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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.
Ferguson is planning to raise more revenue by increasing fines.
Other information confirms that this includes fines for traffic offenses. That will fall heavily on the poor, increasing the oppression they already suffer. Some will be jailed because they can't pay these fines, which will be an excuse for other fines.
A thug union objected to a right-wing city councilor's union-busting plans, so their private investigators tried to frame him.
I too object to those union-busting plans — the fact that the union members are thugs doesn't excuse them — but this form of opposition is pure thug.
A US high school basketball team was kicked out of a tournament for wearing "I can't breathe" protest shirts while preparing for the match.
What strict repression! I am sure the tournament organizers will say, "We're not racist, we only oppose criticizing racism. We're not in favor of cops' killing people, we just insist that nobody rebuke them when they do."
The NSA plans to crack into millions of computers and take remote control of them.
Alexei Navalny was given a suspended sentence of over 3 years — meaning that Putin can hold this over Navalny for any sort of protest activity that Putin chooses to declare illegal.
This is similar in spirit, though not in legal detail, to the practice in the UK and the US of making arrested protesters agree to refrain from protests as a condition of bail.
China is imposing strict conformity on views expressed in universities.
Western countries such as France which prohibit disagreement with the official view of certain issues, such as the genocide of the Armenians, provide China with an excuse for its own restrictions on permitted opinions.
Many working people in the UK are effectively working for nothing because their wages pay for less than the costs of working.
I suspect the right-wing government would punish them if they quit.
Senator Bernie Sanders: The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement Must Be Defeated.
The Prison State of America: prisons are a scheme for forced labor, charging prisoners fees and fines to make them work for companies for a pittance.
The private prison companies lobby for many measures, some explicit and some subtle and indirect, to put more people in prison.
The last independent TV station in Russia is being shut down.
Red knots, birds that migrate very long distances, are in danger from global heating in several ways at once.
The public school system of a city in Pennsylvania is being turned over entirely to a company.
US TV shows about the real lives of teenage mothers convinced thousands of US teenagers to avoid following that path.
It appears that these shows caused a 6% drop in the rate of teen pregnancy, from 2008 to 2012. (A further 11% drop was due to other causes.)
The UK government has decided to permit the main nightingale habitat site to be bulldozed for new housing.
Police officer Joseph Crystal was hounded out of his department after reporting a thug for attacking a handcuffed prisoner.
The thug was convicted, got a slap on the wrist, and remains employed by the department.
Campaigners are putting labels on goods in UK stores that make demands to pay their workers a living wage.
A headline-minded prosecutor in Arizona tried to charge people with intentionally killing dogs under their care, hoping to bury evidence that an air conditioner failure was the cause.
Perhaps kennel companies should be required to take care to detect nighttime air conditioner failures in time to do something to save the dogs, but prosecuting hapless employees is not the way to establish such a regulation.
Compared with 40 years ago, Americans are better off in some ways and worse in many others.
The GDP is worthless as a measure of society's economic well-being. If a plutocrat gets a billion dollars of income by taking $100 in income away from each of 10 million working people, that is a big change for the worse, but the GDP registers it as no change. When an article presents GDP figures as if they mattered, that indicates a bad framing of the issues: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Using the word "monetize" embodies and thus promotes the attitude that the article opposes.
When computer manufacturers have back doors to get people's data. that creates many threats over and above an antidemocratic government.
Al-Sisi is ruling by decree and has imposed a series of diktats against human rights.
A US-linked radio station in Azerbaijan is being shut down and its staff persecuted.
The Mall of America and its pet city government plan to sue "black lives matter" protesters into ruin.
Big banks' losses due to betting on a high oil price could be imposed on taxpayers due to the betrayal budget bill that Senator Warren tried to stop.
Obama, obedient as always to the banksters, lobbied the Senate to pass it.
Mexican farm workers, growing produce for the US, are treated as slaves and forbidden to leave the farm. If caught escaping, they are brutalized.
Forced to buy food from stores that gouge them, they end the season in debt.
A Femen protester is imprisoned in the Vatican.
Picking up a statue and holding it in a protest is not "stealing". What nonsense! As for "offending religious sentiments", that's at the core of freedom of speech.
Pfizer is trying to bully pharmacists not to prescribe generic drugs.
The Dodd-Frank bill was not strong enough in the first place, but the Federal Reserve keeps giving banks extensions on complying with it.
A court told London Activists they could reenter the unused bank building to serve a meal to the homeless on Christmas, but the court betrayed them immediately after and they were not allowed to do this.
One of the activist points out that the UK has 10 unoccupied buildings for each homeless person.
The state's refusal to let homeless people live in those buildings demonstrates its evil priorities. Making squatting a crime was vicious too.
Does anyone know whether the Green Party advocates legalizing squatting?
Mehmet Emin Altunses faces the criminal charge of insulting the president of Turkey.
Anyone who loves Turkey must fight to get these charges dropped so that Turkey does not disgrace itself.
"No Justice, No Respect": Why the Ferguson Riots Were Justified.
Treaties are needed to restrict development of autonomous AIs with deadly weapons.
A SWAT team raided Chad Chadwick's house
based
on a false report, shot him, beat him up, and tased him, then
fabricated a series of charges against him.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
They did not convict him of anything, but they ruined his life as well as rendering him deaf in one ear.
These thugs must be punished or they will ruin someone else's life next.
Privatized UK parole officers put people back in prison for taking jobs that start too early in the morning.
Jeffrey Deskovic was falsely convicted of murder, and freed after 16 years. Now he dedicates his life to freeing others wrongly imprisoned by a system that makes slapdash mistakes.
A cinema in the UK called the thugs to arrest some 12-year-olds for bringing iThings with them to the movie.
The fact that they did not in fact record the movie is a side issue. What if they had done so? Since that is not a crime in the UK, the only complaint the cinema could make is that they violated its rules. That should not qualify as an "emergency" — the thugs should have refused to come.
This is in addition to the general point that laws against sharing copies of published works are an injustice.
Protests Erupt in Nicaragua over Interoceanic Canal.
The canal raises two issues. One is that farmers who will lose their land don't trust that they will be compensated. There is an obvious solution: start buying their land at a fair price now.
The bigger and harder issue is that of potential ecosystem damage. I don't know if there is a way to prevent that.
Advice for Americans dealing with debt collectors.
How the nebulous idea of "cloud computing" led millions of internet users to lose their privacy.
The one flaw in the article is that it presumes we have all fallen for the trap. For example, "When the technology industry embraced 'cloud computing' and made it part of our daily lives, we all made a Faustian bargain." Maybe you made that bargain — I never did. I hope you will join me in rejecting it now.
Some kinds of services are acceptable to use in specific ways. But if you adopt a policy of trusting a service without first carefully checking who you would be trusting with what, you'll be mistreated over and over. This is why I have adopted the policy of not identifying myself to businesses I deal with except under very narrow conditions (for instance, the company that hosts stallman.org knows it's mine).
In other words, you've got to stop thinking that there is a "cloud", and start thinking about each particular service.
Life and business in occupied Palestine are tangled in hundreds of absurd Israeli regulations, each with its own excuse, but all designed simply to make life poor and difficult.
Obama continues to claim that the war in Afghanistan made the US safer.
A public hospital in Alabama makes patients waive their legal right not to be sued for hospital bills.
I don't think poor indebted Americans should feel the slightest shame about using bankruptcy to escape the medical bills that a civilized country would never have tried to impose on them.
Meanwhile, I wonder whether the hospital's contract with these patients is valid. If the law says hospitals can't do something to their patients, can the hospitals set it aside just by getting the patient to say yes?
Democracy protests in Hong Kong have resumed and thugs arrested dozens.
The UK government celebrates the 1914 Christmas truce because it doesn't threaten the idea of war. Contrast it with the reception of acts and movements that did.
Obama plans to send mercenaries to Iraq so he can deny he is sending ground troops there.
Mercenaries are troops.
Faux News cut a protest chant in mid-sentence to misrepresent it as advocating the kill of thugs.
Now cat litter comes with DRM.
How a woman won election as MP for Timbuktu.
Syriza's Marxist economist does not propose leaving the Euro. Rather he demands debt relief with that threat in the background.
Is Sony's Crackdown a Bigger Threat to Western Free Speech Than North Korea?
Russia reports that an unidentified witness saw a Ukrainian fighter plane take off with missiles and land without them, at the time flight MH17 was shot down.
If true, this would not be conclusive proof that Ukraine shot down the passenger jet. There could be other reasons for the fighter to return without missiles.
But is this testimony real? We have only the Russian state's word that the witness made this testimony — and that the witness exists at all.
The UK has used bail conditions to arbitrarily ban hundreds of activists from protests.
The bogus charges are dropped eventually, but in the mean time, democracy is the loser.
Israel arrested members of an anti-Arab hate group, accusing them of various violent acts.
Brazil's new Agriculture minister is the obedient servant of big agribusiness and will energetically promote deforestation.
The NSA and its friends undermine general internet security in many ways.
The NSA has created a web of cooperating companies. It helps protect them from cracking, and they allow help the NSA spy on others.
The low price of oil may be Saudi Arabia's plan to hurt Russia and Iran.
The article speculates that it may cause a big decrease in oil production a few years from now. I hope that leads to more renewables installation then, but it would be better to have a high oil price now to incentivize renewables now.
Israel's parliament is considering a law to bar the most outspoken Palestinian legislator from parliament.
I disagree with Ms Zoabi on her controversial statement: I think kidnaping children is wrong even in fighting a colonizing occupying power. Nonetheless, barring her from election to Parliament attacks the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of people, and that is also wrong.
New Jersey is trying to clear away the democratic procedures that allow the residents of a city to block water privatization.
Governor Christie has a chance to block this by vetoing the bill. If he does not, it may hurt his presidential chances.
Homeless squatters joined activists who sought to feed them, to occupy a disused bank in London. The government sent thugs to kick them out, true to its policy of screw the poor to help the rich; but two of the activists climbed on a balcony rather than leave.
This shows that the UK state regards the idea of feeding homeless people on Christmas as a danger so urgent that it warrants an eviction on Christmas eve to prevent it. (For me, as an Atheist, I don't particularly care that it was Christmas; I'd disapprove of the eviction equally much on any day of the year.)
The court ordered the activists be allowed to return temporarily to feed the homeless today. I guess someone decided to try to smooth over resentment over the eviction. I hope it does not succeed in that aim.
Dissecting the US "evidence" supposed to tie the cracking of Sony to North Korea.
It's flimsy argument, misleadingly cited multiple times as if that made the conclusions stronger. In other words, total bullshit.
The North Korean regime is viciously oppressive; there is no need for false accusations where so many valid accusations are available. But these accusations smell like a PR campaign meant to shape US public opinion.
Don't forget Sony's cyber-attacks against its own customers.
Thugs in St Louis (near Ferguson, that is) shot another black teenager, saying he was pointing a gun at them.
If things happened as the thugs claim, I don't think they did wrong this time. But people are right to distrust the thugs and demand proof, as the thugs have lied so many times before.
The US government asks courts to order computer companies to remotely give access to people's computers — when the companies have power (through back doors) to do so.
The defense is to use free software that probably does not have a back door, rather than proprietary software that almost certainly does have one.
Let's Leave Behind the Age of Fossil Fuel. Welcome to Year One of the Climate Revolution.
The UK gave 1.5 billion dollars in subsidy to all sorts of power plants just for existing and doing what they were going to do anyway.
The subsidy was supposed to be an incentive to bring new generating capacity on line, but it did none of that.
Since a large fraction of this generating capacity uses fossil fuel, that fraction of the subsidy is subsidy for continuing to use fossil fuel (rather than building renewable capacity).
Global heating is disrupting butterflies, so that caterpillars mature in the autumn and can't survive the winter as adults.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to stop giveaways to Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The TTIP would require US states to pay foreign companies in order to regulate toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic". Its other name, TAFTA, stands for "Turn All Freedom To Ashes".
A solidarity hunger strike persuaded Israel to release Nahar al-Saadi from solitary confinement after 570 days of it.
Solitary confinement is a form of brainwashing common in US prisons.
Israel blatantly disregards the Fourth Geneva Convention in its treatment of occupied Palestine.
Another way Comcast tries to buy support for its planned merger with a large competitor: by handing out cards that entitle the bearer to decent customer service. In Washington DC, these cards are often given to people with political influence.
As two children (ages 10 and 6) were walking home from a park, thugs grabbed them, took them to their home, then threatened to shoot their father.
I think the father should have refused to sign any papers making absurd promises, even for a few days, and told the kids, "I can't stop them from taking you prisoner, but mom and I will rescue you." Any child of 6 will understand what that means.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to school every day. That's what all the boys and girls in first grade did, in my ordinary neighborhood public school in New York City. How cowardly TV has made Americans.
A police officer in Buffalo was fired for trying to stop a thug from choking a handcuffed man.
Quite a few security experts doubt US claims that the crack attack on Sony was carried out by North Korea. This article presents their reasons.
Santa Claus and his crew joined a protest against a natural gas storage facility that is likely to pollute the regional water supply in nearby Seneca Lake.
There is still a chance for the many streams of climate defense activism to prevent the worst level of disaster — but we need to push for deep changes that go beyond changing our individual lifestyles.
CO2 emissions are putting mussels in danger.
Everyone: call on Mississippi Attorney General Hood to drop his plans for a mandatory ISP censorship list.
It does work to sign with Javascript disabled — the page of JSON data that you get indicates success.
Australia's carbon tax was effective in reducing CO2 emissions. That's why the fossil fuel companies' men were so determined to get rid of it.
Nepalese workers are dying in Qatar at the rate of 15 a month. And this doesn't count the workers from India and other countries.
Another fine mess for freedom of speech in Egypt.
Luxembourg should not bring charges against the person who leaked the tax avoidance schemes of Luxembourg.
Amazon Anonymous claims its boycott in the UK has cost Amazon 8 million dollars.
While I support the boycott, I can't say I have bought any less from Amazon than I did in the past.
In 1995, Senator Moynihan proposed to abolish the CIA.
US torture extends beyond the CIA, and everyone responsible ought to be chased down and prosecuted.
Reportedly three other countries have made a secret agreement giving Ukraine a veto over publishing results of the investigation of the destruction of flight MH17.
This article belongs to a body of writing that claims that MH17 was shut down intentionally by Ukraine. That is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof — it is much more plausible that badly trained missile operators were mistaken about the target. The articles I have seen are not extraordinary proof: for the most part, the evidence is attributed to people I can't find much information about, and I am not convinced it is for real.
For instance, this article says that the unusual flight path of MH17 has never been explained, but I recall reading that it (as well as other flights before and after) were diverted away from a storm.
Nonetheless, the author personally attests to getting a runaround in requests for information about this agreement, and I think that point is credible.
The Smartest Cities Rely on Citizen Cunning And Unglamorous Technology (as opposed to fancy sensors that spy on everyone).
Refugees from Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea report on life under the rebels and/or Russia.
Some of these people could be motivated to exaggerate, but it is consistent with what Putin does in Russia, and some of them had no other reason to flee.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has laid charges of torture in Germany against two officials of the Bush regime: former CIA Director Tenet and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
Contrast the difference in reaction between the unusual event that someone shoots a thug dead and the frequent event that a thug shoots an unarmed man dead.
The producers of a documentary about Edward Snowden have been sued by someone who claims they are "profiting from the theft of documents".
From what I have read, the use by journalists of leaked documents is lawful in the US. (The movie isn't where they are used; it is about Snowden, not whet he showed us.) But the US government might try to use this lawsuit as an opportunity to press its case to label Snowden as a criminal.
US universities host raving supporters of the occupation of Palestine, but those who criticize it are labeled "antisemitic" and excluded.
Sony Threatens to Sue Twitter Unless It Removes Tweets Containing Hacked Emails.
The Lima agreement is weaker than weak — a "roadmap to global burning."
A Milwaukee thug shot an unarmed homeless man, apparently beating him up first, then accused the homeless man (apparently falsely) of attacking him. The thug will get off without prosecution.
1/4 of the tenant families in the UK have cut back on food to pay rent.
Ukraine is planning to join NATO, and
NATO
does not reject the idea.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
That seems calculated to push Russia into war.
Thugs don't seem to mind so much when right-wing fanatics kill thugs.
The oppression of North Korea is no joke.
Nonetheless, I think it is a fitting target for jokes — ha ha, only serious.
The world's wheat harvest is predicted to decrease 6% with each 1C rise in world temperature.
Maybe we could cope with a 12% decrease, but 30%?
Koalas are headed for extinction due to human destruction of their habitat.
Pressure for prosecution of US torturers is growing.
The New York Times editorial uses the word torture which many other media have avoided. It omits the ringleaders, Bush and Cheney, from the list of suspects to be investigated, but they should be the prime targets.
The senate talks about setting up a "truth commission" to investigate, as a substitute for prosecution. That won't be enough to cleanse America's name, or repudiate tyranny. The Bush regime's secret memos trashed the whole Bill of Rights.
So much evidence has been published already, including Dubya's and Cheneys' public confessions, that there should be no need to offer any of the major organizers immunity.
A Taliban-supporting cleric in Pakistan threatened violence against protesters, and is being investigated for these threats.
Italians have been charged with planning
right-wing
terrorist violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Painting a pretty face on the harsh life of servants is a way of romanticizing inequality.
Accepting sponsorship from arms companies promotes arms trade and war.
It's comparable to sponsorship from tobacco companies, fossil fuel companies, or Big Pharma.
Large dam projects in Amazonia lead to deforestation, and may have something to do with the failure of rains in Sao Paulo.
A high-ranking New York thug posted a tweet that appears to endorse intentional extrajudicial killings.
Listing the 32 Democratic senators that sided with the Republican betrayal budget bill.
What the banksters got from the betrayal budget bill:
taxpayers
potentially on the hook for giant losses from speculation in
derivatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook blocked access in Russia to a page proposing a protest in Russia, in obedience to the Russian regime.
US citizens: call on the FDA not to approve genetically modified salmon.
Eating them is probably safe, but growing them in the ocean endangers wild salmon.
US citizens: call on Obama not to renominate Wall Street's Antonio Weiss to regulate Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Obama to show some spine in opposing Wall Street's corruption of Congress.
The UK's anti-immigrant party's leader reacted with bad grace to a satirical app.
I hope that the developers released the app as free software.
The New Economy movement calls for making economic activities smaller-scale and under local ownership.
Syriza could win the next Greek elections, and says it will destroy austerity — but the forces of repression could stage a coup in Greece.
US citizens: call on Holder to prosecute JP Morgan.
Everyone: call for
dropping
the "feticide" charge against Purvi Patel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for prosecution of the CIA officials responsible for torture.
I added a note saying to prosecute Cheney and Dubya as well.
Ten medical problems that modern contraception can prevent or make lighter — aside from pregnancy.
The Christian story of Christmas encapsulates disgust for female sexuality.
Thugs are not always the killers — occasionally they are killed. Someone shot two NYC thugs, just before killing himself, and after killing someone else.
Other thugs have seized on this as an opportunity to campaign for their own impunity, and to attack the public for the anger that has been provoked by the actions of many thugs over a long time.
In effect, the thugs claim that their lives matter astronomically more than yours or mine, and that protesting when they kill mere citizens is equivalent to shooting them.
I don't think those two thugs deserved to die. But I feel less concern about each of them than about each of the many innocent people that thugs have killed — because the thugs are part of a group that has power and uses it arrogantly to oppress.
The reason I call them "thugs" is not primarily because of the killings they do, many of which are due to haste and unconscious racism rather than malice. Rather, it is primarily because of the numerous protesters and other innocent victims that they grab, punch, kick, pepper spray, or beat with sticks, and then frame for various bogus charges. That, they do from arrogance.
Only a fraction of thugs would do those things, but when they lie about it, all their buddies support their perjury. That's why they all deserve the name of "thugs".
Once in a while someone in a thug department stands for justice and rejects the arrogance and impunity of the other thugs. Those people deserve the name of "police officer".
The Taliban are winning their war against Pakistani children's future.
The Tor project reports that some government (the US, it appears) may try to disable its directory authority servers and shut the Tor network down.
Christian fanatics falsely claim that some birth control methods are abortion, so they can stretch their restrictions on abortion rights to restrict birth control too.
From my point of view, the difference between contraception and abortion, while real, has no moral significance: they should both be legal and the state should provide them both gratis.
The EPA's proposed rules for handling coal ash are too weak to do the job.
It's not a good thing for everyone's email to be published. Or collected by the NSA.
When Maria Lopez cut her finger on a meat saw at the Hormel plant, because they had sped up the production line, they kept the line running dripping her blood into the food.
The higher production speed causes accidents and contamination, but the companies have bought the support of the US government to allow them to replace government inspection with their own half-hearted inspection. To trust these companies to inspect themselves is to invite them to cut corners on safety — for their workers and for their customers.
The UK has imposed onerous and unnecessary restrictions on volunteers returning from helping to care for Ebola patients in Africa.
These people can be trusted to tell medical personnel if they develop symptoms suggesting they might have Ebola. And if they don't have those symptoms, they are not contagious.
As Egypt's government plunges to new depths of tyranny, it is getting
full
military support from the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
A practical study in Chicago found that red-light cameras caused a small increase in injuries due to car crashes.
It wasn't a significant increase, but the lack of benefit is enough reason to get rid of them.
Why does Obama insist on sending Shaker Aamer to Saudi Arabia (where anyone may be tortured) rather than to Britain, which is ready to accept him back?
Turkish opposition editors and journalists have been arrested under absurd accusations.
The Lima climate talks seem to have failed, leaving human civilization on course for global disaster.
The political will to avoid disaster was not strong enough to overcome short term interest plus the corruption spread by fossil fuel companies.
The only agreement reached was that countries would propose unilateral measures they will take, starting in 2020, when it will be too late to avoid more or less disaster.
I think that the countries expecting to be hit first by deadly climate disaster have grounds to declare war on the main greenhouse emitting countries. They may as well die resisting climate attack rather than give up and die helplessly.
Such a war would not be mere revenge — those countries may have a chance to protect themselves from part of the expected damage. By destroying fossil fuel export or import infrastructure, they could cut the use of fossil fuel, which could reduce the extent of the disaster they face.
Actions to block activities that are likely to kill of hundreds of millions of people could be justified legally under the defense of "necessity".
The US is posting blimps near Washington DC to scan for cruise missiles up to 340 miles away.
That's a good thing to do, if it works (which is not clear), but the blimps could also watch cars and people.
Vermont's governor has abandoned the single-payer health care plan that was enacted.
He says this is because the tax required to fund it would be too high, but it will surely be less than what the same people would have to pay under the current system.
The Senate report identifies 26 men who were imprisoned wrongly by the CIA and tortured, but it seems there were hundreds more.
The CIA claims these mistakes were a tiny fraction. I don't trust the CIA to count them honestly. But even when someone was a real terrorist, that doesn't excuse torture.
Can you tell a gun from a power drill in half a second? Seeing a picture of a black person's face makes some people see the drill as a gun. This is unconscious racism at work.
The article also describes simple methods of reducing these unconscious prejudices.
If the American public considers torture acceptable, perhaps it will balk at destructive experiments on unwilling human subjects, which the CIA also did.
The two tend to go together (there are clear examples from German concentration camps).
Overprotection of children: New York City is removing swings and welding spinning disks so they can't spin.
This goes with the attitude that leads to prosecuting parents that let their kids go to the playground alone.
The lawlessness of the CIA extended to Guantanamo, and the published details provide the lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners with arguments for motions in their "trials".
I don't think it matters greatly how much imprisonment without trial was done by the CIA and how much was done by the US Army. They are both part of the US government.
A woman driving by said "fuck the police", and they
arrested
her. A court gave her a $100,000 punitive judgment to teach the
thugs respect for freedom of speech.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
They would learn the lesson better if they had to pay the judgment personally, but chances are that won't happen.
This contrasts with other countries that fail to uphold freedom of speech. In France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, and many other countries, insulting officials is a crime, although they often deserve the insults.
The CIA has known for a long time that torture doesn't "work" for getting intelligence, so Bush and Cheney must have known this too. Why then did they choose to use torture rather than get better information?
One possibility is that they are sadistic savages. Another, more sinister, is that they wanted bad intelligence (fabrications) to justify attacking Iraq. Torture works great for that.
