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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Some sites have paper tiger paywalls that can be defeated by deleting a cookie. I don't post links to those sites because it would be too complex to tell users what to do to avoid having to identify themselves.
Google, Twitter and (of course) Facebook are working for the right-wing corporate-funded Super PACs.
The highway bill being considered by Congress is a change for the worse in regard to honesty, maintenance, air quality, public oversight, trains, and bicycles.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
You shouldn't use Amtrak anyway, since it requires passengers to identify themselves. I take buses instead of trains in the US.
The WTO ruled that the US is not allowed to label meat by the country of origin. In other words, the WTO stands for keeping people in the dark about their food.
"Free trade" policies such as the WTO undermine democracy, both indirectly (by allowing companies to threaten to move their business elsewhere if states regulate them as they ought to be regulated) and directly (with lots of rulings such as this). All these treaties need to be cancelled so that we can restore democracy.
Citizens of North Carolina call for climate sanity.
Unnecessary US Navy exercises would sink four ships, polluting the ocean with toxic PCBs that get into fish, and wasting metal that would be quite valuable if recycled.
Many US farms play games with the laws that protect farm workers from toxic pesticides.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Some questions for Obama about government secrecy and whistleblowers.
As Romney attacks Obama's health care plan, Massachusetts Governor Patrick praises the results of the similar Massachusetts law passed by...Romney himself.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Rhode Island has adopted a law to protect the rights of homeless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Persecuting the homeless is kicking the weak while they are down. There are bigger evils in the US, but none more mean-spirited. The demand for such policies comes largely from stores. People should identify the stores in their neighborhood that advocate such policies, and boycott them.
Most Blatant EU Pro-ACTA Campaign So Far Is A Copyright Monopoly Violation.
US citizens: call on Obama to push in the TPP negotiations for provisions that are good for American workers and American democracy.
70% of Japanese want their country to move away from nuclear power, but the New York Times doesn't want to admit that, so it says they are "deeply divided" about the question.
Musician Kevin Steinman explains how he is moving to Norway because the US medical system puts an impossible burden on him.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support raising the minimum wage. Also send mail through this link.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The latest tactic of "at all costs" antiabortionists: revoking the medical license of an abortion doctor for not forcing raped ten-year-olds to have babies.
James Watson signed the ACLU's amicus brief against patents on human DNA.
In the UK, many thugs have raped women or pressured women into sex.
This is not limited to the UK and is not new.
Morsi took his oath of office in Tahrir Square
to defy the
generals.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
He also said he would work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman from US prison.
That seems strange to me; I wonder what reason he gives for that position.
UK citizens: write to your MP in support of thorough and complete libel reform.
The proposed bill is missing crucial points.
Here's a campaign I decided I could not support, even though I agree with the basic idea.
It would be correct to take appropriate action so that lion poaching does not take off. Perhaps the sale of lion bones should be banned, but I'm not sure: that ban might encourage poaching by removing the existing legal source. In any case, I can't bring my self to say that I want to recommend tourism to South Africa. That is because it generally involves long-distance flights.
Demand-reduction through education of the users seems like a good approach here. Repeat users of illegal mind-effecting drugs at least know that they have a real effect. The users of these phony drugs are only imagining an effect. They should try viagra instead — then they would get their money's worth. If they don't know this, we should inform them.
I heard about a video designed to drive Chinese men off the superstitious idea that tiger bone, lion bone, or whatever absurd irrelevant thing, would be effective as a virility medicine. It showed tigers having sex, which does not take very long, and said something like, "Using tiger bone you can last a whole ten seconds." Why not play this on TV ten times a day all across China?
Ecuador has stopped sending soldiers for training to the
School of
the
Americas, which provided torture training.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support a strong treaty to control international
arms
sales.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Julian Assange, Pursued for the Crime of Practicing Journalism.
Call on Thomas MacKenzie, who got a bonus of half a million dollars from Northrop and then immediately went to work as a congressional staffer, to resign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UN ethics office hardly even tries to protect whistleblowers in the UN who report corruption.
The Supreme Court extended the Corporations United decision to state laws.
Thus, all elections in the US are now effectively for sale.
Everyone: send email to the European Parliament to oppose ACTA. The vote will be on July 4.
Republicans want to reduce the US minimum wage.
The US minimum wage has fallen drastically since 1970, taking account of inflation. This Republican initiative is simply a tactic to make the rich richer.
The US Forest Service approved a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon based on a completely inadequate environmental impact statement.
The US is massively expanding surveillance of all Americans — taking fingerprints and iris scans on the slightest pretext, including people stopped for speeding.
The goal is clear: a system of total surveillance that would be great for repression of democracy. As for crime, I doubt this will be of any use for preventing the most widespread and damaging crimes, such as foreclosure fraud or the purchase of laws that hurt millions of workers.
Bahrain has paid compensation to the families of some protesters who were killed, and has charged the killers with manslaughter.
This is correct, but Bahrain must above all stop its repression of protests. Amnesty International that Bahrain arrested an 11-year-old kid and bullied him into confessing crimes which are just a way of saying "protesting", and he now faces imprisonment.
NGOs call on Cambodia to stop torture, which is regularly practiced by thugs there.
Torture anywhere is monstrous, but as an American I am especially disgusted by the torture practiced by the US.
The US is exporting its practice of mass imprisonment to subservient countries in Latin America.
Libyan dissidents have sued the UK government and officials for handing them over to Gaddafi. However, the plans for secrecy in trials could deny them the chance for justice.
Every government data base about people is used by government employees for their own purposes. The only way to limit this is to limit what gets put in such data bases.
Of course, what's even more frightening is what the state will do to dissidents with all the data it has. While real non-state-sponsored terrorists do exist, the state itself is a much bigger danger to us and our freedom if its violence is not kept in check.
Neither civilization nor natural ecosystems can adapt to the amount of warming that cheap "unconventional" fossil fuels are driving us towards. The result will be a planet whose life has little resemblance to today's Earth.
Perhaps some country (it does not matter which) should begin bombing fossil fuel power plants and oil refineries around the world. Even if this war caused a million deaths, that would be hundreds of millions fewer deaths than climate disaster would cause. To be sure, this solution is unnecessarily violent and drastic, since a treaty could do the job and do it better; but governments refuse to sign such a treaty, so what's left to do?
Another Republican attempt to sabotage environmental laws about pollution and wildlife.
Republican officials say businesses deserve more freedom — to refuse to cover cancer treatment for their employees.
This represents nasty priorities, but more fundamentally, the question arises as a result of a misguided policy: linking medical care with employment. The US government should bypass this issue by funding medical care with taxes — for everyone, whether employed or not.
Contracted workers for the US government abroad are often trafficked from other countries and treated effectively as slaves.
US cell phone networks refuse to show customers their own location data.
Note the non-sequitur reason offered by Sprint: "We won't tell you your location data, because we're not allowed to tell you some other data." I don't believe they expect this nonsense to fool their customers. Rather, they expect that they will never be called to account for the irrationality.
Whether you can find out your own past locations is not the real issue. The real issue is that companies store them and will report on you. Being able to see how much information they store about you is indirectly relevant, because if you could see it, you might not stand for it.
I wonder if a state government could legally require phone companies to hand over this information to subscribers.
A simple model using yeast shows how a stressed population can reach a tipping point and collapse irreversibly.
Attempts at fisheries management that fail to take account of this possibility are likely to fail disastrously — and since we cannot determine where the tipping point lies, we need to be a lot more cautious.
How multinationals and the US were involved in the not-quite-legal impeachment of President Lugo.
Greg Palast: the euro was conceived so as to provoke a crisis which would be an opportunity to roll back social and workers' protections across Europe.
Thugs in Tel Aviv attacked a protest and arrested over 90 protesters for no clear reason. When a judge asked for their reports about why they had arrested the protesters, the thugs had nothing to say.
Here's more information about the protests themselves.
The police raid on Megaupload's founder's home was illegally done, says New Zealand court, and seized evidence must be returned to him.
"Share This" is a mechanism used to track users' browsing from site to site.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose attempts to roll back Obama's health care reform. Also use this page to send a message:
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the text I entered:
As your constituent, I urge you to oppose any further attempts to repeal or restrict this important law. The only change that should be made is to reduce our health care costs by establishing a single-payer system as in Canada. The parasitic health care companies, which secretly lobbied against this law while saying they were in favor of it, ought to be removed once and for all from our economy. Thank you.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The House of Representatives voted to declare Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to deliver documents about the operation "fast and furious" that allowed gun smuggling into Mexico.
Holder says he stopped the operation as soon as he heard about it. If so, he's not to blame for the operation itself. But that is no reason to withhold information from Congress about it.
Meanwhile, the War on Drugs has killed a hundred times as many people in Mexico.
Egypt's chief general defied the newly elected president by claiming the posts of defense minister and supreme commander, attempting to pre-empt the president's choice.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Recall that the military hold hundreds (at least) of protesters prisoner after military trials.
Professor David Nutt calls on governments to allow use of psychedelic drugs in research on the brain.
Nutt was an advisor about drugs for the UK government until he offered advice that was too rational for the government to tolerate.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obama's health care plan.
This law was a step forward in terms of health care coverage. The bad things about it are that it won't save any costs, because it fails to remove the grip of the health coverage companies and big pharma.
Nonetheless, the health coverage companies tried to defeat the bill. They gave $100 million to lobby against it, despite saying publicly
they were in favor of it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ethiopia has convicted 24 dissidents of “terrorism”.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When a government (including the US government) talks about doing something to "terrorists", read "dissidents" and respond accordingly.
Genetically engineered mosquito's are intended to reduce the spread of diseases that infect humans, but there are many uncertainties about what will result from them.
The War on Drugs promotes the spread of HIV.
Thousands protested in Kuwait after a court declared legislative elections void.
Climate safety activists plan direct action to block construction of the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline's southern part.
Considering how many people would be killed by burning the tar sands oil, almost any action to stop the pipeline would be justified on the principle of necessity.
The EPA's power to regulate CO2 emissions was upheld on appeal.
However, it still faces threats from Republicans in Congress.
China returned North Korean refugees to North Korea, which executed them.
Because the US government continues to practice torture and protect torturers, the ACLU has launched a torture data base to record what is known about these crimes.
The US-installed Haitian government is evicting poor Haitians from a shantytown, but they have nowhere to go.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The minister says the government "will" offer the evicted refugees new homes — in other words, at some time in the future, not now. I am sure these poor Haitians know exactly what a promise like that from the Haitian elite is worth.
A Silicon Valley insider since the 1960s contrasts the values of today's large tech companies and their founders with those of the 60s.
Things have gone a long way down.
Occupied Haiti: A Prefab President, Parliament and Constitution.
Massachusetts citizens: tell Governor Patrick to veto the bill that says supermarkets don't have to put the price on products.
US citizens: support a plan to require sea turtle escapes in all the nets used for catching shrimp.
Barclays Bank has been fined over half a billion dollars for manipulating interest rate markets.
If they don't put the executives in jail for this, it is a slap on the wrist.
32,000 have been evacuated from the vicinity of a forest fire in Colorado.
One idiot criticized the government for not putting out the fire sooner. Clearly the firefighters are doing all they can. What the government should have done sooner is stop the process of roasting our planet.
Top Five Reasons Why Caracol Industrial Park is Disastrous for Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A former Libyan official extradited from Tunisia may have been tortured and gravely injured. It isn't clear.
US citizens: call for senate hearings into Republican voter-suppression laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court decision on Arizona's "show me your papers" law did not rule that requirement was constitutional, only that the question must be considered later.
Republicans call any government policy that's inconvenient for the rich a "job killer", and the mainstream media repeat these mindless accusations as true.
Paid sick-leave is good for people's health and reduces health care costs, but the cruel US right-wing will stop at nothing to abolish laws that grant workers the right to paid sick-leave.
A German court has ruled that circumcision of male infants is illegal. It says that men should be free to decide for themselves whether to undergo circumcision.
Global heating deniers call environmental protection a “religion”.
The same smear is sometimes told about the free software movement, and it is equally irrational in that case. The operative idea in the smear is that any moral stand is merely arbitrary.
Refuting claims used to argue against sharing.
Europeans: ACTA isn't dead yet. Contact your MEPs to explain why ACTA is bad.
US citizens: tell the Navy to change plans that it predicts will kill almost 2000 wales and gravely injure thousands more.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has destroyed ancient Arab buildings in Jerusalem.
It should be noted that Israel is not alone in this; Saudi Arabia has destroyed many of the historical sites of early Islam.
The Palestinians of Susya have been expelled from their lands several times. Their village now faces demolition. A group of Israelis joined them in a nonviolent attempt to walk to their original homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The siege of Gaza has continued for five years, but it was planned by Israel long before. This shows it was not a response to anything done by Hamas.
Israel has broken its agreement not to extend the imprisonment without trial of Palestinian prisoners.
A Palestinian businessman says, investing in Palestine only supports the Israeli military occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your senators to support the DISCLOSE Act. Also send them mail through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Facebook: the most congenitally dishonest company in America.
The news site torrentfreak.com is censored in thousands of access points.
Record high temperatures (surprise, surprise) are making large US fires spread even more.
Everyone: support Greenpeace's call to save the Arctic.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel treats every Palestinian child as a potential terrorist.
The judge in Bradley Manning's case ordered prosecutors to hand over documents that might help his defense.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: donate to Jill Stein's campaign now; she is close to qualifying for Federal matching funds and needs a little more.
The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation in Spain has 85,000 worker-members.
Mondragon is an alternative to the stockholder corporation as a way of organizing business, but we must distinguish that from free markets. The word "capitalism", used to refer to the two of them at once, obscures the point.
Members of Congress have proposed a bill to stop the use of "state secrets privilege" to stop lawsuits against the government.
This might make it possible for torture victims to get justice.
Modelling an economy that delivers prosperity without growth.
The new French environment minister tried to do her job, and was promptly removed from her post.
Denmark has resisted pressure to punish people for file-sharing, but plans to use Internet filtering and propaganda, and will try to get everyone to put passwords on WiFi networks.
Running a WiFi network with no password is the only way to resist being a footsoldier in the War on Sharing.
In Japan, downloading unauthorized copies is punished with years in prison.
This is what the copyright companies want to impose on all of us. I suspect that Obama helped pressure Japan to do this.
What should a person do, after seeing that business-dominated governments have decided to let business destroy civilization?
Republican state legislator admits the purpose of voter ID laws is to help Republicans win.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook is sneakily leading users to send email to other users via facebook.
The Supreme Court approved the nastiest part of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, the “show us your papers” part that attacks everyone's rights.
Libya accuses an ICC representative of smuggling a letter to Gaddafi's son.
People will be executed in Iran for drinking alcohol.
When alcohol is made underground, it becomes dangerous; that danger does not exist in the US, where alcohol is legal, but heroin which is illegal is dangerous due to contamination.
Los Angeles is crawling with license plate cameras, including fixed installations clearly intended for surveillance of everyone.
The data is kept effectively forever.
A new software package automatically follows anyone from one CCTV camera to another.
The next time Big Brother decides to bug your house it could be done with a flying robot bug.
Present trends suggest that the US will strew these literally everywhere, record all conversations in a complete behavioral dossier for each person, and argue about whether a warrant is required to listen to the recordings days or years later.
These developments demonstrate that the basic logic of US privacy law is inadequate. If it is acceptable to take note occasionally that a car or person passes by, that doesn't make it acceptable to collect a large dossier on every car's movements, or every person's.
I suggest making constitutional limits on systematic collection of information about people.
Diverse perspectives on aerial bombers, manned and unmanned.
US banksters are on trial for fixing prices of bond auctions. This seems to be a tiny piece of a much broader crime syndicate.
UK citizens: sign the petition against extradition of Richard O'Dwyer.
The Iraqi government has closed 44 news organizations, ironically including some set up by the US government.
The Islamist candidate Morsi was declared winner of Egypt's presidential election.
However, the generals have claimed independent power which threatens the authority of the president.
The US East Coast will experience 1.5 to 4 meters of sea level rise in this century, even in the unlikely case that we cap global heating at 2 degrees C.
This will lead to frequent flooding in New York, and I suppose in Washington as well.
US citizens: call for a law to require corporations to get permission from stockholders for political campaign activity.
Bradley Manning's lawyer accuses prosecutors of lying to the court.
US citizens: call on Obama to defend the right to sell what you've bought.
Military contractors are using their employees as hostages to demand more US government military spending.
The US Senate voted to cut food stamps.
Billionaires are taking control of US public universities, thanks to state policies that starve them of funds.
Just how dangerous is the ITU's proposal for the Internet?
Right-wingers selectively use the argument about not imposing a debt on future generations: they use it to argue for austerity, but ignore it in other areas such as avoiding global heating disaster.
Republican senator: protect corporations from "harassment and intimidation" by their supposed owners.
Lugo's impeachment was unconstitutional, and some other countries have refused to recognize it.
Here is what Lugo said about it.
The US is at a fork between the values of the enlightenment and the irrationality of the middle ages. Alas, hardly any powerful people or institutions are defending the enlightenment.
Romney tells voters “I feel your pain”. Sure he does — he feeds on it.
An interview with Tony Nicklinson, petitioning for the right to a painless death.
I'm very impressed, and the world will lose something when he dies. However, that's no excuse to force him to spend day after day in futility.
Spanish coal miners and their families face destitution from the
closure of the mines.
I will not campaign to keep inefficient coal mines running, or even efficient ones. However, the state has the duty to make sure closing them does not force miners and their families onto the street.
Under Spanish law, the miners will have to pay their mortgages even if they lose their houses. Since nobody will buy houses in a ghost town, the seizure of their houses will hardly reduce their debt. Even if they could find other work, unlikely in today's Spain, they could hardly support their families and pay the mortgages on the lost homes.
They may thus be forced to join the thousands of "fiscally dead" who can only work in the underground economy, because any legally recognized earnings would be directed towards debts they can never pay.
An
article in Spanish explains how foreign multinationals such as Monsanto
procured the impeachment of President Lugo.
This article from 2010 says that Lugo also bowed to the multinational
land grab and didn't defend the peasants who voted for him.
However, if the senate was against him, he may not have been in a position
to defend them alone.
US citizens: tell your senators and representatives, overturn the Corporations United decision.
The US sells mining leases for a pittance to a near-monopoly mining company.
The result is a loss of billions for the US treasury; at the same time, this encourages the use of coal and consequent pollution of many kinds including lots of CO2.
Toxic fluids injected underground, to force out oil and gas or simply to dispose of them, are seeping into ground water, which supposedly would never happen.
Churches intentionally violate US tax law by endorsing candidates and the IRS does nothing.
Even though Obama is attacking whistleblowers as no president before, Congress is considering a new law to attack them with.
Here's more info about one whistleblower.
It appears that Obama doesn't want to prosecute all those who leak information, only whistleblowers (those who expose government crimes).
Oil pipelines in Alberta have had 3 major spills in the past few months.
Of course, the main reason to reject the planet-roaster oil pipeline is the oil that won't leak — the oil that will be burnt and push the world into global heating disaster.
Russia is attacking independent news sites, citing the usual excuses ("protecting minors", "pornography" and "extremist ideas").
We must reject those excuses for censorship, and any others.
Look at how the US government argues that it's ok for DEA agents to put a gun to a child's head.
Aside the outrageous arguments and the factual falsehoods, worst of all is the reprehensible moral distortion. To refer to grabbing a person (child or adult) and throwing that person on the floor as "assisting that person to the floor" must not be tolerated; everyone responsible for making that statement should be fired for it.
Meanwhile, even though the mistake of raiding the wrong house might not be anyone's fault, why shouldn't the state compensate the victims for the lasting terror caused by this raid? Even in Afghanistan the US compensates victims when it admits it attacked the wrong people.
US citizens: sign this petition for a bill to prevent banks from being “too big to fail”.
Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas all disrespect freedom of speech.
CEO Romney Helped Outsource Manufacturing Jobs To China.
Court decisions have ordered the FDA to limit the regular use of antibiotics on farm animals.
President Lugo of Paraguay has been impeached and removed from office.
This seems to have been political, like the attempt to remove Bill Clinton from office. Whether it is really a disaster for democracy in Paraguay, I don't know enough to judge. I don't know enough about him and the situation in Paraguay to come to any conclusion.
He was interested in free software, and his aides invited me to Paraguay three times, each time saying he wanted to meet with me, but each time some other urgent issues arose and made him too busy. Since every "LUG" is really a GLUG, I wanted to ask him to change his name to Glugo ;-).
Jeffrey Sachs says business has destroyed the American democratic system and transformed citizens into mere consumers.
A new system is said to be able to read fingerprints from 20 feet away.
This makes me concerned that systems will read fingerprints without our knowing. We may have to wear pads over our fingers in public to prevent this.
The article claims that these systems will not be connected to the FBI's fingerprint database, but that is beyond their control. Under the U SAP AT RIOT Act, the FBI can collect all these fingerprints from any company at any time.
Note how they suggest that you will choose to use this system so you can buy from Amazon. You should not buy from Amazon anyway.
World leaders agreed to express "deep concern" about the environment, instead of protecting it.
Thugs tased Amy Storm when she was helplessly tied up.
Tasers occasionally kill, so this is a grave thing to do.
She did not complain at the time, because she did not know that a video was made. She knew it was futile to complain about the thugs' violence with only her word against their lies.
The Twilight of the Elites proposes to explain why the US' institutions have gone awry and social mobility has diminished.
US citizens: call on Clinton to stop supporting religious profiling by the US and Israeli governments.
The newest victims of the War on Drugs are Americans that need painkillers.
Even before this attack, Americans with pain have encountered difficulty in getting adequate medication.
Saudi Arabia plans to pay Syrian rebels.
Support the "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions.
Movie stars joined with Greenpeace to try to block oil drilling in the Arctic.
Protesters tore up a copy of the worthless Rio “agreement”.
Greenpeace, WWF and Oxfam condemned world leaders for bowing down to business at Rio and delivering "a new definition of hypocrisy".
UK Prime Minister Cameron shamed a comedian out of using a tax-avoidance investment, but what about his cronies?
Why not change the tax law so that no one can do it?
The EFF should call for elimination of software patents, not mere reform of them.
A NYPD thug shot a helpless woman in cold blood. She was pinned in
place by a car air bag, and pleading "Don't shoot me!"
Chicago's torture commission established that Chicago thugs tortured suspects, and the chief torturer has been convicted and imprisoned.
However, the commission's funding has been canceled, so it cannot get justice for those who were tortured into confessions.
Suing to block Obama's expansion of oil drilling.
The Senate rejected Imhofe's amendment to encourage mercury pollution.
Who are the 46 senators that voted for it?
The US is arming Syrian rebel groups.
Ai Weiwei was not allowed to attend the tax hearing against his company and its lawyers have not been allowed to see the evidence.
For the US government, using contractors instead of employees is more expensive.
Indian ISPs were allowed to unblock bittorrent sites after an appeal rejected the broad censorship order.
The fifth European Parliament committee voted to disapprove ACTA.
The only vote that counts is the vote of the full parliament, so Europeans must keep their activism up.
Egyptian journalists are arrested and punished for bizarre pretexts.
Why Julian Assange is justified and rational in seeking political asylum.
US citizens: file a public comment with the EPA in favor of limiting CO2 pollution.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings says that US drone attacks encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.
I don't see any special controversy about using drones bombers in a war zone where artillery or manned bombers might otherwise have been used. Drones can kill civilians, but so can the artillery or manned bombers. The issue here is when drones are used outside such areas, in what fits the concept of assassination more than that of war.
Estimates of global CO2 emissions have been revised upward.
US citizens: oppose the giveaway bill for big oil, HR 4480.
US citizens: call on the US government not to label former conscripted child soldiers as "terrorists".
They were victims, not responsible for what they were forced at gunpoint to do.
Call on President Correa to give asylum to Julian Assange.
Attorney General Holder is likely to be held in contempt of congress for falsely claiming to be unaware of a policy that allowed guns to be brought easily into Mexico.
It looks like the Egyptian generals are preparing to falsify the result of the election to make their candidate president.
A psychologist says that one twisted mind — in a school, or in a bank — can push everyone there into harmful and nasty behavior.
Thug departments in the UK are looking at privatizing almost all of their activities.
Since these contracts won't create a competitive market for the public, the only way they will make things "more efficient" is by paying workers less or by doing a bad job. Compare, for instance, what privatized parking meters have done in Chicago and what prisons do in the US.
American society is reconsidering the question of what to do with the demented aged whose maintenance requires tremendous effort and expense (while they have no understanding of what's happening).
If I reach the point where I can't learn anything new, or contribute anything to the world, I think I would see no point on going on living as a burden.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect bees from the threat of neonicatinoid pesticides.
Thugs in Pennsylvania raided a protest camp blocking the eviction of 30 families for the sake of fracking.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the political spending secrecy requirements put in by the House of Representatives. Also contact them through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The US is blocking a UN report accusing Rwanda of stirring up rebellion in the Congo.
Pro-EU parties won the election in Greece.
Welfare cuts in the UK are expected to lead people to suicide.
Uganda has arbitrarily banned 38 organizations alleging that they promote homosexuality.
There is nothing wrong with promoting homosexuality, but more than that, arbitrarily banning an organization without a fair trial violates freedom of association. The US also engages in such arbitrary bans, which are equally wrong.
The UK government reveals its irrational hostility to drugs by condemning advice based on rational considerations.
Hamas retaliated with rockets for an Israeli attack on Gaza. (This was inspired by a terrorist attack that probably wasn't carried out by Hamas.)
Israel then re-retaliated with a fatal airstrike.
Israeli and international women dressed protested in Shuhada Street, formerly the main shopping street of Hebron, which Israeli colonists have turned into a Jews-only zone. They were violently arrested.
This is the nonviolent action that Issa Amro was later accused of helping to organize.
Everyone: tell the speaker of the Michigan house of representatives to apologize for gagging the female representatives.
Universities might track students' Internet use to monitor their "mental health".
Anthony Graves, who was held in solitary confinement on death row for 18 years and then proved innocent, talks about how solitary confinement frequently practiced in the US drives people mad.
Tunisian artists fear repression after the culture minister sided with the mob that destroyed controversial works.
A constitutional argument for the right to record what thugs do and say, even in private.
The proposed agreement for the Rio conference has almost no commitments. It is just a list of wishes.
We can see the hand of the plutocracy in this. Governments have surrendered to the empire of the megacorporations and fight for their profits above all else.
Greenpeace says it will campaign to stop banks from lending to fossil fuels and deforestation.
The world must move away from “grow now, clean up later”.
When Jamie Dimon was asked by a congressman, “Why do you deny the people cleaning your buildings a living wage?” he did not give a real answer.
JP Morgan's Connections to the House Finance Committee.
But there may be a deeper reason why the US won't touch JP Morgan: JPM derivatives prop up the US debt.
New York thugs lie about crime statistics to the FBI. Of course, that's not all they lie about.
Puerto Rico's thugs rampage with impunity against citizens.
The US has made no response to UN criticism of repression of Occupy protesters.
Now the UN Human Rights Council has called on the US to stop the secrecy about drone bombings.
The Ethiopian dictatorship has forced tribes off their lands to set up sugar plantations.
Thousands protested silently in New York City against the policy of letting thugs search people arbitrarily on the street.
I don't care whether the people who are searched are brown, pink, green, or purple. It's wrong no matter who it is aimed at.
JP Morgan receives $14 billion in benefit from special low interest rates from the US government.
Romney plans a further tax cut for the rich, and uses irrelevant arithmetic (distraction) to disguise it.
Palestinian nonviolent protest organizer Issa Amro was arrested at a border crossing from Palestine into Jordan, and accused of planning a nonviolent protest.
Thugs arrested a man for saying the word "cripple" in a park.
Whether "cripple" in particular ought to be grounds for arrest is a side issue. the real issue is, this is entirely wrong. There is no word which is so nasty that people ought to get arrested for saying it.
US citizens: tell Obama, don't attack Iran.
Residents of Nabi Saleh forced open the barrier that the Israeli Army had placed across the only paved road leading to the town.
Israel has agreed to release Mahmoud Al-Sarsak from imprisonment without trial, and he has begun eating again.
Israel said he was involved in terrorism but did not present evidence. If the government really believes this, it should put him on trial.
Right wing "settlers" are openly fomenting terrorism; will the Israeli government charge them?
Julian Assange is in the Ecuadorian embassy and has asked for political asylum.
Assange is wanted in Sweden for questioning, although there are no criminal charges against him as of now. Yet, when he offered to be questioned in the UK by Swedish officials, they did not take him up on it. UK judges twisted and stretched the law to permit extradition even without an order from a Swedish judge.
The crime that they want to question him about is not rape. According
to published explanations, his alleged actions
would not be a crime in
any other country. It is not nice conduct, to be sure, but that is
not the same as rape.
I have read that Sweden has an arrangement with the US whereby it
would hand him over to the US on a mere request. That would be a bad
thing.
It would be improper for Ecuador to shield Assange from possible sex
charges. I suggest that Ecuador invite Swedish officials to question
Assange in the embassy or in Ecuador. If he is subsequently charged
in Sweden, Ecuador could approve his extradition to Sweden on the
condition that Sweden not hand him over to the US, but rather let him
return to Ecuador if acquitted, or at the end of his sentence if he is
found guilty.
Tony Nicklinson, paralyzed except for some of his head, pleads in court to allow a doctor to kill him.
Nicklinson has justice on his side. I wonder, though, if there is a way for him to get to Switzerland where he could lawfully be helped to die.
US citizens: support EPA regulations to limit mercury pollution.
Canada plans to use sensitive microphones to eavesdrop on travelers entering or exiting Canada.
If it is "game over" for Earth's climate and human civilization, it is because the business ordered governments not to save them.
Japanese Gov't Hid Radiation Information from Public.
Activists defending forests, rivers and farmland are being killed at the rate of two per week.
Obama wants the Rio summit to backtrack from commitments made by Bush I, 20 years ago.
This shows how Obama is more right-wing than even Republicans used to be.
Iran wants reduction of sanctions if it is to make any nuclear concessions.
This seems reasonable, especially since Iran's uranium enrichment was presented as the reason for the sanctions.
Citizens of Massachusetts: tell your state senators to insist on a vote, not more "study", about extending beverage bottle deposits to other beverages than soda.
Support Bernie Sanders' bill for anticorruption reform of the Federal Reserve.
The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate appears to have won the election in Egypt, but the generals are acting to take total control.
Is anyone investigating whether the US supports the generals? It occurs to me that the prosecution of the staff of two US-funded NGOs might have been a demand from the generals for more US support "or else".
Anti-women legislators in Michigan barred a legislator from the debate because she used the word vagina.
It is typical of power-tripping right-wingers that they claim certain words or images are evil.
Dozens, or maybe hundreds, of people are in federal prison for a crime that (it turns out) wasn't a crime at all, but the government has no intention of telling them about this.
Egypt's military government gave its thugs more powers to arrest.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to sign the Miller-DeLauro letter against secret negotiations for the TPP.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Uri Avnery condemns the pogroms against African illegal immigrants in Israel.
Was the Houla massacre carried out by opponents of Assad?
Here is a translation of the article from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
What convinced me this was done by Assad's men was the testimony
attributed to an army defector. I wonder if it is possible to
confront him with these claims.
I don't think that the Christian religious orders are implicitly trustworthy either. Assad protects them and they are afraid that Sunni fanatics will kill them. This could lead them to lie about massacres. At the same time, it reflects real danger from armed Sunni groups that have been supported by other countries.
The nonviolent protests of 2011 were nonsectarian. Assad wanted to turn it into a sectarian conflict, and outside Sunni states wanted the same thing. Now they have both got their gruesome wish.
In the UK: participate in the Open Rights Group's training for action
against censorship and surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
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UK citizens: tell your MP that libel reform needs to be complete, with a public interest defense, and participate in the demonstration on June 27.
Israel plans to imprison illegal immigrants without trial, even if they are fleeing due to a valid fear of persecution.
The City of Oakland commissioned a study that criticized the violent attacks by the city thugs against Occupy protesters.
The report fails to criticize the worst thing about Oakland's response: the fact that it shut down the Occupy encampment and led the wave of attacks that eliminate the right to make protest camps in the US.
Many large banks continue investing in companies that make cluster bombs.
Who's the money behind the farm bill?
The US government's argument with victimized Megaupload users compared with a bull in a china shop.
An additional reason to reduce the normal working hours is to reduce the use of resources.
In other words, producing less is good for sustainability, provided that the loss falls on the wealthy (who would do fine with less), not on the workers.
The Taliban in Pakistan are holding the region's children hostage by banning polio vaccination.
Regional collective management plans can clean up large rivers and forests.
Republicans have attacked funding for sidewalks and safer bike paths.
The Republicans are funded by fossil fuel companies that want us to burn more fuel at any cost.
18 Federal Reserve directors personally benefited from the Federal Reserve's bailouts.
That's because they worked in financial companies that received 4 trillion dollars of bailout money. They personally probably got millions in bonuses out of this, as well as stock appreciation.
Too Big To Trust:
Banking Reform and Financial Instability
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai demanded an end to airstrikes against residential buildings
in
Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
But NATO is not listening.
Monsanto's Genetically-Modified DroughtGard Corn Barely a Drop in the Bucket.
If it were possible to engineer a kind of corn that used significantly less water to grow, it might be a big step forward if only it did not spread legal pollution in the form of a patent.
U.S. Supporting Rwanda as it Destabilizes the Congo — Again.
Movie companies are forcing cinemas to convert to
digital formats
with DRM.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose approval of GMO corn designed to be sprayed with a highly toxic defoliant (more or less, Agent Orange).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Romney's plan to privatize US education and subsidize religious know-nothings.
Women in Saudi Arabia plan to protest by driving.
The danger of another terrorist attack against the US is mainly due to the US' day-by-day aggression against other countries, including against their civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Did the Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?
They surely did, but Obama helped them along by failing to campaign publicly for stimulus policies, or for tax increases on the rich. Obama even endorsed the goal of cutting the deficit during a recession.
In the US: join the anti-fracking protest in Washington DC, July 24-28.
US citizens: tell your senators to support the EPA regulations on mercury pollution.
US citizens: call your senators to make the farm bill support healthful food.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: protect the Clean Water Act.
Citizens of Massachusetts: oppose proposed policies to harass illegal immigrants and restrict welfare recipients.
US citizens: support the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 (H.R. 4170).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Israel to free Mahmoud Sarsak.
Big high-tech fishing boats, designed to be very efficient in a sea full of fish, control nearly all of the UK's fishing quota, and the result is ecological damage.
The efficiency estimates come from this study.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
How the world's wealthiest 10% are pushing the world over the sustainable limits.
The cease-fire monitors in Syria have been withdrawn because they are in too much danger.
The ACLU is trying to find out when the US government reads people's email without a warrant.
Maya's parents are worried that a software patent will yank away the program that she uses to generate speech.
Software patents put all software developers in danger, and this is an example.
A software patent is the immediate cause of this nastiness, but what gave it the opportunity to do so is something even nastier: Apple's unjust power over the iThings.
What put Apple in a position to decide whether her parents can get this app? The system software of the iThings is malicious, set up to let Apple decide what programs users can install. Apple practices arbitrary censorship, and not just in this instance.
What put Apple in a position to remotely delete this app? Another malicious feature, called a "back door", which is designed to let Apple remotely delete installed apps.
The iThings are designed as jails for their users. Gilded jails, but still jails. They were lured in by the gilding, but and now they see the door shutting.
If you want to fight against this, sign up at DefectiveByDesign.org.
Meanwhile, suppose the company that made the app loses the lawsuit or settles it with an agreement not to distribute that app. That too would stop Maya from ever getting another copy. Why is this? Because the program is proprietary software, controlled by that company and not by its users.
What Maya really needs is to replace that program with free/libre software, software controlled by its users.
Growing cocoa can encourage reforestation in the Amazon.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
However, success requires policies to pressure to grow cocoa this way.
It must be noted, however, that it is very hard to replant the Amazon forest, because the biodiversity there is enormous. The first goal must be to stop the cutting of the forest.
Egypt's military government wants digital ID cards. Of course, this is just for efficiency of operations, right?
Oman: Assault on Freedom of Speech.
ElBaradei warns Egypt it is letting a 'new emperor' take over.
The US-backed African army in Somalia has pushed the Shabaab out of the cities, and claims to be winning.
I will shed no tears for the Shabaab, who stand for cruel Islamic law, but will the government imposed by intervention receive any loyalty from Somalis? Perhaps it will, if it establishes peace.
The worm that turned Obama into a hypocrite (if he weren't one already).
Chicago Workers' Economic Plan: Go Co-Operative!
Blowback, or Impossible Dilemmas of Declining Powers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
From what I've read, one small correction is called for: Al Qa'ida was set up by Pakistan's intelligence service to support the resistance against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, and was later turned to another purpose.
The Internet Archive is suing to overturn a law in Washington that could be used to prosecute web sites for third-party material.
This resembles the censorship of Thailand.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose CISPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Imprisoned journalists in Iran are on hunger strike.
Obama has legalized almost a million illegal immigrants who were brought to the US as children.
I am not sure what position to take on the immigration issue in general; I do not think countries are in general obliged to let everyone in. However, this policy is clearly right for those children who hardly know any other country.
Rupert Murdoch appears to have been caught lying to the Leveson inquiry.
Will he be prosecuted for this, or is he "too big to prosecute"?
Ban Ki Moon says that the Rio conference is too important to fail.
He is right — but that doesn't mean success is possible. Obama is staying away because he does not care.
Bahrain's regime confirmed the sentences of 11 medics accused of treating wounded protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Thanks to the Israeli siege, 10% of small children in Gaza have stunted growth and half have anemia.
Haiti is boiling with anger towards the UN army, which Haitians understand is an army of occupation that serves foreign interests such as the US.
A leak of the TPP shows that the US is pushing to give foreign companies special rights over the US government.
Turkey is constructing a dam that will threaten the ecology of the Tigris valley and destroy archaeological sites, primarily as a weapon against Kurds.
Legal guest workers in the US are often treated as slaves.
The EPA proposed stricter standards on soot (particulates), which is known to damage human health.
Of course, business lobbyists want to go on polluting, and never mind your lungs.
US citizens: call for solid protection for whistleblowers in the Public Health Service.
The state of Mississippi says it cannot make a privatized prison operator carry out legal obligations. It can only beg the company to do its job.
A sneak attack on the Clean Water Act, through the farm bill.
Agribusiness money is corrupting research at US universities, and the National Academies of Science want even more of this.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The root of the problem are that taxes on these companies are too low. The government should take money from them to finance this research, so that the companies get no control or influence over the research.
Julian Assange will be extradited to Sweden, and jailed there.
Senator Paul has proposed a bill to limit use of drones for domestic surveillance by the federal government. In most cases, a warrant would be required.
That would be a good start.
Mahmoud al-Sarsak, imprisoned without trial in Israel, is approaching death from hunger strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Debunking Monsanto's confusion about “drought-tolerant” corn.
Indigenous activists for water access in Mexico were framed on charges of car theft.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Putin's thugs arrested five journalists who protested against the state's threats to journalists.
The Spanish indignados are now running food banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is a good activity, but this alone won't even start to free Spain from the empire.
They are also accusing a bankster of fraud.
US citizens: protect abortion rights for soldiers who are raped.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Egyptian Supreme Court dissolved parliament, effectively giving all power to the military government.
The UK government sabotaged an EU energy efficiency plan.
The UK government is for fossil fuel and nuclear power, and opposed to renewable energy. It has weakened or canceled nearly all of Labour's programs to reduce CO2 emissions, but continues to pretend it is for renewable energy.
India's system of regulating mines is almost null, so mining companies pollute and destroy at will.
Proper inspection costs money, so mines must be taxed enough to pay for it.
Elinor Ostrom studied why commons don't always lead to overuse.
Israel shoots at Gaza fishing boats before they even reach the 3-mile limit imposed by Israel. And those inshore waters are fished out.
Peter Van Buren — being fired by the State Department for posting a link to a published Wikileaks document — writes about how Obama's persecution of whistleblowers is making the US like a military dictatorship he once lived in.
He warns us that the policy of "classify everything, then leak what makes the government look good" leads to a journalism which is effectively censored.
The UK government says it will reform banking, but it has softened the plans, undermining their effectiveness.
Australia's new marine reserves may not achieve their purpose due to exceptions made to cater to the fishing and mining companies.
You can see in the wheedling words of the prime minister why this happened. We can't protect nature (which means, human survival) and keep business happy at the same time. We need governments prepared to be as tough as Rambo toward any business that gets in the way of protecting the Earth.
Japanese whaling is running into an insuperable problem: people don't want to buy the whale meat.
US citizens: call on Obama to defend the right of first sale in the Supreme Court.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To allow US vendors to deny people's traditional rights by shifting production offshore would attack Americans in two ways at once.
US citizens: sign this petition to cut tax breaks for companies that move jobs out of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to use diplomacy to resolve the issue of uranium enrichment with Iran, and resist being pressured into war.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your senators to protect rules for political transparency.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the US to support establishment of the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.
Most of the world's governments support a plan to make web sites pay a tax to be viewed.
This would destroy stallman.org and gnu.org and nearly every web site, except for big companies that make big profits.
Ben Ali Gets Life in Prison, But Other Security Officials Walk in Revolutionary Martyrs Case.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Chicago protesters have been indicted on terrorism charges after irregular and unfair legal proceedings.
Bloomberg wants New York City to repeat Chicago's disastrous privatization of parking meters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization of any state activity is wrong unless it leads to a competitive market for the public.
Coal's resurgence undermines fight against global warming.
Peasants blame Honduran insecurity forces for killing leaders of the peasants' rights movement and driving peasants off their land.
This is backed by the US, which in private effectively endorses the coup.
The US is fighting several wars across Africa, and building a military and intelligence network to do so.
How US drone attacks help al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
If you take US rhetoric at face value, and suppose that the US government wants to wipe out al Qa'ida, this would imply that the drone attacks are a self-defeating tactic.
However, what if that is just a pretense and the real desire of the US government is to have a war it can fight forever? An excuse to eliminate civil liberties and reduce most Americans to abject poverty without opportunity? Judged this way, the drone attacks would be a great success.
Charting the Cozy Connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee.
These connections (and likewise with other banks) enabled the banksters to get away with tremendous crimes, with bailouts for a punishment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US economy cannot improve because the rich have sucked it dry.
Republicans sell their budget cuts to the Americans who they will hurt using an idea of the family as cruel tyranny.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Comcast has started fighting subpoenas issued as part of the War on Sharing.
Australia has established large marine reserves around the Great Barrier Reef.
Scientific institutions call on politicians to address the danger of population growth and high consumption levels.
The US government has 64 bases for drone operations in the US.
Help the EFF find out how your local thug department uses drones.
US sanctions against a Russian arms exporter were dropped in order to buy Russian weapons for Afghanistan.
Nuclear weapons companies have invested almost 3 million dollars to get more government spending.
As millions in New York can't afford healthful food, or any food, a group that feeds people asks the city to make a vacant lot available for farming instead of building.
Diesel exhaust recognized as carcinogenic.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A journalist who champions human rights has been arrested in Azerbaijan.
New Haven thugs arrested a woman for recording them and are keeping her phone as "evidence".
We need to imprison thugs who act like this or they will continue to terrorize citizens.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone the Speaker of the House at 617-722-2500 and call on him to allow the expanded drink-bottle deposit law to move through the state legislature.
Sanal Edamaruku is now a fugitive under threat of imprisonment due to religious censorship. Sign this petition to support him.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Rep. Issa's follow-on for SOPA is to elevate copyright and a dozen other laws to the status of human rights, with a “digital bill of rights”.
The presence of the term “intellectual property” is a give-away that this is a harmful proposal.
We must oppose this plan.
Two senators are blocking a bill to amend US digital surveillance law until the government comes clean about its surveillance practices. They accuse the executive branch of secretly stretching what the existing law permits.
A legal defense team sent by the International Criminal Court is imprisoned in Libya and accused of possessing a small disguised camera.
So what if they did?
International condemnation for South Africa's press suppression secrecy bill.
If only Obama would stop attacking press freedom in the US.
The UK government will write a blank check for total Internet surveillance.
The discussion of which data can be accessed under which conditions is a decoy from the real issue: the fundamental increase in surveillance which is going on: the policy of making a total dossier on each person.
UK Uncut can sue to challenge Goldman Sachs's favorable UK tax deal.
BT cotton turns out to be good for insect wildlife, compared with conventional cotton and all the pesticides it needs.
I am not against genetic engineering in general, but if we use it, we must protect farmers' rights.
Fires in the US southwest are straining the capacity to drop water from airplanes, which has been reduced due to budget cuts.
The cut in the budget for fire fighting has two causes: Republican tax cuts, and the perverse policy of cutting spending just when a stimulus is needed.
Tens of thousands (elsewhere I read 100,000) protested in Moscow against Putin's autocracy.
Fukushima residents filed a criminal complaint against officials in charge of the nuclear power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Nanoparticles pose special — or at least, different — health risks, which laws do not take account of.
The empire of the megacorporations will obstruct the necessary changes.
The UN monitors say that Assad's forces are torturing children and using them as human shields.
They cite testimony from children who were tortured, and from torturers.
CO2 emissions from China seem to be more than the government admits.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mines and factories in China have polluted a tenth of the agricultural land, or maybe more.
Along with the African land grab is a water grab.
The policy that spread obesity: replacing fat with sugar.
Campaigning for lower energy costs is misguided.
Feds tell Megaupload users to pay lots of money if they want to get their data back.
Compare that with a hypothetical example of a bank and safe deposit boxes.
This is an example of Stallman's Law at work: a change in technology is an excuse to reduce people's rights.
The Supreme Court upheld the US government's right to torture with impunity for "national security".
It also abandoned the rights of prisoners in Guantanamo, even though most of them are acknowledged to have been imprisoned for no reason.
Why should anyone hold the US government in higher esteem than the Chinese government?
Tribune Company Moves to Seize Occupied Chicago Tribune's Website.
Florida governor Scott is suing for the right to disenfranchise lots of Democratic voters.
In an apparent miscommunication, Karzai said that the US had agreed to stop bombing civilian residences, then the US said that wasn't so.
Spanish miners are on strike against government austerity.
A economics professor proposes that schools charge students on a publisher's behalf for the right to take a class based on a textbook, whether they buy the textbook.
The article confuses the proposed system with the patent. The proposed system is what matters. The patent has no effect on students, except that it might be an disincentive to implement the system. The only ethical issue about the patent itself is that it is a business method patent, which is a kind of software patent, and those should not exist.
What can we say about the proposed system? It involves corrupting schools, turning them into marketing agents for publishers. Any school that requires students to obtain a book in a specific way should be shut down.
Indian thugs banned a protest in Hyderabad, demonstrating that tyranny in India is not limited to the Internet.
Vulture capitalist (to use the usual term) Singer, who wants to use US courts to force poor countries to pay debts they defaulted on, wants help from the US Congress.
