Jami

The PBS documentary tracking two families over 22 years is heartbreaking testament to a cruel decline in US living standards

Anyone with doubts as to the ongoing resourcefulness of ordinary Americans should watch the Frontline documentary, Two American Families, which aired on PBS this week. Two families from Milwaukee were tracked over 22 years as they attempted to attain a modest version of the American dream: raise a family in a house that they owned, and maybe one day stop working.

That neither achieved these goals, despite decades-long effort, made the documentary profoundly depressing. It also put pay to the lie that the only difference between success and failure is hard work and innovation. As George Packer noted drily in the New Yorker, when times get tough for the two families:

None of them thinks of inventing Napster.

Both families, one white, one black, started out living on incomes from a single skilled manufacturing job with union protection, entailing decent wages and benefits. Both lost their jobs when those industries downsized and sent the majority of contracts overseas. Unionized labour was replaced with service industry "opportunities" with low wages and no benefits. Tony Neumann went from earning $18 an hour as an engine-maker at Briggs and Stratton, to making $6 at a fast food joint.

After his manufacturing job disappeared, Claude Stanley got a job lining basements for $7 an hour with no benefits, rising after a few years to $8.25 an hour with modest benefits, when he became foreman.

Claude and Jackie had five children. Tony and Terry had two. Both women got jobs, Terry as a security van driver, Jackie in real estate. Claude and Jackie's eldest son went to Alabama State University. With $7,000 a year due in tuition fees, when Jackie's business dried up, they put the shortfall on a credit card, at 18% interest.

In 1998, Claude was off work for months with a lung condition that his benefits didn't cover and ran up a $30,000 medical bill. There was no possibility of sending the younger children to college. Around this time, Claude read an article in USA Today in which it said "everyone who retires is going to need a million dollars." This made him chuckle.

Jackie's real estate business failed. At 60 years of age, Claude became a garbage collector, earning $26,000 a year, with some benefits and no retirement in sight.

Terry, now divorced from Tony, retrained as a nurse's assistant on $9 an hour. The agency she worked for kept her part-time to avoid paying her benefits. Between 2008 and 2010, there were 16,000 foreclosures in Milwaukee – one of those was Terry, who lost her house.

"We don't accept partial payment," she was told by the mortgage lender. She then watched them sell the house for a quarter of what they were asking her to pay for it.

With the exception of the one Stanley son who went to college, neither family had much hope of their children improving financially on their parents' careers. "We went backwards," said Jackie. Both women said they felt like failures.

Much is written about the decadence of the times we live in, and there are plenty of people who believe the financial crisis was largely caused by feckless consumers buying Blu-Ray TVs they couldn't afford. Not much is said about the economic impact of low-wage, no-benefit jobs you simply can't raise a family on.

Counseling those like the Stanleys and Neumanns to "try harder", "think bigger" or to "follow their dreams" is, in the context of the options available to them, absurd to the point of obscenity. If this documentary was a study in anything, it was in the grace and resilience with which these two families met the incoming tide and their cheerfulness in the face of impossible odds.

If that isn't innovation, I don't know what is.

A combination of burning trees for energy and capturing and storing carbon dioxide could offset and even reverse emissions

Global warming could be reversed using a combination of burning trees and crops for energy, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground (CCS), according to an analysis by scientists. But experts cautioned that trying such an approach after temperatures had passed dangerous levels could be problematic, as climate change reduced the number of trees available for "bioenergy".

The bioenergy and CCS method was the most cost-effective way of tackling carbon emissions, said the team at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, publishing their research in the journal Environmental Research Letters on Thursday. Such an approach could offset and even reverse other emissions from fossil fuels, they claimed.

The lead author of the study, Prof Christian Azar, said it could help bring temperatures down even if they rose above the 2C level that world leaders have agreed to avoid: "Even if current political gridlock causes global warming in excess of 2C, we can reverse the temperature trend and reach targets later. This means that 2C targets, or even more ambitious targets, can remain on the table in international climate negotiations."

He said that to achieve a reversal of temperatures, the combination of bioenergy and CCS would need to be combined with a huge expansion in renewable energy or nuclear power, in order to reduce emissions almost to zero. He also admitted that there was a political risk that the proposal's ability to reverse rises at a late stage could be used as an excuse for short-term inaction on emissions.

CCS technology has been tested successfully on small-scale trials, but is still unproven at commercial scale anywhere in the world. Environmentalists have also questioned the carbon benefits of burning trees for power, saying that in some cases the "lifecycle" emissions are worse than coal.

Dr Vivian Scott of Scottish Carbon Capture Storage at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the research, said that the basis for the research's conclusion was sound, but he warned it should not be interpreted "as a 'get out of jail free' card in 50 years' time" and the idea could be hamstrung by climate change itself.

"As shown in this work, Beccs [Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage] could offer a way back from exceeding climate targets. However, there are potentially huge consequences to allowing an overshoot [of those targets]. A warmer climate for even a limited period could profoundly alter meteorological and ecological systems – changes which could perhaps even restrict the ability to produce the biomass on which we might be reliant to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide content," he said.

He also said that reducing carbon emissions to zero could be a major challenge, given the track record of previous efforts to cut carbon: "Progress in addressing emissions has been woefully slow - the International Energy Agency recently announced that the average amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of energy generated has barely changed in the period 1990 - 2010 … in essence all the emissions mitigation efforts to date have achieved almost nothing".

Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2009, when Apple dropped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions from songs sold through the iTunes Store, it seemed like a huge victory for consumers, one that would usher in a more customer-friendly economy for digital media. But four years later, DRM is still alive and well — it just lives in the cloud now. Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service; you're also subject to arbitrary changes in subscription prices. This should be a nightmare scenario to lovers of music, film, and television, but it's somehow being hailed by many as a technical revolution. Unfortunately, what's often being lost in the hype over the admittedly remarkable convenience of streaming media services is the simple fact that meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. In other words, where your media collection is stored (and can be remotely disabled at a whim) is not something to be taken lightly. In this essay, developer Vijith Assar talks about how the popularity of streaming content could result in a future that isn't all that great. 'Ultimately, regardless of the delivery mechanism, the question is not one of streaming versus downloads,' he writes. 'It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's. Be careful.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hey everybody! I know you’re all excited about FINAL FANTASY X|X-2 HD Remaster, so it brings me great joy to announce that, in very limited quantities, those who pre-order the game on PlayStation 3 for $39.99 will receive a free upgrade to the Limited Edition art book package!

I’ll go ahead and wait for you to stop jumping up and down or tweeting your friends.

…

Now on to the fun part! We’re offering you several pieces of original concept art from the early development phases of FINAL FANTASY X and X-2 over ten years ago, lovingly bound in a beautiful 24-page art book package. I mean, just look at that thing! It’s so… gorgeous…

But that’s not all! We’ve also gathered quotes and commentary from several of the original development team members, including a special message to you, the fans, from Producer Yoshinori Kitase himself!

In case you’re not in the know, FINAL FANTASY X|X-2 HD Remaster will be available on PS3 for $39.99 and includes the original FINAL FANTASY X and FINAL FANTASY X-2 from PlayStation 2, on the same disc and remastered in gorgeous High Definition. These are based on the International Versions of the game which were previously only released in Japan and Europe, and you won’t have to wait long because it’s coming to you soon!

Pre-order now for your free upgrade to the Limited Edition art book package, and follow us on Facebook for the latest information hot off the press!

Now feel free to resume your up/down jumping and, what the hey, go ahead and tweet your friends too. ;)

In second part of Glenn Greenwald interview, NSA whistleblower insists he is a patriot who regards the US as fundamentally good

Edward Snowden predicted more than a month ago while still in hiding in Hong Kong that the US government would seek to demonise him, telling the Guardian that he would be accused of aiding America's enemies.

In the second instalment of an interview carried out before he revealed himself as the NSA whistleblower, Snowden insisted that he was a patriot and that he regards the US as a fundamentally good country.

