The Year in Pictures 2019

Sifting through images of conflict, triumph and catastrophe from around the world, our editors chose photos to represent the year.

www.nytimes.com

5.6 million. That’s roughly the number of images photo editors of The New York Times sift through each year to find the perfect photographs to represent the news for our readers. This collection of images is a testament to a mere fraction of the conflicts and triumphs, catastrophes and achievements and simple but poignant moments of everyday life in the past 365 days.

Elizabeth D. Herman and Celeste Sloman photographed nearly all of the record number of women in the 116th Congress. 

Washington, Jan. 2-3: Clockwise from top left: 

• Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat from Arizona
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat from New York
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican from Washington
• Lauren Underwood, Democrat from Illinois.

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, applauded President Trump at his State of the Union address. It was a clap that resonated around the world. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, skipped school to protest at the Swedish Parliament. Elisabeth Ubbe for The New York Times

Judge Rules Trump Can’t Block People on Twitter

President Donald Trump can’t block Twitter users from following his personal account, a federal judge ruled.

www.bloomberg.com

1. @realDonaldTrump stopped being Trump’s personal account once he started using it as #potus aka Dear Leader  #potus45
2. The DoJ must order Trump to unblock all Americans

The judge said the comment section of Trump’s personal account, @realDonaldTrump, is a public forum and that blocking users on the basis of political speech is a violation of their free-speech rights under the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan issued the ruling Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by Trump after replying to his tweets.

The judge declined to issue an order forcing Trump to unblock the users, saying her ruling should be sufficient to force a change in behavior.

"Alabama Republican Senate Candidate Roy Moore co-authored a study course, published in 2011 and recently obtained by ThinkProgress, that instructs students that women should not be permitted to run for elected office. If women do run for office, the course argues, people have a moral obligation not to vote for them.

The course is also critical of the women’s suffrage movement, which in 1920 secured some American women the right to vote. The course, called “Law and Government: An Introductory Study Course,” includes 28 hours of audio and visual lectures given by Moore and others, as well as a study guide. The course is available for purchase on Amazon, where “Chief Justice Roy Moore” is listed as a co-author alongside Doug Phillips, Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft, and Dr. Paul Jehle.”*   

Steve Ballmer’s new project: find out how the government spends your money

Nonpartisan USAFacts provides a comprehensive database on government spending and revenue

www.theverge.com|Amar Toor

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has launched a new project aimed at providing a comprehensive database of government revenue and spending. The website, called USAFacts, brings together a wide range of financial data from various US government sources, compiled by a team of economists, professors, and researchers over the last three years. The site went live on Tuesday.

In an interview with The New York Times, Ballmer said USAFacts aims to “figure out what the government really does with the money,” describing the site as “the equivalent of a 10-K for government.” The former Microsoft chief and current Los Angeles Clippers owner spent more than $10 million on the project, according to the Times, which was used to assemble a team of researchers in Seattle and provide a grant to the University of Pennsylvania.

• INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAXES: $1.7 trillion 33.27% of Total U.S. revenue
• CORPORATE INCOME TAXES: $375.3 billion 7.19% of Total U.S. revenue

NATIONAL DEFENSE AND SUPPORT FOR VETERANS: $752.9 billion - 13.97% of Total U.S. spending

China ends anonymity on its internet

For years now, China’s government has been pushing internet users towards real-name registration for some internet services, with varying degrees of success. But with a new cybersecurity law that will

www.techinasia.com

But with a new cybersecurity law that will go into effect on June 1, 2017, the government has officially stopped beating around the bush. If you want to get online in China, you’ll have to provide your real identity.

According to the new law:

Network operators handling network access […] shall require users to provide real identity information when signing agreements with users or confirming provision of services. Where users do not provide real identity information, network operators must not provide them with relevant services.

In other words, ISPs, wifi node operators, and any other company that provides internet access will need to confirm your real identity before they can let you online. All network operators are also required to cooperate with police and state security organizations by handing over records if requested.

