The man who was held captive by Isis for 10 months says how they can be defeated (The Independent)

A French journalist who was held hostage by Isis for 10 months has spoken out against air strikes in Syria, saying they represent “a trap” for Britain and other members of the international community.

...

Mr Henin has previously spoken about how he was held for seven months in Syria itself, and how British national Mohammed Emwazi – known as Jihadi John – was among the jailors who subjected him to physical and psychological torture.

"Strikes on Isis are a trap,” he said.

“The winner of this war will not be the party that has the newest, the most expensive or the most sophisticated weaponry, but the party that manages to win over the people on its side.”

...

Coalition bombing was not hurting the militants, Mr Henin said in the interview before British MPs voted in favour of RAF strikes in Syria, but rather “pushing people into the hands of Isis”.

When your kids' school district mandates "cloud computing", they're mandating that your kids be tracked by a company that profits by exploiting people's data.

Roseville City School District Embraces Chromebooks, But At What Cost? (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Many people—including Jeff—assumed that the law would prevent Google from collecting data on his daughter for advertising purposes. But the truth is more complicated. While Google is legally forbidden from creating a profile on Katherine when she’s using the school-sanctioned Google Apps for Education tools (which include email and document sharing), it can collect data as soon as she uses other Google services that aren’t part of the student-specific suite—including YouTube.

What Weekly reminds us what's going on, with a report from Justin Sanders:

Why You Need to Stay Informed About the Freddie Gray Trials – |... (What Weekly)

Baltimore is like every other city in America: its criminal justice system is a corrupt machine used against the people.

That might be distasteful to read, but it’s true.

I can offer you statistics and numbers to prove it to you. I can point you to court cases which state, unequivocally, that the police are under no legal obligation to protect you, thus raising the question: if the police are not for our protection, then what exactly are they for?

...

At the sound of Gray’s name some people in this city cross themselves and pray, “I hope they don’t riot again.” I always wonder why their prayers never go, “I hope the police don’t kill any more people,” or “I hope this is the last time we have to try our police officers for brutality and corruption.” But, it’s always, “I hope they don’t riot again,” which is an infuriating notion—first in how it assumes my community is stalking an opportunity to burn another CVS and break some more windows; second in how it completely absolves the police of any responsibility.

I’m talking with the guys in my barbershop and there’s a theory I hear, it’s one that’s been repeated to me many times while talking to people on the street. The theory goes that Freddie Gray was killed by the cops as a hit because the cops are connected to the drug trade in Baltimore and Gray either saw something or did something—what exactly varies depending on who’s doing the telling—and the cops put out a hit on him to protect their interests. That’s why his back was broken and his larynx crushed, to send a message. This is not a theory I subscribe to, but I do think that the theory is telling of how my community views the police. We don’t view cops as there for our protection. We don’t put it beyond them to murder us in service to their own interests. We know, for a fact, that they allow and profit from the drug deals many of us do just to maintain poverty.

Cory Doctorow reports on Mozilla dropping/freeing/spitting off the Thunderbird e-mail client and explains why you should use a stand-alone mail client rather than webmail. (I use Sylpheed, myself, for its support of MH-style folders, I like my mail in a directory tree I can run find and grep over.)

Mozilla will let go of Thunderbird (Boing Boing)

Thunderbird -- which I use for my own email -- is creaky and poorly maintained, something that is tacitly admitted by Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker in her memo, where she describes how trying to balance the needs of Thunderbird and those of Firefox often puts the two teams at cross-purposes. Baker doesn't describe exactly how Thunderbird will stand on its own, but I've heard reliable internal rumors that a new nonprofit entity is likely to be stood up to maintain and advance the project.

I live in my email (I hate instant messaging, and relying on platforms like Google or Facebook to maintain your messages is a terrible idea, since both are liable to squeeze their users if it is commercially expedient to do so). As a hardcore Thunderbird user, I'm glad to see something happening with the project. I would contribute to a nonprofit for maintenance and advancement of Thunderbird, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

There are many good reasons to use standalone email clients, but for Americans one of the most compelling is the absurdly outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which treats any file left on a server for more than six months as "abandoned" and accessible to law enforcement without a warrant (no, really!).

Law professor David Kopel looks at the facts around "universal background checks" and bans on "assault weapons" and "high-capacity" magazines, and explains why these laws won't help prevent violence, only criminalize ordinary citizens.

Kopel is an analyst for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank that's quite right on some issues (the "war on drugs", mass incarceration) and quite wrong on others (capitalism). But even when it's wrong, its arguments are thoughtful and well-informed.

My favorite sentence from the paper rather sums up the problem with firearm prohibition laws: " If gangsters can obtain all the cocaine they want, despite a century of prohibition, they will be able to obtain 15-round magazines."

The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control (Cato Institute)

It is unfortunate that Obama chose to disparage those who disagree with him for their supposed fixation on grubby “politics” and indifference to murder victims. Whether Obama realizes it or not, there are good reasons to be skeptical of gun-control policies. This paper will scrutinize the three most common gun-control ideas that have been put forward in recent years: universal background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and a ban on assault weapons. These proposals are misguided and will not prevent the crimes that typically prompt officials to make pleas for more gun control. Policymakers can take some steps to incapacitate certain mentally ill persons who are potentially violent. Yet, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that gun laws often cannot stop a person bent on murder. Policymakers should not pretend otherwise.

We recently linked to coverage of special treatment afforded to Georgia police accused of murder; Baltimore public defender (and candidate for judge) Todd Oppenheim has an NT op-ed about how the same idea is at work in the Freddie Gray murder trials:

Another Baltimore Injustice (www.nytimes.com)

The court has given extraordinary treatment to the accused officers, from their arrests up to their impending trials. But thousands of other defendants in Baltimore receive an inferior brand of justice.