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Global March in defense of citizens rights against capital fascist earth wreckers. @lord_truman Take a look at Truman human (@lord_truman): https://twitter.com/lord_truman

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What is perhaps most troubling is the way this new movement is targeting ambitious and clever young people with so much potential to contrib

How fascism came back in 21st century:

"What is perhaps most troubling is the way this new movement is targeting ambitious and clever young people with so much potential to contribute positively to our society and economy"

What is perhaps most troubling is the way this new movement is targeting ambitious and clever young people with so much potential to contrib

Detoxifying social media would be easier than you might think William Perrin To find the tools to clamp down on online misogyny, racism and bullying, parliament needs to look to the past Mon 21 May 2018 10.00 BST

The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online draws on in-depth interviews by scholar Whitney Phillips to showcase how news media was hijacked from 2016 to 2018 to amplify the messages of hate groups

Ideas for America A broken idea of sex is flourishing. Blame capitalism By Rebecca Solnit In this world, women are marketed as toys and trophies. Are we surprised when some men take things literally? Sat 12 May 2018 11.00 BST Last modified Sun 13 May 2018 02.14 BST Since the Toronto bloodbath, a lot of pundits have belatedly awoken to the existence of the “incel” [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/25/what-is-incel-movement-toronto-van-attack-suspect] (short for involuntary celibate = the so-called incel movement, one of the stranger offshoots of the “alt right” born in 4Chan discussion board ) online subculture and much has been said about it. Too often, it has been treated as some alien, unfamiliar worldview. It’s really just an extreme version of sex under capitalism we’re all familiar with because it’s all around us in everything, everywhere and has been for a very long time. And maybe the problem with sex is capitalism. ‘Raw hatred’: why the 'incel' movement targets and terrorises women What’s at the bottom of the incel worldview: sex is a commodity, accumulation of this commodity enhances a man's status, and every man has a right to accumulation [what about ladies accumulating men trophies / men users kind] , but women are in some mysterious way obstacles to this [women writer] , and they are therefore the enemy as well as the commodity. 'Incels' want high-status women, are furious at their own low status, but don’t question the system that allocates status and commodifies us all in ways that are painful and dehumanizing. Entitlement too plays a role: if you don’t think you’re entitled to sex, you might feel sad or lonely or blue, but not enraged at the people who you think owe you. It’s been noted that some of these men are mentally ill and/or socially marginal, but that seems to make them only more susceptible to online rage and a conventional story taken to extremes. That is, it doesn’t cause this worldview, as this worldview is widespread. Rather, it makes them vulnerable to it; the worldview gives form or direction to that isolation and incapacity. Many of the rest of us have some degree of immunity, thanks to our access to counter-narratives and to loving contact with other human beings, but we are all impacted by this idea that everyone has a market value and this world in which so many of us are marketed as toys and trophies. Feminism and capitalism are at odds, if under the one women are people and under the other they are property If you regard women as people endowed with certain inalienable rights, then heterosexual sex – as distinct from rape – has to be something two people do together because both of them want to, but this notion of women as people is apparently baffling or objectionable to hordes of men – not just incels. Women-as-bodies are sex waiting to happen – to men – and women-as-people are annoying gatekeepers getting between men and female bodies, which is why there’s a ton of advice about how to trick or overwhelm the gatekeeper. Not just on incel and pick-up-artist online forums but as jokey stuff in movies. You could go back to Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Casanova’s trophy-taking, too. It goes back before capitalism, really, this dehumanization that makes sex an activity men exact from women who have no say in the situation. The Trojan war begins when Trojan Paris kidnaps Helen and keeps her as a sex slave. During the war to get Helen back, Achilles captures Queen Briseis and keeps her as a sex slave after slaying her husband and brothers (and slaying someone’s whole family is generally pretty anti-aphrodisiac). His comrade in arms Agamemnon has some sex slaves of his own, including the prophetess Cassandra, cursed by Apollo for refusing to have sex with him. Read from the point of view of the women, the Trojan wars resemble Isis among the Yazidi. Helen of Troy, the original woman-as-commodity. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo Feminism and capitalism are at odds, if under the one women are people and under the other they are property. Despite half a century of feminist reform and revolution, sex is still often understood through the models capitalism provides. Sex is a transaction; men’s status is enhanced by racking up transactions, as though they were poker chips. Which is why the basketball star Wilt Chamberlain boasted that he’d had sex with 20,000 women in his 1991 memoir (prompting some to do the math: that would be about 1.4 women per day for 40 years). Talk about primitive accumulation! The president of the United States is someone who has regularly attempted to enhance his status by association with commodified women, and his denigration of other women for not fitting the Playmate/Miss Universe template is also well-known. This is not marginal; it’s central to our culture, and now it’s embodied by the president of our country. Women’s status is ambiguous in relation to sexual experience, or perhaps it’s just wrecked either way: there’s that famous scene in The Breakfast Club in which a female character exclaims, “Well, if you say you haven’t, you’re a prude. If you say you have then you’re a slut. It’s a trap.” Reminiscing about these 1980s teen movies she starred in, Molly Ringwald recently recalled: “It took even longer for me to fully comprehend the scene late in Sixteen Candles, when the dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter’s sexual urges, in return for Samantha’s underwear.” The Geek has sex with her while she’s unable to consent, which we now call rape and then called a charming coming-of-age movie. Under capitalism, sex might as well be with dead objects, not live collaborators This idea of sex as something men get, often by bullying, badgering, tricking, assaulting, or drugging women is found everywhere. The same week as the Toronto van rampage, Bill Cosby was belatedly found guilty of one of the more than 60 sexual assaults that women have reported. He was accused of giving them pills to render them unconscious or unable to resist. Who wants to have sex with someone who isn’t there? A lot of men, apparently, since date rape drugs are a thing, and so are fraternity-house techniques to get underage women to drink themselves into oblivion, and Brock Turner, known as the Stanford rapist, assaulted a woman who was blotted out by alcohol, inert and unable to resist. Under capitalism, sex might as well be with dead objects, not live