At first blush, you’d be forgiven for asking what Sony’s Xperia ZL was for, given that it was the less fancy version of the Z. The dowdy sibling turned out to be a lot better than expected, however, with nicer ergonomics, even at the expense of the…
LG has just unveiled in China what could very well be the LG G3 mini, though it is really stretching what the word “mini” really means. While the LG G3 Beat is indeed smaller than the current LG G3 flagship, it still sports a 5.5-inch display that comes close to crossing that very thin line that separates a smartphone from … Continue reading
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Monday it is preparing to indict two American detainees for carrying out what it says were hostile acts against the country.
Investigations into American tourists Miller Matthew Todd and Jeffrey Edward Fowle concluded that suspicions about their hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their testimonies, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a short report. KCNA said North Korea is making preparations to bring them before a court.
Both Americans were arrested earlier this year after entering the country as tourists.
Fowle entered the county on April 29 and North Korea’s state media said in June that authorities were investigating him for committing acts inconsistent with the purpose of a tourist visit. A spokesman for Fowle’s family said the 56-year-old man from Ohio was not on a mission for his church.
KCNA said Miller, 24, entered the country April 10 with a tourist visa, but tore it up and shouted that he wanted to seek asylum.
North Korea has also been separately holding Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae since November 2012. He is serving 15 years of hard labor for what the North says were hostile acts against the state.
The United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, so Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang, oversees consular issues for the U.S. there. Unless a detainee signs a privacy waiver, the State Department cannot give details about the case.
The Korean Peninsula is still in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter potential aggression from the North.
Well then. Let’s start with a working definition of psyops.
Here is some background on the Facebook mass psychological testing as being reported recently. The study about the test itself, an interesting take on it by another scientist.
You should not be either shocked, or surprised. Companies in the social media space run an implicit yet often almost silent social compact with you. The social networking or social media company develops, tests and produces a product you want to use.
In order to use it, you have to click through terms of services or terms and conditions. These are lengthy legal documents created by very smart lawyers to basically protect the company from almost anything.
Most people literally never bother to read these “click thrus,” and instead just literally do that.
Click thru.
By doing so, one should expect to be spied on by companies and governments alike. One should also expect to be used in a multitude of “experiments,” “a/b testing,” and “algorithmic adjustments.” Expect this daily.
People forget the internet is not theirs. It is actually “domain” of some powerful companies that access our data, b.c we give it up freely.
— Alan W. Silberberg (@IdeaGov) June 29, 2014
. @IdeaGov we give it up, yes; but not so sure it is all that “freely” (& even less likely to be “knowingly”). Choice = merely an illusion.
— Adrienne Mead (@AdrienneMeadEsq) June 29, 2014
The social compact between you and the big social networking companies is implicit, if mostly silent. We get to use things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Secret, Whisper, Google, Bing, etc. without paying in hard dollars (usually.) What we pay for it with is the invisible digital currency. That of your life on display for anyone with an algorithm, and a way to analyze that data can easily see. Either use these services and accept that in part or do not use the services. But this is the hard choice we all face, if you ever stop to think about it.
I started to read Michael Waldman’s book, The Second Amendment: A Biography, with a certain amount of trepidation, because if nothing else, here’s someone who hits the ground running when it comes to anything having to do with public policy. And whether it’s voting rights, or election financing reform, or same-sex marriage or just about any other domestic policy that liberals want to own, Waldman has been in the thick of the argument ever since he took over the Brennan Center in 2005.
Why trepidation? Because although Waldman may have actually shot a rifle at least one time, let’s just say that he’s not much of a gun guy and his friends and policy associates don’t spend Friday afternoons popping some tops down at Franzey’s Bar & Grill.
Now don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be a gun guy to say something smart about guns. But Waldman’s resume reads like the exact opposite of someone who would give gun owners a break, and let’s not forget that he runs a public policy institute named after a Supreme Court justice who probably would have been just as happy if the Second Amendment didn’t exist. So I figured the book to be just another one of those “it’s time to defang the NRA” deals, with the usual elixir of anti-gun proposals like more background checks, another assault weapons ban and, for good measure, let’s get rid of all the damn things anyway.
I was wrong. Leaving aside the early chapters on the how’s and why’s the Second Amendment even got into the Constitution, the book’s real strength is Waldman’s ability to tie the narrative of recent gun jurisprudence to the general rightward drift of American politics and American law. I have been waiting for someone to explain how judges like Scalia defend the notion of Second Amendment “originalism” in order to promote a conservative, current-day agenda and Waldman nails this one to the wall. Going back to the 1980s, he charts the confluence of conservative energies represented by politicized evangelicals, right-wing think tanks and specific-interest groups like the NRA, all combining to support a judicial agenda that seeks to roil back or dilute progressive programs and reforms.
It’s not so much that gun control is at the top of the progressive agenda; it ebbs and flows as high-profile shootings come and go. But a majority of gun owners, particularly people for whom guns are a serious part of their life-styles, tend to be politically conservative anyway, so using fears of gun restrictions to enlist them in the anti-liberal crusade works every time.
