were to be shot. Statistics vary as to how many victims there were. The most famous one was Peter Fechter, who was shot and left to bleed to death, almost within arms´ reach of Western soldiers, who could do nothing but watch. Any attempt to "mingle in the affairs of another state" could have been an excuse for war. East/West tensions were very high, and the fear of a nuclear holocaust was extremely real.

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newsnigeria · 5 years

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/can-russia-survive-without-china/

Can Russia (or Iran) survive without China?

[this analysis was written for the Unz Review]

In a recent article entitled “China, Bolivia and Venezuela are proof that social democracy cannot thrive in the global capitalist order” my China-based friend and correspondent Jeff J. Brown asked me an exceedingly interesting and important question. He wrote:

Russia is a social democracy, with a large, successful people owned industrial sector and many social services for the 99% from the Soviet era. But, unlike Bolivia and Ukraine, it is avoiding the West’s color revolution poison pill, because since 1999, Russia has gone from strength to strength, under the inspired leadership of patriotic President Vladimir Putin. But like all social democracies, the problem is what happens if another Western whore Boris Yeltsin succeeds Putin, and returns Russia to its dystopian Wall Street rape of the 1990s? Then what? It only took Macri four short years to bring Argentina back onto its groveling knees. Without a 100% nationalized media, Russians had better be demanding that Putin & Russian Patriots Inc. work overtime to censor all the Western overthrow garbage that is put in Cyrillic ink and on the airwaves. I would love to hear what my good friend Andrei Raevsky thinks about this at The Saker (http://thesaker.is/), because let’s be honest: without China’s, Russia’s and Iran’s continued anti-imperial independence and socialist success into the 21st century, humanity can kiss its ass goodbye!

Let’s begin by deconstructing the assumptions and implications of Jeff’s question.China and Russia *could* be separatedThe first assumptions Jeff makes are the following ones:

Russia is a social democracy

The Russian media is not 100% state controlled

A new Eltsin might succeed Putin

The West is saturating the Russian information space with garbage

That western propaganda can still strongly impact Russia

China and Russia *could* be separated (hence the need to prevent that as the central thesis of Jeff)

And, finally, considering the above, Jeff offers the following compelling implication for the China-Russia-Iran triangle:

Considering the above, China’s independence and support for Russia and Iran are vital for the sovereignty and freedom, if not survival, of Russia and Iran

Now let’s begin by looking into Jeff’s assumptions:

Russia is a social democracy:

Yes and no. If we define a social democracy as being a specific polity and system of laws, then Russia is a social democracy. However, if we define social democracy as a specific polity, system of laws and social culture, then I would argue that to the extent that Russia is, indeed, a social democracy, she is a rather weird one. What do I mean by that?

By that I mean that thanks to the nightmare of “democracy” under Eltsin and his US curators, and thanks to the recent explosion of “democracy” in the Ukraine, the Russian people have by and large come to consider the words “liberal” and “democracy” as four letter words. For example, the word “либерал” (liberal) has now given birth to a derived word либераст which takes the first letters of the word “liberal” and adds the last letters of the word педераст (pederast – a rude word for homosexual [yes, in Russian homosexuality and pederasty are not separated!]) which results in the new word “liberast” the closest to which in English would be something like “libfag”, hardly a compliment. In some interpretations, a “liberast” is also somebody who has been “f**ked by democracy“. Not much better… As for the word “демократия” (democracy) for years it has already been called “дерьмократия” (using the first letters of дерьмо (der’mo or shit) and the last letter of democracy to create der’mokratia or “shitocracy”. Finally, there is also the saying that “демократия, это власть демократов” (democracy is the rule of the democrats), which for a country which has undergone the 1990s and seen the Ukraine being comprehensively FUBARed is ominous; not funny at all. All this is simply to show that culturally the Russian society is not at all your typical social democracy. It is a sort of democracy in which the majority of the people do not believe in democracy. This is very important, crucial even, and I will address this issue later.

The Russian media is not 100% state controlled:

That is absolutely true! However, it misses an important point: the real profile of the Russian media which is much more complex than “state controlled” vs “free media”. To make a long story short, the main TV channels, while not really “controlled” by the state at all, are mostly pro-Kremlin. But here we need to get the cause and effect right: these channels are not pro-Kremlin only because they get state funds or because of the political power of the Kremlin, the main reason why they are pro-Kremlin is the terrible rating of those media outlets who took a strong anti-Kremlin position.

To make my point, I want to mention the rabidly anti-Kremlin TV station which is very well known in Russia (Dozhd’ – see here for the (predictably complimentary) entry in Wikipedia for this TV channel). In fact, Dozhd’ is just the best known of a fairly extensive anti-Kremlin media but, in reality, there are many more outlets which hold an anti-Kremlin pro-Empire line. However, as I explained in a 2016 article entitled “Counter-Propaganda, Russian Style” and then, again, in 2017, in the article “Revisiting Russian Counter-Propaganda Methods” the Kremlin has developed a very effective counter-propaganda strategy: instead of suppressing the Empire’s propaganda (like the Soviets did, most unsuccessfully), the Kremlin now directly funds that same propaganda! Not only does the (state-owned) Gazprom finance Dozd’ – the western and Russian liberal guests which ridicule themselves on Russian TV are also generously paid for each of their appearances. Even hardcore Ukronazi nutcases get invited regularly (when they truly overdo it they also get into fights, or get kicked out of the studios, which is all very much fin to watch and is therefore watched by millions). The truth is that at this point the AngloZionist propaganda in Russia has much more of a very healthy “vaccination” effect then the ability to convince anybody beyond the “traditional” 2-4% of folks in Russia who still think that the West is some kind of heaven on earth and Russia an ugly, vicious and freedom crushing “Mordor”.