The precise headline used for an article affects how readers understand it and which parts of it they remember later.
This is part of the general human tendency to stick with first impressions or first conclusions, and not change them sufficiently when subsequent information calls for correcting them.
This is, for instance, why it is so important to talk about "free/libre software" and not "open source".
Eight proposals for how to make Wall Street cease to threaten the US economy.
Everyone:
call on FIFA to
insist that Qatar put an end to slave labor conditions in construction
for the World Cup.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
In one province of Pakistan, 40% of all criminal trials label the defendant a "terrorist". In most of those cases, there was nothing remotely terrorist about them. And Pakistan is about to execute someone based on a confession beaten out of him when he was 15 years old.
As Pakistan fights the Taliban, I hope the thirst for "blood" does not lead to more injustice like these.
Inequality of wealth distribution in the US continues to increase.
Chevron has abandoned plans to drill in Canadian Arctic waters, acknowledging it is unable to meet safety requirements.
Nobody can drill safely in Arctic waters. Even drilling safely in the Gulf of Mexico is not to be counted on.
Where to learn, at one remove, what it feels like to be tortured.
Western mining companies gladly accept slaved labor from the Eritrean government.
Movie theaters refused to show Sony's film, The Interview, after bomb threats against theaters, so Sony cancelled the release.
This is censorship by threat. Even worse, it is likely to make others self-censor in anticipation of a threat. (I wish they didn't call these crackers "hackers" — it seems clear that playful cleverness is not a significant part of their mentality.)
We should not be quick to believe claims about who is responsible. I wouldn't put this past North Korea or China, but I also wouldn't put it past the FBI to falsely accuse them.
It takes no expertise to make a false bomb threat. Anyone could have done that. Reportedly, Sony's computer security was so incompetent that even a kid could have cracked it.
Senator Feinstein is already using this to promote the privacy-threatening bill that would allow companies to give your personal data to Big Brother in bulk "voluntarily".
Sony is not an innocent victim: it has a history of launching cyber attacks against its own customers.
Remember the Corrupt Disks with the rootkit that took over the users' operating systems to install DRM software? Remember when Sony forced each PlayStation 3 owner to forfeit either the ability to run GNU/Linux or the ability to talk with Sony's game network? Remember when Sony sent thugs to arrest George Hotz for publishing how to jailbreak the PS3?
We must take action to prevent further attacks of the sort that was made against Sony, and to prevent further attacks of the sort that Sony launched. But governments are not interested in protecting us from the power of big business. The US is negotiating treaties such as the TPP that would strengthen the power of companies such as Sony against us.
Thus, I continue to say, Boycott Sony!
Reportedly some Iraqi Sunni tribes want to fight PISSI, and the US is training their soldiers.
The US is not above exaggerating good news in war, but it would be good if this is true.
After a long public campaign, Ebay has dropped ALEC.
South Korea banned a leftist party that supports North Korea.
If the party was a vehicle for plotting rebellion, this decision was legitimate. But were the trials of the imprisoned legislators fair?
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The accusations against him cannot be credited, coming from Putin.
The UK government is doing a subtle but effective job of undermining the development of ocean-wave-powered electric generation.
It offered huge guarantees for new nuclear plants, so that uncertainty would not hold back investment, and could do the same for wave power, but renewable is not its priority.
Meanwhile, it gives big subsidies to fossil fuels.
In Ireland, a brain-dead pregnant woman's body is being kept on an incubator so as to make the fetus turn into a baby born motherless.
A dead body on an incubator is not a human being, and has no rights. A fetus of 17 weeks is not a human being, and directly has no rights, but causing it to develop into a human being in disadvantaged circumstances would be harm or cruelty to that human being. That's what Ireland is trying to do here.
Western mining companies gladly accept slaved labor from the Eritrean government.
The New Era low-rent housing in London has been sold to a foundation that will keep the rents low.
This is a victory for public protest, but it is a small one. Bad laws in the UK are pushing house prices and rents up, just as bad laws have pushed wages down 10% since the financial crisis. Bad laws encourage the well-off to occupy more space, leaving less for the poor. Bad laws have enabled privatization of the housing that was built to provide homes to the poor, while other bad laws reduced the tax on businesses and the wealthy so there are no funds to replace what was lost.
All these laws need to be changed.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the embargo on Cuba.
People are mounting TV cameras on their houses in ways that violate their neighbors' privacy.
I've stated it should be illegal for anyone — including the state! — to set up a camera pointed at a place where the public is admitted, which permits remote access, except under a specific court order specifying the place to be surveilled and the time for the surveillance to continue.
This shows that if the camera can observe someone else's private space, it infringes that person's privacy even if it only makes a local recording (or no recording).
Jeb Bush is a global heating denier.
The Israeli army has closed 7 investigations into possible war crimes in Gaza, with no charges.
It also opened 8 more investigations, but it seems unlikely they will lead to charges either.
If we don't put the US government torturers on trial, it will happen again. The CIA tortured in Vietnam, but those responsible were not punished; just 30 years later, the CIA reoffended.
The main difference seems to be that now the US government doesn't even have the decency to apologize. Culpable officials such as Cheney are brazenly barbarous now.
Pakistanis are united against terrorists, but maybe not all terrorists.
The judges of the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether their rich backers broke the law in supporting their campaigns.
Statistics suggest that teenagers use e-cigarettes instead of smoking.
The war in Afghanistan has cost the US a trillion dollars, 80% of which was spent under Obama.
Or should we call him O-bomber?
Ukraine has established a "ministry of information policy", supposedly to counter Russian propaganda, but it threatens to impose censorship of dissent.
Ukraine is in the middle of a civil war; some action against Russian propaganda is legitimate. But this kind of action threatens to be dangerous. What claims to be "hate Russia" could really be "like Russia".
Fights Break Out in Kenyan Parliament over Controversial Anti-Terrorism Laws.
The dangerous law has been passed, threatening journalism and dissent in Kenya.
George Stinney would be 84 years old if he had not been executed on false charges at the age of 14.
This is one of the reasons why the death penalty should be abolished.
The judge suspected Stinney was tortured or tricked into making a confession. The latter is often easy with naive kids that aren't street-smart and believe thugs are to be trusted.
Another secret "trade treaty", the "Trade in Services Agreement", attacks internet freedom in the ways that plutocrats generally want to.
I expect it does other things to deregulate companies and weaken democracy, because those are the purposes for which plutocrats set up those treaties. We don't need to see the details to determine they are bad.
The right-wing government of Australia is making Indigenous people work for 5 dollars an hour.
Australian phone companies and ISPs want to block customers from accessing the metadata about them.
The real issue is that companies should not be allowed to keep this data except about specific people subject to court orders.
A Republican senator blocked a program to help veterans not commit suicide. He considered its price, $22 million, too high.
During World War II, the US recognized waterboarding as a form of torture, and said so clearly.
The betrayal budget bill shows how Congress will try to squeeze through fast track for the TPP.
Hong Kong is trying to take a 14-year-old protester away from his parents on the grounds that they "neglected" him by not stopping him from protesting.
The willingness to do something that everyone will regard as deceptive and cruel is a stage frequently seen on a government's path to complete tyranny. It is a way of declaring open war on human rights. Putin passed through this stage a few years ago, and Erdogan is going there now.
The London bicycle rental scheme tracks all its users.
Amazingly, the company published a data base, thinly anonymized, that allows anyone to try to figure out who each user is. But I think that's just a minor add-on to the bigger danger of Big Brother, who already knows who they are.
US citizens: call for cancellation of the planned pointless and destructive road through the Tongass National Forest.
Some kinds of birds know enough to avoid getting hurt by offshore windfarms.
A Chinese version of Android has a universal back door.
In fact, nearly all models of mobile phone have a universal back door in the modem chip. So why did Coolpad bother to introduce another? Because this one is controlled by Coolpad.
The Campaigners Who Won't Forget the Schoolgirls Kidnapped by Boko Haram.
Rescuing prisoners is difficult and risky. The government could do a better job of fighting Boko Haram, but freeing the girls will be possible only with a lot of luck.
Kurdish forces are attacking PISSI, trying to recapture territory.
I hope they will be prepared also to welcome and care for women freed from PISSI captivity.
Most children kept in institutions are not orphans. Their parents can't afford to care for them.
The US is mainly ruled by political dynasties.
I won't vote for either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush unless they go through a big transformation.
Over 700 Million People Taking Steps to Avoid NSA Surveillance.
However, such measures are only partially effective. You can encrypt the contents of your email, but there is no way to stop various governments from seeing who you are sending the email to.
A proposed EU directive on trade secrets would endanger whistleblowers.
A cease-fire in Ukraine is holding.
New York State has banned fracking for two years.
It's a start.
The Taliban's massacre at a school in Pakistan has generated intense anger that might make a difference to defeating it.
The European Parliament voted to endorse a Palestinian state "in principle".
Hamas may well deserve to be labeled as a terrorist group, but such decisions should always be the result of putting the group in question on trial.
Spy agencies have persistently undermined computer and network security through many avenues.
The movie companies want to impose DNS-blocking on US ISPs.
A law professor says that organized hypersensitivity of students is an obstacle to the teaching of rape law.
Other kinds of violence can make people uncomfortable too. There are many subjects that can't be taught to or learned by the squeamish, including law, history, sociology, biology and medicine.
There are many other fields where this is not an issue, including math, physics, chemistry and some kinds of engineering. Students who are particularly sensitive may need to choose those fields. However, schools should encourage students to overcome squeamishness rather than hold back education to cater to it.
Low-wage employers in the US have received billions of dollars in subsidies from state and local governments.
People who supposedly got rich "on their own" got a lot of help from subsidies too.
Investigating how Bedouin in the Negev were driven off their lands.
Palestinian bus drivers in Jerusalem face attacks from Jewish bigots; there is an attack every day. 100 bus drivers have quit because of the danger.
The media talk about Palestinians that attack Israeli strangers, not mentioning that it goes the other direction too.
But it's not always random bigotry. A Palestinian woman was shot by a soldier after she stabbed an Israeli — but she says she was defending herself from him.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, "No new sanctions on Iran; give diplomacy a chance to work."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on your senators to stay in Washington to confirm Obama's judicial appointments while that can still be done.
I'm not saying each and every one of them is a good choice. At least one is right-wing and should not be confirmed at all.
But in general they should be confirmed.
Everyone:
urge Michigan
governor Snyder to veto the law to authorize religiously-motivated
discrimination in Michigan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on El Salvador to stop imprisoning women for having abortions or miscarriages.
Everyone: call on fast food chains not to use GM potatoes, which have not been properly tested.
The US and Cuba have renewed diplomatic relations, in a deal brokered by the Pope.
The three imprisoned Cubans and American Alan Gross have been freed as part of the deal.
The Cubans were imprisoned for spying on terrorist groups harbored by the US, which planned attacks on Cuba. I supported a campaign to free them.
Alan Gross's work was also legitimate, even though the Cuba government did not like it.
"Smart cities" represent a scheme to regiment and control people, which threatens democracy too.
England may prohibit smoking in a car with minors in it.
This seems like a good idea. Children get the idea of smoking from watching adults.
I object to referring to teenagers as "children", though. That is misleading.
Pakistan's response to the murder of many students by suicide bomber-gunners: resume the death penalty.
Can you imagine anything more ridiculous than the idea that execution could deter attackers who expect to die in the attack?
Most of the plastic in the sea seems to end up in sediments at the bottom.
Maybe this means the oceans will clean themselves over time — if we stop dumping more. But it doesn't change the fact that plastic is doing lots of harm to wildlife now.
As the US moves step by step towards legalizing marijuana, use by teenagers is slowly decreasing.
What should the US do with prisoners that can't be tried because torture corrupts all the evidence against them?
It's simple: release them. Imprisonment without trial is injustice and will inspire people to hate the US. (It already does.)
It makes no difference whether these men might fight the US once released. Suppose a few did — on top of the the thousands who are flocking to fight for PISSI already, they make no significant change in the situation. However, if the US stops committing gross evil, that would, over time, reduce the recruitment of its enemies.
Thugs in the US overall kill people more than New York City thugs, although the statistics for the rest of the US are incomplete.
The betrayal budget bill has one possibly good provision, intended to stop the Justice department from prosecuting state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
But it may fail in its goal because it is written badly.
Congress passed a law to limit one kind of massive surveillance started by Reagan. The EFF says it is a real but small step forward.
Here's more detail.
In the US, is it "bad enough yet" to motivate people to fight the plutocrats?
Many pizzas in the US contain more salt than an adult ought to consume in a day.
Western sanctions are causing economic disaster for Russians. There is no sign Putin personally is suffering, but he is suffering a defeat.
I don't think he will go down passively to defeat. His specialty is attacking in surprising ways, and I think he will do that again.
I also suspect that this is not just a reaction to Putin's aggression in Ukraine. It seems more likely that Western plutocrats used that as an excuse for something they wanted to do anyway.
Three congresscritters got a bill for harsh confrontation with Russia passed by "unanimous consent".
US mainstream media decline to call torture what it is, and say they have to "present all sides", but they never show the side of the victims of torture.
Human Rights Watch says that the Sudanese army is using rape systematically as a method of repression.
Five proposals for avoiding the mass extinction we are on the way to cause.
If "Change our economic system so it values nature" means assigning monetary value to wild ecosystems, I fear that will backfire by encouraging them to be purchased and destroyed.
Taliban attacked a school and killed 130 children of Pakistani army officers.
The article explains that this mass murder of children is meant as intimidation. Let's hope that revulsion will cost the Taliban support among the people who now support them.
Turkish protest organizers
face
charges of trying to overthrow the government.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Although the charges appear to be false, overthrowing a repressive government is not wrong anyway.
Three UK parties including the Green Party formed an alliance against austerity.
US citizens:
call on
Kerry to pressure El Salvador to stop prosecuting women for having
abortions or miscarriages.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Luxembourg Tax Whistleblower Says He Acted out of Conviction.
The thug who shot Tamir Rice, age 12, never ordered him to put his (toy) gun down. He shot Rice almost immediately.
The Mexican federal thugs in Iguala were informed about the attack on protesting students as it started, and monitored it as it occurred.
The UK Labour Party endorsed the right-wing goal of eliminating the deficit.
Increasing taxes on companies and the rich would have the effect of reducing the deficit, but making the latter the goal would encourage doing it by abandoning the poor and helpless.
Reporters Without Borders supports the Japanese journalists that are challenging the state secrecy law.
How Huge Companies Like Apple Are Actually Parasites on America's Tech Industry.
The Sydney Siege Should Not Be Used to Justify Draconian New Anti-Terrorism Laws.
If Australia can suffer the roughly 1300 deaths per year from car accidents without going mad and destroying its freedom, it ought to be able to stay sane when violence kills two people.
North Korea says the UN should investigate US torture rather than North Korean human rights violations.
North Korea's human rights violations have millions of victims — dwarfing the scale of US torture. The reason I demand the US prosecute its torturers is that I love my country and want it to deserve everyone's good opinion.
If you look at the number of people driven out of their homes by US-started wars, it may be comparable with the crimes of North Korea.
Cryonic preservation could offer a way to preserve the biosphere and avoid global heating disaster. If we could convince 4/5 of humanity to get frozen for later revival, the part of humanity remaining active would generate a much smaller amount of greenhouse gas, and could develop space habitats providing enough room to unfreeze everyone.
Belgium was shut down by a general strike against right-wing poverty-spreading policies.
The CIA Tortured Abu Zubaydah, My Client. Now Charge Him Or Let Him Go.
The EU may ban use of diclofenac for animals so that their corpses don't kill vultures.
Egypt's repression extends even to visiting foreign academics.
Cheney's morality is that of a terrorist.
The UK government is blocking a fair trial for a pair of Burmese immigrants accused of a murder in Thailand.
Estimates of the rate of Greenland's ice melt may be too low because they don't take account of the secondary effects of surface melting.
In general, these estimates tend to be too low. Heat tends to flow from what's hotter to what's colder, and can do so in many ways. We know the ways it is flowing today, but as the temperature rises, it can find new ways to flow — which are missing from our models.
Karl Rove said that Dubya personally approved CIA torture methods.
We must give him a chance to repeat that in Dubya's trial!
Public marriage proposals are a form of emotional blackmail.
How the plutocrats are destroying the "disposable" half of the US population.
It would be good if the US population goes down to half what it is now, but not by crushing people who exist. The only ethical way to get there is by having fewer births.
Beware the three false assumptions in the limited discussion of US torture.
Affirmative action can help all of us avoid unconscious racism.
Many products contain endocrine disruptors that can cause various human illnesses. A rough estimate suggests they cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage annually.
Coal extraction appears to be headed for a new record. Just the thing to destroy civilization.
Spain's new law forbids sites that link to snippets of news articles unless the sites pay the publishers. The response, Google will omit Spanish news articles.
The stated motive is to direct more income to the publishers. My solution for this problem is to allow publishers to charge a little anonymous digital cash for viewing an article. This would also make it possible to eliminate the advertising and the surveillance of most web sites.
Unless the law has some exception that has not been mentioned, I think these political notes would be illegal if stallman.org were in Spain. Fortunately, it is not.
However, the EU seems to be considering imposing a similar law — whose justification is the bogus term "intellectual property". Use of that term always tends to be harmful.
Cheney Calls for International Ban on Torture Reports.
(This is satire. I expected this to be obvious, but a reader said he could not tell, because it was plausible Cheney would really do this.)
In the UK, good jobs require doing unpaid internships first, and only the wealthy can afford to do the internships.
It appears that these internships are illegal but the interns don't dare complain.
Sea walls built to protect beachside housing tend to destroy the beaches, which then can be maintained only by artificially replenishing them.
A few decades from now, with sea level rising ever faster and various disasters striking, no region will be able to afford to sustain beaches artificially; rich people will do it in private enclaves.
I am no expert, but I suspect that the natural process that creates new beaches may be too slow to keep up with the speed of the rise as it will be a few decades from now. The process may not get a chance to work again until hundreds of years from now, when the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps have melted and sea level is a 100 or 200 meters higher.
Torture unites the US and PISSI with the Nazi regime and medieval barbarism.
Cheney defends US torture by stretching the definition of the word and claiming the Sep 2011 terrorist attacks were torture too.
His definition is wrong, but more importantly, his implicit premise is that the US should match its enemies for barbarism.
More sick ideas from Cheney: torturing innocent people is forgivable if the US does it, and they should never be released afterwards because some of them might be so angry they would fight against the US.
This is part of an all-out campaign to legitimize torture by the US. Americans, if you love your country, now is the time to insist that Cheney stands trial for his crimes, along with Bush and their underlings.
After Ohio thugs shot John Crawford dead as he carried an air rifle he was about to purchase, they interrogated his girlfriend making wild accusations and threats.
Angela Davis talks about repression of blacks in the US from slavery to the present.
China is snooping on Hong Kong Democracy protesters and trying to crack their email accounts, as well as punishing them by barring them from entering China.
US citizens: support the Grand Jury Reform Act.
The UK government proposes to discourage poor people from having extra children by providing no funds for any extra children they have.
It makes sense to discourage excess children, but imposing penury on them and their families is neither effective nor legitimate.
The UK's privatized air traffic control system shut down because the company skimped on long-term investment.
Well, what do they expect? It had to skimp on something; how else could it extract a profit?
Israel continues its slow expulsion of Palestinians from Jerusalem, by ordering the demolition of additional homes and businesses.
China told the US, regarding human rights,
"Who
are you to criticize China?"
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Here's
China's
report on US human rights violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The first section concerns private crimes of violence. While the lack of proper gun control in the US is a serious problem, it does not fit the category of human rights violations by the state, so it doesn't belong in this report.
Here's the US report on China's human rights violations.
A fraction of the list concerns the law limiting number of children. I support such laws, so I don't regard those items as valid criticisms. However, the rest of the list includes many grave crimes.
Overall, China is a lot worse than the US, but "we're better than China" is hardly an adequate standard for any country to apply to itself. The US ought to strive to be #1 in respect for human rights.
The US government has pressured most US colleges to hold unofficial rape trials which can (in effect) sentence the accused to permanent exclusion from higher education. They fall far short of the legal standards of real trials.
Saudi women are in jail for driving cars to the Saudi border and trying to enter their country.
AT&T is connected with several
major
attacks on US democracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Humans are causing Earth's sixth mass extinction. Between destruction of habitats, overfishing and global heating, we could destroy more than 3/4 of the species on Earth.
Local governments in the UK are resorting to complex schemes to prevent their public housing from being privatized.
The UK Parliament will ask the US Senate for full information on UK participation in CIA torture.
An Indian man who operated a Twitter account posting material in support of PISSI has been arrested and charged with "abetting war against the state", though so far there is no evidence he did anything but distribute propaganda.
To eliminate human rights in the name of fighting PISSI is missing the point about what is bad about PISSI.
The CIA Is Still Running Amok — by lying about torture and trying to cover it up.
Obama's proposals for policing do little good. They won't stop the militarization of US thug departments.
It is important to note how making thugs wear body cameras requires privacy protections and is helpful to restrain their violence only if the rest of the system upholds that goal.
Learned Helplessness: the Enduring Effects of Torture That Haunt Victims.
The UN will ask the NSA to show its radio intercepts bearing on the assassination of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöaut;ld.
Michigan is considering a bill to allow businesses to discriminate against customers as long as the motive is religious.
Senator Wyden has proposed a bill to reject requiring back doors in computers.
European countries have been fined at least 4 billion dollars under treaties that subject governments to foreign corporations.
Other cases, not yet resolved, demand over 35 billion dollars in "compensation" to foreign corporate overlords — and that's only half the cases that are in process.
All such treaties are antidemocratic; we must fight until we eliminate every last one.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect Arctic ring seals from the danger of oil spills.
In the Cincinnati Enquirer, "investigative journalism" means covering organizations that might pay for advertising.
This article uses the word "monetize" in the sense of "contemptuously regard mainly as a source of income". I reject that usage of the word because I reject the attitude that it embodies.
"Monetize" properly means "to use as currency".
NPR systematically avoids calling US torture "torture", because that would mean criticizing it.
The Washington Post does the same thing.
The effect is to support the torture apologists and Obama in trying to downplay US torture. Example in point: ABC television's story that is more concerned with the blowback from US torture than with the wrong of torture itself.
That attitude is "whatever we do, we don't deserve to be punished for it."
A pregnant woman in Wisconsin was put in solitary confinement because she had used methamphetamine while pregnant.
It is unjustified and cruel to punish a pregnant woman for possibly damaging her fetus. Barring her off from employment is stupid — that would do much worse harm to the possible eventual child.
It can, in principle, be legitimate to stop a pregnant woman from doing something that would cause permanent damage to a future human being, but that's easier said than done. It might be better to abort the fetus instead — if it never becomes a human being, then no human being is damaged.
The new head of Australia's government research lab believes in dowsing.
I guess that's part of what falls down on you if you take the suppository of all ignorance.
There were
87
complaints in 2014 that New York thugs put people in choke holds
(which is against their rules), and only once was any action taken
against the thug.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Ireland passed a law to allow foreign governments to snoop on communications and force ISPs to cooperate in secret trials.
"Focus on the Family"'s irrational "sex education" was plagiarized from someone else's joke.
A Seattle thug that punched a handcuffed woman and fractured her skull
will
not be prosecuted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
When Americans sue a thug for illegal violence and win, the thug is never personally held liable.
No wonder they feel they can get away with murder.
The UK's internet censorship blocked access to a UK government site about investigation of US kidnaping and torture.
An experiment found students rate their instructors more highly when they think the instructors are male, than when they think the same instructors are female.
The actual sex of the instructor (concealed from the students) did not correlate with the ratings.
How medical doctors participated in CIA torture.
The UK government has used a string of sleazy tricks to conceal its involvement with US torture.
A US court ruled that telling people how to remove DRM is lawful.
I suppose the perpetrators of DRM will appeal this decision, so it won't be final.
Dubya's torture did "work" … to provide the false information he wanted as an excuse for the war he wanted.
The Oregon GMO-labeling referendum was defeated: a judge refused to stop the election authority from applying an arbitrary criterion to exclude 4,000 votes.
If you point out evils of the US government, such as torture, apologists pop up to claim you just want the US to look bad.
I do it because the US government needs some "tough love". I want the US to stop doing evil, so I could be proud of my country.
