Clarkson: Trump administration is imperiling progress made under Clean Water Act – Richmond.com

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We dont need all the gadgets and gizmos. We dont need the internet, television, microwaves, cars, planes, computers, live streaming necklaces, tablets, cell phones. Heck, I suppose when it really comes down to it, we dont need fly rods, or fancy reels, or even size 12 Adams to probe the waters for hungry trout.

The list of things we dont need is nearly endless.

The list of things we do need, and I mean to survive on this planet as a species, is rather short indeed. At the top of that list is water - good, clean water.

Remarkably, the future of clean water in the United States is currently in peril as one of the first executive orders signed by the Trump administration tasked the Environmental Protection Agency with rescinding and replacing the Clean Water Rule, a rule that protects 60% of stream miles in the United States and one-third of the nations drinking water supply.

Its shocking, said Chris Wood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Trout Unlimited. What we are talking about here is water, the basic right of every American to have clean drinking water.

Of course these headwater streams that stand to lose protection are the same waters that hold trout, like our native brook trout here in Virginia.

Waters of the U.S (WOTUS), or the Clean Water Rule, was signed by President Obama in 2015 after years of uncertainty and debate and several Supreme Court cases regarding which waters and streams were protected under the Clean Water Act. Unfortunately, additional lawsuits have held up the implementation of the rule.

What was unclear under the Clean Water Act, some argued, was whether or not intermittent or ephemeral streams, ones that dont always have water or flow, should be protected. These are the headwater streams, or 60% of all streams in the United States.

After hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and millions of public comments, a clear nexus was established between headwater streams and the navigable waters into which they flow.

To sum it up, water flows downhill and it takes whatever you put in it upstream to where it goes downstream, even when that water might only flow for part of the year.

The whole point is these are the roots of streams and bays downstream, the coolest and cleanest waters downstream and the heart and soul of trout water, said Steve Moyer, Vice President of Government Affairs for Trout Unlimited.

We want to go forward on water. We want things to get better. We see streams and rivers getting better. We see the Chesapeake Bay getting better. Why would you want to go back?

And thats the heart of the issue. Why would we want to go backwards in terms of clean water?

Gravity works cheap and never takes a day off, Moyer continued. We stand to lose 1000s of miles of streams that wont be protected under the Clean Water Act with the need for basic permitting.

How could Virginia be affected? Not as badly as some states, but still, its not good. A significant amount of headwater streams in the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the James River watersheds, including 58% of streams that constitute the Jackson River watershed, could lose their protection. Of course the water flowing into the Jackson ultimately makes its way into the James, which accounts for our drinking water here in Richmond.

From an ecological and science perspective, all these waters are connected, said Bill Street, Chief Executive Officer for the James River Association. Headwater streams are crucial for the health of waters downstream. We cant have a healthy James unless we have healthy headwaters. Removing federal protection from those waters makes them more vulnerable.

While the folks at Trout Unlimited are certainly focused on trout and their habitat, their concern here extends beyond just places where anglers might cast a fly.

Every new administration has the right to put their mark on things, said Moyer, but this is a fundamental and radical shift from how this nation has protected its water for 40 years.

The comment period on the proposed rescinding of the Clean Water Rule has been extended through September 27th. For more information, and to comment, visit Trout Unlimited s website (http://www.tu.org) or the Environmental Protection Agencys website (https://www.epa.gov).

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Clarkson: Trump administration is imperiling progress made under Clean Water Act - Richmond.com

Public’s help needed as software upgrades progress – Dothan Eagle

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As Dothan Utilities moves to a new software system for its electrical system, it will need customers help to keep it working properly.

Electric Operations Superintendent Chris Phillips said Dothan Utilities has been in the process of implementing an interactive voice response (IVR) system along with an outage management system (OMS) from Milsoft Solutions for a couple of years. He said the IVR system, which allows Dothan Utilities customers to report outages and other issues by responding to menu prompts, is currently running.

The system, however, relies on correct and updated information to work at peak efficiency an area where customers can contribute.

Whats important is the phone number is valid. The system has caller ID and can get the address and account information, Phillips said. That is the responsibility of the customer. They can call 615-3302 to update. Its one of the menu options.

Phillips noted the system can catalog a few different phone numbers for each account. He said many people will use their cell phones as an alternate number.

This is an extreme example, but if you head to your mothers house across town during a power outage, you could list your mothers phone number on the account, Phillips said.

Updated information will be key as the OMS portion is installed in about seven to eight months. The system will be able to handle more calls regarding problems (up to 24 at one time) than is possible through the current system (about 12 to 16).

It will also help Dothan Utilities linemen identify issues more quickly since the system will be able to tell if a litany of calls are related to one singular issue or a variety of problems quickly.

The old-school way (to determine a problem) was to start at the substation and follow the circuit, Phillips said. There could be miles of line to follow.

The system can perform all of these functions as long as customers information is up to date.

Thats the most important piece to the entire project, Phillips said. If the customer calls in and it doesnt recognize the number, it doesnt know where its coming from.

To update the information, call 615-3302. Phillips said the caller will need to know either the phone number or account ID to complete any changes.

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Public's help needed as software upgrades progress - Dothan Eagle

Pilgrim’s Progress: Ireland’s Camino-style journey – BBC News

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BBC News
Pilgrim's Progress: Ireland's Camino-style journey
BBC News
Ireland has got its own fully-guided pilgrim journey, similar to Spain's famous Camino de Santiago. The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage route to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. But now you ...

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Pilgrim's Progress: Ireland's Camino-style journey - BBC News

Review: Grizzly Bear Sort Out Their Old Lives on the Slinky, Satisfying Painted Ruins – SPIN

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Can you feel it coming? Quickening on the horizon, a rustle of Uggs and shutter shades, skinny jeans and chunky highlights; a murmur of Friendster notifications in Netscape browsers and mainstremo bands on white iPods. Its name is aughties nostalgia, and it is almost upon us. The realization elicits a shock quickly followed by a no doy, considering the moribund state of nineties nostalgia. Look around you: The Toadies are trapped on a purgatorial tour that presumably consists of Possum Kingdom eleven times per night; the half-hearted comeback of chain wallets is wringing out the fashion dregs. Only a few unavailable seasons of Blossom still stand between us and total nineties depletion.

The aughts werent all well-dressed men singing songs for oblivion, hate-watching their own fame, and getting one another strung out on drugs, as portrayed in Meet Me in the Bathroom, Lizzy Goodmans recent oral history of post-9/11 New York rock. If some were hungry, others were haunted, and countered the wave of spartan decadence with arcane varietals of messianic monk-progbands like TV on the Radio and, of course, Grizzly Bear. While Casablancas and them rocked rumpled suits and struck poses of prep-school dissipation, Grizzly Bear were otherworldly ciphers whose ranks included a bona fide merman yowling in dolphin language and blowing a conch shell. Cultivating the tempo and grandeur of sances, they led a sensitive, severe shadow trend to all the disaffected hedonism, not unlike the post-acoustic bonfire music the art-hippies in Animal Collective were busy turning into a genre.

If Grizzly Bears influence was minted in the aughts, their commercial peak was 2012s lavish, laborious Shields, a validation that also felt like a logical conclusion. They scattered and did grown-ass things for a whilekids, divorces, leaving New Yorkbefore returning today with Painted Ruins, their first record in five years. Pieced together from afar, and consequently cautious, it seems unlikely to shift the bands attenuated trajectory. But it comes at an opportune moment in the nostalgia cycle, being so stoic and redolent of something were about to start missing.

It all started in the bedroom of Ed Droste, whose 2004 debut, Horn of Plenty, suggested a universe in which Leonard Cohen joined the Velvet Underground. Drostes sparse, droning, hollowed dirges conveyed a shaken austerity that lots of people identified with. Though the Strokes and Grizzly Bear sounded little alike, they and other New York bands were united in struggling to make and hold onto meanings, rather than bursting with an overabundance of them, in the manner of more ecstatic, perhaps more typical, rock musicians.