collaborators. It is not imagined as something two people do that might be affectionate and playful and collaborative – which casual sex can also be, by the way – but that one person gets. The other person is sometimes hardly recognized as a person. It’s a lonely version of sex. Incels are heterosexual men who see this mechanistic, transactional sex from afar and want it at the same time they rage at people who have it. That women might not want to grow intimate with people who hate them and might want to harm them seems not to have occurred to them as a factor, since they seem bereft of empathy, the capacity to imaginatively enter into what another person is feeling. It hasn’t occurred to a lot of other men either, since shortly after an incel in Toronto was accused of being a mass murderer the sympathy started to pour out for him. The commodification of women is embodied by our president. Photograph: Marc Stamas/Getty Images At the New York Times, Ross Douthat credited a libertarian with this notion: “If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?” Part of what’s insane here is that neither the conservative Douthat nor libertarians are at all concerned with the just distribution of property and money, which is often referred to as socialism. Until the property is women, apparently. And then they’re happy to contemplate a redistribution that seems to have no more interest in what women want than the warlords dividing up the sex slaves in the Trojan war. Happily someone much smarter took this on before Toronto. In late March, at the London Review of Books, Amia Srinivasan wrote: “It is striking, though unsurprising, that while men tend to respond to sexual marginalisation with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, women who experience sexual marginalisation typically respond with talk not of entitlement but empowerment. Or, insofar as they do speak of entitlement, it is entitlement to respect, not to other people’s bodies.” Woman behind 'incel' says angry men hijacked her word 'as a weapon of war' That is, these women who are deemed undesirable question the hierarchy that allots status and sexualization to certain kinds of bodies and denies it to others. They ask that we consider redistributing our values and attention and perhaps even desires. They ask everyone to be kinder and less locked into conventional ideas of who makes a good commodity. They ask us to be less capitalistic. What’s terrifying about incel men is that they seem to think the problem is that they lack sex when, really, what they lack is empathy and compassion and the imagination that goes with those capacities. That’s something money can’t buy and capitalism won’t teach you. The people you love might, but first you have to love them. Rebecca Solnit is a freelance columnist and the author of Men Explain Things to Me. Topics US news Ideas for America Share on LinkedInShare on PinterestShare on Google+Share on WhatsAppShare on Messenger View commentsView on theguardian.com back to top jobsdatingmake a contributionsubscribeguardian labs about uswork for usadvertise with uscontact ushelp terms & conditionsprivacy policycookie policysecuredropdigital newspaper archivecomplaints & corrections all topicsall contributorsmodern slavery actfacebooktwitter © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Financial Times - Brexit Customs union: the battleground set to decide the fate of Brexit The ‘in-out’ fight is the principal antagonism in negotiations with the EU, threatening Tory party civil war and the UK economy April 25, 2018 4:00 am by George Parker and James Blitz in London Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, stood smiling on the quay at Dublin Port last week after christening the hulking ship rearing up behind him. Officially the 235m long vessel capable of carrying 600 trucks bears the name Celine, but in Irish circles they know it by a different name: Brexit Buster. The world’s biggest short sea roll-on roll-off vessel, its vast hull gleaming in the early summer sun, will provide a direct route for Irish exporters to ship their goods directly to the EU without passing via Britain, avoiding the border controls that could spring up at UK ports after Brexit. But while the Celine will be able to navigate the obstacles thrown up by Brexit, Theresa May, Britain’s Conservative prime minister, is heading straight towards the apparently unmovable economic and political challenges created by her decision to leave the EU’s customs union. Liam Fox, trade secretary, who said in February it would be 'a betrayal of the voters in the referendum' if Britain were unable to have a 'fully independent trade policy' © AFP Britain’s border is now the frontline of Brexit, the principal battleground at Westminster as the endgame begins. Downing Street was forced to deny on Monday that Mrs May might resign if she failed to take Britain out of the customs union, but the stakes are high. “We are leaving the customs union, we will have an independent trade policy and we will strike trade deals around the world,” Mrs May’s spokesman said this week. Tory Eurosceptics claim that Brexit must free Britain to trade around the world and warn of dark consequences — including a leadership challenge — if the prime minister retreats. Yet Mrs May is facing powerful pressure on two fronts to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU, staying in an arrangement where countries agree a common external tariff and then allow goods to circulate within the union tariff-free and without complex “rules of origin” checks, which can disrupt supply chains. Brussels is insisting that Britain gives a legally binding guarantee there will be no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland: staying in a customs union would help considerably. Mrs May’s fragile government faces defeat if as few as a dozen Conservative pro-European MPs join forces with a united Labour opposition to keep Britain in the customs union, partly to help maintain the peace in Northern Ireland, partly to ensure an economically palatable “soft Brexit”. The House of Lords, Britain’s upper house, last week voted by 348 votes to 225 to retain a customs union. Mrs May’s Brexit strategy would be derailed if she was defeated in the Commons too. “Everyone has got to get real,” says Anna Soubry, a former Tory business minister and leading pro-European. “Leaving the customs union without any customs arrangement in place is bad for British business, bad for jobs, bad for property and bad for the process of peace in Northern Ireland.” Tory Eurosceptics have elevated the departure from the customs union to a central tenet of their Brexit creed: Liam Fox, trade secretary, said in February it would be “a betrayal of the voters in the referendum” if Britain were unable to have a “fully independent trade policy”. But that has not always been the case. Writing in 2012, Mr Fox called for a new relationship with the EU, based on “an economic partnership involving a customs union and a single market in goods and services”. In the same year David Davis, the Eurosceptic Brexit secretary, said his preference was to “remain within the customs union”. Pro-Leave: Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, and Michael Gove, environment secretary But the Eurosceptics have proved skilful at adapting their explanation of the purpose of Brexit, developing new “red lines” as old positions are quietly abandoned. In the same 2012 article, Mr Fox was among those citing excessive Brussels regulation as a major drawback of EU membership, bemoaning rules on working time, pollution and data protection that had “cost British