At a solidarity die-in in London, thugs arrested 70 peaceful protesters for fictitious "violence".
Aleppo Faces Catastrophe If Assad And Rebels Don't Agree to "Freeze" Fighting.
The Egyptian government claims there are just 866 Atheists in Egypt, after defining secularists as Atheists.
The Obama regime is concealing interviews with CIA torturers and their victims, which might occasion criminal charges against the former.
Sudan's Anti-Dam Movement Fights the Flooding of Nubian Culture.
France may legalize medicating terminally ill people into unconsciousness at their request.
US citizens: phone your senators saying to vote against the budget deal that attacks America in so many ways.
I suspect that using the site to call your senators involves running nonfree Javascript; if it does, just call the switchboard directly.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on your representative to support the bill to ban fracking on
public lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to prosecute the officials responsible for torture — starting with Dubya.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
US citizens: call on the EPA to impose strict standards to reduce toxic smog.
In the US:
support
decriminalizing the feeding of homeless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
An Indonesian editor has been accused of blasphemy for a cartoon that criticized PISSI.
An FBI interrogator who questioned Abu Zubaydah without torture, reports on how the CIA torturers took over, then lied about what he had achieved, while not bothering for months to question Abu Zubaydah at all.
Human predation of whales and seals has created ecosystem catastrophes, wiping out other species of animals and plants.
20 years ago, when Russia's war with Chechnya started, Yeltsin was determined not to negotiate with Chechnya and made foolish excuses.
Protesters in Oakland discovered two infiltrating disguised thugs and a few attacked them, whereupon one thug pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the surrounding crowd.
I understand that the thug might have felt threatened at that moment — but he should not have been there in the first place.
The thug department says that they infiltrated the protest to "keep the public safe". If they shot protesters, they'd say that was "keeping the public safe" too.
Italians have launched a general strike against austerity.
Thugs appear to be covering up the murder of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy by calling it suicide.
His mother is wrong to criticize the older woman he was having an affair with. That prejudice might be the same one that motivated the murderer, and it is wrong no matter who expresses it.
Turkish writers that criticize the government have been accused of being part of the "international literature lobby" by supporters of Erdogan.
Hong Kong's umbrella movement has not won, but it has not failed.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights says the US attorney general must prosecute those responsible for torture.
It is strange, however, that he thinks Dubya deserves immunity as the then head of state. Slobodan Miloshevic, Saddam Hussein, and Uhuru Kenyatta were not granted that privilege.
UK officials held 24 meetings with US Senate investigators pleading to cover up the UK's involvement in CIA torture. It looks like they got what they wanted.
There are many things a government can do to curb the power of corporations.
All that is needed is political will.
Occupy protests gained public attention because of two factors: disruption and personal sacrifice.
CIA Director Brennan arrogantly repeated his past lies in Congress, and refused to affirm that the CIA would not torture again.
If I were in Congress I would vote to cancel all funds for the CIA until it is cleansed of torture supporters.
Thugs in Baltimore attacked a woman with a taser and pulled her out of her car, then erased the video she was making of how they were attacking another victim.
Then, as is typical for thugs who think courts will believe any lie they tell, they falsely accused her of trying to run them over.
Some unidentified person has been charged with leaking the Luxembourg tax dodging schemes.
The apology offered for these deals makes no sense to me. What difference does it make whether they are similar or different? The point is that they help companies at public expense.
Canadian prostitutes feel threatened by a law that makes it a crime to be their customers.
Prisoner abd el Rahim al Nashiri might be guilty of deadly terrorism, but US government torture gets in the way of proving this in a fair trial.
The "military commission" doesn't aim be a fair trial.
A Catholic council acknowledges that the celibacy required of priests may have contributed to leading them to have sex with children.
With Help From USDA, Factory Farms 'Masquerading' Products as Organic.
All About That Wall Street Giveaway That Elizabeth Warren Hates and the House Is About to Pass.
How to break the DRM on Keurig coffee pods.
I think that coffee pods are a bad idea because they involve more nonbiodegradable waste.
Elizabeth Warren fights hard against Wall Street, but doesn't talk much about permanent war I will vote for her if she is the Democratic candidate (which I would not do for Ms Clinton), but I'd rather have Bernie Sanders running, since he opposes both Wall Street and permanent war.
High levels of phthalates in mothers' blood is associated with a decrease in IQ for their children.
Since the experiment that would prove without a doubt that phthalates damage IQ would be unethical, there is no use waiting in the hope of clearer proof. The US should follow Europe in banning phthalates in anything meant to come in contact with food or people's bodies.
Why Afghanistan's government can't stand unless propped up by the US.
In addition, it oppresses women almost as much as the Taliban would. Do the people of Afghanistan want the US to prop up this government indefinitely at the cost of continuing the war?
Spain's right-wing government has imposed a million-dollar fine for some protests, and large fines also for publishing photos of thugs.
The latter one seems to be intended to stop people from documenting the thugs' violence. The people of Spain, under repression, need to develop networks for anonymously posting evidence outside Spain.
The same law also represses insulting a thug. Many thugs do things which provoke well-deserved insults. Prohibiting insults against anyone is inexcusable censorship.
I will suggest to people in Spain that they turn the word "policÃa" into an insult. Then it will be possible to insult a thug just by saying "es un policÃa", and it will be difficult for them to prosecute this.
The US has closed its notorious Bagram prison.
Henceforth the government of Afghanistan will be responsible for abuse and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan. It's still barbaric but the guilt will only indirectly be on US hands.
The European Commission plans to cancel proposed EU clean air and recycling directives.
In today's US wars, the very idea of a future peace has been discarded.
CIA/military torture and killer thugs are part of the same spectrum of injustice and impunity.
Obama: the US does not have to prosecute those responsible for torture because it it is exceptionally good.
For the US to be good at all, it must prosecute its torturers and its killer thugs.
Women in Brazil that get underground abortions face repression and even death.
The idea that there is something wrong with an abortion is nothing but religious ignorance.
The UK's mandatory censorship by ISPs has a
persistent
tendency to go beyond the pornography that the UK requires them to
block.
In
France
and Ireland, the parliaments have voted in favor of recognizing
Palestine.
It is too bad they make this vote advisory only.
Darfur
Radio Station Exposes the Use of Rape As Weapon of War.
What
the US must do to clear away the blot of torture.
This applies to military torture, too.
A mother in South Carolina was
jailed
for allowing her child to play in the park.
So crazy has the US become. And the result of this insanity is that
parents have to transport children everywhere — causing burden
on the parents and making children feel a lack of autonomy.
An
oil
spill threatens the Sundarbans forest, home to rare dolphins as
well as tigers, but perhaps not for much longer.
The CIA
spent
180 million dollars to build up a group of psychologists to
legitimize torture.
A leader in PISSI explains how it was
set
up inside a US prison in Iraq.
A bar manager in Burma is being
prosecuted
for displaying a lack of respect for Buddhism.
Too bad the Buddha isn't here — he would tell them to stop
making a fuss about that bar and go back to meditating.
Freedom of speech means the freedom to criticize, offend, insult, or
mock any person, idea, practice or thing — even the Buddha.
Even you or me. Burma should start respecting this freedom.
The Hong Kong government is
shutting
down the democracy protest camps.
A few activists will remain to
dare
the state to arrest them.
People will try again later.
The bipartisan deal in Congress
allows
rich people to pay more to buy the support of major political
parties.
Kerry asked Congress to approve
"flexible"
and perpetual war.
Islamic terrorists
killed
5000 people in November, mainly in Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen and Somalia.
Note the absence of any Western country in that list. While Islamists
are vicious and evil, they are not a significant danger to people in
the West. It would be foolish for us to give up vital freedoms for
fear of a danger that doesn't come near us.
Australia is
not
quite as obstructionist in Lima negotiations as its public statements
would suggest.
I find this very surprising. The extreme statements are not going to
please many people in Australia besides the coal companies, and those
will care more about results (preventing an effective climate
agreement) than about statements.
The US infiltrated the Cuban rap scene to try to stimulate opposition
to Castro, but it
backfired.
Antibiotic resistance is
killing
almost a million people a year. Projections suggest it may kill
10 million a year by 2050.
I agree that we should give high priority to curbing antibiotic
resistance. The first step has to be
banning
giving antibiotics to farm animals (except to individual ones to
treat a sickness).
"A lot of These
Gomers Didn't Know Shit": Former CIA Officer on Torture Report.
The Keystone XL pipeline and Australia's new coal mines, if not
cancelled,
could
render the climate negotiations futile.
E-cigarettes are
of
little interest to anyone other than smokers, in the UK at least.
For CIA, Truth
about Torture Was an Existential Threat.
The article presents proof that CIA lawyer John Rizzo thought
that the CIA's activities were torture.
Shame on the Obama regime for
imprisoning
John Kiriakou for telling the truth about torture, while CIA
officials were lying to everyone.
With the attention focused on CIA torture, don't forget that
the
US military carried out torture too in Guantanamo, Iraq and in
Afghanistan.
Around
100,000
people protested in Dublin against charges for water.
Every kind of business should have to pay for water at market rates,
but each person should get a reasonable amount of water gratis.
The costs of ordinary amounts water and sewage for people should be
paid for by income tax on the rich, not by those people.
Earth's oceans contain roughly
270,000
tons of plastic trash, mostly in tiny pieces that endanger sea
animals.
6
years of CIA attempts to obstruct the investigation of CIA
torture.
Obama
withheld
almost 10,000 CIA documents from the Senate torture inquiry.
Republicans threatened to shut down the US government again, and
won
small acts of sabotage: cancelling out Washington DC's initiative
to legalize marijuana, and a little deregulation for banksters to
cause future financial havoc.
The banksters were
aiming
for more than this. If they don't get all that now, they will try
again soon enough. They have lobbyists and lawyers who will work full
time for years to be able to
create
bubbles and pop them,
swindle
their clients,
and
fraudulently
foreclose millions of people's homes.
Their first victory was
blocking
the US from imposing adequate regulations to prevent another
crisis.
Everyone:
Write
to Saudi Arabia calling for the release of imprisoned journalist
Raif Badawi.
A copyright lawsuit demanding royalties for a small sample of music
has been
defeated,
but the judge's criteria seem to favorable to the plaintiff, leaving
copyright still an impediment to remix.
A minister in the Palestinian government was killed by Israeli troops
while
engaging in a peaceful protest.
He was teargassed, then a member of the extremely violent border thug
unit bashed him with a rifle and kicked him. It's wrong to do that to
someone who is young and healthy, but this man was old and not
well, so the abuse killed him.
Everyone:
call on
Oregon to count every valid vote in the initiative on labeling
GMOs.
Violence against women in India is part of a
pervasive
attitude of sexism.
Brazil also has a new torture report, which demonstrates that
torture
of prisoners was a systematic policy in the 1970s.
The question is whether the torturers will be prosecuted.
Crucial
conclusions from the report on CIA torture.
Senator McCain
continues
to denounce torture.
However, right-wing fanatics continue to
glorify
and praise, torture and call bloodily for more.
They hope to make their cruel and bloody lies prevail over truth by
repeating them. It might work. They have convinced a large fraction
of Americans to continue believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction in 2003, despite the fact that
investigation
found he did not.
US citizens:
support
the move to legally limit use of US ground troops in Iraq and
Syria.
The US Supreme Court ruled workers don't have a right to be paid for
the
time they are required to wait for a security check.
I am no expert on US labor law, but this is a bad policy: it is good
for the rich and hurts the working poor.
In Hebron,
Israeli soldiers
watched as fanatics attacked Palestinian children then destroyed a
Palestinian's car.
This has happened
many
times before.
Israel has started
8
more investigations of possible war crimes by Israeli forces in
attacking Gaza.
It is a step forward, but these investigations tend to be whitewashes.
Palestinians in occupied and besieged territory are governed under
secret
Israeli regulations. In some case the enforcers have lost their
copies.
The head of the ACLU suggests that Obama formally pardon torturers if
he does not prosecute them,
as
a way to affirm that what they did was a crime.
While I see his point, I doubt it would achieve the goal very much.
Any torturer that could potentially be prosecuted, either in the US or
by an international court, should not get a pardon. The ACLU points
out that there is
no
statute of limitation for many of these crimes.
Some of those responsible may be prosecuted in other countries or in
the
ICC.
Everyone:
call on
Proctor and Gamble to remove known carcinogens from its cosmetics
and other products for people to put on their bodies.
US citizens:
call on Holder
to appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute the officials responsible
for US torture.
Everyone:
kick the fossil fuel
industry out of climate negotiations.
Why did the FBI give a computer security advisory secretly to some
businesses and tell them
not
to inform the public?
The CIA made prisoners
stand
for hours on broken feet.
CIA torture was
useless
for finding Osama bin Laden; prisoners who were tortured gave only
false information.
We should keep in mind that finding Osama bin Laden was of no great
importance in fighting al Qa'ida. Killing leaders such as Osama bin
Laden does little damage to an underground group that
can
recruit more leaders.
Choosing to kill him, rather than try to arrest and try him, was
murder.
To
the Criminal Justice System, Black And Muslim People Embody our
Nightmares.
This is what comes from being ruled by the suppository of all cruelty,
Abbott.
CIA
Torture Report: Europe Must Come Clean About Its Own Complicity
(in US torture, kidnaping, and imprisonment without trial).
US citizens: please call your House member right away. (General House
phone number 202-224-3121). Tell them to stop this deal while there's
still time!
"I'm a constituent. My name is...
"I'm calling about an outrageous provision that Wall Street lobbyists
and a few House and Senate leaders are trying to sneak into the budget
agreement. It would let the biggest banks go back to using taxpayer
subsidies and guarantees to gamble on the riskiest derivatives - the
exotic financial instruments that blew up the economy in 2008.
"This would be a huge giveaway to a tiny handful of the biggest Wall
Street banks, and it would put the country's financial and economic
stability at risk. Please do all you can to remove this provision from
the spending bill, and make it clear that you will oppose the bill
unless it is removed."
The US is
relaxing
requirements for home mortgages, inviting another housing bubble
that could pop and make another crisis.
Noteworthy
ways in which Vice President Cheney supported torture.
As
US Occupation Drags on, Afghanistan Suffering at Record High.
This is not uniquely the fault of the US. The Taliban are to blame too.
They kill more Afghan civilians than the US, and often do so
intentionally.
However, the badness of the Taliban is not a good reason to prolong an
unwinnable war.
The Australian government now
plans
to impose internet filters for censorship and to punish people for
forbidden sharing.
Pushover journalists are
inviting
US officials to lie to cover up the torture they are responsible
for.
The UK method to abolish rights is to
define
them as something only criminals and poor foreigners need.
New Zealand, on a weak pretext, has authorized the state to
spy
on anyone for 24 hours without a warrant.
I wonder, can they do this to you day after day?
Right-wing Japanese nationalists are
agitating
to ban a US film that depicts torture of American prisoners of war
by their Japanese guards.
Some Japanese soldiers were convicted of war crimes consisting of
torture including waterboarding. Japan has an obligation to
acknowledge and condemn its torture, just as the US does.
Protests
against the violence of thugs continue in Berkeley, California.
Five
recent oil spills have polluted the Peruvian Amazon and made
indigenous people ill.
Political leaders are meeting in Lima, but most of them are better
characterized as "fossil fuel leaders" than as "environmental
leaders".
Uber has been
banned
in Spain and Thailand.
Portland, Oregon, is
suing
to shut down Uber there.
South
Sudan's civil war, a mixture of personal rivalry and tribal
rivalry, has brought hunger to millions.
The State of Georgia is determined to execute Robert Halsey
notwithstanding
the incompetence of the lawyer who failed to defend him properly.
The death penalty is wrong even after a properly-run trial.
Electrical
brain stimulation helps some people think better, but it harms
other people.
The senate report shows CIA
tortured
Gul Rahman to death, and the agent in charge got a commendation.
Janat Gul, by contrast, begged to be killed but the CIA did not grant
his wish.
Janat Gul fell into the standard horror of those who are tortured
for information they don't know.
A
summary
of CIA torture methods.
Torture is
wrong
even in the unlikely event that it "works".
But it
often
resulted in fabricated information which the CIA took for true.
Those guilty
must be prosecuted, if not by the US then by an international
human rights court.
This includes Dubya, who has already
confessed
his guilt.
The CIA used
forced
enemas on prisoners on hunger strike.
Sudan
a Dangerous Place for Journalists Who Cross State's 'Red Lines'.
The same is true
in
the US,even for
prize-winning
reporters. In the UK, even
journalists'
spouses are in danger.
China and North Korea
used
the Senate CIA torture report to tell the US it shouldn't talk about
their human rights abuses.
In fact, both
China
and
North
Korea oppress the people much more than the US, but given the bad
things the US has done, it lacks the moral authority to criticize them
without being ridiculous.
This is an additional reason why the US must put its torturers on
trial.
The
Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men.
If thugs can't help instantly assuming the worst about blacks, in a
split second, perhaps it is necessary to tell them not to be so quick
to shoot anyone.
In US-Supported
Egypt, 188 Protesters Are Sentenced to Die Days After Mubarak is
Effectively Freed.
The new world-wide plan for failing banks is that
depositors
lose their deposits, because derivatives owed to other banks get
first priority and there won't be enough to pay them.
Depositors are supposed to be protected by deposit insurance,
but there isn't enough money in the insurance fund to cover the
depositors of a big bank.
A part of London
plans
to fine those that leave buildings unoccupied, but only buildings
constructed in the future.
Maybe that's the best a local government can do. If so, criticizing
that local government for not doing better is pointless. The national
government must do something better.
In Sierra Leone, if you report Ebola in your family, you are
likely
to be put in with people that have Ebola, and thus catch it
yourself.
Protests
in Washington against the TPP.
An OECD study concludes that dooH niboR policies (taking from the
non-rich to give to the rich) over recent decades have reduced overall
economic growth.
In other words, the idea of "trickle down" is wrong all the way down
to the root. We already knew that helping the rich get richer at the
expense of the rest does not help the rest. Now we know it hits them
twice:
they
get a smaller share of a smaller pie.
Increased US fossil fuel exports
cancel
out reductions in the US's own use of fossil fuels.
Climate defense activists
protested
the fossil fuel company influence that pervades climate
negotiations in Lima and elsewhere.
The protesters shut down a panel that falsely presented CCS (carbon
capture and sequestration) as ready for widespread use.
Wally Kowalski is a licensed medical marijuana grower in Michigan.
Thugs
raided
his house, taking his plants and equipment, all of which was
legal.
Subsequently they returned and arrested him.
Laws against growing marijuana do great harm to society, and enforcing
them is harmful even if done correctly.
Everyone:
call
on PBS not to put any global heating deniers in positions of
authority.
Sony's web site was
cracked and
effectively taken down.
Most people don't know it, but Sony has done things even worse to its
own customers. Sony sabotaged all PS3 computers: it released
a malicious firmware downgrade which gave each PS3 owner a choice of
two ways to be harmed. The owner could install the downgrade and be
unable to run GNU/Linux on the computer, or not install it and be
locked out of the Sony game network.
Sony also
sent thugs after George Hotz when
he found out how to jailbreak them.
US citizens:
call
on the US Forest Service to block a wolf-killing competition.
US citizens:
Call on
Pepsico to stop fueling deforestation to get palm oil for chips.
Reflections
comparing the first and second world wars.
I reject the idea that there is something wrong with fighting an
invading army. It was right for France and Britain to fight against
Germany's aggression (in Poland) in 1939, and just as it was right for
Iraqis to resist US occupation in the 2000s. This doesn't exempt the
conduct of the war from moral criticism. If the greatest legacy of
the second world war is massive deaths of civilians, the German air
force may have started it, but that doesn't justify the the US and UK
in responding in kind.
As it turned out, the bombing of German cities was not even effective
in stopping German weapons production. They moved the factories
underground, but not the civilian population.
New Spanish pun La Rioja
California's drought is the
worst
in 1200 years.
The drought's cause is mainly natural climate fluctuation,
but
global
heating made its effects worse.
Most of California is in a condition of "exceptional"
drought.
Anti-abortion protesters in Australia are intimidating women to the
point where
they
try to kill themselves.
Failure to confront the evil of US government torture
will
endanger American lives.
Everyone:
call
on Starbucks to stop funding the Grocery Manufacturers
Association's lawsuit to overturn Vermont's GMO labeling law.
Jersey, which has not signed up to all the human rights treaties,
is a
testing
ground for total surveillance.
It is also used as a route for extracting profits so they can't be
taxed.
Putin is
supporting
right-wing parties in Europe.
I think he is doing this to sow chaos rather than for
a specific purpose.
Yes,
People Can Starve in Benefit-Sanctions Britain.
It is
even
worse in the US.
The UK weather bureau says 2003-like deadly heatwaves
will
occur 'every other year' by the 2030s.
They won't kill as many people each time as were killed by the 2003
heatwave, because many of the old people who might be killed by
heatwave N will have been killed a couple of years before by heatwave
N-1.
Workers will
strike
in an Amazon warehouse in Germany.
Too bad US labor law makes organizing so difficult.
The UK government
proposes
to make it essentially impossible to sue to challenge legislation.
The UK government plans to make food banks a standard solution for the
poor who can't afford food. That basically means
giving
up on keeping people properly supplied.
The UK's Green Party MP opposes the Infrastructure Bill
that
would
put lots of money into increasing car traffic and maximize fossil
fuel extraction.
Everyone:
tell
the Walton family to stop opposing home solar power installations
and start donating to promote them.
This is an additional reason not to buy from Walmart, added to its
mistreatment
of employees.
US citizens:
call
on the remaining supporters of ALEC to stop.
US citizens:
call for reforming
prosecution of rapes of military personnel by military personnel.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to make all financial advisers accountable
for how they treat their clients.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to oppose additional sanctions against Iran.
Right-wingers want these knowing they would kill the nuclear
negotiations which are the only chance to stop Iran's progress towards
nuclear weapons. Sanctions can't achieve that goal.
A report by the Council of Europe
rejects
the idea that "secret, massive and indiscriminate" surveillance is
justified.
Is
the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?
Transgender people are
frequently
denied basic rights and face discrimination.
Campaigning
to prove benzene responsible for leukemia.
Uber has been banned in Delhi after a
driver
raped a passenger.
Nuclear weapons on instant launch readiness pose a
risk
of accidental war, while stockpiles are not secure enough and
could tempt thieves.
Perhaps the US, Russia and China could agree to mutual observation of
each others' launch vehicles to verify that they are not being readied
for launch.
Australia's government is accused of sabotaging climate negotiations
by
insisting
on legally binding targets.
This may be true in a narrow tactical sense. However, the US and
China, by rejecting legally binding targets, are doing their part to
make these talks fail to reach their goal. Just when the world needs
the mother of all crash programs, governments that bow down to fossil
fuel companies are blocking it from happening.
Diesel engines need to be eliminated over time because of the
effects
of pollution they cause.
With possible improvements in technology for storing electric energy,
maybe we could replace them with electric vehicles.
There are protests across Haiti
to
remove the US-imposed "president" Martelly. Perhaps the Haitian
senate could impeach him.
It's the US that
keeps
him in power.
Some
US thugs comment on the killing of Eric Garner.
An audio recording of the shots that killed Michael Brown
proves
that thug Wilson's statement of what happened is false.
In addition, the prosecutor
misrepresented
the law to help Wilson escape prosecution.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are starting to cooperate in
fighting
the Taliban.
With all the protests,
US
thugs feel they are being persecuted.
However, to say they are getting a taste of their own medicine would
be an exaggeration. No thugs have been killed in these protests.
They are moaning because people are not fawning on them as they think
they are entitled to.
Ralph
Nader: Ten Reasons Why I Don't Have a Credit Card.
I have one, but I never use it except for flights and occasionally
to donate to a political organization in a hurry.
Obama has
released 6 more
prisoners from Guantanamo, including one who has been left
wheelchair-bound by cruel treatment.
The US government is still pushing to conceal videos of how he was
tortured, claiming that knowledge of this would make people angry.
They should have thought about this before they acted that way.
Republicans
say publication of the CIA torture report could make people in the
Middle East angry enough to commit violence. What a laugh! Lots of
people there are already that angry at the US. They just assume the
worst.
For the US to confess and take its punishment, then punish those
responsible for torture, is the only way it can regain any moral
authority.
