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Facebook and the Future of Online Privacy

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Imag

Facebook and the Future of Online Privacy

The EU has taken the lead in responding to abuse by the likes of Facebook, thanks to its new privacy standards and proposed greater taxation of peddlers of online personal data. Yet more is needed and feasible.

NEW YORK – Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, recently notedthat the public scrutiny of Facebook is “very much overdue,” declaring that “it’s shocking to me that they didn’t have to answer more of these questions earlier on.” Leaders in the information technology sector, especially in Europe, have been warning of the abuses by Facebook (and other portals) for years. Their insights and practical recommendations are especially urgent now.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before the US Senate did little to shore up public confidence in a company that traffics in its users’ personal data. The most telling moment of testimony came when Illinois Senator Richard Durbin asked whether Zuckerberg would be comfortable sharing the name of his hotel and the people he had messaged that week, exactly the kind of data tracked and used by Facebook. Zuckerberg replied that he would not be comfortable providing the information. “I think that may be what this is all about,” Durbin said. “Your right to privacy.”

Critics of Facebook have been making this point for years. Stefano Quintarelli, one of Europe’s top IT experts and a leading advocate for online privacy (and, until recently, a member of the Italian Parliament), has been a persistent and prophetic critic of Facebook’s abuse of its market position and misuse of online personal data. He has long championed a powerful idea: that each of us should retain control of our online profile, which should be readily transferable across portals. If we decide we don’t like Facebook, we should be able to shift to a competitor without losing the links to contacts who remain on Facebook.

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Ending America’s Disastrous Role in Syria

Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Ending America’s Disastrous Role in Syria

America’s official narrative has sought to conceal the scale and calamitous consequences of US efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That is understandable, because US efforts are in blatant violation of international law, which bars UN member states from supporting military action to overthrow other members’ governments.

NEW YORK – Much of the carnage that has ravaged Syria during the past seven years is due to the actions of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. Now, faced with an alarming risk of a renewed escalation of fighting, it’s time for the United Nations Security Council to step in to end the bloodshed, based on a new framework agreed by the Council’s permanent members.

Here are the basics. In 2011, in the context of the Arab Spring, the US government, in conjunction with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel, decided to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, even though overthrowing another country’s government amounts to a blatant violation of international law. We know that in 2012, if not earlier, President Barack Obama authorized the CIA to work with America’s allies in providing support to rebel forces composed of disaffected Syrians as well as non-Syrian fighters. US policymakers evidently expected Assad to fall quickly, as had occurred with the governments of Tunisia and Egypt in the early months of the Arab Spring.

The Assad regime is led by the minority Alawi Shia sect in a country where Alawites account for just 10% of the population, Sunni Muslims account for 75%, Christians make up 10%, and 5% are others, including Druze. The regional powers behind Assad’s regime include Iran and Russia, which has a naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coastline.

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Trump on the Warpath

Trump on the Warpath

The US suffers from an arrogance of military power disconnected from today’s geopolitical realities. The US is on this path again, heading for a collision with a nuclear-armed adversary, and it will remain on it unless other countries, other American leaders, and public opinion block the way.

NEW YORK – Fifteen years after George W. Bush declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea formed “an axis of evil,” Donald Trump, in his maiden address to the United Nations, denounced Iran and North Korea in similarly vitriolic terms. Words have consequences, and Trump’s constitute a dire and immediate threat to global peace, just as Bush’s words did in 2002.

For Trump, as for Bush, there is Good (America) and Evil (Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran, North Korea, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein). America the Good makes demands on the evildoers. If the evildoers do not comply, America can exercise the “military option” or impose punitive sanctions to enforce “justice” as the United States defines it.

Bush applied the logic of force vis-à-vis Afghanistan and the “axis of evil,” with disastrous results. The US quickly overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2002 but could not secure order. Fifteen years on, the Taliban controls considerable territory, and Trump has just ordered an increase in troops. America has spent roughly $800 billion in direct military outlays in Afghanistan, and indeed has been at war there almost non-stop since the CIA covertly intervened in 1979, helping to provoke the Soviet invasion of that country.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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