Hello and a big welcome

to everyone new to diaspora\*

• There are some step-by-step tutorials on our project website covering the basics of how diaspora* works, and how to get connected with people. There's a link to these in the side-bar, should you ever want to read them in future, and there's also an in-app Help section you can access through your user menu (at the right-hand end of the header bar).
• You can search for people by name or by diaspora* ID (which looks like an email address), if you know it, from the search field in the header bar. You can invite people to join you in diaspora* by sending them a link to our project website, from where they can choose their own pod to register with. Your friends don't need to be on the same pod as you in order to connect and communicate with you.
• One good way to start getting connected with people is to start following some #tags of subjects that interest you (maybe #music, #photography, #linux, or #activism ... whatever interests you) so that you will see content on those topics in your stream. You can then start following people whose posts you find interesting, by placing them into one of your aspects.
• If you have any questions, post something with the #question or #help tag, and people will try to help you. Make sure to make your post public so anyone who can help is able to see it!

Revealed: #leak uncovers global abuse of #cyber-surveillance weapon | #Surveillance | The Guardian

Revealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon

Spyware sold to authoritarian regimes used to target activists, politicians and journalists, data suggests

^{www.theguardian.com}

Feb. 22, 1943: White Rose Members Executed

Game developer for youth environmental activist program

Art Works for Change is a nonprofit organization that creates contemporary art exhibitions and storytelling projects to address critical social and environmental issues. We recently launched a new storytelling project that will help people visualize the impact of global warming and the pathways to solving the climate crisis. As part of this project, we are creating a series of interactive experiences to promote action on climate change. These experiences include climate-themed games, which we will roll out in partnership with grassroots environmental organizations. Your role would be to help us develop browser-based versions of our games. We are flexible about the game development platform(s), and in many cases you would be able to use existing open-source game code as your starting point.

Plus, you will get to join a fun, passionate team, working for an important cause--and build your own skills and network in the process. Remote volunteers are happily accepted.
We get a lot done for a small organization! Learn more about us in this New York Times feature: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/arts/design/museums-inspire-social-activism-politics.html?_r=0
Visit our website at www.artworksforchange.org to see the important work we do.

Joan Baez

* 9. Januar 1941

(Ain't Gonna Let Nobody) Turn

Happy 18th Birthday, Greta!

Can we save Assange? Abby Martin, Snowden, Chomsky, Varoufakis, Greenwald & others speak out!

Nasrin Sotudeh, Iranian human rights activist lawyer was told to return back to prison today!

Hello and a big welcome

to everyone new to diaspora\*

• There are some step-by-step tutorials on our project website covering the basics of how diaspora* works, and how to get connected with people. There's a link to these in the side-bar, should you ever want to read them in future, and there's also an in-app Help section you can access through your user menu (at the right-hand end of the header bar).
• You can search for people by name or by diaspora* ID (which looks like an email address), if you know it, from the search field in the header bar. You can invite people to join you in diaspora* by sending them a link to our project website, from where they can choose their own pod to register with. Your friends don't need to be on the same pod as you in order to connect and communicate with you.
• One good way to start getting connected with people is to start following some #tags of subjects that interest you (maybe #music, #photography, #linux, or #activism ... whatever interests you) so that you will see content on those topics in your stream. You can then start following people whose posts you find interesting, by placing them into one of your aspects.
• If you have any questions, post something with the #question or #help tag, and people will try to help you. Make sure to make your post public so anyone who can help is able to see it!

Don't go back to normal

Mass direct action might be the only way to stop Trump from stealing the election

“Authoritarian rulers fear peaceful resistance above all else.”

"We demand to live in safety". Part 2: Israel - "It was so amazing in Morocco!"

"We demand to live in safety". Part 1: Europe - "Now fuck off!"

A funny and impressive conversation between Russian Jew and Moroccan Arab :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZS6AI6U-q4 (Hebrew + English)

"We demand to live in safety". Part 2: Israe - "It was so amazing in Morocco!"

"We demand to live in safety". Part 1: Europe - "Now fuck off!"

A funny and impressive conversation between Russian Jew and Moroccan Arab :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZS6AI6U-q4 (Hebrew + English)

"Shomer fucking Shabbos!" or Something about a national traditions and indugenous manners :)

A small discussion was started HERE

[An introduction]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPo9OBrIOi4

• Walter Sobchak: I told that kraut a fucking thousand times that I don't roll on Shabbos!
• The Dude: Walter …
• Walter Sobchak: WELL, THEY CAN FUCKING UNPOST IT! C'mon, Dude - Uh, eventually she'll get tired of her little game and, you know, wander on back.
• Donny: How come you don't roll on Saturday, Walter?
• Walter Sobchak: I'm Shomer Shabbos.
• Donny: What's that, Walter?
• Walter Sobchak: Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don't work, I don't drive a car, I don't fucking ride in a car, I don't handle money, I don't turn on the oven, and I sure as shit DON'T FUCKING ROLL!
• Donny: Sheesh.
• Walter Sobchak: SHOMER SHABBOS!
• The Dude: Walter, how am I going to—
• Walter Sobchak: Shomer fucking Shabbos!

