birminghammail--2019-02-05--How Google and Princes Trust are helping 4500 young people to work

How Google and Prince's Trust are helping 4,500 young people to work

Google has awarded the Prince's Trust £1.6million to help 4,500 young unemployed and underemployed people develop digital skills.  The multinational technology giant is also helping the Prince's Trust deliver online and face to face training for the two year project.  Google is committed to helping 100,000 people in the UK to find a job or grow their career directly through the skills they have learned through its Digital Garage programme which was first launched in Leeds in 2015.  It has helped 300,000 to date.  The partnership with the Prince's Trust was launched at the charity's centre in Birmingham on Monday (February 4).  Google UK and Ireland Managing Director Ronan Harris said: "It’s never been more important to open up possibilities for the people of the UK.  "I’m thrilled to announce this two year commitment as the next chapter of Google’s longstanding relationship with The Prince’s Trust.”  UK Chief Executive Nick Stace highlighted how important digital skills are to finding employment, with eighty per cent of jobs in 2030 expected to be different to the jobs of 2019.  The Prince's Trust's 2019 eBay Youth Index revealed that more than half 16 to 25 year-olds think social media create an overwhelming pressure on young people, on Tuesday (Feb 5).  Nick Stace said: “We are delighted to be able to announce our work with Google.org which will enable The Trust to support young people to develop the digital skills needed for the future economy and to pilot new ways of developing technology skills in young people.  "The Prince’s Trust and Google.org aim to prepare young people for careers that will improve their life chances and future earning potential, giving them an opportunity to transform their lives.”  Andy Street said: It’s so important for young people to possess the skills they need to shape their future.  "It is wonderful to see The Prince’s Trust and Google.org working together on such an invaluable programme opening up opportunities for people across the UK in an increasingly digital world.”  Learn more and sign up here


bonginoreport--2019-12-18--A Case on Google’s IP Theft is Headed to the SCOTUS

In the upcoming year, the Supreme Court will hear Google’s challenge to the ruling of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that the tech giant’s use of Oracle’s Java application programming interfaces (APIs) violated copyright law.  The issues in the case are not particularly complicated. Google copied thousands of lines of Java’s API code to implement its Android OS, and Oracle, which owns the code sued. The case is straightforward. Software code falls under copyright laws, which prohibit its copying or reproduction, with an exception that it may be reproduced for fair use. According to Supreme Court precedent in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, the replication of copywritten material is “fair use” only when the result is “transformative.” Google’s use of the code certainly wasn’t. Google just copied.  The Federal Circuit found that the code in Android “is the same as the purpose of the packages in the Java platform,” and further “Google made no alteration to the expressive content or message of the copyrighted material.”  Google argues that Java’s interface is effectively more like a language of shortcuts—universally used and uncopyrightable. Yet, just because something is widely used does not make it uncopyrightable. It was in Oracle’s interest for Java to be widely used, and Oracle offered the API scripts for free to app developers. Oracle only wanted hardware manufacturers and competing platform developers, such as Android, to pay a licensing fee. Under copyright law, Oracle had the right to do just that.  But Google has never let the law dictate their behavior. As one of its top lawyers admitted, "Google's leadership doesn't care terribly much about precedent or law" when it comes to copyright. Google took the Java code to help launch the Android mobile operating system—just as it was losing out in the then-nascent mobile search market. IPhones initially used Bing as its default search engine, which threatened Google’s search monopoly. Android, however, used Google as the default search engine.  In the ensuing years, mobile search has surpassed desktop. Android now enjoys a duopoly on smartphones in the U.S. and controls 75% of the global market, and Google started paying Apple billions of dollars to become the default search engine. Google has used Android to favor other verticals as well, like YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. In addition, Android ruthlessly invades consumer privacy—greatly strengthening Google’s data monopoly.  Android’s rise was necessary for Google to entrench its market power across search, advertising, data, browsing, email, and other platforms. And this dominance would not have been as easily or profitably achieved had Google paid the license for the APIs in the first place.  With breathtaking chutzpah, Google argues that its market dominance argues for overturning the Federal Circuit’s decision. Even as Google is facing bipartisan antitrust scrutiny, an antitrust investigation by 50 state Attorneys General, the House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Google claimed in its certiorari petition that the Federal Circuit’s ruling must be overturned because “control over interfaces gives rise to barriers to entry and implicates issues of competition and innovation that warrant this Court’s review.”  The Computer Communications Association of America—a lobbying organization which represents Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other Big Tech companies—wrote an amicus on the subject. It argued that “[a]llowing the Federal Circuit’s decisions in this case to stand will lead to the anomalous result of less competition in the software industry.” Even Microsoft, the company synonymous with software monopolies, opined in Google’s favor by discussing how loose software copyright regimes, “facilitat[ed] the entry of new competitor[s].”  There’s no question that overly strict copyright enforcement can restrict competition, particularly if intellectual property plays an essential role in the economy, and antitrust laws can require compulsory licensing of intellectual property to competitors at a fair price. However, as noted, Oracle licensed the APIs to all. Moreover, the script was not necessary to create an app-based operating system—Apple and Microsoft both managed to do so without it.  It doesn’t take a cynic to be skeptical of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon claiming to be concerned about facilitating competition. Google v. Oracle is not about helping small tech companies compete but letting Big Tech companies ignore the law to continue their dominance.


breitbart--2019-05-04--Donald Trump Jr Google Kowtowing to Leftist Demands by Blacklisting Hunting Ads

Donald Trump Jr.: Google 'Kowtowing' to Leftist Demands by Blacklisting Hunting Ads

Donald Trump Jr. called out Google’s policy that prevents advertising on hunting.  Trump Jr. wrote, “Oh look, now @Google is kowtowing to leftwingers & blacklisting hunters from advertising on their platform. But we’re really supposed to believe that Big Tech isn’t biased?”  Trump Jr.’s also supported Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Rep. Greg Gianforte’s (R-MT) letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding that they reverse their position banning hunting advertising. Read the letter to Pichai here. Daines and Gianforte’s letter arises as Montana’s Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) had its ad rejected by Google.  “We, therefore, demand you reverse these prohibitions and request that Google reexamine their policy interpretations on prohibiting hunting promotions,” the lawmakers wrote. “We also request a meeting to discuss the importance of Montana’s and the United States’ hunting heritage.”  In response to Google’s rejection of the RMEF ad, one Google employee claimed that the ad was considered “animal cruelty and deemed inappropriate to be shown on our network.”  Google has increasingly moved to ban firearms from its platforms as they crack down on free speech. In March 2018, YouTube decided to ban all videos which demo firearms and link to websites that sell firearms or firearm accessories.  In February 2018, Google decided to remove all search results for guns, including water guns, “Guns and Roses,” and “burgundy.” Google since restored many of the search results; however, search results such as “AR-15” and “revolver” still display no results.  Trump Jr.’s recent Twitter post arises as Facebook and Instagram decided to ban conservative figures including Paul Joseph Watson, and Laura Loomer for being “dangerous.”


jerusalempost--2019-11-19--Amnesty International calls on Spain to release two jailed Catalan leaders

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ipolitics--2019-02-20--House committee invites Facebook Apple Twitter Google CEOs to testify for fake news study

House committee invites Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Google CEOs to testify for ‘fake news’ study

In this image provided by Facebook, Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, applauds at the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012, from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares.  A House committee is asking senior leadership from Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon and several other digital platforms to testify for an international study on fake news.  The access to information, privacy and ethics said Wednesday that it has invited 11 executives from the biggest names in social media and digital operations to appear at the second meeting of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’ in Ottawa on May 28.  The invitations were sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operations officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former executive chair Eric Schmidt, Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and CEO of Amazon Web Services Andrew Jassy. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel were also invited.  Conservative MP and committee chair Bob Zimmer said he hopes that the executives will take advantage of the “unique opportunity to speak to representatives from around the globe about what their platforms are doing to ensure the privacy of our citizens.” He also said he wanted to hear what they were doing to stop the “spread of disinformation” and protect users from online manipulation.  “It is vitally important that we hear from these top executives so that we can get the answers we’ve been seeking,” he said in a statement.  “We will not be accepting testimony from regional representatives at this meeting, as previous experience has shown that their answers have proven to be frankly inadequate.”  Parliamentarians from nine different countries appeared for the inaugural meeting of the international committee in London, U.K. on Nov. 27, 2018. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declined several public requests to appear for the inaugural meeting.  The committee, though, quizzed Facebook’s president of policy solutions Richard Allan for several hours at the meeting about the social-media platform’s role in a range of international data-collection and disinformation-related scandals.


