Bonjour Planet Earth

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Facebook has lost $70 billion in 10 days — and now advertisers are pulling out...

Shares of Facebook Inc fell again on Monday after the U.S. consumer protection regulator made public its investigation of how the social network allowed data of 50 million users to get into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Scrutiny by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which generally confirms the existence of an investigation only in cases of significant public interest, adds to pressure by lawmakers in the United States and Europe for Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain how his company handles user data.
Facebook shares fell as much as 6.5 per cent, briefly dipping below US$150 for the first time since July 2017, before recovering the day’s losses to close up 0.4 per cent at US$160.06.

The shares are still down 13 per cent since March 16, when Facebook first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channeled to Cambridge Analytica. The company has lost more than $70 billion in market value since then.

At the day’s session low the company had lost US$100 billion in market value since March 17, when newspapers first reported that Facebook member data was improperly used by consultants Cambridge Analytica to target U.S. and British voters in close-run elections. Full story...

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Facebook knows a lot about you, even your ...

Monday, March 26, 2018

How brainwashing works...

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Facebook knows a lot about you, even your call history and SMS data...

(...)

f this information isn’t creepy enough wait till you find out that Facebook is also collecting call history and SMS data from Android users.

A couple of days ago, a big story broke out stating that Facebook exposed data of 50 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign.

And now Several Twitter users are reporting finding months or even years of call history and SMS data in their downloadable Facebook data file. People freaked out and outraged about the Cambridge Analytica prompted them to download all the data that Facebook stores on their account, and millions deleting their Facebook accounts.

“Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year,” says ‏Twitter user Mat Johnson. Another, Dylan McKay, says “somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum.” Others have found a similar pattern where it appears close contacts, like family members, are the only ones tracked in Facebook’s call records. Full story...

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Saturday, March 24, 2018

When caste follows you overseas: Ostracism, discrimination among South Asians in US...

Caste is an integral part of Hindu society and practices. But does your caste identity have a bearing on your experience or how you are perceived by others even outside India?

According to a recent survey, caste discrimination is prevalent in the United States of America among the South Asian immigrant community - across people from various countries and those who practice different religions.

A survey conducted by Equality Labs titled ‘Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans’ showed that of the 1,500 respondents, 52% of Dalits and 25% of Shudras were worried about their caste being ‘outed’, as they could end up facing rejection from public and religious spaces, bullying and more. In contrast, only 1% of Brahmins were worried about their caste being ‘outed’.

TR, a parent who responded to the survey, said that her child was secluded from other children when the mother of another child discovered that they were Dalit. “Word that my family was Dalit spread like wildfire, my child became secluded from other Caste Hindu children. It angered me and it broke my heart that my child had to face the feeling of being an outcaste in the 21st century in the United States!”

Many such parents have reported that their children have been treated differently in schools and feel alienated. Full story...

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Cambridge Analytica: How the royal family became embroiled in a data harvesting scandal...

The extended Royal family has become embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal. As journalists investigate the shady deals of the consultancy firm, it has been exposed that ties to the data company go right to the top.

As the week progressed, more and more links between CA and the establishment have been revealed. Board members for parent company SCL Group include a Lords member, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors… there’s even a direct descendant of a queen in there for good measure.

CA is one arm of SCL group, formerly known as Strategic Communication Laboratories. The Observer article, which initially broke the CA scandal, said “for all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.”

SCL's board is a who's who of the British establishment, with minor royals rubbing shoulders with Conservative Party donors and the military top brass. Full story...

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Facebook: six degrees of giant squid...

(...)

The game is no longer about sending you a mail order catalogue or even about targeting online advertising. The game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life –your reality—in order to directly influence and modify your behavior for profit. This is the gateway to a new universe of monetization opportunities: restaurants who want to be your destination. Service vendors who want to fix your brake pads.

Shops who will lure you like the fabled Sirens. The “various people” are anyone, and everyone who wants a piece of your behavior for profit. Small wonder, then, that Google recently announced that its maps will not only provide the route you search but will also suggest a destination.

