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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.
What's bad about Eventbrite.
Forecasts of a high rate of US oil and gas extraction turn out to be based on oil company figures that were designed to attract investors. The real potential is much less.
If the worst problem we faced was that oil and gas might become expensive, this would be bad news. However, this is good news since it will encourage investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Shell asked the US for a 5 year extension in trying to do dangerous underwater oil drilling in the Arctic.
Child poverty has increased in many of the world's wealthiest countries.
That's directly due to plutocratic policies of transferring income to the wealthiest.
Australia has created special obstacles to investigating violence by thugs against protesters or bystanders outside the G20 meeting.
Since thugs enjoy near impunity to start with, this means they will be allowed to wreak havoc and repression.
An official UK study finds that punitive drug laws don't even succeed in reducing the use of the prohibited drugs.
They do, however, succeed in ruining lots of people's lives; in the US mostly people from the minority groups that thugs seek excuses to arrest.
The Hungarian regime has hollowed out democracy by setting up a distorted election system, but has avoided measures that would make a lot of people angry until just now.
The FBI is trying very quietly to get the power to break the security of computers in the US and elsewhere, essentially unsupervised.
Once a judge authorizes some investigation, the FBI would be allowed to break into any and all computers in the world as part of that investigation, and would be left entirely on its own in choosing those targets.
The FBI subverts various web sites to attack their visitors.
UK nuclear fuel storage ponds are an accident waiting to happen.
The BBC found an excuse to exclude the Green Party from election debates. Not right wing enough, apparently.
Italy's failure to stop illegal fishing of swordfish could wipe them out in the Mediterranean in three years.
Brazilians talk about the reelection of President Rousseff.
The publisher of a poster showing two 19th century men kissing was ordered to pay damages to people who found the idea offensive.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend, so this decision is illegitimate censorship.
Everyone: Call on Google to stand for network neutrality.
On the ethics of various brands of candy available in the US.
High US officials despise Netanyahu, and say so anonymously.
If they start saying this overtly, the US might do what's necessary for peace: to make Israel reverse its land-and-water-grab in Palestinian territory.
The coverage of the Hong Kong protests is teaching the young people of Hong Kong that the mainstream press is an instrument of the Chinese state.
In Iran, even reporting crimes can get journalists arrested if it embarrasses the state.
Thugs in the St Louis area have spent over $172,000 on equipment to fight protesters.
How about spending that much on ending racist practices?
The Making of the Warrior Cop.
The UK admits that GCHQ collects data without a warrant, effectively whenever it wants to.
Israeli
troops plan
to demolish the school of Samra, built by the inhabitants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
This is part of the bit-by-bit ethnic cleansing plan for that region.
Netanyahu ordered construction of 1000 more apartments for Israelis in Palestinian territory annexed to East Jerusalem.
A major Israeli construction company will stop building Israeli colonies in the West Bank due to international boycott pressure.
US citizens: call on Obama not to bring back Bush's policy on torture.
Israel has imposed segregation of Palestinians on commuter buses in an indirect deniable way.
For the first time in 14 years, Hashem Azzeh has been able to harvest his olives.
The U.S. Government Is Suddenly Way, Way More Interested In Tracking Snail Mail.
How Mass Hysteria about Ebola
Is Violating
Our Rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US Sues AT&T, Alleges Severe Throttling of "Unlimited Data" Customers.
Newspaper Outraged After FBI Creates Fake Seattle Times Page to Nab Suspect
The US government keeps using impersonations to catch people, without considering the harm this will do. It had someone run an unauthorized vaccination program to find Osama bin Laden, and the resulting resentment is stopping us from eliminating polio.
GMOs require applying the precautionary principle because if GMOs do harm, it can be a spreading global harm.
US Republicans are secretly planning to deny millions of Americans the right to vote based on dubious claims that they are registered in two states.
The trick is to compile the list carelessly so that it includes lots of people with similar names. Then they can deny all these people the right to vote without really investigating far enough to determine that they are not guilty.
The early stages of global heating: less maple syrup, fewer cherries … chocolate too expensive.
Corn production is dropping as a permanent thing, but occasionally there is a wheat harvest failure due to extreme weather. This will get more frequent too; in 30 years it may happen all the time.
Nurse Kaci Hickox, who does not have an Ebola infection as far as medicine can tell, says she will sue if the state of Maine tries to impose a quarantine on her.
Six Arab countries join PISSI in endorsing the execution of anyone that ceases to be a Muslim.
President Maduro promises to reform the country's thugs after some were accused of killing a politician.
The head of a Venezuelan government agency told me a decade ago that the thugs made a practice of arresting people on false charges to get ransom, and even heads of agencies were not safe.
Chavez did not cause this — it was happening before he became president. He did not, however, take strong action to stop it.
A man who was jailed and almost convicted of "possession of extreme pornography" (a video he had failed to delete fully) is campaigning to change that law.
This "extreme pornography" law needs to be repealed, not just reformed. Various kinds of animals, including cats, dogs, gorillas, and dolphins, sometimes enjoy and even ask for sexual activities with humans. To prohibit the act, or images of it, is sheer authoritarian prudery. Necrophilia can't hurt the person who died (nothing can), so there is no reason to prohibit the act, let alone images of it.
However, the fundamental point is that prohibiting the possession of a copy of something — no matter what it is — is tyranny and puts everyone in danger.
Between 1 and 12 percent of the oil from the Big Spill is lying at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Where the rest is, nobody knows. But the oil on the bottom will be toxic for sea-bottom life as long as it remains there.
State judges in many US states are elected, and wealthy political interests are spending money to control the elections.
Many Republican officials (and some Democrats) suffer from Empathy Deficit Disorder.
The US proposal to stop incentivizing banksters to take dangerous risks is so weak it is laughable.
Turkey has allowed 150 peshmerga to cross to defend Kobani.
How can that number be enough?
Al-Sisi decreed that protesters (or anyone accused of any offense on a public street) can be given military trials.
Irish politicians will take abortion pills to protest the ban on using them in Ireland.
Dissidents in Eritrea, penetrating a curtain of repression and censorship, say that the shortages resemble North Korea, except that the regime is kept in power by Ethiopians personally loyal to the dictator.
Dubya got a law to permit secret searches claiming this was needed to stop "terrorism". The US has used this power 51 times in investigations of "terrorism", and 11,000 times for other purposes.
How to stop companies from using "big data" to disguise racial bias through use of algorithms.
A psychological study found no correlation between frequent use of first-person singular pronouns and actual narcissism.
Big US banks have refused to fund Australia's big new coal port.
The US Supreme Court repeatedly decides to give thugs more power and citizens fewer rights.
It appears Sharif Mobley was put on trial in a secret court set up by Yemen in subservience to the US.
A mobile phone company sells data about the people in the vicinity of billboards — personal characteristics and what they are doing at the time.
It plans to go even further and inform the billboard company about the interests of people who are approaching. This way, even the billboards will know you're a dog.
The demonization of Gary Webb and the denunciation of his report about CIA drug smuggling shows how much the US mainstream media are under the control of the power structure.
US hospitals and clinics invent new fees to defeat attempts to limit costs. Often these new fees are not covered by insurance, leaving patients broke.
Verizon sabotages its customers by inserting tracking info into their HTTP requests so web sites can track them.
Malaysia's main opposition leader has started an appeal against a criminal conviction for "sodomy".
Whatever the details, they don't matter ethically. It is wrong to punish people for voluntary sex.
'Feminism Lite' Is Letting Down the Women Who Need It the Most.
Australian thugs have been given special powers to prevent protests against the G20 meeting in Brisbane.
What is the meaning of the PR campaign in the US to "thank the troops"?
The article contains links to amazon.com; please don't buy any books that way.
Nobel Peace Prize winners call on Obama to clearly end US torture with full disclosure of past torture practices, and an end to imprisonment without trial.
I think this is too forgiving. Those who performed torture, and especially those who ordered it, must be prosecuted.
New pun: change.
Top-level Spanish politicians have been arrested and accused of corruption.
The Arctic Ocean has warmed so much that a ship was able to cross it from the Atlantic to the Pacific without an icebreaker.
If this were the only effect of global heating, it would be great.
Male rage threatens women and men. Why are some men so angry?
The UK attack on the poor has gone so far that poor people must steal food to eat — or steal more expensive things in order to get into jail.
People who are hungry are entitled to steal food.
Some people in Mosul say that life under the rule of PISSI is a disaster even if you're not being singled out for punishment.
This suggests they would be glad to have the chance for a government that won't repress them. The problem is where that could come from.
The Australian plan to "protect" the Great Barrier Reef ignores the damage that global heating will do.
A company wants to pay people to turn old camera phones into remote surveillance cameras.
How is this different from stationing a human there to count people? They couldn't afford to station humans full time in very many places. And if they argue that they don't or can't recognize individuals, what assurance do we have that they won't be recognizing individuals using the same technique 10 years from now?
I think it should be illegal to set up a camera looking for more than a short time at a place where the public is admitted, if it makes the video remotely accessible. Individuals, and especially the state, should have to get a court order before they can do this.
New Jersey's emergency experiment with voting by email ran into various practical problems in addition to the fundamental ones you'd expect, and there is no way of knowing how many votes were lost.
It is amusing how the artificial concern with voter fraud, stoked to provide a basis for stopping poor and disabled people from voting, is not applied to internet voting.
Fear of Ebola elicits bizarre reactions.
Hoax news contributes to the panic.
Ironically, Ebola is being used to spread computer viruses. But they probably can't hurt you if you are running GNU/Linux.
When foreign fighters want to leave PISSI, it holds them prisoner and threatens to kill them.
Meanwhile, when Britons who went to Syria to fight against Assad go home because they don't support PISSI, the UK puts them in prison.
Giant web site companies are capturing and centralizing the internet, so that now 30 companies generate half the traffic in the US. They are converting it primarily into a broadcast medium.
I almost never access those companies' sites. In my view, the only good use of the internet is what they don't do.
Fortunately there is still enough of that to make a big difference from what the world was like before the internet.
US citizens: oppose the Republican plan to make money laundering easier so as to help dishonest payday loan companies that make phony loans.
On Amtrak, almost any unusual behavior is considered "suspicious" and is grounds for filing a report, perhaps arresting you, and perhaps stealing your money.
In practice it rarely happens to whites.
Compare the US reaction to killings of US citizens by Israelis and by Palestinians.
UK slumlords evict tenants for complaining about unhealthy conditions.
The US millennial generation is the least religious generation in US history. Churches are shrinking, and in the long term, the theocratic Christian right-wing is going to get weaker.
In effect, this election is the Christian fanatics' last chance at grabbing political power, and if they get it, the only way they can hold on to it is by denying the vote to those who will later take it away from them.
Silencing Extreme Views, Even If They Are Those of Internet Trolls, Is Wrong.
It is not just wrong, it is tyranny.
Financial "disruption" and technical "disruption" work together to track more, control more, and charge more.
The UK's university system remains better than the US system in one way: the payments made by graduates depend on their incomes.
My main motive for going to college was fascination for learning. I hardly thought about making money afterward; I assumed I would become a professor but I rarely thought that far ahead. It was easy in the US in the 60s and 70s to follow an artistic or scholarly fascination and let income take care of itself, because the US still allowed most people a share in its income.
We should not blame today's students for giving high priority to their careers after they graduate, but the fact that they do so is a disadvantage for society. It will change when we get rid of plutocracy.
In Egypt, an Authoritarian Regime Holds Sway Again.
The loss of Arctic ice has made severe winters in Eurasia twice as likely as before.
A woman in Iran was executed for killing a man that she said was trying to rape her.
I believe her claim, especially since there was no other plausible account of what happened.
1/3 of the most popular US web sites make users give up the right to sue over various sorts of mistreatment.
States should be prohibit this practice, but until they do, people should refuse to use sites that try to escape justice.
Many Britons are fed up with the right-wing Labour Party and are switching to the Green Party.
Local thug departments in Virginia are collecting people's phone call records and redistributing them.
Apple announced that iThings would randomize the WiFi hardware address to protect privacy, but it tuns out to do this only in unusual circumstances.
The UK proposes a vague law to imprison computer users that "damage national security", including whistleblowers.
It is idiotic to pass a law against "using computers to do XYZ". If XYZ should be crime, what difference does it make whether it is done with a computer, with a pen, or however it might be?
Obama can work with Republicans just fine when it comes to suppressing information about torture by the US government.
Protesters blocked fracking near New York State's Seneca lake, which is a source of drinking water.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups say that Europe's greenhouse gas pledge is shamefully weak.
The UK government spied on history professors who were members of the Communist party, even reading their mail, with no reason to suspect them of having anything but an opinion.
It spied on various academics and writers just because they agreed to a statement against nuclear weapons.
UK thugs repress protests near Parliament to the point of arresting people for passing around bottles of water.
They are forced to hand over pizza boxes because the thugs say they might be useful for sleeping.
The sleazy government of Chicago shortened the time period of yellow lights in order to trap motorists into more fines.
Gyroscopes in mobile phones are so sensitive that they can pick up the sound of nearby voices. This allows apps to eavesdrop even if they are not allowed to use the microphone.
Note that this is a separate issue from conversion of phones into listening devices, which the NSA and other entities can do through the phone's universal back door. Thus, this facility doesn't make the phone more of a listening device than it was; but it does allow more parties to use it as a listening device.
'Koch Congress' Could Make Oligarchy Official.
The NSA has to listen to everything to protect us from…what?
(The part I'm referring to is the first 8 slides. After that comes very technical material.)
The Committee to Protect Journalists says that US government resistance to encryption endangers journalists.
That is true, but the first and broadest danger to journalists comes from metadata: tracking who talks with whom.
A man in the UK has been sentenced for prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation.
The advocates of this kind of censorship started by saying they were trying to protect real children from being abused in order to take their photos. Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.
However, they have already gone far beyond that. No child was harmed in drawing the cartoon.
To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.
Pennsylvania's prisoner-gagging law seems to be aimed first of all to gag Mumia abu-Jamal.
US citizens: announce your general support for campaigning against collecting your data.
An activist set up events for Malaysians to get used to petting dogs, and is now getting death threats from religious fanatics.
Islamist rebels in Egypt have a persistent campaign of attacking Egyptian soldiers.
These rebels deserve condemnation for seeking to impose the rules of their religion on everyone, which tramples their human rights.
However, when al-Sisi calls them "terrorists", that is a lie. Terrorism means attacking civilians; attacking soldiers or state institutions is rebellion.
Al-Sisi calls even peaceful opposition "terrorism".
US media are trying to exploit Ebola by spreading panic about anyone who might have come anywhere near it.
This is having political results already from politicians that want to look tough.
Americans interested in helping to treat sick people in Africa will now either (1) return home through some other place or (2) decide not to go.
These people should take precautions, but it isn't necessary to lock them up, costing them their jobs and perhaps making them homeless afterward.
MI6 Whistleblower's Partner Accuses Intelligence Agencies of 'Moral Slide'.
Frustrated CIA Blames Torture Report Delays on Senators Who Want It To Be Intelligible.
The right thing for the senators to do is to publish what they see fit and tell the CIA to jump in the lake. And then start a new Church Committee investigation that will tear the CIA open from top to bottom. You can't stop its abuses while handling it with kid gloves.
People in Liberia are clinging to traditional burial rituals to the point of killing their relatives and killing themselves.
They kill their relatives by denying them treatment for whatever disease they have. They kill themselves by washing and handling the bodies of the dead, some of whom died of Ebola.
They are acting like idiots, but they don't deserve the consequence that they are bringing on themselves.
There are accusations that PISSI has used chemical weapons on a few occasions on a small scale.
I have to wonder: since Saddam Hussein destroyed his chemical weapons, how did any survive.
Muslim fanatics in Afghanistan demand the punishment of journalists who wrote an article that they believe criticizes their religion.
Shame on anyone whose religion includes believing people are not allowed to insult it.
The UK government is classifying thousands of people with incurable degenerative diseases as "likely to be able to work again soon".
Even if some Britons only pretend to be disabled, why bother to "catch" them? There aren't enough jobs in the UK for all the people who are looking for work. There aren't enough jobs in the UK to start pushing wages up.
The EU's new target for reduced CO2 emissions is considered a weak target by environmentalists.
Everyone: tell the owners of Walmart to stop lobbying against installation of home solar power.
I think this is one additional reason not to buy from Walmart. I never get anything there.
Mexico is still having massive protests about the disappearance of 43 protesting students.
Parts of South Florida want to split off from Florida and form a new state to get rid of the political control of global heating deniers. One more foot of sea level rise will destroy the water supply and sewage systems of South Florida.
Armed drones used for policing could threaten human rights.
I agree, but there is one countervailing factor. Soldiers and thugs can use rubber-coated steel bullets and tear-gas canisters to kill by intentionally shooting them at people's heads. A drone operated by a human through remote control would not enable such accurate shooting.
In Miami-Dade County, hundreds of people labeled as "sex offenders" are forced to be homeless because every available living space is covered by the areas where they are forbidden to live.
The US is extremely energetic about labeling people as "sex offenders" which means they are punished in many ways for the rest of their lives.
The US government has a PR campaign to cover up the atrocities in Viet Nam and make that unjust war appear glorious. It wants to bury the fact that atrocities by US forces were commonplace.
"You can't separate this effort to justify the terrible wars of 50 years ago from the terrible wars of today."
US corporations manipulate their stock prices by buying back shares. Some companies borrow money to do this, which over time puts the company in greater debt. Others are sitting on piles of uninvested cash and can do this without borrowing.
The Burmese migrants that confessed to a murder in Thailand say that the thugs threatened to kill them and dump them if they didn't confess.
The survivors and relatives of the workers killed in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factories have only begun to get compensation.
What is really needed is an end to the business-controlled globalization that lets multinational companies make states such as Bangladesh compete to allow the worst exploitation of workers. Let's replace it with a new form of worker-focused globalization, in which countries legislate that "If you sell goods here, the factories that make them must pay and treat workers according to our standards, no matter where they are working."
The Love Commandos in India protect couples who run away from families that want to force them to marry others.
On land and now on sea, the organizations responsible for protecting wildlife habitat in the UK have become friendly with the industries that destroy it.
Several corruption scandals have hit the Japanese government.
Russian journalists must now operate from Latvia due to Russian media censorship.
Will we see Australian journalists operating from Indonesia due to Australian media censorship?
Pennsylvania has passed a law allowing arbitrary censorship of public statements by prisoners and even former prisoners.
The US government led the way for this with its censorship of testimony about prisoners in Guantanamo about how they were tortured.
US citizens: call on prominent Democrats to support nuclear negotiations with Iran.
The internet is crawling with misogyny, and any woman doing something controversial is likely to be attacked by posted threats of violence.
The examples cited in this article seem sick and twisted to me, but the worst thing I find in it is the assumption that women who are raped, or even seen semi-nude, have something to be ashamed of. That's the explicit assumption of the Indian rapists that make videos of the act, as well as their victim who was interviewed. She expects people to condemn and shun her if they know she was raped. People who do that are committing the most basic injustice.
We can see this attitude in the firing, by an elite Canadian high school, of a drama teacher because who made porn films in 1970. (She is now 73 years old.)
What, the administrators ask, will today's high school students think from knowing their teacher made porn 45 years ago? Perhaps "Older generations were just like us"? Or perhaps, "Our administration wants women to be weak and susceptible to misogyny"?
Earthjustice and farmers have sued to block use of 2,4-D herbicide (best known as part of the toxic Agent Orange that the US dropped on Vietnam).
The EU has adopted the target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
It is an ambitious target, but it lacks firm measures to achieve the goal.
Meanwhile, Australia plans a new policy for boosting fossil fuel investment and holding back growth of renewable energy.
The Republican candidate for attorney general of Wisconsin wants criminal investigation laws changed to give politicians special privilege.
Is Obama Stalling Until Republicans Can Bury the CIA Torture Report?
The BBC presented a documentary accusing the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front of broad war crimes. In response, it proposes to ban the BBC in Rwanda.
That seems like a plea of guilty.
Fossil fuel interests have spent 7 million dollars to defeat a referendum to ban fracking in Santa Barbara County.
Schools and hospitals in the US are selling data about the students
and patients
they are supposed to serve.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Civil liberties advocate opposes use of online avatars to catch sex offenders.
There are two issues here. First, the question of whether a person should face prosecution for a fictitious crime against a fictitious person. Second, supposing the answer is yes, there is the issue of entrapment, luring the person to commit the fictitious crime.
The UK's economy has experienced a structural change of low pay for workers, starting in 2003, and apparently permanent.
Now that the UK has more or less exempted the rich and multinational companies from tax, the tax burden falls mainly on workers. Thus, the low pay wipes out tax revenue. The rich and businesses must be put into the tax base.
Elizabeth Warren Demands An Investigation Of Mortgage Companies.
Amid Shootings, Chicago Police Department Upholds Culture of Impunity.
Some killer thugs even get awards.
Gough Whitlam, Australia's great social reformer, was removed from office by a CIA scheme. A CIA agent admits it.
A company installed "beacons" to track passersby's phones in four US cities.
El Salvador s Fight Against Gold Mine Will Be Decided in D.C.
These treaties do not deserve to be obeyed, only torn up. That's what the Salvadoran government should do.
FTDI's proprietary driver for its USB-to-serial chips sabotages alternative replacement chips when it finds them.
The driver can be used for sabotage because it is nonfree software.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with making other compatible chips, and it is wrong to call them "counterfeit" unless they are sold dishonestly.
The euro-zone countries are reacting to a repeat recession by
undermining
workers' rights yet again.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
More US cities are making it a crime to give food to homeless people.
The right-wing idea is that homeless people are homeless because they are lazy; they were punished enough, they would find jobs. Of course, other right-wing policies have made sure there are no jobs for them and that jobs don't pay enough to rent a place to live.
Canada has seen two attacks by isolated Islamists against soldiers in Canada.
Several responses that Canada will be tempted to make, but must not make:
An ISP in Australia is resisting copyright industry demands to rat on their customers.
One in the US is doing this too.
Dredging the Great Barrier Reef for coal exports will endanger development of fish larvae.
University College London has set up a "sustainability institute" funded by a giant mining company.
It must be difficult for people at that institute to be honest about the damage caused by mining.
TVs will be designed to monitor their users.
This article uses the perverse concept of "consuming" video. That word enables the writer to demonstrate his sophistication in disregarding all aspects of a situation except the economics, and getting even that wrong.
New pun in French.
In the US: tell NPR to stop running pro-fracking ads.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate toxic pollution from oil refineries.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, have Congress vote on whether the US should fight PISSI.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The permanent occupation of Palestine is accompanied by a permanent rejection of the idea that Palestinians under Israeli rule have human rights.
Bush appointed a paid global heating denialist as his chief of "environmental quality", whereupon he imposed changes on government scientific reports to minimize the danger.
Are you a young person? That official was putting your life in danger.
US spy agency personnel can get away with perjury, destruction of evidence, torture, kidnaping and assassination. The only unforgivable crime is telling the people how they are spitting on our rights.
Laura Poitras talks about her experience working with Edward Snowden.
Blackwater security guards were convicted of manslaughter.
However, the higher-ups who put them in a position to kill Iraqis are not being prosecuted.
In Geneva, old fallout shelters are now in use as homeless shelters.
An imprisoned Vietnamese blogger was removed from jail and put straight on a plane to exile in the US.
Ironically, it seems the statements that he was jailed for were a nationalistic criticism of China, not a campaign for freedom.
Note to Canada: it is not "terrorism" to kill soldiers of a country at war.
One can argue it is treason for a Canadian to thus take sides against his own country.
The ethics of this are a complicated question. Was Mr Rouleau fighting on behalf of Iraqis devastated by Bush's conquest and occupation of Iraq (done with Canada's help), or was he fighting on behalf of the PISSI which is more cruel than Bush ever dreamed of being?
Facebook juggles its books to claim that it has "lost money" in the UK.
Make Facebook lose money for real! Don't be a used of Facebook!
India is railroading a large dam project through slipshod environmental review.
Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Poses Global Threat, Warn Doctors.
An Australian MP asked the ICC to investigate Australia's treatment of asylum seekers.
Just about everyone is exposed to phthalates that seep out of plastics, and they have various harmful effects on people.
Rising sea levels due to global heating are affecting gondolas in Venice: they have trouble getting under the old bridges.
By and by, Venice will have to be dammed off from the Adriatic Sea, and water pumped out of the lagoon all the time.
Afghanistan's poppy production has hit a record level. Since the government tries to destroy poppies, they are grown mainly in areas controlled by the Taliban.
The UK will have the "risks and benefits" of fracking investigated by a team funded by frackers.
The team says it will be "impartial", the way Faux News is "fair and balanced".
Canadian indigenous people are using their traditional land title to protect the environment, so the Canadian government is trying to force them to sell nearly all their land for a pittance.
"Cleansing the Stock" And Other Ways Governments Talk About Human Beings.
Right-wing US school boards are banning books about poverty and social classes.
The drugstore chain CVS owns a company that reimburses drug stores from insurance companies.
The idea of penalizing people for using drug stores that cell cigarettes might be good, but one drug store should not be able to decide on such policies towards its competitors.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Judge Fuller, who pled guilty to attacking his wife.
The future of journalism in the US: will "official sources" be the only sources?
How to rebel against "inverted totalitarianism"?
A scholar argues that US "security" policy is decided by an entrenched bureaucracy, not by elected officials.
This may be true in practice, but a president opposed to massive surveillance could stop it.
It appears Ukraine dropped cluster bombs on Donetsk.
How Nigeria's vigorous response quashed Ebola in that country.
Putin has reestablished the Soviet practice of declaring dissidents mentally incompetent and imprisoning them in mental hospitals.
Housing First: the 'Counterintuitive' Method for Solving Urban Homelessness.
Democracy protesters have occupied Parliament Square in London for several days. Recently they were attacked by thugs using a law designed pre-emptively to criminalize protest camps.
Google search statistics suggest that porn is especially popular in the repressed Christian south of the US.
Large centralized power plants carry large unreliability.
Microsoft's "immutable laws of security" ironically imply (law 1 and 2) that if Windows is on your computer, it's not secure.
Zainab Al-Khawaja faces 7 years' imprisonment in Bahrain for tearing up a photo of the king.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult any person, any group, any organization, and any idea.
Bahrain used Saudi troops to crush protests, with total US backing.
Here's what I think of this.
Meanwhile, US journalism is subject to distorting influence in regard to issues such as war, destabilization campaigns, supporting tyrannical allies, global heating, "free trade" treaties, massive surveillance, and others.
If you value your freedom, rather than arguing about whether a review of a nonfree game was accurate in regard to secondary aspects, refuse to run nonfree games.
Illegal Copying Has Always Created Jobs, Growth, And Prosperity.
The UK government is punishing prison guards that are whistleblowers.
The US needs a constitutional amendment to establish every citizen's right to vote.
There's finally an effective way to end teen pregnancy: long-acting birth control.
The UK government's real attitude towards the disabled is now patent: to stir up hatred against them while pushing them into hopeless poverty.
People who hate the disabled will forget to hate the plutocrats that really deserve it.
A worldwide survey of happiness finds that people are generally happier in societies with "big government" that runs ample welfare programs.
The UK government wants to be able to collect data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube automatically (without a warrant, of course).
The US wants to use the TPP to impose criminal penalties on access to trade secrets through a computer, with no protection even for journalists investigating dangerous or unjust practices.
This calls to mind the "Ag-Gag" bills designed to criminalize undercover investigations of shameful or illegal farm practices.
Finland has a system for the public to propose revised laws by petition; then the parliament is supposed to vote on these changes. A petition for small relaxation in harsh copyright law was rejected by a committee as too radical.
So far, parliament has rejected all six of the petitions without voting on any of them.
The Senate's still unpublished report on CIA torture intentionally disregards the role of higher officials in the Bush regime.
A study found that a neonicotinoid pesticide, used on soy beans, provides little or no benefit in production.
Farmers may still want to use it, if it gives a little benefit, but we should not allow them to do so.
A Florida court ruled that tracking a person's movements in real time through cell phone data requires a warrant.
This is a good decision, but I still don't feel like carrying a cell phone and giving that data to anyone.
Will Chevron succeed in buying municipal elections in Richmond, California?
The French senate voted for the Loi Cazeneuve, which imposes dangerous censorship.
Environment defenders are moving their money out of Australia's big banks to pressure them to divest from fossil fuels. They claim $250 million has already been moved for this reason.
This goes with warnings that fossil fuel reserves are a bubble that has to burst.
Pakistan continues sentencing people to death for blasphemy, after trials that would be unjust even for a real crime.
Changing the trials and the penalties would make the blasphemy law do less damage, but would not make it just. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend or insult any person, real or imaginary. Criminalizing blasphemy was wrong in Britain, just as it is wrong in Pakistan today.
The unfair trials are a second injustice, and the murder of politicians is a third. What all three have in common is that they are perpetrated by religious fanatics who believe they are entitled to use force against those who would criticize them.
The Hong Kong protest has grown to around 10,000 again, and thugs had to give up on attacking the protesters.
Protesters in Mexico continue to demand return of the 43 disappeared students, and also take actions to denounce and apologize for other protesters' violence.
All those mass graves, whether they contain these students or not, are testimony to the violence that Mexico has experienced from the "war on drugs". When a war is on drugs, its violence affects everyone indiscriminately.
An internal report of the CIA found that arming rebels in other countries has almost never been effective.
In many cases it was a good thing that this failed, since the US was attacking governments with local support, for reasons of commercial interest.
Although Haiti's former dictator "Baby Doc" is dead, his repression continues under President Martelly. Martelly is also fabricating charges against Aristide.
The US intervened shamelessly to make Martelly "president".
Detroit's bankruptcy-imposed government continues trying to make people with no income pay high rates for water.
Germany and Nordic countries are developing so much renewable electric generation capacity that they can retire some fossil fuel plants.
Ayatollah Khomeini decided that Iran cannot make weapons of mass destruction.
A review of Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, by James Risen.
The US dropped weapons and supplies to Kurds in Kobani. and appears to have convinced Turkey to let Kurdish reinforcements in.
"Cost savings" obtained by screwing the poor and sick often cost society dearly. For instance, the UK could save 8 billion pounds a year by spending a mere 1/3 billion on mental health care for mothers.
Reducing spending or deficits is only an excuse. When right-wingers succeed in doing this, they turn around and cut taxes for the wealthy or businesses, thus creating another deficit that they "need" to reduce by screwing the poor and sick.
An accused terrorist in the UK is being tried partly in secret.
A secret trial is an unjust trial, but we have already seen enough to condemn one the charges, that of "possessing a document". For there to be any work that it is forbidden to have a copy of is incompatible with human rights.
The Canadian government is punishing NGOs with audits for writing to the government about issues, which is supposed to be legal for them.
Deceptive practice has become standard practice for many businesses.
A democratic primary/secondary school in the US.
Everyone: Tell McDonalds to adopt a policy to make sure its palm oil does not cause deforestation.
Republicans insanely condemn Obama's rational response to the danger of Ebola virus.
What they demand to avoid at all costs is what will make the US safer from Ebola and other future epidemics: supporting proper public health systems in poor countries.
Western-imposed privatization and spending cuts in Africa produced weak health care systems that can't cope with epidemics such as Ebola.
PISSI enslaves captured women. Some have escaped, and then a strange thing happens: they feel ashamed, rather than proud of their strength and courage.
I think this reflects twisted patriarchal gender attitudes, the same ones that provide the soil for PISSI to grow in.
If you want to watch the video from youtube, don't watch it embedded — that uses nonfree software. Instead, fetch it with youtube-dl.
PISSI captures and kills Iraqi journalists too.
Automation is the central factor behind a 10% fall in wages for British workers without unusual marketable skills, and it is going to get worse. More or less the same is happening in the US.
The solution is obvious: tax the rich to spread the benefits that automation provides.
Seattle celebrated Indigenous Peoples' Day, rather than celebrating the man who started killing and enslaving them.
If you want to listen to the audio, please use one of the alternative formats that work without enabling Javascript code.
Coal companies used the G20 meeting to lobby for more coal mining, presenting coal as the savior of the world.
It's ridiculous, of course, but officials often support ridiculous claims to get funds for their election campaigns, or work in retirement.
Facebook is still suspending the accounts of drag queens that don't reveal their official names.
However, Facebook is trying to convince them to stay, so it can do drag net surveillance.
The UK is cutting the budget for education for teenagers in prison, but it proposes to build a privatized prison for teenagers as an excuse to legalize using force against them.
Edzard Ernst, hero of scientific medicine.
The rate of deforestation in the Amazon rain forest has doubled since a year ago.
Beware the BitLicense.
Erdogan says Turkey will not help the US defend Kurds. This formalizes what was already apparent.
So much for Obama's dream coalition. However, the US can bring food, arms and Kurdish fighters to Kobani by air without Turkey's help.
Human pharmaceuticals could be to blame for part of the massive destruction of wildlife now occurring.
Thugs have repeatedly attacked the massed protesters in Hong Kong. The protesters resist the sticks and pepper spray without attacking.
Has the Christian Doctrine of Hell Become an Awkward Liability?
Jean Davis, 86 years old, fasted to death because her children were forbidden to help her get a less difficult death.
Is it possible for the US to bring Kurdish peshmerga from Iraq to Kobani by helicopter? That might save the Kurds of Kobani.
Is it possible for the US to airdrop food and ammunition to them? Even if half of it fell into the hands of the jihadis, that half would make no material difference (they already have plenty of both), and the other half might save the Kurds of Kobani.
Ten Facts about Being Homeless in USA.
Basically, governments don't help the homeless as much and persecute them more.
Inadequate staffing is causing an increase in suicides in UK prisons.
In some cases, the suicide seems to be a reaction to mistreatment. How can it make sense to put a suicidal person, not accused of doing anything wrong to others, in prison "for his safety"? Even a well-staffed prison is not a safe or secure place.
4000 African children who got into Italy appear to have been kidnaped and enslaved.
The aim of divestment from fossil fuel companies is to show that these investments are odious, and force them to pay for all the future damage they have caused.
The effects of global heating are nonuniform. The average October temperature in Pt Barrow has risen 7C (12F) since 34 years ago.
The New York Times once again defines "democracy" in Latin America as "submitting to the USA".
Thugs repeatedly clear away protest areas in Hong Kong.
If the 400,000 who supported the protests were to keep protesting, the antidemocratic government might have to yield.
New pun: geometer.
Right wing judges and officials don't want "stand your ground" laws to apply to women defending themselves from violent domestic partners.
Indeed, those laws are meant to allow white men (who dare carry guns in public) to kill black men (who know thugs would fabricate an excuse to beat them and arrest them if they carried guns in public). Helping women was never the intention.
Navalny, after a relaxation in the terms of his house arrest, accuses Putin of using war to stay in power.
The people who clean the UK foreign ministry protested that their minimum-wage pay is too little to live in London and do the job.
The article demonstrates the harm done by subcontracting, which gives the state and other companies a way to hire people for low wages and say "we're not responsible, since we don't employ them."
A company or agency that gets workers through a subcontractor should be directly responsible for how they are treated and how much they are paid.
Yemeni Man Sues Germany for Role in US Drone Killings of Civilians.
US citizens: call
for an
end to trials of GMO wheat.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Thugs in New York State say that they can collect information on everyone's driving because that's public; but when a reporter asked to see their records about him, they claimed it was secret.
An education campaign in Vietnam has cut the demand for rhino horn by 33%, by correcting the superstitious idea that it is beneficial.
Can anyone make plausible imitation rhino horn? It would work just as well as the real thing.
Privacy International calls for prosecution of the British company that made the Finfisher intrusion/spying program, used by the cruel Bahraini regime to attack activists in England.
Ray Cole describes how in Morocco he was accused based on irrelevant evidence, jailed incommunicado, and bullied into signing a statement he could not read.
The prison guards also lied to the British consul, saying Cole did not want to see him.
It seems clear they treat Moroccans just as badly.
Australia's government
proposes
massive biometrics capture, but may not succeed in imposing it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
If a lot of natural gas is obtained by fracking, it will squeeze out renewable energy and likely result in more greenhouse gas emissions.
A Tory minister called for paying the disabled less than minimum wage, stating explicitly the right-wing goal of reducing the weak to desperation.
The same goal is at work in making prisoners work for companies that pay them a pittance. This reduces jobs and wages for people outside prison, and more of them will end up in prison, making a vicious cycle.
Europe Needs to Fix Or Ditch Its Emissions-Trading Scheme.
A carbon tax would be better. One of the problems with the European emissions-trading scheme is that it is too easily gamed: companies can get credit for industries that have simply failed, for instance, and emissions credits are so cheap that nobody really needs to conserve.
Private "police foundations" buy controversial massive surveillance equipment and donate it to thug departments across the US, bypassing democratic decisionmaking about what these systems should do.
Offshore oil wells are great habitats for fish.
Burning oil generates CO2 which makes some fish dangerously uncautious and will kill (at a sufficient concentration) many shelled animals.
But we could plant suitable structures without using them to extract oil.
Iraqi Doctors Call Depleted Uranium Use "Genocide".
From Chicago to Geneva, a Call for Police Accountability for Violence and Torture.
Colombian farmers are suing BP in Britain.
Farm pesticides have been linked to an increase in depression and suicide.
The US Supreme Court allowed some Texas abortion providers to reopen … until the case is finally decided.
The UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism says that massive surveillance violates human rights as defined by the UN.
Thugs attacked Hong Kong protesters and closed some of their barricades.
100 students were arrested in Egypt this week for protesting.
Violent Islamist fanatics continue to fight the regime with terrorism, but all in all their violence is less than what the military regime directed at peaceful Islamist fanatic protesters.
The mass graves found in Mexico appear not to contain the 43 disappeared students.
A talk by feminist Anita Sarkesian was cancelled due to a mysogynist threat to shoot her, backed up by a state law that prohibited stopping people from bringing weapons into the auditorium.
That law says, in effect, that anyone people threaten to shoot cannot speak in public.
Private charities are nowhere near capable of giving America's tens of millions of poor people the help they need.
Matt Taibbi explains why no banksters go to jail in the US, while so many blacks and welfare recipients do: because thugs systematically harass those groups seeking (and inventing) excuses to arrest them.
It's not policing, it's occupation.
The corruption charges against high officials in
Turkey have
been dropped. Many of the officials involved in bringing the
charges
had faced
official retribution.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Either the charges were bogus and placed for political reasons, as Erdogan says, or they were valid and he has protected his party colleagues' abuse of power. I have no way of determining which it was.
Pacific Islanders blocked a coal ship leaving Australia.
Combustion of fossil fuel is inundating their islands little by little. A few have already become uninhabitable.
French documentary makers are being prosecuted for filming in West Papua, where foreign journalists are not allowed.
Indonesia took over West Papua by force in the 1960s when the Dutch pulled out, and has sent large numbers of Javanese colonists. It's somewhat like China and Tibet.
State colleges in the US today have been reshaped by plutocracy and budget cutting, along with hiring patterns, so that students from poor backgrounds are likely to end up with debts and no good job.
There are some exceptions, of course. If you have talent in a professional field, and you study hard, you can still get a job. For a while.
China has banned logging in state forests in its most heavily forested province.
In the US, businesses control politicians. In China, the politicians own and control the businesses, or else the state owns them. While Chinese politicians can be quite corrupt, they can also take action to protect China's future from rogue businesses, in a way that US politicians no longer can do.
How Whisper users can be identified based on the vague geolocation data Whisper keeps.
The FBI presented cases to prove that it needs the power to encrypt people's data. All of the cases were bogus.
Why the US-constructed Iraqi army couldn't and wouldn't fight PISSI.
Basically, the idea of setting up a client state and training its army to fight for it (i.e., for the US) doesn't work.
US budget cuts aimed at poor people don't ultimately reduce spending. But they sure do help demonize the poor, which is what right-wing politicians need.
Everyone: sign
this
petition calling on Boston to put an end to racism in its thug
department.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition of solidarity with Hong Kong democracy protesters.
Microsoft uses US courts to shut down companies by seizing their domain names so clients cannot contact them. The court cases go on without informing the targeted companies.
In Australia, government policy makes millenials poor and the rest of society blames them for it. Many of them, not realizing the fault isn't theirs, are going crazy.
The first step in not going crazy is to realize that the injustice is imposed by the state. The second step is to unite to kick out plutocracy. If the rich were not getting richer, there would be enough for the aged and the young.
A new leak of the part of the draft Trans-Pacific Partnership shows that the US is pushing mass murder in the form of tightened patent power on medicines.
This treaty does harm already, although it is still a draft, simply by using the propaganda term "intellectual property" to lump together various unrelated laws.
To repeat that term is to boost the confusion — and we don't have to repeat it. Since I identified the term as a confusion-spreader, ten years ago, I have not used it once.
I will say that the TPP negotiators put the bogus label "intellectual property" on this chapter but I will not use the term myself.
Raising the minimum wage to match what it was in the 1960s would save 1.7 million Americans from needing public assistance.
Seven potential disasters that could result from fighting PISSI.
It appears to me that we must accept sectarian partition of Iraq. It has, de facto, already happened, and accepting it is the only way to convince Iraqi Sunnis they can protect themselves without PISSI.
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The UK NHS is so underfunded that its staff shortages endanger patients.
The reason the NHS is underfunded is plutocratic refusal to tax businesses and the rich; they demand to be subsidized instead.
Egypt's US-Backed Military Regime is Brutalizing Student Protestors.
The latest TPP draft proposes to make coffeehouses liable when their patrons use the internet for sharing.
Annie Machon: GCHQ prostituting itself to the NSA over the last few years.
ACLU: the dangers posed by collecting millions of people's voiceprints.
Whisper, which promises its users anonymity, records their location at each post. The pattern of a single user's movements can more or less identify who that user is.
All the MPs of the Golden Dawn party face charges of murder and other acts of violence.
This worries me. The party is neo-Nazi, and some of its members commit violence, but are all of them directly implicated in the violence — or are they going to be tried for their political views?
This resembles the way Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas supporters and even MPs using a real crime as a pretext.
The crass remarks of a Tory minister reveal an already-existing abuse, where people are pushed into self-employment so as to pay them less than a minimum wage.
New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager revealed evidence of the ruling party's dirty political tricks; then thugs raided his house and seized his computers.
Evidently the politicians that control New Zealand prefer to keep crime secret rather than behave honestly.
Saudi Arabia sentenced a Shi'ite religious leader to death, for "crimes" amounting to dissent.
A TV personality has received rape threats after speaking in favor of allowing a convict to resume his previous job after release from prison for rape. Her daughter received rape threats too.
You may agree or disagree with her statement, but threats are not justified as a response.
The US imposes so many kinds of exclusions on ex-cons that, unless they are geniuses, they are almost condemned to a life of crime. This is not in society's interest; it results from politicians' desire to look tough. I don't know whether it is the same in the UK.
It seems to me that people who object to giving this particular ex-con this particular job back view sports stars as symbols of an ideal person. A rapist is a bad choice for an ideal person, but then, I don't consider professional sports as the site to find ideal persons in. I think it is just a well-paid job.
US state governors are privatizing state services for profit. In some cases, their own profit.
It is not just states. Chicago privatized parking meters and was greatly shafted.
Obama's persecution of reporters' sources, and how it dwarfs previous US history.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to cancel oil exploration on the Atlantic coast, which
will make loud sounds that injure whales and dolphins.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
I put this as my message.
To avoid global heating disaster, we need to leave 80% of fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Finding more reserves is at best a waste, and when it injures whales, it is worse than a waste.
US diabetics are three times as likely to get a leg amputated if they are black, than if they are white.
It is not clear why, but it has to be due to prejudice one way or another.
Nurses accuse Dallas hospital of having inadequate equipment to protect them from Ebola, and lousy procedures too. Two of them have caught an Ebola infection.
The UK plans to allow fracking companies to put "any substance" under people's homes, without informing them.
Even being wealthy graduates of prestigious schools doesn't enable US blacks to protect their children from racist insults.
What makes the most impression on me is how far blacks in the US have to bend over backwards to avoid being falsely accused or treated with prejudice. These precautions seem to have been mostly effective — being called a nasty name is not that bad on the scale of human injustice — but it's unfair for anyone to have to do that.
Meanwhile, think of all the people (black or not) who aren't in the families of wealthy graduates of prestigious schools. They don't deserve to be harassed either.
Whaling interests in Japan paid a PR company in the 1970s to fabricate a "national tradition" of eating whale meat.
For minors in the US, getting a judge's permission for an abortion is painful harassment, often followed by arbitrary denial.
Just getting out of school to go to a court in another town may be a struggle.
I don't understand how people who generally agree it is not a good thing for poor minors to have children come to support laws making it hard for them to avoid doing so.
A SWAT team shot and killed a homeowner who tried to protect himself from a repeat burglary. He didn't know that the burglar claimed to have stolen drugs from him.
I don't see anything saying where this took place, except that it is in the US. Can anyone tell me?
Thieves do steal drugs and drug equipment. Perhaps it was reasonable to investigate the accusation against Hooks. The central problem is the repeating tendency of SWAT raids to kill innocent people.
New York City thugs keep on bashing and injuring unarmed people who are not even suspected of doing anything seriously wrong.
If you want to watch the YouTube video, please download it using youtube-dl. If you view it from the site directly, that requires either Flash or nonfree Javascript code.
Another New York City thug stole a thousand dollars from a man after harassing him because he objected to how the thug was treating his friend.
A US wireless ISP is reportedly sabotaging TLS security by acting as a man in the middle.
How a city can set up a
public
bank and make its funds secure against failure of the big bankster
banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israel destroyed the power grid of a Palestinian village that Israel threatens to demolish entirely.
Israel continues to keep 33 members of the Palestinian Parliament in prison, mostly without charges.
The kidnaping and murder of three teenagers is used as the pretext for this, although these elected officials had nothing to do with it.
Imagine if Palestinians could put Israeli right-wing politicians in prison because Israeli fanatics murdered a Palestinian teenager.
One Administration's Terrorist Is Another's Freedom Fighter. Just Ask the PKK.
US citizens: call on Obama to take action quickly to curb methane leaks from oil and gas extraction.
It appears this needs to be done for coal mining too.
Russia's principal human rights organization since Soviet times, founded by Andrei Sakharov, is going to be shut down by Putin.
"Sports drinks" are mostly used outside of the context of sports, and are bad for people's health.
Modern western society isolates the young and the old, leaving them with no idea of anything to want except wealth.
The statistics cited are from the UK, but I expect it is true in the US as well.
When hippies wished to live in communes, it had to be a rejection of the beginnings of this. The communes failed because just wishing isn't enough to make a new social system succeed.
The loneliness of old people, many of whom had children, shows that having children is not a solution.
Being part of some other sort of community, such as a political activist community that defends people who are being exploited, can make your life a lot less lonely as well as helping others.
Ireland will close one of the tax loopholes that multinational corporations use to avoid paying tax on their income cross Europe.
However, Ireland's low corporation tax still constitutes beggar-thy-neighbor. The rest of Europe, if it were not corrupted by those same corporations, would make Ireland stop this.
Louisiana plans a megaproject to reclaim some of the 2000 square miles lost to the sea in the last century.
In principle, it is a good idea, but it will be futile if we don't stop pumping out the greenhouse gases that melt icecaps and raise sea level even more.
President Morales of Bolivia was reelected after his socialist policies reduced poverty and grew the economy.
You can cause economic growth with right-wing policies too, as the US and UK have demonstrated, but doing it that way increases poverty.
Fighting has flared up between Kurds in Turkey and the Turkish state.
This fighting seems to have been provoked by Turkey's policy of passively helping PISSI to capture Kobani.
The UK plans to deport Liaquat Ali Hazara to Pakistan where he faces death threats from religious fanatics.
North Korea is keeping its people hungry to export rice to wealthier China.
Various Republican forms of political sabotage worked together to support Wisconsin's voter ID law, leading to a split between modern "hold power no matter how" Republicans and older Republicans who have some loyalty to the ideals of a free political system.
Weekly "Moral Monday" protests have begun in Ferguson and in nearby St Louis.
The practice of privately hiring thugs with the legal power to arrest,
or to look the other way,
endangers
the rights of those who aren't paying.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
New pun, Facebook's policies.
On doxing, and how to spell it.
In the US: call on banks to drop their forced arbitration clauses.
US citizens: sign
this petition to
demilitarize and reform US thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
UK MPs voted to recognize Palestine. Unfortunately it was a non-binding vote.
The UK has adopted the US model for university education, requiring students to take out huge loans. Nonetheless, many are desperate to go to a university because wages for non-graduates have been knocked down. Indeed, many graduates won't get good jobs because there are too many.
The only aspect which is not quite as bad as the US is that graduates with low incomes won't have to pay as much.
Next year, most children in the UK will be living in poverty. The UK hasn't got the billions needed to help them, because nuclear missile submarines have higher priority.
New antiplutocratic parties have had success in several European countries.
The sea level rise of the past century is a record for 6000 years. (That is when the melting of the ice age ice sheets finished.)
Even if we stop pumping out greenhouse gas, the Earth will continue getting hotter for quite some time due to the greenhouse gas we have already pumped out. That's ignoring the possibility that positive feedback effects will release more. And it will take centuries for the effect of that heat to finish melting all the ice it is going to melt.
We will have to lower the greenhouse gas level substantially below the present level to get the ice to stop melting.
In Japan, right-wing extremists with support of officials in the ruling party call for persecution of Korean residents, and have launched a campaign of threats against journalists that cover Japan's war crimes.
The Korean residents of Japan are descendants of Koreans forcibly taken to work in Japan when Korea was under Japanese rule. Those alive today were born in Japan, but in Japan that does not give them citizenship.
Naturalization in Japan is not like naturalization in the US; it requires denying one's previous identity and trying to act totally Japanese. These people of Korean descent might be willing to get Japanese citizenship, but they don't want to deny their identity.