This being said, there is one channel through which the worst of the western consumer-society propaganda still permeates Russia: commercials. Russian commercials are mostly absolutely disgusting; they basically vehiculate one crude and simple message “Russians must become US Americans”. That propaganda via commercials is, I think the single most toxic and insidious form of de-russification I can think of and it is far more dangerous than any other means of “defacing” Russia.

Finally, and to my great regret, media outlets like RT and Sputnik have decided to “go native” I suppose and they now cater to western tastes much more than to Russian ones. The quasi constant “reporting” about MMA fights, minimally clad ladies, sex in all its shapes and forms and Hollywood gossip – all of this just goes to show that the folks in charge of these media outlets have decided that catering the the lowest possible social common denominator is the way to promote Russia abroad. I am not so sure. What began with “Question More” and “Telling the Untold” now seems more preoccupied with trying to copy the yellow press in the UK than to challenge the Empire. I very much regret that state of affairs.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of 5th columnists and russophobes in these media outlets (especially in their online, Internet-based, websites; the actual radio/TV shows are mostly better).

So all is not rosy in the Russian media scene, but its not all bad either.

A new Eltsin might succeed Putin

Here I can only completely agree, and that is very scary. Due to the lack of space, I will present my arguments in a short, bullet-point, list:

“Russia” is still very much a “one man show” meaning that Putin himself, as a person, is still absolutely vital to the current functioning of Russia. Not only are most Russians still strongly supportive of him personally, but there are no credible candidates to replace him. Yes, there are a few potential candidates out there (in no special order: Ivanov, Shoigu and Rogozin would be the best known, but there are others, of course), but what makes it all worse is that historically, Russia, unlike China, has a very bad record of successions.

The 5th column is still there and while it keeps a very low profile (current events favor the Eurasian Sovereignists), it is still there, literally in all branches of power and very much inside the Moscow elites who hate Putin for putting an end to what they saw as the “Bonanza of the 1990s”.

There *is* a patriotic Russian opposition to Putin, and it is slowly growing, but it is poorly organized, has a lot of clueless nostalgics of the Soviet era and a lot of its criticisms are, frankly, naive or plain silly (along with very valid points too!). I don’t see this opposition capable of producing a strong and credible leader. But that might change in the future.

Thus the cornerstone of “Putinism” is Putin himself. With him gone, for whatever reason, Putinism could very rapidly fade too. This might be a good or a bad thing depending on the specific circumstances, but the chances that this might be a very bad thing are higher than the opposite being true.

“Putin The Man”, urgently needs to be replaced by “Putin The System”, but that is truly a herculean task because that means reforming/purging most of the immense and powerful Russian bureaucracy and find somewhere a new generation of men and women who could be both effective and trusted. The problem is that in most cases when one man goes against a system, the system wins. Putin is the proverbial case of a very good man in a very bad system. True, he has successfully reformed the two branches of government which were most needed to make it possible for both him and Russia to survive the war the Empire was waging on Russia: the armed forces and the intelligence/security forces. Other parts of the Russian state are still in a terrible shape (the entire legal system for starters!).

I think that the risk of an Eltsin-like prostitute coming to power is real, even if the bulk of the population would not necessarily approve of it (or be divided about it). Long-term historical stability of a huge country like Russia cannot come from a man. It can only come from institutions. And just as Peter I destroyed the traditional Russian monarchy, so can one man destroy the current “new Russia” (for lack of a better descriptor), especially if this “new Russia” has only one man as its cornerstone.

Finally, history teaches us that every time that Russia is weak or disunited, the western powers immediately pounce and intervene, including with military means. The Poles are still dreaming about yet another chance to prove Churchill’s diagnosis about Poland true and pounce on both the Ukraine and Russia if given the chance.

The West is saturating the Russian information space with garbage and western propaganda can still strongly impact Russia

As we have seen above, these are both at least partially true, but they are also not that much of a big deal. This is clearly a source of potential concern, a danger, but not a threat (a danger being vague, a threat specific). To the extend that this is a bad thing, this is mostly due to the hyper-materialistic consumer culture which currently competes against a much more traditional, Russian culture. It is hard to say which one will win. The former has much, much bigger financial means, the latter one has a strong ‘home turf advantage”. Only time will show which will prevail. So long as many Russians will think “western propaganda lies” (which most understand) AND are attracted to western-style commercials (which are, in so many ways, an even much more effective and insidious form of propaganda), the jury will remain out on who will prevail should instability return to Russia.

China and Russia *could* be separated

This is probably the most important assumption made by Jeff. First, since this is completely hypothetical, and since we are not future-seeing prophets let’s first agree to never say never and not dismiss this possibility out of hand. This being said, I would like to remind everybody that Russia and China have gradually changed the labels which they applied to the other side. The latest (as far as I know, Chinese speakers please correct me if needed!) expression used by Xi and other Chinese officials is “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for the New Era“. There is a lot to unpack here, but let’s just say that this does not sound like the Chinese came up with that concept lightly or that they have many misgivings about the future of the relationship with Russia. As for the Russians, they have now openly used the term “ally” on many occasions, including Putin. In Russian that word “ally” (союзник) is a very strong one and contrasts sharply with the cynical and disgusted way the Russians always speak about their western “partners” (which often shocks those who don’t speak Russian).