This is just one peephole, in one corner, of one industry, and the peepholes are multiplying like cockroaches. Among the many interviews I’ve conducted over the past three years, the Chief Data Scientist of a much-admired Silicon Valley company that develops applications to improve students’ learning told me:

“The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behavior at scale. When people use our app, we can capture their behaviors, identify good and bad behaviors, and develop ways to reward the good and punish the bad. Full story...

Friday, March 23, 2018

Trump take note – why Singapore’s claim that the death penalty works for drug offences is fake news...

Speaking before the country’s parliament, Singapore’s minister for home affairs, K Shanmugam, extolled the country’s success in fighting drugs. He attributed these results to Singapore’s harsh drug laws, which include the use of capital punishment.

It may seem surprising to the uninitiated that Singapore has the death penalty for drug crimes. But, as the minister said: “Our penalties are severe because we want to deter such offences”.

Singapore is one of a tiny number of countries classified by Harm Reduction International (HRI) as “high application” states in the use of capital punishment for drugs. This means that death sentences and executions are a regular part of the criminal justice system. Indeed, there have been two executions for drug offences just this month, killings which were condemned by UN human rights officials.

The idea that harsh drug laws such as the death penalty are effective is one actively promoted by Singapore. And it is a belief now allegedly being adopted by US president Donald Trump. Given Trump’s notorious concern with what he considers “fake news”, it is somewhat surprising he has embraced one of the more dubious claims in global drug control – the myth that Singapore’s harsh penalties have nearly eliminated drug use and drug crime. Full story...

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Racism used for ‘divide and rule’ in Malaysia, says report...

MALAYSIA’S government is utilising racism as a tool to “divide and rule” the country, according to a damning new report from a local human rights organisation.

Pusat KOMAS released the Malaysia Racial Discrimination Report on Wednesday, tracking what it said were increased instances of racism recorded in the media during 2017 in the multicultural, Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation.

Malaysia has long dealt with racial and religious tensions between its Malay majority and sizeable ethnic Chinese and Indian communities. The ruling United Malays National

Organisation (UMNO) has for decades provided economic advantages to Muslim Malays to the exclusion of minorities.

With the country’s 14^th General Election expected sometime in the coming months, the Pusat KOMAS report argued that “racism has become more pronounced and is being increasingly used as a tool to divide and rule.” Full story...

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Malaysia bolsters affirmative action for "bumiputra" Malays...

Facebook's data gold rush: Web giant's takings soared by £12BILLION after it let companies hoover up users' data...

Facebook revenues soared to billions of pounds after it started giving away users' details.

The social media giant practically doubled its takings every year after opening up profiles to 'tens of thousands' of app developers.

Facebook users were yesterday waking up to how much private information has been handed out.

During the data gold-rush – which lasted from 2009 to 2015 – it appears almost anyone who described themselves as a 'developer' could freely mine Facebook's database.

In this period, the technology firm's revenues rose sharply, from £500million in 2009 to nearly £13billion by 2015.

The company is now facing probes from law enforcement agencies around the world, including in Britain. Full story...

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Has Russia had enough?

This morning I watched a briefing the Russian Foreign Ministry provided for the diplomatic community where international toxic substances experts presented information concerning the alleged nerve agent used in the alleged attack on Skripal and his daughter. This information has been known for some time, and none of it has been reported in the Western presstitute media.

In the briefing the Russians once again relied on facts and existing agreements that govern the investigation of such events and asked why the British were demanding explanations from Russia when the British refuse to comply with established procedures and refuse to produce any evidence of what the British allege to have occurred.

The response from the US and French embassy representatives was simply to state that they needed no evidence to stand in solidarity with their British friends, that Russia was guilty by accusation alone, and that they would hold Russia accountable.

The benefit of this absurd response, which the Russians declared to be shameful, is to make clear to the Russian government that it is a waste of time to try, yet again, to confront unsupported accusations from the West with facts and appeals to follow the specified legal processes. The West simply does not care. The issue is not the facts of the case. The agenda is to add another layer to the ongoing demonization of Russia. Full story...

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Pot meet kettle alert: Google’s AI guru attacks Facebook’s algorithms...

