Configuring a Qubes workstation was a new challenge for the team as we abandoned years of experience writing Infrastructure as Code for the cloud and started learning how to write #Salt #configuration. Salt (also know as SaltStack) is a management engine available by default in Qubes.
#cybersecurity #news #journalism #linux #technology #software #securedrop
https://gijn.org/stories/tracking-shell-companies-secret-owners/
Everything that is not encrypted is wiretapped and even if it is encrypted, the metadata is analyzed. Are there any secure, anonymous communication channels left in the digital age?
#question #journalism #leak #communication #security #surveillance #privacy #internet #encryption #messenger
#politics #journalism #haaretz #israel #gaza
However, over a week ago, other documentation of the incident surfaced on Al-Jazeera. It showed four men, not one, walking together on a wide path, in civilian clothing. There is no one nearby, only the ruins of houses where people once lived. This apocalyptic silence in the Khan Yunis area was shattered by a loud explosion. Two of the men were killed instantly. Two others were wounded and tried to continue walking. Perhaps they thought they had been saved, but seconds later, a bomb was dropped on one of them. You can then see the other one falling to his knees and then, a boom, fire and smoke.
This story is but one example, made public, of the manner in which Palestinians are killed by IDF gunfire in the Gaza Strip. The number of dead Gazans is now estimated to be over 32,000. According to the army, some 9,000 of these are terrorists.
A host of reserve and standing army commanders who have talked to Haaretz cast doubt on the claim that all of these were terrorists. They imply that the definition of terrorist is open to a wide range of interpretation. It’s quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of “terrorist” posthumously, at least by the IDF.
“In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate,” says a reserve officer who has served in Gaza.
In the heart of a kill zone
The combat zone is a key term. This is an area in which a force sets itself up, usually in an abandoned house, with the area surrounding it becoming a closed military area, but with no clear marking as such. Another term for such areas is “kill zones.”
“In every combat zone, commanders define such kill zones,” says the reserve officer. “This means clear red lines that no one who is not from the IDF may cross, so that our forces in the area are not hit.” The boundaries of these kill zones are not determined in advance, nor is their distance from the house in which the forces are situated.
- Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz • Mar 31, 2024
Middle East Eye
Myth-busting documentary finally breaks the stranglehold of Israel and its western media acolytes over the story of what happened on 7 October.
.
Tags: #news #media #corporate_media #journalist #journalism #propaganda #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #war_crimes #documentary #hamas #war_crimes #international_law #un #un_resolutions
The revolt among NBC personalities is extraordinary—and could force a real debate about all the ways the media enables Donald Trump and MAGA.
#GQP #TrumpVirus #truth #media #journalism #integrity #scruples
The weird thing about all these anti-abortion people taking cases to the Supremes is that they have brought up how stuff is dangerous to the grown-ups but never that it's dangerous to the fetus, which they've always claimed is a person. NEVER.
♲ Vox - 2024-03-26 19:56:17 GMT
Even the Supreme Court seems sick of its abortion pills case #journalism #media #newstodon https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/3/26/24112540/supreme-court-mifepristone-fda-alliance-hippocratic-medicine-abortion-pills
Ask social psychologist Phil Zimbardo about "bad apples" versus "bad barrels & barrel-makers".
IMM, Laurence O'Donnell is the embodiment of integrity, plus quite a good fit with the seeking of "context and perspective".
Even good barrels will occasionally produce bad apples, but bad barrels plus bad barrel-makers is what tips the scales toward evil.
If there are islands of responsible journalism that can speak truth to power, and ;even to apparent corruption of 'purity' in one's own ecosystem, I'm happy to see it and celebrate it. I'm thinking O'Donnell, Stephanie ("Let's get smarter" Ruhl), Wagner (who described #Muskvirus as a "free speech absolutist"), and others whose shifts I don't often see .... play on! Continue offering refuges of #truth.