And it is not all sweet talk either. The Russians and the Chinese have had many and major joint military maneuvers, they have practiced the Russian equivalent of the US/NATO “Combined Joint Task Force” concept (see here for details). Thus, while not formal allies, Russia and China do all the things which close allies do. I would even argue that the “informal symbiosis” between Russia and China is far stronger than the NATO alliance.

It is my opinion that what Putin and Xi have done is something which has no previous equivalent in history, at least as far as I know. Even though both Russia and China have been empires in the past, I strongly believe that both of these countries have entered a “post-imperial phase” in which the trappings of empire have been replaced by an acute sense that empires are extremely bad not only for the nations which it oppresses, but also for the nation which hosts it. Both Russia and China have paid a horrendous price for their imperial years and both Russia and China completely understand that the people of the USA are also amongst the prime victims of the (transnational) Anglo-Zionist Empire, even if that is all too often forgotten. Not only do they not want to repeat their own mistakes, they see the USA dying in the quicksands of imperialism and the last thing they want is to jump in and join the US.

I believe that the relationship between Russia and China is a symbiosis, which is much stronger than any alliances because while the latter can be broken, the former typically cannot (at least not without extremely severe consequences). I also believe that Putin and Xi both understand that the fact that Russia and China are so completely different is not a problem, but a tremendous asset: they fit perfectly, like Lego or puzzle pieces. What Russia has China does not and vice-versa. And, just to clarify for the logically challenged: both sides also understand that they will never get from the other side by war what they could get by peaceful exchange. Yes, the silly Polish dream of having Russia invaded by China several times (an old Polish joke of sorts) is only a reflection of the ancient Polish inferiority complex, not of geostrategic realities 🙂

Of course, in theory, anything could happen. But I personally see no chain of events which could be sufficient to threaten the Sino-Russian symbiotic relationship, not even a collapse of “New Russia Putinism” (not elegant, but functional for our purposes) or the kind of chaos which a Eltsin type of comprador regime could try to reimpose on Russia. At the end of the day, if Russia collapses then China will hold truly immense financial and economic power over Russia and will therefore be able to impose at least a China-friendly regime. In that extremely unlikely case, Russia would, of course, lose her sovereignty, but not to the West, but to China. That is not quite what Jeff had in mind.

Conclusion:

Yes, Russia and China need each other. I would argue that they need each other. Vitally. And yes, the “loss” of one would threaten the other. But that is not just true for Russia, it is also very true of China (which desperately needs Russian energy, high-tech, natural resources, weapons systems but most of all, Russian experience: for most of her existence Russia was threatened, invaded, attacked, sanctioned, boycotted and disparaged by a long succession of western states, and she defeated them all. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but each time Russia prevailed. The determination and ability to resist the West is something which is deeply embedded in the Russian cultural DNA (this in sharp contrast with the rest of the so-called “East European” countries). Finally, and for all their very real recent advances, the Chinese armed forces are still far behind the Russian (or the USA for that matter) and in a one-on-one war against the USA China would definitely lose, especially if the USA goes “all out”. Russia, on the other hand, has the means to turn the US and Europe into a post-industrial nuclear wasteland (using nuclear and, most importantly, non-nuclear munitions!).

I would also add something Jeff did not address: Iran. I believe that both Russia and China also very much need Iran. Okay, that is not a vital need, both Russia and China could survive without an allied Iran, but Iran offers immense advantages to both countries, if only because thanks to the truly phenomenal stupidity of the Neocons the USA’s breathtakingly stupid policies in the Middle-East (here is just the latest example) have turned Iran into a regional super-power eclipsing both Israel and the KSA. Furthermore, if Russia has shown much more political and moral courage than China (which, lets be honest, has been pretty happy to have Russia taking the brunt of the Empire’s attacks), Iran has shown much more political and moral courage than Russia, especially concerning the slow-motion genocide perpetrated by the Zionist Entity in Palestine.

And this brings us full circle to the discussion of what kind of country Russia currently really is. Russia is not the Soviet Union. Neither is she pre-1917 Russia. But what is she really?

Nobody really knows, I think.

It is a moving target, a process. This process might lead to a new and stable “new Russia”, but that is by no means certain. Paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of Article 13 of the Russian Constitution say:

In the Russian Federation ideological diversity shall be recognized

No ideology may be established as state or obligatory one.

In the Russian Federation political diversity and multi-party system shall be recognized.

In other words, not only is there no “no official ideology” in Russia, there is an explicit recognition for a multi-party political system (itself an ideological statement, by the way). These are all potentially very dangerous and toxic items in the Russian Constitution which already are hindering a true national, cultural, psychological and spiritual rebirth of Russia. Iran, in contrast, has succeeded in creating an Islamic Republic which is both truly and unapologetically Islamic and truly democratic, at least in the sense that, unlike western democracies which are mostly run by minorities and for minorities (or a coalition of minorities), in Iran the majority supports the system in place.

And since the vast majority of the Russian people do not want a single-party-system or a return to Soviet times yet don’t believe in (western style) democracy, Russian intellectuals would be well advised to take a very close and careful look at what I would call the “Iranian model”, not to simply copy it, but to see what aspects of this model could be adapted to Russian realities. Historical Russia was an Orthodox monarchy. That time is gone and will never return. Soviet Russia was a Marxist atheistic state. That time is also forever gone. Modern Russia can only find references, lessons and implications in her past, but she cannot simply resurrect Czarist or Communist Russia. Of course, neither can she reject her entire history and declare it all “bad” (which is what Russian “liberals” always do, which explains why they are so hated).