Last night Google’s deep-learning expert François Chollet tweeted a long and slightly illuminating thread, decrying the state of artificial intelligence programming. In light of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle–where a data firm was able to obtain millions of user profiles–Chollet sees the increasingly frightening prospect of algorithms being trained to control information supply. While it’s scary that Facebook essentially allowed a Trump-affiliated program to execute a series of targeted ad campaigns, the hidden story is Facebook’s innate power and how it can be used for psychological control.

Indeed, this is a very interesting and horrifying problem. Platforms adopting algorithms to fine-tune the content it feeds to users presents an easy pathway for psychological control. “If Facebook gets to decide, over the span of many years, which news you will see (real or fake), whose political status updates you’ll see, and who will see yours, then Facebook is in effect in control of your political beliefs and your worldview,” writes Chollet.

But this criticism is somewhat rich coming from the deep-learning guy at Google. While perhaps we should pause, nod, and agree that this is a problem, Chollet may not be the most appropriate messenger. Google, after all, is a company that itself has created some very powerful algorithms, ones that people rely on day in and day out. I would go as far to say that Google’s artificial intelligence programs are far more insidious than Facebook’s. Full story...

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'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe...

Europe’s march towards a post-Christian society has been starkly illustrated by research showing a majority of young people in a dozen countries do not follow a religion.

The survey of 16- to 29-year-olds found the Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe, with 91% of that age group saying they have no religious affiliation. Between 70% and 80% of young adults in Estonia, Sweden and the Netherlands also categorise themselves as non-religious.

The most religious country is Poland, where 17% of young adults define themselves as non-religious, followed by Lithuania with 25%.

In the UK, only 7% of young adults identify as Anglican, fewer than the 10% who categorise themselves as Catholic. Young Muslims, at 6%, are on the brink of overtaking those who consider themselves part of the country’s established church.

The figures are published in a report, Europe’s Young Adults and Religion, by Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London. They are based on data from the European social survey 2014-16. More + charts...
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"No religion" is now Australia's number one religion...

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Iraq war: 15 years later...

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Giving up porn for Lent means drop in computer viruses...

Software and security experts said malware infections fell 17 percent in the United States since the beginning of the Christian Lenten season—a trend they say is due to people giving up pornography for Lent.

Experts at Enigma Software (ESG) found that there has been a reduction of nearly one-in-five malware viruses since Lent began for millions of Christians on Ash Wednesday, February 14. Many Christians commit themselves to various acts of penance during the approximately 40-day religious observance period, including fasting during daylight or more mundane tasks like refraining from swearing.

This year, Lent ends three days before Easter Sunday on March 29. But the reduction in detected malware infections has led several software experts to connect the dots between the decrease in viruses and a decrease in time spent on porn websites during Lent each year.

“It’s very common for people who participate in Lenten activities to curtail usage of things like social media and technology in general in the weeks leading up to Easter,” ESG spokesperson Ryan Gerding told WGNO-TV. Full story...

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Which advertisers have access to your Facebook data? Here’s how to find out...

We all know that Facebook has access to more personal data than our spouses, friends or parents may ever know. The recent scandal involving Facebook and political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which has allegedly illegally harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users in 2014 and used this to influence elections in several countries, has raised the important question – how safe is my personal data on Facebook?

Most Indian users may have found the data breach irrelevant to their own lives, but what if you could access all of the data that Facebook has collected about you over the years? What if you could know the names of all the advertisers that may have access to your personal data, thanks to Facebook?

Although Facebook does allow a user to access the names of the advertisers, the worrisome fact is that the Social Networking giant does not clearly mention what specific data of the person is being shared with the advertisers. Despite numerous requests by activists and organisations, the company’s response has been evasive. In an email sent on April 6, 2017, Facebook responds to the question “Which contact info does each advertiser have? (which email, which phone number, etc), posed by an activist. The social media giant states, “Advertisers do not give Facebook any users' contact details. We only get such details in hashed form and they are, in any event, deleted within 48 hours. We are therefore not able to confirm what contact information an advertiser has for a particular user.”

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data breach, we tell you how to access the names of all the advertisers, who have access to your data - most probably without your knowledge. Full story...

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Cambridge Analytica's real business isn't data...