Computerized recognition of people's voices is being employed on a large scale.
I don't mind if bank customers can use this authenticate themselves to the bank. What worries me is that it can also be used to track people.
Taking account of externalities, wind power is the cheapest form of generation in Europe.
Coal costs more than double.
Remotely supervised use of prescribed abortion pills can make abortions safer and more accessible.
The level of sexual harassment female students face in UK universities today is amazing.
I think it is largely the same in US universities, but I never saw anything like this when I was studying at Harvard in 1970-74.
I think the social pressure to get drunk is the worst part of it.
Germany's government is practicing economic harshness for harshness' sake, and pushing Europe into depression.
A world-wide survey found that around half of all girls expect to have no control over their lives.
Peter van Buren reviews reports on al Qa'ida's magazine.
In tyrannical states such as the UK, you could be imprisoned just for having a copy of the magazine.
A week ago I made a connection in Dallas-Ft Worth Airport, and was wearing my "Impeach God" button. A pilot said it takes courage to wear such a button there. It did not seem to me that I was being particularly courageous.
However, a rather strange conversation ensued on the subsequent flight: a flight attendant said, "I feel offended by your button. Please take it off."
I responded, "I don't see why you should feel offended, unless … you're not a god, are you?"
She: "No, but I believe in god."
I: "Well, I don't."
She: "But you're putting your views all over me!"
I: "Actually, I'm putting them all over me. I can't make you wear such a button, and I wouldn't try."
At that point, she let the issue drop.
The Australian National University decided to divest from some fossil fuel companies, which occasioned absurd rebukes from right-wing politicians that represent the fossil fuel companies.
There is no limit to how far they will go to increase fossil fuel sales.
The evil of the Koch brothers includes racism, as well as voter-suppression, dooH niboR and frying Earth's ecosphere.
The US now allows bankrupt cities to cancel 60% of retired workers' pensions.
They can't live on what remains.
The Pirate Party had an electoral success in Czech local elections.
Around 10 million people with HIV owe their lives to generic equivalent drugs. The Obama regime is pressuring India to stop making them, which would kill millions of those people within a few years.
The Nazis murdered 7 million civilians. This could murder more than 7 million of those now in treatment, and more millions in the future. The US officials behind this are aiming to be literally worse than the Nazi leaders convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against humanity.
The article uses the incoherent propaganda term "intellectual property", which the pharma companies love because it interferes with critical thinking about their unjust demands.
The pharma companies claim that only patents can enable them to do research into new lifesaving drugs, but the fact is they don't do much of that research. It is usually government funded.
Dow Chemical covered up knowledge of the medical damage done by its toxic pesticide, chlorpyrifos; now the question is whether the EPA has the guts to do its job to prevent more sickness.
Thousands marched in St Louis
on
behalf of Michael Brown and against thug violence. Fortunately,
this time the thugs did not engage in more violence against the
protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect all waterways.
Centralized social networks can learn a lot about people that don't directly give them data, through what others say about them and even who knows them.
In other words, you should insist that your friends not mention you by name or email address in anything they post on centralized social networks.
I think this applies to gmail as well.
Business is the "enemy within" countries with plutocratic governments.
When RSA installed key generation code that had been weakened by the NSA, it wasn't just ingenuous — it took money from the NSA to do so.
Fossil fuel companies and their pet politicians made the University of Wyoming get rid of a sculpture that reminded people about the effects of global heating on forests in that region.
There is a proposal in the UK to prohibit domestic "coercive control", but identifying that might require a difficult judgment call.
What strikes me is that the methods used for domestic coercive control have a lot in common with the methods used for enslavement of farm laborers and domestic workers. Criminalizing such enslavement has not been very effective at stopping it. Could it be more effective to change other systems so that these methods of control can't be used or don't work?
For instance, if banks automatically gave one spouse access to a limited amount of money from the other spouse's account — not enough to substantially harm the other spouse, but enough for the one spouse to get by — one element of coercive control would not work. If spouses were required to jointly view the deed of their residence once in a while, another element used in this instance would not be possible. Other elements could also be blocked.
Enough such concrete measures would often prevent coercive control, and otherwise would make it require a cut-and-dried violation that could be prosecuted easily without a difficult judgment call.
A UK court stopped publication of an autobiography on the grounds that it might cause pain to the author's son.
In the US, which respects freedom of speech much more than the UK, this decision would be called "prior restraint", which is more or less unconstitutional, though I would not trust today's US Supreme Court to stand by that principle or (any human right, when it's for actual humans rather than corporations).
Reflections on the Death of an Unpunished Dictator.
A young black male is 21 times more likely to be shot dead by US thugs than a young white male.
Obama pretends that the US military budget has suffered intolerable cuts.
The damage to coral reefs from CO2 could amount to a trillion dollars annually in losses to humanity, by the end of this century.
A Japanese reporter in Korea
faces 7
years imprisonment for reporting the existence of a rumor about
the president.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Did you think it must be North Korea, which is of course a total tyranny? Sad to say, it is South Korea.
If the report was false — if the rumor did not exist — it might be legitimate to sue the reporter for claiming it did. However, nothing can justify prosecution for an insult. Freedom of speech means having the right to insult everyone, even President Park, even me, even you.
Dozens of poor countries are in danger of sliding into a debt crisis.
Many of these debts were more or less imposed by outside pressure and accepted by rulers that were tyrants or traitors. Those debts should be considered entirely invalid.
The European Commission proposes insane blanket deregulation (except for the biggest companies). The rest would be allowed to pollute however they like.
Identifying PISSI as a form of theocratic fascism.
Everyone: call on the Susan G. Komen Foundation to stop pinkwashing toxic and carcinogenic fracking.
Reagan's order 12333 lets the US government collect all sorts of data about Americans by copying it from mirror servers located outside the US.
Meanwhile, Snowden says that snooping by the UK government on its cities has no practical limit.
Hong Kong protesters are being attacked with military-grade Chinese malware.
The UK National Health Service is so underfunded that it is paying staff poverty wages.
The NHS needs a lot more money, and it needs to come from the rich (including businesses). However, making housing cheaper would help the workers get by; that too depends on increasing taxes on the homes of the rich.
Putin has withdrawn a substantial fraction of troops from near the border with Ukraine.
This could still leave substantial numbers to sneak into Ukraine and attack.
California aquifers contaminated with billions of gallons of fracking wastewater.
There will be a last-ditch attempt to block two new nuclear power plants in the UK, on the grounds that the subsidy will be a burden for the country.
The reason that it is a burden is that the same amount of money could buy a lot more in renewable energy and negawatts (improved efficiency).
Hong Kong democracy protesters have resumed large protests after the government reneged on talks.
Airplane cleaners in New York went on strike demanding protection from diseases in vomit and shit that they have to clean up.
Satellite data suggest that coal mines in the US southwest are leaking lots of methane.
The US Supreme Court blocked the voter-ID law in Wisconsin.
The Netherlands has renovated 300,000 apartments so that they don't need fossil fuel or external electricity, and 100,000 will be renovated in the UK.
This scheme is very good, but its scale is minuscule: 100,000 homes in a country of 64 million people is a drop in the bucket. Its significance is to show that humanity can still save itself from global heating disaster, if it can overcome plutocracy to do similar things on a large scale.
UK thug chiefs insist on allowing thugs to confer to coordinate their testimony.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act.
Everyone: Call on Obama to pressure Turkey to let Kurds cross the border, whether to defend Kobani or escape from massacre there.
The UK will require a court order to get journalists' phone records.
That is a small step in the right direction. I have to ask, however, who this will apply to. On the internet, anyone can be a journalist.
In addition, journalists reporting on ticklish issues such as government snooping must arrange to communicate with their sources in a way that can't be tracked.
Cuba has sent more doctors to fight Ebola than any other country.
Facebook now combines "Like" button tracking data with data from Facebook itself to get even more information about people's digital activities.
Facebook does not tell other companies the identities of users, but they can identify users based on data they get elsewhere.
"Like" button surveillance even tracks people who are not useds of Facebook (i.e., never had a Facebook account).
However, you can block "Like" button tracking with the GNU browser, IceCat.
Citizens of Europe and the US: take action against TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic).
Saudi Arabia, always tyrannical, is now systematically repressing anyone that endorses human rights.
The Pentagon is trying to paint the Vietnam War as a glorious triumph.
British workers are experiencing the biggest decrease in standard of living in 150 years.
In the US today, parents who would dare resist overprotecting their children face threats from other parents.
When I was six years old, I walked 5 blocks to school in Manhattan. Not that I was unusual — this is how everyone got to school. We all knew how to cross streets. We all understood traffic lights, since there were traffic lights at every intersection.
For the first time, the US government has officially informed 13 Americans whether they are on the No Fly List.
This is just a small step towards justice. The No Fly List is a deprivation of rights. The US government should not be allowed to put anyone on this list without a trial.
Local pollution in parts of the Great Barrier Reef impedes photosynthesis, which leads to higher CO2 levels locally.
Kurds fleeing into Turkey have been arrested without charges and accused of fighting PISSI.
It's unlikely to be true, since some of them are children. However, if some of them really did fight PISSI, it is disgusting to punish anyone for that.
Big US banks once again face criminal charges, but the executives will probably get off unscathed yet again.
The European Commission is inventing strained legalistic excuses to block a referendum opposing the TTIP.
Agricultural workers in the UK are stripped of their passports and their pay, and gouged on rent.
This is a world-wide pattern, much like what happens to construction workers in Qatar.
A government that doesn't want to let businesses exploit people could adopt laws that make it harder to get away with this. One approach would be to make the farms directly liable for how the temp agency treats the temporary workers. It would help to prosecute the executives and staff of the temp agency, as well as the agency, for any wrongdoing; I can't tell from the article whether this is already done.
Large protests around Mexico demand release of the 43 students disappeared by thugs.
It looks like the thugs murdered them, but this is not yet certain.
Philadelphia students went on strike in solidarity with their teachers, whose contract was cancelled.
Manuel Velez was convicted of murder because the public defender didn't bother to investigate the evidence that proved he was innocent.
The cruel prosecutors gave him a choice between a new trial (on charges already known to be false), which would probably have meant keeping him in jail for a year or two, and pleading guilty to a smaller false charge. Evidently they are more interested in pretending they are never wrong than in justice.
The main cause of these repeated injustices is that we don't have enough public defenders in the US. They can't possibly do a proper job for so many clients. Most of the time they advise clients to make a deal and accept a lesser charge, whether it is true or not.
US citizens: call on the Senate to resist the NRA and approve Vivek Murthy as Surgeon General.
Arguing that putting the local inhabitants or indigenous people in control of forests works better than REDD for ending deforestation.
I see some questionable points. For instance, the danger that the forest's trees may die even if protected exists no matter how we try to protect them. Global heating is killing a lot of pine trees in the US.
UK mobile phone networks' computers provide customers' call records to the state automatically whenever asked, without even checking for a legally valid order.
A legally valid order made by thugs, without the need to justify it to anyone, is not morally valid.
The US government says it knows where Sharif Mobley is, but refuses to tell his family.
The NSA sends agents to install spy devices in networks in various countries, including apparently the US.
For the US government to do this to a rather hostile government such as China does not seem wrong to me. Doing this to Germany and South Korea would be a low blow against an ally if it was done without those states' approval (we don't know). If those states approved of the act, it might mean that they are spying massively on their own citizens.
US citizens: call on Congress and Obama to limit US war in Syria and Iraq.
Walmart's owners support organizations that campaign to slow down installation of solar power in the US.
Farmers and indigenous peoples are protesting the World Bank's support for corporate land grabs and "development" that helps business take from the poor.
Malala Yousufzai, admired around the world, can't return home because of death threats from the Taliban.
Turkey is denying entry to 10,000 Kurdish civilian refugees trying to flee Kobani.
The US could airdrop ammunition and food to the Kurds fighting for Kobani. Since the plan is already to arm opponents of PISSI, why not these, now?
An experiment on adolescent rats finds that heavy sugar consumption made their memory worse.
This does not prove sugar has the same effects on human adolescents, but it might be so.
Other studies have found that low-calorie sweeteners fool the brain into preparing for sugar, causing confusion when the calories do not arrive.
Amnesty International says that the government of Guatemala, together with Canadian mining companies, provoke resistance by indigenous peoples by setting up mines near their homes without consulting them.
A train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in the middle of a Canadian town.
No one was directly injured, but the toxic smoke from the burning chemicals may cause people respiratory problems down the line.
Walmart is pushing reducing the hours on 30,000 workers so as to deny them health insurance.
The US laws that associate medical care with employment implement a bad policy. For instance, it is an incentive to replace workers with robots. Companies should pay for people's health care through taxes that would only increase if the company replaces workers with robots. The laws ought to be changed so that everyone gets medical care, regardless of the person's life situation.
This does not excuse Walmart's conduct. Ethics are separate from law; taking advantage of a bad law to screw people legally is just as wrong as screwing them illegally.
The ACLU studied statistics on how Boston thugs searched pedestrians and found a gross pattern of racism.
The NSA was asked for a list of the information it has disclosed to reporters. It responded that the list is too secret to show.
The NSA is trying to hide its propaganda activities.
Crypto Wars Redux: Why the FBI's Desire to Unlock Your Private Life Must Be Resisted.
The US has begun bombing PISSI fighters attacking Kobani. Since then, Kurdish forces have started advancing.
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
A pressure campaign (which I supported here) has convinced Lego to cancel its marketing collaboration with Shell.
This sort of thing is very important: we need to strip the fossil fuel companies of the little maneuvers that they use to disguise the murderous nature of their plans.
Hundreds of thousands of fools wanted to risk spreading Ebola to humans to save a dog.
Nobody knows whether a dog can pass Ebola to humans, but let's not find out the hard way.
Australia proposes to imprison journalists and their sources for publishing information about secret searches of people's homes.
US citizens: call on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to protect coral and sponge habitat in the Bering Sea.
Indian environmentalists are suing to block a giant coal mine in Australia which would export coal to pollute India (as well as polluting the whole world with CO2).
Despite everything the US government says about encryption in phones, the fact is that they still make massive surveillance of everyone easier than before people used them.
Burmese expatriates in Thailand confessed to killing two British tourists, but now they say they were tortured into a false confession.
I believe them.
In the US, people with harmless mental illnesses end up in jail unless they are rich.
Once jailed, they are put in debt for their imprisonment, so they may never be able to get out.
Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers.
It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed.
Children of East Asian (mainly Chinese) immigrants excel even in mediocre Australian schools.
This suggests that the root cause of the high educational success of various East Asian countries may not be particularly due to how the schools there are run.
The ACLU won a legal victory: the Ferguson thugs are not allowed to arrest protesters just for standing still.
Massive Mongolian Mine Endangers Nomads' Water, Way of Life.
However, the bigger culprit is global heating, which is hitting Mongolia more than most of the world, and drying it up.
Mercury pollution damages the brains of songbirds.
65 million Americans have a criminal record; many US colleges exclude all of them in blanket fashion.
Employers plead for sympathy because they can't find people to hire, but really it's just that they won't pay enough.
Inside the $7 Million Fight to Tax Soda in San Francisco.
The Jewish National Fund is actively involved in trying to kick a Palestinian family out of its home near Jerusalem.
Some of the JNF's tree planting campaigns were carried out over former Arab villages whose inhabitants had either fled or been expelled.
The World Bank says 20 billion dollars must be provided to quash the Ebola epidemic.
Former Oil Mogul Confirmed as EU Climate and Energy Commissioner.
He will surely find ways to obstruct progress in decarbonization; whoever proposed him for the post must have done so with this goal in mind. Whatever controls are set up to make sure he does his job, they can't stop him from dragging his feet.
Thus, I fear, the fossil fuel companies have neutralized the only center of political power that was sincerely trying to avert global heating. I fear that they have murdered many of those who are reading this.
Italy's prime minister Renzi pushed
through a
law making it easier for businesses to fire workers, hoping that
in exchange the EU will avoid punishing Italy more.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
These "reforms" are part of the world-wide campaign by business to set countries against each other in a competition for letting business have more power and workers less power. Step by step, business gets to do want it wants, leaving most people poor.
I doubt that the plutocrats will keep their side of this deal. Appeasing them is foolish; the more power they get, the more they can demand more power.
A Shi'ite rebel group has taken the capital of Yemen, perhaps with the cooperation of the president.
It opposes the Wahhabi missionaries sent by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia seems to be the root of a large part of the theocratic cruelty in the Arab world, and spreads this with the backing of the US.
A thug in St Louis shot a black teenager, then claimed the teenager had fired shots with the sandwich his friends said he was carrying.
It would not be beyond a thug to plant a gun on the deceased.
Facebook and Master Card will join forces to profile Master Card customers so banks can push them to spend more.
By doing this, Master Card is ratting on its customers. This reinforces the point that using a credit card enables others to take advantage of you. It also interferes with your efforts to limit your spending.
Don't be tracked — pay cash.
Ebola virus may persist a human's semen and milk months after the person has recovered from it.
Turkey is blocking Kurds from joining the defense of Kobani, while allowing reinforcements to join PISSI.
US public TV governing boards are dominated by business executives.
Business also dominates public TV stations through its money.
With 50,000 SWAT raids per year in the US, lots of people will inevitably get hurt badly.
Superstition about witches leads to murder, even in the UK.
Australia Spying Law Meets Grassroots Resistance.
The Australian government's duty is to keep Australians safe … from total surveillance.
Revolutionary Kurds in Syria have established the sort of popular democracy we would hope that the whole Middle East could have.
The British tourist jailed in Morocco for being homosexual was released. His Moroccan friend or lover is not so fortunate.
Extinction of wildlife is another problem that the US could partially solve by legalizing marijuana.
Jamal Jones is suing thugs for breaking car windows and attacking him only for not carrying identification (which he had no obligation to carry).
It is not enough to sue the thugs and the city; that is no deterrent for thugs. We need to prosecute them.
I hope, if you are ever on a jury, that you will reject any presumption that thugs are telling the truth. Lying in court is habitual with them.
Israel has repeatedly attacked Palestinians' water supply and sewage systems for more than a decade.
Israeli soldiers told the inhabitants of the village of Khirbet Um al-Jimal that all their homes will be demolished at some undetermined date.
Glasgow University voted to divest from fossil fuels.
Everyone: tell GoFundMe to allow requests for funds for abortions. Abortion is not like terrorism, violence or addictive drugs.
US citizens: call on the Pentagon to stop distributing military hardware to thug departments in the US.
Adobe "digital editions" spy system sends users' complete reading logs to Amazon.
Adobe says this is legitimate because users agree to it in the EULA, but pressuring people to click "Ok, spy on me" does not excuse it.
This article focuses on the fact that the NSA can watch this data passing on the net, avoiding the need to use the PAT RIOT act to collect it directly from Adobe. It legitimizes the snooping by saying that's needed to enforce DRM, which legitimizes DRM too. According to the article's view, all this would be fine, if only Adobe didn't also leak everyone's dossier.
As a defense of readers' rights, this is pitifully weak. DRM, being evil itself, can't justify anything.
Windows 10 requires users to give permission for total snooping on their files, commands, text input, and voice.
UK prisons have become so cruel that the government plans to fire the inspector of prisons.
Baltimore's inner harbor will be flooded roughly 900 hours a year, on the average, by 2045 — due to global heating.
A few decades later, it will be permanently inundated.
Many other US coastal cities and towns face similar problems that we are bringing on ourselves.
Consumer Reports found that nearly all US food products containing soy or corn are made with GMOs, even if they are misleadingly labeled as "natural".
Clinton has openly endorsed the policy of endless war.
Put this together with NSA snooping and the systematic dishonesty of the mainstream press, and it adds up to 1984 lite.
The main threat to Americans comes from plutocracy. Plutocracy could kill millions of Americans in the coming decade, mainly through the poverty it imposes. Compared with this, underground terrorists are a tiny threat.
Back when Dubya was president, I speculated that he and al Qa'ida were both working to cause the endless war that suited them both. It seems the same for the US and PISSI. Not that they have explicitly conspired to do this together. Rather, each side expects to gain domestic power from endless war. So PISSI offers bait, and the US government jumps for it.
For the fascist plans of US officials, terrorism (real or imaginary) is the gift that keeps on giving.
The author makes a mistake by saying that "we" have adopted these foolish attitudes, because that effectively insists the reader can't reject them. We can all reject them — it just takes a tiny bit of moral fiber. I reject them every time they come up, and you can, too.
US officials, Republican and Democrat, have programmed an endless war all around the world.
It is endless by nature, because its tactics generate more enemies, and have never won a victory anywhere.
The US makes an abstract policy distinction between Iraq and Syria, and in Syria only attacks PISSI's logistical support, not its troops. This is why it has not provided close air support to the Kurds fighting to defend Kobani.
Meanwhile, the US wants Turkey to fight this battle, but Turkey would rather fight Assad that PISSI.
Close air support is the only sort of fighting that the US ought to do against PISSI. Once it starts attacking urban facilities, it causes civilian casualties.
The chance that foreigners fighting for PISSI will return home and commit violence there has been exaggerated beyond what past experience suggests.
Politicians seeking to abolish human rights persistently exaggerate the danger of terrorism.
The author of leaflets questioning the validity of "psychics"' claims to talk with the dead has been threatened with a lawsuit by a psychic.
How the Big Pharma companies make Americans pay more for medicines than people in any other country.
Daniel Ellsberg judges Obama's Iraq strategy against the
facts
of the Vietnam War.
New York Governor Cuomo had criticisms of fracking
deleted
from a scientific report.
Cuomo pretends to be neutral on the issue while secretly trying to
impose fracking on the unwilling citizens of New York.
The UK freedom group Cage was almost forced to shut down by
official
harassment including closure of its bank accounts.
The Enxet people, in Paraguay, keep winning legal victories to get
back the land they were kicked off. But
the
government has been reluctant to implement these decisions.
The UK National Health Service is so underfunded that it
will
soon have to charge fees for hospital beds, fees which poor people
can't pay.
Nigeria quashed its Ebola outbreak quickly, because it had a
strong enough medical system to do what was necessary.
Australia has
destroyed
the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's credibility as well as
its ability to do is job.
This was not suicide, it was murder: the government wants nothing
to stand in the way of its plans that include destroying the reef.
Twitter is suing to overturn the
PAT
RIOT act's gag provisions.
US citizens:
tell
Holder, send a bankster to jail before you leave office.
In Mexico, plutocratist politicians allied with drug gangs are
killing
students that oppose the abolition of rural schools.
The plutocrats that dominate Mexico via NAFTA don't want any money
to be spent on educating poor rural Mexicans.
The
National Crime Agency Would Take [The UK] Back to Soviet-Style
Surveillance.
Politicians
Should Stop Bullying Young Jobless People into Trying to Find
Work.
Long experience shows that the only way to deal with terrorist
movements (other than small gangs without public support) is to
negotiate
with them.
This may not apply to PISSI today, which is more of a barbarian horde
than a terrorist movement. It can be defeated in battle, at this
stage. If that happens, it may morph into a terrorist movement.
PISSI is slowly capturing parts of
Kobani.
Many
forms of evidence link Roundup to increased rates of cancer in
humans.
Finland's schools demand
less
school time, have hardly any standardized tests, and students come
out very well educated.
Guantanamo
force-feeding
videos show that torture is still practiced there, even against
prisoners that are admittedly not criminals and have been "cleared for
release".
The UK government is talking about cutting human welfare funds to dump
people into the street.
Why
not cut corporate welfare instead?
Everyone:
call
on giant fast food companies to stop using palm oil from farms
created by destroying forests and peat swamps.
Everyone:
write
to the political leaders of Iran on behalf of Ghoncheh Ghavami, an
Iranian woman threatened with dying in prison because she wanted to
watch a sports match.
US citizens:
Call
for an investigation of submissive bank regulators that don't dare
enforce regulations on Goldman Sachs.
An argument that the bureaucratization and marketization of society is
partly
responsible for putting an end to major technological advances
since 1970.
Hillary Clinton owes Ray McGovern an apology, because the State
Department under her direction
persecuted
dissident Ray McGovern.
I agree, but I lost my respect for Ms Clinton long ago for other
reasons.
500 New York City phone booths have devices to
track cell phones
that pass by.
The city says it will remove them.
Turkey
traded
PISSI soldiers interned in Turkey for Turkish civilians captured by
PISSI
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Vice President Biden was forced to apologize for telling the truth about US "allies" that funded the growth of the jihadi movement in Syria (leading to PISSI).
UK arms exports to Israel may be illegal under UK law.
Obama's plan to strengthen "moderate" Syrian opposition to fight
against PISSI has so many problems that the
US can't
find suitable "moderate" Syrian opposition to support.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Estimates of the cost of curbing global heating need to be set against the costs of failing to do so. The medical costs of global heating will be bigger than people realize.
Morocco has imprisoned a tourist, convicting him of "being gay".
The Hong Kong executive defeated the protesters by waiting for them to lose hope.
Smelly, Contaminated, Full of Disease: the World's Open Dumps Are Growing.
Australian senators voted for a monstrous censorship law without reading it.
If you see government agents kill people, either accidentally or
intentionally, it will
be illegal
for you to tell anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
UK thugs have been directed to investigate their own intimidation of political activists.
In a privatized immigration prison in Texas, the staff take sexual advantage of the prisoners.
In ordinary language, a prisoner is anyone kept in prison. When the authorities try to impose distinctions, with words such as "detainee", I think that is a plan to avoid the odium of the word "prisoner" for cases such as these. Why help them? I call these people "prisoner".
Clinton admits in her book that, while claiming to support returning Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras, she was actually moving secretly to prevent his return.
US citizens: call on the USDA to require labeling of food containing ammonia-treated meat, "pink slime".
Dentists in the US are increasingly likely to recommend expensive unnecessary dental work.
This appears to be due to the economic pressure placed on dentists by changes in dentistry, including large companies with hundreds of offices.
The Ebola epidemic shows the need for universal basic health care to extend even to the poorest places.
The UK could boost the economy, and not only for the wealthy, by setting a strong target for energy efficiency.
The government is not interested, perhaps because it aims to make workers desperate and penurious, not make jobs.
UK thugs used a journalist's phone call metadata to identify a source, after a judge told them they were not entitled to that information.
They used the notorious R.I.P. act, which was the death knell for privacy of communications in the UK. This law also makes it a crime not to answer thugs' questions.
If you want to "do something" about PISSI (aka ISIS), be careful you are not following their script.
Latin America has mostly eliminated hunger, but global heating threatens to bring it back by damaging agriculture.
A growing population won't help.
US thugs around the country are attacking CopWatch groups and their leaders with threats and even bogus arrests.
Is spitting in a thug's face really a felony? If so, the first step in ending the thugs' reign of terror is to change that law — and many others with it. Thugs regularly abuse their power; they must have less of it.
Some US dissidents are claiming that the Hong Kong protests are a US plot.
Those critics seem to be more anti-US than pro-freedom.
If the US is indeed supporting the protests in Hong Kong, I'm glad that for once it is doing something good. I'd say the same thing if it were demonstrated that China or Venezuela had supported Occupy Wall Street or other legitimate democratic activity in the US.
I support Emma Watson's HeForShe manifesto.
It took me a while to find it in textual form; I don't want to link to a video that would lead people to run nonfree software.
Chemical companies are using the TTIP to attack regulations to protect against toxic chemical spills.
An inexpensive 20-year-old drug for an unusual medical condition may soon cost patients $80,000, due to a legal maneuver by drug barons.
The long-known generic drug colchicine, used for gout, was made a monopoly through a similar maneuver.
The same sort of corrupt scheme for new monopolies on old drugs exists in Europe. These monopolies, applied to drugs that were already available, are an additional reason to distrust everything drug companies say to argue for patents on even new medicines. I think they just want monopolies.
Obama has signed an agreement with the contrived Afghan government to keep propping it up for 10 more years.
Most NSA snooping is "authorized" by Reagan's executive order 12333. This snooping has no oversight by Congress or courts. Although the government says this is to prevent "terrorism", that is nothing more than an all-purpose excuse.
A list of ethical issues that someone else sees in regard to video games.
I agree with most of them, but conspicuously absent is the direct injustice that most video games commit against their users: the game software is not free/libre. Indeed, the article goes so far as to condemn "unsanctioned clones" for being "free" (i.e., gratis, not freedom-respecting). That's where I disagree with the article.
Humanity is pounding the natural world so hard that even common species are not safe from extinction. Many species that humans depend on face extinction.
Don't forget that a the species that inspire human interest, such as tigers, orangutans and pandas, are used for campaigns to protect the entire ecosystems they live in; if we lose them, it will be because we lost the thousands of other species that live along with them.
The Tories' proposed tax cuts will help only the non-poor, while the benefit cuts to pay for them will shaft the poor.
We've seen similar dooH niboR misdirection from US Republicans, who got support from foolish workers who these same Republicans then impoverish.
US citizens: call on Congress and Obama to direct US diplomacy towards ending the siege of Gaza.
Right-wing extremists in the Japanese government are denying the facts about forcing women from conquered peoples to act as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.
The worst crime was committed by the societies that despised these women for the way they were treated. Many of them did not go home after the war, certain their families would reject them.
Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrian rebels to defeat PISSI is fantasy, and even confirmed Syrian enemies of Assad say so.
Even a right-wing commentator acknowledges this.
So did Obama, not long ago. (Search the article for "fantasy".)
On the other hand, if the Turkish army is willing to fight PISSI in Syria, it could win. Since Turkey is mainly Sunni, Syrian Sunnis who fear Assad would massacre them for their sect could trust Turkey not to do that. (Turkey is no great defender of human rights, but it may be good enough for this.) This might enable the Syrian Sunnis to reject PISSI.
Other things could go wrong: the Turkish army might start fighting Kurds in Syria, for instance. But there is hope of avoiding that.
There are many problems with Obama's plan for dealing with PISSI.
If the Senate continues blocking the small reform of the "USA Freedom Act", parts of it will expire entirely next year.
Let's hope so.
Four cities have dropped their bids for the 2022 Olympic Games, because the IOC demands too much money.
The only remaining bids are from corrupt, tyrannical countries which don't care.
As PISSI closes in on Kobani, Turkish troops have not intervened.
A Hong Kong opposition legislator accuses the government of sending gangsters to attack the protesters.
It looks like the thugs, or some of them, cooperated with the gangsters.
Even if some of the anti-protesters are being honest about their motives, they are unpatriotic to put their immediate income above democracy. Shame on them!
Naturally, China's imposed "chief executive" cites the danger of more such nonuniformed attacks against the protests as an excuse to order a uniformed attack against the protest. That's tyrant logic for you. We should be prepared to denounce it when we see it in our own countries.
The more subtle form of global heating denial: rather than denying outright that fossil fuels are making the Earth hotter, simply ignoring this in discussing issues where it is significant.
Uri Avnery: What do Netanyahu's and Abbas's UN speeches mean?
Naomi Klein says, although private businesses invest in renewable energy for their own interests, we need four times as much investment as what they are doing, and there is no reason to expect businesses to go that far without the state's help or pressure.
The enormous government subsidies for fossil fuels are pertinent here, because they push the market towards fossil fuels, and will continue to do so. Transferring the subsidy to renewables would push the market towards renewables, and a carbon tax would do likewise.
Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq do not trust Obama's new "Iraqi government" not to oppress them, so they feel they must stay on the side of PISSI.
The Koch brothers' toxic empire is toxic to the financial system as well as to the biosphere.
Labeling food with GMOs will cost food businesses a total of less than a penny per day per consumer.
Bloodthirsty republicans want to kill people who try to get into the White House, rather than arresting them.
Lessig: Americans should be protesting for democracy like the people of Hong Kong.
Holder's Disappointing Tech Legacy.
Debunking the myth that we "only use 10% of our brains".
Every part of the brain gets used in various kinds of mental processes.
Margaret Thatcher was planning to call striking miners, and the whole Labour Party, "the enemy within", more or less traitors. Only an opportune terrorist bombing led her to change her rhetoric. But her systematic state violence and frame-ups made her the real "enemy within".
Millions of Britons had good reason to celebrate Thatcher's death, but her successors today are pushing far beyond Thatcher to push them into penury. Today's Tories don't speak with venom about the non-rich but kick them harder.
Companies with Links to Tories "Have Won £1.5bn Worth of NHS Contracts."
If the NHS contracts work out to companies, the companies will get their profits by squeezing either the patients or the employees. Such contracts should not be allowed at all.
Nowadays, being self-employed mostly means doing an unglamorous job with no job security and does not get a living wage.
Being an entrepreneur (not counting funded startups) means taking a risk with your money — gambling on your success. There's a small chance you will make a lot, and a big chance you will lose all.
You shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose, and nowadays most Americans (and Britons) are so close to the edge that they can't afford to lose anything. Therefore, it is foolish for them to be "entrepreneurial". When politicians say they want most people to be "entrepreneurial," it means they intend to make most people's lives risky.
Judge Kessler ordered the US government to publish videos of force-feeding in Guantanamo.
The Russian proxy invasion of Ukraine is trying to capture Donetsk airport with tanks.
US prisons make prisoners pay for food, medical care, even toilet paper. If relatives want to give prisoners money for this, they have to go thru companies that take almost half the money.
The other way prisoners can pay for this is by working, for a pittance, for private companies, thus undermining the standard of living for Americans not in prison.
It should be forbidden for the government to contract parts of its operations to companies in this way. They should all be done by people with civil service jobs. But prison should not make prisoners or their poor relatives pay for what they need either to live, to be healthy, or to be rehabilitated.
And when prisoners work for companies, they must be paid the prevailing wage for the work they do.
US citizens: oppose Syngenta's request to increase the dose of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
Keurig, the company that brought DRM to coffee machines, is being sued in Canada for it.
Now that the plutocrats have reduced UK workers to penury, they are targeting what's left of the middle class.
Protesters oppose tar sand strip mining in Utah. As in Canada, these mines cause tremendous local environmental damage while advancing global heating disaster.
Obama says that PISSI is part of al-Qa'ida, as justification for attacking PISSI, even though the two are fighting each other.
Reportedly al-Nusra recently said it was allying with PISSI. If that really happens, it would validate Obama's argument.
However, I don't think the US should be authorized to make war everywhere in the world by a 13-year-old vote.
US citizens: call on the other Democratic FCC commissioners
to support
network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Non-denial denials should make reporters suspicious.
Sexism in everyday life manifests by judging women by their femininity, even in contexts where their capabilities and achievements are more pertinent.
In Israel, even ministers describe the killing of Palestinians suspected of murder as an "assassination", and the official in charge says he chose not to try to arrest them.
(This is the last of several topics covered in the article.)
Sweden will officially recognize Palestine.
The Tories would withdraw the UK from the the European convention on human rights.
Turkey will fight to protect Kobani from PISSI.
I too wonder why the US does not destroy PISSI's tanks that are operating there. There is very little danger of mistaking civilians for a tank.
Humanity is not on track to meet its commitment to slow down the rate of loss of biodiversity.
The "CEO" of Hong Kong refused to resign but agreed to talks with the protest movement.
In Hong Kong, 1000 enemies of democracy attacked 100 democracy protesters.
The mass haul-out of walrus is a symptom of damage to a specific ocean ecosystem that depends on sea ice. With more heating, eventually there won't be any sea ice.
Thom Yorke Sells New Album via Paywall Protected Torrent.
This is much more ethical than other internet music sale schemes. The only thing wrong with it is that paying requires identification and nonfree Javascript code. (We've verified that free bittorrent clients work.)
If they accepted anonymous payment and didn't require Javascript to pay, I could endorse it.
Israel is pressuring the UN to strictly control all construction in Gaza on Israel's behalf.
A court ruled the EPA has the power to ban mountaintop mines. Now the EPA needs to do this broadly.
Civilization's survival depends on greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Making coal (and other fossil fuels) scare is a great way to make the market boost investment in renewables.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach judge Fuller.
Australia's record hot September, a year ago, would have been a freak occurrence 50 years ago. Global heating has made it a fairly likely event that will happen once every 6 years or so.
Australia proposes to drop previous nuclear weapons controls when exporting uranium to India.
A US judge rejected Obama's demand for a secret hearing about the torture of Guantanamo force feeding.
Germany imposes internet filtering on routers (which I suppose includes those in ISPs as well as those in people's homes), blocking sites with no trial, and claims that the names of the censored sites are a "secret".
A site that posted the list of blocked domains was threatened with blockage itself.
Germany also made a rather shocking claim that posting this list in the US is illegal under US law, on the grounds that some of the censored sites display "child pornography".
Some works are disgusting, but censorship is more disgusting.
"Child pornography" is an all-purpose excuse to attack human rights on the internet. The FBI and Holder are now using it as an excuse to demand to be able to snoop on everyone's computers. This "cure" is worse than the disease.
Everyone: Participate in the Global Frackdown on Oct 11.
US citizens:
call
on Georgia to stop blocking 50,000 voters' registrations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on
Congress to pass the Smarter Sentencing Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Railroad companies want to take 7 years to replace the explosion-prone tanker cars used for transporting oil.
Instead, transporting oil should simply be banned starting now. Any time some activity with fossil fuel causes a second problem in addition to global heating, we should ban that activity. If we ban enough of them, it may reduce the use of fossil fuel enough to avert global heating disaster.
New York City is building a 10-mile-long seawall/recreation-area to prevent flooding for a few decades.
If we don't stop pumping CO2 into the air, no seawall will protect New York City.
A town in Florida is under the perpetual legal control of a rich religious extremist who gets support from religious extremist elected officials and religious extremists on the Supreme Court.
Leaked recordings show that the Federal Reserve is too cozy with Goldman Sachs.
This may be partly because the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks.
US protests blocking unloading of Israeli ships have spread to Tampa.
A meeting of Nobel peace prize winners was cancelled because South Africa would not give the Dalai Lama a visa to attend.
US media supported democracy in Egypt for 6 weeks, but is now firmly (with the US government) on the side of military repression.
In Sudan, women get flogged for not covering their hair. Jailing is common, for women who aren't totally submissive.
Corruption has been discovered at the center of the UK's cabinet, in someone who is not a minister.
The ministers are overtly corrupt.
US thugs and prosecutors are distributing software to "protect children", which is really spyware.
Americans are so insanely obsessed with overprotecting children that you can get them to swallow almost any form of abuse in the name of doing that.
Stiglitz: The euro-zone austerity has caused tremendous harm, all of which could have been avoided.
If you judge these budget cuts in terms of the supposed goals of nations' policies, they are failure. But they are very effective as an intentional shock (as Naomi Klein puts it) to transfer wealth to the plutocrats.
Small satellites, "cubesats", are being placed in long-lived orbits thus increasing the danger of collisions that generate space debris.
The disaster shown in the movie Gravity is in fact happening, though far more slowly than in the movie. The question is whether we can find a way to stop it.
In the mean time, we should not do stupid things that are likely to speed it up.
Israeli fanatics, aided by soldiers, forced a Palestinian family out of its apartment in Jerusalem.
The army regularly helps them establish outposts that the government says it has not authorized. (It is misleading to call only these colonies "illegal", since they are all illegal under international law.)
The army demolished an apartment building in Abu Dis, a Palestinian town just across the annexation wall from Jerusalem, not giving the inhabitants time to remove their belongings.
The Palestinian Authority had given permission to build additional three floors, but Israel treats those permits as invalid as an excuse to practice systematic harassment of Palestinians.
Facebook now allows people to use aliases, but only if they are generally known by those aliases.
This is not much better than the previous "real names" policy. You can't have one account to show your boss and your parents and another for your friends.
Putin remains, in spirit, a Soviet secret policeman who watched the East German tyranny collapse. He is determined to attack any challenge to the regime pre-emptively, to prevent protesters from winning.
Nothing will convince Putin let go, but sooner or later he will die or become incapacitated. Economic sanctions against Russia may convince Putin's successors not to continue his tyranny.
Single Mothers Are the Real Casualties in Cameron's Class War.
Israel agreed to allow Gazans to fish 6 miles from shore, but unilaterally went back on the agreement, and has attacked fishermen just a mile from shore.
Some Hong Kong students are preparing for a theoretical Chinese invasion.
How concentration of wealth hampers efforts to make a sustainable civilization.
Another danger from fracking: mining the fine-grain sand it uses can poison water and air.
The UK has grown in GDP since the economic crisis, but workers' pay remains lower than it was before the crisis.
The average decrease is just a few percent, so the UK government plans to cut aid to the working poor.
The Tories won't be satisfied until they have millions of Britons living in closets.
A commercial carbon-capture coal-burning power plant has opened.
In principle this can be part of a solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If other forms of fossil fuel are cheaper, a simple tax can make them more expensive.
Subsidizing fossil fuel use is harmful, but subsidizing a decrease in the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use makes sense.
Uri Avnery: Palestinian President Abbas offers Israel a partner for negotiations, provided the negotiations are sincere.
Avnery says it is an exaggeration to call the attack on Gaza "genocide", but according to the official definition, the accusation may be valid.
This case, imposing destructive conditions of life on a part of the targeted people that are likely to kill some fraction of the victims, but nowhere near all of the victims, seems to be an edge case. I tend to think it should not be considered genocide. The official definition may be a little too broad, depending on how it is interpreted.
However, I think that is a side issue. Provoking a war as an opportunity to kill and wound 10,000 people is a great crime regardless of whether it qualifies as "genocide".
It's Time to Shout Stop on This War on the Living World.
The world needs economic growth for the benefit of the poor, which can be done together with less waste for the rich; but that is not what plutocratic governments are likely to do.
Neocons hope to pressure Obama into attacking Assad as well as PISSI.
(PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.)
California has implemented "gun restraining orders": if you feel a relative is likely to shoot people, you can ask a judge to order his guns taken away.
In Israel, people who disagree with prevailing hatred of Palestinians are fired, attacked, and get death threats.
Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo prisoner and now human rights investigator, was imprisoned in the UK and accused of terrorism after he went to Syria to investigate evidence of UK torture.
The UK government will violate any rights to prevent the facts about its torture from being brought out in court.
The loss of ice in Antarctica is big enough to affect the Earth's gravity as measured by satellites.
Melting is unlikely to continue at 500 cubic kilometers per year. The greenhouse gases we have already emitted will make the atmosphere hotter, and melting will speed up.
Florida thugs tased and arrested a woman as she was walking away after asking about arrests of other people.
I wonder whether she was concerned on general principles or because she saw something that looked wrong.
How US corporate media promote US wars.
MEPs are concerned that the European Commission wants to cancel conservation policies and deregulate instead.
Deregulation of business means that plutocrats have less in their way as they build businesses that make profit for them while poisoning you.
A food aid worker in Syria tweeted the coordinates of a bunker being used by PISSI. PISSI says it will kill him for this.
This shows why humanitarian aid workers should remain neutral — so that they can get the support of all sides in a conflict.
The US spends almost 70 billion dollars a year on "intelligence agencies", but they hardly ever predict the major events that the US might rationally want them to predict.
They probably do a good job of suppressing many journalists and protesters.
The lack of sea ice has forced 35,000 walruses to go ashore in Alaska, rather than resting on sea ice to take quick trips to feed.
This surely makes it hard for them to eat, and will therefore interfere with reproduction.
China's efforts to keep the public ignorant of protests in Hong Kong show occasional slips.
Nonetheless, we have found no way to defeat the tyranny of internet censorship, which has spread to many supposedly "free" countries including France and the UK.
The US public health defenses that prevent an outbreak of Ebola in the US.
The scandal is that extractivism and short-sightedness won't let Sierra Leone and Liberia have the medical systems necessary to prevent Ebola outbreaks there.
A hoax about a show of "invisible art" satirizes the art world.
The most bizarre part is that there really is invisible "art".
Modi's government plans a big increase in coal burning, and hopes that a parallel investment in renewable energy will distract from the fact that this pushes human civilization closer to the invisible edge of the cliff.
A zero-waste (or else recycled materials) restaurant in the UK.
A US court declined to stop Detroit from continuing to shut off poor residents' water supply.
Citizens plan to continue their resistance.
Polio is resurging in Pakistan as a result of religious extremists that fight against vaccination.
A gang of Mexican thugs killed and kidnaped around 60 students, perhaps because the thugs are connected with a drug gang.
In Mexico (aside from one state), women are imprisoned for years for having abortions.
Outgoing Attorney General Holder has joined the US government campaign against online privacy.
The former Aral Sea dried up completely this summer.
Many US thug departments want to return military equipment that the Pentagon says is "on loan" to them, but the Pentagon won't take the equipment back.
US citizens: tell HUD to stop selling mortgages to wall street.
US citizens:
call
on the USDA to abandon its plan to let poultry companies do their
own inspections.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Only a government working for the foxes would put them in charge of the hen house.
Brazil's government has successfully given a larger fraction of GNP to the non-rich, lifting millions out of poverty, by adopting non-plutocratic policies.
"Open-plan" offices appear to harm workers' health and productivity.
I wonder why businesses use them. The savings in rent can hardly be enough to be the reason.
The Australian spy agency can get permission to snoop on the entire internet by getting just one warrant.
Ireland will have a referendum on abolishing the crime of "blasphemy".
US citizens: support taking away tax exemption from professional sports leagues.
A World Bank carbon offset plan involved kicking people off their lands so that a forest could grow.
This is a fundamental conflict, and human population growth makes it worse.
The UK Conservatives are so embarrassed by the growth of renewable energy that they have decided not to report statistics on it.
They are in cahoots with fossil fuel and nuclear power companies, for which this growth is an inconvenient embarrassment.
Obama is trying to cover up torture by holding Guantanamo torture hearings in secret.
Detroit's water shutoffs for the poor have been approved by a plutocratic court.
The Obama regime wants to spend lots of money making more plutonium cores for nuclear weapons. Never mind that the US has lots of extra ones in storage.
US hospitals in HMOs hire doctors in the emergency room who are not in the HMO — so that the doctors can gouge patients.
A former LA Times reporter, covering the CIA, showed his stories to the CIA to get approval of them.
Gitmo Hunger Strikes Are a Cry for Help. Why Is the US Fighting Back with Secret Torture?
Apple may have to return tens of millions of euros in illegal state funds to the Irish state.
The misogyny of ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel spills over constantly to seating on airlines.
When it happens on airlines, it is funny, but in Israel it makes secular Jews think of emigrating. I don't think Arabs will destroy Israel (most of the governments no longer even say they want to). Orthodox theocracy will do it.
Nicaragua's planned canal would destroy and pollute forests where endangered species live.
I have to wonder whether a railroad might do a better job. Now that containers make it quick and easy to load and unload ships, the time it takes to move cargo from ship to train is only a matter of how long a ship must wait to be unloaded. Building more port facilities can reduce that to any level.
A train line could carry the containers from one shore to the other faster than a ship could go through the canal. If one train line isn't enough, even ten parallel tracks would hurt the forest and the surrounding inhabitants less than a canal.
Animals can run across the tracks, but it would be easy to make bridges across the train lines since trains are much less tall than ships.
Press Release by Occupy Central with Love & Peace (Hong Kong).
Mass protests have succeeded in Hong Kong before.
Australia's hottest ever recorded spring and summer, a year ago, were 2000 times more likely due to the global heating that has occurred in recent decades.
Comparing the video of the killing of John Crawford with what the thugs said had happened shows their story was false.
The thugs call that "testilying".
A nurse in Kenya has been sentenced to death for an underground abortion which went wrong, but Kenya's restrictive abortion law is the real killer.
WWF estimates that Earth has lost half its wild animals since 40 years ago. They have been wiped out by human activity and its consequences.
I think the count refers to vertebrates only.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to put an end to the quota system for keeping unauthorized immigrants in prison.
The quota system means that they always keep the prison full, and if there aren't enough unauthorized immigrants that there's a reason to imprison, they have to fill the bed with someone else that there is no reason to imprison. It's as wrong as giving thugs a daily quota for traffic tickets.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Iran executed a religious innovator for "heresy".
For cover, other charges were listed with no evidence presented.
Old people change their political and ethical views as much as younger adults, and they tend to change in the direction of greater tolerance.
Is it right or wrong for Australia to mine and export uranium?
The FCC requires local thug departments to sign a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, as an excuse to keep the use of cell phone snooping devices secret.
The text of the NDA itself is also secret. Nice of them to at least admit that the contract is an NDA.
Racism in the US is more pervasive than even black Americans realize.
So [Tory Minister] Brooks Newmark Sent Some Explicit Pictures — Why Should He Resign?
I am glad to see prominent rejection of the absurdly exaggerated importance given to politician's private sex lives. The same foolish idea was the basis for impeaching President Clinton.
That Tory minister is not fit to be in office because he's on the plutocratic side. The same was true of Clinton. Their sex lives were none of our business and not relevant at all.
Russia will block access to Facebook, Twitter and Google unless they register and keep all data on Russian users in Russia.
That policy would make the users safer (perhaps) from NSA spying but more vulnerable to spying by the ex-KGB. For people in Russia, the Russian state is much more of a threat than the American state, so this law oppresses them.
By contrast, the European Union has better data protection law than the US, so requiring European users' data to be kept in Europe is an improvement in their privacy.
However, that improvement will only fully take effect if the EU prevents the US from subpoena'ing user data that subsidiaries of US companies keep in Europe.
Hong Kong Surprises Itself with the Exuberance And Spontaneity of Protests.
Thugs were unable to shut the protests down.
So the government withdrew the thugs.
Protesters have again blocked an Israeli ship from unloading cargo in the port of Oakland.
The al Qa'ida affiliate in Syria has joined up with PISSI (the pseudo-Islamic state). This will simplify Obama's argument that Congressional authorization for war against al Qa'ida covers fighting PISSI.
Fighting PISSI might offer a path towards ending the fighting between Assad and the other Syrian rebels.