Coal in Australia threatens the Great Barrier Reef, but the provincial government of Queensland refuses to take steps to preserve it.
Burning that coal will kill the Great Barrier Reef and all other corals due to acidification of the ocean.
European governments are pushing for a world-wide Internet censorship scheme.
I doubt that "child" pornography, even when it really depicts children and not postpuberal teenagers, plays a big role in leading people to sexually abuse children, because adults have done this for a long time even though porn was not available. In any case, the main risk to a child comes from people in the family.
So I think this is simply an example of a common political phenomenon: a phony solution that allows politicians to pretend they are doing something, while serving other interests (the copyright industry) and harming the public.
There were anti-ACTA protests across Europe.
Exposure to common environmental pollutants during pregnancy results in various birth defects — occasionally gross and fatal, but more often subtle and seen in mental retardation years later.
Spain is getting an EU bailout for its corrupt banks, and paying the banksters millions, but the cost will be disaster for millions of people in Spain.
A credit agency in Germany plans to evaluate people's creditworthiness by who their “friends” are on facebook.
The lesson is that we should make sure that no activities collect information about lots of people's social networks.
The death of bee colonies has been traced to mites that transmit a virus, but also to neonicotinoid pesticides. They both contribute.
Here is how the neonicotinoid pesticides contribute.
Libya is splintering, and some of the parts are holding their own elections and even reducing corruption.
In Singapore, artist Samantha Lo faces yeas in prison for posting stickers.
Tourism is destroying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands.
Ironically, the unusual organisms are the main motive for anyone to go there.
Intel's Big Brother TV, that watches the users all the time, is stimulating resistance.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
The Awa tribe begs the Brazilian government to prevent logging on its land.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook's phony privacy referendum.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Building drones to observe the fighting in Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Vietnam proposes to require Internet users to register with their real names, and other nasty policies.
Students in Turkey have been sentenced to 8 years in prison as "terrorists" for carrying a banner calling for free education.
When a government talks about laws against "terrorism", read "dissent".
The Turkish government also applies the term "terrorist" to writers prosecuted for their writings.
North Carolina Senate decides to include science in sea level projections after all.
Indonesia's forests of corruption.
Some in Congress call on Obama to protect dolphins by resisting the WTO's decision on dolphin-safe tuna labeling.
A president worth voting for wouldn't need to be pressed to do this. Jill Stein for president!
States that cut funding for education a few years ago are using rising revenues to give tax cuts (mainly to the rich).
Vandana Shiva: The empire of the megacorporations, established by "free trade treaties", has undermined the achievements of the Rio summit of 20 years ago.
Of course, it also assures that the new Rio summit can't fix things.
Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality and the Myth of Opportunity.
In Congress: a bill to raise the US minimum wage to the same level it had in 1968.
Time was when the US extended the fundamental right of a fair trial even to people who had killed millions.
The Earth is likely to experience, in a few decades, an irreversible ecological tipping point which would cause massive extinctions and global changes in ecosystems.
In other words, if we do reach a population of 9 billion humans, it won't stay that high for very long.
European telecommunication companies want to use the ITU to make network sites pay for their visits.
The proposal would wipe out noncommercial web sites such as this one. I couldn't afford to pay anything substantial to run this site.
Canadians: campaign against the Internet surveillance bill.
NGOs and scholars call for an end to US support to the insecurity forces in Honduras.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Documents show Mexico's main TV empire asked a right-wing presidential hopeful for money to slant its coverage for him.
Support actions around the US for local resolutions in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision [spelling intentional].
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A mob attacked Egyptian women who protested in Tahrir Square for women's rights.
This puts the Muslim Brotherhood on the spot. It must firmly condemn this attack, and support those women, or else it will demonstrate that even "moderate" Islamists are sexist bigots.
The air strike that killed many civilians in Afghanistan was done in haste and without consulting the Afghan government.
And since the Afghan army had surrounded that house compound, it also reflected a lack of trust in that army.
There may well be good reasons to distrust Afghan troops, but refusing to trust them is surely likely to lead to problems like this.
Note how the US assumption that adult men can't be civilians pervades this article.
Almost 1000 politicians and almost 1000 soldiers are under investigation in Colombia for ties with the paramilitary terrorists.
One of Bahrain's political prisoners is an 11-year-old boy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Cybersecurity Act (S. 2105) Threatens Online Rights.
The FBI says you can spot terrorists because they practice civil disobedience, exercise their rights under the Freedom of Information Act, and meet in coffee shops.
This is part of a long-term campaign to label dissidents as terrorists so as to crush dissent.
Viruses spread by mites have been tied to the death of honeybee hives.
I wonder how this relates to the other work that showed certain pesticides kill large numbers of honeybees. Perhaps they are two separate dangers acting in parallel.
Obama actively defended imprisonment without trial in court, but lost.
Governments regularly disregard the environmental treaties they have signed.
By contrast, governments rarely ignore the nasty copyright treaties they sign. I suspect that's because business power wants the copyright treaties obeyed while it sabotages the environmental treaties.
Assad's men committed a massacre in a village that was at peace, then apparently fired at UN monitors trying to enter the area.
Illegal forest cutting in Brazil has dropped 75%, but the new forest law puts this achievement at risk.
Peter Gleick, who obtained damaging documents from the Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] through subterfuge, has been reinstated as head of the Pacific Institute.
Forced marriage will be a crime in the UK.
The issue of how not to make victims hesitate to report forced marriages is a tricky one, which I have nothing to contribute to, but in general I support this measure.
India censors the Internet for two unjust reasons: to attack sharing and to suppress controversial opinions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Anonymous calls for a general protest aimed at Indian government web sites, and explains that this is a protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The text scores an own-goal when it uses the term "attack" to describe these protests. I suggest that Anonymous drop the terms "DDOS" and "attack", and stick clearly to the terminology of protest.
Also, I'd appreciate it if, when they talk about the GNU/Linux system, they didn't call it just "Linux". See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.
Tunisian Bloggers Join Hunger Strike Against Violation of Press Freedom.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The issue also includes protesting the use of a military court for the case about protesters who were shot by government snipers during the revolution.
Osama bin Laden tried to continue directing Qa'ida, but its affiliate groups didn't listen to him, making him irrelevant to events.
This is more reason why his death was no real gain for the US.
He tried to focus the affiliate groups on attacking the US, but they instead focusing on attacking local enemies. Perhaps that's part of the reason why the danger to Americans from terrorism is so low as to be negligible. Americans are more likely to be killed by their own furniture.
But Obama is working hard to change that.
More warrantless wiretapping is Obama's “top priority”.
Lawsuits challenge the constitutionality of the nasty copyright law that the US imposed on Colombia.
Unfortunately they don't seem to include the nastiest aspect I know of: punishment without trial.
Bradley Manning's lawyers have won access to some government documents that might refute some charges against him.
Success in negotiations with Iran requires offering concessions on sanctions.
China plans to force nomadic Mongols to settle, so that they don't get in the way of destructive mines.
The US has similar destructive mines and doesn't support the people who live in the vicinity.
Israel threatens to demolish the school of Jinba cave village in the West Bank, as well as the solar power facility and road. But teachers can't reach the village to teach, there because Israeli soldiers took their van.
The area was declared a zone for military exercises, apparently as an excuse to get rid of the village because it isn't really used as such.
Peru's President Humala, who ran as a leftist, has continued the right-wing mining policies of his predecessor.
Russia is following the examples of Quebec and Chicago by imposing harsh penalties on protests.
When the US fails to defend the freedom to protest, it is easy for any other nasty regime to forbid them.
US citizens: support the constitutional amendment for public funding of election campaigns.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to defend the requirement for TV stations to say who paid for political ads.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand action for mortgage relief. Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Many states in the US have suppressed journalism about the treatment of farm animals by banning investigative reporters from lying on job applications. This means they cannot hide the fact that they are reporters.
Such harmless deception is legitimate and necessary in order to expose abuses by business.
The Rio+20 international conference for environmental protection has failed before it starts.
20 years ago, the power of business was less, and governments could make agreements to protect the environment. Today that is impossible because business interests won't let states cede an inch. They will fight to the end over whatever scraps they don't manage to destroy in the process.
Billionaire Polluters have compelled scientists who did research into the effects of the Big Spill to hand over their private emails. The scientists fear these will be taken out of context, misinterpreted, and used to attack them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I don't understand the logic of this decision, since the scientists were in no way involved in the events that caused the spill and therefore cannot be expected to have any special information about them.
Humanity's tremendous changes in the ocean mostly go unnoticed, because they are gradual. A book documents with photos how large fish were wiped out, across 30 years. It also shows how protecting fisheries can bring back stocks that are almost gone.
Although the details of fisheries management are complex, the basic idea is simple: give priority to the long term, and the fishermen must adapt to that.
The world's cities are making so much waste that it is hard to deal with.
We need to reduce the world's population.
Although the recall of Gov. Walker failed, one Republican state senator was replaced, so Democrats can now block Walker.
Gravely injured Québec are bitter but determined. One of them lost an eye.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A member of the provincial parliament was arrested along with many peaceful protests in a gratuitous attack on democracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Tien An Men dissident Li Wangyang appears to have been murdered, a year after his release from prison where he spent 21 years.
Human rights groups have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the state-sponsored murder of over 3000 civilians in Colombia.
The US knowingly funded these murders.
Amnesty International calls for Israel to release or charge all the Palestinians imprisoned without trial.
Iran has fabricated 1/3 of its moderately enriched uranium into fuel for a research reactor.
Robert Grenier, former CIA official, says that Obama's lax approach to drone bombings against unidentified targets is only making more enemies.
The US is attacking people who come to rescue the victims of a drone bombing.
This tactic was used by other terrorists too.
South Korea has surrendered to creationism.
The US Supreme Court says thugs can use tasers on anyone, even those who are infirm and not threatening anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This despite the fact that tasers occasionally kill.
A US judge whose job includes issuing digital surveillance orders estimates that 30,000 are issued each year. In most cases the targets are never informed.
Israel destroyed a yogurt factory in Gaza, as well as houses and other businesses.
Michael Morpurgo, who visited Gaza for Save the Children, reports on seeing a child, scavenging ruined buildings, shot by Israelis.
Whoever shot the boy could not avoid seeing he was shooting a child. The fact that missiles are launched from Gaza, though also a war crime, is irrelevant to this issue.
Israel will not prosecute the orthodox rabbis who wrote that it is ok to kill Gentile children to stop them from growing up and killing Jews.
The author thinks that Israel's prohibition of "hate speech" is a good thing, and claims with regret that this decision has effectively made it null and void. I disagree, because that law is censorship. The wrong is not that religious speech is exempt from censorship, but that nonreligious speech is subject to censorship.
While I totally disagree with the views of these rabbis, just as I disagree with the cruel views of right-wing American politicians and Islamists, they all deserve the right to state their views.
Putting those views into practice is another matter. Israeli "settlers" are seizing land from Palestinians to expand their colony, and threatening the neighboring Palestinian children on the way to school.
Colin Powell, whose false accusations paved the way for Bush to invade Iraq, now falsely accuses his subordinates of not correcting them.
Israeli border guards demand to see "suspicious" visitors' personal email.
Just like the US, Israel presents this as protection from "terrorists" but mainly applies it to nonviolent criticism. That, in case anyone has not noticed, is lying.
The recall of Governor Walker has failed.
This is due to companies' money and its power of distraction.
Sri Lanka tortures Tamils denied asylum in the UK for telling about how Sri Lanka tortured them before.
A major Brazilian beef company is using illegally deforested land and stolen indigenous land.
China says that the US embassy in Beijing has no right to publish air pollution readings.
A cardinal in New York condemns gay marriage as "immoral" and against "natural law" is connected with paying pedophile priests to agree to a quiet dismissal.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mountain lilies and hummingbirds depend on each other, but global heating is pushing their cycles out of sync.
Another global heating positive feedback effect: tundra turns quickly into forest and reflects less sunlight.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israelis who built on Palestinian land, without even permission from the Israeli government, are protesting a Supreme Court decision to demolish their buildings.
Israel demolishes dozens or hundreds of Palestinian buildings every year.
A few highly visible crackpots have intimidated the Republican Party and then Obama into failing to prevent global heating.
What makes them so influential is the working of oil company money behind the scenes.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose Senators Inhofe's plan to stop the EPA from limiting mercury pollution from power plants.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell the Senate to insist on the military cuts agreed on last September. Call your senators, and sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
CAFTA has enabled a Canadian mining company running a never-approved mine in El Salvador to attack the Salvadorean state.
The US is using drones to attack Yemeni rebels that are mainly interested in fighting the government of Yemen.
In effect, that means the US is helping to prop up that government.
From Dreams to Drones: Who is the Real Barack Obama?
Peru needs glacier loss monitoring: dire UN warning.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign this petition
to prosecute the banksters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A Kuwaiti was sentenced to prison
for
insulting Islam and for insulting other states.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Two injustices in one.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats in Congress
to stand firm against extending
the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US and Canadian citizens: oppose the plan to negate environmental protection in Canada and harass environmentalist organizations.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone Governor Patrick at (617) 725-4005 and call on him to support a constitutional amendment to overturn the Corporations United decision [spelling intentional].
Tobacco companies are spending millions to defeat a referendum to increase cigarette taxes in California. They will say anything at all, figuring that they can get away with it.
Ideally voters will decide based on studying all the arguments and facts carefully. But if you have not got that time, here's a heuristic: vote against whatever big companies want.
Rwanda appears to be fueling a rebellious armed gang in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Profit-driven surveillance threatens to pressure most people to forfeit “voluntarily” what remains of their privacy rights.
To put legal limits on access to the information collected is not adequate to avoid the harm to our freedom, because even with such limits, the information will be a giant dossier about each person.
Stolen social security numbers are being used to get fake tax refunds from the US government.
Although this causes inconvenience for those whose tax refunds are delayed, it is good for the US as a whole because it puts money into the economy — just what the Republicans have blocked for two years.
What is unfortunate about this is that it encourages lying. It would be better to stimulate the economy by paying people to do useful public works.
Canada's right-wing government plans to nullify environmental planning requirements and harass environmentalist organizations.
A Libyan militia fought with the government over control of Tripoli's airport.
Chinese censorship is working overtime to suppress discussion of the Tien An Men massacre of students.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters commemorating the massacre were arrested, with violence reminiscent of Chicago and New York.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This article says that Uri Avnery oversimplified the situation in his recent article.
I think the point remains valid nonetheless.
Turkish women (and men) protested the plan to effectively ban abortion.
It would be banned after 4 weeks, but as reported, 4 weeks is too early to carry out the procedure.
Palestinian prisoners threaten to renew their hunger strike because Israel has not carried out its agreement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Various Bangladeshis are being prosecuted for insulting the prime minister or making accusations that the prime minister is responsible for crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
These laws contradict freedom of speech; Bangladesh's prime minister deserves to be put on trial for this prosecution.
Proposing a treaty to make ecocide an international crime enforced by the International Criminal Court.
Bhaskar Sunkara was questioned by Canadian border agents because he is a known journalist. Eventually they let him in for a short visit but ordered him not to write anything.
The US is much worse: it requires foreign journalists to get a special visa, and denied entry to a journalist from Australia who didn't have one.
The Libyan SSC, set up to rein in the militias, kidnapped and tortured a prominent human rights defender.
This occurred as he was on a mission for the health ministry to fire a hospital director. This seems to be part of a larger power struggle between the nominal government and the SSC.
How Obama Was Dangerously Naive About STUXNET and Cyberwarfare.
Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction?
Oklahoma doctor Refuses To Provide Rape Victim With Emergency Contraception.
The Turkish president says women who are raped should be forced to have babies.
Thus, both Christianity and Islam inspire oppression of women.
Bruce Schneier, debating Sam Harris, explains why profiling airline passengers makes bad security.
Sam Harris made an exaggerated statement which nonetheless has a kernel of truth:
As bad as Christianity and Judaism have been in the past (and may yet be again), only Muslims reliably work themselves into a killing rage over the mistreatment of a book; only Muslims murder their critics and apostates; only Muslims can be counted upon to riot by the tens of thousands over cartoons; and only Islam, with its doctrines of jihad and martyrdom, is perfectly suited to spawn a global death cult of suicidal terrorists.
The statement is quite an exaggeration. For instance, Muslims in general don't reliably work themselves into a killing rage about mistreatment of a book, or anything else; in fact, most of them never do any such thing. Properly stated, the point is that Islam is the only religion which reliably leads substantial numbers of adherents to into a killing rage about that.
Likewise, "only Muslims murder their critics" is misleading since most Muslims don't murder anyone. It must be replaced with, "Only Islam regularly motivates some adherents to murder its critics." Christianity may not be far behind, though, since it regularly motivates some adherents to murder doctors and condemn pregnant women to death from curable medical problems.
Most Muslims disapprove of terrorism; they believe killing innocent people is a sin. Most Muslims won't riot over cartoons or criticism of their religion, but many advocate censorship of such works. Many Muslims endorse the prohibition on ceasing to be a Muslim, even if they don't support killing those who try. We should not treat all Muslims as terrorists, but we need to press all Muslims to respect the human rights of people who disagree with them.
Lots of Americans' private medical data is being sold off or stolen.
The UK government has been secretly lobbying against renewable energy plans in EU decision-making, on behalf of the fossil fuel companies.
Just as Nixon's men hoped to personally discredit Daniel Ellsberg with stolen psychiatrist's notes, the US tries to personally discredit Julian Assange to distract people from the enormity of criminalizing journalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Nixon wanted to prosecute Ellsberg, too.
The Vatican wants to prosecute Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist who published leaked Vatican letters that reveal apparent cronyism and financial misdeeds.
The funniest political diatribe I recall ever seeing: George Monbiot skewers the UK energy bill that would encourage gas and coal power plants, and the minister who dishonestly champions it.
The UK government is working very hard to disguise its subsidies for nuclear power.
Five Facts That Put America to Shame.
(Many more can be found in the other political notes.)
In Europe: Protest ACTA and the “intellectual property” enforcement directive.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When the term “intellectual property” is used in formulating a law, that almost guarantees it is bad.
Birth control chemicals coming untouched through sewage treatment plants interfere with the sexual maturation of fish, and can cause populations to shrink or disappear. Profitable drug companies don't want to pay to clean this up.
License plate cameras are being installed in New York State, near the Canadian border, by some government agency that officials refuse to identify.
The US ambassador to Australia claims the US "is not interested" in Julian Assange, and that having him in Sweden would not help the US extradite him anyway. Assange's supporters present arguments that this is false.
Parts of the ambassador's statements seem like potential weasel-words: "There is no such thing as a secret warrant" may be true, but there may still be a secret indictment which could be used later to get a non-secret warrant.
It is also possible that the ambassador was intentionally given false information. That is a common tactic of governments. It would be interesting to ask the ambassador if he will resign in protest if that Assange is sent to Sweden and the US then asks to extradite him.
Obama would be ultimately responsible for lying to the ambassador, but he is proud of lying and weaseling.
Pity the Poor Billionaires — taking heat for spending lots of money for bad laws.
Instead of banning large sodas, as New York City has done, it would be better to put a heavy tax on sugary drinks.
Mapping the glaciers of Africa, which are on the way to disappearing in two decades.
The endemic species on these mountains will be forced up to the peaks and then off into extinction by global heating.
Between overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction, humans are transforming the ocean disastrously. Maybe we can save it with firm action.
The article omits the danger of CO2 emissions. CO2 in the ocean turns into carbonic acid, and the increased acidity can wipe out molluscs and the coral reefs that many other species depend on.
A Syrian air force major defected after watching the massacre at Houla.
This leaves no doubt about who was responsible for the massacre.
Uri Avneri says that the Jews in Israel are a self-segregated minority who have nothing in common with most "Jewish" Israelis, so the two should be considered different ethnic groups.
Fazil Say, a Turkish Atheist, faces charges of “publicly insulting religious values”. Censorship is an insult to the human mind.
The UK's revised bill judicial secrecy bill will still suppress justice.
Malaysia has banned Allah, Liberty and Love because it "can deviate Muslims from their faith" and "insulted Islam".
Wherever Muslims have achieved political power, they have used it to intimidate or censor of criticism of their views.
Prisoners in the US are resisting inhumane conditions, with uprisings and with hunger strikes.
Google is trying to give Chinese users information about what searches are likely to be censored by China.
Using the term "kill list" to refer to those killed by drone strikes falsely suggests all the victims were known and selected in advance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government wants to cut subsidies for wind power enough that no more will be built.
This will finish the elimination of renewable energy projects in favor of fossil fuels, resulting in the least green government the UK has ever seen.
Former Egyptian President Mubarak was convicted of one charge that he might well reverse on appeal, and nobody was held responsible for the massacre of 1000 protesters.
Nearly all the profits from cocaine trafficking stay in the rich consuming countries, and are kept in the banks of these countries.
But the US government doesn't dare bother the banks because the banks dominate it. So it concentrates on putting the replaceable little guys in prison.
This shows the folly of prohibiting drugs.
Obama's "drug czar" offers irrational arguments for banning marijuana.
Fortunately, simplistic and misleading drug war rhetoric is losing hold, even in Texas.
Paul Krugman: Austerity is not intended to fix the economic crisis; rather, the crisis provides an opportunity for austerity whose purpose is to screw the non-rich.
Obama's men are proud of the "wiggle words" that allowed Obama to make deceptive promises.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This reminds me of the way Romney supporters admired the way he changes his position.
Why ask which of these two deceivers is better? Vote for Jill Stein, and you can be proud of your vote.
NGOs operating in Haiti with responsibility for water and sanitation have decided not to follow their usual standards.
1/3 of the US high plains will exhaust its ground water in 30 years.
Agriculture there will more or less come to an end.
Part of the reason for this is government corruption: the US sells rights to ground water for a pittance.
Pushing to investigate Sheriff Arpaio's men for killing a prisoner.
Workers have occupied a factory in Chicago and are making progress towards running it as a cooperative.
The US government blocked Florida Republicans' attempt to stop many citizens from voting by being careless in checking their citizenship.
Texas Schools See Big Money In Electronic Tracking Of Students.
This trains students to let Big Brother monitor everything.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act (H.R. 3313, S. 1787) which put a tax of 0.03 percent on Wall Street transactions.
This tiny tax would be enough to reduce the amount of computerized rapid trading, while having no effect on investment.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The IEA says fracking according to the rules it recommends would lead to disastrous global heating. But it buried that in page 91, and the mainstream media have ignored the point — presenting these rules as if they were a solution.
A secret UK government report suggested Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.
Stuxnet was made by the US and was approved personally by Obama.
I don't think such an attack against Iran is necessarily wrong. However, it can backfire.
A carbon tax or energy tax would help reduce budget deficits while doing less harm to the people than spending cuts do.
How the Lieberman-Collins "cybersecurity" bill threatens Internet users' rights.
Calling this "security" is like calling the thugs "security forces": it is security for the state, but it's the opposite of security for the people.
New Mexico has a record-setting fire and it's only the start of June.
Maybe this will convince some thick-headed Republicans in the Southwest that it is past time to do something about the underlying cause.
Brazil's new forest law will pardon illegal deforesters, and do other harm.
A new record CO2 level shows that we are on an accelerating path to disaster.
The bureaucrats meeting to discuss inadequate plans, and not admitting that they still lead to disaster.
The term "technocrat" used in that article is misleading because it implies that technology motivates the decisions. If our politicians were really technocrats, we would probably see a solution being implemented. But they are something much worse than technocrats: they are sellouts to the companies that profit by keeping humanity on the path to disaster.
That article proposes that we lead from below with our own projects. As was recently pointed out, such actions cannot address the problem, because the relentless logic of the market will push emissions elsewhere. Only political policy changes can reduce total emissions. However, local projects might be a way to create the political motivation for the policy changes we need.
Meanwhile, how about putting banksters on trial for attempted negligent mass homicide?
What the ITU plans to do with the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US refuses to confront the problem of its population growth.
The new chief of the Honduran national thugs was suspected of running a death squad before.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
That's the sort of person that the US-backed, coup-installed government would want at the head of its thug force, which does not believe that dissidents or labor organizers have any rights.
The US is getting what it wants from the Honduran state: obedient assistance in the "war on drugs".
Egypt's "emergency" law has expired and won't be renewed, but the dissidents imprisoned under that law have not been freed.
The US is moving step by step into war in Yemen.
US citizens: call on Congress not to ban the US military from trying biofuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The extent of Republican support for the oil companies goes to an absurd extreme. However, the oil companies have bought Democrats too.
Everyone: urge Newark and Michigan to drop the plan to work with Nestle to encourage breastfeeding and healthy eating.
It's like recruiting the fox to run a project for the safety of chickens.
Reducing CO2 emissions would be a tremendous job creator, world wide.
Campaigners in the UK for laws to impede tobacco marketing are receiving threats from irrational tobacco proponents.
The laws being considered would not interfere with buying or selling cigarettes, they would only interfere with the marketing methods used to hook new smokers. Thus, smokers have no reason to object to them. Only the tobacco companies have a reason to object.
I therefore suspect the people making these threats have been indirectly encouraged or funded by the tobacco companies.
The Indian government must stop subsidizing fossil fuel.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, don't allow the Pentagon's propaganda to be used against Americans. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If California votes to label foods with GMOs, the whole US may get the benefit.
An analysis of the ruling against copyright on APIs.
I appreciate this thorough analysis of the ruling, but I take objection to one statement made in passing: "If Oracle wanted that, it should have gone for a patent."
Nobody should have the kind of power that software patents impose, and nobody "should" try to get such power. What should happen is the abolition of software patents.
Harsh discipline in California schools is doing harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Chicago officials and media are praising the thugs for "restraint and tolerance" because they didn't riot the way they did in 1968.
What a low standard.
North Carolina legislators want to require the state to underestimate sea level rise.
An interesting approach to global heating: require governments to pretend it is not happening.
The Orwellian basis of US drone attacks, imprisonment without trial, and other assaults on human rights: redefine terms so as to make human rights commitments meaningless.
The judge in Oracle vs Google ruled that the Java APIs (and APIs in general) are not copyrightable.
I expect Oracle will appeal, so the battle is not over.
House members hear why ITU can't be trusted with Internet regulation.
The oppression of Islamic law: Intisar Sharif Abdallah was sentenced to death for adultery.
Using evidence obtained by torture is an additional injustice. Of course, that is not limited to Islamic law: the US is trying to do that in Guantanamo. But it is just as bad in Sudan.
An interview with an Anonymous protester fighting Internet censorship in India.
The Defense of Marriage Act (which denied federal recognition to gay marriage) has been declared unconstitutional.
Spanish indignados have launched a distributed campaign to find evidence to prove the guilt of officials responsible for the crisis.
US citizens: call on the EPA to block a giant mine in Alaska which would generate billions of tons of toxic waste.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose two CISPA-like bills: the Cybersecurity Act and SECURE IT Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
China tortures Tibetans to pressure them to make declarations of loyalty.
500 lawyers protested in Montreal against the anti-protest law.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When US companies are to blame for workers' deaths, OSHA is usually not allowed to impose fines big enough to make the companies change.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama personally directs US drone attacks to kill specific people.
The US bombing policy violates US law and international law (the Geneva conventions).
The US government presumes all men who were killed by bombing are “militants”. That is how the US reaches the conclusion that just about everyone killed is a "militant".
Hollande plans to cap the salaries of executives of state-owned companies, as well as increasing taxes for the rich to a reasonable level.
The US needs a president more like him.
Israel's leading investigative journalist, Uri Blau, is on trial for publishing leaked documents that proved Israeli officials preferred to kill Palestinians rather than arrest them.
The officials ought to be on trial, not the person who exposed them.
US citizens: Phone Obama and insist on trying to prosecute banksters.
US citizens (and maybe others): tell Clinton to make human rights a priority in the US's relationship with China.
Everyone: sign this petition to greatly increase the UN monitors in Syria.
It is not guaranteed to help, but it won't hurt so there is no reason not to try.
US citizens: call on the attorney general to block the attempt in Florida to disenfranchise thousands of (mostly Democratic) voters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US has the highest child poverty rate among developed countries.
The US congress is suspicious of the ITU's attempt to take control of the Internet.
I agree — it is very scary.
Human Rights Watch condemns Israel's prosecution of nonviolent protest leader Bassem Tamimi, as well as Belarus's prosecution of human rights lawyer Oleg Volchek.
The EU is trying to force Germany to implement the directive for storing data about each person's phone calls and internet contacts.
I've been told that Germany rejected this because it is unconstitutional.
Explaining the issue of search neutrality.
Murdoch's News Corp. (which owns the Wall Street Journal) is a member of ALEC.
Everyone: Phone Kentucky Fried Chicken to criticize its rainforest destruction policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to set up a do-not-kill list.
UK judges stretched the law with all their strength to find an excuse to deliver Assange to Sweden.
The French Internet surveillance systems company Amesys is being investigated in France for supplying surveillance machines to Gaddafi. Similar machines were installed in Tunisia, which is why I participated in an exorcism at Bull headquarters there. Amesys did not belong to Bull when those machines were installed, but I'm told Bull did the installation. This system in Tunisia is still operating.
Malaysia's new law says people accused of sending hate messages are guilty unless they prove they are innocent (which is often impossible).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is a secondary additional reason why it is wrong to punish people for the views they state, even views we don't like.
Tibetans continue burning themselves to death as a protest against Chinese tyranny and oppression.
Rhode Island is moving to decriminalize possession of marijuana.
A rookie in Toronto thought he had joined the Police Department, and did not realize he was supposed to act like a member of a gang.
Haiti's US-installed government wants to hand off mineral riches to rich foreigners. If this occurs, a few lucky local inhabitants will get horrible jobs. The rest will get only the pollution
Many large US companies secretly fund global heating denial although they pretend not to agree with it.
I suspect they are also paying candidates to do nothing.
Apple's code of conduct has made little difference in Foxconn.
The only thing that would make a difference is to show a willingness to stop buying from factories that treat workers badly.
Oppressive laws failed to discourage Swedes from sharing.
Let's make sure to counteract any social pressure that says that sharing is bad.
US citizens: sign this petition to Obama against "modernizing" (and undermining) poultry inspection.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to end the Bush tax cuts for people with incomes over $250,000.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
How rich people and rich companies really spend their money.
Obama tries to wind down large overt wars, but starts many quiet hidden ones.
Israel arrested the founder of the Palestinian Prisoner TV channel, and confiscated its equipment, giving no reason.
The UK decided to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Sweden has an arrangement to hand people over to the US without much legal protection.
The modern monetary system bloats the interest on the national debt of any country.
US antiabortionists (who hate women's rights) are trying to use rarely-practiced sex selection as a lever against abortion rights.
There's nothing wrong with deciding about abortion based on the sex of the fetus. Women should be free to do that. The prejudice against women in some societies is nasty and foolish, but that's no reason to restrict abortion rights.
Bassem Tamimi was freed after receiving a suspended sentence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is good that he is free and can continue to organize nonviolent protests, but Israel really ought to stop bullying teenagers into giving false testimony.
The Prime Minister of Turkey wants to ban abortion so as to make the population increase, thinking this will boost the economy.
What he will get, if he succeeds, is lots of unemployed young people, low wages, increased carbon emissions, and political instability.
Tunisia: Injured of the Uprising Urgently Need Care.
17 Months On, Government Failing Victims of Police Gunfire.
The people of Madrid have started a permanent noisemaking protest outside the headquarters of a bank that has refused to let pensioners move their savings to less volatile accounts.
I have to acknowledge that most people should not have put their money in what is effectively a stock mutual fund. They, like many others, made the assumption that stocks go up and not down. However, I suspect the banks encouraged them to make this assumption and the state probably did nothing to stop them, so the principal responsibility lies with them.
Israel is cutting back on Gaza's fuel supply, endangering water supply and sewage handling.
Israel is cheating on the agreement it made with Palestinian hunger strikers about imprisonment without trial.
While the continued imprisonment without trial is the greatest evil, giving Gazan prisoners fewer and shorter family visits than other Palestinian prisoners is the epitome of nastiness, because there is no plausible motive for it except malice.
Mahmoud al-Sarsak, imprisoned in Israel for two years without trial, has been on hunger strike for over 70 days and is losing consciousness.
Fanatical Israeli colonists in the west bank set fire to a Palestinian olive grove, then shot at the farmers who tried to put out the fire.
One of them is reported badly wounded.
The price of natural gas obtained by fracking could be so low that it kills renewable energy.
Of course, the price of the gas won't include the cost of polluted water supplies and sick people. Worse, it won't take account of the certainty of global disaster due to global heating, until it is too late to avoid that.
The available known resources of fossil fuel are far larger than what we dare burn. Avoiding disaster requires preventing most of that fuel from being burnt.
IKEA is cutting down old growth forests in Russia.
Tuna near the US west coast have radioactive cesium from Fukushima.
The disaster released a tremendous amount of radioactive material into an even more tremendous ocean. The density in the water is tiny, but living organisms concentrate it. The amount in these tuna is not dangerous, but each species is a different case, so all the species people eat may need to be tested.
If another larger disaster happens — for instance, if another earthquake or tsunami knocks down reactor 4's spent fuel — another release 10 times larger could easily occur, and that would bring the levels in tuna up to the current safety standard.
A Thai webmaster was convicted of the crime of not deleting comments that criticized the king.
The fact that she was given a suspended sentence does not excuse this unjust law. Thailand has failed the test for freedom of expression, and the king cannot evade the responsibility for this.
Many cities have set up microphones to detect and localize gunshots. But they can also record conversations on the street.
As long as these systems really only record when there is a gunshot, I think they are acceptable. But what guarantees that this will remain so?
If a city uses the company's service, in effect they are using Software as a Service. This means that the city and its citizens must trust the company not to listen to them.
Microsoft and SONY will make users sign contracts barring class-action lawsuits.
The Supreme Court decision which permitted this reflects the right-wing composition of the court, which is in favor of companies against people. Does anyone know whether the proposed amendment that human rights don't apply to corporations would reverse this decision?
Natural gas companies scored a great victory by getting the EU to label natural gas as “green”.
This comes on the heels of the discovery that leaking methane makes natural gas as bad as coal.
A woman who insulted passengers on the train in London was sentenced to prison.
Ms Woodhouse insulted people with no grounds, which is nasty as well as foolish. She also expressed naive political views. For instance, she condemns other Britons for using some of the insufficient public housing instead of condemning the government for allowing public housing to become scarce.
But that is no grounds for jailing someone. Imprisoning people for their opinions is tyranny.
A Russian journalist was lured onto the street and stabbed.
Unusually, this may have been done by an Islamist instead of by the usual government-related suspects.
Putting a monetary value on natural resources can backfire disastrously: it provides an excuse to let the rich buy them and destroy them.
To value a tropical forest at 30 million dollars can help protect the environment if it convinces the wealthy world to pay a million dollars a year to preserve the forest. But if that means allowing the wealthy world to pay 30 million to buy the forest and destroy it, it is does harm.
The idea of dividing up the total value of forests among the existing forest area is misguided because, if we lose half the existing forest, the remaining half will be even more precious than it is now.
To prevent public anger towards the way NATO soldiers behave, NATO has banned them from taking photos.
Forbidden file sharing spreads information in North Korea about what life is like outside.
The real difference between state-imposed poverty in North Korea and South Korea is great, but South Korean TV shows might give an exaggerated picture if they follow the same practice as the US: "ordinary" people on TV live in houses that are too expensive for ordinary Americans.
Florida is again trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
It was by disenfranchising 50,000 legitimate votes (mostly Democratic) that Dubya stole in the election in 2000.
The UAE paid lots of money to the Comoros Islands to give citizenship to stateless residents of the UAE. Now dissidents are being deported there.
Pakistani men and women were sentenced to death by an extremist cleric because they were accused of dancing together at a wedding.
The official says the accusation was false, but what difference should that make? These clerics belong in prison either way.
50,000 Moroccans protested against Islamist government.
Citizens defeated an ALEC deregulation bill in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in parallel.
A state-controlled bank in the UK lent around 60 billion dollars for fossil fuel projects in the past six months.
The bank's responses amount to "Others do it too" and "It will be hard to stop." Neither of which is a valid excuse.
Since frackers don't collect the escaping methane, fracking contributes more to global heating than was previously thought.
The government of Peru fought protests against a large mine. The local people have evidence that it pollutes their rivers.
The state ought to suspend the mine and investigate whether the pollution really comes from there. If it does, the mine should be confiscated and someone else should have a chance to run it better.
Japan's former PM blames regulatory capture of the nuclear safety agency by business for the government's helplessness at the time of the Fukushima disaster.
Facebook's phone will give Facebook total information about the user's actions.
Last Friday Germany got 1/3 of its electricity from solar power.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This can't be done every day, because some days are cloudy. But it demonstrates that renewables can do the job when a large effort is made to install them.
Turning off nuclear power plants means more carbon emission in the short run, but what happens in the long run depends on many policy decisions.
Obama and Romney are using tracking of people's browsing in order to send them campaign messages.
The UK's new energy policy pretends to reduce CO2 from electric generation while in fact abandoning the effort.
Even new coal plants can be built, as long as they will supposedly be used with carbon capture some day (if that ever works).
If you're committed to driving head on into a wall, why not speed up?
The current system of manufacturing, subcontracting at every level, makes it almost impossible to avoid sweatshop manufacturing and exploitative mining.
I suspect this is no coincidence. Subcontracting is the consequence of business globalization, and business globalization was intentionally constructed by treaties and other state policies that were designed to favor business. Business got what it wanted, and what it wanted was to push production into sweatshops.
The fragmentation of subcontracting does harm in other ways, too. For instance, it interferes with pressuring manufacturers to sell machines that we can support with free software.
I think the remedy is to undo the policy changes and treaties that created this system of manufacturing. We should not allow businesses to make workers in the US, China and Vietnam compete on pay.
Afghan women fear that the Taliban will attack their rights, but put no faith in Karzai, so those who can are fleeing.
If they were prepared to arm themselves to fight the Taliban, they might give Afghanistan what it now lacks: committed, idealistic opposition to the Taliban.
The European austerity pact requires countries to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP each year. To try to do this by paying back the debt is hopeless, since that implies a spending cut which reduces GDP and increases that ratio.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
South Africa plans to require Israel to indicate which products are exported from colonies in the West Bank, European countries are considering a similar move.
It appears that B'liar cosied up to Murdoch and his media empire in much the same was as the Tories have done.
I think this demonstrates the danger of media concentration. Future politicians will follow the same path as long as the Murdoch empire (or its successor) has so much power. They will simply find cleverer ways to disguise it.
The real solution is to break up media empires.
The DEA is installing license plate scanners on major highways in the US southwest. All cars that pass get recorded.
We are fortunate that in Utah some legislators have made a stink, rather than surrendering as in Texas and California.
TED refused to post Nick Hanauer's talk which refuted the 1%'s claim to be the "job creators".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the talk.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
TED subsequently posted the talk after public criticism.
Greg Palast describes how BP financed a coup in Azerbaijan to take control of the country's oil, and what life there is like under the corrupt Aliyev family that is allied with BP.
Compare this with Iran's history, the overthrow of Mossadegh which led to the oppressive Shah — whose oppression inspired the reaction that led to the even more oppressive Islamic Republic.
Remnants of Haiti's former army marched in the capital.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ezili Danto says this title represents colonial media's misleading bias, and her title would be "Martelly Militia, alongside US occupiers behind UN guns, march in the Haiti capital."
It is not clear who is really behind this or who is on what side.
A long list of ways in which privacy is being attacked by digital technology.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Many of them are things you can still refuse...but if you don't organize to keep the alternatives, they will disappear.
How Apple and Microsoft set up a giant patent troll.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This article confusingly treats "intellectual property" as a synonym for patents. That term should never be used because it spreads confusion.
Nortel got these patents "for defense", but they are being used for parasitism. If you work for a company that asks you to apply for patents "for defense", demand a deal like the one Twitter recently began offering, which promises to use them only for defense.
UK dissidents who were arrested preemptively are suing to stop thugs from doing likewise in the future.
Rich Arab countries are trying to arm Syrian rebels, with US help, and they provoke Assad's army into responding with massacres.
This does not excuse the massacres; Assad and his men are responsible for what they do, and Assad's family members seem to be personally involved. But it does mean that the rebels are playing with civilians lives.
The article says "it is thought" that jihadis are responsible for the May 10 bombing in Damascus, but those who think this must not have paid attention to the defectors who say it was Assad's false flag operation.
A NATO air strike killed 8 people in a family in Afghanistan.
The Taliban kill civilians too, even more of them, but Afghans resent the US bombings more. Why this bias? Why don't the killings of civilians by the Taliban make Afghans support Karzai?
Or perhaps the Taliban kill selected civilians that they suspect of collaborating with Karzai and NATO, and that gives civilians a way to be safe from them. But there is no way to be safe from NATO since it kills civilians randomly.
I don't know the answer, but it's clear that Karzai's lack of real loyalty is an important part of it. And that is why the US can't win in Afghanistan. It can only prop Karzai up.
The US government has dragged its heels in searching its files for evidence that might help Bradley Manning in his trial.
I don't think the trial can go forward without doing this, so why delay? Perhaps the government wants to delay the result of the trial. Perhaps till after the presidential election? That might make sense, but the trial was not expected to end before the election anyway. Thus, I can't see a plausible answer to this question.
The TSA broke a diabetic's insulin pump.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
One of the comments is from another person who uses an insulin pump, who wrote, "I have an insulin pump, and twice I have had to go through security with it, both times when I insisted on a manual inspection of my insulin supplies and a pat down due to my pump I was refused".
The EU is talking about forcing all countries to issue digital national ID cards.
Simply to have national ID cards is already an injustice.
The UK government wants to force more of the unemployed to work without pay.
This is supposed to teach them the right attitude to hold a job. That would make sense if the UK had lots of jobs offers but nobody ready and able to fill them. However, it does nothing about the real problem, which is a lack of job offers. It could even make that worse, since the companies that get work done for nothing might otherwise have hired people to do part of that work.
So it's simply a way of blaming and attacking the victims of austerity, while helping business yet again.
The New Economy movement is trying to reform the US economy from below.
Obama's rigid negotiating stance makes a deal with Iran difficult.
The Commencement Address That Won't Be Given.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
"Faster Than We Thought": An Epitaph for Planet Earth.
Methane is already leaking out of the Arctic permafrost, and as the Earth heats up, there is a danger this will release so much methane that it adds tremendously to global heating.
When Obama said he would be “transformative” for the environment, he seems to have meant he would transform our coasts into an oily mess and our land into a desert.
Obama won't be much less bad than Romney. The only candidate worth voting for is Jill Stein.
Census objectors in the UK will be allowed to sue to avoid answering intrusive questions.
They point to the risk that US companies involved in the UK census might be compelled by the U SAP AT RIOT Act to hand the data over to the US government.
It is clearly wrong for the UK to allow foreign companies to have any role in the census.
Secular Touareg rebels gave their support to establishing an Islamic (i.e., oppressive) state in northern Mali.
Meanwhile, the coup-created government of Mali is arresting and disappearing journalists.
Tony B'liar has taken a job doing publicity for the dictator of Kazakhstan.
The writer is naive to believe that the conquest and occupation of Iraq was a sincere campaign for democracy, but that doesn't invalidate the other points.
50 years after the publication of Silent Spring, we are damaging the environment more than ever, and the industrial forces that tried to smear Rachel Carson have more political power over our governments than they did then.
EU farm policies that eliminate meadows and wetlands devastate wildlife, in particular birds.
Although these bird species are hardly endangered, I'm sure that this is just one sign of general damage to nature, and it will have other effects too.
The pope's butler leaked secret Vatican documents to expose Vatican lies.
The Vatican, like the US, is more interested in punishing the people who reveal its crimes than in punishing the guilty.
I have seen no reports of the scandals themselves. Those are the more important issue. Can anyone find them?
Assad's regime launched an 18-hour attack on a town, killing many civilians.
It is clear that the UN's cease fire does not restrain him.
Meanwhile, the report that Assad released Islamist prisoners in November suggests that he sought to create the sectarian aspect to the resistance, which he claimed existed.
Chen Guangcheng's brother has disappeared, and the natural suspicion is foul play by the thugs.
Call on governments to require companies to offer a choice of operating systems for PCs.
Carbon aerosols and ozone, aided by greenhouse gases, are pushing the northward expansion of the tropics into the Northern Hemisphere.
I believe this means that the border, which is a parallel of latitude, between the easterly tropical Trade Winds and the temperate zone Prevailing Westerlies is shifting north.
The result is desertification of large areas.
Look at what can be deduced just from the records of your phone calls and your emails.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This information should not be retained without a search warrant.
Shafilea Ahmed was murdered by her parents for her choice of clothing and boyfriends.
Her brother and sisters watched as they killer her, and one sister has testified in court against them.
The two vicious attitudes underlying this murder are treating women as property, and brutal punishment. These are also the basis of Islamic law, which is cruelty incarnate.
China's auxiliary thugs, the chengguan, attack people on the street, arrest and jail them (without any authority to do so), and steal their goods.
Entrapped! Confessions of a Violent Consumerist.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
After 8500 accusations of corruption in the UK, only 13 thugs were convicted.
Now some of the anti-corruption squad are accused of taking bribes.
To avoid disaster if another earthquake or tsunami strikes Fukushima, plans to secure the highly radioactive used fuel rods need to be speeded up.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
CO2 emissions increased by 1 billion tons in 2011, to set a record.
This is because states have failed to implement policies to reduce emissions. Some have pledged to do so but did not carry out the pledges.
Romney wants to reform student loans to benefit the lenders. As for students, if they need loans they aren't rich enough to matter to him.
The danger of extreme traffic enforcement — based on tracking of cars.
This is not the worst of the consequences of tracking car travel. The worst danger is the threat to dissidents posed by recording everywhere people go.
Therefore, if this helps build anger against automatic tracking, we should consider that a plus.
Refuting some of the vague claims that purport to prove that Iran is developing nuclear weapons now.
I find it implausible that Iran would brave so much pressure and sanctions to do its own uranium enrichment if it didn't have something to do with making nuclear weapons. However, I'm persuaded by reports already cited here that Iran is not yet trying to build them, and the idea that Iran aims to be ready to design and build them and stop there seems like a plausible interpretation.
Tennessee allows thugs to take people's money based on vague suspicions, with no hearing (let alone trial).
Civil forfeiture has been a pervasive problem in the US, and I doubt Tennessee is the only state which carries out such injustice.
I've been told that thugs in the UK are authorized to presume that anyone carrying more than 200 pounds got them from a crime, and confiscate them. Would any tourist travel with less than 200 pounds?
Egyptians will have to choose between the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate and a former general.
African Voices Join With UK Farmers: GM Is a False Solution to Hunger.
Genetically modified organisms are not inherently bad. They can have biological harmful effects, but that is not inevitable. However, if farmers cannot freely breed them, they trample the farmers' rights, and that is what eliminates biodiversity. The cost of buying seed plus the chemicals they need puts farmers in danger of going broke and losing their land.
