Social media manipulation rising globally

The manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat to public life. Around the world, government agencies and political parties are exploiting social media platforms to spread junk news and disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in media, public institutions and science.

China: Crackdown on Tibetan Social Groups

In February 2018, the Tibet Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau published a list of newly defined forms of “organized crime” in a circular – the first set of such prohibitions to be announced at the provincial level. The now-banned activities include any initiatives for the promotion of local language and culture, and protection of the local environment.

Cardinal steps down amid widening sex abuse scandal

“The Vatican must investigate and publish its conclusions regarding McCarrick’s advancement and very successful career,” said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based group that tracks abuse cases. “The officials responsible must be identified and disciplined, and the investigative file must be made public,”

A meeting with Oksana Shachko

Shachko was an artist from a young age. Educated in the Orthodox tradition, she made religious paintings and at the age of 8 her artistic talent earned her a place at a specialized school in Ukraine focused on painting religious icons. By age 10, Shachko was being commissioned to create church frescoes, and moved into the church full time at aged 12. As an adult, her later works subverted traditional religious iconography to create feminist art.  

"We have the immense sadness to learn the death of Oksana Shachko, promising artist that we presented in Crash and to whom we dedicated the cover of our December 2017 art issue. We also presented her work in our gallery, the 22Visconti. Oksana was an outstanding activist, co-founder of the Femen and political refugee in France because her life was in danger in her country. She had enrolled at the Paris Beaux-Arts school and her work as a painter has profoundly touched us with its light and strength. Here is the interview Armelle Leturcq did with her in November 2017."

Rameau - Les Cyclopes (rondeau in d minor) - Elaine Comparone

The Event

they (Silicon Valley’s elite) were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

Pierre Boulez, Christine Schäfer, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (opening concert of the Musik Triennale Köln 2000)

Modern Slavery

North Korea has the highest prevalence of modern slavery globally, with one in 10 of the population, or 2.6 million people, victims of modern slavery. A third, or 15 million, of victims of modern slavery enter through forced marriage, an issue that disproportionately affects women and girls.

Google hit with record $5 billion EU antitrust fine *

EU regulators hit Google with a record 4.34 billion euros ($5 billion) antitrust fine on Wednesday for using its Android mobile operating system to squeeze out rivals.

* and the Facebook, which "apps" are inside the system of the devices (because the labels did allow it) and cannot to be removed? How much they will be fined? (I wrote to the European Commissars Vera Jurová and Cecilia Malmström on that issue)

Iannis Xenakis - REBONDS a.b. - Kuniko Kato

RSF describes Turkey as “the world’s biggest prison for professional journalists”

Turkey’s former prime minister Binali Yildirim, and President Erdogan’s son-in-law and powerful treasury and finance minister Berat Albayrak, and members of their families have filed defamation actions against award-winning journalist and International Consortium of Investigative Journalists member Pelin Ünker and her newspaper, Cumhuriyet. The influential Turkish figures do not claim factual errors or inaccuracies but seek financial penalties for alleged damage to their reputations.

Media freedom was one of the key demands of the revolution that toppled the Shah and swept Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979, but it is a promise that has never been kept. The media are mostly under the Islamic regime’s close control and there has been no let-up in the persecution of independent journalists, citizen journalists, and media outlets. Media personnel are still constantly exposed to intimidation, arbitrary arrest, and long jail sentences imposed by revolutionary courts at the end of unfair trials. Despite an improvement in its international relations, Iran continues to be one of the world’s five biggest prisons for media personnel.

The New Octopus

Today, as technology creates new forms of power, we must also create new forms of countervailing civic power. We must build a new civic infrastructure that imposes new kinds of checks and balances. But where new firms, however innovative, outstrip our ability to assure their accountability, then we have to ask hard questions about whether we want to pursue such innovation in the first place.

Iannis Xenakis - REBONDS a.b. - Kuniko Kato

U.S. accuses Russian spies of 2016 election hacking

Officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, covertly monitored computers of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Democratic campaign committees, and stole large amounts of data, the indictment said.

Forty-two years ago, a Russian leader privately offered unlimited assistance to a presidential candidate. Given the continuity over the years of Russia’s covert-action methods, it is of little surprise to see Russia doing in 2016 what Brezhnev offered to do in 1975. The difference is that this time the offer was accepted, while in 1975 the United States was led by a man of great experience and absolute integrity, who ignored the offer.

Trump also refrained from publicly criticizing Russia’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, another geopolitical win for Putin against Western efforts to isolate him.