But he said he had chosen to release the highly classified information because freedoms were being undermined by intelligence agency "excesses".

The interview was conducted on June 6 in a hotel room in Hong Kong. The first part of the interview was released on Sunday June 9, starting a media frenzy and intensifying US efforts to track him down.

Snowden has since fled Hong Kong for Moscow, where he is reportedly marooned while resisting US attempts to extradite him to face charges under the Espionage Act.

In the newly released interview excerpts, he predicted he would be portrayed not as a whistleblower but a spy.

"I think they are going to say I have committed grave crimes, I have violated the Espionage Act. They are going to say I have aided our enemies in making them aware of these systems. But this argument can be made against anyone who reveals information that points out mass surveillance systems," he said.

Asked whether he had sought a career in the intelligence community specifically to become a mole and reveal secrets, Snowden, 30, said he had joined government service very young, first enlisting in the US army immediately after the invasion of Iraq out of a belief in "the goodness of what we were doing. I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas."

But his views shifted over the length of his career as he watched the news, which he saw as propaganda, not truth. "We were actually involved in misleading the public and misleading all the publics, not just the American public, in order to create certain mindset in the global consciousness and I was actually a victim of that."

He had not fallen out of love with America, only its government. "America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics."

In the new excerpts, he explained his motivation for revealing the information. "I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded," he said. "And that's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under."

He also insisted he had continued with his job while waiting for political leaders to rein in what he decribed as "government excesses".

But, he said, "as I've watched I've seen that's not occuring, and in fact we're compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive. And no one is really standing to stop it."

Snowden has been attacked by his critics for first going to Hong Kong, which is part of China, even though it enjoys freedoms not available on the mainland, and to Russia. He has been offered asylum in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua but faces the practical problem of how to get to any of these countries.

The most recent poll, for the Huffington Post and YouGov, suggested a shift in support away for Snowden, with 38% saying they feel he did the wrong thing in leaking documents against 33% who felt he did the right thing. After the first interview, 35% said he did the wrong thing while 38% said he had done the right thing.

The interview took place immediately after the Guardian published the first leak about a court order to Verizon ordering it to hand over US customers' call records to the NSA.

Snowden explained why he thought that story and the other subsequent leaks about the NSA and its partnership with the corporate sector had to be made public.

"They are getting everyone's calls, everyone's call records and everyone's internet traffic as well."

In reference to one surveillance system – Boundless Informant – that he said allowed the NSA to track data it was accumulating, he said: "The NSA lied about the existence of this tool to Congress and to specific congressmen in response to previous inquiries about their surveillance activities."

He was part of the internet generation that grew up on the understanding that it was free, he said. The partnership between the intelligence agencies and the corporate sector was a "dangerous collaboration", especially for an organisation like the the NSA that has demonstrated time and again "it works to shield itself from oversight".

STT Internetin kansalaisaloitepalveluun tulee tietovuotaja Edward Snowdenin nimeä kantava kansalaisaloite. Asiasta kertoi aloitteita esiintuova Avoin ministeriö -yhdistys.

スクウェア・エニックスは、PS3/Xbox 360『LIGHTNING RETURNS:FINAL FANTASY XIII』における初回購入特典を発表した。さらに、各法人企業向け初回限定特典も明らかになっている。

As Venezuela and Nicaragua offer help to whistleblower, experts say US actions are strengthening his case for safe haven

Attempts by the US to close down intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden's asylum options are strengthening his case to seek a safe harbour outside of Russia, legal experts claim.

Snowden, who is believed to be in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, has received provisional offers of asylum from Nicaragua and Venezuela, and last night Bolivia also offered him sanctuary. He has applied to at least six other countries, says the Wikileaks organisation providing legal support.

Michael Bochenek, director of law and policy at Amnesty International, said the American government's actions were bolstering Snowden's case. He said claims that the US had sought to reroute the plane of Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, amid reports that the fugitive former analyst for the National Security Agency was on board, and suggestions that vice-president Joe Biden had phoned the Ecuadorean leader, Rafael Correa, to block asylum for Snowden, carried serious implications.

"Interfering with the right to seek asylum is a serious problem in international law," Bochenek said. "It is further evidence that he [Snowden] has a well-founded fear of persecution. This will be relevant to any state when considering an application. International law says that somebody who fears persecution should not be returned to that country."

Venezuela's extradition treaties with the US contain clauses that allow it to reject requests if it believes they are politically motivated. The country's president, Nicolas Maduro, has praised Snowden for being a "young man who told the truth" and has criticised European countries' alleged role in the rerouting of Morales's plane last week .

"The European people have seen the cowardice and the weakness of their governments, which now look like colonies of the US," he said on Friday.

Spain said it had been warned that Snowden was on the Bolivian presidential plane, the first acknowledgement that the manhunt was linked to the plane's diversion to Austria. Foreign minister José Manuel Garcia-Margallo said: "They told us that the information was clear, that he was inside." He did not say who "they" were or whether he had been in contact with the US.

Speaking from Buenos Aires, Bochenek said the US actions were transforming the Snowden affair into a global saga. "In PR terms, opinion here and elsewhere in Latin America has shifted precisely because of the appearance of interference with other governments' decision-making processes," he said.

Bochenek said there was no reason why Snowden could not be granted asylum without setting foot in the country that had granted him refuge. The need to be present in the country where asylum is granted is a convention that can be ignored if nations see fit, he said.

"It's true that a lot of states have that as a rule in their own domestic requirements, but it is not required by international law," he said.

Neither did placing Snowden on an Interpol "red flag" list mean that states had to hand him over to the US. The procedure is an advisory measure that can be ignored, legal experts said.

A decision to give Snowden refuge has political consequences for Maduro, and provides his critics with ammunition.

Venezuela's opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, has accused Maduro of using Snowden to distract voters from economic woes at home. "Nicolas, you can't use asylum to cover up that you stole the election. That doesn't give you legitimacy, nor make the people forget," he said on Twitter.

Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, said he was willing to offer asylum, "if circumstances allow it", although he did not say what the circumstances would be. Venezuela, though, appears a more likely host.

"Asylum for Snowden in Venezuela would be the best solution," Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, said on Twitter. "That country is in a sharp conflict with the US."

However, there are no direct commercial flights between Moscow and Caracas, and the usual route involves changing planes in Havana.

It is not clear whether the Cuban authorities would grant Snowden transit. However, Cuba has expressed sympathy for Snowden's situation and accused the US of "trampling" on other states' sovereignty.

Meanwhile, spotting Snowden is becoming a popular game among people passing through Sheremetyevo airport.

"I offered my kids $200 to get a picture of him," said Simon Parry, a Briton who expressed sympathy for Snowden after spending a couple of hours in the airport.

"The wireless internet is appalling, the prices are awful, and people never smile," Parry said. "So I commend him for making it 24 hours, let alone two weeks. I might rather face trial."

The public is being told that the NSA and GCHQ have 'only' been collecting metadata, not content. That's nothing to be thankful for

Over the past two weeks, I have lost count of the number of officials and government ministers who, when challenged about internet surveillance by GCHQ and the NSA, try to reassure their citizens by saying that the spooks are "only" collecting metadata, not "content". Only two conclusions are possible from this: either the relevant spokespersons are unbelievably dumb or they are displaying a breathtaking contempt for their citizenry.

In a way, it doesn't matter which conclusion one draws. The fact is that, as I argued two weeks ago, the metadata is what the spooks want for the simple reason that it's machine-readable and therefore searchable. It's what makes comprehensive internet-scale surveillance possible.

Why hasn't there been greater public outrage about the cynicism of the "just metadata" mantra?

One explanation is that most people imagine that metadata isn't really very revealing and so they're not unduly bothered by what NSA and its overseas franchises are doing. If that is indeed what they believe, then my humble suggestion is that they think again.

We already know how detailed an account of an individual's daily life can be constructed from metadata extracted from a mobile phone. What people may not realise is how informative the metadata extracted from their email logs can be.