I don’t know what the future Russia will look like. I am not even totally sure that this new Russia will ever really happen (though my gut feeling is that it will). I hope that it will, but whether that happens or not will not be decided in China or by China (or any other country). To conclude on a famous quote by Karl Marx “the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves” (in Russian: “Освобождение рабочих должно быть делом самих рабочих”) which a famous Russian 1928 book turned into “the salvation of those who are drowning has to be the action of those drowning” (in Russian: “Спасение утопающих — дело рук самих утопающих”). Whatever version you prefer (I prefer the 2nd one), the meaning is clear: you need to solve your problems by yourself or with those who share that problem with you. In other words, Russians are the only ones who can save or destroy the Russian nation (I mean “Russian” in the traditional, Russian, multi-ethnic and multi-religious meaning of the words руссий and российский which in traditional Russian are both interchangeable or different depending on the context).

The Saker

PS: I leave you with a photo which, imho, speaks a thousand words

#China #Iran #russia

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organiclifestylemagazine · 5 years

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Google Removed Natural Health Websites From Search Results - List of Alternative Search Engines

The internet has increased our level of awareness to unprecedented heights. For better and for worse, we have had a freedom of information that we have never enjoyed before. One major drawback has been fake news (though the phrase has been co-opted to mean news one disagrees with). Today social media sites are using fake news and other disinformation as an excuse to censor alternative news and information.

Pinterest has banned our website and Facebook has warned us about spreading anti-vaccine information. Even MailChimp has banned anti-vaccine content and Amazon removed books with anti-vaccine information.

A few years ago we saw the writing on the wall and we put our energy towards ensuring we ranked well on the search engines – primarily Google because they account for more than 95% of search engine web traffic.

But on June 3rd, Google had a major algorithm change, which nearly eliminated the organic search results for natural health websites including Green Med Info, Mercola, DrAxe.com, Naturalnews.com, and ours.

We agree that disinformation is a problem but questioning the prevailing wisdom, raising concerns, and alternative news is imperative for a fair democracy. Censorship is not what we need.

The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee, but rather because we as citizens, we as users of these services, help each other. We talk and we share and we point out what is fake. We point out what is true. The answer to bad speech is not censorship, the answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters, now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting more popular.”

Edward Snowden

This concept is backed up by the fact that the younger generation is better at identifying fake news and other forms of disinformation.

And while Pinterest and MailChimp may mean well, Amazon is getting into big pharma in a big way, Facebook makes a lot of money from the pharmaceutical industry and Mary Ellen Coe, Google’s president of Customer Solutions sits on Merck’s Board of Directors (Merck is one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers). And Alphabet (the company that owns Google) is now a pharmaceutical company.

Google today is not only a weapon for promoting the pharmaceutical agenda but now also a drug company itself. During the past six years, Google’s parent company Alphabet has launched two pharmaceutical companies. In 2013, it founded Calico, run by Genentech’s former CEO Arthur Levinson. Calico operates an R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area for the discovery of treatments associated with age-related diseases. Two years later, Alphabet founded Verily Life Sciences (previously Google Life Sciences). Both pharma companies are partnering with other drug corporations. Recently, Verily has partnered with the European pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to form a new drug company, Galvani Bioelectronics for the development of “bioelectronic medicines.” The collaboration is costing the companies $715 million, and the new firm is being chaired by Glaxo’s former chairman of its global vaccines business.

Fed Up Democrat

If this isn’t enough for you to use another search engine, check out the video below. James O’ Keefe is an investigative reporter and founder of Project Veritas. He released an undercover video of a top Google executive within Google revealing how the company is manipulating search results in an attempt to influence the 2020 elections with autosuggestions, search results, and google news aggregator feed. This video was quickly removed by YouTube (owned by Google).

Google ‘is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.’

Google Head of Responsible Innovation Says Elizabeth Warren ‘misguided’ on ‘breaking up Google‘

Google Exec Says Don’t Break Us Up: ‘smaller companies don’t have the resources’ to ‘prevent next Trump situation‘

Insider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020

For the record, we’re not fans of Trump, but we’re also not fans of corruption or the corrupt, bought-and-paid-for “mainstream” democrats that Big Pharma and neo-liberal corporations like Google want to elect (Kamala Harris, Pete Butigege, and Corey Booker, and Joe Biden are all corporate sell-outs).

Here are ten alternatives to Google search (sourced from Collective Evolution):

StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).

Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.

MetaGer – An open-source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.

SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.

Qwant – A private search engine based in France.

DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.

Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).

YaCy – A decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer search engine.

Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.

Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.

youtube

Google Removed Natural Health Websites From Search Results – List of Alternative Search Engines was originally published on Organic Lifestyle Magazine

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rolandfontana · 5 years

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National Security Telecom Purchase Ban: Say What?

For more than a decade, China has blocked American tech companies from fully participating in China’s Internet boom. If you know China’s Internet-related laws for foreign companies and you have represented foreign companies trying to proft from China’s Internet, you know that in most cases, the reality for foreign companies has been much worse even than the laws. To put it bluntly, the way China treats foreign companies is what has prevented companies like Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and even Apple (FAANG) from succeeding wildly in China. Those who believe it a coincidence that these five companies have done so well worldwide as compared to China either unintentionally or deliberately do not understand how China has treated these companies. Or, as the New York Times accurately put its in As Huawei Loses Google, the U.S.-China Tech Cold War Gets Its Iron Curtain:

The digital Iron Curtain has been long in the making. From its earliest days dealing with the internet, the Chinese government has squelched content it didn’t like. Today, the Chinese internet at first glance doesn’t look much like the one the rest of the world uses. It has different platforms, ideals and business strategies, all tended carefully by censors.