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolds, the Western world is meeting a little-known part of its political industry, the one that has operated in developing nations since at least the 1990s. CA's methods as revealed by the U.K.'s Channel 4 News, whose reporter posed as a potential Sri Lankan client, may be a bit extreme -- but for the most part, the consultancy has been one of many firms that have brought Western-style electioneering to lawless environments in which it has been blatantly abused.

In the U.S., political marketing developed from an art into a science by the 1980s. By the end of the following decade, the U.S. had an industry of about 7,000 people who worked on campaigns, political scientist Christian Schafferer wrote in 2006. The U.S. market became too competitive for all these professionals. This, however, was the era of Pax Americana, when most countries' establishments sought American knowledge and at least the external veneer of Western democracy. The Global Political Consultancy Survey of 1998-2000 revealed that 57 percent of the top U.S. political consultants also worked overseas -- in post-Communist countries, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East. Sometimes, from Honduras to Israel, opposing politicians were being advised by different U.S. consultants.

The same survey showed that campaign professionals from Western Europe -- especially the U.K., France and Germany -- were also in demand. In the post-Communist world in particular, their experience was deemed at least as relevant, if not more so, than their U.S. colleagues'. That's where London-based Cambridge Analytica comes in, too. Political consulting is a globalized market now. Full story...

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“All of you so black how to recognise?” Hotel cafe manager tells off Singaporean Indian worker...

A Singaporean was met with an unapologetic racist remark when he was simply trying to do his job at Hotel Boss – a 19-storey, 1500-room hotel located at 500 Jalan Sultan – recently.

The man, Facebook user Hunter Hers Helmsley, wrote online earlier this month that he visited the hotel to pick up a group of guests who were eating at a cafe in the hotel lobby. As Hunter approached the cafe, he was encountered the manager of the cafe who asked him for his room number.

Hunter explained that he was not a hotel guest and that he was there to fetch a group of guests. The worker peeked into the cafe and noticed his guests who requested for him to wait so they could finish their meal. When some time had passed, Hunter went back to the cafe to look for the guests since there was no sign of them.

The same cafe manager saw Hunter and asked him for his room number again. When Hunter explained that he is not a guest and that he had already shared this with her, the cafe manager allegedly retorted, “All of you so black how to recognise?” Full story...

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Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Cambridge Analytica: Undercover secrets of Trump's data firm...

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Man wins $390,000 in gender discrimination case because a woman got the promotion he was more qualified for...

A court in Austria has ruled that transport ministry official Peter Franzmayr was discriminated against on the basis of his gender when a managerial role he applied for was given to a woman instead.

The case began in 2011, when the Austrian Minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology led by Social Democrat (SPÖ) politician Doris Bures—currently the Second President of the country's Parliament—decided to consolidate two departments and had to pick a new manager.

Three candidates came forward and were all judged to be highly-qualified for the role. Ursula Zechner, who then headed the rail regulator Schienen-Control, was ultimately offered the job over the other two male applicants. Franzmayr, whose application was rated 0.25 percent higher than Zechner's, sued for gender discrimination.

The Federal Administrative Court ruled in his favor on Monday, the Austrian press reported, and instructed the State to pay him compensation worth €317,368 (nearly $390,000)—the difference between his current salary and the one he would have earned in the role plus damages and interest. Full story...

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Revival of free speech at Speakers’ Corner: Embarrassing defeat for the British state...

I have never visited Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London. I first heard about it during English lessons in school while growing up in Germany. Learning at the age of about 13 of this unique and idiosyncratic institution of individual freedom, this outward sign of a truly tolerant society, added to my sense of pride in my English heritage, my mother being a daughter of the island nation. I was also intrigued; it chimed with my budding interest in politics. However, for some reason, even after moving to Britain permanently 17 years ago, I’ve never got around to actually going there and listening to some orators. I knew it was there, but I ignored it. And now it, and what it represents, are in grave danger. So what happened?

What happened had a long build-up and can be summarised thus: Self-destructive madness. In the face of mounting manifestations of internal contradictions of its multicultural outlook and philosophy, the ruling class of Europe, including Britain, is displaying growing signs of sheer lunacy and shameful abrogation of responsibility. Brexit was, if anything, a reaction of its supporters against the madness they perceived taking hold of their government and political representatives in their country and across the whole continent. Precisely because in Britain the tradition, or at least the memory, of free speech is still alive, the local branch of the ruling class could not avoid calling a referendum on EU membership forever. Hubristic and arrogant, they were sure they would win. When they lost, David Cameron, the prime minister responsible for calling the vote, resigned, remarking that at least he had managed to institutionalise same-sex marriage. But the ruling class as a whole did not resign. It has essentially remained in place.