In an attempt to illustrate this, MIT researcher Ethan Zuckerman published an extraordinary blog post last Wednesday. Entitled "Me and my metadata", it explains what happened when two of his students wrote a program to analyse his Gmail account and create from the metadata therein a visualisation of his social network (and of his private life), which he then publishes and discusses in detail. En passant, it's worth saying that this is a remarkably public-spirited thing to do; not many researchers would have Zuckerman's courage.

"The largest node in the graph, the person I exchange the most email with, is my wife, Rachel," he writes. "I find this reassuring, but [the researchers] have told me that people's romantic partners are rarely their largest node. Because I travel a lot, Rachel and I have a heavily email-dependent relationship, but many people's romantic relationships are conducted mostly face to face and don't show up clearly in metadata. But the prominence of Rachel in the graph is, for me, a reminder that one of the reasons we might be concerned about metadata is that it shows strong relationships, whether those relationships are widely known or are secret."

There's lots more in this vein. The graph reveals different intensities in his communications with various students, for example, which might reflect their different communication preferences (maybe they prefer face-to-face talks rather than email), or it might indicate that some are getting more supervisory attention than others. And so on. "My point here," Zuckerman writes, "isn't to elucidate all the peculiarities of my social network (indeed, analysing these diagrams is a bit like analysing your dreams – fascinating to you, but off-putting to everyone else). It's to make the case that this metadata paints a very revealing portrait of oneself."

Spot on. Now do a personal thought-experiment: add to your email metadata the data from your mobile phone and finally your clickstream – the log of every website you've visited, ever – all of which are available to the spooks without a warrant. And then ask yourself whether you're still unconcerned about GCHQ or the NSA or anyone else (for example the French Interior Ministry, when you're on vacation) scooping up "just" your metadata. Even though – naturally – you've nothing to hide. Not even the fact that you sometimes visit, er, sports websites at work? Or that you have a lot of email traffic with someone who doesn't appear to be either a co-worker or a family member?

How have we stumbled into this Orwellian nightmare? One reason is the naivete/ignorance of legislators who swallowed the spooks' line that metadata-hoovering was just an updating of older powers to access logs of (analogue) telephone calls. Another is that our political masters didn't appreciate the capability of digital computing and communications technology. A third is that democratic governments everywhere were so spooked by 9/11 that they were easy meat for bureaucratic empire-builders in the security establishment.

But the most important reason is that all this was set up in secret with inadequate legislative oversight that was further emasculated by lying and deception on the part of spooks and their bosses. And, as any farmer knows, strange things grow in the dark.

Gmail users can see their metadata links at https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

Lester Brown says grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to 'peak water'

Wells are drying up and underwater tables falling so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, one of the world's leading resource analysts has warned.

In a major new essay Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world's people, are now overpumping their underground water tables to the point – known as "peak water" – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year.

The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: "Among the countries whose water supply has peaked and begun to decline are Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. By 2016 Saudi Arabia projects it will be importing some 15m tonnes of wheat, rice, corn and barley to feed its population of 30 million people. It is the first country to publicly project how aquifer depletion will shrink its grain harvest.

"The world is seeing the collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments in the region to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed and less irrigation water with which to feed them."

Brown warns that Syria's grain production peaked in 2002 and since then has dropped 30%; Iraq has dropped its grain production 33% since 2004; and production in Iran dropped 10% between 2007 and 2012 as its irrigation wells started to go dry.

"Iran is already in deep trouble. It is feeling the effects of shrinking water supplies from overpumping. Yemen is fast becoming a hydrological basket case. Grain production has fallen there by half over the last 35 years. By 2015 irrigated fields will be a rarity and the country will be importing virtually all of its grain."

There is also concern about falling water tables in China, India and the US, the world's three largest food-producing countries. "In India, 175 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping, in China 130 million. In the United States the irrigated area is shrinking in leading farm states with rapid population growth, such as California and Texas, as aquifers are depleted and irrigation water is diverted to cities."

Falling water tables are already adversely affecting harvest prospects in China, which rivals the US as the world's largest grain producer, says Brown. "The water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country's wheat and a third of its maize is falling fast. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, forcing well drillers to turn to the region's deep aquifer, which is not replenishable."

The situation in India may be even worse, given that well drillers are now using modified oil-drilling technology to reach water half a mile or more deep. "The harvest has been expanding rapidly in recent years, but only because of massive overpumping from the water table. The margin between food consumption and survival is precarious in India, whose population is growing by 18 million per year and where irrigation depends almost entirely on underground water. Farmers have drilled some 21m irrigation wells and are pumping vast amounts of underground water, and water tables are declining at an accelerating rate in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu."

In the US, farmers are overpumping in the Western Great Plains, including in several leading grain-producing states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Irrigated agriculture has thrived in these states, but the water is drawn from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge underground water body that stretches from Nebraska southwards to the Texas Panhandle. "It is, unfortunately, a fossil aquifer, one that does not recharge. Once it is depleted, the wells go dry and farmers either go back to dryland farming or abandon farming altogether, depending on local conditions," says Brown.

"In Texas, located on the shallow end of the aquifer, the irrigated area peaked in 1975 and has dropped 37% since then. In Oklahoma irrigation peaked in 1982 and has dropped by 25%. In Kansas the peak did not come until 2009, but during the three years since then it has dropped precipitously, falling nearly 30%. Nebraska saw its irrigated area peak in 2007. Since then its grain harvest has shrunk by 15%."

Brown warned that many other countries may be on the verge of declining harvests. "With less water for irrigation, Mexico may be on the verge of a downturn in its grain harvest. Pakistan may also have reached peak water. If so, peak grain may not be far behind."

If you work for a company that depends on advertising revenue, you won’t here people talk that often about using Adblock Plus, but it’s something that millions of consumers probably can’t imagine their Internet browsing without at this point. It manages to block out most ads on websites, providing a relatively clean experience that’s sometimes night and day from the standard web.

The thing is, some ads do get through, and Google at least appears to be paying to make that happen, according to a new report that’s prompting a lot of discussion on Hacker News. Adblock Plus has an “acceptable ads” filter that allows certain content by default, and the company makes no secret that it charges big companies for whitelisting services – it mentions it right in its FAQ.

AdblockPlus says this fee is about helping it to maintain its filter list, which also whitelists some small websites and blogs for free, in addition to charging those larger companies like Google that participate. But it’s easy to see Google and others as buying the right to put ads in front of web browsing users, with Adblock Plus essentially acting as a gatekeeper meting out access to that sizeable chunk of consumers. Which gives Adblock a lot of power, and companies like Google that can pay a sizeable advantage over mid-sized competitors who can’t.

On Hacker News, this has spun into a discussion of the merits of online advertising in general, and it’s very interesting read, even if you’re not that concerned about who can and can’t afford to buy whitelist from Adblock Plus (which still also offers the ability to turn off even “non-intrusive advertising” entirely via the extension’s settings). Like it or not, display ads are still by and large the currency of the web, even for Adblock Plus, a company that’s built around reducing the user experience impact of ads online.

Rightwing Christians are abusing the right to religious liberty to impose their views on others and restrict access to contraception

Freedom and liberty should be fairly simple: you don't step on my toes or impede my right to live according to my belief system, and I'll do the same. Unfortunately, reality is a bit more complicated than that, especially where religion is concerned. Increasingly, rightwing Christians aren't happy with being allowed to practice their own religion without interference; they want the right to mandate their beliefs across the board and call it "religious freedom".

The conservative reaction to the Obama administration's contraceptive policy is case is point. Although 99% of American women who have had sex have also used contraception and the vast majority of Americans support contraceptive access, a small handful of religious organizations and individuals oppose the use of birth control and don't want it offered in employee health plans.

The Obama administration came up with a compromise: houses of worship don't have to include contraceptive coverage in their employees' health plans. If there are other religious non-profits that object to contraception, they can be totally hands-off when it comes to birth control coverage; they won't have to pay for contraceptive coverage, nor will they have to contract or arrange for it. A third party will come in and formulate separate plans that cover contraception for employees at those institutions.

