'Dark MoneyIllegal Campaign Financing Saga Rages On: DUP Brexit Ads Targeted England, Scotland & Wales

The exposure flows from data released by the UK parliament Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee's inquiry into 'fake news'.

The DUP ads were arranged by "digital advertising, web and software development" company AggregateIQ, a Canadian firm with oblique connections to Cambridge Analytica. Adverts such as seen up to 4.7 million times by Facebook users in England, Scotland and Wales, but a mere 860,000 times in Northern Ireland.

Call for Entries
UK 'fake news' inquiry calls for end to tech middleman excuses, election law overhaul

Social media firms neither publisher nor platform, we need new term - MPs
[...]
"Social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a 'platform', claiming that they are tech companies and have no role themselves in regulating the content of their sites," the report said.

"That is not the case; they continually change what is and is not seen on their sites, based on algorithms and human intervention.

"However, they are also significantly different from the traditional model of a 'publisher', which commissions, pays for, edits and takes responsibility for the content it disseminates."

wut

The new category - which the MPs want to see defined by government in a white paper due in autumn - should establish "clear legal liability for the tech companies to act against harmful and illegal content on their platforms". This should include content that has been referred by users and content they identify themselves.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Big Auntie is Watching You update

reference
Exceptions to copyright

archived
Government giveth, and government taketh away

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Car, Gun, Money: Scandal Over Macron's Ex-Aide Grips France

"Alexandre Benalla never held the nuclear codes. Alexandre Benalla never lived in a 300-square-meter apartment....Alexandre Benalla was never my lover," the president said, addressing news reports and rumors about the allegedly favorable treatment given his aide.

ahem

"We shouldn't paralyze the country," said art gallery owner Franck Le Feuvre, who is among those who think the scandal is a waste of time. Benalla "is just a guy who was too zealous, and no one dared intervene so as not to offend the big boss."

alrighty then

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

EUR-schizophrenia, surely
Italy Reels From Racist Attacks, Rancorous Politics

Matteo Renzi, the former center-left Italian premier, called the attacks on people of "different skin colors" an emergency. He said it is no longer possible for anyone, especially those in government, to deny that.
[...]
[Silvini] added: "I want politicians and do-gooder journalists to remember that I don't judge people on the basis of their skin color, I divide them between good people and delinquents. There's a future for the first, not for the others!"

archived
"What this means, I believe, is that a country with its own currency would not be subject to the kind of self-fulfilling panic that is now arguably hitting Italy."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

EU asks Mali for details of key presidential vote

Not a single ballot was cast at 716 polling stations in Sunday's first round vote in the ["]volatile["] central region of Mopti and some parts of the north following threats and attacks by armed groups.

why?

There were a total of 23,000 polling stations nationwide.

French President Emmanuel Macron poses with leaders at an African Union summit, 2 July
Humanitarian situation in Mali deteriorating significantly: UN, 5 July
Bertelsan Nation Index

Three predictions about Mali's 2018 presidential election, 17 July
What conditions have changed? Four French soldiers were wounded.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

mask off
US official urges FYROM citizens to take part in new name vote

The country will vote in a Sept. 30 referendum on the agreement, which would change their country's name to "North Macedonia."

What could go wrong?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Bruegel | Is Europe America's Friend or Foe?

Since Donald Trump took office as US president, a new cottage industry in rational theories of his seemingly irrational behavior has developed. On one issue, however, no amount of theorizing has made sense of Trump: his treatment of America's oldest and most reliable ally.

luis_de_sousa@mastodon.social

German population with immigrant background reaches new peak in 2017
"Destatis defines someone with a "migrant background" as a person who was not born in Germany or who has at least one parent who is not a German citizen." Why?
'Little Britain' in Germany's Rhine region lives on borrowed time
" 'I was going to get dual nationality,' he says."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

EC | Michel Barnier, the European Commission's Chief Negotiator for the negotiations with the United Kingdom | An ambitious partnership with the UK after Brexit, 2 Aug 2018
< squint >

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

€88m pulled in by Revenue in offshore tax evasion haul

Almost 70% of the disclosures related to four jurisdictions. They were the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Spain.

real estate property rental income?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Too bad "A Victory for European Justice" slid from Top Diaries list.

