Deluge of electronic waste turning Thailand into 'world's rubbish dump'

So they sold it. They bought it.  And this is what's left. This is a solution? It feels so good that we talk zero waste here in the west but where is the global audit of what really is happening?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/deluge-of-electronic-waste-turning-thailand-into-worlds-rubbish-dump

Mexican Police Force Arrested, Links to Candidate Killing

Yeh, but at the same time the Mexican government is writing law and cracking down on political dissent in favor of the ruling elites. I guess you have to maintain some decorum even in a police state.

In an unprecedented move, the entire police force of a Michoacan municipality is arrested with links to a mayoral candidature killing.

With the lates killings the number of Mexican political candidates and pre-candidates murdered since September 2017 to 121, making this the most violent electoral cycle in the country's history.

https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/50839-mexican-police-force-arrested-links-to-candidate-killing

Why Is the US Silent About Mexico’s New Internal Security Law?

While Mexican governmental institutions are experiencing a credibility crisis, Mexico’s National Congress approved what is known as the Internal Security Law. According to Article 2 of the text of the law, its objective is “to safeguard the permanence and continuity of governmental order and institutions, as well as national development through the maintenance of constitutional order, the rule of law and democratic governance.”

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto enacted the law, which became effective on December 21, 2017, and has since caused a wave of protests throughout Mexico. Numerous social movements, unions and civil society organizations see the new law as part of a process of militarizing Mexican society, which could worsen violence in the county.

In general terms, this law broadens opportunities for the armed forces to act throughout Mexican territory, even legitimizing the use of violence. It allows the armed forces to intervene in matters that concern civil authorities, such as disturbances and protests that are considered violent or acts of resistance. The law also permits the invasion of citizens’ privacy to collect intelligence information and entry into homes without a court order, including during criminal legal system investigations.

Anneliese Danaé Echeverria, an attorney and professor who is a union member and legal affairs assistant with Section 22 of the National Organization of Education Workers (CNTE) in the state of Oaxaca, tells Truthout, “The Mexican Constitution established that the army could not intervene in civil matters, they had to resolve any conflicts through the military court system. Civilians have their own courts. But the new law guarantees military intervention in all aspects of civilian life throughout the country. Civil authorities that are already in crisis will have little room to interfere with these interventions, because the military will act immediately, without consultation or requesting a warrant.”

https://truthout.org/articles/why-is-the-us-silent-about-mexicos-new-internal-security-law/

How Totally Out of Control Is Facebook? Read This

Much of this we could guess from news about Facebook but most people assume that it is what you post and what you like and who you know publicly and intentionally that forms the basis for their soft sort of spying.  Turns out not so soft after all.  In fact this is the stuff spy thrillers are made of.  One has to wonder who they will sell the technology to.  Are they good guys?  Will you know they are watching?  Is it the police, FBI, NSA or the Russians?  After all it's just a product and just for profit and that's what business does.  My suspicion born of some evidence, is that these and all such tools will be compiled into a suite of tools, packaged together with other kits and AT&T spy tools to build an even better surveillance toolkit for private, corporate and state espionage and of course  the NSA's total surveillance dream machine.   Then of course inevitably leaked it all to theives and corporate criminals to prey on the masses for elicit profits, start wars, corrupt elections, punish and destroy decent, empty bank accounts, take credit cards, copy private credencials and passwords, hijack your computers, steal billions.  You know -- the usual thing.

What 7 Creepy Patents Reveal About Facebook

Facebook has filed thousands of patent applications since it went public in 2012. One of them describes using forward-facing cameras to analyze your expressions and detect whether you’re bored or surprised by what you see on your feed. Another contemplates using your phone’s microphone to determine which TV show you’re watching. Others imagine systems to guess whether you’re getting married soon, predict your socioeconomic status and track how much you’re sleeping.

A review of hundreds of Facebook’s patent applications reveals that the company has considered tracking almost every aspect of its users’ lives: where you are, who you spend time with, whether you’re in a romantic relationship, which brands and politicians you’re talking about. The company has even attempted to patent a method for predicting when your friends will die.

By Sahil Chinoy, The New York Times
Be sure to click on this original article link below.  It is really Creepy

https://nyti.ms/2MGqm7T

Here's How the Rest of the World Covered Trump's Disastrous G-7 Performance | Alternet

Foreign leaders universally see (and rightly so), that Trumps behavior and the direction American policy undermine the legitimacy of "International Institutions."

Here again these institutions are not strictly speaking legitimate to anyone but the multinational corporate elite -- not legitimate to the Greeks, nor the Ukrainians, or Spain, or Portugal and certainly not Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.  So why should I care if the G7 process is damaged by Trump.  Almost everything that the G7 does harms the rank and file and had frequently been vocally protested until after 1999 they locked the meetings down because of fears of another Seattle like WTO "battle".  Anti-union, anti-environmental regulation, pro-war, pro-economic sanctions, anti-democracy, pro-security state.  I oppose their entire agenda. Progressives may ask the question, if American international influence is hereby damaged, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well it certainly may be a dangerous thing to the current world order and unintended consequences and collateral losses, even bloody ones may ensue, but good or bad? -- I can not call that question as most future options in general look pretty bad for us all. I am inclined to watch the decline of these institutions and look for opportunities to organize democratic movements.  Protecting them from Trump is certainly not my fight.