136 prisoners remain in Guantanamo. The US owes each of them
either a fair trial for some charges, or release.
Paraguay is considering a dangerous data retention bill, so vague it
could
apply to cybercafes as well as to ISPs.
That the proposed law places no limits on what sorts of offenses could
be investigated by searching everyone's phone records is an additional
nasty detail, but don't think that narrower limits would fix the
wrong.
Antivirus companies should stop
concealing
the US-implemented attack software they detect.
Everyone:
tell Chevron
to pay for its pollution in Ecuador.
Also
call
on the US state department not to give Chevron an award.
Everyone:
tell
Best Buy not to use paper made from ancient forests.
Congress is
considering
repealing the regulations adopted after the financial crisis.
They were
too
weak in the first place.
The only people arrested for the killing of Eric Garner were
two
witnesses.
Leaked
audio recordings prove the corruption and dishonesty of Egypt's
military rulers.
A student was labeled as a drug user for breathing in
crushed
candy in order to blow it out visibly.
A PR guide for thugs about
cleaning
their image after they kill unarmed people.
A cleaning company that cleaned corporate offices is going bankrupt,
leaving the cleaning workers
unpaid
for weeks of work.
This is one of the dangers caused by the increased use of
subcontractors where in the past the company would have hired workers
directly.
Forget
North Korea — the Real Rogue Cyber Operator Lies Much Closer to
Home.
Ecuadorian indigenous leader
José
Isidro Tendetza Antún, who campaigned against mining on his
tribe's land, has been murdered, and apparently tortured first.
The EU agreement allowing individual countries to ban GMOs seems to
have a
legal
loophole that could lead courts to overturn those bans.
A city in Libya has joined PISSI;
fanatics
are killing all their opponents.
Obama is
slowly
increasing the number of US troops that will stay in Afghanistan.
There are two possibilities for Afghanistan: prop up its government or
let it fall. The US can keep propping it up indefinitely at high cost
in money and Afghan lives, but what's the point?
A Cleveland thug
shot
Gregory Love clear out of the blue, then handcuffed him and fined
him. Thugs also punched and kicked a witness before handcuffing
him and taking him away.
The UK government has boosted investment in
oil
extraction in the North Sea, which is
bad
news for all of us in the long term.
7
Ways Saudi Arabia Is Silencing People Online.
Calling
on western countries to restrict export of surveillance technology
to repressive countries.
The New York thug that unintentionally shot Akai Gurley then
contacted
his union representative right after. Only then did he call for
medical assistance for Gurley, who was still alive.
Gurley later died from his wounds. I don't know whether getting aid
sooner might have saved him. The thug couldn't have known it would
not save him.
Grand juries nearly always indict accused non-thugs, but
almost
never indict accused thugs.
Catching thugs' killings (and other brutality) on video isn't going to
deter them if they enjoy impunity even once their guilt is recorded.
Many
New York thugs have killed people for no good reason, but hardly
any were prosecuted.
Another unarmed black man was
shot
dead by a thug who then made accusations against him.
AT&T condemns government regulation, except when it's
a
regulation to forbid cities from setting up public WiFi networks.
The US has published
the
full list of military equipment given to US thugs.
That's a good first step. Next we have to
close
down most of the SWAT teams so that they don't endanger people
when they make a mistake.
The US forced most Latin American countries to deport Germans to the
US, which
put
them in prison unless they agreed to go to Germany as World War II
continued.
Articles about rape accusations
should include
interviewing those accused.
Pregnant women and mothers of babies are now
under
impossible pressure to avoid many activities, most of them based
on little evidence.
This general tendency
continues
as children get older, with pressure not to let them play alone,
walk on the street alone, or just be home alone.
People with cancer felt a similar pressure during the years when many
people believed that a positive attitude was crucial to survival: it
led, in effect, to blaming the sick person for not getting well.
Everyone:
call
on New York City to fire the thug that killed Eric Garner.
On ALEC's agenda: companies' right to do
secret
political spending.
Laws requiring seed companies to test their seeds are
being
used to shut down noncommercial seed exchange libraries.
Thugs in Denver
attacked
a man, then knocked his companion to the ground, then forcibly took a
witness's tablet and deleted the video.
A group of Chicagoans out for the evening were attacked by
thugs in
disguise. Since 2010 they have been fighting to get justice from
a system that tries at every step to protect the thugs.
This includes repeatedly trying to threaten them into dropping their
complaint.
Most thugs would not intentionally beat you up. But if one thug does
so, all the rest will join in protecting that one from justice.
Journalists must not try to be "balanced"
when
freedom of speech and privacy of communications are at stake.
Interesting
political comments from comedian Chris Rock.
Air strikes against PISSI
flattened
a residential building, killing several civilians.
Because of US secrecy, we don't know what happened. Was that house an
intentional target? Was it hit by mistake? Some civilian casualties
are inevitable in war, but reckless disregard for civilian life can't
be justified. The secrecy which prevents us from telling whether the
US is reckless in Iraq, combined with certainty it
has
been reckless elsewhere, makes it plausible the US is reckless in
fighting PISSI in Iraq and Syria as well.
In general, air attacks on anyone other than fighters with arms
will
tend to cause civilian casualties.
US citizens:
tell the
FDA not to approve GMO salmon.
EU citizens:
support network neutrality.
The CIA has
renewed its
pressure to kill the Senate's release of the executive summary of
its torture report.
Some companies get enough information about most people's desktop use
and enough information about most people's smartphone use that they
can usually
figure
out when the two computers belong to the same person.
This is more reason not to let any company get that much information
about what you do with any of your computers.
New
York and Los Angeles give false figures about tying up children in
school.
I
Told a Grand Jury I Saw a Cop Shoot and Kill an Unarmed Man. It
Didn't Indict.
The thugs at the scene tried to discourage him from even making a
statement. That must be part of their habitual routine for pushing
away accountability for their crimes.
Prosecutors control the grand jury's decision. When they want someone
indicted, they almost always get their way. In this case, the
prosecutor wanted to protect the thug, so he cut the witness off,
stopping him from presenting crucial facts.
This is why we can
hold
the prosecutor in Ferguson personally responsible for making sure
Michael Brown's killer was not indicted, in addition to
Governor
Nixon for not appointing a special prosecutor.
The New York Thug department attacked a protest about Eric Garner with
a
military
sonic weapon that causes intense pain.
This was after the protesters responded to more direct violence by
thugs.
Some residents of the tent city in San Jose explain
why
they can't find any other housing in the city, even with offered
rent vouchers to supplement their pay.
What this reveals is a system totally stacked against people who are
homeless, which combines with the shortage of affordable housing so
that someone — whoever is weakest — must be shafted.
The US government appears to have
tracked all the cell
phones of people attending a protest for Eric Garner in Chicago.
Senator Wyden has introduced a bill to
ban
government requirements to put back doors into digital products.
It doesn't go far enough. The bill should ban
all
back doors whether mandated by government policies or not.
The Iraqi government has made a deal with effectively independent Kurdistan
about
oil
revenue and fighting PISSI.
The UK is
considering
a new scheme to privatize NHS hospitals.
Any form of privatization in the NHS is harmful, since it will temp
companies to harm patients and cut staff pay. The right-wing
government doesn't mind this because its long-term goal is to abolish
the NHS and impose a lousy US-style system. It can't do so directly
(too much opposition), so it plans to ruin the NHS and present the
results as "proof" there is no point in having one.
Council of
Europe Recommendation on Net Neutrality — Unclear And
Unhelpful.
UK thugs are using a run of vandalism as an opportunity to
intimidate
and insult anarchists.
However, one senior leader, to his credit,
opposes
asking thugs to decide on the limits of freedom of speech.
Israel
blocked
an Irish political leader from visiting Gaza. He wanted to talk
with leaders of Hamas.
Beware of products and treatments that claim they will
"cleanse"
or "detox" your body. The idea is medically nonsensical.
There are some toxic elements, such as
lead
and
mercury,
that can accumulate in your body over time and cause you harm. But
removing them from your tissues is a specialized job and these
products don't even try.
The International Criminal Court has
dropped
its case against Uhuru Kenyatta, president of Kenya, accusing him
of intimidating witnesses and denying access to pertinent documents.
I don't know the details; in particular, I can't take for granted that
the retracted testimony was true. But I also can't take for granted
that it was really a lie.
What we can tell is that the ICC by itself has trouble acting against
the politically powerful unless other stronger governments exert
pressure too strong to resist.
Who
is legally responsible if you set a robot running and it commits a
crime?
I would not assume a priori that the same answer fits all kinds of
crimes.
Cutting
CO2 emission is the way to cut emissions of medium-term
greenhouse gases also.
The UK's ban on sending books to prisoners has been
cancelled
by a court.
New York City has curbed "stop and frisk", but the crime rate is
getting
lower anyway.
How about ending the practice of harping on minor offenses
that led to the death of Eric Garner?
Heating of the Southern Ocean seems
likely
to start melting Antarctic ice sheets and raising sea level.
San Jose, California, has a shantytown where 300 poor people live.
The city now
plans
to evict them, which will make them homeless.
Renting space has become so expensive that even people with jobs
are homeless.
Two thugs in Texas that
banged
a prisoner's head into a table then dragged her across the floor by
her feet escaped criminal charges.
However, the root of this scandal is that she was jailed for an unpaid
parking ticket. In today's US, the system that
fines
the poor is a pipeline to jail (and opportunities to be beaten up,
maimed or killed).
The UK government is talking
about plans
to tax income that Google and Topshop transfer out of the UK, but
apparently only to very small extent.
A lawsuit by sick workers has obtained and revealed documents showing
how chemical companies
have worked
to undermine the scientific results showing that benzene is toxic and
carcinogenic.
Scotland's devolved government
is talking
about land reform, taxing rich people's hunting estates, and so
on. Even to identify and disclose landowners is a radical step in
the UK.
The cost of adapting to global
heating will
be far more expensive than previously believed. It could cost up
to 500 billion dollars a year by 2050 even if we hold heating to 2C.
Some fracking chemicals
cause a
risk of sterility and birth defects for humans and animals too.
The UK budget
proposal increases
subsidy for oil and doesn't even mention renewable energy.
Obama
should suspend
the donation and sale of military weapons to thug departments
until strict limits are in place.
The NSA spies on emails of employees of phone companies in "allied"
countries to find
how to attack their phone systems.
It even goes as far as introducing security weaknesses into phone
systems, undermining security against an crackers whatsoever.
A prominent Pakistani
Muslim faces
charges of blasphemy.
Maybe the country will self-destruct in a web of crossed blasphemy
accusations.
Kerry proposes
to continue war against PISSI for years, but there is no reason to
think such a war could ever be won.
I think this is part of a plan
to slowly
send a large number of US troops to fight PISSI on the ground.
Attrition, and death of some leaders, can't defeat PISSI. Land
battles can push PISSI back, but doing this with US troops would not
work because their occupation
would inspire
the same resentment as before.
It is impossible to defeat PISSI except by giving Iraqi and Syrian
Sunnis a way to be safe from Shi'ite repression. If they get this,
they may
well throw
PISSI out. However, the current repressive behavior
of Iraqi
Shi'ite militias surely convince them to they must keep supporting
PISSI
Thousands of fast food workers and airline workers and medical care
workers went
on
strike across the US to demand a living wage.
Obama promised plutocrats he would
impose
the TPP over the opposition of most Democrats and most Americans.
I've always considered him a Republican in disguise.
Many cruise ships
dump
poorly treated sewage into the ocean, and now they refuse to
answer questions about this practice.
Unless you're shallow in your approach to life, I suggest you avoid
taking a cruise as a vacation. I went on one once, invited to give a
talk, and found it to be more "Here's the next thing you're supposed
to enjoy" than truly enjoyable.
Most people that view images depicting sexual abuse of children
will
never do anything to real children. However, they are all likely
to be imprisoned.
The UK Tories now propose
drastic
further spending cuts. This could make the center-right Labour
appear comparatively better, but that only means it won't attack the
poor quite as much.
The effects are likely to be
disastrous.
And that's aside from the recession it can cause. The worst harm will
fall on the poorest.
Australia has given one minister arbitrary total power over boat
people. He can order that they be
secretly
deported to be tortured, or abandoned at sea. I wonder if he has
the power to order they be secretly shot.
Refugees sent by Australia to Nauru are nearly prisoners even if they
are granted some sort of
"refugee
status".
The St Louis thug department is being criticized for
publicly
warning about toy guns that look real.
The advice was not a threat, and it was wise. People should not give
children toy guns that look real, unless the children are mature
enough and trained enough to handle a real gun properly — to do
so invites many kinds of trouble, starting with scaring people, even
if thugs do not get involved.
This is independent of the many cases where thugs have wrongfully
killed adults and children.
A US court rejected an attempt to give chimpanzees the rights of
persons, on the grounds that they are
not
capable of assuming the legal responsibilities of persons.
A fully grown chimp is quite dangerous to people (and often to other
chimps), precisely because it can't fulfill these responsibilities. A
human being with the mind of a chimp would be committed to an
institution as mentally incompetent and dangerous.
The US has obtained
immunity
from prosecution for its troops in Iraq, which looks like
preparation for sending a lot of troops.
The Church of England, which owns stock in Shell and BP, will file
shareholder motions to
push
them to curb global heating.
The Cleveland thug department has been rebuked for
hundreds
of cases of brutal treatment of citizens.
We
Can't Be Complacent about Pregnant Women's Rights.
The pygmy chameleon
might
be extinct already — but if not, it will have a hard time
surviving now that humans have cut down nearly all the forest it used
to live in.
ALEC has more legislators as members, but perhaps
less
money to buy their support with, since most of the companies that
used to support it have stopped.
Protesters in Canada have
thwarted
a pipeline project to take tar sands to the Pacific Ocean.
Investment in fossil fuels is
increasingly
risky: extraction will be stopped, either by a
climate-preservation deal or by a collapse of global trade, and the
rest will lose its value.
Stop
Police Officers from Killing Our Children.
Everyone:
oppose
Ohio's proposed bill to keep execution methods and consequences
secret.
Heathrow Airport set up an
astroturf
"community group" to pressure for building another runway there.
It's a mistake to increase airport capacity in the London area,
or just about anywhere. The world needs to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions.
US citizens:
tell Congressional
Democrats not to join Republicans in a tax cut for business.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to get ready to veto Republican bills that attack the
non-rich.
Student protests have resumed in the UK, and
so
has repression by thugs.
The insecurity of a zero-hour contract
convinced
a teacher to work in a supermarket instead.
Government policies are the reason for widespread insecurity.
Insecure work where workers can't be assured of enough hours to
support themselves should be banned.
Low-tech indigenous peoples, not at all responsible for global
heating, are being
slammed
by its effects.
Kiribati is not yet underwater, but
drought
may render it uninhabitable first. It is too late to prevent
this; denialists have delayed action too long.
It may be too late for Miami, too.
An indigenous group in Australia has appealed to the UN about
government plans to allow
fracking
in their lands without consulting them.
Ecuador's thugs
repeatedly
harassed climate activists trying to go to the Lima conference,
with false accusations.
Two Australian activists decided to make their marriage a
joint
commitment to love the world by campaigning for humanity's good.
They were recently arrested trying to interfere with coal mining
promoted by Abbott, suppository of all pollution.
The massacre of radical Mexican students by the narco state has led to
a
broad
demand for the resignation of the right-wing president.
Brandon McKean was
stopped
on the street by a thug for walking with his hands in his pockets.
Perhaps it wasn't solely because he had his hands in his pockets.
Perhaps he was mistaken for someone else who was under suspicion
because the two had the same skin color.
It looks like 2014 will set a
world
heat record.
Many small volcanic eruptions have
temporarily
suppressed part of the heating that our greenhouse gases would
have caused.
The US treats pregnant women and mothers
very
badly.
I don't agree that "motherhood is the most important job in the world".
Humans need to
have fewer children. But when a child is born, we should give it
what's needed for it to have a good and healthy life.
The
executive summary
of the Senate CIA torture report has been released. It has many
gaps and flaws.
Australia
is trying
to sabotage global climate negotiations in order to boost coal to
the max.
Campaigning for the
right
of heterosexual couples to choose a civil partnership instead of
marriage.
In France, any two people can form a civil partnership.
It does not suppose that they are lovers.
When Big Brother makes Facebook and other companies run algorithms to
spot "terrorists", they
will
trigger for thousands of other people by mistake.
Canada is having a
green-energy
boom despite the government's efforts to promote fossil fuels, but
investment depends on foreign banks.
A New Net-Neutrality
Battle Brews Over…Text Messages.
The publisher of Nature is trying a
cynical
form of "open access", dependent on DRM implemented in nonfree
software.
This illustrates the weakness of the term "open access". It leads
people to think that schemes like this are acceptable. We need to
campaign for
free scientific
publication instead.
Many governments are using the DMCA to
censor
critical publications made through US internet companies.
Today's copyright descends from an English censorship law adopted in
1565.
The UK government's latest tax cut for house owners is
likely
to increase house prices, making things worse for the non-rich.
Cuba's
Extraordinary Global Medical Record Shames the US Blockade.
The great Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, apparently
killed
by the regime, admired the achievements of the Cuban revolution in
areas such as medicine, education and agriculture, and
wanted
to preserve them.
The impunity of thugs continues as the thug that choked Eric Garner to death
escapes
charges.
Cameras Aren't a
Miracle Cure for Police Brutality.
The ACLU
calls
for a reform of the New York Thug Department to prevent more such
killings.
The Justice Department is
investigating
whether to charge the thug with violating Garner's civil rights.
Hacking as a protest against prudish censorship: artist Rokude Nashiko
has been
arrested
for distributing plans for a kayak based on the shape of her vagina.
Megacorporations pay
most
of the world's bribes, and often the people who pay them are
executives or high-level managers.
The current low price for oil is the
greatest
market failure in history.
It is due to failure to make greenhouse gas emitters pay for the harm
they do.
In the US, being accused of a crime and jailed can leave you
in
debt for thousands of dollars. Poor people who can't pay those
debts can be jailed again for that (i.e., it is debtor's prison) and
thus given even more debt they will never pay.
Since states expect that less than 1/10 of this debt will actually be
repaid, it's not a serious attempt to collect money, but rather a way
to repress the poor. We should cancel all these debts and abolish
fees for all aspects of being accused of a crime or imprisoned.
Support
the Environment or the U.S. Military?
Bernie Sanders presents his
economic
program.
While he doesn't advocate all the points I think are necessary, I
would be glad to vote for him because of this much.
On Monday there were
protests
on behalf of Michael Brown (and by extension others killed by
thugs).
The UK plan to censor speeches in universities means the
end
of intellectual freedom, in a sad contrast with the tradition of
liberty.
Evictions in the UK are
hitting
a record pace. Traps placed in welfare benefits by the Tories are
almost certain to cause an eviction when they go off.
The main problem is that the wealthy are using a larger fraction of
the UK's total housing space than before. This can be reversed at
least partially by raising taxes on large houses and apartments, which
will move the middle class and somewhat wealthy towards somewhat
smaller spaces, making more buildings available for poor people to
live in.
Baby coral animals
may
be able to adapt to higher acidity.
Everyone:
support US fast food
workers on strike for $15 an hour.
Japanese corporation Sumitomo tried to get a license to mine in the
Solomon Islands by
telling
the Japanese ambassador to threaten to cut aid for a hospital.
The ambassador didn't dare say no, but fortunately he avoided carrying
out the order.
Common "complementary medicines" claimed to assist cancer chemotherapy
are likely to
undermine
its effectiveness.
Eating
Less Meat Essential to Curb Climate Change, Says Report.
Most people don't realize how big a footprint meat production has.
Especially beef.
Fixing this problem does not require "telling people what to eat";
making greenhouse-emitting activities pay for the damage they do
would be enough.
Soap,
Sunscreen And Steroids Found in Antarctic Waters And Wildlife.
Some of these chemicals can be harmful to wildlife in minute
quantities because they mimic hormones.
Important EU countries are
pushing
to end Luxembourg's tax-dodging scheme.
When thugs disbelieve a woman who makes an accusation of rape, they
often threaten her until she falsely confesses to lying. Then she
gets prosecuted and
may
be caught in prison until the rapist is caught raping someone
else.
Antisemitism
Is Racism. We Need to Acknowledge That.
The rifle manufacturer Kalashnikov, whose weapons are used in wars
around the world, now
advertises
itself as "promoting peace and calm".
Reminds me of how the US renamed the War Department as the "Defense
Department".
A journalist in Bangladesh has been
fined
for questioning the government's claims about the number of political
murders in Bangladesh's war of independence.
Ironically, he was
instrumental
in calling attention to these murders.
Such vile censorship is not unique to Bangladesh. France has two laws
each explicitly prohibiting disagreement with the official views on a
particular question. One was
adopted
just a few years ago.
All this while encouraging people to keep burning fossil fuel.
Obama isn't proposing to stop militarizing US police,
only
to monitor the process more.
The US is
dragging
its feet in Lima climate talks, acting as if we could take our
time curbing global heading slowly.
The US spent a lot of money for war but
won't
help Syrian refugees.
I think the US should offer funds for permanent resettlement of these
refugees, not just to keep them alive in refugee camps, because that
way the problem will be solved.
Australian immigration seems to have pressured Monica Jones to agree
to be filmed for a TV program,
on
pain of receiving harsh treatment.
Clinton's criticism of fracking
presumes
that there are some places where the risks are acceptable.
Clearly she is considering only the local risk of polluting water
and not the guaranteed harms of (1)
using
scarce water and (2)
contributing
to global heating.
The Labour Party would have used a little less austerity than the Tories
applied, but both would have
spread
poverty.
Obama
plans
to somewhat limit the militarization of US thugs.
Why is this program "popular in Congress"? Probably because of the
money of the companies that make the equipment, which have arranged to
divide the work around nearly all congressional districts.
We must reject the idea that an elected official's proper job includes
pulling jobs to their districts from other parts of the US, or getting
the government to do misguided spending in their districts.
Where
to draw the line between online death threats and jokes or
self-expression?
A just criterion can't rest on the subjective understanding of either
party. It has to be based on what is reasonable in the situation.
In addition we must stop publicly posting our private musings.
Web sites such as Facebook that encourage that practice are harmful.
The Iraqi army, trained by the US, had
50,000
"ghost soldiers" on its payroll who were not really acting as
soldiers.
This alone does not explain PISSI's triumph. The 10,000 real soldiers
in Mosul greatly outnumbered PISSI, and could easily have held the
city — if they were inclined to fight.
The Spanish right-wing government
cut
off funds for finding and identifying the graves of people massacred
by its predecessor, the dictator Franco, during the Spanish civil
war.
Franco was a general, and tried to stage a military coup, but ran into
resistance from the people so that it took him three years to conquer
all of Spain.
Friends in Spain told me a few years ago that Franco's supporters
still occupied positions of power. It is no surprise, therefore, that
right-wing politicians want to Franco's crimes to be forgotten.
A Bahraini human rights campaigner was
sentenced
to prison for attacking two thugs. That's what the thugs
generally say; more likely they attacked her.
The effect is to keep her in permanent exile.
London residents facing eviction by a new tax-evading landlord
protested
at the company's office.
US citizens: call
on Congress to renew incentives for renewable energy and energy
efficiency.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter and senators not to wipe out nuclear
diplomacy with Iran.
Studying Syrian censorship through
leaked
logs.
Thousands of Hong Kong democracy protesters occupied a street,
and were attacked by thugs with
dogs
and pepper spray.
It seems to be a
very
strong form of pepper spray.
Putin is exerting
control
over publishing in Russia, not just "news".
In general I object to using the word "content" to describe
publications,
because
it disparages them. However, it may be a fitting word for the
publications of Putin's flunkies.
Millions with HIV die because they
can't
afford the drugs to keep them alive.
The World Trade Organization and its TRIPES (*) agreement is partly
responsible for the high price of these patented drugs. The leaders
of that organization, as well as the politicians that signed it and
ratified it, should be tried for mass murder by the International
Criminal Court.
* Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science.
How
to Police the Police: What Rules Should Govern Police Use of Body
Cameras?
When a US company has data in a server in Europe, which country has
jurisdiction
to seize the data?
1000 protesters tried to enter Tahrir Square and were
attacked
by thugs.