It took the addition of Daniel Rossen, a second singer, songwriter, and guitaristinsofar as you can define those roles in the all-singing, all-playing approach that Grizzly Bear helped imprint on the erato round out the scheme on 2006s Yellow House. Rossen, who has his own following with Department of Eagles, paneled in Drostes moody grays with songwriterly woodgrain. Yellow House was their most lovable album, and 2009s Veckatimest was probably their best, expertly balancing sere saturnalia with pert pop like Two Weeks.

But Shields, though critically acclaimed, was just not, generally speaking, a fun album to make, as Droste said recently. Its foggy-mountain jams are diligent but not joyful; even the beloved Sleeping Ute unwelcomely reminds me of a time when we had to listen to bass solos and Yeasayer, often simultaneously. Painted Ruins is an easier go. It has all the vibes and parts youd expectthe jagged somnolence, the lathed bass lines, the martial drumrolls and oceanic swells, the bright, crispy chords stabbing through the mannered churn like sun spikes though a hangover. Slinky grooves, like Steely Dan gone mod, exfoliate; Mourning Sound has a particularly perky thump and sway.

The choice of the wandering Three Rings as lead single indicates how utterly, even for Grizzly Bear, this record is about the rolling landscape, not the particular sights. Its a landscape haunted more by the past than by the present, and the title has an unmissable implication of putting a fresh coat on something inhabited mainly by memory. This is bigger than dated trends. Grizzly Bear were forged in a time when prestige music was learning to be made for the Internet in a certain way, pored over by the type of people who used to sit with headphones and liner notes, which created a market for prestige music that demanded more and more complexity, more ambiguity, more fiddly bits to hold our fragmenting attention.

In the 2010s, the aughties fad for the hermetic that Painted Ruins revives has passed. More music is made for a populist, personalized vision of the Internet than for an elite one. Bold statements of identity, swirls of social color, and off-the-cuff inspiration are the temper of our times. Of course Grizzly Bear cant shake the aughties by tunneling into vintage psych-pop citations. Theyre a band that was always prized for looking in, not out; its drowsy, not woke, elaborate without urgency.

Four Cypruses glimmers into being with magisterial serenity, beautifully rises and falls for a while, and fadesout. Its chaos, but it works, Rossen shrugs. Aquarian touches the lighter side of Captain Beefheart, laying out trippy thickets for people who havent tripped in years. Rossen sings about upcountry drifters in permanent repose on the spidery Glass Hillside, which perfectly captures the records overall sense of drifting disengagement, of shifting through internal gears and sorting out old lives. The forms are large, the meanings small, an inversion of contemporary musics vitality. Painted Ruins is monumental at a time when monuments fall.

Droste sings with such gravitas and remove that its easy to overlook how deliberately blank the lyrics are, and always have been. The profound trip-hop groove of opener Wasted Acres cant elide that all its about is riding a Honda TRX 250 ATV in a field. Throughout the record, words are just pathways through which the melody travels from one sweep to the next, but nothing really comes into focus except an almost free-floating regret and confusion. You can no longer feel the knife, but you can remember feeling it, in another decade, one just beginning to seem both self-defined and irretrievably lost.

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Review: Grizzly Bear Sort Out Their Old Lives on the Slinky, Satisfying Painted Ruins - SPIN

Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
The debate intensified over whether the growing number of tech companies that blocked white supremacists and a neo-Nazi website on the internet have gone too far, as a prominent privacy group questioned the power a few corporations have to censor.
'Is this the Day the Internet Dies?'National Review
Op-Ed: Rights group criticizes revoking services to The Daily StormerDigital Journal
Freedom of speech on the Internet and taking down neo-Nazi websitesMyBroadband
EFF
all 92 news articles »

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Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Far-right groups find new homes on the Web, with difficulty – San Francisco Chronicle

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In the aftermath of a violent protest in Charlottesville, Va., that left three dead and thrust neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists back into the public eye, tech companies big and small have turned their back on far-right extremists by cutting off access to revenue and canceling service effectively banishing them to the far corners of the Internet.

The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, went offline. PayPal stopped transactions that benefited hate groups and their supporters. And OkCupid revoked the dating privileges of known white supremacists.

While some antiracist activists and tech leaders applauded the impact the digital ice-out would have on extremists reach and revenue, others worried that tech firms may have gone too far: Could they do the same to any group that challenges popular ideals or opposes the interests of Silicon Valley?

The same policies against hate speech or hate groups or terrorist propaganda that are leading companies to take down the Daily Stormer and its folk are routinely used against groups on all sides of the political spectrum that dont advocate violent ideology whatsoever, said Emma Llans, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Any tool that enables censorship online can be used against potentially everyone regardless of ideology.

White nationalists and free-speech activists have begun building alternatives to the mainstream Internet in an effort to operate outside the rules and norms of Silicon Valley, on networks where hate speech and extremist organizations can exist unchecked.

But there are significant drawbacks, said Cody Wilson, who helped to create Hatreon, an alternative to the better-known Patreon, a website that allows content creators to receive financial support from users.

No one truly wants to rebuild 20 years of Internet infrastructure so they dont have to engage in these full-scale social purges, said Wilson. Theres not a lot of money or talent behind the so-called alt-tech. This isnt a thing where were like, Oh, were going build a whole new world. It doesnt work that way.

Wilson doesnt align himself politically with white nationalists or far-right extremists. But he believes that they, too, should have a forum to express themselves.

Hatreon, which has about 1,000 users, was booted off of its infrastructure provider, DigitalOcean, Friday amid a widespread purge of hate groups from the Internets most prominent gatekeepers.

Several online civil rights groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and San Francisco advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have questioned the power of big tech firms and cautioned those who cheer the dismantling of Nazi websites that they could be next.

After terminating its contract with the Daily Stormer, Matthew Prince, the CEO of website security firm Cloudflare, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the power Internet companies have is troubling, and without a system in place to regulate decisions that result in censorship, its unlikely those decisions will be made objectively.

Privately owned tech companies are not subject to the First Amendment, which ensures the right to speech free from government censorship. Most, instead, operate in accordance with their own terms of service.

But even then it can be hard to tell whether a company is implementing its rules fairly or singling out certain people or groups that it may not like, Llans said.

We need more transparency across the board, she said. Its kind of hard to talk about content moderation when we still dont have very good information about what social media platforms are actually doing.

Even the open Web, a supposed free-for-all, has posed challenges for far-right groups. GoDaddy and Google refused to manage the Daily Stormers Internet domain, forcing it to bounce around to several different domains including one on the dark Web and another in Russia before resurfacing with the unlikely address dailystormer.lol through the domain registrar NameCheap.

NameCheap did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the companys terms of service explicitly outlaw hate sites.

Discord, a voice chat service popular among video game enthusiasts that had been instrumental in organizing far-right extremists, axed several accounts, chat rooms and servers affiliated with neo-Nazi sentiments or white nationalist groups.

Google also banned social network Gab, billed as the far-rights version of Twitter, from its Android app store Thursday.

Our online community leans libertarian, small-c conservative, and anti-corporatist left, Gab spokesman Ustav Sanduja wrote in an email.

Since then, the social network has raised $400,000 from its users, Sanduja said, pushing its total contributions since July to more than $1 million. Gab, which has 207,000 users, was founded by Bay Area entrepreneur Andrew Torba, who considers the social network a haven for Internet separatists.

Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and Facebook have long been the subject of criticism both for suspending and banning accounts because of the content they publish on those sites and also for not doing enough to combat hate speech and harassment.

Facebook and YouTube have recently announced plans to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to better identify and more quickly suspend groups that promote hate speech and white nationalist ideologies on the social networks.