Trump has repeatedly denied his campaign colluded with Russia and has characterized the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a witch hunt. Trump is infuriated by any suggestion he might owe his election victory to Russia.

Here are 10 critics of Vladimir Putin who died violently or in suspicious ways

Oliver Knussen: "Cantata" for oboe and string trio

Amnesty International estimates that at least 97 prisoners of conscience are currently held in Vietnam’s prisons

serving a 10-year prison term following her June 2017 conviction on charges of spreading “propaganda against the state” under Article 88 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, Quynh (Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh) had blogged about human rights abuses and official corruption for more than a decade.

She had also criticized the government’s response to a 2016 toxic waste spill by the Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group that destroyed the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Vietnamese living in four coastal provinces.

Tibetan Villagers Tear-Gassed, Beaten For Mine Protest

Chinese police have launched a violent tear-gas assault on Tibetan villagers in Qinghai’s Yulshul prefecture, ending a two-month protest against suspected mining operations on local mountains, according to a local source.

Kaija Saariaho - Circle Map - FRSO/Susanna Mälkki

Bad Romanian Horse Meat Stampedes Across Europe

Last year, the Agromexim-Cetina partnership generated a new European alert for cadmium- contaminated meat — its fifth one. The meat was sold to the Italian company Boventi SPA, which sent it on to Germany and Hungary. The source of the cadmium contamination has never been identified, according to the Romanian authorities. Meanwhile, Chevideco, the Belgian buyer, continues to buy horse meat from Agromexim.

Vivaldi's "La Folia" (Madness), arranged by Jeannette Sorrell after Sonata XII, Apollo's Fire

Former Pakistan PM Sharif Sentenced To 10 Years Over Panama Papers

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $10.6 million on corruption charges linked to 2016 Panama Papers revelations about his family’s properties overseas.

Elderly and disabled civilians were burned alive

Reiterating his call on the government and African Union to establish a hybrid court for South Sudan, he said the soldiers had slit elderly villagers’ throats, hanged women for resisting looting and shot fleeing civilians.

Nobel widow Liu Xia leaves China after 8 years’ house arrest

The release of Liu Xia, who has never been charged with any crime, is the result of years of campaigning by Western governments and activists and comes just days before the one-year anniversary of the death of dissident Liu Xiaobo while he was serving a prison sentence for inciting subversion.

Oliver Knussen - Horn Concerto

The composer and conductor Oliver Knussen has died

Oliver Knussen has died; he was 66. A pupil of John Lambert and Gunther Schuller, Knussen made a vivid impression at a very early age; his First Symphony was written when he was just 15.

A former Facebook moderator says she had to review 8,000 posts a day

Katz said she was not asked to report the accounts sharing the material — a fact that "disturbed" her. "If the user's account was less than 30 days old we would deactivate the account as a fake account. If the account was older than 30 days we would simply remove the content and leave the account active," she said.

Beethoven - Egmont Overture - Apollo's Fire/Jeannette Sorrell

Distorted neutron stars give up secrets of dense nuclear matter

GW170817 offers astrophysicists new and exciting information about the equation of state (EOS) of neutron stars. The EOS describes the complex behaviour of the dense nuclear matter that makes up neutron stars. Little is currently known about the EOS because it is difficult to glean information from conventional astronomical observations and because theoretical calculations of dense nuclear matter are extremely difficult to do. Before GW170817, the most important piece of information about the EOS came from observations published in 2010 and 2013, which showed that neutron stars can have masses at least as large as two solar masses.

Stravinsky - Petruschka - Yuja Wang

British woman dies after Novichok poisoning

A 44-year-old British woman died on Sunday after being exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in western England just a few miles from where Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were struck down by the same agent four months ago.

Mining the Sky

Space is relatively untouched. It has not yet been exploited and pillaged—and when it is, I would hope that everybody could benefit from it. If space becomes entirely privatized, however, I worry that the profits will simply flow to the private sector—and thanks to countries like Luxembourg, those profits won’t be taxed.

Gender and Climate Change

The Climate Change Gender Action Plansare nationally recognized strategies with a unique methodology for training and building the capacity of women and women’s organizations on the linkages between gender and climate change. 

The EU's dodgy Article 13 copyright directive has been rejected

The Copyright Directive, which contained the particularly concerning Article 13, was rejected by 318 votes to 278, with 31 abstentions

Pierre Boulez plays Douze Notations

Gustav Leonhardt: Louis Couperin's Suite in D