#propagqnda #journalism #truth #MSNBC #LawrenceODonnell #RomneyMcDaniel #TrumpVirus #gaslighting #psychology
source: https://www.zachseward.com/ai-news-thats-fit-to-print-sxsw-2024/
So we've seen how ML models are at their best, for journalism, when recognizing patterns the human eye alone can't see. Patterns in text, data, images of data, photos on the ground, and photos taken from the sky. Of course, a lot of this has been possible for many years. But there are some equally inspiring uses of the hottest new machine-learning technology, LLMs, or generative AI. If traditional machine learning is good at finding patterns in a mess of data, you might say that generative AI's superpower is creating patterns. So let's look at a few examples of that in action for news.
Die #Presse berichtet gerade einhellig:
Da es sich um besetztes Land handelt müsste es sich doch um eine #Annexion handeln 🤔?
Hat Putin am Ende die Krim nur beschlagnahmt?
#framing #journalism #Völkerrecht #problem #nachrichten #manipulation #propaganda #medien #politik #Einordnung
https://newsie.social/@ZhiZhu/112026279928099587 ZhiZhu@newsie.social - @protecttruth
The #NYTimes once published an article saying that #Hitler wasn’t really that bad. He was just using #antisemitism as a way to attract followers & keep them excited about his #political campaign.
The NYTimes more recently published an article saying that #Trump isn’t really that bad. He is just using threats of #violence & #authoritarianism as a way to attract followers & keep them excited about his political campaign.
The Washington Post’s new #publisher and C.E.O., Will Lewis, was more clearly bearish on subscriptions. “That subscription-based model is now #waning and then will enter a more significant period of decline,” he said. “There’s very positive evidence of how news can be accessed and paid for in more innovative ways. There are day passes that are successful, there’s week passes, there are models like the #Guardian where you can make #donations. So there’s a whole new generation of paying user concepts. I’m pretty excited about it. I think it’s #newsroom 3.0.”
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/is-the-media-prepared-for-an-extinction-level-event
#news #newspaper #press #journalism #future #finance #economy #capitalism #society #problem
source: https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-last-days-of-julian-assange-in-the-united-states/
“I’m in this cell, and then the first thing I remember is one thing that Nelson Mandela said: that years pass like minutes in prison, but the minutes, they pass like years. And I remember I kept going to the door and looking at that digital clock. And I’m thinking that it’s been, like, several hours, but it’s been like 10 minutes.”
#torture #crime #justice #humanrights #wikileaks #usa #press #freedom #journalism #politics #news #uk
Media Lens
(...) Far from jumping through hoops ‘to be balanced and impartial,’ the BBC seems embarrassed even to associate Israel with its own crimes. A typical BBC headline read:
‘World Food Programme says northern Gaza aid convoy blocked’
Was there a landslide? Was Hamas playing politics with food aid? The headline should have read:
‘Israel blocks northern Gaza aid convoy’
(Text continues underneath the photo.)
.
Or consider the damning words of the Director-General of The World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who reported this month:
‘Grim findings during @WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern #Gaza: severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed…
‘The situation at Al-Awda Hospital is particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed.
‘Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only paediatrics hospital in the north of Gaza, and is overwhelmed with patients. The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children.’
The BBC headline reporting this story read:
‘Children starving to death in northern Gaza – WHO’
Did the crops fail? If Russia had caused child starvation in Ukraine, we can be confident the words ‘Putin’ and ‘Russia’ would have appeared front and centre in BBC reporting. (...)
On 29 February, a New York Times comment piece was titled:
‘Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children’
Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook commented:
‘Israel is choosing to starve Gaza’s children by blocking aid.’
On 5 March, a Reuters headline read:
‘As Gaza’s hunger crisis worsens, emaciated children seen at hospitals’
Author Assal Rad responded:
‘Gaza’s “hunger crisis” is not a natural phenomenon. Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza as a weapon of war, which is an act of collective punishment and a war crime.’ (...)