We all felt this righteous indignation after what happened (in Charlottesville), and fair enough, Hatreons Wilson said. But look, if some radical San Francisco LGBT group got kicked off the Internet for violating terms of service, we would all be having a very different conversation.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae

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Far-right groups find new homes on the Web, with difficulty - San Francisco Chronicle

Alt-Tech Bad Boy Cody Wilson Explains Hatreon, an Alternative to Online Censorship – PJ Media

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A funny thing happened to me today. I had been waiting by the inbox for my invitation to the new crowd-funding site, Hatreon. After feeling the all-powerful hands of YouTube squeeze a little too tightly around my neck, I was seeking out a new home for my video content which, by all accounts, is mostly comedic with some political lecturing thrown in for fun. My YouTube channel also contains a historical record of all the rabble rousing I've done over the years in various suburbs in opposition to various elected bad actors. It's not as shocking or groundbreaking as I'd like to believe it is. It's pretty tame. But according to YouTube, it's becoming advertiser unfriendly. This is the death knell for any YouTube channel demonetization. And so I went looking for somewhere I could still get paid for the thousands of hours I put into creating content. I researched Patreon but realized that content creators to the right of Bernardine Dohrn are now getting booted off for "hate speech" as outlined in their draconian terms of service (TOS) which enforce speech codes. A few people suggested Hatreon, the so-called "alt-right" answer to Patreon. I immediately liked the name. If they're going to label us haters, we might as well laugh about it.

So my invitation to join Hatreon finally came (and why wouldn't it? After all, I am deplorable), but the joy quickly faded as I clicked the login link to find this waiting for me.

Are you freaking kidding me?

How is this happening? It's like the entire tech universe is conspiring together to keep us offline. Oh, wait. That's exactly what's happening. I confirmed on Twitter that this was a deliberate booting of Hatreon's account off DigitalOcean servers complete with self-serving virtue signaling from DigitalOcean crowing about what a good deed they did by denying service to a paying customer.

PJ Media reached out to Hatreon's founder Cody Wilson and interviewed the man Wired magazine once listed as one of "The 15 Most Dangerous People In the World 2012." He was the opposite of how I would expect someone to sound whose new project had just been tanked for no reason other than left-wing hysteria. Wilson's good mood and light tone made me feel a little bit better about being under the Big Tech Boot of Censorship. He seemed undisturbed. He cracked jokes. He made them seem ridiculous.

"What if I owned a bakery and someone asked me to make a transgendered, Islamic, gay-themed wedding cake and I said no?" He chuckled. "I think you know the answer."

Wilson was sure Hatreon would be operational again later that day, and as of 10:15 p.m. the site appeared to be back online. Clearly not a beginner in the highly censorious tech world, Wilson didn't put all his eggs in one basket. He counted on DigitalOcean's small profile to keep them safe from public scrutiny. What he didn't know was that the alleged white supremacist Daily Stormer website housed some data on DigitalOcean's servers, which made them the target of SJW lynch mobs on Twitter. (I say "alleged" because Google deleted them from the internet before I ever had a chance to see what they are or aren't. Having never read Daily Stormer myself, I refuse to take CNN's word on the matter as truth. They might be a white power news source or they might be just a poorly written weather fan site. No one knows now because they've been disappeared by Google and its henchmen.) When the SJW outcry began to take down Daily Stormer after the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville that ended in inexcusable violence and mayhem, everyone raced to the control room to start flipping the switch to "off" on any bogeyman they could find (or invent). Hatreon got caught up in the mad dash to purge the Internet of "Nazis." DigitalOcean shut off their service overnight with no notice and later claimed Hatreon had violated their TOS, but offered no proof of the violation. The TOS they supposedly violated was 3.2 and is so overbroad it might be a good test case for an enterprising lawyer who wants to get it declared void for vagueness.

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Alt-Tech Bad Boy Cody Wilson Explains Hatreon, an Alternative to Online Censorship - PJ Media

Boston Right-Wing ‘Free Speech’ Rally Dwarfed By Counterprotesters – NPR

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Counterprotesters assemble at the Statehouse before a planned "Free Speech" rally by conservative organizers begins on the adjacent Boston Common, on Saturday. Michael Dwyer/AP hide caption

Counterprotesters assemble at the Statehouse before a planned "Free Speech" rally by conservative organizers begins on the adjacent Boston Common, on Saturday.

Updated at 1:00 p.m. ET

Thousands of counterprotesters gathered on the Boston Common on Saturday, far outnumbering a "Free Speech" rally of a few dozen conservative activists who said they have no connection to last week's violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., which drew white nationalists and sparked violent clashes and a deadly vehicle attack.

Under police escort, the Free-Speech demonstrators left the location where they said they would rally as they faced a sea of counterprotesters. It wasn't immediately clear if they would reassemble elsewhere.

Earlier, a speaker who addressed the counterdemonstrators condemned what many see as President Trump's tepid response to events last week in Charlottesville that led to the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

"If you don't condemn it, you condone it," the speaker said. Demonstrators also chanted "black lives matter" and "our streets."

Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident who planned to join the Free Speech rally, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying: "The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist."

"This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, I'd be protesting against them," Hood said.

Some 500 officers, both uniformed and undercover, have been deployed to maintain order, according to Boston Police Commissioner William Evans. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat, both warned that extremist unrest in the city would not be tolerated.

Speaking with member station WBUR in Boston, an organizer of the self-described free speech rally insisted that the message from the demonstrators "is one that [is] anti-hate and pro-peace."

"I think we've taken pretty much every precaution, not only with [Boston police], but with the other organizers, to make sure our message is clear," John Medler, of the Boston Free Speech Coalition, said.

However, WBUR reported Friday that a "free speech" rally in Boston in May drew not only more mainstream conservative activists, but also some of the same groups that caused violence in Charlottesville:

"On May 13, a group of veterans, ex-police, Tea Party Republicans and young people affiliated with the self-described 'alt-right' a conservative faction that mixes racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism gathered around the Common's historic Parkman Bandstand.

"Organizers claimed that they were honoring their First Amendment right to assemble and express radical viewpoints. But the event felt more like a small, right-wing rally than a celebration of the Constitution."

For Saturday's rally, Police have banned backpacks and signs on sticks. The Boston Globe writes:

"Boston officials said Friday that they will shut down the Saturday event if there are signs of violence.

" 'The courts have made it abundantly clear that they have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are,' said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. 'They don't have the right to create unsafe conditions. ... They must respect our city.' "

"He urged the public not to confront members of hate groups who show up Saturday and advised residents and tourists to avoid the Common during the rally."

WBUR's Bruce Gellerman, reporting from the Common, tells Weekend Edition Saturday that the site of the Parkman Bandstand, the focus of the rally, is historic because of speakers such as then-candidate Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass.

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Boston Right-Wing 'Free Speech' Rally Dwarfed By Counterprotesters - NPR

Thousands march through Boston for ‘Free Speech Rally’ – Fox News

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Thousands of leftist counterprotesters marched through downtown Boston on Saturday, chanting anti-Nazi slogans and waving signs condemning white nationalism as conservative activists appeared to cut short a rally one week after a Virginia demonstration turned deadly.

People assemble on Boston Common before a planned "Free Speech" rally by conservative organizers begins, Saturday in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Dozens of rallygoers had gathered on the Boston Common on Saturday, but then left shortly after the event was getting underway. It's unclear if they will gather to rally somewhere else in the city.

Rallygoers had been met by thousands of leftist protesters who marched peaceably through downtown Boston on Saturday, chanting anti-Nazi slogans and waving signs condemning white nationalism ahead of the rally.

Organizers of the midday event, billed as a "Free Speech Rally," have publicly distanced themselves from the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others whose Unite the Right march in Charlottesville turned deadly Aug. 12. A woman was killed at that march, and scores of others were injured, when a car plowed into counterdemonstrators.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said Friday that 500 officers -- some in uniform, others undercover -- were deployed to keep the peace Saturday.

