Category Archives: Viva!

What has happened in Venezuela is a coup. Trump’s denial is dangerous | Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

Juan Guaidó has declared himself president. Now the US and rightwing regimes may seek an excuse to intervene in support

The picture shows him in the act of swearing himself in as “interim” president of Venezuela. His right hand raised to the heavens, as is proper of one who, having no popular mandate, proclaims himself in the name of God like the kings of old. Only this is no kingdom, but a revolutionary republic born of a people’s war. It has since protected its right to self-determination by means of people power and persistent anti-colonial struggle.

In the 19th century the struggle was led by Simón Bolívar, “the liberator”. Rebelling against the laws of the time, Bolivar stood up to the might of the Spanish empire in alliance with then free Haiti. Bolivar made instant enemies of slaveholders in the newly formed US and the rest of the Americas upon embracing a universal right and call to happiness without hypocrisy. That promise was realised only in part.

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Facebook to create ‘war room’ to fight fake news, Nick Clegg says

Spin, spin, lie, lie, money money money

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Dublin operations centre to target political misinformation ahead of EU elections in May

Facebook will tackle political misinformation in the run-up to the EU elections this May with a new “war room” based in Dublin, the company’s incoming communications chief, Nick Clegg, has announced.

In his first speech as Facebook’s top public face, Clegg said the company would be setting up an “operations centre focused on elections integrity, based in Dublin, this spring”. The centre will build on the company’s previous experience running an “elections war room” in its US office, where it coordinated efforts to police the platform during the US midterm and Brazilian presidential elections.

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Trump steps up Maduro pressure with sanctions against Venezuelan oil giant

First be cruel to refugees, and Federal workers and woman- now wag the tail rattle the tin can hats and threaten Venezuela.
Where have you been as the Sudan has suffered, elections rigged in the Congo?
This is just too easy a way to be cruel and puffed up!

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  • Sanctions on $7bn in assets intended to boost Guaidó
  • John Bolton keen to counter ‘penetration’ from Cuba and Iran

The Trump administration has tightened the screws on Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, announcing sanctions against the country’s state-owned oil giant PDVSA in what the US national security adviser admitted was partly an attempt to counter strategic threats from Cuba and Iran.

Related: Juan Guaidó: Venezuela has chance to leave chaos behind

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Joshua Tree national park ‘may take 300 years to recover’ from shutdown

Fools should be barred from Joshua Tree and the White House

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National park saw ‘irreparable’ damage including vandalism, ruined trails and trees cut down, says former superintendent

The former superintendent of Joshua Tree national park has said it could take hundreds of years to recover from damage caused by visitors during the longest-ever government shutdown.

“What’s happened to our park in the last 34 days is irreparable for the next 200 to 300 years,” Curt Sauer said at a rally over the weekend, according to a report from the Desert Sun. Sauer retired in 2010 after running the park for seven years.

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New climate initiative ‘heats up’ in Latino communities across the country

By Mark Magaña and Dominique Browning

LatinaLista

It is a myth that Latinos don’t have the time nor interest to care about climate change.

The truth is quite the opposite: Latinos have long been leading the fight against dangerous air pollution that contributes to climate change in their communities. And why not? Latinos are disproportionately impacted by both air pollution and climate change.

It’s why earlier this year we launched Ecomadres, a national partnership between GreenLatinos and Moms Clean Air Force that addresses issues of clean air, climate, and toxins that affect the health of Latino children and families. We want to accelerate a people-powered movement that brings Latinos together around this broad and inclusive message: when it comes to our children’s health, we’re all in this together, and every voice counts.

In Latino communities, we discuss the connection between climate and our health and livelihoods—and how failing to take action on climate change comes at serious health and financial cost for Latinos and all Americans. In fact, poll after poll–including the recent Latino Decisions conducted on the eve of the midterm election—shows that Latino voters, regardless of party affiliation, want Congress to get its act together on climate. Fighting climate change and protecting the environment are priorities among the Latino community, nearly as important as immigration and job creation.

This movement is gathering steam across the country — quite literally—with regularly scheduled conversations held over steaming-hot coffee. These “cafecitos” bring like-minded Latinos together in intimate spaces like living rooms, backyards, classrooms, and coffee shops. We are currently organizing in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Florida with plans to expand even further in states with large and growing Latino populations. We have also supported Ecomadres hosting their own volunteer-led cafecito in California, Illinois and Tennessee.