This is enough reason to ban them.
President Rousseff vetoed the worst parts of the Brazilian forest unprotection law, but allowed some parts to go ahead.
A whistleblower says one of the companies to which the UK is privatizing NHS operations has lied about its services.
Although the UK is not privatizing the NHS as such, contracting its operations to companies is still a form of privatization. Privatizing government operations, when it does not result in competition for the end user, is wrong in general.
The privatizers claim that businesses will increase efficiency, but in practice their profit usually comes from skimping on service, from charging more, from shafting the employees, or from fraud.
Such privatization is therefore a form of corruption, and when it has been done, it must be reversed.
The US-backed coup-installed government of Honduras said it was investigating the shooting that killed or wounded 8 boat passengers, but they don't seem to have tried very hard, since they didn't find the wounded passengers in the hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Reducing one's personal carbon footprint (or pressuring someone else to do so) is unlikely to have a big effect under any sort of market system, since a reduction in demand for petrol here will reduce the price and lead to more sales somewhere else.
What's needed is to take global actions that will reduce the total emissions.
That writer proposes the global action of sequestering as much CO2 as is emitted. That's one way to do it (though it wouldn't cover methane emissions, which also contribute to global heating), but as far as I know such sequestration is only in its experimental stages.
A sufficiently high tax on greenhouse gas emissions could also do the job. The money could be spent on sequestration if and when that technology is ready, but it would discourage consumption right away.
Cap-and-trade could do it too, if the system is set up so as to first limit and later reduce the net allowed emissions. Anyone doing sequestration could sell emission credits, and the eventual result would fairly similar in practice to what the writer proposed: most activities doing emissions would have to buy emission credit from sequestration.
Unfortunately, international negotiations about ending global heating have once again failed, apparently because the governments did not really want a deal.
Vint Cerf's statement how the ITU threatens freedom on the Internet.
When governments collect personal data, government employees frequently look at it for personal reasons.
This evidence is from the UK, but it happens in the US too, which reaffirms that the only way to prevent abuse of data is not to collect it.
US citizens: tell Obama and your senators to fight imprisonment without trial.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The WHO says that most people in the area around Fukushima got so little radiation that it won't significantly affect their health.
Note that this could be true even if a thousand of them are likely to die from it eventually, because that would be a small fraction of the people in the area.
Thousands of garment workers are on strike against a large factory in Phnom Penh.
The Senate Armed Service Committee voted to spend $90 million on tanks that the army does not need.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The stated purpose is to keep the plant open, but the army doesn't want to buy any more. So why not close the plant? It's not as if the US faced a threat of attack from a powerful tank army. This is only a cover reason, of course, but it's interesting that such a flimsy one is considered sufficient.
Spanish students and teachers from all levels of school went on strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hot US temperatures for the past 3 months have fueled major forest fires earlier than the usual fire season.
In ten years it will be considerably worse.
On Wednesday, thugs in Montreal arrested 500 protesters after besieging them.
They cited a new law that more or less bans protests. This law has motivated many more people to join the protests.
On Thursday, the thugs seem to have learned a lesson: they didn't try to enforce this law.
However, people should continue massive protests until the law is repealed.
A doctor in Spain who carelessly failed to abort a fetus has been held liable to pay for raising the child that was born as a result.
This seems fair to me.
Supporters of Bradley Manning, and journalists, have petitioned to make his trial more transparent.
One can guess the reason it isn't transparent is to partly conceal the general injustice of military trials.
Here's an article by one petitioner.
Chen Guangcheng's nephew as been charged with manslaughter after resisting torturers.
Israel offered compensation but no apology for the killing of unarmed activists trying to bring the Mavi Marmara to Gaza. The victims' relatives rejected it, and the Turkish state also says that it is inadequate without an apology.
Los Angeles will ban supermarkets from handing out plastic bags.
However, we still need to deal with the other levels of packaging that food tends to come in.
The officers who ran a container ship aground near New Zealand by cutting corners, and fouled many miles of beaches with fuel, have been sentenced to prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
That punishment is deserved, but if New Zealand wants to prevent repetition, it needs to punish every captain that does this — not just when there is an accident.
Nuclear negotiations with Iran have begun, but Iran offered no serious concessions. and the western powers didn't offer enough either.
The Dictator's Practical Internet Guide to Power Retention.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It's like an Internet appendix for The Prince.
An exercise for readers who live in a state that isn't normally considered a dictatorship: which of these methods are being practiced or proposed in your country?
US citizens: phone your representatives, if they are Democrats, and call on them to refuse absolutely to extend Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Senate version of CISPA.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the town where Sergeant Bales shot several civilians, an unidentified US officer threatened reprisals against civilians if another Taliban mine was exploded.
That's the way that war is fought. The Taliban do it too. Keeping Karzai in power can't justify sinking to that level.
New York Judge Reichbach begs the state to legalize medical marijuana.
Dentistry companies are doing unnecessary dental work on US children in school, and bilking the government for it.
This is the result of allowing private businesses to carry out public work.
New York thugs tried to frame journalist student Alexander Arbuckle, who filmed a protest to document how professional and law-abiding the thugs were. He has been acquitted after presenting proof that the thugs lied.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I hope Arbuckle's exposure to the dark side of the thug has taught him not to think positively of them.
Meanwhile, where are the prosecutions for perjury? The thugs will continue what they called "testilying" until they cease to enjoy impunity when they lie.
Byron Sonne, persecuted by thugs and prosecutors who twisted innocent facts into crimes, was found not guilty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
We can't expect this one failure to dissuade governments from trying it again. It came pretty close to success, and even failing, did Sonne great harm (the loss of his marriage, and a year in jail).
A similar exaggeration and distortion campaign is now under way in Chicago, and since it alleges “terrorism”, they may have an easier chance of arranging an unfair trial.
The Irish national thug department is harassing and threatening journalists trying to catch thugs who have leaked information to the public.
Murder by treaty: as Bayer sues to block India's compulsory license for a cancer drug, Obama is trying to make the TPP forbid that practice.
The WTO is also murder by treaty; the US used it to make India to change its old, wise patent law, which allowed patenting improved methods to make drugs but did not allow patenting drugs. This encouraged the sort of research that India and other poor countries really need.
Obama's idea of "help" for Africa consists of helping the megacorporations take control of agriculture, but organic farming techniques are cheaper and can work better.
The African farmers may go broke as many Indian farmers did. I expect the result will be that megacorporations buy their land. Instead of killing themselves, as the destitute Indian farmers do, these destitute farmers might pick up guns and fight back.
Azerbaijan is hosting the prestigious Eurovision contest, and arrested protesters who shouted “freedom” outside the building.
Azerbaijan also preemptively arrested opposition leaders in advance, but instead of calling them “terrorists” as in Chicago, it just gave one of them a fine for “disobeying thugs' orders”, which is also a common excuse in the US for punishing protesters and halting protests.
US citizens: Tell Congress to end the $30 million per day given to fossil fuel polluters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose S.1100, the hypocritically named "Keeping Politics out of Federal Contracting Act", which would ban the president from requiring federal contractors to disclose their spending on electioneering.
Obama has not done this, despite many requests. This reflects the fact that he's on their side. But people are trying to pressure him to do it, so we need to keep Congress from blocking it.
Sick of being kept in the dark about TPP negotiations Senator Wyden proposed a bill to require the USTR to provide full information to all members of Congress.
He ought to go even further and block the US from participating in the TPP negotiations at all.
Occupy Wall Street has sued New York City over the books and computers that the thugs confiscated when they attacked the encampment.
Sea Shepherd is using the arrest of Paul Watson to campaign against shark finning.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support a bill to stop rewarding companies that ship jobs out of the US and start rewarding those that go the other way.
In the US: tell PBS it should stop letting companies use PBS shows for marketing.
PBS sold Chick-fil-A the right to use a PBS kids' show to market food to kids.
I am not surprised that PBS did this, because it has no principled stand on the matter. (Neither does NPR, even though it has not gone as far down the path of sellout.)
An organization that wants to get funds from companies and not be corrupted must draw a line and refuse to cross it. For the FSF, the line is that we will never present a nonfree program as a solution to any problem. Nonfree programs are the problem, not the solution.
An Atlanta region thug kicked a woman in the belly as she was trying to calm her brother. The police department said this was ok.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I don't think it matters that she was 9 months pregnant. It is wrong to do that to anyone.
Other thugs in the same town are being prosecuted for their
violence against helpless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The violence in Yemen must be understood against the background of a food shortage in which 10 million people don't have enough to eat.
It seems that this food shortage is permanent: Yemen cannot feed its population. The global price of food is likely to keep increasing (because of global heating, soil exhaustion, and other excesses of human activity), so the problem won't go away. A long-term solution must include birth reduction, to bring Yemen's population down to the number the country can support.
People who cannot feed their families should not have more children. It is inhumane to stand aside and let them starve, but it is self-defeating to help them make the problem bigger.
This suggests making the offer, "We will feed you for the rest of your life if you get sterilized now, but if you want to have children you're on your own."
Israel has discovered that 10 seconds of shooting protesters can outweigh hours of not shooting protesters, in the judgment of many.
What's amazing is the idea that there is something misguided about that judgment. Imagine a person on trial for shooting someone who argued, in court, "It's ok that I shot him, because at that point I hadn't shot anyone for many hours."
Two years ago, the Tunisian state censored books that criticized the regime. Now it censors books that criticize Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Censorship also affects broadcasters and writers. A cartoonist had to flee into exile. I hope Interpol won't help Tunisian censors get their hands on him.
TV broadcasters are trying to crush a service that rents users a remote TV antenna that gets good reception.
While I agree with the EFF that this should not be illegal, but I see something that might make it ethically unacceptable. Does the service use DRM to communicate with the user? That should be illegal.
Afridi, who ran a vaccination campaign as a front to help the US find Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison in Pakistan.
The reason that campaign was wrong is that it spread distrust of vaccination campaigns. That could impede the eradication of polio, since one of the few remaining areas where polio is endemic is in Pakistan/Afghanistan.
However, 33 years in prison is too much. It smacks of endorsing al Qa'ida, and Pakistan cannot do that and present itself as being in the right.
US citizens: oppose the plan to weaken the Clean Water Act.
Everyone: tell Kentucky Fried Chicken to stop buying from Asian Pulp and Paper, rainforest destroyer.
A Perfect Storm: How Government Will Dictate Your Search Results.
The fraudulent Facebook IPO shows that we need stricter regulation of IPOS.
The recent JOBS bill, which reduced government regulation of companies, facilitates such fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
New York State legislators propose banning anonymous Internet postings.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to support cutting aid to the Honduran insecurity forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The "War on Terror" Guarantee: Profit and Destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Bogus feats department: a man plans to "swim across the Atlantic", swimming only by day an sleeping on a boat each night.
This is like running a marathon, one mile a day.
I don't think a person can honestly claim to have swum across any particular body of water if he gets onto a boat sometimes. The only honest way to do this feat would be if you stay in the water all the way across. That might be difficult, even impossible without some better methods for resting. Being difficult is the point.
Facebook is accused of cheating some investors in its IPO.
Environmental organizations say, protect Antarctic ocean biosystems before we destroy them.
Renewable electric generation is subsidized in Germany, but the benefits to the country of cheap electricity and low pollution make up for the subsidy.
Wounded people in Bahrain dare not go to the hospital.
Bassem al-Tamimi, organizer of nonviolent protests, was convicted by an Israeli court based on evidence coerced from a 15-year-old.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Unjust governments occasionally admit they have imprisoned someone for political opposition, when they don't see a need to deny that they are tyrannical regimes. But more often they do wish to keep up the pretense. So instead of imprisoning someone for opposition, they fabricate evidence to convict the dissident of what pretends to be uncontroversially criminal. In Chicago, now, it's "terrorism".
Israeli colonists attacked a Palestinian village, first with stones, then with guns. Watching Israeli soldiers did nothing.
Kucinich: NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan is Not Ending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A school in Australia admits putting malware in the computers that students take home, to spy on them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The article doesn't mention that these computers run Windows, which is malware due to spy features as well as other reasons.
An interview with a National Lawyers Guild lawyer who works for the protesters who have been framed in Chicago for "terrorism".
In the US as elsewhere, when a government says "terrorists", read "dissidents". When a law or measure is proposed to punish "terrorism" or support for "terrorism", read "political opposition".
The state uses this lie to create an excuse for its own violence. There was a real danger of violence in Chicago these past days, but it came from the thugs, not from protesters.
A "burn pit" incinerator next to Bagram airfield causes breathing problems for the soldiers there, and some might have life-long lung and heart problems.
The campaign to establish universal health care in Oregon.
Ten percent of all carbon stored annual in the ocean is stored by seagrass meadows, but humanity is busy destroying them.
A die-in protest around Boeing headquarters.
Protesters accuse Boeing of supporting war, aiding torture and oppression, while trashing the environment, busting unions, and taking subsidies while paying no federal income taxes.
Citizens of California: support the bill
to reduce penalties for possession
of forbidden drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Possession of drugs for personal use should not be a crime at all. There are some drugs I think it is foolish to use, but that is no reason to arrest people who use them.
"Tea party" Republicans who criticized bank bailouts in their campaigns are firm supporters of the banksters now that they are in Congress.
The Gates Foundation is promoting a scheme with connections with Monsanto to "help" Africa by introducing technology that African farmers can't afford.
Assad's men shot 83 captives after telling them to "run for it".
Let's end polluter welfare: instead of cutting aid to the poor, cut aid to rich fossil fuel companies.
An appeals court ruled that the CIA can conceal information about its illegal methods of interrogation (i.e., torture).
Ethan Kaplan, former record company executive, says it that more file sharing leads to more sales, and that this is obvious.
Seth Godin: the US system of public education was designed to mass-produce workers for mass production jobs that have left the US. It does this through fear and tyranny.
It needs change, not just in methods, but in goals.
This relates to John Holt's criticism of the compulsory public school as a sort of prison that crushes the spirit. (See How Children Fail, which may still be on sale from the organization he founded. Don't buy it from amazon!)
Here are URLs for two of John Holt's books
iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Holt_How_Children_Fail.pdf
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys from Trash/Resources/books/insteadofeducation.pdf
John Gatto explains
the real curriculum of most US schools as six basic
lessons
and
describes four class-variants of public education
for students of various social classes.
The kind of education that helps people think critically and clearly
is offered mainly to the children of the elite.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I had a small taste of it in a public high school, in an advanced placement history course. But that was the rare exception, even in New York City.
I disagree with Godin on one side point which I think is worth mentioning. Godin argues that since manufacturing and mass activity jobs have mostly moved out of America, and those that remain are lousy hourly pay jobs, people should all aim for the sort of job that calls for creativity.
Society could benefit from more people ready to be creative, and if you're like me you will want work of that kind. But not everyone has the talent for this, not everyone wants to do it, and a lot of the work that's needed isn't creative. So if everyone did look for creative jobs, only a fraction could get them. That is a solution for some, but not for all.
I think society needs to be arranged so that the people who can't do creative work can have a decent life too.
Alas, the article mentions the Khan Academy, which makes available nonfree educational videos on a site that uses Flash.
Vint Cerf, a leader in the launch of the Internet, warns that the ITU would try to destroy it.
The article uses the confusing term “intellectual property”, but without attributing it to Cerf. I wonder if Cerf stuck to clear terms such as "copyright" to avoid confusing unrelated laws, and the blogger undid that effort.
I agree that Anonymous should not use attacks — but that term should not include virtual protests ("DDOS attacks") or graffiti ("web site defacement").
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the government's student loan program to help, not harass, students who can't repay their loans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The culture of the banksters is, if you have already got 96 percent of what you want, why not take the remaining 4?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama, even in areas where he can act without Congress, has primarily been the banksters' friend and shield.
One small note: the deregulation that occurred under Clinton was not all his fault. From what I've read, Clinton vetoed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and Congress passed it over his veto.
Wild wheat and barley have evolved since 1980 to flower 10 days earlier.
Their genetic diversity, used in breeding improved domesticated wheat, has declined.
Coal mining on public lands pays the US government very little.
It is equivalent to a subsidy for pollution.
A study of 2,000 people convicted in the US and later proved innocent includes over 1,000 that were framed by thugs who planted drugs or weapons on them. However, for the rest, erroneous eyewitness identifications are common causes of conviction.
It is hard for people to reliably recognize anyone they saw for a short time but don't know.
Hamas and Fatah have made an agreement for holding another Palestinian election.
The US is spending billions to build an antimissile system on the West Coast to defend against hypothetical future North Korean nuclear missiles. Now Republicans want to build another such system on the East Coast for hypothetical future Iranian nuclear missiles.
The Hondurans who run the boat that was shot from helicopters say that their boat was, in effect, a river bus.
It's conceivable that one of the passengers had some drugs, just as on any bus in the US. Now imagine if the DEA shot at a bus with helicopters because there were reports that someone on the bus was carrying drugs.
They don't do this yet in the US, but in a few more years of increasing police state, it might happen.
An interview with Syrian rebels.
The regime's claim that al Qa'ida is operating in Syria was blown to shreds by the defectors who reported how the regime set up a false flag operation to look like al Qa'ida.
To undo the sectarian aspect that Assad has injected will be harder. However, if this means Syria must choose between oppression of the Alawite minority and oppression of the Sunny majority, the former is less bad. And it might be possible eventually to reconcile the groups.
The big obstacle to aiding the rebels is that they are not militarily in a position to be helped to win.
Alexis Tsipras visited Paris and warned central Europe that austerity will attack them all, if they don't join him to fight it.
Chicago thugs hancuffed journalists covering the protests at the NATO summit, then destroyed their computers' hard drives. Other thugs stole some journalists' car.
These attacks occur in places and times where there is no protest, no crime, no shred of a legitimate excuse. That demonstrates they are planned repression.
Journalists in Yemen have been attacked, arrested and prosecuted recently.
In Bangladesh, thugs attacked journalists covering protests against the arrest of opposition political leaders.
Ohio's proposed bill to regulate fracking is so weak that it would do little good.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America.
Of course, these ultra-rich believe the purpose of the state is to help them dominate and exploit everyone else. When they say "my country", they think it means "the country I own".
At the NATO summit protest, dozens of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans ceremonially discarded their medals.
Some apologized to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The activists arrested in Chicago were framed by undercover thugs who left weapons in the apartment where the activists were staying.
Lawrence al-Rashidi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for insulting Bahreini's royalty.
Bahrain is not as powerful as Syria. It would not dare do this if Obama didn't support it.
Criminal sentences for insulting someone are fundamentally unjust, whether that someone be a beggar, a thug, a king, or a prophet.
Vermont Becomes First State to Ban Fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mohammed Abdelmawla al-Hariri in Syria has been sentenced to death for giving an interview to al-Jazeera.
It will be funny to see Assad try to claim that al Qa'ida imprisoned him or carried out the execution.
An interview with Sanal Edamaruku, who finds that religious persecution increases the interest in his secularist views.
Refuting the claim that violent video games inspire violence.
25,000 joined an anti-austerity protest in Frankfurt.
This is especially interesting given that Germany has mostly escaped the brunt of the austerity policies that Merkel has pushed hard to impose on Europe.
Pakistan quietly unblocked access to Twitter.
Richard Dawkins explains the moral lessons of the bible.
50 ways to wreck the network.
The African land grab in a Sudanese corner of Ethiopia is run by a Saudi who wants to export food. The inhabitants were rudely shoved aside.
Since the US is so friendly with Ethiopia, it would not surprise me if some of Obama's plan to invest in African agribusiness is directed to such activities.
Here's a general discussion of the global land grab, which covers over 1.3 million square kilometers in Africa. That's over 10% of the land area of the US.
The Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] has lost a large share of its funding and sponsors; even staff and board members quit in disgust at the unamomber billboard.
I call it the Heatland Institute because it has little heart, but wants to subject the Earth to lots of heat.
The Illinois Coal Association and the Heritage Foundation have taken up where previous donors left off. Now it will be possible to criticize those organizations for the billboard which they have effectively endorsed.
An investigation of Peter Gleick's published Heatland internal documents found that he did not (as alleged by Heatland) falsify anything.
Humans are pumping so much water out of aquifers that it is raising the sea level.
Pakistan blocked access to Twitter in an act of religious censorship.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has died. He was convicted of Pan Am flight 103 but claimed he was innocent, and even at the end called for continuing the legal campaign to clear his name of the charges.
There are reports that the blame was put on Libya for political reasons.
Chris Hedges, a plaintiff in the lawsuit to overturn the law for imprisonment without trial in the US, writes about their preliminary victory.
Lady Gaga has been banned in Indonesia and faces the threat of censorship in the Philippines.
I am not a great fan of her music, though I appreciate her hacker spirit. The article leads me to think that this song is a cheap attempt at shocking people (but I can't say I am sure of that; I have not heard it). But even if that's all it is, censoring it is wrong.
Laws punishing "insulting religion" are pure and simple injustice. So are laws punishing racial insults. It is foolish and sometimes nasty to judge someone else by her race, but people should not be imprisoned for folly or even nastiness.
Egyptian soldiers who captured protesters on May 4 tortured them afterward.
These people were protesting violence apparently started by the military which had attacked another protest on May 2.
The ITU, which hopes to take control of the Internet, is excluding civil society from its discussions.
The Dallas round of negotiations over the TPP (Trade Privilege Punishment?) agreement was another backroom deal, clearly intended to serve megacorporations.
If the TPP indeed has an "IP" chapter, its most basic error would be the use of the propaganda term "intellectual property", which frames whatever issues it is applied to in a confusing way favorable to the benificiaries of various diverse privileges.
I say "if" because, thanks to the secrecy, I don't think we know whether the TPP uses that term.
I am sure the rest of the TPP attacks the public interest in other areas. When a government participates in these negotiations, that indicates it has decided to betray its citizens to the megacorporations. You should only vote for candidates that are opposed to the whole idea.
Why do people show resignation to the copyright industries' will?
These people probably know the difference between corporations and legislators, but they are also aware that nowadays the legislators mostly take orders from the corporations. They are resigned to the continuation of this anti-democratic system.
But that is their error. It only continues because they don't rise up and put an end to it.
However, I think that if we are to end it, we must do so beyond the one issue of copyright. If we are to strip the copyright companies of their political power, we need to do the same to other companies.
The idea of democracy, since ancient Athens, is that the non-rich unite to be stronger than the rich and deny the latter any special political power. Democracy today is a hollow shell because it fails to do this. To restore democracy means ending the companies' power.
Chicago thugs arrested protest organizers and accused them of "terrorism" because they had apparatus for brewing beer. In response, thousands protested on the streets, and the thugs attacked them.
One thug committed a hit-and-run with a van against a protester.
More about the fabricated charges, and what motivated the thugs to try to frame these protesters.
The UN says Israel bulldozed dozens of EU aid projects in Palestine, and a hundred more are in danger.
Swedish Telcom Giant Teliasonera Caught Helping Authoritarian Regimes Spy on Their Citizens.
TEPCO has been nationalized, which means Japanese taxpayers will pay the costs of the Fukushima cleanup.
Once the disaster occurred, there may have been no way they could avoid doing so, since TEPCO was surely not going to have earnings to cover the cost of the work. The conclusion is, if your country allows nuclear power plants to be built, it is going to cost you a lot when something goes wrong.
The history behind the massive use of the pesticides that kill honeybees.
It looks like natural problems with the previous integrated pest management system for corn created trouble, and Monsanto jumped in to forestall solution within the scheme of integrated pest management.
Obama offers to "help" Africa through investment that will go to agribusiness companies, not to small farmers.
These are the same companies, I would guess, that will drive thousands of farmers off their land. The profit will go to companies like Monsanto. Thus, this plan is an orwellian scheme to hurt poor Africans disguised as help.
75 US journalists have been arrested since September. Mostly for making recordings of the thugs' actions in public places.
Even though courts and the Justice Department have upheld citizens' right to make recordings of thugs at work, the thugs continue to make bogus threats. I believe the only way to stop them is to prosecute each one.
Richard Dawkins endorsed a government plan to provide gratis bibles to UK state schools. He says that people who read these bibles will see how bad the book is as a moral guide.
The more repressive Ethiopia gets, the more aid its government receives.
The Ethiopian state persecutes journalists and political opposition, often calling them "terrorists" and imprisoning them without trial. And it sends armies into other countries. For the US government, what's not to love?
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Interational called on Obama to try to change Ethiopia's nasty practices. That's ridiculous — Obama loves states like that. (Examples include Bahrain, Honduras and Uzbekistan.)
London thugs will extract and permanently keep all the data from the mobile phones of people they arrest.
Utah's Internet censorship law that restricted publishing anything "harmful to minors" has been ruled unconstitutional.
I am skeptical of the idea that talking about sex is "harmful" to minors.
A US base in Chile is designed to teach soldiers to repress the population.
China sent Chen Guangcheng into exile in the US.
A psychiatrist who claimed to have found it was possible to "cure" homosexuality has withdrawn that claim and apologized to homosexuals.
We should distinguish two questions here: whether some sort of intervention can turn a homosexual into a heterosexual, and whether homosexuality constitutes a disorder or problem.
If it were indeed possible to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, that would not imply that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Many conditions that are not disorders can be changed nowadays. It is possible to surgically convert males into females and vice versa, but that does not imply that maleness and femaleness are medical disorders.
Contrariwise, the fact that it isn't possible to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals does not prove homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Paralysis is clearly a disorder, and usually there is no cure for it.
The reason I do not regard homosexuality as a disorder is that there is no objective reason to consider it an impairment, and homosexuals don't consider it one.
Bank of America's victims got into its annual meeting.
The insecticides used on genetically modified soy beans in Argentina seem to have caused a high rate of birth defects and other diseases.
Tar sands oil is more corrosive and toxic than ordinary petroleum, so its pipelines leak more often and the leaks are more damaging and harder to clean up.
The article says simply "tar sands", but I'm pretty sure it really
means the oil extracted from tar sands rather than sand.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose the heartless "bombs not bread" tea-party budget passed by the House of Representatives. Also send them mail through this page.
Humanity is using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably provide. The result is steady degradation, and if it continues, we will find that the resources we want to use are no longer available.
Paul Krugman says that austerity will make the euro zone snap unless the EU offers hope of growth to the suffering countries of the euro zone.
I think Krugman is unfair when he describes anti-austerity Greek politicians as "extremists". First, because they are the new mainstream. Second, because their views simply consist of acting on Krugman's own point.
No Secret Why CIA is Now Romanticizing “Harsh Interrogation” Techniques.
US citizens: tell the USDA not to hurry poultry inspections.
In the US, one day's terrorist is another day's freedom fighter. It depends on who is the enemy today.
Orwell described this in 1984: "Oceania has always been at war with
Eastasia", until it decides to ally with Eastasia and then "Oceania
has always been at war with Eurasia."
Chen Guangfu describes how Chinese thugs tortured him.
Now take the disgust you feel, and apply it also to the CIA and the US
government.
American Dystopia: Welcome to the
2012 Hunger Games.
The UK went to great lengths to
cover up and legalize a 1948 massacre
in Malaysia. The victims were suspected Communist rebels.
Sounds like modern times.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The province of Quebec has adopted repressive laws against protests to crush the student strike.
A last-minute stealth amendment in the House's NDAA authorizes the Pentagon to apply its propaganda to the US population.
The corporate media are bad enough already without this change, as FAIR demonstrates every week.
Uri Avnery: a protest for social justice that renounces politics thereby renounces the only path towards achieving its goal.
Avnery says that Israel is sailing toward an iceberg: the effects of the occupation of Palestine. The world as a whole steers toward the bigger iceberg, as it were, of global heating. (Please don't mind the oxymoron.)
Cell phone tracking through cell towers can be more precise than GPS, so it needs at least as much protection from arbitrary use by the state.
In both cases, requiring a warrant for access to previously collected information is not sufficient. A warrant should be required to start creating such a dossier about anyone.
More on the bogus arrest of Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd.
EU fishing quota monitors say that Iberian boat crews try to bribe them, steal from them, interfere with them, deprive them of sleep, and even threaten to kill them.
Large fines have been imposed on Scottish fishermen for exceeding their quotas.
I suspect that others do likewise and have not been caught.
To allow many fishing boats but limit each one to catching far less than it could get is inefficient, both in terms of the effort put into fishing and the enforceability of the rules. I suggest reducing the number of fishing boats operating, and fix that number of boats by assuming each one catches as much as it can using lawful methods. Then enforcement could focus on illegal methods.
The world's efforts to slow global heating are so pitiful that hopelessly inadequate steps, such as using smaller cardboard rolls inside toilet paper, are presented as triumphs.
Hollande will push for a carbon emission tariff on goods entering the EU.
Malawi's new president will try to repeal the laws against homosexuality.
The EU will strengthen its policies against products made in the Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Several recent reports purporting to prove Iran is developing nuclear weapons really don't prove much.
The US is lowering its definition of "success" in Afghanistan.
It is good when the government recognizes facts.
Republican leaders did not allow a vote on an amendment to the military spending bill (NDAA) which would have sped up withdrawal from Afghanistan because they thought it might get adopted.
The amendment to repeal imprisonment without trial was voted on but did not pass.
US citizens: tell the Federal Reserve Bank to keep the Volcker Rule strong and not allow a loophole for JP Morgan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the bill to restrict abortion in Washington DC. Also send a message through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone your state senator to call for a vote on S.772, which would endorse a constitutional amendment to overturn the Corporations United decision that human rights apply to corporations
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Asthma, Baby, Asthma: House Energy Committee Eliminates Protection From Smog.
Chicago thugs arrested activists planning protests at the NATO summit and have refused to acknowledge holding them prisoner, let alone charge them with anything.
This reminds me of events in Russia and Egypt.
Facebook faces a large lawsuit over tracking users and ex-users.
Syrian defectors say that Assad arranged "terrorist bombings", which he blamed on al Qa'ida, including the big bombing in Damascus a week ago.
US citizens: sign this petition for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The sting was taken out of the congressional resolution against "containing" a "nuclear weapons capable" Iran, as its author clarified that a "nuclear weapons capable" Iran means one that has built and tested nuclear weapons as well as missiles that can deliver them.
This means the resolution does not interfere with plausible diplomatic settlements.
As the UN pretends to keep peace in haiti, the violence in Haiti is stimulated by the foreign forces that are taking the land for sweatshops.
Eduardo Saverin and Apple illustrate the elite of the 1%, that exploit all countries but belong to none.
The article errs when it concludes that "there is no easy way to do anything about this". Given political will, states could clamp down on the tax shelters that Apple and Saverin use.
The editor of Genomics resigned in protest against Elsevier's restrictions on the dissemination of scientific knowledge.
The inequality speech that TED won't show you: a rich capitalist says that people like him are not the job creators.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
India joins Russia and China in proposing to give control over the Internet to governments via the UN.
An Indian parliamentarian argues against the proposal.
The "SonicWall" "child protection" filter blocks access to this page, which reports that "child protection" filters in the UK block access to the anti-violence charity Conciliation Resources.
Tens of thousands of students have returned to protesting in Chile.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel demolished a colony "outpost" (considered illegal even by Israel).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The oil companies' congressional strike force is trying to sink the US
navy's biofuel program.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Some biofuel production is self-defeating because it uses fertilizer (made from petroleum) and scare water to grow the fuel. That is true, for instance, with the ethanol made from corn in the US. I can't tell from this article to what extent the navy program is of that kind.
The prosecution messed up in the trial of Ratko Mladic by not showing some of the evidence to the defense.
Obama is pushing Europe to reduce its austerity.
An ex-minister in the UK faced criminal charges for criticizing the actions of a judge.
This is further criminalization of insults (or even criticism).
An experiment suggests that low-level radiation over a long period causes less DNA damage than the same total amount of radiation in a short time.
One way to avoid the filter bubble is to use a search engine that doesn't track its users.
To verify that a search engine really does not track its users would require more than just releasing the source code for the software it normally runs. The problem is that other programs could be placed on the machine to do surveillance.
Simply using a search engine and email run by different companies is a step in the right direction.
US district court ruled that the imprisonment-without-trial provisions of the NDAA are unconstitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
We must continue to push for Congress to reject it too.
Romney's record as a job-destroyer.
A Mexican general and a former deputy minister have been accused of drug trafficking.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The War on Drugs can't destroy the drugs, but it can destroy everything else.
Southern Sudan, under aerial attack from Sudan, is facing famine and drought.
The UK government's argument for secret trials, that this is the price of continued intelligence cooperation with the US, is bogus.
Even if it were true, it would not justify a measure to cover up torture and thus encourage torture.
A study measured temperature in Australasia over the past millenium and found the last 60 years are the hottest ever.
The US is organizing to arm Syrian rebels with money from rich Arab countries.
This seems like a very bad idea to me. The Syrian rebels can't take an hold a region of Syria. All they can do is start a very bloody urban guerrilla. With better arms they could more often make Assad have recourse to shelling the entire neighborhood to rubble, but they can't actually win.
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will protest the NATO summit and return their medals.
Here's an interview with one of them.
Strictly speaking, the point that they were searching for mines that wouldn't have been there if the soldiers hadn't been there is not conclusive. That's true of many operations in all wars. For instance, naval ships have anti-aircraft missiles to defend against enemy attack planes, but if the ship weren't there, no planes would attack it. That doesn't mean the anti-aircraft missiles and their crews are pointless. Their job is necessary, given that a war is being fought.
The real question is whether fighting the war is necessary and justified. To justify a war takes a strong reason, which in the case of Iraq never existed, and in the case of Afghanistan does not exist any more.
90 congresscritters call for speeding up withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Arctic Ocean is leaking methane into the atmosphere.
Apparently global heating is melting some of the frozen methane, which rises and eventually escapes into the air. This is positive feedback, because global heating causes more heating.
It means that the tipping point for disaster is closer than where it would otherwise have been. But we still don't know where it is, or whether we have passed it already.
The ACLU is defending a whistleblower in the State Department who is being vindictively fired.
The US maintains a fighter base and naval troop bases near Somalia and Yemen. They may be bombing and attacking in those countries.
Freedom of Indonesian journalists under threat.
Oxfam predicts that Colombia's small farms will lose (on the average) 16 of their income or more, due to the free exploitation treaty.
Oxfam says, "They are likely to take up coca cultivation, engross the files of illegal armed groups, or migrate to urban areas to join some 5 million Colombians — over 10 percent of Colombia's total population — forcibly displaced from the countryside over the last 12 years, the great majority of whom live in extreme poverty."
This is the evil that free exploitation treaties do.
The full study
Hugo Chávez can inspire Europe to reject the politics of the 1% as it has done in Latin America. Maybe he has already started to.
Chávez's administration is not good on all fronts. Some opposition candidates have been arbitrarily barred from running (though real opposition candidates do run). Opposition TV stations have been closed, though some of them were inculpated in the coup attempt. There continues to be a lot of corruption in Venezuela, though Chávez did not create it.
These criticisms of Chávez do not invalidate the point that his economic policies are a better model than the standard right-wing model.
The US kidnaped Khaled el-Masri in Macedonia and took him to Afghanistan for torture. Now the European court of human rights will hear his case.
Condoleezza Rice said any errors would be corrected, but the US has not given him an apology, let alone compensation. Perhaps dumping him in a lonely spot in Albania was the way they meant to correct it.
In the long term, humanity needs to end economic growth that involves use of natural resources.
How ALEC has legislators raise funds for it, funds which it then pays to legislators to attend ALEC events.
Both sides are corruption. Legislators who receive funds for ALEC are beholden to the donor just as if they had received a personal gift.
Wisconsin Governor Walker was caught on tape admitting that he planned to destroy unions there.
The US Department of Agriculture is very concerned about mad cow disease. Specifically, its media coverage.
Honduran thugs and US agents fired at a boat from a helicopter, killing 4 innocent people and wounding 4 others.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Even accepting that they believed these people were drug traffickers, that is no excuse for shooting them from a distance.
The whole War on Drugs is inexcusable in general.
Anti-Wall Street protesters at Morgan Stanley's annual meeting.
The Indian cotton harvest has increased, but it seems genetically modified cotton has not contributed.
Now the challenge is how to stop using it. If India cannot stop, that shows GM plants should be illegal unless they come with an escape plan.
Colonized by corporations: an essay about what a real revolution against an empire calls for.
The trial of Ratko Mladic has started. He is accused of masterminding and personally leading atrocities in Bosnia.
Russian thugs attacked an Occupy protest in a Moscow park, forcing them without letting them take their chairs and sleeping mats.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Maybe Putin is learning from New York Night-mayor Bloomberg.
Endocrine disruptor chemicals harm humans as well as wildlife, but businesses want their profits placed above everyone's health.
Nuclear reactors are a bad investment. UK electric companies have funny ways of saying that.
This discussion of the death penalty in the US ends with an interesting observation of where it is used and why.
If you want to discourage something, the effective way is to punish it most of the time. Punishing it severely but rarely tends not to work.
Carl Malamud campaigns to make US legal requirements publicly available on the Internet.
Hard evidence that sharing movies doesn't mean movies can't be profitable.
The article repeats the movie company propaganda by calling sharing "piracy". To use that term is to support the War on Sharing; please join me in refusing to use it.
Indian police have attacked women who reported violence. A protest against this was banned.
Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd has been arrested on apparently bogus charges from 2002.
Twenty years after the Rio Earth summit, our environment has got worse.
The Heatland Institute is taking plenty of heat for its absurd billboards that compared recognition of global heating to being a mass murderer.
It is a pleasure to see greedy bastards stumble, but those that wish to pay for global heating denialism will find another organ to use.
The US southwest had big forest fires in 2011. It looks like this year will be more of the same.
Global heating will make it even worse in the future.
Carlos DeLuna was executed by a state that persistently closed its eyes to the evidence that his lookalike Carlos Hernandez was the real murderer.
This calls for more than just abolition of the death penalty. Convicting the wrong person based on such reckless disregard for evidence must not happen again, not even if the sentence is a night in jail.
Finland joined the countries where operators of an open WiFi network are not liable for unknown parties' use of it.
This resists one of the methods of the War on Sharing.
The Catholic Church wants Sanal Edamaruku arrested, but doesn't want a hearing over its accusations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Don't Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon's Budget Could Boost the Economy.
Another journalist was kidnapped in Honduras.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops raided the Ramallah office of Stop the Wall, a nonviolent human rights organization, and took away computers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
After 20 years, a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem has prevailed in court against a plan to seize its home.
I wonder whether the false witness was paid to lie — or threatened.
In part of the West Bank, Palestinians are not allowed to build schools, and blocked from their own economic activity, so teenagers work for a pittance in Israeli colonies.
Israel's attorney general is considering prosecution of a Palestinian film-maker because his film makes Israel look bad.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Bil'in protest organizers told everyone not to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers. When young men they didn't know appeared and did so, the protesters asked them to stop.
Then the young men arrested the protesters. They were Israeli army provocateurs.
The US is going to resume selling weapons to Bahrain, effectively accepting its increased repression.
The US has encouraged repression in several countries under Obama, Honduras being another noteworthy example.
The Afghan army has vetoed some night raids.
It is good that they can do this, but they are not consulted for all night raids, only for some of them.
Congress is on the edge of adopting resolutions calling for war against Iran if it has "nuclear-weapons capability".
Does Iran's current ability to refine uranium constitute "nuclear-weapons capability"? I am not sure.
US military veterans mainly support Obama, because they think he is less likely to start another war.
Both veterans and the general public are against war with Iran, but Congress only listens to AIPAC.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support ending subsidies for oil companies. And sign this petition in support of the bill to do so.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the UK: support the campaign to restore freedom of speech by legalizing insults.
US citizens: tell the EPA to regulate power plant CO2 emission firmly.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition in favor of eliminating oil subsidies.
US citizens: oppose development in the Western Arctic Reserve.
The UN brought cholera to Haiti. This campaign calls on UN donors to eliminate cholera by donating clean water systems to Haiti.
They should also pull out the troops, who are in Haiti to maintain non-democracy there.
Nokia is turning into a software patent troll as well as a Microsoft suck-up.
Nerds, don't assume technical hacks will defeat government snooping and censorship. That is a path to defeat.
It looks like Greece will drop the euro.
Israel has granted many of the Palestinian prisoners' demands, in return for a commitment by the prisoners to avoid any support for terrorism.
The agreement limits Israel's practice of imprisonment without trial but does not eliminate it. Israel has further to go to properly respect human rights.
As for Palestinian terrorism, that is wrong when it happens, but it does not happen much any more. The main problem is the occupation.
An Iranian expatriate rapper has been threatened with assassination after being declared an "apostate".
Germany should announce it will retaliate militarily against Iranian government assets if Iranian-supported assassins attack him.
The Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] is campaigning to feed anti-net-neutrality material into the media, as well as for global heating.
A resistance movement in the 1980s eliminated mandatory fingerprinting in Japan. Now the job has to be done over again.
Censorship in the UK gets nastier: a man faces jail for describing a city council member using dirty words (probably "cunt" and "shit").
I have never called anyone a "cunt" because that implies that the person's flaws are based essentially in femaleness. It would never occur to me to say that, because I don't think of either bad or good personal characteristics as inherently linked with gender. Use of the word suggests this man was not thinking very clearly about his criticism
That's if indeed it was meant as a criticism. Maybe it wasn't; it appears he did not intend that people would know who he was talking about.
But even if he had stated the person's name, that is still no excuse for punishing anyone. UK law gives prudes a chance to go on a power trip trampling human rights.
Remember acid rain, and the ozone hole? You don't hear about these global environmental problems now — because the world took measures to address them.
Human Rights Watch acknowledges NATO did a good job of avoiding
civilian casualties in Libya, but calls on NATO to investigate the
ones that occurred and give compensation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama wants the US to export more. More arms, for more questionable
uses. And more subsidized GMO corn, to
destroy local agriculture in
other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mother's Day was invented as
an occasion
for mothers to take political stands and be heard.
(This was before women had the right to vote in the US.)
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The World Wide Web is under attack from governments and giant companies at once.
What should a woman's place be in modern Japan?
Don't stop reading until at least 8 paragraphs in.
The IRS has started blocking tax-exemption applications from nonprofit journalism organizations.
When the article says "nonprofit", read "tax-exempt". Anyone can set up a nonprofit corporation; the IRS is not involved in that. However, IRS approval is required to get the 501(c)(3) tax exemption that they aim for.
Noam Chomsky: Plutonomy and the Precariat.
Of course, we know that the reason most Americans are getting poorer is that the rich, who control Congress, want to make them poorer. But it is good to be able to cite Citigroup for this.
Here are the most rich parts of the Citigroup memo.
Here's the entire memo.
The world's leading scientific institutions say there are three "global dilemmas": growing demands for water and energy, natural disasters, and carbon dioxide emissions. Behind the growing demands is growing population together with ascent out of poverty. We don't want to keep people in poverty, so we must reduce the population growth.
A Moroccan musician whose song rebuked the thugs' corruption faces imprisonment on charges of insulting the thugs, and for "showing contempt" for the state. Any state which does this deserves worse than contempt.
The video should have used a crocodile's head.
Thanks to the Republican War on the Poor, 230,000 unemployed Americans are about to lose unemployment payments.
The IMF thinks that the price of oil may double in the next decade. If so, countries ought to prepare by increasing mass transportation and other energy efficiency measures.
Spanish thugs in Madrid attacked journalists, then protesters. The protesters were not daunted.
The Yes Men infiltrated the negotiations for the TPP.
Malaysia found Dubya and Cheney and their advisors guilty for Guantanamo torture.
There is no doubt about this verdict, since Bush has confessed. However, it was wrong to try them in absentia; trial in absentia is fundamentally unjust. Malaysia should have put out an arrest warrant for them, but not go further until it had them in custody.
Malaysia violates human rights in other ways too. For instance, it demands fingerprints from visitors, it denies people labeled as Muslims the right to stop being Muslims, and it extradited a Saudi blogger to face execution without even an extradition hearing. However, none of that excuses Dubya's crimes.
The US should be ashamed if it leaves the punishment of its torturers to other countries.
The Catholic church performed same-sex marriages for over a thousand years.
The US navy says its sonar and explosives in Hawai'i might injure 1000 marine mammals each year.
The TSA has wasted over $100 million on machines it didn't use.
This is in addition to all the money it wasted on the machines it does use.
An 18-month-old baby was ordered off a plane, which means her parents had to leave too. Jet Blue and the TSA each say the other was responsible.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Lesson #1: don't be "embarrassed" when bullies mistreat you. If you let that embarrass you, you're a sitting duck for bullies.
A UK private investigator claims the thugs pay him to get information about people when they have no legal grounds for a search warrant.
Meanwhile, as regards personal data from databases, the proper lesson is: if they collect it, it will get misused.
Protesters against nuclear reactor construction in India face a range of absurd criminal charges, and the thugs even blockaded a village near the site.
Mass protests have begun in Spain on the anniversary of last year's protests.
The protesters peacefully dare the Spanish state to attack them as it has threatened to do.
London thugs attacked protesters camped near the Bank of England.
A UN effort, spearheaded by Spain, calls for compensating victims of terrorism. For instance, life insurance policies would not be allowed to make exceptions for death due to terrorism.
I agree with this change, but it focuses on a danger that is rather small compared with those of wars of aggression, austerity, crushing democracy, and global heating disaster. The Spanish government is guilty of the second and third of those right now.
When Obama says that Canada's tar sand oil will be extracted and burnt, in effect he takes future global heating disaster for granted. Obama is eager to please the frackers.
Uri Avnery thinks that the new Israeli coalition will reduce the tendency to fascism and war.
Some German schools block access to the German Pirate Party's platform statement.
The judge who ordered censorship of proxy servers in the Netherlands has corrupting financial interests in his decision.
Citizens of Portland, OR, oppose the plan to build giant coal export terminals because of the pollution that extracting and shipping it will cause in the US, and the pollution that burning it will cause in China.
ACLU Presses on With Challenge to US No-Fly List.
The Global May Manifesto of (many of) the indignados.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans have launched a War on Children to go with their War on Women, all for the sake of getting money for other wars.
A cartoonist in Iran faces flogging for insulting an MP.
The UK imprisons people for stating opinions about people, too.
Both cases are injustice; the difference is only in degree.
A scandal has developed about Romney; in high school he took the lead in bullying someone for being gay.
It would be foolish to criticize Romney for this. Children and teenagers are easily led into attacking any target of opportunity, but often they grow up afterwards.
We should judge Romney, like any other candidate, by his behavior as an adult. Romney wants to hurt everyone in the US who isn't rich.
Do we really need to add anything to that?
Putin jailed Russian opposition leaders on ridiculous pretexts reminiscent of the way Occupy protesters are treated in in the US.
I have doubts about a campaign to "democratize" Internet governance.
I cannot endorse this statement because it uses the confusion-spreading term "IP", treating the term as meaningful. But what about the substance of the issue?