What to call the theocratic state in Syria and Iraq? Calling it the "Islamic State" endorses their claim to represent Islam. That's dubious, since most Muslims say otherwise; it also plays into their hands.
Since it stands for a twisted and distorted version of Islam, it is really a pseudo-Islamic state. Thus, I propose PISSI, for Pseudo-Islamic State of Syria and Iraq.
Can we trust Apple's improved support for users' privacy?
Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore [Global Heating] And What To Do about It.
Car loans in the US now come with remote control car shutoff devices.
I don't think this should be allowed.
The ACLU is suing Oklahoma thugs over their private network for keeping records on lots of citizens.
A member of B'liar's cabinet says that the UK, by fighting ISIS, is repeating the mistake he made.
The Ferguson thug chief apologized for a secondary detail of the killing of Michael Brown. His apology has not been accepted.
The Taliban captured a visiting Afghan-Australian and tortured him to death, apparently just because of his ethnic group.
A new invention uses 80% of incoming sunlight to generate electricity and desalinate water.
What Price Artistic Freedom When the Bullies Turn Up?
"What the Isis jihadis lose in strength from the air strikes they may gain in legitimacy".
US citizens: call on Obama to take action for real net neutrality.
The Washington Post recommends governments cut retirement benefits for government employees, so Bezos (its new owner) decided to do this to the staff of the Washington Post.
Veterans of the Bush forces are suing to get precise information about where DU (dirty uranium) weapons were used, to gauge whether they were exposed to this carcinogen.
US citizens: support the No Federal Contracts for Corporate Deserters Act.
Indian Prime Minister Modi went to New York for a triumph but encountered a lawsuit from victims of the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat that he is suspected of encouraging.
The US Forest Service claims to have banned commercial photography (including for journalism) in federal wildlife areas.
A Pennsylvania prison employee was raped by a prisoner, and the state claimed in court that it was the employee's fault.
Everyone: phone Walmart at 1-800-WALMART to tell that company to give Thelma Moore her job back. She was fired for being injured while pregnant.
The proposed European Commissioner for the environment seems to be tied to Malta's policy allowing mass shooting of migrating birds, and people suspect his choice was part of a larger plan to sabotage EU environmental protection.
Effects of global heating are causing damage around the world, even though it is just the beginning.
If you are young and in the
US, you
may become an environmental refugee later in this century.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The one privately run NHS hospital in Britain has been neglecting patients.
Why am I not surprised?
An in-depth study shows that a feeling of being subject to collective punishment is a primary ingredient in the making of a terrorist fanatic.
The head of the FBI condemned tech companies that have improved security against massive surveillance, saying they are helping people "place themselves beyond the law".
That's a falsehood; people have no legal obligation to open their window shades to help the FBI spy on their private lives. It is the US spy agencies that have placed itself "beyond the law".
Will African palm oil be produced by local farmers or by corporate plantations?
US citizens: call on Obama to choose a new attorney general that will stop the cruelty of the War on Drugs.
Everyone: call on Google
to stop
funding politicians that deny global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Here's info on how Google funds them (and other companies too).
Everyone: Phone Ebay and call on that company
to stop
supporting ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
ALEC pushes plutocratic laws at the state level in the US.
Why The Islamic State Is Not Islamic.
I am thinking about using another name for it; perhaps Da'esh.
Abbas, speaking to the UN, condemned the US-sponsored sham "peace negotiations" and said that any new negotiations must be aimed at creating an independent Palestine.
Groups that campaign for peace generally oppose Obama's new war in
Iraq and Syria. They
recommend a
different way to deal with ISIS.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
I support providing air support to the armies fighting ISIS armies. I've explained why that is urgently needed, and less likely to result in civilian casualties.
Aside from that, I agree with the peace groups.
Housing: How Many Have to Be Unable to Afford It Before It Becomes a Political Problem?
Expanding use of natural gas in the US will increase future carbon emissions.
Attorney General Holder has made a habit of going soft on criminal big business.
Psychology explains how Burning Man creates a high level of voluntary cooperation.
The word "market" means buying and selling. To use that word to refer to altruistic cooperation is an abuse of language; I am not going to use the word that way.
Australia's new ban on journalism will imprison journalists and their sources.
If it had been in effect two years ago, articles we have read about Australia's spying would have led to imprisonment of the authors.
Uzbekistan holds thousands of political prisoners.
Biometric ID in the US began as a scheme to stop slaves from escaping.
The thugs that killed John Crawford had recently seen a video encouraging them to act fast against people who are shooting other people.
Great work, except that they didn't stop to find that out that John Crawford was not shooting anyone.
Julian Assange: 'When you post to Facebook, you're being a rat.'
I've stated the same point in my speeches for a few years, asking people not to post photos of me to Facebook and explaining why.
Charlo Greene's boosted the marijuana legalization campaign in Alaska by quitting her TV job on the air.
The CIA helped a few major US newspapers nitpick the CIA-cocaine scandal story to death.
It seems unlikely that the people in charge of each of those newspapers ordered the major biased efforts spontaneously. It must have been coordinated somehow. Since these CIA documents don't show how, it remains to be investigated.
Turkey has started blocking the smuggling of oil from ISIS in Syria, but it is also blocking refugees from leaving that part of Syria.
US citizens: sign this petition for Congress to limit US war in Iraq and Syria, regarding both time and methods.
Los Angeles legislated a $15/hr minimum wage for hotel workers in large hotels.
If some hotels move to nearby towns, that will show the whole region ought to have a higher minimum wage.
Cambodian protesters say Cambodia doesn't respect human rights enough to be a fit place to send refugees who went to Australia.
UK cuts in legal aid are supposedly meant to save money, but they won't do much of that; rather they will deny justice to the non-rich.
The reaction to Ebola is crippling food production in Liberia.
The West Has No Plan for Winning the War against Isis — Only Avoiding Defeat.
Indonesia's lame duck parliament voted to abolish direct presidential elections — which seem to offer too much democracy.
Australians held 30 protests to keep the existing target for renewable energy.
The US attacked ISIS oil wells and refineries to cut off its funding.
It seems like an intelligent way to damage ISIS, but it risks causing horrible pollution.
UK schools teach creationist pseudoscience and some universities recognize it academically.
A large EU research project for containing oil spills from undersea oil wells has the stated goal of encouraging public support for such wells.
Research on containing spills is a valid goal; risking the spills is not.
Germany's first 20th century genocide, in Namibia, trained many of the people who carried out Nazi genocide.
Students in many US high schools protested the dress rules imposed on girls by the American Taliban, and the nasty punishments used to enforce them.
One giant beer conglomerate controls half the US market. Four companies control almost 80%.
That's about as bad as the ISP market, the book publishing market, and the recorded music market.
I think we should take whatever steps are needed so that no company, unless it is a regulated monopoly, controls more than 5% of any field.
50 years ago, students at UC Berkeley defeated an attempt to control them with censorship. Today, under plutocratic rule, students are controlled with debt they can't pay, because the plutocrats got out of paying taxes.
Attacking ISIS in Syria, without authorization from the UN Security Council, violates the treaties that created the UN, and Obama's argument that it is Iraq's right of self-defense is invalid.
If it were valid, it would equally well authorize Assad to bomb Turkey.
The ethical argument that convinces me it is right to bomb ISIS forces in the field as they try to conquer cities and big dams is that we must protect those people from horrible oppression including mass murder. I don't know how that plays out against the UN charter, but that's not the argument Obama made.
In Europe: join protests on Oct 11 against unfair trade treaties.
A hill in England that hosts old trees, nightingales and rare butterflies is slated for building; all those things will be lost.
The UK urgently needs more council housing, but that does not require destroying rare bits of nature. It is much better to replace low-density housing near train stations with apartment buildings.
Advice to distance yourself from painful experiences, not rehearse them as a grievance.
If the painful experience was an injustice, the one feeling you shouldn't try to weaken is your support for others to whom such an injustice happens.
The few remaining wolves in Wyoming are once again protected.
Protection enabled wolves to recover, but some states don't like that, and seek to use the successful recovery of the species as an excuse to wipe it out again.
$26 Billion in US Aid Later, the Iraqi Military Is a Total Disaster.
A Briton in Pakistan, who has been charged with blasphemy, survived an assassination attempt by a thug.
This law is why I refuse to visit Pakistan.
I recommend that the US and other countries require all visitors to make a public pledge in support of freedom of speech (which would include condemning laws against "blasphemy") before allowing them to enter.
Pakistan is not the only country that unjustly punishes "blasphemy". In India, web sites can be forcibly shut down if they "offend" any religion. And the Maldive Islands have imposed censorship on book publishing as part of Muslim extremism.
Sierra Leone has imposed quarantines on large zones containing more than 1/3 of the population.
I am skeptical that this will be effective for stopping the spread of Ebola. Surely there are infected people in each of the zones that the country is now divided into.
Fatah
and Hamas Agree Deal for Unity Government to Take Control of Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Both the US and Iran have their blind spots when talking about ISIS.
A thug that punched a woman in California with no grounds has agreed to resign.
Good, but he should be prosecuted.
A coal train protester says ending coal shipments is the government's job, but since it failed to do its job, the responsibility fell to him.
Scottish protesters shut down a factory making components for Israeli military drones.
Seattle has banned neonicotinoid pesticides in the city.
It also will fine people that don't do composting. I am not sure how this is supposed to work for people that live in apartments and have no gardens.
US politicians want to cancel the citizenship of people that support ISIS.
There are crimes that we have good reason to punish, some by life imprisonment, but denial of citizenship is never legitimate. (It also violates treaties to make someone stateless.)
Sad to say, the US has a history of revoking citizenship of immigrants for political reasons. For instance, Emma Goldman's US citizenship was revoked because of her political activities: draft resistance and birth control.
Egypt is systematically repressing gays (extralegally) after a video was posted of an unofficial wedding of two men.
In Romania, the commander of a prison under Ceausescu is being prosecuted.
When will the US prosecute people who presided over torture in Guantanamo?
Facebook with its "real name" policy makes itself the arbiter of other people's selves.
Students in Colorado walked out and protested a right-wing plan for one-sided education in obeying authority.
Cameron says the UK plans to phase out old coal power plants over the next 15 years, but does not make a clear commitment to replace them with safe renewable power.
Egyptian "president" al-Sisi has made a decree that threatens human rights NGOs with prosecution.
What Obama says about fighting in Iraq is misleading due to perverse redefinitions of common terms such as "imminent attack", "civilians", "militants" and "ground troops".
The pro-business party in New Zealand won reelection through a long-term organized practice of smearing opponents through proxies.
Over a million people could be infected with Ebola virus by January if it keeps spreading at the current rate.
Sri Lanka continues to torture Tamils regularly, often demanding information about Tamil refugees in the UK. Meanwhile, the UK continues deporting those refugees to Sri Lanka.
This is prima facie evidence that the UK minister in charge of deportations is callously blind to justice, law and humanity.
Bill McKibben critiques Obama's speech about global heating.
US citizens: call for strict limits on shipping oil on trains.
Everyone: call on Amazon to make commitments for renewable energy.
Talking about "inequality" covers up the painful reality of poverty.
The ACLU is suing to free people that Mississippi jailed for as much as a year without charges or lawyers.
Australia's government is using far-away ISIS as an excuse for a massive and broad attack on Australians' freedom, including imprisonment of reporters and whistleblowers, massive surveillance, and punishment without trial.
ISIS is a horrible threat to people in Iraq and Syria; for Australia, the danger of ISIS is a pinprick compared with this.
Walmart's security camera shows that John Crawford was not threatening anyone, bothering anyone, or pointing the BB rifle at anyone when thugs shot him. He was standing still, talking on his phone.
A passerby told the thugs that Crawford was pointing the BB rifle at people, and the thugs who killed Crawford falsely repeated that claim, but they shot him without taking a couple of seconds of care to check it.
If thugs can get away with this sort of excuse, nobody is safe. However, whites are in less danger than blacks: people are less likely to falsely perceive whites as threatening others, and thugs are less likely to shoot whites before asking questions.
Plutocratic extremists in the US want to set retired people and children against each other, hoping parents will blame the retired and fight them for the dwindling share of the nation's production that plutocrats allow to everyone else.
Everyone: call on Myriad Genetics to stop trying to patent mutant human genes.
Of course, what is really needed is a law to eliminate all such patents in Australia, that's no reason not to pressure the companies that try to exploit the existing bad law.
Palo Alto's electricity is carbon-neutral, and cheap compared with the rest of California.
However, that doesn't include the cars; there is still a long way to go.
The thugs that shot John Crawford, while he carried a BB-gun he was about to buy, will not be prosecuted.
The US legal system, through a combination of its official rules and its unstated prejudices, empowers thugs to shoot innocent black men from time to time, and to harass them continually.
Kidnaping and killing three Israeli teenagers was a horrible crime, by every day standards, but Israel used it as an excuse to commit a crime 400 times as big.
Google gave money to Stanford for research, but made Stanford accept the condition not to use it to fund privacy research.
[later] It seems the original report was based on a misunderstanding; everyone now says there was no such restriction.
The US and Kiribati will create vast marine reserves in the Pacific.
Greenpeace protesters in the UK blocked a coal train and packed the coal into bags saying to return it to Putin.
A mass protest in Tokyo against restarting nuclear power plants.
Two Republican legislators criticized a Democratic candidate for "plagiarizing" part of the text of a policy proposal. The same two Republicans did not hesitate to copy a nasty ALEC model bill and present it as their own work.
The concept of plagiarism is not applicable to policy proposals and laws. It would be total folly to refrain from advocating a good policy just because someone else has advocated it before.
Scientists must resist the idea that science is above politics and that they ought to be apolitical.
Today, several areas of science tie directly to the most important political issues of our age, including global heating, privacy, and toxic agricultural practices.
Trying again to hold British soldiers in the Bush forces responsible for torture carried out in cahoots with the US government.
Taking metaphors seriously is no way to understand an important issue such as global heating.
A thug in Seattle expressed his hostility to another official by giving 80 people fines for smoking marijuana, apparently illegally.
China pledged to publish soon a schedule for capping and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
If China goes through with this, the US had better do it too.
Most of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions comes from China, the US, and India.
Tasmania's proposed law, meant to crush protests against logging, will exclude places such as stores and public areas. But it will still be aimed at forests, factories, and farms, so it is still unacceptable.
Australia is trying to make asylum seekers go to Papua New Guinea, including some who are gay — but they would be persecuted there.
It plans to force them to Cambodia instead.
Turkey
will
participate in fighting ISIS.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
This support is clearly useful, but even though Turkey's government is not as bad as Saudi Arabia's or Bahrain's or Qatar's, it is still Islamist and an enemy of human rights.
China awarded Duck Duck Go its most prestigious internet medal: censorship.
Plutocrat-imposed poverty in the UK shows up in children: half the children of the age to start school are not mentally developed enough. Their parents are too short of money to do what the children need.
The Tory Party has condemned those children to a life of backwardness, but Labour says it will make only marginal improvements.
Dinesh D'Souza confessed to laundering donations for right-wing political campaigns.
Interviews with civilians in Raqqa about the US airstrikes there.
Spain's right-wing government has given up on attacking abortion rights.
However, it has already made a large fraction of Spaniards poor, and attacked the right to protest.
An Italian town's last-ditch effort to help the unemployed people is to give some of them funds to try to emigrate.
Israeli soldiers found the two Palestinians that were suspected of kidnaping and murdering three Israeli teenagers, and killed them.
Why weren't they arrested instead? Maybe they fought and made it impossible to arrest them. Or maybe the Israelis preferred to kill them.
The US is now allied with Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, in fighting in Syria.
It makes strategic sense to ally with Sunni monarchies to undermine the claims of ISIS to the loyalty of Sunnis. But I can't understand how anyone can be "proud to stand shoulder to shoulder" with these vicious regimes. Saudi Arabia beheads people regularly, and oppresses women almost as badly as ISIS does. As for Bahrain, remember the protests and the massacres?
Google has broken with ALEC.
Being willing to work with ALEC even over some other issue suggests a moral blindness.
The US started air strikes against ISIS in Syria, including in the city of Raqaa, with cooperation from Jordan.
An announcement on CNN said, "A military official said the strikes are meant to target the ability of the terror group to command and control, resupply and train." There is nothing wrong with those goals in principle, but this means the attacks are not against troops in the field — and therefore are likely to kill civilians.
If the people living in Raqaa resent ISIS and wish they could kick ISIS out, they will welcome these attacks; if some of them are killed, they will consider that a necessary evil and blame ISIS. But if they don't resent ISIS, they will blame the US for those deaths, and give ISIS more support.
Obama says administrative measures will close the "tax inversion" loophole.
It will be good to shut it this way, but that ought to be firmed up in law.
The
spying-industrial
complex: 5 companies that get contracts from US intelligence
agencies and continually exaggerate the danger of terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Terrorists do exist, but the threat they pose to Americans is minute compared with the danger of cars, smoking, and the plutocratic regime that leaves tens of millions of Americans with no health care except the emergency room.
Terrorism hype is striking Australia too, and being used as the excuse to attack civil liberties there.
The Committee to Protect Journalists rebuked the Obama regime again for its harassment and prosecution of journalists.
400,000 people joined in the climate march in New York City.
This was followed by the Flood Wall Street protest. The protesters couldn't get inside the stock exchanges, but pointed out that the ocean will get in, unless we stop the global heating that raises sea level.
Private US colleges are demanding more money from poor families while offering scholarships to the wealthy.
Hong Kong students have called a week of strikes to demand democratic elections.
Australia has been cutting the budget for intelligence agencies. Proposed attacks on human rights are apparently meant to compensate for that.
Coping with the effects of global heating is leaving some poor countries short of funds for health care and education.
Extending unemployment benefits has no effect on when or whether people get back to work. But it sure helps them avoid living in the street unless/until they get work again.
What does help get people work is government spending directed in ways that create a lot of jobs — not spending on banks or weapons. For instance, unemployment benefits feed money into the economy, and the recipients are sure to spend it right away on job-creating activities.
Almost 40% of potentially employed people in the US are not working, because there aren't jobs for them. Most of them are in some degree of hardship. Automation is likely to make this a lot worse.
The solution is a basic income for everyone.
A courageous Australian MP calls for former prime minister Howard to be prosecuted by the ICC for starting a war based on lies.
Hear, hear!
The Urgent
Case for
a Ban on Fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans in Georgia are blocking 51,000 voter registrations, apparently because they are from minority groups.
Australia has ordered some sort of "preventative detention" for people associated in some way with an alleged terror plot. Everyone is forbidden to publish any information about what is going on, including (it appears) the names of the people imprisoned.
Are those people's friends talking about their absence?
The UK may sneak secretly into a ground war in Iraq using commando groups, while imposing new secrecy rules to thwart democracy.
The global economy needs to cut its carbon intensity by 6% per year from now till 2100 to avoid more than 2 degrees of heating.
And that's assuming good luck, that we don't hit an unexpected positive feedback that sends heating shooting ahead.
Australia's government plans to increase exports of fossil fuels and uranium, effectively aiming to push the rest of the world to cause global heating disaster.
Western Australia killed an aboriginal woman by jailing her for unpaid parking tickets and denying her medical care.
Queensland is returning 20,000 square km of land to aboriginal traditional owners.
Europeans took the land of Australia from the aboriginal peoples, and it is right to give some of it back.
However, I do not approve of the aboriginal culture's idea that major aspects of that culture, its laws in effect, should be the property of small groups. Secret law is not law. It does far more harm in Obama's hands, or the Australian government's hands, than in the aboriginal people's hands, because the latter have comparatively little power. It is wrong in principle nonetheless.
29 single mothers, made homeless by the UK's crush-the-poor policies and threatened with being sent 200 miles away, have occupied a boarded-up building in their town.
China sentenced Ilham Tohti to life in prison for publishing political views.
The US is not in a position to sneer at China, given what it continues to do in Guantanamo.
ISIS released a video calling on supporters to kill non-Muslims in Australia, Canada, Europe and the US.
It is a valid point that this video shows ISIS does not have the power to carry out such attacks itself.
A more important point becomes visible when we consider why ISIS made this statement. They can't help knowing that it will inflame war-fever in those countries, so that must be their aim. They must want those countries to engage in an overt war that will boost support for ISIS among the people it rules. They are telling us, enemies they can barely touch, to "come out and fight like a man" so they can profit from that mistake.
One Australian politician questions the logic of trying to destroy ISIS by war. "We must curb our instinctive reaction and look at the root causes."
Jordan's participation in the attack on ISIS in Syria was a good move for Obama, since it will undermine ISIS's message to Sunnis.
The thug who accosted Danielle Watts had no legal basis to do so, and he handcuffed for calmly exercising the legal rights everyone is supposed to have in the US.
Three cheers for Danielle Watts!
Walmart is dumping the cost of new uniforms on its workers by calling the uniforms a "dress code".
A thug tased a teenage driver, apparently because the car's electric window on the passenger side did not open. Dragged out of the car, the driver's head seems to have hit the ground, causing a grave brain injury.
This is unremarkable in the US, but this teenager was not a mere citizen. He was the son of another thug. So shit is hitting the fan.
I hope that kid gets justice, but it won't be a lot of justice if it applies only when the victim is the child of a thug.
After Scotland almost voted to exit the UK, will that be enough to convert the timid Labour Party into something ready to fix what is wrong?
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
pledged
to divest from fossil fuel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
In addition to punishing fossil fuel companies' stock price — which could be cancelled out if other investors buy in — the divestment movement can concentrate plutocratic lobbying power in favor of decarbonization. Plutocratic lobbying power is an injustice, and to restore democracy we must get rid of it, but in the mean time setting some of it against global heating is a step forward.
The French government, under the Socialist Party, plans to make France
"more
competitive". That's the code word for "surrender to the
plutocrats."
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The Pentagon gives military weapons even to thug departments that the US government considers likely to violate people's rights. It is a mistake to suppose that the other thug departments won't do this. Hardly any of them should get military weapons.
The existence of a SWAT team impels rules to use it frequently, and that use puts people's lives in danger. The US needs 20 SWAT teams in cities distributed around the country; more than that is an avoidable risk.
Why Ordinary People Bear Economic Risks and Donald Trump Doesn't.
India denied entry to a Greenpeace official, as part of a broad attack against Greenpeace.
The Modi government is turning out to be an even greater sellout to business than the Congress Party was.
There is evidence suggesting Darrien Hunt was cosplaying when thugs shot him.
Human CO2 emissions, by acidifying the oceans, are reducing the ocean's ability to absorb CO2. This means more of the emissions will go into the atmosphere and global heating will speed up.
Arrogant sports teams bully US cities into funding stadiums for them, promising the cities economic growth — which benefits only a few, if it happens at all.
A humorous article, Futon Physics
New puns in Italian
Congress is considering a bill to allow resale of devices that contain software covered by EULAs.
This is a first step in the right direction. The right of first sale should trump all EULAs, and so should personal modification.
The article refers to DRM (digital restrictions management) by the unfortunate term "digital locks". This grants them legitimacy by comparing them to ordinary locks. Please criticize that term when you see it.
While We March for the Climate, Governments Meet with Polluters.
Uber drivers are getting shafted; Uber can arbitrarily cut their pay, and they have to work 15 hours a day. Some are trying to unionize.
Uber requires running nonfree software, too; if you value your freedom, you won't consider Uber an option.
We should not accept the whitewash label of "sharing economy" for companies like Uber. A more accurate term is "piecework subcontractor economy".
The University of Dayton has decided to divest from fossil fuels and invest some of those funds in green energy.
The folly of repeated "lockdown" drills in US schools.
Thousands protested in Moscow against aggression in Ukraine.
Only in the US would people propose a law to punish parents simply because their teenage children commit crimes.
Humanity is failing completely to reduce CO2 emissions; they are headed for a record this year.
Afghanistan was unable to conclude an election to choose between two candidates for president, so eventually the two leading candidates made a power-sharing deal.
It does not betoken a government with sufficient unity and strength to fight the Taliban.
Desmond Tutu calls for fighting fossil fuels with the tactics used to fight apartheid, including boycotting anything sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
The US handed over some Pakistani prisoners from its secret prison in Afghanistan to prison in Pakistan.
This Bagram prison is even nastier than Guantanamo; the prisoners have been brought there from around the world, can't even see a lawyer, and the US won't even say who is imprisoned there. In effect, they have been disappeared.
No matter what those men did, or are accused (perhaps spuriously) of doing, it can't justify this.
Libyan Islamists appear to be behind a wave of assassinations of non-Islamists in Benghazi.
In the horrible world where Ebola virus spreads, anyone who comes near you could kill you.
If we stop the spread of Ebola reasonably soon, the long-term population growth will be unaffected. Having "neighbourhood festivities" when a baby is born might be partly responsible for the dangerously high growth rate. We need to do something about that.
How the "privatization" of Britain replaced government services with foreign-controlled monopolies.
Why poor people eat junk food and smoke, and can't make long-term plans that would improve their circumstances: they can barely cope with each week.
Being sleepy all the time makes it harder for people to plan well. When the system imposes that on people, it's the system that must be changed. However, discouragement plays a role too. It is hard to summon up attention for long-term dangers when you know you can't protect yourself from the immediate dangers.
This shows that the US needs to undo the plutocratic changes since 1980, so as to make most people's lives no worse than they were then.
However, it also shows the importance of helping the poor in ways that don't require them to make plans, choose carefully among options, and apply for support. Because they don't have the time for that on top of their daily obligations.
When a woman who did not want to get pregnant has an abortion, it means the system failed to give her the means to avoid pregnancy and she is correcting that failure.
We should help poor women avoid pregnancy by having high school steer students into effective modern birth control, such as implants or IUDs. The state should pay for these, for all women. To refuse is stupid penny-pinching.
If you want to buy Ms Tirado's book, please don't order it, especially not from Amazon. Buy it with anonymous cash in a local independent book store.
UK schools have taken the fingerprints of a million students as if it were nothing.
Assange: Google is effectively the private equivalent of the NSA.
Global heating's effects are all around us, but powerful plutocrats suppress recognition of global heating in the US (and Canada, Australia and the UK). So US cities that want to plan to cope with the consequences expected in the next few decades have to tiptoe around the cause.
The CDT and ACLU reported 5 US massive surveillance programs to the UN as especially threatening to human rights.
Paranoia in Australia: a passenger was kicked off a flight because someone saw him scribbling in a notebook about the fear of terrorism.
This sort of paranoia helps governments attack human rights, which does far more damage than terrorists ever could.
Obama says he won't send ground troops to fight in Iraq, but instead will "forward-deploy" some of the "advisers". In practice, it may be the same thing.
There may be some advantage in this disguise; until ISIS kills some on the battlefield, the US could claim not to have troops fighting in Iraq, much as Putin pretended not to have Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
Warning to Canadians: in the US, thugs are waiting to rob you.
A study gives a preliminary suggestion that common artificial sweeteners can affect intestinal bacteria in some people, causing them to experience high blood sugar levels.
The proposed US law to prevent antibiotic resistance won't help; it will make the system worse.
Ralph Nader: Damaging Our Country from Wars of Choice.
Leading US news editors rebuked Obama for making the US government more secretive and for intimidation of journalists.
Rich countries including the US are going back on their promises to help poor countries cope with the damages of global heating.
It was inevitable that, as those increased, the rich countries would someday face so much expense coping with those increasing damages that they would refuse to help other countries. Eventually the rich countries themselves will be unable to cope.
However, the austerity that the plutocrats have imposed on the US has made it happen sooner.
Australia is drifting into less CO2 emissions, which is good, but means it should adopt a more ambitious target.
New Zealand voters reelected the rulers that spy on them all and lied about it.
One might be tempted to say that they deserve such mistreatment, but that is fallacious. Only half of them chose it — but all are now stuck with it.
Nadya Tolokonnikova continues working in Russia to oppose Putin's regime, and global capitalism on the side.
I don't oppose capitalism as such — the existence of private businesses. However, what some call "global capitalism" is more plutocracy than capitalism as such, and I oppose plutocracy.
Executives of a US peanut plant have been sentenced to prison for falsifying contamination test records. 9 people died from the contamination that they hid this way.
New pun: Fossil Fuels.
California has had the driest three years ever recorded, causing record-breaking fires, and it's expected to get worse in the coming months.
The fire season in the US west has increased, typically, by 70 days since a few decades ago. That is long-term change, global heating at work.
The fires convert trees into carbon dioxide, adding to global heating. Positive feedbacks like this mean that at some point (which we can't predict) global heating will become self-perpetuating.
The fools running the University of California
refused
to divest from fossil fool companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
They think divestment would cut the income for running the university. That's probably true, for the next few years at least. They'd certainly be better off continuing the status quo — but they are fools to think that is what they have chosen.
Have they thought about how much funds the University of California will lose when global heating wrecks the state economy? When drought eliminates half the farming in California, and the forests are burning up, do they think the state will prioritize the university over firefighters? If global heating continues unchecked, some sort of University of California may still exist in 30 years, but it will be a shadow of its present-day self.
If the regents were wiser, they would grab at any chance to avoid that fate. Divestment at least offers a chance.
This is much worse than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They are on the oil train, rolling slowly torwards Lac-Mégantic, and trying to save money by not putting on the brakes.
Republican judges authorized Wisconsin's voter ID law less than two months before the election. 300,000 voters may be disenfranchised, and it would be very hard for them to get IDs even if they can afford to try.
Republicans impose voter ID laws because most citizens that don't have IDs are among the weak who are likely to vote Democrat.
The London thug department apologized to Nordell Edmonson. A gang of thugs pulled him out of his car and hit him with sticks while he was helpless — supposedly because he was driving without insurance.
If he was indeed driving without insurance — I would not take the thugs word for it — he deserved to be tried, not beat up.
Edmonson is not satisfied with payment of compensation, because that helps him only. He wants action to curb the violence of the thugs.
The proposed Australian "anti-terrorism" law would permit torture.
This law is clearly unnecessary; an alleged terrorist plot involving real violence was watched and the planners were arrested yesterday.
Putin has plans to set up means to disconnect the Russian internet from the rest of the world in an "emergency".
"Emergency" in this case means Russians' paying attention to criticism of Putin.
Since the NSA hands over data about Palestinian-Americans' communications to Israel, and Israel uses such data to blackmail Palestinians in Palestine, it looks like the NSA is part of the blackmail system.
Canada's extraction lobbyist hopes that more disasters with oil trains will convince the US to approve Keystone XL.
However, looking at the harm done by extracting it as well as by burning it the best option is to stop transporting that oil in any way.
Ilham Tohti is about to be convicted of bogus charges after a phony trial. His unpardonable crime was to rebuke abuses of power rather than advocate Uighur nationalism.
Pennsylvania has 200,000 abandoned oil wells, and when fracking is done near them, they become channels for leaking methane.
Mexican soldiers captured and then summarily shot 22 people, including members of a drug gang, and others who said they had been kidnaped by the gang.
Egypt's regime has made religion an arm of the state. Atheists have been threatened with arrest.
Yet another NFL football player is charged with violence against a woman: he appears have tried to force his wife to have sex, then hit her and broke her nose. This together with manipulative threats.
Decrease of the human population growth rate has ceased in sub-Saharan Africa. The world's population threatens to grow to 11 billion by 2100.
I don't think it can reach that level — the consequences will cause global disaster before then, and many children will die. But that is a horrible way to limit the population.
Microbeads in toothpaste can hurt users' gums, as well as wildlife after they go down the drain.
India's "Untouchables" Are Still Being Forced to Collect Human Waste by Hand.
There are two wrongs here: the fact that many Indians don't have flushing toilets (which is a matter of poverty and overpopulation) and the fact that certain people are forced to clean them. If caste prejudice were eliminated, the second wrong would be gone but the first wrong would remain.
A California court denied a driver's suit to gain access to the data that license plate cameras have collected about him.
We should not allow license plate cameras to record seeing any particular plate, unless that plate is invalid or sought by court order.
More about enslavement of high tech workers in Malaysia, and suggestions for ending it.
Russian observers say that the vote counting for Scotland's referendum on independence was not done in accord with international norms.
This is a cheap shot — the Scottish referendum should have been run according to standards, but that does not validate Putin's phony elections in the Crimea or in Russia.
Mother Jailed for Sending Semi-Naked Photos of Daughters to Dance Teacher.
It appears that the dance teacher manipulated her into doing this so that her daughters would be admitted or kept in the dance school. He abused his power, but I don't think she should be punished.
Finally, The West Is Acting on Ebola. What Took Us So Long?
The US Air Force allowed an Atheist airman to swear his oath to support the Constitution without citing a deity.
Torture is standard practice for Nigerian thugs.
A fire near Sacramento has burned over 110 square miles and is threatening 2000 houses.
Since global heating is making California more arid, this will be a frequent occurrence in a couple of decades.
The USDA approved GMO corn and soybeans resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, which was used in Agent Orange during the Vietnam war.
Superweeds will experience a temporary setback, but in a few years they will evolve resistance to this chemical too.
Many companies give money to political parties to prevent an issue from ever being discussed.
A US for-profit college company has been sued for predatory lending.
I think it is a good idea to prohibit for-profit schools, and for-profit hospitals too.
Philanthropists are buying the students' loans in order to forgive them.
This is necessary because the US has made it impossible to get rid of student loans through bankruptcy. That law is cruel.
Obama continues to propose to boost exports with antidemocratic "free trade" treaties. The existing ones have not had that effect, but the US Trade Representative is giving Congress fudged statistics to pretend that they did.
Even if they did boost exports, it would not be particularly good, because that principally means more profit for US businesses. Nowadays that growth does little good for US workers, due to the antidemocratic effects of these same treaties. So there is no reason for Americans to make increased exports a goal at all.
How pay toilets were eliminated in the US.
I wish other countries would pass similar laws.
Reports say that Assad has agreed to US bombing of ISIS forces in Syria.
If Assad does indeed help target the attacks, that would be useful since they would be less likely to hit the wrong targets. But I worry about one thing: would Assad dishonestly supply coordinates of non-ISIS rebels, claiming they were ISIS?
Japan's "scientific" whaling has produced just two peer-reviewed papers since 2005.
The papers were based on 9 out of the 3600 minke whales Japan has killed during that time.
Sharif Mobley found a way to phone his wife and told her he was being tortured in Yemen's prison.
It appears that the Obama regime and Yemen's regime are collaborating to imprison him without trial. He faces criminal charges, perhaps bogus, but the Yemen regime is sabotaging the trial by refusing to bring him to court.
Senator Sanders proposes a law to make rich heirs start paying estate tax again.
Japan announced it will disregard the International Whaling Commission's vote to limit whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Big investment groups called for a "stable, reliable and economically meaningful" price on carbon emissions.
What can be learned about Ton Siedsma from one week of his metadata? Quite a lot.
Darrien Hunts' sword had a rounded edge, so he could hardly have seriously threatened anyone with it. It appears that, before the thugs shot him, he was making moves with the sword as a form of pretend play, away from other people.
The most dangerous looking thing about him was his skin color. If you're a black male, in the US, people will often perceive your actions as dangerous; if a while male did the same thing, people would not consider it dangerous. Over and over, this leads thugs to kill innocent people.
A large fraction of the workers in Malaysia's electronics factories are enslaved.
The head of the Lib Dems says he won't let the UK be lured into war with ISIS by provocative videos. There are surely some US politicians that are wise enough to reject that, but the mainstream media don't present them much.
The Silence on Climate Change Is Deafening. It's Time for Us to Get Loud.
The term "climate change" was coined by the denialist movement to make global heating sound neutral rather than dangerous. It makes no sense for us to use that term.
The Tories have been so successful at enriching UK businesses that they have doubled the price of meeting ministers.
Canadian PM Harper will skip the climate summit.
Not surprising, for a government that gags scientists to cover up the unpleasant facts of global heating.
US criticism of Putin's expansionism and destabilization is undermined by several instances where the US did or supported similar actions.
US universities are getting M-16 assault rifles, even grenade launchers, for their campus thugs. It is dangerous for them to have such weapons.
US citizens: sign a statement of support for Greenpeace protesters in Cincinnati, who face ten years' imprisonment under Putinesque charges.
US citizens: Tell House Energy Chair Upton to give the polluters' campaign money to the cleanup of the pipeline spill in his district.
ISIS released another provocative video, this one threatening to attack the White House.
The ISIS propaganda team is clever, and surely expects this to make a lot of US politicians demand war so that they can look tough. I continue to claim that ISIS wants the US to fight so that it can convince Iraqi Sunnis that they have no choice but to support ISIS.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to make
powerplant carbon limits strong enough to do the job.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
A group of thugs (not necessarily official state thugs) attacked a BBC team in Moscow; while the team was reporting the attack to the official thugs, someone erased their computers' memories.
Apparently some of Putin's men wanted to stop them from reporting on a Russian soldier apparently killed in Ukraine.
Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin says that Putin has taken Russia back to "Soviet times of total lies", and that Putin's violence is preparing Russians to support a series of wars.
Putin's nationalist propaganda resembles the US propaganda used to convince Americans to have faith that the US is the "good guy" in every war, in disregard of all truth. However, Putin's version is even stronger.
Here's more about Mikhail Shishkin.
I am saddened by the Americans that grasp at straws to argue that Putin's lies are truth and that the fault lies entirely with Kiev.
There certainly is some wrong on Kiev's side. Its deal with the EU could pave the way for "shock capitalism" and disastrous debt. There are indeed neo-nazi militias fighting for Kiev.
Kiev's rejection of easterners' demands for limited autonomy was unjustified. But none of this alters the nature of Putin's military aggression in Ukraine.
A Pakistani professor who promoted a liberal interpretation of Islam's social rules was assassinated.
The battle over cutting Tasmania's old-growth forests will resume, with a government ban on protests condemned by the UN.
Chevron is trying to buy the city council election in Richmond, California using smears and confusion.
Many experts warn that ISIS propaganda videos are intended to suck the US into a war that would legitimize ISIS among Sunnis and thus strengthen it.
US hawks that call for immediate war are motivated by domestic politics. If as a byproduct of political gain they strengthen ISIS, that's not important to them.
What the US government must do if it wants to cut poverty.
California passed a
bill banning
businesses from making customers agree not to post negative
reviews. One is proposed at the US level.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
I wonder whether these measures also cover the attempt to require customers to assign copyright on their reviews to the business.
As surrender to plutocracy spreads poverty across Europe, nationalism offers the prospect of a magical escape without confronting the real root of the injustice.
Often nationalism puts the blame for poverty on "parasitic" immigrants rather the principal parasites — the rich.
The German government allowed the intrusion software FinFisher to be sold to governments that trample human rights.
The article errs in talking about "Linux computers"; the context shows that this refers to the GNU/Linux system.
August 2014 was the hottest August ever recorded, just like May and June.
Professor Ilham Tohti, who wrote in favor of Uighurs' rights, is
being
tortured as preparation for his show trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Texas is trying to rewrite textbooks to deny global heating.
Ukraine's government has adopted partial autonomy for the Eastern region where the rebellion is occurring.
This limited autonomy seems natural to me, given that every part of the United States has it. Did Ukraine offer this limited autonomy at the beginning?
Lots of iThing users are complaining that they did not want the U2 album "gift" that Apple stuck them with — and that it was hard to delete.
These complaints focus on a superficial problem, which reflects the shallow thinking that Apple instills in its users. Ironically, though, this superficial problem reflects a much deeper problem that the complainers have failed to notice: the unjust power that Apple has imposed on whoever uses an iThing or iTunes.
Agents of the Theater of Security Agency demanded to grope a passenger after he got off a flight, claiming it was because they had forgotten to do this before the flight.
Some US states provide fewer resources to voting places with more minority groups, causing long waiting lines.
One must suspect this is another method of Republican voter suppression.
A New Mexico sheriff faces charges for two cases of attacking passing drivers.
New Zealand Prime Minister Key is changing and contradicting his statements to try to deny revelations about the massive surveillance he started.
The US government continues trying to smear Snowden with falsified claims that his disclosures aided terrorists.
Even if they had been of some use to underground enemies of Americans, that harm would be small compared with the positive contribution of giving us a chance to recover democracy.
Sea level rise could cause over 200 billion dollars in damages to buildings and infrastructure in Australia in this century.
For the US, I would guess it is ten times that. Has anyone seen a recent estimate?
Thugs said they shot Darrien Hunt because he lunged at them with a sword. However, an autopsy found he was shot in the back.
Surveillance camera recordings have been provided to the thugs but not to Hunt's family.
Attorney General Holder launched a study of racism among US thugs.
It is a good idea. If only he went after the banksters and the torturers, he'd be doing a good job.
The president of Botswana is persecuting journalists that reported on his car accident.
Belgium has granted a prisoner's petition for euthanasia.
I understand and sympathize with a prisoner's wish to die rather than spend life in prison.
It worries me that there's a danger this will encourage prison conditions designed to encourage suicide, a de-facto death penalty. However, such conditions exist in many countries, including the US, where euthanasia is not allowed.
New Chinese pollution controls on coal will cut into Australian coal exports.
This is a great opportunity for Australia to cancel all the planned expansions in coal mining.
Ghoncheh Ghavami has been imprisoned in Iran for 3 months for asking to be allowed to watch a sporting event alongside men.
Noam Chomsky: The Fate of the Gaza Ceasefire.
Israeli "settlers" invaded Hebron and pepper-sprayed two Palestinian children, who had to be taken to a hospital.
Google refuses to respond to public criticism of its support for ALEC.
Jihadi groups in north Mali run on funds obtained by smuggling drugs north.
I seem to recall that Islam disapproves of these drugs. It would be hard to reconcile the smuggling with being an "Islamist".
44 economically powerful countries are drawing up a plan to make multinational companies pay taxes.
Qatar has made a deal to reduce its support for Islamist parties. The deal also includes ordering al-Jazeera to stop criticizing Egypt for its bloody suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood.
I shed no tears for those religious extremists, but al-Jazeera has been hurt by this. We have seen evidence of bias in al-Jazeera imposed from above, but this blatant censorship is shameful nonetheless.
Teenagers in many countries are drinking less, using drugs less, even getting pregnant less. Perhaps that's because they expect to be punished all their lives if they do those things, and expect the adult world to be one that condemns all but a small fraction winners to hopeless poverty.
It's good that teenagers do less of these harmful things, but not good at all that plutocracy has made adult life so hard.
The New Climate Economy report claims it is possible to curb global heating without harming economic growth.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support H.Con.Res.114, which says that any sustained US combat in Iraq or Syria requires congressional authorization.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
An Australian state is moving to legalize medical marijuana but only for people who are dying.
The people who need this most are the ones that might be saved by chemotherapy if they can stand the suffering it causes.
Indonesia has agreed to do more to stop the forest fires that people set for the purpose of deforestation.
Indonesia should make it illegal to farm land that was forest less than 10 years ago, use satellite photos to identify such farms, and destroy them so that the forest can come back.
An insider accuses Giganews of logging all accesses to newsgroups for the FBI.
To comply with the principles of human rights, the US must stop claiming that the law is secret. Secret "law" is really arbitrary rule.
The "13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles" that the EFF advocates may be necessary and proportionate, but they are not sufficient to achieve their goal: to protect society from massive total surveillance. They were designed for a different context, before Snowden showed us how far surveillance really goes even in "free" countries; then they were transferred to this issue without rethinking them.
What we really need is to redesign digital systems so they don't surveil and track people.
A former guard at Auschwitz has been charged as an accessory to 300,000 murders.
It turns out that this guard has campaigned against holocaust deniers.
"Defense" secretary Hagel proposes sending US troops into combat in Iraq to fight an unending war with no concept of victory.
Chelsea Manning — who was an Iraq intelligence analyst before becoming a heroic whistleblower — explains why this won't work.
If the goal is to win Iraqi Sunnis away from supporting ISIS, sending US troops to attack them again is the stupidest possible strategy. However, if the goal is to distract Americans with war fervor from the way plutocracy is oppressing them, it might work.
Large protests for democracy continue in Hong Kong after China rejected free elections there.
Look at the companies donating money to oppose the Oregon referendum to require labeling GMOs.
California has enacted groundwater management.
Senator Machin says he will oppose Obama's misguided Syria intervention plans.
Web sites that make desperate people bid to do jobs for the lowest pay move society another step towards near-universal poverty.
For the First Time, U.S. Agencies Consider a Diet for a Healthy Planet.
Human Rights Watch identified several Israeli actions in Gaza that appear to be war crimes and must be investigated.
Obama will send 3000 US military personnel to Africa to fight Ebola.
I can't judge the details but it seems to be a necessary job.
US citizens: call on Obama to put a stop to blanket use of antibiotics on farm animals.
An autopsy suggests that a Palestinian prisoner was tortured to death in an Israeli prison.
Sacrificing the Vulnerable, From Gaza to America.
US citizens: call on Kerry
to block
another Enbridge pipeline plan for exporting Canadian tar sands
oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Users of Comcast are reporting that Comcast says they are not allowed to use Tor and threatening to terminate their service.
California has banned stores from handing out gratis one-use plastic bags.
We need to make bags, and other food packaging, out of plastics that will truly biodegrade in a few years.
I taught myself a couple of years ago to reuse larger, tougher plastic bags. I carry 3 of them in my computer bag and mostly avoid single-use bags.
The US Chamber of Commerce is backing some "Democrats", the sort who are almost like today's Republicans.
Obama Has Indeed Learned Some Foreign Policy Lessons, Just Not the Ones the Establishment Likes
US citizens: sign this petition not to arm the Syrian rebels.
US citizens: call on Congress to debate the war against ISIS.
Call on Obama to seek authorization for this war.
The FCC received
3
million comments about network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Fracking's contamination of drinking water in Texas and Pennsylvania was due to leaky cement in frack wells, a study finds.
Deforestation and global heating have put an end to rain in part of Brazil.
Some librarians are campaigning to protect library users from massive digital surveillance.
A newspaper requested an interview with a Canadian scientist about algae. Government officials had a discussion of 100 pages before they refused permission for him to talk to the press.
This is because the facts about the algae demonstrate effects of global heating, while the Canadian government wants to promote use of fossil fuel.
Thousands of rich French people are dodging taxes by moving their money to Belgium.
France needs to tax these people no matter where they go.
LA thugs saw a black woman kiss a white man in a car, and handcuffed her, making the assumption based on that alone that she was a prostitute. They do this every day, but this time they were embarrassed because she was a film star.
Real prostitutes don't deserve to be treated that way either, so jumping to the conclusion because of her race makes it two wrongs.
Nigeria is imposing biometric ID cards that include fingerprints and iris scans. And share all the data with Mastercard.
National ID cards such as this are inherently oppressive. Nigeria faces a big terrorist threat, but these cards will do no good whatsoever against it.
British politicians distract attention from the need to reduce CO2 emissions by debating where to expand airports in the London area.
At least the estuary airport would be self-limiting, since global heating will eventually make it unserviceable.
The UK's right-wing parties talk about recovering sovereignty from the EU, but they are eager to surrender sovereignty to businesses through TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic).
An Uruguayan marine who snuck out to Italy when investigated for participation in government torture now faces charges in Italy.
A Republican congresscritter champions the right to fire people for being gay.
Everyone: sign this petition for the UN to take control of the removal of fuel rods from the fuel pool at Fukushima #4.
Scientists Don't Need to Kill Whales to Study Them.
Sea animals near Australia are eating plastic, 3/4 of which comes from waste from cities.
The Israeli military intelligence reservists who revealed that their work included blackmailing innocent Palestinians have been condemned for puncturing the claim that Israel's army is "the most moral in the world".
Those reservists believe their army is really supposed to be the world's most moral. That's why they are disgusted with what it really is.
Militarization of thug forces implies that they are occupying enemy territory, but who in the US is the enemy? Blacks, principally. This article makes the connection between militarization and racism.
The article also explains that the occupation of Ferguson puts on display the weapons and armor that most often are used to attack private homes, unseen by anyone except the people who live there.
Although non-blacks are not inherently part of the enemy, anyone such as a protester or journalist whose actions support the enemy is treated as one of them.
US citizens: sign
this petition to
put a price on carbon emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this
petition to require disclosure of fracking chemicals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone:
call
on the Pennsylvania legislature to stop impeding abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Information provided by Edward Snowden proves that the NSA has penetrated national and international networks operated by German companies in ways that they cannot figure out.
Naomi Klein connects global heating to the plutocratic system that has subjugated democracy.
Klein is right that reducing your personal energy consumption is not an effective action. Under a market system, the fossil fuel you don't use will be sold to someone else. The way to reduce the total use of fossil fuel is by macro-policies such as placing more tax on such use.
The let's-win-over-the-billionaires environmentalism that Klein shows is ineffective is the climate analogue of "open source," which says, "Let's win over the businesses by not saying things they wouldn't like." They got a lot of shallow success, but it didn't have deep roots.
Shark meat is popular in Indonesia, and tuna fishers catch and sell lots of endangered sharks as "by catch".
The Yangtze river sturgeon is following the Yangtze river dolphin into extinction.
In the UK, prisoners regularly die or commit suicide as a result of prison budget cuts. They see no point in reporting when they are raped.
There are no funds for rehabilitation, which puts a burden on the rest of society when they get out.
The Prime Minister of New Zealand says that there is no massive surveillance there. Edward Snowden proves he is lying.
This was implemented in 2012/2013, under a law that was misrepresented as having a much smaller effect.
The almond farms of California are rapidly exhausting the state's ground water.
Global heating will make droughts in California more frequent. For the short term, the state needs to manage its water rather than allow farmers to pump it at will.
For the long term…there won't be much farming in California, by and by, unless we curb global heating.
A study of unschoolers — people who were allowed as children to learn on their own for some years — shows that they turned out quite well as adults. They had no trouble getting into college or being successful there.
I suspect that one of the conditions for this to be successful was that the children did not feel the threat of poverty and were not surrounded by despair. It might not work for most children of the non-rich in the US today.