Latinos can be powerful change-agents and by offering a safe space to speak up and be heard, we hope to play a role in a growing movement to empowers new generation of Latino environmental activists. Over coffee, we talk about how climate change and toxic pollution, such as mercury, affect our communities. We talk about how Trump’s EPA is trying to undermine mercury rules and other protections that keep our children safe from fossil fuel pollution. Our ambition doesn’t stop there: we also empower Latinos to raise their voices within their communities, with their elected officials, and at the ballot box, and it’s working.

In some states, the response has been so positive that we are shifting from monthly to weekly “cafecitos” to keep up with demand. Take Maria Prentice as but one example. Maria is a married retiree living in Las Vegas who just attended her fifth “cafecito.” She credits these gatherings with giving her a real sense of belonging among a community of passionate thinkers and doers.

Ecomadres is one big family with shared interests,” as she puts it. In her retirement, Maria looks after two grandkids who respectively suffer from asthma and allergies made worse by extreme heat — something increasingly common in Las Vegas, where temperatures routinely exceed 110°F in the summer.

Having seen climate impacts like extreme heat in both her hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico, and her adopted hometown of Las Vegas — and having seen how these impacts directly affect her grandkids—Maria wants to do all she can to be a force for change. “When we look at what is happening to our planet, its people and all species really, we have to say that it’s going to take more people getting involved to get this right.” Maria is right, we need everyone pitching in to make change.

As the popularity of our “cafecitos” make clear, many Latinos like Maria seek a connection, a group of madres armed with reliable information and solutions through online resources, articles, action tools, and on-the-ground events. In fact, there are some 56 million Latinos in the U.S. who are especially vulnerable to the health threats posed by climate change because of where they live and work. A disproportionate number of Latinos work outdoors in states that are among the most affected by the trifecta of extreme heat, air pollution, and flooding.

Given these realities, is it any surprise that Latinos know that part of what they can do to protect their families is to support action on climate change? The reason Latinos are more focused on climate change is that their families here and abroad are already experiencing the consequences of inaction. Ecomadres are transforming those experiences into action.

Mark Magaña is the Founding President & CEO of GreenLatinos, a national coalition of Latino environmental, natural resources, and conservation advocates. Dominique Browning is the co-founder and senior director of Moms Clean Air Force, a community of more than 1 million moms and dads united against air pollution.

Privacy is not just a personal matter

“Is it too late to do anything?
No. Clearly, there is a lot of damage and companies have invested heavily in business models based on surveillance. That said, there were a lot of companies that struggled with the change from content-driven ads to person-driven ads. Every time there is a change, there are winners and losers. Some of the winners last time might be losers now.

We have allowed certain companies to gather data on us which we would never have allowed other companies or governments to do. Now we are experiencing the consequences. The loss of our privacy is a loss for society and for democracy.

When our collective privacy is lost, there are consequences for us all.
Tell your politicians that you no longer want to allow companies to collect data. We can help our politicians be strong and stand against the pressure from lobbyists. Help others understand by sharing this article.

Let’s fix this together!”

 

I started working with the Web in 1992, just a few years after Tim Berners-Lee made Web standards available to the public, paving the way for a massive transformation in our lives. A transformation that has been very positive.

I have always believed that access to the Internet and to the information available there is good for society. That is why I founded not one, but two web browser companies. First Opera and now Vivaldi (after losing control over the direction of Opera). I have dedicated my life to helping people get onto the Internet and make the most out of it on their terms. Now, sadly we have real problems to contend with.

During the past 10 years, certain companies have taken liberties. They have decided that our data is really their data and that it can be monetized, as they see fit. Meanwhile, our governments have looked the other way. Maybe they have not understood what is happening. Or maybe they have just seen it as progress. Or maybe they have not dared to stand up to the influential companies behind it.

It is now time for us to understand and wake up to what is happening and turn the tide. But we better hurry.

Data is the new oil?

At a conference I was attending a couple of years ago, many referred to data as “the new oil.” I was rather appalled at the time, but in reality, there may be a lot of truth to the comparison.

