Rumble in the Digital Jungle

https://ghostbin.com/paste/h4y28

Hiding behind this statement is the determined efforts to stop discussion of the alleged issue of a specific Remote Control Execution said to be vulnerable tMan-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks, by one Simon Joseph Smith of www.evestigator.com.au &  www.cybersecurity.com.au 
who styles himself as "Australian's most elite Computer Digital Forensics Private Investigator...renowned in Australias as "Today Tonight's" Cyber-bullying Expert" .

Mr. Smith appears incensed:

https://ghostbin.com/paste/2nhwz

The resulting number of takedowns continues to grow.

As usual, getting this hissy online only results in more people having a look at the app in question's specifications and going on to make a snap judgment about the character of the hisser.

Snapshot of the Week

ABC TV, Adam Hills' The Last Leg, 14 June 2017

Quotes of the Week

"I use the word crisis deliberately because suicide rates are at a 10-year high. Eight Australians a day on average kill themselves, six of them are men. It's far higher than the national road toll.”  [Julia Gillard being quoted by ABC News online, 3 July 2016]

“Any leader that would use blackmail to demand loyalty from a few would not think twice about usin' the military to demand loyalty from all.” [@TeaPainUSA on Twitter, 2 July 2017]

He is political pornography — gripping, exciting, lewd, fascinating. [The Washigton Post, 3 July 2017] 

Capturing the national electorate's response to years of poor energy policy under Abbott then Turnbull

Snapshot of ABC TV Mad As Hell image

The fight continues in US Court of Appeal against Trump's 'Muslim Travel Ban'

Business Insider, 29 June 2017:

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The state of Hawaii asked a federal judge in Honolulu on Thursday to clarify a US Supreme Court ruling that reinstated parts of President Donald Trump's revised travel ban, arguing that the Trump administration had interpreted the court's decision too narrowly.

In a court filing, Hawaii said the US government intended to violate the Supreme Court's instructions by improperly excluding from the United States people who actually have a close family relationship to US persons.

The 90-day ban took effect at 8 p.m. ET along with a 120-day ban on all refugees.

On Monday, the Supreme Court revived parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries, narrowing the scope of lower court rulings that had blocked parts of a March 6 executive order and allowing his temporary ban to go into effect for people with no strong ties to the United States.

The court agreed to hear arguments during its next term starting in October to decide finally whether the ban is lawful.

The Supreme Court exempted from the ban travelers and refugees with a "bona fide relationship" with a person or entity in the United States. As an example, the court said those with a "close familial relationship" with someone in the United States would be covered.

The Trump administration decided on the basis of its interpretation of the court's language that grandparents, grandchildren and fiancés traveling from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen would be barred from obtaining visas while the ban was in place.

In its court filing, Hawaii echoed criticism from immigrant and refugee groups that the Trump administration had defined too narrowly who should be exempted.

Hawaii called the refusal to recognize grandparents, fiancés, and other relatives as an acceptable family relationship " a plain violation of the Supreme Court's command."

The State of Hawaii’s  latest motion is Civil Action No. 1:17-cv-00050- DKW-KSC EMERGENCY MOTION TO CLARIFY SCOPE OF PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

Motion to clarify President Trump's travel ban by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd

Around the same time this motion was filed, the Trump administration announced on the US State Department website that it was removing “fiancé” from the list of relationships not considered bona fide:

Upon further review, fiances are now included as close family members.

UPDATE

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is reported in The Guardian to have ruled on 7 July 2017 that it did not have jurisdiction to weigh in on this particular aspect of the matter:

In a statement, Hawaii Attorney General Douglas S. Chin said the ruling “makes clear that Judge Watson does possess the ability to interpret and enforce the Supreme Court’s order, as well as the authority to enjoin against a party’s violation of the Supreme Court’s order placing effective limitations on the scope of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”

Yet another Liberal-Nationals publicly funded program ripe for rorting by the private sector

Remember the pile on to hoover money from the Research and Development (R&D) Tax Incentive program administered by the Tax Office and the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science or the debacle which is the Vocational Education and Training program?

Well now the Turnbull Government has decided this is great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

HuffPost, 3 April 2017:

CANBERRA – A voluntary internship program, designed to get young people eventually into work, has just been kicked off by the Turnbull Government despite widespread concern about its efficacy and potential for youth exploitation.

Under the Youth Jobs PaTH Program, an unemployed or disadvantage young person under 25 years will be paid an extra $200 a fortnight "incentive" on top of the usual income support payments to complete an internship of between four to 12 weeks….

Businesses partaking in the program will receive an upfront bonus of $1,000 for taking on an intern and get an additional $6,500 if the internship turns into a job.

