Emrys
Emrys's JournalTheresa May's Brexit Plan Will Leave Britain Subject To Secret Global Trade Courts
Theresa May’s plan for Brexit could leave the UK exposed to a network of secret international courts able to rule in corporations’ favour over the NHS, food standards, environmental rules and more, leading trade experts have told BuzzFeed News.
In a detailed speech in January, May set out a plan for Brexit which would see the UK becoming a pioneer of free trade, signing deals with countries across the world, and leaving the jurisdiction of the EU’s highest court, the Court of Justice (ECJ). May and her ministers have said they want to sign deals quickly to show the UK can be a “great, global trading nation” after Brexit.
But trade experts have warned that signing such deals without the EU judicial system will almost inevitably mean signing up to systems known as “ISDS” (Investor State Dispute Settlement) – secretive, binding arbitration systems that can force countries to overturn their laws when it hurts corporate interests. These formed the core of international opposition to trade deals such as TTIP (between the EU and US) and CETA (between the EU and Canada).
...
“If the narrative is the UK doesn’t want to be subject to ‘unaccountable’ courts then the UK simply cannot enter into trade deals,” Professor Geert van Calster, head of law at the University of Leuven, told BuzzFeed News.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/theresa-mays-brexit-plan-will-leave-britain-subject-to-secre
Britain becoming U.S. vassal state, says French presidential hopeful Macron
British Prime Minister Theresa May, who will hold talks with Trump later on Friday, wants a renewal of the "special relationship" between London and Washington at a time her conservative government redraws its relationship with Europe.
"Britain lived in an equilibrium with Europe," Macron told France Culture radio. "But now it is becoming a vassal state, meaning it is becoming the junior partner of the United State."
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-macron-britain-idUSKBN15B16A
Fact is, the "special relationship" and financial and military/intelligence ties ("The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier", Menwith Hill, etc.) have made the UK a vassal US state for decades.
It'll just be a heck of a lot more apparent outside the EU.
Never mind the optics, Theresa May's US dash was mortifying
But other than that, the PM would have been delighted. In the press conference that followed their Oval Office meeting, there were no bombshells: Trump managed to get through it without insulting an entire ethnic group, trashing a democratic norm or declaring war, any of which might have diverted attention from May's big moment. He was on best behaviour, diligently reading the script that had been written for him, attesting to the "deep bond" that connects Britain and the US. May received all the assurances she craved that her country's relationship with the US remains "special". Why, he even, briefly, took her hand.
However, these are not normal times. May and her team will be pleased with the optics and indeed some of the substance – artfully, May got Trump to confirm, on camera, that he is "100% behind Nato" – but the underlying truth is that this dash to Washington was mortifying.
...
He will have seen May as that most desperate of creatures: the housebuyer who rashly sold her old house before she had found a new one. Having tossed away Britain’s keys to the European single market, she will soon be homeless – and Trump knows it. For all the niceties – May’s shrewd deployment of a royal invitation for a state visit and her compliment to the president on his “stunning election victory”, flattery which saw Trump glow a brighter shade of orange – he will have seen May as a sucker who needs to make a deal. And he will look forward to naming his price.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/27/never-mind-the-optics-theresa-mays-us-dash-was-mortifying
Which Android phone does Donald Trump use?
The New York Times has reported that Donald Trump still tweets from the White House on his "old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides," contradicting earlier reports that the president had turned in the handset in exchange for a "secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service." It's difficult to know with 100% certainty which Android device Trump currently uses to tweet (or whether it's the off-the-shelf model he likely used during his campaign, or some secured variant.)...
So there you go. Trump's personal Android phone is more than likely a Samsung Galaxy S3, released in 2012, and which last received a software update in mid-2015, with firmware based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.
As noted in the intro, we don't know for sure that Trump is still using this specific Galaxy S3. The two NYT reports conflict on whether he turned it in, or is still using it to fire out tweets from the White House. But if he is, and it's the same consumer GS3 model he was apparently using as of February 2016, it's safe to say it's a good three years out of step with the latest Android security updates. Many Android security scares have come and gone since the GS3 got its last update in August of 2015.