The problem described here is real, no doubt. But I fear that "democratizing" the Internet means, in this case, letting many governments vote about how to treat it, and what would they vote for? Censorship, I think. Censorship on the Internet requires surveillance, so the same vote would be for surveillance.
I don't see a solution for this problem that I would have confidence in.
Obama is sending US troops to support the coup-installed government of Honduras.
That is the government that doesn't bestir itself to protect journalists and union organizers from being murdered, perhaps because the murderers are working for the elites that are the government's power base.
The US appears to have been in favor of this coup all along.
I think the situation is likely to lead to a civil war. I expect the US will support the government in the civil war, and that may be the real purpose of sending these troops.
Erick Martinez, Honduran gay rights defender, was murdered.
Many journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the coup, which the US has effectively endorsed.
Obama's Afghanistan policy presents itself as removing troops while not really doing so.
US generals say the Afghan army is making progress, but thanks to Daniel Davis we know that is not true.
The European Commission says that the EU probably will not ratify ACTA, the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement.
We have not won yet! Citizens of Europe, please help La Quadrature du Net and other organizations achieve final victory.
Copyright law is already to restrictive and strict, so any proposal to make it more so is going in the wrong direction. We need to legalize sharing and adopt other methods to support artists, such as perhaps my proposal.
The Israeli Supreme Court is standing up to Netanyahu, who wishes to delay ad infinitem the court-ordered demolition of two colonies in the West Bank that don't have state approval.
In general, these "illegal" colonies get unofficial state support, although not as much support as the "legal" colonies get.
The Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded global heating denial campaign, argues that global heating does not exist because various detested people believe it does.
You could make similar arguments for 2+2 = 5. Didn't Hitler believe that 2+2 = 4, except perhaps towards the end when counting German troops?
In fact, there are global heating denialist tyrants too. For instance, those who staged a coup in the Maldive Islands.
Global heating denialism has not produced mass murderers yet, as far as I know, but just give it a few decades and it will make Osama bin Laden and even Bush look like small potatoes.
Fortunately Americans are starting to see the effect of global heating.
A courageous politician now could win a mandate for action to curb global heating. Alas, Obama doesn't know the meaning of courage, and advocates roasting the planet to keep gasoline prices down.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say, "Pass the Glass-Steagall Act again." And sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A poll finds
Americans want big cuts in military spending,
so why are even Democrats in Washington against it? The only answer
I can see is money.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The article says that most people polled are concerned that military cuts would cost jobs, but that's not true. Spending the money in other ways would support more jobs than spending it on the military, so the result would be a net increase in jobs.
JP Morgan's $2 Billion
Tumble Renews Call: "Break Up the Big Banks".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
"Too big to fail" is too big to be allowed to exist.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter urgently to support the amendment to remove imprisonment without trial from the NDAA. The vote will be later this week.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
South American countries will build cables so their communications don't pass through the US.
They know that the NSA watches all their traffic.
Tsipras was unable to form a government, but has held to is opposition to austerity and refused to join a government that would approve the deal.
This means a new election, and the people — seeing for once a politician with the courage to refuse to hammer nails into their coffin — are flocking to his party.
Professor Keridis represents the position that "What's good for the banksters is good for Greece" wants a "stable, long-term government" that can implement even bigger cuts and disregard the public. Such a government would have to be fascist.
UN guidelines about the use of farmland, fisheries and forests are intended to promote local food production.
The article was written by a UN official under whose auspices these guidelines were drawn up. I'd be interested in seeing what criticisms activists have of these guidelines. However, assuming they are better than nothing, the question becomes whether the WTO, World Bank and IMF will pressure countries to do the opposite.
Rotterdam is trying new methods to prevent inundation as rains get heavier than they used to be.
These methods can cope with rain, but most of them are useless against the rising sea levels due to global heating, except for the floating communities. For the rest of the city, the only way to defend against rising seas is with higher dikes. If they really can't do that, eventually they will have to abandon the city.
An unknown Italian anarchist group claims to have shot a nuclear power company CEO.
It is not impossible that this is true, but it could also be a lie. Right-wing Italian groups carried out bombings in the 70s so they would be blamed on leftists.
The mainstream media incessantly say that austerity is a solution rather than the problem.
ABC broadcast a "news" segment painting fracking as a bonanza for western landowners, which carefully did not use the term "fracking".
Some NATO countries want US tactical nuclear weapons removed from Europe.
In strictly logical terms, the presence of these weapons in Italy or some other country does not mean the US would necessary use them to retaliate if that country were attacked, and moving them elsewhere does not mean the US would necessarily not use them. The two questions are more or less independent.
I don't think that where these weapons are stored is a very important question in its own right, so it might as well be negotiated as part of a nuclear weapons treaty.
The
US government is worried that the new coalition in Israel could lead to
an attack against Iran "at any moment".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The European Environment Agency says that endocrine disruptor chemicals found in many household products may be responsible for cancer, obesity, autism and/or diabetes. It isn't certain yet. But the agency recommends taking a cautious approach to the use of these chemicals.
UK ministers were so subservient to Murdoch's empire that they asked for advice, or should we say instructions, on how to help it acquire another cable TV company.
JP Morgan's huge losses from gambling in the big casino show that the 2010 financial regulations are inadequate.
Bring back Glass-Steagel!
Everyone: call on governments to require companies to offer a choice of operating systems for PCs.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of the Interior
to fix the loopholes
in its fracking regulations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
An Afghan army soldier shot a US soldier yet again. It was the 15th such attack since the beginning of the year.
The immediate effect of these attacks is that US troops can't trust the Afghan troops they are supposed to be working with (and, in some cases, advising or training).
However, the real significance of these attacks is that they demonstrate that the Taliban inspire loyalty and Karzai's puppet regime does not. That is why the US cannot possibly "win" the war in Afghanistan.
These events also confirm that reports of "progress" in strengthening the Afghan army are bogus. "Just give us another year and we'll get there", they have said, over and over. A year later they say it again. That talk is cheap, but the war costs money and lives.
The American public are learning not to believe the liars. But that won't lead to a pullout until we have congressional candidates willing to reject the lies.
Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims.
Companies are asking Obama to use the TPP to impose draconian laws.
The article doesn't really say what sort of laws, since it follows those companies in describing them with the vague term "IP". However, I expect that what the RIAA and MPAA want are draconian copyright laws.
Other companies might want stricter trademark laws, and maybe that is part of this same campaign; but since copyright law and trademark law are totally unrelated, it is a mistake to unify those two issues. The companies lump them together to discourage thoughtful consideration of either issue. To follow their lead on terminology plays into their hands.
ARM computers with Windows will handcuff users like the iThings.
Stallman's Law is at work.
Everyone: sign this petition to Brazilian President Rousseff to veto the forest bill that relaxes protection against cutting down the Amazon forest.
The cholera strain has evolved since its introduction, suggesting
it may be
permanently established.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
As mentioned before, the experimental vaccine Paul Farmer is not the right way to address this problem. The right way is to set up for clean water.
Israel ordered Palestinians to destroy 1000 olive trees on their land, which Israel declared a nature reserve.
Nature reserves are a good thing, but these people were not represented in the decision to establish one, and they won't get compensation for their farm.
Occupy protesters have set up a camp right next to the London Stock Exchange.
This is in the "City of London", a small borough with few residents, effectively controled by the banksters and used by them for political purposes. It must be abolished.
BP will start operating more drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico than it did before the Big Spill.
Although Obama made regulations a little more strict, he did not do as much as is necessary to eliminate the danger. But what the hell? The Gulf is already poisoned.
Around the world (including in the US), mining companies push the local people out of the way and pollute them to death. Strict regulation is needed to stop this.
Obama's is mainly on the side of the mining companies. His heart is made of oil and coal. Jill Stein for president.
China is building another dam on the Yangtze which is expected to cause the extinction of several species of fish.
In Peru, continuing to grow coffee may require great efforts for reforestation.
The departing CEO of JP Morgan said, "In hindsight we took far too much risk, the strategy was barely vetted, it was barely monitored. It should never have happened."
The solution is simple: don't allow banks to do risky trading.
China is punishing Chen Guangcheng's family for his escape.
The US is not clearly better than China on this score; the US has also been known to attack family members of targets. For instance, the Bush forces in Iraq sometimes got their hands on people by taking family members hostage.
Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison Unveil Bill To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies.
Republicans won't let it pass the House of Representatives, but it would be nice at least for Obama to support it.
ALEC's next target is to undermine laws to promote clean energy.
Many US states have made libel a crime.
This has threatens freedom of speech.
The UK has established many "marine reserves", but since fishing is still allowed in them, they are "reserves" only in name.
In the US: call on the CEO of the biggest US private prison company to debate the ACLU.
Uganda's government threatens to ban Oxfam and the Uganda Land Alliance for revealing how the state chases farmers off their land to give it to corporations.
Keep Domestic Cybersecurity Efforts in Civilian Hands.
The solution to anything on the Internet that you feel might be bad for your child is for the child to view things together with you.
Australia allows its citizens can be arrested and extradited to the United States based on information supplied by Australian spies for breaches of US law on Australian soil.
In effect, Australia is converting itself into a colony of the US. That should be considered treason.
Philadelphia plans to destroy the public school system, replacing many schools with charter schools.
Charter schools are usually worse than the public schools they replace.
Congress does nothing to stop the FBI and NSA from collaborating to impose the idea that all of Americans' communications should be subject to government eavesdropping.
The Netherlands has legislated requirements for network neutrality, including a requirement that ISPs cannot disconnect a subscriber except on specific conditions.
This is a great step forward, except that a court has imposed very broad censorship to block access to the Pirate Bay. The censorship requires blocking access in a web proxy, and forbids even listing the names of unrestricted proxies.
To really block access to the Pirate Bay would require the equivalent of Chinese censorship.
Canadian journalists rebuke Canada's government secretive policies.
I think it is inaccurate to categorize this as a matter of freedom of expression. Rather it is a matter of government secrecy. But it is bad in any case.
Canadian journalists should write articles citing extragovernmental scientists' reasonable conclusions, then add, "No scientists at the Department of Pollution Obfuscation expressed disagreement with what Dr. Independent said." Eventually the state will decide it is better to let its scientists speak.
There was a massive terrorist bombing in Syria, and it is not clear who was responsible.
An appeals court rejected an Illinois law that banned recording the actions of the thugs.
The latest US idea for discouraging illegal immigrants is to deport
them if they get traffic tickets,
or even report crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Franken asked the "Justice" Department how many times it got
Americans' cell phone
GPS data without a warrent.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To require a warrent for looking at saved past cell phone location data is obviously necessary, but it is not enough. A warrant should be required to start saving this data.
Turkey censors the mass media, with a hundred journalists in prison, but so far has less success in censoring the Internet.
Ecuador is close to passing a law requiring loan forgiveness
for first-time home buyers that go negative,
up to a certain
limit.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is what the US needs, and any congresscritter who won't support it needs replacing.
U.S. Treasury Claim of Iran-Al-Qaeda "Secret Deal"
Is
Discredited.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Wall Street's Casino Culture Still Alive and Well.
The US should pass the Glass-Steagall act again.
Obama's agreement with Karzai presents an appearane of giving Karzai's
government control over night raids,
but it is a false
appearance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The agreement envisages keeping US troops in Afghanistan till 2024.
But that's unlikely to put an end to the Taliban, so they will have to extend it till 2034.
US citizens: phone Obama at 202-456-1111 (9am to 5pm Eastern time) and tell him to fire Ed Demarco, the official blocking adjustment of mortgages for homeowners whose equity is negative, and prosecuting the banksters for foreclosure fraud.
In the US: rebuke Microsoft and Comcast for supporting the Heartland Institute, a global heating denier.
In the US: call on the CEO of the biggest US private prison company to debate the ACLU.
US citizens: call on the IRS
to crack down on Karl Rove's political
organization that wants to pretend to be a charity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to vote to remove imprisonment without trial from the new NDAA bill. Also send email through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: support
the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike against
imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: thank Obama for supporting
same-sex marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is rare that he does anything progressive, but it is good to give positive feedback as well as negative.
Feds Bypassing Citizens to Massively Invade
Their Privacy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Congress plans to give the Pentagon broad powers to carry out "clandestine operations in cyberspace".
Against the UK's new Internet surveillance plans.
An Israeli official admitted that imprisonment without trial isn't usually "necessary", even by Israel's standards.
Twitter is fighting hard to block the subpoena for an Occupy protester's private information, arguing that it belongs to him.
Twitter sets the standard for how a company should protect its users' privacy against subpoenas — a standard by which other Internet services fall short.
Protesters should use a proxy in some other country to talk to Twitter.
The IMF and World Bank have strangled Jamaica by pressuring the country to pay an impossible debt load.
Congressional intelligence leaders say the Taliban has got stronger since Obama's "surge" in 2010.
The US can prop up Karzai in Kabul, at great cost in money and lives, but there is no way to win this war.
The US has acknowledged that a bomb killed one Afghan family, but
never acknowledges the implications of activities that repeatedly
have
such consequences.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is true that wars generally kill civilians; even with the best efforts to avoid doing so, it will happen. When soldiers kill a civilian, it does not necessarily mean that they did something wrong. Sometimes they made the best decision they could, in a hurry, with their limited information, and it goes wrong. This is called "moral bad luck."
It follows that the decision to fight the war is responsible for those civilian deaths that the soldiers could not reasonably have avoided. This is why it is wrong to fight a war without a strong justification.
Most Americans in all parties oppose Obama's plans to continue propping up Karzai's government.
Even low doses of neonicotinoid pesticides harm honeybees and bumblebees.
Local US anti-wind-power groups are being organized nationally using funds from fossil fuel companies.
Global heating is causing fish species to move northward.
In a couple of decades, the species that now need the colder water will only be able to live in the Arctic Ocean. And in another couple of decades, they will be extinct.
The supposed underwear bomber was a CIA agent.
This seems to imply progress in infiltrating jihadi circles outside the US. That's the best method for dealing with them — much better than wars or drone bombings.
The jury deadlocked on the Oracle v Google trial,but its verdict is irrelevant anyway. The all-important question is whether copyright covers interfaces at all, and the judge will decide that. I expect that eventually the Supreme Court will decide it.
For the rich, America is "regenerating its strength", as it jettisons most of the population into poverty.
A proposal to extend transparency laws to corporations.
The CIA has blocked another attempt to explode an underwear bomb in an airplane.
It seems clear that the TSA had nothing to do with blocking the attack. The TSA has never caught a terrorist. Even though there is a real danger of attacks against airplanes, that doesn't make TSA security theater necessary (or useful).
US journalism is threatened by Obama's secrecy and spying, and by ISP's attacks on network neutrality.
Nestle is funding "water education" in US public schools, but it fails to teach them the social costs of bottled water.
The Fukushima reactors are not entirely stable. One suffers from a water leak that seems to be reducing the level of cooling water and could cause it to heat up.
If another earthquake occurs in the next few decades, it could cause the cooling arrangements to fail, leading to a disaster much worse than what already happened.
China has shut al-Jazeera's news bureau because al-Jazeera did not provide the favorable coverage China wanted.
Cate Jenkins, who was fired from the EPA for warning that the dust from the World Trade Center was toxic, has won a lawsuit and got her job back.
Now we need an investigation into why the EPA exposed hundreds (or is it thousands) of firemen to lung damage by failing to warn them or protect them.
Human Rights Watch rebukes Israel's practice of imprisonment without trial.
The Pirate Party has got 8% of the vote in various regions of Germany and stands a chance of doing equally well nationally.
Chen Guangcheng's relatives, friends and lawyers are being attacked by thugs and stopped from communicating.
I support China's one-child-per-family law. Given how much future load each child places on the world's limited resources, which are running scarce already, we must reject the idea that people are entitled to make as many more people as they wish. Some countries don't need to take action to reduce birth rates, but China did not have that good fortune.
Just because a law is necessary,, that doesn't justify enforcing it in the cruel Chinese manner. I agree with Chen Guangcheng in condemning that. If Chen Guangcheng opposes the one-child-per-family policy itself, I disagree with that position, but I defend his right to stand for it.
As Putin celebrated being "re-elected", the thugs visited cafes where dissidents gather and arrested people at random.
Putin does not allow serious opposition in his elections; the permitted parties were no real challenge. The US has two parties that can easily win elections, but neither challenges the power of the banksters.
The Syrian opposition boycotted the parliamentary election.
The in-laws of Sahar Gul, who tortured her to force her into prostitution, have been convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
To establish women's rights in Afghanistan would be a great thing. This goal is why I supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when it required little bloodshed. But I don't think it justifies the level of bloodshed that will be required indefinitely to keep Karzai in power.
Investors in Billionaire Polluters may sue the company for misleading them by covering up previous drilling accidents.
Putin's thugs arrested 250 protesters after attacking many more, in a large protest against his phony democracy.
I wonder if the people who threw bottles at the thugs were provocateurs. The thugs attacked the protesters in general, not those people specifically, which suggests that they were provocateurs.
The leaders of the opposition were arrested and certainly
were not
among those.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A right-wing foaming-at-the-mouth government minister sent 8000 thugs into Barcelona and shut a university, all to prevent an imaginary protest.
Even if the protest had been real, this would only prove he is an enemy of democracy.
The author writes "psychopath" but I think he meant "psychotic".
The same minister was in charge last year when plainclothes thugs were
caught infiltrating a large protest and starting violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
32 Iranian students are still in prison for political opposition in 2009.
The real job creators are consumers that spend, but austerity and
inequality imposed by cruel laws prevents
this from happening.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The flowering of various plants is getting earlier due to global heating, faster than was predicted by previous experiments.
Former chief Guantanamo prosecutor Morris Davis condemns the military
kangaroo courts
he was involved in.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Officials say these are preferable for a small group of prisoners. They fail to say that the preference is so as to conceal how they were tortured by the US government. Thus, these kangaroo courts are part and parcel of Obama's policy of covering up torturers.
Human Rights Watch published a report about the murder of opposition activists in Burundi, but was ordered by the state to stop distributing it there.
For more info, here is the report.
A glacial lake in Nepal burst, causing dozens of deaths.
Global heating makes glaciers unstable.
The idea that streets are mainly for cars, and not for people, was established by an organized corporate political campaign.
The consensus among Israeli military and intelligence chiefs opposes Netanyahu's desire to start a war.
Bahrain has arrested important protest leaders, one for planning
illegal protests and one for
insulting thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To make it a crime to insult someone is tyranny in itself.
The Philippine military kills, tortures and disappears people with impunity.
Sad to say, asking the US to get the Philippines to stop this is like asking the pot to pressure the kettle to get clean.
Anti-austerity parties gained ground in Greece; the government of occupation will have to struggle to impose its austerity plans.
Sarkozy lost the election for the French presidency.
Good riddance to him, but I don't think Hollande will justify the term "left-wing". I fear he will be centrist. He lacked the courage to oppose Sarkozy's tyrannical Internet and DRM laws.
Indeed, he says he will pursue austerity in France.
I fear that taxing the rich, though correct, won't be enough to prevent the disaster spiral that the rest of Europe is experiencing.
This article argues that Osama bin Laden had been put out to pasture, and no longer had anything to do with real operations of al Qa'ida.
Reportedly other al Qa'ida leaders considered him mad. However, he could not have been entirely mad if he was able to recognize that killing civilians was self-defeating.
The US government seems to thickheaded to learn the same lesson.
Many governments, including the US and UK, threaten Internet freedom in the name of "security".
Imperialism Didn't End. These Days It's Known
as International
Law
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Chinese imprisoned unofficially for going to Beijing to complain have gone on hunger strike.
Thugs in Togo attacked a journalist and took his camera while he was lying unconscious.
Sounds a lot like the US.
Heights of Hypocrisy: The Universal
Use of 9/11 in Politics
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Americans who celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden were focusing a minor enemy while the main enemy is robbing them blind.
US citizens: call on Rep. Pelosi to stand firm for Social Security,
Medicaid and Medicare.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Microsoft says it will make its datacenters carbon-neutral.
I am skeptical that this activity will really mean anything in practice. Electricity is carbon-neutral if generated without burning carbon fuel. However, what companies more often do is claim to compensate for their carbon emissions by funding carbon sinks. That is fine in theory; the problem is that those sinks (such as planting trees) are not guaranteed to absorb the carbon they are supposed to compensate for.
Of course, this issue is not limited to Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will continue to hand users software that tramples their freedom.
Soldiers involved in the Batang Kali massacre said in a 1970 investigation that they were ordered to shoot prisoners.
The investigation was launched by the Labour Party, when it really stood for something, and was stopped by the right-wing Tory Party.
Alexis Tsipras, who will try to form the new government of Greece, declared the austerity deals void.
Everyone:
call on Honduras
to provide protection to journalist Dina
Mexa.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell Obama
to release all the photos of damage done by
the Big Spill, without further delay.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Portland Oregon high school students protested against cuts.
Obama has authorized air force drones to spy on Americans as long as they say it was an accident.
A London thug faces prosecution for attacking a handcuffed prisoner.
Western countries have done nothing to stop businesses from selling
deep packet inspection equipment
to dictators.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Part of the problem is that these countries themselves perform increasing surveillance of the Internet.
Iran's Internet filtering blocked distribution of Fearless Leader's fatwa about filtering.
Libya's interim government has adopted a censorship law worthy of Gaddafi.
Naomi Wolf asks whether the FBI is telling us the truth about the new underwear bomb, or just doing PR to sell more expensive scanners.
Someone will surely design a swallowable suicide bomb some day. It won't be possible to find that with body scanners.
Bank Vs. America: Protests Outside, Inside BofA Shareholder Meeting
Moving your money out of Bank of America is a good way to take action. Convincing companies, organizations and cities to move their money can be even better.
Fukushima released more radiactive fallout than Chernobyl , and has rendered almost 1000 sq km uninhabitable. And it may still get worse.
The World Bank calls for states to assign monetary value to natural capital.
Many have proposed this, and it might do some good if economic decisions take account of that natural capital. For instance, if corporations that diminish the natural capital are required to pay for it, they might not do it.
Charlotte, North Carolina, has adopted laws to prevent protests, and used the Bank of America's annual meeting as a test case.
The sea of garbage in the Pacific can alter the ecosystem.
Effects of global heating will result in total destitution for 30 million Bangladeshis in a few decades. And they know it.
Gouging workers has become standard practice for US companies even when they are tremendously profitable.
We should note that this isn't the only nasty thing that Caterpillar does. It is a target for divestment campaigns because it supplies equipment for Israel's annexation wall.
Debunking 5 tax myths spread by the 1%.
Another advantage of taxing financial transactions, not mentioned in the article, is that it would make a some short term speculation unprofitable while doing nothing to discourage long term investment.
All the Egyptian parties distrust the military and doubt it will hand over power.
Some Egyptian protesters say that people they did not know infiltrated the latest protest and started throwing stones at soldiers. It is plausible that the military sent provocateurs; it is a common tactic for the thugs.
Senegal has cancelled the licenses of foreign factory fishing boats.
Let's hope this is permanent — Senegal needs to protect its fisheries. If it keeps the fish stocks up, and the population down, it will avoid pushing itself into disaster.
However, disaster might come anyway. In a few decades, global heating could wipe out all those fish.
A GMO experimenter pleads for environment defender not to destroy an experimental field.
The article does not address the question of whether the use of these genes would spread patent pollution. If they would, then the work is not available for ethical use, so the experiment is pointless. If not, then maybe his arguments are valid.
Occupy protests were held across the US on May 1.
Daniel Chong wasn't charged with a crime, but federal agents put him in a cell, then nearly killed him by ignoring him for five days.
Kuwait Prepares to Crack Down on Social Media.
Refugees from North Korea describe the trivial reasons for which people
are
thrown into prison camps in which they can starve to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Mexican government is investigating and monitoring the leaders of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, a political organization calling for an end to the War on Drugs.
Thugs attacked a sit-in by students in Brooklyn College.
There is evidence tying senior executives of Billionaire Polluter to the coverup of the extent of the Big Spill.
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to revoke Rupert Murdoch's broadcast
licenses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Portland, Oregon, is using dirty tricks against Occupy protesters that face criminal charges.
The changes are bullshit in the first place, fabricated by thugs as an abuse of their power.
If you are ever on a jury, and thugs testify that a protester committed a crime, consider the testimony of any number of thugs worth less than the word of one protester. The thugs are accustomed to lying in court, and they plan their testimony together.
Three states have given ALEC a special exemption from requirements on lobbyists.
Dajaz1's lawyer says that domain name seizures are not authorized by US law.
The term "intellectual property" or "IP" is a uselessly broad generalization about many disparate laws. The generalization has a harmful effect on public debate and even on legislation, because it suggests choosing between simplistic foolish positions such as "for IP" and "against IP".
The name of the "PRO-IP Act" shows that it is based on this foolish thinking.
The Israeli army absolved itself of responsibility for killing 21 civilians in Gaza, who were in a building where Israeli soldiers had ordered them to go.
Israeli colonists in the West Bank
pollute the water supplies
that they haven't seized.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli army demolished a Palestinian farm ; the cows may die as a result.
Israel
destroyed the only road
to the Palestinian village of Khirbet Yarza.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is considering plans
to annex a large part of the West Bank,
and kick out most of the remaining Palestinian inhabitants not already
squeezed out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli agents admit infiltrating Palestinian protests and throwing stones in the direction of Israeli soldiers.
The reason to exclude the Israeli theater company Habima is that
by performing in a colony in the West Bank it
explicitly endorses the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Kansas is considering a law that would require doctors to warn women about false "dangers" of abortions , and is also trying to regulate abortion clinics out of existence.
TestPAC is campaigning to defeat Lamar Smith, author of SOPA.
The Philadelphia thugs' union plans to expel Ray Lewis, retired thug,
for wearing his old uniform
in an Occupy protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
They even sought an excuse to charge him with a crime. Just like thugs.
The US government concealed photos of threatened animal species harmed by oil from the Big Spill.
False DMCA takedowns are being used for political censorship.
Frackers use legal strategems to gag people who suffer health problems due to fracking.
Videos of cover songs are an example of where copyright law is broken.
Steve Kardynal's remixes, Songs in Real Life, are censored now due to copyright.
To fix copyright law will require crushing the political power of the copyright lobby — in other words, the businesses that wanted to feed us SOPA. With their nasty practices, they don't deserve to make one red cent, not even when they do something that isn't itself wrong.
Obama supports a Senate bill that is approximately
as bad as
CISPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Egyptians protested at military headquarters, and fought with troops that tried to stop them.
Some of the protesters were captured and face military trials — some simply for participating in a forbidden protest.
The Heartland Institute has turned off its billboard that tried to smear concern for global heating by associating it with the unabomber.
The revised route for the Keystone planet-roaster pipeline still threatens to pollute water supplies.
This is in addition to the certainty of putting humanity on a path to megadisaster.
India has imposed Internet filtering on ISPs, blocking access to many unauthorized sharing sites but also to other sites.
NFL players often sustain repeated brain injuries that subsequently ruin their lives. The NFL denies this, so some players commit suicide and donate their brains to science to help prove it.
I don't even like to watch football because the violence fills me with revulsion. I wonder how watching such violence — real, not fictional — affects children and teenagers. To ban fiction is censorship, but it would be legitimate to regulate football violence in reality.
The UK's loony experiment of privatizing the London fire department is burning up badly.
Private fire departments will sooner or later find a way to squeeze money out of the owners of burning buildings, as Crassus did.
Privatization government activities is always bad unless it results in a competitive market for users.
The Guantanamo judge silenced a defense lawyer who spoke about how his client had been tortured.
Connell is entirely right to say that this kangaroo court is a "blight on America's international reputation and her commitment to the rule of law." Shame on you, Obama!
The European Union is considering regulating the scrapping of EU ships, even if it is done outside the EU, for the sake of workers' safety.
I am completely in favor of this. Why allow businesses that don't have proper safety rules to compete in our markets? And while we're at it, why allow sweatshops to compete?
I don't think it is wrong to employ workers in Bangladesh, or China, rather than workers in the US or Europe; but it is certainly wrong to replace safe working conditions and good pay with low-paid dangerous conditions. If you want to hire Bangladeshis, go ahead as long as it isn't an excuse for a setback for workers' rights and pay.
The UN suggests that the US should return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes in violation of treaties.
There is no denying that justice calls for this.
I also think the US ought to pay reparations for slavery to the descendants of slaves. They suffer today from the repercussions of the policies that denied them fundamental legal rights.
All US slaveowners are long dead, and most Americans today are not even their descendants. We cannot inherit personal responsibility for an old evil. However, the US government which denied slaves equal rights still exists. So do the state governments which until the 1960s had racist laws that denied all Blacks equal rights. These governments must take responsibility for those acts; they must pay reparations to the victims and their descendants.
Lincoln High School in Walla Walla has reversed the destructive trajectory of its district's problem students, by rejecting the cruel and punitive spirit of zero tolerance.
Many of these children's suffering could have been predicted in advance because they were born to problem parents. As an individual, you can't retroactively choose your parents, but society can influence how likely various people are to become parents. We need to do more to encourage these people to have no children, perhaps by paying them to get sterilized.
Obama has launched an all-out attack against medical marijuana, using any conceivable pretext to shut dispensaries and harass patients.
The UK government is trying desperately to build nuclear reactors, but this is running smack into its promise not to subsidize them.
The article considers a minimum carbon trade price as a kind of subsidy for nuclear power, but that is only half true. It is, rather a kind of subsidy for everything other than fossil fuels. Absent some other subsidy for nuclear power, I expect businesses to choose to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
When Democrats win, and when they lose, the corporate media say it proves they ought to become more right-wing.
They won't have my vote unless they become Liberals again.
The White Plains thugs will get off untouched after killing Kenneth Chamberlain.
It may be true the final step, the actual killing, was justified if Chamberlain was attacking his tormentors with a knife. But the whole dispute was provoked by the thugs. There no excuse for not leaving him alone when nothing was wrong, or for not allowing him to talk with his relatives.
Let's think carefully about the thugs' statement that they will "never run away from an emergency". There was no emergency except the one they created. In effect, their position is that once they create a problem they will not let it end. And they had to destroy Kenneth Chamberlain in order to save him.
The US government shut down Dajaz1.com in advance of hypothetical charges against it — then never filed any charges.
What US politicians say about Iran and nuclear weapons
is the opposite
of what thoughtful leaders believe.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Those thoughtful leaders include the main Israeli generals and intelligence chiefs. Against them is Netanyahu and his obsessions, together with US politicians intimidated into supporting him.
Look at the list of cruelties that a court said John Yoo couldn't be expected to recognize as torture.
A man who was seriously injured when Portland thugs shot him with tasers won a lawsuit against the city.
I am glad he won, but unless the thugs are personally punished, they won't learn to stop attacking innocent people.
A terminal at Newark Airport was completely evacuated because a baby had gone through security unchecked.
Lesson: always check your babies, rather than carry them into the cabin.
The band All Shall Perish was shocked to discover that a copyright troll has started suing their fans.
Who is to blame here?
The copyright troll is doing something inexcusable under any circumstances, but others are responsible too. The record company was negligent, at best, in selling the rights to a troll, and if it did so without consulting the band, that was abusive treatment of the band.
The band members were wrong in accepting a contract designed to forbid the public from sharing, but I understand that the record company pressured them to do it, so I would forgive them if they condemn the record company strongly enough.
Syrian subjection forces are massacring the inhabitants of Idlib.
The paramilitaries of Colombia are terrorizing journalists there.
While the state fights against the FARC, who are drug traffickers and kidnapers, it does little to fight the paramilitaries who are the worst terrorists in Colombia. That's because they have close ties to the ruling elite, including former president Alvaro Horrible.
Amnesty International condemns censorship
in Tunisia.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Human rights defenders must not be soft on Islamist censorship, Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize any one, any thing, and any idea -- including any religion and any church.
Palestinian, Israeli and International peace activists blocked the Israeli army from destroying 1400 Palestinian olive trees.
The National Academy of Sciences says parts of Obama's Europe-based
missile defense system
won't work and should be scrapped.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Since Obama is willing to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan in two years without a victory, why wait?
The full list of corporations that support ALEC.
They include Johnson & Johson, State Farm insurance, AT&T, eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Time Warner.
The FBI wants a law to require surveillance backdoors in web services and communications software.
I seem to recall reading that Skype already provides surveillance facilities.
I wish we had a government that only used its powers against criminals and not against dissidents, a government whose idea of the public interest were different from "Give that company whatever it wants."
A schedule of royalty rates for different kinds of Digital Restrictions Management threatens to become part of US copyright law through a backdoor.
Most Internet users are not aware that Spotify is DRM and must be fought. Please support our campaign against DRM.
Austerity in Europe, and lack of stimulus in the US, is pushing a lot of Europe into recession and has prevented recovery in the US.
We need FDR, not Obama.
Ms Londono Suarez says that the secret service agent who slept with her committed a horrible wrong because she could have gone through his papers to learn secrets.
I suppose she could have, but he was a bodyguard, not a diplomat or policy planner. He probably had nothing in his papers that would be very important to national security, and he probably knew this.
As far as I can see, the only thing he did wrong was refuse to pay her.
The motive for military kangaroo courts in Guantanamo is to cover up the crimes of torture committed against the defendants.
The US government wants to label as secret anything they say about their torture experiences at the hands of US inquisitors.
This is totally under Obama's control, and therefore totally his responsibility. Obama, stop shielding US torturers!
Greenland's glaciers have sped up by 30% since 10 years ago.
While this is not as bad as some imaginary scenarios, it is bad. We have no way of predicting how much worse it will get as temperatures rise even more. Global heating concentrates in the polar regions; the Earth on average has heated by about 1 degree C, but it's more than that in Greenland. And further heating will again be worse in Greenland than the average for the Earth.
Argentina's economic policies present an example for the downtrodden countries of the euro zone.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan now. Also sign this petition.
I don't think the fact that Osama bin Laden is dead makes any difference to the situation. There is simply no point propping up Karzai; that won't change next year, and it won't change in a decade. So there is no reason to continue the fighting.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell Obama
you demand criminal prosecutions of bankster fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign
this petition
for the EPA to intervene regarding the
southern part of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
the Equal Rights Amendment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition
for sustainable fishing for canned tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the Senate to reject anti-environment provisions in the transportation bill.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan now. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
I don't think the fact that Osama bin Laden is dead makes any difference to the situation. There is simply no point propping up Karzai; that won't change next year, and it won't change in a decade. So there is no reason to continue the fighting.
Egypts' generals said they were not responsible for the killing of protesters, and that they want to hand over power to civilian government, but it is hard to believe they were not responsible.
The US admits that drone bombings kill civilians, but still pretends they are very few.
Republicans are trying to cut social welfare programs and increase the military budget.
And they want to cut taxes even more for millionaires.
This is when we are handicapped by having Obama instead of someone who will denounce "trickle-down" as a fraud and a lie.
The Methodist Church voted to condemn Israel's occupation of Palestine but rejected divesting from the companies that supply equipment for it.
The files of the East German secret police say that Ikea used Cuban political prisoners to make its furniture.
Republicans now want to cut the children's health insurance program, as well as nutrition programs.
While fighting to protect fictitious babies, they are trying to kill real babies.
Correa's anti-austerity policies in Ecuador have extended education and reduced poverty by 25%.
US citizens: call on Energy Secretary Chu to end fracking.
Almost 400 US troops have died in Afghanistan since Osama bin Laden was killed. (I don't know how many Afghan civilians have been killed, but I'd guess it is more.) These deaths appear to have been for nothing.
For one week: US citizens, phone your senators to oppose CISPA.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Civil liberties amendments for CISPA were mostly rejected, but other amendments were adopted. Here's more detail about them.
Egyptian plainclothes thugs attacked a protest with guns as well as teargas, and killed several protesters.
I can't make sense of the stories about Chen Guangcheng. He left the US embassy, for unclear reasons but maybe he thought he had a deal with China, but now he wants to flee to the US.
It seems the US embassy told him about Chinese threats to harm his family members.
Passing on information about an enemy's threats is not the same as making the threats. It looks like Chen had prepared cleverly to escape from his village and get to Beijing, but was not prepared to deal with threats of that kind.
One must be prepared to tell hostage-takers, "If you hurt hostages, the evil will be on your head."
Inside documents show that the UK coalition is privatizing the NHS and will enable companies to get big profits by making big cuts.
The UK will end up with a system as bad for the public, and as good for busineess, as the US has.
Some US judges are resisting the tactics of the copyright trolls.
This shows why Hollywood and Obama are determined to force ISPs to punish Internet users: by avoiding trials and courts, they can evade the basic principles of justice that courts are supposed to maintain (and sometimes do).The head of the Senate commerce committee seeks information about News Corp from the UK.
The company, and Rupert Murdoch in person, have been described by the UK parliament as unfit — relevant because some of their broadcasting activities require licenses and companies must meet that standard.
Quebec student protests have spread into a broad social movement against austerity.
Bravo!
Professors are suing to stop skeletons 10,000 years old from being lost to science due to NAGPRA.
For a historical Amerindian tribe to claim these bones belong to their ancestors is absurd. The city of La Jolla has as much basis for such a claim as the Kumeyaay do.
US citizens: sign this petition to
require labeling of GMOs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Expert confirms EPA finding that fracking linked to
Wyoming ground
water contamination.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Therefore, Obama has a clever plan to make it hard to prove that future fracking has contaminated water supplies.
While the Republicans launch a cavalry charge crying "Death to the environment!", Obama tries to destroy it subtly and quietly.
There was a protest in DC against mass imprisonment in the US.
I support the cause, but I dislike the hyperbole of describing this as "occupying the Justice Department". It was a protest march.
EU's highest court ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted there.
Bolivia has renationalized its electric power grid, taking it away from a Spanish company.
Hooray, Evo! Privatization of such things is the act of a government that wants to give away as much as possible to business.
Obama, subservient to Netanyahu, is trying to delay the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the occupation of Palestine.
A Pakistani court ruled that the government's Internet censorship plans are unconstitutional.
A US court approved Internet censorship by libraries, inexplicably disregarding Supreme Court precedent.
UN observers in Syria say both sides are violating the cease fire but that the violence is decreasing.
Obama continues to claim that the Taliban are losing.
Everyone: Obama's negotiators are trying to block global negotiations
to protect marine life and fisheries. Sign
this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for an investigation
of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Also send mail through
this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
against allowing poultry processors
to do their own inspections.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Also please sign this petition, directed at Obama.
The Cambodian thugs who killed Chut Wutty arrested him first, and knew who he was.
Filter Schmilter: Libraries and Internet Filtering Software
Austrian human rights activists have organized street protests and a legal challenge against the universal surveillance of mandatory data retention.
Iran plans a totally controlled "Internet" with surveillance of
everyone
and no access to the outside world.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Malaysian thugs specifically targeted journalists covering protests for clean elections.
The thugs also destroyed or stole cameras which had evidence of how they were treating the protesters.
Aboriginal people trying to protect their land in South America often face charges of "terrorism".
When someone proposes an "anti-terror law", think "anti-democracy".
Vietnam arrested Nguyen Quoc Quan, allegedly planning a protest, and accused him of "terrorism".
Wouldn't it be nice if the US set a good example that we could urge Vietnam to follow?
In case anyone that speaks Vietnamese is reading this, is "Nguyen Quoc Quan" a patriotic pseudonym?
Even some thugs are participating in a campaign to end the war on drugs.
Mass protests covered Europe
on May Day.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is not enough to demand an end to austerity. Europeans must support parties that will take their countries out of the euro zone unless the rules are changed so the banksters are not in control.
A Pakistani legislator says her country is helpless against US drone bombings, and asks Americans to press for an end to them.
Detroit high school students, suspended from their school for protesting against the plan to close another public school, started their own "freedom school".
Coal ash is toxic, but the Republicans want to stop the EPA from regulating its disposal.
ALEC says its activities will focus on American working people. ALEC seeks to reduce their wages, cut their sick days, smash their unions, and undercut them with forced labor in privatized prisons.
However, ALEC won't really get out of the voter suppression and killing promotion field.
That was a pretense.
At ALEC meetings, corporation representatives speak and state legislators listen.
Israel ordered Palestinians to destroy 1000 olive trees on their land, which Israel declared a nature reserve.
Various European countries are putting pressure on Ukraine to stop torturing opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko in prison.
Mississippi has passed a law designed to force the state's only abortion clinic to close, through artificial requirements.
Aborting unwanted pregnancies is an admirable mission. It can prevent lots of suffering, in the short term and in the long term.
An EPA official who proposed to prosecute polluters energetically has resigned after Republicans criticized his colorful metaphor.
That was a typical weak Obama response, and symptomatic of his weak concern for the environment. A president who really cared would have corrected the metaphor and defended the goal.
Romney's choice for the Supreme Court is Bork, even more
right-wing than today's
conservatives on the court.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Americans are imprisoned for debts they owe, and debts they don't owe,
through
various legal excuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This may stop when imprisoned debtors decide to stay in jail rather that pay.
US citizens: tell the SEC not to let publicly traded corporations
hide
their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rebuke the TPP negotiations: states and their corporate masters conspiring secretly against their citizens.
The Oklahoma initiative to declare fertilized eggs and embryos persons was blocked as unconstitutional.
The head of the Star of Hope Mission, which says it aims to help the
poor, endorsed a plan to fine anyone in Houston who gives home-cooked
food
to the needy without a permit.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The supposed reason is to prevent unsightly homeless persons from making commercial properties unattractive. But it seems that part of the motive is to ensure homeless hungry Americans can't get help except from churches.
The US Patent Office wants to cancel the practice of publishing patent applications after 18 months.
The original purpose of patents in the US was to discourage trade secrecy. Inventors were offered 17 years of monopoly in exchange for showing others their technique. This exchange no longer really occurs, because patent lawyers have worked out how to get broad patents while concealing the most important knowledge.
Trade secrecy in 1800 was simple: you just didn't tell anyone your methods. That didn't depend on any government intervention. Nowadays, information can be distributed massively and still considered a trade secret, and laws have been passed to help maintain these secrets. In other words, with one hand the government facilitates and thus encourages trade secrecy, and with the other hand it imposes monopolies to reduce the harmful practice of trade secrecy.
What a racket!
An American woman let her breast cancer become untreatable because she
feared losing
her job if she got treatment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This story begins quite a ways down the text.
The suicide rate in Greece increased 40% from 2010 to 2011.
Rivers in India suffer from god pollution.
Most of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners appear to be subservient to the industry, and they seem to be undermining the commission head by provoking him into anger so they can call for his replacement.
This is an instance of the general corruption of the US government by business interests.
Elected officials and journalists sued New York City over attacks against
protesters
in Liberty Park.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
As jihadis conquer towns in Yemen, and imprison anyone who won't pray, the people flee.
But the army fails to fight them effectively, because the state is recognized as a US puppet.
ISPs in the UK will be required to block access to the Pirate Bay.
People in Britain will still be able to access the site through proxies, and its new data base format is small enough that they may simply get copies of it.
I believe that noncommercial redistribution must be legalized, but not necessarily commercial use of copyrighted works. Because the Pirate Bay gets money from ads, it can be considered a commercial activity; it is on the edge of what constitutes commercial. Thus, I don't necessarily object to shutting down such sites, as long as it is done with a fair trial.
Bahrain says Al-Khawaja can have a new trial, but will be kept in prison.
He may fast to death before the new trial occurs.
Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, had a continuing conversation with Osama bin Laden and seemed to share his ideology.
In 2001, the Taliban were willing to cut their ties with al Qa'ida in order to have a better relationship with the US. If their position has changed, why did that happen? Clearly because of the war.
But it has not necessarily changed. This ideological sympathy may have existed already in the 90s. If that didn't stop the Taliban from making concessions for peace in 2001, it might not stop them now.
Two Russian dissidents who wanted to pray in the Moscow cathedral for Putin's removal were attacked by official thugs and a private gang.
Privatizing US education, which Obama favors, is a great business opportunity for makers of proprietary rote lessons.
Louisiana is doing this, with help from ALEC.
The presence of ALEC shows that the real goal is private profits. And the "school choice" delivered by vouchers turns out to mean "you can choose a religious school".
Apple pioneered techniques for avoiding the low US corporate tax rate in order to pay next to no tax.
The loopholes that Apple uses would be closed, if not for the political power of business. "Free trade" treaties give business increased power to block such changes, so we must abolish them to break business's power.
A published letter allegedly proves that Gaddafi provided 50 million euro to Sarkozy's previous election campaign.
Sarkozy says it is fake, and that is not impossible. However, his argument that this must be false because the campaign spent only 20 million is nonsense. Such a donation, if it occurred, would not have been entered in the campaign's official account books.It appears certain chiropractic manipulations can cause strokes and death.
The FCC decided to require TV stations to report who bought their political ads, but failed to insist on non-obfuscatory formats.
Tar sand oil may be extracted in the US.
It is stupid to look for more fossil fuel to extract. We already have far more deposits than we can safely burn.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose CISPA. Also send email through this campaign.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Professor Loretta Capeheart is fighting to keep her job when the boss wants to fire her for criticizing his policies.
A UK supermarket cooperative will boycott Israeli export companies that deal with produce from colonies in the West Bank.
Connecticut has
abolished the death penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Workers in general would benefit from an increased minimum wage.
Evidence implicates top BP executives as well as its partners Chevron
and Exxon and the Bush Administration in the deadly cover-up
of the blowout in the Caspian.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This went so far as falsifying a report to the Securities Exchange Commission.
This is the full version of an article linked to in a pol note on April 26.
Shell grossly underestimated the size of an oil spill in Nigeria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It looks like such minimization is standard practice for oil companies.
A UK store chain asks people to give an old piece of clothing when buying a new one.
It seems like a good idea, but the right way to cut down on wasteful purchase of clothing is to ensure the people who make it are paid decent wages. People will buy less, less water and fertilizer will be used, and the total income of the workers will increase even as the amount of work they do decreases.
Nothing stands in the way except the subservience of government to business. The "free trade treaties" are instruments constructed by subservient governments to carry out the orders they receive from business; we need to eliminate them, but they are the instrument, not the cause.
Pakistani human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar has received a US visa to speak at a discussion of US drone bombings.
The US refused for months to answer him, purely because of his activities as a lawyer for victims. Even though the US ultimately did the right thing, it was wrong to even hesitate.
What's wrong with Obama is not that he can't overcome Republican votes in Congress. It's that he doesn't even try.
Obama doesn't try because he is more interested in satisfying the oil companies, Hollywood and the banksters than in the American people. Just look at what he did with the free exploitation treaties with Colombia, Panama and South Korea — and now the TPP.
However, many Liberals who swallowed Obama's vague slogans in 2008 are still reluctant to recognize that they were had.
I wish we had mounted a primary challenge to him, so that at least for a while there's be a Democrat in the race that deserved our support, but I guess nobody could raise the money to try.
Jill Stein for president!
The new Hungarian "anti-terror" thug force has the power of the secret police of a fascist state.