taxpayers” more than £35bn. However, Mrs May now insists Britain embraces such rules and would try to strengthen them, while Eurosceptics claim they never advocated sweeping deregulation. Mr Davis said in Vienna in February: “These fears about a race to the bottom are based on nothing: not history, not intention, not interest.” Yet the economic advantages claimed by the Brexiters for a post-customs union free-trade policy have been undermined by the government’s own analysis, which concluded that Britain’s economy would be 5 per cent smaller within 15 years, even if Mrs May secures a free trade deal with the EU. The analysis, obtained by BuzzFeed, concluded that even a trade deal with the US would boost gross domestic product by only about 0.2 per cent in the long term. Trade deals with other non-EU countries, such as China, India, Australia, the Gulf countries and south-east Asia nations would add, in total, only 0.1-0.4 per cent to GDP. Martin Donnelly, former permanent secretary at Mr Fox’s trade department, said recently that swapping the benefits of full EU membership in exchange for bilateral trade deals at some future date was “rather like rejecting a three-course meal now in favour of the promise of a packet of crisps later”. Faced with pressure from Brussels to resolve the Irish border question, perilous parliamentary arithmetic and analysis suggesting Mrs May should stick close to the EU, rumours have swirled round Westminster that the prime minister may be about to climb down and adopt what the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexiter, calls “Brexit in name only”. Downing Street issued a denial on Sunday, insisting that Britain would leave the customs union, but some on the Conservative right want her to prove her mettle by putting her job on the line when the Commons votes on the issue. Andrew Rosindell, MP for Romford, says: “The PM must stand firm, this is a matter of confidence for the whole party and we cannot let the British people down.” Mrs May has refused to say that losing a vote on the customs union would be a resigning matter, but she faces several parliamentary tests on the issue, including a debate and non-binding Commons vote on Thursday. There could be other Commons votes next month — linked to as many as three separate Brexit-related bills — and a vote on the final deal in the autumn. “That’s the moment of truth,” says Mr Rees-Mogg. Some pro-Remain cabinet ministers privately hope that MPs will force Mrs May to keep Britain in something akin to a customs union. “Parliament will have a big role in deciding what sort of Brexit we have,” says one senior minister. “Wasn’t Brexit all about restoring parliamentary sovereignty?” Meanwhile Michael Gove, the influential pro-Leave environment secretary, is suspected by some Eurosceptics of working behind the scenes with Mrs May to cook up some kind of compromise. “We can work with Michael,” says one pro-European cabinet minister. Mr Gove denies going soft on the customs union, but one leading Conservative Eurosceptic says: “Michael is positioning himself to be a leadership candidate at a future date. He’s trying to show he’s a moderate and not one of the hard men of Brexit.” The Institute of Directors has suggested staying in a customs union for manufactured goods but not for most agricultural products © AFP The prime minister’s senior advisers warn, that if she decided to stay in the customs union in all but name, at least two Brexit hardliners — Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, and Mr Fox — could resign, triggering turmoil in the party. For now Mrs May is attempting to resolve the issue by promoting two alternative solutions intended to allow Britain to have both an independent trade policy and smooth borders with the EU; both draw on unproven or non-existent technology and were both denounced as “unworkable” by EU officials in Brexit talks last week. On Wednesday Mr Johnson, Mr Davis and Mr Fox will use a Brexit cabinet committee meeting to call on Mrs May to abandon one proposed model — a so-called “customs partnership” — which is seen by Eurosceptics as so far-fetched that it is part of an elaborate trap. The customs partnership would see Britain remain in effect part of the EU’s customs territory, collecting tariffs on behalf of the bloc at its ports and sending them on to Brussels. Britain could set lower tariffs and maintain its own trade policy, but a complex system would be required to track goods to determine whether they were staying in the UK or heading on to the EU. “Some of the people proposing it know such an immensely complicated — and untried — arrangement is guaranteed to end in chaotic failure,” wrote David Jones, former Brexit minister, on Saturday. “At which point they will conclude we have no choice but to rejoin the fully fledged customs union.” Mr Rees-Mogg called it “completely cretinous”. Jon Thompson, head of Revenue & Customs, said last year it would take five years to introduce such a system from the moment it was agreed: Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 and a transition period ends in December 2020; the customs partnership might not be ready until several years later, suggesting Britain might remain in the customs union in the meantime. Eurosceptics prefer the so-called “maximum facilitation” or “maxfac” model, which would accept the need for customs borders — including in Northern Ireland — but would use technology and “trusted trader” schemes to limit friction. The problem is that Brussels says it would not work and it would not deal with the Irish border question. A disused former customs guard hut on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic © Getty Mrs May’s dilemma is that she needs to resolve the Irish border question — the EU says it wants an answer in time for a European Council meeting at the end of June — while avoiding ripping her party apart. Mr Johnson tells friends that Brussels is using the Northern Ireland issue to push Britain to stay in the customs union and even the single market: “It’s the tail wagging the dog,” he says. The prime minister’s allies say she also needs a solution on the customs question that unites “50 Eurosceptic ultras on one side and 20 pro-European ultras on the other”, otherwise she could lose the Commons vote in the autumn on the final deal; her minority government has a working majority of 13 thanks to the support of Northern Irish unionists. It is a formidable challenge. Can she devise a compromise that combines an independent trade policy with a frictionless border, that satisfies Brussels and both wings of her party? John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, says the government could attempt two possible compromises to head off a rebellion but both have serious flaws. One, recently advocated by the Institute of Directors, would see the UK staying in a customs union for manufactured goods but not for most agricultural products. Recommended The customs union is imperative for Britain’s future prosperity “Tariffs are high on agriculture so we can reduce our agricultural tariffs in future trade deals to help give us access on services,” Mr Springford says. “The trouble is this doesn’t tackle the Northern Ireland problem. There is a huge amount of agricultural trade between Northern Ireland and the republic, which means it would be impossible to maintain a frictionless border.” A second possible compromise would involve the UK staying in a customs union until the technology for frictionless trade caught up. “The hard Brexiters won’t want to stay in the customs union for an indefinite period,” he adds. One pro-European ally of the