The Suez Canal has
allowed
toxic tropical jellyfish to invade the Mediterranean, where they
endanger people and fish. And other dangerous invaders too.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture
rebuked
the US for failing to punish torturers, as well as use of solitary
confinement and violence by thugs, and imprisonment of large numbers
of people facing possible deportation.
The small health risks of some birth control methods are smaller than
the
health
risks they prevent, and trivial compared with the health risks of
pregnancy.
Many US women are
in
prison for being unable to stop their husbands from beating their
children to death.
The legal system fails to consider that the women were terrorized by
those men.
The grand jury gives prosecutors a secret opportunity to indict anyone
— or, as in the case of Michael Brown's killing, to avoid
indicting someone.
This
article proposes a replacement system.
The UK is giving out "counter-terrorism" leaflets whose only use
is to
make
people scared and ready to give up freedoms for security against a
tiny danger.
(You know already what these campaigns are for, but the article is so
funny it would be a shame not to show it to you.)
The way for the UK (and the US) to minimize the danger of terrorism by
Islamists is to wind down the many interventions in mainly Muslim
countries.
In 1944, just after freeing Greece from the Nazis,
the
UK joined with Greek collaborators to massacre unarmed leftist
demonstrators in order to impose a right-wing government of the
former flunkies of the Nazis.
This led to the Greek civil war an dictatorship, and to today's Greek
neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
It is quite likely you are already responding to fear of
what
internet surveillance can do to you.
Scientists protecting endangered species on the Galapagos Islands have
run
out
of money because competing local people made them close their gift
shop.
Human inhabitation of the Galapagos Islands endangers the unique
species there, and so does tourism.
Chicago's
schools lost
100 million dollars after banksters led them into a tricky financial
scheme
The crucial point is that banksters had shortly before procured a
state law to permit this sort of scheme. That's the way they work.
All the "financial deregulation" laws of the past 20 years should
simply be repealed.
In the
UK, homelessness
and destitution are becoming normal: people are starting to accept
it as a permanent state of affairs which need not be corrected.
The same happened in the US in the 1980s; it is part of Reagan's
legacy.
Right-wing Japanese officials
are pushing
denialism of forcing women from occupied peoples into
prostitution, using one piece of questionable evidence as a false
excuse to deny all the evidence.
Germany's biggest electric company
will split
off fossil fuel generators to concentrate on renewable energy.
US thugs that get fired for misconduct
typically have
no difficulty getting jobs as thugs in other places in the US.
The person who did the autopsy on Michael
Brown seems
to be hardly qualified for it, and not very honest.
Why, I wonder, did the state entrust such a sensitive job to someone
like that?
Tibetan singer Kalsang Yarphel has
been imprisoned
for encouraging Tibetans to learn and speak Tibetan.
Evidently China aims to erase Tibetan culture.
Having a baby is substantially dangerous; occasionally the only way a
woman can save
herself is
with a late-term abortion.
Washington DC thugs have planned years in advance how to spend the
money they expect to
take from
people not convicted of crimes.
An example of research that should not be
done:
tracking people automatically from one camera to another.
Note the idiotic non-response given in the article to concerns that
this is dangerous. They suggest that if the video is encrypted in
transmission to Big Brother it will protect you from being tracked by
someone else. As if anyone were as dangerous as Big Brother!
I've proposed making
it illegal
to have remotely accessible cameras pointed at public places.
US citizens:
call
on the US to stand for strong measures to curb global heating in
the Lima negotiations.
In my message, I used the term "global heating" to underline how
serious the danger is, rather than the denialists' term
"climate
change".
Michael Brown's killer
quit
the Ferguson thug department.
The buying fever on Black Friday is a
disgrace
to society, as well as a distraction from more important
things.
The people who do it don't understand how pathetic their obsession
with appliances is.
According to reports smuggled out of Raqqa, PISSI lords it over
the inhabitants like an occupying army, and
doesn't
bother defending them from Assad's bombers when they attack civilian
areas.
If this is accurate (it could be an exaggeration), it would be easy to
get people's help in pushing PISSI out, if only there were a decent
alternative on offer. But
there
isn't.
I wonder why Assad continues making them hate him.
Note: PISSI is the
Pseudo-Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq.
Murder and corruption charges against Mubarak and some of his henchmen
were dismissed
in
an arbitrary way.
With the supporters of democracy and human rights under total
repression, I guess al-Sisi doesn't need to pretend to hold the
previous military ruler accountable for anything.
Italy
is trying
to weaken EU standards for network neutrality.
Brazil's
Javari Valley Threatened by Peruvian Oil, Warn Tribes.
The Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala, gave an impression of being
vaguely leftist, but this does not seem to be very much the case.
The
harm
done by fracking could be comparable to that of thalidomide,
tobacco or asbestos.
The Germany spy agency came up with a
tricky
legal excuse to spy on the communications of some Germans.
Your Face
Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in
Public Places.
This article is as valid as when it was written a decade ago.
However, I must disagree with one point in the article: fear of
terrorists is not justifiable for Americans in general. The danger of
terrorism in the US is so tiny that it is foolish to worry about it,
unless you're one of the small fraction who has a job to do to prevent
it.
The Massachusetts "fusion center", created to try to find
"terrorists", was
used to monitor Black
Lives Matter protesters in Boston last week.
David Brock used to get Republicans elected; now he
proposes
to work for Ms Clinton, who is almost a Republican.
An example shows how mainstream media propaganda for Wall Street works:
by
grossly
misrepresenting what progressives said.
And it handles the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline by
presenting
a "debate" between two associates of the oil industry.
Haitian thugs
shot
and wounded protesters who want the US-supported sweatshop next to
their town to provide them with electricity.
Chinese activists are being tried for
fictitious
acts of "disorder".
The UK legal system leaves many women
vulnerable
to their ex-abusers who are released from prison, unless they have
extra money to spend.
Of course, women in that position tend to be short of money.
The US needs to seriously address the question of
racism
and its effects.
Practical racism interacts with the growing inequality of wealth.
With ever more Americans poor, groups that are targets of prejudice
will tend to get poor first.
The UN human rights report reproved the US for
imposing
sleep deprivation on prisoners.
Pope Francis, visiting Turkey, calls for responding to religious
fundamentalism
by helping
the poor and marginalized.
It seems that he and I agree on political issues, except for those
related to sex and reproduction.
A Chinese
official threatened
Tibetan students with punishment later if they study the Tibetan
language.
Some of China's methods
of spreading
propaganda about Tibet.
Israel
deploys balloon-suspended
cameras over Jerusalem which can track all protesters, and
everyone else too.
A man in the US
was arrested
after pointing a banana at a thug as if it were a weapon.
It is foolish to pretend to threaten armed people with a gun, even if
it without anything that looks much like a gun. If he had succeeded
in fooling them, they couldn't be blamed for shooting him in perceived
self-defense.
However, once they knew it was a banana, they also knew it was never
seriously meant as a threat. Thus, it was wrong for them to arrest
and charge the man with threatening anyone. Mere folly should not be
treated as a crime.
A study estimates
that over
10,000 people in the UK are in slave labor.
In general, the estimates for numbers of slave laborers in various
countries
include
a lot of guesswork.
Exit
International teaches
how to commit suicide painlessly. People flock to learn this in
case they will need it later.
I think everyone should have the right to commit suicide, though it
makes sense to impose a waiting period and to treat people for
depression if that's the root of their wish to die.
Death is unfair; that people must die is a fundamental injustice in
the universe (though there is no one to blame for it). But when life
is so horrible that even death is better, forcing the person to go on
living is a kind of torture.
Ohio has been embarrassed by a series of botched executions, so now
Republicans plan
to block
even courts from investigating how they are carried out.
A thug
in Ferguson shot at a woman in a car, causing her to lose an eye.
US citizens: stand with Elizabeth Warren
in rejecting
bankster Antonio Weiss as an official of the US Treasury.
Peaceful
protests closed
shopping malls around Ferguson on Fools' Friday, and other
activities around the US.
Some
e-cigarettes contain
a lot of formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic.
I suggest that they should be sold like tobacco itself: to adults but
not to minors.
US citizens: call
on the EPA to push harder and faster to reduce CO2
emissions from power plants.
Women
on Climate Change Frontline Make Big Impact on Small Grants.
Weather
has devastated olive production in many countries.
Specific occurrences of these kinds of bad weather are random, but our
global heating activities are making them more frequent.
Most poultry in the UK is contaminated with
potentially
fatal bacteria, and the UK government is failing to tackle the
problem.
Instead it is considering an industry proposal to cut inspections.
An Indian version of Hamlet faces
censorship
threats.
Thugs beat up Hong Kong protest leaders
after
arresting them.
The European Union is trying to impose
the
right to have articles dropped from searches for your name on Google
world-wide.
I don't think this particular requirement is a big deal, but it is
dangerous for any country to have the power to limit search engines
world wide.
Dostoevski predicted the totalitarianism that can occur
when people
abandon individual morality by going to any lengths to fight for some
cause.
It is a mistake, however, to equate morality with religion.
The problem he presents is not in having ideals, not as such, but in
approaching them with the assumption that they justify any means
whatsoever.
Pakistan's Geo News to Appeal against
Owner's 26-Year
Jail Term for Blasphemy.
Two people in the Indian film industry were sentenced
to 26
years for "blasphemy" consisting of having a religious song playing
during a wedding scene.
Pakistan should beg the world forgiveness for censoring criticism of
religion, but in the second case it wasn't even criticism.
India
is not
very good in this department either.
One railroad line in the UK was run by the state, and was run so well
that
it became
an embarrassment to right-wing politicians who insist on
privatization.
Privatization of the railroads in the UK has been a rip-off. They
should all be renationalized.
Indonesia's
president proposes
plans to protect forests and peatlands.
The Five
Leaders Who Failed Ferguson.
A former UK tory
leader lost
his libel suit: the judge believed the thug who said the
politician called him a "pleb".
The judge said that the thug didn't have enough imagination to have
made this up,
but lying
in court, for a thug, is not the stretch it would be for you or
me
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
I can't find either of them credible enough to believe.
Nuclear weapons can be detonated by accidents and rebellions, making them so dangerous we need to eliminate them all.
Refusing to ransoming hostages from PISSI, so that they got beheaded for propaganda instead, may have done the US and UK more harm than ransoming would have done.
US public schools are so poorly supported that they charge students for lunch, and when students' parents have not paid, they go hungry. Some students receive lunch gratis, but they are treated as objects of scorn.
When I was a child, the public school gave all students lunch.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that rejecting the idea that the poor deserve to be looked down on is one important lesson for schools to teach.
Indian rich fritter away millions on frivolities, displaying contempt for the rest of society.
A judge rejected DNA testing that might support Rodney Reed's claim he is innocent of murder. The judge would rather kill a man than recognize doubt in a past verdict.
The death penalty is inherently wrong, because it can't be undone when evidence shows the convicted person was innocent. And other reasons too.
US citizens: call on Holder to give justice for Michael Brown and to defend the right to protest.
US citizens: call for stricter carbon emission standards for existing power plants.
US citizens: Call on Obama to give justice for Michael Brown.
The Oregon referendum on labeling GMOs came out so close that it requires a recount.
Canadian scientist Alfredo Frid explained why he joined in civil disobedience against an oil pipeline.
Frid is mistaken when he accuses the Canadian of "inaction" on "climate change". The Canadian government is a strong supporter of global heating and takes many kinds of actions to speed it up, including gagging scientists and shutting down research projects that can monitor heating.
The thugs clamped down hard on protesters in Ferguson.
One thug begged people not to burn down their city. Considered by normal standards it is foolish for people to burn down their own city, but then, if they had normal lives and considered normal standards applicable, they wouldn't want to do so.
The killings of blacks around the US is the extreme manifestation of a racist system that needs systemic change.
Of course, the system in the US oppresses whites plenty as well; just not as much on the average.
Obama is planning to send some more US troops to Afghanistan.
The US can never actually lose the war in Afghanistan, but it can't win either, and continuing the fight means continuing the suffering of Afghans and the expense and militarization of the US.
The resumption of night raids will increase the suffering.
I don't think war is justified under these circumstances.
A Venezuelan opposition politician faces charges of
organizing
to kill President Maduro.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
This is not an absurd accusation, given that the opposition launched a coup attempt against Chavez a decade ago, organized by the US.
However, it could also be stretching the facts.
A UN committee's resolution against massive surveillance left out the crucial issue of recording who talks with whom.
Records of who talks with whom are absolutely crucial. Whistleblower Donald Sachtleben is in prison because the US government exhaustively studied the phone records of dozens of journalists from the Associated Press.
The UK asked Vodaphone for the phone records of one journalist, so Vodaphone handed over the phone records of everyone at the same newspaper.
We Should Cash-Bomb the People — Not the Banks.
On the other hand, if officials' goal is to help billionaires, not the rest, handouts to banks make perfect sense.
Mexico's Missing Students Draw Attention to 20,000 'Vanished' Others.
Deforestation in Brazil has become substantially less this year.
It is not clear why.
In Egypt 78 teenagers were sentenced to prison for protesting for Morsi.
The EU has taken a
feeble
first step towards controlling CO2 emissions from
ships, but it won't even start until 2018.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Charging a fee for emissions would cover this naturally; shipping any load by air or sea should be charged for the emissions involved.
Three (or more) factions are now fighting over Libya.
I am not sure whether there is a basis to prefer any one of them to the rest.
Islamist fanatics
killed
two polio vaccinators in Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
This is an extreme example of the harm religion does to society.
UK thugs are distributing fear propaganda which will aid their campaign for further surveillance and censorship.
Human overpopulation is leading to increasing human incursion into a national park in Mumbai.
The UK government wants to follow the US in weakening the inspection rules for farm animals.
This would save money for companies in ordinary operation and make some rare big dangers more likely.
US citizens: call on Obama to require increases in fuel efficiency for trucks.
US citizens: call for federal guidelines to prevent racial profiling by state and local thugs.
Although most countries have signed the treaty to ban cluster bombs, Russia, China and the US have not, and many banks and funds have invested in their production.
A gene modification treatment for an obscure disease costs
over
a million dollars per patient. What will happen to the poor?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The ham-fisted UK spy-on-all agencies are blaming Facebook as an excuse to get themselves off the hook for incompetence in detecting jihadists planning an attack; but the real problem is the unjust interventions that make people so angry they will kill.
It seems incorrect to call that attack "terrorism", because it was aimed at a soldier, not at civilians.
In the Greek "economic recovery", the state drains people and schools to support banks that hardly lend money.
I'd say it's an extractivist government of occupation.
Warm weather in autumn leads some frogs to breed now rather than in spring. But it is a risky bet.
Turkey has
banned
reporting about the investigation of corruption accusations
against members of the government.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Erdogan dismissed the prosecutors that brought the accusations long ago.
Suggestions for fixing the racist system that leads to killing so many black people in the US.
It appears Mexican thugs arrested protesters more or less at random and charged them with attempted murder.
This is in addition to attacking other protesters.
The conduct of the thugs so far has already demonstrated that protesters have plenty to worry about (including being murdered like the 43 students that all this started with).
US Republicans
enabled
the current Canadian government to gain power.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Ferguson, goddamn: No indictment for Darren Wilson is no surprise. This is why we protest.
The law may have spoken but the Ferguson verdict is not justice.
The Australian whistleblower who leaked a report about an apparently corrupt scholarship given to Prime Minister Abbott's daughter will not face charges, but still seems to face more criticism than the parties apparently involved in the corrupt proceedings (the school and the prime minister).
How did Mari Sherkin end up on a dating site unwillingly? Through a new scam by Facebook: it pops up windows showing other companies' sites, which then trick Facebook useds into "agreeing" to let those companies get their personal data from Facebook.
The extremely sophisticated cracking software referred to as "Regin", used to attack computers in many countries including Belgium, seems related to Stuxnet which ties it to the US and UK.
Arguing against term limits on elected officials.
I have always opposed term limits for legislators.
Global heating will endanger honeybees by helping a parasite.
Hong Kong thugs arrested two of the main protest leaders.
The new owners of low-income housing in London, who plan to evict the poor to raise the rents, will evade taxes on the increased income.
I hope the victims organize physical resistance to the evictions, and to further use of the building by the anonymous new owners.
1/6 of all killings in Utah are committed by thugs.
Russia is moving to annex Abkhazia, a breakaway part of Georgia.
It is not exactly comparable to the case of Crimea: the Abkhazians rebelled on their own rather than experiencing a Russian invasion. Still, to be ruled by Russia is to suffer tyranny.
Welfare cuts in the UK are leaving disabled children hungry and sick, and their parents are in even worse state.
But it's even worse in the US, where over 2 million children were homeless during 2013.
Texas approved textbooks which list Moses as one of the founding fathers of the USA. And other wacky stuff.
Thugs shot a 12-year-old boy dead when he tried to pull a pellet gun on them.
The orange "this is a toy" indicator had been removed, so it looked real. Thus, I can't criticize the thugs for this one. I would not take their word for what happened, but if the boy's family saw the video and doesn't disagree, I suppose their story is true this time.
Hagel's resignation should provide an opportunity to debate Obama's wars.
The US mainstream media will, however, express no doubts.
Human emissions have already locked in 1.5C of global heating, and the consequences will be disastrous. The question is how soon we stop making it worse.
The Senate torture investigators did not try to talk with prisoners in Guantanamo about how they were tortured.
The US government has a secret search engine to search through the billions of records of Americans' and other people's communications.
The agencies that use this data pretend that they didn't use it and it doesn't exist. They are legally required to minimize their retention of data about Americans, but they ignore that.
Monsanto asks people to calm down and have a civil conversation about GMOS, even as it sues to overturn the laws passed by Vermont and Maui.
Deforestation, "Development" Connected to Spread of Ebola in West Africa.
In a Country Without Formal Unions, 8,000 Chinese Teachers Strike for Higher Pay.
The [US] Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist.
Phony "scholarly journals" will accept any junk whatsoever for publication.
I occasionally receive an invitation to register for a conference in some foreign country. Often the stated topic is human trafficking. I wonder whether these events really occur, people use them to take a vacation and claim it's for a conference, or whether they only commit credit card fraud.
Putin is carrying out stiff repression of Crimean Tatars, including murder of activists.
The Tatars reject Russian rule of the Crimea but have not engaged in violence.
What global heating denial will look like in 100 years, assuming civilization still exists.
Rasmea Odeh's lawyer calls for reconsideration of the verdict that convicted her of concealing how she had been framed and tortured in Israel in 1967.
US citizens:
call
for protecting wilderness areas in Colorado from fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's "climate change" envoy recognizes that lots of fossil fuels have to be left in the ground.
Now if Obama would only start doing so.
Obama appears to have dismissed "Defense" secretary Hagel because Hagel wasn't suited for Obama's war plans.
Societies with little religion can be quite good to live in.
This does not prove that Atheism, by itself, will make a society good to live in. (It did not make the Soviet Union very good.) But this does show that religion isn't necessary for a society to be good to live in.
Please don't buy the book from Amazon.
How religions cause psychological harm to some (many?) believers.
Great apes imitate fellow apes when there's an advantage in it, but humans imitate other humans even for no reason.
Human see, human do.
US targeted 24 specific men in Pakistan with multiple drone bombings each. The bombings killed only 6 of them, but killed 868 other people including about 140 children.
Some fraction of the other people killed may have been Taliban soldiers, but clearly a large fraction were bystanders and relatives.
The Atlantic mackerel catch limit has been reduced 25%. Since the fish stock is at quite a low level, I think it is nuts to allow people to catch any of them. To try to fine-tune catch levels presumes more knowledge than we really have. We should do everything possible to give the fish a chance to bounce back; if they do, then we can start catching them again, with luck much more of them than now.
The multiple traumas inflicted on Americans are causing a massive breakdown.
Saudi Arabia has defined criticism of the state, and any defense of Atheism, as "terrorism".
The US took a start down that path by defining "animal rights terrorism" to include actions such as running a web site or loosing farm animals.
I can understand prosecuting that as destruction of property, but calling it "terrorism" is another example of a lying law.
Religion does lots of harm to society.
A Thai editor has been sentenced to over four years in prison for "defaming" the king.
Any law making it a crime to defame, insult or offend someone is a violation of freedom of speech.
The UK proposes to make universities censor "radical" speakers.
Initially this is to be applied to radical Islamism, but who knows when it will be extended to cover refusal to run proprietary software, support for the Green Party, or opposition to censorship.
The UK already has a vicious regime of censorship, but that's no reason to tolerate more.
Imposed exile without trial is also proposed, as well as an arbitrary ban on flying without trial.
It's not clear that breastfeeding is good for babies. Perhaps it's being raised in a middle-class home (which is where mothers are likely to do this) is what's good for babies.
Private companies are finding ways to squeeze money out of supervision of criminals on parole.
These companies function by mistreating their employees, the public, the prisoners, or some combination. Sometimes the indirection means they can't in practice be held accountable for how they treat the prisoners.
The California initiative just approved, releasing many prisoners that there is no need to keep in prison, is very good notwithstanding this problem.
The peace talks with the Taliban endanger the fragments of women's rights in Afghanistan.
I supported the invasion of Afghanistan to liberate women (and to some extent men) from the oppression of the Taliban. However, the existing Afghan government has allowed a large part of the same oppression, even in the places it effectively controls. I can't say that the small freedom Afghan women have gained justifies unending war.
Ebola Is Scary, But Antibiotic Resistance Should Scare Us More.
Australian thugs listened sneakily to a prisoner's discussion with his lawyer.
The government refuses to tell him why he was arrested and forbids newspapers to mention his name. I wonder if he has been gagged as well — I suspect so. Is any information about this available outside Australia?
If your relative is arrested, spread the word immediately so that the state can't put the cat back into the bag.
Psychological experiments reaffirm that it is possible for social structures to encourage and reward cooperation more, and selfishness less, than the ones existing in the US and UK.
Comparing the free software world with the proprietary software world demonstrates the same thing.
Present-day society has been reshaped by plutocrats to weaken society's defenses that restrained them. If we recognize them as the enemy, and defeat them, reversing the changes they made is a map for undoing the harm they have done. Simply to reverse all pertinent changes since 1980 would be a big improvement overall.
A few of the changes since 1980 may be considered improvements (for instance, equal rights for gays, most advances in medical technology, improvements in renewable energy technology, PCs before they were designed for DRM, the internet before apps, and the web before Javascript), so I would advocate aiming exactly to recreate 1980.
Amnesty's Detekt program may give a false sense of security.
In Massachusetts: oppose holding Olympic Games in Boston.
The Olympic Committee is leaning towards Boston because of Boston's record of clamping down arbitrarily on millions of people, when it forced everyone to stay indoors.
Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC should start organizing too.
If people with enough democracy to reject Olympic Games do so, the games will be held in dictatorial countries. At least that way they won't lead to tyranny worse than what those countries already have.
US citizens: Call on Obama to raise the pay limit for workers to get overtime pay.
Here's a list of products made by companies largely owned by the Koch Brothers, so you can choose alternatives.
The World Bank says it will "focus" future investments on renewable energy, but falls short of ceasing to invest in fossil fuels.
I am worried by the escape hatch to allow coal investments in cases of "extreme need". Billionaires can claim with a straight face that they have "extreme need" for the profits from a coal mine, and ways to convince politicians to endorse the claim.
Horrific pictures of casualties don't seem to stop war.
Israel's cabinet approved a law to
officially
make non-Jews second-class citizens and remove Arabic as an official
language.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
This seems ideally calculated to provoke more Israeli Arabs into random acts of violence, but Netanyahu calls it a "deterrent" like other acts of collective punishment.
There is no word on whether Netanyahu also plans to punish Jews collectively for acts such as firebombing Huda Hamaiel's house.
Conservationists are pressuring Australia's big banks not to invest in coal companies.
If those banks are looking for long-term return, they should try to make sure that Australia isn't knocked to its knees by global heating.
The Hong Kong government defeated democracy protesters by yielding nothing and waiting for the public to get tired of protests.
Lesson: people who get tired and stop protesting don't win.
Blanket Data Retention Does Not Come in "Good" And "Bad" Forms.
Communication and server companies have an interest in letting people think they care about privacy, but not so much in effectively doing so.
I disagree with one point: encryption is not a fraud or a sham. However, it can only protect specific limited aspects of privacy, which are not enough.
The old School of the Americas, under a new name, teaches fighting "terrorists" (whatever that means) and the "war on drugs".