The Guardian, 3 April 2017:

The Turnbull government launched its Prepare, Train and Hire (PaTH) internship program on Monday despite the legislation for its full implementation being stuck in the Senate.

Implementing the internships without legislation could cost workers up to $42 a fortnight, because the $200 a fortnight they receive for taking on work placements will count as income that reduces their other social security payments.

HuffPost, 3 July 2017:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull trumpeted a breakthrough for his government's controversial PaTH internship program on Monday, as he unveiled a plan for 10,000 retail interns, but the businesses onboard with the plan have come under fire over previous penalties for mistreating and underpaying workers.

The PaTH plan -- Prepare, Trial, Hire -- was announced in the 2016 budget, designed as a way to get young unemployed people into job training and work experience programs, with a view to getting them off welfare and into paid employment. The job skills training is compulsory, but participating in an internship is voluntary, and completing up to 25 hours a week gives "interns" an extra $200 on top of their existing welfare payments. Businesses that take on interns would also receive thousands in financial incentives.

Unions and workers groups slammed the idea, claiming it would lead to "churn" culture where businesses would stop employing casual or part-time employees who the business itself has to pay, and instead sign up to receive a revolving door of interns who the business not only does not pay, but actually gets paid to take on.

On Monday, Turnbull joined employment minister Michaelia Cash to announce the Australian Retailers Association would "partner" with the government to offer up to 10,000 internships through the PaTH program. News Corp reported that retailers including Battery World, Coffee Club, Bright Eyes and Bakers Delight will participate in the program, but opponents have seized on the recent history of some of those businesses.

"The employers that have signed up to the Youth Path program don't have a good track record treating their workers with respect," said Labor's shadow employment minister Brendan O'Connor and shadow minister for employment services Ed Husic.

"Bakers Delight apprentices, and assistants were reimbursed almost $40,000 after the Fair Work Ombudsman found they were being underpaid. A former Coffee Club franchisee in Brisbane was fined more than $180,000 in penalties for contraventions including an unlawful cash back payment."

The Coffee Club decision was announced on the government's own Fair Work Ombudsman website just two weeks ago.

"The Turnbull Government can't explain how the Youth PaTh program won't displace jobs that could go to full-paid employees. The Government has not outlined how its agreement with retailers will stop subsidised workers from being used by some retailers to avoid paying penalty rates -- by engaging subsidised, so-called 'interns' in penalty shifts that would normally be staffed by employees," Husic and O'Connor said.

SBS News, 4 July 2017:

On Monday, Minister Cash sought to assure potential interns that they would have a decent chance of getting a job at the end of their placement…..

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney said the program offered no path to qualification, employment or workforce protection.

"This is a government-sanctioned program that actually borders on slavery," she told reporters in Melbourne.

"If this does create new jobs, then pay the kids for the jobs. Pay them a wage. They're going to be productive. They're going to be contributing to the bottom line of these businesses."

Trump's America reaches dangerous toxicity levels

The United States of America is becoming a nation to fear.

If the checks and balances within its political structure continue to fracture and the propaganda narrative that those who oppose the Trump Regime are 'evil' grows in volume and intensity, then a destabilised, disintegrating America gone rogue lurching across the international stage is likely to injure us all.

US President Donald J. Trump at a Washington faith rally on Saturday, 1 July 2017

https://youtu.be/n-uuK9xAfTI

National Rifle Association of America call to arms against citizens who oppose Trump

https://youtu.be/WK_jkPhrddc

Somehow this scenario doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore:

Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy.

Business Insider, 3 May 2017:

TIMOTHY SNYDER: So, it’s really important, I think, to accept the logic of our constitutional structure. The logic of our constitutional structure is not that Americans are great. The logic of our constitutional structure is that Americans are people and people have weaknesses.

When the framers of the Constitution were setting up our system, they weren’t thinking about how wonderful we were gonna turn out to be, which is a good thing because we’re not always so wonderful. They were thinking about the structures that would be needed to preserve a Democratic Republic overtime. So the right mood is always scepticism. The framers of the Constitution were worried that someone might come along at some point who could be elected president. This was precisely their worry, who didn’t have concern about the rule of law or about democracy. We are now in that situation.

Up until now, there is nothing in Mr. Trump’s words or in his actions which would convince us or which would even suggest that he cares even a little bit about democracy or about the rule of law. On the contrary, there are plenty of things he said like referring to judges as “so-called” judges, referring to journalists as enemies of the people, talking about “America First” and indulging other kinds of nostalgia for the 1930’s, which suggests he doesn’t like democracy at all. His admiration tends to be limited to foreign tyrants.

So we need to be sceptical about ourselves and we need more than sceptical about him. What I would say is that our institutions were set up for a moment just like this one but they will only protect us if we enliven them and if we support them.