You might notice that some of these powers exist in the US as well under the PAT RIOT Act.
"Fighting terrorism" is an old excuse for fascism. The US-backed dictatorships in South America in the 1970s said they people they secretly murdered were "terrorists". This is why "fighting terrorism" does not justify any special state power over individuals.
Medical personnel are increasingly threatened during wars, for many reasons.
The US intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the trickery involved in finding Osama bin Laden, have fed the distrust of vaccination programs there although irrational suspicion of medicine, also found in the West, has contribute too.
Privatizing thug jobs in the UK has made some thugs formally unaccountable to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
This is above and beyond the unofficial tendency for the IPCC to give thugs impunity.
The problem that contractors bring unaccountability is a general pattern. We saw it also with mercenary contractors in the Bush forces in Iraq.
The Unlearned Lessons of the BP Disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This doesn't include the lessons to learn from BP's concealment of a previous smaller disaster caused by the same corner-cutting practices, which Greg Palast is revealing.
Reporters investigating secret Pentagon PR contracts in Afghanistan were smeared by a dirty tricks campaign accusing them of working for the Taliban.
Under the unjust law signed by Obama last winter, this could have served as an excuse to imprison them without trial.
Secret emails of the Islamist party in power in Tunisia demonstrate
that it was looking for ways to impose aspects of Shari'a law.
And various other irregularities.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Tunisian state has attacked the human rights of protesters in recent weeks.
A Lebanon newspaper reports a reporter resigned from al Jazeera because he was told to slant the news against Assad.
Al Jazeera has been accused before of slanting some news areas at the orders of the Qatari state, so I don't think this accusation is impossible. What is surprising is that this happens only rarely, allowing so many issues to be covered without state-imposed bias.
I don't know what al Akhbar stands for. Maybe it is pro-Syrian. (Syria has a lot of influence in Lebanon.) But even if that is so, I think the story is credible.
Curtis Johnson, age 55, must kill himself soon or be condemned to many
years of suffering with no escape.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
His last act will be to damn the laws that put him in this predicament.
He could spend his last few hours in front of the state capitol, and kill himself there. That would drive the point home to the ones who must act to fix this.
If he has some months left, he could start protesting that way each day. He might perhaps get them to change the law by his deadline — it is worth a try.
The TSA wants to search bus passengers
in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. It is just a system for searching Americans as they travel.
The UK government wants to apply the motto of "open data" to personal information held by any state agency.
Thugs in New York State arrested 28 people for planning a protest outside the gate of a base from which drone bombings are launched.
To require such a small number of people to get a permit for a peaceful protest is in itself tyranny, and it is clear that the military are working with the thugs to attack Americans' right to protest.
Spain plans to criminalize using the
Internet to organize
protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: Tell Shell's CEO: You can't profit
from human rights
abuse.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Correction about CISPA: the last-minute amendment didn't make it worse. Rather, it replaced dangerous vagueness with dangerous specific powers, making explicit the danger that was previously only inferred.
Chickens in factory farms get a broad array of drugs, and drugs whose use has been banned are still showing up in chicken feathers.
Republicans rejected a ballot petition in Michigan because of the size of the type.
The term "intellectual property" spreads confusion every time it is
used. Here's an interesting article
about copyright policy,
with the completely evitable flaw of using "intellectual property"
as a synonym for "copyright". Put that together with another article
which equates "intellectual property" with patent law, and you're
likely
to be totally misled.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The article gains nothing whatsoever from that term. There was no reason to use it other than the feeling that (misled) readers expect it. Misled readers expect it because of articles like this one that use it. If the article always said "copyright", it would have been clear and correct.
When will they ever learn?
The Ridenhour prizes are awarded to heroic whistleblowers.
As "middle class" Americans slide down towards poverty, the term "middle class" becomes a euphemism for "not quite poor".
Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders.
The TSA defends its decision to body-search a frightened 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy.
In a narrow but meaningless sense, this search was necessary. I wouldn't put it past a terrorist to hide a knife on his daughter. For thorough security, little girls must be searched.
In a broader sense, there is no reason to worry about the weapons that could be hidden on a little girl. Bringing a knife on the plane would gain a terrorist nothing: he couldn't do more harm with it in an airplane than he could do on the street.
On Israel's independence day, a small group of activists held a discussion criticizing the expulsion of Arabs in 1948. Thugs stopped them from leaving the building, and arrested one of them for speaking.
The Internet has made it much easier for the FBI to catch people who collect child pornography.
I see nothing to criticize in the FBI's methods in getting evidence against Cafferty. It steered well clear of entrapment. The characters in its nonexistent videos were described as unambiguously children, not stretching that term to the postpuberal. My only objection is to the idea that people should be imprisoned for having a collection of images based on what subject matter they depict.
And it seems to me that the FBI could just as easily to apply the same methods to prosecute people interested in any other kind of material. Material from Wikileaks, for instance.
Effectively purchased by agribusiness, Brazil's congress passed a law
that
will facilitate deforestation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has escaped from his guards, and describes how they tortured his family from someplace in Beijing.
Why the Israeli government tried to stop CBS from talking about what life is like for Palestinians.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Violence Against Women Act.
Here's a little more information, but I can't recommend you sign
it
since it requires running nonfree Javascript.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US has expanded drone attacks in Yemen, including situations where they don't know the identity of whoever is being bombed.
Israeli Army Chief Says He Believes Iran Won't Build Bomb.
The CIA agent who destroyed videos of CIA torture committed a crime,
but he basks in impunity thanks
to Obama's protection.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Coca Cola Company vetoed a plan to refill visitors' water bottles at Grand Canyon National Park.
Fortunately the park ultimately reinstated the plan.
This problem shows how it is dangerous for important activities to be funded by donations from companies. We need to get their funds by taxing them, so that they threaten not to pay.
Meanwhile, there is a world-wide boycott of Coca Cola Company for murdering union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala.
Rugged Operating System, used in industrial control systems, has a back door installed by the developer.
When it is activated, the devices could act as if they were running D-Rugged Operating System ;-).
If the system were free software, users could fix this problem; but if it were free software, such a back door would probably never have been introduced.
US citizens: state your support for the
Progressive Budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Billionaire Polluter told the public that the flow rate of oil from the Big Spill was irrelevant to stopping the leak, and that the "top kill" was working, although engineers were telling the company otherwise.
The Royal Society says that humanity's priorities must include limiting population and consumption.
A study finds that fracking causes cracks in rock, which occasionally extend over 300 meters away. So it recommends that fracking not be allowed within 600 meters of an aquifer.
Maybe this is sufficient protection for water supplies, but it won't protect against global heating.
A large study finds that mobile phones do not cause illness for their users.
They do however subject their users to surveillance worse than Stalinesque.
The FBI is prosecuting a BP minnow, but not the BP sharks.
US citizens: support the workers of Station Casinos which is trying to
stop them
from unionizing.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Israel was going to demolish a West Bank colony built without government permission, but the extremists have made the state back down.
Germany has used copyright to suppress publication of Mein Kampf. The copyright will expire soon, so Germany is considering a more ethical way to combat Hitler's racism: explaining why it is wrong.
I hope the copyright industry won't push to extend copyright world-wide just so that Mein Kampf can be further suppressed. There is no limit to how small a tail the copyright industry will try to wag the dog with.
Connecticut is considering a law to punish individual thugs who interfere with legitimate video recording by citizens of what the thugs are doing.
Plenty more laws like this are needed to stop these armed gangs from marauding around the US.
Media Jump On Idea That Social Security Is Going Bankrupt, Ignore Easy Way To Ensure Its Future.
US citizens: urge Obama to stand firm against CISPA.
School vouchers offer an excuse to divert public funds to religious schools , backed also by the broader privatization lobby.
170,000 students are on strike in Quebec against austerity plans.
The Bush tax cuts, preserved by the Republicans, amount to twice as much as the Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years.
And the military cuts called for by the law that set up the supercommittee would also cover it.
US citizens:
tell Congress to cut bombers, not health care.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's extension of drone attacks in Yemen appear to lack authorization from Congress.
Meanwhile, US drone attacks in Pakistan have been
officially forbidden by the government of Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistan would be entitled to regard these attacks as an act of war.
The Dutch government has imposed a ban on selling pot to visitors.
It is noteworthy that the states reasons would evaporate if neighboring countries were to adopt the same policy that the Netherlands has had for decades. The cause of the supposed problem is therefore the prohibition in those other countries.
Film student Ian Van Kuyk was beaten up by thugs, then charged with fabricated crimes, because he refused to stop making a video of thugs at work.
His girlfriend had to try to rescue the camera in the interests of justice so that the thugs could not destroy evidence against them.
For-profit US colleges joined ALEC.
Many of these colleges ought to be shut down so they cannot rip off the public; they are using ALEC to lobby to prevent that.
The Pirate Party in Sweden organized young artists to denounce the copyright lobby's pretends to speak for them. Now founder Falkvinge calls for a similar campaign in Germany and other countries.
Chen Guangcheng appealed to the Chinese state not to persecute his family.
I've read elsewhere that he is in the US embassy.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Arbitration Fairness Act* (H.R. 1873, S. 987). Also send a message through this page.
The Cambodian soldier who killed Chut Wutty is dead. Supposedly he shot himself when he realized what he had done.
I am skeptical that a soldier who helped protect illegal loggers felt remorse about killing an environmentalist. If the soldier was in fact shot dead, I suspect he was killed or coerced by other soldiers, in order to make him the fall guy and protect his commanders from blame.
US citizens: tell the US not to allow experimentation with oil shale to pollute public land in the west.
ACTA was
condemned by the EU Parliament member appointed to study it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
He rejected it despite his confused support for the bogus concept of "intellectual property". In the specific issue of ACTA, that is a good sign. However, the monster is not dead yet; Europeans still need to support the organizations that fight against ratification of ACTA.
Meanwhile, the fact that he gives credence to the confused concept of "intellectual property" — and, worse, support for the idea of enforcing "it" more — suggests he might be disposed to support some other unjust measure for copyright enforcement, and wouldn't even know how to separate that issue from other unrelated laws and their unrelated issues.
ALEC will attack state targets for renewable energy.
A former CIA agent was so upset to hear his fellow agents called "torturers" that he destroyed video evidence of their torture.
The Harvard libraries have created a stir with a cry of distress about restricted scientific publishing. However, their recommendations are still timid. Michael Eisen shows what a really strong stand would look like.
Jill Stein says,
if elected president she would pardon
Bradley Manning.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Wal-Mart faces federal criminal probe tied to allegations of bribery in Mexico.
Colombian union leaders receive death threats from neo-paramilitaries.
If Obama's world were concerned with the truth, he might be embarrassed that this has happened just after he certified that Colombia was making progress ending the assassination of union leaders.
Israel retroactively authorized three "outposts", new colonies built without official government support.
The effect is to launch additional government-approved colonies.
Vietnam is tearing down mangrove forests for golf courses and shrimp farms. And not just a few — in decades they could be nearly gone.
"Free" (gratis, not libre) games for the iThings can convince children to spend lots of money.
Recall that Apple censors iBad software based on many other criteria and says this is for the users' sake.
Kenyans say UK agents kidnaped them in 2010 and handed them over to Uganda's torture police.
In Uganda's prison, UK and US agents interrogated them and helped to torture them.
China is beginning large efforts to control carbon emissions.
A Billionaire Polluter engineer faces charges for deleting text messages that belied BP's public statements.
UK welfare cuts placed great expenses for housing on local governments. Some near London are talking about moving the poor to other areas with lower rents.
I suspect that those areas, far from London, have no jobs at all.
The International Energy Agency says that humanity is failing to implement the measures necessary to avoid global heating disaster, and governments are to blame.
Humanity has an opportunity to act to avoid disaster, and must not lose that opportunity.
The Dutch copyright-enforcing cartel BREIN acts like a thug (in both senses of the word).
California is considering a bill to make the state get a warrant to access cell phone location data. The cell phone companies oppose it because they make lots of money from selling this data to the state.
Shell underestimated the size of an oil spill in Nigeria
by a factor of 60.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It will be hard to prove that Shell knew the statement was false without internal documents. However, it is clear that we cannot trust an oil company to tell anyone the true size of an oil leak.
Argentina has begun collecting fingerprints and other biometrics of everyone entering the country, not to verify their identities but rather to build up a data base for use in tracking them in other ways.
I was going to visit Argentina in June for discussions about a free software law. Now that is out of the question. I will miss Argentina and my friends there, but some outrages must not be borne.
The TSA outdid itself, subjecting a married couple of
age 85 and 95,
in wheelchairs, to multiple feel-ups, and making them put $300 in cash
in the bin, from which it was stolen, and then the TSA rejected
responsibility.
[Reference updated on 2017-12-02 because the old link was broken.]
If TSA searches did a necessary job, perhaps one could argue that every system goes wrong sometimes and this is the price we must pay for safety. However, all we buy with this price is a ticket to security theater, and we'd rather skip the show.
A study estimates that typical web users would need to spend 250 hours a year to read the privacy policies they encounter.
It would not be worth the trouble, because the reliable way to prevent misuse of data is by preventing it from being collected, so privacy policies do little good anyway.
Planned Parenthood sees an inexplicable surge in women visiting and asking about abortions based on the sex of the embryo, and suspects that they are phony patients trying to create a phony scandal.
If this is true, they seek to use the irrational prejudice against women who abort a fetus because of its sex. There is nothing wrong with choosing on that basis.
In some cases, the motive for such a choice might be prejudice against females. There are other possible motives — someone might feel, "I have a boy/girl so now I want a girl/boy." If the motive is prejudice, it is foolish and could hurt people's feelings, but women are entitled to abortions for whatever reason.
Shareholders will confront American Electric Power with the
3200
deaths caused by pollution from its coal-powered electric plants in
the past year alone.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
That's more than one September 11 attack per year.
When appliances are connected to the Internet, they become vulnerable to attacks through the Internet. This includes attacks by the manufacturer through back doors that the appliances might have.
When you hear "Internet of things", think "danger".
Common Cause has called for an IRS prosecution of ALEC for lobbying in contravention of the rules for public charities.
The United States can't abandon the country [Afghanistan], but our troops must leave.
Palestinian hunger strikes draw attention to Israeli detention practice.
Anyone imprisoned without a fair trial deserves a "get out of jail free" card. The Palestinians arbitrarily imprisoned have not found that. What they have discovered is a chance of getting out by maintaining a hunger strike for months, which causes severe bodily damage, perhaps irreparable.
Elie Wiesel rebuked Netanyahu's attempts to equate Iran with the Nazi extermination campaign.
There is another plan for exporting tar sands oil from Canada: through New England.
Extracting that oil will inevitably cause disaster due to global heating, and it is well known which areas of the world are going to suffer the disaster first. (They are typically coastal or arid.) The people in those areas can morally justify sabotaging these pipelines based on the necessity defense. It might even prevail in court, if the judge is sincerely concerned about justice.
The effects of global heating and climate change make it a human rights issue, which is further justification for those attacked to resist.
One point in this article is strangely confused. Why would anyone dream that the failure to stop global heating is due to democracy, and propose eliminating democracy as a "solution"? Everyone should know that the nondemocratic political power of business is directly tied to the failure to stop global heating; oil companies fund global heating denialists and arrange for mainstream media to pay attention to them. That the corrective to plutocracy is democracy should not be countintuitive.
Bahrain's suppression forces arrested a British TV news crew, which
had come for the car race, but
tried to cover protests in nearby
villages.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike
to protest the tyranny of their imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I am not impressed by Israeli claims that these people are "dangerous". Bring it out in court, or shut up.
The World Bank is financing the land grab in Africa.
Olympic parathugs attacked photographers taking photos of games venues from nearby streets.
I've coined the term "parathug" by analogy with "paramilitary" and "paralegal". These people are not official thugs, but they work alongside the thugs in the same field.
A
PBS program funded by Dow is functioning effectively as an
infomercial for Dow.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Globalization of Hollow Politics — and the popular backlash.
Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Union condemned the practice of punishment by Internet disconnection on mere accusation.
She also condemned DRM and cited the Free Software Foundation (Europe).
Interview with Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.
Paul Ehrlich reaffirms his concern about the population bomb , which is still ticking away as he predicted.
The UK's latest plan to help poor countries reduce carbon emissions: give them $100 million (a drop in the bucket) to build carbon capture and storage facilities (which have not yet been made to work).
Divestment by the Methodist Church from companies connected with the occupation of Palestine would ease Palestinian suffering.
Everyone: support CBS's presentation of the story that the Israeli occupation has pushed most Christians to leave the area of Bethlehem.
Cambodian thugs shot and killed environmental activist Chut Wutty, who exposed illegal logging.
First they tried to take away his photos. They must have been in cahoots with the loggers.
How the NSA is setting up total surveillance of Americans, in the name of "protecting" us.
Here Amy Goodman interviews Appelbaum, Poitras and Binney.
A Mexican law allowing the state to get cell phone location data without a warrant is likely to help criminal gangs find their victims and kill them.
The US government spreads fear
among Americans by asking people to
report anything "suspicious". Many Americans refuse to do this
because they recognize that it is likely to harm innocent people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Another part of the same point is that they recognize it is very unlikely to have good consequences.
A nation of informers — both human and computerized — is exactly what the state is developing. Claims to the contrary are disingenuous if they are not simply lies. State violence is a bigger threat to American lives than any non-US-affiliated terrorists, and it permist state bullying that crushes our human rights.
The foundation for these attacks is the fear spread by security theater and by announcements in our buses and subways. The fear makes the pretense that this is protecting us seem plausible to too many gullible Americans. Even many who realize it is bullshit feel obliged to kowtow to it. We need to stop kowtowing and say we don't want to be "protected" this way.
Everyone:
phone people in North Carolina
to help defeat an
anti-gay initiative which also threatens everyone else.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US still allows feeding cattle brains and other nerve tissue to various kinds of animals, including chickens whose droppings are then fed to cattle. Whether this can transmit mad cow disease is not known.
I am not outraged on principle about feeding chickenshit to cattle. I don't know whether cattle dislike it; if it is mixed with other things, they may not notice. However, we had better make sure it is safe.
The "Internet of things" proposes to connect your appliances and your car to the Internet.
This means some company will collect data from your things and store it, then the state will find an excuse to collect it all. Stay away from it!
The House of Representatives passed CISPA with an amendment to extend it beyond "cybersecurity".
Even before that, CISPA was still very bad despite some other changes that shaved off certain bad points.
Charles Taylor has been convicted of crimes against humanity.
The latest Republican false accusation against Obama is that he wants to enforce environmental laws strictly and protect the environment.
What a vile canard! Obama is a firm supporter of undersea oil drilling and the planet-roaster pipeline too.
It's only our biosphere and ordinary people that lack his support.
Thousands of monks protested in Tibet, and were repressed by Chinese thugs.
It resembles the US response to Occupy protests.
US citizens: call on the Senate Intelligence Committee to publish its study on torture.
Wal-Mart started to investigate reports its Mexican subsidiary had paid bribes to get permission to build stores, but then decided it would rather not know.
US Senate candidates report their campaign contributions on paper,
which creates long delays in making the information public.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Large Indian Internet sites typically apply Internet censorship eagerly, deleting anything that someone objects to.
Free software activists in Bangalore organized street theater against Internet censorship.
I think they are making a mistake by conceding censorship of so-called "hate speech". Once you tolerate censorship of something, on whatever grounds, it is hard to object to censorship of anything else that someone can present as "disgusting" or wrong-headed. Views can be hateful, but not more hateful than gagging people.
Do Limbaugh and such tell lies about electric cars because they hate the very idea of conservation?
Or is it because they have business relationships with oil companies that want to maximize the consumption of oil?
As global heating melts Arctic ice, big oil companies are trying to drill for oil where the ice used to be.
The wells might cause disasters as BP and others have done. If they avoid this, the oil will boost global heating and melt more ice. The companies probably think that's great, while tens of millions die of the consequences.
The US has agreed to give Karzai's government control over night raids in Afghanistan and control over prisons.
These two decisions are the right ones. The night raids decision is right, because Karzai's men in control will reduce the killing and injury of civilians in those raids. As for the prisons, both countries abuse prisoners and there is someting to be said for letting the Afghan government have real sovereignty.
I remain skeptical that Karzai's government can ever stand on its own. It is corrupt and inspires little loyalty; we never hear of Afghans who join the Taliban, then shoot the other Taliban soldiers as enemies of Karzai's government. Thus, I think that any resources, human or financial, put into propping it up will be wasted. However, with these two decisions those efforts will do less harm while they continue.
The UN will study the life situation of US aboriginal peoples as it has studied those of other parts of the world.
Wikileaks cables confirm the US government knew about BP's blowout
in the Caspian sea, but helped conceal this from the public.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This article was abridged; full version later.
Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency (of their political advertising).
Tax Day is a good opportunity to protest the US government's heavy spending on military and war.
Craig Murray's evidence about UK torture has been fed into the investigation of former minister Jack Straw.
A right-wing plutocrat said, "I think (the ultra-wealthy) actually
have insufficient influence (in Washington)." But they are working on
fixing that.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Corporations United decision (I call it by a descriptive name rather than its dishonest official name) represents phony democracy.
Facebook has a history of blocking the posting of links about certain controversial political issues.
Australia's high court affirmed that the ISP iiNet has no obligation to filter copyrighted material out of its users' communications.
The expert is right that copying is not theft, and that people refuse to consider it so. However, I am skeptical of the claim he makes when he uses the term "illegal downloading" too. Downloading copyrighted material is not in general a crime. Even uploading without authorization is usually not a crime, though it may grounds for a lawsuit. Unless Australia has a particularly nasty law about this, his discription is misleading.
One of the nasty things the copyright industry is doing is trying to make unauthorized copying a crime. The US tried that in ACTA but had to give it up.
Citizens of California:
phone
Senator Boxer to oppose the
Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. Republicans are trying to make
the senate pass a bill requiring it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA and Obama
to put strong limits on
carbon emissions from power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The TSA defends its actions in
ordering
a 4-year-old they had terrorized
to stop crying and stand still for a pat down.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In 10 years, if another mother disobeys orders and goes to comfort her little child, they will arrest her or even shoot her. SWAT teams already do that sort of thing, then justify it based on violence in their imagination. That is the spirit of rigidity and zero tolerance, which is the spirit of America.
The Vatican told US nuns: stop caring for the poor so much and start focusing on abortion.
Bassem Tamimi, nonviolent protest leader from Nabi Saleh, was granted bail. This could mean recognition that the false case against him has collapsed.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support the WORK Act that would allow low-income women to count raising children as work.
Also send a message through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Wealthier people have
less compassion.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Some cardiologists own specialty cardiac hospitals which boast of
better-than-usual patient outcomes.
But it's not because
the hospitals are better.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It turns out that these hospitals select the healthier and wealthier patients, and the doctors make more effort to treat them than they do similarly ill patients in the other hospitals where they work.
The silly scandal about prostitution should not hide the real scandals of the Summit of the Americas, which were found in Obama's statements and actions.
The Japanese government relaxed radioactivity standards for food after
the Fukushima nuclear disaster, so some food stores have set stricter
standards. The government now wants
them to stop doing that.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know whether the revised standards add up to significant increased danger for people who eat the food. They might have been hypercautious before.
An independent nuclear engineer, given access to the Japanese
government's data, reports on
what really happened in the
Fukushima.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Meltdowns penetrated the pressure vessels and the containment structures, releasing radiactive fuel into the ground.
He draws a lesson, too:
If you have to assume something, then you are not prepared.
In particular, redundancy for a certain apparatus — such as, backup electric generators, or connection to the power grid — is a useful precaution against random equipment faiures, but inadequate against systemic problems, since they can make all the similar pieces of equipment fail at once.
Two years after the Big Spill, many people exposed to the oil are still sick.
John Brennan says that stripping and putting his clothing through the
TSA's X-ray machine
was the right thing to do.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I think people should have the right to go naked in public if they wish, and should not have to give a reason. It should never be illegal to have an appearance that someone else feels distate for.
Journalist Laurie Penny says she understands why the Occupy movement detests journalists — because most of them take orders from the 1%.
US citizens: sign this petition for the Pentagon to stop buying from Rosoboronexport, which is a principal supplier of arms to Assad.
The rate of teen pregnancy in the US has decreased greatly in recent decades, but is remains highest in the states that are religious and conservative.
This may relate to the established failure of abstinence-only "sex education". However, that causes another problem that is more frequent: it fails to help teenagers who need help to enter the world of sexual relationships.
UK agents threatened Libyan exiles with deportation to Libya if they did not cooperate with the UK and Gaddafi.
It is possible for indigenous tribes to survive — if they can keep their lands.
However, logging countries are murdering the Awa tribe to cut down the trees on their land.
You can tell the politicians who are subservient to business because they criticize Argentina's nationalization of its oil company.
The company was privatized by a previous right-wing government as a give-away to the rich.
Privatizing state assets is generally harmful and wrong except when the result is a competitive marketplace for the public.
The Barhain F1 race will proceed even though a protester was beaten to death by the thugs.
In typical thug form, they seem to have falsified evidence to accuse him of violent actions — although that would hardly be an excuse even if true.
The Prime Minister bends over backwards to defend Bahrain's interests.
With international aid for water treatment, cholera in Haiti could be wiped out in months.
Instead, Haiti will be the testing ground for a questionable vaccine used in a way that won't eliminate cholera even if it works.
Applying Darwinism to economics shows why laissez-faire does not serve the general good.
We must regulate business.
The UN authorized sending 300 monitors to Syria.
Syria has excluded the international press, making it impossible to check on reports of government attacks. This is why I believe those reports are generally true, even though some fabrication may occur. Maybe these monitors will fill the gap.
100,000 protested in Prague against austerity.
The House Agriculture Committee wants to cut food stamps for 46 million Americans.
This is to keep military spending increasing as was previously planned.
Republicans want to eliminate the Lacey Act that cuts down on illegal
logging
around the world.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It isn't 100% effective — it has not stopped Asian Pulp and Paper from cutting down rainforests — but that could only be a reason to make it stronger.
Don't be fooled by the bill that pretends to correct the injustice of imprisonment without trial.
US citizens: call for thorough safety regulations for undersea oil drilling.
US citizens: sign this petition to cancel the
F-35 aircraft
program.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign the ACLU's campaign against CISPA. and Avaaz's as well.
The US and India endorsed the coup against Maldives President Nasheed,
which suggests
they encouraged the coup too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The pattern of support suggests the coup was organized because of his efforts to curb global heating, by governments that don't want to help.
Now that ALEC has dropped voter-ID laws, right-wingers will run their campaign through the National Center for Public Policy Research
Having promised no subsidies for future nuclear power plants, the UK government is considering hidden subsidies.
Governments should not subsidize business without getting stock in return.
Tennessee plans to legislate that crimes can be committed against embryos.
This could lead to punishment for abortions, and even for women that try to commit suicide while in early stages of pregnancy.
Florida Governor Scott appointed a "task force" to study the "stand your ground" law. All the legislators in it supported the law.
Guardian: In the state-orchestrated grab for cyber-territory we have to work together to ensure our online freedom is protected by law.
In contrast to Anonymous' digital protests, governments attack dissenting web sites too.
Anonymous is to Chinese government digital attacks as a popular protest is to the "spontaneous rallies" of tyrannical states.
The Formula 1 race in Bahrain has become the focus of protests.
The race, and the teams that persist in racing give the foolish excuse that sport is above matters of life or death, and freedom or tyranny, so it should not be "used for politics". But the reason they won't stop is that they are being paid. In effect, paid for political propaganda for Bahrain.
Supporters of Wikileaks will start a US foundation to receive
funds on Wikileaks' behalf.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
What's the Difference Between War Crimes and Regular Old War?
Sign this petition to Obama for mortgage relief for US homeowners.
Thugs in the UK insulted, attacked and tased Edric Kennedy-Macfoy, not bothering to find out that he had approached them to give them information.
Then they arrested him and pressed false charges. He was actually prosecuted, but acquitted. Meanwhile, the thug department tried to bury his complaint.
The article focuses on the point that they apparently did this because Kennedy-Macfoy is Black. However, I think that the reasons for their choice of victim are a minor detail. Attacking and framing innocent people would be no more acceptable if they chose victims at random with no racial bias, or if they chose people for their political activities (which they often do).
The thugs will stop terrorizing people when they get properly punished for doing so. If they don't go to prison for this, it will be a miscarriage of justice.
20,000 people protested the construction of a coal-fired power plant in China, fearing the pollution it would generate.
They stormed and destroyed local government buildings after the government refused to consider their protest.
BP covered up dangerous practices that caused an oil well blowout in the Caspian sea, according to someone who was there.
This enabled BP to use the same dangerous practices later in the Gulf of Mexico, and cause the Big Spill.
Global heating is changing the zones where various butterfly species can live, and the times of the year when they develop, but they are havintg trouble moving to those new locales.
For the populace, austerity is cruel stupidity.
But it's great for the banksters.
EFF: Yes, CISPA Could Allow Companies to Filter or Block Internet Traffic.
Since 2010, fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico have seen fish and crustacians with a wide variety of2 unprecedented deformities. Sometimes 50% of the catch is deformed.
The article describes these animals as "mutated", which claims their DNA has been altered. However, the article does not report any tests which might determine if that were so. The deformities could have been caused during development by the influence of chemicals on the developmental signaling that generates the animal's body plan.
It is no surprise that animals are missing both eyes and eye sockets, because the two probably develop together in response to a single starting signal at that place in the embryo. If that signal or its recognition is suppressed at the crucial time, neither the eye nor the socket will develop.
I find it noteworthy that these defective animals manage to reach adulthood in large quantities. Surely they are less able to avoid predation than healthy animals, so why weren't they eaten? Perhaps because the predators that would have eaten them are missing or defective too. In other words, the problem may be more ecologically extensive than this article shows.
In any case, it seems likely that the Big Spill has damaged fishing in the Gulf of Mexico for decades. Obama, true friend of the oil companies, downplays the damage just as Jindal does.
A few days ago I read a message from the League of Conservation Voters endorsing Obama. Obama has authorized undersea oil drilling in the Arctic, where cleanup would be even harder. I suppose the endorsement was based on "lesser of the two evils" reasoning, but it did not express any misgivings about Obama. I can't stomach this "lesser" evil any more than I could stomach a deformed and dying fish.
The computer science community can organize to overcome organizations such as the ACM that restrict access to papers published by scientific conferences.
More about the prosecution in India of Sanal Edamaruku for
"insulting
religion".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Polluters are lobbying to redefine the mission of the Illinois
Pollution Control Board to include "emergency" actions to protect
polluters from financial setbacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Why the Israeli state is terrified of peaceful protest.
I want Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and the near-embargo of Gaza. I don't want the Israeli state to "destroy itself". However, if it continues to crush democracy for the sake of occupation, it could delegitimize itself completely.
The planned extradition of Richard O'Dwyer has focused attention on the general injustice of the one-sided UK-US extradition treaty.
The UK must cancel this treaty.
The Formula 1 car race in Bahrain, the centerpiece of the Bahrain regime's "everyone's calm and contented here" PR campaign, has instead inspired renewed protests.
It is amusing to read the article's concern that these protests might overshadow a mere car race. Horrors!
The protesters are responding to the regime's violence with
violence
of their own.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It is natural, and I can't blame them, but it plays into the hands of regime supporters such as the US government.
The CIA wants to conduct drone bombings in Yemen without identifying the people to be killed.
Past experience shows this will lead to killing many civilians.
For the Israeli government, the worst thing that can happen with Iran is a diplomatic nuclear deal between Iran and other countries.
Congress is considering a bill that would to require a tracking device in all new cars starting in 2015.
This is in addition to punishment without trial for people accused of owing a lot of back taxes. I am in favor of collecting taxes from rich people, but punishment without trial cannot be acceptable.
Obama activated the US-Colombia free exploitation treaty by pretending
not to see that Colombia continues to tolerate
the murder of
unionists.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
(The words "deeply disappointing and troubling" hardly do justice to this injustice.)
Putting provisions into the treaty to require Colombia (and the US) to uphold some rights of workers was a nice idea, but if the states simply disregard those problems, these provisions do no good.
It is absurd to think that free exploitation treaties can do any good for the 99%. We must cancel them all.
The FBI shut down many web sites and mailing lists by seizing an
server which also runs an anonymizer service that someone used to send
a bomb threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Since the anonymizer was designed to save no relevant information, seizing it was useless for finding the person who sent the threat. I suspect the FBI wants to make people scared to run anonymizers.
I suggest running them on separate small computers.
Figures from a few cities suggest that US thugs are doing lots of cell
phone tracking, and spending
millions of dollars for it too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The newest World Bank sleaze: loans for "development", supposedly to improve the life of the poor, go through banks and even hedge funds which can redirect the money to their own profit.
The European Stability Mechanism creates a totally unaccountable organization that can demand any amount of money from any of the member governments.
Formerly secret government papers show that the British Empire fought Communist rebels in Malaya using familiar methods: strip-searches, censorship (even of concerts), and death squads.
When the UK sought to set up the US base on Diego Garcia, and planned to exile all the natives, it set up planned a deception campaign to cover up the fact that they lived there.
Members of the US Secret Service are being punished for having sex with prostitutes.
It is a typical prudish US sex scandal, much ado about nothing. The only conceivable concern of the government is that it might lead to blackmail, but that concern only exists if the US government makes an irrational fuss as it is doing.
If an agent indeed tried to deny a prostitute her pay, that was wrong; but if that's the issue, they should say so.
Ban Ki-Moon says that Syria has reduced the violence since the UN
cease-fire
but not ended it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Two of the Cuban Five have an art show in the UK.
The Cuban Five were imprisoned in the US for trying to warn Cuba about terrorist attacks organized by US-based Cuban expatriates.
Obama proclaimed support for "open government" but his
actions don't
fit his words.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Obama opposes CISPA but supports Lieberman's senate bill, which is not as sweeping but is dangerously vague.
Obama retreated before the banksters on regulation of financial derivatives.
ALEC says it will cease its support for voter ID laws and
"stand
your ground" laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Henceforth it will only lobby for "economic" measures, such as crushing unions and prohibiting municipal free Internet access points.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and senators to support the RESTORE act, which would use BP's fine money to try to restore the damage of the Big Spill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also send them mail through this page.
FCC Chairman Genachowski rebuked TV broadcasters for opposing plans for an FCC data base on political ads they show.
What it was like to get an abortion in the US in 1978.
Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Admits Ahmadinejad Never Said Israel Should Be 'Wiped Off the Face of the Map'.
The US needs to reduce military spending the way Nixon and Eisenhauer did.
Big Brother Is Not Your 'Friend'.
The EFF's FAQ explains the dangers of CISPA in detail.
Israel, acting in a spirit of paranoia, barred entry to many people who were not coming to protest. Even some Israelis were not allowed to go Israel.
I disagree with the article on one point. Even if a passenger did intend to participate in the Bethlehem peace ceremony, that hardly qualifies as "solid legal grounds" for barring that person.
By excluding visitors to Palestine, Israel proved that the West Bank is run as a prison.
Israel promised not to allow new "settlements" in the West Bank, but
winked as new ones were built. Now, facing a court order to dismantle
some of them, the government wants to build other
new colonies to
replace them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Some of the expansionists who build them also repeatedly attack
nearby Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli army arrested a Palestinian woman for "attacking soldiers"
who were taking away
her 3-year-old child.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian farmers trying to work their land cut off by the annexation wall face a series of hurdles. Getting a permit is just the first one.
Ex-marine Ross Caputi says he shares the views of Tarek Mehanna
— that Iraqis and Afgans attacking US troops are simply
defending their homelands from occupying armies — and dares
the US to prosecute him too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I must partially disagree with one of Caputi's side points. It is true that "jihad" means "struggle" in general, and does not imply it is against non-Muslims. However, there are Muslims who advocate trying to conquer the world and impose their dominion over the non-Muslims. Several countries have trampled human rights in the name of Islam.
However, that issue is a digression from the main point of the article. Publishing articles advocating any views, even Muslim world dominion, is not terrorism.
Most comments in Israel about the officer who smashed a nonviolent protester in the face with a rifle support the officer. When regrets are expressed, they are regrets for what this will do to Israel's image. They cannot see the injustice of the act.
This reminds me of the Americans who were ready to disapprove of the costs of the occupation of Iraq but unwilling to question it on moral grounds.
The US Congress is trying to sabotage talks with Iran just as they look promising.
This makes sense if their goal is to do whatever Netanyahu wants. He would consider a peaceful resolution of this dispute a disaster, since it would leave nothing to distract attention away from Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Many Americans can reduce their federal income tax to zero by working
less, making less money, and doing more things for themselves instead
of paying others to do them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I am not against taxation on principle: a welfare state requires taxes. If the US government were using its money for ethical purposes, which would include some military preparedness along with helping the poor, research, support for the arts, and other things, I would not regret paying taxes. But given what the US government is now, a machine for transferring wealth to the rich, I don't see why non-rich should not resist in any way they can.
The UK government told an activist he will be jailed if he protests anywhere near Olympic games sites.
When the UK gave independence to African colonies, it destroyed most of the papers describing atrocities carried out by the colonial governments.
It kept the rest of the papers secret although legally they were supposed to be released long ago.
The ACLU wants the US to own up to its missile strike in Yemen that
killed many civilians, and explain whether it has given compensation
for their deaths.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It is not currently possible to look at a YouTube video with an ordinary browser without running nonfree software, which you shouldn't do; but there is a youtube-dl script that can fetch the video.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, tortured by Gaddafi after UK and US help, has sued former UK minister Jack Straw after MI5 sources said he as minister approved the operation.
Tim Berners-Lee spoke against proposed UK surveillance legislation.
House Republicans propose to cut food stamps and other aid to the poor, to avoid the pre-programmed cuts in military spending that they pressured Obama to agree to.
Twitter says it will make a commitment in writing, to its employees
that file patent applications,
not to use the patents for
aggression.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I have proposed for 20 years that employees demand this of their employers, in some of my speeches on the danger of software patents. I am very glad to see that a prominent company will set an example.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call your state legislators
to support
spending on reproductive health services.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to reform the 1872 mining law that charges nothing to companies that mine US natural resoures.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose HR 4089, which would weaken protections for wilderness areas.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on the US government
to demand Bahrain release
nonviolent protest leader al-Khawaja.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to label GMOs in food.
The US military is intervening in Hollywood to ensure its movies are positive propaganda for the military. And now perhaps in music videos too.
The for-profit spying lobby campaigns for CISPA.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian farmers are impoverished because the Israeli hoops they must jump through to reach their farmland make farming unfeasible.
Fossil-fuel subsidies are the real job killers.
Medical insurace companies have a PR campaign saying it's unfair to require them to spend 60% of their income on medicine.
Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Hoang Hai faces 20 years in prison
for
criticizing the state.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The approved builder of a UK nuclear power plant demands increased guarantees of future income.
Nuclear power plants are so expensive (as well as risky) that none will be built without tremendous subsidies. And once the state pays so much, it is unconscionable to allow a private company to walk away with the results. The UK claims future nuclear plants will get no subsidy; Obama is proud of these giveaways to business.
Long-term drought due to global heating is putting many farms out of business in southeast England.
The US government is trying to prevent Megaupload from paying lawyers for its defense and to rule all experienced copyright lawyers off limits.
Six Rigged Rules Corporations Use to
Dodge Taxes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The World Bank has spent billions to privatize water systems and plans to increase that.
The claim that corporations are obligated to place shareholders' gain above all else is not a law, not a moral principle, just a right-wing lie.
Corporate executives may fear they will be replaced if they don't push the stock price up by the end of the year. They may lack the moral fibre to disappoint the board or the shareholders, but that is not the same thing as being legally required or morally obligated to go all out for their gain.
As Andreas Ias was riding a bicycle with a group of pro-Palestinian activists near Jericho, an Israeli soldier hit Ias in the face with his rifle. Nothing unusual about this, but this time it was caught on video.
The government says this does not represent the Israeli army. As readers of these notes are aware, it represents many armies all too well.
US citizens:
tell
your senators
to oppose an attempt to make it harder
for workers to vote on forming a union.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Thugs in Jordan arrested protesters and then tortured them so badly that some were knocked unconscious.
The protest was about the imprisonment of other protesters.
Istanbul, Tokyo, Baku, Doha and Madrid are competing for the 2020 Olympic Games .
Whichever city "wins" will suffer as a result . The effects may extend to the whole country it is in.
If you live in Istanbul, Tokyo or Madrid, better start organizing now for your city to "lose". Baku and Doha are in countries too authoritarian to let people organize; paradoxically, it is only in those countries that the games might do no harm, mainly because the elites there can do all the harm they wish without an excuse.
Zimbabwean exiles in South Africa are pushing that country to prosecute Mugabe for his grave human rights violations.
The cost of global heating and acidification on the world's oceans is estimated at 2 trillion dollars per year, over this century.
Since the problem is growing, the annual cost now are less than that. Towards the end of the century, the annual cost will be more than 2 trillion dollars.
"Micro-labor" is a new form of piecework, offering businesses an easier path to eliminating workers' benefits such as health care and pension contributions.
This is one further reason why these necessities should not be tied to employment.
Tennessee and Arizona are in a race to attack science, women, and poor people.
Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money.
The way company profits are distributed has only an occasional loose relationship with who earned them.
Stephen Downs, who defends American "terrorists" caught by FBI sting operations, say that the charges are based on lies and that the US is turning its courts into a platform for show trials.
Proposed: an ISP that will go all-out to protect customers' privacy.
A lawsuit seeks to require a state agency to reveal what chemicals companies are using for fracking.
Trade secrecy is antisocial; the US patent system supposedly exists to discourage the practice. To require everyone to disclose all secrets would be tyranny, but when an activity threatens public health, that is valid grounds. Companies should be allowed to keep secrets only when there is no public interest in requiring disclosure.
China's leadership promises to crack down on corrupt officials, starting with Bo Xilai.
It will be hard to succeed at this without more democracy and less censorship.
While I wouldn't put it past a scheming high-level official's wife to have someone killed, I'd expect her to have enough self control not to do it personally. It seems more plausible that this is a frame-up, pinned on Bo's wife for political reasons. Is anyone investigating the possibiliy that someone else killed Mr. Heywood?
Israel blocked 50 passengers in Ben Gurion airport simply because they wanted to meet with Palestinians. Hundreds of others were blocked in Europe based on obviously false accusations.
Israel's position is that it shouldn't be criticized until it gets as bad as Syria. Next Putin will say that criticism of Russia's repression is not allowed because Russia isn't as bad as Iran, and Obama will say that criticism of US human rights violations is off limits because it isn't as bad as China.
Sergey Brin says the Internet's freedom is under attack "from all sides".
When the thugs attacked Occupy Wall Street, they smashed all the laptops of the people they arrested, and claimed it happened by accident. But the Free Network Foundation's radio tower, they simply stole.
Perhaps the radio tower was shot while trying to escape.
The Spanish neofascists now in power propose to criminalize various currently used forms of nonviolent protest in order to "make the people fear the system more". These include:
Americans are driving less; younger Americans are driving much less.
I suggest the reason Congress hasn't noticed this is that it listening to companies, not Americans.
When Facebook paid a billion dollars for Instagram, what it paid for was Instagram's users, and its data about those users.
In other words, part of the requisite for trusting an online service with your data is a commitment that will be binding on successors of the company.
Ten Egyptian presidential candidates were barred from running, with no reason given.
13 ways the US government tracks us, and some that are on the way.
The US government is democratic in form, but it has largely converted itself into a government of occupation for the empire of the megacorporations. In other words, a banana republic.
Obama's JOBS bill is tailor-made to encourage fraud and lead to stock bubbles like the 90s .com bubble.
This will make it dangerous to invest in companies that have been public for less than 5 years.
Two Mexican bikers face charges of terrorism for revving their engines.
The crowd at a festival thought they heard gunshots, panicked, and couldn't get away since stalls had blocked the streets.
In the US, they'd have to rev their engines for some sort of political opposition group to get accused of terrorism.
The US government uses sexual humiliation to demoralize its populace.
A new Tennessee law says schools must allow teachers to deny evolution and global heating.
Kuwaiti writer gets 7 years imprisonment for tweeting a claim that Kuwaiti Shi'ites are loyal to Iran.
Such a statement, in Kuwait, could be aimed at stirring up intersectarian hatred and persecution of Shi'ites. I think that is a bad thing to do, and I hope it fails; but making it a crime to state such a claim is directly injust.
A UK mining company is using children as miners in the Congo.
The Olympic Games contracted to Adidas to make uniforms, and Adidas contracted with factories in Indonia, which pay workers around $2.50 for a 10-hour work day.
Daniel Davis exposed how the US is pretending that the war in Afghanistan is a success. The US government can't prosecute him, so it ignores him and te truth.
200 young Afghans wanted to protest that the government doesn't respect women's rights, even the right not to be murdered; but only 30 arrived. The rest were too scared to show up, or were prevented by their families from participating — which proves their point.
The UN will send observers to Syria hoping to put the cease fire back together.
CISPA, Cybersecurity, and the Devil in the Dark
The Internet defeated SOPA with the help of many of the same businesses that are ready to acquiesce to CISPA. CISPA is the test for whether the users of the Internet can block an oppressive law.
The first US/UK oil sanctions against Iran were the prelude to the CIA-organized coup in 1953.
I don't agree with all of the article's conclusions. I do not believe that the Iranian government launched its nuclear program for the sake of nuclear power plants; however, Iran seems to be willing to offer concessions on uranium enrichment now.
Don't forget that the world needs to reduce its use of fossil fuels.
US jobseekers now face criminal background checks carried
out by
sloppy companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Every recession in the US tends to lead to new demands and indignities on people looking for jobs; employers swamped by applicants grab for any excuse to reject some of them. These burdens tend to become permanent, perhaps because the level of unemployment has slowly risen over the long term.
Climate scientist Michael Mann denounces the attacks of the global heating deniers, who do disregard science for political ends.
UC Davis has pressed charges against students and professor who carried out the bank blockade.
Professor Nathan Brown calls for protests against UC Davis Chancellor Katehi until she quits.
In the BP annual meeting, one shareholder-protester asked
if the board was preparing an escape pod to leave Earth
when it is devastated, and whether tickets could be purchased.
Others raised serious questions, but got no answers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The EPA made tenuous excuses to disregard the
danger of pesticide
2,4-D.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
10,000 joined an Occupt protest in Papua New Guinea against a plan to allow the legislature to remove judges, and appear to have stopped it
Occupy Detroit Rallies to Save School
for the Deaf.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of people are planning a "fly-in" to Israel to accept an invitation to a peace ceremony in Palestine.
This is to highlight the fact that Israel tends to refuse to allow people entry if they intend to cooperate with Palestinians in any fashion.
Airlines are supporting the Israeli government by cancelling these people's tickets and not refunding their money.
The airlines' argument that they might be required to transport the passengers home is bullshit if these passengers have already paid for the return flight.
