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“A cool, throbbing, spy-thriller” DAILY TELEGRAPH (UK)
http://www.madman.com.au/incinemas
From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief), ZERO DAYS tells the story of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer malware, known as a “worm” for its ability to burrow from computer to computer on its own. The U.S.A. and Israel unleashed the virus to destroy a key part of an Iranian nuclear facility, and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target. It’s the most comprehensive accounting to date of how a clandestine mission hatched by two allies with clashing agendas opened forever the Pandora’s Box of cyber-warfare.
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17 August 2017, 13:56 UTC
The Hong Kong authorities’ relentless pursuit of jail terms for three leaders of the pro-democracy movement is a vindictive attack on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, Amnesty International said.
The real danger to the rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Hong Kong is the authorities’ continued persecution of prominent democracy activists.
Mabel Au, Director of Amnesty International Hong Kong
On Thursday, Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal handed Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law between six and eight months in prison for their roles in a demonstration that helped spark the city’s 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. Prosecutors pursued harsher punishments for the trio, after they were originally given non-custodial sentences at their first trial a year ago.
“The relentless and vindictive pursuit of student leaders using vague charges smacks of political payback by the authorities,” said Mabel Au, Director of Amnesty International Hong Kong.
“The real danger to the rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Hong Kong is the authorities’ continued persecution of prominent democracy activists. Prosecutions aimed at deterring participation in peaceful protests must be dropped.”
The convictions relate to a specific incident on 26 September 2014 at the beginning of the student-led pro-democracy protest outside government headquarters in Hong Kong. On that day several students pushed their way and climbed into a fenced-off forecourt of the legislative complex, commonly known as Civic Square. The square had been a popular site for previous peaceful protests on other occasions, before the authorities’ restricted access to it in the summer of 2014.
At their first trial, Joshua Wong and Alex Chow were found guilty of “taking part in an unlawful assembly”. Nathan Law was found guilty of “inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly”.
Joshua Wong and Nathan Law had previously been ordered to carry out community service but this was increased to six months and eight months prison terms respectively at today’s hearing. Alex Chow’s original three-week suspended prison sentence was increased to seven months in jail.
The vague provisions of Hong Kong’s Public Order Ordinance, on which this prosecution was based, have been repeatedly criticized by the UN Human Rights Committee for failing to fully meet international human rights law and standards on the right of peaceful assembly.
WED, 8/16/2017 – BY JULIA CARRIE WONG AND OLIVIA SOLON
The US government is seeking to unmask every person who visited an anti-Trump website in what privacy advocates say is an unconstitutional “fishing expedition” for political dissidents.
The warrant appears to be an escalation of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) campaign against anti-Trump activities, including the harsh prosecution of inauguration day protesters.
On July 17, the DoJ served a website-hosting company, DreamHost, with a search warrant for every piece of information it possessed that was related to a website that was used to coordinate protests during Donald Trump’s inauguration. The warrant covers the people who own and operate the site, but also seeks to get the IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited it, as well as the date and time of their visit and information about what browser or operating system they used.
The website, www.disruptj20.org, was used to coordinate protests and civil disobedience on 20 January, when Trump was inaugurated.
“This specific case and this specific warrant are pure prosecutorial overreach by a highly politicized department of justice under [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions,” said Chris Ghazarian, general counsel for DreamHost. “You should be concerned that anyone should be targeted simply for visiting a website.”
The warrant was made public Monday, when DreamHost announced its plans to challenge the government in court. The DoJ declined to comment. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
The government has aggressively prosecuted activists arrested during the January 20 protests in Washington DC. In April, the US attorney’s office in Washington DC filed a single indictment charging more than 217 people with identical crimes, including felony rioting.
Ghazarian said that DreamHost provided the government with “limited customer information about the owner of the website” when it first received a grand jury subpoena a week after the protests occurred. But the government came back in July with the much broader search warrant.
“We’re a gatekeeper between the government and tens of thousands of people who visited the website,” said Ghazarian. “We want to keep them protected.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been advising DreamHost, characterized the warrant as “unconstitutional” and “a fishing expedition”.