China is systematically harassing and excluding foreign journalists, and pressuring their Chinese assistants to spy on them.
The US is not blemish-free in this area: it requires foreign journalists to get a special visa. The US should repeal this law so that it can effectively criticize other countries.
A teenager in Pennsylvania faces two years in prison for faking oral sex with a statue of Jesus.
This law should certainly be unconstitutional. The right to offend people is part of freedom of speech.
The relatives of James Foley report that US officials told them that paying a ransom for him would be a crime.
This policy is just and necessary to avoid encouraging the taking of more hostages. Foley's relatives, mad with grief, would have saved Foley by endangering others; the officials prevented this. It's not that they didn't understand what it's like to be a relative of a hostage. Rather, it's that they recognized their duty was not solely to that family. I only wish President Reagan could have been prosecuted for ransoming hostages from terrorists.
The one doubt that occurs to me is whether ransoming hostages might encourage terrorism less than letting them be used in the snuff videos that are effective propaganda for ISIS. The current policy was not chosen for a situation like this, which nobody envisioned.
Meanwhile, it is foolish to criticize the US government for not rescuing Foley. I'm sure the Pentagon was looking for a chance to rescue these hostages, but that is much easier said than done. Many attempts to rescue hostages have ended up killing them instead.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize US foreign policy, but we shouldn't endorse every criticism just because the US is its target.
The concentration of agribusiness has resulted in record production while hunger continues to grow.
Asylum-seekers in Australia are treated worse than the inmates of asylums; they can be put in solitary confinement for long periods.
I hope the recent supreme court decision puts an end to this.
The Modi government expressed doubts about mandatory ID cards, before the election. Now in power it strongly supports the imposition of ID cards.
Requiring a national ID card is an injustice in itself; taking everyone's fingerprints or iris scans is an even worse injustice.
Not one Republican voted for the amendment to reverse the "Citizens United" decision.
Obama Is Picking Targets in Iraq and Syria While Missing the Point.
US officials have big disagreements about how dangerous ISIS is, and whether bombing will hurt it or help it.
The question is confused because the term "bombing" fails to distinguish between air strikes on troops engaged in battle and drone assassinations, but this distinction is crucial. Tactical air support focuses on heavy weapons and military vehicles, and it is easy to distinguish them from civilians. People don't have heavy weapons or HUMVs at home, even in Iraq. Thus, air support causes few civilian casualties, and those few, when they occur, are understandable.
By contrast, drone assassinations often kill civilians in their homes and cars; in Pakistan and Yemen, those casualties, coming literally and figuratively out of the blue, have inspired understandable lasting hatred against the US.
For the moment, the US campaign against ISIS is mostly air support for the armies fighting ISIS. I'm in favor of providing such support. We see already that it is effective: it has prevented ISIS from conquering thousands of people and likely butchering them wholesale. It has also resulted in rather easy recapture of substantial territory, a vital dam, and some towns. As long as ISIS maintains armies fighting in the field, fighting them this way will be effective for the same reasons.
But Obama's speech shows he envisions continuing the fighting into a drone assassination campaign. A proper debate must treat those as two separate issues.
A drone assassination campaign in Iraq would be self-defeating as well as unjustifiable. Iraqi Sunnis would form ranks behind ISIS in response to the civilian casualties, producing a stalemate of suffering like that in Yemen. Such a stalemate never leads to victory; each day, the US would face the choice to terminate it and lose, or continue it and cause additional pointless suffering to preserve the status quo.
When Congress debates fighting ISIS, as is its duty, it must distinguish these two forms of fighting. If I were a member of Congress, I would vote for air support on the battlefield, for as long as ISIS keeps fighting on battlefields, but insist on prohibiting assassination campaigns.
NGOs call on Congress to adopt a new model of "trade" negotiations, with goals to be stated in advance.
Given a Congress not subservient to business, this new system could give good results — but our current Congress is too submissive to adopt it.
The US suffers from a lack of feelings and activities of general solidarity.
The Taliban are advancing in parts of Afghanistan.
It's sad, but predictable. The Afghan government's army doesn't have the motivation needed to resist the Taliban. Afghans who oppose the Taliban aren't motivated to fight as much as the Taliban are motivated to fight.
We could continue to keep the Taliban out with permanent US intervention. We could do that for as long as the US has resources to do it, which won't be forever (in a few decades, global heating will be causing disaster in the US). But permanent victory against the Taliban depends on Afghans. We could continue war there until we go broke, but at the end the Taliban would come back unless Afghans opposed to the Taliban.
Canada's government has, in effect, subjugated Canada to Chinese investors (including the Chinese state) by allowing them to sue secretly to demand changes in Canadian government policies.
This includes extremely dangerous pipeline plans.
To subject one's country to such a treaty constitutes treason, in my view. A new Canadian government should abrogate the treaty.
The mainstream US media describe cutting workers' pensions as "responsible". If the government is forced to break promises, break promises to the rich before promises to the non-rich.
Witnesses recorded immediately after Michael Brown was shot dead said that he had his hands up.
"Just-in-time" scheduling of hourly workers means that their part-time job rules them every hour of the week, although they only get paid for a fraction of those hours.
I think that businesses should be required to pay half wages for every hour that an hourly worker is on call to work with less than a week's notice.
US citizens: call on Obama to get authorization for expanding war in Iraq or Syria.
For background.
Obama's plans for war with ISIS depend on allies that have not shown an ability to do what is required.
I think the article underestimates the peshmerga. They had to retreat when ISIS attacked with its captured US heavy weapons and armored vehicles, but were able to advance with US air support. So were the Shi'ite Iraqi militias. The problem with them is that strengthening them pushes Iraqi Sunnis to support ISIS.
Australia's ancient rock art is threatened by miners, tourists and animals.
Boko Haram suffered a big defeat in a pitched battle in Nigeria.
One such defeat won't destroy the group, but could inspire the Nigerian army to fight harder from now on, if the government gives this priority.
New Jersey prosecutor McClain went easy on a football player that knocked his fiancée unconscious, but threw the book at a women for carrying a gun with a permit from Pennsylvania.
To carry a gun for protection against future robberies is not necessarily a wise idea; it may cause more danger than it avoids. That's an unrelated issue and has no effect on this one, but I shouldn't mention the idea of getting a gun for self-protection without mentioning these doubts also.
The new CEO of National Public Radio intends to get more money from advertising by advertising more attractive products.
I used to give money to a local NPR station, but I stopped when I noticed that the shows had started to include commercials.
US citizens: call on Congress to remove the requirement for NIST to consult the NSA specially about encryption standards.
A Republican filibuster killed the constitutional amendment to stop companies from buying elections for Republicans.
The Koch brothers are trying to buy control over universities' choice of professors, for political purposes.
China rents pandas to zoos for a lot of money as part of a general system of pressuring countries for trade advantage. Meanwhile, the habitat for wild pandas is being wiped out.
A relationship where the woman says she is scared of the man should not be considered "normal".
The leader of a gun control protest in Chicago is receiving death threats from US gun nuts, who call him a "terrorist".
He isn't one, but they and their threats are coming pretty close.
Zoe Quinn is the victim of a campaign of false criticism that was organized dishonestly from the beginning by people that wanted to do her harm.
You can see something similar though smaller in the attacks against me that are posted in some forums. They not only make strained criticism, they also misrepresent the free software movement drastically (as you can see for yourself by comparing their statements with gnu.org).
This Is the Third World War — And This Time We Are on the Fringes.
I think there is some truth in this, but it's not entirely true. Conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis, like conflict between Catholics and Orthodox and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, is not inevitable. It is stimulated or provoked by political parties that expect short-term gain, and many of them could theoretically be convinced to stop.
Most deforestation on Earth is done commercially, and half of it is done to get products to sell to the wealthy countries.
Deforestation in the Amazon
jumped
by almost 1/3 last year.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on your senators to preserve the US law requiring food to be
labeled by the country of origin.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The UN General Assembly voted to start negotiations on a treaty to allow states to get rid of oppressive debt.
The US was among 10 countries that voted against. Shame on you, Obama.
Stopping Climate Meltdown Needs the Courage That Saved the Ozone Layer.
That means daring to tell powerful businesses to drop dead rather than let them kill us.
Scientist Who Identified Ebola Virus Calls for "Quasi-Military Intervention".
The UK government is trying to set up privatizations so that they are too expensive to cancel.
They act like raiders who have taken control of the state and intend to destroy as much as they can before they are chased out.
The just response would be to impose a 200% tax on those businesses, or make it a crime to continue to exercise such a contract.
San Diego's "school police" has acquired a mine-resistant armored vehicle. They must think students will riot against whatever follows the Common Core and might turn to improvised explosive devices.
Citing BP for "gross negligence" hardly did justice to the company's persistent pattern of safety violations around the world.
Seven Key Points from Obama's Isis Speech And What They Actually Mean.
I disagree with the article on the conclusion of the first point. If it's a question of fighting threats to the US, it does not follow that the US should only fight the worst one. But this is a side issue, since it's relevant only if you believe that the most important thing about ISIS is whether it threatens the US directly.
The second point's conclusion is simply wrong. There is nothing "preventive" about responding to a continuing armed attack.
However, the other five points are valid.
The University of Sydney disinvited two Sri Lankan NGOs from an international human rights event, caving to pressure from Sri Lanka's brutal government.
People have called Belarus "Europe's last dictatorship", but Russia has more or less become equal to it.
Regardless of what organizations it may join, Azerbaijan is not in Europe. It is in the Middle East.
It appears that the NSA
intercepted
the Thinkpad keyboard that Andrea Shepard, a Tor developer in Seattle,
had ordered from Amazon. Presumably this was to sabotage it. I
wonder if people have studied this keyboard to see what the NSA
changed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
If you are any sort of activist, don't order a computer by mail yourself. Have a friend order it, after discussing the plan in person with no mobile phones around.
Almost 250 teachers at Boston University have called on the university to divest from fossil fuel companies.
It is clear that conservation measures in Boston University itself will have only a tiny influence on world fossil fuel consumption. In a market system, if A decides not to buy some commodity, the price goes down and B or C buys more. We need to change the parameters of the system itself.
The direct financial effect of divestment by Boston University alone would also be small, but this approach has a better chance to turn into a movement by many universities, and that could intern influence policies to change the parameters.
Apple is redesigning iThings to help companies communicate users' personal data from one to another, and enable them to manipulate users better. This page shows the perverse viewpoint of someone who is on the companies' side and presents this malice as an advance.
They are also now designed to make it harder for victims to keep control of their budgets.
It is a truism that "if you don't pay, you're the product." But now we see that, with proprietary software, you are often the product even if you do pay.
In Boston: rally at 3pm on Oct 1, at WGBH headquarters (1 Guest St),
to remove
a Koch brother from the WGBH board.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Australia's supreme court placed constitutional limits on imprisonment of asylum seekers.
Israeli Military Orders Criminal Investigations into Gaza Attacks.
This is a promising development if they do an honest job, but I fear its purpose is only to deflect criticism.
Presenting a feasible program of investment to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
It's doable, but the fossil fuel companies don't want it to be done. They intend to to force us to stay on track to global catastrophe.
Russia sent another convoy of "humanitarian aid" into Ukraine without Red Cross inspection.
I am sure they are carrying ammunition. If not, Putin would have had the Red Cross inspect them so he could refute such accusations.
A Russian military vehicle was spotted in Ukraine. The soldiers running it said they were Russian mercenaries. Then they repainted it to disguise its origin.
Global heating effects threaten agriculture, and the more diverse agriculture is, the better it can withstand those effects. Big agribusiness monoculture is driving agriculture in the wrong direction.
Turkey has increased internet censorship.
Internet censorship was one of the early signs that Erdogan was going to attack human rights in Turkey.
43 veterans of Israel's military intelligence (equivalent to the NSA in the US) denounced their work as a system of oppression and political manipulation rather than a matter of national security.
The full text of their letter.
Quotes from their personal testimonies: The fact people were innocent was not at all relevant.
Fear of Ebola is making Sierra Leone life crazy.
In Liberia, MSF's treatment center is full.
The US has declined to show whatever evidence it has about who shot down flight MA-17.
I find it implausible anyone intentionally fired at an airliner. Thus I believe that rebels fired at what they thought was a Ukrainian government plane.
A Florida teacher is risking dismissal by refusing to spend a week administering a standardized computerized test.
The UN has allowed corporations' interests to pervade the climate summits.
In Pennsylvania, fracking causes illness in 40% of the households within 1km of a frackwell.
Fracking probably contributes even more to global heating than coal. Fracking should be banned, so that as we cut down coal mining, it is not replaced by another fossil fuel.
Jabhat al-Nusra released the 45 Fijian peacekeepers that it took prisoner two weeks ago.
The job of these peacekeepers was to separate Syrian and Israeli forces. I think that no forces currently separate al-Nusra from the Israeli border.
Everyone:
call on Google,
Microsoft and others to stop supporting global heating denialists.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World.
The
ban
on chlorofluorocarbons is starting to reverse the former growth of
the ozone hole.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Obama is trying to stretch presidential authority to cover air attacks anywhere in the world. This is a dangerous precedent.
Obama calls ISIS a "terrorist group", but I think that term is misleading. ISIS does not seem to have carried out any terrorist attacks against civilians. It is murderous and oppressive, but in a different form. I would call it a gang army. They have been known for many years in the eastern Congo and other parts of Africa.
Obama says he will employ the tactic of drone assassination against ISIS because it has been so successful in Yemen and Somalia. The Islamist militias in those countries don't seem to have been defeated by years of drone assassinations.
The current round of air strikes against ISIS don't pose the same problems because they take the form of close air support in field battles. It is easy to distinguish soldiers with heavy weapons from civilians, so mistakes are unlikely. If some civilians are hit, their relatives will understand that battle zones are dangerous places to be.
But it appears that Obama expects the fight against ISIS to develop into an assassination campaign. If it does, it will generate support for ISIS.
The new plan for Detroit's water supply eliminates public accountability and paves the way towards future privatization.
Israel has imprisoned a retired Palestinian professor, Yousef Abdul Haq, without charges.
Abdul Haq has been active in organizing nonviolent resistance to the occupation. It's not the first time he has been imprisoned without charges.
12,000 wounded people in
Gaza struggle to find
medical treatment in the remaining hospitals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
As part of the modern American witch hunt, a woman was convicted of endangering a fetus because she took methadone prescribed by her doctor.
Inability to buy newsprint
is forcing
some Venezuelan newspapers to close.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
It takes dollars to buy imported paper, and how many bolivares you have to pay for each dollar depends on your level of privilege.
The Secretary of Homeland Security says there is no reason to think ISIS wants to attack the US.
Don't be taken in by the exaggeration of politicians.
An Atheist US Air Force officer is suing for permission to take his oath of service without citing a deity — something that the Air Force permitted until a year ago.
Former Israeli intelligence officials say Israel should agree to the Arab peace plan.
Praise for Steven Salaita from other teachers and from his students.
Salaita was offered a job by the University of Illinois, which treacherously rescinded the offer a couple of weeks before the start of the school year.
Palestinians are boycotting Israeli products.
The IPCC proposed that governments surrender to their debt by borrowing more money to cope with the damage caused by global heating.
This would wipe out what remains of democracy in the world, and would not even reliably do what it is supposed to do.
Since the debt is the result of an unjust plutocratic regime, it needs to be erased, not be catered to by increasing debt.
Chinese censorship demonstrates that the internet empowers tyrannical regimes, if they are clever.
To argue for human rights based on efficiency is turning things upside down. Freedom is more important than efficiency. We should sacrifice efficiency for freedom if necessary.
If we want freedom in the internet, we can't assume that will happen due to the nature of the internet. We have to fight for it. YOU have to fight for it.
The fear-war complex has convinced lots of Americans that ISIS is a direct threat to the US.
The US government is planning to pressure Iraq to adopt a federal scheme for the "security forces".
(Note that the article errs in speaking of the "Sunni majority". The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq, and the Iraqi government is controlled by the Shi'ite majority, which has used this power to oppress the Sunni minority.)
I don't know enough to say this can work, but it seems to be at least vaguely headed in a sensible direction.
However, the idea of supporting Syrians that are fighting both Assad and ISIS has serious problems: some of them are almost as fanatical Islamists as ISIS, and the rest tend to treat Islamists as rivals rather than enemies.
Hawai'i's hotels are pushing to make it a crime to sleep or even sit on the sidewalk in Honolulu. The proper answer to those hotels is, "Give the homeless people a better place to sleep and sit, or shut up!"
Meanwhile, providing a camp on Sand Island is better than what many other US cities are doing.
The neo-Nazi Azov militia battalion mumbles about overthrowing the government of Ukraine.
Ukraine says Russia has withdrawn most of its troops.
Offering some sort of partial autonomy to eastern Ukraine seems like a fine thing to do, and should not have required a war.
Join the global fight for a neutral net: Big Telecom vs THE WORLD.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says it will not provide evidence of war crimes to the Israeli army, because the army has proved not to try seriously to investigate such crimes.
Israel gives preferential funding to people living in colonies in Palestine.
Murky Special Ops Have Become Corporate Bonanza, Says Report.
Queensland, a state in Australia, has banned the general public from suing to block mines on environmental grounds.
Thus, when the state government is inclined to close its eyes to probable environmental harm — which it clearly is, or it would not pass such a law — citizens will be helpless to prevent the harm.
A study finds that people under 17 years old that use marijuana every day suffer various harmful effects.
I don't think this can justify prohibition, because prohibition hurts a much larger number of people.
It is possible, though, that these teenagers used marijuana so much because they already had problems.
Everyone: Call on Walmart to release the video showing the killing of John Crawford.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to stop hiring debt collection companies to harass people for student loans.
We really need to restore the possibility to eliminate student loans through bankruptcy. Until we do that, this is a necessary first step.
Obama believes he is allowed to order bombing of Syria without congress.
If the president is allowed to bomb any country if he can convince it to accept some "noncombat" US troops, the requirement for Congressional approval of war is almost completely negated. Congress is inclined to approve this campaign, but it should demand to be asked so it can say yes.
Israel presented a video from 2009 as "evidence" that Palestinians were firing from al-Wafa hospital.
The video was of a different building, and was put together with an unrelated audio track talking about a house (not a big building).
Hindu fanatics in India say they are going to convert "all" Christians and Muslims. This could only be done by threats of violence.
Meanwhile, when supposedly "Hindu" Dalits try to convert officially to Buddhism, they face violent interference.
Australia's government says Australians shouldn't worry about being arbitrarily stopped from leaving the country, because the officials will be so well trained that they will never make a mistake.
Zephyr Teachout got 1/3 of the vote in the New York gubernatorial primary against incumbent business-subservient Democrat Andrew Cuomo.
An organized gang that raped children in the UK was protected assiduously by thugs: when a researcher discovered what was going on and reported it, they threatened to expose the researcher to the gang.
There are laws that dishonestly claim that every time someone under 16 or 18 (depending on where) has sex, it is "rape". Calling willing sex "rape" does not make it rape, and calling a 17-year-old who wants to have sex a "child" does not make that teenager a child.
However, this gang committed real rapes, and other real violence, and its victims included real children.
A subtle change in the rules of the Federal Reserve Bank (an organization run by the big US banks) requires those banks to dump municipal bonds. This could force many US cities into bankruptcy.
Development of new crop varieties depends on wild relatives of the crops, but global heating puts those relatives in danger.
CIA water torture was even more vicious than previously reported.
If the US wants to be morally superior to ISIS, it must punish all the torturers from Dubya on down.
Obama and Clinton take note: due to methane leaks, fracking is a bridge to nowhere. We must aim for renewables without delay.
The US leads the way in failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Famous tree-huggers can inspire us to actions that could save Earth's climate.
A Massachusetts district attorney dropped charges against two anti-coal protesters because he concluded their actions were justified to prevent global disaster.
The UK government has created lots of excuses to fine the poor, so it is no surprise that one man's death is directly tied to fining him.
Ferguson's city council is voting to limit court fine income to 15% of the city revenue, instead of 21% as now.
What directly oppresses the poor citizens of Ferguson is the rules that the system follows, such as fining people for being unable to pay fines. Cutting out a little over 1/4 of the fines is insufficient to make a qualitative difference.
Some of the other changes might matter more.
If the US goes to war with ISIS, how long before Americans conclude that it was a mistake?
ISIS is evil enough that fighting ISIS is not inherently wrong. The same was true for Saddam Hussein — but launching a war against his regime made things worse in Iraq, and the same thing could easily happen again.
Thwarting ISIS in a conventional war of movement is easy. Destroying ISIS would mean an urban guerrilla war, which would be horrible (as it was 8 years ago in the same part of Iraq) and would not succeed. To really defeat ISIS requires convincing Iraq's Sunnis to kick ISIS out.
Limiting global heating to 2C was an arbitrary target, and appears to be too much heating for safety.
Violence between individuals kills ten times as many people as wars, and costs 40 times as much.
A silly and annoying rule change by US customs has banned famous French cheeses.
Another silly and annoying US customs rule is the one that prohibits import of all meat products, even soup mixes. Yes, it is conceivable that they could carry a prion disease — but nobody is going to feed the soup to cattle.
Models are in danger of being denied their pay unless they diet to an extent that is dangerously unhealthy. Except the stars, of course.
These abuses resemble what we see in other fields of work, so I wonder if there are general solutions that cover all fields.
For instance, how does it happen that models start in debt? Should it be a crime to make workers pay money to get a job?
Greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 increased faster than any time since 1984.
John Crawford was shot dead by thugs in a Walmart while holding a BB gun he wanted to buy. It appears this was based on an exaggerated and false accusation from someone who was in the store.
The article shows why "open carry" laws effectively apply only to whites. It's too dangerous if you're black. Lawfully carrying a concealed gun can cause you trouble if you're a black; thugs frequently search you, and even though the gun is not a crime, the thugs will look for an excuse to charge you with something.
As a result, "stand your ground" laws are also whites-only.
US citizens: tell the CFPB to publish consumers' complaints about financial companies.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to require
frackers to disclose all the chemicals they use.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The ideology of ISIS is based on modern European ideas, notwithstanding its pretension to return to the roots of Islam.
Exposing this might undermine ISIS propaganda.
The manufactures of armored cars for thugs feel uncomfortable about admitting that they are made to repress protesters.
When US thugs use their military-style "counter-terrorism" gear for suppressing protests, it turns out to be illegal; thug departments that have done this could get in trouble.
Rather than fining these thug departments, it would be far more effective to take away their heavy weapons and armor.
Or maybe the rule won't get enforced.
Bahrain continues to repress dissidents.
US thugs have taken 2.5 billion dollars in the past 13 years from people who were not charged with crimes.
No matter what Kafkaesque excuses they make, this is punishment without trial.
The US is also turning towards Pre-emptive prosecution, where the question is not whether you committed a crime but whether you might.
The EU's dependence on Russia for natural gas is creating strong pressure for energy efficiency improvements.
TEPCO is withholding pay from Fukushima cleanup workers.
One would think that such an important job, which has to be done right, should offer high pay to get the best workers.
Clinton's glowing review of Kissinger's book shows what she is really made of.
Gambia Passes Bill Imposing Life Sentences for Some Homosexual Acts.
Everyone: call on OceanaGold to drop its lawsuit which claims El Salvador is not allowed to protect its water supplies.
Deforesters murdered Peruvian activists that campaigned against illegal logging.
In Africa, as formerly in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is spending millions on aid projects that generally don't work because they never made sense.
Everyone: urge California Gov Brown to sign the bill that requires thugs to get a warrant before using drones.
The BBC wants to make ISPs in Australia punish their customers on accusation of sharing — including anyone that makes heavy use of a VPN.
A group of former presidents and ministers calls for an end to the War on Drugs.
Janitors don't have to be paid poverty wages — if they unionize.
Modi, since his election, has started denying global heating.
Apparently he has surrendered to the "burn, baby, burn" lobby.
US citizens: tell the EPA not to allow the Pebble Mine.
The slavery investigators disappeared in Qatar have been freed.
Today's climate models, applied to 1990s data, predicted the slowdown in atmospheric heating of the 2000s.
There was no slowdown in global heating; rather, heat started going into the oceans rather than the low atmosphere.
Over half the bird species in the US, including the bald eagle, are threatened by global heating.
Still Scared Stupid in the Age of Terrorism.
Greenpeace protesters in the US face felony prosecutions for a banner drop.
Spanish thugs are buying more arms to escalate repression of suffering Spaniards.
More about Russia's armed kidnaping of an Estonian detective.
A gang of 6 thugs in New York City handcuffed a man and then hit him repeatedly with sticks.
The companies that sell armored vehicles and automatic weapons to US thugs are showing no shame at "Urban Shield".
Big Ag in Oregon procured a law giving farms immunity for dropping toxic pesticides on people's houses.
The US justice system will believe in the impossible, to excuse killings by thugs, or to keep someone in jail.
Russia's population has been decreasing for over 20 years; Russians die younger and have few children. One author says this is because Russian society has learned to give up hope.
If that is true — I don't take it as certain — then it probably relates to the cruel capitalism that took over Russia in 1991. The same thing might happen in the US if the plutocrats cement their power.
New York thugs got creative to find an excuse to arrest a woman who had left a protest, as she waited near a restaurant for her family to come out of the toilet.
A UK immigration prison appears to have killed a prisoner by doing nothing when he reported chest pains. When his relatives asked what happened, they were told he had committed suicide.
Illinois thugs have refused to tell Joshua Paul's family any details of why and how they killed him.
In 1994, Justice Scalia cited two cases as examples that the death penalty could be incontrovertibly justified. One of them was the case of the two men just proved innocent by DNA evidence.
US citizens: call on Obama and Kerry not to let Enbridge double the size of the Alberta Clipper tar oil pipeline.
Also submit a public comment to the State Department.
To avoid disaster, we should convert with all possible speed to a zero-carbon-emissions society.
I have to comment on some minor points.
Ukraine has lots of natural gas that could make it an ideal target for fracking, especially if it is in debt to the IMF and can't resist.
The article erects a large superstructure of theories which I think are strained and not convincing.
The US is widening its air bombing intervention in Iraq.
As long as it remains limited to giving close air support to a local ground army fighting in a non-urban battlefield, the harm to civilians will be limited too. If it goes beyond that, it could become the sort of hatred-generator that drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen have been.
The Rise of the Warrior Cop describe the horror felt in the early US about mixing the roles of army and police, and how Nixon's "War on Dregs" started to endorse mixing them up.
Russian troops or thugs kidnaped an Estonian investigator from a customs office on Estonian territory; the former KGB now claims he was captured in Russia.
Anti-slavery activist Andy Hall has gone on trial in Thailand as punishment for a stellar career of defending the rights of migrant workers.
Judge Posner said his ruling in favor of voter ID laws was wrong.
The ruling, which disenfranchised over 70,000 black voters in one state still threatens US democracy.
There are too many activities in the US which require a government-issued ID card, and this threatens to turn state driver-or-equivalent licenses into the equivalent of a national ID card.
For Israel, the Beginning of Wisdom Is to Admit Its Mistakes. If Israel wants security, it should stop the policies that insure Palestine can't have any security.
Qatar has admitted arresting two foreign human rights defenders who were investigating slavery in Qatar.
The delay in announcing this shows that the government hoped the world would not notice, and that the "illegalities", if not fabricated, are violations of laws Qatar will be ashamed to have.
Nigeria is imposing biometric ID cards that include fingerprints and iris scans. And share all the data with Mastercard.
National ID cards such as this are inherently oppressive
Abbott is betting that if he repeats over and over that he did not break his campaign promises, voters will forget that he did.
US citizens: if you haven't
already, submit
a comment to the FCC defending network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Mainstream US TV political shows present debates between right-wing pundits that all agree the US should launch all-out war against ISIS.
Above all, it is necessary to show Iraqi Sunnis how they can have a government they generally won't feel is their enemy.
Perhaps that requires offering to break up Iraq, so they can have their own government as long as it isn't warlike.
Many journalists have been kidnaped in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Secrecy in many individual cases has hidden the size of the problem.
NATO: Part of Solution [in Ukraine] — Or Problem.
I think the question is not quite right. Nato expansion has clearly contributed to provoking Russia, but that doesn't prevent NATO from being useful for resisting Russia. Putin is not an innocent good guy, he is a former KGB officer.
In Philadelphia, if the bank doesn't make you
homeless, the
thugs might try it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act.
Violent religious fanatics are a real danger, but there are no violent atheist fanatics nowadays. The closest thing you can find are a few Communist dictatorships. They are cited to create a false appearance of moral equivalence between secularism and religion.
People do not need religion in order to treat each other well. Humans (except sociopaths) have a conscience as a matter of instinct, and can train it through reflection. It can even have the strength to prevail over religious immorality.
A story from Samoa (*) says that the religious practice of human sacrifice was ended when the son of the Malietoa (one of the top-level chiefs) saw that the woman he loved was going to be sacrificed, and presented himself for the sacrifice in place of her. The Malietoa, rather than sacrifice his son, banned human sacrifice thenceforth. Whether or not this really occurred, the repetition of the story shows that a human society can value conscience over religion, and it makes an instructive contrast with the story of Abraham and Isaac.
* From Les religions du Pacifique et d'Australie by Nevermann, Worms, and Petri.
The US rate of job generation fell to a new
low, less
than ever since the 1970s.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The 1970s is the last time we had a government that represented Americans other than the elites.
In the US: hold a rally for network neutrality.
The Justice Department's Inspector General released a report about how the FBI can bypass new "guidelines" about getting journalists' phone records and other data, but the FBI censored it so badly that all we know is that it's a secret.
An Eritrean, imprisoned because of his religious sect, took 3 years to reach Britain, where he received asylum.
He had to fend off kidnapers in Sudan, which also lets the Eritrean agents seize Eritrean refugees.
One thing I do not understand is why he snuck into the UK from Calais rather than asking for asylum in France. What is the attraction or advantage of the UK for a person who has a valid claim to asylum? Does anyone know?
Twitter told people about protests and thug violence in Ferguson (those who are interested), while Facebook mostly steered people away.
An ISIS torturer went to Brussels and shot four people at the Jewish Museum.
Why it would be a mistake to discourage jihadis from western countries from returning home if they have changed their mind about the issue.
One fast-food striker explains how he chose to get arrested for his daughter's sake.
Making thugs wear cameras is not an automatic guaranteed solution to thuggishness. They tend to turn off their cameras when they shoot people — and the cameras can contribute to massive general surveillance. Careful rules are needed.
The Australian government wants to delegate protection of threatened species to the states, which are not in a position to do it properly even if they wanted to.
Of course, the point of the change is that the states don't even want to try.
The US is pressuring Canada to seize generic medicines in transit on behalf of patentholding pharma companies.
These laws are murderous; officials who carry out such seizures should be tried in the ICC.
US citizens: tell Kerry it is time to do more than weakly criticize Israel's continued land-grab in Palestine.
US citizens: support journalists' freedom to report.
US citizens: Tell the Department of Housing
to stop
selling off people's mortgages to the same sort of "securitized"
market that screwed them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The UK Green Party is broadening its concerns to include opposing plutocracy.
It could replace the former UK Labour Party, which has transformed itself into a center-right party on economic issues.
Sierra Leone has declared a four-day "lockdown" in about two weeks to try to halt the spread of Ebola.
I think the need is sufficient to justify such a measure, but is it likely to work?
Abbott treats Australia's environment as an enemy. These are his ten worst attacks against the environment.
At a Moral Mondays protest, thugs arrested a black politician for handing out voting rights leaflets (which is not a crime).
Right-wing Americans don't want people of minority groups to be able to vote, and in many states have passed laws designed to stop them.
Cell phone "interceptors", special modified cell towers, can take over a phone through the back door in the baseband processor.
ISIS waterboarded its captives.
What a shame it is to America to have set an example of barbarity for barbarians. The US must punish its torturers, starting with Bush.
As for the prisoners that can't be put on trial because torture taints the case against them, we must release them! So what if they go to ISIS or some affiliate of al Qa'ida? They won't add much to the strength of those organizations, but releasing them is crucial for the moral strength of the US.
State representatives and even a congresswoman joined in fast food workers' strike protests.
Koch Operative: Raise the [minimum] Wage, Totalitarianism and Terrorism Follow?
The UK has cut funds for inspection of food and prosecution of food fraud to the point where fraud is easy and profitable. That's the Tory philosophy: make crime pay, when business wants it to.
In San Jose, California, the thug department decided to act a little more like a police department, by getting rid of the armored repression vehicles that the US government gave it.
In Davis, it was the city council that made this wise decision, over the opposition of the thugs.
The supporters of harmful educational reform are asking for a less polarized discussion.
That's what right-wingers say when they are in the driver's seat and the people are getting angry enough to kick them out.
In the US: support the fast food workers strike.
US citizens:
oppose
oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea, off the coast of the Alaskan
National Wildlife Refuge.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
US oil production is rising, due to extraction of shale oil, and short-sighted politicians are claiming this is a good thing.
A US bombing killed a leader of al-Shabaab.
I predict this will have as little effect as the killing of the previous leader. These groups don't depend on one person.
The ICC case against Uhuru Kenyatta has collapsed because
Kenya's
refusal to cooperate has prevented collecting evidence.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
The cease fire in Ukraine is holding so far.
Boko Haram has seized towns and held them, and the Nigerian army is not fighting back very well.
The blue whales of California have recovered their numbers almost to
pre-whaling levels,
thanks
to lots of protection efforts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
However, globally the blue whale population is only around 2% of what it was 140 years ago.
Obama says he wants to destroy ISIS, but will not escalate until there is an Iraqi army that is strong enough to win with help.
This means he is rejecting the pressure to do something rash and foolish.
However, he is straining the limits of the War Powers Act to the breaking point.
ISIS propaganda videos are designed to recruit individual supporters by making ISIS look tough and harsh.
It is a mistake to go to war because ISIS killed two Americans, or because ISIS kills people in a barbaric way. As has been pointed out, Saudi Arabia frequently kills people by beheading, and the practice is just as barbaric there.
The murder of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, and religious oppression of those that live, are much bigger reasons to fight ISIS, but only if that is likely to be effective.
Could it be effective? This article, although it frames the issue in terms of "what do we need in order to win" rather than "does the approach make sense", points out that defeating ISIS is unlikely unless it is done by a more powerful army which is determined to fight and defeat ISIS, and which can cut off ISIS from its supply of recruits.
A foreign army would tend rather to boost ISIS recruiting as a reaction, while the Iraqi army lacks the commitment that could enable it to win.
60% of the world's children face regular physical violence, in many cases from their parents.
Israel has announced plans for 300 more houses in its colonies in Palestinian territory.
A new data broker offers to pay people directly for their personal data.
Datacoup's existence by itself will not eliminate ordinary data brokers; something more is required. Supposing that something more appears, and other data brokers disappear, how much better will this be?
I would not give any data to the services that Datacoup works with. In fact, the only one of them I might consider using is Twitter, precisely because one doesn't have to give real personal data to it.
Therefore, I would not be interested in making such data available for a mere $10 or $100 or $1000 a month.
US inner-ring suburbs such as Ferguson are full of blacks, partly because other suburban towns have adopted policies to keep poor people out.
Zoning laws are a big source of injustice, and play a major role in the high cost of renting housing in the US. I think we need to invalidate some aspects of zoning laws in a broad fashion.
The TTIP is providing an excuse for companies to bully the EU to accept GMO food imports.
Modern free exploitation treaties, since the one that created the WTO, are harmful by nature. Politicians that endorse the project of making a new free exploitation treaties have their hearts in the wrong place.
Movies trigger fads for unusual pets, which get abandoned by the dozens or hundreds a few years later.
Activists in Oakland and San Francisco are protesting the "Urban Shield" thug militarization conference.
Fast-food strikes are revitalizing the union movement in the US.
Russian TV Shows Funeral of Soldier Killed 'On Leave' in Ukraine.
Lessons to draw from the Ashya King case.
A country can't admit torture was committed and then fail to do anything about it. Unless it is ruled by the Obama regime.
Iranian Women's Magazine Editor Accused of Promoting Feminist Views.
Fighting ISIS by making it look ridiculous.
The Arab World's Version of the Ice Bucket Challenge: Burning ISIS Flags.
Human rights activists investigating enslavement of workers in Qatar appear to have been disappeared by the government.
The downtrodden parts of the US systematically direct youth into prison, but some forms of aid have shown they can break the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
We also have an obligation to end the systems that constitute the pipeline: running the economy to keep most Americans poor, racist thugs, the War on Drugs, and thugs in schools shoving students into the school-to-prison pipeline.
Seattle activists blocked a train line to protest the transport of oil by train through their state.
Refuges for women experiencing domestic violence are necessary so they don't have to stay with their abusers.
Closing them down is part of the right-wing "family values" agenda, which values compelling people to be in families rather than the people as people.
Naomi Klein: global heating and the plutocratic world order are hitting the world at the same time. This means either disaster or perhaps opportunity.
The plutocrats will seek to use the effects of global heating for shock capitalism, so as to drive most people in developed world into desperation such as we haven't seen since the 1930s. If ending plutocratic rule is necessary to avoid disaster, maybe that will spur people to do it
Naomi, please don't call the plutocrats and their supporters "Liberals". A Liberal is someone like me, or (to cite a leader of Liberals) someone like FDR.
Asylum seeker Hamid Kehazaei was apparently killed by Australia, which sent him to an offshore prison in which prisoners got bad and delayed medical treatment.
Ukraine and Russia-lead rebels have agreed to a cease-fire.
The defeats suffered by Ukraine's forces, after weeks of slowly gaining, seem to prove by themselves that Russia gave the rebels armor, if not troops as well. Therefore, I don't think Putin is willing to let the matter end here.
Billionaire Polluters will have to pay Billions in Penalties after a judge ruled BP guilty of "gross negligence" in the Big Spill.
Abbott continued right up to the Australian election a year ago being the suppository of false promises.
Stopping the Ebola outbreak will cost half a billion dollars and take up to 9 months.
That's if we commit the resources now.
Ashya King Case Shows How Parents Can Be Let Down by the Law.
South Africa barred entry to the Dalai Lama — again.
The idea of a "playable city".
The US government will investigate the practices of Ferguson thugs, in general as well as relating to the killing of Michael Brown.
In Ferguson, if you're black and not rich, simply driving is enough to get you fined over and over, and jailed because you can't pay.
A Koch-funded organization appears to have violated IRS regulations on electioneering in 2012.
Will Obama and Holder bestir themselves to have this investigated?
Pennsylvania, to facilitate fracking, has gutted its inspection system and rushed the approval of projects.
50 organizations have called on Google to stop supporting ALEC.
Google claims its motto is "Don't be evil", but there is little in US politics that is more evil than ALEC.
US citizens: phone your senators to urge them to vote for the constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision.
Although the amendment being considered is narrow,and won't abolish the idea that corporations are entitled to human rights, it is important nonetheless.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
75% of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, unable to save any money.
14% have had trouble getting food at some time in the past year.
Some US intelligence whistleblowers say they distrust the claim that Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine.
Here is the evidence I've seen that Russia has sent troops to fight in Ukraine.
It does not all come from the US or NATO.
Due to the Supreme Court's "rich people's money is speech" McCutcheon decision, 300 rich people have already spent 11 million dollars more on this year's election than previous limits permitted.
The Tories are trying to hamstring organizations such as Oxfam so they cannot campaign for hungry people there.
Phony abortion counsellors that give false information have spread from the US to Australia.
The Indian government blocked foreign funding for Greenpeace India, but a court reversed the decision.
Evidently Modi's government wants mining companies to trash India.
CVS is discontinuing sale of cigarettes.
Opponents
of GM Labelling Triple Lobbying Spending in 2014.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
In a Lot of Ways, We're Worse Off Today Than We Were under George W. Bush.
Global heating is hitting the Gulf of Maine hard, driving many species northward.
Pennsylvania put a prison next to a coal ash dump, and the prisoners are getting diseases from that.
Australia has been pressured into cancelling the plan to dump waste from dredging a new coal port straight into the Great Barrier Reef. However, the export of coal from that port will still gravely threaten the reef.
AT&T Wants Tax Incentives And State Laws That Protect It from Competition.
Since cables running down the street are a natural monopoly, they should be be owned either by tightly regulated businesses or directly by the state.
Commenting on a female candidate's appearance, whether positively or negatively or neutrally, tends to harm the candidate's success in the race. Pointing out that this is a side issue, and what matters is the candidate's politics, cancels out that effect.
In this context, it is interesting to note the way other senators
commented
disparagingly on the appearance of Senator Gillibrand.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Staff in "fast food" restaurants in several US states plan to go on strike on Sep 4 and protest outside restaurants.
Remember that "fast food" was not supposed to be eaten. It was originally intended for fasting.
ISIS published another beheading video.
ISIS is really desperate to get the US more involved in fighting.
How conservative prejudice cut off the promising therapy of LSD.
Citizens of New York State, Connecticut, Rhode Island and
Massachusetts:
help
block a pipeline for fracked gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israel sabotaged the Palestinian Authority by not passing on the tax revenues it collects on the PA's behalf.
UK thugs secretly checked a journalist's phone records without a warrant.
This was to identify a whistleblower in the thug department.
The thugs refuse to say how many times they have done this.
Tax dodging and corruption cost the world's poorest countries 20 billion dollars in tax revenue, or maybe more if the tax rate were what it should be.
The US government (and US citizens) suffer from this too.
Tasmania has permitted logging in 1500 square miles of currently protected forests.
They claim that this is justified by "creating jobs", which is standard bullshit for right-wing governments that decide to loot the environment. (The same has been said to argue for the Keystone XL pipeline.) Of course, the same right-wing governments destroy far more jobs through austerity. Take away a lot, give back a little while screwing you, and say you should be grateful.
I do not consider trees sacred. If most of the Earth's wild forests were still here, it would make sense to cut parts of them, just not too much. But we've already come close to wiping out many ecosystems, and now it is time to stop.
As we get closer to catastrophe, the money pressure attacking every protected area or possible resource will grow. The plutocrats who hope to profit will promise trickle-down to some of the masses they have made desperate, so as to get them to support the looting. By the time civilization can no longer support the sort of trade that makes it profitable to cut down forests and ship the wood across the world, we may have wiped out every last bit of forest in the final frenzy.
Mining threatens to poison the Scandinavian Arctic.
Five questions North Carolina thugs must answer about the two teenagers they framed for murder.
A judge rejected release of photos of Mohammed al-Qahtani, because seeing how he was tortured might make people angry at the US.
Wouldn't all criminals love to be able to use that argument.
The EU is requiring improved efficiency from electric appliances, and right-wing media are trying to make a scandal out of it.
The UK government has had to admit that that the TTIP would ban undoing the privatization of the NHS. Its whole purpose is to put companies over the public.
Is there any major party in the UK that opposes the TTIP? Please tell me if you know.
Advances in climate modelling have tied global heating to long droughts including the current drought in California.
In Germany, Uber has been renamed Unter: it is banned. However, not for the sake of passengers' privacy.
Two convicted murderers in North Carolina may be freed now that DNA evidence shows the real killer was someone else.
The thugs bullied the teenagers into confessing, then hid evidence that would have proved their innocence. Egregiously, the thugs seem to have actively blocked investigation of the real killer at the time. (Don't let inconvenient facts get in the way of the preferred theory.)
It's as if the thugs were out to get those two teenagers, but why? I don't know, but I can guess a possible explanation. Is it possible that the teenagers were black and the real murderer was white?
Will the detectives that committed this vicious act be put on trial?
Some policies to reduce long-term global heating can increase short-term global heating. This is because they reduce CO2 emissions but increase methane emissions.
This issue becomes important if humanity gets its act together to reduce CO2 emissions enough to curb long-term global heating. If humanity fails to do so, as now appears likely, then this issue will only slightly change the timing of disaster.
A few Florida thugs listened to their consciences and reported that their chief was illegally giving them a quota for traffic tickets.
Will the chief be prosecuted? Will the tickets be refunded and the license points taken off?
India and China have announced they will downgrade their participation in the last-ditch meeting to try to avoid global heating disaster.
A Palestinian citizen of Israel, well accustomed to second-class citizenship, reports on the wave of increased racism and repression.
Widely repeated death threats against Arabs go unchecked, while Arabs that make sober criticism of war get fired or arrested.
The boycott of Israeli products is getting strong enough to make Israeli businesses pressure the government.
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendments Act.
The winners and the losers of the latest battle in Gaza.
An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian teenager in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet, fracturing his skull.
This does not happen by accident: the soldiers are good shots, and the teenager was not expecting violence, so he was probably walking in a steady, predictable way.
The Israeli army took a Palestinian civilian hostage, then used him as a human shield, forcing him to search buildings for tunnels.
Israel repeatedly accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields but there is no evidence this ever occurred.
The UK has exposed collusion and lying among the thugs that accused an important Tory politician of calling them "fucking plebs".
Such collusion and lying is commonplace among thugs, to cover up other nasty things such as killing an innocent person. The system is set up to take it for truth — unless the victim is an important right-wing politician.
Barcelona faces the problem of an excess of tourism, which threatens to force the residents out of the city, as a local consequence of broader problems: corruption and the debt-collecting government of occupation.
Medecins Sans Frontieres says military medical teams are needed in West Africa because health systems have collapsed. Infectious corpses are rotting in the streets and treatable diseases are killing people.
The absence of medical care could kill a lot more people than Ebola is killing now. The panic could become worse than a civil war.
Liberian nurses have gone on strike because they don't have proper equipment to protect them from catching Ebola from their patients.
Shouldn't the US donate this equipment?
40 years later, data vindicate the Limits to Growth study, suggesting that civilization is nearing the start of a collapse into global poverty.
Easing Restrictions on Gaza Won't Create Conditions for Normal Life Or Offer Any Economic Or Diplomatic Horizon.
Proof that Wisconsin Governor Walker is indeed a target of the campaign violations investigation that a crony judge has halted.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Employee Empowerment Act, which would make it illegal to discriminate against employees for trying to organize a union.
The US is developing tiny neural modulators as implants to modify the function of particular nerves in the brain.
I am suspicious of the idea of using this to treat arthritis. Arthritis is not a brain condition; it is a disorder of joints. A neural modulator might alter the sensation of pain from arthritis but that would not make the joint any better. It might over time do just the opposite.
Ahead of proposing mining projects in northern Australia, the Australian government is cutting funds for monitoring environmental damage there.
Sample
weather forecasts for 2050 might show people what global heating
means in practice.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Remember that 2100 will be much worse than 2050.
Our reality resembles the film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, though not at the same speed.
I think the writer doesn't really understand science fiction; he thinks it is supposed to be a comment on our world. As a famous critic (was it Samuel Delaney?) pointed out, people who don't really understand science fiction tend to perceive it as allegory, a comment on something else, rather than a fictional world in which the events described happen. This is the heart of science fiction.
I once heard a song on the radio that talked about birds' disappearing in the sky. What an alarming idea! I recall imagining what I'd ask if I saw that really happen. Were they being destroyed, or transported elsewhere? What's the cause — a natural phenomenon, a technological accident, a weapon? Would it get me next?
Then I realized the song did not mean it literally, only that the birds were flying off into the distance. How pedestrian! Their disappearance would have been far more interesting.
This made me realize that I have a science-fictional way of understanding a story.
The UN will try to investigate atrocities committed by ISIS, and lesser atrocities committed by the Iraqi government army.
Hong Kong legislators protested as China's representative declared that only submissive candidates would be allowed in Hong Kong.
New pun anteojos para dormir.
Everyone: call on Dunkin Donuts
to pay workers a
living wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Farm guards in Greece were acquitted, incredibly, of shooting Bangladeshi farm workers who were protesting that they had been denied their pay.
The farmer owners exploit these migrant workers rather than pay a Greek worker decent wages. I would support the Greek government completely in deporting the migrant workers — and prosecuting the farmers for hiring them. But that is no justification for denying them their pay, let alone for shooting them.
US citizens: call for an end to funding militarization of thugs.
Madly overzealous UK thugs had the King family arrested in Spain for taking their sick child out of a hospital, hoping to give him a different treatment elsewhere.
It appears doctors disagree about whether the proton beam treatment they hope to give Ashya King might help him. (See the end of the article.) In any case, the hospital he was in had given up hope for saving him, so there was nothing to lose by trying another treatment except what it would cost.
The hospitals that say the proton beam treatment is better might have been exaggerating to get business. Or it might be true.
Whether it is true or not, whether it saves Ashya King or not, it is clear that his parents were acting responsibly to try to care for him. The accusations of neglect, used to get them arrested in Spain, are impossible to justify.
It appears that the European arrest warrant was issued without a valid legal basis.
Modi's government wants to preserve some of the coal mining licenses that were issued corruptly.
Even if a mine is ready to produce, that is no obstacle to requiring the mine license to be auctioned properly to buyers.
There is also the separate and vital environmental issue of whether India ought to burn so much coal.
Thousands of Russian soldiers were sent to places near Ukraine, then stopped communicating with their families.
Hundreds have turned up killed in combat, and the government refuses to say where they died.
The only plausible explanation is that they have been sent into Ukraine to fight.
I find it amusing that people who (rightly) distrust what the US government says about its own military operations are willing to believe what Putin says about his.
Don't blame low-paid working mothers for bringing along children to help.
Instead, blame the cruel right-wing politicians that make laws that make this the best option those mothers have available.
Everyone: call on Dole to intervene to protect Andy Hall, who reported on slavery in pineapple production in Thailand.
Everyone: call on Algeria and Tunisia to stop accepting marriage as an excuse to avoid punishment for rape.
Erdogan has continued to arrest the Turkish thugs that are connected with trying to prosecute ministers for corruption.
The US
rebuked
Israel for seizing Palestinian land near Bethlehem.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-21 because the old link was broken.]
Israel admits that this seizure of land is meant as a collective punishment of Palestinians for a crime they have nothing to do with.