A close reading of sources from the debates over the Bill of Rights makes clear that individual gun ownership represented the ability of citizens to protect and defend their political rights; rights to free speech, free assembly, due process and the like. But the argument for gun ownership advanced by the NRA today, Ollie North’s appeals to patriotism notwithstanding, is based on the alleged social value of guns to protect us against crime. The NRA would never argue that the Glock in my pocket should be used to stop cops from coming through the door, but they insist that the same Glock is my first line of defense when a bad guy breaks down that same door.
Waldman clearly understands that by using the Second Amendment to justify gun ownership as a defense against crime, the pro-gun community has successfully restated the history of the Second Amendment to buttress a contemporary social justification for owning guns. Neither will be readily undone as long as gun control advocates believe they can respond to this strategy by stating and restating the “facts.” Remember “it’s the economy, stupid”? Now “it’s the guns.”
What’s the reason for the tempest in the teapot of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s personal finances?
It can’t be about how much money they have. Great wealth has never disqualified someone from high office. In fact, some of the nation’s greatest presidents, who came to office with vast fortunes — JFK, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his fifth cousin, Teddy — notably improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The tempest can’t be about Hillary Clinton’s veracity. It may have been a stretch for her to say she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House, as she told ABC’s Diane Sawyer. But they did have large legal bills to pay off.
And it’s probably true that, unlike many of the “truly well off,” as she termed them in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, the Clintons pay their full income taxes and work hard.
Nor can the tempest be about how they earned their money. Most has come from public speaking and book royalties, the same sources as for most ex-presidents and former First Ladies.
Then what’s it about?
The story behind story is that America is in an era of sharply rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well but most Americans on a downward economic escalator.
That’s why Diane Sawyer asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
And it’s why Hillary’s answers — that the couple needed money when they left the White House, and have paid their taxes and worked hard for it — seemed oddly beside the point.
The questions had nothing to do with whether the former first couple deserved the money. They were really about whether all that income from big corporations and Wall Street put them on the side of the privileged and powerful — rather than on the side of ordinary Americans.
These days, voters want to know which side candidates are on because they believe the game is rigged against them.
According to new Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans now think economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and 78 percent think too much power is concentrated in too few companies. Even 69 percent of young conservative-leaning voters agree the system favors the powerful.
Other potential presidential candidates are using every opportunity to tell voters they’re on their side. Speaking at last week’s White House summit on financial hardships facing working families, Vice President Joe Biden revealed he has “no savings account” and “doesn’t own a single stock or bond.”
The same concern haunts the Republican Party and is fueling the Tea Party rebellion. In his stunning upset campaign, David Brat charged that Eric Cantor “does not represent the citizens of the 7th district, but rather large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts, and constant supply of low-wage workers.”
But the Republican establishment doesn’t think it has to choose sides. It assumes it can continue to represent the interests of big business and Wall Street, yet still lure much of the white working class though thinly-veiled racism, anti-immigrant posturing, and steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
The Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, doesn’t have that option.
Which means that, as the ranks of the anxious middle class grow, the winning formula used by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may no longer be able to deliver.
That formula was not just to court minorities and women but also to appeal to upscale Republican-leaning suburbs, professionals, moderates on Wall Street, and centrist business interests.
Accordingly, both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s economic plans called for deficit reduction as part of a “responsible” fiscal policy, measures to promote economic growth, trade expansion, and “investments” in infrastructure and education.
But in a world of downward mobility for the majority, Democrats need to acknowledge the widening divide and propose specific ways to reverse it.
These might include, for example, raising taxes on the wealthy and closing their favorite tax loopholes in order to pay for world-class schools for everyone else; pushing for a living wage and minimum guaranteed income; and changing corporate and tax laws to limit CEO pay, and promote gain-sharing, profit-sharing, and employee ownership.
In this scenario, Democrats would seek to forge a new political coalition of all the nation’s downwardly mobile — poor, working class, and middle class; white and black and brown.
It’s a gamble. It would make big business and Wall Street nervous, while ignoring Republican-leaning suburbs and upper-middle class professionals. The GOP would move in to fill the void.
But as the middle class shrinks and distrust of the establishment grows, a new Democratic strategy for the downwardly mobile may be both necessary and inevitable. If she runs, Hillary will have to take the gamble.
And if America is to have half a chance of saving the middle class and preserving equal opportunity, it’s a gamble worth taking.
ROBERT B. REICH’s film “Inequality for All” is now available on DVD and blu-ray, and on Netflix. Watch the trailer below:
Witness a man being born again as a huge stray rock—ejected from the explosive demolition of a clothing factory in Czech Republic—swooshes right by his head. A few inches closer and he would have been instantly killed.
Windows Phone already lets you store apps in Start screen folders, but it’s a bit of a hack — you have to use Nokia App Folder to get the feature in the first place, and you’re really just opening one app to launch another. Microsoft might be near…
It’s been seven years and the iPhone is still kicking just as hard – or even – harder than the day it launched. Speaking of the launch – do you remember exactly where you were on that historical day? I remember clearly where I was: at the Cube Apple store in Manhattan where I’d been queued up in a long … Continue reading
Facebook is, unsurprisingly, embroiled in yet another scandal. Surprisingly, it isn’t directly related to privacy but comes quite close. The social networking giant has been revealed to have manipulated their news feed ever so slightly in order to see the effects on the moods of its users. Sounds almost harmless until you learn that the findings were recently published in … Continue reading
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