“I can’t conceive of a legitimate justification other than casting your net as broadly as possible to justify millions of user logs,” senior staff attorney Mark Rumold told the Guardian.
Logs of IP addresses don’t uniquely identify users, but they link back to specific physical addresses if no digital tools are used to mask it.
“What they would be getting is a list of everyone who has ever been interested in attending these protests or seeing what was going on at the protests and that’s the troubling aspect. It’s a short step after you have the list to connect the IP address to someone’s identity,” he said.
Wide-reaching warrants for user data are sometimes issued when the content of a site is illegal such as pirated movies or child sexual abuse imagery, but speech is rarely prohibited.
“This [the website] is pure first amendment advocacy – the type of advocacy the first amendment was designed to protect and promote,” Rumold added. “Frankly I’m glad DreamHost is pushing back on it.”
It’s not the first time that the US government has sought to unmask people protesting against Trump or his policies.
In March this year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of the Homeland Security Department, ordered Twitter to hand over the phone number, mailing addresses and IP addresses associated with @ALT_USCIS, an account that purported to convey the views of dissenters within the government.
The account, whose username is a reference to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, is one of dozens of alternative Twitter accounts established after Trump was inaugurated. The unverified accounts claimed to provide an uncensored view of civil servants who disagreed with Trump’s policies.
To protect the identity of the person running the account, Twitter launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that it would have “a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and the many other ‘alternative agency’ accounts that have been created to voice dissent to government policies”.
After public outcry over the administration’s overreach, CBP dropped the request.
The whole world was shocked by the rise Donald Trump, but there was one man who had been plotting it for years: Roger Stone. Diving deep into the mind of the master manipulator, Get Me Roger Stone provides a raw perspective on the transformation of American politics. Now Streaming on Netflix.
SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7
Immediately below is the Alt-right Facebook info for the San Francisco’s event on Saturday, August 26th, Following this announcement is a listing of known SF events leading up to 8/26. Announcement for Sunday, August 27, Berkeley event to follow SF listings.
Please also view National Lawyers Guild (NLG) request at the end of this message
Listings for actions for Saturday 8/26 and Sunday 8/27 will be sent shortly.
San Francisco:
Freedom Rally San Francisco
Patriot Prayer Large Event
Saturday, August 26, 2017
2:00pm – 5:00pm
Crissy Field Beach
San Francisco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1454498877929964/
Description:
“Liberty Weekend in the Bay Area! This is a 2 day event in the NorCal SF Bay Area!!
Liberty Weekend with Joey Gibson – Patriot Prayer, Amber Gwen Cummings – Transsexual Patriot, & Lindsay Grathwohl – patriot, mom & Daughter of the late Larry Grathwohl.
Patriot Prayer Joey Gibson rally will kick off Liberty Weekend on Saturday August 26th at Crissy Field Presidio & Amber Gwen Cummings rally is on Sunday August 27th at MLK park in Berkeley.
Join us in San Francisco, California on August 26th,2017 at the Presidio – Crissy Field at 2pm for a day of freedom, spirituality, unity, peace, and patriotism! San Francisco has long been a city that prides itself in acceptance of all, so together, let’s unite in this beautiful city to listen to some great speakers & live music!
We just received confirmation that the band – Good Ol’ Boyz will be performing in San Francisco at Crissy Field!
Speakers will include: Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer, Will Johnson of Unite America First, Kyle Chapman – “Based Stickman”, Harim Uziel – Los Angeles For Trump, Amber Gwen Cummings – Transsexual Patriot, Kathryn Townsend, Gabriel Silva -Activist, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, Pam Brunfield-Uriate, and more! As more speakers confirm, we will update this page.”
SF Actions Leading Up to August 26
Friday, August 18
Friday, 1:00pm, NPS Sit-In: No “Patriot Prayer” in SF!