jerusalempost--2019-11-20--Google changes election ads policy to limit targeting


jerusalempost--2019-11-21--Google to let sites block personalized ads under California privacy law


lewrockwell--2019-11-09--Shocking Proof How Google Censors Health News

June 3, 2019, Google implemented a broad “core update”1 that in one fell swoop eliminated most Mercola.com pages from its search results. Virtually overnight, Google traffic to my site dropped by approximately 99.9%.  Considering Mercola.com has been the most visited natural health site for the last 16 years, it’s no great surprise that we were listed as one of the biggest losers in Google’s June algorithm update.2  I wrote about the ramifications of Google’s core update in two articles at the end of June 2019. In Part 1, I discussed the effects that the new search algorithm and updated quality rater guidelines is having on traffic to this site.  As mentioned in that article, Google’s “quality raters” are manually lowering the ranking of what they arbitrarily decide is undesirable content and burying even expert views if they think they’re “harmful” to the public.  In Part 2, I revealed how Wikipedia censors information and crafts narratives to benefit certain groups, and how Google raters use Wikipedia’s skewed and biased articles to ascertain the expertise and trustworthiness of any given author or website.  Today’s videos and article will show you just how clearly and deliberately Google has eliminated my articles from its search results. When Google Met WikiLeaks Julian Assange Best Price: $7.02 Buy New $11.10  After more than 15 years of being considered a highly relevant source of content, Google has removed all those high-ranked results, and replaced them with health information from advertising companies that promote junk food and drugs instead. Below, I’ll provide clear examples of how this works.  For many years now, I’ve been warning about how Google’s monopoly presents a clear danger to the free-flow of information, and health information in particular, seeing how holistic health is a direct threat to the drug industry. The fact that Google would eventually grow big enough to dictate what people see and don’t see was predictable, and we’ve now entered the era of blatant internet censorship.  A major reason for my success as a physician running my own practice was the ability to resolve extremely challenging cases of arthritis. One of my articles describing my arthritis treatment protocol generated over 1 million views, and was consistently a top search result when doing a Google search for arthritis.  Today, even if you use my name in a search for arthritis, you will not find that highest-ranked article. What you find instead is an article copied from my website — without permission — by a Croatian website operated by Zdravko Mauko, followed by a few articles about arthritis from my pet site, followed by a short piece about arthritis that I contributed to Creations Magazine.  The top search result for “Mercola arthritis” is a tiny, insignificant site that in no way, shape or form could possibly compete with Mercola.com. When you compare the ranking of our sites on Alexa, you find my site (as of October 8, 2019) ranks 9,002 in global internet engagement over the past 90 days.3  And that’s despite having been buried by Google since early June, as two years ago our overall Alexa ranking was 3,708. Compare this to our-arthritis.com, which has a ranking of 9,401,920.4 The first screen shot below is Alexa’s ranking for Mercola.com on October 8, 2019. The second screen shot is Alexa’s ranking for our-arthritis.com on that same day.  Another signal of trust and popularity is based on the number of sites linking in, or the number of sites that reference your own site. There are more than 11,000 sites linking to Mercola.com, and only 2 linking to our-arthritis.com. This is another example of Google’s purposeful censorship.  Despite the fact that our-arthritis.com plagiarized my entire article without permission, and have no credibility in terms of website engagement or ranking, it “owns” the search terms “Mercola arthritis” — above my own site!  Giving precedence to a site with a relevance ranking that is 1,000 times lower than my own would be bad enough, but it doesn’t end there. Even if you try to use a restricted search, which allows you to search for results within a specific website, Google has you barking up the wrong tree.  When doing a restricted search for “Mercola.com arthritis,” or “site: Mercola.com arthritis,” which theoretically should provide you with links to the most popular articles about arthritis within my site only, Google provides the top search results for arthritis on our veterinary website!  The entire first page of search results; 10 of 12 of the search results on Page 2; and 6 of 10 results on Page 3 direct you to our Healthy Pets website. How is that for relevance? Google has really outdone itself in “helping” users find relevant information, hasn’t it?  The same misdirection and obfuscation is happening on YouTube, which is owned by Google. If you do a YouTube search for “Mercola arthritis,” links to my many arthritis videos are blatantly pushed aside by irrelevant search results as evidenced in the screen shot below.  In short, it’s not a suspicion but a blatantly obvious fact that Google is doing everything it can to erase my online presence and hide the many tens of thousands of free articles and videos I’ve generated over the last 22 years.  Who are the Google-trusted health websites that now dominate health searches? WebMD and Healthline. But are they really the most trustworthy sources on the web? Their track records certainly suggest otherwise.  WebMD is owned by the global investment firm KKR & Co.,5 which also owned RJR Nabisco at a time when it sold junk food and tobacco products. As described in my 2018 article, “Google and WebMD Partner To Be Your Virtual Doctor,” KKR also owns Medscape and MedincineNet.com and, according to Fast Company,6 “is trying to corner the market on internet-based health information dissemination …”  WebMD, as you may recall, was in 2010 caught providing users with a fake depression screening test. The test — in which 100% of quiz-takers ended up having a “high likelihood of major depression” and were directed to talk to their doctor about treatment7,8 — was sponsored by drug giant Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta.  The quiz was in fact direct-to-consumer advertising masquerading as a valid health screen, and this is perhaps the most hazardous kind of drug advertising there is.  Then, in 2017, Google partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, launching a depression self-assessment quiz which, like WebMD before it, funneled querents toward antidepressant drugs.9,10 There simply is no doubt that Google is a proponent for and promoter of pharmaceuticals.  Likewise, WebMD — which pockets millions to promote drugs — is far from an independent source of health information. A quick search of WebMD articles on antidepressants and depression, for example, reveals a clear pattern: They contain ads for antidepressant drugs furnished by Google ad services and doubleclick — both of which are owned by Google.  Healthline, meanwhile, is owned by Red Ventures,11 a self-described advertising agency, and promotes things like McDonald’s home delivery services with its health articles. Isn’t that great? You can get junk food without ever leaving your couch, courtesy of one of Google’s most trusted health websites!  In short, WebMD and Healthline — two “health” sites that promote some very unhealthy choices — are prioritized in search results because they both use Google ad services. When traffic is shuttled to these sites, Google makes more money from advertising revenue.  WebMD’s privacy policy clearly tells you about its relationship with Google ads under its “Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies” section:12  Google Violates Its Own Policy by Promoting WebMD  As mentioned earlier, Google’s updated quality rater guidelines instructs quality raters to manually bury content deemed “harmful,” regardless of the expertise of the author.  But the guidelines13 also tell quality raters how to identify deceptive pages, which should be rated “lowest, regardless of intent,” and based on these guidelines, neither WebMD nor Healthline would pass the criteria. Here’s a screen shot of section “7.6.1 Deceptive Page Purpose” from Google’s Page Quality Rating Guideline dated September 5, 2019:14  According to Google, “articles to manipulate users in order to benefit a … business … or other organization … monetarily, or otherwise” is a deceptive page and should be given the lowest possible quality rating.  According to Google, any website that “claims to offer an independent review or share other information about a product, but is in fact created to make money for the owner of the website without attempting to help users” should be given the lowest possible quality rating. Do WebMD and Healthline profess to offer “independent” health information that in reality makes money for the owners and don’t really help users?  Likewise, “a webpage with a … title that has nothing to do with the content of the page” should be given the lowest rating, yet these websites provide “articles” that are in fact advertising, without telling readers that what they’re looking at is an ad, or that the test they’re taking is in fact a PR ploy designed to get them to inquire about a drug.  In short, Google’s quality rating guideline says one thing, but in reality, websites that should be dismissed are pushed to the top, and vice versa — simply because that’s what benefits Google and its advertising partners.  Now more than ever we must work together to share health information with others by word-of-mouth, by text and email. We have built in simple sharing tools at the top of each article so you can easily email or text interesting articles to your friends and family. No Place to Hide: Edwa... Glenn Greenwald Best Price: $2.00 Buy New $6.78  My information is here because all of you support and share it, and we can do this without Big Tech’s support. It’s time to boycott and share! Here are a few other suggestions:  Become a subscriber to my newsletter and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is the easiest and safest way to make sure you’ll stay up to date on important health and environmental issues.  If you have any friends or relatives that are seriously interested in their health, please share important articles with them and encourage them to subscribe to our newsletter.  Consider dumping any Android phone the next time you get a phone. Android is a Google operating system and will seek to gather as much data as they can about you for their benefit.  Use the internal Mercola.com search engine when searching for articles on my site.  Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:  Sign the “Don’t be evil” petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly  The Best of Joseph Mercola


liveaction--2019-04-16--Google ditches advisory council after protests over inclusion of pro-life Black female leader