[The main part]:

@ghose [D*]

What’s wrong with taking knee? In many countries people put their hand on their heart, take hat off, pose in a very emotional manner or even cry when their national anthem (a song!) plays even before a f… sport game. So what’s wrong if some people take knee down to reflect respect for those people whose LIVES are not RESPECTED. Taking knee, as that national song, a f… flag, are symbols. I’m sure you understand that. I’m truly respect those “six brave men” that stand (...)

@ghose [D*]... What’s wrong with my offer to suck my cock? … In many western or eastern countries billions of lgbt-activists have a good old tradition to do it! This process is pleasant, safe… warrantable by law and supported by State!

I’m truly respect those brave men or women that suck my dick! And… by the way, to kiss my noble #jewish #ass – as that national song, a flag, are symbols. I’m sure you understand that! And you must to esteem all national traditions!

SHOMMER FUCKING SHABBOS!

INFOSEC: FUCK YOUR '"BLACK/WHITE NEUTRALITY"!

By Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day | July 4, 2020

The information security (infosec) community has angrily reacted today to calls to abandon the use of the 'black hat' and 'white hat' terms, citing that the two, and especially 'black hat,' have nothing to do with racial stereotyping.

Discussions about the topic started late last night after David Kleidermacher, VP of Engineering at Google, and in charge of Android Security and the Google Play Store, withdrew from a scheduled talk he was set to give in August at the Black Hat USA 2020 security conference.

In his withdrawal announcement, Kleidermacher asked the infosec industry to consider replacing terms like black hat, white hat, and man-in-the-middle with neutral alternatives.

These changes remove harmful associations, promote inclusion, and help us break down walls of unconscious bias. Not everyone agrees which terms to change, but I feel strongly our language needs to (this one in particular).

— David Kleidermacher (@DaveKSecure) July 3, 2020

While Kleidermacher only asked the industry to consider changing these terms, several members mistook his statement as a direct request to the Black Hat conference to change its name.

With Black Hat being the biggest event in cyber-security, online discussions on the topic quickly became widespread among cyber-security experts, dominating the July 4th weekend.

While a part of the infosec community agreed with Kledermacher, the vast majority did not, and called it virtue signaling taken to the extreme.

Most security researchers pointed to the fact that the terms had nothing to do with racism or skin color, and had their origins in classic western movies, where the villain usually wore a black hat, while the good guy wore a white hat.

Others pointed to the dualism between black and white as representing evil and good, concepts that have been around since the dawn of civilizations, long before racial divides even existed between humans.

Right now, the infosec community doesn't seem to be willing to abandon the two terms, which they don't see as a problem when used in infosec-related writings.

The flagrant fact of racism: "White begin and always win"... or Why black king always suck?

If you are worried that the game of chess is racist, please take up Go, where black moves first, instead of looking foolish by wasting taxpayer money at a state broadcaster to "investigate" it!

(Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist, whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time)

John Adams slams ABC Sydney radio show for discussion over whether chess is ‘racist’

A Sydney radio station has come under fire from a former player for organising a segment to discuss whether chess was racist.

Former Australian chess representative John Adams has slammed the ABC for organising a radio segment discussing whether the popular board game is racist.

Professional economist Adams received a call from a Sydney-based ABC producer on Tuesday asking whether the game was racist because white always moves first.

“I just received a phone call from an ABC Sydney based producer seeking a comment about the game of chess,” Adams posted to Twitter.

“The ABC have taken the view that chess is RACIST given that white always go first!“

“They are seeking comment from a chess official as to whether the rules of chess need to be altered!“

“Trust the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster to apply ideological Marxist frameworks to anything and everything in Australia!“

“With all the drama resulting from COVID-19, I am amazed that the ABC is broadcasting on irrelevant topics!”

— John Adams (@adamseconomics) June 23, 2020

Teaching my child to play chess this week and it was proposed to me that I should change the rule that says “white always gets to go first”. Please help me understand whether this is a long-overdue correction of past injustice, or just political correctness gone mad.

— Stuart Khan (@stukhan) June 22, 2020

The Daily Telegraph reported James Valentine’s afternoon program on ABC Sydney would run the segment on Wednesday.

The move comes amid a wider debate about racist attitudes in society sparked by the death of African-American man George Floyd in the US at the hands of a white police officer.

The ensuing protests have led many to question their own behaviour and seen statues toppled, episodes removed from streaming services and brand names such as ”Redskins” changed.