BOSTON HOPES TO KEEP PEACE AT 'FREE SPEECH RALLY'

Counterprotesters hold signs before conservative organizers begin a planned "Free Speech" rally on Boston Common, Saturday in Boston. Police Commissioner William Evans said Friday that 500 officers, some in uniform, others undercover, would be deployed to keep the two groups apart. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Opponents feared that white nationalists might show up in Boston anyway, raising the specter of ugly confrontations in the first potentially large and racially charged gathering in a major U.S. city since Charlottesville. But only a few dozen conservatives turned out for the rally on historic Boston Common -- in stark contrast to the estimated 15,000 counterprotesters -- and the conservatives abruptly left early.

There were some confrontations amid the counterprotesters and conservative rally participants in Boston as they marched from the city's Roxbury neighborhood to Boston Common, where the rally was being held.

TV cameras showed a group of boisterous counterprotesters chasing a man with a Trump campaign banner and cap, shouting and swearing at him. Other counterprotesters intervened and helped the man safely over a fence to where the conservative rally was to be staged.

People assemble on Boston Common before a planned "Free Speech" rally by conservative organizers begins, Saturday in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Black-clad counterprotesters also grabbed an American flag out of an elderly woman's hands, and she stumbled and fell to the ground.

Boston police estimated the size of the crowd participating in the march by conservative activists to the Common at about 15,000.

The permit issued for the rally on Boston Common came with severe restrictions, including a ban on backpacks, sticks and anything that could be used as a weapon. The permit is for 100 people, though an organizer has said he expected up to 1,000 people to attend.

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organized the event, said it has nothing to do with white nationalism or racism and its group is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizers in any way.

"We are strictly about free speech," the group said on its Facebook page. "... we will not be offering our platform to racism or bigotry. We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence."

But the mayor pointed out that some of those invited to speak "spew hate." Kyle Chapman, who described himself on Facebook as a "proud American nationalist," said he will attend.

Events are planned around the country, in cities including Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Thousands march through Boston for 'Free Speech Rally' - Fox News

The Gunmen at ‘Free Speech’ Rallies – New York Times

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Photo Credit Hanna Barczyk

Even before violence erupted in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, city residents and the police anxiously watched the arrival of self-styled militias swaggering gangs of armed civilians in combat fatigues standing guard over the protest by white supremacists and other racist agitators against the removal of a Confederate statue.

Who were these men, counterprotesters asked as the riflemen took up watchful positions around the protest site. Police? National Guard? The Virginia National Guard had to send out an alert that its members wore a distinctive MP patch. This was so people could tell government-sanctioned protectors from unauthorized militias that have been posing as law-and-order squads at right-wing rallies.

In brandishing weapons in Charlottesville, the militiamen added an edge of intimidation to a protest that was ostensibly called as an exercise in free speech. By flaunting their right to bear arms, they made a stark statement in a looming public confrontation. You would have thought they were an army, noted Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, one of 45 states that allow the open carrying of rifles in public to some degree, most without a permit required.

The limits of that freedom are being increasingly tested by jury-rigged militias at demonstrations, public meetings and other political flash points around the nation. These strutting vigilantes have become such a threatening presence that government should rein them in to allow for a truly free exchange of ideas. State and federal laws would seem to allow their curtailment, provided that political leaders and the courts face up to the risks of mob rule.

No shots were fired in the Charlottesville violence, but with more alt-right rallies planned the danger that these militia members loaded weapons might be used increases. The armed groups mostly back up right-wing protests, although there was one militia in Charlottesville claiming to protect peaceful counterdemonstrators at a church. (The protest also drew antifa anti-fascist counterprotesters on the political left, ready to brawl with fists and sticks against those on the other side.)

Police officials have warned that gun-packing vigilantes only compound the risks in confrontations. Charlottesville officials, citing public safety, had sought to move the protest to a different site but were rebuffed in federal court. The American Civil Liberties Union defended the protesters free speech rights, though lawyers concede that the issue is becoming more complex as the potential for violence grows. Some critics think that the intrusive militias in Charlottesville could have contributed to the initial hesitation by the police to break up the violence.

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The Gunmen at 'Free Speech' Rallies - New York Times

Free Speech or Hate Speech? Civil Liberties Body ACLU Will No Longer Defend Gun-Carrying Protest Groups – Newsweek

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Since its founding during a period of anti-communist paranoia in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has served as a reliable line of defense for those who find their constitutional freedoms under threat.

Sometimes, that means fighting for liberal causes: ACLU lawyers were involved in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the two U.S. Supreme Court victories that underpinned womens right to abortionin modern America.And the ACLU was the only major U.S. organization to speak out against the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

But sometimes, the group has decided to defend people who its liberal supporters find less palatable. In a 1934 pamphlet, entitled "Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis in America?" the group defended its choice to stand up for German-American Nazis who wanted to hold meetings in the U.S. Is it not clear that free speech as a practical tactic, not only as an abstract principle, demands the defense of all who are attacked in order to obtain the rights of any? its justification read.

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In modern America, the ACLU finds itself in a similar bind. With far-right groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan more visible, and white nationalists grouping under the self-defined banner of the "alt-right,"it must decide whether it will defend the rights of such groups to demonstrate and spread their often hateful views.

While the ACLU does still advocate for such groups, it is now laying out some strict boundaries about what it is willing to stand up for. Prior tothe Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia, the ACLU actedin support of the organizers, who were originally denied a permit to gather. However, that gathering resulted in violent clashesand the death of a woman when a man drove his car into a group of anti-fascist counterprotesters.

On Thursday, the ACLU made a statement specifying that it would not defend groups that wanted to incite violence or march armed to the teeth, the Los Angeles Times reported.

We review each request for help on a case-by-case basis, but take the clear position that the 1st Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence, the statement, from three California ACLU affiliates, said.

If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution, the statement continued. The 1st Amendment should never be used as a shield or sword to justify violence.

Waldo Jaquith, a former member of the ACLU Virginia board, had already resigned over the groups decision to defend far-right activists. I just resigned from the ACLU of Virginia board, he wrote on Twitter. Whats legal and whats right are sometimes different. I wont be a fig leaf for Nazis.

As the organizations ranks have swelledin many cases with people opposed to the policies of U.S. President Donald Trumpand left-wing views on zero-tolerance anti-fascist tactics gain a greater hearing, this is likely to be just the start of a long wrestle within the ACLU on the boundaries between defending free speech and endangering more vulnerable groups.

Members of the Charlottesville community hold a vigil for Heather Heyer, who died protesting the rally, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 16. The Cavalier Daily/Handout/Reuters

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Free Speech or Hate Speech? Civil Liberties Body ACLU Will No Longer Defend Gun-Carrying Protest Groups - Newsweek

Is hate speech protected by American law? Quartz – Quartz

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The denial of first amendment rightsled to the political violence that we saw yesterday. That was how Jason Kessler, who organized last weekends far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, explained the actions of an extremist who rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one of them. Like many on the far right, Kessler was claiming that displays of hate needed to be protected as free speechor else.

The US constitutions first amendment protects free speech much more strongly than in most democraciesa German-style law against holocaust denial would never stand in the US, for exampleand Americans support the right to say offensive things more strongly than other nations, a Pew survey found last year. But for a long time, free speech was a core concern of the left in America, not the right.

When the National Review [a leading conservative magazine] was first published in the 1950s, the vast majority of articles addressing free speech and the first amendment were critical of free expression and its proponents, says Wayne Batchis, a professor at the University of Delaware and author of The Rights First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech & the Return of Conservative Libertarianism. Today, review of its contents reveals the precise opposite.

What prompted the shift, Batchis says, was the rise of a concept that quickly became a favorite target of the right: political correctness. As Moira Weigel wrote in The Guardian last year, the concept rose to fame in the late 1980s. After existing in leftist circles as a humorous label for excessive liberal orthodoxy, it was co-opted by the right and framed as a form of limitation of free speech.

In 1990, New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein (paywall) used political correctness to refer to what he perceived as a growing intolerance on university campuses for views that diverged from mainstream liberalism. In a span of only a few months, stories about political correctness (some even deeming it a form of fascism) became commonplace in columns and on magazine covers. Before the 1990s, Weigel reports, the term was hardly ever used in the media; in 1992, it was used 6,000 times.

