#theintercept.com

By Peter Maass October 10 2019, 5:34 p.m.

Stockholm is more than 1,500 miles from Sarajevo, and the war in Bosnia was halted in 1995, so there’s a lot of time and distance between the Swedes who just chose the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature and the nasty war that happened in the heart of the Balkans a generation ago. But that’s no excuse for the decision to give this year’s prize to Peter Handke, who denies that a well-documented genocide was committed by Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia.

We live in perplexing times when the U.S. president saw “very fine people” among neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and we have a television network that traffics in racism and conspiracy theories. Our world is being described in fraudulent ways, and history is being rewritten to suit these distorted narratives. The last thing we need, and the last thing I’d expect to happen, is for an intellectual honor as paramount as the Nobel Prize to go to a writer who embodies the prime intellectual diseases of our era. And let’s remember that the Nobel selection comes at a moment when violent white supremacists are singling out the 1990s Serbs as heroic avatars of what needs to be done in our world. It’s dumbfounding that the Nobel Committee would seize this moment to honor an Austrian writer who defends these war criminals and dissembles on their behalf.

What were they thinking?

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this whole thing. But let me start by making clear what I am not saying. I am not saying that we should not read Handke’s literary work. My objection is not a version of the age-old question of whether we should listen to Richard Wagner. Go ahead and listen to Wagner. Go ahead and read Handke. My point is this: It is one thing to read him — it is quite another to bestow upon him a prize that delivers a great amount of legitimacy to his entire body of work, not just the novels and plays that are most impeccable and nonpolitical.

By Nick Pinto April 27, 2019 8:00 AM

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted last year to deport Ravi Ragbir, an outspoken critic of the agency, it was motivated by a desire to retaliate against his criticism, according to a ruling by a panel of judges with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals released yesterday.

“Ragbir’s public expression of his criticism, and its prominence, played a significant role in the recent attempts to remove him,” the ruling says. “The government’s retaliation was egregious.”

The ruling, written by Judge Christopher Droney, constitutes a direct challenge to broad executive power over immigration issues. In the case, the administration contends that people facing deportation are not entitled to make constitutional claims. The 2nd Circuit’s rebuke of that position now sets up a potential Supreme Court showdown over whether Congress or the executive can prevent the courts from hearing such claims.

Stanton Jones, one of the lawyers representing Ragbir, called yesterday’s ruling an important affirmation that the government cannot silence its critics through exile.

“It should outrage every American that our government would attempt to stifle important political dissent and advocacy for civil rights by deporting the government’s most prominent critics,” Jones said. “That is the type of behavior that we might expect from an autocratic foreign regime, but it’s not behavior that any of us should expect or accept from our government.”

NFL Owners and Executives Who Protested Donald Trump Are the Biggest Hypocrites Yet

As long as Colin Kaepernick is frozen out of the NFL, support for protesting players from team owners and executives rings hollow. Source: NFL Owners and Executives Who Protested Donald Trump Are the Biggest Hypocrites Yet

Curator’s Note: THANKS N.S.A.  We wonder if Microsoft colluded with this, or if the N.S.A. withheld these exploits from Microsoft.  Either way, this is terrible news for Windows users worldwide.

From TheIntercept.com

The ShadowBrokers, an entity previously confirmed by The Intercept to have leaked authentic malware used by the NSA to attack computers around the world, today released another cache of what appears to be extremely potent (and previously unknown) software capable of breaking into systems running Windows. The software could give nearly anyone with sufficient technical knowledge the ability to wreak havoc on millions of Microsoft users.

The leak includes a litany of typically codenamed software “implants” with names like ODDJOB, ZIPPYBEER, and ESTEEMAUDIT, capable of breaking into — and in some cases seizing control of — computers running version of the Windows operating system earlier than the most recent Windows 10. The vulnerable Windows versions ran more than 65 percent of desktop computers surfing the web last month, according to estimates from the tracking firm Net Market Share.

The crown jewel of the implant collection appears to be a program named FUZZBUNCH, which essentially automates the deployment of NSA malware, and would allow a member of agency’s Tailored Access Operations group to more easily infect a target from their desk.

According to security researcher and hacker Matthew Hickey, co-founder of Hacker House, the significance of what’s now publicly available, including “zero day” attacks on previously undisclosed vulnerabilities, cannot be overstated: “I don’t think I have ever seen so much exploits and 0day [exploits] released at one time in my entire life,” he told The Intercept via Twitter DM, “and I have been involved in computer hacking and security for 20 years.” Affected computers will remain vulnerable until Microsoft releases patches for the zero-day vulnerabilities and, more crucially, until their owners then apply those patches.

“This is as big as it gets,” Hickey said. “Nation-state attack tools are now in the hands of anyone who cares to download them…it’s literally a cyberweapon for hacking into computers…people will be using these attacks for years to come.”

Hickey provided The Intercept with a video of FUZZBUNCH being used to compromise a virtual computer running Windows Server 2008–an industry survey from 2016 cited this operating system as the most widely used of its kind.

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Glenn Greenwal.