And just as the way China has treated foreign tech companies should come as no surprise to those who regularly do business with China, U.S. retaliation for that treatment has not come as a surprise to many in China:

Others in China point to the country’s own barriers against competitors as a strategy that was going to provoke retaliation sooner or later. At some point, the United States was bound to use reciprocity in dealing with a closed Chinese internet market. One popular blog post explained that reciprocity has been translated into “mutual benefit” in Chinese, which explains why many in China didn’t understand that the idea could be used in retaliation.

Another popular blog post drives the point even more clearly.

“You’ve been opposing the U.S. for many years,” said the headline. “You should be long prepared that the U.S. will oppose you one day.”

A large part (so far) of U.S. tech retaliation has been against Huawei, “a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China …. founded by a former People’s Liberation Army officer.” See Wikipedia. The U.S. is action against China in two ways. The first is a ban on sales of technical products to Huawei, with the threat that this ban will be extended to other Chinese companies. The second is a ban on purchases of telecom products from Chinese companies, with Huawei as the probable initial target. I discussed the sales ban yesterday in The Huawei Sales Ban: Brrrrr. In this post I consider the purchase ban.

The purchase ban was implemented by an Executive Order issued on May 15, 2019, entitled Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain. In the Order, President Trump declares a national emergency to counter “foreign adversaries” threatening the U.S. telecom sector by selling certain telecommunications products to persons located in the United States. Under powers granted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), President Trump ordered the United States Department of Commerce to issue rules to prohibit the import of offending products into the United States.

The U.S. administration has been working to impose a ban on imports of telecom products from China’s Huawei and this Order is generally seen as the final implementation of that plan. This order goes well beyond just prohibiting the U.S. government and its agencies from buying Huawei telecom products; it will impose a general ban on purchasing such products by any U.S. person/entity. It is an absolute, nationwide ban.

The Order itself does not refer to Huawei specifically. It refers only to “foreign adversaries” and it gives the Department of Commerce 150 days to publish the foreign adversaries list. We can though assume for now that at a very minimum Huawei will be on that list.

This then means, for example, that rural U.S. telecoms that rely on inexpensive Huawei telecom equipment will be forced to find an alternative supplier. The media is reporting (and I believe rightly) that the result of this ban will a major blow for rural American telecom companies, since no alternative supplier that meets their needs has been identified.

There is much that is not clear about this Order. The uncertainty is at least party due to the fact that this appears to be the first use of the IEEPA national security sanction involving the sale of a commercial product. The 30 Existing IEEPA national security sanctions are listed by the Department of the Treasury on its Sanctions Programs list here and a quick review of those sanctions shows they fall into the more traditional notion of what constitutes a foreign based national emergency. Prohibiting the purchase of Huawei products does not fit easily into the tradition of sanctions under the IEPPA program. This means how this sanction will be applied is uncertain.

The next thing apparent from reviewing the sanctions list is that no country in Asia other than North Korea had previously been placed on it. If, as expected, various Chinese companies, including Huawei get placed on this list, China will be joining pariah regimes such as Russia, Iran, North Korea and South Sudan. This will significantly alter the U.S. relationship with China from business adversaries to political adversaries. This is a major event and it should be seen that way in the United States, particularly since it is not clear there is a general consensus in the United States for placing China in this category.

The following additional open issues are more technical but also significant:

1. The Order requires the Department of Commerce to designate the specific foreign adversaries that will be subject to the U.S. purchase ban. As stated in the Order, a foreign adversary can be a nation state, a company or an individual. It is almost certain Huawei will be listed as a foreign adversary. What is not known is whether other Chinese companies such as ZTE will also make the list. Will the entire PRC be placed on the list? Will entities and countries outside China be placed on the list? At this time we just do not know.

2. The order states its goal is to protect the United States in the following sectors:

— Information and communications technology

— Critical infrastructure

— Digital economy

— National security

As I have noted above, this list goes far beyond any previous uses of the IEEPA. The list moves from the classical definitions of national security to purely economic spheres such as the digital economy. Whatever anyone thinks of that broadened scope, the fact is the U.S. has no experience with this type of regulation coming from an executive order. For that reason, we do not know what its immediate impact will be or its impact in the future. Will the U.S. government eventually convert all economic conflicts with foreign competitors into national emergencies?

3. Though the Order is couched in terms of telecom equipment, its definition of impacted technology is very broad:

(c) the term “information and communications technology or services” means any hardware, software, or other product or service primarily intended to fulfill or enable the function of information or data processing, storage, retrieval, or communication by electronic means, including transmission, storage, and display.

This definition can apply to virtually any modern electronic product. Obviously, it applies to the telecom switches sold by Huawei to the rural telecoms in the U.S., but it also applies to Huawei smartphones. More significantly, it can be read to apply the Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are incorporated in the huge variety of “smart products” currently being imported from China and the rest of the world. Much of the work I and the other China lawyers at my firm have been doing for the last five years has involved IoT devices.

