DEM VOLKE DIENEN
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- International
News from Latin America
Brazil:
The National Commission of the League of Poor Peasants published a statement on September 4 in which it comments on various issues related to the current political situation in Brazil, and in particular on the recent murders and acts of violence committed by the Latifundium and its lackeys. On August 03, three armed men stormed the home of Fumaça and his wife Cleide Silva in the rural Humaitá region of the southern part of Amazonas, tortured the couple and executed the husband with five shots to the head and the wife with five shots to the chest. Cleide and Fumaça had moved from Rondonia to the state of Amazonas to help poor peasants conquer large estates. Through WhatsApp, big landowners informed each other of the couple's arrival in the region, identifying them "as activists of the League of Poor Peasants from Rondonia." On August 17, in the state of Bahia, Mãe Bernadete, a leader of the Afro-Brazilian, the Quilombola, was murdered despite being under police protection. She had previously received death threats from big landowners. Below we quote the redherald.org-translation of parts of the statement of the National Commission of the League of Poor Peasants.
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- BRD
Insolvency wave in NRW
Last Friday, the state statistics office in NRW published the figures for companies that went bankrupt in the first half of the year. With 2160 company bankruptcies, the number is about 20% higher than in the previous year. At the same time, the trend is forecast to deteriorate further for the rest of the year.
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- Allgemein
G20 to strengthen role of World Bank in face of BRICS+
Today, the G20 came to an end. Already before the summit was formally underway Newspapers like Berliner Zeitung reported, that the G20 Summit would be marked by US Imperialisms intent to combat Chinese Imperialism and particularly aim to limit the influence of BRICS, reportedly by strengthening the role of the World Bank. With its conclusion, many other publications set the results of G20 in direct relations to the BRICS groupings developments.
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- Kultur
Tipping is part of it?
In the Austrian state of Carinthia, the Chamber of Economy caused a stir this summer with a campaign called "Danke, stimmt so" ("Thank you, that's all right"). Hosts were sent envelopes with advertising displays for their establishments, sending a supposedly "unobtrusive signal" to customers to tip enough. The restaurateurs themselves were largely outraged by this way of formally forcing customers to pay extra.
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- BRD
Hamburg: News on the strike at Hagenbeck Zoo
For 2.5 weeks now, a small but determined section of the Hagenbeck zoo has been on strike for a collective agreement and for uniform working conditions. The colleagues on strike at the zoo are thus defying the threats of managing director Dirk Albrecht, who even repeatedly announced that he would initiate criminal proceedings against the employees and the union because they would endanger animal welfare with their strike.
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- Allgemein
Another two security holes used by Israeli Spyware “Pegasus” closed today
“Pegasus” is a software product that over the last years gained dubious reputation. In essence, it is a service sold to government level actors to infiltrate and spy on peoples phones. It is developed in Israel by the so-called “NSO-Group” and licenses for its use are solely granted in collaboration with the Israeli government. In the past, it was used by at least 19 governments to spy on people domestic and abroad, be it NGOs, political activists, politicians, lawyers, drug traffickers or, of cause, every one deemed a “terrorist”.
Today Apple announced, in collaboration with the Canadian based “Citizen Lab”, the closing of two “Zero-Day Exploits” existing in its operating system iOS that were used by Pegasus to silently infiltrate and take over the system without the knowledge of its owner. It is yet another stage in the battle between the NSO-Group and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, that has been going on for some time now and resulted in several iterations of security vulnerabilities being found and closed.
For dozens of Millions the NSO-Group sells its service to state level players like the Mexican army, the Saudi Arabian government and many others. These “customers” provide the “target’s” phone numbers and NSO deploys its software application and uses security loopholes in Android and iOS to take over the designated phones without much possibility of the users to recognize the intrusion. Pegasus then gathers all data, including logins, phone calls, SMS, messengers and other app data and sends it back to NSO so that its customers can access and surveil their designated targets without the necessity to provide any legitimization to do so.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-israels-pegasus-spyware-stoked-surveillance-debate
Hence, Pegasus has become a tool widely used by governments and has become so potent, that the Israeli government uses it as a lever in its foreign politics, granting licenses based on diplomatic agreements. All over the world, governments, intelligence agencies, police forces and other state agencies, such as attorney generals, have licenses and use them to spy on whoever they consider important or a nuisance. These include high level targets such as presidents (e.g. the President of Mexico), journalists (like Jamal Khashoggi, who was surveiled by Saudi intelligence and set up to be murdered in its embassy in 2018) as well as lawyers or anyone else attracting the special attention of these agencies, such as political activists, protesters, etc.
The loopholes through which Pegasus infiltrate the phones are commonly called “Zero-Days”, which describes, that the developers are not aware of the security issue (that is, they have know of it for “zero days”). NSO by no means is the only player that works towards finding such loop holes, as there are both other private enterprises providing a similar product as “Pegasus” as well as the expected intelligence agencies such as CIA, NSA, Mossad, etc. In Germany the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminal - BKA) has its own Product called “Remote Communications Interception Software” and with DigiTask (known for the “Staatstrojaner / State Trojan [horse]”) in Hesse and FinFisher in Bavaria two companies in the private market similar to NSO, although historically mostly concentrating on the exploitation and surveillance of desktop computers.
These state run or state linked actors have over the years created an increasing demand for “Zero-Days” that can be weaponized into taking over a targets phone, computer, laptop or other smart device. So much so, that there exists an international market Grey Market, were “Zero-Day Exploits” are bought and sold for 300.000 US$ to more then a million dollars, depending on complexity, likelihood of discovery, target system, etc.. However, most bigger companies – such as NSO – mostly focus on finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities of their own and employ a vast number of hackers to do so. With todays disclosure and closing of two of these “Zero-Days” exploited by Pegasus through the “Citizen Lab” and Apple a temporary blow is dealt to the NSO Group, which will – yet again – have to find new ways of exploiting security vulnerabilities in the service of Governments to surveil, target, discredit, intimidate, gaslight, frame, blackmail and kill all over the world.
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- BRD
NRW: Attack on the rights of students
In Germany, one of the biggest attacks on students in recent years is taking place under the radar of the general public.This is about the abolition of the semester ticket, which is being pushed by the federal and state governments. The semester ticket is not a uniform, Germany-wide ticket for students, but looks different depending on the state and university and has different prices. The semester ticket is part of the annual semester fees and is negotiated by the respective Asta of the university. An Asta, or Asten, is the general student committee, a kind of small "pseudo-government" for students that is elected by the student parliament.
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- BRD
Despite anti-Semitic flyer: Bavaria's Economics Minister maintains his position
Aiwanger can remain in office. This was announced by Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder at a press conference on 03.09. A few weeks earlier, reports emerged that Aiwanger had allegedly written an anti-Semitic leaflet in his youth in which he referred positively to German fascism and the Holocaust.