(The Daily Signal) Believers in internet freedom and all the potential of the digital revolution should be deeply disheartened by Google’s spineless decision last week to abandon its artificial intelligence advisory council.  The reason Google dropped the idea? The inclusion on the council of The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kay Coles James.  James would have been a conservative voice on the council to offer balance and a different perspective than is usually heard in the left-leaning world of digital enterprises.  The presence of even one conservative was too much for the intolerant minions of Google, who rose up in protest, wrote slanderous petitions against her, and forced their management into retreat, just like they previously forced Google to abandon plans to work with the Pentagon.  Yet, James is exactly the kind of person who would have so much to contribute. Who in the male-dominated, techie world of Silicon Valley could match her insight and experience? Her perspective as a black, conservative, female intellectual and leader is distinctive, compassionate, and so rich that few people could match it.  James wrote in an op-ed this week in The Washington Post:  Being attacked is not new for me. As a black, conservative, pro-life, evangelical woman, I have spent most of my life being called names and being denounced for my beliefs.  In 1961, at age 12, I was one of two dozen black children who integrated an all-white junior high school in Richmond, Va. White parents jeered me outside the school, and inside, their kids stuck me with pins, shoved me in the halls, and pushed me down the stairs.  So, when a group of Google employees resorted to calling names and making false accusations because they didn’t want a conservative voice advising the company, the hostility was reminiscent of what I felt back then—that same intolerance for someone who was different from them.  In a world of intellectual honesty and good intentions, Google’s choice of James would have been brilliant.  In fact, having a multifaceted group with many points of view on the powerful, fast-moving technology of artificial intelligence is in itself a terrific idea.  Many of the problems currently presented by the ever-increasing speed of digital innovation and social media might have been mitigated by thoughtful, forward-looking analysis and discussion. What a shame this was not to be.  Unfortunately, there’s much to be concerned about in the digital sphere.  Internet freedom has long been U.S. government policy. Millions of U.S. dollars are devoted annually to creating circumvention technologies to enable citizens of China, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran access to uncensored information and ideas on the internet.  Yet, the Freedom House—whose annual report, “Freedom on the Net,” studies internet freedom globally—says the internet “is growing less free around the world, and democracy itself is withering under its influence.”  The 2018 report, issued Nov. 1, reported a decline in internet freedom for the eighth consecutive year.  Here in America, we have reached an impasse as the left seeks to dominate digital platforms, just like it dominates most of the media and academic institutions, brutally shutting down debate.  Tech titans like Google, Facebook, and Twitter end up undermining the very ideals on which they were founded when they cave to pressure from left-wing ideologues who cannot abide diversity of opinion.  Editor’s Note: This article was published at the Daily Signal and is reprinted here with permission.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-11-21--Wall Street Journal report: Google execs altering search results on abortion

A recent report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has revealed that, despite claims to the contrary, Google executives and engineers actively alter the search engine’s results in favor of big business and executives’ opinions, using blacklists and auto-complete to determine which web addresses appear at the top of the search. One of the common search topics the search engine seems to have modified the results for is the term abortion.  Google holds an astounding 90 percent of the market share for all search engines, including Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing. It is so widely trusted that it’s become a verb rather than a name in the English language, and it is the most highly trafficked website in the world, helping its parent company earn over $30 billion in annual profit, according to WSJ. Basically, Google holds the power to inform the world and therefore control what versions of the truth it uses to answer the 3.8 million queries typed into the company’s search bar every minute.  According to the report from WSJ, when Google first began some two decades ago, it was built on the idea that search algorithms would do a better job than human beings in wading through the information available on the internet and spitting out the best results for the search users. In both private meetings and during congressional testimony, top Google executives have said that algorithms are objective and autonomous. They are meant to be “unsullied by human bias or business considerations” according to WSJ.  READ: ORWELLIAN: Abortion supporters lobby Google to ban pregnancy center ads on searches… about pregnancy  “We do not use human curation to collect or arrange the results on a page,” reads the Google blog. Yet the corporation doesn’t share details about how exactly the algorithms work, which leads to obvious concerns.  WSJ found that Google “has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged.” They’ve done so as a result of pressure from businesses as well as the influence of outside interest groups and governments. And WSJ said that Google’s interference with authentic search results based on algorithms has “increased sharply since the 2016 election” including — despite denials — using blacklists to prevent particular websites from showing up in the search results.  When it comes to abortion, Google appears to take a pro-abortion stance. 39 percent of its first-page results for the term “abortion” direct users to Planned Parenthood’s website. In comparison, only 14 percent of Bing’s first-page results and 16 percent of DuckDuckGo’s first-page results send users to Planned Parenthood.  U.S. foreign law requires that certain sites — such as those showing child abuse or those with copyright infringement — don’t appear in search results, but Google seems to have gone beyond that. WSJ found that Google uses blacklists to determine what appears in the auto-complete function, in which suggestions appear as a person types into the Google search bar. They have done this to block certain information on controversial subjects. This makes some sense when it comes to preventing inappropriate information appearing when a person searches, for example, a celebrity name. But when it comes to topics such as abortion or immigration, the information that the corporation is allegedly blocking isn’t inappropriate; it just doesn’t line up with their opinions.  Take a look at these auto-complete examples for the search term “abortion is.”  The results for Google are shockingly different from those of the three other search engines. When using the search term “abortion,” DuckDuckGo’s top search result is an ad for the pro-life group Alliance Defending Freedom. Yahoo and Bing results were varied. But on Google, the first search results for “abortion” tell the searcher where they can go to have an abortion, along with Planned Parenthood’s website — which was not tagged as an advertisement as Alliance Defending Freedom was tagged on DuckDuckGo.  A 2016 internal investigation at Google found that up to 25 percent of its search queries returned misinformation, according to WSJ and a company executive. That works out to about two billion searches each year that return what the corporation says is misinformation – though the company doesn’t want to actually define what that means. Google formed a team known as “Project Owl” in which engineers worked to push certain webpages down in the search results based on its “authoritativeness.” All of this increases concerns about how Google influences and determines what their search users see.  Altering algorithms isn’t the only act that signifies the Big Tech corporation’s desire to push abortion. In May, the company announced it would be forcing abortion-related ads to state whether or not a facility provides abortions. In July, a leaked document showed that Google interfered in Ireland’s 2018 abortion referendum by blacklisting certain terms from search results. And among other controversial news regarding Google and abortion, a top executive there was caught on camera in September assaulting a pro-life activist.  “It’s very convenient for us to say that the algorithms make all the decisions,” one Google executive told WSJ. However, evidence is showing that this simply isn’t true, and that speaks volumes about the company’s abortion stance and whether or not the company is truly untarnished by human biases as it claims.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!


liveaction--2019-12-24--Google is working to help people with Down syndrome to utilize voice assistants

Technology is advancing more than ever, and part of that includes voice technology. “Smart” technology has been implemented into many aspects of every day life — cars, TVs, cell phones, even the lights, fans, and air conditioning in people’s homes — and with that comes the ability to turn something on or off using just your voice. But voice assistants often can’t understand people with Down syndrome. Now, Google is partnering with the Canadian Down Syndrome Society to change that.  Project Understood has asked for adults with Down syndrome to participate by recording phrases and donating them, therefore improving voice technology to better understand the unique speaking patterns of people with Down syndrome. “With the help of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society we were able to sample a small group to test whether there were enough patterns in the speech of people with Down syndrome for our algorithm to learn and adapt,” Julie Cattiau, a Google project manager, told the Disability Scoop. “It’s exciting to see the success of that test and move into the next phase of collecting voice samples that represent the vocal diversity of the community. The more people who participate, the more likely Google will be able to eventually improve speech recognition for everyone.”  READ: People lie about children with Down syndrome, like my son, to encourage abortion. Here’s the truth.  Due to low muscle tone and differences in facial structure, people with Down syndrome often need speech therapy as children, and as adults, still have different speech patterns than the typical population. This means voice assistants like Siri and Alexa miss approximately every third word said by people with Down syndrome, according to Disability Scoop. The reason is simply because no one has yet worked to get the data needed — which is what Project Understood is looking to change. And as Project Understood explained, this is especially disheartening, as people with disabilities are often the people who can benefit the most from voice technology.  Voice interfaces have now been sold in millions of products ranging from smartphones, to vehicles, to home devices. These systems offer endless possibilities for enhanced living. But as it currently stands, the technology is not optimized for use by people who would benefit from it the most: people with disabilities. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) can greatly improve the ability of those with speech impairments to interact with everyday smart devices and facilitate more independent living. However, these systems have predominantly been trained on ‘typical speech’. But not all human speech is the same.  “For most people, voice technology simply makes life a little easier,” Laura LaChance of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society told Disability Scoop. “For people with Down syndrome, it has the potential for creating greater independence. From daily reminders to keeping in contact with loved ones and accessing directions, voice technology can help facilitate infinite access to tools and learnings that could lead to enriched lives.”  People with Down syndrome are still thought of by many people to be incapable of leading independent lives. Yet with advances in science and medicine, they are living longer, healthier lives, and are able to accomplish more than ever before. The issue is not that people with Down syndrome are not capable; it’s that there are barriers before them that the typical population does not face. With initiatives like Project Understood, those barriers are a little bit closer to being knocked down — giving people with Down syndrome even more chances to lead the kind of lives most people take for granted.  “Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!  Stories like the one you just read transform hearts and minds. For example, one of our followers, Ross, messaged us and commented: “I began to question my pro-choice views after reading articles about Live Action…Live Action is primarily responsible for my becoming Pro-Life through their well-thought-out, scientific information and the emotionally and uplifting stories of real people with real experiences in saving the lives of their children regardless of what others might say.” Knowledge is power and CAN open eyes to SEE the truth. And, YOU can provide the spark to transform someone’s mind, just like Ross. The DAILY publishing at Live Action News is only made possible through generous people, like you, who give $5, $10, or $25. Your gift today will not only keep these stories coming in 2020, but also help us open more eyes and change minds to be fully pro-life and save lives. Will you join us in creating a world where the killing of preborn children is unthinkable and support Live Action News by making your tax-deductible gift today? DEFEND PREBORN CHILDREN IN 2020   MAKE YOUR GIFT TO LIVE ACTION