In other words, employees will have the right to affordable contraception if they want it, but employers that have a legitimate religious objection won't have to pay for it or otherwise take steps to obtain it to their employees. We're not talking about churches here; we're talking about religiously-affiliated non-profits, like hospitals, charities, social services groups and universities, which employ large numbers of people who don't share the religious beliefs of the owners.

So, the folks who oppose contraception don't have to pay for or use it, and the folks who are fine with it can see it treated like any other medication under their health plan. For-profit companies that happen to be owned by religious people don't qualify for the exemption. So, just because your boss has a particular view of a certain medication doesn't mean he gets to decide that the company's health plan won't cover it.

Sounds fair, right?

Not to the religious groups and individuals who not only want the right to practice their religious beliefs, but wish to force others to adhere to them, too. They oppose the compromise, arguing that any religious individual who owns a company should have the right to block medications that conflict with their beliefs from being covered in their employee health plan. The company suing over the law is a chain of craft stores called the Hobby Lobby, owned by conservative Christians who oppose hormonal contraception.

This is a for-profit business just like millions of others in America. Its owners aren't demanding their own rights to religious freedom; they're demanding the right to determine the healthcare their employees receive.

Taking the Hobby Lobby's argument to its logical conclusion, what if you're a plumber whose company happens to be owned by Jehovah's Witnesses: should your boss have the right to determine that your health insurance won't cover any surgeries or procedures that involve blood transfusions? What if you're a lawyer and the head of your firm is a Scientologist: should he be able to exclude coverage of psychiatric medication and treatment? What if you're a restaurant employee and the owner is a Muslim fundamentalist who opposes polio vaccines: should he have the right to refuse vaccination coverage? What if you're an administrator for a company owned by Christian Scientists: should they have the right to entirely refuse to cover their employees' healthcare?

The list goes on, because people hold all kinds of religious beliefs that, while their right and entitlement to hold, would be extremely burdensome and cruel if applied to everyone. There are religious followers who say their faith compels them to refuse or oppose chemotherapy, HIV treatment, vaccinations, fetal surgery, genetic counseling, prenatal diagnosis of disease and all sorts of other necessary components of any healthcare plan.

Personally refusing medical treatment is an important right. For example, if someone doesn't want to treat their cancer with radiation because it's against their religion, then refusing treatment is their prerogative. But I'd like my cancer treatment, please. And if my insurance comes from my employer, then it's simply not good enough to say, "You can be treated for cancer, you just have to pay for it yourself because we're going to intentionally select a plan that doesn't cover such treatments."

That's what the rightwing radicals are arguing about birth control: you can still use contraception; you just can't get it covered through your workplace health plan – into which you pay and for which you see a deduction from your wages.

The Hobby Lobby owners, by the way, claim that their religious rights are being violated because they "believe" that hormonal contraception and IUDs are abortifacients. The overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence indicates that's not actually true: contraception prevents pregnancy, it doesn't end it. But the scientific accuracy of the Hobby Lobby's claims wasn't an issue for the tenth circuit court of appeals (pdf), which held that the veracity of the belief doesn't matter as long as the holding of it is sincere.

That's a fair enough view generally, since most religious beliefs are by definition based in faith and not science. But it's different when religious individuals attempt to make a factual claim for their belief, as is happening here. The owners of the Hobby Lobby say that their religion compels them to oppose abortion, and that contraception causes abortion. The idea that contraception is an abortifacient is a relatively new one, unsupported by science and held by a minority of religious extremists. If an employer holds a counterfactual view about health or medicine – say, that HIV doesn't actually cause Aids and that pregnant HIV-positive women should not take antiretrovirals, which is the honestly-held but dangerously incorrect belief of many folks – do we really want to accept the view simply on the grounds that it's sincere, and thus allow the employer's opinions to dictate the care their employees can access? 

For-profit companies also pay taxes, much of which goes to the US military, even if those businesses are owned and operated by individuals whose religious beliefs direct them to object to war and abstain from military duty. And for-profit businesses pay taxes which go into funding an electoral system, and those taxes are paid even by people whose religious beliefs compel them not to vote. Companies pay taxes that subsidize hog farmers, even if those companies are owned by Jews or Muslims who oppose the consumption of pork.

And for-profits also pay taxes that fund federal Title X programs, which pay for contraceptives.

A similar case cropped up 30 years ago, when a member of the Old Order Amish refused to withhold social security taxes from his employees or pay his employees' share of those taxes, because he believed that would violate the tenet of his faith requiring the Amish themselves to provide for the elderly. (Social security, the argument went, allowed other Amish to shirk their caretaking duties by allowing the state to step in.) The US supreme court held that "not all burdens on religion are unconstitutional", and that exempting religious people from paying taxes into anything they found objectionable would make the social security system, and the tax system generally, untenable.

In the contraception case, the tenth circuit court held differently. The healthcare mandate isn't a tax, but it is a large-scale government program, which would be rendered extremely difficult to administer if any for-profit company objected to covering this or that medication or treatment on the basis of religion. The tenth circuit, though, sided with the Hobby Lobby, holding that the company – which it deemed a "person" – had its religious freedom substantially burdened by the law, and that the government failed to adequately demonstrate a compelling interest in creating that burden. 

That's the face of "religious freedom" today, according to the radical right: that is, not simply the freedom to practice your own religion, but the freedom to limit the rights and choices of anyone over whom you hold a modicum of power.

Healthcare is indeed a moral issue. So is contraception – access to it is a leading contributor to longer and healthier lives for women, better birth outcomes, lower abortion rates and healthier babies. Individuals who oppose birth control or any other medical treatment for reasons moral, religious or otherwise are welcome to hold that belief, act on it within their own skin and speak that belief freely without government interference.

But they should not be welcome to determine which medications their employees can access. Not if we want to maintain a balance of freedoms that allow all of us, no matter our religious beliefs or lack thereof, to live according to our most deeply-held values.

astroengine writes "Astronomers were on a celestial fishing expedition for pulsing neutron stars and other radio bursts when they found something unexpected in archived sky sweeps conducted by the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The powerful signal, which lasted for just milliseconds, could have been a fluke, but then the team found three more equally energetic transient flashes all far removed from the galactic plane and coming from different points in the sky. Astronomers are at a loss to explain what these flashes are — they could be a common astrophysical phenomenon that has only just been detected as our radio antennae have become sensitive enough, or they could be very rare and totally new phenomenon that, so far, defies explanation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fantomas writes "The BBC reports on the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori: young people, mainly men, who are holed up in rooms in their parents' houses, refusing to go out and engage with society. 'A conservative estimate of the number of people now affected is 200,000, but a 2010 survey for the Japanese Cabinet Office came back with a much higher figure - 700,000. Since sufferers are by definition hidden away, Saito himself places the figure higher still, at around one million. The average age of hikikomori also seems to have risen over the last two decades. Before it was 21 — now it is 32.' Why is this happening? And is it a global phenomenon or something purely due to Japanese culture? (We're all familiar with the standing slashdot joke of the geek in their mom's basement, for example.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A new study of books and music for sale on Amazon shows how copyright makes works disappear. The research is described in the abstract: 'A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows three times more books initially published in the 1850's are for sale than new books from the 1950's. Why? A sample of 2300 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along with a random sample of 2000 songs available on new DVDs. Copyright status correlates highly with absence from the Amazon shelf. Second, the availability on YouTube of songs that reached number one on the U.S., French, and Brazilian pop charts from 1930-60 is analyzed in terms of the identity of the uploader, type of upload, number of views, date of upload, and monetization status. An analysis of the data demonstrates that the DMCA safe harbor system as applied to YouTube helps maintain some level of access to old songs by allowing those possessing copies (primarily infringers) to communicate relatively costlessly with copyright owners to satisfy the market of potential listeners.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Those calling for the British ban on sex selection of children born through IVF to be lifted should look at India and think again

As we consider whether the British ban on sex selection of children born through IVF is ethically justifiable or not, in India a controversy rages on precisely this issue. Shah Rukh Khan, one of Indian cinema's biggest stars (often referred to as the King of Bollywood), is facing allegations that he selected the sex of his baby boy, born in May through IVF and surrogacy.

