August 6, 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison. William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes. As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM Anniversary of Hiroshima The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima ruins An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops. The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings: https://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/ <Hiroshima survivor
Found watch stopped at the time of explosion> Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/online-collections/decision-to-drop-atomic-bomb On August 6, 1995 up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
August 6, 1957 Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
August 6, 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states. The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times. Introduction to the Voting Rights Act: https://www.justice.gov/crt/introduction-federal-voting-rights-laws-0
August 6, 1990 George Galloway The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions“ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .”When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96)
August 6, 1998 Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.
New laws may make it easier to pursue far-right activist over alleged role in spreading disinformation
(I think they are here, because of our Constitution. However, it’d be good to see this sort of activity controlled, and people safer. -A)
Images of Tommy Robinson using his phone while sunbathing in Cyprus as a Rotherham hotel housing asylum seekers was set alight have prompted outrage among those long concerned about his ability to inspire far-right action, even from a distance.
Yet while he has long seemed able to operate with impunity, events may finally be catching up with the man who first rose to prominence in 2009 as the de facto leader of the now defunct English Defence League (EDL).
Far from being powerless to pursue Robinson, new legislation means the authorities may be able to move more easily against those who share damaging information online that they know to be untrue.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is already known to be among those who are being looked at by police for their alleged role in disseminating disinformation.
A former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald KC, spelled out on Monday how he believed investigators would want to quickly identify individuals who are involved in “online organisation, online incitement and online conspiracies”.
“I think prosecutors will want to have a strategy to identify people who may have been involved in inciting and encouraging these events, and they will want to arrest them and build cases against them. These are, in one sense, the most important people,” Lord Macdonald told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.
While Robinson has been abroad since 28 July, when he fled the UK on the eve of a high court hearing over contempt of court proceedings, he has maintained a near constant commentary on events in the UK since the fatal stabbings of three young girls in Southport on 29 July, sharing claims that police have described as false.
While he has long been a prolific user of multiple social media platforms – benefiting in particular from the return of his X account after Elon Musk bought Twitter – going after him for his online output is not clear-cut.
Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general for England and Wales, told the Guardian: “It is an offence to incite violence on the grounds of race, belief or sexual orientation, and there is incitement to hatred. But it’s a grey area between the right to criticise and incitement to hatred and is a very difficult area to police.
“Quite simply, that’s why it is possible for people to play around with that area. Either you clamp down on it, in which case legitimate freedom of speech gets eliminated and breeds undesirable problems of its own, or you live with it and challenge those views through debate.”
Recent changes in the law open up other possibilities. Since January, an amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information that they know to be false and “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
Ashley Fairbrother, a senior prosecutor at the law firm Edmonds Marshall McMahon, said: “This now makes the circulation of damaging and false information online into an offence in its own right.” (snip-More)
Hi everyone. As many of you mentioned and one of my doctors said I have PTSD. and it has really been pushing me hard lately. He came to me about 2 hours ago and asked me to stop blogging and watch a move or play Halo. He was getting very worried about me. I told him OK, but first I wanted to answer some comments. He came in a half hour later and seen I was still blogging. He again asked me to stop and watch a movie. I told him only a few more, I don’t want to lose them. He came in a few minutes ago after an hour and half, and said enough. He asked me what newish movie I would like to see. I told him I have never seen Spiderman No way home. He asked me to find it. I did on Prime, but it was $8. and I balked at paying that. Ron told me to buy it, and then as I ate supper watch it. Anything. Just stay off the blog, no news, and no MS site stuff. So dear viewers, I give in to my husband I bout it, and will now watch it. Hugs. Scottie
The call to action comes as the issue has intensified in recent years, affecting students to public figures like Taylor Swift and AOC.
Originally published by The 19th Republished with their republish link.
“This is an issue that affects everybody — from celebrities to high school girls.”
That’s how Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, describes the pervasiveness of image-based sexual abuse, a problem that artificial intelligence (AI) has intensified in recent years, touching everyone from students to public figures like Taylor Swift and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In May, the Biden-Harris administration announced a call to action to curb such abuse, which disproportionately targets girls, women and LGBTQ+ people. Stopping these images, whether real or AI-generated, from being circulated and monetized requires not just the government to act, but tech companies to as well, according to the White House.
“We’re inviting technology companies and civil society to consider what steps they can take to prevent image-based sexual abuse, and there’s really a spectrum of actors who we hope will get involved in addressing the problem,” Klein said. “So that can be anything from the payment processors, to mobile app stores, to mobile app and operating system developers, cloud providers, search engines, etc. They all have a particular part of the sort of ecosystem in which this problem happens.”
Responding to the White House’s call to action, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and the National Network to End Domestic Violence announced in June that they would form a working group to counteract the circulation and monetization of image-based sexual abuse. In late July, Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, removed 63,000 accounts linked to the “sextortion” of children and teens.