mercurynews--2019-02-28--Google workers take fight against forced arbitration to Washington

Google employees who have seen some success in pressuring their company into ending forced arbitration joined lawmakers in Washington as they introduced related federal legislation Thursday.  “Now, time is up for all corporations, and all their subsidiaries and suppliers, across all sectors,” said Tanuja Gupta, a program manager for Google Search engineering, at a news conference to announce the bills in the nation’s capital. “We come here today not as employees of the same company or colleagues in tech, but as 6 of the 60 million workers in America denied access to justice.”  One bill addressing the issue is the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, by Reps. Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, and Bobby Scott, D-Virginia. It takes aim at not just employers but at businesses that bury forced arbitration in the fine print. The FAIR Act wants to give employees and consumers the right to take employers and businesses to court when necessary.  “Last week, Google announced it is getting rid of forced arbitration,” Johnson said at the news conference. “That’s good news, but we need to make sure more companies are doing just that.”  The Googlers and lawmakers were joined at the news conference by other Americans who have been forced into arbitration. They included former Chipotle workers, a DirecTV customer, an advocate for nursing home patients, a Navy reservist who was fired by his company because of his deployment, survivors of sexual harassment and others.  Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox news anchor who sued her Fox boss, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment in 2016, said she has talked to thousands of women who have shared their stories — and stories of being silenced by mandatory arbitration agreements — since then.  “Courage is contagious,” Carlson said at the news conference. “We’re seeing the effect of people speaking up,” she added, ticking off the names of tech companies that have changed their policies on forced arbitration in sexual harassment cases, such as Microsoft, Uber, Facebook and others. “Action is also contagious.”  Google’s announcement last week that it would end all mandatory arbitration for employees came after months of pressure from groups such as Googlers for Ending Forced Arbitration. However, the employee group pointed out that the company’s changes, which also includes ending the requirement that employees waive their right to filing class-action lawsuits, don’t go far enough because they don’t apply to temporary and contract workers.  The group is now calling on all workers to stand up for their rights to sue, including by urging their lawmakers to co-sponsor the legislation unveiled Thursday.  Other bills mentioned at the news conference include the the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, the Restoring Justice for Workers Act and the Justice for Servicemembers and Veterans Act.  FTC zooms in on tech with new antitrust task force Why this proposed San Jose hotel has gotten even bigger Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, wrote the bill that seeks to protect service members’ employment rights. He called the widespread use of forced arbitration a system that’s “secret, rigged, unfair and un-American. … We’re not willing to wait for corporate America to do the right thing.”  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement slamming the bills, saying they would only benefit lawyers.  “For many Americans, arbitration has proven to be a better path to justice for nearly 100 years because it is simpler, fairer, and faster than going to court,” said Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. She said eliminating arbitration “is simply a forced litigation scheme.”


mintpressnews--2019-01-25--Amnesty International Should Oppose US Economic Sanctions and Incitement of a Military Coup in Venez

Amnesty International Should Oppose US Economic Sanctions and Incitement of a Military Coup in Venezuela

The following letter to Amnesty International was signed by various writers, academics and political activists including Australian filmmaker, John Pilger; Canadian journalist and author, Linda McQuaig; former UN independent investigator on Venezuela, Afred de Zayas; the Venezuela-based academic Steve Ellner and journalists working the reader-supported media outlet VenezuelAnalysis.com.  Last year, Amnesty International was asked if it denounced US-led economic sanctions on Venezuela and remarks by various US officials (Trump, Rex Tillerson) encouraging a military coup in Venezuela. Amnesty said it took no position on these matters.  Now the US has “recognized” a Venezuelan legislator as Venezuela’s new president. This strategy has been applauded by prominent Venezuelan opposition members as a way to prevent Venezuela’s state oil company from getting paid for oil sales to the United States without the authorization of the “new government” named by Trump. It amounts to an effort to impose an oil embargo on Venezuela aimed at driving Venezuela’s government from office through a military uprising.  US-backed military coups in the Western Hemisphere have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the post WWII era. In this century alone, a US-perpetrated coup in Haiti (in 2004) cost thousands of lives.  Before this recent escalation, US financial sanctions have already cost the Venezuelan government over $6 billion USD in lost revenue since August of 2017 in an economy that was only able to import $11.7 billion USD worth of goods in 2018. As US economist Mark Weisbrot noted the sanctions “do actually kill people by depriving them of access to medicines”  Amnesty has denounced governments and even non-state actors for saying things that encourage attacks on vulnerable people. Amnesty should similarly object when the world’s most powerful government produces a steady stream of comments that make it crystal clear a military coup in Venezuela would be welcome – as indeed the Bush administration made clear in 2002 when it welcomed the dictatorship of Pedro Carmona. This kind of support for a military coup is, just like other statements that Amnesty has previously denounced, aiding and abetting of human rights violations. For example Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just stated the following on January 10.  Amnesty should change its position. US economic sanctions and remarks like these from US officials should be strongly opposed.  Top Photo | Activist Medea Benjamin with the group Code Pink, heckles remarks by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during an extraordinary session about the crisis in Venezuela held by the Organization of American States, Jan. 24, 2019 in Washington. Luis Alonso Lugo | AP  Joe Emersberger is a Canadian engineer and UNIFOR member with Ecuadorian roots. He writes primarily for Telesur English and Znet.


mintpressnews--2019-03-01--Amnesty International is Peddling Trumps Regime-Change Propaganda Against Venezuela

Amnesty International is Peddling Trump’s Regime-Change Propaganda Against Venezuela