Consider the IoT issue. Say the U.S. designates China as a whole to be a foreign adversary. And say the U.S. follows the clear language of the definition to include IoT devices as products that fall under the purchase ban. Designating of IoT devices as a security threat would not be far fetched. Bruce Shneier outlined the threat from IoT in his recent book Click Here to Kill Everybody. The State of California has recognized this threat by promulgating IoT security rules. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Security warned of Chinese made drones of secretly gathering up and sending back sensitive military information to China. See DHS warns of ‘strong concerns’ that Chinese-made drones are stealing data. Our China lawyers have done probably at least a half a dozen transactions involving Chinese drones and I mention this to show the extent of the impact this ban might have.

A vast number of products imported from China contain an IoT component. A huge number of the electronic devices imported from China implement a feature that allows it to be controlled by a smartphone or laptop. If the Order is enforced in a completely consistent way and IF the entire country of China is designated as a foreign adversary, a huge list of electronic products imported from China will be banned from sale to the United States. Even if this will not be the immediate impact of the Order, the threat remains that the Order could be expanded at any time to have this impact.

Note also that there is no way to avoid this result. The ban follows the component. It will not work to move production to a neutral country and then have the component shipped from China and incorporated into a product made in that third country. The ban follows the specific IoT (telecom) component. In a world of interlocking supply chains, determining the source of each and every critical component for each and every electronic product produced from each and every country in the world will be overwhelming.

The end result of this Order is uncertainty and risk. Initially, the risk comes from direct purchases of telecom products from China. But as the process works out, the risk may infect the entire world trading system. The final result is hard to predict. What we can say, however, is what we have been saying for nearly a year: relations between China and the United States are on a straight-line decline with no end in sight.

National Security Telecom Purchase Ban: Say What? syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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whittlebaggett8 · 6 years

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Worried About Huawei? Take a Closer Look at Tencent

It has extended been comprehended that Tencent — the Chinese enterprise that owns WeChat and QQ, two of the world’s most commonly applied social media programs — facilitates Chinese govt censorship and surveillance. But around the previous calendar year, the scale and importance of this action have amplified and come to be more visible, each within and outside China.

Throughout the previous thirty day period alone, several functions have illustrated the craze and Tencent’s close partnership with the Chinese authorities.

On March 2, Dutch hacker Victor Gevers uncovered that the information of hundreds of thousands of conversations on Tencent purposes between consumers at online cafés are being relayed, alongside with the users’ identities, to police stations across China. Just a few times later, the company’s founder and chief government, Pony Ma, took his seat amid 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. Ma reportedly elevated the difficulty of info privacy even as protection organizations were employing facts from his company’s applications to root out unauthorized religious activity.

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On March 16, China watcher Chenchen Zhang shared an anecdote on Twitter about a member of the Uyghur Muslim minority who was stopped at mainland China’s border with Hong Kong and interrogated for a few times basically due to the fact another person on his WeChat make contact with checklist had not long ago “checked in” with a place placing of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The authorities apparently feared that the Uyghur man had traveled on pilgrimage to Mecca devoid of authorization, warning that these a move could produce 15 decades in jail.

As Tencent’s pattern of censorship and info sharing with China’s repressive governing administration carries on and intensifies, now is the time to contemplate actions that could possibly assist shield the fundamental legal rights of all buyers, irrespective of their place and nationality.

Tencent’s Job in China

Established in 1998, Tencent and its popular programs have speedily emerged as ubiquitous factors of China’s communications, money, and social cloth. In January, the firm declared that WeChat alone experienced a billion lively daily end users.

Though the firm has been forced since its inception to comply with demanding Chinese Communist Celebration information and facts controls, the blend of increasing federal government needs and WeChat’s in close proximity to current market saturation in China has greater the scope and effect of its complicity.

In the realm of censorship, media experiences and expert investigation suggest that WeChat has been refining the use of artificial intelligence to recognize and delete images, which netizens usually employ to evade censorship and surveillance of textual content-centered communications. The system has also shuttered 1000’s of independently operated social media accounts that produced unauthorized information and evaluation. These and other forms of censorship noticeably distort the information gained by Chinese users on crucial subjects. Analysis by researchers at Hong Kong University’s WeChatscope undertaking, which tracks deletions from some 4,000 general public accounts on the platform, located that among the the most censored topics in 2018 ended up key information stories like the U.S.-China trade dispute, the arrest in Canada of Huawei main financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the #MeToo motion, and public wellbeing scandals.

Monitoring of user exercise on the platform has been built less difficult by improved enforcement of serious-identify registration necessities for cell phones, the digital payment functions of WeChat, massive-scale law enforcement purchases of smartphone scanners, and new regulations facilitating general public safety agencies’ entry to data centers. As indicated earlier mentioned, content from Tencent applications is staying immediately “spoon-fed” to law enforcement in some circumstances.

This surveillance is increasingly main to legal repercussions for regular buyers. A sample of conditions tracked in Liberty House’s China Media Bulletin above the earlier calendar year function penalties in opposition to a lot of WeChat customers for mocking President Xi Jinping, criticizing judicial officials, commenting on massive floods, sharing data about human rights abuses, or expressing views related to their persecuted religion or ethnicity, be they Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, or Falun Gong practitioners. The punishments have ranged from quite a few days of administrative detention to lots of many years in jail, in some scenarios for remarks that had been ostensibly shared privately with close friends. These dynamics have inevitably inspired self-censorship on the system.