The idea became a centerpiece of right-wing theory, eventually leading to the popularity of the Tea Party and the election of a president, Donald Trump, who made the shunning of political correctness a political trademark.

But fighting political correctness wasnt the only thing that encouraged conservatives to embrace free speech. Money was also an incentive. Over the past decade the party has increasingly opposed any form of campaign-finance regulation, arguing that political donations are a form of free speech. Its reward came in the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which allowed companies and trade unions to give unlimited donations to political causes. Liberals commonly oppose this view on the grounds, Batchis says, that spending money should not be treated as a form of speech.

In the event, both Republicans and Democrats have benefited from that ruling. Indeed, in last years election, Hillary Clinton raised $218 million from super PACS, the fundraising organizations that sprang up in the wake of Citizens Unitednearly three times as much as Donald Trump. During the primaries, though, the candidates for the Republican nomination collectively raised close to $400 million (paywall) from super PACs.

Conservatives have supported freedom of speech more consistently than liberals, even when its speech that goes against their views, according to Batchis. My research does suggest that even on hot-button issues like patriotism and traditional morality, many on the right have moved in a more speech-protective direction, he says. By contrast, progressives have been more likely to advocate constraints, particularly on speech that was seen as harmful to racial minorities and women, he says.

Still, there are exceptions to this rule on both sides. Many liberals still hold to the ACLU-style civil libertarian tradition even in the face of hate speech, says Batchis, while moralistic conservatives have advocated limitations on free speech such a ban on flag burning.

In the wake of Charlottesville, the California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union declared that the First Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence. If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in protected free speech. And indeed, direct threats arent protected (pdf, pp. 3-4) by the first amendment. But to count as a threat, speech has to incite imminent lawless action, in the words of a 1969 Supreme Court ruling; merely advocating violence is allowed. That is why neo-Nazis are allowed to march, and to cast themselves as free-speech champions.

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Is hate speech protected by American law? Quartz - Quartz

Hate on the Web: Does banning neo-Nazi websites raise free-speech issues for the rest of us? – Los Angeles Times

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Many Internet users cheered when the Daily Stormer, a website openly devoted to white supremacy and neo-Nazism, was sent packing by its Web domain host, GoDaddy, following last weekends racist violence in Charlottesville, Va.

GoDaddys action, which turned the Daily Stormer into a site without a host, seemed like a beacon of effective response to an era of rising hate speech online years of vicious attacks that had driven many women, blacks, LGBTQ individuals and others off such popular platforms as Twitter and Facebook, and seemed only to have intensified with the rise of Donald Trump.

But a counter-narrative already has emerged: Is this response really a good thing?

Dailystormer.coms forced march in search of an Internet home began Sunday, when GoDaddy gave the site 24 hours to find another domain host service. GoDaddy provided the link between its Internet protocol address, which is a series of numbers, and its URL, which is what users typed into their browsers to reach it.

The Daily Stormer fetched up the next day at Googles hosting service, which promptly sent it packing. Later the site appeared to be using a Russian hosting service, but by late in the week it seemed to be inaccessible anywhere on the Web.

Meanwhile, other online services said they would look askance at any potential clients associated white supremacist or neo-Nazi activities. After Charlottesville, PayPal issued a statement emphasizing that its Acceptable Use Policy bars accepting payments or donations for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance, including organizations that advocate racist views, such as the KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups. As my colleague Tracey Lien reported, Apple shut off Apple Pay services to several websites selling Nazi or white supremacist products.

Cloudflare, which speeds up and protects websites from hackers, terminated the Daily Stormers account after initially resisting calls to do so. As its co-founder and Chief Executive Matthew Prince explained in a blog post, Cloudflare took that action not because of the content per se, but because he was irritated that the Daily Stormer was bragging that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.

These actions turn an uncomfortable spotlight on the power that Internet gatekeepers have to deny services to websites they dislike.

Theres no question that GoDaddy, Google, and the other services have the legal right to refuse to do business with anyone they wish. Their actions dont implicate the 1st Amendments guarantee of freedom of speech, since the amendment applies only to government agencies.

This part of the Charlottesville story makes people think about who controls speech on the Internet, says Daphne Keller of Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society. We dont have 1st Amendment rights to stop private companies from shutting down our speech, and most of the Internet is run by private companies. Most of us want some intermediaries to play that role when we go on Twitter, we dont want to be barraged with obscenities and on Facebook we dont want to see racism. But its kind of scary that all these other companies can also be shutting down speech willy-nilly, and thats certainly their right under the law.

By almost any standard, the Daily Stormer is an easy target for total eradication from the Web. Brimming with unapologetically bigoted and anti-Semitic content, the site is named after Der Sturmer, a Nazi propaganda newspaper that promoted violence against Jews during the Third Reich. Its proprietor, Julius Streicher, was convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremberg and hanged. Wherever one chooses to draw the line separating appropriate discourse from hate speech, the Daily Stormer lies outside the boundaries of civilization. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading hate-group tracker, has endowed it with the label of the top hate site in America.

Nor is it hard to argue that the website crosses the line from mere speech to incitement. Thats the rationale cited by GoDaddy, which says it generally does not take action on complaints that would constitute censorship of content, except where a site crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence against any person. Dailystormer.com, the firm says, crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence.

Other Internet services came to the same conclusion. Charlottesville is a flashpoint, says Brittan Heller, the Anti-Defamation Leagues director of technology and society and its liaison to Silicon Valley. The reason that companies feel they can take action now, where they were uncertain earlier, is that with this event the connection between hate speech and real-world violence is quite obvious.

Companies may have been reluctant to play Internet police in the past in part because vetting every website or utterance online could be a superhuman task. Distinguishing hate speech from political commentary can be daunting, Heller says, because much of it consists of dog whistles audible to a sites followers but not outsiders. She mentions memes such as Pepe the Frog, an originally innocent cartoon character that was adopted by neo-Nazi groups despite the objections of its creator, and the triple parentheses that white supremacists and Neo-Nazis placed around the Twitter handles of users to identify them as ostensibly Jewish. That symbol eventually got co-opted as a symbol of solidarity among Jewish and progressive Twitter users.

As hate speech has proliferated on the Internet, especially over the last year, companies have been seeking out more tools to fight it. We have now crossed the Rubicon, Heller told me. They feel they must do something because their users and the public are demanding it.

But what if Internet gatekeepers begin to shun any potentially controversial speech to avoid disturbing some users or groups? The standard 1st Amendment mantra is that we dont need to worry about popular content, says Eric Goldman, a cyberlaw expert at Santa Clara University law school. Its the unpopular content we need to fight for. Almost anything in public discourse will be controversial to somebody: If we decide we can suppress content because of its unpopularity, then no content is safe, he says.

Some experts argue that the risk that any but the most noxious sources will entirely lose access to the Internet is vanishingly small, thanks to the sheer multiplicity of service providers. What makes this not terribly troubling, says Eugene Volokh of UCLA law school and a prominent blogger on 1st Amendment issues, is that there are a lot of domain registrars and hosting services out there, and its pretty easy to switch.

Thats a virtue, but it may eventually prove cold comfort. Consolidation among Internet services is proceeding apace, with little interference from regulators. Todays multiplicity may morph into a small number of dominant providers and a few inefficient little ones.

In his post defending his shutdown of the Daily Stormer, Cloudflares Prince listed 14 categories of Internet service providers that could be choke points limiting someones access to the Internet or closing it off entirely, for reasons of their own. They include publishing platforms such as Facebook and WordPress, infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services, domain registrars such as GoDaddy, and search engines such as Google.

Any of the above could regulate content online, Prince observed. The question is: which of them should?

No one has come up with a surefire way to distinguish all hate speech from more innocuous expression online and act against it without being too heavy. In 2014, Hellers department at the ADL worked with the tech community to develop a roster of best practices for responding to cyberhate on their platforms. They included terms of service with clear definitions of hateful content, user-friendly mechanisms and procedures for reporting it, and consistent enforcement and sanctions.