prime minister predicts that Mrs May will end up backing a solution that resembles the customs union: “She’ll insist on calling it a ‘customs agreement’, but it will be a compromise.” But one former Whitehall official cautions that, unlike other aspects of Brexit, this is less susceptible to fudge: “The issues with the customs union are, in truth, very binary.” The Celine might be able to sail around the problem but Mrs May is heading into perilous waters, apparently without a chart. Economic ties: So what is the customs union? Sir Ivan Rogers, former British EU ambassador © Bloomberg The customs union was barely mentioned during Britain’s EU referendum campaign in 2016; indeed it is such a venerable and dry part of the EU’s architecture that one Brussels Brexit negotiator joked: “Even we had to dust down some of our old books on the subject.” Most debate focused on the EU single market — established in 1993 — covering the free movement of goods, services, capital and people and the removal of regulatory barriers. Mrs May has promised that Britain will leave the single market because membership would mean accepting EU laws, the jurisdiction of the European Court and it would not allow the UK to control its borders. The customs union, created in 1958, was a cornerstone of the European Economic Community, which became the EU. Member states do not levy customs duties on goods travelling within the customs union but apply a common external tariff to goods entering from outside. Eurosceptics dislike the customs union because Brussels negotiates trade deals on behalf of all members, while the common external tariff would remove from Britain the ability to cut its tariffs on goods imports to secure trade deals with third countries. Liam Fox, trade secretary, has warned that staying in the customs union would be “a sellout of Britain’s national interests”, leaving the EU in charge of negotiating trade deals on the UK’s behalf, while London had no say over them. Keir Starmer, Brexit spokesman for the opposition Labour party, admits that Britain could not accept a customs union deal like Turkey — a non-EU member — where Brussels negotiates third country access to the Turkish market without securing reciprocal rights for Turkish exporters to the third country. But Sir Ivan Rogers, former British EU ambassador, said last week: “The implications of being outside the customs union on disruption of supply chains might be so severe as to see significant relocation of business out of the UK into the EU27.” A former Whitehall official adds: “The idea that there are any benefits to leaving the customs union is wholly illusory. There is no evidence that having control of our own tariffs will bring any benefit to the UK economy.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited . All rights reserved. Please don't copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. View comments Latest on Brexit A Swiss template for the Irish Border April 25, 2018 4:00 am UK explores producing own satellite system after EU’s Galileo snub April 24, 2018 8:30 pm. Britain will have to pay EU divorce bill ‘no matter what’ April 24, 2018 6:55 pm EU damps hopes of bespoke post-Brexit financial deal for UK April 24, 2018 1:50 pm A critical showdown on Brexit looms April 24, 2018 12:29 pm Latest on UK politics & policy Wake-up call to business with one month to be GDPR-compliantApril 25, 2018 3:00 amUK fire safety tests need urgent overhaul after Grenfell disasterApril 25, 2018 3:00 am Corbyn meeting on anti-Semitism dubbed ‘missed opportunity’ April 24, 2018 9:50 pm Windrush issue spreads to other Commonwealth Countries April 24, 2018 8:57 pm Kogan criticises Facebook over use of ‘honour system’ April 24, 2018 7:37 pm Legal & Privacy Terms & ConditionsSlavery StatementPrivacyCookiesCopyright FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.

To check out Event-Driven Microservices The Architect's Guide to Building a Responsive, Elastic and Resilient Environment The Service Decomposition Paradox & the fallacies of distributed computing Download White Paper First Name * Last Name * Work Email * Company * Job Title * Get the latest content from Solace. You can unsubscribe at any time Download Paper © Copyright 2018 Solace. All Rights Reserved. We all get the promise of microservices: enhanced agility, scalability, resiliency, and speed to deploy and maintain components. Unfortunately, not all microservice architectures unlock these values. The brittleness of distributed processing, ecosystem integration challenges, and a lack of service harmony represent three major barriers. In this paper, Sr. Architect Jonathan Schabowsky addresses these challenges, and shares his perspective on the one modern messaging integration pattern architects can leverage to realize the full promise of microservices. Learn how to overcome: Point-to-point Microservice Orchestration and tightly coupled systems that hamper agility and scalability The Integration Conundrum & the challenges of enabling data flow between microservices in distributed systems Solace develops the world’s leading, enterprise grade message brokers, deployable as an appliance, software and as a service. Solace message brokers provide a single, enterprise-grade messaging layer for all your apps and microservices, in all your environments, enabling performant, stable and secure data movement across your hybrid cloud. Learn more Tried and Trusted by the World's Leading Enterprises

Financial Times Technology Mark Zuckerberg, a tech visionary tripping up on his own success The Facebook founder went to Washington this week to defend his creation April 13, 2018 3:22 pm by Richard Waters Mark Zuckerberg has always displayed a messianic sense of his own destiny. He once predicted that enlightened governments, prodded by a populace empowered by his company’s social networking tools, would champion a connected future in which Facebook would play a central part. “We believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people,” he declared in 2012, at the time of Facebook’s initial public offering. These would include “the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them”. It was just the kind of self-referential fantasy a 27-year-old planning a $100bn IPO would indulge in. This week, a more mature Mr Zuckerberg — now 33, married with two children and fresh from a 30-state “listening tour” of the US — faced off against 98 elected representatives of the American people in Washington DC. They were not the Facebook-friendly army he had dreamt of. Rather than standing up for the right to share, they seemed animated more by fear: that his creation might have become a threat to the privacy of its 2.1bn users and, perhaps, to democracy itself. Mr Zuckerberg has run headlong into a series of crises caused by the almost unimaginable success of his invention. It began with his resistance to owning up to the fake news epidemic that hit the social network during the 2016 US election, followed by his unwillingness to face up to Facebook’s role in Russian interference. That has now been followed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal — another crisis that he was too slow to address. It has raised fundamental questions about whether Facebook can be trusted with its users’ data. To draw the political sting, a pale and studiously deferential Mr Zuckerberg, in sober suit and tie, bowed to 10 hours of public questioning by legislators on Capitol Hill. But his appearance before Congress failed to resolve the question of whether he had done enough to hit reset — not just for his company, but for the trajectory of his own life. Recommended