It's a different harm but it's still harm. Recall that the dictatorships of South America in the 70s said that the people they disappeared were "terrorists".
As expected, the grand jury decided not to indict the killer of Michael Brown.
This was predictable; hardly ever do killer thugs face justice.
The decision led to predictable riots.
It is wrong to vent this rage by burning down private buildings that have nothing to do with the killing. At the same time, I understand that many in Ferguson feel that rioting is their last recourse after trying everything else. I hope it leads to some good.
Civil rights and justice groups called on Governor Nixon to appoint a special prosecutor, but he didn't. He could still do this, but he would rather provoke riots and repress them. He is directly and personally responsible for giving a killer thug immunity. We should not let him shrug it off.
Hundreds or perhaps thousands of Hong Kong citizens who protested for democracy have been banned from China.
Much like the US no-fly list, they don't find this out until they try to cross the border.
The EU foolishly relaxed its requirement to adopt LEDs for street lighting, inviting a giant waste of energy and money.
Beyond Ferguson: we need to stop giving carte blanche to militarized thugs.
US citizens: call on Obama to appoint some Federal Reserve governors who don't represent banksters.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to charge JP Morgan now with the crimes that Alayne Fleischmann has witnessed.
US citizens: Call on Senator Udall to personally release the Senate's torture report while he is still a senator.
US citizens: support network neutrality again.
Pakistan's uniformed thugs say they go on raids to kill major criminals. Others say the thugs are killing whoever is convenient in order to run up the tally.
Claims of Satanic child abuse are coming back. These are based on convincing people to remember things that never happened to them.
Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic have recovered to some extent from past overfishing, so governments jumped at the chance to increase fishing quotas.
I hope eventually it will be possible to catch these tuna at a higher rate sustainably, but it is foolhardy to be hasty. The current numbers of tuna are more than in the 1950s, but they could be minuscule compared with the 1850s.
A variant of an RFID turns out to be a prime method used by US and Russian agents (and maybe others) to sabotage computers.
A UK politician has been forced to resign from some positions because his swiped credit card number was used to buy pornography depicting children. The fact that it wasn't him is, apparently, not sufficient to protect him; being falsely accused is considered reason why he must resign.
Isn't this nuts?
These events illustrate that the crusade against "child pornography" endangers everyone. This result tends to happen whenever possession or purchase of some sort of publication is illegal. We must abolish such laws because they whip up witch-hunts.
Many Syrian rebel groups are joining with PISSI, or at least making truces with PISSI, because they regard the US as an enemy for fighting PISSI.
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Israeli soldiers shot and
killed
a Palestinian who was trying to catch birds and went too close to
the Israeli border.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has no right to kill people in Gaza for walking around in Gaza. If Israel wants a buffer zone, it should construct that buffer zone on Israel's side of the border.
Putin launched a plot to kidnap Bill Browder, after killing his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in prison.
Al-Shabaab terrorists captured a bus and murdered all the passengers that were not Muslims.
French thugs killed an anti-dam protester with a grenade, inspiring
continuing
protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Puncturing the fiction of a "recovery" in the UK, the number of poor people going to food banks continues to increase.
This includes people who have work but their wages don't cover food.
Japan is entering a recession, and as usual financial powers are pushing for spending cuts to make it worse, but the government is determined to stimulate the economy instead.
Britain seems to be entering another recession (although working people have not started to recover from the last one), so the plutocratic government plans more budget cuts to make sure of this.
Banksters are taking over state pension funds in order to drain them with high fees and risky investments.
UK newspapers were ordered not to report on sexual abuse by politicians, and the records of these orders appear to have been destroyed, or else the orders were fake.
Either way, it is very fishy.
Experimental subjects paid more to protect strangers from electric shocks than to protect themselves from shocks.
The article ends with a very good refutation of one of the typical fallacious cynical attacks against altruism.
The Australian government is attacking public broadcasting for not being right-wing.
The Chilean officers that tortured Alberto Bachelet and his daughter (now president) have been sentenced to prison.
Walmart workers plan strikes and protests on the day that foolish Americans typically start shopping for mandatory Christmas presents.
Since they are looking for support from the public, I suggest that people participate.
Robert Holsey is set to be executed, and the state of Georgia doesn't care that his defense team was nonfunctional because its leader was drunk.
The death penalty is wrong even if the criminal has competent defense lawyers. This case points rather at the willingness of the US legal system to insist on upholding decisions that were made laughably.
United nonviolent resistance is defeating the Mafia protection racket in Sicily.
A new study finds that allowing people in general to carry guns leads to more crime, in the US.
Occupy London protesters are returning to Parliament Square.
The Gates Foundation has insisted on free scientific publication for research it supports.
They use the term "open access"; I think that term is misguided because it tends to lead people in the direction of weaker positions than this. Fortunately the Gates Foundation overcame the weakness of the term itself, and took a strong stand.
There are so many ironies in this.
Meanwhile, France cut its research budget in order to pay publishers such as Elsevier.
Obama has authorized remaining US troops in Afghanistan to continue fighting the Taliban directly, hoping people won't notice.
Global heating means big snow loads from the "lake effect".
Whistleblowers are repeatedly subject to dishonest retaliation and false accusations by those in power whose errors or crimes have been exposed.
US phone companies are trying to push customers off the superior copper cables onto VOIP, by refusing to maintain the copper cables.
The idea of requiring the VOIP replacement to be improved before forcing the changeover is not sufficient. VOIP is inherently less reliable as well as subjecting people to digital monkeybusiness.
Algorithmic decision making is leading to many strange kinds of troubles caused by mistaken identity.
Obama proposed a bankster to be the Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, and Elizabeth Warren came out swinging against him.
Senators have introduced a carbon tax bill.
This has no chance of passing, but introducing it is at least a political step.
A movie exposes the methods of the paid global heating denialists.
US abortion doctors say the harassment and restrictions are the worst they have ever seen.
The last remaining "Angola 3" prisoner had his conviction overturned, but the state may appeal this decision to keep him in prison more years until he dies.
Regardless of the issues of his guilt and his trial, keeping anyone in solitary confinement for so long amounts to brainwashing.
Growth: The Destructive God That Can Never Be Appeased.
Six Vital Steps World Leaders Must Agree to Take to Protect Earth.
Here's what the agreement needs to do and why.
US citizens: Call for establishment of a clear and practical way
to report
abuses by US border patrol agents.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to make sure the pollinator health task
force
takes
sufficient measures to truly protect bees.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Jewish Voice for Peace mourns the Jewish and Palestinian casualties of individual violence in Israel and Palestine.
An example of how US mainstream media promote escalation of war against PISSI.
Examples of how they promote the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
When they do acknowledge the real argument against the pipeline, next they claim it's impossible to stop the extraction of tar sands oil.
"Stop resisting, you can't win" has been used against every successful resistance movement.
Are "We the People" Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?
American women are ceasing to feel ashamed of accusing men of raping them.
The idea of being ashamed of being assaulted in any fashion makes no moral sense to me. I can only understand it intellectually.
It was common to for families to despise women who were raped, along with women who had sex without authorization, treating women as possessions of the family rather than as persons. For instance, a legend about the foundation of the Roman Republic admires a woman for committing suicide after being pressured into sex. In some twisted societies, this attitude continues today and is the basis for "honor killings".
I suppose women internalized this condemnation and converted it into shame.
Everyone: sign up to boycott Amazon.
I gave this as my additional statement.
There are additional reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon. It keeps a database of what people buy, and does not accept cash. Amazon ebooks are a surveillance system and Amazon can erase them remotely: see stallman.org/ebooks.pdf.
See also stallman.org/amazon.html for more bad things Amazon does.
Thus, I agree to boycott Amazon, but it won't change anything, since I'd never consider buying from an organization that treated me that way, even if it didn't abuse its workers and evade taxes.
Always-listening, always-watching computers are supposedly meant to serve people, but when they're full of nonfree software they are actually tools to subjugate people.
Many car companies now make cars that track where they go. The companies are trying to make this acceptable with weak promises about what they will do with the data.
Those policies are irrelevant because real protection for the driver's privacy consists of not tracking the car in the first place. If you own a car, make sure its tracking hardware is deactivated.
FISA Judge To Yahoo (in 2008): If US Citizens Don't Know They're Being Surveilled, There's No Harm.
Two men in Ohio spent 40 years in prison because thugs bullied a teenager into testifying against them.
At least they weren't executed.
GCHQ Whistleblower Calls for Public Interest Defence.
It's a rare moment in the US when black victims get justice for the violence of whites.
When Police Spy on Journalists Like Me, Freedom Is at Risk.
A Haitian opposition march was
attacked
by supporters of the president, who was imposed by the US through
a
twisted
election.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Walmart pretends to be trying to protect the environment, but it gets its electricity from coal.
Utah's legislature proposes to shut off the water supply to the NSA's data center.
A subtle point in the TPP would make transitory copies (such as loading a program into memory to run it) copyright infringement.
Iran has worked around western sanctions at the cost of destroying its environment. The result is dust storms.
You might think that humanity won't wake up to the dangers of global heating and extinction until it sees catastrophes, but the catastrophes are already happening, and the only awakening is by businesses that want to abolish environmental regulations.
Many US cities arrest blacks far more often than whites. Ferguson is not the worst.
The UK government is losing billions of pounds by not keeping track of tax give-aways to businesses.
This while they nickle-and-dime the unemployed and disabled into homelessness.
Aarhus has an interesting personal active approach towards people returning from fighting in Syria, which seems to have been effective at preventing more youths from going there.
Meanwhile, the UK plans a system of internal exile for such people.
U.S. Firms Accused of Enabling Surveillance in Despotic Central Asian Regimes.
UK journalists are suing the thugs for spying systematically on them as they covered protests.
Thugs have long regarded democracy as their enemy; what is new is to have proof.
New Report Finds Little Oversight of Surveillance, Intelligence Agencies in Latin America.
US citizens: call on Obama to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
Menlo Park's license plate cameras recorded car license plates 263,000 times in a few months. Just one of them helped solve a crime. All the rest were massive general surveillance.
The question of cost is a side issue; what's wrong here is injustice.
Alayne Fleischmann has gone public about how JP Morgan and Attorney General Holder conspired to cover up JP Morgan's crimes. She offered her testimony several times, but they worked together to stop this from coming out in court and to avoid really punishing the bank.
It should be noted that "securitization" of home mortgages is a harmful practice even if it is not done fraudulently. Your mortgage should be owned by a local bank that has the power to adjust it if you fall behind, and the incentive not to give you a mortgage without confidence you can pay it. Thus, I think that the practice should be stopped entirely.
Rich countries have not pledged enough to do the job of helping poor countries cope with the effects of global heating.
But it is a hopeless job, because the costs will go up each decade. If we don't stop the heating, sooner or later the poor countries will be overwhelmed, followed by the rich countries.
Thugs in Brisbane, where the G20 meeting was held, brutally attacked a man with no legs. They will probably claim he was trying to run away.
Of course, the thugs accused the man of various crimes. I am skeptical.
Harvard students have sued Harvard for mismanaging the school's endowment by investing it in fossil fuel companies.
These companies' value is inflated by the carbon bubble, which has to pop some day.
The American Nursing Association has given its support to a Guantanamo nurse who faces a military trial for refusing to participate in force feeding.
North Dakota's public bank is more profitable than US private banks.
The oil boom in North Dakota is not an occasion for humanity to rejoice, given the grave danger it contributes to. But that is orthogonal to the merits of a public bank.
The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation helped develop a treatment, then sold its share of the patent rights to a company that is charging almost $400,000 per year. Most of the patients can't afford that.
Other countries' national health systems will negotiate a price that will probably be far lower. US law, paid for by Big Pharma, does not allow this.
A proposal: instead of network neutrality regulation, create a competitive market for ISPs.
Causing competition between ISPs is a good idea, but I would not trust that to replace network neutrality. Four competitors are too few to make a truly competitive market. And even companies in a competitive market impose nasty terms on customers. Consider the hotel that "fined" customers for bad reviews. It competes with lots of other hotels but that didn't stop it from pulling a fast one.
Competition would pressure ISPs to improve their performance, price, and customer service. Those are things that customers notice all the time. We need common carrier regulation also for all the things that are less visible.
US officials refused to explain to the Committee Against Torture why nobody was prosecuted for US government torture.
Bankers, after being led to think about their work, become more likely to cheat than people in general.
In other words, it's not that bankers are inherently dishonest but rather than working as a banker encourages dishonesty.
The Swedish appeals court did not cancel the arrest warrant against Julian Assange, but pressured the prosecutors to accept his invitation to question him in the Ecuadorian embassy.
If the Swedish prosecutors were really concerned about the sexual allegations against Assange, they would interview him in the embassy so as to advance that case and either charge him or not. Their refusal to do this demonstrates that they are using the allegations as a pretext to send Assange to the US.
Women are speaking about their abortion experiences to counter the harassment against women who have abortions.
If anything, it's not aborting a pregnancy that raises questions as the human population continues to grow.
Thugs attacked protesters in Ferguson already, after creating pretexts, although the decision on prosecuting Michael Brown's killer has not been announced.
A UN agency called for prosecution of North Korea's ruler in the International Criminal Court. North Korea responded by threatening to throw a tantrum.
This UN move was entirely justified, but I wish it would go after the even more flagrant human rights violators such as Bush II.
Australia's government has sunk to shameless self-contradiction.
Frackers polluted clean aquifers in California with fracking waste water.
The weakened USA Freedom Act is so weak that Obama plans to revive it.
US citizens:
sign
this petition to amend the constitution to stop the rich from
using their money to dominate US elections.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans used Twitter to disguise their violation of US election laws.
Journalist Sarah Lacy writes about how an Uber executive said he would punish her critical journalism by using lies to smear her family life. It was the culmination of years of contempt for the company's drivers and passengers.
By the way, I don't see anything wrong in offering taxi rides driven by attractive models of either sex. Since I believe sexual services should be legal, I would not object if they offered to fly you while driving you. However, this need not and should not be accompanied by Uber-style contempt towards women (and men).
UK spending cuts have reduced tax income and caused a fresh budget deficit. The insane remedy is to cut spending more, and never mind that it has failed in its ostensible goal, because the real goal is to reduce workers to desperation.
In teenage girls' fascination for the Hunger Games, they show a form of political maturity.
The world of The Hunger Games is a projection of today's starve-the-poor plutocracy. It's much worse than today's USA, but the America of 2100 might be even worse. If globalized manufacturing collapses, we might be left with nothing but low-tech.
Refuting the claim that unemployment insurance causes unemployment: a study shows it is mostly false.
Note that the claim really argues for lower wages; but US wages for many jobs are not enough to live on, so they must be raised.
The US has many other policies that discourage employment, which we should change. For instance, charging employers for social security and medical care is a mistake. That money should be obtained by taxing rich people and businesses' income, independent of how much they pay to workers.
The Illinois legislature is considering raising the minimum wage but banning cities from adopting a higher minimum.
This measure would be harmful to workers. The statewide raise will probably not be enough, and living in Chicago is even more expensive.
A hotel charged guests extra, on their credit card, for posting a bad review of the hotel. The hotel claimed it was entitled to charge them because it had put that in the contract guests are made to sign. I suppose most guests don't read the contract; but if they did, having arrived and with perhaps nowhere else to stay, refusing to sign would not be much of an option.
Hotels should not be allowed to write their own conditions arbitrarily to impose on guests.
Many big US companies pay their CEOs more than they pay in taxes.
When Mega Corporations Get Mega Tax Breaks, We All Pay.
Financialization of rental residences means that people live in financial instruments.
Under Putin, the former KGB now runs Russia and has returned to actively harassing and intimidating journalists and dissidents.
By contrast the US style of massive surveillance is done quietly, so people don't realize how much they are being tracked. Digital technology means that both the US and Russia have a higher level of general surveillance today than was found in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union could not tell where everyone went all the time; its agents could follow only a limited set of people.
Although the NSA and FBI don't entirely run the US, the level of oversight by Congress and courts is very weak.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Interior to cancel a wolf-killing competition.
The defeat of the USA Freedom Act could, ironically, backfire and abolish part of the PAT RIOT act, reducing mass surveillance even more.
However, we need more than just to abolish the PAT RIOT Act, since that pertains only to certain methods of massive surveillance.
http://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html.
Prisons can help prisoners escape from gangs. Like other forms of rehabilitation, it costs money and requires not adopting the goal of being as tough as possible.
US citizens: call on the US not to allow Shell (or anyone) to drill for oil in the Chukchi sea. A spill would turn it into the Upchukchi sea.
The USA Freedom Act, already weakened so much that even Obama supported it, was defeated in the Senate.
This means our next battle will be against renewal of the PAT RIOT act.
Due to the shortage of ambulances, people who go to the MSF treatment center in Sierra Leone because they might have Ebola are sure to catch it by the time they arrive.
Secret disenfranchisement lists denied Democrats 4% of the vote, and enabled the Republicans to steal control of the senate.
Netanyahu plans a "harsh" retaliation to the murder of 5 Israelis.
This harshness will be on top of the harshness of decades of Israeli occupation. The killers were retaliating for a much larger set of murders and other crimes committed against Palestinians by Israelis, together with persistent oppression.
Retaliating against them with additional crimes (house demolitions, which are illegal collective punishment) and additional persistent oppression is more likely to inspire more Palestinians to retaliate in their turn.
I suppose Netanyahu knows that.
Trying to silence individuals considered misogynist has become a substitute for campaigning to change sexist institutions.
The US plans to allow fracking in the George Washington National Forest.
Solitary confinement regularly drives prisoners mad, but the US government continues to do it and to misrepresent it.
Ten illegal attacks on protesters that thugs in Ferguson might plausibly do.
2.5 million children in the US were homeless at some time in 2013. That's up 8% from the previous year.
Traffickers now recruit or even force teenagers to run boats full of people from Africa to Europe.
Most of the people using Britain's food banks went there directly because of government policies of harshness to the poor.
CO2 emissions must be cut to zero by 2070 to avoid disaster.
How much it will cost to achieve this depends on how actively we cut emissions before 2030.
The lack of toilets in rural India goes with gender discrimination that makes it even worse for women.
Energy drinks are dangerous for children.
A US coal company is accused of falsifying its environmental reports.
The slowly-closing ozone hole has altered climate and ecosystems in the southern hemisphere.
A male TV presenter wore the same suit every day for a year, just to prove that nobody cared in the slightest about his clothing style, unlike the way viewers treated his female counterpart.
Students in the UK marched on Parliament to make university gratis again.
The Greenpeace boat that was captured by Russia has now been captured by Spain.
Human Rights Watch reports on political prisoners in Uzbekistan, which relates to the forced labor of picking cotton.
A survey of clod computing practices.
Mainstream media continue to parrot the Obama regime's claims that the casualties of drone attacks are mainly "militants".
Astroturf and intimidation are the proposed methods to gain approval of an "backup" alternative to the Keystone XL pipeline.
A Spanish navy boat rammed a Greenpeace boat that was interfering with oil drilling.
In Nairobi a mob of men stripped a woman because they disapproved of her miniskirt. This led to a protest in favor of women's right to dress as they wish.
The idea that revealing clothes are "not African" is ludicrous given that women in many parts of Africa did not cover their breasts until Europeans taught them prudery.
Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon proceeds over the murder of land defenders.
A Briton was convicted of possessing a copy of a book about how to make a bomb, after a secret trial.
This case illustrates the principle that possession of a copy of a publication must never be illegal. Such prohibitions are outright tyranny, and so is a secret trial.
The governor of Missouri declared an emergency, preemptively attacking expected protests over the expected decision not to prosecute the thug that killed Michael Brown.
The governor was asked to appoint a special prosecutor but refused. Looks like he's on the side of the thugs.
The Australian government nullified environmental planning requirements for a giant coal mine by saying the environmental impact study could be done after the mine is running.
Campaigns to silence people whose views we dislike endanger a fundamental freedom.
This includes even PISSI, the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
US citizens: call on the EPA, in reducing power plant CO2 emissions, not to encourage fracking.
Everyone: Send
a message of support for Ghoncheh Ghavami.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support a proposed EPA regulation to reduce ozone pollution.
A teacher's resignation letter: "my profession no longer exists" due to bizarre school reforms.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's permitting system for pipelines and other gas and oil facilities is designed to let companies have what they want.
Germany's law punished WiFi network owners for what people download through those networks. The result is — very few publicly usable WiFi networks.
This law is unjust because (1) it is a system of collective responsibility, conscripting anyone that has a WiFi net as an enforcer, and (2) the War on Sharing is unjust in its entirety.
It would be ironic if a mere economic consideration leads to elimination of this unjust law. In the mean time, Germans should operate WiFi networks without passwords, to refuse conscripting as enforcers in the War on Sharing.
Even the US Supreme Court cites junk science to interfere with abortion.
Elizabeth Warren: Corporations Are Taking Over the Courts with the GOP's Help.
I suspect they got help from some "Democrats", too.
Is there room on Earth for humans and wildlife?
Sometimes it is justified to evict humans from an area so that other species can survive. After all, we humans occupy so much land on Earth, and we tend to take all the land there is.
Mexico is revealed as corrupt from top to bottom.
Peña Nieto's election was corrupt too.
But it was the reaction to the killing of protesting students that ended society's willingness to tolerate it.
A refugee who escaped from North Korea sends balloons over the border to teach the people of North Korea the idea of freedom.
The CIA believes arming Syrian rebels to fight PISSI is hopeless, and Obama knows this.
So who does he think he is fooling when he proposes to do more of this?
The Rosebud Sioux tribe says that building the Keystone XL pipeline would be an act of war.
Yes, it would be — against the whole world, not just them.
Accusing Putin of waging an "information war" by supporting anyone that criticizes the west.
There is some truth in this; however, western governments deserve a lot of criticism, Putin or no Putin. Indeed, they do a substantial amount of the same things.
The polar bear population on Alaska's north coast has fallen 40% in 10 years. Few young bears have survived.
Rodney Reed is about to be executed for the murder of his lover, but she may really have been killed by her jealous thug fiance. The investigation did not consider the thug seriously as a suspect.
The St Louis thug chief accused all the protesters, journalists and bystanders teargassed and attacked in Ferguson of being "criminals".
Nurse Kaci Hickox condemns the politicians that want to impose unnecessary and harmful quarantines in order to look like they are protecting us.
Rich people think that the idea that geoengineering could make global heating go away is likely to encourage them to go on burning fossil fuels.
The fallacy is that geoengineering is just an idea, not a real solution.
Australia gave business representatives accreditation to the G20 but denied it to union representatives.
Documents show US drug companies wined and dined doctors to get them to prescribe narcotic painkillers more.
These painkillers certainly have their place. It has been a long time since I took one, but they are far better than pain. However, these sales tactics (for any drug) corrupt medicine and must not be tolerated.
In Venezuela, some people in the opposition are being prosecuted for expressing happiness about an assassination.
I managed to see some of Inés González Árraga's tweets; they were quite hostile to the government, but did not make threats or call for violence.
German Spy Agency Wants To Buy Zero-Day Vulnerabilities In Order To Undermine SSL Security.
US citizens: urge your senators to vote for the USA Freedom Act
I suggest you add, as I did, that this is not enough to restore our privacy.
The IRA protected rapists within its ranks much like the Catholic Church and some sports teams.
Evidence that the gender pay gap can't be explained by anything other than bias.
US citizens:
oppose
rigging the electoral college.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The thug that killed Michael Brown arrested a man for making a video of him, then lied about it (standard thug procedure).
US citizens:
call
on Obama to cancel spending a trillion dollars for replacing the
US nuclear arsenal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI used surveillance to try to pressure Martin Luther King Jr. commit suicide.
We know that the NSA now does surveillance to get data for blackmail.
The coal company government of Australia fought to the bitter end inside the G20 meeting to undermine actions against global heating.
A series of bank scandals, leading to large fines, are the predictable result of deregulation.
I suspect that the fines are not big enough to motivate the bank executives and shareholders to try to prevent more corruption. In the US, they aren't. The result of inadequate fines is that the executives would like another corrupt scheme to make a lot of money followed by an inadequate fine.
Complicated and changing banking systems will tend to offer new opportunities for corruption. Let's have a simple banking system that changes little.
Africans who recover from Ebola face ostracism by ignorant neighbors who don't understand they are not contagious any more.