Nothing has highlighted the continued rule by an aloof class of politicians and media grandees more clearly than the recent detention and subsequent deportation of Martin Sellner from England, and the deafening, shameful silence this was met with in most of the mainstream media. The Austrian activist of the Identitarian movement simply wanted to speak about freedom of speech – at Speakers’ Corner, on Sunday 10th March. Where Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell had spoken, where anyone can speak about anything, Sellner was denied this right – on the basis of anti-terrorism laws.

This has now backfired in a very major way. For the state, and for those who manipulated its institutions to act against Sellner. Full story...

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WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton told his Twitter followers to delete Facebook...

Amid the turmoil of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton on Tuesday told his Twitter followers to delete Facebook.

"It is time. #deletefacebook," he wrote on the social media platform.

Acton has almost 21,000 Twitter followers.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. Acton remained with the company for several years before quitting to start the Signal Foundation earlier this year. His WhatsApp co-founder, Jan Koum, still leads the company and sits on Facebook's board.

Acton also applied for a job at Facebook in 2009, and posted about his rejection on Twitter at the time: Full story...

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Mark Zuckerberg AWOL from Facebook’s data leak damage

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Exclusive: Mark Zuckerberg AWOL from Facebook’s data leak damage control session...

It’s not just that he’s silent in public. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg declined to face his employees on Tuesday to explain the company’s role in a widening international scandal over the 2016 election.

Facebook employees on Tuesday got the opportunity for an internal briefing and question-and-answer session about Facebook’s role with the Trump-aligned data firm Cambridge Analytica. It was the first the company held to brief and reassure employees after, ahead of damaging news reports, Facebook abruptly suspended Cambridge Analytica. The Q&A session was first reported by The Verge.

But Zuckerberg himself wasn’t there, The Daily Beast has learned. Instead, the session was conducted by a Facebook attorney, Paul Grewal, according to a source familiar with the meeting. That was the same approach the company used on Capitol Hill this past fall, when it sent its top attorney, Colin Stretch, to brief Congress about the prevalence of Russian propaganda, to include paid ads and inauthentic accounts, on its platform.

Nor, The Daily Beast has learned, did chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg attend the internal town hall. Full story...

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Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Nikola Tesla describes a cellphone in 1926...

A time traveller in a Charlie Chaplin movie???

Russian to Judgement...

The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s now assure you Russian “novochok” nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May’s statement yesterday was “only”. She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been “developed by” Russia. Antibiotics were first developed by a Scotsman, but that is not evidence that all antibiotics are today administered by Scots.

The “novochok” group of nerve agents – a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago – will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents. And one country which has always manufactured very similar persistent nerve agents is Israel. This Foreign Policy magazine (a very establishment US publication) article on Israel‘s chemical and biological weapon capability is very interesting indeed. I will return to Israel later in this article.

Incidentally, novachok is not a specific substance but a class of new nerve agents. Sources agree they were designed to be persistent, and of an order of magnitude stronger than sarin or VX. That is rather hard to square with the fact that thankfully nobody has died and those possibly in contact just have to wash their clothes. Full story...

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French baker fined €3,000 for working too much...

A baker from the small town of Lusigny-sur-Barse in northeastern France has been fined €3,000 for working seven days a week. The law imposes a weekly day of rest for all workers but Cédric Vaivre kept his bakery open all week in the summer of 2017.

Lusigny Mayor Christian Branle and locals from the town of just 2,000 people have come out in defence of Vaivre and started a petition, according to local newspaper L'Est Eclair.

Locals argue that in the summer months, “there is nothing worse than closed shops when there are tourists" and it is essential that the baker stays open every day.

During the summer months the town sees an influx of tourists travelling to the lakes in the nearby stunning Orient Forest Regional Nature Park. Full story...

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Elderly people in Japan are getting arrested on purpose because they want to go to prison...