This unproven accusation has had media teams camped outside his house, because India has just been through some very raw and painful experiences linked to a highly imbalanced gender ratio. The brutal gang rape in Delhi last December is considered by many to be a consequence of years of unchecked sex selection favouring male children. In a very young country, where more than 50% of the population is under 25, there are simply not enough women – contributing to rising sexual violence, as many men have little hope of having a normal heterosexual relationship.

This silent gendercide is taking place behind closed hospital doors despite the fact that sex selection has been illegal since 1994. But thanks to lax policing and a laissez-faire judicial system, very few cases have ever been pursued. It is essential, therefore, that those who are urging the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to allow sex selection for family "balancing" examine the situation in all its complexity. Opting for a particular sex is only one aspect of choosing what kind of child one wants for "social" purposes.

This week, a report by medical ethicists concluded there was no justification for the UK's current ban. But the authors should consider the psychological and physical impact of these decisions at the family, national and global level. If we begin to commodify such a natural phenomenon it could lead to dangerous results, with individuals and doctors deciding together what the "ideal" child could be.

When I was researching my last novel, Origins of Love, which dealt with surrogacy and IVF, I found that the demands could, quite quickly, go beyond the sex of the child. These could include the colour of the child's skin or its probable IQ, or indeed any other feature that the parents might covet. Examining practices undertaken during IVF treatment, especially where the donor eggs and sperm need not be that of the commissioning parents, I came across some alarming examples. Parents and doctors often want more and more control of the "designer" baby they are creating. In the long run this could have unintended consequences, such as disappointment if the "product" turns out not to be as good as planned, and the desire for another designer baby to make up for the failure of the first.

Even if interventions are carried out purely for the purpose of selecting sex, these choices can affect other children in the family who might feel that they are of the unwanted gender, particularly in Asian countries where there is a marked preference for male offspring, creating a huge gender imbalance. A World Health Organisation report found that even in European countries such as Germany there is "a slight preference for boys over girls" as a firstborn child. This preference, however slight, has the potential to skew future generations. There is no telling to what lengths human intervention will go – and once it begins, it becomes harder to limit.

The main reason why sex selection still goes on in India, frankly, is thanks to sympathetic doctors who still feel (much like the ethicists behind the British report) that parents have a right to decide. Medical professionals tend to state they are rescuing mothers from a lifetime of oppression, because Indian women are under social pressure to produce a male child, and if they do not do so, their situation could become life-threatening. But in India, and in Britain, there are moments when the medical fraternity must step back from intervention and allow nature to take its course.

Mass street protests are symptom of unsustainability of IMF model in the face of environmental and energy challenges

Last night's ousting of President Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian Army comes as no surprise. Despite being Egypt's first freely elected leader, his attempts to override democratic checks and balances while grabbing unilateral executive power fuelled widespread simmering grievances. Although Adly Mahmud Mansoor, the new interim leader sworn in today by the Army, promises to pave the way for new democratic elections, the fundamental drivers of Egyptian rage remain overlooked.

Morsi's key problem was that he had spent most of his energies on consolidating the reach of his party, the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than dealing with Egypt's entrenched social, economic and political problems. Indeed, Egyptian unrest is the consequence of a fatal cocktail of structural failures rooted in an unsustainable global model of industrial civilization - addicted to fossil fuels, wedded fanatically to casino capitalism, and convinced, ostrich-like, that somehow technology alone will save us.

Egypt's oil production peaked in 1996, and since then has declined by around 26 per cent. Having moved from complete food self-sufficiency since the 1960s, to excessive dependence on imports subsidised by oil revenues (now importing 75% of its wheat), declining oil revenues have increasingly impacted food and fuel subsidies. As high food prices are generally underpinned by high oil prices - because energy accounts for over a third of the costs of grain production - this has further contributed to surging global food prices.

Food price hikes have coincided with devastating climate change impacts in the form of extreme weather in key food-basket regions. Since 2010, we have seen droughts and heat-waves in the US, Russia, and China, leading to a dramatic fall in wheat yields - on which Egypt is heavily dependent. The subsequent doubling of global wheat prices - from $157/metric tonne in June 2010 to $326/metric tonne in February 2011 - directly affected millions of Egyptians, who already spend about 40% of their income on food. That helped trigger the events that led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 - but the same configuration of factors is worsening.

Egypt has suffered from horrendous debt levels at about 80.5 per cent of its GDP, far higher than most other countries in the region. Inequality is also high, widening over the last decade in the wake of neoliberal 'structural adjustment' reforms – implemented throughout the region since the 1980s with debilitating effects, including contraction of social welfare, reduction of wages, and lack of infrastructure investment.

Not learning the lesson of history, Morsi's economic plan was to ingratiate himself as much as possible with the very institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that had already played a central role in escalating the country's economic woes.

Last month, Al Ahram reported that a combination of surging food prices, "weakening Egyptian pound" and "energy shortages", had propelled urban inflation to 8.1%. But inflation was also the result of an austerity programme designed to meet IMF conditionalities before loan approval:

"The government, for its part, is adopting an economic programme that involves a string of austerity measures that include reducing energy subsidies that eat up a fifth of the country's budget, and raising sales tax on select items to broaden the tax base. While unpopular by nature, Egypt is pushing the measures to secure a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."

With forty per cent of Egyptians already below the UN poverty line of less than £2 a day, Morsi's IMF-inspired policies amounted to a form of economic warfare on the Egyptian people. To make matters worse, as Egypt's economic crisis made it harder to arrange payments, wheat imports dropped sharply - between 1st January and 20th February, the country bought around 259,043 tonnes, roughly a third of what it purchased in the same period a year ago. Coupled with ongoing unemployment and poverty, Morsi's Egypt was a time-bomb waiting to explode.

Post-Morsi, Egypt still faces the same challenges, which have worsened under the Brotherhood's mismanagement. In the long-term, the country also faces a growing demographic crisis. Currently at 84 million, the population is projected to increase to an estimated 100 million after about a decade.

In this sense, Egypt is in some ways a microcosm of our global challenges. With the age of cheap oil well and truly behind us, an age of climate extremes and population growth ahead, we should expect increasing food prices for the foreseeable future. This in turn will have consequences. For the last few years, the food price index has fluctuated above the critical threshold for probability of civil unrest.

Unless Egypt's leaders and activists begin taking stock of the convergence of crises unraveling the social fabric, their country faces a permanent future of intensifying turmoil.

And that lesson, in a world facing rising food, water and energy challenges, is one no government can afford to ignore.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

Today marks the start of Repeat Login Campaign No. 1, an event celebrating the eleventh Vana'versary of FINAL FANTASY XI! Each day (Earth time) that you log in to FINAL FANTASY XI during the campaign, we will reward you with special login points that may be traded in for specific in-game items!

Campaign Period:
Wednesday, 10 July, 2013, at 3:00 p.m. (GMT) to Wednesday, 31 July, 2013, at 2:59 p.m.
*In the event that you are already logged in when the campaign begins, you can receive login points by either zoning into a different area or logging out and logging back in.

Read on for further information about Repeat Login Campaign No. 1, including how to participate.

We're giving away all three Abyssea battle area expansions, along with a few key items to help with your adventures there...but the end is nigh! Hurry and procure your present before it's too late!

The Campaign ends on 11 October at 2:00 p.m.

Read on for more tantalizing tidbits about this giveaway.