Why Facebook’s data scandal has not become a wider crisis The huge wealth generated by Facebook’s success has led to suspicions that Mr Zuckerberg’s idealism has been drowned in self-interest. In reality, the Harvard dropout has never separated the two. While declaring his mission to “make the world more connected”, he made clear from the outset that profits would play an important part: as both the validation of his company’s success in achieving its higher purpose, and the fuel to further his vision. The twin goals of improving the world and making as much money as possible created “an intrinsic contradiction” from the beginning, says David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect. “The money has been so prolific that it has truly confused everyone [at Facebook] as to their responsibilities.” If Mr Zuckerberg himself has been part of the problem, that has inevitably raised questions about his future. One investor has already called on him to hand over his chairmanship, and there have even been calls for him to surrender management control entirely. Few are holding their breath. Given his majority voting control, “this is an individual who can’t be removed from office,” says Scott Galloway, author of a book critical of big tech companies and an outspoken critic of Facebook. But even if shareholders could replace Mr Zuckerberg, it would be beside the point, he adds. The Facebook co-founder is doing what all bosses do in maximising his company’s profits. The real challenge is for society to come up with restraints. “It’s not his responsibility, it’s ours,” says Mr Galloway. The huge wealth generated by Facebook’s success has led to suspicions that Zuckerberg’s idealism has been drowned in self-interest To his critics, Mr Zuckerberg’s outsized success has left him — along with his number two, Sheryl Sandberg — disconnected from the impact they are having on the world, and badly placed to fix the company. “I look at Zuck and Sheryl and think, ‘Wow, you’ve succeeded beyond your wildest dreams, you’re billionaires,’” says Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor who advised Mr Zuckerberg in Facebook’s early days. “I would think they would want to be heroes in their own movie, instead of presiding over a system that is undermining democracy and civil liberties. But, for whatever reason, something’s happened. Maybe they’ve lost the ability to relate to the problems.” To his supporters, this is just one more challenge for an executive who has successfully rebooted Facebook each time it has faced a new threat. “I have seen Mark face adversity many times, and he has always been able to galvanise his team, and come out stronger as a leader and organisation,” says Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist who backed him when he was 20. “I would never bet against Mark Zuckerberg.” Mr Zuckerberg’s attempt to project humility this week has met with mixed success. Not known for his empathy or emotional displays, his apologies for data leaks were late, and sounded pro-forma. A repeated vagueness fed suspicions that despite his claim to be willing to accept new regulations, he has not yielded ground on any important issues. But some who have followed him for years say it would be wrong to see the Washington visit as nothing more than a cynical exercise in self-preservation. “He is now, in a way he definitely wasn’t a year and a half ago, trying to work out what it means to be a company with such a civic responsibility,” says Mr Kirkpatrick. Given the stakes, politicians and citizens in many countries will be desperately hoping he is right. The writer is the FT’s west coast editor Copyright The Financial Times Limited . All rights reserved. Please don't copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. 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The Brexit project is already a complete failure. That statement may seem odd, as we are less than one year away from leaving the EU. But what happens in March 2019 if all goes to plan? We leave the EU, but remain in the Single Market (SM) and Customs Union (CU). It is not Brexit means Brexit, but Brexit in name only (BINO). All the UK ‘gains’ is the inability to influence the rules and laws we have to follow as part of the SM & CU. If the Brexiters were being honest, the transition is worse than not leaving. Not only do we lose the sovereignty they perceive as a result of being in the SM & CU, but we also lose our current say in how the SM & CU are run, and we still pay into the EU budget. In sovereignty terms that is going backwards. Free movement continues, although again if Brexiters were being honest they were never too worried about immigration: that was just a hook to catch voters with. But all the things that Brexiters do go on about like freedom to make trade agreements with other countries are impossible during transition. Brexiters may well convince themselves that transition is just an embarrassing phase before their new dawn. They can only do that because they have never concerned themselves with details, whether those are details about how trade works or details about negotiations. The reality is very different. There is no solution to the Irish border problem except staying in the Customs Union and Single Market for goods. Will the EU be prepared to accept the ‘Jersey option’, which means splitting the Single Market (UK in for goods and out for services) and allowing an end of free movement? That may appear to others as if the UK might be better off after Brexit, which breaks one of the key EU requirements of any deal. As we have learnt from the last year, if the EU does not want something it does not happen. Leaving with No Deal is no longer a threat, so it may be quite possible that the EU may simply say the only feasible solution, if the UK does not want a border in the Irish Sea, is to stay in the complete Single Market and Customs Union. With a hard deadline for the end of transition leaving little room for negotiation, the UK may have little choice but to agree to BINO, or something very close to it. The alternative is that the EU creates an extended transition. But if they are unwilling to allow the UK what it wants, this amounts to the same thing. The only cost to the EU of perpetual transition is pretending to negotiate. The UK government will continue the pretense because it is too embarrassing to admit defeat. The result for the Brexiters is the same: staying in the CU and SM with no say. If you think that could not happen without a revolution on the Conservative right, watch how Gove and Johnson are already backing down on all their past red lines. Will not voter pressure (aka. the right wing press) demand that May cannot agree to continuing free movement? By 2020, when the final deal will be negotiated or postponed, immigration from the EU may have almost disappeared as a result of slow growth in the UK, sterling remaining weak against the Euro, and continuing uncertainty about the final deal. Net EU immigration is already less than half non-EU immigration. It is no surprise that the Brexit project has failed and failed so utterly and completely. It was based on a fantasy about UK power. According to this fantasy the EU would be desperate to let the UK continue to trade with the EU on current terms and would turn a blind eye when the UK no longer obeyed the rules of the Single Market and Customs Union. The reality is that the EU has not been willing to destroy the Single Market and Customs Union just to keep exporting to the UK. The moment it became clear to Brexiters that their fantasy was just that, the only way that they could gain the sovereignty