Top Polish court halts disputed judge retirements, pending ECJ ruling

"The Supreme Court has doubts and is presenting its doubts to an outside independent organ that was set up according to EU treaties to resolve such doubts," Laskowski told reporters. The president's office immediately responded that the suspension had "no legal basis and has no effect on the president or any other organ".

Of course it did. I've seen that movie before.

The law allows the president, a PiS ally, to grant an extension to judges' terms, while the KRS, whose members include politicians, can give an opinion on who is allowed to hold a judicial position.

Next Quarter: Supranational Power in search of legislated sanctions against disobedience or voluntary obedience? You be the judge.

archived separation of powers
wait for it
Marbury vs. Madison

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Open Fiber granted 3.5 billion euro project financing for Italian fiber optic network
UniCredit, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Head of German secret service advised far-right Alternative for Germany - World Socialist Web Site

Hans-Georg Maaßen, the president of Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), met with former Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Frauke Petry several times in 2015, advising her how to avoid nationwide surveillance of the AfD by the German secret service and having her party designated as "right-wing extremist."

This was revealed in a recently published book, Inside AfD, by AfD dropout Franziska Schreiber. The 28-year-old author was a close colleague of Petry's and was chairperson of the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative in Saxony.

CS).ie | Gross Value Added for Foreign - owned Multinational Enterprises and Other Sectors Annual Results

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Ryanair pilots in the Netherlands back industrial action

Meanwhile, Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O'Leary has warned that he is prepared to move more jobs to Poland - or to cut jobs in any market if necessary - if strikes cause further damage to the company.

archived: 17 Jul - 31 Jul
German pilots back industrial action at Ryanair
Ryanair Cabin Crews in 4 European Countries Go On Strike + pilots in IE
Amazon workers strike in Germany, joining action in Spain and Poland

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Sterling Rises After Bank of England Hikes Interest Rates

The pound trimmed losses, rising to $1.3129 from $1.3081 [GBP:USD, 1:1.3129] before the decision, settling down 0.1 percent on the day. Against the euro the pound rose to a 12-day high of 88.62 pence [EUR:GBP, 1:0.8862] from a flat level [wtf] before the rate rise [to 0.75%] was announced.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

This, by @Steinernomics, is an excellent, excellent meme. pic.twitter.com/duZYFxsQTW

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) 3. August 2018

(I lied about being off Twitter)

437,465: total population estimate a/o 30 Sep 2016, the last year for which public data are available (published 20 Oct 2017)

Let Me Tell You What Forced Separation Feels Like

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Is Trump colluding with Democrats?

## Mental disorder is a communicable disease.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

GOP Donor Deal With Playmate Revealed in Unsealed Suit
$1.6M "hush agreement"*

to keep quiet about her 2017 affair with Broidy and the pregnancy she ended last year.
[...]
Shera Bechard's heavily redacted complaint, filed July 6, contains significant overlap with several other lawsuits involving President Donald Trump
[...]
Broidy made two of eight installments to Bechard, failed to make the third payment on July 1, 2018. That day, The Wall Street Journal ran a story about Broidy's missed payment.

Refund demanded

Broidy's attorney said there would no more payments made - leaving $1.2 million still owed to Bechard - because [her now-former attorney Keith] Davidson leaked information about the agreement to Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti, who in turn shared it on Twitter [!] in April 2018.

Bechard seeks the return of $140,000 she paid Davidson for his work, the remaining money due under her deal [!] with Broidy and damages against all defendants.

*USA Today locution today

Somewhere on earth John Edwards is crying.

#ProPublica#MeToo#Time'sUp analysis developing ...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Feds Want Onus to Reunite Immigrant Families on ACLU
"The ACLU would also be responsible for confirming the parent is who they say they are before they can be reunited with their child, according to the government's request."

