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Huawei sues US over government ban on its products

Source: The Guardian

Huawei sues US over government ban on its products
Chinese company files lawsuit claiming restriction is unlawful, harms consumers and violates constitution

Lily Kuo in Beijing

Thu 7 Mar 2019 03.49 EST First published on Wed 6 Mar 2019 23.39 EST

Huawei is suing the US over a government ban on its products, raising the stakes in a protracted diplomatic incident between China, the US and Canada, where a senior Huawei executive is facing extradition.

In a statement on Thursday, the Chinese telecoms equipment and smartphone manufacturer said it had filed a lawsuit in the US district court in Plano, Texas, home to the company’s US headquarters, calling for the ban on US government agencies buying Huawei equipment or services to be overturned.

“This ban not only is unlawful, but also restricts Huawei from engaging in fair competition, ultimately harming US consumers. We look forward to the court’s verdict, and trust that it will benefit both Huawei and the American people,” said Guo Ping, Huawei’s chairman.

The ban, a provision of the National Defence Authorisation Act signed by Donald Trump in August, also prevents government agencies using third-party contractors who use Huawei products. Huawei alleges it amounts to a “bill of attainder”, a legislative act forbidden under the US constitution in which an individual or group is declared guilty of a crime without trial.

More at the link.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/huawei-sues-us-over-government-ban-on-its-products

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/huawei-sues-us-over-government-ban-on-its-products

To All the Little Girls a film by Rebecca Morgan Brubaker.

Newshour vs. Fox News

PBS Newshour has done a Fox news piece that has me feeling weird. When did the news start eating their own? Or is Fox News really news? I'm tempted to say it's more like propaganda with a loose relationship with the truth.

Bill Shine as bff and Sean Hannity and his nightly phone calls to Rumpt. Who's driving this train? Is it a feedback loop? Is it propaganda? It's certainly a sick symbiotic relationship.

Most viewers don't realize Fox News is mostly Fox Entertainment. This Jane Mayer interview is an important and interesting perspective piece.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/

Live Stream


Other sources

The Making of the Fox News White House
Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?
Jane MayerMarch 4, 2019 5:00 AM

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/jane-mayer-on-the-revolving-door-between-fox-news-and-the-white-house

Jane Mayer on the Revolving Door Between Fox News and the White House
The New YorkerMarch 5, 2019 10:50 AM

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/jane-mayer-on-the-revolving-door-between-fox-news-and-the-white-house

Neuroplasticity: You can teach an old brain new tricks

Neuroplasticity: You can teach an old brain new tricks
Brain imaging studies show that every time we learn a new task, we're changing our brain by expanding our neural network.
DANIEL HONAN
11 October, 2012

Your brain is more flexible than we've ever thought before. It changes because it is constantly optimizing itself, reorganizing itself by transferring cognitive abilities from one lobe to the other, particularly as you age. After a stroke, for instance, your brain can reorganize itself to move functions to undamaged areas. And yet, due to the lifestyles we lead we tend to not make full use of our brains.

Dr. Dennis Charney, dean of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, has studied how the brain responds to dramatic changes in peoples' environments. In the video below, Charney describes how prisoners of war who were placed in solitary confinement developed unusual cognitive capacities because the only activity they were allowed to do was think. The POWs were essentially exercising their brains. What can we learn from this?

Charney is using this research to conduct psychological therapies that can improve learning and memory, and solve problems with anxiety and depression. Watch the video here:

https://bigthink.com/think-tank/brain-exercise?jwsource=cl

What's the Significance?
Consider two examples of groups of people scientists have studied. The Sea Gypsies, or Moken, are a seafaring people who spend a great deal of their time in boats off the coast of Myanmar and Thailand, have unusual underwater vision -- twice as good as Europeans. This has enabled Mokens to gather shellfish at great depths without the aid of scuba gear. How do the Moken do this? They constrict their pupils by 22 percent. How do they learn to do this? Is it genetic? Neuroscientists argue that anyone can learn this trick. Simply put, the brain orders the body to adapt to suite its needs.