It is extraordinary, when the US has deeply offended France by being found snooping on its communications, that France should apparently accede to an American request to refuse permission for a plane to enter its airspace because that plane might be carrying the very person who revealed the snooping (Bolivian jet diverted on Snowden escape fears, 3 July). It is more remarkable still when that plane was carrying the president of a third country with which France has had good relations – up till now. France was probably within its legal rights, but it will be most interesting to see the American reaction when some country refuses overflying rights to USAF1 and compels it to make an unscheduled landing with President Obama aboard so that it can be searched for the presence of someone suspected of spying, the director of the National Security Agency perhaps.
Anthony Matthew
Leicester

• Your editorial (3 July) states "Over the weekend, Ecuador aborted the idea that he might find sanctuary in Quito." This is completely false. Rafael Correa has made a clear distinction between considering Snowden's asylum request and committing to provide him safe passage to Ecuador, where he must be to make such a request. The thuggish treatment France and Portugal just delivered to Evo Morales reveals how important that distinction is. Correa has always said he would seriously consider Snowden's asylum request if he arrives on Ecuadorian soil.

The incident with Morales reveals how foolish it would be for any Latin American country to attempt to move Snowden around within Europe. European governments must be pressured to honour Snowden's right to asylum and international law generally by explicitly allowing him to move. That is the responsibility, primarily, of Europeans. Others can only implore the Europeans to behave in a civilised manner.
Joe Emersberger
Windsor, Ontario, Canada

• Isn't it rather naive of the Guardian to suggest that Edward Snowden gives himself up to face trial in the US? This is the country that has 166 men locked up illegally in Guantánamo, 86 of whom have been cleared for release; a country that justifies the use of torture and the killing of innocent civilians with its drone attacks; a country that pardons members of its armed forces who have admitted the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And what about the terrorist Orlando Bosch, who walked the streets of Miami freely despite his involvement in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in the 1970s, where all 73 passengers and five crew were killed? I submit that Edward Snowden could expect little justice from the US and I hope he is awarded protection and support from other countries with more humane governments.
Maisie Carter
London

• It seems that the US government has already convicted Mr Snowden, by denying him the use of his passport and by obstructing the fundamental human right to seek asylum from prosecution. The absence of any legal due process speaks volumes about how the government views itself – judge, jury and prosecutor – on any and all actions that may reveal the truth about its covert activities and schemes of privacy destruction – especially when they involve billions of dollars in profits for its corporate subcontractors. The pressures and blackmail applied by the US government on other nations' leaders also seem to confirm American officials' views of other countries as mere pawns in a global chess game of domination, in which sovereignty means little and can be trampled on whenever circumstances require it.
Professor Luis Suarez-Villa
University of California, Irvine, US

• Mark Weisbrot suggests a number of useful ways in which governments can assist Edward Snowden, instead of allowing him to hang out to dry (We can help Snowden, 2 July). I would like to see the Norwegian Nobel committee convene five months earlier than usual and award Snowden with the Nobel peace prize. Such a bold act of solidarity would offer the American whistleblower great comfort at a critical period in his life, and wrongfoot those who wish to bring him down.
Paul Pastor
Ormskirk, Lancashire

holy_calamity writes "U.S. citizens have historically been protected from government surveillance by technical limits, not legal ones, writes independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani at MIT Tech Review. He claims that recent leaks show that technical limits are loosening, fast, with data storage and analysis cheap and large Internet services taking care of data collection for free. 'Spying no longer requires following people or planting bugs, but rather filling out forms to demand access to an existing trove of information,' writes Soltani."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

niftydude writes with the latest news on the Edward Snowden saga. It appears that the Bolivian President's plane was denied access to French and Spanish airspace due to suspicions that Snowden was on board. Quoting a few pieces from the Guardian: "In an extraordinary move, France and Portugal revoked flight clearances for the Bolivian President's plane on Tuesday after representations were reportedly made by the U.S. State Department. Mr Morales was flying home from an energy conference in Moscow and his aircraft was hastily rerouted to Vienna, Austria. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca angrily denied that Mr Snowden was on the President's aircraft, a fact later confirmed by Austrian authorities, and said France and Portugal would have to explain why they abruptly canceled authorization for the flight. AP reports that Venezuela's foreign minister Elias Jaua has condemned the decision by France and Portugal to block the plane from its airspace. He claimed that changing a flight's route without checking on how much fuel was left in the plane, put Morales' life at risk." Spain claims they only agreed to allow the plane to refuel there if it were subject to search, and France did end up authorizing use of their air space today. In related news, Julian Assange and the general secretary of Reporters Without Borders Christophe Deloire published an Op-Ed today why Europe must protect Snowden. And: dryriver sends news that Ecuador discovered that their embassy in London was bugged, describing the incident as "another instance of a loss of ethics at the international level in relations between governments."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The internet is being snooped on and CCTV is everywhere. How did we come to accept that this is just the way things are?

America controls the sky. Fear of what America might do can make countries divert planes – all because Edward Snowden might be on one.

Owning the sky has somehow got to me more than controlling the internet. Maybe because I am a simpleton and sometimes can only process what I can see – the actual sky, rather than invisible cyberspace in which data blips through fibre-optic cables.

Thus the everyday internet remains opaque to all but geeks. And that's where I think I have got it wrong. My first reaction to the Prism leaks was to make stupid jokes: Spies spy? Who knew? The fact that Snowden looked as if he came from central casting didn't help. Nor did the involvement of Julian Assange, a cult leader who should be in Sweden instead of a cupboard in an embassy.

What I failed to grasp, though, was quite how much I had already surrendered my liberty, not just personally but my political ideals about what liberty means. I simply took for granted that everyone can see everything and laughed at the idea that Obama will be looking at my pictures of a cat dressed as a lobster. I was resigned to the fact that some random FBI merchant will wonder at the inane and profane nature of my drunken tweets.

Slowly but surely, The Lives of Others have become ours. CCTV cameras everywhere watch us, so we no longer watch out for each other. Public space is controlled. Of course, much CCTV footage is never seen and often useless. But we don't need the panopticon once we have built one in our own minds. We are all suspects.

Or at least consumers. iTunes thinks I might like Bowie; Amazon thinks I want a compact tumble dryer. Really? Facebook seems to think I want to date men in uniform. I revel in the fact that the algorithms get it as wrong as the man who knocks on my door selling fish out of a van. "And not just fish," as he sometimes says mysteriously.

But how did I come to accept that all this data gathered about me is just the way it is? Wasn't I once interested in civil liberties? Indeed, weren't the Lib Dems? Didn't freedom somehow incorporate the idea of individual privacy? When the state monitored all its citizens as though they were suspects – whether in East Germany or North Korea – we called it authoritarianism. Now we think it is what keeps us safe.

In 2009 I sat on a panel with Vince Cable at the cross-party Convention on Modern Liberty. Cable told us that a recession could provide the preconditions for fascism. Gosh, I thought, that's a bit strong. Then the recession hit and austerity became the narrative that subsumed all debates about freedom. No one poor is free, and it is no coincidence that the poor are the most snooped on of all.

What Snowden, who is no spy, has revealed is the nature of the game: that surveillance is a huge private industry; that almost full control of the internet has been achieved already; that politicians here and in the US have totally acquiesced to industrial-scale snooping. There is a generation now made up of people who will never have had a private conversation online or by phone. These are my children. And should they or anyone else want to organise against the powers that be, they will be traceable. We have sleepwalked into this because liberty remains such an alien concept, still. But the US has the fourth amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure, shall not be violated."

It has been violated. Bradley Manning is in prison, Guantánamo remains open, CIA agents who spoke out about waterboarding are banged up. And there are other kinds of whistleblowers who conveniently kill themselves. The letter from Daniel Somers, who served in Iraq, says he was made to do things he could not live with. He described his suicide as a mercy killing and reminded us that 22 veterans kill themselves every day. This is not whistleblowing. It is screaming into a void.

But we remain passive while other European countries are angry at what Snowden has told us. We maintain the special relationship. For Snowden, the truth will not set him free, it will imprison him for ever. We now debate whether we should exchange liberty for security, but it is too late. As John Locke said: "As soon as men decide all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy." He could have been talking about our passivity.