Companies that fail to do this, according to the law, are subject to fines of between US$7,300 and US$73,000, temporary or permanent suspensions of their websites or their entire business, and cancellation of operating licenses. Specific individuals within the companies found to be responsible may also be fined between US$1,500 and US$15,000.

In addition to internet access providers, other services including social media and messaging services will be subject to the same laws and penalties.

The new cybersecurity law also looks set to make trouble for foreign companies. Companies that work in strategically important sectors must store all of their data in China and submit to security reviews conducted by the government. The law defines China’s strategic sectors very broadly, meaning that everyone from transportation companies to online finance firms will be subject to the new rules. And it’s not yet clear precisely what these security reviews will entail. Some foreign firms are concerned that they’ll be required to hand over the source code for all of their products.

V: 

Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler Donald Trump. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

...

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. Strength through unity, unity through faith! I am V. At last you know the truth. You’re stunned, I know. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that beneath this wrinkled, well-fed exterior there lies a dangerous killing machine with a fetish for Fawkesian masks. Vive la revolution!

In our new form of government, a trained persuader such as Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders gains popularity on social media and forces the traditional media to fall in line. That form of government looks more like populism. The majority has more control than it did under a republic or under economic fascism.

But what about the tyranny of the majority problem? Will social media lead to mob rule because the majority has too much power?

I think the Internet and social media solve for that problem. Consider what is happening at Trump rallies. The entire public is watching every skirmish and dust-up at those rallies. The fear is that the small scuffles will escalate to something terrible. But social media solves for that. Every person at a Trump rally knows the world is watching. And it isn’t just big media that is watching. Every phone in every pocket is a direct link to the world. And Trump supporters know their candidate would be done if a big riot broke out. Social media has already taken control of Trump rallies. We should expect to see more scuffles and punches from individual idiots, but no widespread rioting. The crowd knows that violence works against them. But only because social media is watching so closely.

As a general rule, evil grows where no one is looking. If it grows too big before anyone notices, then it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle. But social media is the ultimate eye on evil. It spots evil fast and shines the light of public scrutiny on it. Is that enough to say our new system is better than the last?

I don’t know. But the bar was low. Economic fascism doesn’t seem too hard to beat.

Top Ten Ways the US Government will Smear, Slight Whistleblower Edward Snowden

www.juancole.com

The governmental class, however, will attempt to destroy Snowden, with well-practiced tools of propaganda, demonization, and distortion, as a way of taking the focus off their own alleged wrong-doing. This is how it is done (although the points are given in the future tense, most have already been trotted out).

1. Snowden will be called a traitor for revealing to the American people the secret actions of the US government as they affect the American people.
2. Snowden will be called a defector for going to Hong Kong, which is ultimately under Chinese rule.
3. Questions will be raised about Snowden’s mental balance.
4. It will be alleged that Snowden does not understand the secret programs on which he blew the whistle.
5. Government spokesmen will assert without evidence that his allegations are simply untrue.
6. Charges Snowden did not make, such as that the government is engaged in warrantless wiretapping of telephones, will be denied. This is a form of misdirection.
7. It will be alleged that the domestic surveillance is legal, even thought that assertion has never been tested in the courts because the US government won’t reveal the victims of its program, so no one is recognized by the courts as having standing to sue. (Everything the Soviet Union did was legal, too, by Soviet law).
8. A small, uncontroversial part of his charges will be admitted, to take the focus off the iceberg under the sea.
9. It will be alleged that Snowden has aided terrorists in eluding observation (even though we have no evidence that major terrorist plots were defeated by data-mining).
10. It will be alleged that what Snowden did was wrong, since Americans could always just have had a democratic dialogue on the secret programs instead. They are hoping you don’t notice that they had kept it secret from you and prevented a democratic dialogue.

When governments begin selling safety in exchange for liberty, deserving them has nothing to do with anything as governments will not guarantee your safety, but guaranteed they will take your willing sacrifice of liberty for the promise of safety. Why people who are willing to sacrifice liberty for the notion of safety are undeserving of neither is because they are so willing to sacrifice liberty and look to someone else to provide them with safety.