But Adams condemned the ABC for not focusing on “bigger issues” amid a global health pandemic, accusing the radio broadcaster of reporting “bulls”.

“They said with everything going on, they wanted to have a conversation about white going first — and the racial context of whether white should go first,” Adams told The Daily Telegraph.

“The response to the tweet showed that common sense is prevailing. People want the national broadcaster to focus on bigger issues.

“People are struggling with the economy, with their health, with the lockdown. They don’t want their money wasted on bulls.”

MORE 'Senior janitor', 'Major yardman', 'Leading dishwasher' and 'Chief servant'! .... or "Microsoft: Addressing racial injustice"

N.B.! Sounds strange: I have always believed that to achieve the best performance and quality, every company needs good specialists, not black, white or brown idlers.

Addressing racial injustice

Jun 23, 2020
Microsoft Corporate Blogs

An email from CEO Satya Nadella to Microsoft employees:

As I shared in our Employee Town Hall last month, and in my email earlier this month, we are committed to take action to help address racial injustice and inequity, and unequivocally believe that Black lives matter. Below you will see many of the steps we are taking.

Over the past several weeks, the senior leadership team, board of directors, and I have spent time reflecting, listening, learning, and discussing what role the company – and all of us collectively – must play in helping to drive change, both within Microsoft and in our communities. With significant input from employees and leaders who are members of the Black and African American community, we have developed a set of actions that we believe are both meaningful to improving the lived experience at Microsoft, as well as driving change in the communities in which we live and work.

Today, we are making commitments to address racial injustice and inequity for the Black and African American community in the United States. We will additionally take important steps to address the needs of other communities, including the Hispanic and Latinx community, across the company in the next five years. We are focused on three multiyear, sustained efforts:

- Increasing our representation and culture of inclusion. We will build on our diversity and inclusion (D&I) momentum from the past five years by adding an additional $150M of D&I investment, and will double the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors, and senior leaders in the United States by 2025.

- Engaging our ecosystem. We will use our balance sheet and engagement with suppliers and partners to extend the vision for societal change throughout our ecosystem, creating new opportunities for them and the communities they serve.

- Strengthening our communities. We will use the power of data, technology, and partnership to help improve the lives of Black and African American citizens across our country, including to address the safety and well-being of our own employees in the communities in which they live.

Below are key details on how we will accomplish this.

Our Culture

We need to ensure that our culture of inclusion is a top priority for everyone. It starts with our values of respect, integrity, and accountability. Each of us must be able to thrive in diverse teams. Every manager must be able to attract, retain, and grow employees of all backgrounds. This is certainly true at Microsoft, and also more broadly. It is the new baseline for manager excellence across industries across the globe.

We will meet this new goal in three key ways:

1. We will accelerate our cultural transformation through further investment in inclusion. Managers who have a deep understanding and commitment to building inclusive culture are key to our company’s success. Starting in FY21, our training on allyship, covering, and privilege in the workplace will be required for all employees, with additional new content on understanding the experience of the Black and African American community. Because leadership sets the tone, we will have required live sessions for CVPs and EVPs to ensure they better understand the lived experience of these specific communities.

2. We will strengthen our intentional career planning and talent development efforts. This will apply across our workforce, beginning with Black and African American employees. These programs will expand to include other employee groups as we learn and grow. We will expand on our leadership development programs for select Black and African American midlevel employees and their managers, to help prepare for promotion to Director/Principal. For Director/Principal level, we will create a new development opportunity to expose them to the leadership expectations of the Partner/GM level and match them with senior-level sponsors and mentors. For Partner/GMs, we are continuing to invest in the dedicated leadership development programs.

3. We will further strengthen company accountability for progress on representation. We will deepen our practice of evaluating each CVP/GM’s progress on diversity and inclusion when determining their impact and rewards, as well as promotion considerations. We will provide CVPs with dedicated D&I coaches to confront and resolve systemic obstacles within their organizations. We will expand our global, quarterly promotion process to ensure we build diverse leadership teams at all levels. This will include direct engagement with business leaders on review of all candidates for people management, Director/Principal level, and Partner/GM level.

Our Ecosystem

A vast business ecosystem surrounds Microsoft from our supply chain to our partner community. We recognize that a stronger and more productive ecosystem requires better representation of the diversity in our communities. We will evolve our engagement with our supply chain, banking partners, and the broad Microsoft partner ecosystem in this effort.

1. We will double the number of Black- and African American-owned approved suppliers over the next three years and spend an incremental $500M with those existing and new suppliers. We’ll do this by ensuring our existing guidance to include diverse minority-owned suppliers in all RFPs is well understood, evaluate supplier portfolio composition, and enhance the weighting of diversity characteristics (both in ownership and in broad workforce) during the supplier evaluation and selection process. We will also encourage Black and African American representation progress in our top 100 suppliers, which account for over 50 percent of our indirect spend, by requesting annual disclosure of their diversity profile information (e.g., workforce diversity, goals) that we will incorporate into our RFP evaluations.