When did you surrender your freedom to communicate, something that was yours and yours alone, whether an email to a lover or a picture of your child? Ask yourself, do you feel safer now you know that you have no secrets? Now, the intimacies that are of no import to anyone but you have been subject to virtual extraordinary rendition. Because, fundamentally, your government does not trust you. Why therefore should you trust it?

• Comments will be activated on this article on Thursday morning.

Nyder sends this quote from TorrentFreak: "Swedish payment service provider Payson received an email stating that VPN services are no longer allowed to accept Visa and MasterCard payments due to a recent policy change. ... The new policy went into effect on Monday, leaving customers with a two-day window to find a solution. While the email remains vague about why this drastic decision was taken, in a telephone call Payson confirmed that it was complying with an urgent requirement from Visa and MasterCard to stop accepting payments for VPN services. 'It means that U.S. companies are forcing non-American companies not to allow people to protest their privacy and be anonymous, and thus the NSA can spy even more.'" Oddly, this comes alongside news that MasterCard has backed down on its financial blockade against WikiLeaks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twentysomethings missing out on the homes, pensions, independence and confidence that come with steady employment

"All your life," says Argyro Paraskeva, "you've been told you're a golden prince. The future awaits: it's bright, it's yours. You have a degree! You'll have a good job, a fine life. And then suddenly you find it's not true."

Or not so suddenly. Paraskeva left Thessaloniki University five years ago with an MSc in molecular biology. Beyond some private tutoring, paid essay writing ("I'm not proud. But a 50-page essay is €150") and a short unhappy spell in a medical laboratory, she hasn't worked since.

Over cold tea in a sunlit cafe in Greece's second city, Paraskeva says she has written "literally hundreds of letters". Every few months, a new round: schools, labs, hospitals, clinics, companies. She delivers them by hand, around the region. She's had three interviews. "I will go anywhere, really anywhere," she says. "I no longer have the luxury of believing I have a choice. If someone wants a teacher, I will go. If they want a secretary, I will go. If they want a lab assistant, I will go."

So would countless other young Europeans. According to data out on Monday more than 5.5 million under-25s are without work, and the number rises inexorably every month. It's been called the "lost generation", a legion of young, often highly qualified people, entering a so-called job market that offers very few any hope of a job – let alone the kind they have been educated for.

European leaders are rarely without a new initiative. Last week, they pledged to spend €6bn (£5bn) over two years to fund job creation, training and apprenticeships for young people in an attempt to counter a scourge that has attained historic proportions. This week, Angela Merkel is convening a jobs summit to address the issue. Yet still the numbers mount up. In Greece, 59.2% of under-25s are out of work. In Spain, youth unemployment stands at 56.5%; in Italy, it hovers around 40%.

Some commentators say the figures overstate the problem: young people in full-time education or training (a large proportion, obviously) are not considered "economically active" and so in some countries are counted as unemployed. That, they say, produces an exaggerated youth unemployment rate.

But others point out Europe's "economically inactive" now include millions of young people (14 million, according to the French president, François Hollande) not in work, education or training but who, while technically not unemployed, are nonetheless jobless – and have all but given up looking, at least in their own country. Millions more are on low-paying, temporary contracts. By most measures, the situation is dire.

In the words of Enrico Giovannini, Italy's employment minister, this is a disaster all the more shocking because it is hitting Europe's best-educated generation: in Spain, nearly 40% of people in their 20s and early 30s have degrees; in Greece it's 30%; in Italy, more than 20%.

The crisis is even more acute because of its knock-on impact: these are often young people with no pensions, no social security contributions, diminishing networks, limited opportunities for independence. High youth unemployment doesn't just mean social problems and productivity wasted; it means falling birthrates and intergenerational tension between parents and their thirtysomethings still living at home. "A wholesale destruction," a Bologna University professor says, "of human capital".

In the first three months of last year, Paraskeva earned €300. Then nothing for four months, then €250 more, then nothing again. She spends "€30 a week, max, mostly my parents' money". She is not entitled to unemployment benefit because what little work she has done has mostly been on the black market. So at 29, she's back living at home with her parents. Her mother has rheumatoid arthritis, her father is on dialysis – but both, thankfully, still have their jobs as teachers. And their health insurance.

As a registered jobseeker, Paraskeva gets a few discounts, and free screenings at Thessaloniki's film festivals. She goes to classes for the jobless: art, fantasy fiction, French. She sees friends (though most of her classmates have gone abroad; she might too, next year, a funded PhD in the United States). She collects her parents' prescriptions. She reads, a lot.

"You have to find a routine," she says. "You need a routine. And to meet other people like you, that's really important. To understand that it's not your fault, you've done nothing wrong, that everyone's in the same boat." But still, some mornings "you wake up and there's … no meaning to getting out of bed".

Sporadically, this overwhelming frustration boils over into anger on the streets: the indignados of Spain, the near-riots that have scarred Athens in recent months, the great movement of Portuguese protesters that forced the government into an embarrassing U-turn last year. This month, thousands marched in Rome to demand action on record unemployment.

But in between times, young people are just as likely to respond to their predicament with a mixture of gloom and resignation.

Vasilis Stolis, 27, has a master's in political science and – apart from odd evenings playing the bouzouki in restaurants until the work dried up – has been unemployed since 2010. "Sometimes, I'm not going to lie, it feels really bad," he says. Stolis lives in a flat belonging to his grandfather. His parents, other family members, "anyone who still has an income, basically", chip in to help with the €350-odd a month he lives on. "It's frankly miserable, sometimes," he says. "You pay the bills. You go out with a girl you like, you can buy just one drink. No cinema. No holidays."

If most of these young people in the worst-affected states – Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal – are getting by, it must be at least partly thanks to some remarkably resilient, close-knit families. Many are still at home, or living – like Vasilis – in places owned by a relative, and with the help of parental handouts.

"The family," says Andrea Pareschi, 21, a political sciences graduate from Bologna, "has become the primary social security system." (That's while wages, pensions and benefits hold up, of course; in Greece at least, both – certainly in the public sector – are shrinking fairly fast. Stolis's father, who works for the health service, has seen his salary slashed from €2,500 to €1,500 a month.)

One way of postponing the issue is to prolong your studies. "As long as you're studying, you have something to do," says Sylvia Melchiorre, 26, who graduated from Bologna, Italy's oldest university, spent 12 months as an au pair in Paris, and has come back to do two more years of languages and literature.

Her boyfriend, Daniele Bitetti, also 26, will apply for a PhD in human geography unless he finds a job soon. The couple, from Puglia, pay €300 rent plus bills for their apartment – helped by their parents who send each some €600 a month.

"Studying at least makes you feel that you're not doing nothing," says Melchiorre. "You do three years, then a couple more, and then – my God, what next? A master's, a PhD … and never a job at the end of it."

Others are simply packing up and leaving: this crisis is seeing young Europeans emigrate in unprecedented numbers. More than 120,000 recently qualified doctors, engineers, IT professionals and scientists – half with second degrees – have left Greece since 2010, a University of Thessaloniki study found this year.

"It's a terrible loss for this country," says Sofia Papadimitriou, who is applying to study bioinformatics in the Netherlands next year. "It trains all these brains, and they all leave. The government says the future will be different; they will come back. I'm not so sure."

In previous decades – after the second world war, in the 1960s and 70s – Italian emigrants were mainly unskilled workers, fleeing a life of poverty. Last year, emigration from Italy jumped 30%. Half the leavers were aged 20-40, and twice as many as a decade ago had degrees.

In Spain, the employment ministry estimates more than 300,000 people aged under 30 have left the country since the 2008 crash. Some 68% more are seriously considering it, according to a European commission study.

Among them is Lucia Parejo-Bravo, 22, leaving Málaga University next month with a business management degree and the firm intention of finding a job in Germany, where she studied for a year. "Most of my friends have left: to the US, UK, South America, Asia, Scandinavia, Canada," she says. "Staying here means fighting – I mean really fighting – to find a job. If by a miracle you do get one, it's €600 a month. Or less, if they make you work self-employed. They get away with it because there are just so many of us so desperate for work. Germany won't be easy, but at least it will be fair."