Mexican soldiers are accustomed to impunity, so they terrorize everyone, from innocent travelers asleep in a bus to acclaimed human rights lawyers.
The Syrian army started shelling again, which means the cease-fire is not holding.
We should not criticize Kofi Annan for trying this. It was worth a try.
Protesters against Swaziland's absolute ruler were crushed by the army.
Don't believe Bahrain's PR — its
oppression of dissent
continues.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The suicide rate in Greece increased 40% in early 2011 compared with 2010.
I suspect that the death rate from illness increased too, but the figures are not available yet. I also suspect that things have got worse since a year ago.
Canada's Supreme Court rejected a law allowing the thugs to listen to phone calls with no controls as long as they say it is "to prevent an emergency".
Sanal Edamaruku debunked a "miracle" on TV, so he now faces arrest for blasphemy.
Why the best solutions are so often
"off the table".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of buying the friendship of everyone in Afghanistan (or Vietnam) is interesting partly because that's almost what the US did. In 2002, it seemed that the war was essentially over and it was time to fund development projects. Unfortunately they didn't work, and turned into gifts to a small fraction of Afghans.
Uri Avnery: Gunter Grass's criticism of Israeli policy mostly sensible and partly mistaken, but it wasn't hostile, and Germans should not be barred from criticizing Israeli policy because they're German.
Uri Avnery was German too, until 1933.
In the US, Big Brother is
getting bigger.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US subsidies for US nuclear power add up to many billions in corporate welfare.
Everyone (even if you don't use Facebook): tell Facebook to drop its support for CISPA.
CISPA is the unlimited NSA Internet surveillance bill that also allows blocking sites.
US citizens: call on Obama
to order federal contractors not to
discriminate on sexual orientation or gender identity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In Spain:
sign this petition
against the plan to make peaceful protest a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of India: sign this petition to annul India's Internet censorship rules.
US citizens: call on the US
to stop opposing the establishment of
global marine reserves.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Marine reserves not only protect endangered species, they can also increase the total number of fish available to catch. That is because the mature fish in the reserve produce young that eventually leave the reserve.
US citizens: tell the Department of Agriculture not to approve genetically modified corn that is made for use with the dangerous pesticide 2,4-D.
US citizens:
call
on the Attorney General to act firmly
to protect the right to vote against voter suppression laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the EPA to make strong regulations to curb industrial CO2 emissions.
In the US (and maybe elsewhere):
tell companies
to stop supporting ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the message I gave:
Americans are waking up to how ALEC-promoted unjust laws endanger their rights, their well-being and even their lives. If you fund ALEC, we will consider you to blame for what ALEC does. Please cut off your support to ALEC forthwith.
See www.ALECexposed.org for more info.
In the US: tell NPR and PBS
to reject political attack ads
even though the law requiring to do so was just struck down.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, NPR and PBS should not run any ads. They don't admit they run ads; they call their ads "enhanced underwriting". I decided to support the petition nonetheless because the petition calls them "ads", and thus also works against the pretense.
US citizens:
tell Obama
to do a thorough and proper investigation of
Wall Street's crimes, not an inadequate investigation with too few staff.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
10 Big Companies That Pay No Taxes (and Their Favorite Politicians).
An expensive, experimental program of cholera vaccination has started in Haiti.
This is instead of building an infrastructure to provide safe drinking water, which would prevent many diseases.
India's government says Indian airlines are forbidden to pay
the EU's
tax on CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I think it will relent when those airlines face fines or exclusion from flying to Europe.
What is significant here is only that India has declared its opposition to curbing global heating. When Indian officials say that they won't agree to a deal to achieve that goal unless this tax is cancelled, in effect they say they won't agree to any plan that is effective. That puts them in the planet-roaster camp, with the US.
People in developed countries should eat 50% less meat (especially beef and pork) to curb global heating, and reduce the use of fertilisers by 50%.
Eating less meat is wise, since it would lead to better health and longer life.
Tasmanian forests, home to threatened animals, need to be protected from logging.
People, cities and churches are moving lots of money out of the big banks.
Have you moved yours?
The oil companies say they have improved safety measures since the Big Spill, but the UK still has more than one significant safety problem per week. I expect the US has them much more often.
Protesters say BP's use of dispersant sunk a lot of the oil to the sea bottom, from which it rises and re-pollutes the shore.
March 2012 was the hottest March ever recorded in the US.
Will this convince the skeptics, or will they wait for a record-breaking July and August?
It appears the US welcomed the coup against President Nasheed of the Maldives. I doubt the goal was to stop him from campaigning to halt global heating, but has anyone proposed an explanation?
The UK is talking about banning brands from cigarette packages.
The opposition is dishonest, pretehding that this discouragement to marketing is a prohibition of tobacco. I would oppose prohibition of tobacco, dangerous and harmful as that drug is, but prohibition is not the policy being proposed.
The real obstacle to this may be from free exploitation treaties. Uruguay and Australia have tried partial measures along the same lines and have been attacked for it this way.
Thanks to Clinton's "welfare reform", aid to poor children is at the lowest level in 50 years, while poverty spreads.
I disagree with the interpretation that Clinton destroyed the Liberal movement's moral authority. Rather, he betrayed the Liberal movement and denied it the support of the Democratic Party. It still has the support of people like me.
The signatures on the Walker recall petition were very carefully checked and proved to be 97% valid.
Forced evictions in China lead thousands to protest across the country every month.
Navajos and Hopis protested together against a senate bill inviting the tribes to give up their water rights.
They seem to be afraid that the Navajo president will agree to this deal.
French people have sued the state for racial profiling.
Vietnam's new Internet censorship regulations will require users to give their real names.
It is not surprising to find such rules in China, and now in Vietnam. Requiring people to indentify themselves for postings is a tool of tyranny. I urge people to reject communications platforms such as Facebook and Google+ which require real names.
Farmers in Haiti were dispossessed without warning to build sweatshops that will make clothing very cheap.
Kuwait is extending its assault on freedom of speech with a bill to execute people for blasphemy.
This would put it in the same cruel class as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Under international law, Israel cannot justify attacking Iran because it is not under imminent threat.
A UN-brokered cease fire in Syria is partly effective.
The Real Invisible Hand: George Orwell, and Why We Got JOBs
not
Jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In Poland the state can access communications traffic records with
very little controls, and did
so almost 2 million times in
2011.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps the officials are nostalgic for Communism.
Lloyd's of London joins environmentalists in warning that undersea drilling in the Arctic is dangerous.
Would it be interesting drop several gallons of oil in a few places on Arctic coasts to measure how much of it remains how long? Spills of that size must be frequent from ships, so a few artificial ones won't do grave harm, and we might learn something from them.
Trayvon Martin's killer faces charges of second degree murder.
US unions want the US Labor Department to invoke CAFTA provisions against Honduras for denying workers' rights.
Given that CAFTA exists, I will be glad if it can do some good against for lable rights. However, I doubt it will do enough good to outweigh the harm done by free exploitation treaties, whose general effect is to turn every country into a banana republic.
Several presidents from Latin America will tell Obama that the War on Drugs must be stopped.
They have recognized that when a war is on drugs, it attacks almost randomly and everyone becomes a target.
If the US implements the US-Colombia free exploitation treaty, that would reduce the US' political leverage to improve labor rights conditions in Colombia.
However, Obama isn't inclined to use that leverage anyway, since implementing the treaty would mean disregarding the continued murders of unionists. Apparently he intended this party of the treaty as a false promise, to be ignored once it convinced the US Congress to vote for the treaty.
An appeals court ruled that violating web site terms of service is not a crime.
As well as being the right policy, it is also a sensible legal decision. It is hard to be confident that courts won't stretch laws for the sake of corporate power.
CEOs reduce their taxes by using a corporate jet "for safety".
Shahzad Akbar, Pakistani human rights lawyer, has sued the US government for killing civilians in Pakistan with a drone bomber. Since then, he has been unable to get a visa to revisit the US.
The US government says that this is not retaliation for his lawsuit. Do you believe that?
In the Jordan Valley, Israeli repression hits every
aspect of
life.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I don't see anything wrong, in general, with diaspora Jews' sending money to help Israeli Jews live better. And one can ask why diaspora Palestinians (and other Arabs) don't provide such donations to poor Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. However, it would take tremendous sums to compensate materially for the effects of the denial of land and water, and no amount of money could make up for the tight restrictions on construction.
Everyone: call on Honduras not to criminalize taking the morning-after birth crontrol pill.
Everyone:
rebuke
the city of St Petersburg
for arresting people
for carrying signs in favor of equality for gay people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell Democrats
to go beyond the millionaire's tax
and end the Bush tax cuts.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US is exhausting itself in an arms race with nobody.
The pesticide that kills bee colonies may be getting in via high-fructose corn syrup.
It should be easy to see if bees fed another substance are safe. Meanwhile, high-fructose corn syrup carries pesticides into beehives, maybe it carries them into you and me.
China has imprisoned hundreds of Tibetan pilgrims who went to a ceremony in India.
The president of Guatemala calls for drug regulation instead of drug prohibition , but isn't bold enough to say he will pull his country out of prohibition.
That probably means he will allow his country's policy to be controlled by Obama, who isn't bold enough to tolerate medical marijuana even though over 75% of Americans want him to.
Malaysia is considering a law to end imprisonment without trial and recognize political freedom of speech.
Malaysia is not blatant tyranny like China or Iran, but it still has a long way to go to fully respect human rights. For instance, Malaysia must allow anyone to practice any religion, or no religion. This law can be a major step in the right direction.
Facebook "apps" that some persons run get
access to everything their
"friends" make visible to them, and may hand all that info to a company.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
While this article shows that there is currently a way to turn that off, I expect that Facebook will take any necessary steps to ensure that most users don't do so. The purpose of those apps is to get access to that data, and I'm pretty sure that benefit figures, to Facebook's advantage, into the financial arrangements between the app developer and Facebook. Facebook will make sure it does not lose that advantage.
Chinese high school students, worn out from studying many hours a day with little vacation for standardized tests, burned their textbooks.
The US is in the process of making its education system just as bad.
The
US ordered UK and Canadian airlines to give details
of passengers flying between the UK and Canada or Cuba,
and to apply the US "no fly" list to them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The British acquiescence in this demand is a remarkable display of the "special relationship" between the two countries. The usual name for that relationship is "master-slave".
You should not board an aircraft in the UK, because they use X-ray scanners (unsafe!) and don't allow you the option of feeling you up instead. This is one more reason to take a train to some other country and fly from there.
US citizens: CISPA is the new Internet Blacklist Bill, using "security" as the excuse this time. Phone your congresscritter and say no, and sign this petition too.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Obama to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic.
The European Court of Human Rights approved the extradition of Babar Ahmad to the US.
Here is an interview with Babar Ahmad.
As far as I can see, all he is accused of is stating opinions, which is supposed to be a human right that we respect whether we agree with them or not. When the US gets its hand on him, will it accuse him of something that would honestly constitute terrorism, or will it stretch the term as it often does?
Looking at the larger issue, the UK's one-extradition treaty with the US is unjust for two reasons: because it is one-sided and because it abolishes protections such as dual criminality (the principle that you will not be extradited for an act that isn't prohibited in the country where you are).
Israeli occupation observers report on a Palestinian family made
homeless, and a Palestinian man released from prison in Israel
but not
given his ID card back.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The state invited him to ask for his ID card at the prison in Israel, knowing he cannot go there because he has no ID card.
Requiring people to use ID cards is itself tyranny.
Peter Beinart's book which exposes the lies of the Israeli right wing
makes them so uncomfortable that they have launched a campaign of
personal
vilification to distract attention
from what it says.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I got a small dose of such vilification myself, after my visit to Palestine and Israel in 2011. The more prominent the author, the stronger the vilification.
The Israeli government evicted the right-wing activists who had seized
the home of
a Palestinian family.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The government's policy is to do precisely this, but slowly over a long term. When individuals rashly rush things, that causes embarrassment.
Israeli soldiers disguised as civilians entered the Palestinian village of Rammoun. Three villagers who didn't recognize them accused them of being thieves, whereupon the soldiers shot them all.
One of them was shot again later, while already wounded. He died.
10 years on, the Israeli annexation wall that snakes around through Palestinian territory is almost twice the length of the border between Palestinian territory and Israel.
Large gaps remain in the wall, where construction has been stopped by lawsuits. Evidently the cessation of suicide bombings for many years is not because the wall blocks them.
Israel is building more new housing in East Jerusalem and demolishing Palestinian homes.
The revenue of a casino and a "nonprofit" bingo operation in
California funds more
such construction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Obama knows that Israeli construction makes peace impossible, but he only cares about staying in office.
Wellcome Trust will push for free access to research it funds.
I can't tell from this article whether this will include the freedom to redistribute articles, which is also necessary.
In the US: Tell AT&T
to stop supporting ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Ni Yulan defended poor Chinese people who were left homeless for the Olympic games. The thugs atatcker her so badly she is permanently disabled, and kept her in an unofficial "black jail" in a hotel. Now she has been framed for not paying the hotel.
The UN's world happiness report put China at number 112 out of 156. So China banned it.
Individual Chinese know they are unhappy, but the idea is they should not know they aren't alone.
Pharma companies seek to invent new diseases to convince Americans they need more medicines.
A widely used herbal remedy, aristolochia, causes kidney disease and cancer.
Many human rights organizations called on Obama to get human rights
defender al-Khawaja freed from Bahrain's prison
before he fasts to
death.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Everywhere: inform your friends about the boycott against Ahava cosmetics, made in an illegal Israeli colony in the West Bank, and sold in the US, perhaps in a store near you.
Tunisian thugs attacked protesters and journalists, breaking the hand
of an opposition leader.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The agreement giving the Afghan government control over US night raids has loopholes that Humvees will drive through.
The Republican Party wants to encourage driving rather than biking.
Whatever it takes to burn more oil faster.
Marlyand adopted a law forbidding employers from demanding employees or applicants social media passwords.
Protestors oppose a high-speed train line in Italy through the Alps to France.
What would they rather travelers do? Drive? Fly?
This line, with a further an extension inside Italy, would make it just feasible to take a train from Paris to Milan instead of flying. That will attract many more travellers to use the line. The existing train line can't possibly achieve that.
The Syrian army bombarded a refugee camp in Turkey, and Assad has effectively rejected the UN's cease-fire plan.
Malawi's new president has fired the thug chief who has terrorized dissidents for two years.
A software patent has halted the development of systems to transmit medical images for several years.
Software patents generally do harm because a large software package needs to combine thousands of ideas. Each time an idea is patented, the patent is ready to cause a disaster like this one. Some disasters are bigger than others, but disaster is all they can cause.
It is too bad the article equates patents to "intellectual property". The author probably felt it was obligatory to use that fashionable term.
Even worse, the article speaks of "theft" of this mysterious reified substance. Patent infringement is not theft; a patent is an artificial government-imposed monopoly. One of the reasons to reject the term "intellectual property" for patents is that it leads people to try to construct strained analogies such as these between patents and physical property. These analogies are misleading, and they generally encourage support for stricter patent law. That's another reason to reject the term.
The US cyberspying bill is
"even worse than SOPA".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Obama wants to use the TPP to criminalize even private sharing of copies of music.
The propaganda term "copyright theft" is a simple falsehood today, and always has been: copyright infringement is not theft, and in many cases is not a crime at all. However, our enemies want to change the law to match their lie. Apparenltly TPP stands for "Tyrants Punishing People".
Another point of the TPP would be to apply to patent law a "loser pays" rule that ACTA applies only to some other laws. I am not sure whether this is good or bad (does a plaintiff that loses have to pay the defense legal fees?), but it is silly for a treaty to specify this.
This reflects a general tendency of the misleading term "intellectual property": by generalizing about these unrelated laws, it encourages making them more similar. It also encourages and paves the way for one treaty to deal with several of these laws together, as does the TPP. It is therefore unfortunate when anyone uses that term.
The MPAA thinks Obama can get it something like SOPA, and they are working on it now.
Dodd of the MPAA described this as a new backroom deal.
ALEC pushed for the "stand your ground" law in Florida, and in other states too.
The UK now admits it is compelled to support Karimov, the tyrant of Uzbekistan, in order to use the highway to Afghanistan.
The US is in the same boat.
Thus, another benefit of pulling out of Afghanistan will be that the US and UK can stop supporting Karimov.
How about suggesting to Craig Murray that he point the link there to avoid the paywall?
The European Union proposes to ban "Hacking Tools".
This adds insult (using "hacking" as synonymous with "security breaking") to injury (banning useful programs).
The Egyptian military has whitewashed its of women.
Uganda has declared tyranny by banning an important opposition group.
US border guards harass award-winning documentarist Laura Poitras
every time she enters the US, trying to get her notes,
footage and
sources.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
When she decided to note down their questions, they threatened to prosecute her claiming that her pen was a weapon. More dangerous than a sword, perhaps?
The Palestinian Authority arrested Palestinians for publishing criticism of it.
60,000 protested in France against nuclear power, in
a "human chain
reaction".
The world's media took no notice.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The supposed recovery has not spared US workers from layoffs.
Another important Russian journalist was attacked on the street. When the thugs appeared, they did not seem interested in what had happened to her. This suggests the attack was organized by the state.
Everyone:
call on China
to release film-maker Dhondup Wangchen.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The UK asked the US to kidnap exiled Libyan opposition activist Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Bouchar. They were tortured first by the US government and then by Gaddafi's men.
Now the UK is considering a law to block courts from handling their case and similar cases, as the US has already done.
It was Dubya's men who ordered this monstrous evil, but Obama has a duty to prosecute them. Instead, he does everything possible to cover up their crimes, and thus makes himself responsible for them.
Unending copyright is creating a book desert, a period of many decades whose books are nearly all out of print.
It is clear this is caused by copyright because the desert begins at the year when books start to be under copyright today.
How this leads to their unavailability is not self-evident. My guess is that the hassle of determining who has the rights to an old copyrighted book, plus the risk of being wrong about the answer, plus the difficulty of negotiating with heirs who imagine their titles are far more valuable than they really are, have combined to lead publishers not to even think about reprinting an old copyrighted book, except for those so successful they were in print not long before.
If you live near the coast of the US, find out if you're likely to be flooded in the next few decades due to sea level rise.
Everyone:
call
on the governor of Louisiana
to move the Angola 2
out of brainwashing conditions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Here's what I put in as the personalized message:
Prolongued solitary confinement is a form of brainwashing. Whether Woodfox and Wallace are killers or not, they should not be subject to an inhumane punishment. Likewise, stopping prisoners from reading is inhumane.
Please put an end to this abuse.
US citizens: Tell Obama and Dodd, no to SOPA 2.
US citizens: call on Obama to regulate fracking for safety as he said he would.
Everyone:
call for prosecution
of the thugs who shot Kenneth
Chamberlain, age 68, who was unarmed in his own house
purely because his medic alert system had triggered spuriously.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Here's some more information, which includes evidence that the thugs are making false accusations against the dead man to justify their crime.
US citizens: sign this petition against the Big Brother "cybersecurity" bill.
Everyone: call on Oxford University Press to follow academic standards of citation and disclosure.
More information about what it's doing wrong.
Registration of web sites in Lebanon will
make it easy to censor them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Hey there, shock capitalism: here come the Olympic Games and celebration capitalism, which have almost the same effect.
Activists fight "cyber-security" bill that would give NSA more data.
Please help; see the urgent note published in this batch.
Five persistent right-wing myths exposed.
Specific reasons why US dissidents have reason to fear they will be labeled as "al Qa'ida supporters" and imprisoned. And US government representatives refused in court to say this was impossible.
A Greek man, age 77, shot himself in Syntagma Square because he was
broke and had no way to survive.
Protesters say the state killed him. I'd say the banksters did it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In 1972, the Limits to Growth study predicted economic collapse around 2030. The world is right on track for it.
Uri Avnery: two viewpoints on the Passover story, viewed from weakness and from power.
Arizona is considering a law that would define a woman as pregnant since her last menstruation before conception.
By this logic, every fertile woman would be considered pregnant all the time.
Even aside from the law's attempt to reduce abortion rights, that may not be a matter of semantics. Women have been prosecuted for things they did while pregnant. Imagine combining this with that.
Prosecutors in the US are almost never punished, even for causing grave miscarriages of justice, such as concealing evidence that proved the innocence of accused people on trial and causing false convictions.
The US has an "economic recovery" for the 1% only.
Given how many unjust laws they have imposed, this is no surprise.
There is a campaign to
pressure web sites to ban all prostitution ads,
because some of them are placed by pimps that force women into
prostitution.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The author says, "Many prostitution ads on Backpage are placed by adult women acting on their own without coercion; re not my concern". But they are the article's concern, since its demand is that Backpage stop publishing those ads too.
I am in favor of action against anyone that coerces or threatens prostitutes, but that can be done without harassing other prostitutes.
Obama's men
raided the state-licensed Oaksterdam University medical
marijuana training school.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The school's founder, legalization leader Richard Lee, says he will step aside from running it but that it won't close.
The UK is exporting Internet surveillance technology to other states that can also punish people for what they say or read.
Five Iconic Mountains Threatened By Climate Change.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Tunisia's Islamist government has used a law left over from Ben Ali's
dictatorship to
imprison people for mocking Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Confirmation that Judge Garzón was singled out unfairly by the Spanish Supreme Court. This article (in Spanish) says that the listening to defendants' discussions with lawyers was approved by the prosecutor's office following a standard procedure that other judges have also approved.
Whether or not this policy is just, to punish one judge for doing this and not criticize the other judges who did it too (let alone change the policy) shows that the real goal was "Get Garzón".
Farmers around the world are resisting Monsanto's domination of farming.
Hungary's intellectuals are fleeing because anyone who criticizes the regime gets accused of some sort of crime.
Increased use of fertilizer in the past 50 years has increased
emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
If only there were a way to collect it in balloons for the farmers to sell.
Tunisian thugs attacked a protest of unemployed university graduates,
breaking the legs of some of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I am not sure whether there's any legitimate measure by which the state can give these graduates jobs. (Curbing corruption would help in the long term.) But even if they are barking up the wrong tree, they shouldn't be attacked for doing so.
Colleges are acting as collection agencies for US government student loans, blocking defaulting, penurious graduates from applying for further education or jobs.
The result is that higher education, for many low-income Americans, is just a trap.
If someone is in arrears on a loan for a bachelor's degree, it might be wise to think twice about his prospects before lending him more money for a Ph.D. Even if he is personally diligent and not to blame for his unemployment, he might still find no job with a higher degree; competition is often even stiffer at that level. But that's a different matter from blocking him from employment or furthert schooling.
A proposed anti-abortion measure in New Hampshire could leave poor women without medical care.
These fanatics are "pro-life" for fetuses only.
German officials discussed their surveillance trojan with officials from the US, UK and France.
I think this technique, like interception of phone calls, is legitimate as long as courts keep close control over it — something we Americans cannot rely on today. However, the vulnerabilities that make this possible can be exploited by others.
Despite Apple's profits, it still cadges handouts from nearly-broke city governments.
I wonder why Austin offered that subsidy. Did Apple say, "Another city offered us $20 million; pay us $21 and we will choose Austin instead"? I have no information about this case, but that is a common practice, and it has led local and state governments across the US into spending lots of money on "jobs programs" that make no sense except as handouts to business.
Airport security theater harms passengers directly, and everyone indirectly.
The claim of 500 deaths per year due to people who drive instead of flying in order to avoid TSA checkpoints is an extrapolation of an estimate that was made for 3 months in 2002.
I don't think we can extrapolate confidently from ten years ago to today. People have had time to get used to TSA inspections; meanwhile, the TSA has made them more inconvenient and offensive than in 2002.
Besides, that estimate presumes everyone who decided not to go through airline security drove instead. Surely some took a bus while others stayed at home. It would not surprise me if the actual number of extra fatalities due to the TSA were as low as 100 a year or as high as 1000 a year.
How the US Uses Sexual Humiliation as a Political Tool to Control the Masses.
Many Americans are adapting calmly to the current high price of gasoline, which has not yet equalled the 2008 peak.
These price fluctuations are annoying because they are unpredictable. The goverment should take the uncertainty out of the matter by telling Americans when the price of gasoline will be $5 per gallon (perhaps in 2014), when it will be $6 (perhaps in 2015), when $8 (perhaps in 2017), and so on. And then adjusting the gasoline tax to make prices follow the schedule.
Libyans rallied in Benghazi for disarmament of the militias.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The leader of the military coup in Mali has agreed to hand power back to civilian rule.
That still leaves the issue of how to deal with the Islamist butchers who have overrun the north of that country.
Saleh's replacement as president of Yemen seems to be no more democratic than Saleh.
People are not protesting him; is that because they like him better or because they are more afraid?
Jim Hansen says that limiting global heating is a great moral issue, and calls for a worldwide tax on carbon emissions to avoid disaster.
Amnesty International calls for the release of Bahraini political prisoner Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja.
He has been on hunger strike for two months, so he is probably only a few weeks away from death.
160 countries have signed the treaty to ban land mines, but the US is still holding out.
The US mainstream media gave widespread attention to Rep. Ryan's assault-the-poor budget but hardly mentioned the progressive caucus' Budget for All.
Airline pilots conceal incipient mental health problems because they fear losing their jobs. America's weak social safety net means they might end up on the street with their families.
In other words, this spectacular (though rather unlikely) danger of a pilot cracking up and crashing a plane is a small consequence of the large, everyday harm that modern American society does to the non-rich. The best chance to make sure our flights are safe is Occupy Wall Street.
Thousands of Haitians
called for the resignation
of their
US-imposed president.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Tim Christopher's has been put in a special restrictions cell
just for
questioning whether his legal fund should accept donations from a
certain company.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Christopher heroically blocked an oil drilling lease auction in order to protect the shore and the environment, at the price of two years' imprisonment for himself. Three cheers for Tim Christopher, and shame on President Obama for not pardoning him.
Leading climate scientists say it is too late to avoid 2C of global heating,
and it will be hard to stop at 3C.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Jor-El, are you building your spaceship?
The US is considering rules to stop hired children from doing certain kinds of farm work that can be dangerous. These rules would not apply to children working on their family's farm.
Therefore, some Republicans have introduced the "Preserving s Family Farms Act" to block these rules. Typical Republican dishonesty, to block regulation of employee working conditions and raise "family farms" as a red herring.
If Republicans cared about family farms, they wouldn't have driven most of them bankrupt under Reagan.
Wall Street titans support financial speculation tax! (A late April Fool.)
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs a national conversation about ensuring that those legally eligible to vote are permitted to vote.
Preventing what Dubya did in 2000 to steal that election needs to be part of this conversation.
Users are suing Google about its new policy of combining the data
it gets from all its services.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I find Google's argument, "The better to serve you with my dear," to be an insult to our intelligence. At the same time, I think this is a secondary issue. Whether or not Google combines all this data, the FBI can collect it all, keep it for 5 years (under Obama's new policy), and combine it. The problem is not that Google combines it too. The problem is that it is collected at all, by anyone.
The article errs when it says that Facebook uses only data that users did knowingly hand over. In fact, Facebook does lots of surveillance.
Corrupt police in the UK delete police files for those with money to pay.
This reminds me of the fictional "Google cleaner" in Cory Doctorow's story, "Scroogled".
Computers in cars can lead to exhaustive surveillance of drivers.
Note OnStar, being a cell phone in the car, implies tracking of the car's whereabouts at all times. License plate recognizing cameras also threaten to enable Big Brother to track all cars in the US. And if you carry a cell phone with you, that too tracks you and can be remotely converted into a listening device.
The EPA, with Obama's backing, has set limits on CO2 emissions from
future power plants.
But these limits are weak.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
With these limits, future coal-fired power plants can only be built if they promise later to install facilities to capture much of the CO2 emissions — but that is future technology, a chicken that hasn't hatched. We can't depend on a promise that can only be kept if technology advances.
Limiting use of coal could limit the practice of mountaintop removal for coal mining, which destroys the environment and people's health. But not necessarily — the US might mine the coal and sell it for China to burn.
The
proposed standards have other loopholes too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This rule will do some good but it is just the first step towards a policy that would limit greenhouse gas emissions enough to protect us from their deadly long-term effects.
The United Arab Emirates shut down the National Democratic Institute and jailed its staff, just as Egypt did earlier.
The National Democratic Institute is to some extent an instrument of US foreign policy (it was involved in the US-sponsored coup in Venezuela), so perhaps shutting it down on those grounds can be justified. However, jailing its staff is shocking.
US citizens: call your senators to support a bill to raise the US
minimum wage. Also
sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Tunisian thugs
attacked a peaceful protest calling for
aid for people
wounded in the revolution and for the families of those who died.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Then, as thugs are wont to do, they made false accusations against the victims.
Canada plans to make its warrantless Internet spying bill even worse.
After Todd Stave rented a building to an abortion clinic, Christian fanatics began making threatening calls to him and his family. So he organized his friends into Voice for Choice, which gives the nastiest ones a mild taste of their own medicine.
Foxconn's truth is nastier than Mike Daisey's fiction.
Why did well-paid factory jobs with medical benefits and safety regulations get replaced with these sweatshops? Clinton together with the Republicans adopted laws and treaties to make it happen.
Zuckerberg is wrong: Americans do care about Internet privacy.
I urge Americans who care about privacy to do as I do, and refuse to surrender their privacy. How about starting by boycotting Amtrak until it stops interfering with passengers' privacy?
The CIA's source of torture ideas has been leaked.
Thousands of Bahrainis braved attacks by the government's suppression
forces in support of an imprisoned protest leader who has been on
hunger strike for two months.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US government trained terrorists in 2005.
Specifically, the
US military trained members of the Mujahideen-e
Khalq, an Iranian opposition group which at the time was on the US
list of designated "terrorist" organizations. Providing any sort
of assistance to a banned group, even advice about how to respect
human rights, is a crime according to the Supreme Court. Providing
military training is unquestionably a crime — so will those
responsible be prosecuted?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Mujahideen-e Khalq were reported recently to have helped Israel kill some Iranian nuclear weapons development scientists. That's not exactly terrorism, but the organization may do terrorism also.
However, the US can't make this so by saying so. To ban organizations arbitrarily without a trial is tyranny.
A
broad range of US organizations called on Congress to facilitate a
diplomatic
deal with Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Islamists in Tunisia
resist the abolution of the death penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Does the support for the death penalty in the US come mainly from Christians? I think so.
A Tuareg uprising in northern Mali has morphed into a jihad to slaughter Christians (and probably any non-Muslims).
Don't fall for the line that Islam is a religion of peace.
Assad's shelling is sending thousands more Syrians into flight.
Mutant H5N1 bird flu virus papers to be published in full.
The US has agreed to hand over prisoners to the Afghan government,
despite the risk they may be tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
However, if the US forces stay in Afghanistan until the day it is clear the Afghan government won't torture them, that would require them to stay forever. And the US tortures prisoners too. This transfer may be the least bad of a bad set of alternatives.
Users are organizing to pressure pinterest.com for changes its
Terms of Service.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This is good, but this method of resistance can't do the whole job. In general, the users have much less clout than the site. People who believe they can't stop using Facebook will be unable to pressure Facebook this way.
I think we need laws to regulate these Terms of Service, just as laws regulate landlords' terms of service for leasing an apartment.
Arizona keeps almost 3000 prisoners in conditions comparable to
brainwashing.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Google invites news sites to require visitors to fill out Google marketing
surveys before they can see an article.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
With few exceptions that occur rarely, I won't identify myself to any web site. Since I view web pages by having a server run the equivalent of wget, I wouldn't be able to fill out these surveys even if I wanted to. I'm automatically safe — but you are not.
Building a long-term campaign against war with Iran to oppose the long-term campaign for war.
Space exploration by humans is far more effective than robots.
Panamanian indigenous people fought with loggers cutting down endangered trees in their traditional lands.
The US soldiers in Afghanistan are cynical about the war. They know that the US is effectively funding the Taliban.
I expect they know of other reasons to be cynical, too. Why continue this farce?
The Secret Torture Memo Cheney Didn't Want You To See
Drug policy reform organizations condemn Obama's raids on state-licensed medical marijuana facilities.
With most Americans supporting medical marijuana, Obama nonetheless broke his promise to stop these federal raids. He's such a coward he will cave in to a mere shadow of a threat.
Nuclear power reactors planned for the US depend on government subsidy in the form of loan guarantees. They may get cancelled because the government conditions don't add up to enough of a subsidy.
Stopping Climate Change Is Much Cheaper Than You Think
Even if it were expensive, it would be better than the alternative.
CIA to UK: "Protect our torturers, or we will refuse to warn you about bomb plots."
The UK government seeks to adopt legislation to stop courts from revealing information about US torture practices. It wants to terrify Britons into supporting that legislation. So it announced that the CIA refused to give the UK details of a terrorist plot in the UK.
The plot apparently was not carried out. Either it was thwarted anyway, or it never existed. However, there are more important points to make here.
Assuming the CIA really did what was reported, that wasn't directly a matter of concealing torture practices. The CIA could have told the UK everything relevant about the supposed plot without revealing anything about torture.
Thus, this refusal was more in the nature of a threat: "change your laws to protect our torturers, or we will let you down when you need us." Some special relationship, eh?
That is, if these events really happened as reported. Maybe the CIA made up the plot so has to create an opportunity for the threat. Or maybe the UK government, which wants to protect US torturers, made up the whole story.
The only thing we can be sure of is that this does not excuse the torturer protection law that the UK government wants.
The Intelligence Bureaucracy That Ate Our World.
Bush muzzled the FDA because he didn't want to protect Americans' health if that would annoy business. Obama continues the practice, perhaps because he's afraid to do anything Republicans might criticize.
Improper and unsupervised use of the latest antimalarial drug is helping the malaria parasite develop resistance.
The lack of proper medical care for the poor can kill you even if you have the money to pay for your own medical care.
The WTO's appeals board upheld the decision that banning flavored cigarettes is a forbidden "barrier to trade".
For the WTO, childrens' lives are of no account if they get in the way of business. Americans, kill the WTO before it kills your children!
Obama's policy forbidding US diplomats to talk with Iranian diplomats puts the US on a track that almost assures war.
Proposing a "fair trade Israel" certification for Israeli products that don't benefit from or promote the occupation.
Education bureaucracy and No Child Left Behind are turning US education into a test-passing pressure piston.
Arizona legislators plan to limit the law to criminalize offensive Internet postings, but not enough — it would still be an unconstitutional attack on freedom of speech.
In the US, it is effectively impossible to buy soybeans which don't have Monsanto's patented genes.
A lawsuit charges the
CIA is illegally ignoring FOIA requests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Lakota activists have launched a hunger strike against the Keystone XL
planet roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
If that pipeline is built, it will harm millions through global heating. Cancelling that pipeline is not enough to prevent planet-roasting, but it's a necessary step.
An investigation into the failure to show undercover infiltrator Mark Kennedy's tapes to protesters' defense team found nobody to blame.
The thugs probably feel they got home free. This will not do much to avoid future miscarriages of justice like this one, which was only exposed after some protesters were convicted.
Meanwhile, the UK thugs have found an excuse not to investigate how they shot Mark Duggan and sparked off riots.
The US will ease trade sanctions against Burma
as a reward for holding
an election in which opposition candidates can win.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Have the opposition victories been recognized by the state? I thought the official results would take a week to announce.
Obama plans to try accused Sep 11 conspirators in military kangaroo courts.
Like everyone accused of any crime, these suspects deserve a fair trial. Obama has shown he is soft on human rights, and also that he is timid when facing opposition.
Former New Orleans thugs were sentenced to long prison terms for killing refugees fleeing when hurricane Katrina flooded much of the city.
As usual, other thugs lied to help them cover up their crimes.
The US and Afghanistan are negotiating to give Karzai's forces control over night raids.
In this deal, which presumes US troops would remain in combat in Afghanistan after 2014, Afghan soldiers would be in charge of each raid.
This might make them less destructive to civilians.
The FARC released their last prisoners from the government forces, as a peace gesture.
Will the government release any FARC prisoners as a peace gesture?
The worst terrorists in Colombia are the government-linked paramilitares. They never had any principles except greed, and I doubt they ever took prisoners.
The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel's colonization of Palestinian territories and launched an investigation into it.
United Nations Still Denies its Troops Brought Cholera to Haiti
The UN also pretends that its troops in Haiti are "peacekeepers" rather than occupiers meant to prevent the poor from electing who they wish.
International Criminal Court says it cannot investigate alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza because Palestine is not a state.
However, this might change if the General Assembly declares Palestine a state.
Prominent British theater figures called on the Globe Theater to rescind its invitation for Israel's national theater company to perform there.
By virtue of being the "national" theater company, it represents the state. It also endorses the occupation by performing in Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory. I think therefore that it is entirely appropriate as a boycott target.
Global heating episodes millions of years ago were caused by releases of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The UK LibDems are resisting Tory plans for secret trials.
The crucial issue about any such proposal is to ensure that the UK can be held accountable for complicity in torture by other countries (such as Pakistan, the US, and formerly Libya) which wink at torture and protect state torturers.
Many companies pay very little taxes in the UK and the US by shifting their profits into countries that have low tax rates for businesses.
Rather than changing tax laws to offer "US" companies an incentive to bring profits to the US without being taxed, the US should change its tax laws to tax some of those profits anyway. The existing system does a bad job for the 99%, so there is no reason to cling to it.
A man is being prosecuted in the UK for having the wrong "kind" of book.
UK rivers are drying up, making it necessary to catch wild fish and keep them alive in tanks.
Chinese thugs attacked and arrested farmers protesting land seizures. It sounds like they are taking lessons from the US thugs that attack and arrest Occupy protesters.
Thugs lie so frequently that their "side" of the story signifies nothing.
An interview with Bill McKibben about the planet-roaster pipeline, Obama, and strategy for ending global heating.
Voters concerned with the environment, with human rights, and with reducing the power of business do have a better candidate to vote for: Jill Stein.
Hana Shalabi, who went on hunger strike when imprisoned without trial, was released from Israeli prison but forcibly exiled to Gaza.
The Israeli army demolished the houses of Susiya on the grounds that the nearby colony was erected very close to it. Now the residents live in tents, so the army plans to demolish them too.
The US leaked a report that Israel had made a deal to use Azerbaijan's territory and airports as a refueling point for attacking Iran.
The speculation is that this was announced so as to impede an attack. Obama appears to prefer to avoid war with Iran, but he doesn't dare say so.
Noam Sheizaf: nothing can end the occupation of Palestine except putting pressure on Israel.
An Israeli human rights lawyer discusses Israel's slow movement towards explicit rejection of human rights. There were cases he took to the Israeli Supreme Court which he believes would now only uselessly legitimize injustice.
Haitian farmers are worried about US "donations" of hybrid seed that could result in long-term dependance.
US-imposed
Haitian president Martelly received 2.5 million dollars in
payments from a Dominican Republic senator.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
That senator's construction companies won many contracts in Haiti, worth around $200 million, and these payments may explain how.
The US Congress is pushing the US into a commitment for war with Iran, listening to AIPAC and disregarding the American public.
It may be impossible to hold the next scheduled election in Afghanistan in 2014, so there is talk of advancing it to 2013 or postponing it (probably forever).
Considering how fraudulent the last election was, cancelling the next one would only admit what is already the case.
Israelis "bought" a Palestinian family's home from a fraudulent "owner", then invaded it with the help of soldiers and forced the family out. Netanyahu gave the thieves permission to remain there.
A UK thug attacked a teenage prisoner in a police station.
His colleague who made a racist insult was not punished at all, while ordinary citizens have recently been prosecuted for such insults. Insults must not be a crime, but any public employee who says such things while carrying out a public function should be fired.
Several multinational companies say they will not buy from Asia Pulp and Paper, which destroys forests in Indonesia.
This is good, but there are plenty of others willing to buy that company's paper, if not in Europe and the US then in China. Stronger action is needed.
How to stop factory fishing ships from wiping out the fish off Senegal's shore.
EU rules to promote biomass energy are leading to cutting down of forests.
Cameron wants to repeat Thatcher's mistake: privatizing "council housing" which is built to rent to poor people.
Although the privatization works by selling these homes at subsidized prices to the people who rent them, they subsequently get sold again in the regular housing market, and become useless to the people that need council housing. Unless the state builds new council housing to replace what gets privatized, the result is that poor people once again can't find homes to rent.
Bhutan warns that the world's suicidal path must be changed.
Human activity is unsustainable in many ways: it cannot continue for very long as it is now. That alone does not imply it is suicidal; when one resource runs out, we may be able to use another. However, global heating is more or less suicidal for civilization even if some humans might hang on in a devastated world.
The ACLU found that different US cities have a hodge-podge of different rules about access to saved cell phone location data.
It is not enough to require a court order for access to this data. Phone companies should not be allowed to save it without a court order telling them to store it.
Indian thugs often disregard murder of women by their families or when they are accused of witchcraft.
Some state elected officials have complained to the US government about Obama's raids on state-licensed medical marijuana activities.
This is another one of Obama's treacheries.
Senator Franken is campaigning against surveillance by companies such as Facebook and Google.
It is most important to campaign against government surveillance. However, since the government can take whatever personal data these companies have collected, they are in effect arms of government surveillance too.
Europe is making progress on accountability for torture, but Obama protects the torturers in the US.
Thugs in Baltimore arrested children aged 8 and 9 in school and kept them in jail 11 hours.
The thugs said they handcuffed these children to protect themselves, apparently feeling they were threatened by the children.
These children reportedly fought other kids in ways that endangered them. Some action was called for to put a stop to that, but there was no need to make it so cruel.
However, the arrests of other children, for 'rudeness' and a harmless prank, were totally gratuitous. They simply reflect the general trend towards rigid cruelty on the part of US thugs and schools. The "zero tolerance" fad taught them that arresting children is the thing to do.
Putin shut Red Square because a protest was planned.
Everyone:
call on Delaware
to revoke Massey Energy's charter.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: cry "fowl"
about the USDA's plans to let
poultry companies do their own inspections of chickens and turkeys.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: call
on ALEC's corporate sponsors to end their support.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to call for effective regulation of toxic chemicals. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: oppose the plan to give parts of the Tongass National Forest to a company for logging.
Israel's secret plan to expand its colonies in Palestinian territory has been exposed.
Honduras is about to ban emergency contraception.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Abortion is already banned. Thus, the coup-installed government which kills journalists and opposition leaders will kill women too.
The US and other countries are discussing aiding the Syrian rebels.
There is a report that the US and Turkey are already arming them.
I might support aiding Syrian rebels if they were in a position to win and if they were likely to establish a regime better than Assad's. I have doubts about the latter, because I'm worried that this might lead to forcing Alawites into exile (and it isn't clear where they could go). Meanwhile, I see no chance they could win. But they could get lots of civilians killed.
European and other factory fishing boats are overfishing the waters off West Africa.
Perhaps Europe should fund a coast guard for Mauritania.
Europeans
Pushing Back Against Austerity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Grading teachers and schools by their students' standardized tests puts pressure on teachers to improve their students' answers.
Convincing the public to support curbing global heating needs to show the public its own interest, not just polar bears.
The difficulty is that the disastrous harm to the public, causing tens of millions of deaths, is likely to take a few decades to materialize.
Neoliberal economic policies in South Korea ap pears as an economic success, but the people there are the unhappiest in the developed world.
Iraq's vice president, a Sunni that the government wants to arrest, has remained at large for months.
I don't know whether al-Hashemi was running Sunni death squads, but it was well known that Shi'ite death squads connected with a major Shi'ite party were operating in Iraq. I have not heard that al-Maliki had tried to arrest those Shi'ites. Thus, whether or not al-Hashemi is guilty as charged, the govermnent's policy is sectarian bias.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party claims victory for nearly all the seats that were contested in Burma's parliamentary by-election.
We will find out in a week whether the government counted the votes honestly.
Arizona is on the verge of passing India-style Internet censorship,
or perhaps even worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Department of Homeland Security says that Internet voting is "premature".
Understatement of the year?
CNN is stirring up war fever with imaginitive reports of an army of Hezbollah agents in the US waiting to attack.
US citizens: tell Attorney General Holder, stop lying about how the U SAP AT RIOT is being stretched.
I am disappointed that this campaign uses the propaganda term "Patriot Act", but I think it is worth supporting anyway.
That term isn't the law's official name. The law's official name is an acronym: the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.
If we are going to treat that series of initials as words, U SAP AT RIOT or PAT RIOT are just as valid as USA PATRIOT or PATRIOT.
US citizens: phone your senators to support a tax increase on millionaires. Also send a message through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Restore Public Trust Act, which would ban members of Congress from feeding data secretly to Wall Street.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call Senator Leahy to urge him to demand release of Obama's assassination policy.
In the Boston area: oppose the coming MBTA fare increase and service cuts.
Senators Who Voted To Protect Oil Tax Breaks Received
$23,582,500
From Big Oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Now that prosecutors can't put GPS devices on people's cars without a warrant, they want to use cell phone location data without a warrant instead.
I think it is an injustice even to collect so much data about everyone. A state that collects massive data about everyone is a police state. A warrant should be required before the data can be saved for even a short time.
America Needs Healthcare, Not Health Insurance.
Mass privatization put former communist countries on road to bankruptcy, corruption.
Students were required by their schools to work in Apple factories in China.
Chubu Electric is building a 59-foot wall around a nuclear power plant, but seismologists say that tsunamis at that spot could be up to 69 feet.
The US has given approval for construction of new nuclear power plants, disregarding safety flaws.
The UK government wants a law to allow the state to monitor who people call and what web sites they visit, without even a warrant.
Weren't the Lib Dems opposed to such things? Why aren't they fighting it now?
Republicans want to destroy the USPS, and are using a phony deficit created by their unreasonable legal requirements as an excuse.
As global heating makes the Arctic Ocean navigable, oil spills from ships threaten the environment and we have no way to clean them up.
Dolphins are still sick from the Big Spill, and many kinds of arthropods in marshes have been badly hit.
Naomi Wolf explains how she has foregone interviews for fear of being put in prison without trial.
The English Language Arts Exam (a New York State required test, I think) is designed to trick the students.
Professor Enrique Dans has been sued by the Spanish music industry's organization, Promusicae, for saying it acts monopolistically.
I've read elsewhere that it is an officially established monopoly, which leaves no room for doubt that it acts monopolistically.
Others tell me that Promusicae also acts as the music companies' lobbying organization, comparable to the RIAA in the US.
Tar balls from the Big Spill are still washing up on Gulf beaches, and some have been found to contain deadly bacteria.
The US government is trying to frame Aristide for drug trafficking.
Obama has boasted about drone attacks in speeches, but his
officials refuse to confirm in
court that they really occur.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
We can respond, "No-bama?"
This reminds me of his denialist response to the Wikileaks cables, claiming that they were still secret even though they had been published. And that reminds me in turn of how Dubya's official rejected "reality-based" thinking.
As regards war and human rights, Obama is not significantly better than Bush, and I doubt McCain would have been very different either. I an proud I did not vote for Obama, but that is a rueful kind of pride when I think of what he and Dubya have done to my country.