Naturally, there's huge (YUGE!) interest in which smartphone — secured, or otherwise — the most powerful man in the world is using. (And understandable concern over how protected it is from digital threats.) We may never have an entirely clear answer. Nevertheless, in 2017, a GS3 certainly fits the description of an "old, unsecure Android phone."
http://www.androidcentral.com/which-android-phone-does-donald-trump-use
Timelapse of the National Mall on Inauguration Day (2017)
Posted because Drudge is currently pushing a CNN Gigapixel high-res photo shot from a low angle looking out from the podium as "proof" that Trump & Spicer's alternative facts about the inauguration turnout aren't so alternative:
In brave new media era, your eyes and ears will not witness same things...
http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/
(I can't get CNN's Gigathing to load on my browser, but it's shot from the thick of the crowd, and crops posted by others from it clearly show the white gaps towards the back that every other shot has shown.)
Predictably, this is being lapped up by deplorable flying monkeys on that thread as evidence of the lying media. It's quite something when you can actually witness people deceiving themselves about the evidence of their own eyes. The conclusive timelapse video above was posted as a counterpoint, and one conveniently ignored by many.
Let's hope there's more substantial issues to get them all steamed up in the coming week.
How 550 Facebook Users Spread Britain First Content To Hundreds Of Thousands Of People
The Facebook profiles seem entirely ordinary. Scattered across towns in England, Wales, and Scotland – as well as Spain, Australia, and the US – they share photos of their grandchildren, missing children warnings, sad tales of animal abuse, and cute memes about hugs.
But these 559 profiles are also among the most prolific spreaders and boosters of anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, and far-right content on the internet. Each of them has liked hundreds of posts on a leading far-right political party’s page, prompting Facebook’s algorithms to push the content up the News Feeds of first thousands, then hundreds of thousands more.
BuzzFeed News has analysed more than a million likes by 350,000 people of posts on the “official” Britain First Facebook page, made over six weeks. The data gives a unique insight into how one of the social network’s most controversial pages gets promoted across the platform, who its most active fans are, and what content they share the most.
Britain First’s Facebook page is liked by more than 1.5 million people and markets itself as an official page for the far-right UK political party formed by former members of the BNP. The fringe party has no elected MPs, MEPs, or councillors, and its former leader was jailed last month for violating a court order forbidding him from entering any mosque in the UK.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/how-550-facebook-users-spread-britain-first-content-to-hundr
No One Loves the 45th President Like Donald Trump
To understand how the future president of the United States thinks and acts, a look back at how he treated one of his former employees can be helpful. The woman in question didn't become known because of complaints regarding Donald Trump's behavior. Rather, he himself boasted about his own treatment of her in one of his many books.
Trump hired the woman in the 1980s. "I decided to make her into somebody," he writes in "Think Big and Kick Ass," a book in which he seeks to share the secret of his success with the world. He gave her a great job, Trump writes, and "she bought a beautiful home."
In the early 1990s, when his company ran into financial difficulties, Trump asked the woman to request help from a friend of hers who held an important position at a bank. The woman, though, didn't feel comfortable doing so and Trump fired her immediately.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-brings-uncertainty-and-nacissism-to-white-house-a-1129925.html#ref=nl-international
The Alt-Right's Meltdown Is Just Like Any Other Message Board Drama
Things have gotten bumpy for the alt-right online movement since the election. It’s facing an identity crisis (what does it mean to be the “alt” if you’re getting what you want?) and grappling with certain fundamental questions like “Are we OK with Nazis?” (Even if its very name was coined by, well, Nazis.) The handful of leaders who emerged over the last year or two are at odds with each other over those and other questions, forcing helpless anime-avatared Twitter trolls caught in the middle to choose sides.