World Expansion

Although WeChat’s key consumer base is in China, an estimated 100 to 200 million people outside the house the state use the messaging assistance. Amid them are thousands and thousands of users of the Chinese diaspora in nations like Canada, Australia, and the United States, but there is also broader enlargement in a great deal of Asia. Malaysia is reportedly property to 20 million WeChat buyers, out of a populace of 31 million. In Thailand, an estimated 17 p.c of the populace has a WeChat account. In Mongolia, WeChat was the second most downloaded software in 2017. Merchants in Myanmar’s Shan state together the border with China have taken up the application, and the variety of stores in Japan that take WePay (largely when serving Chinese vacationers) increased 35-fold past year.

Tencent recently obtained a $150 million stake in the popular information aggregator Reddit and is eyeing an entrance into the on line video clip sector in Taiwan, in accordance to Taiwanese officials.

Evidence that politicized censorship and surveillance might influence Tencent users outdoors China has begun to emerge. A 2016 examine by Citizen Lab found that conversations among an abroad consumer and a contact inside China ended up topic to particular forms of key phrase censorship, and that once an account is registered with a Chinese telephone variety, it remains subject to mainland controls even outside the region.

In Australia, a far more new research of information resources out there to the Chinese diaspora identified negligible political coverage of China on the WeChat channels of Chinese-language news companies. Extremely, in between March and August 2017, none of the WeChat channels posted a single post on Chinese politics, regardless of the operate-up to the vital 19th Party Congress that tumble. In Canada, WeChat censors have deleted a member of Parliament’s concept to constituents praising Hong Kong’s Umbrella Motion protesters, manipulated dissemination of news reports associated to Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, and blocked broader media coverage of Chinese government corruption and leading officials.

Amid a large crackdown in Xinjiang, Chinese law enforcement have also harnessed WeChat to hook up with overseas Uyghurs, need individual details or aspects about activists, and insert condition displays into personal groups.

How to Answer

Irrespective of whether or not Tencent is a unwilling or an keen accomplice to the Chinese government’s repressive policies, the actuality is that Tencent employees can be envisioned to censor, observe, and report personal communications and private info, in lots of scenarios foremost to harmless people’s arrest and torture.

This really should be the starting issue for anyone contemplating applying, regulating, or investing in the company’s providers.

For people inside China, it is just about not possible today to purpose with out applying WeChat to some extent. But people would be perfectly encouraged to exercising caution, restricting the software to its most sensible features and consulting offered guides on boosting digital protection and accessing facts on latest affairs more securely. (Independence Residence posted a established of these means final 12 months.)

Buyers outside China, particularly those people with out loved ones or buddies on the mainland, should really rethink regardless of whether WeChat is genuinely critical to their day-to-day life. People who do talk with individual contacts in China can help secure them by directing them to a lot more protected applications if a sensitive topic will come up, or using homonyms to substitute perhaps problematic terms, as some journalists have documented undertaking. Users in the Chinese diaspora need to examine means of increasing their sources of information and information beyond what is accessible on WeChat.

As governments all around the planet check out to deal with troubles related to “fake information,” political manipulation, and weak information protections on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Chinese counterparts like WeChat should be topic to at the very least as a great deal scrutiny and regulation — and be held accountable for any violations. Governments and organizations really should also restrict use of WeChat among their workforce, significantly those people who function with delicate facts, as the governments of Australia and India have not too long ago carried out. Politicians communicating with their Chinese-speaking constituents really should make absolutely sure to do so across a diversity of platforms, not just those people that are topic to Chinese authorities command.

Worldwide civil society groups can help equally users and democratic governments by sustaining up-to-day electronic stability guides out there in Chinese, documenting the extent to which material outside the house China is censored or monitored on WeChat, and exploring authorized recourse for individuals whose legal rights could have been violated by Tencent’s methods.

Finally, traders in Tencent really should seriously take into consideration the moral and political implications of their help for the organization. Any one concerned about human legal rights, electoral interference by international powers, or privacy violations by tech giants must divest from the business, such as retirement resources. Socially dependable financial investment options really should exclude Tencent from their portfolios if they have not presently. Even from a purely monetary standpoint, Tencent shares may possibly not be a wise purchase. The stock’s rate has dropped 19 percent above the previous 12 months, at least in component since of tighter federal government controls on consumer communications. Presented that Chinese regulators are now turning their interest to the gaming marketplace, the company’s most rewarding spot of activity, its price is possible to dip further. As stock analyst Leo Solar has warned, “investors in Chinese tech providers should really in no way underestimate the government’s potential to throttle their progress.”

No amount of pushback from buyers, democratic governments, civil culture teams, or investors is very likely to modify Tencent’s complicity with the Chinese government’s repressive actions. Its extremely survival depends on dutiful adherence to Communist Bash directives. But the ways prompt above would do a great deal to restrict the present-day and probable long run injury brought on by the company’s methods — for personal users, for the world’s open up societies, and for the pretty notion of absolutely free expression in the digital age.

Sarah Cook dinner is a Senior Study Analyst for East Asia at Flexibility Dwelling and director of its China Media Bulletin.

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shirlleycoyle · 6 years

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Music Industry Sues Major ISP In Bid to Kick Pirates Offline Permanently

In a series of recent lawsuits, the entertainment industry claims that by continuing to provide broadband to pirates, internet service providers are liable for the piracy of their customers. The lawsuits are also part of a controversial gambit to force ISPs to kick pirates off the internet—permanently.

Labels including Sony, Universal, and Warner collectively filed suit against Charter Communications (whose cable and broadband service is branded Spectrum) in the US District Court in Colorado last Friday, claiming Charter is liable for piracy because it didn’t kick accused pirates offline.

But while the recording industry hopes to raise the stakes for online piracy by kicking infringers off of the internet, copyright experts say the legally dubious plan poses a huge risk to everyday internet users, free speech, and the openness of the internet at large.