Amnesty International‘s reports, by their nature, require readers to trust their honesty and impartiality. But there is ample reason not to trust them. Because Amnesty has ignored grave human rights abuses in plain sight in Venezuela while demonizing supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.  Shortly after meeting with Juan Guaido (whom Donald Trump and a new Iraq-style Coalition of the Willing have anointed as Venezuela’s interim president), Amnesty put out a report that reads like a barely disguised attempt to reinforce, from a ‘human rights’ angle, the military threats against Venezuela from Trump and his henchmen.  Amnesty’s allegations about Venezuela are serious and, if true, deserve condemnation. But there are numerous reasons to question the group’s honesty, impartiality, and public statements.  Somebody should ask Amnesty, for example, to list the countries which are “genuinely concerned”. How many Saudi–arming countries like the US, UK, Canada, and France are on that list?  As Amnesty released this report, the threat of a US military attack on Venezuela disguised a “humanitarian aid delivery” could not be more obvious. Never mind that Venezuela is, in fact, receiving foreign aid with authorization from the Maduro government. US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio have repeatedly made Mafioso-like threats against Venezuela’s military and Maduro. Trump himself has been repeatedly threatening a military “option” since 2017 (the year he reportedly asked “Why are we not at war with Venezuela?”).  At the same time, Amnesty has refused to denounce Trump’s financial sanctions which have been in place since August 2017 and whose impact on the entire economy has been crippling. By now, the sanctions have cost Venezuela’s government well over $6bn in revenues in an economy that imported $11.7bn in goods in 2018. Before the deep and sustained collapse in oil prices (and oil production, which nose-dived as the sanctions began), Venezuela’s economy had been importing about $2bn a year in medicines.  It is important to remember that, in Venezuela’s case, Amnesty has been very explicit in pointing to economic problems as human rights abuses. Last year, when they wrote to me refusing to denounce Trump’s sanctions, Amnesty said:  As I’ve noted at The Canary, Amnesty has now updated its position on Trump’s sanctions. It absurdly asks Trump to please be careful and “monitor” the impact of new sanctions that he imposed in January. The new sanctions directly cut off revenues that the Venezuelan government obtained from sales to the US. Amnesty’s continued refusal to acknowledge that a devastating attack on the Venezuelan “right to health and food” has been ongoing since August 2017 is appalling. And that alone is an excellent reason to doubt the honesty and impartiality of their work on Venezuela. Because any credible human rights group would demand an immediate end to all the economic sanctions Trump has imposed.  Amnesty also stated in its latest report that:  There’s no doubt that Venezuela’s security forces have committed crimes. The Maduro government has conceded as much. And Venezuelan police officers were arrested for crimes perpetrated during the violent protests of 2017. In June 2017, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López publicly warned security forces in remarks broadcast on state TV that he didn’t “want to see one more national guard perpetrate an atrocity”. Those protests were the fifth US-backed effort to oust the government by force since 2002. Trump is now leading the sixth.  It’s also important to remember that Venezuelan security forces have confronted a very high homicide rate (since long before the current government came to power) and police officer death rate. At the same time, the country has been plagued by violent US-backed protesters for years, who have done things like burn Afro-Venezuelans alive in the streets and murder police officers. And today, it faces the very grave threat of US invasion that would install the most violent opposition groups into power.  We can only imagine how security forces in a country like the UK would behave under the above conditions. Young men have been sent to prison in Britain, for example, simply for writing Facebook posts that advocate riots. I made some of these points last year in response to a similar UN report that was hyped by Reuters.  Venezuela’s very real homicide problem (and violent US-backed opposition problem) could indeed allow security forces to pass off extrajudicial executions as “fighting crime” or as self-defense. But it can also allow apparently partisan groups like Amnesty to distort the situation in support of Trump’s regime-change agenda.  Again, the “limited state programs” would be the ones Trump has been viciously attacking through sanctions since 2017. Also notice how Amnesty casts as thugs the organized poor people distributing food to millions of people – up to 60% of households according to an opposition-aligned pollster (Datanálisis).  As George Ciccariello-Maher explained in We Created Chavez, the history of poor people organizing and arming themselves (quite understandably) for self-defense in Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods goes back decades. It’s not new.  It is Maduro’s supporters in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside, however, who – armed or not – will be violently targeted if the US-backed opposition takes power; especially if they do so in a coup or through a US invasion. Amnesty appears to have little concern about “stigmatizing” them, though, and negligible concern about Trump’s attack on their “right to health and food”.  All of the reasons above make a powerful case for questioning the integrity and objectivity of Amnesty when it comes to Venezuela. And for the sake of peace and justice, we should hold Amnesty to much higher standards.  Top Photo | A supporter of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro sits next to an image depicting the late president Hugo Chavez during an anti-intervention march coinciding with the anniversary of the deadly 1989 social uprising against neoliberal measures known as the Caracazo, in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 27, 2019. Ariana Cubillos | AP  Joe Emersberger is a Canadian engineer and UNIFOR member with Ecuadorian roots. He writes primarily for Telesur English and Znet.


mintpressnews--2019-05-24--Amnesty International Hangs Julian Assange Out to Dry or Possibly Just Hang

Amnesty International Hangs Julian Assange Out to Dry — or Possibly Just Hang

NEW YORK — Journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been hit with 17 Espionage Act charges by the United States. If convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 170 years in prison or even face the death penalty.  A conviction would also set a dangerous precedent for journalists in the U.S. who publish classified material. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wrote that “This case will decide the future of media.”  The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.” Nonetheless, the prosecution of Assange continues undeterred.  With so much at stake for reporters and with Assange’s life on the line, one would expect leading human-rights NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to be going to bat for Assange. Yet his predicament and its broad implications are evidently of little concern to Amnesty International, which wrote a letter to the Julian Assange Defence Committee (JADC) telling them that Amnesty is not actively working towards Assange’s defense.  “According to Amnesty International, neither Assange nor [Chelsea] Manning are ‘prisoners of conscience,’” Laura Tiernan reports.  Peter Benenson was the founder and leader of Amnesty International until a scandal regarding Amnesty’s direct cooperation with the U.K. Foreign Office and Colonial Office forced him to step down. MintPress News has covered the early days at Amnesty, when the NGO would receive “discreet support” from the U.K. government.  Another co-founder, Luis Kutner, informed for the FBI on Black Panther Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton — a move that got the young leader killed by the Bureau shortly afterwards.  Amnesty even called on the UN Security Council to send Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court as the push for regime change was heating up, and the same month NATO ultimately invaded the country. And now Amnesty has also toed the U.S. imperial line on Venezuela.  Maxine Walker of the JADC wrote to Amnesty:  [Assange’s] name appears not to have been mentioned in your material for World Press Freedom Day, an extraordinary omission given his current situation and that Julian Assange was awarded the 2009 Amnesty International U.K. Media Award for New Media.” The U.K. government has ignored, indeed poured scorn, on the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention 2015 ruling that ‘the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange is arbitrary and in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’”  When Tiernan inquired of Amnesty why they do not consider not just Assange, but also Manning, a ‘Prisoner of Conscience,’ she writes:  Manning perfectly fits the definition of a political prisoner. She is currently jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury in its investigation of Assange. Even prior to receiving a subpoena in the case, Manning opposed grand jury processes on political grounds. “I can either go to jail or betray my principles,” Manning told reporters. “I would rather starve to death than change my opinion.”  Feature photo | Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody, April 11, 2019. Victoria Jones | PA via AP  Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the United States’ policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.


mintpressnews--2019-11-25--Amnesty International Toes US Gov’t Line in Urging Unrest in Iran

The U.S. government has lent its full support to anti-government protesters in Iran. “The United States is with you,” announced Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Vice President Mike Pence was similarly emphatic.  Meanwhile, President Trump offered condemnation of the Iranian government’s actions; “Iran has become so unstable that the regime has shut down their entire Internet System so that the Great Iranian people cannot talk about the tremendous violence taking place within the country,” he tweeted. Yet even as the U.S. government was announcing its endorsement of events, their Iranian adversaries were claiming victory over the demonstrators. At a cabinet meeting in Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani claimed,  Widespread, peaceful protests originally flared up on November 15, after an unexpected overnight tripling of fuel prices. However, these were soon overtaken by more militant, violent confrontations with security forces. Over a dozen gas stations and more than 70 banks are reported to have been destroyed. The proceeds from the price hike were reportedly intended to subsidize low-income Iranians, although the reasons for the increase were not explained, leading to a public outcry.                 Amnesty International reports that at least 115 protestors have been killed in the violence, and puts the blame squarely on Iranian security forces, suggesting the final death toll may be “much higher.” The Iranian government rejects these figures, claiming only a handful of people have died, including at least four members of government security forces at the hands of rioters. Inside the country, the Internet was shut down for over a week, adding to the confusion.  Across the Western media, the events have been described as a government “crackdown” (e.g. BBC, CNN, LA Times). And for Fox News, the fact that the Iranian government is trying to “squash” the “massive protests” is proof that it is losing its grip and is afraid of its own people.  Yet others have not seen it like this. Mohammad Morandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, draws a distinction between what he sees as the legitimate, peaceful, anti-fuel increase protests and the “very well organized and very violent” demonstrators who immediately destroyed banks, ambulances and public services, “egged on” by international media such as the government-subsidized BBC and Voice of America.     Others have criticized Amnesty for failing to be a neutral actor in the conflict racking the Islamic Republic. Ben Norton, Assistant Editor of the GrayZone, for instance, condemned Amnesty researchers for appearing on Saudi-backed media and on U.S. government mouthpiece Voice of America, both of which have been pushing for regime change in Iran for some time. Norton claims that Amnesty is becoming little more than a “tool of US imperialism.”  In a tweet condemning the Iranian government’s harsh response to the protests, Amnesty rather ominously announced that “we urge states to bring Iran’s authorities to account.” It is difficult to see what states, except the United States, that Amnesty would be calling on to discipline Iran, especially seeing as the U.S. is already conducting a campaign of economic war against the country in the form of sanctions.  The United States government has long attempted to foment popular uprisings and hijack or manipulate protests against the Iranian government. As far back as 2009, the influential Brookings Institute think tank published a report with chapters dedicated to “supporting a popular uprising” and “inspiring an insurgency.” More recently, NBC News reported that a new study from Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for a New America Security arguing that the United States military should be indefinitely deployed in the region “to counter Iran,” raising the possibility of permanent war. Earlier this year MintPress News contributor Ali Taj worried that a U.S. conflict with the Islamic Republic is “virtually inevitable” and that any confrontation could be the spark that ignites a hot war.  President Rouhani announced that his government had emerged victorious from the situation, claiming that violence was a “scheme pre-planned by…the Zionists and the Americans.” To what extent, if any, the violence was indeed orchestrated from abroad is impossible to tell, but what is certain is the Trump administration will be disappointed that the government remains in power.  Feature photo | Demonstrators chant slogans during a pro-government rally denouncing last week’s violent protests over a fuel price hike, in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 25, 2019. Ebrahim Noroozi | AP  Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.


