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'We are not robots': Amazon warehouse employees demand better work conditions

Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 12:06 UTC
Amazon warehouse workers protest
As Amazon's workforce has more than doubled over the past three years, workers at Amazon fulfillment center warehouses in the United States have started organizing and pushing toward forming a union to fight back against the company's treatment of its workers.

Amazon's global workforce reached more than 613,000 employees worldwide according to its latest quarterly earnings report, not including the 100,000 temporary employees the company hired for the holiday season.

Just a few months after Amazon opened its first New York-based fulfillment center in Staten Island, workers announced on 12 December the launch of a union push with help from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
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Snakes in Suits

Judge dismisses lawsuit over Google's controversial facial recognition program

Lucas Nolan
Breitbart
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 12:06 UTC
google
© Reuters / Chris Helgren
A Chicago judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against tech giant Google over its use of facial recognition technology.

Engadget reports that a Chicago judge has granted Google's request to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the company over their use of facial recognition technology. The company was accused of violating Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act by gathering biometric data from users photos without their express permission.

The judge dismissed the lawsuit ruling that the plaintiffs were unable to demonstrate "concrete injuries" from the facial recognition software used to collect biometric data by Google. The suit was filed in March 2016 with the plaintiffs seeking $5 million to compensate state residents, with $5,000 each for purposeful violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act and another $1,000 for unintentional violation.

Comment: Here is more from the official ruling:
"The Seventh Circuit has definitively held that retention of an individual's private information, on its own, is not a concrete injury sufficient" to establish standing, the 28-page opinion states.

Further, there are no allegations that hackers have stolen the plaintiffs' information or that there has been other unauthorized access to the Google Photos accounts.

"Plaintiffs cannot show - and do not argue - that Google 'intruded into a private place' by receiving photographs of plaintiffs voluntarily uploaded to Google photos" by themselves or others, Judge Chang said.

He added, "Plaintiffs do not offer evidence to dispute that their faces are public - just that their facial biometrics are. This is consistent with Fourth Amendment case law that rejects an expectation of privacy in a person's face." (Emphasis in original.)


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Cow

'Go vegan or we die': Activists block Toronto intersection to protest Brazil's new president


CTV News
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 06:02 UTC
vegan protest toronto
© Jenny HenryAnimal rights activists protest the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's new president, in Toronto on January 1, 2019.
Animal rights activists blocked traffic at a major Toronto intersection on Tuesday, staging a "die-in" to protest the inauguration of Brazil's new far-right president and his proposed environmental policies.

Organizers say nearly 50 people participated in the protest at the intersection of Bay and Bloor streets outside the Brazilian consulate. Some activists held signs urging President Jair Bolsonaro to "go vegan or we die."

"We challenge President Bolsonaro to sign up for Veganuary," Anita Krajnc, an organizer with the Toronto Climate Save and Extinction Rebellion told CTVNews.ca, referring to a movement that urges people to try living on a plant-based diet for the month of January.

Comment: So rather than focus on the legit environmental problems the protesters take issue with, they make the ridiculous demand that the Brazilian president go vegan. Can we see why so many people think vegans are idiots?

See also:

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Book 2

Interview with author Robert Greene: Identity politics, the Yellow Vests and cultural appropriation

Ryan Holiday
Quillette
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
author robert greene
Robert Greene is the author of The 48 Laws of Power and most recently, The Laws of Human Nature. His books, which are popular with many world leaders, celebrities, professional athletes and hip hop stars like Drake, have sold more than 5 million copies and have been translated into over 30 languages. Robert's raw, "amoral" look at history and the dynamics of power, seduction, and warfare have always been controversial - indeed, his books are banned in many prisons across the United States. This interview about political correctness, the bloody cost of the denial of human nature, and the inner-work required for rational thought was conducted for Quillette by Ryan Holiday, his former apprentice, over the phone from Austin, Texas while Robert recovers in Los Angeles from a near-fatal stroke he suffered in August, 2018. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.
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Bizarro Earth

Minibus bursts into flames killing three in Russian city where building collapsed


RT
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 20:39 UTC
minibus russia fire
© Ruptly
A tragedy has struck twice the city of Magnitogorsk in the Russian Urals. A minibus turned into inferno killing three people less than two days after a house collapsed killing nine with over 30 still missing,

The video shows a column of fire engulfing the vehicle.

A series of loud bangs can be heard throughout the footage of the incident provided by RT's Ruptly video agency. No official explanation has been provided for the noise, which sounds somewhat similar to gunfire. Witnesses in the video can be heard suggesting that the bangs come from firecrackers exploding inside the burning minibus.