Oil and fossil fuels are useful in many ways. At the same time, the consequence of consuming them at scale is a catastrophe, which threatens the planet with climate change.

Similarly, misuse of our data is gradually turning the Internet from a great place to be (barring the odd troll) to a place where all of our actions are tracked, and the data sold to the highest bidder to use for what they will.

Is Privacy a personal matter?

How often have you heard someone say: “I know privacy is important, but I really do not care. I have nothing to hide”.

The problem with this thinking is that your privacy is not only about you. When our collective privacy is lost, there are consequences for us all.

The fact is that our every move is being tracked. This makes us more careful about what we say and do (not that the trolls care), and keep our opinions to ourselves. This hits home with me. I am particularly careful about liking or sharing things on Facebook, knowing that it helps Facebook build a profile on me.

Profiles ad nauseam

Giving up our privacy leads to our data being used to build accurate profiles on us. There are a lot of companies doing research into how the data you share can be used to influence your decisions. This is not only about convincing you to buy things you do not need. These methods can and have been used to influence people during elections. They can even be used to create unrest or otherwise undermine our society

These tools, in the wrong hands, are very dangerous. With our own intimate information, such as love for cats or hate for rats, those using them can get under our skin and make us do things we would otherwise not do. And this does not just happen to “stupid” people which is often claimed. I believe that anyone can be fooled and influenced this way, and I know many good people who have been.

Monetizing us

Some companies think that if we get our fair share of the revenues – instead of just big companies monetizing – the problem of information gathering will be solved.

The issue here is that there are some things that are plain detrimental to society. Yes, like being programmable through services such as Google and Facebook.

You might be able to make a few bucks a year by selling your data, and the company helping you would make a bit as well – they need money to run their show. But the fact remains that your personal data is changing hands.

Sometimes I think of this as selling your body, no matter who the pimp is.

So what data is being collected?

You may be interested in these examples of data being collected.

  • When you visit services such as Facebook and Google, everything you do is tracked.
  • Facebook tracks you when you visit pages of even other websites whether their buttons are shown or not. They’ll know even if you aren’t logged in or don’t have a Facebook account.
  • Google has everything you type in the browser – and this has significant privacy  implications that can be quite revealing.
  • Google tracks your location through your phone and through your PC. The location is tracked through a mixture of GPS, WIFI and Bluetooth information even if you have turned off these services
  • Google scans your email if you use their Gmail service.
  • Google knows about your visits to any sites that have their ads.
  • Google also gets information from their Google Analytics service.
  • Google and Facebook also get data from other third parties, such as banks.
  • There are a lot of stories about photo data and microphones and whether data is being collected and used, and technically it is possible.

Google and Facebook are not the only ones that collect information about what you do. Anyone who has gone through an installation of a Windows machine knows that Microsoft by default will collect a lot of data.

Many others do as well, but often the data they gather is limited. Because the big ones are getting away with it, the rest think they can as well, all chasing after “the new oil.”

Overcoming objections

So why aren’t regulators doing something about this mass surveillance? There are steps being taken by the General Data Protection Regulation, but are they enough?

The problem with the current regulations is that they treat this too much as a matter of personal privacy. More should be done to address the underlying issue of tracking.

The real solution would require taking a big step in regulation and that is hard for our politicians, even those that truly want to do the right thing. It’s just a complicated situation.

They need to take all sides into account, and there are many voices telling them that regulation on tracking would:

  1. Hamper competitiveness of companies in their countries;
  2. Mean that we’d have to pay for the services we now get for free;
  3. Make it impossible to provide those services without access to data;
  4. Do nothing as it is too late.

Now, let’s look at those arguments a little closer.

Would competitiveness suffer?

Facebook and Google have set a precedent on data collection and now other companies are pushing for equal access to information. For example, US telecommunications companies, such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and others, can now monitor their users.

Isn’t it better to improve competitiveness for those companies not spying on us by regulating those that do?

Would we have to start paying for services?

These services were free before. Our information was not being sold. The services were quite often ad-driven, but the ads were more generic. Instead of ads following us from site to site, they were typically related to the content we were reading. If we were on a tech site, we would see tech ads, if we were on a fashion site, we’d see fashion ads.