But she acknowledges that many have fallen short in execution. You need both strong and transparent terms of service and effective and transparent mechanisms for enforcement, she says. Sometimes theres a gap between having the ambition for a responsible response and having the bandwidth to enforce it. Up to now, moreover, companies have relied on their users to report hate online rather than proactively looking for it.

The response by GoDaddy, Google, Cloudflare and other companies suggests that Charlottesville may have changed that, at least in the near term and for gross violations. When people are using their platforms to plan violence, incite violence, and celebrate violence, thats different, Heller says. Thats the Rubicon.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

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Hate on the Web: Does banning neo-Nazi websites raise free-speech issues for the rest of us? - Los Angeles Times

Beware the War Against ASEAN’s Atheists – The Diplomat

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There is one minority that knows no borders, isnt divided by race or gender, and yet still faces persecution across the world: atheists. And in recent weeks, they have been under attack in Malaysia. The government has announced that it will hunt down atheists who, it says, could face prosecution exactly what for remains in question. This all began earlier this month, when the Kuala Lumpur branch of the Atheist Republic, a Canada-based organization, posted a photo of their annual meeting on social media.

The Hunt for Atheists Continues

In response, the Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department, Malaysias religious watchdog, said it is now constantly monitoring atheists groups, presumably those also online, and its director said that they would provide treatment to those caught. Shahidan Kassim, a minister in the Prime Ministers Department, said later that: I suggest we go all-out to hunt down these groups and we ask the media to help us identify them because this is a religious country.

Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar upped the ante when he commented that the the police would scrutinize the existing laws to enable appropriate action to be taken should the atheist group cause anxiety among Muslims, as FreeMalaysiaToday, an online newspaper, put it.

One can make many things of this comment. Primarily, though, if a few dozen, mostly young people who gather once a year in private can make Malaysias Muslims anxious (note Khalid cared little about the nerves of Malaysian Christians or Buddhists) then isnt his comment an affront to their commitment to the faith itself?

But the Malaysian authorities took the issue back to a perennial one: apostasy.

According to Malaysias federal laws, apostasy is not a crime. But in practice, the countrys state-run courts, which hold the sway over religious matters, rarely allow Muslims to formally leave the faith. Instead they are punished with counseling, fines, or jail time. Similarly, atheism is not strictly illegal in Malaysia, but blasphemy is. This makes atheism a grey area, since the most fundamental point of it is the belief that there is no god.

A similar problem exists in Indonesia. In 2012, Alexander Aan was almost beaten to death by a mob and then sentenced to two and a half years in prison while his attackers were set free after he posted a message on Facebook that read: God doesnt exist. The commentary surrounding the case frequently asked whether atheism was illegal in Indonesia or not. Most pundits took the opinion that it wasnt illegal: Alexander Aan, they said, wasnt convicted for his atheism but for blasphemy. To some, that was no more than intellectual contortionism at work.

But none of this should have come as a surprise. A 2016 report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union found Malaysia to be one of the least tolerant countries in the world of atheists. The report singled out Prime Minister Najib Razak for criticism. In May of that year, he described atheism and secularism, along with liberalism and humanism, as deviant and a threat to Islam and the state. He stated clearly: We will not tolerate any demands or right to apostasy by Muslims.

Over the years I have met a number of Malaysian atheists. Many have to hide their lack of faith from their families, lest they be ostracized. Social media, here, has been a massive help. And many are forced to hide behind less-controversial monikers, like freethinker, in order to avoid the thought police. By way of a comparison, I have met Vietnamese pro-democracy activists more willing to criticize the Communist Party in public places than Malaysian atheists willing to talk about religion at coffee shops. I am worried. I have already accepted that something might happen to me that I might be killed, one Malaysian atheist recently told Channel News Asia.

No Freedom From Religion

We are often told that Malaysia and Indonesia are secular nations. That is not quite true. At best, they are secular-lite. Secularism has three main components, and that is often forgotten conveniently by some. The first is a genuine separation of the church or mosque, or pagoda and the state. The second is freedom of religion, which brings with it pluralism and religious tolerance. Put simply, all faiths have equal status within the eyes of the state.

Malaysia and Indonesia do to some extent practice these but certainly not the third, which is freedom from religion. It means that I, a non-believer, am not interfered with by the forces of religion, and am protected against this by the state. It also means that a believer is allowed, by law, to remove himself from a religion. As has been indicated above, that is not quite the case by any means.

More Than Politics

Some pundits will simply claim that politics is at hand. Malaysian elections are approaching, and Malaysias ruling party is playing the religious card, fearful that Malay-Muslims will vote for one of the opposition parties. In Indonesia, the arrest and imprisonment of Basuki Ahok Purnama for blasphemy, coming as it did during the Jakartas mayoral election, was also politicians using religion, some say. President Joko Widodo weighed in here with the opinion that the anti-Ahok protests, some of the largest Indonesia has ever witnessed, were steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation.

There is some merit in this view, but it is far from the whole picture. For starters, if they are exploiting conservative religious sentiments, then surely those sentiments themselves must have been there in the first place and must be thought by a sizeable number of people for opportunistic politicians to take notice. That itself is something that ought not to be ignored, since it is the root cause of the issue we are addressing here.

Second, if it is only politicians exploiting the situation, why havent the moderate Muslim organizations come out and defend the atheists, for instance, or, to take a more specific example, why didnt they campaign for Ahok? As some experts have already noted, Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Indonesian Muslim organization, with more than 50 million followers, made a lot of noise against the radical protestors at the time, but was conspicuously quiet on defending Ahoks right to say what he did.

A More Radical Mainstream?

Some have argued that the extremists in Malaysia and Indonesia are becoming more open. But there is also some evidence that points to the mainstream, or even the public at large, being more conservative. For instance, in 2013, the Pew Research Center conducted a worldwide survey on the attitudes of Muslims towards different elements of faith. When Indonesian respondents were asked if they favored making Sharia the national law of the country, 72 percent said they would it is currently only the law in the semi-autonomous state of Aceh. Of Malaysian respondents, 86 percent said they would, higher than the percentages recorded in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt, countries which are not typically described as moderate.

Some might argue that Muslims were merely responding in such a way because they perceived that doing so was in line with what their religion called for and what it meant to be a good, practicing Muslim. But what was striking was that, of those respondents who favored introducing Sharia, 41 percent from Malaysia and 50 percent from Indonesia thought it should apply to all citizens, not just Muslims. And 60 percent from Malaysia and 48 percent from Indonesia thought stoning to death was an appropriate penalty for adultery.

One can quibble with any single poll or statistic or development. But the point here is that there are enough of each of these out there for a level of concern to be raised. Or, at the very least, for more attention to be paid to a relatively neglected issue.

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Beware the War Against ASEAN's Atheists - The Diplomat

Space Photos of the Week: Galactic Neighbors Got a Star Factory Going – WIRED

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Galaxy IC 1727 (pictured here) and galaxy NGC 672 (out of frame) are close neighbors so close, in fact, IC 1727 is completely warped due to gravity from the two galaxies pushing and pulling against one another. The pair of interacting galaxies are also a hotbed for starbursts and star clusters.

This is two photos of Titan, Saturns moon, taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Cassini boasts a host of cameras and instruments that examine Titans hydrocarbon haze as well as its fluid atmosphere. The left is a natural color view and the right is a false-color view, revealing a strip of white clouds.

This is dubbed a jellyfish galaxy due to its long tentacles of gas. This happens because of ram pressure stripping, which is when gravity causes galaxies to plummet into galaxy clusters. There they run into hot, dense gas that blasts through the galaxy sending gas streaming out and setting off starbursts. Ram pressure stripping also feeds the hungry supermassive black hole in the galaxys center and makes it shine brightly. There are only 400 known jellyfish galaxies in the universe.