they craved and promised was to leave with no trade deal. But that idea was also based on the fantasy that trade with the EU could be easily replaced with trade agreements with other countries. Nearly every expert said at the time these ideas were nonsense, and nonsense they remain. No government would ever knowingly do so much damage to its economy. The moment the government’s own analysis confirmed what outside experts had said before the referendum, No Deal was off the table. Mr. Fox will still have a job: not making new deals but trying to convince the many countries that currently have trade agreements with the EU that they should still trade on the same terms with the UK after we leave. As I write the paragraph above there is a part of me that says surely no one could have been that foolish to believe those things. Surely there must have been more behind the accusation of Project Fear, and the fact that over 40% still believe they will be better off after Brexit happens. But in truth there was nothing more profound. Look at the desperation of Brexiters over the Irish border, claiming that none is needed when they originally campaigned to take back control of our borders. Of course none of this will prevent the Brexiters celebrating their independence day in March 2019. They love the symbolism, and they will do a good job in persuading the BBC that something has been achieved. They have too much political capital in Brexit being a success. Key Brexiters will prefer to party rather than complain, particularly when there is still the prize of the party leadership to win. But the reality is that in March 2019 we become what Rees Mogg calls a vassal state in the short term for sure, and probably in the longer term as well. There has been some debate recently among those who understand what is going on about whether Remainers should give up trying to prevent March 2019 happening and focus on getting the best Brexit terms. It is, as Ian Duntsays, a false dichotomy: there is no conflict in doing both. But if there is an exception to that, it lies with the Conservative rebel MPs. If they can see that Brexit will end not with a bang but awhimper, they may well decide that it is not worth being branded traitors by voting against the withdrawal agreement. That, not Corbyn, is the most likely reason why March 2019 will happen. Of course there are mistakes the government can make before March 2019. But if Brexit happens, it will not even be a token victory for the Brexiters. For them, BINO or something close to it is worse than EU membership, because we gain nothing and lose a seat at the table. Their fantasy dream of Global Britain has in reality made Britain more insular, more powerless and less influential than at any time in centuries. Nor is there anything to celebrate for Remainers here. Economic damage has already been done, and will continue to be done because BINO is a more uncertain state than EU membership and because of less EU immigration. Years of the UK’s political life will have been spent finding out that the scheme of a small number of politicians and press barons was the folly experts said it would be, and then pretending it was not. Mainly Macro at 01:23 Share 14 comments: Robert Jones9 April 2018 at 02:50 When Nixon visited China in 1972 he asked Chou en Lai about the impact of the French Revolution and he replied: "It's too early to say". To write off Brexit only after nearly three hundred years may be unreasonable but to write it off before it has even started would almost certainly be regarded as little more than hyperbole. The truth is that we will not know what the effect will be for at least twenty years I would say and, by the end of this time, I suspect that your piece will be proven wrong to the point where it is viewed as odd. Both the UK and the EU will change substantially during this period and I believe the EU will not be here in its present guise and I would not even be surprised if the UK were not then part of a European grouping whose contours we can only speculate about now. Reply Pendragon9 April 2018 at 03:12 " But what happens in March 2019 if all goes to plan? " I think I've said this before on this blog: There will be parties on Brexit Day. They will have all the appearance of being spontaneously organised by Leave-voting members of the public and they will get massive coverage in the right-wing press. Reply Anonymous9 April 2018 at 05:40 Brexit is the total humiliation of the UK. Reply Michael McGuire9 April 2018 at 06:27 My sentiments exactly..my 30 years in freight/logistics made it obvious to me we could not leave the SM/CU from a purely practical infrastructure perspective alone with out causing disaster capitalism at its finest. The same leaving the SM/CU also makes it automatically impossible to avoid resurrecting the Irish border Reply SpinningHugo9 April 2018 at 07:00 "That, not Corbyn, is the most likely reason why March 2019 will happen" A curious either/or given that in the previous paragraph you noted Dunt's pointing out a false dichotomy. Corbyn contributed, as did all who have aided him. Reply NICK GREENWOOD9 April 2018 at 07:07 The above reads like a Remainer bleat by an academic economist, the ones who usually get things hopelessly wrong! The Remainers, needing to project post Brexit GDP outcomes have to adopt debateable and flawed ECONOMIC MODELLING or scenarios, rather than serious research - because there is NONE! There are stats as trotted out on a regular basis by the BoE and OBR. They take a wide input of variables which provide a wide range of outcomes; they then create a fan chart and tend to opt for the median whilst scaring with the periphery. The result is the type of hocus pocus Treasury forecasts pedalled by Osborne ahead of the Referendum; and we know thankfully how that turned out! The piece above is of that ilk. Can Simon Wren show me one, just one plausible and peer accepted piece of research to support the Remainer claim of a parlous effect of Brexit on the UK economy. I searched for any such ahead of the Referendum in Jun'16, but came up empty-handed. I am still looking... There was however plenty of well researched commentary to the contrary - The Civitas & Bruges Group reports being just two. No, what I am looking for is proper in-depth and argued research as to why/how Brexit will penalise the UK economy. As I said above, plenty of excellent research the other way; but if Simon Wren can point to equivalent research showing a negative outcome - please enlighten me. Regrettably all we ever get is meaningless conjecture, which can be construed in the way this distorted piece does in trumps! Reply Andrew Watt9 April 2018 at 07:11 Simon, I would make two points. I am not sure that BINO is as (almost) inevitable as you suggest. It is the complete abandonment of the UK's negotiating position and goes against what both the major UK parties say they want. JC has just dismissed OS for disagreeing with the Party line on this. Of course, that does not mean that BINO will NOT be the outcome. Just less likely than you imply. On the other hand, assuming BINO does happen, I think your already pessimistic assessment is too optimistic. There will be massive disaffectation on the Leave side. A rich seam for populists to mine ("stab in the back"). The already enduring and poisonous UK "debate" on Europe will drag on and quite possibly get even more bitter. I am not sure that BINO is, to borrow from macroeconomics, a politically stable equilibrium. Because of this I am not even sure that, in the longer run, it is in the interest of UK remainers. (And I tend to be sceptical of that type of short-term