"idgits"
Whenever I read these horror stories attributed to the "Trump Era," I recall (among other incidents) of this book, classified young-adult-fiction, House of the Scorpion (2002). I read it, when my child was in middle-school (US aged 9 - 13 years). Borrowed it from the public library. I liked to know what she was up to. I still do, to the extend her kidulty privacy allows.

Brief search indicates it has been translated only to Spanish. < reckless eyeballin' > I have recently seen a digital upload (EN) to the innerboobs. You can find it.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Malaysia's Flight MH370 was manipulated off course to its end | Straits Times |

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, missing since 2014, was probably deliberately steered off course and flown to the southern Indian Ocean, according to the Malaysian government's safety report into the disaster.

It is difficult to attribute the aircraft's changes in course to any specific system failure, according to the report released on Monday (July 30).

"It is more likely that such manoeuvres are due to the systems being manipulated," it said.

...
The report offered little to solve modern aviation's biggest mystery. There is nothing to suggest the plane was evading radar, or evidence of recent behavioural changes in the crew, it said.

Significant parts of the aircraft's power system were probably still working throughout the flight, according to the report.

Without the help of cockpit data recorders, search teams have only guessed what happened in the flight's final moments.

Analysis by the Australian government suggested MH370 ran out of fuel before plummeting - at as much as 25,000 feet a minute - into the water.

Other investigators speculated that a person was at the controls to the very end, gliding the plane into the ocean beyond the furthest limit of any search area.

New MH370 probe shows controls manipulated, but mystery remains unsolved (_link)pic.twitter.com/tJJwNH9qW2

— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) July 30, 2018

My coverage in a diary dated March 11, 2014

○ Mystery Deepens: Renegade Plane Crashed In Indian Ocean [Update-5]
○ More Contradiction, Less Certainties
○ WSJ Jon Ostrower with MH370 Info Updates

'Sapere aude'

Liberia: Poor Voter Turnout Overshadow Senatorial By-Elections
mid-terms under "volatile" conditions

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Zimbabwe: Breaking News - Zanu-PF Extends Lead [sort of]
Close of business 31 July ZEC still collecting parliamentary tallies for world. Illustrated precincts here. I'm thinking, wifi, nay ELECTRICITY, is not part of the protocol, but trash talk is the universal language of politicians.
Chamisa: "I WON!" Mnangagwa: "I WON!"
Observer teams give polls thumbs up
Zimbabwe: Deadly clashes erupt over election 'results manipulation'
Westworld + US Senator Jeff FLAKE criticizes ZEC, because the national assembly is for little people. 75% voter turnout, on average.


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Dying Alone in Japan: The Industry Devoted to What's Left Behind

Companies such as Tail Project are increasingly necessary in a country where each year more people die with no one to mourn them.
[...]
According to the Association of Cleanout Professionals, a Japanese trade group, its 8,000 member companies collectively bring in revenue of $4.5 billion a year. Over the next 5 to 10 years, the group expects its membership will double.
[...]
She recently turned down a 70-year-old man who asked to work for her and a 60-year-old woman who wanted to study under her. She felt neither would be able to handle the physical demands. Soon, the gatekeeping might become more rigorous. The Association of Cleanout Professionals is in discussions with the Japanese government to create an official clean-out certification for companies and individuals.

archived
Seoul government announces comprehensive measures to prevent lonely deaths

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

On Ecology
Hong Kong taps into the kindness of strangers
Happy Black History Y3 D214

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Denver Hospital on Lockdown For Hours Over Fears of Possible Ebola Outbreak

Last June [SIC], the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) reported a total 59 cases of hemorrhagic fever, which led to the deaths of 33 people.
[...]
The Ebola virus is transmitted to humans from animals [?!] and is estimated by the World Health Organization to have a 50-percent fatality rate [?!]. The last outbreak in the DRC was officially declared over, with no cases having been reported for 45 days.

UPDATE: July 2018 refugee camps at the Uganda border
differential diagnoses

archived
living lab

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

India Mortgaged? Forced-Fed Illness and the Neoliberal Food Regime
fat shaming!