motherjones--2019-01-22--Google Facebook and Microsoft Sponsored a Conference That Promoted Climate Change Denial

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Sponsored a Conference That Promoted Climate Change Denial

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.  All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.  Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.  In the LibertyCon exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster.  In a Saturday presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,” he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”  He insisted that when he hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.  Rossiter also claimed that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas “improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water. “I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he declared.  “I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.  Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing, “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”  The presence of the tech sponsors at a libertarian conference is not itself unusual, as governments around the globe move to try to regulate social media and online privacy. Tech companies see libertarians as natural allies in the fight against regulation. Indeed, Google sponsored two different sessions at the conference, one on why “permissionless innovation” needs to be defended and another on whether the government will “continue to let the Internet be awesome.” But the companies’ underwriting of a conference with a climate denier on the schedule shows the hazards of trying to advance a policy agenda through interest groups without also supporting their fringe elements.  The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.  A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says, “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.  A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying, “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws. As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors.”  On Wednesday, Microsoft said in a statement, “Our commitment to sustainability is not altered or affected by our membership or sponsorship of an organization. We work with many groups on technology policy issues and do not expect or anticipate that any organization’s agenda will align to ours in all policy areas.”


motherjones--2019-12-17--Another Google Employee Says They Were Fired for Backing a Union

A Google employee says she was fired for supporting union-organizing efforts, just one week after a federal investigation into union-busting at the company was publicly confirmed.  The former employee, Kathryn Spiers, wrote in a blog post published on Tuesday morning that she had been fired on Friday for creating an internal pop-up notification that let her fellow employees know about their union organizing rights when visiting the website of IRI Consultants, a company contracted by Google to help its anti-union push.  Spiers is also filing an unfair labor practice claim with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that her firing was an “attempt to quell Spiers and other employees from asserting their right to engage in concerted protected activities.”  “Google’s actions are the antithesis of the freedoms and transparency it publicly touts and violates Ms. Spiers’ and other Google employees’ rights to engage in concerted activity protected under the National Labor Relations Act,” reads a draft of the claim provided to Mother Jones.  Spiers’ pop-up notification was powered with a few lines of code, and simply read: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”  Spiers says these kinds of notifications are normal for Googlers to create and that doing so was technically a part of her job. She noted that there’s even precedent for Googlers to use programmed notifications in support of organizing activity.  “This kind of code change happens all the time. We frequently add things to make our jobs easier or even to just share hobbies or interests,” Spiers wrote. “For example, someone changed the default desktop wallpaper during the walkout last year so that the Linux penguin was holding a protest sign. The company has never reacted aggressively in response to a notification such as this in the past.”  Spiers alleges that the process prior to her being fired included an “extremely aggressive and illegal” interrogation by Google.  “They wouldn’t let me consult with anyone, including a lawyer, and relentlessly pressured me to incriminate myself and any coworkers I had talked to about exercising my rights at work,” Spiers wrote.  Spiers told Mother Jones that during parts of the investigation Google denied her requests to have an attorney present, despite Google’s own staff attorney being there. (A Google spokesperson said that they were not familiar with the details of Spiers’s exit interviews.)  Spiers believes her firing is part of Google’s alleged broader anti-union agenda. At the end of November, the company fired four workers over what it said was data security violations. The workers claimed they were actually dismissed for working to organize a union.  “With these firings, Google is ramping up its illegal retaliation,” workers wrote in a statement at the time. “This is classic union-busting dressed up in tech industry jargon, and we won’t stand for it.”  Bloomberg reported that the company has created a tool to flags large employee gatherings organized on internal calendars, which many believe is an attempt to crackdown on organizing.  The New York Times reported in November that Google had hired IRI Consultants, a firm with a history of working to quell unionization efforts. The company’s move followed an uptick in worker activism after employees spoke out about the company’s Department of Defense contracts and protested its handling of sexual harassment allegations lodged against several male executives.  Spiers, who is a trans woman, also said that she believes Google is targeting its queer employees.  “It is incredibly bizarre that three of us have been trans-women and four of us LGBTQ,” Spiers said of the now five employees, who, after being fired by Google, have said they were targeted over union organizing efforts. “I think Google was targeting more vulnerable members of the community.”  Google has maintained that none of the firings are related to union-busting, nor are the result of any bias against LGBTQ employees. At the time of the four employees’ firings, the company said their dismissals were in reaction to “searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs.”  While a Google spokesperson acknowledged in an emailed statement that the company had “dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool,” describing it as a “a serious violation,” the company declined to confirm Spiers’ involvement.  A spokesperson explained that employee had been fired for violating policies regarding internal pop-ups that bar engineers from creating notifications for anything that isn’t related to security, privacy, or without a “business justification.”  Spiers said that she wasn’t familiar with any such specific rules, and that Google had not laid out where its policies say this.  Spiers has engaged in other protest efforts and was involved in creating an internal Chrome extension, first reported by Bloomberg, that emailed Google’s top lawyer every time a user opened a Google document. That code was created in protest of what programmers saw as Walker changing Google’s open, transparent culture.  While Google has denied engaging in union-busting, the National Labor Relations Board has launched an investigation into November’s terminations.  “Since they hired union-busting firm IRI, they’ve got a lot more aggressive. They feel like they can steamroll us and that they might get away with it if they do it fast enough,” Spiers said.


sottnet--2019-04-16--Amnesty International ignores Al-Qaeda war crimes to criminalize Syrian government