More at the link.

https://bigthink.com/think-tank/brain-exercise

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this, lapfog_1.

Carpocalypse now: Lyft's founders are right -- we're in the endgame for cars

Carpocalypse now: Lyft's founders are right — we're in the endgame for cars
Jim Edwards Mar 3, 2019, 4:44 AM

The founders of the ride-sharing app Lyft filed their IPO papers last week, and their vision for the company is dramatic. Lyft (which works a bit like Uber) is not just about getting you from A to B, they say. Rather, founders Logan Green and John Zimmer believe that car ownership is in permanent decline and they want to help it die, they write in their S-1 filing.

"We believe that the world is at the beginning of a shift away from car ownership to Transportation-as-a-Service, or TaaS. Lyft is at the forefront of this massive societal change," they told investors. "Car ownership has ... economically burdened consumers. US households spend more on transportation than on any expenditure other than housing. ... On a per household basis, the average annual spend on transportation is over $9,500, with the substantial majority spent on car ownership and operation."

Cars create "inequality," they argue. "The average cost of a new vehicle in the United States has increased to over $33,000, which most American households cannot afford," the IPO says. "We estimate over 300,000 Lyft riders have given up their personal cars because of Lyft."

They may be right.

Snip.

Much more at the link.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carpocalypse-cars-automobile-sales-data-us-europe-2019-3

I watched the televised bombs and cried my paleontology, archaeology,

ancient sociology loving eyes out that night. As far as I'm concerned, civilization died that day.

You are not correct.

Essure is my best example. Medical devices including hips and knees are not regulated. I have more than five years of research on Essure. It has been a long struggle but as of this year it will be pulled from the market after 10's of thousands of complaints of harm, including still births and deaths. Lawsuits are pending.

https://essureproblems.webs.com/

There is no law protecting you from a toxic implant. None.

Esisters are working on that project for you, too.

http://www.medicaldeviceproblems.com/

You're welcome.

Build a Border Wall? Here's What Border Communities Say They Want Instead

Build a Border Wall? Here’s What Border Communities Say They Want Instead
For many of us who actually live along the U.S.-Mexico border, the “Mesquite Manifesto” addresses economic and climate problems by building up industry around the native tree.
/image
A man on the Mexican side chops trees beside the U.S.-Mexico border wall near the Morley Gate Border Station in Nogales, Arizona on October 13, 2016.

Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Gary Paul Nabhan posted Feb 25, 2019
OPINION

President Trump has declared a national emergency to fund a wall along our nation’s southern border. The border wall issue has bitterly divided people across the United States, becoming a vivid symbol of political deadlock.

But for many of us who actually live along the U.S.-Mexico border, the wall is simply beside the point. We know that a wall can’t fix the problems that straddle the boundary between our nations; nor will it build on our shared strengths. So a group of us—ranchers, farmers, conservationists, chefs, carpenters, small business owners, and public-health professionals from both sides of the border—have come up with a better idea. We call it the Mesquite Manifesto.

Our plan would tackle the root causes of problems that affect border communities on both sides. While the media have fixated on the difficult conditions in Mexico (and other Central American nations) that propel immigrants northward, real problems are on the U.S. side, too. The poverty rate in this region is twice as high as for the nation as a whole, and joblessness drives many into the lucrative drug trade. Poor diets and inadequate health care contribute to high rates of disease: Nearly one-third of those who live along the border suffer from diabetes. And a rapidly growing population, along with rising demand from industry and agriculture, is stressing the region’s limited water supply—a problem made worse by the changing climate.

To address these problems and build a sustainable future for the region as a whole, we look to mesquite, the iconic native tree that grows in every county and municipio along the border. Its gnarly branches have provided food, fuel, medicine, shade, and shelter to indigenous communities in the borderlands for more than eight millennia.
...snip...

More at the link.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/build-a-border-wall-heres-what-border-communities-say-they-want-instead-20190225