Israeli society is increasingly flooded with dehumanization of Palestinians and threats/advocacy of sexual violence.
The Pentagon has repeatedly covered up flaws in its weapons, flaws that kill US troops, and punishes the whistleblowers that reveal them.
ISIS and al-Nusra continue to get lots of funding from people in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Those states may not be funding them directly, but they permit it to go on.
Everyone: call on the Vatican to divest from fossil fuels.
Massachusetts citizens: see how your candidates stand on abortion rights.
California is about to pass a bill that in effect requires college students to explicitly ask "Do you want to have sex?" before doing so.
The article does not make it clear that this law will regulate how colleges handle accusations of sexual assault — not students directly.
However, it is so common for people to have sex without explicitly asking each other "Do you want to have sex now?" that I fear students will consider the requirement for "affirmative consent" ridiculous, and systematically ignore it, so that they will nearly all be technically guilty if the school ever investigates them.
Another point in the article, which makes the law seem unreasonable in a different way, describes it wrong. The law does not say that consent is invalid if "given under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs", as the article put it. Those words would seem to mean that if two people meet after drinking alcohol, and then have sex, then neither of them really consented — if the law said that. But the law really says that a person who is "incapacitated" by alcohol and/or drugs does not consent. That seems correct to me.
The high rate of arrest warrants in Ferguson — more than 1.5 per year per inhabitant — is due to systematic harassment of the poor.
This is common across the US, and amounts to an additional tax on the consequences of poverty.
Thousands in Australia protested Abbott's war on children and young people.
The decline of wild salmon populations is slowly wiping out the orcas of Puget Sound.
Designing munitions that reduce the environmental damage of war.
This is the opposite of depleted uranium munitions.
Hong Kong citizens plan a massive protest after China rejected free elections in Hong Kong.
When babies are born at the 23rd week of pregnancy, out of those that survive, almost 90% will have a disability. Often very serious.
I think that implies a moral duty to abort these fetuses rather than let them become disabled babies.
Britain Accused of Conniving at Torture of Maoists in Nepal's Civil War.
The Islamist army that conquered Tripoli is also tied to particular Libyan tribes, and is terrifying residents connected with tribes it considers enemies.
The New York Times endorses bending over backwards not to punish killer thugs.
The impunity is so complete that exceptions are very rare.
Microsoft is playing the offshore game to dodge lots of taxes.
An Australian of aboriginal origin has rejected the Australian state, its money, its passport, etc., as a symbolic act.
Noam Chomsky: America's Real Foreign Policy.
It aims for security for state and plutocratic power, not for citizens.
Imposed poverty in the UK has reached the point where children suffer from rickets, which is caused by a shortage of minerals or of vitamin D.
Vitamin D is made in the skin when it's exposed to sunlight, but the minerals must come from food.
The Pacific Islands Are Drowning, We Need the World's Help.
The proposed TTIP treaty has a back door which could be used, afterwards, to cancel out food safety inspection.
Even though economic growth is no longer tied strictly to energy use increases, many human activities are pushing absolute resource limits.
Of course, our current way of doing things is not sustainable. But ceasing to overload the Earth does not inevitably mean we must be poor and deprived. That depends on whether the plutocrats take it all.
A Brazilian court ordered Apple, Google and Microsoft to delete the Secret app (and a similar one) from their app stores.
Nobody should use that app; it is proprietary software, so the users don't control it and it may well be malware (as many proprietary programs are).
The Apple and Microsoft operating systems are proprietary and full of malware, too, as is Google Play which is part of Android.
Notwithstanding that, this court decision is oppression, pure and simple. But what makes the decision so damaging is that Apple and Microsoft have built censorship of apps into their operating systems. Now Brazil is using their censorship systems for its own purposes.
In 1950, the UK establishment confronted democracy to maintain its power. Nowadays, it has achieved such superiority over democracy that there is nothing to restrain its power.
In the US, the confrontation dated from 1932 to 1980, and some details of the establishment are different, but the result is the same.
This is why none of the major parties proposes measures that would give poor Britons decent housing.
Kerry called for a "global coalition" to fight ISIS.
Fighting ISIS in a way that is effective in the long term is not such a simple thing. Previous interventions backfired, and ISIS is the result.
Although fighting ISIS can hurt it tactically, in the long term military opposition that enrages foreign Sunnis is what ISIS thrives on.
The leaders of ISIS seem to want to encourage a big US intervention, and that is why they publish provocative videos of real or pretended beheadings.
They also want to encourage Shi'ite hatred that will frighten Iraqi Sunnis.
Hillary Clinton went to a GMO convention and gave GMOs her full support, repeating the false talking points of the GMO companies.
In the US: petition major organic dairies to drop out of the organization that is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Vermont's GMO labeling law.
Women report that men's verbal confrontation is occasionally followed by their physical aggression, often enough that the verbal confrontation makes them scared physical aggression will follow.
I don't understand those men's attitude towards women. It seems to be a mixture of desire, hatred and contempt. I have never felt that way towards anyone, but I am compelled by women's testimony to believe that some men do.
Nonetheless, expressions of emotion are not physical attacks. The two are not morally equivalent. If some insults lead to an assault, that doesn't mean an insult is as bad as an assault.
Uri Avnery: The War for Nothing.
It is interesting that the rockets fired from Hamas, although they rarely injure a person, made life so unpleasant in the farms near the border of Gaza that people began to move away.
Israel has no right to order Gazans to stay away from the border on pain of being shot without warning. Israel does have the right to evacuate the land on its own side of the border. If Israel wants a buffer zone, that is the legitimate way to make one.
A UK man was sentenced to about 3 years in prison for redistributing copies of a movie.
Someone pointed out that this is as much as the usual penalty for convicted rapists.
This redistribution was done commercially. I don't advocate legalization of commercial redistribution of copyrighted works without authorization. Works made to be used in a practical way should all be free but this was a work of fiction, not a functional work. So I don't think what Danks did has to be legalized.
However, the companies that the UK government caters to would have told it to jail him just the same if he had not tried to make one penny.
Please don't refer to unauthorized copying with the smear term, "piracy". Movie piracy is what you see in Captain Blood.
Most Americans want it to be illegal to allow children to play outside alone.
This shows how far the American insanity about children has gone.
Another foolish overreaction: a foreign tourist who climbed a tower on the Brooklyn Bridge faces criminal charges. He is likely to be jailed for years before trial.
Canadian scientists are required to get
9
levels of approval before they can tell the public how much Arctic
ice has melted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs knew Shannon Renee McNeal was the wrong person, and so did the court, but they insisted on jailing her anyway.
Anyone can make a mistake, but there should be zero tolerance for insisting on mistreating someone based on a mistake that has been recognized. All the people who did so should be fired.
States which had legalized medical marijuana, in 2010, had significantly fewer deaths from opioid pain-killers.
A
US hedge fund appears to have given Mugabe the money for his
terror campaign that undid the opposition's electoral victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
A thug in Texas killed a teenager who reasonably thought the thug was an armed thief and tried to drive away. The thug faces no charges.
An executive order made by President Reagan, which ostensibly allows spying on foreigners, is used today mainly to collect data about Americans.
The article repeats the absurd nostrum that terrorists such as al Qa'ida threatened the existence of the US. This is a ridiculous exaggeration — what they could directly do was too small to eliminate the US, and the only way they could do great harm was if the US reacted self-destructively (which it did). Since this ridiculous exaggeration was the excuse for Dubya's attacks on US human rights, and on Iraq, we must not let it pass as true. We must refute it even when someone else mentions it only in passing.
President Reagan's other horrible things: He betrayed his country by supplying weapons to terrorists as ransom for the hostages they had taken. He attacked the non-rich, setting the US on the path towards today's plutocracy and expanding poverty.
Republican candidates for the senate met with rich donors and
confessed
their undying gratitude and loyalty to the money.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for an end to
tax
write-offs on penalties to corporations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Many US thug departments are planning to deploy drones, perhaps with infrared cameras to see what the eye could not (such as, whether someone is home).
We certainly can't trust thugs to follow rules, or laws.
Some major social networks tend to silence a dissenting few, on any issue.
This is why it helps us greatly if you insist on calling the GNU/Linux system "GNU/Linux" and refuse to be intimidated by those who erroneously call it "Linux".
Intimidation by Imran Khan's opposition party is driving a Pakistani TV station mostly off the air.
The ICC says that it can investigate war crimes in Gaza if it gets a request from the government of Palestine.
I don't know whether it really needs that request or is passing the buck. I am sure the US is putting pressure on Palestine not to give the ICC jurisdiction.
ISIS uses waterboarding on prisoners, following the US example.
Intelligence agencies have every reason to overestimate the danger of terrorism.
Not to mention that it provides an excuse to do to us what they want to do anyway: spy on everyone's communications and movements.
Ferguson protesters and bystanders attacked by thugs have sued the thug department for 40 million dollars.
I hope they win, but if they do, they will only get compensation from the city. The guilty won't be punished.
US citizens: call on state officials
to ditch
ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
On US TV, the political "debate" shows don't invite, or even mention, union leaders.
The libertarian ideology stubbornly opposes all solutions to problems such as public health and global heating.
US sanctions against Iran continue to make necessary medicines unavailable there.
The UK says that Russia has sent 80 tanks and lots of soldiers into Ukraine.
Hong Kong has launched accusations of bribery against a media mogul that campaigns for democracy.
Plutocrats want the benefits of socialism for them, plus "small government" to strand the rest of us.
The number of manatees in Florida has increased greatly since they were protected, so the question is whether to designate them as "threatened" rather than "endangered".
A species can't survive if its habitat is wiped out. The US often protects one endearing endangered species as a way of protecting the whole ecosystem, including many other species, that it lives in. It seems that manatees are an example of this. The existing restrictions enable manatees to coexist with human water activities, but this redesignation would permit land development that could wipe out all of them.
E-Cigarettes Should Be Called 'Nicotine Sticks' to Curb Appeal, Experts Say.
I suggest calling them "nicotine inhalers" and designing them to look like the inhalers for other drugs — totally un-cool.
US citizens: tell Hillary Clinton to stop supporting Monsanto and GMOs.
Syrian rebels have taken UN peacekeepers hostage.
The GMO industry is trying to get Reuters journalist Carey Gillam fired or transferred, part of a general pattern of trying to silence criticism.
Due to global heating, a brain-eating amoeba is spreading north from Louisiana.
Getting just one in your nose can be fatal.
Victims of US-managed kidnaping and torture call on Obama to release the Senate's torture investigation report.
ISIS killed 200 Syrian soldiers that it had captured, according to its supporters.
Even supposing the report is inaccurate, it shows what ISIS would like to do.
A prohibition on cohabitation, effectively Mormon polygamous marriages though not saying so, has been overturned in a court.
There is a secular polyamory community, which I support. We believe that polyamorous relationships are legitimate; we know they can be happy, and don't lead particularly to problems. I see no valid grounds for the prohibition that was just overturned.
However, the critics of Mormon polygamy say it is a system of oppression of women and children. Are they right? If so, how can those facts be reconciled with secular polyamorous experience? Are these relationships bad in a hidden way? Is there a crucial difference, that causes secular polyamory to have better results than Mormon ones? Is it a matter of different ways of judging whether a relationship is good or bad?
Elizabeth Warren is right wing in regard to Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Muslim and Jewish leaders in Britain say, let's export peace to Gaza.
Australia's next offensive for the fossil fuel companies is to eliminate new spending on conversion to renewable energy.
Market Basket's old CEO, that customers and workers supported, has returned.
How the US government's basic error leads to underestimating the CO2 emissions from Keystone XL.
Renewable energy now generates 22% of electricity, but politicians are working hard to slow the growth rate.
When you compare the cost of renewable energy subsidies with the damage global heating will do, the former is clearly less. It's also much less than the fossil fuel subsidies, which the same politicians don't complain about. Clearly that cost is not the real reason.
I think the reason for this is fossil fuel company money.
The Australian government's next excuse to step on the downtrodden: punishing those who miss a job interview.
The Ukrainian army says that the Russian army has invaded and is attacking the city of Mariupol, after weeks of bombardment from Russian territory.
It appears that Putin has decided on a real covert war of conquest, not the provocation/distraction from Crimea that I thought this was.
Not all safety advice constitutes victim-blaming.
The question of whether to intervene in Iraq includes questions about what sort of intervention it would be, and with what goal.
The Obama regime, obedient to the banksters as usual, fined Goldman Sachs for fraud, but will allow Goldman Sachs to deduct the fine from its taxes and recover 1/3 of it.
Shaker Aamer, held without charges in Guantanamo, is now being beaten daily by the guards as punishment for protesting his imprisonment.
Suggestion: the US has no more obligation to fight Assad in Syria than it has to fight the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, etc.
When Assad faced a campaign of peaceful protests for human rights, that campaign merited support on ethical grounds. Today's situation is totally different.
When a violent uprising started in parallel with that campaign, Assad said it was started by Islamists, and that may have been true. Once the fighting started, various Sunni groups, reportedly less fanatical, joined in; but they have been eclipsed by the jihadi groups funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
That the US does not have to fight all these dictators does not mean it must or should give them strong support, as it does now.
The reasons the US government has stated for supporting so many Arab dictators and monarchs are: to oppose the Soviet Union (obsolete), and to promote stability. Ironically, this practice has had the effect, across decades, of enabling Islamist fanatics to win the support of those who oppose the dictators and monarchs for other reasons.
The indefinite cease-fire in Gaza includes some relaxation of the siege, but not entirely.
The UK thugs didn't bother investigating the murder of Ricky Reel, apparently for racist motives, because they were too busy investigating his family as they campaigned for a proper investigation of the murder.
Universities were once considered a way to benefit society by spreading learning and giving the non-rich a path to advance; now they mainly maintain the elite status quo.
The US equivalent of Iraq Body Count has found that US thugs kill about 3 times as many people as the FBI reports — around 1100 a year.
In an Australian state, one party proposes to escalate the war on drugs.
I think it is a bad idea to use methamphetamine, but the war on drugs does worse harm than the drugs.
New coal-fired electric plants in Europe threatens to wipe out all its savings in CO2 emissions.
If solar power and more advanced batteries catch on, these plants will be lost investments. I suspect that the owners are getting a subsidy to build them, or a loan from the state that will never be repaid if the plants become unnecessary.
Everyone: call on Burger King to drop its tax dodging plan.
US citizens: call for protection of monarch butterflies, whose numbers have fallen by 90%.
Please don't distort the formerly useful word "decimate". It means killing ten percent of something. (The Romans used this as a punishment for military units that mutinied and then surrendered.) What we have done to the monarch butterflies is far worse than decimation.
The ban on GMOs in Kaua'i was overturned in court.
A Koch brothers front group claims that net neutrality is "marxist".
The Koch brothers figure that any absurd claim will pass for true if they get enough organizations to say it often enough.
Three Vietnamese activists who protested for democracy were jailed for "obstructing traffic".
Did Vietnam bring in thugs from Ferguson? This sounds awfully like what they did to some journalists.
The UN reports on the atrocities in Syria, committed by Assad's army and by ISIS.
Protester Ellie Mae O'Hagan, CS gas sprayed by a wild thug for no reason says that the years-late apology from the thug department is no substitute for holding thugs accountable for their actions.
The City of London has a police force that fights the War on Sharing, illegally.
The City of London is a small part of London that acts as a political arm of the banksters. It is the enemy of democracy.
The UK has very little no social mobility. Here are some of the causes.
The situation in the US is similar overall. Social mobility has gone way down since 50 years ago.
A security guard in Australia was declared a "security risk" for having a sign on her car that criticized the danger of coal dust.
The greatest irony is that these ports endanger the security of Australians far more than any individual could.
Global heating denialists claim Australia's record-breaking summer heat is a lie.
New pun in spanish.
US citizens: call on the Department of Transportation to recognize that Americans drive a little less every year, and stop wasting money on unnecessary roads.
Detroit has resumed disconnecting poor people from water supply.
Some people have restored their own connections. Bravo!
Greg Palast: oil companies destroyed the swamp that protected New Orleans from hurricanes, and an oil company shut down the research center that tried to warn people of the danger.
The IPCC reports that global heating is already a source of danger and it may be impossible to reverse.
A woman in Indiana faces many years' imprisonment for taking drugs to cause an abortion.
Young people who were in Fukushima at the time of the meltdown show a high rate of thyroid cancer.
Bus deregulation in the UK (outside London) resulted in high fares and bad service.
This suggests to me that buses need a subsidy, and that deregulation meant elimination of the subsidy. Does anyone know?
How
the Brutalized Become Brutal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Countries and criminals around the world are tracking people's movements through portable phones.
This is why I don't have one.
The NSA can figure out that two people know each other by seeing that their cell phones are in close proximity.
Pipeline protesters in Michigan locked themselves to trucks to block construction of an oil pipeline.
A Florida thug dumped a mostly paralyzed man onto the floor by tipping his wheelchair.
This incident is unusual, both for callousness, and because the thug's superior condemned it and apologized. It is not a basis for judging thugs in general.
But I think it is the extreme manifestation of an attitude that many thugs have in a less egregious form.
How AT&T buys the support of grass-roots organizations for its campaign against net neutrality.
Wisconsin Governor Walker actively raised funds for supposedly independent groups that were going to use the funds to promote voting for him.
Russia admitted its soldiers were in Ukraine, and reporters trying to investigate reported secret graves in Russia of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were attacked.
Hypersonic weapons now being developed by the US, China and Russia would put the world on a hair trigger and could even be mistaken for a nuclear attack.
It would be smarter to sign a treaty to ban them, but the US government generally refuses, assuming it will have the advantage.
Everyone: phone Lisa Kershner, General Area Manager of Oakland Marriott City Center and Oakland Convention Center, at 1-510-466-6410, and say you object to their support for the "Urban Shield" event which promotes military weapons for use on US streets and in US homes.
Spanish women are protesting a mayor who warned men that women would make false accusations of rape.
The mayor's statement combines two points which don't really fit together. The suggestion to be careful where you go at 06:00 is wise, not just for women, and not just in regard to rape. There are places in Cambridge where I hesitate to walk when it is dark or deserted, because I don't want to be robbed.
To give this advice for avoiding rape does not excuse rape, any more than giving this advice for avoiding robbery excuses robbery. Safety advice does not inherently involve blaming the victim.
But sometimes it does. In the case of that mayor, for instance. When the mayor combines safety advice with claims about unlikely false accusations of rape, it is clear that he intends to attack women and is looking for pretexts.
Palestine calls on various countries to investigate the participation of their citizens (who are soldiers in the Israeli army) in Israel war crimes.
Dalit women who refuse to collect toilet waste face threats of attack from higher-caste people who demand this service.
WHO calls for
regulation
of e-cigarettes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine says its army has
captured
Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine alongside rebels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's total destruction of tall buildings in Gaza is an intentional collective punishment of civilians. This is proved by the fact that Israel can, and in the past did, attack particular apartments without destroying the whole building.
If Argentina surrenders to the vultures, it may be forced to surrender a lot of land to foreign powers.
The UK government is fabricating absurd excuses to evade responsibility for undercover thug infiltrators that formed sexual relationships with activists, much as it is fabricating absurd excuses to evade responsibility for aiding US torture.
I may shock some people by saying this, but I think that sending thugs to infiltrate nonviolent opposition movements, in the absence of a serious crime (other than the crime of protesting), is totally unacceptable for a free society even if the thugs do not have sex with them.
Thugs' shooting black people is the current instantiation of lynching.
A prominent Tory wants to apply "guilty unless proven innocent" to anyone that goes to Syria or Iraq.
The NSA maintains a huge database of who talks with whom, including Americans as well as foreigners, and makes it available to several government agencies for all sorts of investigations.
Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian human rights defender and feminist and member of the Palestinian parliament, has been arbitrarily exiled by Israel's army from Ramallah to a distant part of the West Bank.
ISIS massacred Shi'ite prisoners in Mosul after telling them they were about to be released. This lie reminds me of the lies Nazis told to Jews to get them to cooperate with being killed.
I suspect the purpose of this massacre was to provoke Shi'ite militias to massacre Sunnis and thus force Sunnis to support ISIS.
Germany may be forced to allow euro-austerity to stop.
A former Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector says that the NRC is ignoring its safety guidelines regarding the safety of the Diablo Canyon reactor in case of earthquake.
In Macao, an unofficial poll of citizens satisfaction with the chief official was shut down forcibly, based on an absurd pretext as usual.
Strong and harsh reactions to the spreading of Islamist ideology can backfire (not to mention that they can violate human rights).
Short-term events and cycles explain the short-term discrepancy in heating of the Earth's surface since 2000, showing that the climate models were correct overall for the long term.
Cameron wants to grab at the ISIS provocation to start another open-ended "war on terror".
As the article says, this is strategically foolish; but it's a great excuse to smash what remains of civil liberties with "anti-terrorist" laws which can then be turned against dissidents, journalists, and journalists' spouses.
The University of Illinois confirmed that it cancelled its faculty offer to Steven Salaita because he had criticized on Twitter the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
I asked someone to find me a sample of his tweets; these are what I received.
I try my best to remember that we don't just stumble into political consciousness; it's better to teach than to berate or shame.I don't see anything here that legitimately justifies taking away a teacher's job."Hamas" is the biggest red herring in American political discourse since Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."
When will the attack on #Gazaend? What is left for #Israelto prove? Who is left for Israel to kill? This is the logic of genocide.
Members of the Knesset routinely call for the elimination of Palestinians, so #Israel can spare us the bullshit about restraint in #Gaza.
#Israelgets billions in aid, arms, and financial subsidies from the US, yet most Americans condemn imaginary Black women for welfare.
Rednecks need a new slogan. Instead of "kick their ass and take their gas," how about "#Gazais a disaster, but Netanyahu is my master"?
Republicans are such tough guys, eager to kill 4 God and country. #Israel slaps around the US of A, though, and all they do is ask for more.
The dude who wrote the genocide is permissible article has an egg avatar. Total hasbara troll.
I just got an email condemning my "slander of holy Israel." I reckon I can accept "slander," but "holy" seems a bit out of place.
As Scotland votes about independence, one Englishman is envious, wishing England had the chance to escape from its sham democracy.
What this says to me is that independence for Scotland is a side issue. All of the UK needs to real democracy.
Entrenched systematic bigotry means that
fatal accidents
systematically happen to the group on the receiving end.
Harbors around the world have
plastic
fibers in the water, which can harm fish.
It will take a lot of work to find out how these fibers affect various
species of fish.
David Barron, now Federal Judge Barron, was in an awful rush to
approve
killing
a US citizen with no criminal charges based on nothing but
intelligence reports.
We know how a president can
shape
intelligence reports around whatever result he seeks, so this is
little limitation.
35%
of young Britons would be happy to show their social media
profiles to employers if pressured to do so.
The report says "in exchange for job security", which sounds like a
benefit; but since employers can reduce job security to zero if they
wish, in practice it means, "If you don't show us, you'll be fired (or
never hired)."
It should be illegal for employers to even ask.
The outcome of trials in Florida is affected by the race of the people
in the jury pool,
in
a strange way.
If all the jury pool is white, black defendants are more likely to get
convicted than white defendants. But if at least one black person shows
up for the jury pool, the disparity disappears — even a jury is
made up only of whites.
I think it would be legitimate to arrange for partial racial balance
in jury pools if that eliminates demonstrated unfairness in trial
outcomes.
The study that found damage in animals that were exposed to Roundup,
or that ate Roundup-ready GMO corn, has been
published
again.
The journal that published it first later
retracted
it in suspicious circumstances.
Thugs killed another black man in St Louis, not far from Ferguson.
Video shows that there was no reason to shoot him, let alone shoot him
12
times rapidly without waiting as much as 15 seconds.
It could well be that those thugs really believed he was threatening
them. Part of the effect of racism is that it leads people to
perceive a black male as potentially violent. If the thugs are
allowed to cite this as an excuse for killing someone, their murder
spree will go unchecked.
Racist thinking is associated with the bad logic of "essentialist"
thinking, but specific
kinds of experiences can lead people out of such thinking.
Racist assaults, often by thugs, are frequent occurrences for blacks
in the US,
which teach
them a justified rage.
Learning to control so much justified rage is not easy. It would help
if they could get justice.
The Shi'ite militias that resist ISIS, where the Iraqi army is
incompetent to do so, hate Sunnis
and intend
to expel them from any areas they capture from ISIS.
This is likely to force Sunnis to support ISIS even if they detest
ISIS's oppression and cruelty. Unless they have somewhere else to
turn, and at present they don't.
US Republicans want the US
to intervene
against ISIS in Syria.
I don't think the killing of one US journalist, on top of so many
others murdered by ISIS, is particularly important. I don't think
ISIS is close to attacking the US itself. Whether this sort of
intervention is right depends mainly on its effects on the region
itself. I can see the reasons in favor, but I also worry that things
can go wrong in ways we are not likely to anticipate.
US military support for Kurdistan makes sense because Kurdistan is a
nation fighting a conventional war. It has an army that is loyal to
something more than its pay. In addition, Kurdistan is not likely to
fall into brutality comparable to that of ISIS or the Shi'ite
militias.
The use of drones to attack ISIS poses no special ethical issue
because the targets are military units, typically equipped with
unmistakable military vehicles or heavy weapons — not cars,
houses and groups of people standing around, that might well have
civilians in them.
Can/will Kurdistan protect Sunni Arabs that wish to join it? Can it
offer them a way out of support for ISIS?
Tony B'liar's business accepted a lot of money to advise the dictator
of Kazakhstan on how
to damp
down the bad publicity he got from shooting a bunch of protesters and
crushing the opposition.
Google seems to be aiming slowly
to make
the World Wide Web effectively its proprietary product.
Israel's shift to right-wing racism means
that Liberal
Zionism among Jews elsewhere has hit a dead end.
Liberal Zionism means support for a Liberal Israel which no longer
exists; Israelis who would support it
are met with intimidation, even repression. No wonder 40% of Israelis
are thinking of emigrating.
UK cuts in support for local government
are focused
on the poorest areas.
When thugs do something violent, and get fired,
they frequently
move on to some other town that doesn't care.
Campaigning against the practice
of putting
sugar in lots of foods where you would not expect it.
The Ferguson thugs confirm
that a
thug shot at Michael Brown as he was running away.
Apparently that shot did not hit Brown, but that miss is no excuse for
shooting at someone who was no threat.
After they shot Brown,
the thugs
did not allow a nurse to perform CPR.
That amounts to deliberate murder.
The head of the Missouri Republican Party thinks it
is shameful
that voter registration booths have been set up in Ferguson.
Republicans can't count
on voter-suppression
laws to prevent black citizens from voting; some of them will
succeed in voting if they try.
The government of India
has permitted
the entry of GMOs, disregarding its own laws over and over.
Various states and parties in the Muslim world are
declaring
their opposition to ISIS.
Beijing
Independent Film Festival Shut Down by Chinese Authorities.
Austerity
Has Made Europe's Depression Longer Than In The 1930s.
Economic growth used to require more energy use, but now it is
possible to invest in energy efficiency leading to
growth
with less energy use. Many governments don't do that, because
they have surrendered to the fossil fuel companies, which won't permit
it.
However, economic growth is not invariably a good thing.
It is good when people generally share in it and it reduces
inequality.
The black citizens of Ferguson
do
not expect justice for Michael Brown.
Israel
completely
destroyed two large buildings in Gaza, saying that Hamas was using
space in them.
One of them had 44 apartments. Hamas should not have used one of them
for warlike activities — if indeed it did so; I would not take
Israel's word for that. But if Hamas did so, that doesn't excuse
destroying the building.
Islamists took control of Tripoli, bringing about the
semipermanent
fracture of Libya.
From
Gaza to Ferguson: Exposing the Toolbox of Racist Repression.
The US has seen cycles of racial segregation and desegregation in
different areas. Segregated areas for blacks tend to be ruled by
whites, with thugs that
repress
the black inhabitants on various pretexts.
Ferguson became poor, where people can barely get by from week to week
and people can't afford education, as a
result
of companies' moving manufacturing out of the US.
Being poor, they are continually harassed by the US legal system,
which in 2013 delivered
three
warrants per household in the town.
Genetically engineered eucalyptus trees won't directly hurt people,
but they have the potential to do
great
ecological harm and encourage land grabs.
The ACLU says that
the
First Amendment was "suspended" in Ferguson; the right to protest,
or report on protest, was loaded with impossible requirements.
It points out that journalism in the US is
under
general attack.
The reason it is so unpleasant to deal with Comcast is that
call
center staff are under pressure to sell something, regardless of
the purpose of the call.
The Obama regime
argues
in court that the Nuremberg trials are legally irrelevant to the
culpability of Bush and his officials for the crime of aggressive war.
It is easy for US law to define US officials as legally immune
from prosecution for whatever crime it may be. The moral argument
is harder for them to win.
A lousy US university has imposed
censorship
on network access for students and others on campus.
Satellite observations show that the melting of Greenland and
Antarctic ice sheets has
doubled
since 2009.
Don't buy land within a few meters of sea level!
US thugs are
campaigning
to continue receiving military weapons and gear.
A thug from the vicinity of Ferguson was "relieved of duty" after it
was seen that he had made a
bigoted
right-wing speech in an organization primarily of thugs and
soldiers.
The thug has not been fired.
Despite Abbott's mystification,
his
policies clearly reflect the intention to push global heating to
the max.
Ferguson's
Black Community Must Not Be Given the Same 'Justice' As Trayvon
Martin.
The Center for Media and Democracy, which often reports on ALEC's
lobbying, believes
that a
right-wing operative is trying to do a hatchet job. He's the one
who destroyed ACORN by publishing a misleading video.
Everyone: tell Starbucks
to offer
employees a fair and predictable work week.
The Lac Mégantic oil train explosion
was a
disaster waiting to happen, due to weak safety rules granted to
railroad magnates by an evidently corrupted government.
A Hamas representative living in Turkey said that Hamas was
responsible
for kidnaping and killing three Israeli teenagers.
However, there are doubts about whether the Hamas leadership really
ordered the kidnaping is not clear.
Australia's proposal for increased surveillance is written so broadly
that the spy agency would
be allowed
to access any computer on the internet.
The government says wiping out privacy is supposed to be legitimate
because "we're protecting you". The usual stupid excuse of tyrants.
The US may be funding compensation for civilians killed in Yemen
while refusing
to admit killing them.
What Britain would
have if
it had avoided Tony B'liar.
Ferguson
relates to net neutrality, which enables people to spread the word
about what the thugs are doing.
It also relates to censorship by Facebook
and now
Twitter too.
Two different ocean cycles coincided
in sinking
Earth's acquired heat for the past decade, so that the atmosphere
didn't warm all that much.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service
to list
the northern long-eared bat as an endangered species.
US citizens: Americans, comment to the EPA
to support
regulation of pollution from oil refineries.
The UK
must nationalize
the trains; privatizing them was wrong.
Privatization of a government service is generally harmful unless it
allows the public to buy from a free competitive market. Otherwise,
the private owners increase their profits by shafting the public, the
workers, or both.
Everyone:
tell Google to stop supporting
ALEC.
ALEC lobbies for damaging laws in US states and cities, but you don't
need to be a US citizen to put pressure on Google.
US citizens:
Sign
this
petition to stop providing heavy weapons to thugs.
Uri Avnery on
why
Israel wants to keep fighting in Gaza.
Avnery suspects that the three rockets supposedly launched from
Gaza weren't really launched from Gaza.
Shi'ite fanatics attacked a Sunni mosque in Iraq,
killing
almost 100 people.
Aside from being an atrocity, this will help ISIS gain support and
commit atrocities.
Why
Hollywood treats abortions as shocking and shameful — in
contrast to the 1980s, when it treated them as no big deal.
The US is
not
giving much information about its fighting in Iraq.
Drone weapons turn out to be convenient for suppressing journalism.
In Dubya's invasion of Iraq, the Bush forces pressured nearly all
journalists to "embed", which both limited their movements and
pressured them to bias their coverage. But there's not even room for
an embedded reporter in a drone.
Privatization in Britain has followed the path of privatization in
Russia, leading to an
immense
transfer of wealth to the new owners.
Most of the Russian "humanitarian aid" trucks entered Ukraine
without
inspection.
Putin would never go to such trouble for humanitarian purposes. This
must have some harmful motive.
US right-wing racists are
raising
funds to support the thug that killed Michael Brown, cheering on
the killing of more blacks.
A teacher in the US was
punished
for allowing students to reenact two controversial killings, which
the students themselves selected as important current events.
I don't see why students should not learn about these events in that
way.
A Palestinian mortar rocket
killed
an Israeli child.
Firing mortars at towns is a war crime, just like the Israeli
bombardment of Gaza.
Pranksters accused of painting the side of a building in Moscow
are
threatened
with 7 years in prison.
They say they did not do the painting, but the more important point is
that whoever did the painting should not be imprisoned.
The school-to-prison pipeline at work: a student in South Carolina was
suspended from school, then arrested, for writing a
story
about shooting a pet dinosaur.
The thugs say he was arrested for his reaction when the thugs threatened him.
Of course, being threatened by armed thugs who
can
put you in prison by lying about you is enough to rattle most
anyone. It takes training and experience to avoid giving them
something they can twist into an excuse to put you in the wrong.
India has
censored
a film about the assassination of Indira Gandhi because of the
political slant of certain scenes.
This shows
where
the UK will get to if it continues down the path of political
censorship.
A censorship board that does its job "honestly" is a bigger threat to
human rights than one that can be bribed not to censor.
The UN human rights chief says the Security Council's ineffectiveness
on Syria caused
hundreds
of thousands of deaths.
However, there is was
no
proper action the Security Council could have taken in regard to
Syria, even if it had not been paralyzed between the US and
Russia.
The US and UK are now being drawn by necessity into
allying
with Assad in Syria against ISIS.
The only chance for supporting opposition to Assad with good results
was when the opposition was not jihadi. I think Saudi Arabia and
Qatar are to blame for the
jihadists
in Syria.
The public school reality that white Americans won't see: cuts in
spending, especially on schools in poor neighborhoods,
track
the children (mostly minority groups) into bad lives (or
prison).
The various "education reform" programs that the US has seen since 2000
in effect pretend to compensate for these cuts with burdensome handwaving.
The result is that poor American children have been forced into what
we might call
"reform
school".
US citizens: call on the FCC
to reject the
Comcast-TWC merger.
Everyone: call on McDonalds
to pledge
to reject palm oil made from deforestation.
I have never eaten at McDonalds, because I don't need to repeat
someone else's mistake in order to learn from it. McDonalds makes
fast food — food for not eating.
The UK government is planning
a massive
giveaway of public land, a requirement to extract all fossil
fuels, and abolition of local planning.
Thailand has made its military coup effectively permanent
by declaring
the head general to be "prime minister".
US citizens: tell the
USDA, don't
import apples from China.
Hamas supports
Palestine's joining the International Criminal Court. This would
expose Hamas and its agents to war crimes prosecutions, as well as
Israel and its agents.
UK immigration prisons
are paying
prisoners a pittance to cook and clean. Ironically, those
prisoners are not allowed to work in the UK outside prison.
This practice hurts not only the prisoners but all workers in the UK.
Whoever does this work should be paid a decent wage.
The Green
Party condemns
many systematic injustices in the policing of the US.
Corporations Spy
on Nonprofits (that criticize them) with Impunity (in the US).
Oakland
Protesters Hold
Up Mirrors to Police Officers in Ferguson Solidarity March.
Thousands rallied
in New York City.
Bank of America agreed to pay a fine for mortgage fraud,
but it's
much smaller than it appears to be.
Congress should insist that
Obama consult
Congress before military interventions such as the bombing campaign in
Iraq.
Obama has taken steps
to protect
insurance coverage of contraception from the Hobby Lobby decision.
US citizens:
submit
a comment to the FCC opposing the merger between Comcast and Time
Warner.
That two companies with such large share of any market should not be
allowed to merge ought to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the US
goverment has been turned into a zombie by businesses, and has trouble
with no-brainers.
Everyone:
call
on Marriott to stop supporting Urban Shield, the main US event to
promote militarization of thugs.
Everyone:
call
on DA McCulloch to appoint a special prosecutor for the killing of
Michael Brown.
Sweden sentenced an artist to prison for
"racist"
art.
I share their disapproval of racism, but censorship threatens
everyone.
The World Bank and friends say that they are eliminating poverty,
but it's more like
redefining
poverty.
Canadian professor John Smol
rebuked the
government for trying to gag him from talking about his
measurements of pollution from oil sand strip mining.
The US "war on terror" has not only failed, it has
backfired.
The US "economic recovery" is lopsided,
leaving
low-paid workers poorer than before.
Earnings for Britons under 30 have
fallen
around 10% in 4 years.
UK censorship expands to politics with a vengeance; the government
threatens
anyone redistributing or even watching an ISIS propaganda video.
The National Guard is
being
withdrawn from Ferguson.
I hope that the protests do not peter out soon. Nothing fundamental
has been corrected.
The trial of Sharif Mobley is blocked because the Yemeni government is
holding
him in a secret prison and won't allow him to see the court or his
lawyers.
Protests have occurred in NYC, Los Angeles, Oakland and elsewhere
against
the killing of local people by thugs and in solidarity with
Ferguson.
The Russian humanitarian aid convoy is
starting
to enter Ukraine after Red Cross inspection.
Putin could have got all these trucks inspected by the Red Cross
days before, and into Ukraine without conflict, if he had wanted to.
Venezuela
plans
to use a biometric card to ration subsidized products so they
won't be smuggled into Colombia and resold.
Switching to a system like food stamps would solve this problem pretty
well.
It's right to make thugs wear cameras in public, but why do that to
meter
maids?
Twitter undermines its history of respect for freedom of speech by
censoring
a bloody ISIS propaganda video.
Operators of Diaspora hosts are reportedly
threatened
with punishment if people post the ISIS propaganda on their hosts.
I think this is censorship as dangerous as ISIS. Your opinions are
next on the list.
Tests prove that many kinds of
weapons
and explosives can be smuggled through the X-ray scanners that
were formerly used, untested, for "security" in airports.
Even worse, if one of these machines were to break, it could give a person
a
dangerous
radiation burn. Once I learned that, I opted out every time. I
said, "Please feel me up."
Protesters
explain why they shut down an Israeli weapons factory in the UK.
The crime of "aggravated trespass" is a synonym for "annoying
protest". To accuse anyone of that crime is a sign of an
antidemocratic government.
A neighborhood in Liberia has been
quarantined
to block spread of Ebola.
I don't know whether this sort of measure is effective enough to
justify the loss of liberty it involves.
Repression of the homeless in Australia: in Melbourne,
begging
is a crime.
As the Australian government proposes to cut the support for the
unemployed, especially those under 30, it will make more homeless
people that will be forced into "crime".
Richard Dawkins says that
women
have a moral duty to abort a fetus that has Down's syndrome.
I completely concur. Having a baby with Down's syndrome does harm to
someone (that baby). An abortion does no harm to anyone.
The US military says that
employees will be
punished if they read The Intercept.
This prohibition would be ludicrous if it were not so dangerous. It
covers millions of people, soldiers and civilians, many of whom will
obey the prohibition. Then they will base their thoughts on, and
spread, a warped world view which they have taken for truth.
Ferguson protests respond to
systematic
repression and disenfranchisement.
Thugs in Ferguson raided a church that was providing
medical
care to protesters who were suffering from tear gas.
Mobilizing Canadians against the
Atlantic
substitute for the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens:
Help End Domestic Slavery.
With Javascript disabled, this page does work
even though it appears to have failed.
Israel is
blocking
the staff of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from
going to Gaza to investigate war crimes.
A town in the Solomon Islands
has
to move to higher ground as sea level rises.
The US must start planning to move parts of Boston, parts of New York
City, parts of Washington DC, and all of Florida. This move won't be
needed for some decades, but it will take decades to do.
The
hidden
costs of fracking are tremendous.
New York gubernatorial candidate Randy Credico was
arrested
and given a little gratuitous torture in New York City for making a
video of thugs' arresting someone else.
I hope he wins and starts jailing thugs for such conduct.
Activist Hedy Epstein, age 90, was
arrested
for protesting in Ferguson.
Her supposed "crime" was simply continuing to protest.
Thugs in Ferguson repeatedly offered to "help" some reporters by
taking
them far away from the protests, "for their safety".
Considering that the only danger to them is from the thugs, this is
really half of a threat.
A new Australian coal mine was
allowed
to dicker down the compensation it would have to pay for predicted
damage to the Great Barrier Reef.
For
several
reasons, this mine should not be allowed at all.
The Real Looting of Ferguson:
Its
Black Citizens Never Had a Chance to Get By.
Here are the
embarrassing
secrets for which Obama plans to imprison James Risen.
A former Israeli gun crew chief says he
does
not believe Israel's claim to have tried to minimize civilian
casualties in Gaza.
US corporations
claim
that corporation taxes are too high, but really they believe that
since they got one tax amnesty they are entitled to tax amnesties ad
infinitem.
A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle
remember
less of the events.
I think issues like this are less important than the
injustice of the
Swindle.
They claim that military weapons and equipment for thugs are
"surplus", but
1/3
of them are new.
I think there are multiple motives for it. Repressing racial
minorities and the poor is one reason.
Feeding
the manufacturers is another.
In the US, or where US TV networks are available: Call on TV networks
to stop choosing McCain as
a pundit.
US cities, and senators, are asking the FCC
to override
state laws purchased by ISPs that ban municipal broadband
networks.
Saudi
Arabia's role in creating ISIS, the monster that it can no longer
control.
Someone in
Gaza fired
rockets at Israel, breaking the cease fire. Israel responded by
killing the family of a Hamas leader, and another family.
US
thugs keep
on killing unarmed black men, then fabricating excuses.
Here's What
Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men.
White Supremacy Is
the Real
Culprit in Ferguson. The Excuses Just Prove It.
Dennis Kucinich explains what is needed
to undo
militarization of US thugs.
Israel kills
Gazans all the time, not just when there is a war.
Israel is
systematically campaigning
to undermine international humanitarian law — the treaties
about war crimes which Israel has been condemned for violating.
Israeli soldiers arrested
64 Palestinians from the West Bank, clearly for political reasons.
Israeli
soldiers demolished
a Palestinian home in Jerusalem without warning, and did not allow
the inhabitants to take out any of their property.
An Israeli sociologist tries to explain the psychology of fear that
enables Israelis
to see
themselves as humane while dehumanizing Palestinians.
The article also offers explanations for how Israel became almost
entirely hawkish, racist and right-wing.
If 40% of Israelis wish to emigrate, I suspect that it's because those
who are more or less secular expect the religious fanatics to take
over and oppress them.
ISIS
is advancing
territory in Syria using weapons captured from the Iraqi army.
It seems the West must attack ISIS in Syria to protect Assad.
Murderous as he is, letting ISIS defeat him would be even worse.
US citizens: call for the US
to tighten
rules on ivory, to protect elephants.
Two artist/hackers who put white flags on the Brooklyn
Bridge fear
they will be permanently excluded from the US.
It sure looks like the US has no sense of humor.
The Iraqi
government failed
in an attempt to retake Tikrit; Isis soldiers gave hard
resistance.
US air strikes are easy and effective in open country, but not in
cities.
If Tikrit is indeed controlled by Baathists and Sunni militants, as
the article says, it should be possible to make a peace with them.
They can't be very happy with Isis; they must regard it as a last
resort to get out from under the Maliki's sectarian rule. The
challenge will be to convince them that a new Iraqi government won't
be equally bad.
US citizens: call on the DOT
to protect
Americans from oil trains.
Australia is going to "unthinkable" lengths
to force
Syrian refugees back to Syria, where they face torture or death.
The Australian state of Victoria proposes
US-style seizure
of possessions on a system of guilty-until-proven-innocent.
ICANN is considering giving governments
almost total
power over its decisions.
A
journalist reports
on his arrest in Ferguson. Thugs shot him first. They did not
really care why he was there; they were arresting anyone who could be
found.
Note the sleazy excuse for denying the journalist the right to phone
his lawyer. Just the sort of behavior I'd expect from a thug.
Then a press photographer was arrested,
for not
standing where the thugs wanted photographers to stand. These
thugs think they are entitled to control protests and control the
press.
I am glad that some of the protesters tried to control random violence
by other protesters. That sort of indiscipline leads to defeat.
While it is less serious, intrinsically, than the thugs' violence, it
gives the thugs an excuse to pretend that they are protecting the town
rather than occupying it.
Some suspect that
the few
violent protesters are outsiders.
The next night,
they arrested
78 people, protesters and bystanders and journalists I suppose.
Other countries that trample human rights more than the
US find
in Ferguson an opportunity to retort.
I wish the US would clean up its act so it could criticize oppression
without making people laugh.
The Committee to Protect
Journalists Condemns
Ongoing Harassment, Arrests of Reporters in Ferguson.
The Man Who Ran Contra Propaganda for Reagan
Is Guatemala's
New DC Lobbyist.
US citizens:
support
the bill to make firing union organizers a matter of
discrimination.
It's already forbidden, but this would make it easier and faster to
enforce the ban.
The UK's environmental department is
lobbying
the EU to keep a very dirty coal power plant running.
One of the thugs who
accused
Henry Davis of "destruction of property" for bleeding on their
uniforms is now a city councilor in Ferguson.
The wealth of the 1% is
literally
beyond measure, because they hide so much of it. What they
sequester has prevented economic recovery for the rest.
The UK ambassador to the US has been
lobbying
the US Senate since 2012 to conceal the UK's complicity in CIA
torture.
A gang of thugs (not cops this time)
attacked an editor in Sudan that
had advocated normalizing relations with Israel, and trashed the
newspaper office.
Two Iranians
will
be whipped for criticizing a book published by a local official on
artistic grounds.
M. L. King:
A
riot is the language of the unheard.
Ukraine
and rebels accuse each other of firing rockets at a convoy that
was evacuating civilians.
I expect that neither side attacked them intentionally, but this is
the sort of thing that happens in war, and even more so when care is
not taken.
However, firing the inaccurate Grad rockets into urban areas is a war
crime, and I have seen accusations that Ukraine regularly does that.
Ten
Facts About Police Violence in Ferguson Sunday Night.
Arms
companies have effectively paid Congress to support militarization
of US thugs.
The
pollution
and resource scarcity problems that humanity is creating can be
seen as a failure in coexistence with the natural world.
Civil liberties organizations in Australia warn
that human
rights are threatened by the new "counter-terrorism" proposals.
There is very little danger of terrorism in Australia. It's just an
excuse to attack human rights.
Extreme capitalism is the idea
that every
aspect of society has to be run as a business. This is a major
cause of what's wrong in US education and health care.
US citizens: support Amnesty International's call for the Ferguson
thug chief to respect
the rights of peaceful protesters.
Republicans
are blocking
federal funds for processing the backlog of "rape kits" containing
evidence from complaints of rape.
Those right-wingers don't care much about any sort of rights if they
are for women.
Richard Nixon faced impeachment
for undermining
the Constitution with illegal spying and dirty tricks. Under
Bushbama it's even worse.
Aug 19
is "Earth
Overshoot Day", the day when we've used, since the beginning of
the year, as much resources as the Earth can sustain for the whole
year.
Just 14 years ago, that point was reached in October.
Irom Sharmila has been in prison and on hunger strike for 14 years
after witnessing a massacre by the Indian Army.
I think she was never given a trial, but
a court
now ordered her release.
Bringing home the fact that you don't control your mobile phone,
there's an app
to give
someone else remote control over it.
Obama is stretching the facts
to avoid
asking Congress for authorization to use military force in Iraq.
Congress should not accept this stretching. What's at stake is the US
Constitution.
Everyone: call for your country
to defend
the rights of the Tibetan people under repression.
When 100 Tibetans
protested, Chinese
thugs shot several, then arrested them and denied them medical
treatment
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Amory Lovins claims we can switch entirely to renewable energy without on-grid storage by using time-shifting to make demand fit the momentary supply.
We need to be careful to set up these systems so that they don't collect information about what systems we are using.
For instance, if the goal is to tell 1/4 of the air conditioning systems in a substantial area to shut off, it isn't necessary to find out which ones happen to be on at the moment. Statistically, the result would be roughly the same if you make the decision based on which houses have such air conditioning.
Update to On Hacking to recognize that "hacking" is not supposed to cover wit and art.
A desperate woman in Ireland was forced to have a cesarean section, when she threatened to starve herself after being denied an abortion.
She was pregnant because of a rape committed before she reached Ireland.
Abortion is a basic right.
The Iraqi Kurds recaptured the Mosul dam, with US air support.
Michael Brown's autopsy report says he was shot 6 times, all from the front.
Even if the thug's actions after stopping Brown were not wrong, it seems clear he would not have stopped a white man.
US thugs will let you walk around with a weapon (in some states) … if you're white. If you're black, they order you to drop it, and shoot you before you have a chance to comply, even if it's a toy.
In other words, "open carry" laws potentiate the effect of racist attitudes.
Now that the UK charges workers almost $2000 for filing a discrimination case, complaints have gone down by 80%. Only well-paid workers can afford to complain.
The EPA has failed for 30 years to issue legally required rules to make polluters pay to clean up their pollution.
Just living near a place where coal ash is handled or dumped can give people asthma.
The US is pressuring the ICC and Mahmoud Abbas not to request an investigation into Israeli and Palestinian war crimes.
Australia's government said it would maintain the renewable energy target but is clearly making plans to create an excuse to eliminate it.
Explaining the background of ISIS in radicalization of Sunnis.
10,000 Israelis demonstrated for peace with Gaza.
It was a good try, but I think it will take more than 10,000 to influence the government, and the Arab-hating people.
Western news media have a superficial view of many countries, because reporters nowadays don't stay in a place long enough to know what's what.
