Think Riyadh’s Netflix ban was bad? Imagine if Hasan Minhaj was a Saudi citizen; The Guardian, January 4, 2019

Safa Al Ahmad, The Guardian; Think Riyadh’s Netflix ban was bad? Imagine if Hasan Minhaj was a Saudi citizen

"The government of Saudi Arabia makes it very clear that resistance to its regime is futile. It will not tolerate dissent; it is untouchable.

The kingdom has never claimed to be a democracy – or that it believed in free speech, the right to protest, or the right to collectively bargain for rights. There is no independent press."

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham; The Guardian, April 11, 2018

Zephyr Teachout, The Guardian; Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham

"On Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Cameras surrounded him. The energy in the room – and on Twitter – was electric. At last, the reluctant CEO is made to answer some questions!

Except it failed. It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. It was a show that gave the pretense of a hearing without a real hearing. It was designed to deflect and confuse...

In my view, we need to break up Facebook from Instagram and the other potential competitors that Facebook bought up. We need to – at a minimum – move towards opt-in, we need to hold Facebook responsible for enabling discrimination, and we need to require interoperability.

But that’s not enough. There is so much we don’t know about Facebook. We know we have a corporate monopoly that has repeated serious violations that are threatening our democracy. We don’t know how their algorithm treats news organizations or content producers, how Facebook uses its own information about Facebook users or how tracking across platforms works, to just give a few examples.

Now that the initial show trial is done, we need the real deal, one where no senator gets cut off after a few minutes. The real hearing would allow for unlimited questions from each of our senators, who represent millions of people. If it takes two months of sitting in Washington DC, let it take two months. This is our democracy."

Facebook’s boy billionaire leaves the tough stuff to the grown-ups; The Washington Post, April 10, 2018

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; Facebook’s boy billionaire leaves the tough stuff to the grown-ups

"Where do the 87 million Facebook users who had their data scraped for Cambridge Analytica come from?

“We can follow up with your office.”

Does Facebook collect user data through cross-device tracking?

“I want to have my team follow up with you on that.”

Is Facebook a neutral forum or does it engage in First Amendment-protected speech?

“I would need to follow up with you on that.”

Zuckerberg was practically crying out for adult supervision.

Zuckerberg, of course, is no dummy. He was coached for the hearing by some of the best Washington hands money can buy. His professed ignorance, therefore, was most likely a calculation that he could avoid committing to much — and it wouldn’t come back to bite him.

He was probably right. Senators seemed as if they were less interested in regulating him than in gawking at him."

‘You should resign': Elizabeth Warren excoriates Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf; Washington Post, 9/20/16

Jena McGregor, Washington Post; ‘You should resign': Elizabeth Warren excoriates Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf:

"In at least a couple of instances, she used the bank's own words against him. She began by reading from the bank's "vision and values statement," which says "we believe in values lived, not phrases memorized," and "if you want to find out how strong a company's ethics are, don't listen to what its people say. Watch what they do."

So, she said, "let's do that," noting Stumpf had repeatedly said "I'm accountable." Then she drilled into questions where he was unable to affirmatively answer that he had resigned, handed back money he'd earned or fired any senior executives."

Drugs And Privilege: Big Business, Congress And The EpiPen; Huffington Post, 8/31/16

Michael Winship, Huffington Post; Drugs And Privilege: Big Business, Congress And The EpiPen:

"[Mylan CEO Heather Bresch] should resign for price gouging rather than get a raise, but like so many of her fellow executives Bresch sails serenely on as her fellow Americans drown in health care debt. Her career and the success of her company epitomize everything that so enrages every voter who believes that the fix is in and that the system is weighted in favor of those with big money and serious connections...

And even at half-price, the cost of an EpiPen remains an outrage. In fact, some estimate that the dose of epinephrine used in the injector may really cost as little as a dollar.

In other words, this is one more, big old scam — yet another case of big business trying to pull the wool over the citizens’ eyes and pick our pockets while the government and our politicians mostly look the other way.

The Mylan mess is the cozy relationship between regulators and the regulated in a nutshell. Throughout government, politics and business, cash contributions are made, connections are used, strings are pulled and favors are requested and returned. So the system wins again, corrupt as hell.

But take notice. Realize that the rest of us are more and more aware of how we’re being had — and that we truly must be heard and heeded. Unless the tiny-hearted, gold-digging CEOs of America’s corporations and our leaders get the dollar signs out of their eyes and come to their senses, they are writing a prescription for an angry public response that not even their bought-and-paid-for Congress can hold at bay."

By Russian Standards, Melania Trump Would Be a Plagiarism Amateur; New York Times, 7/22/16

Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times; By Russian Standards, Melania Trump Would Be a Plagiarism Amateur:

"A study published in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta found that out of 450 members of Parliament, about 200 claimed advanced degrees and at least 49 had been accused of plagiarism, including the speaker. (He denied it.)

Dissernet started work in 2013 after a political appointee with a limited academic record was tapped to lead a prestigious mathematics school. Academics began pouring over his history dissertation line by line, which inspired Mr. Rostovtsev to write software to automate the process.

The Dissernet group knew that an electronic synopsis of every doctoral thesis was posted online in Russia. Its software selects a thesis and compares it with all others in the system. If there is more than a 50 percent overlap, the computer flags the material and a volunteer compares both full works manually.

The software makes comparisons 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and a band of about 50 volunteers does the rest. The results are published on Dissernet.org."