Guatemalan troops helped sugar plantations kick peasants off their lands, but now that it is obliged to give them aid, it says it can't find them.
Hungary has weakened judicial independence and shut down the main independent radio station.
ICANN plans to help governments
seize domain names.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I think this increases the need for an alternative DNS system that does not depend on ICANN and that governments would find hard to mess with.
A Turkish variant of Islam, named Gülen after its founder, has got taxpayers to fund 130 religious "charter schools" in the US.
I would guess that Christian sects have done this too, but I don't have information about that.
Harry Potter e-books have no DRM, but they carry EULAs that teach children an antisocial lesson. As of today, the terms include this:
12.3 You may not and may not permit others to do any of the following things in relation to any book or extract: § sell, distribute, loan, share, give or lend the book or extract to any other person including to your friends (except in the limited circumstances explained at 12.1 above); § print-on-demand or copy or burn the book or extract to a device whose principal function is to act as a storage device, for example, a CD/DVD or USB stick;
That is not a good lesson to teach to children.
China has shut web sites which were used to spread rumors (apparently false) about a military coup.
Where truthful information is blocked, rumors will spread.
The UN rebuked India for allowing soldiers in Kashmir to arrest and kill arbitrarily with impunity.
Some Chinese from Suzhou who complained about confiscation of their land have been imprisoned secretly.
Thanks to a global monitoring system, it is effectively impossible to
hide a nuclear test.
This removes one objection to the US' signing the nuclear test ban
treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Shell claimed its untested technology would reclaim 95% of the oil spilled from a leaking undersea oil well, and the US government believed it.
Is the US government a sucker, or was it paid to believe, or what?
Iraq is threatening severe
Internet censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating denial is a matter of faith, and is more or less resistant to rational or scientific argument.
The inhabitants of some towns near Fukushima can return home soon.
"Suspicious activity reporting" means keeping dossiers on anyone that
someone
feels suspicious about.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
These are the root hairs of the sapling US police state.
Marwan Barghouti, framed for terrorism but still committed to nonviolence, calls for an end to Palestinian cooperation with Israel.
That cooperation was meant to prepare the path to peace, but since the Israeli state has no intention of following that path, it only maintains the occupation.
Facebook together with mobile apps makes it easy to find girls (or boys) that are currently somewhere near you, and learn a lot about them before you go meet them.
If Zoe found out that half the men who picked her up in the bar in the past month had found her through Girls Around Me — rather than meeting her there by chance — would that bother her? I don't know, but I see no rational reason why she should think that's worse than finding her via match.com.
Would it bother her to know some of them told a false story to start a conversation? I would find it difficult to tell even such a small lie, but I think most people would shrug it off as insignificant. ("Honey, I have a confession to make. When I met you at the bar, it was no accident. I just had to meet you.")
However, she might rationally be concerned that someone frightening will stalk her this way some day. It's not an everyday occurrence, but it happens at some point to a lot of women.
The law allowing imprisonment without trial is being challenged in court by people who fear their political activities might be grounds to imprison them.
If the law provided for punishing corporations without trial, they'd have a better chance with our current supreme court.
Genetically modified wheat emits a low level of peppermint odor to scare away aphids.
For aphids to evolve a defense against this, they would need to change their alarm chemical. I expect that would be difficult. They could easily evolve to ignore their alarm odor, if the selective pressure were high enough, but they'd pay a continuing penalty for that so the net result would still be beneficial.
I would guess that these plants will be pretty safe for wildlife, since peppermint has not caused an eco-disaster. But that is not certain. If this is widely adopted, the quantity of peppermint odor coming from wheat could vastly exceed the quantity that comes from all the peppermint in the world, and that could have unprecedented effects on wildlife — which might be disastrous or not. This would have to be studied.
Meanwhile, if the plants are patented they would attack the rights of farmers. And if they pollinate across distances, they would pollute other farms and put them in danger of being sued.
A student was suspended from school in Indiana for using a common expletive on Twitter.
This is one wrong piled on another. Even if a student wrote a "dirty word" on the blackboard in school, it has no business suspending him for that.
A Catholic school in the Phillippines is denying some students their diplomas for posting prank photos and wearing bikinis. Three cheers for the parents who have sued the school.
An audit of the Foxconn factories that build iThings found people working overtime and not getting paid for it, blocked fire exits, and plenty more.
Public pressure might eventually make Apple make Foxconn clean these things up. However, making Apple stop abusing its own customers will be more difficult.
Aung San Suu Kyi says the coming Burmese election is neither free nor fair.
A Republican attack ad used an edited audio recording attack Obama's health care bill based on something that never happened.
I think this amounts to a lie. It's also irrelevant to the issue, and an insult to people's intelligence.
Obama's anti-regulation team has blocked the regulation of several highly toxic chemicals for years. They won't even tell us which chemicals the EPA wanted to ban.
Obama created the anti-regulation team as part of his general right-wing policy of surrendering to business. I'd rather have an admitted 1960s Republican as president than this crypto-Republican.
US citizens:
call
for stronger EPA regulations to limit CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell Obama
to tax financial transactions and stop trying to interfere with doing so elsewhere in the world.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Recent breakthroughs in Pre-Zen studies.
Republicans are obsessed with abortion but have little interest in protecting fetuses from birth defects due to toxic chemicals from the environment.
Some Republicans want to punish pregnant women who do anything that hurts a fetus. Strange that they don't care about the problem when a factory causes it.
Republicans and Democrats ignore the one way to reduce health care costs.
The article says "all parties", but it really only talks about the Republican Party and Democratic Party. I think the Green Party has a better stand.
An eye-witness denied Zimmerman's claim to have been attacked and badly injured by Trayvon Martin.
Why are people presenting indirect evidence about whether Zimmerman's nose was broken? Wasn't he examined by a doctor after the event?
A Black Londoner has a recording to prove that a thug called him a "nigger", after strangling him.
It is an injustice to criminalize stating one's opinions — the UK's law against racist insults violates the fundamental right of freedom of speech. However, public employees who make such insults against members of the public in the course of their work should be fired, since treating people of all races as persons is part of their job.
As for the strangling, that was a crime of violence.
US citizens:
Tell Congress
to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose broad "cybersecurity" bills that threaten to give the government total access to our personal data.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
David House is suing the US for confiscating his computer at the border, and the judge refused to dismiss the case, meaning that the government may have to yield up information about its motives.
The FBI told agents they could break the law.
I don't believe people are morally obligated to obey unjust laws, for instance laws against copying and sharing, or against gay sex, or against abortion. Some laws are valid; for instance, the law against murder is an obvious example. But that law is not the reason why murder is wrong.
However, when state agents break laws, the result is arbitrary rule. We can't tolerate that.
France: new biometric ID database found
unconstitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US-backed pro-"government" militias in Somalia, and the Ethiopian troops, are killing and torturing prisoners.
400 Afghan women are in prison for running away from forced marriage, or for being raped.
The Taliban would be worse, but this is not good enough to fight a war for.
Senator Collins has introduced a bill to require proper safety tests
for X-ray body scanners, and EPIC is suing to
demand the same
thing.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Ultra-orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn cover up sexual abuse of children, just like the Catholic Church.
A general strike against austerity in Spain shut down cities and major industries.
A pesticide related to some widely used ones damages bees' ability to navigate and to produce queens.
Thus, while it doesn't kill bees directly, it can wipe them out.
The UK says that Werritty defrauded donors to Fox's "charity".
This raises the question: what did Werritty tell Moulton the money would be used for.
Dictator Mugabe and his party get the money from
Zimbabwe diamond
fields.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese companies do the mining, and also construction, and they abuse workers terribly.
One of Mugabe's youth militias have taken over some areas and has
blocked
their opposition deputies
from coming to them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
As Occupy protested the New York thugs' violence, the thugs committed
more crimes
against protesters and reporters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
What the EU data retention directive
really means.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Research into possibly dangerous variants of flu virus faces censorship.
The danger of mutated viruses is obvious. The danger of censorship is not as obvious but it too can affect millions.
Global heating will cause disastrous weather events around the world.
An airline pilot who went mad during a flight faces criminal charges.
What is the sense of prosecuting someone for madness? That cannot be deterred by penalties. His life is already ruined; isn't that enough?
The current House of Representatives is the most anti-environment in the history of the US.
The Republicans behave like an invading army, aiming to loot and destroy as much as they can get away with. Most of their attacks have been blocked, but from time to time the Democrats join them.
The Red Cross plans to use funds donated to help Haitians to build a hotel instead.
US citizens: pledge to resist the WTO when it attacks laws needed for purposes more important than mere trade policy.
Fukishima reactor 2 has been examined with sensors and the radioactivity is worse than expected. The other two damaged reactors can't be examined because they are even more radioactive.
An official panel found that the UK riots of last summer were caused by giving poor youth no stake in society and bombarding them with advertising for luxury goods.
The right-wing coalition has used the riots as an excuse to make things worse.
Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Industry Gasand Why They Stopped.
Brune ended the relationship after he became executive director of the Sierra club, but he tried to conceal the fact that it had previously existed, though he refused to tell an outright lie about it.
Although burning gas produces less pollution than burning coal, fracking adds to the greenhouse gas output and eliminates any advantage. This is in addition to polluting water supplies.
However, the deeper lesson is about getting close to companies to try to change their practices: the chances of success are small.
It would not surprise me if the same energy companies that cozied up to the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, leading them to think this would result in passing a climate protection bill, were also funding lobbying to make that bill fail.
When the 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation were prepared to offer Israel a peace deal, Hamas tried to kill it with a terrorist attack. But they went ahead anyway, and it was Israel that has rejected the offer for 10 years.
Israeli occupation policy is to continue the occupation of Palestine and block any long-term solution, because most Israelis like the status quo. Thus, Israel will not choose between "one state" and "two state" long-term solutions until international pressure such as sanctions makes continuing the occupation of Palestine cease to be attractive.
Israeli interrogation policy has a special exception to facilitate torture of "security suspects".
Israeli school textbooks convey
prejudice designed to produce soldiers ready to dehumanize Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
It doesn't always work. Here are interviews with three Israeli conscientious objectors who will soon go to prison for refusing to serve in the army. One of them was formerly an officer.
This can be compared with stories that Palestinian textbooks use to dehumanize Jews (though reportedly that was corrected in the 90s).
Regarding prejudice in US textbooks, see the book Lies My Teacher Told Me.
Why did Israel break the Gaza truce and provoke a round of fighting?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Tel Aviv University Lecturer Anat Matar participated in a quiet solidarity
rally for
hunger-striking prisoner Hanaa Shalabi. Now the university is
going to "investigate" Dr. Matar for this "illegal protest" at the request
of a right-wing group.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It sounds a lot like McCarthyism to me.
If this is what academic freedom means in Israel, Israeli universities can hardly claim any sympathy against the Palestinian boycott call. If this is what democraticy means in Israel then there isn't much of it left.
The UN rebuked the Israeli law that would force the Bedouin of the Negevto settle in specific towns.
The European Parliament will vote on ACTA in June. All opposed, get active now!
Everyone: sign this petition to ban trade in rhino horns.
Just banning the trade won't magically end poaching, but it will make enforcement easier.
I wonder if it would be possible to develop a cheap convincing fake rhino horn that only laboratory analysis can distinguish from real rhino horn. All the sellers would sell the fake, and the rhinos would be safe.
Another idea is to inject a chemical that has harmful effects on humans into the horns of living rhinos. It would not hurt the rhino if it stays in the horn. (Of course, this could be verified first.) If this were done to 10% of the rhinos, it would scare off purchasers.
In the US:
phone Walmart
and say they should not sell Monsanto's
genetically modified corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Walmart mistreats its workers in many ways, so you shouldn't buy from them. But you can phone anyway.
Activists in South Africa are petitioning a court
to investigate torture in Zimbabwe.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Is the White House Hiding the Influence of Special Interests on Crafting Regulations?
Extrapolating from Obama's other behavior, I expect the answer is yes.
US states are still resisting the REAL ID plan to turn drivers' licenses into a national ID card.
India's government has arrested Tibetan activists , and sealed others in their dorms and neighborhoods, to stop them from marring a Chinese tyrant's visit with unsightly protests.
Other Indians should protest on the Tibetans' behalf, against China's treatment of Tibey and against the tyranny of their own government.
An undersea well near Britain is leaking various gases including methane and hydrogen sulfide. The gas could poison marine life, and could even cause explosions.
The engineers can't find where the leak is coming from, so they can't try to seal it. But the company says we should not worry; the situation is "stable" and there is no danger. That would be reassuring, if we could trust them to be honest if that were not the case.
Shell says it will be safe to drill in the sea near Alaska. That would be reassuring, if we could trust them to be honest if that were not the case.
The UK budget cuts have brought about another recession.
No surprise there.
The Pirate Party got over 7% of the vote in regional elections in Saarland, Germany.
Iran buys Internet surveillance equipment from a Chinese company which also resells US equipment.
Boston will have to pay Simon Glik $170,000
because thugs arrested him for making a video of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Mozambique has a boom due to fossil fuels.
The inhabitants certainly deserve what they get from the trickle-down, but this increase in fossil fuel extraction adds up to death for many of their grandchildren.
The Internet Society has hired Paul Brigner , a SOPA advocate at the MPAA.
If Brigner's job were managing a factory, perhaps it would not matter what views he expressed in his previous job. However, I expect his job will include speaking for the Internet Society, and I don't believe he can do so and be considered sincere.
Company computers that trust the company's self-signed certificates can snoop on and even take control of employee's interactions with web services — even their banks.
Walmart and many other big store brands get their workers through multiple layers of temporary agencies. They pay these workers piecework, speed them up on threat of being fired, use up their bodies, then fire them , while paying them peanuts.
These companies should be required by law to take direct responsibility for everyone working in their plants.
In a rejection of freedom of speech, the UK has sentenced a student to prison for making racist remarks .
Most articles are mysterious about what this "crime" consisted of
— apparently to keep Britons in ignorance of just what might
land them in jail.
One article shows what he said:
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
His words are racist and nasty, and I don't agree with them one bit. But they do not threaten to hurt anyone. They only express hostility. It is tyranny to imprison people for mere insults no matter what the details.
The US "state secrets privilege" has been used to stop victims of US torture from suing, so as to conceal information about how they were tortured. Now we find it has also been used to conceal a stupid failure of intelligence against Afghanistan.
I wonder if that operation, had it been carried out, would have provided intelligence about the planning of the Sep 11 attacks.
Western governments have been secretly pressuring the Egyptian civilian government in waiting to declare an amnesty for the military rulers, accused of killing and arresting protesters.
In the US:
participate
in nonviolent direct action training
April 9-15.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Sierra Club accepted $25 million from the fracking industry, and its executive director falsely said it had not received them.
I wonder what they told themselves to justify their decision to accept secret donations from companies they should have been campaigning to stop.
Extreme weather events were
more frequent in the last decade
than before.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
MPs in the UK want to censor search engines world wide.
The TSA had Bruce Schneier removed as a witness in a congressional hearing about the TSA.
Simple ways to defend the good parts of Obama's health care law.
These are indeed good aspects. The bad part of the law is the part whose validity is being challenged before the Supreme Court: the requirement to buy insurance from a private insurer. If the law is invalidated, it will be because of Obama's surrender to those companies.
The anchors of prominent news programs make so much money that they might well tend naturally to support politics for the rich.
The Federal Trade Commission is considering solving a tiny part of the problem of corporate surveillance of Internet use.
Poor Bangladeshis sold their kidneys and then did not get paid.
I am not sure that sale of kidneys for transplant is a bad thing. And if it were legal, the sellers might at least get paid. (Though in a country with high corruption there is always uncertainty about that.)
The death of coral in the Gulf of Mexico has been traced definitively
to the Big Spill.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US required cities and states to buy, from the banksters, billions of dollars worth of fixed-rate loans as a hedge against possible high interest rates. Then the US drove down interest rates to cater to the banksters, making our cities lose while the banksters win.
The result is thousands of jobs lost.
ALEC "scholarships" amount to illegal gifts to legislators.
Despite Rights Concerns, U.S. Plans to Resume
Egypt Aid.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
With the JOBS Act, Congress proposes to smooth the way for all but the largest companies to succeed — by defrauding their investors.
The WTO and NAFTA may be used to block the regulations needed to prevent more financial crises.
Yet another reason we must abolish these treaties.
US TV broadcasters are fighting tooth and nail against publishing who paid for political ads.
After Obama's betrayal of many Democratic Party pledges about civil liberties (many listed in this page), will the party maintain its pledges for the coming election, or abandon them?
US citizens:
file
comments
in support of birth control coverage in
health insurance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
the FDA
to ban Bisphenol A in food packaging.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the progressive
Budget for All and reject the Ryan anti-non-rich budget. Also sign
this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Murder, mutilation, misogyny and madness are part of the nature of
war.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Undersea oil drilling threatens the Canary Islands.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of US atheists and seculars participated in
the Reason Rally in Washington DC.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The UK plans to increase the retirement age along with life expectancy, so that people would be required to work until age 71 or even 74.
In a society with a labor shortage, this policy would make perfect sense. If more workers are needed, each person needs to work for more years. But what's the good of this in a society with high unemployment.
Former vice president Cheney had a heart transplant.
Now that he has one, does he feel sorry for the victims of war and torture that he is responsible for?
The London thugs attacked student protester Alfie Meadows, who needed brain surgery as a result. Now students protest that he is on trial instead of them.
Spain is entering the cycle where austerity produces a budget shortfall that demands more austerity.
A majority of
Israelis oppose attacking Iran, and some protested in Tel Aviv
to show their opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Muslims in Pakistan kidnapped a Hindu girl and forcibly married her to a Muslim man. They also claim she converted to Islam.
The article says she was "forcibly converted", but that would require a mind control device. She may have been forced to pretend to convert.
When this was exposed, they intimidated her into denying it, or else lied and said she had denied it.
Pakistan has sentenced people to death for "blasphemy" because they criticized Islam. This arrogant disrespect for the rights of non-Muslims has been a strong current in Islam since Mohammed's day.
Thet Sambath, filming about the motives behind the Khmer Rouge mass murder, says that people connected with the crime are trying to kill him before he can finish it.
The thugs are a street gang, and they treat Occupy protesters as a rival gang.
Facebook has put an outrageous trademark claim on the word "book" into its terms of service.
To be dependent on Facebook, or any other specific company you could not replace with another, is to make yourself vulnerable to unbounded legal aggression. Don't be a fool — unfriend Facebook today rather than accept these terms.
Cubans who tried to protest for human rights, using the occasion of a papal visit, have been met with repression comparable to what Occupy protesters in the US received.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, indigenous human rights
activists are being framed for murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Republicans plan to gut the FCC and allow unbridled media concentration.
This is even worse than Obama's plan.
Internet Society Hires MPAA's Paul Brigner:
Just Flip Over and Shake?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A general strike against austerity measures shut down Portugal's main cities.
As usual, austerity causes a further downturn and makes it harder to pay the debt, which predictably leads to need for a further "bailout" and more austerity. It is like putting ice on someone with hypothermia.
Obama's new forest service rules weaken the protection for wildlife.
The campaign to ban regular feeding of antibiotics to farm animals
has won a court victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The EPA admits that its regulations about acid rain are inadequate, but refuses to tighten them anyway.
A right-wing politician such as Obama makes business his main constituency.
Indians have started a campaign against the government's harsh Internet censorship.
Malawi has adopted the unjust practice of criminializing insulting the president.
France and Ecuador both have similar unjust laws, as well as other countries that have been mentioned in previous notes here but which I don't recall.
Using civilian satellites to document Sudanese army bombing of civilians in South Kordofan.
Silent Spring Dawns Hot,
Dry and Merciless.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The March heat wave broke thousands of temperature records across the US, day after day.
The heat wave is over in Massachusetts, because the weather still fluctuates. "If you don't like the weather in New England, wait five minutes", though this time we had to wait a few days. But that doesn't mean global heating has stopped. There will be more, worse heat waves, and they will become more frequent. And they will happen in summer and kill vulnerable people. By ten years from now it will be worse.
Don't let the temporary return of non-extreme weather lull you into a sense of security.
Sarkozy's plan to criminalize the mere viewing of Islamist web sites
is running
into some opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Note how Sarkozy cites the prohibition of "child pornography" as a precedent for prohibiting access to a political opinion. The idea that this was the thin edge of the wedge is no longer just a theory. It is an excuse for censoring all sorts of things.
No matter how disgusting some works may be, censorship is more disgusting.
A Big Polluter whistleblower says that a BP deep sea drilling platform lacks the engineering documentation needed for safe operation. He says it is an accident waiting to happen.
Given BP's culture of cutting corners on safety, I find it entirely plausible that they are taking reckless risks yet again.
While Obama "expedited" part of the planet-roaster pipeline, protesters were put in a cage miles away, where neither Obama nor TV camera would notice them.
Just like Bush.
The US' problem isn't Big Government, it is government obeying Big Money.
Cory Doctorow explains the distortions of copyright in practical terms.
My article explains the conceptual distortions which facilitate the passage of unjust copyright laws.
When the thugs arrested Occupy protesters in New York, in some cases
gravely injuring them,
they galvanized the movement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Computerized barter systems are spreading around Greece.
It is a nice fillip that it (probably) uses free software — though I can't be certain, because it says "open source", and there are a few open source programs which are not free.
But I also worry about the idea that the system knows about all the dealing.
Obama's new nominee for head of the World Bank has the support of Jeffrey Sachs.
Was it wrong for Mike Daisey to make false statements?
I think it was wrong. If he did not want to stick to the truth, he should have criticized a fictional company, or said "It would be easy for XYZ to happen", rather than saying presenting exaggerations as real events.
I also criticize movies that say "based on a true story" when they have willfully changed things.
The real facts about Apple products are sufficient reason to refuse to use them.
By contrast, there was nothing wrong with making false statements about himself to Foxconn in order to get evidence about Foxconn.
Fools are criticizing the French government for not predicting that Mohamed Merah would commit murder.
What they want is impossible; this cannot be predicted. There are surely at least 50 people who show such "warning signs" and don't engage in violence, for each one who does so. It would be tyranny to imprison them all, and short of that, there is not much that can be done which wouldn't be worse than the disease.
However, a few measures that might help could be possible. For instance, he could have been denied permission to have firearms.
US citizens: tell the IRS
to enforce tax laws against right-wing
political groups that pretend to be "social welfare" organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on the SEC
to require publicly traded companies
to disclose their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The murders of union leaders in Colombia continue. Ricardo Ramon Paublott Gomez, a leader in the union in the Coca Cola plant, was shot and killed in January.
Sergeant Bales has been charged with murdering Afghan civilians.
The article says he is being kept in an "isolated cell". I hope he is not getting the same inhumane treatment as Bradley Manning. Bales is accused of murder, while Manning was heroic whistleblowing, but no prisoner (whether accused or convicted) should be kept in long-term solitary confinement.
Nevada is running out of water, and either Las Vegas or a farming region will have to do without.
The proposed pipeline will probably not solve the problem for long. Global heating will make the American west dry up even more, so the problem will come back. A solar-powered desalinization plant is the only sustainable way to keep Las Vegas supplied with water.
The banksters committed systematic crimes when they misled borrowers.
Why won't Obama prosecute them?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
New antidepressant drugs are worse than old ones,
even ineffective. They were approved because of one-sided
publication of studies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the arid land of the West Bank, Israeli colonists have taken dozens of natural water sources away from Palestinians.
US citizens: phone your senators to support S.2204, which would repeal tax breaks for big oil.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: support Greenpeace's campaign against
Shell's arctic
drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Former IAEA officials accuse its current head of twisting the facts to suit the enemies of Iran.
This accords with a Wikileaks cable that said he was in cahoots with the US.
Remember when Boehner and the Republicans committed Congress to budget cuts cross the board if the Supercommittee didn't make a deal? Now he wants to exempt military spending from those cuts.
This shows his real goal: to impoverish most Americans.
Students at UC Davis have permanently shut a branch
of US Bank on
campus.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Sarkozy
plans to criminalize reading, using one murderer as an excuse.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A thousand people rallied in New York to condemn the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Repress U, Class of 2012: Seven Steps to a
Homeland Security
Campus
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Move your money (and organizations' money) out of the big banks,
which not only caused the economic crisis and practiced massive fraud,
they
also invest in fossil fuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Kony 2012 shows what's bad about Kony and the LRA, but the other side isn't good.
There are a couple of points in the article I don't agree with. Even though the US government generally has a business-related motive for any action, including an intervention, that doesn't necessarily mean the action is wrong. On occasion, what's good for US business happens to be the right thing for other reasons.
Secondly, if the US tries to stamp out a kind of nasty practice in one place while supporting a government that does the same nasty practice in another place, that might support the conclusion that the US is hypocritical, but that doesn't imply that it is wrong in both cases. It could be doing right in the first case and doing wrong in the second.
Thus, a US intervention against the LRA could be justified (though it might also be unnecessary now in Uganda). But that doesn't justify US support for Uganda's government on other issues.
Alarming rhetoric in push for cybersecurity bills.
Scotts Miracle-Gro has admitted putting highly toxic pesticides in birdseed, despite warnings from employees, and has been offered a plea deal with a fine that's tiny compared with the profit it made.
Why haven't the managers responsible for falsified papers been prosecuted?
US citizens: tell Obama not to build the Keystone XL
planet-roaster
pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
That page focuses on the minor issue of gasoline prices, but what's at stake here is avoiding global heating disaster.
Here's the message I used.
The Keystone XL pipeline would be a disaster for the world, since it would commit to use of a large reservoir of oil that produces more CO2 than ordinary oil. To use the tar sands oil would be an act of folly, and if you make the decision to do so, future generations will hold you resposible.
Some states, under the control of the reality denial party, are opposing teaching about global heating as well as evolution.
The biotech giant companies are distributing pseudoscience to children, making false claims about the benefits of genetic engineering.
NSA whistleblowers say the NSA can and regularly
does spy on Americans' communications.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
And when the NSA hesitates to spy directly on US communications, it gets Canada to do the job.
Is your refrigerator spying on you?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Iran and the IAEA came very close to agreement about inspections. The talks broke down because Iran refused to allow issues, once settled, to be reopened.
I think Iran's position was unreasonable. This is a matter of inspection, not criminal prosecution. I would expect nuclear facilities and possible nuclear facilities to be inspected repeatedly like elevators.
Congress and Obama plan to abolish large parts of stock regulation.
The EPA whitewashed fracking-related pollution problems in water in Pennsylvania.
Dangerously Vague Cybersecurity Legislation Threatens Civil Liberties.
Obama's plan to impose Summers as head of the World Bank has come apart.
Romney's advisor says he's like an etch-a-sketch: after he wins the nomination, he can "hit the reset button," and whatever he said during the primary campaign can be forgotten.
The FBI complains about how inconvenient it is to need a search warrant.
If they could investigate anyone with no limits, they could surely prosecute a lot more people — maybe everyone.
US citizens: send a comment to the FDA calling for
mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to
keep the interest down on student loans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Congress to
move election day to Sunday.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This is desirable, but not enough. Another the reason minority groups and poor people don't vote is that Republicans have taken action to stop them. And another reason is that there is rarely anyone good to vote for.
Russia and China supported a
UN resolution threatening some sort of action
against Assad if he does not end the violent repression in Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Israel tortures and brainwashes
thousands of Palestinian children and teenagers, pressuring them into
confessions that are surely often false. Over 90% of them suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli right-wing group calls for accelerated demolition of Palestinian homes, effectively acknowledging the goal of ethnic cleansing.
Hana Shalabi, imprisoned by Israel without trial for a second time, refuses to eat and is close to death.
I hope I will have the courage to escape from prison this way if it is called for.
Occupy Wall Street tried to set up a camp in Freedom Park, but the
thugs violently attacked them to enforce new rules set up to ban
protest camps.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Cameraman ZD Roberts was attacked by New York Thug Department while covering an Occupy protest — for the second time.
Banksters' bonuses were cut by 25% and they can't make ends meet. They might have to quit the country club or take care of their dogs at home.
Bolivia under Evo Morales has made great economic strides by rejecting surrender to the corporatocracy.
Five Tips for President Obama on Nuclear Negotiations with Iran.
Large mines are being developed in Afghanistan, so it can pay for continuing occupation. Now we know what the war is for.
The mines won't be ready until 2024, so I suppose Obama will want us to prop up Karzai's corruption until then.
There is evidence to show Trayvon Martin's killer did not shoot in self-defense.
When sites require facebook accounts to post comments, it means that a person's comments on all sites can be tied together, which adds up to broad and intimidating surveillance.
The Internet tends to create near-monopolies, one for each activity. (Not every activity has developed a near-monopoly yet.) Due to the weakness of democracy today, these are not regulated like the old near-monopolies, the phone company and the post office. So they use their power to worm their way into controlling more and more activities.
British troops in Afghanistan are restricted in handing prisoners over to Afghan custody because Karzai's men are likely to torture them.
This creates a conundrum about what to do with prisoners when NATO troops are removed from Afghanistan. They cannot remain permanently in Afghanistan to guard those prisoners, they cannot take the prisoners out of Afghanistan, and they cannot hand them over to Karzai. Some of them are probably prisoners for no good reason, but not all.
Google has provided legal arguments to defend Hotfile (and Megaupload).
The UK's right-wing government will destroy planning regulations so that business can easily trash the environment and public health.
Privatizing infrastructure is a big handout to business with no benefit for the public.
That's why right-wing governments want to do it: they serve business, not the public.
Miami Occupier Tells of
Violent SWAT Raid.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Tell the Toll Group to stop intimidating union supporters
and stop firing truck drivers for taking an
emergency bathroom
break
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Requiring drivers not to stop when they feel weak or sick is not only illegal, it could cause a fatal accident.
Obama has taken another step backwards in requiring contraceptive coverage.
No law allows the thugs to demand that prisoners give iris scans, but they are informally retaliating against Occupy protesters who refuse.
You'd think that fingerprints would be sufficient for the purpose of verifying that the intended person is being released. So why do they want iris scans at all? Perhaps so they can track people's movements on the street. So it is very important to refuse.
Staying in jail longer should be part of the aim of protests where one gets arrested. The freedom riders of the 60s aimed to fill the jails to the bursting point.
The Supreme Court gutted age discrimination law, so a bill proposs to reverse the decision.
Everyone: call on HP to stop providing biometric systems for
checkpoints in the
Israeli annexation wall.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
China's large investments in solar and wind power put the US to shame.
A carbon emission tax could solve the US deficit problem, if only lunatic officials were not in the way.
Germany plans to push for renewable energy even while phasing out nuclear power.
The Syrian government is tricking users into visiting a fake YouTube site which installs malware into their systems.
I suspect that this only targets Windows (which is malware in its own right), and that you'd be safe if you use GNU/Linux. Does anyone know?
ITU control of the Internet would exclude civil society.
The US control of the Internet leads to injustices such as domain name seizures, but that doesn't mean the ITU would be better. Russia and China surely don't care about defending netizens from the US government and its masters in Hollywood. Obama and the US Congress would love to let the ITU adopt regulations comparable to SOPA, since then they could say, "We have no choice: the ITU has forced it on us."
US citizens: phone your congresscritter
to oppose HR 5 which
would shield hospitals, drug companies and doctors from
responsibility for negligence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell US ISPs not to attack people who share.
Romney's old company, Bain, owns a Chinese company that makes surveillance cameras.
For something of very general use, such as pencils or general purpose computers, it is valid for the manufacturer to argue that it can't control how purchasers use them. That argument is inapplicable for surveillance cameras in China because repression is their most significant use.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support legislation to
discourage a war with Iran.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the cartel cable
companies
want to start.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a Bahraini protester sentenced to life imprisonment for protesting, has been on a hunger strike for weeks.
In the US, people can be informally imprisoned for life with no trial at all, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The UK has proposed another pointless criminal law against harassment or violence that drives someone to suicide.
This law would be ineffective in discouraging those practices. The perpetrators surely do not expect the victims to kill themselves (which is a rare event), so they will not worry about being prosecuted under this law, and thus will not be deterred.
An effective policy would have to address the violence as such, not just in the rare case where it leads to suicide.
Meanwhile, if Nosheen Azam said she feared being killed, doesn't that suggest someone else attacked her? That is a crime already, and this proposed law would not apply.
An Italian student attacked by thugs and arrested, just for taking pictures of historic buildings in London, has received financial compensation but no apology.
I think she would have been more true to herself had she held out for a public defeat for the thugs.
Austerity in Portugal appears to have killed 1000 people in February.
45,000 Americans die per year due to lack of medical insurance.
A Syrian official defected and published documents showing Assad's personal involvement in plans to crush demonstrations.
Persecution of homosexuals is sweeping across Africa.
The corporate-run World Water Forum is the first step in a plan to privatize the natural world and abolish the right to water.
If the natural world is privatized, poor people will be compelled to sell their shares (if they got any in the first place), and then will have no water. It is one way to do population control, but not a humane way.
After the UN-approved intervention in Libya to protect civilians was stretched into a drive to oust Gaddafi, the Russia and China are unwilling to approve interventions to protect civilians.
Five accused terrorists were shot dead in Bali.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The alleged terror plot is plausible, but the fact that all the accused participants were shot dead is fishy. It suggests that the thugs wanted them dead to avoid putting them on trial to demonstrate their guilt, as the US apparently did with Osama bin Laden.
Thugs in China unofficially imprison people for ransom in unofficial jails if they try to file political complaints.
Israel has held Ahmad Qatamesh prisoner without charges for a year after taking his family hostage to get ahold of him.
He is apparently being used as a political football.
Meanwhile, this shows the Palestinian Authority also holds people prisoner without charges for political reasons.
Many video games are developed as propaganda, either for specific countries and causes, or for war in general.
The UK's treasury-robbing government wants to privatize existing roads.
60 women in Alabama have been jailed through a law that equates fetuses with children.
It is not totally unreasonable to punish actions that risk causing the birth of a defective child. Unless it is very severely damaged, it will be a person after it's born, so if it is impaired then, a person will have been harmed. However, this must be done by laws that explicitly concern fetuses, not by equating fetuses with children.
The EFF is looking for prior art to abolish a software patent that is being used for extortion against many US cities.
I wish them luck — please help if you can — but eliminating software patents one by one is as useless as trying to eliminate malaria by swatting mosquitos. Every software patent is a threat to the field of software, and we need to get rid of them all at once.
endsoftpatents.orgA radical artist who doesn't want to make art super-expensive for the 1% got funding with Kickstarter.
A copyright collecting organization in Belgium wants libraries to pay for allowing volunteers to read books aloud to children.
These libraries should strike back: they should tell the volunteers to read only public domain books, and post signs condemning the collecting organization and calling on people to oppose it.
Oil company executives face criminal charges due to an
oil well leak off the cost of Brazil.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It is not clear from this article why individuals should face charges. The mere existence of a leak should not be a crime. However, if they directed workers to take reckless risks like those that led to the Big Spill, that would justify charges.
The US' failure to charge anyone for the Big Spill simply shows that Obama is in the oil companies' pockets.
It must take special talent to be in so many pockets at once.
How and why Wall Street is responsible for US education cutbacks.
Papuan independence activists have been convicted of treason in Indonesia for a peaceful protest, and sentenced to three years in prison.
The US plans to threaten protesters with 10 years in prison.
The dictator of Belarus executed "terrorists" convicted after an unfair trial.
The US also carries out bogus trials.
US citizens: call on the US to
protect the sea life in Bering sea canyons.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to defend the state election laws that limit corporations' election spending.
US citizens: tell the FCC
not to allow more media consolidation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell
Republican presidential candidates you don't like their talk about war.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The European Court of Human Rights approved kettling, at least in one case.
Dharun Ravi was convicted of a crime for putting up a webcam in his room and watching his roommate. And then teasing or insulting him about being gay.
Ravi was charged with "intimidating" the roommate. Hostile teasing is mean, and people shouldn't do that, but merely insulting someone should not be a crime. If he made threats, that should be a crime. I don't know what Ravi actually said.
As for the webcam, that was just a prank.
Amazon is demanding that small publishers sell at a loss.
One ironic point about the article is that it treats the Amazon Swindle as a legitimate product, taking no notice of the way it attacks readers' freedom and should never be used.
The small publishers should start selling without DRM, and should let independent book stores sell copies for them.
The UK will allow information on all drivers, including their credit card numbers, to be stored in an Indian outsourcing company.
This decision means Britons will have fewer jobs and less privacy, but a corporation will make more money.
Note that the issue exists because of the decision to implement a congestion charge based on general surveillance. It could have been implemented another way.
The UK wants cameras at filling stations to detect uninsured cars and refuse to let them get gasoline.
Given the UK's austerity, these drivers won't be able to buy insurance. What they will do is arrange for their friends to buy gasoline for them, which they could then siphon from one car's tank to another.
The same system spies on everyone, so everyone should object to it. As for detecting drivers that don't pay, an old-fashioned security camera whose images are viewed only when there's a reason would suffice for that.
A study shows babies grow up smarter if they are fed whenever they are hungry.
The US has sold irreplaceable helium for party balloons, and now it has become permanently scarce.
Coptic Christians in Egypt feel threatened by Islamist extremists.
They used to support Mubarak for his protection. Supporting the oppression of most people can't be justified, but Muslims must recognize religious freedom, which includes the freedom to argue for or against any religion.
Venezuelan thugs provoked a scandal by
shooting and killing a diplomat's daughter.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs in Venezuela have checkpoints all the time on major highways between cities. They check everyone's papers, regardless of whether they suspect the people of anything. They don't usually kill, but often they arrest people demanding fines which are effectively ransoms/bribes. They even do this to government officials (an official I know told me this happened to him). The problem is older than Chavez's presidency.
Another Tibetan self-immolation sparked a large protest march.
It is typical of oppressive regimes to attack dissidents protesters with distracting side issues. When China says that these protests are encouraged by "supporters of the Dalai Lama", they might as well say "Tibetans".
Politicians are whipping up public jealousy of public school teachers.
The US military has a ray that causes people to feel an unbearable sensation of heat — at a distance of half a mile.
Just like drones, this will find its way to the thugs, who will find it even more fun than pepper spray for hurting people that want to practice democracy.
During the great Irish potato famine, there was plenty of food in Ireland, but landlords exported it and starved the poor.
This offers a lesson for today, with a billion people hungry and another billion overweight.
Uri Avnery: Israel unleashed a battle in Gaza with a targeted killing of someone easy to replace. Was this justified, or even advantageous?
In general, it is legitimate to kill leaders of an enemy army in war. But not when a truce is holding.
Indian police have linked the bomb attack against the Israeli embassy to Iranians.
This doesn't surprise me; it confirms that the attacks were tit-for-tat.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter saying to sign Chellie
Pingree's letter saying
don't use ammoniated meat ("pink slime")in school meals.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the US delegation to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to protect tuna from destructive fishing methods.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose McCain's cybersnooping
bill.
Also send them messages through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The overfishing of sharks resulted in destruction of scallop fisheries.
Senate Bill Could Roll Back Consumers' Health Insurance Savings.
The US-Korean free exploitation treaty was rushed into effect before the Korean election, in which the opposition party is expected to win thanks to the strength of public disapproval of the treaty.
The opposition should cancel the treaty immediately, rather than allow the US to play for time by "negotiating" changes.
Voting fraud in the European Parliament blocked copyright reform.
Denmark blocked access to Google and Facebook saying they had
"child pornography".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Censorship attacks basic human rights, and must not be tolerated except in an emergency such as war.
The World Water Forum has become a corporate trade show, so activists
have set up the Forum Alternatif Mondial de l'Eau to organize to implement
the
recognized right of access to water.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the US:
call on Rush Limbaugh's advertisers to stop funding his show.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A court in India ordered all the country's ISPs to block access to sharing sites.
At the corporate-run World Water Forum, the hot idea is digital ration cards for water.
Rather than condemn the landless poor to flee in search of a place that will let them have water, it would be far more humane to discourage people from giving birth to them. The world needs subsidized contraception and subsidized sterilization.
The NSA snoops on effectively all of Americans' digital and telephone communication, and records it permanently.
A former manager says we are very close to a "turnkey totalitarian state".
Do you find it hard to believe Obama would intervene to keep a journalist in prison in a foreign country?
A Republican congresscritter wants to sell off national parks.
Privatizations are generally arranged to benefit businesses, so the state doesn't get a fair price. And that's just the beginning of how the citizens lose.
Sign this petition to
stop bailing out AIG and start taxing it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell officials to extend whistleblower protection to the Public Health Service and NOAA.
By 2050, conventional pollution is expected to kill 3.5 million people per year. I say "conventional pollution" because that figure does not count greenhouse gases and the effects of global heating, which if not stopped will eventually kill tens of millions per year, but perhaps not until later than 2050.
Sabu did more than just inform on a cracking group — he set it up, effectively acting as a provocateur. He recruited people to be crackers so the FBI could punish them.
In the UK, support for fracking is "growing rapidly in some political circles", but not in the public.
I think that is corporate money at work.
Iraq's implosion after conquest illustrates what intervention in Syria might lead to.
Witnesses in Afghanistan insist that more than one soldier participated in the latest massacre.
I wouldn't give unreserved trust to the US officers' claims. However, witnesses can easily be mistaken about people they saw, unless they already knew and recognized those people.
The Congolese Army is preparing an offensive against Rwandan gangs and the LRA, but it might kill thousands of civilians instead.
Two senators say that the US government is stretching the unjust provisions of the U SAP AT RIOT act, and doing so for purposes that are not even crucial for national security.
Republicans want to keep bodies taboo.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This promotes anxiety that makes people unnatural with other people's bodies.
Terrorism, Money, the Internet, and ICANN.
We must stop accepting "terrorism" or "child pornography" as excuses for warping technology into a system of oppression of everyone.
Two Pakistani UN soldiers have been convicted of raping a Haitian boy.
It is bullshit to refer to the UN troops as "peacekeepers". Peacekeepers prevent war from breaking out between two armies. That was never the case in Haiti. What this UN mission is intended to prevent is an outbreak of democracy.
Israel won't connect Palestinian villages to the electric grid, so Europeans funded solar power for them. Israel plans to demolish the solar panels because they don't have permits (which Palestinians basically can never get).
I agree with the UN official: the goal of this harrassment, which extends to many other areas of life, is to drive Palestinians off their land.
Progressives must proudly repeat the
arguments for abortion rights and contraception, not shy away from these
issues.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's health care program has provisions that increase costs and provisions that decrease costs. By considering the former and ignoring the latter, Republicans make false attacks.
False statements by Republicans are hardly news in general. What's really noteworthy is that a national health service, such as most developed countries have, would save tremendous amounts. Of course, Republicans oppose that.
Republicans want to go in the opposite direction by privatizing Medicare.
Pakistan has denied permission for further US drone attacks there.
Haitians are ready for democracy, but the US won't allow it.
Americans judge Obama on gasoline prices, and Republican war talk raises gasoline prices — leading Americans to support those Republicans.
Wanting low gasoline prices is foolish, short–term thinking, but I am not surprised to see that from Americans.
Karzai demanded that the US pull its troops out of Afghan villages.
If the US does not obey, that will imply that in fact the US is occupying Afghanistan.
Pumping water from aquifers for farming in China emits more CO2 than New Zealand.
When the aquifers are depleted, where will they get water? And how much CO2 emissions will that require?
MPs accused Shell and Cairn of totally inadequate emergency plans for undersea drilling in the Arctic.
Too bad they have the US government on their side.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support HR 780, which would end funding for the war in Afghanistan except for withdrawing US forces.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on the Governor of Kansas to
oppose the "Let Doctors Lie" Bill, designed to encourage them to trick
women into having babies with birth defects.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US senate rejected an amendment that would have allowed undersea oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildife Refuge and elsewhere, as well as authorizing the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Keeping that oil in the ground is necessary to protect species all around Earth, including humans.
Sri Lanka's shameful record on detention without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It carries out assassinations too.
The US could be a force for good in the world if its own policies were better than these.
PayPal has clarified its censorship policy, which it will apply book by
book.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The total amount of censorship will be much less, but it is still wrong to censor by restricting the act of payment.
A PAC is campaigning to unseat Rep. Lamar Smith, enemy of Internet users.
(The host name is humorous but it is a real campaign.)
Major US ISPs are setting up to punish their clients based on complaints from Hollywood and the record companies.
This plan, which was arranged by every Internet users's enemy, Obama, takes advantage of the fact that ISPs are allowed to terminate anyone's service more or less at will; users have no right to continued service. That is a general injustice of the Internet today, and this is just one manifestation of it.
More info about the
school that demanded a girl's Facebook password.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Phosphorus in
Chicago's sewage fuels the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Thoreau's wildflower records lead to an estimate of 2.4C of warming since 1850.
Arizona is considering a law to allow women to be fired for using contraception.
Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye is in prison for revealing
the truth about a US bombing, and Obama seems to want this to continue.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
On fundamental human rights issues, Obama is little different from Bush. Both deserve to be tried for conspiracy to commit torture.
Some unknown technology company has challenged the validity of a warrantless FBI search of records about individuals.
Understanding national security in the broad sense, these searches threaten it more than the terrorists (and dissidents) that the FBI investigates.
Wall Street's shift from long–term gain to short–term greed started in the 80s.
US health care in 2037 could cost more than the median income, if current trends continue.
The fix should include a national health system, which can cut costs by 50% while providing equally good service.
The US is keeping lots of secrets about Bradley Manning's trial. Reporters have petitioned for publication of official steps.
If we don't cap global heating very soon, melting permafrost will emit large amounts of greenhouse gas.
2 degrees C of global heating is probably enough to make Greenland's ice sheet begin melting away irreversibly.
The melting would take centuries, but it would be a world–wide disaster nonetheless.
Many economists have implored Obama to support, not oppose, the European Union's emission–trading scheme for airplanes flying in and out of the EU.
It is insane to fight against efforts to reduce global heating. Doing so is the sign of a government so subservient to business that it will follow a suicidal path on command.
Tar sands oil extraction will emit
even more CO2 than previously estimated, by destroying peat bogs and
releasing their stored carbon.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Peat bogs are carbon sinks, so their loss will increase subsequent global heating too. This means that pledges to restore the land as it was are bogus (greenwashing), since they do not plan to replace lost bogs.
The world has plentiful supplies of fossil fuels, but we dare not burn them because it will roast the Earth.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone your state legislators to support
extending the Bottle Bill (required deposits on drink bottles) to other kinds
of bottled beverages.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US congresscritters have signed letters calling for suspension of aid to the coup–installed government in Honduras.
How the US lost the 40-hour work week, and how to bring it back.
The best way to buy a congresscritter is with an offer of a million dollars a year job after leaving office.
The revolving door applies to other government employees too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Democrats in Congress asked Obama to
support Jeffrey Sachs as head of the World Bank.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
However, Obama seems to want Larry Summers, who advocated giving the banksters what they wanted.