The curfew in Ferguson was obeyed by recognized leaders and organizers, but hundreds of people stayed past midnight in pouring rain rather than let thugs chase them out of their town.
This article says the thugs did use tear gas.
Over 100 SWAT raids occur each day in the US, and most of them are for nothing more serious than searching a house for drugs.
This is accompanied by training thugs to act like an occupying army. If they expect to shoot people down, they will find opportunities to do it.
Here is data about the military equipment that the US has given to thugs.
Facebook is ordering users to switch to a different Messenger app which demands access to lots of personal information.
It's proprietary software, thus inherently untrustworthy, so using it is an act of folly. The same is true of Facebook's main app, and the nonfree program (in either iThings or Android) for accessing the app store where it is released.
In Android, that program is called Google Play, and it has a back door that is more or less universal.
Of course, you shouldn't be used by Facebook at all, because it extracts personal data that nobody ought to know.
A mob attacked a clinic in Liberia and drove out 29 people infected with Ebola.
Now they are likely to infect other people. Way to go, idiots!
The patients have been found and brought to another clinic.
Australian PM Abbott's plan to stop promoting renewable energy would amount to a 10 billion dollar gift to the fossil fuel companies he serves. And without even achieving the promised insignificant side benefit of a reduction in electricity prices.
A Jewish Israeli woman converted to Islam and is marrying an Arab. This has brought out various sorts of racists.
I find it hard to imagine a greater folly than for a woman to convert to Islam. But she has a right to do it, and a right to get married.
A US woman accused in Indonesia of murdering her mother says that thugs are beating her and threatening to deny her water unless she confesses.
I have no opinion about whether she is guilty of those charges. There may be valid reasons to prosecute her, but suspects should not be tortured.
The slogan "We don't talk with terrorists" is often an excuse to continue war.
Negotiating ransom with terrorists is what one should never do. Negotiating peace, that's different.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect farm workers from dangerous pesticides.
On Race, America Has Far to Go. Ferguson Won't Be The Last Flash Point.
Union activists blocked an Israeli ship from docking in Oakland as a protest against the bombardment of Gaza.
Australian thugs are trying to arbitrarily ban a protest against an Israeli film festival in Australia.
US citizens: sign these two petitions to stop militarizing US thugs.
French MPs propose to require supermarkets to donate unsold but still edible food to charities.
In principle, the idea seems good.
Poisonous algae in Lake Erie seem to result from a change in the form of phosphorus used in fertilizer.
Afghan thugs raided a coffee shop because women and men were allowed to sit and talk there.
Ecuador's foreign minister asks why the Swedish government fails to use the opportunity to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, and thus denies justice both to Assange and to the women who made a complaint against him.
Of course, we can infer the answer easily.
California "Kill Switch" Bill Could Be Used to Disrupt Protests.
Advocates of greater regional autonomy in Russia have been arrested and their demonstrations banned.
I think it is proper for wealthier regions to support the development of poorer regions; thus, I disagree with demands for independence from the wealthier regions based on objection to this; for example, in Catalunya because its taxes help poorer parts of Spain.
If Siberia is proportionally richer than other parts of Russia, I would object likewise in Siberia's case. But I don't know whether that is so, and I don't know what Putin is doing with the tax money.
James Risen Calls Obama 'Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom in a Generation'.
US citizens: thank Obama for rethinking weapons deliveries to Israel.
US citizens: call on Obama to eliminate the tax incentives for companies to move their headquarters outside the US.
UK thugs want to be allowed to look at people's confidential medical records without getting a warrant (let alone permission). They cite "vulnerable" people as an excuse, but the loss of rights would apply to everyone.
Perhaps it is, in a sense, about vulnerable people. When undercover thugs infiltrate a dissident group, if they could check the medical records of everyone in the group, they could quickly find which ones are vulnerable to being pressured into a sexual relationship.
How US media spin the civilian casualties in Gaza — including claiming that civilians working for Hamas in non-military roles count as combatants.
Apple is storing the data of iThing users in China on servers in China.
Since Apple can extract lots of personal data from an iThing remotely, I think Apple will have great difficulty refusing when China demands that it do so.
China released human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng from prison, starved and with smashed teeth.
His teeth fell out because he was given limited food. He was tortured both physically and mentally. Now he can hardly speak.
Al Sharpton exhorted Ferguson protesters to avoid weakening their case by engaging in crimes such as looting.
This is wise advice: blacks of the 60s won advances in civil rights through discipline, and protesters today need discipline too.
Since then, a curfew has been imposed. I don't expect the protesters to disperse quietly just because someone told them to.
A Ukrainian rebel leader claims to have 1200 soldiers who were trained in Russia, as well as 30 tanks.
They could not have captured 30 tanks from the Ukrainian army in that area. If the claim is true, most of those tanks must have come from Russia. Perhaps Russia captured Ukrainian tanks in the Crimea and sent them to Ukraine.
Communities, Individuals, and the Long Fight Against Poverty [in the US].
This fight would not be nearly so long if not for the rich that defend poverty for everyone else.
US citizens: Call for approval of the
constitutional
amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision (to call
them what they are, not what they pretended to be).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Rabaa massacre, one year later.
Michael Brown has been accused of stealing cigars from a store shortly before he was killed. The thugs have given conflicting stories about whether his killer knew about that.
The news of this ended the temporary peace between the thugs and the people of Ferguson, as the people took this as an attempt to smear the victim.
Ferguson's Days of Unrest Expose Stark Reality of a Segregated Society.
One white resident says about black drivers who get stopped: "Tires gone, lights out, no insurance, pieces of junk, that's why."
Perhaps it is true that black residents of Ferguson tend to have cars that are nearly junk, and leave things unrepaired. I wonder why. Perhaps because they don't get enough work, or their unemployment benefits were cut off, or they get paid minimum wage which is worth less and less, or they were victims of fraudulent foreclosure. Or their relatives have these problems, and they have to help their relatives rather than get a nice new car.
James Risen is epitome of how Obama (continuing Dubya's policy) threatens freedom of the press in the US.
The main group of Yazidis, on Mt Sinjar, escaped the siege of genocidal ISIS, but smaller groups caught in villages are being massacred.
Fracking under the sea threatens coastal ecosystems.
Malaysia demonstrated contempt for human rights by threatening to jail a citizen for three years for "liking" a Facebook post that praises Israel.
Being a used of Facebook is foolish, but expressing opinions there should not be a crime.
Algorithmic filtering can affect history, not just hide history. Facebook's filtering algorithm suppressed news about the thug riot in Ferguson until after it became national news.
The UK government has blocked publication of the report into the cause of horsemeat in the "beef", because it will point the finger at the government's cuts in inspecting food.
The deeper cause, which the report may not mention, is the EU's deregulation that makes it easy to ship meat from one company to another, in different countries, in a long sequence. Make the supply chain long enough, and there is sure to be a cheater in it at some point.
The US wants to do both of these things: undermine inspections and deregulate meat imports.
Fraud is profitable, so when business determines the laws, it often legislates for fraud.
Ferguson thugs' previous caper: they arrested the wrong man, jailed him even after they became aware of this, kicked him in the head, then charged him with the crime of damaging thug department property (bleeding on their uniforms).
Maybe he didn't bleed on their uniforms at all — the thugs later said they had made it up.
These thugs committed perjury. Why are they not in prison for that?
Uri Avnery: Eyeless in Gaza.
A big spill of mine waste in Canada has led to repercussions against the mine.
Australia's National Security Proposals Will Criminalise Journalists, Says Union.
Australia plans to tell asylum seekers they should go to Cambodia instead.
It might be a valid response, except that Cambodia treats asylum seekers almost as badly as Australia does.
The widely acknowledged (though not officially) "Hannibal Directive", by which the Israeli army risks killing its own soldiers to make sure they are not taken prisoner, means that the Israeli government will kill Israelis to avoid annoying negotiations.
When you get accustomed to dehumanizing the enemy, you tend to dehumanize your friends too by force of habit.
US frackers continue injecting diesel fuel even though it is illegal.
A California Hospital Charged $10,000 for a Cholesterol Test.
This is an extreme case of a standard practice of gouging people who don't have an insurance company to push for a lower price.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which monitors violations of Palestinians' human rights and called for peace in Gaza, has been singled out for punishment by the state because of its peace advocacy.
This fits into the general pattern in Israel of repression of those that oppose the occupation. Israel boasted of being the only free society in the Middle East, but it isn't much of a free society any more.
Due to militarization of US thugs, Ferguson looks like Iraq.
For US blacks, being killed by thugs is not unusual, and being harassed by thugs is an everyday occurrence.
However, while racial profiling is unfair, that's not the central issue here. It's a fact that the people killed by thugs for no reason tend to belong to certain minority groups, but that's not what makes these killings wrong. The killing of Michael Brown would have been equally wrong if he were of some other ethnic group.
The unjustified violence of thugs, exacerbated by their militarization, is the central issue.
The Australian government hopes a meaningless apology will mollify those it intends to push into poverty on the street.
Making thugs wear cameras is just part of what is needed to curb their violence.
These cameras won't stop other abuses, such as searching people without grounds.
A leak shows that the secret proposed Canada-EU free exploitation treaty, CETA, has investor-state injustice comparable to TPP and TTIP.
For instance, if a city privatizes its water, it would be unable to make the water public again.
We should not be distracted by precisely where lines are drawn. All such treaties are fundamentally inimical to democracy, and we must abolish them, not sign more.
New York City is directing some of its spending towards worker-owned co-ops instead of businesses that profit mainly the boss.
Even if the page you visit isn't malware, various governments can replace it with malware.
Iraq has a new prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, but is there any chance he can win support from all sectors of the country?
The US proved it is possible to buy the support Sunni clan leaders, but it's not enough to pay them for a couple of years; one needs to keep paying them permanently. That may be worth the price.
Michael Brown's Death Was No Anomaly. We Cannot Stay Silent.
We must somehow end the impunity of thugs that attack citizens.
Verizon is harassing phone customers to make them switch from copper lines to fiber cables that will be useless in a protracted emergency.
Modi focused a speech on condemnation of rape in India and calling for better treatment of girls.
US citizens: call on the EPA to require disclosure of the chemicals used in each frack well.
Everyone: call on Detroit to implement the 2005 water affordability plan and switch on everyone's water.
Creeping privatization of Britain's National Health Service is resulting in corruption, waste, and injuries to patients.
Children are more likely to encounter bullying and harm while at school than on the internet.
Busted: the myth that winning the soccer world cup leads to some economic benefit for a country.
Even if that were true, this would be a lousy way to make most people better off, since only one country can win. There are lots of better ways to use that same amount of money for the general good.
The main cause of glacial shrinkage nowadays is human activity.
Way to go, homo sap! This will lead to growing scarcity of fresh water in the areas that get their water from glacial runoff, such as California and northern India.
The UK government talks up community wind energy co-ops but has tightened the rules, blocking new ones.
Public pressure, criticizing cruelty to whales, has made SeaWorld agree to change some practices. Will it do enough?
How the thugs in Ferguson
intentionally
attacked TV crews.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Azerbaijan's tyrant has arrested human rights activists.
The excuse about NGO funding has been used to suppress civil society in several other countries, most recently Russia.
A new commander convinced the thugs in Ferguson to stop attacking the protesters.
"Stand your ground" laws have lead to an increase in number of killings, and in a racially biased way.
Customers of Market Basket: demand restoration of the CEO that treated workers and customers decently.
The US
continues
to oppose the proposed treaty against weapons in space.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The black residents of Ferguson report that the city government is controlled by whites that persistently oppress them.
Abbott's business adviser prominently called climate science a hoax and warns of an imaginary threat of global cooling.
I suspect he is being paid somehow to do this by the coal industry. I wonder if he has ties to those suppositories of all climate folly, the Koch brothers.
Thugs, some armed with assault rifles, attacked protesters and journalists in Ferguson.
The thugs fired rubber-coated steel bullets at a protester with his arms in the air, and at journalists. They arrested journalists too.
Firing tear gas canisters at people's bodies is a tactic well known from Palestine, where soldiers sometimes succeed in killing people with these "nonlethal" weapons that way. That's not how tear gas canisters are supposed to be used, but try telling thugs that.
The repression in Ferguson highlights the effect of the general militarization of US thugs since 2001.
Thugs with military weapons now create a war-zone atmosphere at protests they wish to repress.
The thug in Ferguson who arrested a reporter, and bashed his head against a car window, was wearing armor that prevented identifying him. Handy, if you want to hurt and injure people and get away with it.
These thugs are the nascent occupying army of the plutocratic state. As the state imposes more "free trade" treaties to cement the power of big business and serve the interests of the 1%, it needs to repress the people somehow. Just stopping poor and minorities from voting may not be enough.
Why research ethics are necessary even in the midst of an epidemic.
"Social media" seem to make many people more narcissistic.
Comcast seems to have a systematic practice of telling customers that some repair will be gratis, then charging for it anyway — unless the customer has a recording to prove it.
Interviews with the enslaved foreign workers building Abu Dhabi's branches of the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum and New York University.
In Many US Communities, Cops are the 'Terrorists'.
The US wants school children to eat vegetables, but won't make the effort needed to prepare them to be edible.
Shipping lots of oil by train is dangerous even at low speed, but US railroads want the trains to travel at 60mph.
Poor people have cultural patterns, but the "culture of poverty" is a fabrication designed to prove that poverty is caused by bad habits.
Exposing Walmart spin about its economic power.
When a musical recording is released solely under iTunes, it is off limits to libraries… and oppressive for individuals too.
The only way you should ever accept copy of that recording is by file-sharing, so that you do not agree to their unjust contract.
The NSA's automatic counterattack device presumes that the NSA is intercepting all internet traffic into the US.
Comcast and Time Warner are putting lots of money into "honoring" the FCC commissioner in charge of reviewing their merger.
To such large companies in the same field should never be allowed to merge. That ought to be a no-brainer.
Child Asylum Seekers' Rights on Nauru 'Systematically Violated'.
We may be able
to stop
the TPP, but we must reject Democratic pressure to "give Obama a
victory" which would be a defeat for the American people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Russian military vehicles were seen crossing the border into Ukraine.
Appeals for "calm" are not enough; the occupation of Ferguson and other parts of the US by armed thugs must be ended.
Police Brutality Must Be Punished If We Want Real Justice for Michael Brown.
We need to unmilitarize the thugs, too.
Everyone: call on the Justice Department to investigate the thugs of Ferguson.
Everyone:
call
on Bumble Bee to take positive action to avoid killing sharks when
it catches tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt Is in the Grip of a Violent Tyranny — with the West's Backing.
Nitrous oxide, as sold on the street, is hardly dangerous at all, so why so much effort to get rid of it?
Perhaps it is unsightly, like a hungry homeless person. Cities try to ban them, too.
Snowden says that Syria's disconnection from the internet was due to a mistake that the NSA made while trying to install spy software.
Guatemala's president, formerly a general who implemented US-backed repression has hired a US lobbyist to get more military "aid" from the US.
The current outbreak of Ebola virus continues spreading because of fundamental problems in the medical system in Sierra Leone which result in lots of avoidable deaths from less exotic diseases.
Satellite observations find that the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere has increased over 30 years, as climate models predict global heating to cause.
US citizens: Tell Congress
you object
to letting company reps choose their staff.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It occurs to me that Putin may have provoked the rebellion in eastern Ukraine with the goal of firing up Russians to support him while he imposes Chinese-style censorship on the internet in Russia.
Professor Schabas, appointed to lead a UN investigation of war crimes in Gaza, has said that Netanyahu deserves to face the International Court.
The information given does not justify the conclusion that Schabas is anti-Israel, but does suggest he has a preconceived view of the issue to be investigated. I agree with view, but his having it in advance may mean the investigation is biased.
Confirmation: Nixon and Kissenger sabotaged a cease-fire in Vietnam in order for Nixon to win the presidential election of 1968.
Whether this literally constitutes treason, or just a betrayal, I am not sure.
I've seen accusations that Reagan's men sabotaged an agreement with Iran to free the US hostages in 1980 so that he would win the presidential election that year. I don't know whether this is true, but he certainly betrayed his country later by ransoming hostages Iran-supported Lebanese kidnapers by selling arms to Iran.
More than ever before, Israel represses both Jews and Arabs that oppose the war.
Hamas has always used its tunnels against Israeli soldiers, not against civilians.
The article also mentions several Israeli claims about the tunnels that were erroneous or fabricated.
Right wing demonstrators in Israel boast of killing all the children in Gaza. (That is not in fact the case, but apparently they wish it were.)
A peace demonstration was banned, but hundreds came anyway.
The DEA bribed an Amtrak secretary for 20 years to get passenger name records rather than try to subpoena them.
I refuse to take Amtrak because it demands passengers show ID. Please join me in taking buses that don't demand ID instead of Amtrak for the distances for which ground transport is possible.
Israel agreed to allow Gaza a seaport, but has violated the agreement thus far.
Maybe EU control of shipping offers a compromise to open commerce and travel by sea.
Chinese research seeks to develop a computer system to detect people who are feeling stress, so as to arrest them.
Knowing about this system of surveillance will make some people feel stressed.
US citizens: call on the EPA to make power plant CO2 rules tighter.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to adopt the rule to make publicly traded corporations
declare political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on state governors to stop transferring prisoners to private prisons out of state.
The UK government quashed torture lawsuits by saying that admitting the facts would embarrass the US. Then it began lobbying the CIA to stop the US Senate from acknowledging the torture, because if it did, that would pull the rug out from under the UK's self-serving argument.
Human Rights Watch accuses the Egyptian army of intentionally massacring protesting Morsi supporters.
Some Australian cities allow businesses to vote in local elections.
This is the logical progression from the Corporations United decision*. In fact, why allow mere humans to vote at all? Allowing businesses to appoint officials directly is the logical end of plutocracy.
* The organization is officially called "Citizens United", but I prefer to call it what it is rather than repeat its falsehood.
The Obama regime is citing the supposed "threat of terrorism" as a reason to keep undocumented migrants in prison rather than release them while their cases are heard.
Because I believe in equal rights, I don't think that this is even worse for being applied to women and children. It is equally bad to do this to men.
Uri Avnery: the war between Israel and Hamas has come out a draw, and now Israel has to negotiate with Hamas.
Ukraine says that Russia's "humanitarian aid" convoy will be allowed into Ukraine if the Red Cross inspects and approves its contents.
Authoritarian Erdogan won the election for president of Turkey, by less than was expected.
The seed library in Pennsylvania may in fact be legal, but these laws need to be changed to protect sharing of nonpatented seeds.
In the US today, if you're black or Latino, having a thug assume you're committing a crime is a rite of passage.
A CIA and NSA-funded company made a report claiming that al Qa'ida learned about resisting tracking from the Snowden revelations, though in fact it was developing countermeasures years before.
A curfew in Baltimore seems to presume that anyone under 16 who is out at night is being neglected by her parents.
The UK government is firmly determined to "reform" welfare to the point where the poor will starve, and claims that they are great for the poor.
1.3 Americans have died per day from fighting wars, since 2001. 120 die per day from lack of medical care. Why don't the latter get as much concern?
The thug that shot Michael Brown seems to have fabricated a false accusation as an excuse.
Police officers are simply not credible witnesses about such events, because they are accustomed to lying in court.
Ferguson thugs shot protesters and bystanders with wooden bullets that wound people.
The UK says it will suspend some arms exports to Israel if Israel resumes fighting in Gaza.
At the Goldcorp (Canadian) mine in Guatemala, a local man who tried to complain was burnt alive by the company thugs.
The smallest porpoise species, found in the Sea of California, is facing extinction due to gill netting.
US citizens:
Tell
the USDA not to allow 2,4-D resistant corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Spells of heat or rain that lasts for weeks have become twice as common since 2000, due to measurable changes in the behavior of the jet streams.
All this is due to global heating.
Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, organized as militia units, are leading the attack against pro-Russian rebels.
Bullying is bullying, on the internet or off it.
Perhaps teenagers would self-harm less if our society did not make life so precarious.
Who does the US save, and who does the US allow to be oppressed?
More than 65,000 people in Gaza are homeless because their homes were destroyed.
Can you tell which statements were made by Clinton and which by Netanyahu?
No Safe Place: How [US] Cities Are Making It Illegal to be Homeless.
Iran has banned sterilization in a
campaign
to pressure people to have more children. It will fall most
heavily on those who can't afford to travel abroad for an operation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
I can understand that people would not want to have children in Iran. What if they are daughters?
Israel's identification of criticism of the occupation of Palestine with antisemitism was meant to suppress the former using the odium of the latter. It worked for a while, but now it has backfired: the odium of the occupation is boosting antisemitism.
A new analysis estimates that the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline will result in 120 million tons of extra annual CO2 emissions, not merely 30 million.
This is because it would result in a lower price for oil, which would encourage users to burn oil rather than invest in alternatives.
Although this is a small fraction of what the human world emits, it is an investment in increasing the emissions, when what we need to do is invest in decreasing them. We must also end the subsidies for oil. Better an increase in price now, than a big jump in price in 5 years.
Amnesty International criticizes the US for whitewashing killings of Afghan civilians.
That the Taliban are even worse is no excuse, because they are no standard of comparison.
A large part of US bottle water is shipped from California, which has a severe drought.
I just about never buy a bottle of water in the US or other countries where tap water is potable. Why pollute the environment by being a sucker?
The tiny fraction of climate scientists who deny that human activities cause global heating report much more media coverage than the ones who agree with the consensus.
Obama tried persistently to unite Iraq under Maliki's government, but he has recognized that this won't work.
Kurdistan makes a much better ally, since it is a nation and has an army that will fight for something other than pay or hatred.
The Bangladeshi workers on hunger strike received their back pay.
The article does not mention one of the reasons these workers are mistreated so much: the "flexible" system of subcontracting that makes it easy to move production from one subcontractor to another. We must make the shell companies that put their names on these goods responsible for the actions of their supply chain.
The Australian Liberal Party registered domain names that use "Abbott lies", acting like the "pregnancy counselors" that try to distract women away from abortion clinics.
A thug in St Louis shot an unarmed black teenager for no obvious reason, triggering a big protest in his neighborhood.
Indigenous women organize to fight extractive industries promoted by governments that have sold out.
Don't lump boycotting Israel together with antisemitism.
Pakistan's government has banned an opposition protest march.
The UK censored a report on house prices, apparently to cover up the effect of fracking.
The UK government is not as blatant in its support of fossil fuels as the Australian and Canadian governments, but it is persistent.
Racism still exists the US, but people grasp at straws to argue it isn't really racism.
Facebook tracks everyone's browsing through "Like" buttons. A scandal has erupted because Facebook says it will use that data to choose what ads to show people.
How Facebook uses that data is a distracting side issue. The real injustice is that Facebook (and other companies) collect this data at all. That practice should be prohibited by law.
You can protect yourself from this particular surveillance mechanism by using a browser such as IceCat that blocks the things that do the surveillance.
10 years later, the New York Times recognizes that torture is really torture even if committed by the US government.
Russia has joined China in requiring all users of internet cafes to show their identity. This policy is part of repressing dissent.
If you are in Russia, you can help resist Putin's repression by leaving your own wifi network unencrypted.
The EFF is developing a system that allows you to have your private encrypted wifi network plus a secondary unencrypted one for anyone passing by.
I am somewhat unhappy that they call it "open", but it's a good project despite the name.
Hamas threatened to increase its ineffective rocket attacks on Israel unless the siege is ended.
It suits both Hamas and Israel to treat these rocket attacks as a big danger.
Naomi Klein: 'Our Economic Model Is at War with Life on Earth'.
20,000 or more besieged Yazidis escaped from Isis encirclement.
It is not clear whether US attacks helped make this possible.
What the world needs now is secularism, and urgently.
When Obama talks about "banning" torture, which is illegal, and fails to prosecute torturers, the effect is to undermine the law against torture and make torture a mere matter of policy.
China has excluded some Apple computers from the list approved for government purchases, on grounds of insecurity.
This is very wise. Apple computers have no security against Apple itself.
Some US Christians are as vicious as ISIS.
US casinos get most of their money from slot machines made so addictive and "smooth" that people can get lost in them for hours or days.
I have sometimes wanted to get lost in playing a machine. Rather than going to a casino, I played a game on a computer — that cost me nothing. Free software games are available for this.
The idea of raising money for a state by legalizing casinos and taxing them made some rational sense for the first few states to do it. People from other states came there and spent money. Now that most US states have legalized casinos, this effect has disappeared; the result is that people spend money on casinos instead of some other business that also pays taxes.
It's amazing how shortsighted politicians can be when that enables a business to make money.
Since Colorado legalized marijuana, the rate of car accidents has continued its general downward trend.
ISIS gets its funding from US "allies": Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
This seems to have been going on for longer than the article says: it seems that some of them were behind the start of the armed uprising in Syria, back when Syrians where still holding nonviolent protests for democracy.
Amnesty International says there is mounting evidence of intentional Israeli attacks on medical facilities and workers in Gaza.
The US has repeatedly squandered opportunities to make the world less vulnerable to nuclear destruction.
The article has a certain one-sidedness, as is often found in articles whose main point is to criticize the US. For instance, it tries to suggest that the US was in the wrong in planning for war with Japan in 1941 (though nothing forced Japan to start that war). Japan in 1941 was in the process of conquering China by means of a stream of atrocities; that's why the US stopped selling Japan the materials Japan needed in order to continue that conquest.
Chinese companies now offer censored computing services to people outside China.
Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood's political party.
I would hardly agree with that party on anything, but banning a party is an act of tyranny.
US citizens: call on Obama to block corporate tax-deserters.
In the US: join or support the
People's Climate March.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Mexico has made the disastrous decision to privatize oil extraction.
If this needs "investment", I am sure the Mexican state would come out better by doing the investment itself. This sort of claim is the basis for most privatizations, and nearly all of them do harm to all but their investors.
Decommissioning reactor 3 at Fukushima will be more difficult than supposed, because it appears that nearly all the fuel rods melted down.
The four main US ISPs are accused of violating the one network neutrality rule that remains in effect.
Ukraine fired inaccurate missiles at a rebel missile launcher operating near civilians, and this killed civilians.
Drugs that many humans take, and excrete, wind up in waterways and harm wildlife. Perhaps we should choose drugs with a view towards reducing these effects.
Airline prices are falling and this will cause an increase in CO2 emissions caused by flights.
Hamas refused to extend the temporary cease fire, demanding an end to the siege of Gaza.
A siege is an act of war, just as much as firing a rocket or dropping a bomb. Declaring a free-fire zone inside Gaza and shooting at anyone who goes there is also an act of war. If Israel wants a buffer zone, it should create that buffer zone inside Israel's borders.
The tunnels built by Hamas could be used to attack civilians or soldiers, but Hamas uses them to attack soldiers. And taking soldiers prisoner is not "kidnapping". However, the rockets launched by Hamas against civilians are war crimes.
More about the dishonest terminology used by Israel and Hamas.
1600 Bangladeshi clothing workers occupied their factories because they have not been paid for months.
The thugs are on the company's side.
The US is trying to subject parts of Africa to Walmart domination.
This generally results in lower prices paid to farmers and other producers because they have to accept what Walmart is willing to pay them.
The verbal tactics right-wing politicians use when an aggressive falsehood is caught out.
Many Europeans are responding to Israel's repeated aggressions by hating all Jews.
Antisemitism was suppressed for decades because it was condemned by a large part of society, in response to Nazi genocide. My mother told me about the regular antisemitism she experienced in New York in the 1930s, but I have almost never encountered it. (I am Jewish by ethnicity, and the fact that I am an Atheist would not make antisemites forgive me for that.) Now it seems that suppression has ended, antisemitism has come back. Israel's actions are to blame.
It is not rational to condemn all Jews for Israeli aggression. When people with a valid cause attack an illegitimate target, it makes the situation worse. Israel's killing of Arab civilians did that, and antisemitism will do it again.
Obama Defends CIA Chief John Brennan Amid Resignation Demands.
Max Schrems' persistent fight against Facebook's monstrous surveillance engine.
Temple University distanced itself from the bogus study that found false "savings" from private prisons. That's not enough — universities must not allow their professors to do false research for pay.
Even opponents of abortion rights don't really believe that abortion is murder.
They use the slogan to talk themselves into a frenzy so they can aggress against women's rights.
Americans should stop freaking out when they see children in parked cars.
The US has a general pattern of smothering overprotection of children.
It is normal for children to leave the house and play together without adults. It used to be normal in the US for children to walk some miles to school by themselves.
Reports of evidence that Malaysia flight 17 was attacked by cannon fire from fighter planes.
I have not seen these claims anywhere else. If they are confirmed, it would change everything about the issue.
Wisconsin's supreme court is not conservative, it's right-wing radical.
Isis is conquering parts of Kurdistan with the help of heavy US weapons captured from the disintegrating Iraqi army.
Who Are the Yazidis And Why Is Isis Hunting Them?
Obama announced he will launch air strikes to prevent genocide.
That is a valid reason for war, and supporting Iraq in defense makes it legal as far as I know.
I worry, however, that this US intervention will backfire just like the last one. In the long term, it would make more sense to give heavy weapons to the Kurds. They probably can be relied on not to lose those weapons to Isis.
Ireland formally accepted that an abortion is better than a woman's suicide, but seems to be trying to take it back.
Making palpable the hopelessness of survival after a nuclear war.
What could possibly have excused dropping a nuclear weapon on Nagasaki?
Israeli troops left shit and words of hatred in Ahmed Owedat's home after destroying the appliances and stealing his life savings.
They did similar things in a girl's school while occupying it as a base to destroy houses all around.
These acts fit the general hatred of Arabs expressed by Israelis today.
Demand in China for shark's fin has crashed, as many Chinese refuse to eat it out of concern for the danger of driving sharks to extinction.
Maybe similar education campaigns could end the demand for tiger bone and rhino horn.
Obama could save Argentina from the vultures with a simple order, but he has already capitulated to them.
Edward Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia three more years.
I am sure he would rather be in Bolivia, but the US wants him to be in Russia.
A giant coal mine in China is illegally eating up a nature reserve.
To make sure Chinese people can't complain about this, China is imposing tight control on all Internet communications.
The UK government edited Wikipedia to downplay cases where UK thugs shot people dead.
Walgreens gave way to the pressure campaign and decided to keep its headquarters in Chicago.
One factor that may tend to encourage US companies to move their headquarters elsewhere is to take advantage of "investor-state" lawsuit provisions in existing and proposed free exploitation treaties.
Almost half the people in the US list of terrorist suspects have no connection to any known terrorist group.
Since that the US designates groups as "terrorist" arbitrarily, without a trial, some "known terrorist" groups may not really be terrorist groups.
Dozens of major US corporations are planning to move overseas to dodge taxes.
Any politician who refuses to change laws to undo the effects of this is working for those corporations — which is treason.
The Obama regime crossed out so much text in the Senate's CIA torture report that it becomes unreadable.
Senator Feinstein threatens to punish the CIA by not publishing the report?!?
Isn't that exactly what the CIA would prefer?
If the senate is serious, it should stick an amendment into some must-pass legislation giving the senate full control over what it publishes in this report.
Mothers of murdered Argentine dissidents are finding some of their kidnaped grandchildren.
Israeli dissident Gideon Levy, who criticized the Israeli air force for callously bombing civilians, is receiving death threats from powerful right-wing politicians.
Mercury pollution from industry and burning coal accumulates in the oceans near the surface and gradually poisons marine life.
Workers and customers have joined to fight against the change in management of Market Basket supermarkets.
Civil war in South Sudan continues and aid workers are being killed.
Even Wall Street Thinks Income Inequality Could "Capsize" the Economy.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to obey pollution laws with its dams.
US citizens: tell the Fish and Wildlife service not to reduce protection of manatees.
40,000 Iraqis of a minority sect are stranded without water, but face mass murder by Isis if they leave their mountain.
Mohammed said it is legitimate to lie if someone forces you to convert to some other religion. I agree: lying is less bad than killing, so when killing in self defense is justified, as in a case like this, so is lying. By this standard, the trapped Yazidis could agree to "convert", flee the area, then say they lied under coersion.
They would have to stay out of Isis's hands, however. Muslim fanatics do not apply the Golden Rule to their own fanaticism.
Australia orders dismissal of Save the Children staff teaching children Australia for expressing sympathy with protesters.
The US owes reparations to Guatemala's poor for the repression that it financed for decades.
I don't think that these reparations must obligatorily take the form of allowing Guatemalans to move to the US in large quantities. It would be fine to give them the means for a decent life at home.
Everyone: call on Coca Cola Company to stop opposing laws to label GMOs.
US citizens: oppose Obama's plan to allow oil drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens: call on the US to stop giving out coal leases that are effectively give-aways to mining companies.
Illustrating the evil of making it a crime to possess pornography, a man in the UK was convicted of the crime of not knowing how to delete all copies of a disgusting video sent to him by a stranger.
I don't understand the pretext for banning pornography involving animals. If extreme animal rights activists demanded that, at least there would be some sense in it.
"Child pornography" should not be illegal either.
I wonder how long it will take for thugs to start carrying around kids they can fondle as they arrest people and beat them up. Then any photos of the brutality would be "child pornography", and the photographer would be sent to prison.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA you support its decision to block Pebble Mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for continued protection of wild bighorn sheep from the danger of disease transmitted by domestic sheep.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA that Americans are ready for strong action to reduce
CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a prisoner in Guantanamo, has been approved for release to Uruguay, but since that might not happen for years, he is hunger striking basically to death and suing to end force-feeding.
If you are sick of a market-driven world, maybe you still have some values that aren't aligned with plutocracy.
Right-wing militias now helping Ukraine's army fight rebels might become dangerous once that is over.
Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson call for the UN to order an end to the siege of Gaza.
There is a 72-hour cease fire at present, but converting that into peace will be difficult.
5 infectious diseases that are more dangerous in the US than Ebola, in terms of how likely it is that you will get one and die of it.
India blocked a proposed trade treaty because it threatens food security for poor countries.
The argument that a "free trade" treaty would good because it "adds to the world's wealth" is fallacious even if it really does add to total wealth: these treaties, in today's plutocratic system, assure that all the increment goes to the plutocrats. It's another form of the "trickle-down" swindle.
Democracy is at stake in Obama's threat to imprison reporter James Risen.
You can still sign the petition.
Why was a SWAT team sent to disarm a Texas grandmother with a shotgun?
A news site indirectly owned by Comcast deleted an article about Comcast-funded astroturf organizing against network neutrality.
Russia threatens to block the BBC web site for an interview with Siberians who wanted to march for Siberian independence.
I can understand why they don't want to be ruled by Putin, but why leave the rest of Russia behind?
Global heating is hitting Europe's forests hard.
Unemployed Britons describe the impossible hoops of the "jobcenters" that were set up to create excuses to punish them.
I think they would advance their rights more if they got together and held a sit-in in front of a jobcenter, demanding to be put in prison. Civil rights protesters showed their contempt for unjust law by filling the jails; why not the unemployed?
But they have to refuse to do any work while in prison that the state would profit from.
Abbott proposes a broad attack on human rights in Australia in the name of "fighting terrorism".
Most of the chicken sold in the UK is contaminated with campylobacter, which causes stomach illness that is sometimes fatal. Hygiene standards are evidently not good enough.
Either it is the same in the US, or it would be the same if standards are lowered. This is part of the reason why the US proposal to reduce inspection standards is so bad. Only under plutocracy are such crazy "economies" proposed.
A class-action lawsuit against Facebook for violating privacy adds up to 8 million euros.
I agree with the plaintiffs in spirit, but the victory they aim for would take the form of limiting the use of giant data bases. That isn't enough to give us privacy where we really need it. We need to prevent the accumulation of giant data bases about people.
In particular, don't be a used of Facebook at all.
Fertilizer runoff has led to a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie.
The waste of fertilizer will haunt us too, as supplies of some chemical fertilizers are running out.
Libraries around the US are starting to lend traditional seeds as well as books, but Pennsylvania says it presents a danger of "terrorism".
In the US, for-profit home health care agencies working for Medicare cost more and provide worse care.
This is natural. Their profit has to come out of the patients and the public. Privatizing a public service is nearly always harmful unless it enables the public to buy directly from a competitive market.
New figures from the Commerce Department show that US inequality growth is even more than was believed.
ALEC is recruiting states to try to block the EPA from regulating CO2 emissions from electric plants.
ALEC is funded by fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers, and their agenda is to make us burn as much fossil fuel as possible and run at high speed into climate disaster.
US citizens: support the Marshall Islands in demanding an end to nuclear weapons.
The Satanic Temple demands a religious exception to laws restricting abortion.
The US is developing a palm-sized surveillance drone.
Chris Hedges describes systematic Israeli lies about types of violent events he witnessed.
US citizens: Support protecting Puget Sound from oil tanker traffic.
A cunning loanshark sells furniture to US soldiers at elevated prices, lending them money, then sues them in a state where they can't go, so that they always lose.
UK activists report that undercover thugs harassed them to become informers. One says thugs threatened to prosecute her if she told about this.
Alan Gross, sent by the US to try to give Cuban Jews internet access and imprisoned for it, aims to die within a year if not released.
I have little general sympathy for US meddling, which is often done with an evil intent, but Cuba's interference with people's right to communicate is wrong in any case.
The only reliable way to get a good grade on US standardized tests is to get the latest textbooks from the three publishers that make the tests.
Wealthy areas can afford to provide these books. Poor areas can't. So the tests are an excuse to call poor children stupid, and a scam to benefit those publishers.
US citizens: Support extending
the Pacific
Remote Islands National Marine Monument.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of criminal convictions were based on bogus hair comparison "forensic analysis" by done the FBI.
Reportedly other kind of forensic analysis also turned out to be bogus.
Perspectives on media bias over Ukraine and Russia.
The UK government is determined to re-privatize a railroad line that made a lot of money for the treasury.
The income undermines the government's ability to claim it can't afford programs to help the poor.
The US imprisoned Yunus Rahmatullah in Afghanistan for a decade without allowing lawyers to talk to him.
Australia's chief immigration psychiatrist says the treatment of asylum seekers is designed to make them suffer, as a form of mental torture.
And not only mental, when you consider the confiscation of medicines, the violence, and so on.
The intelligence services, effectively a fourth branch of government, continue to enjoy effective impunity while spying on all of us.
New York's jail for minors is a hell of violence.
Australia's proposed austerity budget would hurt the poor most.
That's what it was intended to do. Tony Grabbit is evil, but not incompetent.
The UK will reexamine each planned weapons sale to Israel to ensure they don't support attacking Gaza.
Whether this is serious, we will see by the results.
Getting to grips with the danger of manipulation of the public through digital media.
Using mass media to manipulate public opinion and launch wars started before the 19th century. Remember the Maine, which sunk in Havana harbor due to an internal explosion, then provided the excuse for a media frenzy that pushed the US into war with Spain.
Many Americans don't have the choice to boycott Walgreens, because medical plans require shopping there.
Some Facts that Poverty-Deniers Don't Want to Hear.
Alabama's latest attempt to close abortion clinics has been overturned by a court.
US citizens: call on Obama to fire CIA director Brennan and CIA agents that spied on Congress, and launch an investigation to prosecute them.
US citizens: call for a suspension of executions in the US.
This should be a first step towards ending the death penalty.
Republican-controlled states that rejected Obama's health care plan have a lot more uninsured people, and it costs them a lot of money.
A US court overturned Obama's decision to offer tax credits for signing up in these states. This is going to cause suffering for a lot of people.
Republican legislators want to make life precarious at any cost, because the plutocrats profit from the desperation of potential workers. If this causes a state deficit, they will use that as an excuse to cut some other program that helps the non-rich.
A resource for Canadians:
hundreds of nasty
things that the Harper government has done.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Unemployed And Applying for 40 Jobs a Month: If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry.
In the UK, only the Green Party is prepared to reject the idea that billionaires' wealth is good for everyone.
How Israel engineered and provoked the war in Gaza.
Americans can use jury nullification to protect future Aaron Swartzes and Edward Snowdens.
It's worth a try, if you find yourself on jury duty. But we need to push for more reliable solutions too.
Foreigners are being evacuated from Libya, which is collapsing into chaotic war.
The USDA has modified a little its plan to let poultry companies inspect their own products.
It is a step in the wrong direction, and making it smaller won't make it ok.
The UK government is trying to censor the US Senate torture report when it talks about the UK's participation.
Canadian Charities Will Survive Chilling Audits Of "Political Activities".
Russia wants Apple to provide secret source code.
This would show Russia how to extract data from an iThing just as Apple does.
By Expelling Isabella Acevedo, the [UK] Home Office Tears Another Family Apart.
The UK government is stretching and even breaking its own immigration laws to deport exactly the people it should be most willing to allow to stay, for no reason except trying to prove how harsh it is to migrants.
An organization that pretends to represent US small business owners does right-wing lobbying for the Koch brothers and big insurance companies without telling its members.
The AARP acts similarly — it lobbies for right-wing causes that its members, who are Americans old enough to retire, might not approve of. This is why I refuse to join the AARP.
The Keystone XL pipeline is facing increasing opposition and increasing legal defeats.
I am not convinced that Obama really has decided to block it. If he had, why hasn't he done so? I think he is waiting for 2015 to approve it.
Regenerative organic farming can cut a large fraction of humanity's greenhouse has emissions.
We would have to eat much less beef. I think we would all accept that inconvenience if we understood what the alternative is.
Dissidents opposed to the war in Israel are facing persecution at every level: mob attacks on the street, threats of punishment at school, exclusion from employment, and threats of state punishment.
It reminds me of what I've read about McCarthyism in the US.
The New York Times accepts Israeli censorship of reporting about Gaza.
Reporters in Gaza, reporting by channels that bypass Israel, can report freely as far as I know.
The New York Times says that anyone who couldn't distinguish a passenger plane from a military plane was "irresponsible and stupid" and "a war criminal". Except when the person is an officer in the US Navy.
100 economists called on the US government to take action to thwart vultures from attacking Argentina or any other country.
US citizens: support the Stop Corporate Inversions Act.
US citizens: call on Kerry and Obama to impose an end to the siege of Gaza.
US citizens: support access to contraception for women in the US military.
Australian officials told the boat people, imprisoned at sea, that they would be forcibly put into lifeboats which they would then have to navigate to India.
While imprisoned on the ship, they did not get enough food.
Israel bombed another UN school full of civilians.
Human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko writes to Obama asking for support. Maseko is in prison for criticizing the government and the courts of Swaziland.
Israel spied on Kerry's communications while he was making his futile efforts to broker a cease-fire in Gaza.
Netanyahu is treating the US with overt contempt, believing he has the US government on a leash. A couple of days ago he essentially told the US, "Shut up, you have no right to question Israel's decisions." The US government does not seem to have listened.
US
citizens: support
the Schedules That Work Act
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
California has declared a fire emergency, with fires now at the level usually seen only in September.
In 30 years, that will usually arrive in June, due to global heating.
The ignorance of right-wingers knows no bounds. A language teacher in Utah was fired for writing an article about homophones.
How the US
empire weakens
the US and harms Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery: Israel keeps changing the "aim" of the attack on Gaza, so there is always a reason to keep attacking.
To keep it going, the US has just sold Israel more ammunition.
The latest "war aim" is to destroy Hamas tunnels, which Israel claims are meant to attack Israeli civilians. Never mind the fact that they have only been used to attack soldiers.
It's not clear the Iron Dome rockets are effective at destroying Hamas missiles (which seem to pose little danger in any case), but they are great for making loud explosions that get Israelis scared.
Israeli civilians have talked themselves into a frenzy of fear based on a danger that is tiny. That frenzy is, in objective terms, no justification for them to inflict great harm on civilians in Gaza.
The casualties (killed and wounded) in Gaza, around 10,000 people, amount to half a percent of the population of Gaza (1.8 million). If 30,000 Israelis were casualties of Hamas attacks, Israelis would face the same level of danger as Gazans, and I'd agree they had a valid reason to be frightened.
Vandana Shiva explains Monsanto's world-wide attack on food safety laws.
In the US: call on Walgreens to remain a US company.
The UK Labour Party is terrified that people might think it is planning to tax inherited fortunes.
That would be a tax on wealth. Taxing wealth is just what Thomas Piketty says we need to do.
With the Earth's surface heating, and ice melting everywhere, it was a mystery why sea ice around Antarctica was increasing. Part of the explanation is that the increase is less than was thought.
In order for fracking to have a chance of leading a transition to cleaner energy, it would need a coherent plan to end use of coal and oil.
There is no such plan, because the backers of fracking don't really want to reduce fossil fuel use. They only want to extract more and faster.
This is aside from the point that fracked gas releases a lot of methane which makes its greenhouse contributions much higher.
Global heating is visible in the change of which fish species live around Britain.
A Hindu-nationalist politician claims that rape accusations in India are a "fashion", in effect asserting it is unthinkable that rape could really occur in India.
Australia forced the Tamil boat people onto a plane to Nauru with no warning and without informing their lawyers.
People who committed crimes while drunk show a pretty good rate of staying sober under the monitoring of a sobriety bracelet.
This use of surveillance is legitimate because it is specifically targeted and because it is imposed after due process.
25,000 people in Detroit are cut off from water supplies, and it is not clear that the mayor is going to treat the poor any better than the bankruptcy manager.
The US denies citizenship to Muslim permanent residents and refuses to tell them why.
US citizens: oppose mergers of big companies such as Comcast.
Hungary's government is slowly extending censorship, much as Putin did until a couple of years ago.
Wall Street Has Raked In Almost A Billion Dollars Helping Companies Move Overseas To Dodge Taxes.
72 companies have stopped funding ALEC, but ALEC still gets plenty from the Koch brothers, tobacco companies and Big Pharma.
Lots of Earth-broiling companies support ALEC.
Did Google ever stop funding ALEC?
A US court continues to demand that Microsoft hand over a client's emails stored in Ireland, without consulting Ireland.
Ireland could stop Microsoft from complying, if it had the guts.
The Great Barrier Reef is already sick, and the new coal mine that Australia plans to create will attack it in several ways, probably killing it.
The GAO says big US banks are still "too big to fail".
Uganda's latest anti-gay law was struck down as unconstitutional, but only on a technicality, and the old one that was imposed by British colonialists remains.
The unknown spider species we are driving to extinction today might save your life if it survives. And wiping them out could make us starve.
The Palestinian Authority should call on the International Criminal Court to prosecute the war crimes in Gaza.
Although Israel claims that Hamas uses UN schools for military activities, so far there is no evidence that it did so in the schools where civilians are sheltering. The UN reported finding rockets stored in UN schools that were closed and not in use.
The "social" aspect of multiplayer video games is an unhealthy society, totally structured to get people to play and pay.
While we have seen such things before, such as shopping malls as places to hang out, and the increasing number of holidays structured around socially-pressured gift-giving, they do involve a lot of social interaction on which no structure is imposed. This is a change for the worse; it could be producing millions of people who don't interact with their "friends" outside of the imposed structure.
The UK government, which does not want climate negotiations to succeed, has cut the budget for its climate diplomacy by 1/3 in recent years.
The UK government is working for fossil fuel companies and intends to prevent an agreement. That does not require much staff work.
The inhabitants of Mosul are resisting ISIS.
Israeli artillery practices are a recipe for hitting civilians.
Are the gunners sloppy and incompetent, or do they just not care about killing Arabs?
The Obama regime and CIA torturers are censoring the Senate investigation into CIA torture.
Some prisoners in Guantanamo said they would accept force-feeding done in a way that doesn't amount to torture. Obama would rather torture them.
Japan's Yushukan war museum says that Japan was never an aggressor, and that Japanese troops never committed atrocities. It was always all the other side's fault.
Japan is not the only country to whitewash aggression and massacres in this way. Today Israel and the US do it. It is noteworthy how the Japanese army defined all Chinese men of military age in Nanjing as soldiers in civilian disguise; thus it can claim their execution was not a massacre. Did Bush and Obama get the idea from there?
US citizens: call on Congress to end bulk use of antibiotics in factory farms, before the resistant bacteria kill us.
Russia has prohibited anonymous comments on web sites.
It has also imposed many other limits on Internet use, including arbitrary blocking of inconvenient web sites.
Of course, Russia is ruled by a tyrant, and this is what tyrants do. (I pity the poor fools in the Crimea that wanted to be under Putin's power — if indeed they were more than a bunch of armed gangs he had set up.)
What is more dangerous is that governments of "free" countries such as the US, France, Italy, and Finland also block web sites, and have laws such as the DMCA that lend themselves to political censorship.
A UK committee wants to ban anonymity on the internet.
Extreme weather in Siberia has impacted salmon, causing bears to attack humans.
Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court struck down the law criminalizing defamation.
However, Cambodia is moving in the other direction.
Scientists have found more coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico that have been badly damaged by the Big Spill.
They say that not all reefs in the area were harmed. It makes sense that the oil was carried by currents in certain directions and others were spared. It makes for a good comparison.
40 million US workers don't get paid sick days, and ALEC is fighting to keep it that way.
CIA Admits to Spying on Senate Staffers. And breaking the security on Senate computers, too.
But worst of all is that they lied about it.
The CIA needs to be investigated by another Church Committee.
India has suspended trials of genetically modified foods for the sake of protecting its food security.
US electric companies are paying ALEC to push laws to obstruct installation of solar generation in homes and businesses.
An unidentified London thug will be charged with murder for a scandalous killing 9 years ago.
Massachusetts has replaced its "buffer zone" law with a
different
way of preventing harassment of patients and doctors at abortion
clinics.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Australia's prison for boat people is intended to make future boat people stay away, so it is intentionally cruel. About 1/3 of the prisoners have mental health problems.
One epileptic had seizures because the government took away her anti-seizure medicine and did not supply more. Some children are described as having given up eating because it was not worth living.
The prisons are cruel to people with non-mental illnesses, too. This article (mostly overlapping) informs us that the thugs confiscated eyeglasses and hearing aids too.