So how about a little background.  For more detailed background on G7 and WTO read this white paper  International Trade Governance and the G7 in theTrump and post-Brexit Era were it is clearly stated:

As the WTO’s Preamble clearly states in its aims: “trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services”

This statement is of course largely bullshit as progressives concluded around the time of NAFTA that it was not about free or fair trade but rather the "freedom to plunder" the rest of the world by the G7. In any case the economic system that is propped up by all this requires unending "steady growth" based on resource extraction, finacialization, a relaxation of regulation and the legal authority to "externalize" the real costs of all this onto the masses and indeed the planet.  This NeoLiberal project  has hit serious end-game limits (or end of the world limits if you prefer) and is increasingly difficult to justify.  Hence the next stage.  Enter the fascist as they march around the world.  Thus current acceleration of the erosion of democratic institutions is functional to the systems survival.

As I have stated about this blog.  I do not have a plan other than being clear about my values of democracy, peace and justice.  I just what to be clear where we are going.

Here's How the Rest of the World Covered Trump's Disastrous G-7 Performance | Alternet:

see latin america for examples of the roll back of democracy.



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Is the Global Economy Just a Giant Debt Scam? Here's What the Financial Elite Doesn’t Want You to Know | Alternet

This review in Salon is about a book, Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment by Yanis Varoufakis.  This article does not quite stand up but it does shake up some pretty dangerous ideas  I would speculate that the march of fascism is a useful and  necessary development to prop up failing capitalism.  The old model's collapsing viability as the dominant economic system which still demands every increasing extraction demand extreme effort.  Democracy in this context is of course to dangerous to be allowed.

Leftist academic Yanis Varoufakis saw power up close. He says capitalism is dead, democracy is crumbling and we’re ruled by debt

Democracy has been undermined by the “financialization” of both the economy and politics

Is the Global Economy Just a Giant Debt Scam? Here's What the Financial Elite Doesn’t Want You to Know | Alternet:



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The Destruction of Latin America’s Left And Lessons for Everyone

This is not particularly well written or researched but it calls out a global trend and points to the degradation of governance itself.  I wholly agree that this is a global trend but would like to go further to speculate the cause -- The collapse of capitalism as the world's economic system that can not be stopped because it is baked in.  In the chaos of collapse mighty fortunes can be mantained and obsene profits can still be pocketed that populations would never agreed to if thing were democratic.  This of course has been going on for many years.  The smart money is on taking over the government and destroying anything progressive. As I have said elsewhere democracy is too dangerous.

The so-called marea rosa, or ‘pink tide’, of allied leftist governments which held sway across Latin America in previous years is being rolled back. Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in a right-wing coup, co-conspirators of which have now managed to imprison the current presidential frontrunner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno has stabbed his former leader Rafael Correa in the back by barring him from seeking re-election, while seemingly purging his cabinet of remaining Correa loyalists and beginning the process of allowing the US military back into the country.

This is a very dirty game, and left-wingers keep treating it as if it is not: as if there are rules, and both sides play by them. Increasingly in the US that is not the case, and it is clearly not the case many other places. If your enemies win, they will destroy you by any means. You should think long and hard about what you will do to them if you get into power, because they know what they will do to you.

I do not necessarily agree with this last though but then I do not have and alternative proposal.  I just know where we are going, that at some point it will brake, shit will fly and heads will role.



The Destruction of Latin America’s Left And Lessons for Everyone | Ian Welsh:



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Canada’s Trump Now Premier of Canada’s Largest Province | Ian Welsh

This just in from my Canadian blogger. Yep, the fascist are marching and winning all over the world and are the handmaids of the corporate elites that profit from the ensuing chaos.  This is and example of what they will do to prevent progressive policys.

Oh well, gonna be a sucky 4 years in Ontario, but that’s what a plurality of us voted for. And, yeah, Canadians, willing to vote for really shitty people, just like Americans. (Trudeau, by the way, has run a terrible policy regime in many ways. He just knows how to look good doing it.)

Canada’s Trump Now Premier of Canada’s Largest Province | Ian Welsh:



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Before You Give Your Computer to the Geek Squad

This article shines light on a serious, perhaps unstoppable police state trend -- The state apparatus working in tandem with Big Business to gather information, perform analysis, make policy and write law, enforce laws, and in most cases overreach their constitutional authority.  But the powers are out of the geeks Pandora's box and will not likely be put back anytime soon.

But here’s the rub: The Geek Squad technicians had a secret agreement with the FBI in which they were paid every time they tipped off the feds to child pornography on computers they repaired, so they reported the photo. FBI Special Agent Cynthia Kayle prepared an affidavit for a search warrant of Rettenmaier’s home, falsely saying that the image found was child pornography and not mentioning that it was found in the unallocated space or that the FBI had paid the Geek Squad employees who reported it.

     The judge issued a search warrant for all of Rettenmaier’s electronic devices, and FBI agents found hundreds of child pornography photos on his iPhone. Rettenmaier’s attorney discovered that the FBI had been paying Geek Squad employees a $500 bounty every time they discovered child pornography on a customer’s computer. The employees were identified in FBI files as “confidential human sources.” The attorney posited that because they were paid, they were de facto FBI employees and, as such, had to have a search warrant to look for the photos.

The judge disagreed, but he ruled that the search was illegal anyway because he would not have authorized the search warrant had the FBI told the truth – that there was a single image of child erotica found in the computer’s unallocated space. Federal prosecutors filed a notice of appeal but missed the deadline and dropped all charges.

.RSN: Before You Give Your Computer to the Geek Squad:



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