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Week of 29 July 2018
Hot AFRICAN Air Brings Scorching Heat, Dust to Europe
[AFRICAN] Heat wave hits Japan
-- "Seoul's temperature was raised by a so-called foehn [AFICAN] phenomenon, in which the easterly wind moves westward over the Taebaek Mountains."
Hot and dry [AFRICAN] El Niño-fuelled summer on the cards out east after 'wintry' spring
B.C.'s [AFRICAN] heat wave is breaking maximum temperature records that have stood for over 100 years: report, illustrated
waitwut
97 injured as Mexican plane crashes at airport in HAIL STORM
AFP | Deadly heat waves to threaten China's northern breadbasket due to [AFRICAN] climate change

Wet-bulb temperatures take humidity into account, providing a better measure of potential health impacts. [...] Unless drastic measures are taken to limit the greenhouse gas emissions warming the globe, "the North China Plain is likely to experience deadly heat waves with wet bulb temperatures exceeding the threshold defining what Chinese farmers may tolerate," he added.

archived
"We will see BIBLICAL movements of people from the South to the North"
A 'biblical disaster'
Saharan dust registers highest levels in a decade

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

archived
east AFRICA: "the region's poor disaster preparedness"

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Jeremy Hunt mistakes his Chinese wife's nationality

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

What Netanyahu Doesn't Know About History

Note: "anti-Semitism", not "anti-Judaism".

The difference is significant. Anti-Semitism was part of the Race Theory, which claimed to be an exact science and was at the time at the height of its world-wide popularity.

This was not just an ideological fad, an invention of demagogues. It was a branch of science that was assumed to be as objective as, say, mathematics or geography. The basic assumption was that every race of human being, like every breed of horses or dogs, has specific characteristics, good and bad. [...] According to the German race theory, there is a master race, the Aryan, which originated in India and from which the Germans are descended, and there are inferior races, the "Semites" and "Slavs" for example. According to the race theorists, this is not a matter of opinion. It is solid scientific fact, a fact that cannot be changed.

Mississippi Statutory Segregation: Apartheid
Ahed Tamimi and Her Mother are Freed from Jail

One might say that Ahed and her siblings are honor graduates of the Bassem/Nariman Folk School, just as Rosa Parks was a graduate of The Highlander Folk School [SIC]. The common curriculum has to do with courageous persistence in the pursuit of justice. Moreover, our delegation was to discover that Rosa Parks is a revered figure in the Israeli Knesset -- well, at least in the modest conference room allocated to Arab members.

*memorable quote of a correspondent among the CA Cohort of Petty Landlords

archived
How should we define racism?
the candidate avoided German epistemology of the period

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Meet Karl and William Menniger, prairie authoritarians and authoritative analysts of "passive-aggressive personality disorder" (US- and UK-Eng. idiom, lip service).

[pp 4-5]The first official document about the disorder is a single Technical Bulletin issued by the U.S. War Department just as the Second World War was coming to an end. In 1945, Colonel William Menninger voiced concern about soldiers who were shirking duty by willful incompetence. They were not openly defiant, he conceded, but expressed their aggressiveness "by passive measures, such as pouting, stubbornness, procrastination, inefficiency, and passive obstructionism." Menninger saw their behavior as an "immaturity" and a reaction to "routine military stress" (Bulletin TB M.D. 203, dated October 19, 1945, as cited in Malinow, 1981, p. 123).
[...]
Having logged the quirks of servicemen, however, psychiatrists soon began applying the same charges virtually unaltered to civilians. As it readied the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for publication in 1952, the APA simply copied the relevant phrases from the military memo and gave them diagnostic codes. Indeed, it adopted the same practice for a large number of behaviors and ailments, making the temporary frustration of the U.S. War Department a basis for establishing lasting pathologies in the population at large.

Next Week: B. F. Skinner

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Yes, You Can Catch Insanity
untreated strep and the fake mind-body dichotomy

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

"Now they don't have a bloody choice ..."

