Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, news, etc.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
Yellowstone Nat'l Park - Joe Shikspack
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
News
Software Meant to Fight Crime Is Used to Spy on Dissidents
Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Google engineer and Bill Marczak is earning a Ph.D. in computer science. But this summer, the two men have been moonlighting as detectives, chasing an elusive surveillance tool from Bahrain across five continents.
What they found was the widespread use of sophisticated, off-the-shelf computer espionage software by governments with questionable records on human rights. While the software is supposedly sold for use only in criminal investigations, the two came across evidence that it was being used to target political dissidents. ...
The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes. ...
“This is dual-use equipment,” said Eva Galperin, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group. “If you sell it to a country that obeys the rule of law, they may use it for law enforcement. If you sell it to a country where the rule of law is not so strong, it will be used to monitor journalists and dissidents.”
Until Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak stumbled upon FinSpy last May, security researchers had tried, unsuccessfully, for a year to track it down. FinSpy gained notoriety in March 2011 after protesters raided Egypt’s state security headquarters and discovered a document that appeared to be a proposal by the Gamma Group to sell FinSpy to the government of President Hosni Mubarak for $353,000. It is unclear whether that transaction was ever completed.
Michael Moore: Get Used To Phrase "President Romney
Obama Nominates Top Advisor To Tea Party Senator As U.S. Attorney
President Obama nominated a very odd candidate to be the next U.S. Attorney in Utah, the chief legal advisor to the Senate’s most radical tenther, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT):
President Barack Obama tapped Sen. Mike Lee’s legal counsel to be the next U.S. attorney for Utah, a move that infuriated Democrats from the state and ended a lengthy political drama over who would claim the high-profile position.
The White House on Tuesday announced the nomination of David Barlow. He will need to win Senate confirmation before he can claim the spot as Utah’s top federal prosecutor, a job that has remained vacant since the end of 2009.
Canada Orders Iraq War Resister to Be Deported Back to US
A war resister who has been living in Canada for the last five years has been ordered deported back to the U.S., an immigration board said Thursday.
Kimberly Rivera, reported to be the first female U.S. war resister, had served in Iraq in 2006 but sought refuge in Canada in 2007.
Rivera is the mother of four children, the two youngest born in Canada.
She must now leave the Canada by Sept. 20.
Quebec baffled by $30 million maple syrup heist
Maple syrup producers in Quebec found themselves in a sticky situation after thieves made off with millions of dollars worth of the breakfast sweetener that had been stored in a warehouse.
Empty barrels were found at a warehouse that had held some 10 million pounds of syrup worth an estimated $30 million, indicating that the thieves had emptied syrup into other containers to sell on the black market. ...
Quebec, the so-called Saudi Arabia of syrup, produces 70-80 percent of the world’s supply of the popular condiment and had been expected to help cover additional demand after a poor US harvest in 2012.
Oil companies desperately seek water amid Kansas drought
Oil companies drilling in the drought-ridden fields of southern Kansas are taking desperate measures to get the water they need to tap into the state's oil reserves.
Huge amounts of water are required to extract oil, especially when companies use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which requires millions of gallons of water to crack the shale rock and bring oil to the surface. But now that the entire state is in emergency drought status, with only 1.19 inches of rainfall last month -- the 10th driest July on record -- unprecedented water shortages are making it difficult for drillers to get the water they need.
Some companies are paying farmers for any remaining water they have left in their ponds, drilling their own water wells, digging ponds next to streams or trucking in water from as far away as Pennsylvania.
Obama Gives Shell Green Light to Start Risky Arctic Drilling
The Obama administration has given Royal Dutch Shell the green light to begin "preparatory activities" for oil drilling in Alaska's Chukchi Sea on Thursday to the outrage of environmental groups.
The U.S. Interior Department said the OK was for Shell to begin preparatory work but not tap into underground oil reserves at this point.
Shell is still waiting for Coast Guard approval of its oil-spill containment barge, the Arctic Challenger, which remains in a Bellingham, Wash., shipyard, and is waiting on modifications to its air-quality permits from the EPA.
Arctic wildlife at risk from climate change
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues
The last battle for single payer
First Sailboat Through Canada's M'Clure Strait Completes Northwest Passage
Yellowstone Nat'l Park - Joe Shikspack
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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