If we regulate companies that are unable or unwilling to regulate themselves, we will remove the unfair advantage and even the playing field. It will be possible for services to thrive without using an advertising model that relies on surveillance data (look at DuckDuckGo).

Facebook and Google would need to change their business models. Maybe they would not make as much money. Maybe they would be more vulnerable to competition. Maybe that would be a positive thing.

Is it possible to provide those services without access to data?

Clearly, if the service provider could not use any data, there would be services that could not be provided. How can you provide traffic information without having information about those stuck in traffic?

I am not suggesting that data cannot be used to provide a service. It is a question of whether that data can be used for other purposes. Your traffic data is useful there and then, and you would experience a benefit in sharing that data to get a better driving experience.

Companies should be custodians of our data. They should not own it or monetize it.

But storing your location every two minutes has nothing to do with that. Selling that information to advertisers even less so. As long as the data is limited to providing the service, we do not have a problem.

Companies should be custodians of our data. They should not own it or monetize it. In fact, they should go out of their way to keep our data safe.

Is it too late to do anything?

No. Clearly,  there is a lot of damage and companies have invested heavily in business models based on surveillance. That said, there were a lot of companies that struggled with the change from content-driven ads to person-driven ads. Every time there is a change, there are winners and losers. Some of the winners last time might be losers now.

We have allowed certain companies to gather data on us which we would never have allowed other companies or governments to do. Now we are experiencing the consequences. The loss of our privacy is a loss for society and for democracy.

When our collective privacy is lost, there are consequences for us all.

Tell your politicians that you no longer want to allow companies to collect data. We can help our politicians be strong and stand against the pressure from lobbyists. Help others understand by sharing this article.

Let’s fix this together!

 

Neanderthals Had Advanced Hunting Technology

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Forty thousand years after disappearing, the Neanderthals have stayed alive largely as the butts of our jokes. You know how it goes: They’re unintelligent, lethargic, incompetent—an embarrassing chapter in our evolutionary history. Right?

Not really. Research published today in Scientific Reports provides yet another indication that our ancestors were far more advanced than we had thought—even when it comes to violence, a realm in which humankind can claim some unequivocal, if unfortunate, authority.

Archaeologists from University College London (UCL) have demonstrated that the 300,000-year-old “Schöningen spears”—the oldest preserved hunting weapons ever found in Europe—could have been used to hunt prey from a distance, and not only at close range. When the spears were excavated between 1994 and 1999, in a lignite mine in Schöningen, Germany, they helped to “really push away” the perception that Neanderthals were scavengers instead of hunters, says Annemieke Milks, the lead author of the new study. Still, Milks noticed while conducting her graduate research that there was a lack of data on hand-thrown spears from the period. Researchers like her “needed to understand basic things about how” these weapons functioned. So she set out to do exactly that with the Schöningen spears.

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Using wood from Norwegian spruce trees grown in Kent, England, UCL Institute of Archaeology alum Owen O’Donnell built replicas of the spears by hand, weighing 760 and 800 grams, respectively. To ensure that the spears not only matched the historical specifications, but that they would also be handled with the proper technique, the team enlisted six javelin athletes to throw the spears at a hunter’s high velocity. The javelin throwers were able to hit targets up to 20 meters away, and with enough force to kill the would-be prey. Before the experiment, scientists had estimated that the spears could only be thrown half as far. They’re relatively hefty, after all—NFL footballs, by comparison, weigh around 400 grams.

The findings reveal the Neanderthals’ technological sophistication, and a major—if rather macabre—way in which they influenced human civilization. “Understanding when we first developed the capabilities to kill at distance,” said co-author Matt Pope in a press release, “is… a dark but important moment in our story.” Yet these capabilities represent just one piece of the rather complex Neanderthal puzzle. Between the last 10 and 15 years, says Milks, researchers have had to radically rethink the Neanderthals after evidence emerged that they explored underground, created art, thought symbolically, and made other advanced stone tools. But maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising: The Neanderthals roamed for over 300,000 years. “Understanding them as a human-like species,” says Milks, “helps us understand their longevity.”

Going forward, Milks hopes that this study can lay a foundation for comparing early spears to later projectiles, and that a larger sample size of throwers can illustrate the importance of variables like skill and body size in handling them. Until then, let’s give the Neanderthals a break already.