pain for long-term gain argument.) I wonder whether a harder Brexit, economic damage, and then a clear re-think (and re-accession) would not be better. (Yes, I realise it is easy for me personally to say that.) Sincerely A. Reply Anonymous9 April 2018 at 11:19 Tory party unity has been maintained. Brexit has therefore been a success, so far. The Brexit referendum was called to maintain Tory party unity. The extend and pretend negotiation strategy is designed to avoid a Tory party split. The goal will be to continue this strategy as long as possible. There is a good chance that fudge can be maintained up to a 2022 election. The UK will be closely aligned to the EU but will have some optional trigger to bring about a more dramatic separation which may never be used. A Tory party split could happen at any time, but is by no means inevitable. Many UK governments have done terrible damage to the UK economy and living standards, its par for the course. EU migration to the UK has come down because of the devaluation of the pound against the Euro and the slow recovery of some of the EU 27 countries. This could have happened anyway without Brexit. EU migration to the UK could be more determined by what happens with the Eurozone economy than Brexit. Why do voters think the UK may be better off with Brexit? Brexit has shaken up the political system a greater variety of policy options are now getting an airing. The overton window is slightly ajar. The UK badly needs to spend about 9% or 10% of GDP on health care starting immediately. The most recent chance the electorate got to vote for increased health spending was Brexit. The Tory party is still in power. In Tory party terms May has done an excellent job so far. May's position is therefore sadly secure. Reply Anonymous9 April 2018 at 15:34 How many times must May say that Britain will leave the customs union and Single Market? You're clinging to some sort of fantasy about the Irish border, when in reality an agreement about zero bilateral tariffs and on animal & plant sanitation standards would probably suffice. In any case, whilst a no-deal in March next year may have caused problems, by Jan 2021 companies will have had a notice period longer than WW1 and viable affected companies in almost all sectors will have adjusted. We are already seeing subsidiaries being set up on both sides of the Channel to maintain access to the other's market, we're seeing significantly more domestic sourcing on both sides of the Channel, we are seeing British companies diversifying into RoW markets, we will presumably see the end of the Rotterdam Effect. Who knows, perhaps people will even notice that Dover is not our only port. We are therefore seeing the decline of vested interests in the status quo. You'd need a heart of stone not to have concluded from the referendum period that diversifying away from the EU is an urgent national strategic goal, because so many people went into hysterical panic at the economic consequences of withdrawing from the EU, and no sovereign state should ever see that phenomenon both from a humane point of view and for the sake of democracy not being poisoned and warped by fear. So no, Brexit is working because we will leave the SM and CU whatever happens, under any circumstances leaving after the transition period would be comparatively painless, and we're reducing our dependence on the EU. Reply Kimberly Dick9 April 2018 at 16:04 I honestly wonder if they'll be able to go for BINO, and still convince their constituents that they accomplished something. The way I imagine it is this: they proclaim a successful Brexit, and point to the improving economic conditions which will likely to be a consequence of coming to an agreement on staying in the single market. As long as they can control the media message, this shouldn't be all too hard. So my question is: will they be able to prevent acceptance of the counter-claim that the UK has not really left, but only eliminated its influence in the EU? Reply Anonymous10 April 2018 at 00:11 "Nor is there anything to celebrate for Remainers here. Economic damage has already been done ... because of less EU immigration." I agree that Brexit will be costly for the UK, but not for the reasons you say. Remainers did not make a convincing case to say why the very dramatic increase in EU immigration became suddenly so necessary. Many people in many parts of the country have a right to question what they have gained from such immigration - especially since there has been a long period of relative, and even absolute, decline in many parts of Britain. Elites have to try and understand the indignity and insecurity of having to go to high cost areas of Britain and compete with seemingly endless supplies of low cost labour, and feel like a foreigner in one's own country on a building site. Of course these people feel that the elite that love Europe couldn't give two hoots. Hopefully one thing that comes out of this is that the elite start asking the real questions of what led to Brexit - why there was so much disenchantment and resentment that enough people could vote out - rather than blaming red herrings like Press Barons (or even austerity policy). Reply William Davison10 April 2018 at 01:12 Dear Simon You write: "But all the things that Brexiters do go on about like freedom to make trade agreements with other countries are impossible during transition." In an agreed green section of the draft WA, it says: "Notwithstanding paragraph 3, during the transition period, the United Kingdom may negotiate, sign and ratify international agreements entered into in its own capacity in the areas of exclusive competence of the Union, provided those agreements do not enter into force or apply during the transition period, unless so authorised by the Union." So, it is misleading for you to state the UK cannot "make trade agreements" during the transition. I think there's a case for tweaking the post to ensure your readers aren't misled. Cheers Reply Laurie10 April 2018 at 01:39 I'm afraid this is all very depressing as no one with any influence will commit to a second referendum. Indeed in your previous articles you have even said yourself that due to the extension of the final deal outcome into the transition period after formal leaving that isn't really on the table - I foresee the only end will be leaving to some half baked (or overdone?) mess. Probably ending with an application to rejoin by a relatively impoverished UK (GB?) some years in the future who will as part of the deal accept Schengen and the Euro. Reply Anonymous10 April 2018 at 02:36 As has been noticed by the perceptive watchers of Trump, the place where he has been most active in alliance with his party is in the appointment of judges. Where British Conservatism through Brexit is identical to American Conservatism is in its driving obsession about separating the UK from laws not wholly made in the UK. As such, trade deals are a part of this Conservative legal push, but only a part. If the UK Conservative Party is going to implode in the coming months it will be over the law. Reply Unfortunately because of spam with embedded links (which then flag up warnings about the whole site on some browsers), I have to personally moderate all comments. As a result, your comment may not appear for some time. In addition, I cannot publish comments with lots of site URLs that I cannot check. Links to this post Create a Link › Home View web version Simon Wren-Lewis Mainly MacroEmeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. This blog is written for both economists and non-economists.View my complete profile Powered by Blogger.