While older forms of this abuse include the leaking of intimate photos without the consent of all parties, the AI version includes face swapping, whereby the head of one individual is placed on another person’s naked body, Klein said. Both Swift and Ocasio-Cortez have been victims of this kind of sexual abuse. In March, Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act of 2024. The legislation provides recourse for people, more than 90 percent of whom are women, who have had their likenesses used in intimate “digital forgery.” The Senate passed the DEFIANCE Act on July 23.
Such images have also garnered repeated headlines this year after spreading at schools. The White House’s appeal to tech companies follows the Biden-Harris administration’s recent updates to Title IX, the law that bars educational institutions that receive federal funds from engaging in sex discrimination. Under the new regulations that took effect Thursday, sex-based harassment includes sexually explicit deepfake images if they create a hostile school environment.
“We respectfully urge the Department of Education to issue guidance delineating Title IX procedures and protocols specifically tailored to addressing digital sexual harassment within educational institutions,” the letter states. “This guidance should provide clear direction on how schools can effectively handle cases of digital sexual harassment including support mechanisms for victims, investigation procedures, research and referrals, and prevention strategies.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s effort to prevent the proliferation of explicit deepfake images coincides with states taking action.
“There’s a patchwork of laws across the country, and there are 20 states that have passed laws penalizing the dissemination of nonconsensual AI-generated pornographic material,” Klein said. “But there’s a lot of work to be done, both at the state level and at the federal level to really make that work a whole quilt to continue the process.”
“It was pretty tricky because of the various First Amendment arguments that get raised,” he said. “The bill, to be honest, got watered down more than I wanted as it went through the process. But it has since been copied in other states, and then frankly, made stronger in other states.”
Berman decided to file legislation to prohibit child sex abuse deepfakes when the California District Attorneys Association informed his office that they’re increasingly catching people who are creating, disseminating or possessing such images.
“Their interpretation of California law currently is that it is not specifically illegal, because it doesn’t involve an image of an actual child — because AI takes thousands of images of real children and then spits out this artificial image,” Berman said. “So they said, ‘We need to close this loophole in California law and make sure that the law explicitly states that child sexual abuse material, even if it’s created by artificial intelligence, is illegal. I was shocked that people were even using AI to create this type of content, and then I found out just how pervasive it is, especially on the dark web. It’s terrifying.”
Possessing or distributing such images online may result in perpetrators sexually exploiting minors offline, making it all the more important to address AI-generated versions of this content before it spirals out of control and becomes a huge problem for the nation’s young people, Berman said.
Multiple schools in California have been rocked by deepfake scandals, often related to images created by students of their peers. In March, a Calabasas High School student accused her onetime friend of disseminating actual and AI-generated nudes of her to their peers. That same month, a Beverly Hills middle school expelled five students for allegedly circulating AI-generated nudes of their classmates.
Such incidents are one reason Berman believes students need to be taught to use AI responsibly. “AB 2876 will equip students with the skills and the training that they need to both harness the benefits of AI, but also to mitigate the dangers and the ethical considerations of using artificial intelligence,” he said.
The legislation has been ordered to a third reading, the bill’s final phase before it leaves the state assembly and moves to the senate. Meanwhile, his bill to prohibit child sex abuse deepfakes, AB 1831, has been referred to the suspense file, meaning that the bill’s potential fiscal impacts to the state are being reviewed. The legislation would take effect January 1 if enacted.
“It’d be great if Congress can pass some federal standards on this,” Berman said. “It’s always an ideal when it comes to legislation that really applies to every state and to kids in every state.”
Pending national legislation addressing the issue includes The SHIELD Act and The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSA), which the Senate passed July 30, although it still awaits a vote in the House of Representatives. The former would make the non-consensual sharing of intimate images a federal offense, while the latter would require social media companies to take steps to prevent children and teens from being sexually exploited online, among other measures. KOSA, however, has sparked fears that lawmakers could use it to censor content they dislike, particularly LGBTQ+ content, under the guise of protecting children. Civil liberties groups like the ACLU said that the bill raises privacy concerns, may limit youth’s access to important online resources and could silence needed conversations.
Evan Greer, director at Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on digital rights, objected to KOSA’s Senate passage in a statement. “We need legislation that addresses the harm of Big Tech and still lets young people fight for the type of world that they actually want to grow up in,” she said.
AI-generated image-based sexual abuse also affects college students, according to Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit that addresses college sexual assault. She called it an emerging issue on college campuses.
“It really started with the emergence of nonconsensual image-sharing involving an individual sharing a private photo with someone that they thought they could trust,” she said. “We are now starting to see this challenge come forward with AI and deepfakes, and unfortunately, many schools are not equipped to investigate gender-based harassment and violence that occurs as a result of deepfakes.”
Vitchers appreciates that the new Title IX regulations touch on the issue, but said that colleges need more guidance from the Department of Education about how to respond to these incidents, and students need more prevention education.
“It’s something that we have begun discussing with some of our partners, particularly those in the online dating space,” Vitchers said. “We are hearing that fear, among particularly young women on campus, about someone who can just take a picture of you from Instagram and use AI to superimpose it onto porn. Then it gets circulated and it feels impossible to get it removed from the internet.”