The lawsuit alleges that while Charter has policies stating it will kick repeat copyright infringers off of the company’s network, the ISP routinely refused to follow through on the threat.

“Charter knowingly permitted specifically identified repeat infringers to continue to use its network to infringe,” the music labels claim in the lawsuit.

“Rather than disconnect the Internet access of blatant repeat infringers to curtail their infringement, Charter knowingly continued to provide these subscribers with the Internet access that enabled them to continue to illegally download or distribute Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works unabated,” the labels said. “Charter’s provision of high-speed Internet service to known infringers materially contributed to these direct infringements.”

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), ISPs must forward copyright infringement warnings provided by the entertainment industry to users, and have policies in place for “repeat offenders.” The DMCA does not require that ISPs kick these users off of the internet, but the entertainment industry has repeatedly tried to claim that section 512(i) says otherwise. That section outlines that service providers aren’t liable for monetary relief in cases of copyright infringement.

“When the risk is a crippling lawsuit, many companies are going to cut people off first and ask questions later.”

Copyright expert Mike Masnick told me that since around 2012 or so the recording industry has been trying to force ISPs into the role of content nanny “in the false belief that if everyone else is liable for not successfully policing copyright infringement, it will magically clear the internet of piracy.”

But the problem with the industry’s approach is multi-pronged.

Section 512(i) of the DMCA has been routinely abused by rights holders and those attempting to censor legitimate speech. Putting a broadband industry that has repeatedly proven to have shaky ethics in charge of policing speech isn’t the best idea, Masnick warns.

“It will almost certainly lead to legitimate uses and legitimate speech being blocked,” he said. “When the risk is a crippling lawsuit, many companies are going to cut people off first and ask questions later.”

Read more: The Music Industry Asks US Government to Make ‘Unauthorized Streaming’ a Felony

Internet freedom advocacy groups like the Electronic Freedom Foundation have also argued that eliminating user access to an essential utility like broadband is a draconian overreaction to copyright infringement, and some experts have even argued that such a move may violate users’ First Amendment rights. Others have been quick to point out the evidence the industry uses to prove guilt of piracy is often flimsy at best.

“Determining whether or not something is actually infringing is a complex process that involves weighing a variety of factors, and that’s historically always required a court adjudication,” Masnick told me. “Here, the [recording industry’s] argument is based on the claim that mere accusations of infringement should trigger such a policy, which should concern anyone. If that’s an accurate state of the law, it means that a series of false accusations could literally remove people from the internet.”

Despite these pitfalls and a lot of shaky legal logic, the music industry has had some notable success in bullying ISPs in court. Cable TV and broadband ISP Cox Communications was recently forced to settle with BMG Rights Management, which administers the rights to works by artists including David Bowie and Frank Ocean, for an undisclosed sum after the internet service providers failed to kick repeat-offender pirates offline at the recording industry’s behest.

While this new case against Charter in many ways mirrors the arguments made in the Cox case, Meredith Rose, a copyright expert and lawyer at the consumer rights group Public Knowledge, told me in an email that this new effort has a few unique wrinkles. Specifically, the labels try to argue that the simple act of advertising high-speed internet means Charter was somehow encouraging piracy.

“The unlimited ability to download and distribute Plaintiffs’ works through Charter’s service has served as a draw for Charter to attract, retain, and charge higher fees to subscribers,” the lawsuit claims.

Read more: You Could Be Kicked Offline For Piracy If This Music Industry Lawsuit Succeeds

Rose said this claim was a particular stretch.

“Under their argument, any service that advertises having high speeds is courting pirates and therefore a contributory/vicarious infringer, and thus immediately liable if it doesn’t accept rightsholder allegations of infringement at face value and terminate subscribers when asked,” Rose said. “That’s pretty intensely dystopian,” she added.

The recording industry’s attempt to up the ante with this new lawsuit comes on the heels of more than two decades of failed efforts to thwart online piracy.

In 2013, the entertainment industry struck an arrangement with the telecom sector dubbed the Copyright Alert System. Under this program, ISPs targeted repeat infringers with an ever-escalating series of warnings that included throttling or temporarily suspending pirates’ broadband connections until they confirmed the receipt of “educational” copyright materials.

But the effort was scrapped in 2017 after it didn’t meaningfully impact piracy rates. This was in part because users who receive these infringement notices simply hid their BitTorrent or other infringing activity behind proxies and virtual private networks (VPNs).

Now the entertainment industry wants to up the ante by threatening ISPs’ safe harbor protections under the DMCA unless they kick these users offline. Some ISPs, like AT&T, have already agreed. The company told Motherboard last November that it had begun kicking a “small number” of users offline if they ignored more than nine previous warnings.

But there’s little evidence that these efforts will solve copyright infringement either. There’s nothing stopping accused pirates booted from one ISP from signing up with another (assuming they have a competitive choice). And experts continue to warn that the potential pitfalls of such a system wouldn’t be worth the costs imposed on ISPs and the public.

“In an age when even the Supreme Court has said that kicking people off the internet goes too far, changing the DMCA to undermine its safe harbors would be a disaster for those engaged in civic discourse on the internet,” Masnick said.

Both history and scientific data shows that offering quality, cheap streaming music and video alternatives to piracy is the best way to thwart copyright infringement, but it’s a lesson the industry has historically refused to learn. Instead, internet users and providers are routinely subjected to a rotating crop of heavy-handed “solutions,” many of which experts say cause far more problems than they solve.

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