Citizens scientists captured another stunning shot of Jupiters Great Red Spot using the JunoCAm on NASAs Juno spacecraft.

This is another shot of Saturns moon Titan, showcasing its hazy atmosphere.

This shot of Saturn reveals the planet's many and varied bands of clouds. The turbulence is where clouds moving at varying speeds and directions meet.

You might be counting down the days to the solar eclipse , but the universe is always overflowing with celestials marvels. And this week was no exception.

First up is a rare jellyfish galaxy, nicknamed for its long, winding "tentacles" trailing out behind it. This phenomenon is caused by something known as ram pressure stripping, when galaxies plummet into galaxy clusters at an incredibly fast rate. They sometimes meet hot, dense gas that blows through the galaxy, shooting out gas and setting off starbursts. This process also feeds the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy which makes it grow in size and glow brightly. The photo made by ESO's Very Large Telescope documents just one of 400 known jellyfish galaxies in the universe.

There's also the sparkling IC 1727 galaxy snapped by NASA's Hubble Telescope. The galaxy's unusual and warped shape comes from interaction with neighboring galaxy HGC 672 (not pictured). When galaxies drift too close together, their gravities push and pull against one another, swapping dust and gas. This duo is also a hotbed for star formation, with starbursts and star clusters dotted throughout.

If that's not enough, check out the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's many converging cloud formations. And when you're finished, make sure to explore the entire collection.

Author: Rhett Allain Rhett Allain

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Space Photos of the Week: Galactic Neighbors Got a Star Factory Going - WIRED

Vice President Pence Pushes Expansive NATO And Defense Of European Micro-States: Does President Trump Know? – HuffPost

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President Donald Trump promised a different kind of administration. But many of those around him remain dedicated to the status quo. Even after President Trump spoke for the forgotten Americans who were tired of subsidizing European states which refused to spend more on defense, Vice President Mike Pence recently traveled to Eastern Europe promising to risk U.S. lives and waste U.S. resources protecting those very same nations.

The vice presidents hosts, observed the Washington Posts Ashley Parker, could be forgiven for thinking that Pence with his throwback aesthetic of closely shorn hair and a square jaw was just another happy Cold Warrior abroad.

Even though the Cold War ended some three decades ago, the vice president acted as a modern Rip Van Winkle, just waking up and believing it to be, say, 1984, when former KGB chief Yuri Andropov was still Communist Party General Secretary. Without America protecting the leaderless, impoverished, and helpless Europeans, Vice President Pence appeared to believe that Moscow would conquer everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific, dragging the world into a new Dark Age.

Notwithstanding the presidents desire to improve relations, Vice President Pence observed:

recent diplomatic action taken by Moscow will not deter the commitment of the United States of America to our security, the security of our allies, and the security of freedom-loving nations around the world.

Of course, the one country whose security to which Washington should be committed is the U.S. But Russia doesnt threaten America. Yes, Moscow possesses a strategic nuclear force that could destroy the U.S., but using its nukes would ensure Russias destruction in return. Although the Russian Federations military is potent, its capabilities significantly lag behind those of America and its reach is regional, not global.

It isnt clear where Moscow could attack the U.S. An invasion of Alaska across the Bering Strait? A naval armada to conquer Hawaii? Aiding a Cuban invasion of America, a la the original Red Dawn movie? Washington and Moscow differ over no vital interests and Russian President Vladimir Putin has never seemed anti-American, only anti-Washington, especially after its expansion of NATO almost to St. Petersburgs suburbs. His policy has been more to restrain Americas influence than expand Russias control.

Protecting Washingtons allies, in contrast, should be a means to an end. That is, alliances should be matters of security, not charity. Nations should be protected if doing so makes America more secure. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case in Europe.

In fact, few Europeans believe they face a Russian military threat. Otherwise the continent would devote more than 1.47 percent of its GDP to the military. Germany, with the continents greatest potential, would spend more than 1.22 percent of its economic resources on the military. Latvia and Lithuania wouldnt take years to reach a still embarrassing two percent. The continents two strongest powers, France and Great Britain, wouldnt have difficulty simply maintaining their still modest existing capabilities.

Putin and his cronies have demonstrated no interest in ruling non-Russians. Nor have they shown an inclination toward national suicide, which is what going to war with the West would be. The collective GDP of the European Union is about 13 times the size of Russias economy. The latter is smaller than that of four European nations, including Italy. Europes population is about three times as large as Russias. Europes military outlays are four times as much. So why are over-burdened American taxpayers paying to protect Europeans who prefer to spend their money on generous social benefits?

Nor is it Washingtons job isnt to protect freedom-loving nations around the world. The earth is filled with countries which want the U.S. to protect them. Thats understandable, but irrelevant. Alliances are meant to increase, not decrease, Americas security.

Unfortunately, Vice President Pence would greatly increase U.S. defense responsibilities and the consequent likelihood of war. He announced that Our allies in Eastern Europe can be confident that the United States of America stands with them, even though NATO expansion proved to be a foolish mistake, extending U.S. security guarantees to nations which werent important for American security while inflaming Russian distrust and paranoia.

In particular, the vice president announced that we cherish our new alliance with Montenegro through NATO, even though the latter has the reputation of a gangster state and barely 2000 men under arms. The U.S. might as well have extended alliance membership to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a fictional micro-state featured in the novel The Mouse that Roared.

In fact, the U.S. will do the equivalent if it adds Kosovo, which the U.S. and Europe forcibly split off of Serbia (while denying Serb-majority areas an equal opportunity to remain with Belgrade). Kosovo President Hashim Thaci claimed that Vice President Pence promised to help eliminate barriers to Kosovos entry into NATO. Pristina doesnt even possess a formal military. It does, however, have a reputation for choosing as leaders common thieves and war criminals, such as Thaci.

Even more dangerous was the vice presidents verbal love affair with the country of Georgia. Vice President Pence condemned Russias occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which long harbored indigenous separatist sentiments, sounded like war-happy John McCain in proclaiming America stands with Georgia, and strongly endorsed Georgian membership in NATO.

Yet Tbilisi has never mattered for U.S. security. Indeed, Georgia spent most of the last couple centuries under Moscows control with nary a complaint from Washington. However, President George W. Bush treated the now independent country as an ally and in 2008 President Mikhail Saakashvili, apparently convinced of U.S. support, started a war with Russia. Inducting Tbilisi into NATO would reward that government for its irresponsibility and recklessness, while bringing its dispute with Moscow into the alliance. America would be substantially less secure. The only policy which would be crazier would be to add Ukraine, since it currently is involved in a semi-hot conflict with Moscow.

The VPs performance as uber-hawk confused many who saw it. Observed Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Everybody liked that message, but everybody wondered: Is he actually speaking for the president of the United States? Americans should hope not.

Much of the American right appears to believe that the U.S. needs enemies, and Russia is a convenient state to demonize. No doubt, Vladimir Putin is a bad human being. But hes holding a weak hand while facing a power which is ideologically aggressive, sanctimoniously demanding, and intervention prone. Russia has reason to feel threatened.

Washington should no longer think in terms of containment. Rather, the Trump administration should begin disengagement, devolving onto the Europeans responsibility to provide for their defense.

Candidate Trump criticized defense and foreign policies which put America last. President Trump should set aside his tweets for a few days and take over control of his administrations actions. Maybe then Washington would stop squandering money and risking lives to protect those who wont make the same sacrifice to defend themselves.

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Russia has no plans to attack NATO countries diplomat – TASS

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RONI LEHTI/Lehtikuva via AP

VILNIUS, August 18. /TASS/. Russia has no intention of initiating a military conflict with NATO, the European Unions ambassador to Moscow, Lithuanian diplomat Vigaudas Usackas, has said.

"Russia may be regarded as a rather quarrelsome country, but it is my deep conviction that it is not going to attack NATO countries," the Lithuanian daily Respublika quotes Usackas as saying. He believes that speculations on that score "possibly do take place, but there are no such intentions."

