fuckyeahmarxismleninism:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
1 week ago -
21
Oxford Internet governance Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues that it’s time for data on the Internet to have a legally mandated expiration date. Do you agree?
1 month ago -
4
This shouldn’t even need to be explained.
From Al-Jazeera English:
On social media networks, we have come to expect that what is private one day may be public the next, and that what we erased years ago may suddenly reappear in an archive. But this expectation did not hold, until recently, for email. Most people assume that the audience of their email is the person with whom they are emailing, and that once you delete the email, it is gone.
Security experts decry this viewpoint as hopelessly naïve. “Don’t put anything in an email that you wouldn’t send to your mother,” says cyber security expert Jeff Ahlerich, in a manner yet again reminiscent of an elder scolding a child.
But we are not children. We are adults who cannot possibly maintain the energy or fortitude to police our every online interaction. That doing so is viewed as common sense raises basic questions of how we want to live our lives. We should not be asking how to police our emails, but what it means that we expect our emails to be policed - and what this expectation does to our ability to interact, express ourselves and change.
5 months ago -
2
I’m checking through the cited pages as we speak.
Keep in mind that this article is from Forbes, a business magazine. You hardly need to be leftist or social justice oriented to see the nature of this problem.
Finally, some statistics to prove the stereotypes right. According to a recent survey from Millennial Branding and Payscale, Millenials really are most likely to be employed in service industry jobs. So, all those jokes about post-graduation latte pouring and t-shirt folding haven’t been in vain. And while it might be comforting to think of these jobs as necessary way stations on the path to an upwardly mobile future – especially if you’re someone who holds one – there’s mounting evidence that the American labor market may never return to its pre-recession composition. The future is already here and it brings with it low-wage temporary or contract work as a way of life.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 30% of American workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs – defined as earnings at or below the poverty line to support a family of four – in 2020. This number will remain virtually unchanged from 2010. Given that roughly 50% of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed and those who do work are much more likely to hold these types of jobs, this is a particular grim prospect for young workers hoping to leave these positions behind for greener career pastures.
And even if Millennial workers do manage to move from retail to the corporate world, there’s no guarantee that their office job will be on the career track.
The number of temporary or contract positions was up 6% over last year’s numbers in the first quarter of 2012 according to the American Staffing Association. In fact, the number of temporary or contract jobs added to the economy has been increasing for nine consecutive quarters since the recession officially ended.
Over 40% more people hold temp jobs now than in 2009. This growth starts to become something to worry about when temp jobs aren’t being converted to permanent ones and when contract work replaces full-time positions. As ASA CEO Richard Wahlquist put it when discussing the numbers:
“Employers remain hesitant to add permanent employees due to uncertainty about the current strength of the economy and future economic conditions, including impending tax increases and spending cuts expected to take effect in January 2013. In times like these, businesses are being much more strategic in sourcing additional talent and maintaining work force flexibility.”
And this cautious approach to staffing and reliance on a disposable workforce may continue for years. While there are certainly highly-skilled and in-demand professionals who are able to parlay their hired-gun status into big paydays or renaissance workers who are mashing up day jobs and dream jobs, those who benefit financially from the gig economy are in the minority. With low-wage occupations set to keep growing – even in economic hotspots such as Silicon Valley – most young workers may be destined to either cycle through a number of temporary positions in search of better wages and working conditions or resign themselves to juggling multiple low-wage jobs in order to support themselves if they aren’t able to find an entry point to the career track before they age out of their recent grad status.
While scaring up sympathy for Gen Y is often yeoman’s work, the prospect of a generation of workers who are facing job insecurity and uncertain career growth has broader social consequences that can’t be written off as the inconvenience of a coddled few. That economic mobility we prize as a hallmark of the American Dream? Well, just like the 30-year career with a single employer, its days may be over, too. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts:
“Americans raised at the top and bottom of the income ladder are likely to remain there themselves as adults. Forty-three percent of those who start in the bottom are stuck there as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle quintile. Only 4 percent of adults raised in the bottom make it all the way to the top, showing that the “rags-to-riches” story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality.”
Try not to think about this when you clock in for your next shift at the mall.