National Parks Services
333 Bush St.
SF
Citizens of SF, Mayor Lee and other City Officials, and local activism groups are all staunchly opposed to the white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally (see: http://www.sfexaminer.com/
In light of the likely violence that could take place if #TheResistance focuses efforts on the event itself, a good starting point will be to stage a non-violent sit-in at the NPS office on Bush St. in the city.
Show the Regional Director, Laura Joss, that white supremacists and Nazis are not welcome in SF. The NPS will have no “business-as-usual” until they too condemn these white extremist terrorist groups.
GGNRA officials reviewing permit application for right-wing rally at Crissy Field
http://www.ktvu.com/news/274289088-story
Sponsor: Sunset Resistance Council
Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/144197669499368/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D
Friday, 5:00pm – 7:00pm, Fun NOT Fascism 2: Notify Park Goers
Crissy Field Great Lawn
(old Airfield)
SF
The National Park Service is obligated to provide permits for events under the First Amendment, which is why a group associated with white nationalists were able to secure a permit to hold a rally at Crissy Field. In light of the recent terrorist attack on peaceful protesters in Charlottesville by a white supremacist at a white nationalist rally, it is evident that the rally planned in San Francisco is a clear threat to public safety. One of the event speakers is convicted violent felon Kyle Chapman, better known as Based Stickman to his alt-Reich minions.
We discovered that many people using the park had no idea this event was coming to their park. We will gather Friday at the great lawn behind Sports Basement to educate recreationalists about how they can urge the NPS to cancel the event permit out of concern for the safety of our citizens
Sponsor: The Peoples Campaign
Info:
Friday, 6:00pm – 7:00pm, Friday Night Faith Vigil: Stand Against White Supremacy
16th Street Mission BART Station
2000 Mission St.
SF
Join us at a Faith Vigil to denounce the racism on blatant display in Charlottesville last weekend and the hatred that is coming to our own backyard in 10 days, with white supremacist groups planning a similar rally at Crissy Field. On Friday evening, interfaith voices will lead us in prayerful and powerful resitance against white supremacy, and call out Governor Brown for enabling mass deportation of immigrants through his attempts to amend SB 54 Statewide Sanctuary Bill. This event is jointly sponsored by the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese Office of Human Life and Dignity, Mission Night Walks, and Faith in Action Bay Area.
Sponsor: Faith in Action Bay Area
Info:
Berkeley:
“No to Marxism in America”
Sunday, August 27. 2017
Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park
2151 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Berkeley
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1356598631088305/
Description:
“In America we have Marxism being taught in our schools and communities. Berkeley is a ground zero for the Marxist Movement and we need to speak out and say NO to Marxism. This event is our chance to speak out and expose the plan of purging our nation from a free nation to a communist nation. We will not tolerate this in America. So we are asking people to come stand against Marxism.”
Events Leading Up To August 27
Saturday, August 19
Saturday, 10:00am – 6:00pm, SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice) Art Build
1st Congregational Church
27th & Harrison St.
Oakland
Let’s send a clear message to the white supremacists rallying in Berkeley on August 27th!
Come help us make banners and signs to say No to Racism and No to Hate Speech in Berkeley. Bring markers and poster board if you can. We will have supplies as well.
RSVP: kaseybrenner@gmail.com
Monday, August 21
Monday, 7:00pm, CARF Community Planning Meeting
UC Berkeley
170 Boalt Hall
Berkeley
If you are committed to or interested in joining us in protesting the fascist rally in Berkeley on Sunday, August 27th, we strongly urge you to attend this meeting on Monday evening.
Please come prepared to discuss specific plans, strategies, ideas, and ways you can commit to contribute to this crucial effort. We need people who can take roles in this organized, disciplined, responsible counter-demonstration.
Sponsor: Communities Against Racism & Fascism
Info: 415-864-1278
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
National Lawyers Guild
Needed:
legal observers, hotline volunteers and on call attorneys.
August 26th is in San Francisco and Aug 27th is in Berkeley.
Please read below for details and where to respond.