Comment: For more on the devastating gas explosion, see: 4 killed, 35 missing after gas explosion rips through residential building in Russia - UPDATE

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Stock Down

Countless Americans still living paycheck to paycheck with no way out

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 30 Dec 2018 11:22 UTC
paycheck
A recent Philly.com article noted that, despite the supposed economic "boom", professionals like real estate agents, farmers, business executives and even computer programmers are all still living paycheck to paycheck. Responding to a Washington Post inquiry on Twitter, millennials, Generation Xers and baby boomers that work in a range of geographic areas claim that they have simply been unable to save as rent, childcare and student loans have all gotten in the way.

Americans living paycheck to paycheck were highlighted in a recent report from the Federal Reserve that showed four in ten adults say they couldn't produce $400 in an emergency without going into debt or selling something. And now a partial government shutdown that is seeing nearly 800,000 federal workers not getting paid has fueled the discussion on Twitter about how brief income lapses can be disastrous for some households.


Another Twitter user wrote: "Broke my lease to accept new fed job for which I have to attend 7 months of training in another state. Training canceled with shutdown. Homeless. Can't afford short(?)-term housing/have to work full-time for no pay/returning Christmas presents."

Comment: With many people living on the brink of poverty, it won't be long before we see only two classes; the ultra rich and poor. See also:

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Pistol

Marine dead from gunshot wound at Marine Barracks in Southeast, DC


Fox News
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 11:29 UTC
Marine Barracks
Officials report that a Marine is dead after a shooting at the Marine Barracks in Southeast, D.C. The shooting was reported around 5 a.m. Officials say the Marine was shot and hospitalized but later died from a gunshot wound.

A Marine spokesperson did not identify the Marine but said no suspects have been arrested and that there is no threat to public.
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Handcuffs

Syrian national detained by German police, suspected of planning a terror act


Sputnik
Sun, 30 Dec 2018 02:59 UTC
German police
© AP Photo/Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
The police of the German city of Mainz detained a Syrian national, who is suspected of preparing a terrorist attack and is thought to be linked to four individuals, who were detained earlier in Rotterdam, local media reported on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, the Dutch police said that four individuals had been detained in Rotterdam on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities.

According to Germany's Zeit newspaper, the 26-year-old Syrian national was detained at an apartment in Mainz, with the flat having been searched by the police. The German police worked in cooperation with the Dutch colleagues, the news outlet added.

The detainee is due to appear before court on Sunday, with the issue of his extradition to the Netherlands expected to be considered.
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Network

Malware attack: Delivery of L.A. Times and Tribune papers disrupted across US

Tony Barbosa, Meg James, Emily Alpert Reyes
Los Angeles Times
Sat, 29 Dec 2018 08:10 UTC
LATimes building
© Los Angeles Times
What first arose as a server outage was identified Saturday as a malware attack, which appears to have originated from outside the United States and hobbled computer systems and delayed weekend deliveries of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers across the country.

Technology teams worked feverishly to quarantine the computer virus, but it spread through Tribune Publishing's network and reinfected systems crucial to the news production and printing process. Multiple newspapers around the country were affected because they share a production platform.

The attack delayed distribution of Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune. It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which are printed at the Los Angeles Times' Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles.

By Saturday afternoon, the company suspected the cyberattack originated from outside the United States, but officials said it was too soon to say whether it was carried out by a foreign state or some other entity, said a source with knowledge of the situation.

"We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The source would not detail what evidence led the company to believe the breach came from overseas.
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Star of David

PA sentences Palestinian-American to life in prison with hard labor for selling property to Jews


Sputnik
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 03:11 UTC
Issam Akel
© ScreenshotIssam Akel
Months after being held in the Palestinian Authority's custody, Issam Akel, a Palestinian-American resident of east Jerusalem, was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor this week after he was found guilty of attempting to sell a house to a Jewish organization.

After a weeklong trial, the Palestinian Grand Criminal Court found Akel guilty on Monday of trying to "cut off a part of the Palestinian land and adding them to a foreign country," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Bylaws established by the Palestinian Authority (PA) prohibit the sale of land to a "hostile state or any of its citizens." PA bylaws require residents to obtain permission from the PA itself before carrying out these types of transactions.

Akel reportedly acted as the broker in the sale of the home, jointly owned by the Alami and Halabi families and located in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem. According to the Post, the home fetched the owners a whopping $500,000 from Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli Jewish organization known to purchase Arab-owned properties in the area.

Presently, the bank accounts of Akel and the two families have been frozen by the PA.
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