Environmental groups are suing to deny Shell permission to harass, capture and kill walruses in drilling operations in the Chukchi sea.
Melting sea ice due to global heating is making it hard for walruses to find food. To have a chance to survive, they need what protection we can give them.
Palestinian rights activist Rasmea Odeh faces imprisonment and loss of US citizenship because she didn't mention a criminal conviction in Israel, which she says was a false confession that was beaten out of her.
I see the point that she ought to have mentioned the conviction and said it was false, rather than hiding the issue. Strictly speaking, what she did was wrong. However, it's also clear that she had reason to fear a second injustice would result from the first.
Since all she did was break a rule, not hurt anyone, the court ought to seek to remake the decision properly, as it should have been made given all the pertinent information.
Revealed: How [UK] Coalition Has Helped Rich by Hitting Poor.
US privacy and search law doesn't know how to cope with the indiscriminate surveillance of phony cell phone towers.
Surgeon Mads Gilbert, who treated the wounded of Gaza while Israel attacked, says he will not let Israel stop him from returning to Gaza.
Texas Oil Regulator Says It Will Not Honor Town's Vote To Ban Fracking.
It's Dangerous to Be So Cosy with the Gulf's Autocrats.
On the other hand, the forces opposing them may turn out to be PISSI.
A US woman who had a heart attack faces bankruptcy because
the
ambulance took her to "the wrong hospital" where her insurance did
not cover the costs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Medical costs are a common cause of bankruptcy in the US, because the medical system is totally broken. We need a national health system.
Big US cable companies spent 8 million dollars to buy support in the last election.
The "Justice" department
admitted
that it misled an appeals court regarding secrecy of "national
security" letter surveillance orders — once the EFF caught the
fib.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Hong Kong protest leaders wanted to go to Beijing to try to talk with Chinese officials, but they were denied entry.
Thug departments make lists of what kinds of cars to seize from hapless members of the public.
Some states have tried to restrict civil forfeiture, or stop thug departments from keeping what they confiscate. The US government works with thug departments to circumvent those restrictions.
Forfeiture is punishment without trial. Many of the victims are never even charged. It ought to be considered unconstitutional.
Israel's "Minister of Home Security" publicly said thugs should to carry out summary executions.
Amazon and Hachette have resolved their dispute about ebook prices. This will please those who just want to "get a book right now" and don't care about anything deeper.
Using the Amazon Swindle makes you stop lending books to your friends — which means you're not their friend any more.
Wall Street likes Clinton better than it likes Obama!
Apparently he hasn't been a total pushover, and they think Clinton will be.
So many companies have dropped ALEC that it has lost 1/5 of its funding and is running at a deficit.
That means we should campaign even harder to convince more companies to drop ALEC.
US citizens: call on Obama to order federal contractors to pay workers a living wage.
Everyone: tell Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour.
Everyone: call on Luxembourg to stop facilitating tax-dodging.
US citizens: call on the FCC to instate true network neutrality.
Everyone: tell eBay to quit ALEC.
US citizens: call on Obama to block Keystone XL and apply global heating considerations to all federal projects.
The US government carries fake cell phone towers in planes to identify people on the ground.
In India, women are pressured or forced into sterilization, sometimes because they are poor or low-caste.
This practice is an injustice, but incentives for sterilization are not the same as compulsion. If people are so poor that they desperately jump at any incentives, that doesn't mean the incentives are wrong, but rather that society is too unequal.
A law such as China's one-child-per-family law would be fair and necessary in India.
Plans for recording all Australians' phone contacts are meeting opposition in parliament.
This is wise, given how the Obama regime used phone records to find a whistleblower in the US.
Will the UK government investigate the thugs' attack on striking miners, which was followed (as usual) by trying to frame them?
US citizens: call on Obama
to respect
journalists and journalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
British spying on journalists and lawyers directly threatens Americans and people in other countries.
Conservatives have political control of the English-speaking world because the traditional left parties have lost the spirit to disagree with their assumptions.
In the US, rigging elections through voter-suppression and gerrymandering help them do it.
The morale problem with the US ICBM corps is not just a matter of details. It comes from the nature of its activity.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject plans to encourage export of fracked gas.
Journalist Rafael Marques de Morais: 'No politician, however strong, will stop me doing my job'. But they sure try hard.
Robot watchmen are in their infancy, but if they work well in 10 years, they could put a million Americans out of work.
They carry cameras that can be viewed over the internet. We know from experience that many users will not alter the default password, so anyone will be able to watch through their cameras. Quite a joke that will be on whoever uses them.
The latest bad idea: farm out servers to lots of buildings so that their waste heat can provide heat for the buildings.
That would be efficient in winter; not so much in summer. But what about the privacy implications?
The idea of "the cloud" means "Don't ask who stores your data (and can look at it); don't concern yourself with who does your computing (and controls how it is done). Put your blind faith in you-don't-know-who."
With this scheme, you put your faith in an unidentified homeowner as well as several unidentified companies.
Here's a better idea. Get your own servers to heat your water, and store your own data in them.
Berkeley California disregarded the drink companies' ad campaign and approved a tax on soda.
The tax should apply to all drinks that contain sugar. For instance, fruit juice as sold often includes a lot of added sugar; so it is not good for you. I have stopped drinking all drinks that have sugar, with occasional exceptions when there is something special available.
Australian thugs did not arrest protesters for carrying banners and wearing Anonymous masks, but did arrest someone for having a gas mask.
A gas mask is not an offensive weapon, so prohibiting them is inexcusable.
The US admitted torture practices to the UN. Next step: correct them, and hold the guilty accountable.
Dubya is still lying about Iraq.
US citizens: call for a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, which endanger the bees that pollinate crops and wildlife.
The executives of the company that made thalidomide used political pull to escape punishment.
Major UK ISPs have added political censorship to their sexual censorship.
The American Psychological Association will investigate how in 2002 it revised its code of ethics to permit its members to participate in Bush regime torture.
Bravo for James Risen, who is also standing up to a threat of imprisonment by the Obama regime for protecting his sources.
The US-China climate pledge will be harder for China than for the US.
Too bad that it isn't enough to avoid disaster. Both countries must do more.
To stop Britons from going to fight for PISSI, the UK government proposes punishment without trial, imposed arbitrarily by border control agents and airlines.
Boko Haram captured Chibok, the town where it kidnaped around 300 schoolgirls earlier this year.
US citizens: Thank Obama for making a climate deal with Russia.
US citizens: support Wall Street pay reform to
end
incentives for bad investments.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Congress to resist bills to promote fracking or undermine food
safety.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Where is the real excitement about Ms Clinton as president?
Relating devastation in the Philippines to corrupt debt, and the Ebola epidemic to economic colonization.
Walmart workers are holding a sit-down strike to protest repression against attempts to organize.
I am sad that this links to ustream.com, which can't be viewed without nonfree software. To develop a free front end for ustream would be a very useful project. In the mean time, please don't ustream, and please don't stream with ustream.
The mere presence of a cell phone tends to make discussions about meaningful issues shallow.
On the other hand, if you do have a meaningful discussion about an important issue, such as how to resist plutocracy, carrying cell phones will pre-alert the NSA about who you are talking with.
Using text messages for a dispute is a recipe for
escalating
them. (We old-timers discovered this fact about email back around
1980.)
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
A heatwave in Brisbane will give G20 delegates a hint of what the fossil fuel companies want to do to the world.
"Improved" lampposts do various kinds of spying.
Fining the unemployed in the UK is not pushing them to get jobs, only making them dependent on food banks.
Raising the minimum wage, and abolishing zero-hours contracts, would circulate more money among the poor and thus create more jobs. That would get these people working.
Arnold Abbott says he will continue feeding homeless people in Fort Lauderdale "as long as there is breath in my body."
France ordered Google to delete an article from search results world-wide.
This reminds us of the danger of services provided by multinational companies that operate in countries that limit what the companies can do. In other cases it goes beyond this fairly mild requirement (which applies only to searches for a person's name).
Australians buried their heads in the sand to show
what
Abbott is doing regarding global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Documents show Shell disregarded safety in Nigeria and then tried to cover up the damage.
Australia has banned a peace activist from the G20 event area, and refused to say why.
Perhaps because he would do some sort of nonviolent protest.
EU bureaucrats have abolished the position of Chief Scientific Adviser.
1/3 of natural "world heritage" sites face environmental threats.
"Democratic" senator Landrieu is trying to win a runoff election by pushing for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Elizabeth Warren states what the US government's agenda should be, and what it should not be.
A teacher in the UK is being prosecuted for having sex with a 16-year-old student, after he boasted of it to his friends.
He now says he feels "disgusted", but I think that is only what someone told him to say, or convinced him to feel.
Every secondary school should aim for all of its graduates to be fully capable in sexuality; none should be excluded from participation in sex due to lack of proper experience. Therefore, the school should have several sex teachers, adults with whom students can learn to be comfortable with sex and confident in pleasing their lovers. They would also learn good habits for avoidance of disease and pregnancy.
US citizens:
tell
your senators to vote against the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose "Republibama" government.
This page has been found to work with LibreJS enabled.
Artists protesting against surveillance still naively presume that it is possible to flood the NSA with so much data that it will not provide effective surveillance.
That would have been true 20 years ago. Nowadays the NSA can easily have computers find the interesting bits and discard the rest.
The UK government now demands that companies illegally spy on their customers.
Fascists and neo-Nazis are a significant force in Ukraine; it's not just a Putin fantasy.
On the good that unions do, and the bad that they don't do.
Peabody Energy (operator of the world's biggest coal mine) ran the "energy forum" at the corrupt G20 meeting. It took outside protesters to bring in even the slightest mention of global heating.
Uzbekistan Students Stage Rare Protest Against Forced Labour in Cotton Fields.
The US government investigation of CIA torture seems to have been a whitewash; many victims were never even interviewed.
The Neocon Plan for War and More War.
Where Obama's potential successors stand on global heating.
350.org comments on Obama's carbon deal with China.
The Islamist rebels in the Sinai have joined PISSI.
US employers are denying workers their rights by contracts that impose arbitration.
NATO says Russian tanks are invading Ukraine. Russia denies this, but that denial is worthless. Unfortunately, we can't assume NATO is telling the truth either. If it is true, they should appear in fighting soon enough.
Unidentified drone aircraft are flying around the US and often come close to airliners.
Sooner or later there will be a collision.
A Paraguayan writer faces imprisonment for supposed plagiarism.
Plagiarism is a form of dishonesty, so it is generally wrong; but except in cases where it has been the basis for fraud, it should not be a crime.
The US secretly pays compensation to the families of civilians killed by US drone attacks in Yemen.
Paying compensation for killings is considered appropriate in Yemen, so the US should do this openly and win respect. What is wrong is the refusal to admit that US attacks kill civilians.
Shi'ite militias in Iraq are applying PISSI's bloody practices towards Sunnis they conquer.
The consequence is that Sunnis must support PISSI or be massacred. This is the best news that PISSI could have hoped for.
Obama says that torture is banned for US personnel everywhere in the world.
The EU Needs to Crack Down on the Real Scroungers — Tax Avoiders.
The US-China deal about curbing greenhouse gas emissions is a milestone, but not enough to avoid disaster.
To do this, and increase energy provision as planned, China will have to develop enough renewable energy to power the whole US.
Even though the effort will be heroic, if it isn't enough to prevent disaster, China must do more (and so must the US, Europe, Australia, India, etc).
Republican denialists say they will sabotage the deal.
A movement for antiprivatization attempts to undo what was corruption in the first place.
I think that corrupt privatizations should be cancelled, pure and simple, so that the privatizers can't profit from it.
Thugs in Brazil kill six people per day.
Why Welfare Is Not About Them And Us.
If you want to buy that book, please support a local bookstore, and above all don't get it from Amazon.
Global heating will make ocean "dead zones" bigger in several ways.
Once human civilization crashes, however, we will stop dumping lots of fertilizer into the ocean. At that point, the dead zones may cease.
Fruit drinks for children are full of sugar.
I generally drink water or unsweetened tea. At least my beverages don't make me fat.
"Forfeiture", i.e. legalized robbery by thugs, is going strong in the US.
Forfeiture is an injustice because it is punishment without trial. Indeed, many of the victims are never charged with any crime.
Obama called for real network neutrality.
Hong Kong is planning violence against the student protesters.
The UK is apparently investigating an anti-blacklisting group and its activists because they threaten to show how the state colluded in blacklisting workers.
Putin is pouring money into the Crimea to win the support of some; others face unemployment or confiscation. Those who disagree with the annexation of the Crimea face imprisonment.
The UK government spied on MPs' confidential phone calls with prisoners.
The UN will try to hold US officials accountable for US torture practices.
In the UK, obesity rates are linked to the number of of fast-food outlets in a neighborhood, and both tend to be high where poor people live.
This does not demonstrate what is the cause and what are its effects. For instance, it may be that poor people eat badly because they feel stressed, or that eating better requires time, money, kitchen equipment or access to broader range of ingredients, which they don't have.
Through sleight of hand, Australia's plutocratic government has eliminated the goal that economic growth should be fair.
G20 thugs will arrest protesters for wearing masks even though a judge says they can't.
Detroit's bankruptcy plan demands the highest sacrifice from workers and residents. Rich creditors had to do much less.
It is another example of the general practice of crushing the non-rich. When they become desperate and act accordingly, the rich can demonize them as "scroungers" so as to justify crushing them further.
Books that have been banned in the Guantanamo prison.
An outbreak of illness in an Indian sterilization clinic focused attention on India's gratis sterilization program.
India's population is still growing, which hampers efforts to reduce poverty and contributes to future global heating. Thus, sterilisation programs are extremely important — but the job should be done with proper sanitation and technique.
US citizens: Thank Obama for calling for real network neutrality.
Australian thugs confiscated protesters' projectors that were meant to display images on walls at the G20 event.
If they say it was because they suspected these projectors were weapons, why don't they put the projectors back now that they know they are projectors? Obviously, this is just an excuse to silence protest, on behalf a government set on killing millions of people.
G20 countries are spending 88 billion dollars a year to find more fossil fuel reserves.
This is a total waste, since we already know of 5 times as much reserves as we can burn without causing global disaster.
In Vienna, a model shows what could have been built for the money spent to bail out a big bank.
I think bank bailouts should be done in return for equity in the bank. For big bailouts, the previous owners should surrender all their equity.
Since the US does not fund good solutions to social problems, it dumps those affected into prisons to make them disappear for a while.
Afterwards they typically return worse than before.
Israel is planning to change election rules to keep the Arab political parties from being represented in Parliament. As in the case of US Republicans, the aim is to be able to claim to have a democracy while not really having one.
I disagree with Ms Zoabi on one point: kidnaping (or killing) civilians for a political purposes is indeed terrorism. The forces of repression continually try to stretch that word to apply it to whatever displeases them, but it does have a valid meaning and that act fits it.
Which is not to say that that act justified Israel's repressive response which was apparently designed to provoke Hamas into giving an excuse to attack Gaza.
Anyway, Ms Zoabi's opinions are no excuse for legal discrimination. And prosecuting anyone for insulting thugs (or anyone else) is obvious injustice.
Stop Investing in Colombian Blood: Land Activists Appeal to the UK.
The UK has dropped its US-subservient objections to allowing Yunus Rahmatullah to sue over his torture.
Over a third of the species of freshwater fish are threatened.
The Italian scientists sentenced to prison for saying it was unlikely an earthquake would occur in L'Aquila have been exonerated on appeal.
What sorts of suffering global heating will cause in 30 or 40 years: it includes wars.
It is so warm in much of Alaska that bears have not hibernated.
The president of Mexico appears to have a corrupt relationship with a Chinese construction company.
Plutocratic control of American elections has been measured by a survey finding that 2/3 of Americans want to raise taxes on the rich, while hardly anyone in Congress proposes that.
A rich Tory MP bought some of the last low-rent apartments in London so as to quadruple the rent and make 93 families homeless.
That's plutocracy for you. Perhaps every plutocrat should be sentenced to 6 months' homelessness to see what it is like.
A study predicts 1/3 of the jobs in the UK will be eliminated during the next 20 years.
Either the unemployed must get decent support or they will be in penury.
US citizens: call
for protection
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators
and call
on them to fill all the empty judicial slots.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
I suggest mentioning that a few of Obama's nominees are famously right-wing "compromises" with the Republicans; they should not be confirmed now.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The risks of global heating include irreversible consequences — problems that could not be corrected. The way to manage the risk is to reduce CO2 emissions.
US citizens: call on Obama to boost solar energy.
Obama took a stand in favor of full and true internet neutrality.
It is too bad he appointed an FCC commissioner who's against that. I can't believe he couldn't guess that someone from the ISPs would be against it.
Asylum-Seeker Conditions Inhuman And Unlawful, UN Committee Tells Australia.
Now that some of the murdered students corpse's have been identified by DNA, protests in Mexico have increased, so thugs are trying to discredit them by false-flag violence.
The Billion Dollar a Month Club: A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich.
Median wealth has dropped by 43 percent since 2007.
US attacks against PISSI in Syria turned out to help Assad.
Alas, that is probably inevitable since PISSI and Assad are enemies and PISSI is worse than Assad. It is not obvious how to try to support the weak non-Islamist anti-Assad rebels in any meaningful way.
Several Palestinians have killed Israelis in the street using cars or knives. It is not exactly suicide, but some of them have been killed. The prospect of death or imprisonment has ceased to deter Palestinians from getting revenge for the occupation.
Killing civilians who are doing nothing wrong is not justified, and the responsibility falls on Netanyahu as well as the Palestinians who actually do it.
Netanyahu threatens more collective punishment against Arabs in general — just the thing to inspire this violence to grow.
I suppose Netanyahu finds this violence a convenient distraction to enable him to continue stealing land and water.
The world's largest coal mine is an impressive feat of technology. Peabody wants to make it even bigger. Too bad it is going to destroy civilization.
Peabody has done other nasty things before.
The UK government, ever eager to boost fossil fuels, proposed to distribute more of the income from fracking to everyone in the north of England.
It would be an appropriate thing to do, if we consider only the short term.
Australia's efforts to prevent renewable energy have been quite effective: investment has dropped over 70% since a year ago.
Four economic factors are mainly responsible for falling wages.
Technology is one of them, and society has no obligation to allow businesses to use any and all kinds of automation to replace workers.
GCHQ has gone on the offensive for total surveillance of everyone. Of course, this is to "protect" us from lesser dangers such as terrorists.
How Voter Suppression Helped Produce the Lowest Turnout in Decades.
Ethiopia
is repressing
dissidents and suspected dissidents among the Oromo ethnic
group. It goes as far as torture and death.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Even worse than remote car-shutdown devices, now there are remote lock-out devices for apartments.
Both should be forbidden by law, because they give lenders too much power over renters.
Poland and its neighbors demand to keep burning fossil fuel past the end of this century.
Poland might be able to mine and burn some coal despite global disaster, but it won't get any oil once global trade has broken down.
"Smart TVs" are the 1984 telescreen, watching you all the time.
A number of women are appearing topless in public or in photos to puncture the taboo against showing breasts.
I think it will be good to get rid of the taboo for future generations.
The tedium of maintaining ICBMs and being ready to launch them has produced horribly low morale, which invites mistakes that could cause disaster, and corruption.
China's effort to reduce air pollution in Beijing have failed, so as a last resort it has blocked access to US embassy pollution measurements.
In countries where Starbucks does business: call on Starbucks to stop funding the lawsuit against Vermont's GMO labeling law.
How Surveillance Turns Ordinary People Into Terrorism Suspects.
Facebook is pushing publishers to publish through Facebook.
This could make them inaccessible to us non-useds of Facebook, or could surveil us as we access their publications.
People will have to push back against in an organized way.
The US is pumping lots of oil to decrease the price.
While the government may see this as a way to hurt Iran and Russia, its principal effect is to hurt the whole world by discouraging the move to renewable energy.
Hindus have petitioned to place a statue of Hanuman on the Oklahoma capitol building.
If Christians have that right, Hindus do too.
Senator Udall: while you're still in office, publish the Senate's torture report!
How Republicans use gerrymandering to control the House of Representatives by misrepresenting voters.
Roca Labs has actually sued customers that complained about its work.
Documents explicitly give UK spies permission to snoop on privileged conversations between lawyers and their clients.
Morocco is preventing the Moroccan Human Rights Association from holding meetings.
Due to global heating, covering the alps with snow requires artificial help.
90% of Switzerland's glaciers will disappear by the end of this century, and it won't stop there. This does much bigger harm than merely interfering with winter sports.
Argentina is trying to prosecute crimes committed by Franco's dictatorship in Spain.
Bravo, Argentina, but please don't stop there — go after Dubya and his henchmen too.
A genetically modified potato may be introduced into production.
Genetically modified foods are not necessarily harmful, there is a risk that any given type will harm some people who eat them, or harm wildlife, or that its production (if different) will harm wildlife. These potatoes may be ok, but that doesn't mean that herbicide-resistant corn is ok.
In addition, the patents attack farmers' rights.
US citizens: tell the OMB and the EPA to tackle the issue of using oil dispersants in the sea.
The "new cold war" between the US and Russia differs from the old one in that there are no ideas at stake, just two blocs competing for power that neither one deserves.
To be sure, Putin's personal regime is more arbitrary and dishonest than the US. The US broadcasts lots of lies but is somewhat restrained by the facts. Putin and his men will say anything at all.
Israeli thugs did a Ferguson, murdering an Arab who was running away then claiming he was attacking them.
Naturally this started a riot. Naturally, Netanyahu wants to punish the rioters and not the murderers.
The Conflict Restaurant, which picks a country that the US is in conflict with and serves its food and presents messages from its people, was shut by death threats after presenting messages that criticize Israel's occupation of Palestine.
These criticisms are being labeled as "anti-Israel" — like labeling criticism of Guantanamo prison or US wars of aggression as "anti-US".
World governments failing Earth's ecosystems, says top conservationist.
Evidence shows an important UK thug met with the construction industry blacklist organization.
The Obama regime approved another export terminal for fracked gas.
The problems that Republicans attribute to Obama's medical care system are caused by the involvement of private companies.
A Spanish prison for children, which focuses on treating them and helping them fit into society, is very effective at leading them away from crime
CNN Host: Climate Change Is Undeniable, So Here's a Denier.
Egyptian activists were sentenced to 3 years in prison for a peaceful protest for the freedom to protest. Bystanders, not involved in the protest, were convicted and sentenced with them.
Ralph Nader: some Democrats lost because they did not stand for anything that could inspire downtrodden people to vote for them.
The FBI impersonated an AP journalist to catch a suspect.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns this, saying it undermines trust in journalists.
The FBI probably wants to do that.
High-school students in Colorado turned civil disobedience on the school board that is trying to exclude civil disobedience from history classes.
Abu Wa'el Dhiab's lawsuit against force-feeding in Guantanamo was rejected.
The US has admitted it has no justification for keeping him in prison at all.
Laws intended to undermine abortion rights have been used to accuse hundreds of women of crimes because of miscarriages, attempted suicide, etc.
Canadian cities are now installing face recognition cameras.
They say it is only for watching for known or wanted criminals. The question is, how to make sure they aren't lying?
Mandatory sentences and sentencing guidelines mean that, in practice, prosecutors control sentencing in an arbitrary way. As a result, nearly everyone accused of a crime pleads guilty in order to get a reduced sentence, even those who are actually innocent.
UK human rights groups say the government's investigation of rendition and torture is a cover-up.
Comparing today's America with that of the 1850s shows that surveillance endangers the oppressed.
G20 Protests Begin with Mock Tropical Tax Haven Set Up in Brisbane.
US citizens: call on Obama to do 10 vital actions to resist the expected Republican attack.
In the US, and just about everywhere except Europe, companies can monitor every move employees make, physically and on the internet. And they are finding new ways to do it.
I hope you will refuse to accept nonfree software onto your computer "for work". This is one place where it is very important for you to push back.
One more prisoner has been released from Guantanamo.
At this rate, most of the prisoners will spend decades more in prison without trial, which is a national disgrace for the US.
In the leaked Luxembourg tax dodging records, US companies are the most numerous.
But they don't use only Luxembourg.
Will Republicans help Obama betray the US to foreign corporations?
