2020-02-09: News Headlines

Rick Sterling (2020-02-08). Three Extraordinary Australian Journalists: Burchett, Pilger, Assange. dissidentvoice.org Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations: Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London's Belmarsh prison). Each of these journalists made unique contributions to our understanding of the world. Although Australia is part of the western world, each of …

WSWS (2020-02-08). Montreal SEP Canada meeting demands freedom for Assange and Manning. wsws.org Assange and Manning are the targets of a legal vendetta meant to intimidate and silence all those who would seek to expose the crimes of US imperialism and its allies.

Alexander Rubinstein (2020-02-08). Media darling Pete Buttigieg was in unit that worked with the CIA in Afghanistan. thegrayzone.com While Pete Buttigieg's campaign denies online allegations that he was a CIA asset, military records reveal that Buttigieg was in…

Colin Todhunter (2020-02-08). Bt Cotton: Cultivating Farmer Distress in India. dissidentvoice.org Later this month, India's Supreme Court will hold a lengthy hearing on the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard, which would be the country's first GM food crop. The court has asked the chair of the Technical Expert Committee to be present and says that the decision on GM mustard cannot be kept pending. The …

Rick Sterling (2020-02-07). Pilger, Burchett and Assange: Three Extraordinary Australian Journalists That Spoke Truth to Power. mintpressnews.com Australia, writes Rick Sterling, should be proud of its three native sons that were willing to speak truth to power no matter the consequences.

Johanna Ross (2020-02-07). Assange's Case Represents 'Failure of Western Law' — Says UN's Nils Melzer. globalresearch.ca An interview was recently given by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, to

Staff (2020-02-07). The Census Is Not Safe From Donald Trump. truthdig.com When the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration could not place a citizenship question on the 2020 census, civil rights advocates breathed a sigh of relief. | Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, called the outcome "a victory for democracy." | "The administration deliberately sought to increase the political power of whites at the expense of already underrepresented communities," Johnson said in a Trump administration officials h…

Colin Todhunter (2020-02-07). Genetically Modified Bt Cotton: Cultivating Farmer Distress in India. globalresearch.ca Later this month, India's Supreme Court will hold a lengthy hearing on the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard, which would be the country's first GM food crop. The court has asked the chair of the Technical Expert Committee to …

David Rosen (2020-02-07). Targeting Gender Nonconforming Youth. counterpunch.org The U.S. has been a battlefield over cultural values for nearly 50 years. In states throughout the country, the religious right — together with local Republicans — have built an influential political movement to impose their moral values. Donald Trump's appointment of two conservatives to the Supreme Court has emboldened the religious right to press

Jessica Corbett, staff writer (2020-02-07). 'Not Good Enough': After Judge's Ruling, Greenwald Vows to Take Press Freedom Case to Brazil's Supreme Court. commondreams.org Award-winning American investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald welcomed a Brazilian judge's decision Thursday to reject cybercrime charges that federal prosecutors brought against him last month but also promised to keep fighting against assaults on press freedom by the right-wing government of Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_special_coverage/public/headline/thumbs/glenn_greenwald_bolsonaro_0_0.jpg

RT (2020-02-05). Unleash the meme war! Pompeo mocks Pelosi's speech-tearing stunt with 'Simpsons' screenshot. rt.com The grandstanding between President Trump and Speaker Pelosi during the State of the Union address has triggered an avalanche of memes online, with Mike Pompeo taking part among others. | Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted a 'Simpsons' meme showing a tearful Lisa Simpson tearing papers into shreds in season 3 of the popular series. | The obvious dig at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tore in half her…

Ashley Gorski (2020-02-05). The Government is Using its Foreign Intelligence Spying Powers for Routine Domestic Investigations. aclu.org More than forty years ago, Congress | gave the executive branch a set of exceptional surveillance powers to pursue | foreign spies on U.S. soil. Now, the government is increasingly relying on those | powers to advance ordinary domestic criminal investigations. | In United States v. | Osseily, a fraud prosecution in California, the government appears to have used | this surveillance — which is conducted under the Foreign Intelligence | Surveillance Act (FISA) — to a longtime perm…

Staff (2020-01-30). "Coded Bias": New Film Looks at Fight Against Racial Bias in Facial Recognition & AI Technology. democracynow.org A new documentary looks at the dangers of artificial intelligence and its increasing omnipresence in daily life, as new research shows that it often reflects racist biases. Earlier this month, Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the latest major city to ban facial recognition technology, joining a growing number of cities, including San Francisco, to ban the artificial intelligence, citing flawed technology and racial and gender bias. A recent study also found that facial recognition identified African-American and Asian faces incorrectly 10 to 100 times more than white faces. The film "Coded Bias" begins with Joy B…

CounterSpin (2020-01-17). Chip Gibbons on FBI vs. 1st Amendment. fair.org Media…