8 months ago -
3
The New York Daily News reports that a gay 33-year-old Nebraska woman became the victim of an anti-gay hate crime early Sunday morning when three masked men allegedly broke into her home. The intruders bound the woman with zip-ties, stripped her naked, and mutilated her body with cuts. Anti-gay slurs were carved into the woman’s abdomen and across her arms.
The masked intruders spray painted her wall with a derogatory slur used against lesbians, doused the floor with gasoline, and lit it on fire before leaving the scene, according to CBS News.
The victim crawled with her hands and feet still zip-tied, naked, bleeding, and screaming for help to her neighbor Linda Rappl’s house after the attack:
“I was in shock. She was naked, her hands were tied with zip ties. All I could see was a cut across her forehead and blood running down.”
They called the police around 4 a.m. Officials have begun an investigation but as of yet have no suspects.
Read more here.
According to the Heritage Foundation, America’s preeminent conservative think tank, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland have freer economies than the United States (and the rest of the world). Despite having equal or higher tax rates, universal healthcare, and more public investment in education and infrastructure, these countries have managed to remain more pro-business and economically competitive than the US. They’re not perfect by any stretch, but their example should lead us to wonder: why can’t the “best country in the world” pull of a similar balance?
A lot of wealthy executives (among others) claim that anyone can get as rich as them with enough hard work. But there are two problems with this argument. First, it suggests that income and wealth always correlate with work ethic. So, the implication is that all rich people are hardworking while anyone who is poor is lazy. But there are plenty of people born into wealth who did nothing to deserve it, and many more people who work hard their whole lives and never become wealthy.
Second, these business elites run companies that require the perpetual existence of a low class labor force. They will always seek workers that can be paid poorly for doing menial but vital work. So clearly, not everyone can make it through hard work. The system they support will always demand cheap and exploitable labor, whether it’s here or in some other part of the world.
Colorado, where the recent gun massacre occurred, has one of the loosest gun regulations in the country: there are no limits on assault weapon ownership, no limits on handgun purchases per month, and no permits or licenses required for gun ownership. The state has no authority to regulate guns, while safety measures such as safety lock requirements are nonexistent.
With all that said, most research I’ve read suggests that gun policies, whether strict or loose, have little to no effect on gun violence. Instead, the underlying causes are child poverty, a lack of mental health services, socioeconomic inequality, and a lack of community cohesion. It’s much easier to change a law than to change society, hence why most people seem to defer to the former option as a solution.
Granted, if anyone has any data that show the opposite conclusion, please feel free to share it. I’m just going on what I’ve read and studied myself.
Margo Maine, Ph.D. (Body Wars)
There was a time that, as a person of the male persuasion, seeing this quote made me really mad. It made me mad that women would assume that I was a rapist; it made me mad that rape was becoming ‘my problem’; it made me mad because, frankly, I didn’t think it was true. I think that this is a really common male attitude when confronted with rape statistics- or, at least, it has been in my purely anecdotal experience.
But now, I know there is no excuse for that. Men need to take responsibility and look at these numbers for what they really are, and what they really, truly represent. Men, don’t be mad at the woman who is justifiably wary that more than half of the men she knows could be her potential rapist. Don’t be mad at that there’s someone trying to rain on your fun, privileged parade where rape is something that only happens on Law & Order. Don’t be mad that you can’t accept that rape is way more common than you think. Most of all, don’t be mad at the woman who was raped and is seeking justice and help for her assault just because you thinks she looks like she was ‘asking for it.’
Be mad at the man who waits in the park to prey on the women who have a right to feel safe in their own communities. Be mad at the man who takes advantage of his drunk girlfriend. Be mad at the man who pushes the issue when his wife isn’t in the mood. Be mad at the man who catcalls, who makes unwelcome advances, who cops a feel.
Don’t be angry at the woman who doesn’t entirely trust you. Be angry at the men who have made her feel that way. Don’t be a part of a problem.
Be a part of the solution.
(via bmsmith623)
to my fellow white bio-males: be mad that there are so many men out there who don’t give a shit about consent. DON’T be mad that someone has harshed your mellow with facts; you do not have a right to go through life unchallenged.
(via hobbit-hero)
Just reading the top quote makes me anxious.
(via feministsbakecupcakestoo)
(Source: bblackenedbutterfly, via stfuconservatives)