LEGAL OBSERVERS:
Advanced Legal Observer training! Sunday August 20th 3:30 pm NLG Office 558 Capp Street S.F. We are strongly recommending that you attend this training if you are going to be out in the streets over the weekend of the 26th and 27th. Let’s keep ourselves safe as we do this vital work!
To volunteer as a Legal Observer please email locoordinators@riseup.net
Please give name, telephone number, hours that you are available, which day you are available for, and if you are coming to the training.
HOTLINE VOLUNTEERS:
To volunteer for the legal support hotline please email
hotlinecoordinators@riseup.net
Please give name, telephone number, hours available, which action you are available for and when you were trained.
This would be a good time to gain experience on the hotline as we will be running the hotline from the NLG office in S.F for both actions. There will be more experienced hotline workers there to answer questions while you answer the phones.
ON CALL ATTORNEYS:
To volunteer to be an on call attorney please email
rlederman@beachledermanlaw.com.
If you are new to jail visits/on call lawyering we will be offering
mentorship to help out. Please give name, phone number, what times/dates you are available and level of experience/would you like mentorship.
Published on Aug 17, 2017
The alt-right summoned almost 10 people to protest this Lenin statue. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. https://tytnetwork.com/join/
“Far-right “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted videos and photos Wednesday showing him leading a group of people protesting a Vladimir Lenin statue in Seattle.
Video shows Posobiec leading the group in a chant of “tear it down, tear it down” as the protesters — wearing “Make America Great Again” caps and holding placards bearing phrases like “Lenin is Hitler” and “Alt Left Hate” — marched around the statue.
It appears that about 7 people, including Posobiec, attended the demonstration.
Some alt-right websites lauded the protest, with political blog Gateway Pundit calling it “amazing.”
Many on Twitter, however, had a field day commenting on the small turnout.”
Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/s…
Hosts: Cenk Uygur
Cast: Cenk Uygur
Published on Mar 29, 2017
The hippie spirit of Haight-Ashbury is alive and well in this documentary, shot in the heart of San Francisco during the days when hair was long, love was free and acid abounded. Featuring concert footage of Country Joe and the Fish and other bands, director Jack O’Connell’s quirky film captures the counterculture’s scope, from impassioned leaders such as Rev. Cecil Williams down to ordinary freaks on the street.
The film was invited to the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but because of student riots against capitalism in France, political leaders there feared civil war or revolution. The film was withdrawn from the Cannes Festival because it was too incendiary for that time.
http://www.jackoconnellfilms.com
Goldmill Group, 2015 – Biography & Autobiography –
At 14 years old, Christian Picciolini, a bright and well-loved child from a good family, had been targeted and trained to spread a violent racist agenda, quickly ascending to a highly visible leadership position in America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead gang. Just how did this young boy from the suburbs of Chicago, who had so much going for him, become so lost in extremist ideologies that would horrify any decent person? ‘Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead’ is a poignant and gripping cautionary tale that details Christian’s indoctrination when he was barely a teen, a lonely outsider who, more than anything, just wanted to belong. A fateful meeting with a charismatic man who recognized and took advantage of Christian’s deep need for connection sent the next decade of his life into a dangerous spiral. When his mentor went to prison for a vicious hate crime, Christian stepped forward, and at 18, he was overseeing the most brutal extremist skinhead cells across the country. From fierce street brawls to drunken white power rallies, recruitment by foreign terrorist dictators to riotous white power rock music, Picciolini immersed himself in racist skinhead culture, hateful propaganda, and violence. Ultimately Christian began to see that his hate-filled life was built on lies. After years of battling the monster he created, he was able to reinvent himself. Picciolini went on to become an advocate for peace, inclusion, and racial diversity, co-founding the nonprofit Life After Hate, which helps people disengage from hate groups and to love themselves and accept others, regardless of skin color, religious belief, or sexual preference.