The Australian government representative was shocked people could doubt the benign intentions and good judgment of the government, which are of course beyond question.
The "public inquiry" into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko will not really be a public inquiry. Even its conclusion will not be entirely published.
Some of the Greeks who shot the immigrant workers whose pay they were stealing were acquitted of human trafficking.
Uganda's repressive anti-gay law is being challenged as unconstitutional.
Israel intends to increase its attacks on Gaza, and is buying more ammunition from the US to kill more Palestinians.
Politicians want NATO to "respond" to non-armed "attacks" which might be nothing but propaganda.
If the response to a non-armed "attack" is made in kind, without arms, it does not require the formality of NATO, or any treaty. It would be nonmilitary cooperation between governments, which they can do without NATO.
It follows that this proposal is really about permitting NATO to launch a war in response to non-military action. That seems very dangerous to me.
The UK's dooH niboR government is proposing a new tax cut for the rich.
It will grasp any excuse to claim it has no money for the poor, the NHS, and so on.
Colombia's army and the government-supported paramilitares continue their terrorism and repression, with US support.
Genetically engineered corn that makes Bt toxin has ceased to repel insect pests, in Brazil and in the US. Brazilian farmers demand compensation for the extra pesticides they had to use.
Yonas Fikre says the US had him arrested and tortured in the United Arab Emirates and apparently collaborated with his torturers.
It is not clear that Fikre can't return to the US. The article does not say he faced arrest (let alone torture) in the US. Perhaps therefore Sweden's decision not to grant him asylum was correct, since he can safely return to his home country.
But that doesn't excuse the US for collaborating in torture.
Former US intelligence officials call on the US to show its evidence about Malaysian Airlines flight 17, or else stop claiming to be certain about what happened.
Above all they criticize the tendency to condemn Russia as if the rebels had intentionally shot down the plane (which it is clear they did not do).
Israel bombarded a UN school again in Gaza, and has tried to pretend that Hamas attacked the school.
It is standard practice for the Israeli government to deny the facts to duck the blame for killing innocent Palestinians — one may as well assume such claims are false.
Australia will punish the unemployed if they don't apply for enough jobs or if they send "unsatisfactory" applications.
If there are no jobs available in your field, you will inevitably be punished.
New Zealand's mountains have lost 1/3 of their snow and ice since 1978.
Wikileaks reveals that the Australian government is covering up a bribery scandal by banning all public discussion of it.
Delaying Climate Action Will Carry Heavy Economic Cost, White House Warns.
It's true, but the fact that one must cite economic losses as a reason to prevent worldwide disaster is a testament to plutocracy.
More explanation of the report.
What is "terrorism"? Hamas uses tunnels into Israel to attack soldiers — which is war, not terrorism.
Israel bombards civilians, homes of the families of Hamas members, hospitals, and power plants — which is terrorism, not war.
The unregulated "shadow banking system" vitiates the regulations that were intended to make banks more stable.
Pervasive surveillance in the US forces journalists and lawyers to use spy techniques to communicate with their source and clients.
Although the Senate is now considering a bill that would make it harder for the NSA to collect records in bulk, that would not prevent targeted investigations aimed at a journalist to find the journalist's sources. The approach of limiting access to giant digital dossiers is simply not capable of solving the problem. We must stop the creation of these dossiers.
Comparing the Senate bill with the toothless House bill.
In the
US: tell
Southwest Airlines not to gag passengers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Several European countries now ask stores
to label
products from Israeli colonies in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
They ought to go further and ban commercial importation of all such products.
The US sells coal for a pittance to mining companies, effectively a subsidy so they can export it to boost global heating.
Buy Low, Sell High: How Big Coal And The BLM Treat Taxpayers Like Chumps.
How Capitalism Is Cheating Young Americans. (And young Europeans too.)
Israel has arrested 400 Israeli Arabs for protesting, or planning to protest, or relaying postings about a protest, or just being near a protest. Some get beaten bloody, some get interrogated without lawyers.
People who support peace are called traitors by the right-wing majority.
David Grossman (mentioned in the above article) still has hope that Israel will "grow up" as a result of this war.
Stranger things have happened, but having "the left" understand the majority right-wingers better is not the sort of progress that will help.
If TaskRabbit Is the Future of Employment, the Employed Are Fucked.
The US is providing the Afghan government with more weapons than it can use, and many could fall into the hands of the Taliban.
Republicans passed a bill to let taxes for poor families increase but reduce them for fairly wealthy families.
A court settlement requires the US government to investigate how dangerous 5 pesticides are to endangered wildlife.
General Mills has given Oxfam firm commitments to cut deforestation.
I'm generally skeptical that commitments by businesses are lip service, but if Oxfam thinks this will really solve the problem, maybe it will.
In the US mainstream media, you can get in trouble by showing too much concern for the killing of 1000 Palestinians, but it's fine to say that Hamas is "forcing" Israel to kill Palestinian children.
This is, of course, totally false. Israel could easily protect itself from the tunnels, and the rockets rarely hurt anyone.
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to stop issuing licenses for offshore oil drilling.
Mississippi's attempt to close the state's only abortion clinic has been declared unconstitutional.
However, there may be more appeals.
Israel destroyed Gaza's electric plant. This will make Gaza totally dependent on whatever electricity Israel chooses to supply.
Florida bans doctors from discussing the danger of guns with their patients.
OkCupid did an experiment telling users they were compatible when its scores said they were not.
These pairs carried on with conversations, apparently not noticing their supposed incompatibility. I wonder how many of them formed relationships and how those worked out.
It's possible that this experiment constituted lying to the users, but I don't know whether that is true. It depends on what promises the site makes to users about how it judges compatibility, which are facts I don't know. If "flip a coin" is as good a method as its usual one, perhaps it satisfies the promises.
However, if a dating site's claim to being useful is its method for estimating people's compatibility, and that method turns out to be little better than chance, it seems to imply that the site is pointless.
More information about the experiment.
US citizens: Don't send back child refugees without hearing their cases.
After an oil train derailed in Washington state, activists blocked the tracks so no more could follow.
A former Israeli air force officer says that Israel's moral standards have collapsed. Actions that led to soul-searching 12 years ago are now done without a second thought.
Verizon offers customers "rewards" in exchange for more tracking.
This is why I think it won't achieve much to adopt a law that people "own" their personal data as property — it is too easy to convince them to sell it.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA you support limiting CO2 emissions from coal
power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
ALEC is promoting state laws to remove all regulation from private "charter" schools and ban enrollment in Medicaid.
Why We'll Still Be Fighting About Religious Freedom 200 Years From Now!
Solitary confinement often causes mental illness.
In addition, it must make dementia more likely, since it has been established that exercising the mind tends to delay dementia.
A diary from Gaza under bombardment.
A Spanish union plans a protest in Gibraltar against its use as a tax-dodge haven.
I support their campaign against tax havens, but under the circumstances it can't help being confused with mere nationalism. If they could join with UK Uncut, they could separate it clearly from nationalism.
Despite a year of pressure, Qatar has made little change in its laws that more or less enslave migrant workers.
Domestic violence is a system of permanent enslavement, and the victims need special support in order to leave.
US citizens: Call on the FCC to hold public hearings around US about net neutrality.
US citizens: call on Obama and Holder not to imprison reporter James Risen.
Risen is ready to go to prison to avoid putting a whistleblower in danger. The US government is wrong to try to make this necessary.
Qatar World Cup: Migrants Wait a Year to Be Paid for Building Offices (for the event). The contractor went bankrupt and never paid them, so they are trapped in Qatar because they have no money to leave, and could be imprisoned because they no longer have the right to be in Qatar.
This is part of a general system that treats migrant workers so badly that some of them die from it.
You can punish the Qatari state personally by not taking flights on Qatar Airways, which is owned by the government of Qatar.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU say that lawyers' and journalists' work is threatened by US massive surveillance.
For the lawyers, encryption of the contents of email could be enough of a solution. However, journalists also need to protect their sources' identity, and surveillance of their communication metadata is enough to ruin that. I've stated the solution.
The UK government admits, under pressure, that fracking causes environmental damage, but is mad to go ahead with it anyway.
Isn't it strange that people say we need robots to care for the old and sick because there aren't enough people to do it, when so many people are unemployed?
This is prejudice and plutocracy at work, a desire to replace people with machines and leave more people destitute.
We should ban automation of many jobs, thus preserving work for people, until we institute an automatic personal income so that people don't need jobs.
Everyone: tell the US NFL to treat domestic violence as a serious offence.
The UK covered up massive losses in World War I with censorship and lies.
These losses were due to incompetent generals who lacked the moral courage to a plan when it had clearly gone wrong. With honest reporting, perhaps they would have been sacked.
The decline of wildlife is now causing a food scarcity which increases to war, crime and child labor.
There isn't enough Earth for so many humans and the wild world too. While we can do various things to assuage the conflict, we humans must reproduce less so that we stop overburdening our planet.
Neonicotinoid pesticides are prevalent in waterways in the US midwest and sometimes reach toxic levels. They also persist from previous years.
Obama's proposed regulations for shipping crude oil by train are too little and too slow.
An additional reason to distrust the report of the official investigation of the September 2001 terrorist attacks is that they were based on evidence obtained by the CIA using torture.
This is in addition to the fact that the investigation was corrupted.
So please support the campaign for a proper investigation.
A Colorado judge ruled that promotion of mining takes precedence over human health in Colorado law.
Destroying
Hamas would
make room for a more extreme replacement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
A mob of fanatical Muslims in Pakistan
lynched
a "heretical" grandmother and two of her grandchildren.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs say they could not stop the mob. Will they arrest any of the murderers?
The government of Pakistan encourages this violence with its law against blasphemy, which violates basic human rights.
This stems, in turn, from the general arrogance of Islam, which we see also in the actions of ISIS.
Even businesses object to plans to make unemployed people waste their time filing hopeless job applications.
Research on bees is tainted by involvement of pesticide companies.
The non-plutocratic way to fund this research is to tax the companies more, just as we must tax the pharma companies more and not let them fund tests of the effects of drugs.
Australia approved a new coal mine which will be the world's biggest. Thus we speed towards global disaster.
Tamil boat people who were imprisoned at sea have been brought to Australia, but it is not clear how their asylum cases will be held.
In particular, it is not clear why Australia wants Indian officials to interview them.
Arizona is hitting record temperatures, even at night.
One of the effects of greenhouse gases is to prevent the ground from cooling off at night by radiating infrared into space.
UN Warns Countries With Draconian Abortion Bans That They re Violating Human Rights.
Given the danger posed by human population increase, governments should provide abortion gratis and conveniently.
The Everglades are now threatened by invasive plants and pests.
Has anyone noticed that global heating will drown the Everglades, over time?
The World Bank proposes to shred its environmental protections by allowing governments to opt out from them.
ISIS has imposed
Saudi-style
oppression of women, ordering them to cover their faces and hands
and not to travel without a man.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Women in the area oppressed by ISIS should carry guns under their mandatory loose clothing, and shoot ISIS supporters opportunistically.
The UN reports that life is getting more precarious around the world.
The US is conspiring with Yemen to keep Sharif Mobley disappeared in a secret location and refuse to tell his lawyers where to find him.
I expect they are torturing him too.
The FBI conducted a mandatory study of how drones threaten civil liberties and privacy, and now refuses to tell the public its conclusions.
This is one more element in the US government's systematic contempt for the Constitution and human rights.
Israeli bombardment has leveled entire neighborhoods in Gaza.
Central American leaders implore Obama to spend billions to help them end gang violence, rather than on repelling the children fleeing from it.
One thing they need is to tear up the plutocratic treaty CAFTA.
The US closed its embassy in Libya due to the fighting between militias.
The practice of evidence-laundering allows the US government to use NSA surveillance information secretly and secretly deny Americans fair trials.
Was Kenneth Trentadue suspected of being the second bomber in Oklahoma City?
It may be true that someone said "suspects", plural, from confusion and that there was never video evidence of two people. People often make mistakes.
Whether or not there was a second participant in the bombing, it seems that Kenneth Trentadue was murdered in prison.
The US published satellite photos with evidence that Russia is firing rockets to attack Ukraine.
The Energy-Efficient Way to Punish Putin — And Protect the Planet.
The Israeli peace movement is a small remnant of what it used to be, as overt racism and right-wing hatred takes over the country.
Peace campaigners face not only physical violence but also legal repression.
The Ukraine crises convinced the UK government to stop blocking the public inquiry into Russia's assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
However, the UK still needs a government that won't pander to anyone with money.
Piketty's proposal for global tax on wealth is his idea for saving the world from growing concentration of wealth that will lead either to a bloody revolution or the world of the Hunger Games.
Pakistan's biometric ID
system oppresses
most people but has not prevented false IDs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Phillip Morris, the tobacco company, continues trying to bully Uruguay (and by extension many other countries) into retreating from policies to discourage smoking.
This campaign is capable of killing millions of people.
The article alas spreads confusion when it uses the term "intellectual property". That term is pure confusion and should never be used. The tobacco companies use it as propaganda, and to repeat it is to support their propaganda.
How Paul Ryan's poverty plan would be effective at increasing poverty.
The US is conscripting universities into the War on Sharing.
Even if a university is unable to resist the pressure to bully its students this way, that does not excuse the university for failing to apologize and condemn the pressure.
The article repeats the enemy's propaganda term "piracy". Please don't refer to sharing by a term that means attacking ships.
Australia's wrecker government now proposes in addition to escalate the War on Sharing.
Mandatory internet filters were rejected when proposed for obscenity, but now they get another try.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop listening to the Chamber of Commerce and broaden, not reduce, incentives for business whistleblowers.
Israel did not need to invade Gaza and destroy the tunnels. It had many humane alternatives.
Even at its worst, an attack through the tunnels would have been tiny compared with the devastation of the bombardment of Gaza.
A student in Colombia is being prosecuted for sharing an academic article, under a law imposed on Colombia by the US.
Colombia should tear up that treaty.
A leak shows that TTIP will work against food safety and animal welfare by subordinating them to the convenience of companies.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty is Plutocratic". Corporations have too much power already, so any new "free trade" treaty is going in the wrong direction. We should instead cancel the existing ones.
The US ranks near the bottom in energy efficiency.
The funded campaign to keep use of fossil fuels as high as possible is evidently quite successful.
US citizens: call for more Social Security offices, not fewer.
Uri Avnery explains what is needed to end the Gaza war once and for all.
He also points out how Arab dictators' support for Israel is likely to create pressures for more extreme Islamism, a la ISIS.
ISIS blew up an old mosque that is a major pilgrimage site. It is intolerant of all variations from its own form of Islam.
Saudi Arabia has been doing the same sort of thing.
In the US: ask Trader Joe's to commit not to sell meat made from animals raised using antibiotics.
US citizens: ask Congress
to protect
intelligence whistleblowers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans in the US Congress distrust climate models, and to make
sure they can continue to do
so, they
voted to eliminate funding for validating climate models.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Sooner or later, China's puppet substitute for the Panchen Lama will try to appoint a new Dalai Lama.
US citizens: Tell the RESTORE Council to get moving on restoring the damage from the Big Spill.
Describing the NSA's cooperation with Saudi Arabia's oppression.
Seven-Year Jail Term for Saudi Photographer. And many other journalists and dissidents.
In a 14 year dry spell, the US west has been losing ground water fast.
The More Male-Dominated a Field, the Less It Cares about Domestic Violence.
People with Ebola infections have appeared in African cities.
Iran has arrested four journalists, including three Americans, for no obvious reason.
A solar storm in 2012 could have destroyed most electrical equipment on Earth, except it wasn't pointed at Earth.
We need to develop precautions, because sooner or later one will head towards us, and it could happen at any time.
Israel set the stage for wars in Gaza by pulling out settlers and ground troops while maintaining the occupation in every other way.
US citizens: call on the US government to investigate Amazon for possible violations of competition law.
In the US:
sign
up to boycott Walgreens if it moves its HQ outside the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
Amnesty International in calling for an arms embargo on Israel,
Palestine and Hamas; ask US govt to stop arming Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Why Average Internet Users Should Demand Significant Section 702 Reform.
Reforming law for snooping on our internet traffic is only a part of what we need to do to prevent a society of total surveillance.
The UK has adopted a formal policy of moving files to ODF format.
Over 50 Israeli Reservists Declare 'We Refuse to Serve'.
The NFL punishes players more severely for smoking pot than for domestic violence.
I don't see why the NFL has any business punishing a player for using pot. Using a performance-enhancing drug might be considered cheating, but that doesn't apply to pot.
Privatizations of poultry inspections in the UK led to widespread unsanitary conditions, so that most chicken is contaminated by bacteria that can make people sick if the chicken is not properly cooked.
So why does the US government want to follow the same path?
US states trying to execute prisoners using medical drugs find it often does not work as intended.
I oppose the death penalty in general for other reasons.
Israeli soldiers shot 100 protesters in Nablus, killing several.
The US terrorist watch list now has over a million names, and the White House can add people to it wholesale.
The definition of "terrorism" is so broad and weak that the list could be full of people who were never even suspected of terrorism, only of "terrorism".
These different watchlists and their different uses raise different issues. The no-fly list is punishment without trial, and could only be sustained in the US by tying the Constitution into a pretzel. (Sad to say, the Supreme Court is full of judges willing to do that.)
Asking a foreign country to torture someone is a grave crime, which by the way Obama pretends the US has stopped doing.
Making a note to scrutinize a particular person more in ways that don't require probable cause may be legitimate.
Israel now admits it shelled another school (in use as a refugee shelter) in Gaza.
As usual, Israel says it was because some Palestinians were firing from the school. I am skeptical; I don't think they could have done that without being noticed by the UN staff.
Supposing there are Hamas fighters shooting from a school, which is a war crime, that would not mean Israel is entitled to target the school with any and all weapons. Israel would have to use methods, such as direct fire, that are not likely to stray off target to hit civilians elsewhere on the grounds.
Israel justifies attacks on hospitals and schools by claiming that Hamas has facilities near them, but Israeli army headquarters is also near a hospital.
Russian opposition leaders have been sentenced to prison for the minor rioting that resulted when thugs attacked their protest.
There was a rumor that ISIS ordered genital mutilation for all females, but ISIS says it never did this.
I doubted the rumor, as I knew that Islam does not require FGM.
An interview with Naomi Oreskes about the methods used by organized and funded global heating denialism.
A gate agent for Southwest Airlines forced a passenger to delete a tweet that called the agent "rude", on pain of missing the flight.
Airline employees have the power to kick any passenger off a flight arbitrarily — all they have to do is claim they feel threatened. This power goes to the heads of some of them.
It's the same sort of impunity that thugs enjoy.
George Monbiot: Putting a price on natural ecosystems is nonsense because the prices are fictitious, but it serves as an excuse to destroy these systems in favor of a business "worth" more.
More deeply, valuing everything in terms of money promotes the destructive values of plutocracy.
The UK government is cutting subsidies for renewable energy so can give more to nuclear power and fossil fuels.
France has proposed a law to attack many human rights at once in the name of "fighting terrorism".
Reporters without Borders condemns it.
Glyn Moody: ISPs that want to sort traffic into fast and slow lanes might join with Big Brother to ban encryption.
The American Council on Science and Health is a corporate front group that spreads spin about scientific issues that affect business interests.
UK thugs systematically spied on families campaigning for justice after relatives were killed or maimed — in many cases, by thugs.
It has a certain logic. People whose relatives you've shot might be plausible nuclei for opposition and you might want to sabotage their campaigns.
A Yale professor reports that the dynamic of elite US universities, and the competition to gain admission to them, produces students who don't dare risk failure or stray from a narrow path. He describes this as a bad education.
Israel shelled civilians sheltering in a UN compound.
Wild monkeys 40 miles from Fukushima have blood disorders and some radioactive cesium.
The level of cesium they have might not be enough explain their blood disorders.
Texas has started asking for fingerprints from everyone that renews a driver's license.
People are not required to give all the fingerprints, but the state tricks them into thinking so.
Demanding even one fingerprint is an injustice.
One of Israel's motives for war in Gaza is so it can advertise weapons exports as "field-tested".
Texas invested $200 million in businesses to "create" 1600 jobs in Texas. It turns out that some of the companies don't really exist, aren't in Texas, don't pay their taxes, etc.
As a way to boost employment, this is ineffective. As investment, it wasn't very good either; it made only a little money for the state.
Raising the minimum wage would create a lot more jobs, but that would not please the employers that want workers to be desperate.
Paul Ryan says the US government should eliminate welfare requirements and give money to states to use to help the poor. Texas will give this money to companies to "create jobs", thus ensuring that the poor gain nothing from it.
When ISIS forced Christians to leave Mosul, it stole their houses and even their portable property.
The European Court of Human Rights convicted Poland of aiding CIA torture kidnapping flights, and ordered payment of compensation to the victims. The court ruled that US "rendition" (kidnaping for torture) is fundamentally illegal.
Unfortunately, this won't get them out of Guantanamo prison.
These men are accused of serious crimes which merit prosecution, but they deserve a fair trial, not a Guantanamo kangaroo court.
Obama offered to help negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas.
Either this is a sick joke on Hamas, or Obama intends to pressure Israel to let the fighting stop.
Citizens of Massachusetts: contact specific state legislators in favor of three privacy bills. If they don't pass by July 31 they will be dead for this year.
Oh, Great: Robots Are Set to Conduct National Security Clearance Interviews.
San Diego has set up a network of state and private cameras that any thug can watch at any time.
File sharing sites that governments blocked the name of the world cup have remained blocked and will probably be blocked permanently.
This is another incidental form of oppression dealt out by the world cup.
New York City is moving firmly in response to the thugs' killing of Eric Garner, but not questioning the deeper policy of jailing people over any minor crime.
When legitimate work is hard to get and pays too little to live on, poor people are compelled to break laws to survive. Plutocratic government uses that as an excuse to oppress them.
The only way to reduce annoying crime and black-marketeering is to stop running the economy for the rich. Everyone who can't work should get enough aid for a decent life, and jobs should pay a living wage.
Anti-abortion activists use bogus science to claim that medical abortions are dangerous, while pushing women into amateur abortions that really are dangerous.
I don't use the term "pro-choice" because it fails to defend abortion rights firmly. I also refuse to accept the term "pro-life" that opponents of abortion chose as a way to insult us.
Moroccan women protested the prime minister who told them to stay home and not work.
Jonathan Schell: how the US chose war, and declared its readiness to overthrow any government to impose plutocratic rule.
B'tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, explains why the homes of the families of Hamas members are not military targets, so bombing them is a war crime.
The UN also criticizes Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
Note the Israeli representative's bogus claim that those families are "human shields". That would only be true if the homes were legitimate military targets.
In addition to bombing hospitals, Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza's civil infrastructure such as water and sewage facilities.
In the village of Zanna, every house was damaged by Israeli attack.
Shooting the water tanks had no possible motive except to make civilians' lives miserable. People in Gaza can't afford to replace the water tanks; replacements may be impossible to obtain.
Perhaps Israel destroyed Zanna as preparation for declaring it a free-fire "buffer zone".
A government whistleblower warns that the NSA grabs massive amounts of Americans' data, including email contents, by breaking into servers and communication links outside the US.
Citizens of Illinois, Maryland and New York:
oppose state
bills that would attack the right to boycott Israeli institutions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
More about why HIV researchers call for decriminalization of sex work.
Israel, backed by the West, responded to the Palestinian unity government with repression, which helped get the current war started.
How America Finances the Destruction in Gaza — and the Clean-Up.
Everyone: call on Obama to pressure Israel to end the siege of Gaza as part of a permanent nonaggression agreement.
It is widely noted that the rockets launched from Gaza are an act of war and a war crime. The siege is also an act of war and a war crime. Let's end them both.
An ID card to identify you as a human being.
Turkish thugs have been accused of illegally spying on Prime Minister Erdo an and others, using falsified papers.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the resolution that would endorse the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Anglophone countries are the world center of global heating denialism, perhaps due to the effect of the Murdoch media.
Hamas rockets rarely seriously injure a person, but they have acquired economic clout by causing cancellation of many international flights to Tel Aviv.
Maybe now Netanyahu will agree to end the war that he started.
The whole of the Great Barrier Reef is contaminated by toxic coal dust from Australian coal export.
A Hindu-nationalist MP in India tried to force food down a fasting Muslim's throat.
Even if you believe the MP's claim that this was only a complaint about the bad quality of the food served, shoving it into someone's mouth is hardly justifiable.
At least he did not try to do it via a tube through the man's nose, as the US military does.
Japanese officials ordered removal of a memorial to Korean forced laborers.
India wants to interview the Tamil boat people who are imprisoned on an Australian ship.
Australia's government is cutting funds for public transit to build more roads instead.
It's a natural choice, for a government that intends to boost fossil fuel use.
The US military is responsible for around 5% of world greenhouse gas emissions.
The idea of a "type A personality", with health problems due to stress, was constructed by the tobacco industry.
How opponents of same-sex marriage distort the history of marriage.
Protesters
blockaded
a tar sands mine in Utah.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Iran has finished the promised
dilution
of its most enriched uranium.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions to influence politics, through a maze of twisty channels all different.
The US is stranding Yemeni-Americans in Yemen by confiscating their passports while they are visiting there.
Then they have to wait as much as a year before they are allowed to return to the US.
The UK government demonstrated its contempt for the environment yet again by appointing a fracking flunky to head the Environmental Agency.
US citizens:
tell Subway to stop
making staff work while sick and stop firing them for going to the
hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Secretary Vilsack to publish the proposed rule for poultry inspection, and hold hearings on it.
The very idea of a secret rule proposal is offensive.
Al Jazeera says Israeli troops fired at its building in Gaza.
How UK's Terrorism Law Targets Words, Not Just Guns And Bombs.
Two UK MPs will ask a court to reject the UK's "emergency" surveillance law.
Time Magazine says the US economy is doing great, judging based on the rich and the fossil fuel companies.
China is using fake Twitter accounts, masquerading as famous people, to promote its occupation of Tibet.
June 2014 was the hottest June on record.
Giving Up Beef Will Reduce Carbon Footprint More Than Cars, Says Expert.
President Obama Signs Executive Order Protecting LGBT People from Workplace Discrimination.
Violent pogroms against Arabs are spreading in Israel as many say they want to exterminate the inhabitants of Gaza.
Gush Shalom calls for an end to the bombardment of Gaza.
It turns out that climate models accurately model the rate of Earth's surface heating, when not fooled by El Niño/La Niña.
If you stand for freedom or resist the rich, you have something to fear from an omniscient state that supports the rich.
Some right-wing global heating deniers are driven to their delusion by an ideological opposition to using collective action to solve any problem.
Collective action through the state is also the way to stop plutocrats from pushing most people into poverty, which is another reason those plutocratist politicians hate collective action.
The UK plans another attack on the natural world, both wildlife and the Earth's climate, proposing a legal requirement to extract the maximum amount of fossil fuel.
Human Rights Watch finds that most of the high-profile terrorist plots that the US prosecutes were stimulated by the US government, and the "perpetrators" were often reluctant.
The effect is systematic injustice, but it suits those that hate our freedoms and are in a position to take them away by changing our laws.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Republican plans to block new US National Monuments.
How the Internet makes it easy to create antedated "predictions" for fraud.
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
More information about it.
Coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef has fallen by half since the 1980s.
Israeli attacks killed 100 Palestinians in one day, many of them civilians.
This included shelling a hospital.
Israel's tactics guarantee lots of civilian casualties. One must question whether defense against attacks that might kill a few civilians justifies a response that kills hundreds of civilians.
Ukrainian rebels have not protected the jetliner's crash site from looting or disturbance of evidence.
I regard this as proof of guilt.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of state manipulation of the media, most Russians believe the downing of the Malaysian jet was a plot against Russia.
This is comparable to the global heating denial campaign which has convinced so many Americans to support political fantasy.
India's censorship law is being used to persecute a critic of Modi.
Google has abolished the "real name" requirement for Google account.
This might mean that Google+ is acceptable to use. But I am not certain, because I don't know the answer to two follow-on questions:
7
Reasons Why the Internet of Things Is Doomed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Actually, some of them are reasons why we should kill it, which do not necessarily imply it is doomed on its own.
A "smart house" project Japan is a scheme to impose total surveillance and tracking.
This demonstrates the danger inherent in such schemes.
RJ Reynolds has been hit with 23 billion dollars in punitive damages for advertising designed to make minors smoke.
The article says "children", but adolescents are not children, so I won't use that word. Advertising tobacco to adolescents is arguably even worse than advertising it to children, since children are not likely to start smoking whereas adolescents may well do so.
Even in Isolated, Pristine Tasmania, Pressure to Allow GMO Farming.
The US keeps lots of information about everyone's airline ticket purchases and appears to keep it for at least 10 years.
US citizens: Support postal banking.
The Rising Global Movement That Calls for #noTTIP.
Syria says it is stupid to support the rebels and calls for the UK to support Assad.
The sad thing is, that is true. When the main Syrian rebel groups joined with the Islamists, they became enemies of human rights just as much as Assad is. Here's an article that argues that Israel and Saudi Arabia have promoted the violent rebellion in Syria, even as far as directly supporting jihadis.
I wonder if Israel supports ISIS too.
State legislators that support voter-ID laws show a strong statistical tendency to discriminate against Latinos.
All The Big Broadband Players Support FCC's Proposed Rules... Which Says All You Need To Know.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them not to block diplomacy with Iran.
US citizens: tell Congress
to support
the Hide No Harm Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Some Israelis go to hills near Gaza to cheer at the deadly bombardment. A journalist suspected of not sympathizing with them was threatened with violence.
US journalist Cokie Roberts bemoans the fact that everyone around the world does not obey the US government.
I think most governments fear the US too much; they let the US pressure them into unjust plutocratic treaties.
In the 90s, when I used to listen to National Public Radio, I loathed Roberts' right-wing criticisms of right-wing "Democrat" Bill Clinton. They showed me that NPR is actually rather right-wing, contrary to the reputation it gets by contrast with the extremely right-wing commercial US media such as Faux News.
Journalist Andy Hall faces the threat of imprisonment for revealing slavery in Thailand.
Making it a crime to publish an accusation of abuses is prima facie injustice and inexcusable.
The UK is saving emails of lots of people, without warrants, in case it might be interested in them in the future.
The R.I.P. act (for Rip Internet Privacy) was an injustice even with its previous interpretation. The UK must repeal it.
An arrogant plutocrat threatens San Francisco workers with being replaced by an oppressive computer if they demand decent wages.
In the short term, the workers should simply repeat the demand, to show they are not scared.
In the medium term, they face the threat of being replaced by computers in any case, so they should organize to prohibit that. Why should stores be allowed to replace human sales clerks with computers? It should be banned by law. Until then, I make a point of refusing to use those machines, to push back against them.
In the long term, everyone should get a guaranteed income, obtained by taxing the owners of the robots. This should perhaps be conditioned on not having children; however, anyone who adopts a child should get a big subsidy.
A wildfire in the state of Washington has burned 340 square miles.
Israeli soldiers are in streets fighting in Gaza.
Thousands of civilians are trying to flee, but no place is safe.
WHO calls for an end to treating drug users as criminals.
A Russian radio station reports that rebels sent the Malaysian plane's black box to Russia.
The "investigation" by Russia cant be trusted, but this meddling confirms it was the rebels or Russia that shot down the plane.
The article also provides evidence that Russia is firing lots of short-range missiles at Ukraine. Unlike the ineffective missiles that Hamas fires at Israeli civilians, these are a real threat to Ukrainian troops.
Everyone: Call on NBC News to let Ayman Mohyeldin go back to Gaza.
Russia has a paid internet propaganda and troll army.
The US is funding research on how to manipulate people through social networks.
Uri Avnery comments on the fighting in Gaza.
Why so many children flee from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador can be traced to what the US did to those countries.
"Counter-terrorist" tactics can be effective against a small underground group, but not against an insurgency with popular support.
Israeli tanks are firing flechette shells that hit everyone in a large area 300 meters by 90 meters, and using them in towns where civilians are likely to be hit.
Gazans say Israel is using some sort of
poison
gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors in Gaza suspect Israel is using experimental weapons that
rip human
bodies to shreds.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for protection of habitat for ocelot and jaguar.
Even northern Canada is suffering from a rash of wildfires due to unusual heat.
These fires are due to global heating, and they fuel more global heating. This is positive feedback at work.
US citizens:
oppose
oil drilling in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands
to March in Detroit as 'Heartless' Water Shut-Offs Continue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
NOAA summarizes the continuing slide into global heating.
A
study
forecasts that 100 small nuclear weapons would cause drastic global
cooling and reduce rainfall for more than a decade, as well as
damaging the ozone layer.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Edward Snowden.
A transcript.
US citizens: Call on the Senate not to interfere with diplomacy with Iran.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Call on the state to check for methane leaks from pipelines.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress to cut the F-35 fighter plane.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
ISIS declared Christians must be
second-class
citizens, expressing the tyrannical nature of Islam in pure form.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Why employers prefer that workers have no safety net.
The EPA blocked the Pebble Mine to protect salmon.
The number of leading AIDS researchers killed on the downed flight was much less than previously believed.
Independent ebooks without DRM seem to sell more copies.
That's helpful for the cause of getting rid of DRM, but since DRM is an offence against readers' freedom, if it did increase sales that would not be an excuse for it.
New York thugs killed a man by putting him in a chokehold. They had no reason to attack him in the first place.
Israel plans to turn a third of the area of Gaza into a free-fire zone.
This plan represents a compromise with world opinion. Left to itself, Israel's government might prefer to declare the entirety of Gaza a free-fire "buffer zone". Or you might say that it has unofficially done so.
Florida Governor Scott is raising lots of money from a private prison owner.
A passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing everyone aboard. Around 100 leading AIDS researchers were on the plane.
A leaked tape reportedly shows pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine shot down the jetliner, thinking they had attacked a military transport plane.
This sort of thing is what happens in war. US drone attacks are called "surgical strikes", but they often do the military equivalent of amputating the wrong leg. A US ship shot down an Iranian jetliner, also by mistake. Israeli bombs in Gaza are supposedly aimed at "terrorists" but many hit schools, hospitals, wells and homes.
However, when Russia handed high altitude SAMs to rebels without rigid checklists, it made this sort of accident rather likely.
A reporter resigned from Russia Today to protest its absurd claims that Ukraine fired the missile.
Obama approved the plan to injure 100,000 whales and dolphins to find more undersea oil that we can't ever dare extract.
Ethiopia plans to imprison some dissidents on bogus charges of "terrorism".
What the US and UK do, other countries imitate.
Niger activists opposed to a secret uranium mining deal with France face charges for holding a press conference.
The Open Rights Group will challenge the new DRIP surveillance law in court.
US Accused
of Forcing EU to Accept Tar Sands Oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Food Industry Lobby Groups Behind the New School Nutrition Standards.
What convinced the Guantanamo nurse that force feeding is wrong.
Blanket digital surveillance is a start. But how about a camera in every bathroom?
The UN has condemned massive surveillance as a violation of human rights.
This includes data retention such as the UK is in the process of reimposing.
US citizens: Tell Obama to make Detroit turn the water back on.
US citizens: call for a requirement for fracking companies
to publish
the composition of the fracking fluid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's army has attacked Gaza. This included bombardment of a hospital.
Israeli accusations that Hamas stores arms in civilian buildings were proved partly valid: the UNRWA found missiles in a disused school building.
Whether they store arms in civilian buildings that are actually in use is not proven.
In the secret US prison at Bagram, the prisoners frequently have to go on hunger strike to get clean water to drink or to see the ICRC.
Your portable tracking and surveillance device can now also inform about changes in your behavior pattern.
How America Fails the Rule-of-Law Test.
Everyone: call on Obama not to let Israel bomb the Wafa rehabilitation hospital.
Since Reagan, the US has allowed monopolies or oligopolies to spread across the range of businesses, subjecting Americans to unchecked power of businesses.
This was done in the name of "free markets", but really it was "laissez faire". Due to the inherent instability of the free market, removal of the regulations that protected it allowed it to be converted into something more like feudalism.
Campaigning against TTIP, This Treaty Is Plutocratic, another instance of the oppression of the TPP.
Efficiencies in agriculture could in principle feed billions more people. But the total meat production would have to go down pretty far.
Introducing efficiency into agriculture is much more easily said than done, and global heating will interfere greatly as it means that weather changes from year to year and the proper agricultural methods for a given area cannot be predicted.
NBC yanked correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza because he did a good job of covering the main effect of Israeli bombing.
Brazil allows people to censor all publication about them, and many biographies have been banned. A bill proposes to correct this.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would stop the FCC from making municipal broadband legal.
Syrian mothers force their daughters to marry, as young as 13, fearing that they will otherwise be raped. One said she expected her male relatives to murder the daughter if she is raped.
Rape is common in war, but Arab culture converts rape into a sentence of death. What barbarism! Having daughters in such a society should be considered committing a crime against them.
The RIAA shut down a radio archive that has operated almost 20 years.
I hope people set it up again in some other country.
Censorship in France: a blogger has been fined for publishing a negative opinion of a restaurant.
Reportedly Hamas and Islamic Jihad have offered a
10-year
truce in exchange for Israel's ending the siege of Gaza and ending
its isolation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
These terms seem reasonable to me. Most of the issues in dispute between Israel and Palestine are left out, which is appropriate since this proposes a truce rather than a full settlement.
A military nurse at Guantanamo has refused to participate in force-feeding on the grounds that it is inhumane.
I expect the Obama regime to repress this nurse.
Republicans
blocked
the bill to correct the Hobby Lobby decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is attacking wells and sewage systems in Gaza.
Netanyahu stated publicly that he will never permit a Palestinian state to function.
An Obama representative rebuked Israel for maintaining the occupation of Palestine and rejecting peace.
It's a small sign of the courage that could have a chance of making Israel agree to peace.
Hamas says that Egypt and Israel did not discuss the supposed cease-fire with Hamas before announcing it.
One of the few left-wing terrorists in Greece was captured, but the right-wing terrorists of Golden Dawn are still rampant, and the boot of the banks is still on Greece's neck.
A prisoner in New Mexico is threatened with 90 days in solitary confinement for having a Facebook page.
I think being a used of Facebook is punishment enough.
Australia has repealed its carbon tax, cementing a plan that will kill tens or hundreds of millions of people.
Australia's right-wing government plans to imprison journalists for publishing what whistleblowers report about spying on the public.
These journalists are, of course, the ones who have the "sense of responsibility" that Abbott says journalists should have.
The prohibition is so sweeping that almost any reporting about a secret government action could be covered. For instance, when dissidents identify their lovers as undercover thugs, they could be imprisoned.
Peace demonstrators in Tel Aviv were attacked by right-wing hate protesters.
US border patrol thugs brutalize people at will for grudges, and they are spreading their power to a ever further from the borders.
Don't forget how they beat up Peter Watts, then prosecuted him for not obeying fast enough.
That thug should be in prison.
Immigrant activist journalist Jose Antonio Vargas was arrested when he tried to fly out of a US city near the border with Mexico,
Vargas came to the US from the Philippines as a child, and found out many years later that he did not have permission to reside in the US. I don't believe that countries are obliged to admit everyone that wants to move to them, but people who came as children — before they were responsible — and remained for many years should be allowed to stay.
The west's foreign aid to Africa
is less
than what the west takes out of Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Overprotectiveness is stunting the mental growth of a generation children — in particular, denying them contact with nature.
The article refers to the UK but I have seen similar attitudes in the US.
Too-big-to-fail banks exist because
of Bill
Clinton's deregulation of banks, and their incomprehensible
maneuvers are also permitted due to his deregulation of banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Hillary Clinton is in the same camp; she works for the plutocrats.
Contrast with Elizabeth Warren helps Democrats see Obama's right-wing nature.
Joseph Stiglitz explains how the World Bank, IMF and WTO combined in the 90s to wreck countries' economies, impoverish most people, and transfer their wealth to the international elite.
Clearly this continues in recent times, as can be seen in austerity in Europe.
RT has an obvious slant which comes from Putin, but Michael Hudson is a western economist who accepted this opportunity to communicate to the public.
The US government aims to be omniscient and omnipotent.
This makes its unquestioning supporters comparable to theocrats.
US citizens: phone your congresscitter to support HCR 105 to remove all US troops from Iraq by the end of the year.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US government has too few meat inspectors, as part of the cockeyed plan to let companies inspect themselves.
What the World
Cup Can Teach Progressives About Corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel accepted a ceasefire proposed by Egypt, but Hamas rejected it.
Both Hamas and Israel had reasons to want some inconclusive fighting in Gaza Apparently Israel has had enough fighting to achieve its aims, while Hamas has not.
The Obama regime argues in court that US companies must hand over foreign data to US courts regardless of foreign laws.
The UK's NHS is grudgingly rationing out hip replacement operations. I suppose this is because of the shortage of funds, by which the right wing want to make it so bad people will accept privatization.
Citigroup will have to pay 7 billion dollars for misleading investors, but it's not enough to discourage a repeat, and the executives responsible won't be punished.
Non-star writers are paid very little by the existing copyright-based publishing system. In the UK, the median income for working authors is a pitiful 17,000 or 18,000 dollars a year.
The existing copyright-based system mainly supports the publishing companies as well as the stars that have clout with them.
Abstinence-based sex-non-education is telling lies to keep virgins ill-informed; it puts them in danger.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses described the results of this in 1782, so there is no excuse for ignorance.
Florida's Republicans drew congressional districts illegally to favor Republican candidates, but they hope it is too late to fix the problem for this year.
Washington DC has banned styrofoam containers for food and drinks.
As usual, plastic companies lobbied against this step forward. You would think that some stockholders would be wise enough to say, "People will always want plastic, and we can go along with selling it over a longer period of time to keep our rivers and seas clean." I suspect that the corporation structure systematically leads executives to be extremists: to demand to maximize their profits no matter what the cost to society.
Perhaps some reorganization of the structure of a corporation could alter that tendency. That would a great thing.
The Citibank payment is peanuts compared to what it received in bailout funds.
Australia is holding a boatful of asylum seekers in prison on a ship.
A Japanese artist has been arrested for distributing art: a 3D printer model for a boat designed from her vagina. She has campaigned for years to end the taboo on the image and even the word for "vagina". I think sexual taboos, which censorship preserves, are the cause of many sexual obsessions and hatreds.
The UK government still officially has carbon emission reduction targets, but has ensured it will not meet them.
Wild cheetahs are being wiped out by taking the cubs for pets.
An interview with an Armenian former soldier who volunteered in Moscow to go to fight for the pro-Russian side in Ukraine.
How Bill Gates's money was used to fund and organize "grass roots" support for the Common Core.
This makes me think of how Tea Party "grass roots" groups got funding from rich sponsors.
Two westerners face a secret trial in China.
Think of this when the UK talks about secret trials.
Around half the children in India are stunted, as if they did not get enough food, because of exposure to germs from human excrement.
Nuclear weapons relate to global heating in a number of ways.
South Africa is on the verge of adopting a state secrecy bill that would force journalists to name their sources, and imprison whistleblowers. Following the unjust lead of the US.
The soccer world cup
will leave
Brazil saddled with a debt of perhaps 14 billion dollars.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The world cup of soccer should no longer be given a tax exemption.
I am not sure that change is sufficient to make the world cup cease to damage the host country. If you live in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, the US or Morocco, I urge you to campaign against your country's bid to hold the 2026 world cup.
What the US
has lost since September 2001.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli bombing in Gaza has destroyed or damaged almost 1000 houses.
UK spy agencies have repeatedly bugged elected officials.
They also have a big catalog of tools for distorting and sabotaging public activity on the internet.
Three Israelis have been charged with kidnaping and killing an Arab teenager.
This is as it should be, but it is the exception. Israelis kill many Palestinians every year, and almost always have some sort of official cover that gives them impunity.
In advanced countries, with the exception of the US, strong unions correlate with high productivity.
So don't believe the executives when they claim that unions destroy productivity.
Missouri plans to execute a man convicted of
murder disregarding
evidence that he was probably innocent.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Hillary's Candid Motto for Democratic
Party: "Represent
Banks".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
the US Trade Representative to reject "investor-state" provisions
in treaties.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The UK accesses records of medical visits to find illegal immigrants.
Drones are in use for private spying on behalf of idiotically jealous spouses.
On occasion, these uses achieve a positive result, but I don't think they should be permitted loosely.
Protesters from a march in Paris, condemning Israel's bombing of Gaza, tried to attack a synagogue.
The people in the synagogue are not the ones launching the attack. They may not even support it. The standard Israeli way of dismissing all criticism of its occupation policies is to call it "antisemitism". Apparently these protesters really are antisemitic, but their bad example will help Israel label all of us as "antisemitic".
There is a substantial amount of antisemitism in France among the right wing.
"Natural" disasters happen 5 times as often as they did in the 1970s, because now they are mainly artificial.
Obama is trying to use the "state secrets" privilege to quash the case of a man who is suing to get off the "no fly" list.
The "no fly" list is punishment without trial, obviously unconstitutional, but we can't count on the pro-authoritarian US Supreme Court to care about this.
Jo Beecham is dying of cancer, but has gone to great lengths to prepare to commit suicide without help rather than be helplessly subject to a medical system that will refuse to let her escape short of death.
British American Tobacco has tried to use its giant market power to blackmail a Ugandan MP who has sponsored a European-style bill to discourage smoking.
This sort of blackmail is common, and it is one reason we need to break up large companies. If BAT were replaced by 50 companies, and the biggest of them were 5% the size of BAT, they would not have this power.
US citizens: Support the bill to authorize Clean Energy Victory Bonds.
Raising taxes on the rich would be better than borrowing money, but either one is a lot better than failing to promote clean energy.
US citizens: call on the US government to firmly oppose whaling.
WikiLeaks has shown us that western democracies are now ruled by market forces that debase the very notion of freedom.
Do e-cigarettes lead people away from smoking, or are they a new way to get teenagers hooked?
Perhaps they should be available only by prescription, to smokers who want to quit.
The UK's surveillance bill threatens to punish companies world-wide if they do not obey UK surveillance orders. And it requires some web sites to track their users.
Haiti's cardinal condemned Voodoo, saying that that religion distracts believers from real solutions to their problems.
Religion generally tends to do that, but I am skeptical of the claim that belief in Voodoo is what typically leads poor Haitians not to use the services of doctors or lawyers. I suspect that poverty is responsible for that, and they turn to Voodoo as an affordable substitute.
Islamists in Libya have gone on the offensive.
An
analysis of
the development of the world's global problems since 1945.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The software patent war has extended to data centers.
Israel killed 50 more Palestinians in Gaza, including 22 from one family.
Both Israel and Hamas desire fighting in Gaza for political reasons, expecting the situation to be unchanged when the fighting stops (except for the casualties).
Hachette put itself at Amazon's mercy by insisting on Amazon DRM for ebooks.
The right-wing undermining of Britain's NHS is increasing the time it takes for ambulances to reach people.
The UK needs to increase taxes on the rich and on businesses so it can spend enough on the NHS.
Ted Postol says that the Iron Dome missile interceptor nearly always fails to destroy the missile's warhead.
Republicans finally allowed an actual poor person to speak about poverty but could not accept what she said.
US citizens: remind Obama that children that arrive in the US alone are often valid refugees.
Mary Anne Grady Flores has been sentenced to a year in prison for photographing a protest against drones at Hancock Air Base.
The US government concocts all sorts of excuses to quash dissent.
In the US, workers are punished for spending over 6 minutes a day in the toilet.
In
UK, Big-Labor
Strikes and Low-Wage Struggles Jockey for Future.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Reagan's destruction of US antitrust law paved the way for consolidation in every industry, which transfers wealth to the new monopolies from everyone else.
In a dangerous decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state can order a suspect to decrypt files on his computer.
A California highway thug beat up a homeless woman who was walking by the side of a highway, but was recorded on video by a passing citizen.
It is true we don't know what they said to each other. So ask yourself, can you imagine anything she might possibly have said that would give a thug a valid reason to beat her up? The thug may be asking himself the same question.
If you want to view the video, you can access it without free software by running the youtube-dl script with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-J-yVKxXrY as argument.
Warning: viewing that video on Youtube in the usual way entails running either Flash Player or nonfree Javascript code.
Tepco continues building the "ice wall" to keep ground water away from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plants, despite various problems.
What I don't understand is why they want to use this untried method, rather than building a pair of solid concrete walls with a replaceable plastic filler between them.
China is concerned about spying via an iThing feature that finds locations that a person often goes to.
The UK government is looking closely at some documents about its participation in US torture flights.
Russia has adopted a law requiring web sites that Russians use to keep data about Russians in Russia.
This will make their data safe from spying by the US, but easily available for spying by Russia.
If this law applied only to only to stores and such, it might be a net improvement for Russians. However, blocking Russians from communicating through a foreign web site is oppressive.
An ethical communications system does not insist that people give their real names or their real locations. Such a system may not know if you're in Russia.
Desmond Tutu spoke up for the right to assistance in dying.
The bill being discussed is a step forward, but inadequate, because it is limited to people who probably will suffer for no more than 6 more months even without help. People condemned to decades of boring helplessness should also have this right.
From the Marshall Islands: Why the next climate treaty is vital for my country to survive.
A future contraceptive implant could last for 16 years.
I don't see a tremendous benefit in being able to turn it on and off without removing it — how often would you want to do that? I expect most women will want to use contraception until they decide to have children, have some, then use contraception for the rest of their fertility (or get sterilized). The easy way to space their children would be with shorter-term contraception, perhaps one-year implants. This way, the long-term implant would only have to be removed once, which it requires anyway.
What worries me is that they might design it to require nonfree software to communicate with it.
Luxembourg is Europe's biggest tax-dodger enabler, and Juncker, the new head of the European Commission, worked hard to make it so.