Not all are as optimistic as Parejo-Bravo. Spain's particular problem is that of the 1.8 million Spaniards under 30 looking for a job, more than half are poorly qualified. Victims of the burst property bubble, they left school to earn €2,000 a month or more on construction sites and in building supply firms.

Those jobs have now gone, and will not return for many years. But in the meantime, says David Triguero, 27, at Málaga's crowded Playa las Acacias with friends, "we bought nice cars. I bought a flat. Some got married; had kids. My benefits run out in February. I don't see a future. Nothing."

Things do not seem quite so bleak for Victor Portillo Sánchez, but he too does not see his future in Spain. At 31, about to finish his PhD (the EU-funded money has run out), he entertains no hopes of staying in a country "that's closing research centres it opened only five years ago".

Portillo too gets by "with the help of my parents, and on my savings. But it doesn't feel good to be spending your savings at 31." He has failed to find part-time work teaching, and as a waiter and barman.

So after defending his thesis this summer, he'll be off. "Anywhere, it could be," he says. "If you'd told me three years ago I might apply for a job in Sweden, I'd have laughed. Or in Newcastle. I went there once, for a conference."

Are they happy to leave? Three, four, maybe five years abroad, says Portillo: fine. Nice, even. But this feels more like exile. "I don't see there being a job for me in Spain in five years' time," he says. "Nor in 10. Maybe not ever. And that pisses me off. My dad's not in great shape."

This is not an adventure, Portillo says: "Sorry. It's not like a gap year. If it was my choice, then OK. If I'd fallen in love, something like that. But I'm being forced to leave, to look for food. And I may never come back. That worries me."

They have much to worry them, these young people. Now, true, it is summer: in Thessaloniki and Bologna and Málaga the days are long, the sun is shining, the beach beckons. "We're young, you know?" says Melchiorre in Bologna. "We must live for the day. We have friends. Cafes. It could be worse."

But come September, and once a few years have passed, says Vera Martinelli, "you really don't feel so good. I know. I've been there. I'm 33. September is the time of fresh starts, new beginnings. Except for me it won't be."

Martinelli lives with her husband in a flat belonging to her grandad, a former professor. She has a degree in languages and literature, studied at the Sorbonne and in Oxford, did postgraduate work, trained as a teacher, and worked for three years with chronically ill children. Her unemployment benefit ran out in 2011. The couple live on her husband's (recently reduced) salary of €900 a month, and occasional help – "bills, car insurance, that kind of thing" – from family. She wants to do "something useful, that's all. For an NGO, ideally. But actually, at this stage, for anyone. I just want something to do every day."

The worst, she says, is "when people ask, what are you? And I have no answer. Everything seems to have blurred. I'm not a teenager any more: I'm married. I grew up with feminism; I can't say 'I'm a wife'. And I'm not a grown-up, because I don't have a job. I don't know what I am."

What they all do know is that the world they live in has changed, completely. The kind of working lives their parents have enjoyed and are still enjoying, they understand, will not be open to these people: stable, full-time jobs, a pension.

"They could choose from lots of jobs," says Melchiorre. "They could take time to decide. They knew they'd have work for 40 years. Now they know they'll retire, in six or seven years' time. I have no job, and no money, now. Maybe I'll have none in 10 years. Maybe I'll never be able to retire."

For some, this looks quite exciting. "Every generation has its challenges," says a bullish Stefano Onofri, 21, embarking on a master's in international management. "This is ours. This is the world we're in. It's what we've got now. Opportunities don't die, they just change."

His friend Alessandro Calzolari, 23, midway through a masters in theoretical physics and looking at a career in nanotechnology, sees clearly that "we will all have to be entrepreneurs, with ourselves. We will be constantly selling ourselves. It is quite exciting. Scary, but exciting."

A few have already started. Riccardo Vastola, 28, studied marketing and communications but founded a music business in 2009, organising indie rock gigs, events, club nights in and around Bologna. It's officially an association at the moment, but next year will hopefully become a company.

"I felt I had to do this," he says. "I had to do something I enjoy and that let me work with other people, create like a little family in my work. That was important to me. I'm not sure I could do a 'classic' job in some big company."

For the moment, it's working: Vastola takes home a bit less than €1,000 a month, enough to live on.

In Thessaloniki, the same motivation spurred Stolis to set up alterthess.gr, an alternative news website, with four friends.

He's not making money. "But it's really important to me," Stolis says. "We're working together. That's hope for the future. I think more and more of us will be like this, doing our own projects. People have got it now. That degree wasn't the key to prestige and security everyone said it was. And not everyone can be doctors or lawyers or engineers."

Konstantis Sevris, a 25-year-old political science graduate in Thessaloniki, had a money-spinning idea: a youth hostel, with rented bikes, in a city with 100,000 students that doesn't have one. "I've tried," he says. "The tourist office told me there was no law in Greece for youth hostels. You can have hotels, or rooms to rent. There's a lot of crazy like this in Greece."

But not everyone is ready for a brave new world. "In Italy at least, they don't teach that mentality," says Calzolari. "They don't create a culture where it becomes possible. In the US, start-ups get launched right after university. Not here."

Most said they were largely happy with the quality of university teaching. And they reject the idea of a strictly utilitarian system, tailoring courses and student numbers to available jobs. "University has to be about developing our minds, too," says Caterina Moruzzi, 22, a philosophy master's student at Bologna. "People should be able to pursue what interests them. What would society be otherwise?"

But many feel universities need to do more to prepare students for a new reality. "We're taught how to think, not how to do," says Pareschi. "University here is about learning, not working," says Calzolari: "There's very little connection with the world of work. Few internships."

And almost all are worried about the longer-term consequences of the working environment they see being sketched out for them: Europe's social systems, they point out, are all built around stable, full-time, long-term jobs.

"So we're out there, building our own brand, for hire," says Portillo in Málaga. "Except nothing's set up for that. Say I go to the US, pay into a private pension fund for 10 years. Then I come back, at 41. The Spanish pension system isn't going to let me opt out. It's going to tell me I have to work 30 years, in Spain, for a pension. How's that work?"

In Bologna, Martinelli feels much the same: "I know I'll never have a job like my mother had, teaching English all her life," she says. "It could be great, lots of jobs. But only if when I'm ill I'm covered, when I'm unemployed I'll be OK, when I'm 75, I'll be able to retire."

No one, Martinelli says, seems to be thinking about that. Just like no one is thinking about the implications, longer term, of her and her 30-something unemployed friends not having babies. Sylvia knows a couple who are putting in PhD application simply because "that's three years' income assured. They could start a family. How wrong, as a situation, is that?"

Passittomaksi tehty amerikkalainen entinen tiedusteluvirkailija Edward Snowden kököttää lentokenttätiloissa Moskovassa odottamassa pääsyä jonnekin. Samaan aikaan maailma sulattelee hänen urkintapaljastuksiaan, joita Yhdysvallat ei ole kiistänyt.

It’s that time. Pre-orders for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII are now open, and we can reveal what kind of goodies you’ll be able to get your hands on for getting in early… but only while stocks last!

First up, the Pre-Order Bonus Pack nets you a limited edition steelbook (we love those), plus a token enabling you to redeem probably some of the most iconic Final Fantasy gear in existence.

Yep, you guessed it. The SOLDIER 1st Class uniform, as well as the Buster Sword and Soldier’s Band from Final Fantasy VII, can all be yours. This content will also unlock the familiar FFVII victory poses and fanfare too! Pretty hard not to be tempted, eh?

And as well as the Pre-Order Bonus Pack, there’s also the Lightning Samurai Set is also available, and willthat’ll open up three exclusive outfits with unique looks and abilities. You’ll be able to have all of the Shogun, Sohei Savior and Flower of Battle items.

Check out retailers in your region for pricing and availability.

And last but not least, we all love a good packshot – so we’re delighted to reveal what the game’s box will look like when it releases on February 14 next year for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360… which is easy to remember, as it’s Valentine’s Day!

We <3 Lightning.