(Google Books)
Published on Aug 16, 2017
According to one expert there will soon be a rash of major bank mergers, buckle up. Aida Rodriguez, Joe Sanberg and Steve Oh discuss on Our America. Learn more about Aspiration Bank here: https://www.aspiration.com/tyt?utm_source=tyt
Read more here: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/14/let-t…
“American banks are swimming in excess funds. They do not know what to do with this money so they are giving it away in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. At the same, time the irony is that the banks are just starting to report mediocre to disappointing second quarter earnings. So, on one hand, the resources necessary to support meaningful growth are being given away.
On the other hand, the need to use this money to stimulate growth has never been greater. Initial earnings reports for the second quarter suggest that the banks are not obtaining the hoped for margin increases and it is tougher to locate new loans.
The absurdity of this situation is not going to persist. The door to intra-industry acquisitions may be about to crack open. The first inkling of merger mania was seen recently when JPMorgan Chase was reported to be considering buying a payment systems company Worldpay Group in Great Britain.”*
August 15, 2017 (nytimes.com)
President Trump is not generally known as a student of history. But on Tuesday, during a combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in New York, he unwittingly waded into a complex debate about history and memory that has roiled college campuses and numerous cities over the past several years.
Asked about the white nationalist rally that ended in violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Trump defended some who had gathered to protect a statue of Robert E. Lee, and criticized the “alt-left” counterprotesters who had confronted them.
“Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Mr. Trump said. “So this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down.”
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the president noted, were also slave owners. “I wonder, is it George Washington next week?” Mr. Trump said. “And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?”
“You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” he added, comparing the removal of statues to “changing history.”
Mr. Trump’s comments drew strongly negative reactions on Twitter from many historians, who condemned his “false equivalence” between the white nationalists and the counterprotesters.
But “where does it stop?” — and what counts as erasing history — is a question scholars and others have asked, in much more nuanced ways, as calls have come to remove monuments not just to the Confederacy, but to erstwhile liberal heroes and pillars of the Democratic Party like Andrew Jackson (a slave owner who, as president, carried out Native American removal) and Woodrow Wilson (who as president oversaw the segregation of the federal bureaucracy).
“The debates that started two or three years ago have saturated the culture so much that even the president is now talking about them,” said John Fabian Witt, a professor of history at Yale, which earlier this year announced that it would remove John C. Calhoun’s name from a residential college.
Mr. Witt called Mr. Trump’s warning of a slippery slope a “red herring.” There have been, after all, no calls to tear down the Washington Monument.
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard who is credited with breaking down the wall of resistance among historians to the idea that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, said that the answer to Mr. Trump’s hypothetical question about whether getting rid of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson also meant junking Washington and Jefferson was a simple “no.”
There is a crucial difference between leaders like Washington and Jefferson, imperfect men who helped create the United States, Ms. Gordon-Reed said, and Confederate generals like Jackson and Lee, whose main historical significance is that they took up arms against it. The comparison, she added, also “misapprehends the moral problem with the Confederacy.”
“This is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,” she said. “This is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.”
As for the idea of erasing history, it’s a possibility most scholars do not take lightly. But James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that Mr. Trump’s comments failed to recognize the difference between history and memory, which is always shifting.
When you alter monuments, “you’re not changing history,” he said. “You’re changing how we remember history.”
Some critics of Confederate monuments have called for them to be moved to museums, rather than destroyed, or even left in place and reinterpreted, to explain the context in which they were created. Mr. Grossman noted that most Confederate monuments were constructed in two periods: the 1890s, as Jim Crow was being established, and in the 1950s, during a period of mass Southern resistance to the civil rights movement.
“We would not want to whitewash our history by pretending that Jim Crow and disenfranchisement or massive resistance to the civil rights movement never happened,” he said. “That is the part of our history that these monuments testify to.”
How the events in Charlottesville, and Mr. Trump’s comments, will affect the continuing debate over Confederate monuments remains to be seen. Mr. Witt, for one, suggested that white nationalist support might backfire.
He noted that it was the 2015 murder of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist that led to the removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds.
“The amazing thing is that the president is doing more to endanger historical monuments than most of the protesters,” he said. “The alt-right is producing a world where there is more pressure to remove monuments, rather than less.”