Tensions are being ratcheted up in the north-westerly provinces of Idlib and Northern Hama and Western media prepares itself for the revival of the notorious "last doctor" meme.In September 2018 Russian and Turkish negotiators agreed to establish a demilitarized zone in Idlib which should have been completed by October 15, 2018. The reality is that the withdrawal of heavy weaponry has only been partially successful and the remaining armed groups dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), effectively a rebrand of Al-Qaeda or Al-Nusra Front, have consistently violated the ceasefire and targeted cities, towns and villages on the borders of the so-called "safe zone."ostensibly to curtail the HTS expansionism, but, clearly, and perhaps foolishly relying upon Turkey's NATO membership to offer them a compliant occupier in the northwest while the US coalition increases its own military presence in the vast band of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates - despite President Trump's hollow withdrawal-of-US-troops rhetoric in December 2018.In amongst all this geopolitical jockeying for position and supremacy, civilians in the region are suffering and few more so than those who live in the towns that border Idlib and areas of Northern Hama still under control of the armed groups and their HTS overlords. These are the Syrian people entirely ignored by NATO-aligned media and "human rights" groups that have sustained narratives that traditionally only criminalize one side in a complex and externally imposed eight-year war.The most recent example of this extreme bias in favor of the US supremacist alliance is the Amnesty International report dated 28th March 2019 entitled "Syria: Government forces have bombed medical facilities, school and bakery in Idlib." The title has unequivocally laid out the report's intent, to criminalize the Syrian government. The report opens with Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty International claiming:'The Syrian government continues to show utter disregard for the laws of war and the lives of civilians'.No names of witnesses are provided, we are expected to accept the testimony of anonymous sources whose affiliations are not questioned. We are expected to rely upon the "evidence" provided by "verified open source information, social media photos and videos" which have been "corroborated" remotely by Amnesty's recently established " Digital Verification Corps " (DVC) in Toronto, California, UK or South Africa. Despite this alleged verification process, none of these videos or photos are shown in the Amnesty report.Amnesty claims to have interviewed witnesses themselves but does not provide the identity of the alleged Amnesty staff on the ground in an area infested by Al-Qaeda affiliates who are known to kidnap and endanger the lives of anyone that might question their motives. Were these witnesses interviewed via Skype by the DVC or were anonymous proxies instructed to conduct interviews in an area controlled by HTS? The report does not clarify.and their allies whose intent is to topple the Syrian government and impose a tyrannical sectarian regime in its place.We have heard identical , sensationalist rhetoric during the Syrian Arab Army campaigns to cleanse East Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta of the same extremist occupiers that were then transported to Idlib as part of the Syrian/Russian amnesty and reconciliation deals.This report criminally erases the atrocities committed by HTS and subordinate groups against the towns and villages clustered inside Syrian government secured territory on the borders with the last terrorist stronghold in Syria.This is an outright lie.So, let's add some vital context to this biased and misrepresentative report. Amnesty mention attacks by the Syrian government on March 9 and 11, in Saraqeb and Talmans, southern Idlib. There are claims that hospitals and blood banks were the main targets, while in February bakeries and makeshift medical clinics had been hit.Acclaimed journalist, Sharmine Narwani, had previously conducted an investigation into the systematic destruction of bakeries, flour mills and deliberate decimation of wheat production by Western-backed armed groups to increase pressure on the Syrian government and collectively punish the Syrian people that have resisted the Western-sponsored extremist bid to take over their country. According to Narwani , "the West's terrorists drove wheat production from 2.5 M tons per year to 100K."It is worth noting that several of the Amnesty testimonies come from members of the NATO-member-state financed and promoted White Helmets embedded with HTS in the region. It is also worth noting that a UK government draft document published in April 2017 demonstrates that the White Helmets are the most "routinely reliable source" for both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.What is not mentioned in the report is the reality that armed groups have systematically occupied hospitals , schools, and medical centers across all areas they have previously controlled in Syria, converting many of them into prisons, military centers and ammunition stores and factories.What is also not mentioned are the daily attacks from these HTS enclaves against the Syrian Christian towns of Al Suqaylabiyah and Mhardeh and surrounding villages. In the weeks leading up to March 9, these attacks intensified. I visited the area on March 9 and was shown the destruction of civilian homes in Al Suqaylabiyah by one attack on March 7. The Amnesty report highlights the alleged displacement of civilians as a result of Syrian government attacks but does not mention the homelessness brought about by such attacks by HTS against the civilian populations of these towns.Nabel Alabdalla, the commander of the Al Suqaylabiyah volunteer National Defence Forces told me that the extremists were using a new, more powerful C4 explosive in their Grad rockets as the damage was so extensive to entire neighborhoods in the town. The town's monastery had also been targeted in these attacks, a monastery which doubles as a community center and school for the children of the town. Since the escalation of attacks by armed groups, the children have not been able to attend school as the risk of death or injury is too great. These children are disappeared by Amnesty, their schools don't count.On March 16 , terrorists targeted another residential area in Suqaylabiyah. Salma Boutros Khalil was seriously injured by shrapnel, her home was destroyed. Her daughter in law, Ayat Al-Mahmoud, a Palestinian originally from Damascus, was killed. Ayat was pregnant, her baby was due in one week. Salma's grandson was also terribly injured by shrapnel and was rushed to Hama National hospital. Two other children were grievously wounded in this attack.These attacks do not target military centers, they target only residential areas and civilians. They are, in many instances, war crimes, but according to Amnesty International, these attacks never happened.On March 26, according to the Amnesty report, Syrian government forces fired rockets "at a school in Sheikh Idriss." Again the context is non-existent. On March 23, a suspected chemical weapon attack was carried out by HTS against villages around 10km to the northwest of Al Suqaylabiyah - al-Rasif, al-Aziziyyeh, al-Khandaq, and al-Jayyid. The attack came in from the north, in fact close to Sheikh Idriss.I was in Al Suqaylabiyah when this attack took place and I was able to visit the local hospital that received the 34 victims which included three children, one severely affected with respiratory problems. Victims complained of breathing difficulties, skin blisters, eye sensitivity, nausea and shock syndrome after the attack. One victim, Nawfal Tawbar, described the 1m high dense white smoke that enveloped the area after the mortars had exploded:Without the Syrian government's retaliatory measures, these extremist attacks would only increase. The attacks are motivated primarily by sectarian hatred against the Syrian Christian or Alawite communities or simply against those who remain loyal to their government. One of the recorded messages from the terrorist groups during this period demanded that Al Suqaylabiyah "release its Nusairi inhabitants" to the terrorists (for execution) to avoid their city being "burned." Nusairi is the commonly used terrorist term for the Alawites.In the Amnesty report, Maalouf makes the statement:"Deliberate attacks on civilians and on civilian objects, including hospitals and other medical facilities, and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians are war crimes."The Amnesty report goes on to further shoot itself in the foot. I asked former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford for a review of the report. Ford described the report as the "pseudo-findings on Syria by a Corps that has obviously taken up its place in the battle order of Western propagandists seeking to justify endless war on Syria."Ford points out that the Amnesty report implicitly acknowledges that the areas targeted by the Syrian government are awash with Al-Qaeda (HTS) militants while their student so-called experts "cite the testimony of 'residents' that no HTS were present, indeed couldn't have been present because the areas were part of the demilitarized zone." Ford punches a hole in this claim:"Amnesty, you have just shot yourself in the foot! Any truly independent observer would have been aware from multiple open sources, including US mainstream media, that the demilitarized zone has not in fact been rid of HTS fighters and their weapons. Far from it. Unacknowledged by Amnesty, the takfiris have been shelling civilians in villages on the government side. Any credibility which might have been attached to these reports goes straight out of the window with these crucial highly revealing errors and omissions."To further reinforce Ford's point, the Amnesty report - which contradicts itself - ends with the foot-shooting statement:"Saraqeb is under the control of the Brigade of the Revolutionary Front of Saraqeb and Countryside, which comes under overall HTS control."The following video, published on February 26 2019 , shows these Amnesty-whitewashed "rebels" targeting Abu Duhour, by their own admission - presumably targeting civilian refugees who have fled this brutal terrorist occupation via the Syrian/Russian established and protected humanitarian corridor to the perceived safety of Abu Duhour . Another inconvenient fact omitted by the Amnesty report.Needless to say, colonial media in the West re-published the Amnesty report without correction or investigation - The Guardian Middle East Eye and Jaish Al Islam-affiliate, Scott Lucas of EA Worldview, among the first to trumpet the distorted Amnesty headlines and content within the state-aligned-western-media sphere.This Amnesty report, verified by its student Corps in remote locations who identify war crimes that only serve to increase the real terrorist war crimes against real civilians in Syria, is a travesty. As Peter Ford said "Sorry, Amnesty, you are going to have to up your game. How about demilitarising yourself for a start?"


sputnik--2019-11-15--India’s Top Probe Agency Raids Human Rights Watchdog Amnesty International’s Offices

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided the premises of Amnesty International in Bengaluru on Friday for alleged irregularities in foreign funding. India’s federal Home Ministry had revoked the watchdog’s license under the Foreign Currency Regulation Act in 2010.  In September, the federal economic intelligence agency, Enforcement Directorate had issued notices to Amnesty for alleged contraventions of the foreign exchange act. The organisation denied the charges.  Amnesty International has been critical of several policies of the Indian federal government over alleged human rights violations. Following New Delhi’s decision to strip the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the non-profit body had alleged that the government detained activists and politicians, without any charge or trial.  The federal Home Ministry has cancelled the licenses of about 1,300 volunteer organisations under the foreign funding regulations. This included Greenpeace India, the Ford Foundation, several evangelist associations, right-wing charitable organisations, and educational institutes. The action followed the failure of these organisations to file annual returns as mandated by law.


thedailycaller--2019-07-02--EXCLUSIVE Amnesty International Accuses US Authorities Of Harassment Against Immigration Rights A

EXCLUSIVE: Amnesty International Accuses US Authorities Of ‘Harassment’ Against Immigration Rights Advocates