El tribunal de la Audiencia Territorial de Schleswig-Holstein mantiene en su resolución del pasado jueves día 5 de abril - en la que denegaba la entrega de Carles Puigdemont por rebelión-, sus reticencias sobre el delito de malversación a pesar de declarar que en principio no es inadmisible. El tribunal había solicitado a través de la Oficina del Fiscal General de Schleswig-Holstein información precisa sobre los pagos realizados para la celebración del referéndum del 1 de octubre y la responsabilidad de Puigdemont. Y, también, aclaración sobre la asunción de los costes financieros por el Estado español con cargo al presupuesto autonómico. Llarena se ve obligado en su informe a cubrir un flanco débil: la reforma del Código Penal de 2015 no incluye un título sobre delitos de corrupción. La modificación encargada por el Gobierno de Mariano Rajoy, es decir, de un Partido Popular acosado por múltiples casos de corrupción, buscó evitar, con éxito, que se calificara oficialmente como corrupción una serie de delitos dispersos a través de distintos capítulos del Código Penal que son conocidos por nombres menos chirriantes, que disimulan más La reforma, como gran concesión a la realidad, introdujo el artículo 286 bis en el que se titula delitos ya contemplados anteriormente ahora como “delitos de corrupción en los negocios”. “La novedad del título –que no en el contenido del precepto- en modo alguno supone que los delitos de corrupción queden limitados a las actuaciones previstas en dicho artículo”, explica Llarena. “El delito de malversación de caudales públicos se ubica sistemáticamente en nuestro código penal en el capítulo dedicado a los “delitos contra la Administración Pública junto a otros considerados de corrupción…”, aclara. Los jueces alemanes no tienen problema, según dejan constancia en su Beschluss del 5 de abril, en aceptar los argumentos expuestos sobre la malversación como delito de corrupción –lo que demuestra que han leído oportunamente el escrito del lunes 2 de abril. Los jueces se avienen a considerar, pues, que siendo la corrupción parte de los 32 delitos del acuerdo de euroorden, no ven necesario, de acuerdo con lo establecido por el acuerdo marco de 2002, verificar si hay doble incriminación del delito de malversación, en cumplimiento del artículo 81.4 ley alemana de Cooperación Internacional en Asuntos Penales. Pero, en cambio, parecen apuntar la irrelevancia del nomen iuris o calificación jurídica de los delitos e insinúan la primacía de la realidad de acuerdo al conocido criterio: “Las cosas son lo que son y no lo que las partes dicen que son”. Por eso han pedido –cosa que no se estima satisfecha a la luz de su Beschluss del 5 de abril- una descripción más precisa de las circunstancias en que se cometió el delito de malversación, máxime cuando el magistrado Llarena ha subrayado su inclusión en el artículo 473.2 de rebelión agravada.

Students don’t necessarily want more digital – they just want it used better’ Written by Gill Hitchcock on 4 April 2018 in Features The innovation leaders of higher-education technology body Jisc talk to Gill Hitchcock about spreading digital excellence and developing shared services for UK universities and colleges One of his favourite uses of digital technologies is to allow students to pose and research questions ahead of a debate, says the University of Derby’s head of forensic science Dr Ian Turner. “It really enhances the students’ experience in the classroom.” The university has developing digital capabilities as one of its core goals for the next five years. For instance, it has student digital champions who help others to develop the digital capabilities they might be expected to use in their course, such as e-portfolios, or WordPress as a website-creation tool. Meanwhile, Harlow College claims that it has improved retention and achievement rates for students by making good use of digital technologies. For staff, it offers five cross-college development days where they can learn new digital skills. And there are 15-minute drop-in sessions where they can learn about new apps and tools and explore how they can use them in teaching. "Facebook and Snapchat are very powerful platforms, but they have particular associations. Students don’t want universities and colleges to use those channels for formal things" Phil Richards, Jisc Supporting initiatives such as these is Jisc, the UK body for digital technology and resources in higher and further education and research. Jisc is best known for the Janet network, which connects 18 million users across every university and college and research laboratory in the UK, and Jisc Collections, a purchasing club through which universities buy half their research journals. Jisc’s chief innovation officer Phil Richards uses horticultural analogies to describe his role, seeding digital opportunities and growing the shared services of the future. “The three trees that have been growing the best over the past couple of years have been research data management, learning analytics, then the digital-capabilities tree – which has quite a thick branch, the student digital-experience tracker.”

Data and algorithms are an issue. They can be good, but I believe they should be open and transparent, or they should also be opt in, with all of the caveats and warnings explained to students (and staff) as part of their learning about data literacy. If there is one good thing that as come out of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook story, it is that we are talking about these issues, and that people are realising that data and algorithms are not neutral, that they have political bias, either unconscious to deliberately placed there. I do believe that the Open Movement needs to look at analytics and algorithms and decide how open objects can be used in these closed systems, and what the implications are.

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