A united Ireland women's hockey team plays the final against favorite The Netherlands. The Irish team has played a stunning tournament, well done team!

My phone has a headache... Thank you so much for all the support! We're going for gold 💪🏽💚🇮🇪🏆 #HWC2018

— Chloe Watkins (@Clowatkins) August 4, 2018

@hookhockey We'll be dancing on the streets of Dublin for the @irewomenhockey team!  I'm thrilled to throw a civic reception for our #hwc2018 finalists in Cityhall on Monday evening.  

SHARE & get the crowd there.#greenmachine

— Lord Mayor of Dublin (@LordMayorDublin) August 4, 2018

'Sapere aude'

The @NYTimes, in an oped, calling the "Greenhouse Effect Theory" an "idiocy" in 1971. They've been at this crap a long time it seems. / @NathanielRich

H/t @climatebrad Brad Johnson and his valuable archive for the info and the image: https://t.co/gkwanOav2P pic.twitter.com/qkzHnoUFDP

— Gaius Publius (@Gaius_Publius) 1. August 2018

I read this, Xenophon, Oeconomicus, some years ago (one of the Brads made a mountain of the word from some trivial Adam Smith quote), perhaps in the midst of the Panic of '08. The title was alluring. The innerboobs was full of ...confusion about the source of and remedies for westworld's economic ills. (There was a UID among the CA Cohort of Petty Landlords who insisted the cause lay in fetal alcohol syndrome AND the EUR.) Or maybe it was a few years later amid trash talk about stores of value in precious metals (PMs); I wanted to located historical volumes of silver (and its lethal smelt wastes) and recall what impetus (beside debasement of the coin) might have propelled continental adventurers to "discover" FRESH! BOUNTIFUL! deposits of gold (beyond "Asia Minor," Aegean, and Mediterranean). Anyhoo, I recovered an unintentionally funny part of a conspiracy to render current and future funding of epigenetic research utterly useless.

"Well, one day, Socrates, I noticed that her face was made up: she had rubbed in white lead in order to look even whiter than she is, and alkanet juice to heighten the rosy colour of her cheeks; and she was wearing boots with thick soles to increase her height. [3] So I said to her, "Tell me, my dear, how should I appear more worthy of your love as a partner in our goods, by disclosing to you our belongings just as they are, without boasting of imaginary possessions or concealing any part of what we have, or by trying to trick you with an exaggerated account, showing you bad money and gilt necklaces and describing clothes that will fade as real purple?"

Made a "friend" in Xenophon, ever the pragmatist (by comparison to his peers) I further discovered and digressed at length in investigation of that cohort.

So I did not until the other night examine the supposition that neither the Romans nor the Greeks suffered from lead poisoning. My investigation of (free) innerboob references is hardly exhaustive but seems immediately to offer more rhetorical than scientific, explanations as to why my contemporaries are as little bothered as Mr Franklin by toxicology and expediency which poisons what one holds to esteem.

(a) History of Toxicology and Environmental Health: Toxicology in Antiquity
A great portion of this concerns semantic purposes and application, or the ambiguity of the word: remedy or poison. I recommend its reading in order to fully appreciate the err exacting application of the reference text to calculate pathologies of lead poisoning and its incidence in the final 50 pages.

archived
Heavy Metals

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

She was placed in solitary confinement, is under round-the-clock surveillance... It is very cold in the cell where the Russian is kept, the food ration is meager. Unlike other prisoners, Maria Butina is deprived of the possibility to stroll outdoors" ...

Human Rights and International Law
The United States Is The Largest Prison Camp In The World

The United States Criminal Justice System Violates Human Rights

["]Søren Korsgaard["]

The US criminal justice system has a long history, continuing to this day, of systematically violating prisoners' human rights and, hence, international law. ...

Can't argue with that. Or can you?
In Shielding US from Legal Obligations, Kavanaugh Conflates International Law with Foreign Laws
whatever

archived
received wisdom, 2010
Paul Roberts, "economist" and WSJ editor, has finally gone off the rails, 2009

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.