As president, he will have the power to sabotage the commission's investigation into what he set up.
Americans are using less gasoline, so the US government wants to fund highways from sources other than the gasoline tax.
It is good that we are driving less, and good that cars are more efficient. We should raise the gasoline tax rate to give Americans even more incentive to drive less and use more efficient cars. And we can mostly stop building new highways (though the old ones need proper maintenance).
The New York Times continues
boosting
wars, despite claiming it has learned its lesson from the
disastrous results of boosting Dubya's conquest of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Obama, respect freedom of the press: don't jail James Risen.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose CISA, the new and nastier version of CISPA.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US Supreme Court has made and approved a long string of decisions allowing thugs to do almost anything with impunity.
This includes the ruling that the president can have anyone imprisoned without trial by calling that person a "terrorist suspect".
The recent decision that they can't search arrested people's phones and computers without a warrant is an exception, but one exception isn't enough.
Since "drug-sniffing" dogs are mentioned, I should point out that a dog can easily learn to react the same way to a cue from its handler as it does to the smell of drugs. Then it can give the handler an excuse to search whoever the handler wants to search.
The biggest origin of minors trying to enter the US without visas is Honduras; they are driven by the effects of the US-supported coup.
An Israeli drone attack targeted a building which was a residence for disabled people. Some were killed.
The family home of an enemy fighter is not a valid military target either. A large fraction of Israelis are military reservists; does that make their family homes legitimate targets for missiles?
William Binney says the NSA records at least 80% of all phone calls, and lies about it.
One weakness in most geoengineering schemes intended to counter greenhouse heating is that their effect is temporary so it is necessary to keep doing them forever. If any other catastrophe occurs, making society unable to continue the geoengineering, catastrophic heating (much faster than today) would start within a few years.
Most of these geoengineering schemes fail to do anything to stop ocean acidification, so there would still be a catastrophe anyway.
The US continues billions of dollars of subsidies to fossil fuels.
A large meta-study found that organic fruit and vegetables tend to have more antioxidants and less pesticides and cadmium.
Metastudies are tricky, and if this tendency is real, it is not certain whether it translates into a health benefit. But it plausibly could.
In the UK, tax dodging has been simplified so that even working class heroes that get famous can do it.
The Obama regime stated that it had not known that the UK was going to make The Guardian destroy the computer that a copy of the Snowden leaks, but in fact the highest US spymasters were informed.
Uri Avnery: Israelis for the most part hate Arabs so much that they hardly feel any disgust towards the people among them who kidnaped and burned an Arab teenager.
I suspect that a secondary purpose of the bombing of Gaza is to distract attention from that crime with a bigger crime.
Here's a report from Gaza.
If Palestinians are situating military activities in homes with civilians, that is just as reprehensible as Israel's attacks on those homes. But they can't be launching missiles from homes, and Israel doesn't really need to attack anything except missile launchers.
Indeed, Israel hardly even needs to attack missile launchers. It could slap the missiles away, as it does, and not bother to retaliate, saying, "Are you tired of acting out? Done with your tantrum?" Israel's forbearance would make Hamas look like fools.
But that would not satisfy crowds that shout, "Death to Arabs." And it might create a situation where peace seems reasonable, which is the last thing Netanyahu wants.
The idea of stripping people's names from their data from their histories and passing that around turns out not to work: it is too easy to figure out who they were.
All the more reason why digital systems must not collect people's histories.
A Republican candidate that advocates "abstinence only" as a substitute for sex education ended up with a pregnant teenage daughter.
What do you call people who teach their children "abstinence
only"?
Grandparents.
Deforestation by humans may be responsible for Ebola outbreaks in humans.
US television showed a bombed-out Gaza family and said they were Israeli.
It is part of a standard pattern of greatly exaggerating Palestinian violence and excusing the much larger Israeli violence.
Citizens of Detroit blocked water shutoff trucks, and were injured by the thugs that arrested them.
I hope the next protest will involve thousands of Detroiters.
The ACLU is suing to put an end to investigating people for non-reasons.
An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me
Down Because
I Took a Picture of This.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Chris Christie gave a state subsidy to a company run by a Democrat as part of an agreement not to oppose each other.
A proposed New Jersey law to ban political donations from companies that get state subsidies is just a part of what is needed to end political cronyism, a.k.a. plutocracy.
Clinton and Kerry want Snowden to submit to a trial that imitates the mockery of justice in Alice in Wonderland.
Senators that say freedom of speech covers billionaires' money also want to amend the Constitution to ban flag-burning.
The World Council of Churches calls for divesting from fossil fuel.
The Caliph of ISIS may have been radicalized in a US prison in Iraq.
One can say this serves the US right, but Iraqis do not deserve the oppression of ISIS.
Due to global heating, parts of Miami Beach are regularly inundated.
The Turkey Point nuclear plant will become an island, and will be vulnerable to a Fukushima-type disaster.
As the sea advances, millions of people will have to leave Florida, perhaps in a few decades. The Florida Keys may be submerged during this century.
I suspect that Florida land interests are behind Florida politicians' denial. Fools continue to buy buildings that are likely to be drowned, while somebody else extracts profits to move out of Florida before everyone else wakes up to it.
In 50 years, when the price collapses, will those fools' heirs sue Senator Rubio's heirs?
The US government refuses to repudiate torture, and continues to practice it, and US mass media treat it as admirable.
Nanomaterials: a new range of substances that might be put in food, and some of them might have toxic effects.
A given chemical in the form of nanoparticles might have different effects from the same chemical in a different form. It could even depend on the size of the nanoparticles being used. I suppose most chemicals that are ordinarily nontoxic will not be toxic in nano form either, but there will be exceptions to stumble upon.
Climate saboteurs are shifting from denial of global heating to minimizing the expected consequences.
It's a delaying campaign to keep the money flowing unabated to fossil fuel companies as long as possible.
Where censorship of sex is permitted, gay-friendly materials are likely to be censored — not just in Singapore, but in Canada too.
A Greenpeace parody attacking the Shell/LEGO marketing partnership was taken down from YouTube by a vague copyright claim.
Using the DMCA for political censorship is not unusual. It could be considered common practice.
The Kurds have dropped out of the Iraqi government.
This seems to be a push to make Maliki quit. However, since the Kurdish region aims for independence, perhaps Iraq could kick its representatives out of Parliament; then maybe it could form a government.
How the UK is involved in US kidnapping for torture, and how it blocks public inquiry into this complicity.
US citizens: call on the FDA to stop the ruining of antibiotics by feeding them to farm animals en masse.
New pun judge in space
US citizens: Support the Senate bill to fix the Hobby Lobby decision.
The complicated tax-dodging scheme of Nando's Chicken.
The US is spending a trillion dollars on the F-35 fighter whether it works or not.
Karzai approved a UN plan to check the ballots of the Afghan presidential election.
I hope that this makes it possible to find the real winner before the candidates start trying to defeat each other militarily.
An Australian judge faces irrational attacks after saying that sex between siblings might not be inherently bad.
He seems to be talking about sex done willingly. Why should willing sibling sex be associated with "abuse"?
Alas, Judge Neilson is partly mistaken: some apparently still have a taboo about this, and they attack him for questioning the taboo. The attacks are blatant non sequiturs, claiming that sibling sex is bad because it's "disgusting" and because it's illegal.
Environmental defender Jonathan Moylan faces sentencing for posting a Yes Men-style hoax announcement that a bank had pulled out of a coal mine project.
If you are in Australia, you might want to move your money out of ANZ bank permanently as a protest against its destructive investments.
"Sports drinks" have a considerable amount of sugar, and unless you're doing hard exercise for a long time, you're better off drinking water.
Some studies suggest
certain
farm pesticides increase the chance of autism; a pregnant woman
who lives near a fields where they are used has a higher chance of an
autistic child.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congress is about to vote on a terrible new cybersecurity bill which gives the NSA more spying authority.
Here's more detail.
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are rising as the Taliban increasingly fight in towns.
Afghans don't get as angry when the Taliban kill civilians as they do when US soldiers or drones kill civilians.
Children facing deportation need lawyers.
The fine for poisoning water supplies for 300,000 people: just 11,000 dollars.
Obama's lawyers argue that prisoners in Guantanamo don't deserve the same religious freedom as a corporation.
A one-day general strike of public workers shut down a lot of the UK, in response to a proposed law intended to make it hard for unions to strike.
Part of the motive for privatization of government services is to weaken unions, which helps drive workers' pay down and facilitates cheating them.
The Virginia thugs have given up on making child pornography of a teenager threatened with imprisonment for sending a picture of his penis to his lover.
The laws against "child pornography" are unjust, and this is one of many reasons.
Half the people killed by bombing Gaza are women and children. A good fraction of the men killed are probably noncombatants too.
The EU has deplored the bombing, while the US tries to shield Israel.
Big signs in Washington DC encourage whistleblowers to talk to exposefacts.org.
I asked an expert, who says that the site is good to use but reminds people to use https to communicate with it.
The FBI treated Nelson Mandela as some sort of Communist threat after he was released from prison.
Helsinki plans an integrated system of public transit that would make it obsolete to have a car.
This would be a tremendous advance, except that they plan to build in total surveillance as part of the fine print. Every portable phone is a tracking device, and if you have to pay through one, that means identifying yourself to the system. That would be a big step backwards for privacy.
If we don't want to live in a world of total surveillance, we must reject and oppose every new system that collects data about all users. We must insist on designing systems so that they do not track or identify people. Helsinki's transit system should provides ways to call for a ride by calling a number, and allow paying cash.
See http://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html for more explanation, and practical recommendations.
I did not sign a petition to make the FISA court stop profiling based on religion and a couple of other personal classifications because I think the real problem is that the FISA court is a rubber stamp for spying on people.
A Thai editor was jailed for a Facebook posting.
The UK plans to rush new surveillance requirements into effect without debate.
The UK plans to build a new nuclear plant at the cost of a tremendous subsidy, including buying the power for decades at an artificially high price.
I think the "compelling power" that won parties' support for this deal probably emanates from someone's money, but that gives me no clue about how.
The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay compensation to two journalists that were imprisoned for a year with no grounds. However, they are on trial for publishing information about a supposed coup plot.
"Don't be shocked that the US spied on American Muslims. Get angry that it justifies spying on whomever it wants."
UK documents about its cooperation with CIA kidnapings
were destroyed
by "water damage".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
They could be telling the truth. Maybe they flushed these papers down the toilet — that would certainly lead to "water damage".
US citizens: Call on Congress to penalize US contractors with a history of cheating workers out of their pay.
Of course, there should not be so many contractors' employees — their numbers have been swollen due to privatization. Most of that privatization was perverse. We should reverse perverse privatization, moving the work back to civil service workers.
A jury put blame on the thugs for shooting an innocent woman in London who then died of her injuries, 29 years ago.
The real question is, what will be done to keep the thugs accountable today so that they do not continue such practices?
Hong Kong's press freedom has got worse over the past year.
Citizens of Massachusetts: sign this petition to boost the Massachusetts minimum wage to $15.
Everyone: Call on Uganda not to punish Rev. Senyonjo for refusing to preach hatred of gays.
China has given a big tax exemption to electric, hybrid and fuel cell cars.
Israel's bombardment of Gaza has killed over 70 people. Targets included family homes (8 dead) and a cafe where people were watching soccer on TV (6 dead).
Israel has a recipe for killing Palestinian civilians with a built-in excuse: claiming it was aiming at military targets, and that it was "retaliating" for rockets.
The rockets, when aimed at civilian towns such as Sderot, are a war crime too, or more often an attempted war crime, since these rockets almost never hit anyone. But Israel intentionally started this battle, so it cannot plead "retaliation" now.
Hamas may have cynical motives for giving in to the provocation.
Natural gas under the sea is part of what the fight is about.
I don't think any amount of Israeli attack will make the people of Gaza reject Hamas. Its effect will be to make them cling to it more tightly.
Iraqi women
organize
secretly to protect women from oppression from religious bullies,
including ISIS.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US stopped operating a plane that beamed radio transmissions to Cuba, which were nearly always jammed.
The programs contain a mixture of US government propaganda plus facts correcting Cuban government propaganda. That the Cuban government jams these transmissions indicates its own injustice.
Arsonists Posing
as Firemen: How GOP Sabotages Government for Fun and Profit. This
article explains how Republicans' sabotage brought about several
problems which they now attack Democrats for.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
How oil companies try to
steamroll
local governments that oppose their projects.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Germany has caught another spy that first worked for the CIA, then tried to contact Russia.
A study links neonicotinoids to falling populations of birds.
Broad Coalition Urges 'Full Public Accounting' for Government Surveillance of U.S. Muslim Leaders.
The US government and states gave fossil fuels 37 billion dollars of subsidy last year, and this has increased 45% since 2009.
Without this, renewable power would grow more.
I Filmed the
LAPD Assaulting Me at Pro-Israel Demonstration.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The OECD predicts economic growth will almost cease by 2060, but inequality will keep increasing.
That's before counting the losses that global heating will cause; the report treats that as uncertain.
The report presumes that we will keep increasing productivity by automating more work. But I don't think this increased productivity is good at the cost of more unemployed poor people — not if the benefits go to the rich. It would be better to limit the automation and keep more people employed.
We do not have to allow inequality to increase. The growing inequality is due to policies that can be changed.
The Earth Institute shows how we can still keep global heating down to a painful 2 degrees C, if we act firmly now.
The report offers specific targets and plans for the 15 most-emitting countries.
The report assumes substantial use of nuclear power, but I am sure the target can be met without that at the cost of some extra money.
38 Journalism Groups Urge President to Stop Excessive Controls on Public Information.
Obama's administration seems to be the most secretive ever.
Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On.
The NSA does this without breaking the law, because the law is putty in its hands.
Feinstein's senate committee adopted a "cybersecurity" bill that allows increased state surveillance.
The cease-fire in South Sudan is allowing the beginning of recovery but there is a shortage of food, medicine and doctors.
The Israeli government had information showing that the three kidnaped teenagers were dead, but used censorship and lies to make the public believe they were being held as hostages by Hamas, and manipulate public feeling so as to attack Hamas.
Citizens of the UK: phone your MPs to oppose surveillance legislation being rushed through Parliament so fast there will be no time for it to be thought about.
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/no-emergency-stop-the-data-retention-stitch-up
One of the Koch brothers was a Bircher in the 60s and put money into fighting against civil rights.
US citizens: call on Hillary Clinton to stop supporting Monsanto.
US citizens: Tell the EPA
to suspend
use of neonicotinoid pesticides. There's plenty of evidence tying
them to colony collapse of bees, and since they accumulate, it will
take time for them to decrease in the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops confiscated the computers of Palestinian cultural magazines.
On the social demand for collective mourning for people one did not know.
I rejected the collective mourning for those who died in the September 2001 attacks; while Americans were supposed to feel angry and afraid, I focused instead on resisting the coming attack on our freedom.
The former speaker of the Israeli Parliament asks for a nonviolent Palestinian movement to pressure Israel into accepting peace.
[Australia's] Asylum Secrecy on the High Seas Is Designed to Foil the Enemy Within — The Law.
A minister sees no sign of torture in Sri Lanka. In effect, he says he saw many Tamils who are not in prison or being tortured.
Some imprisoned asylum seekers have attempted suicide hoping to improve their children's chances of receiving asylum.
This suggests that those are economic migrants, aiming to get their children into Australia rather than fleeing persecution.
State legislators acting as tools for ALEC copied the error from ALEC's model bill.
The bill would be just as bad if they had been more careful, but this shows they are tools of ALEC, and not even very competent ones.
The Arab Peace Initiative proposed a peace plan which still
offers a
direction for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians are
still
organizing nonviolent resistance, but they need the rest of the
world to notice it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Those who refuse to recognize Snowden as a hero, and attack him for
showing secrets to the press, are now
compelled to
admit that the NSA can't be trusted to keep its data about you and
me private.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, Snowden did not give this data to just any reporters. He chose reporters who would take care against harming the people mentioned in those data.
The Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies parts of 8 US states, is being
depleted
rapidlyThe spreading drought (which will get worse due to global
heating) is speeding this up.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congresscritters are resisting an investigation by the SEC of accusations of insider stock trading.
Doctors:
TPP Would Trample Access to Medicines.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
TPP stands for Treaty for Plutocratic Power.
The extent of Israel's collective punishment response to three murdered civilians amounts to a far bigger wrong to Palestinian civilians.
Chinese writer Murong Xuecun asked the Chinese thugs to arrest him as they had arrested his friends.
The Afghan presidential election preliminary results declared Ashraf Ghani the winner, but Abdullah Abdullah accuses Ghani's campaign of ballot-stuffing and says he will set up a parallel cabinet.
I have no way to judge what the truth is, but running an election properly includes preventing opportunities for ballot stuffing.
Israel has created an opportunity to invade Gaza again. This gives it a chance to kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians, with an excuse to shield the killers from prosecution.
This is retaliation for rockets launched from Gaza, generally not by Hamas. These rockets are quite warlike but almost never hurt anyone. Effectively they are like a raised fist, which Israel generally responds to with attacks that kill plenty of civilians.
This cycle of violence started with the murder of three Israeli teenagers, to which Israel responded by arresting hundreds of Palestinians unrelated to the murder (generally without charges), and sending troops into Arab areas to harass large numbers of people. This predictably inspires young Palestinians to throw stones, which is an opportunity to shoot tear gas, which often injures people, and also an opportunity to shoot bystanders dead. It's even possible for a soldier to kill Palestinians with rubber-coated steel bullets or tear-gas canisters.
Israeli civilians living in colonies ("settlements") in Palestine are launching attacks against nearby Palestinian villages.
Here's Juan Cole's analysis.
US citizens: Call on the FCC to choose complete network neutrality.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate pollution from recycling plants.
US agents seized Roman Seleznev, son of a Russian MP, in the Maldives.
Either the US agents kidnaped him without informing the government of the Maldives, or the government of the Maldives handed someone over to the US illegally without an extradition hearing.
Whether Seleznev is guilty of breaking computer security (please don't call it hacking!) is a different question. I know nothing about it; maybe he is, or maybe he isn't. But that seems like a secondary issue compared to the way he was grabbed.
Arctic heating: a study of several bird species found they are breeding 4 to 7 days earlier than a decade ago.
An ex-TSA agent ridicules the rule requiring powering up every computer. He says it is not likely to stop terrorists, but is sure to cause many people great upset. I suspect that one passenger a week will explode in violent rage at the confiscation of a computer that happened to be empty of power. The sadists will have a great excuse to imprison these people and really ruin their lives, and say they are doing it to protect us.
Hillary Clinton Flaunts Her Surveillance State Baggage.
The UK has secret quotas for kicking disabled people off benefits.
Cruelty to the weak is what it stands for.
It seems Obama is reaching for the bottom of the barrel to propose corrupt schnook Ahmad Chalabi to govern Iraq, or at least pretend to.
A former chief British spy says that ISIS is not interested in attacking the West, and that publicly calling it a threat is self-defeating.
ISIS is a threat to human rights in the Middle East, and that makes it very bad. But we should not let governments make this an excuse for universal surveillance.
Everyone: boycott Eden Foods for attacking access to birth control.
Millions of US veterans suffer from physical and psychological problems, and many commit suicide.
Being in a war that you can't justify to yourself requires a special sort of nihilism.
China cancelled American Tibetologist Elliot Sperling's visa, apparently because he spoke up for the imprisoned Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti.
Mapping US states on a spectrum from "tight" (repressive) to "loose" (tolerant).
63 of the women kidnaped by Boko Haram escaped and walked to freedom.
The article explains how politics has hampered the fight against Boko Haram.
Médecins Sans Frontières reports that most humanitarian aid agencies have adopted bad priorities and do little to help real refugees.
Canada is holding negotiations about the TPP in a secret location. The government is evidently scared of the people's disapproval of its plan to betray democracy.
Legalizing marijuana has reduced violent crime in Colorado as well as creating jobs and increasing tax revenue.
Most importantly, it means an end to a system of prohibition that ruins many lives and spreads corruption.
Alas, we still have the "war" on other drugs. Some of those drugs are really addictive and/or harmful, but prohibition does even more harm.
CIA employee Jeffrey Scudder tried to go through channels to have old articles published — which was in fact his job. His reward was to be framed and then forced to resign.
Here's more information.
This is the route various authoritarian politicians (including Hillary Clinton) think Snowden should have taken.
A former general associated with a massacre in East Timor, who has stated his opposition to democracy, may be elected president of Indonesia.
A study finds that the UK's policies intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased the total economy.
It could be that this is because the policies are not strong enough to avert disaster. However, disaster is not in any country's real economic interest.
Governments must act to assure development of new antibiotics.
Of course, they must also act to end the wasteful ruination of antibiotics once discovered, but they have not had the courage to tell meat producers to jump in the lake.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to regulate
pollution from refineries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The global heating denial industry grasps at thin straws of sea ice to hide the overwhelming fact of heating.
Comparing the ending of fossil fuel use with freeing the slaves in the US.
The similarity is not complete. Enslaving one person is an injustice, whereas burning one gallon of gasoline would hurt nobody if that were the only gallon burnt. But there are similarities.
US States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth.
The privatization of soldiers and intelligence agents creates armies of lobbies to increase the spending on them.
Tony Nuttall describes how UK thugs violently attacked aged and/or disabled people who rode a train without paying to protest the plans to end the travel discount for old people and disabled people.
If the UK government were not so stingy with its support for old people and the disabled perhaps it would not be important to give them a discount on trains. Anyway, the conduct of the thugs is disgusting regardless of whether one agrees with the protesters.
Australia has admitted handing over boat people from Sri Lanka to the Sri Lankan navy.
Sri Lanka will hand them over to the thugs, and they may be prosecuted for departing Sri Lanka without permission.
Australia's high court ordered the state not to hand over another boatload.
The World Bank is considering relaxing standards for loans to large projects that can involve fossil fuels or other dangers to the public.
Ralph Nader asks Americans
to support two
progressive candidates for US Congress, one independent and one
Green.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Capitalism is having a recovery for the rich, but making this benefit the non-rich requires changing the system.
Some US hospitals are buying personal data to warn people they might get sick.
I see no harm in this particular practice. If it seems creepy, that's because it is the consequence of something that really is creepy: the collection of all that data about people. That's what's really wrong.
I would not mind if my own computer kept a log of my purchases. I might find it useful to run a free program to look through them for things to warn me about. I don't want a data broker to have that data, which is why I always buy anonymously, paying cash.
Leaks show that NSA calls all Tor users "extremists" and makes them targets for spying.
Reading some Boing Boing articles is also enough to make a person a target.
I don't know whether reading THAT Boing Boing article would make you a target. Just to be careful, you should access it through Tor.
If it is true that a second NSA whistleblower has followed Snowden's path, I wonder if he was inspired by reading my emails. My emails say,
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
There is a t-shirt you can use to declare yourself a
TORrorist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
If you have blocked nonfree JavaScript code, you will not be able to pay through Stripe. Please don't enable JavaScript; please pay with Bitcoin or some other method.
Nobody should have expected Facebook's conduct to be ethical.
Exxon
bullied
the major US TV networks into refusing to present a paid political
advertisement that criticizes Exxon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
All I can say is, Yexx!
If you want to watch the PSA, which is hosted on YouTube, please do not access the site directly! Use youtube-dl.
The owners of Hobby Lobby provided medical care including contraception coverage, voluntarily, until a group of right-wing Christians suggested this was a way to the secularity of the law.
Now Hobby Lobby demands to ban insurance from paying for doctor visits in which patients even discuss contraception. And the Supreme Court may have given it to them.
The battle over contraception is the central battle of the war for women's equality and emancipation.
US TV lionizes the CEO of Hewlett Packard for continuing to cut jobs despite the "economic recovery" in the US (thus helping insure it's not a real recovery for the American people).
One incidental detail, irrelevant to the issue, is that this CEO is a woman. It's irrelevant to the issue because a male CEO could have done the same, and it would be equally wrong. The wrong here has nothing to do with her gender. It was right of FAIR not to mention that.
I mention it, though it is irrelevant to this issue, because there are feminists who campaign to have more female CEOs. I think they are being distracted by an irrelevancy.
With regard to CEOs, what matters most for working women isn't whether their chance of becoming one of those CEOs is one in a million or one in ten million. It is curbing the CEOs' power to harm them. Never mind how women CEOs get paid; focus on how women workers get paid.
The UK government has come up with two new excuses to maintain surveillance of everyone.
What they amount to is, "If we can't watch everyone all the time, somewhat more crimes will happen." That's true. But if we allow the state to prevent crimes at any cost, it will oppress us. A state that the people do not control is a bigger danger than the crimes it fails to prevent.
The state itself commits frequent violence when it shows contempt for the people.
Sea-level rise is hitting Virginia so hard that even Republicans can't deny it.
It's not wholly due to global heating. The US east coast is slowly sinking, and this adds locally to the worldwide rise of the ocean caused by global heating.
Hillary Clinton
praised
Angela Merkel, Germany's right-wing leader who refused to
relax the austerity that has crushed Greece, Portugal, Spain and
Italy. This shows where Clinton's sympathies lie.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Massachusetts Legislature Advances Key Electronic Privacy Proposal.
An Ethiopian farmer says UK aid to Ethiopia funds the land grab campaign that chases thousands off their land and forces them into artificial villages where they can't get food.
This land grab is probably for the benefit of some global company.
Snowden gave journalists a sample of intercepts. The Washington Post says that 1/9 of them were from real targets and 8/9 were from bystanders.
They show that the NSA lied again.
WildEarth Guardians are suing the US for approving coal mines without taking account of the pollution the mines and the coal will cause. The US government says the US can't afford to interfere with all that coal mining.
In the long term the US can't afford to let the mining continue, but the US government is more concerned with the short term interests of mining companies than the long term interests of the whole country.
Tariq Abu Khdeir says that Israeli thugs attacked him out of the blue, and video shows them beating him while he was motionless.
Thugs around the world do this to the people they hate. In Israel, the thugs hate Arabs.
Freedom of
religion is
mostly obsolete, because most of it is included in freedom of
speech and thought.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
I am not convinced it is 100% obsolete, because religion includes some practices of worship that people should also have the right to do, within reason (as long as they don't violate others' rights). For instance, the Religious Freedom Restauration Act was adopted so that people wouldn't get fired for their (lawful) religious practices. That's not included in freedom of speech and thought.
However, if the US banned firing people over things irrelevant to their jobs, this aspect of religious freedom would also be superseded.
Everyone: join the People's Climate Mobilization
Australians protested the dooH niboR budget proposed by the Australian Cruelty Party.
In Cambodia, patriarchy and poverty push mothers to make their daughters prostitutes.
The way income, when it arrives, melts away on various necessities of relatives (on whom one depends for aid in turn) is typical of life for poor people in the US, too. This makes getting out of poverty much harder that the non-poor suppose it is.
Israeli
thugs arrested
then beat up a Palestinian teenager, who is a US citizen and a
cousin of the teenager who was burnt to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US government has criticized Israel for this.
Meanwhile, Israel has arrested suspects in the murder of his cousin.
It is unusual for Israeli civilians to kill a Palestinian, just as it is unusual for Palestinians to kill Israelis. In fact, lots of Palestinians are killed by Israelis, but usually the killers have impunity because they are soldiers or thugs.
US citizens: call on Obama to make an executive order to override the effects of the Hobby Lobby decision.
80% of California is now in "extreme" drought, but Californians should get used to this as global heating will lead to more and worse droughts.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting some businesses
whistleblowers from retaliation, but
not
completely.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Germany has arrested someone who was spying for the US.
Ikea supported dictatorships in the Soviet Empire in the 80s.
I think that this is comparable to buying cotton from Uzbekistan today.
Clinton continues calling for Snowden to submit to a US trial while evading the issue that he won't be allowed to argue that his actions served his country.
A new ethical issue about Facebook's experiment: Facebook gave researchers data about its useds without getting the useds' consent.
The growing movement to reverse privatization of public services.
Public pressure forced Syngenta to retract its request for "emergency" permission for massive use of neonicotinoids in the UK despite the EU's moratorium on their use.
If the EPA approves toxic 2,4-D as a herbicide for new GMOs,
over 5000
schools in the US will be rather close to the spraying.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Orwell's Dystopian Future Is Almost Here: A Conversation With Glenn Greenwald.
Romania is rushing a massive surveillance law to require all communications to be registered.
Nuclear Nightmares:
Securing the
World Before It Is Too Late.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Arab teenager kidnaped in Jerusalem was apparently burnt alive.
Arabs on buses and streets are facing harassment that gets to the point of violence, though other Israelis sometimes try to protect them.
Dark dust, from fires, deserts and machines, is melting ice around the world, even in the Himalayas.
Religious Activists Have Too Much Say Over Our Right to Die.
America's national parks are already being changed by global heating.
In a century, they may still be parks (if there is still a state that can maintain them as parks), but aside from bare rock they will change beyond recognition.
Chris Christie vetoed a New Jersey bill to limit magazines to just 10 bullets.
One of the researchers in the Facebook emotion experiment has been funded by the US government to study the spread of dissident ideas.
Denmark plans to impose a nationwide system to track cars.
Such systems should only see cars that are being specifically sought, or are not properly licenses.
The FDA has proposed to require food labels to state the amount of added sugar. The food companies are lobbying against.
Obama's head of the SEC has turned out rather susceptible to the wishes of the companies it is supposed to regulate.
Hong Kong arrested the leaders of the large democracy protest.
A way to find out whether a web site is blocked by ISP censorship imposed by the UK government.
Although some nuclear power advocates claim that the Chernobyl meltdowns did not directly hurt the public, some groups that were nearby show high levels of certain diseases.
An Ethiopian "terrorist" (i.e., opposition party leader) faces execution after being extradited by Yemen.
The UK does not want to protest about such threats to air travellers making connections because it intends to endanger them similarly on similar excuses.
Everyone: call on Temple University to tighten its standards for disclosure of researchers' conflicts of interest.
Two professors there did a study which purported to find that private prisons are great improvements in efficiency; it turns out they were funded by private prison companies, and the study is biased.
In India today there are thousands of temple prostitutes, given to the temple as children by their families. For the most part, they are treated with the same contempt that other prostitutes receive. (I don't understand why many men feel that sort of contempt for prostitutes.)
US corporations are using nondisclosure agreements to gag whistleblowers.
US Confirms Years-Long "Secret" Military Presence in Somalia.
The UK government's policies are curbing the installation of better heat insulation in homes.
This will help the government's patrons meet their targets for sales of fossil fuels.
More evidence that you shouldn't rely on "cloud"y thinking about where to store or transmit data: SoundCloud says it will profile users, and has given the music factories direct censorship control.
Don't use big web sites to distribute files — to the public or to specific people.
US citizens: tell the Fish and Wildlife Service to regulate oil and gas drilling on US public land.
Everyone: Call on CNBC to apologize for seeking to publish a denial of global heating.
The Heatless Party's government in Australia has stopped refugee boats from arriving, at the cost of contempt for refugees, the UN, the press, the Supreme Court, the Australian public and the truth.
Supreme Court Rules JCPenney Allowed to Sacrifice Employees to Appease Cthulhu. (I think this is a satire.)
New pun in french.
US citizens: call on Obama to drop the Trade in Services Agreement and other treaties that put businesses ahead of people.
A crazy proposal to transfer massive quantities of coal from ship to ship in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.
Pollution is certain to spread, but hey, if you're going to burn that coal the reef is doomed anyway.
Calling for speed limits for ships near the Great Barrier Reef to protect whales from being killed by collisions.
In Australia, only right-wingers are allowed to suggest using physical violence on those they disagree with.
Abbott surely deserves to spend many years in prison for his treatment of Australian poor, foreign refugees, and all future life on Earth. But not death, because the death penalty is never justified.
The UK thugs have refused to investigate how thugs cooperated with others (journalists, etc.) to spy illegally on individuals.
An argument for eliminating private business from the development and manufacture of medicines.
I am not sure we need to go that far. I advocate eliminating private business from the testing and approval of medicines.
Freedom, Power, and the Conservative Mind.
The One-Sided Culture War against Children. Whether US parents are too lax, or too controlling, the "solution" is always "impose standardized tests to fire teachers."
I find that US parents tend to be too lax on some issues (they can't say "Don't be used by Facebook!" or "Don't sign an EULA that says you are not allowed to give that to someone else!"), and twistedly strict on others (kids never get to be home alone; parents think that would kill them). But the "solution" of "impose standardized tests to fire teachers" is never going to help.
One of the Peruvian soldiers convicted of killing journalist Hugo Bustios says that Peru's current interior minister Urresti ordered the killing.
Australia gives some asylum seekers a cursory screening and sends them back.
It does not matter a priori whether this is done on land or on a ship, but doing so on ship facilitates "accidental" errors which, at a systematic level, are not accidents.
While the government refuses to admit this, it effectively admits it by trying to pretend that Sri Lanka does not torture dissidents.
Australia's plans show that its goal is to keep refugees out no matter what the situation.
Pennsylvania told state health officials not to return phone calls from people who had health problems due to fracking.
Attacking the Pakistani Taliban provides an opportunity to attack the disease they protect: polio.
Carbon offsets are fueling land grabs in Africa.
Indian soldiers and thugs in Kashmir have been officially given impunity for torture, rape and murder. The mothers of the disappeared have organized in response.
Nigerian Atheist Bala has been released from the mental hospital thanks to a strike by doctors, but now receives death threats from fanatical Muslims.
Islamic law is incompatible with human rights. I've posted examples from Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran, Saudi Arabiaand Sudan. I am sure there are more. Most "Muslim" countries forbid religious freedom to anyone who was once considered a Muslim.
Nigeria must insist that human rights apply to the whole of the country and that no local system is allowed to pre-empt them.
Improvised explosive devices killed 53,000 people in 2011-2013, most of them civilians.
I don't see much hope of stopping this practice as long as the groups that set these bombs are tolerated by their communities.
Everyone:
pledge to boycott
Hobby Lobby.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for continuation of the "temporary" ban on drones in national parks.
Ahmed Abu Khatallah's lawyers say the US government has given them no information about the evidence against their client.
A little information about the 7 Palestinians killed recently by Israelis. 4 of them teenagers.
Killing people who are not hurting anyone is wrong no matter who they are. However, Western politicians seem to care only when Israelis are the victims.
The "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" turns out to be the Privacy and Civil Liberties Overboard.
A court ruled that UK thugs must answer when women ask in court whether their lovers were undercover thugs.
Spain is punishing striking workers.
A new FCC rule will require US TV stations to
show who pays
for political advertisements.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It is a good rule, but we still need this default rule: Vote for whoever is criticized by the expensive attack ads! (Unless you have time for careful study of the accusations against ALL the candidates.)
A debate about whether Capitalism inevitably produces great inequality or merely tends to do so.
I think that the great inequality is not inevitable, but avoiding it takes firmness that requires true democracy (government policies chosen by the people in general to keep the rich in check). Once the rich replace democracy with plutocracy, it is a sure thing that the policies necessary to prevent tremendous inequality won't be practiced.
Ecuador drew up a plan in 2010 to build a power plant in Yasuni to support oil drilling there.
It is not certain that the plan to leave Yasuni oil untouched was dishonest. This could have been a contingency plan for what to do if the world failed (as indeed it did) to contribute the money Ecuador requested for leaving that oil untouched.
In any case, Correa deserves credit for trying something that no other world leader has even tried. If other countries had provided the reasonable sum he requested, he would surely have gone ahead with the deal.
Dwindling water supplies are crucial to the military outcome in Iraq and Syria. Control of a dam means use of the water in its lake, use of the electricity it generates, and the chance to use the water to drown people downstream.
A multi-year drought caused the protests against Assad.
Global heating will eventually make it impossible for the current population of Iraq to survive there.
Our actions that cause global heating are a wrong that we must stop. Iraq contributes to these actions by extracting oil for us to burn. Iraqis also contribute to the problem by having more children than the region can support. One way of reducing population growth is to give women more control over their reproduction. ISIS will clearly do the opposite of that, but so do the religious Shi'ite groups.
Perhaps the world will need to adopt the principle that climate refugees must get sterilized as a condition for asylum. Not as a punishment (they are not personally to blame), but as a sustainability measure.
ISPs from various countries have sued GCHQ for attacking their computers.
Malaysia refuses to let a diplomat accused of attempted rape use diplomatic immunity as a shield.
Tony B'liar plans to help al-Sisi gain more business opportunities for Egypt.
Since Egyptians won't be allowed to think about politics or freedom, or enjoy satire on TV, I guess business is all they will be left with.
A Palestinian teenager was, it appears, kidnapped and killed as an act of explicit revenge for the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers.
The killers of those three teenagers probably thought that was revenge, too. Israelis kill lots of Palestinians each year, including teenagers and protesters. They also torture Palestinian teenagers.
These killings are wrong on both sides, and I insist on condemning them the same.
The permanent stress caused by
poverty causes
children's brains to develop improperly. With almost 1/4 of US
children living in poverty, this creates a permanent handicap for the
US, as well as an irremediable injustice to those children.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Chomsky: America's Real Foreign Policy: Global Corporatization by Force.
We are sucking the oceans dry of small fish to feed fish farms, but farmed fish can grow on vegetable food too.
It will take laws to stop the overexploitation of the oceans. We will have to defeat the business forces that want to wipe them out. Perhaps we should ban the sale of farmed fish that are fed animal products.
Caribbean coral reefs will be lost within 20 years. Pollution and overfishing will get them before the CO2 does it.
Two Chilean officials have charged with murdering two Americans in Chile, with the help of the then head of the US military mission.
This was done shortly after the US-organized September 11 attacks.
Poor families in the UK can't afford to rent more than a shed to live in.
It could be worse: they could be homeless as in the US.
The UK has enough rooms of housing, but policies encourage the rich to use up a lot of space, pushing purchase and rental prices up and leaving the poor with too little.
Global heating doesn't hurt everything. It helps locusts, for instance.
Detroit Citizens Vow Direct Action to Protect Their Right to Water.
Increasing CO2 levels make damselfish unable to recognize other fish that they know.
Iraq's parliament has given up on forming a government, without even trying.
Partition of Iraq may be the way to avoid unending civil war. (I advocated this a decade ago.) However, avoiding unending war also requires that the Sunni regions be ruled by people that are not fanatics.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the French law that bans wearing masks.
This law is typically thought of in connection with a tiny minority of Muslim women, but that is a side issue. Wearing a mask is the only way to protect yourself from being tracked by face recognition cameras. If such cameras are not banned, masks must be allowed as a defense.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens of Hong Kong marched for democracy despite rain and heat.
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan for years of sheltering the Afghan Taliban. Now that Pakistan is attacking the Pakistani Taliban, it accuses Afghanistan of allowing them bases there.
No US soldier starts out wanting to shoot children, not even once, but the dynamics of occupation lead to making that standard practice.
The US is making foreign banks in many countries report US citizens' holdings.
Protests stimulated by the World Cup show that Brazil's democracy is under long-term threat.
In the US: call on Kroger Supermarket to stop selling unsustainable fish.
The FDA is looking for nanomaterials to make animals grow faster.
In principle, this is a great idea. In practice, things may go wrong.
Animals will eat these materials in large quantities, then excrete them; what will happen then? Sewage treatment and water treatment plants were not designed with them in mind, so whether they get into our water will be a matter of luck. If they do, will they increase human obesity?
Egypt's most popular satirist said he will terminate his TV show, implying that the regime will not allow him to continue it.
The US Supreme Court found an excuse to deny some American women access to contraception.
This decision makes no sense in its own terms, because the whole point of a corporation is that it is a separate entity from its owners. They can have religious beliefs, but the corporation cannot. These particular owners, in aiming to impose their views over employees' rights, want to have it both ways. "When the corporation pays for medical coverage, it's really us. If the corporation loses money, it's not us."
This case is part of a general campaign to eliminate access to birth control on the part of Christian fanatics that resemble the Taliban in their misogyny and intolerance.
This question has a real effect because the most reliable forms of birth control involve a big expense once in a while. Getting insurance coverage for them makes a real difference for many US women, especially now that the same right-wingers have made more of them poor.
Congress could amend the Religious Freedom Restauration Act to fix this decision, but it would be better to amend the Constitution to state that human rights in general do not apply to corporations.
However, the clean solution to this problem (and many others) is to disconnect medical care totally from employment. Making employers pay for medical care for employees has the side effect of encouraging companies to eliminate full-time US jobs in favor of foreign operations, part-time subcontractors, or robots.
Instead we should make wealthy people and businesses pay for health care for everyone, employed or not, through a progressive income tax.
Some US states are still trying to teach bogus "science" instead of evolution.
Former NASA Chief Scientist: "We're Effectively Taking a Sledgehammer to the Climate System".
Car exhaust makes it hard for certain moths to find flowers.
[US] Court Blocks Coal Mine Expansion For Not Counting The Costs Of Carbon Pollution.
It's not clear why jellyfish are becoming more prevalent in the ocean, but they are. Sometimes catastrophically so.
I'm sure some aspect of human activities is responsible. We are changing ocean ecosystems in so many ways that it would be a bizarre coincidence if none of them contributed.
Blackwater quashed a US investigation by threatening to kill the investigator.
The US created this situation by sending mercenaries to Iraq and failing to impose accountability on them. For instance, they got away with rape.
The US ought to extend to mercenaries the full spectrum of laws that apply to soldiers. Better yet, it should stop using mercenaries at all.
Mysteriously, US CEOs are paid
much more
than CEOs in other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It would be interesting to find out what difference enables CEO pay to balloon more in the US than in Japan and Switzerland. I suppose that CEOs play one company off against another, but they would do that everywhere if they can. Why is it they can do so more in the US?
Federal Court: No Impunity for Abu Ghraib Torturers.
A plutocrat writes: The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats.
Plutocracy kills poor people by the thousands, maybe even by the hundreds of thousands. Through global heating, that will become millions, then tens of millions. They are justified in fighting for their lives. The longer this battle is delayed, the more destructive it will be.
On the other hand, if we build up the anger and the movement fast enough, maybe we can restore democracy without violence, and end the killing.
Pakistan seems to be serious about fighting the Islamists of North Waziristan.
The US has pressured the Japanese government into "reinterpreting" its constitution to permit fighting war on behalf of allies.
The Australian government rewrote advice about fires and heat waves to cover up their relationship to global heating.
Many Americans despise poor people, not realizing that they too are very likely to be poor some day.
Poor people don't deserve contempt for asking for help. We must give poor people what they need in order to have a decent life. All children deserve good food, a good education, and everything else children should have.
However, poor people have a responsibility, too, as well as rights: they must not act so as to increase their needs. Specifically, they should not have children. Reproduction is a desire, not a necessity. For most people, of all the things they do, reproduction is what puts the biggest ecological burden on the world.
36,000 Egyptians have been arrested for protests since the coup against Morsi.
Deforestation in Indonesia is booming, even faster than in Brazil.
Atlantic City casinos are closing as the region hits "casino saturation".
Gambling does not increase wealth, it only redistributes wealth. Atlantic City casinos were touted as a way to redistribute wealth from other states to New Jersey. However, that's not the sort of redistribution than the US needs.
The US needs to redistribute wealth from the rich to the rest. Unfortunately, casinos redistribute wealth from the middle class and the not-totally-broke working class, and a substantial fraction goes to the casino owners. It's a false solution, offered to reduce demand for a real solution.
Australia's government wants to eliminate tax exemptions for environmental protection organizations and forbid them to carry out boycotts.
It is understandable that the Australian government is concerned about donations to charities that help the poor and the sick, since it proposes a budget that would make poor and sick Australians dependent on those charities.
However, in the long term, protecting the environment is crucial for everyone's well-being.
Global heating is going to cause a revolution in US and European forests.
US citizens: call on the WHO to help tackle the ebola virus outbreak without delay.
The three missing Israeli teenagers were killed and buried.
There is no indication of who killed them, but Netanyahu is using their deaths as an excuse to attack people all over the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel's reprisals have killed 6 Palestinians so far, and imprisoned 400 people. Israel has not bothered to charge them with any crime, and clearly has no evidence to relate them to the three murders. Clearly most of them were not involved.
Is Israel no better than Egypt? Al-Sisi at least has courts "convict" those he wishes to kill or imprison. The "trials" are not serious, but that provides an opportunity to pressure Egypt to do better. Israel does not even bother with trials.
ISIS has proclaimed a caliphate.
While directly this means nothing, it may convince lots of young foolish Muslims to support ISIS.
The biggest advantage of ISIS thus far seems to be that it is more cruel, bloody and unscrupulous than its rivals. I fear that this monstrous ideology will kill millions before it is stamped out. If you are a Muslim and you don't want your community destroyed by violent fanatics, you had better organize now to keep them out.
The Chinese government has been compelled by events to recognize that industry without pollution control has poisoned lakes and soils with heavy metals that cause cancer.
Nonetheless, people who campaigned to stop this are still treated as enemies of the state.
Facebook experimented with putting happier or sadder material into its useds' feeds, and found that had a tiny but measurable effect on their emotions.
I don't see an ethical problem in the experiment as such. It seems to me little different from trying different text on your web site's front page, except that they wrote a scientific paper about it.
However, Facebook's power to influence people does seem dangerous.
Here are many reasons not to be a used of Facebook.
Emperor penguins are threatened with eventual extinction due to global heating.
US citizens: call on the Surgeon General to report on the health effects of sugar consumption.
Americans: see how your senators and representatives voted
on
holding corporations responsible for their actions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
California's teachers' unions are failing to fight back against pension cuts imposed by Democrats, but Chicago's teachers organized public support, struck, and won.
The FISA court's standards for NSA surveillance are extremely permissive.
We also know that the NSA has deceived the FISA court.
Dredging a coal port near the Great Barrier Reef could cause even more damage than previously thought, because currents can cause the millions of tons of debris to spread.
Australia has secretly handed over a boat full of Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka's navy, which is sure to torture them.
The Australian government cannot shield itself from condemnation by refusing to admit its actions. That can prevent us from getting proof, but we don't need that standard of proof to condemn a state for evildoing. The state's refusal to say what happened is enough basis to declare it guilty.
It is different when a human being is prosecuted. For instance, when the minister is put on trial for his role in this, he will be entitled to be considered innocent unless proved guilty. However, at that time it will also be possible to subpoena the evidence to see if it proves his guilt.
None of that applies now, because a state is not entitled to human rights.
Russia has found an excuse to ban most foreign and non-conservative literature: a prohibition on certain dirty words.
Obama's military kangaroo courts for Guantanamo prisoners are getting stuck on the issue of how the CIA tortured the defendants.
Some of those people may be guilty of real crimes, but if the US can't give them a fair trial because the US tortured them, it has to let them go. Let that be a lesson to us: no torture!
Some fraction of those released may fight the US, but we should not overestimate the importance of that. Violent Islamist groups have thousands of members; a few more won't make much difference. What mainly affects their strength is their ability to recruit.
Guantanamo serves them very well as a recruiting tool, and so does the US refusal to face justice for its torture. Try as they might, a few ex-prisoners won't be able to do the US the sort of harm that the US does to itself.
The US must stop betraying what it stands for, so that it can inspire honest friendship and support around the world, instead of inspiring people to join Islamist fanatic groups.
Kiribati has purchased high ground in Fiji as a place to move once the islands of Kiribati are swamped by rising seas.
Does the US government have plans to move the graves of the US Marine cemeteries on Tarawa Atoll?
I don't think there is any intrinsic importance in how corpses are treated (including my own, after my death), but soldiers tend to consider this very important. Many US veterans are right-wing and some are global-heating denialists. This question might offer a way to make them face the facts.
Greenpeace urges Lego to drop a marketing arrangement with Shell.
A clever unknown protester added labels to dresses in a store, saying "'Degrading' sweatshop conditions" and "Forced to work exhausting hours".
The law proposed in this article would be a good step forward, but really we should make the marketing companies that subcontract manufacturing responsible for the working conditions of their whole supply chain.
They should also have to register their subcontractors to all levels, which will have the salutary effect of impeding them from changing their supply chains so often.
Peru has given thugs a license to kill protesters.
Starbucks announced a "scholarship program" for its employees, but it turns out that Starbucks is contributing no money to this, just extracting publicity from it.
The case for paying reparations to US blacks for slavery and oppressive racist laws.
The book Inequality by Design, by Claude Fischer, explains how forcing a group into second-class citizenship affects their descendants too. Thus, I believe the US owes reparations to the descendants of people who suffered a racist denial of equal rights. My ancestors did not participate in doing this, but the reparations must be paid by Americans of today. That includes me.
Of course, the reparations should come mostly from the rich.
The drone assassination memo that the Obama regime released, redacted and incomplete, depends on a body of secret law.
Insane overprotection of children in the US has gone beyond social pressure and reached the point of physical threats. A father was arrested in Ohio for not stopping his son from walking to a store.
The store was half a mile away from his home. When I was 8 I walked around that far to school and back every day, in Manhattan.
Texas women must now get their abortion medicine on the black market.
Rich people in the US get a far greater return on their stocks than middle-class people.
Guantanamo propaganda teams describe hunger strikes as a tactic to discredit the prison authorities and the US government.
This is the twisted logic of someone who adopts the moral premise that "No matter what we have done, it can't ever be wrong."
The prison propagandists also habitually accuse the prisoners of being terrorists, even though none has been convicted of this, and the government says half of them should be released.
Republicans in Congress have spent 20 years sabotaging Congress's ability to study issues.
It makes sense. Right-wingers don't want careful study of their proposals; such study might find flaws in them before they are adopted.
Foreign construction workers in Qatar, who have to work 14 hours a day, rioted when security guards attacked them for trying to go to the toilet and get water.
The UK has come up with a definition of "domestic extremist", which when combined with the misleading definition of "serious criminality" allows them to label anyone who might plan a large sit-in as a "domestic extremist".
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