Japan has the world’s oldest population, with more than a quarter of its citizens aged 65 or older.

The ageing population has already put a strain on Japan’s financial system and retail industry. But in recent years, another unexpected trend has been unfolding: In record numbers, elderly people in Japan are committing petty crimes so they can spend the rest of their days in prison.

According to Bloomberg, complaints and arrests involving older citizens are outpacing those of any other demographic in Japan, and the elderly crime rate has quadrupled over the past couple of decades.

In prisons, one out of every five inmates is a senior citizen. And in many cases — nine out of 10, for senior women — the crime that lands them in jail is petty shoplifting. Full story...

Facebook under fire in escalating data row...

Politicians in the US, Europe and the UK are calling on Facebook to explain how data on millions of its users was harvested.

US senators have called on Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress about how it will protect users.

The head of the European Parliament said it would investigate to see if the data was misused.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said she was "very concerned" about the revelations.

Over the weekend, the Guardian and the New York Times published stories which alleged that Facebook had not done enough to warn millions of users that data firm Cambridge Analytica had collected information about them. Full story...

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Monday, March 19, 2018

Installing a fully functional kitchen in an electric car...

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Indian children’s book lists Hitler as leader ‘who will inspire you’

An Indian publisher came under fire this week for including Hitler in a children’s book about world leaders who have “devoted their lives for the betterment of their country and people.”

“Dedicated to the betterment of countries and people? Adolf Hitler? This description would bring tears of joy to the Nazis and their racist neo-Nazi heirs,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement.

Published by the Pegasus imprint of India’s B. Jain Publishing Group, the book, called “Leaders” — but listed on the publisher’s website as “Great Leaders” — spotlights 11 leaders “who will inspire you,” according to a product description on the publisher’s website.

On the book’s cover, a stony-faced Hitler is featured alongside Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Also included on the cover is Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has recently come under sharp criticism for refusing to acknowledge atrocities committed by the country’s military against the Rohingya ethnic group. Full story...

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When Hitler was worshipped as Vishnu in India!!!

Hitler tried to play cricket ... and decided it was only for sissies!!!

Japanese wartime sailor, 96, passing down anti-war spirit to youths...

Death never fell equally on the killing fields--that's the most unbearable thing for Kuniyoshi Takimoto, a 96-year-old former Imperial Japanese Navy sailor.

“There was no such thing as cool stories on the battlefield,” he said.

At the front, the youths were simply expendable. All the deaths were miserable and pitiful, recalled Takimoto, who has talked about his experiences to younger generations as a “kataribe,” or storyteller.

Takimoto, who resides in Osaka, recently published his memoirs titled “A ‘will’ of a 96-year-old former sailor of the Imperial Japanese Navy,” with an ardent desire to never see a repeat of the era in which he was driven to the verge of starvation. Full story...

Aung San Suu Kyi cancels rare public appearance in Australia...

Myanmar's controversial State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has canceled a rare public appearance in Australia due to ill health, hours after meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Suu Kyi was due to give a speech at Sydney's Lowy Institute on Tuesday but the think-tank announced she had been forced to cancel as she was "not feeling well," in a statement Monday afternoon.

"Following the speech, the State Counselor was to take questions from the audience," the statement said.

Suu Kyi was in Sydney on Saturday for the first ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) meeting to be held in Australia. On Monday morning she met with Turnbull in Canberra.

Her government has been accused internationally of "ethnic cleansing" against Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya population, at least 688,000 of whom have fled across the border in Bangladesh in the last six months. Full story...

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Edward Snowden: Facebook is a surveillance company rebranded as 'social media'

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden ripped Facebook in a tweet Saturday after the social media giant suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm which worked worked for President Trump’s campaign.

Facebook accused the firm on Friday of not deleting data it had improperly harvested from Facebook users, which number in the tens of millions, but Snowden pinned the blame squarely on Facebook and lumped in other social media companies for being just as reckless.

"Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as 'surveillance companies,'" Snowden said. "Their rebranding as 'social media' is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense."

"Facebook makes their money by exploiting and selling intimate details about the private lives of millions, far beyond the scant details you voluntarily post," Snowden said earlier in the day. "They are not victims. They are accomplices." Full story...

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