In the US:
rally
at Walmart stores against selling Monsanto's GMO corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Syrian opposition obtained and leaked Assad's private emails.
The messages show he had contempt for the "reforms" he announced. However, the article does not say they include orders to commit violence against Syrians, so they shed no light on that.
Assad received advice not to attribute a bombing in Damascus to al Qa'ida, but that doesn't indicate whether the bombing was really carried out by al Qa'ida.
Greg Smith quit Goldman Sachs and said that the company has a culture of preying on its clients.
This demonstrates the need for a strong Volcker Rule to stop banks from doing this.
The International Criminal Court has issued its first conviction: Thomas Lubanga was convicted of forcing children in the Congo to fight.
The biggest problem of the ICC is that the US, since Bush days, has opposed it and gone all-out to weaken it. This is because Bush (and Obama I presume) didn't want to be accused there of torture and other crimes against humanity.
US military leaders say that going to war with Assad's army is a very bad idea.
There are reports that the US is secretly arming the rebel underground. That might be legitimate if they could win — and if it were clear that most Syrians prefer them to Assad, something which is not certain. However, if they can't win, arming them only leads to useless casualties.
Why We All Need to Oppose the TPP.
International trade benefits every country in terms of increasing its GNP. But if the country doesn't have a strong democracy, the 1% will snap up the increase and leave most people with only a cut in pay. Thus, the arguments for increasing international trade are valid only so long as it doesn't weaken democracy.
However, every "free trade treaty" attacks democracy by enabling businesses to make states race each other to the bottom.
Protesters showing "Bust up Bank of America" on their bras were arrested and violently attacked by New York thugs, then kept in a freezing cell for hours.
But they are not about to give up.
There was a large spike in infant deaths in the US northwest in the weeks following the Fukushima disaster.
The article covers several topics; you need to scroll through it to reach this topic.
US citizens: call on Obama to pull US troops out of
Afghanistan this
year.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Bassem Tamimi`s trial clearly shows that nonviolent protest organizer
is being framed.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The recent outbreak of fighting in Gaza started when Israel assassinated two militant leaders, saying they were planning an attack in Israel, and that they were responsible for a previous attack. But that seems to be false.
Israeli soldiers shot people in a funeral procession.
The army says these were "warning shots". If they couldn't avoid hitting people with warning shots, that was incompetent. If they didn't try to avoid hitting people, that was dishonest. Which was it?
In the Palestinian village of Seefer, people must spend an hour crossing a checkpoint on foot to get water.
They cannot drive cars, and they cannot have visitors.
The motive for these restrictions is to drive them off their land, which is also why they stubbornly refuse to leave.
Noam Gur decided to go to prison rather than participate in repression of Palestinians.
The US and Europe are no longer the main consumers of oil, and the other users are much more efficient. This means the US will need to make radical improvements in efficiency or be priced out of the market.
US citizens: oppose oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
US citizens: call for AIG to
start paying taxes again.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the US the police now require a warrant to attach a GPS tracker to your car, but San Francisco has invented another method to get it: inviting you to pay for a parking space through the Internet.
For "Internet of things", read "massive surveillance".
Shell's wacky solution to Arctic oil spills is to train dogs to sniff spilled oil.
If they were looking for an ounce of spilled oil, that would be a reasonable method to find it. However, if the problem is a hundred tons of oil broken up into tarballs scattered along miles of shoreline, they wouldn't need a dog to find them. It would suffice to dig up any foot of the shore to find some. But they wouldn't pay for this to be done.
The London Olympics will leave London with a permanent burden of new surveillance systems, repression, and debt.
Nowadays, the Olympic games are a handout for corporations. If your city is proposed as a site, fight back before the decision.
The World Water Forum has been designed to help transfer the world's water resources to the wealthy, and to undermine the human right to water.
Stating that access to clean water is a human right is vital for stopping companies from buying up all the water and leaving none for the poor. At the same time, we cannot eliminate real limits on resources by proclaiming human rights to use them. If we want fewer regions of the world to be under water stress in 2050, we must subsidize and encourage contraception.
US veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan will return their medals to the NATO summit to state their rejection of those wars and demand a pull-out from Afghanistan.
Nitrates from fertilizer are
contaminating the drinking water in parts of California.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Occupy Education debated the Gates Foundation about its standardized-testing approach to education.
India granted a compulsory patent license for cheap manufacturing
of an anti-cancer drug.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The WTO rules permit compulsory licenses, but the US has persistently pressured poor countries to let people die rather than exercise that option. Al Gore was doing this job as vice president in the 90s.
After the massacre that killed an Afghan family, the
US mainstream media are worried that the war may suffer.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Afganistanis expect that the US will whitewash the crime.
It has done so in other cases.
This massacre differs from many others in that the chain of command did not give an order for it. The direct responsibility falls only on the person who decided to kill. For the other massacres, the US government shared in the direct responsibility.
At another level, the war is responsible for all, because it is inevitable that such crimes happen occasionally in a war. Soldiers are under great stress, and some will crack. Many others find excuses to kill wantonly in accord with the rules of engagement, so that they won't be punished. This is why it takes very strong reasons to justify a war.
Slovak voters rejected the corrupt government that privatized their
social security, but right-wingers still
want to do this in the
US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Several states have passed laws allowing obstetricians to intentionally lie about of birth defects that they see when examining a fetus.
The goal of these laws is to trick women into having babies with birth defects. Wouldn't you like to have a birth defect?
The UN rapporteur on torture has accused the US of "cruel and inhuman" treatment of accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.
He also accused the US of blocking him from finding out whether Manning was tortured.
It looks like Gaddafi funded Sarkozy's previous election campaign.
What an ingrate he was, supporting the Libyan rebels! Now he has no Gaddafi to turn to. ;-}
Tony Nicklinson, who is almost totally paralyzed and can communicate only by blinking, has petitioned for help in killing himself.
I suppose he would jump at the chance to live a normal life, but there is no way to give him that. The question is, should he be forced to endure years more of "dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable" life, in which he cannot achieve anything?
Japanese officials were warned the day of the earthquake of a danger of
a meltdown at Fukushima, and covered it up.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In towns near Fukushima, children are not allowed to play outside. People fear to air out their futons and won't buy local vegetables.
Is this fear irrational? In one sense, yes. I suspect that children playing outdoors in cities near Fukushima are at more risk from car accidents than from radioactive fallout. (But I don't have real figures, and it would be interesting to check this.) In another sense, no. After a series of lies from TEPCO and officials, parents have a rational reason to distrust what officials and their scientific employees say now about the amount of risk.
Obama wants warrantless access to cell phone location data. This article argues that this should be unconstitutional.
However, I think it is not enough to require a warrant for the government to access this saved data. It should not even be collected without a warrant about an individual.
400 New York professors call for New York's thug commissioner to be fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
New biometric ID cards in France attack the rights of every citizen.
Tanya McDowell faces 5 years in prison for "stealing" access to a better public school.
The root of the problem is the fact that cities in most states fund their schools from local property taxes. Thus, poor people's children get a worse education.
Glyphosate, aka roundup, has
damaging effects on cattle that eat "roundup-ready" corn, and makes the
corn vulnerable to disease even though it doesn't kill the corn directly.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It is wiping out monarch butterflies by killing off the milkweed that their caterpillars eat.
That article links to another article saying that glyphosate residue hurts people's intestinal bacteria.
Bill Gates claims that GMOs are the solution to world hunger, but he's ignoring a study which says that they don't help.
Today's GMOs are the agricultural equivalent of proprietary software. Perhaps that's why Gates wants us to use them.
Greg Palast reports on falsified safety records at the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island.
There is some confusion in what he says about the strength of the earthquake in Japan. An earthquake at 9.0 on the Richter scale involves 10 times the shaking amplitude as a 8.0 earthquake. Anyway, it was actually the tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster. (Of course, underwater earthquakes often cause tsunamis.)
But this does not invalidate the overall point. Wikipedia says a study in 2008 warned that Fukushima Daiichi could be damaged even by a 7.0 earthquake, but it was ignored. TEPCO also refused to take precautions against large tsunamis despite being warned. This sustains Palast's main point.
Republican candidates say the planet-roaster pipeline is needed to reduce gasoline prices. However, the pipeline presumes high gasoline prices, since otherwise it won't be profitable.
High prices are needed to encourage conservation measures, including improvement of mass transit and more efficient cars, as well as renewable energy provision.
These candidates' policies would increase both the supply of oil and the use of oil. Evidently their real goal is to increase oil companies' profits, and never mind the damage done.
The UK government wants Europe to consider nuclear power "renewable".
Amerindian groups are suing to block a large solar power development in the Mojave desert.
I can well believe that the planners of the project failed to consult local people properly. That seems to happen frequently. However, the claims stated in the article seem exaggerated and bogus. I am skeptical that anyone in the Mojave Desert ever heard of Aztec gods, except via modern books about them. The claim that a horned toad appears at the center of the Aztec "calendar stone" seems strange too.
Nobody knows where the Mexicas (later called Aztecs) lived before 1100 AD or so. Their myth said they started migrating from a place called Aztlan, but if it ever existed, it can't be identified now with any real place. It's not clear those migrations really occurred at all. The northern part of what is now Mexico was inhabited, at the time of the Aztec empire, by different peoples with different beliefs and unrelated languages.
Meanwhile, it is clear that the Maya inhabited their current territory since at least 2500 years ago. (Perhaps we could assert a larger number, but I don't have access to my books about it here.) Whether their ancestors ever passed through what is now the Mojave desert, it is impossible to tell. There are some partial similarities of beliefs between the Maya and the Aztecs, but also great differences.
Petroglyphs of Kokopelli abound in the American southwest. All petrogyphs should be protected, but that can surely be done without cancelling the project.
Biden wants to meet with various Central American presidents to bully them
into
continuing the destructive War on Drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I find it noteworthy and disturbing that Biden arranged to meet with them in Honduras, hosted by coup-installed President Lobo. In effect he has pressured them to grant legitimacy to the coup.
Airplanes given by the US to Afghanistan are being used for drug trafficking.
With all the "development" projects that achieved nothing, at least this project has contributed to Afghanistan's economic development.
US government spending on birth control is a very good investment for society.
It also helps reduce global heating and other environmental degradation, especially in the US, since people in the US use resources more wastefully than elsewhere.
Internal documents show New York thugs
had programs to investigate all Muslims in certain communities, based
on their religion alone. This also shows Bloomberg made false denials of this.
Since he was in charge, he was wrong whether he knew this was false or not.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: support the Massachusetts
bill to legalize marijuana.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: rally on March 15 to
tell Obama to reduce mortgages held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
CNN presented a corporate PR strategist as a commentator "on the left".
Rationalist International's sting operation against a very expensive
Indian faith healer.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Around 100 countries are planning universal health care.
The US, with its government controlled by business, is not one of them.
Former US generals and intelligence officials say, don't attack Iran.
Republican redistricting knocked Kucinich out of the House of Representatives.
Bogus research purporting to demonstrate that abortions lead to mental illness has been debunked. It looks like the researchers stretched the truth to prove the point they had in mind.
Israel attacked Gaza, and militants in Gaza retaliated with rockets aimed (as usual) at civilian targets.
Both sides were wrong.
Users of cell phone apps fail to consider what the apps might do with their personal data.
Saudi Arabia holds people prisoner without trial,
apparently for intending to hold a protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps the reason most of them have not been tried is that torture has not yet extracted the desired confessions from them.
The partially-censored contract for the environmental study of the Keystone XL pipeline reveals a conflict of interest.
It's fine to make the builder pay the cost of the environmental study, but whoever does the study should not be beholden to the builder.
Obama and Holder are trying to nail the coffin shut on the idea that Americans have legal rights.
Jon Corbett, who found a way to trick the TSA's body scanners, says the TSA is trying to intimidate reporters.
NPR presents stories that glorify fracking and minimize the danger.
If the US indeed has oil reserves bigger than Saudi Arabia, we dare not extract and burn that oil.
A US soldier was arrested after wanton murder of Afghan civilians.
I suspect this reflects a general hostility between US troops and Afghans which only rarely manifests itself as murder.
The UK banned mephedrone, but usage has increased nonetheless.
US citizens: tell Attorney General Holder to release the purported
"justifications" for
Obama's targeted assassination campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop rubber-stamping license
renewals for nuclear power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your governer to reject a deal to privatize prisons which would require imprisoning enough people to keep them 90% full.
What if prison is the disease, not the cure?
Jeffrey Sachs as president of the World Bank would stop its destructive practices.
Blue sharks are a threatened species because of overfishing for shark's fin soup.
A hoax ad said that MacDonalds would give a gratis "happy meal" to anyone who has been stopped and searched three times on the street by the New York Thug Department.
The US reached an agreement to transfer Bagram prison and its prisoners to Karzai's control.
Although the US is responsible for assuring these prisoners won't be tortured, experience shows neither the US nor Karzai can be trusted to refrain from torture. Moreover, while the US focuses on preventing release of prisoners, I fear that it won't pay enough attention to releasing those who were imprisoned for meaningless suspicion.
Jonathan Corbett describes a simple, reliable method to fool the TSA's body scanners.
The TSA response says, in effect, "Ignore our flaws, have faith in us."
I'm not worried that this will endanger the safety safety of flights because, as Bruce Schneier has explained, this aspect of the TSA's security checks are mere theater anyway. The real dangers of the TSA are (1) radiation exposure from x-ray scanners and (2) the danger to our freedom from letting them go fishing through our pockets and handbags for grounds to arrest people.
With Deep Packet Inspection, both totally tyrannical countries and occasionally tyrannical countries can spy on all your nonencrypted Internet communications.
The Senate narrowly blocked a Republican plan to force approval of the
planet-roaster pipeline, thanks to strong public opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
UN top torture official
denounces Bradley Manning's detention.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It is noteworthy that the people who support Obama on this are right-wing extremists, because Obama is indistinguishable from a right-wing extremist. In the 1970s, many of Obama's policies merited the label "right-wing extremist".
I wouldn't dream of voting for a right-wing extremist like Obama. Occasionally he has done the right thing, and I've said so, but these are the exceptions to the general practice. This is a regime of the kind that someone like Bushbama would offer; to invade in order to restore our freedom and democracy.
Peaceful protesters in Russia face prison terms of up to 7 years for their protests.
However,
that's less than what the US Congress voted to do to peaceful
protesters, who can face 10 years in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Putin is right to compare Russian repression with US repression, and the US may be worse. Of course, that is no excuse for Putin. "We're not as bad as the US" is not a valid justification for trampling human rights.
US citizens: tell the FCC to investigate the deal Verizon wants
to make with Comcast.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the FAA not to let drones
spy on people in the
US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose McCain's "cybersecurity" Internet surveillance bill.
Also sign this petition.A deputy minister in Syria
announced he was defecting. This was announced also in Russia Today,
which suggests it is not a hoax.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
There's a report that 13 French officers are prisoners in Syria.
Sibel Edmonds reports that NATO is training Syrian dissidents in Turkey and smuggling arms into Syria.
I'm inclined to believe her because of her past history as a whistleblower. Her testimony about US government foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks was gagged by the US government.
Arming the enemies of a dictator is sometimes the right thing to do. Of course, the US wouldn't be doing it for the sake of freedom and democracy. It would be doing this for political reasons involving Israel, Lebanon, Hamas, Iran, etc. However, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still the right thing.
But it isn't right thing in all situations. It isn't always wise.
Paypal has imposed censorship on publishers, demonstrating how the Internet exposes users to a loss of freedom: you always depend on companies as intermediaries, and they can cut off their services whenever they don't like what you're doing.
The Big Lie: One Year After Fukushima, Nuclear Cover Up Revealed
The book estimating deaths from Chernobyl has some questionable science, and I have doubts about its conclusions, but the article's overall point seems valid despite that.
International Women's Day needs to return to its radical roots and throw off corporate-funded mildness.
Cheetahs, following their favorite prey, are being hit by global heating.
If you unexpectedly receive "child pornography", the last thing you should do is report it to the police.
However, just deleting the files may not be safe either. Police investigating you for some other reason might find the data of that deleted file, and then not believe you received it by accident.
I put the term in quotes because US law dishonestly defines images of young adults even of age 17 as "child pornography", despite the fact that most Americans of age 17 have had sex. Perhaps in the UK the term is limited to children.
To punish people for possessing some sort of published work — whether "child pornography" or "terrorist information" or anything else — is simply wrong. And it regularly hurts the innocent.
A leaked Stratfor report involves interviews with US military officers
reported as saying that secret US military teams
were on the ground in
Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Greek credit default swaps are being voided under government pressure. Why didn't the US treasury do that?
The UK wants to build new nuclear power plants, and all the sites will be vulnerable to flooding due to global heating.
The Red Cross has been allowed into Baba Amr after being kept out for several days.
Why the delay? Some reported that Assad's men committed massacres. Others say they planted evidence to blame supposed armed gangs. What is clear is that there was no possible legitimate justification.
This article claims the western media are framing Assad in conjunction with mysterious gangs of snipers.
I would not put it past the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to do such things. But it is also possible for Assad to pressure people to lie. I doubt that gangs of snipers could have operated for months fighting the Syrian army, or that protesters would have failed to recognize what was going on, or that they would have taken the side of snipers against the army if the army was not attacking them. I also doubt that soldiers would have defected if they hadn't really been ordered to kill civilians.
Delaying the Red Cross seems like the ultimate proof, because that was in the hands of Assad's army and nobody else.
In a part of Nigeria, lead dust from mining is making thousands of children sick.
Coal mining in northeast Australia threatens the Great Barrier Reef.
The article fails to mention that burning the coal will produce lots of CO2, which will kill the reef. It needs to stay in the ground.
Since 1990, the percentage of people without access to clean water has been reduced to 10%.
This is a great achievement, but we ought to give priority to reducing births to the point where the population starts to slowly decrease.
Someone hoaxed France 24. She pretended to be the Syrian ambassador to France, and said she was resigning in protest against Assad's actions.
Canada's elections last year were sabotaged by robocalls that
told people the wrong place to go to vote.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans have done this in the US, too, but Canada's judges are taking the matter seriously.
The UK's libel reform proposal is inadequate to protect the public debate.
A whistleblower says Walmart's subcontractor told him to falsify employees' time sheets.
As long as Walmart uses disposable subcontractors it will be almost impossible to prevent that. The practice must be banned.
New Zealand plans to replace journalistic privilege with an ersatz version where journalists can't refuse except at the first step.
UK TV channels are under pressure to hand over hours worth of unbroadcast footage of riots, and say they object to being turned into evidence gatherers.
The UK government will start threatening people who share, in accord with an unjust law imposed in a manifestly unjust way.
Global heating affects the jet stream in a way that makes extreme weather more likely.
The jet stream becomes more wavy and the waves move more slowly, and this can lead to either a heat wave or a big rain.
AIPAC silences its opponents through intimidation
of advertising
companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
China proposes to follow the US in officially legalizing imprisonment without trial for "terrorists" and related crimes (such as political opposition).
A US court rejected the case of organic farms afraid of contamination by Monsanto's patented genes.
Tunisia is debating whether freedom of speech extends to criticizing religion, and whether it extends to attacking secularists.
Christian prosyletizers are moving into US public schools.
Jello Biafra talks about his decision to participate in the boycott of most Israeli cultural institutions.
The Palestinian areas separated from Jerusalem by the annexation wall get no emergency services, and almost no public schools.
Thus, students and a teacher were left to burn to death inside a school bus, while the only public school is terribly overcrowded.
AIPAC is working
for the 1%.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A video shows patients in a Syrian hospital who have been tortured there.
Fleeing refugees report seeing their relatives slaughtered by troops.
Wisconsin's voter ID law ruled unconstitutional.
Internet dating sites are careless with users data, even when they don't sell it to advertisers.
Several members of LulzSec have been arrested, after one member betrayed the others.
If I remember right, some of LulzSec's actions released bystanders' personal info. I think it's not right to do that sort of thing. However, their other actions were minor compared with the wrongs of the organizations they targeted. The US disregards those wrongs.
Schools and employers demand to see job and sports applicants' Facebook passwords.
In this case, it is not Facebook's fault, and they do the same with other similar sites. The conclusion is, don't use a social networking service for private communication. Use email.
Amazon appears to treat self-published authors pretty well, but it can unilaterally drop the price of their books. And when it does, the authors are the ones who lose.
Santorum said that unwed mothers were "building more criminals".
Since their children are likely to be poorer, and lack educational advantages, they may have a somewhat larger chance of becoming criminals. If so, the two principal ways to avoid this problem are (1) birth control and (2) abortion. Just what Santorum wants to prevent them from having.
Karzai has approved a declaration affirming Islamic law over women's rights.
I originally supported the intervention in Afghanistan because of the Taliban's tyranny, especially towards women, so I regret this as defeat for the intervention. However, I think this defeat is now inevitable because the intervention has failed.
It seemed to have a chance, at first. An Afghan government with clear popular support might have been able to advance women's rights. However, Karzai and his government's corruption can hardly convince Afghans of anything about ethics.
It would be absurd to maintain women's rights in a country by occupying it permanently. We must recognize defeat and stop prolonging the war with useless bloodshed.
Virginia's legislature has directed state agencies and staff to
refuse to cooperate with imprisonment without trial, in the name of the
Constitution.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
After a large protest in Moscow about Putin's fraudulent election, 1000 protesters refused to leave and stayed in the square. Russian thugs attacked and arrested them, then beat their prisoners.
Holder misrepresents the issues when defending Obama's power to kill without any supervision by the courts.
Talking about "real time" supervision is another red herring. Soldiers in battle must decide immediately whom to shoot, so it would be absurd to require them to ask a court's approval. However, targeted killings like that of al Awlaki are planned at high levels, and once ordered, they can take months to carry out. Asking courts to consider each case would be no practical difficulty.
Diesel exhaust causes lung cancer, but
not enough is being done to reduce it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I expect that trains (even with diesel engines) emit much less pollution than trucks, for the same amount of cargo. Thus, this is one more reason to encourage use of trains rather than trucks.
Under Dubya, the US was building a new Interstate highway mainly for trucks to drive from Mexico to Canada. Wasn't that stupid? An electified train line would have been much cheaper, used less space, produced less pollution, and burned less oil. However, the oil companies dislike the idea of burning less oil.
Google+ isn't meant to be used, just to get people to give Google their biographical data.
Syria has kept the Red Cross out of Baba Amr for days, and some refugees have arrived in Lebanon.
Many gratis Android apps pass personal data to advertising networks.
I expect that these are all proprietary. Can someone confirm that for me?
The Israeli raid on the unfinished Osirak reactor was credited with stopping Saddam Hussein from getting nuclear weapons, but it may have done just the opposite.
Was it pure stupidity (or rather, greed and overconfidence) that led Hussein to attack Kuwait in 1991? A leaked report said that the US ambassador to Iraq had said, "We don't care if you invade Kuwait, feel free." Perhaps Hussein fell into a trap carefully laid to take advantage of his greed and overconfidence.
Aid groups say the CIA is to blame for a resurgence of polio in Pakistan.
"Vultures" who speculated on Argentina's defaulted debt at pennies to the
dollar, and are
now pushing for repayment in full, are getting support from the
US government.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Argentina should offer to renounce its claims to the Falkland Islands, whose inhabitants are considered British and want to remain so, in exchange for UK's explicit support on this issue.
Flood insurance in flood-prone areas in the UK is getting much more expensive.
This is inevitable and necessary so that people will stop living and stop building in those areas. Global heating makes floods more likely.
Greg Palast criticizes the BP settlement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Guernsey is trying to set itself up as a world-wide libel extortion state
Australia will require Muslim women to remove face coverings when they are required to identify themselves for other legal reasons.
I think this is a legitimate policy, precisely because it is so narrow. It avoids the wrongs of the laws in France and the Netherlands.
Warmer winters mean Canadians will be unable to play street hockey.
I hope they notice this before they build the planet-roaster pipeline.
Putin faked his way to "victory" as president of Russia.
Citizens of Massachusetts: oppose "3-strikes" minimum punishments in Massachusetts.
US citizens: are you fed up with Obama for letting Shell drill in Arctic seas, and for expediting the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline? Support Jill Stein for president.
Ralph Nader suggests that the next goal for Occupy should be to raise the minimum wage.
"Americans have made it clear that they equate
releasing innocent civilians with being 'soft on terrorism'."
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Mexico allowed warrantless access to people's cell phone location data.
Homeland Suppression is
searching Twitter and Facebook postings for some very common words,
including enriched, IRA, prevention, pirates, radicals, hurricane,
storm, snow, watch, earthquake, help, hail, aid, relief, interstate,
hacker, China, worm, and social media.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Marrying "Drill, Baby, Drill" and "Yes We Can": Obama has been promoting Arctic undersea oil drilling ever since he was elected.
The US gave Guantanamo prisoner Majid Khan a plea bargain to cover up how he was tortured.
He has been promised a sentence of no more than 19 years, but that is meaningless since he may be kept in prison for life regardless of "sentence".
Billionaire Frank VanderSloot, who is an executive in Romney's campaign, has blocked media covered of his political and business activities by threatening to sue journalists and publishers.
Putin's cronies are forcing magazines, radio stations and web sites to censor criticism of Putin.
Global heating is hitting the US in the form of tornadoes, and insurance companies are very worried.
The House of Representatives passed a bill
imposing ten years in prison for disrupting certain government
activities, including any that involve presidential candidates.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Even visiting foreign dictators would get this protection from protests.
Under international law, US leaders are guilty of
planning a war of aggression against Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The article says the same is true of Israeli leaders, but I think it may not be correct, since Israel and Iran are already in a state of war.
If it were a virtual certainty that Iran would make nuclear weapons and use them to attack, I think that would justify (under certain conditions) a pre-emptive strike to prevent it from doing so. However, intelligence says this isn't so.
Bush deserves to be tried and punished for invading Iraq, but not executed, because capital punishment is barbaric.
How Andrew Breitbart damaged honest people and organizations with lies.
Like Steve Jobs, he made the world a worse place.
Dubai has expelled 50 Syrian permanent residents for a peaceful protest against Assad's violence in front of the Syrian embassy.
Some have lived their entire lives in Dubai. They can't go to Syria.
The
Illinois law against recording the police has been ruled
unconstitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Here's more information about why.
Unfortunately, the problem doesn't end with this: when the thugs can't arrest you for making a recording, they can fabricate some other pretext.
Shawan Jabarin had the good fortune to be allowed to travel outside the West Bank — for the first time since he became head of a human rights organization.
Not allowing people to travel is typical of tyrannical regimes. For instance, the Soviet Union was famous for stopping many people from travelling, particularly including Jews who might want to move to Israel.
The UK government cooperated with a construction industry blacklist of workers who supported unions or were considered troublemakers.
The victims have tried suing but in the past usually lost.
A professor studying health and safety issues of oil drilling was also recorded in the blacklist, but it isn't clear why the the list maintainers were interested in him. Perhaps they worked for other clients besides construction companies.
The father of one of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing is trying to prove that Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi didn't do it. I presume he wants the real bomber to be convicted.
Australia is fighting against
"investor-state" provisions in the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Bravo, Australia, but the treaty will only do harm even without that.
The latest brilliant right-wing idea: privatized police forces.
If the thugs that beat you and lie about it are not employed by the state it will be even harder to punish them for it.
Egypt's Ministry of Education has ordered schools
to keep students out of political activities, even debates and blogs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops shut down two Palestinian TV stations giving the pretext that they don't have Israeli permits (which would be impossible to get).
Santorum must be very glad that it is becoming difficult for Americans to go to college.
This is one of many reasons the US needs to increase income taxes for the wealthy.
Students are protesting about this.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Elsevier dropped its attempt to eliminate the US public access policy, with the result that the Research Works Act has been defeated.
Scientists should not relax now. We should follow up this victory to gain more victories for science against the journal publishers.
For the first time,
one of the US torture lawyers faces official embarrassment. But this is far short of the trial for crimes against humanity
that he ought to face.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA has made the procedure to request declassification
effectively impossible to use, by charging a lot of money for it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The US has involved psychologists in torture since the 1950s. But they are not punished.
Dirar Abusisi was kidnapped by Israel from the Ukraine, then imprisoned without trial and denied medical care for kidney stones.
Stanford students support a Palestinian graduate, a nonviolent activist, who was arrested by Israeli thugs at a protest on charges that are probably fabricated.
Even if a protester does really push a thug, that is hardly a valid reason to put him in prison. It is an excuse.
Netanyahu is cracking the whip, making Obama promise to attack Iran when Israel does.
Note how this article presumes that war with Iran would be justified and even necessary if sanctions "fail". However, as we know, for the US to attack Iran would be futile, unjustified, and disastrous.
Our CO2 emissions are making the oceans more acidic than they have ever been, as far back as we can measure.
Our ability to measure past ocean acidity goes back 300 million years. We don't know if the oceans were ever more acidic before that.
I think the Permian extinction, which wiped out 96% of species in the ocean, was the worst in the Earth's history. But Obama and the oil companies are not satisfied with tying that record. They are aiming for 100% with Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Occupy the Corporations protests in 70 US cities condemned ALEC.
Twitter closed accounts that were used to criticize Sarkozy.
It is no surprise that Sarkozy is the enemy of French Internet users, but it is frightening that Twitter is supporting his attack.
A reporter went undercover at a shipping fulfillment warehouse to document the sweatshop conditions.
When you buy from the Internet instead of a store, are you supporting this?
Note the peculiar demand of the editors that McClelland couldn't lie about her name or work history. Why not? It wouldn't affect the validity of the report. It was recently pointed out that this is a recent change in the policy of US media and is linked to the diminution of invstigative reporting.
Our labor laws need to be changed sufficiently to allow these employees to unionize. One necessary change might be to ban the use of temporary agencies to get workers to do a job that is permanent.
US citizens: tell the FDA
to make rules to stop massive use
of antibiotics on animals.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This could save your life when you have an infection some day.
China has tightened regulations about soot in the air, and credit bloggers for pressuring for this.
Perhaps the Chinese rulers will eventually realize that democracy is beneficial for society. But it's the US rulers that affect the world most. Will they ever learn this?
The world has learned nothing from the Big Spill; deep water oil drilling is proceeding faster than ever.
If we are "lucky" and avoid further disasters from the wells, burning all that oil is sure to cause one.
A disease that causes lambs to be born deformed spread to the UK thanks to global heating.
In sub-Saharan Africa, most land belongs to the state. So when the state sells it to foreign companies, the farmers are helpless.
Individual title is no solution either. (As the article notes, many of these lands are used collectively, not individually.) In the early 20th century, the US used individual title to destroy many Amerind reservations. It divided up the land among the members of the tribe, and their poverty compelled most of them to sell it to non-Amerinds.
With real democracy, these governments would not sell farmland to foreigners. I wonder whether some foreigner institutions pressured them to start selling land. The World Bank or IMF, perhaps?
Karzai and Obama have been unable to agree on a framework for US troops to remain in Afghanistan.
The main issue is that Karzai wants to restrain US night raids, something the Afghan people demand. Karzai's government may be too corrupt and despised to remain in power without the US' propping it up, but if it is ever to have any chance of not being despised, this is it.
As for the prisons, we know that both the US and Karzai's government are likely to torture prisoners, but if the US stops torturing it might have a chance to break the habit.
Assad's regime blocked the Red Cross from providing food and medical treatment to civilians in Baba Amr, while the army reportedly is shooting and arresting lots of people there.
On the Internet, censorship implies surveillance.
Each US soldier in Afghanistan costs around a million dollars a year.
This isn't the main reason to bring them back to the US. The main reason is that they achieve nothing but death.
Jeffrey Sachs: How I would lead the World Bank.
Some prominent supporters of Israeli hawks have joined the campaign
to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the US list of
arbitrarily banned "terrorist" organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
It has been noted that this campaign is well funded, and reported that Israel and the Mujahedin-e Khalq work together to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. That suggests that the campaign is funded by US backers of the Israeli hawks. who coordinate with the government of Israel.
If they coordinate with the government of Israel, and that coordinates with the Mujahedin-e Khalq, does that mean the campaign violates US anti-"terror" laws? The question is amusing, but irrelevant in practice. The US has no intention of enforcing these laws even-handedly.
The US policy of banning "terrorist" organizations without trial is ipso facto injust. If an organization carries out violence it should be put on trial, along with its members. The practice of banning organizations arbitrarily is turning the US into a dictatorship where nobody has any rights. Your bowling club could be put on the "terrorist" list even if all it does is bowling.
The Virginia attorney general's campaign to get climate scientist Michael Mann's emails (as a fishing expedition looking for some sort of accusation to mak) has failed.
Although science has won this battle, it looks like the planet-roasters have won the war. Their well-funded lie campaigns have convinced millions of US religious lunatics that global heating is a fabrication, and meanwhile Obama would rather ship Canadian oil than protect the world from the damage it will do.
BP agreed to pay about 8 billion dollars of damages to some of the people harmed by the Big Spill.
When Venezuela and OPEC push oil prices up, they help avert global heating disaster.
Companies with power over many people's communications, such as Google, must be watched.
I think all email services should be regulated to protect the rights of their users.
Spanish Internet users are trying to overload the agency that enforces the SOPA-like Ley Sinde.
US psychiatrists have invented a disease, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which simply consists of a tendency to argue with "authority" rather than obey.
How convenient for "authority" if people who resent how they are treated are led to take drugs rather than organize.
The Department of Homeland Suppression's internal memo about the Occupy movement was dangerous even though it wasn't outright menacing.
Since Lamar Smith failed with SOPA, now he wants to impose warrantless surveillance of Internet users through ISPs, and make all the info available without a warrant.
I wonder if Hollywood thinks this will be of use in the War on Sharing.
Stockbrokers are more reckless and manipulative than the usual psychopath.
A famous Egyptian actor
was sentenced in absentia for insulting Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
This is not the freedom that Egyptians protested for.
A test of Internet voting in Washington DC resulted in a victory for a drunken robot. The hapless election authorities didn't even know they'd been had.
NPR has adopted a new code which gives priority to presenting the impartial truth, rather than balance.
It will be interesting to see whether this cures the US press' vulnerability to manipulation through presenting a bogus controversy.
New action against the banksters:
F* (for "foreclose") the Banks.
To encourage people to move their money, Bank of America
has imposed new fees on customers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the US:
call on Rush Limbaugh's sponsors
to drop him
because of his insults against Sandra Fluke.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of India: oppose the government's plans to protect nuclear power plant company from liability for their disasters.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and say, no attacks on birth control insurance coverage.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Rep. Hoyer, a Democrat, not to make backroom deals
to cut
Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the FDA not to approve the latest pesticide-resistant GMO corn. The pesticide to be used is dangerous.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, end the secrecy of negotiations in the TPP. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Western opposition to Uganda's anti-gay bill has led to support for
the bill as
a form of nationalism. (broken link fixed)
In other words, fools are scapegoating gays for the economic harm
caused by organizations such as the IMF. If only they put the
blame in the right place, they might achieve some good.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The law would also ban organized advocacy of gay rights, meaning it would attack freedom of speech and association, as well as sexuality.
Protesters against the coming G8 meeting in Chicago demand
a financial transaction tax to be spent on
alternative energy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
In the Netherlands, people have the right to help in euthanasia if they are incurably sick, suffering unbearable pain, and have repeatedly stated they want to die.
When people are trapped in incurable pain and death is their only escape, we ought to help them escape. Sure, it would be better if we could cure them instead — I expect they would agree — but it's no use clinging to an impossible hope and forcing them to continue to suffer.
It is a good thing that this right is not limited to those who are expected to die soon anyway.
Assad's forces retook the Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs, which had been held by soldiers that defected from the regime, after the defectors retreated to other neighborhoods.
The reports that government forces subsequemntly massacred civilians there might be true. I would not put it past them.
However, I question whether the Free Syrian Army was justified in fighting from positions inside the city, given that it had a choice. Those troops had a duty to defect, but fighting to hold an urban area against overwhelming force afterwards is a different story. There was no chance it could lead to a victory, or to a better government in Syria; it could only produce the shelling and civilian deaths that in fact occurred.
It would have been better for them to fight their way out of Syria. Maybe the UN could have passed a resolution to help them get out, as long as the resolution did not permit any other intervention.
We should pursue truth, but Obama and the US instead pursue
the messengers
that tell us the truth.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A lawsuit accuses the US of endangering coral reefs by allowing overfishing of parrotfish that protect the reefs.
Fukushima released twice as much radioactive Cesium as
previously
estimated.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Japan's government tried to quietly end its decades-old radiation
monitoring program shortly after the accident, and to gag scientific
reports
about the radiation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Japan said it would increase the permitted level of radiactive materials in food, but the public rebelled.
The question can be judged rationally. How many additional people are likely to have health problems from the higher level? If the previous level was super-cautious, it might be few. But we can't tell that by guessing.
A lawsuit seeks to make the US Navy take care to avoid killing marine mammals with its sonars through training exercizes.
Their hearing is sensitive, and the loud sound of the sonar drives them mad.
The Department of Homeland Suppression's surveillance of Occupy, and the Stratfor report released by Wikileaks, may have encouraged the often brutal attacks on Occupy encampments.
Public Knowledge has proposed some changes to reduce copyright power.
These changes are steps in the right direction, but this proposal fails to right the worst wrongs of today's copyright law. It doesn't ban DRM, it doesn't shorten copyright to a length of time we can live with, and it doesn't legalize sharing.
We can't expect proper copyright reform to pass through today's Congress, and we can't expect Public Knowlege's smaller steps to pass through today's Congress. What we can achieve in the short term by advocating changes now is to influence public opinion. Demanding less than what we really need is aiming low.
How YouTube panders to copyright extortion.
An Israeli legislator says Israel should annex the West Bank and offer
citizenship (second class) only to those Arabs who learn Hebrew,
complete with a plan to gerrymander the voting districts so they won't
have much political influence even
if they vote.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
He says that the two-state solution "has been tried and failed, but in fact it was never tried, because Israel set up colonies in the West Bank to assure it wouldn't be."
A single state in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights would not be inherently unjust, but that's not the proposal here.
After Israeli prison guards beat false confessions out of some Palestinian teenagers, border guards gave false testimony to substantiate the confessions.
Fortunately there were records to prove that both were false.
Will the border guards be charged with perjury? Will the prison torturers be charged with torture? If they are not punished, they will repeat these crimes.
In Russia, Nikolai Blinov died trying to defend Jews from a pogrom. A ceremony in Israel honored him, but completely missed the point of his example.
How HP supports the occupation
of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the FCC: don't allow any
more media
concentration.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: take a stand against state "right to work" laws
that
undermine unions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
A town in Spain will fight unemployment by growing marijuana for a large smoking club in Barcelona.
Shell has preemptively sued environmental groups that were expected to sue Shell to block Arctic undersea oil drilling.
PayPal is censoring erotic literature.
Syria's rebelion conflict is taking on a Shi'ite - Sunni aspect.
Syria with minority Alawites ruling is the mirror image of what Iraq was under Saddam Hussein, with minority Sunnis ruling.
The senators who demand war with Iran if Iran has a "nuclear capability" are not clear on what that means.
How to prevent the movie companies from buying another iteration of SOPA.
I basically agree, but I criticize a few points.
To speak of "pirating" a movie is to repeat their propaganda. If you don't believe that sharing is wrong, join me in refusing to call it "piracy".
Also, I don't think unauthorized copying does much good for the movie companies, even if they know about it and you can include it in their statistics. They don't need any factual basis for their statistics,
Another point is that you especially shouldn't use Netflix, because that has DRM that people probably can't ever break. (They can change it too quickly.)
25 people have been arrested for the virtual equivalent of street protests and scribbling criticism on political posters.
To refer to these activities as "attacks" represents a pre-emptive strike against democratic political rights, using the shift from physical to virtual activity as an opportunity.
Obama made an executive order to sidestep the recent military-imprisonment-without-trial law.
That's one small good thing, but it isn't permanent: we still need to get rid of that law.
The Global Partnership for Oceans solutions for sustainable fishing
may cause problems for
poor subsistance fishers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
We cannot continue unsustainable fishing, so it is crucial to take whatever measures are necessary to make fishing sustainable. Perhaps these proposed measures are necessary, but if they can be adapted to help poor fishermen, it's worth a try.
The UK proposes to deport any foreign domestic workers that lose their jobs.
When this was the practice in the past, it made those workers defenseless against abuse by their employers, since they'd be deported if they complained.
The Maldives army
attacked a group of protesting women
, spraying
pepper spray into their eyes while they were prisoner and telling others
they aimed to mutilate them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Since the democratically elected president was overthrown by force, the replacement is not legitimate. So there's no ethical reason why the population shouldn't fight back with force. If they could find suitable weapons, they'd be within their rights to kill the soldiers and the police, as well as "president" Waheed, except those who surrender. Whether to do this or use nonviolence is a tactical question.
However, the army is not justified in attacking protesters even if the attacks are not fatal. It has already put itself in the wrong by staging the coup, and each time it attacks nonviolent protesters, it commits an additional crime.
Police attacked a large student protest in Barcelona, and the students
responded by general violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Ex-generals from the Pentagon's Paid Political Pundit Propaganda
Program are still appearing on NBC and presenting themselves as
disinterested experts.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans are pushing the War against Women to even greater extremes.
The Republican Party has gone insane with hatred.
Ireland has passed a law comparable to SOPA.
A former FBI agent who worked in counterterrorism says the TSA
is
useless, wasteful, offensive, and unjust.
[Reference updated on 2017-12-02 because the old link was broken.]
Our civilization faces collapse , as others have collapsed before, if it fails to cope with the challenge posed by overdemands on the environment.
Asian Pulp and Paper is selling the endangered trees which make up the habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger.
AP&P's response is the usual bullshit of organizations trying to deny evil activities: "In theory, we don't do this, so please ignore any contrary facts."
Demand for minerals has led to global devastation for the peoples unlucky enough to live where the minerals are found.
US citizens:
call on the US government
to prosecute Murdoch for bribery.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Congress not to pass HR 1837, which would damage the ecology of salmon runs to give the water to agribusiness interests. More information on this bad bill.
US citizens:
call on Obama
to regulate dangerous chemicals.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
As the US and Israel threaten to attack Iran, Brazil's foreign minister pointed out that making such threats is itself a violation of the UN charter.
I don't know whether this applies to Israel, since Israel and Iran are have been formally at war for a long time.
Only 20% of Israelis would want to attack Iran without US support.
The others believe the attack would have very bad consequences.
People in the US are suing to overturn the imprisonment without trial provisions of the NDAA.
A team of Bahraini "reformers" visited the US and criticized the protesters.
The visit organized by the regime's PR company.
A coming Supreme Court decision may determine whether US companies can be punished for helping repressive regimes do high-tech surveillance.
France says new Google policy (for using personal data) . violates EU law
I am more concerned with what Big Brother knows about us than with what companies know. Where companies might do annoying things such as target us with ads or distort search results, the state can (and does) sabotage protests and destroy democracy. Under the U SAP AT RIOT Act, Big Brother can collect all this information already, and even if Google does not put it together, Big Brother can do so.
To reduce Big Brother's ability to get information about you, I suggest accessing Google Search (if you use it) through TOR and never logging in. And use an email service in some other country that won't be interested in you.
North Korea has agreed to suspend its nuclear program and let the UN inspect.
Iran is willing to allow IAEA inspection of Parchin, but wants
an overall framework agreement about the
inspections first.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Western journalists are struggling to escape from Homs, where two of them were killed last week, and Syria blocked the UN humanitarian aid chief from entering Syria.
The EU has a sleazy plan to censor the Internet unofficially so that nobody has any legal rights.
The FARC say they will release all their captives and stop kidnapping.
Meanwhile, Colombia's principal terrorists, the right-wing paramilitaries with support in the government, have shown no let-up in their depredations.
China sends North Korean refugees back to North Korea, where they face
horrible punishment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The former commander of El Salvador's national guard will be deported there to stand trial for murders and torture.
Afghan protesters say explicitly that burning qur'ans was just the
trigger for their intense protests against
US and NATO
intervention.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The article asks Americans to imagine that the US were occupied by an army that burnt American flags and bibles. I would sneer at anyone who got upset about that, but if they killed thousands of Americans, that would be a real reason to protest (or fight back).
Thousands of people were imprisoned in the US and the UK
for opposing the draft
in World War I.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
"Investor-state" provisions of many free exploitation treaties, starting with NAFTA, give foreign companies more rights in the US than US citizens.
Minnesotans call on their local and state governments not to
cooperate with US plans to deport foreigners who get arrested
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
(even if they are never charged).
Sea Shepherd activist Erwin Vermeulen was acquitted of fabricated
charges in Japan, where he tried to monitor
dolphin hunting.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Purchasing Prisoners, Creating Criminals & How Occupy
Could be
Next.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
GOP Contenders' Anti-Labor Fervor Reaches New, Disturbing Heights.
Drone aircraft, both government-run and privately run, create a new part of the privacy rights debate.
Obama Budget: Grow Prisons and Keep Gitmo.
Over half of federal prisoners are prisoners of war — the War on Drugs. In other words, they are political scapegoats, imprisoned to keep drug profits high.
Liberal commentator Matt Taibbi enjoys seeing
Republicans attack each other with the same irrational hatred they have
dished out to everyone else.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
I might enjoy it if I were confident it would destroy them, but that's not certain. Some have suggested that the money men, the vultures, are preparing to bring in another candidate at the Republican Convention, someone who isn't running now and isn't being attacked by the current candidates.
Obama's proposal to lower the tax rate for corporations makes no sense, either as a policy or as politics.
It's a typical example of the things Obama does in order to show he's no progressive.
The Occupy movement's next method is to block foreclosure:
Occupy Our Homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
Right-wing lies about the nature of US economic problems
assure they cannot be solved. Wimpy Democrats and a press that aims
"balance" rather than truth prove no obstacle for them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The UK deports Tamils to Sri Lanka even though they may be tortured when they arrive.
The UN threatens Internet freedom by proposing to
put the Internet under the control of the ITU.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
People involved in these discussions told me that the ITU generally tends to pander to big telecom companies. I would not entrust net neutrality to the ITU. While it has no history of pandering to the copyright industry, I expect it would swiftly learn to do so.
Unfortunately, individual governments also threaten Internet freedom with laws such as SOPA and treaties such as ACTA. Under a regime without real democracy, we're not safe from any side.
Tracking Tear Gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The ACLU is suing to block a voter suppression law in South Carolina.
A German ministry wants to punish people for sharing by disconnecting their Internet connections, but there is so much opposition that no party is likely to propose any such bill.
A
Saudi teacher faces criminal charges in a terrorism court
for speaking to the BBC about the lack of human rights in his country.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-24 because the old link was broken.]
The idea that criticizing a government is treason because the country's interests may suffer from resulting condemnation is one we have seen in many countries including the US.
The NRDC is suing the EPA to ban a widely used pesticide that is toxic to humans.
Facebook is not just surveillance. It also does censorship of photos based on prudish criteria.
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