2. We will use our own banking needs to grow our portfolio investment activity with Black- and African American-owned financial institutions. Over the next three years, we will double the percentage of our transaction volumes through these Black- and African-American owned banks and external managers where we have existing strong banking relationships and look to grow that base, which provides an increased opportunity for these firms to attract more capital. We will create a $100M program that will make its initial investment in collaboration with the FDIC to target Minority Owned Depository

3. Institutions (MDIs), which directly enables an increase of funds into local communities (businesses, restaurants, housing, etc.). And, we will establish a $50M investment fund focused on supporting Black- and African American-owned small businesses. The fund will initially focus on investing to improve access to capital, increase skill development, and reduce the technology gaps that exist today.

4. We know how important partners are to the growth of our business. We look forward to investing to increase the number of Black- and African American-owned partners in our US partner community by 20 percent over the next three years. A new $50M partner fund will help with access to capital providing loans to support these partners through their startup phase with the loans recovered over time as their business grows. We will provide $20M of financing to existing and new partners to support their cashflow needs. And, we will invest an additional $3M in training programs covering financial management, tech solutions, and go-to-market readiness.

Our Communities

No company can change the world by itself. But we believe that Microsoft can put the power of data, technology, and partnership to work to help improve the lives of Black and African American citizens across our country. That’s what we’re committed to doing, through a four-part effort.

1. We will strengthen and expand our existing justice reform initiative with a five-year, $50 million sustained effort. Since starting this work in 2017, we’ve come to appreciate the importance of this issue not only to the nation, but to the personal lives of our employees and their families. No one should have to live with the fear of being stopped by the police, harassed while shopping, or bullied in school because of the color of their skin. This conviction has led us to do increasing work advocating both in the Puget Sound and nationally, including in the communities where our employees live.We will build on this foundation by using data and digital technology toward increased transparency and accountability in our justice system. All this work will be backed by public policy advocacy that will increase access to data to identify racial disparities and improve policing. We’ll also use our technology and expertise to support evidenced-based and unbiased diversion programs that direct people into treatment alternatives instead of incarceration. We’ll also use data to promote racial equity in the decisions made by prosecutors, including decisions about who to charge with a crime, the nature of the charge, plea offers, and sentencing recommendations.

2. We will expand our skills work to help Black and African American students and adults develop the skills needed to succeed in the digital economy. Over the next five years, we will expand in 13 states and the District of Columbia the Microsoft TEALS industry volunteer program to bring computer science education to an additional 620 high schools primarily serving Black and African American students. We will also strengthen Microsoft’s support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including in computer and data science programs, campus initiatives and partnerships, and curriculum development. Finally, we’ll offer digital skills training to Black and African American adults seeking new jobs. As part of a global skilling initiative, we will provide $5 million in cash grants to community-based nonprofit organizations led by and serving communities of color, enabling them to better support digital skills programs.

3. We will help expand access to broadband and devices for communities of color and the key institutions that support them in major urban centers, by working with carriers, OEMs, our own hardware team, refurbishers, and nonprofits to enrich low-cost broadband access by providing affordable PCs and Microsoft software. We’ll work to ensure these services can be put to effective use to improve people’s lives, with a focus on telehealth services and educational offerings. Backed by public advocacy, we’ll start by focusing on six cities that currently confront the largest urban broadband gaps.

4. Finally, we will increase technology support for nonprofits that support and are led by people of color. We will help support the digital transformation that we know from experience can make nonprofits more effective. We’ll provide access to Azure and Dynamics credits and financial grants that will enable these organizations to add the IT staff needed to better deploy and maximize technology. We look forward to tapping into the knowledge and expertise of our own employees as we identify effective groups we can support more strongly.

Change begins by looking inward. We expect this change in ourselves. Employees expect this change from their leaders. Our customers and partners expect this change from Microsoft. And the world demands this change.

This is not a one-time event. It will require real work and focus. We will listen and learn. We will take feedback and we will adjust. But it starts with each of us making a commitment to do the work, to help drive change, and to act with intention.

Satya
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/23/addressing-racial-injustice/

#microsoft #ms #software #os #windows #programming #job #technology #whitelivesmatter #USA #America #civil #rights #protest #activism #activist #riot #freedom #blacklivesmatter #news #racial #racism #black #white #photo

'Burnley' - 'Manchester City': #white #lives #matter

[New York Daily News]

‘White Lives Matter’ plane banner overshadows Premier League game between Burnley and Manchester City

MANCHESTER, England

As the players of Manchester City and Burnley took a knee inside an empty Etihad Stadium in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, the sound of an aircraft could be heard overhead.

It had a very different message.