Some tech companies have already offered their support to the White House’s effort to stop image-based sexual abuse, Klein said, but she would like to hear from others. Although state and national lawmakers are working to enact legislation and regulations, Klein said that the Biden-Harris administration is calling on tech companies to intervene because they can take action now.
“Given the scale that image-based abuse has been rapidly proliferating with the advent of generative AI, we need to do this while we continue to work toward longer-term solutions,” she said.
Aug. 4, 2024, 5:00 AM CDT By Anthony L. Fisher, Senior Editor, MSNBC Daily
It’s always the end of the world for the Make America Great Again movement. Ever since Donald Trump’s escalator ride in 2015, there’s been zero nuance to the MAGA message. “Only I can fix it,” the leader roared to thunderous applause upon accepting the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
But especially since Vice President Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic nominee, MAGA messaging has gone from overwrought and hyperbolic to absolutely hysterical and apocalyptic.
Trumpists wave off any and all criticism as unworthy of discussion, bad-faith accusations from minds afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. And yet, deranged is the only appropriate descriptor of the rhetoric emanating from MAGA land’s loudest megaphones. It’s Trump and some of his closest allies and most prominent boosters who have been speaking of an imminent totalitarian government, end times and literal biblical demons.
These people include podcasters with massive, fiercely dedicated audiences. Titans of industry. Religious extremists with political ambitions and close ties to Trump world. And the richest man in the world.
Musk once generally reserved that term for environmentalists — or really anyone concerned about climate change. But he’s since expanded the definition to anything that involves the mysterious and horror-movie-sounding “woke mind virus.” In 2023, Musk told Joe Rogan, “It’s essentially the extinctionists. It is that they’re propagating the extinction of humanity and civilization.”
It’s hard to argue what’s “most disturbing” among these deranged comments from very angry people, but a worthy contender came from Lance Wallnau, the influential Christian nationalist who has the ears of both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. He likened the first Black and Indian woman to be nominated for president by a major party to Jezebel — a spirit with demonic powers. In case he wasn’t driving the point home with just the name, Wallnau clarified that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel … in a way that’ll be even much more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”
The MAGA right hasn’t cornered the market on ridiculous and irresponsible hyperbole in politics. Left, right and center are all capable of taking liberties with facts, hyping the fear factor and exaggerating the stakes.
But of all American political tribes, there’s only one with politically influential figures using this election season to prophesize about Jezebels and explicitly making it about race and gender. Or literally warning of the imminent end of the world because of a Marxist conspiracy to smuggle totalitarianism on an unsuspecting public through environmentalism.
This was once the content you’d find on the furthest, most ridiculous fringes of the AM radio dial. And they are what remains of the brain trust of the MAGA movement. (snip-More)
By Holmes Lybrand, CNN Published 5:46 PM EDT, Mon August 5, 2024
sigh.
CNN —
A Virginia man has been charged with making death threats against Vice President Kamala Harris and appeared in federal court on Monday.
According to court records, Frank Lucio Carillo made several threats against Harris, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray, several Arizona officials, and others on the right-wing social media platform Gettr.
In response to a subpoena, the FBI found 4,359 posts from Carillo “targeting various public officials,” including Harris.
In several posts, Carillo allegedly threatened to cut out Harris’ eyes and described various ways he wanted to kill the vice president, court records say.
“I will cut your eyes out,” Carillo allegedly wrote in one expletive-laden rant where he called Harris a “b*tch” and said he hoped she would “suffer a slow agonizing death.”
A number of similar posts are cited in court records, with graphic and detailed threats against the vice president as well as others, including one Islamophobic post in 2023 when he wrote that people should “go out with your guns and kill all Muslims.”
When FBI agents first arrived at Carillo’s house over the social media posts, Carillo asked if they were there “about the online stuff,” and said, “I posted it.” Carrillo, appearing to talk to himself, also said, “I guess I’m gonna need a lawyer,” according to court documents.
Federal agents retrieved two firearms from his home, including a pistol he bought in 2023 and a rifle purchased this year.
A hearing to determine whether Carillo will remain behind bars while awaiting a resolution in his case has been set for Thursday. (snip)
Hi. I am torn up right now with memories. I am not sure what to do. I wrote one of them to Jill telling her some of my abuse because she has told me it is ok to do that. Still it bothered me. My mind won’t release. I am having one of those times that the vortex of dark despair is hovering me right outside me. I am trying to distract my self. Damn it! I am 61 now, my last rapes happened in my early 20s. I am safe. I am happy. I have a wonderful husband who is even now making ravioli baked in the red sauce I made. Yet the memories come over me in waves. I want to forget, I want to not feel it like I did when it happened. But … but … Oh hell, I am going to do comments to help my mind settle. But today my emotions are raw and I have memories that hurt. At what point in my life do they go away? Really I am 61. I am safe, it is water under the bridge. Yet …. OK hug. Scottie
Hiroshima ruins
<Hiroshima survivor 
George Galloway
Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken Read about the Minuteman III Plowshares action: https://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/WMD
Scottie's Playtime 