At least 118 Palestinian civilians were killed and at least 760 were injured after Israeli tanks opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks on al-Rashid street to the west of Gaza City. The BBC’s immediate headline reactions were full of mystery:
‘Israel-Gaza war latest: More than 100 reported killed as crowd waits for Gaza aid’ (...)
Clearly, then, it was a massacre; so why the lack of clarity? Why was the word ‘massacre’ not used to describe a textbook example of a massacre in a report supposed to verify and clarify the truth?
As we noted recently, the Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November, 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths. They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The group noted that:
‘The same pattern could be seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).’ (...)
Tags: #media #media_bias #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #the_guardian #reuters #new_york_times #israel #gaza #palestine #palestinians #war #war_crimes #starvation #massacre #aid #humanitarian_aid #weapons
This in an interesting bit of both #Politics and #Journalism. First, the politics. Let's start with the one from The Times :
https://archive.is/2024.03.10-213207/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2e7e0631-95da-4491-bb06-2f087ef46417
Under plans being developed by Starmer’s team, a series of new “mission boards” will be created to focus on the party’s pledges to grow the economy and reform public services. Starmer is looking at creating a powerful new executive cabinet that would make key decisions in advance of them being presented to the cabinet, which is seen as too unwieldy to have proper policy debates.
The so-called gang of four would include Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, Angela Rayner and Pat McFadden, who is set to become one of the most important figures in a future Labour government as the prime minister’s “enforcer”. Starmer also intends to create a powerful new policy delivery unit, reporting directly to him, which would concentrate on his priorities across Whitehall. He is considering appointing a senior business figure to run it.
For the first time, outside experts and business leaders could be included alongside civil servants and ministers on these boards and be involved in directly devising policy. Departments would be held to account by a powerful new policy delivery unit, reporting directly to Starmer, which could be led by a senior business figure rather than a full time civil servant.
Okay from this I'd probably mark myself down as interested-skeptical. Sure, central government is malfunctional and a smaller cabinet sounds like an obvious step forward (32 is too large). But four sounds like going too far in the other direction. It all sounds a bit... feudal ? Then again, bringing in outside experts sounds like a potential winner, depending on how they're selected and by whom.
Now for the journalism side of things we need to go to two pieces. The first is from the Financial Times :
https://archive.is/2024.03.10-205454/https://www.ft.com/content/bb249ae9-373a-4923-814e-c666455c28ca
It gives a few more details on the proposals but not much. What interests me is how it reports the, err, report :
The UK prime minister should break up the Cabinet Office and make big decisions with only a handful of key colleagues, according to a report set to be unveiled on Monday by former premiers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown... The review, which will be launched by former Conservative and Labour prime ministers Major and Brown, is the result of a year-long “commission on the centre of government” convened by the IfG.
Righto, seems pretty clear that it gets Gordon Brown's seal of approval then. Pretty unambiguous, or so it seems to me. But then we go to the final piece from Sky News :
https://news.sky.com/story/gordon-brown-likens-starmers-plans-for-slimmed-down-cabinet-to-rule-under-chairman-mao-13092705
Former prime minister Gordon Brown has drawn parallels between Sir Keir Starmer's plans for a four-person cabinet with revolutionary communist China. Mr Brown said he was "shocked" by reports that Labour intends to form a new four-person executive cabinet if it wins the next election.
Ooo...kay ? So this leaves me perplexed. Apparently Gordon Brown is one of the main front men in launching a report about ideas that he hates. I'm lost.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/10/24096762/kate-middleton-edited-photo-royal-family-possible-fake
Prior to Middleton’s admission, the photo raised some questions. It was certainly possible that it was just a shitty Photoshop used to stitch together several photos so that the best expression on each person’s face was used. (Children are notorious for being difficult to photograph.) But the job is so clumsy, particularly around the hands, that one had to wonder if the intent was to keep us all talking about Middleton’s prolonged absence.
"The closure of Télam would not only be illegal but also illegitimate," the Argentine #press unions said, regarding the agency that has about 700 employees and correspondents in all provinces.
#politics #justice #journalism #freedom #humanRights #problem #democracy
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