Usackas called for taking a sober look at the forthcoming Russian-Belarussian military exercise West-2017.

"Real risks are posed not by the exercise as such, not by plans or scenarios, but by the circumstances that may emerge due to unforeseen events or incidents," he said.

Therefore, Usackas believes, alongside strengthening the military potential and accepting assistance from NATOs allies "it is important to maintain certain working relations with Russia at the political and military level in order to avoid their escalation in case of misunderstandings."

"This is normal practice in the sphere of security that has been used since the days of the standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty," Usackas said.

He pointed to the need for at least the minimal dialogue with the neighbors.

"One may disagree with the neighbor, it is possible to belong with different camps, but there is no way of replacing one by another," Usackas said.

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Lawsuit seeks $1.2 million from state Sen. Jake Files – Times Record

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By John LovettTimes Recordjlovett@swtimes.com

A current lawsuit by First Western Bank names Arkansas state Sen. Jake Files as a defendant with his company, FFH Construction, and several financial organizations he owes money to, including Arvest Bank, Centennial Bank, First National Bank, the Internal Revenue Service and others.

First National Bank has filed a countersuit for assets Files company owes. Answers have also been filed from Arvest and Centennial banks. The IRS, however, has relented to First Western Banks claim of superiority over FFH Construction assets.

According to court documents, the First Western Bank suit seeks more than $1.2 million in payment for loans made to Files since 2013, including loans for land in Fort Smith and Conway.

The state senator, who has announced he will not seek re-election next year, gave a deposition June 28 in Fort Smith to lawyers for First Western Bank and co-defendants Arvest and First National Bank. On recommendation from his attorney, Gunner DeLay of Fort Smith, Files invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege.

DeLay was unable to make the deposition, which had been ordered just two days prior to discovery ofthe location of several assets, including a scissor lift, Sky Track (large forklift) and a trencher. Files presented a list of construction equipment and checking accounts at the deposition and said some of the equipment was with subcontractors named Mike Shuffett of Pocola and Mike Gourley of Van Buren. When asked if the subcontractors had been renting the equipment from FFH Construction, Files said yes.

Mr. Files was as cooperative as he can be and agreed to contact the banks for additional information, Troy Gaston, attorney for First Western Bank, said by phone this week.

Files said by text Friday he was in the process of working with banks to restructure debt and that both Shuffett and Gourley still held the equipment in question. He told lawyers in the deposition that Shuffett and Gourley would not be under the assumption they own the items, and Files said he thought either of the two would voluntarily give those items to the banks.

Shuffett is married to Dianna Gonzalez Shuffett, the recipient of more than $26,000 of a $46,500 state General Improvement Fund grant for waterline work on the failed River Valley Sports Complex at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith. The complex was being developed by Files and Lee Webb under a nonprofit group.

The city of Fort Smith filed suit in May for Files and Webb, the Sebastian County election commissioner, to finish a sports complex on which they were the developers and to return $26,945.91 in state grant money.

The city terminated its contract with the River Valley Sports Complex on Feb. 7 after Files and Webb repeatedly missed deadlines to finish the sports complex on city-owned property at Chaffee Crossing. The city entered into the contract in March 2014, expecting the project to be completed by June 2015. The city had agreed to donate $1.6 million to the project in installments and had already donated $1.08 million before severing the contract.

The state grant money, a General Improvement Fund (GIF) grant, was wired to Dianna Gonzalez on Dec. 30 and was intended to be used for waterline work.

None of the work that Gonzalez was hired to do has been completed, although the money was wired to her, City Administrator Carl Geffken told the Times Record in May.

Files went under scrutiny after two of the three contractors listed on the state GIF grant application to the Western Arkansas Planning and Development District (WAPDD) said they did not submit bids for the waterline job. Files said he would provide phone records showing conversations with those two contractors took place, but those documents never surfaced.

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Lawsuit seeks $1.2 million from state Sen. Jake Files - Times Record

ACLU Refuses to Defend Protesters Exercising First and Second Amendments Together – Breitbart News

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ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said, If a protest group insists, No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms, well, we dont have to represent them. They can find someone else.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the policy shift that Romero highlighted is focused on hate groups, which are listed as white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Romero did not say whether ACLU protection would also be denied to Black Panther protesters who are armed or to communist party members who could rally for the left while armed.

The policy shift comes after the ACLUs Virginia branch helped organizers of the Unite the Rightprotest secure a permit to assemble in a Charlottesville park [on August 12]. When the city of Charlottesville pushed to move the protest away from the park, the ACLU stood by protest organizer Jason Kessler and won the day.

On August 15,Breitbart News pointed to Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC) reports that Kessler is rumored to be aformer Occupy Wall Street activist and supporter of former President Barack Obama.

According to SPLC:

Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kesslers ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama.

At one recent speech in favor of Charlottesvilles status as a sanctuary city, Kessler live-streamed himself as an attendee questioned him and apologized for an undisclosed spat during Kesslers apparent involvement with Occupy. Kessler appeared visibly perturbed by the womans presence and reminders of their past association.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host ofBullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter:@AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

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ACLU Refuses to Defend Protesters Exercising First and Second Amendments Together - Breitbart News

How far to the First Amendment’s protections go when it comes to hate speech? – The San Diego Union-Tribune

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As a journalist, I like to think I know a little something about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Like most students in the United States, I studied the Bill of Rights in grade school and learned the First Amendments protections by rote: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition and the press. (That last one is now my bread and butter.)

In later years, I dove a little deeper by reading landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in college like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, in which the court found in 1969 that black armbands worn to protest the Vietnam War were protected symbolic speech.

That was the same year the court decided Brandenburg v. Ohio, and determined that government could not punish public speech, including that of KKK leader Clarence Brandenburg at a 1964 Klan rally, unless it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to spur such action.

Im no constitutional scholar, but I do know that protections exist even for hateful speech, the kind reported extensively in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where ensuing violence claimed the life of 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.

Even though most Americans would agree that the racist rhetoric spewed by Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups is vile and unsettling, many of us would likely also agree that it, too, must be shielded by the First Amendment to avoid creating an environment ripe for censorship and censure.

There it is, folks, the slippery-slope argument. End of story.

Well, not quite.

Im getting sort of sick and tired of all the absolute-constitutional-rights talk. Theres nothing absolute about constitutional rights, said Justin Brooks, a professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

Brooks said as much in a post he shared on Facebook last week, along with a photo of tiki-torch bearing white nationalists gathered on the University of Virginia campus. He added, Hate speech should not be protected speech.

The post attracted many responses and prompted a robust debate among friends and colleagues. It also prompted a call from the Union-Tribune.

Brooks said he disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has long held that there is no general exception for hate speech under the First Amendment, but has identified a few well-defined and narrowly limited exceptions that include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and true threats.

(The court) has drawn the line you have to be inciting violence in order for it to be restricted, Brooks said. What bothers me about this discussion is it doesnt recognize how hurtful some of that hate speech is. At a certain point, speech can actually cause harm to individuals.

He said he understands the fear many Americans and the courts feel about the prospect of regulating hate speech, because defining it is subjective. But he argued that it is possible to draw a narrow definition that regulates public displays of hate, based on race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and sexual preference.

There is no doubt that the hate speech promoted by the KKK and Nazis causes harm to the members of our community who are targeted, Brooks said. Therefore, it is appropriate to regulate that speech.

He didnt need social media to know his views on the subject are unpopular, particularly among others in legal community. (See: slippery slope.)

Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Jason Kessler, organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in a lawsuit to keep the far-right groups permit to protest at a downtown park.

In response to criticism, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero wrote a statement explaining the nonprofits decision to represent white supremacist demonstrators in court. In it, he acknowledged that speech alone can have hurtful consequences, but argued that the airing of hateful speech allows people of good will to confront the implications of such speech and reject bigotry, discrimination and hate.

Preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality, he wrote.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield

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How far to the First Amendment's protections go when it comes to hate speech? - The San Diego Union-Tribune