Amnesty International is alleging that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Justice Department is abusing the justice system to target illegal immigrant activists.  “Amnesty International has found since 2018 that the United States (US) government has executed an unlawful and politically motivated campaign of intimidation, threats, harassment, and criminal investigations against people who defend the human rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (‘migrant human rights defenders’) on the US–Mexico border,” reads a portion of the report, which was obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.  The London-based human rights organization interviewed 23 “human rights defenders” who claim they have being targeted by the U.S. government because of their work on behalf of immigrants. Of the 23 who were interviewed, 10 were put under a DHS watch list for their alleged involvement in human smuggling — criminal investigations that Amnesty International referred to as “dubious.” Others alleged instances of targeted harassment and intimidation at the hands of U.S. authorities.  The people interviewed by human rights group included activists, lawyers and others who work to promote the interests of illegal aliens.  “The Trump administration’s targeting of human rights defenders through discriminatory misuse of the criminal justice system sets it on a slippery slope toward authoritarianism,” Erika Guevara-Rosasa, Americas director for Amnesty International, said in a prepared statement included in the report. “The US government is disgracing itself by threatening and even prosecuting its own citizens for their vital work to save the lives of people in a desperate situation at the border.”  Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Amnesty International’s report does not have any documented evidence that proves a U.S. government official, or any U.S. agency as a whole, targeted an individual specifically because of their immigration rights activism or work. Instead, the report significantly relies on drawing a connection between activists and their subsequent run-ins with the law.  Amnesty International wrote at length about Dr. Scott Warren, a member of No More Deaths, an organization that leaves behind water and food in the Arizona desert for immigrants to consume as they illegally cross into the United States. Warren was arrested in 2017 and charged with three felony criminal charges related to human smuggling.  The human rights group claims that the charges are a “retaliatory attack” for No More Deaths releasing a video allegedly showing Border Patrol agents destroying water jugs left in the desert. However, it is, in fact, a crime to help an alien illegally enter the U.S., harbor an illegal alien, or otherwise encourage such an action. (RELATED: Migrant Father Was Warned About Crossing Rio Grande Before Drowning With His Daughter)  Amnesty International also heavily criticized President Donald Trump, claiming his administration has broken both U.S. and international law, and uses “xenophobic rhetoric” toward refugees.  “The Trump administration must immediately end its politically motivated misuse of the criminal justice system and its abuse of powers to search, detain and interrogate human rights defenders at the border,” Guevara-Rosas continued in her statement.  The Justice Department declined to comment when reached by the DCNF for a statement. DHS did not respond to a request for comment by the DCNF.  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


theguardianuk--2019-02-06--Amnesty International has toxic working culture report finds

Amnesty International has toxic working culture, report finds

Amnesty International has a “toxic” working environment, with widespread bullying, public humiliation, discrimination and other abuses of power, a report has found.  A review into workplace culture, commissioned after two staff members killed themselves last year, found a dangerous “us versus them” dynamic, and a severe lack of trust in senior management, which threatened Amnesty’s credibility as a human rights champion.  It added: “As organisational rifts and evidence of nepotism and hypocrisy become public knowledge they will be used by government and other opponents of Amnesty’s work to undercut or dismiss Amnesty’s advocacy around the world, fundamentally jeopardising the organisation’s mission.”  The report, undertaken by the KonTerra Group and led by psychologists, to look into lessons learned following the suicides in 2018, found bullying and public humiliation were routinely used by management.  “There were multiple reports of managers belittling staff in meetings, deliberately excluding certain staff from reporting, or making demeaning, menacing comments like: ‘You’re shit!’ or: ‘You should quit! If you stay in this position, your life will be a misery,’” it said.  The consultants, who focused on Amnesty’s international secretariat, based in London, found it to be largely operating in a “state of emergency” following a restructuring process to decentralise and move staff closer to the ground in places of civil unrest and conflict.  Many staff at Amnesty described their employment as a vocation or life cause and said there had a “significant risk of experiencing secondary stress or vicarious trauma” due to the nature of the work.  But, the report found, the “lion’s share” of wellbeing issues were not isolated to exposure to trauma or suffering. Instead, the adversarial culture, failures in management and pressures of workload were among the most significant contributors to wellbeing issues.  The review was based on a survey of 475 staff, 70% of the workforce of Amnesty’s international secretariat, and on scores of interviews. Some experienced “significant distress” during the process, it said.  “Amnesty International had a reputation for doing great work but being a hard place to work. Across many interviews the word ‘toxic’ was used to describe the Amnesty work culture as far back as the 1990s. So were the phrases ‘adversarial’, ‘lack of trust’ and ‘bullying’.”  Staff reported multiple accounts of discrimination on the basis of race and gender and which women, staff of colour and LGBTQI employees were targeted or treated unfairly.  “Given Amnesty’s status and mission – to protect and promote human rights – the number of accounts the assessment team received of ‘bullying’,‘racism’, and ‘sexism’ is disconcerting,” it said. The reviewers provided Amnesty’s secretary general with a private report on allegations of abuse of power, discrimination and unfair treatment, which merit further investigation.  They found multiple instances of alleged favouritism or nepotism in hiring and cases where “it appears that positions or individuals may have been made redundant without due process”.  One of the issues facing the organisation was a “martyrdom culture”, in which staff would sacrifice their own wellbeing by taking on huge workloads – a clear “recipe for overload and burnout”. The restructuring had “taken a considerable toll” on staff wellbeing, it said.  “Amnesty cannot effectively strive to make the world a better place while perpetuating an organisational culture deeply marked by secrecy, mistrust, nepotism and other forms of power abuse.”  Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said the review was a difficult and profoundly troubling read. In a statement (pdf), he said he would bring forward a reform plan by the end of March.  Amnesty’s work culture problems were first revealed in May last year, when the Times reported that Gaëtan Mootoo had killed himself after complaining of stress and overwork. Six weeks later, Rosalind McGregor, 28, an intern in Amnesty’s Geneva’s office, killed herself at her family home in Surrey.  One staff member told the review that the organisation’s response to Mootoo’s death “upset many of us a lot”. “The way they announced it, the way they tried to cover up.”  His death was followed by several reviews. One, conducted by James Laddie QC, found that “a serious failure of management” had contributed to Mootoo’s death.  A separate inquiry into McGregor’s death concluded that she had been distressed for “personal reasons” and that Amnesty bore no responsibility for her death.


theindependent--2019-02-26--Global indifference to human rights in Middle East driving repression and civilian suffering warns

Global indifference to human rights in Middle East driving repression and civilian suffering, warns Amnesty International

The international community’s “chilling complacency” towards human rights abuses in the Middle East last year gave authorities “free rein” to crackdown on dissent, a new Amnesty International report has said.  In Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran, the repression of civil society and targeting of peaceful activists “intensified significantly” in 2018. These states were “emblematic” of the international community’s inadequate response to government abuses, according to the group’s annual report on human rights in the Middle East and North Africa region.  “Virtually all human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia are now behind bars or have been forced to flee the country,” Amnesty reported.  The report noted that whilst the case of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was met with unprecedented global condemnation – spurring a Saudi Arabian investigation and prompting Germany, Denmark and Finland to suspend the supply of arms – the kingdom’s key allies did little in response.  “Even the global outcry over the Khashoggi case has not been followed by concrete action to ensure those responsible for his murder are brought to justice,” said Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.  In contrast, the kingdom received worldwide praise for its lifting of the controversial ban on women driving in June, despite the large number of activists that were still in detention, including women who had previously protested against the ban.  Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Yemen war was similarly met with widespread indifference, the report says.  “The USA, UK and France are among states that have continued to export weapons that have enabled the Saudi Arabia-led coalition to target civilians, schools and hospitals during the conflict in Yemen in violation of international law.”  In Iran, Amnesty designated 2018 as a “year of shame”, with more than 7,000 protesters, students, journalists, environmental activists, workers and human rights defenders arrested – many arbitrarily. Women protesting against the forced wearing of the hijab were amongst those targeted by authorities.  The country witnessed two major nationwide protests in January and then in July and August, with security forces targeting those demonstrating with live ammunition, teargas and water cannon, according to the NGO.  The European Union, however, which has an ongoing human rights dialogue with Tehran, “was muted” in its response.  In Egypt, authorities continued to crack down on opposition, intensifying efforts in the run-up to the presidential elections in March 2018, which saw dozens of people arrested.  Egypt is now “a more dangerous place for critics than at any other time in the country’s recent history”, the group found.  “The authorities used solitary confinement that amounted to torture and other ill-treatment and enforced disappearance against hundreds of people with impunity,” Amnesty International said.  Rights groups strongly criticised Egypt this month for executing nine men accused of the 2015 killing of the country’s chief prosecutor, citing concerns of unfair trials with confessions extracted under torture.  On Monday, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi defended the death penalty during a summit between Arab and European states, saying the two regions had “two different cultures”.  “The priority in Europe is achieving and maintaining wellbeing for its people. Our priority is preserving our countries and stopping them from collapse, destruction and ruin, as you see in many surrounding states,” he said.  Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, said human rights had been raised in bilateral meetings during the two-day summit.  Amnesty International also expressed concern over President Sisi’s ratifying of two laws that awarded the state almost “total control” over print, online and broadcast media.  Despite these abuses, France and the US continue to supply Egypt with weapons used for internal repression, Amnesty said.  “Time and again allies of governments in the region have put lucrative business deals, security cooperation or billions of dollars’ worth of arms sales before human rights, fuelling abuses and creating a climate where [Middle East and North Africa] governments feel ‘untouchable’ and above the law,” said Philip Luther, research and advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.  We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.  At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.