The kerfuffle surrounds the DeploraBall, a black-tie-optional party in DC on Inauguration Night. There has been nasty and public fighting among the organizers. Stick with me here: Mike Cernovich, a lawyer who became an alt-right leader after taking up the GamerGate mantle, feuded with a fellow leader who goes by “Baked Alaska” and announced that Baked Alaska had been removed from headlining the event because he had said anti-Semitic things on Twitter. Another leader, Bill Mitchell, announced he was no longer part of the alt-right after they started using the racist hashtag #WhiteGenocide. And just recently, Baked Alaska accused (and sources confirmed to BuzzFeed News) one of the DeploraBall organizers of planting a “rape Melania” sign at an anti-Trump protest in an attempt to make protesters look depraved. In the latest surreal twist, a popular alt-right podcaster and founder of the website The Right Stuff was revealed to have a Jewish wife, which sent his fans into a tailspin.
At first, this disarray might seem surprising. After all, the alt-right claims to be an unprecedented political phenomenon that memed a president into office. But if you want to understand what’s happening there, it’s helpful to think about it as an internet-first creature. While it’s possible — and necessary — to view it through the lens of political or social thought that it echoes, the other way of making sense of it is to look at it as a digital community, regardless of its politics. And if you view it as an online community rather than a political movement, its trajectory starts to look very, very familiar.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/the-alt-rights-meltdown-is-just-like-any-other-message-board
Trump 'cyber tsar' Giuliani among swathes of hacked top appointees
Source: Channel 4 News (UK)
Passwords used by Donald Trump's incoming cyber security advisor Rudy Giuliani and 13 other top staff members have been leaked in mass hacks, a Channel 4 News investigation can reveal.
...
Staff whose accounts also appear to be affected by the hacks in recent years include people who will from Friday at 12pm take roles as:
* the Secretary for the Interior
* the Secretary for Labour
* the Press Secretary
* the Director of the Domestic Policy Council
* the Director of the National Trade Council
* Head of Social Media
* Chief Trade Negotiator
* Director of Oval Office operations
* and many others
Trump's team have not commented on this story.
Read more: https://www.channel4.com/news/trump-cyber-tsar-giuliani-among-swathes-of-hacked-top-appointees
Gove on Trump: an inside look at the interview of the century
“Good to meet you, Nick,” said the president-elect.
“It’s Mikey.”
“Whatever. You’re probably wondering why I chose to give my first British interview to you.”
“Gosh… Now you come to mention it.…”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/16/gove-on-trump-an-inside-look-at-the-interview-of-the-century
By John Crace. John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer. Michael Gove is a deluded, self-promoting eejit.
Another take from Crace:
You might have thought that, after conducting an interview with Donald Trump that read like a celebrity puff piece for an airline inflight magazine and then posing for a cheesy, sleazy photo under a Playboy cover, Michael Gove might have wanted to lie low for a bit to recover from the embarrassment. Not a bit of it. Gove’s narcissism will not be contained and he spent Monday morning doing a tour of any media outlet that would have him to boast about his underachievement.
First stop was Radio 4’s Today programme where presenter Sarah Montague first challenged him on Trump’s assertion that a UK-US trade deal post-Brexit could be done quickly and easily. “I’m no expert in trade negotiations,” Gove said proudly. In Gove World lack of expertise in any field automatically makes you ideally qualified for the job. “But I can tell you that Trump is a dealmaker and he is confident he can make a deal that is win-win for Britain and America.”
Montague’s blink could be felt even on the radio. Hadn’t Gove understood that the most basic thing about Trump is that there is no such thing as a win-win deal for him? A Trump deal always involves winners and losers and it was fairly obvious who the president-elect saw as the losers in any future trade deals. Besides which, we wouldn’t be able to do any negotiations until we had left the EU.
“Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world,” Mikey announced. “He can do whatever he wants. And he definitely wants to do a deal with Britain because he’s emotionally and financially invested in Brexit. Donald loves Brexit.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/16/michael-gove-cheesy-puff-donald-trump-interview
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