Ecuador gave in to European bullying by accepting an unjust "free trade" treaty which includes heavy punishment for copyright infringement (and other things that are bad for Ecuador).
The killers of 43 Mexican student protesters may have been found.
One can't presume that the confessions are true, though they may be true.
Everyone:
call
on the president of Afghanistan to protect victims of rape and
punish relatives that kill them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Changes in agricultural practices have cut the European population of many birds in half.
Famous authors are campaigning against the UK's ban on sending books to prisoners.
North Korea ships slave workers to Qatar.
Egypt has responded to the Islamist rebellion in the Sinai with a further clampdown on human rights including the press and local civilians.
The rebels don't hesitate to threaten local civilians too.
Egypt is about to impose total censorship of all news about the army. If soldiers shoot your neighbors it would be illegal to say so.
Satellite measurements of Earth's air temperature have been too low due to an unnoticed effect of clouds.
Economic sanctions are hitting Russian business hard.
It seems Putin's response is to
attack
Ukraine more.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating denialists never run out of false arguments. Whack one, and they invent another.
They are paid to invent these.
How Luxembourg enables tax dodging on an industrial scale.
As always, after a Democratic defeat, the commercial mainstream media advise that the party should become more right-wing.
On most issues, most of the Democratic party is more right-wing than the general public.
US citizens: call on Obama to make the FCC support real network neutrality.
Censored and monitored Facebook has wiped out independent opposition media projects, including SchNEWS and, to a large extent, Indymedia.
Republican plans to trash the environment in the US.
Several US cities and states voted to increase the minimum wage.
The former editor of a major German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, says he was working under CIA orders for his whole career.
This is part of a broad pattern of converting mass media into CIA propagandists.
Here's Carl Bernstein's 1977 article about CIA infiltration of major US media.
Elimination of many well-paid jobs is pushing UK wages down.
Wages need to be increased for the jobs that do exist today.
100,000 workers protested austerity in Brussels.
Families of people killed by Chicago thugs protested demanding a federal investigation of their thug department.
The EFF asked the Library of Congress to make a 3-year DMCA exception for people to repair their own cars.
Of course, these requests for exceptions are all valid; but we should not let them become our focus. The ban on breaking digital handcuffs is fundamentally wrong; it should be replaced with a ban on digital handcuffs.
Advice to fracker executives: frighten the public, and find dirt on environmentalists to discredit them personally.
A whistleblower from the UK's privatized "work program" tells that her job was to find excuses to push people into working, by fining them, and never mind their illnesses and disabilities.
One of her clients, mentally ill and homeless, had not eaten in five days. This was probably due to being fined on one of the many pretexts that the UK has come up with to punish the helpless for being helpless.
2014 Was the Year Men Finally Got Feminism .
A Russian opposition activist died mysteriously. Friends say he was murdered.
We can't be sure, but I would not trust an autopsy done under Putin's government to be truthful.
Florida activists including church leaders were arrested for offering food to the homeless in Fort Lauderdale.
Although I'm not a Christian, I agree with one basic principle of Christianity: we have a duty to feed the hungry. Anyone who tries to prevent this for no good reason (such as, to please businesses that want the street to look nice) is neither a good Christian nor a good Secular Humanist.
The people who enforce these law are not acting at gunpoint. They choose to do those jobs, and they are personally responsible for all things they do, including enforcing these laws. If they were decent people, they would quit their jobs rather than do this.
UK sex workers have mobilized and blocked the plan to criminalize their clients.
Swedish prostitutes say that criminalizing their clients has caused them to be treated worse in various ways.
Workers are trafficked and enslaved in many trades, including domestic service, farming, and construction.
I think we need general policies to thwart trafficking and enslavement — not repression of specific trades.
Global heating is disrupting pollination of the early spider orchid.
It is done by males of a particular species of bee, but male bees are only flying around for a short time, and that no longer corresponds to when the flowers bloom.
If global heating were happening slowly, most species would adapt to it. However, aside from bacteria, most species don't evolve fast enough to adapt to what we are doing.
A global heating denier will be chairing the the US senate's environmental committee.
If you are young, these people are trying to kill you (and a large fraction of Earth's human and nonhuman population).
Pennsylvania's "gag Mumia" law gags all prisoners.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj's lawyers want the court to investigate how spying on his privileged communications with them has been used to undermine his case.
2014 Was an Election of Firsts for Republican Women. But It Wasn't a 'Win' for Women At All.
The International Criminal Court decided not to take up the case of the Israeli killing of activists on the Mavi Marmara.
A group of Irish people were introduced to US snack foods and found them disgusting.
If you watch the youtube videos, take care not to play them directly since that would mean running nonfree software. Instead, use the youtubedl script or some other free program, that can access youtube.
Who benefits from business tax avoidance schemes?
Chinese demand for ivory is wiping out the elephants of Tanzania.
Oil money failed to buy the local election in Richmond California.
The thugs that shot Darrien Hunt told two demonstrable lies about it, and likely another.
Thugs are not like you and me. They are accustomed to lying, even in court. I would not take their word for anything without objective confirmation.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Dominican Republic for taking citizenship away from its inhabitants of Haitian descent. In response, the Dominican Republic withdrew from the court.
A study found that pollution from burning coal in China causes around 700,000 deaths a year.
The figure given was 670,000, but that's too much precision. The study used statistics from 2012, but since coal use has increased since then, it must be worse.
I estimate around 15 million people die each year in China, which would make coal responsible for around 5% of those deaths.
The president of Sierra Leone personally ordered the arbitrary imprisonment of a prominent critical journalist.
Americans vote for bans on fracking because they can't trust governments to protect the safety of drilling operations.
It is entirely logical that when corporations are too powerful to regulate, they should be shut down entirely.
However, an even more important reason to ban fracking is that we can't burn so much fossil fuel.
Real Democrats might have won some of the races that "Democrats" have lost.
Germany is escalating the war on sharing.
While I do not condemn commercial publishing as such, we need to wipe out the organizations that back the war.
Voting discrimination is the worst since 50 years ago.
Luxembourg is a tax dodge in the middle of the European Union.
New Zealand's trade minister admits that the reason for secrecy in the TPP is to prevent public debate.
Those involved in negotiating the TPP are ipso facto enemies of democracy, and, in my view, trying to betray their countries.
How Much of a Difference Did New Voting Restrictions Make in Yesterday's Close Races?
Denton, Texas, voted to ban fracking. Its inhabitants have plenty of experience with the effects.
Hawaiians Win Community GMO Victory Over Monsanto.
Pakistan
arrested
44 people accused of lynching the Christian couple accused of
"blasphemy."
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
A family of Dalits who resisted caste oppression were
murdered
as a planned political act. The killers' identities are known but
nothing has been done.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government has cut subsidies for solar power in farms, claiming that this is taking land out of use for farming, but has no idea how much land has been taken out of use in this way.
The argument would be irrational even if it were based on true facts, because global heating will do a lot more damage to agricultural output than these solar power plants would do.
DC and Oregon voted to legalize marijuana. Right-wingers in Congress might override the former.
If you read your "smart TV"'s antiprivacy excuse document, you won't use it at all.
The one he's talking about is from Samsung, and here is its antiprivacy excuse document, but other companies' models may not be much less bad.
The first article's author recommends greater legal barriers to access to the data the smart TV collects. That is the usual inadequate solution; even with those protections, the device would damage users' privacy. Appliances should not make recordings of people's voices or actions, except when the people explicitly ask them to.
Disconnecting the TV's microphone and blocking its camera would correct only part of the problem. Be wise: buy a non-smart TV that doesn't record your voice or your actions.
Even better, don't have a TV. I was a TV addict as a teenager, so at age 17 I decided to cut it off cold turkey. I have never regretted that decision. As a side benefit it disconnects me from corporate mass culture.
Republicans took control of the US Senate.
They did so by passing laws to block hundreds of thousands of poor and minority group members from voting, and disenfranchising millions more by secret dishonesty, together with blanketing TV with misleading ads (harping on side issues) paid for by billionaires.
It is clear that some of these senate races would have been won by Democrats if the election had been free.
In effect, this means that democracy in the US has been mostly extinguished.
Republicans will use their additional power to impoverish more Americans (with the bonus that they may be disenfranchised as a consequence), boost global heating, and sign the TPP.
As right-wing political parties in the UK blame European immigrants for the spreading poverty, a study finds that they have paid more in taxes than they received in government benefits.
The real cause of the losses to the UK treasury is the failure to tax the rich and businesses enough.
Israel is proposing a law to imprison Palestinians for 20 years for throwing stones.
In theory, it will apply to Jews too. In practice, Jews carrying out pogroms will have immunity (as they generally do), and only Palestinian teenagers will be punished this way.
Throwing stones at people is a form of violence. In peaceful circumstances, under a democratic government that respects human rights, throwing stones ought to be a crime. However, under such circumstances, no one would suggest a punishment of 20 years in prison for that crime.
In occupied Palestine, the violence of throwing stones is tiny compared with Israel's violence and oppression against Palestinians. The proposed 20-year punishment is evident reinforcement for the occupation. We must not let tiny wrongs serve as pretexts for giant wrongs.
Since throwing stones achieves nothing, and undermines the nonviolent protests that Palestinian adults carry out, it would be wiser for Palestinian teenagers to stop it.
Israel continues demolishing more Palestinian homes and buildings in areas of Palestine that Israel annexed to Jerusalem.
The "lack of permit" is a pretext which Israel systematically constructs by refusing to give permits to Palestinians in areas where Israel is trying to expel them.
Even in situations where it is legitimate to forcibly demolish people's home, to do so without first letting them remove their movable property is gratuitous cruelty.
Demolition is part of a much broader policy of
pushing
Arabs out of East Jerusalem and its annexed territories.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
Now Israel plans to build housing for 1000 more colonist families in East Jerusalem.
I don't suppose those houses will be demolished for lack of a permit.
Udi Segal, one of the Israel youths that refuse to serve in the army and carry out the occupation of Palestine, has declared a hunger strike for his next term of imprisonment.
Australia's repeal of the carbon tax is causing its biggest-ever annual increase in CO2 emissions.
Abbott says that "coal is the future" and claims it will become clean, but Australia is cutting funds for developing CCS.
The fossil fuel magnates are planning to trash human civilization and Earth's ecosphere; they figure their families will use their money to escape the disaster. Whatever they say they will do to avert the disaster is just talk.
The TTIP is a plot against democracy, but despite powerful opposition, the plot is not dead yet.
The name stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic", and even The Economist says it is too plutocratic.
What does the UK Labour Party say about TTIP? What does the UK Green Party say about TTIP?
Things Are Going From Bad to Worse in Syria—And Iraq.
The worst thing that happened is that PISSI (the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq) conquered and massacred a Sunni tribe in Iraq that did not yield to PISSI.
The US and the Iraqi government and militias did not do what was necessary to defend that tribe. This has big consequences: other Iraqi Sunnis who resent PISSI will feel they have no choice but to support it.
Training soldiers from the Libyan army turns out to be ineffective because they belong to factions that hate each other. They fight each other even during training, and when they return to Libya, they join militias that fight each other.
Inaccurate information about you in data brokers' hands can get you shot to death, but data brokers refuse to correct errors.
I wonder how they find out about people's addresses. Does the Post Office tell them? The IRS? Utility companies? Stores?
Fanatical Muslims in Pakistan lynched a Christian couple, accusing them of "desecrating" a copy of the Qur'an.
To oppose their vicious ideas, we must stand firmly behind the principle that freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult anyone or anything. All laws punishing an insult are an injustice.
Furthermore, I think that all visitors to the US should be required to make a video recording, for publication, stating that they endorse this principle as a matter of human rights. If they will not endorse this, they can stay away.
ACLU sues to allow people to post photos of their ballots when voting.
I disagree with the ACLU on this issue. The purpose of the law is to protect you from pressure to sell your vote. The US has no shortage of people with power who would try to force you to vote their way.
UK Museums and Libraries Protest (some) Outdated Copyright Laws.
The inordinate length of copyright on published works is just as bad, maybe worse.
This article repeats the propaganda term "protection" to describe the effect of copyright. That term frames the issue in a way that favors the copyright industry — please join me in rejecting it.
The Government is in Pursuit of a Less Secure Internet.
AT&T, like Verizon, inserts identification codes into mobile customers' web browsing.
Interview wih Jean Lamy Matulnes, local leader of people of Ile a Vache opposing resort hotel land grab, from months ago before he was imprisoned.
If Europe persists on aiming for an inadequate 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, it should explain why it has abandoned its commitment to do what is needed to avoid 2C of global heating.
It is not clear that limiting global heating to 2 degrees C is enough to avoid disaster, but more heating will lead to disaster unless a miracle saves civilization.
The Koch brothers support Libertarian Party candidates, but not sincerely, only to help a Republican defeat a Democrat.
Unofficial "transnational passports" provide a way to check in at a hotel without showing your real name.
I prefer not to stay in a hotel.
Being an activist for a good cause (such as free software, ending surveillance, or defeating dooH niboR) is a good way to be happy. It will easily help you do some of these steps toward happiness.
An official investigation legitimized the shooting of Darrien Hunt by thugs.
I don't trust what the thugs say about the events, but if Hunt indeed posted a message saying he was going to get shot, it's possible this was "suicide by cop".
On the other hand, why should cops question someone for carrying a sword in a place with no one else, when they would not question someone for carrying a gun there? Was that racism?
The failure of Atlantic City casinos illustrates the dead-end that gambling is, as an economic base.
The other local casinos authorized over the past 20 years by various states mainly took away some of Atlantic City's revenue, adding nothing. Given that the income does not "trickle down" to the local residents, governments should not make any concessions to keep casinos operating or to help them start. Such concessions are "beggar thy neighbor" tax-cuts.
Instead, governments should increase the minimum wage, so that workers will spend more money and promote businesses that make things that are good for people.
The West Is Silent as Libya Falls into the Abyss.
It isn't obvious what could save Libya or what to propose.
The UK's proposed "mansion tax" is a small substitute for proper taxation of expensive houses.
Who's Buying the Midterm Elections? A Bunch of Old White Guys.
Worse, they are a bunch of rich right-wing old white guys, and they want to buy policies to help them get richer at other Americans' expense.
Brisbane airport bans "political" ads aimed at the G20 delegates, except for those in favor of fossil fuel.
The G20 is considering a plan of action against global heating disaster, but all it requires is that they consider taking some action.
Ghoncheh Ghavami's trial shows that the idea of justice is absent from the Iranian state.
This is aside from the fact that the charges against her could only be made by a bigoted regime.
Abbott insists that coal is the future, directly opposing UN efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What he means is that the destruction of civilization is the future.
UN Refugee Agency Launches Global Campaign to End Statelessness.
Perhaps the deepest problem is the practice of excluding stateless people from usual activities and human rights. It's one thing to deport someone, and another to deny that person schooling, health care, driving, banking, and so on.
Alaska's mad experiment with internet voting is an invitation to fraud.
Republicans cite the danger of fraud when they impose laws to block poor, old and minority people from voting. Why, we must ask, aren't they up in arms against internet voting?
In the US: join a protest against the FCC's plan for phony net neutrality.
(Sorry that I don't know a site to point to.)
No, We Don't Need a Law Against Catcalling.
I have not yet seen the Hollaback video. It is not easy for me to see any video from YouTube, since I won't connect to that site from my own computer. I am looking for a chance to see it, because I want to see the range of actions in question. Do they include physical attacks? Threats? Intimidation? Insults? Pressure? Invitations? Praise? Silent gaze?
I want to find out what sorts of things women typically experience on the street, and also where this movement draws the line in its criticism.
To make insults a crime is injustice; calling the insults "harassment" does not excuse banning them. However, insults may deserve a rebuke.
Not everything that someone takes offense at is wrong. A woman once rebuked me, as we were riding on BART, for looking at her. I responded that people moving about in public must expect to be looked at. Nobody has a right to order people in a public place to avert their eyes. When I got off, a few stops later, I told her, "I'm leaving, so you can now proceed to your destination unobserved." (By me, at least.)
Soot and ozone pollution in India are cutting crop yields — in some areas, by as much as 50%.
The UN accused Britain of spying on delegations during UN climate summits.
Aside from the scandal of infiltrating spies into a UN meeting to spy on other delegations, the UK government's goal since 2010 has been to slow down renewable energy and keep consumption of fossil fuels high. In other words, to kill you (supposing you are young enough to live 50 more years) through global heating disaster. This spying furthers that goal.
Since July, Israel has imprisoned 900 Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
Only 300 have been charged with crimes; the rest are imprisoned arbitrarily.
Organised Hypocrisy on a Monumental Scale.
"It almost seems as if the Israeli state has mapped the entire Palestinian economy in terms of input-output relations, right down to the capillary level of the individual, the household, the small firm, the large firm, the school, the university, so as to find all possible choke points, which Israeli officials can tighten or loosen at will."
Australian thugs say that ending domestic violence against women requires teaching men to stop despising women.
I agree that needs to be done, but more funds for support to help women escape from violence would also help.
Russia's puppets in Donetsk held a Putinesque election, and are threatening to attack other cities in Ukraine.
Feminist T-shirt Makers' Working Conditions Not Shocking, But the Norm.
Egyptian journalists denounced the editors' plan to give total blind support to the state.
The UK government will send every household a misleading breakdown of how government funds are spent, designed to make people resent those that receive public assistance of any kind.
California farmers are expanding their water-devouring nut farms even though global heating will bring droughts even worse than the present record-breaking drought.
You could say it's nuts.
When women report being trafficked into the UK, thugs and officials often imprison them for lacking a passport.
A destitute Briton decided to protest full time rather than accept forced labor for a pittance.
To change plutocratic capitalism, we need to change the stories that were taught us to sustain it.
The income of the richest 1% of Americans exceeds the cost of all US social programs.
Egyptians were imprisoned for making a video which included a (simulated) gay wedding.
Even in right-wing capitalist terms, the UK's austerity is a failure: it has not paved the way for important economic growth.
These right-wing capitalist terms ignore important forms of harm: dooH niboR, forcing millions into poverty, and strengthening plutocracy.
The UK parliament has destroyed all expense records from before 2010, blocking investigation of accusations of unjustified reimbursements.
A Georgia judge upheld the failure to process
40,000
voters' registrations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The US and Iraqi governments did not resupply the Sunnis of Zawiyat
who were resisting PISSI. PISSI
massacred
them after defeating them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs in Ferguson asked for a ban on overflights mainly to keep news copters from making video of the protests.
Richard Branson's Space Tourism Shows What Today's Obscene Inequality Looks Like. And also the way being a consumer dulls the mind.
I am strongly in favor of space exploration and eventually space settlement. I don't see anything inherently wrong with space tourism, either, if people were going to visit a place of some interest — but that won't be possible in the near future.
Commercial attackware is being sold to many governments, few of which can be trusted not to use it to violate human rights.
I think it is legitimate to use such methods in cases where planting a listening device would be allowed — when ordered specifically by a judge. The hard part is to make the thugs accountable and keep these orders very specific.
US courts are chipping away at accountability for many kinds of illegal searches.
Everyone: Tell Bank of America not to invest in Australia's new coal port.
Oxfam's recommendations for ending dooH niboR.
The head of IPCC says, avoiding global heating disaster is still possible, but we don't have much time.
This means that wreckers such as Abbott, Harper and Cameron need only hold out a little more before they can hammer in the last nails in the coffin of human technological civilization.
Beware the Fear Industrial Complex.
US billionaires have hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in IRAs so as to avoid taxes.
It makes sense to encourage the non-rich to save. With the rich, however, this is just another dooH niboR give-away.
Tiny Cuba is contributing more to the fight against Ebola than the grand United States.
There is good and bad in the Cuban revolution. The good is that Cuba has thrown off the foreign plutocracy and done wonders for the people in the areas of health care, education, and organic farming.
The bad is that Cuba does not recognize freedom of speech or freedom of travel. Dissident Oswaldo Payá, who campaigned for those principles, was reportedly killed by the state which arranged a car crash and blamed his driver.
Payá, who impressed me more than anyone else in Cuba, wanted to maintain the social advances of the Cuban revolution.
The US boycott of Cuba makes no sense except as a sop to the exiles who have a lot of influence in Florida.
Afghan women disguise some daughters as sons, so the daughters can experience a little freedom, and so the mothers themselves won't face condemnation for sonlessness.
US citizens: call on your state's election officials to count every vote.
A UK professor criticized how thugs dealt with her mother's accidental death, so they investigated her political background and listed her as mentally ill.
US citizens: Oppose the plan to build a highway through a designated roadless area in the Tongass national forest.
The IPCC's stern warnings about the pressing danger of global heating are an understatement.
How to ramp up the sense of danger? For one thing, stop using the bland term "climate change" that was imposed by Dubya's global heating denialists and start talking about "global heating".
Meanwhile, efforts to direct politicians' attention towards the necessary action face censorship.
Under great pressure, Abbott agreed that the G20 meeting statement can include a token paragraph about global heating.
As long as he prevents any substantive action to reduce use of fossil fuels, he considers it a victory.
Fast-growing cities correlate with high levels of violence.
Humans must have fewer children — and those with wealth must provide the poor with the effective painless means to limit their reproduction.
Uri Avnery debunks false US accusations against Netanyahu, and explains why Netanyahu thinks it safe to insult Obama.
(Digital) Surveillance Begins at Home.
In Hungary, an Independent Website Defies Censorship And Pressure.
Because many US nuclear power plants are getting older, the EPA proposes to increase radiation exposure standards.
US democracy is being crushed by voter-suppression and gerrymandering.
A leaker reports on the dirty tricks PR plans of the frackers.
Twitter is using Verizon's phone-ID tracking code.
A bill to reduce criminal penalties for libel in Italy does not go far enough.
California thugs consider it a "game" to collect and share nude photos from the phones of women they arrest.
A large study found that occasional use of marijuana by teenagers is not associated with any school or intellectual problems, after controlling for other activities known to be harmful.
Airline security idiots delayed overnight because someone had made a wifi hotspot called "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork."
Theater of Security Agency agents confiscated a belt buckle that looks like a fictional raygun, calling it a "replica" of a weapon.
Those whose job is theater anyway may not recognize the significance of the difference between a real weapon and a fictional one.
The UK government regards dissent in itself as criminal, a reason to infiltrate informers into a person's life and record everything.
Life Is Getting Harder For Objective Journalists in Turkey, Says Cartoonist Sued by Erdogan.
If publishers want to compete with Amazon and Netflix, they should try ditching DRM.
They should also stop imposing unfair contracts (EULAs) and stop making purchasers identify themselves. Then the copies they sell would be no less ethical than a typical CD or printed book.
Angela Davis: US racism is visible in not only when thugs kill innocent people but also when they frame anti-racist campaigners and label them as "terrorists".
Russia and China blocked creation of a marine conservation zone in the Southern Ocean.
Spain adopted a law for DMCA-style takedowns, but even more strict. (That's the second issue in the article; I don't think the "Google tax" is very important.
Is Ireland the new Detroit? Citizens say they will go to jail rather than pay water charges.
It is important to charge businesses for water use, but everyone is entitled to water in a reasonable quantity for personal use.
A Canadian court fined Google for publishing a photo of a woman sitting on the steps of her house. People could tell who she was even though Google blurred out her face.
This decision is fundamentally wrong and dangerous, because the right to take a photo outdoors and publish it must be respected.
The plaintiff received nasty criticisms because the photo showed her wearing revealing clothing. However, Google was not to blame for this. She wasn't to blame either, since there is nothing wrong about wearing revealing clothing. The blame falls on the people who attacked her.
Australia has replaced "polluter pays" with paying some companies to (perhaps) pollute less.
The crucial difference is that the new policy will do nothing to impede the extraction and combustion of coal.
Hungary's government backed down on plans for an internet use tax.
Orban's general strategy is to avoid doing things that make lots of people angry.
The latest proposed way to export tar sands oil is a pipeline to Canada's Atlantic coast. Lots of people are determined to block it.
Canada has adopted
a silly
and gratuitous defense against Ebola.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the old link was broken.]
If someone was exposed to Ebola a whole month ago, there is no chance he would have a contagious case of Ebola today. Either he has recovered already or he didn't catch it at all.
Deforestation in the Amazon may be causing the drought in Sao Paulo.
The US government got more power with the PAT RIOT act in the name of "protecting us" from terrorism, but uses that power mainly for the insane War on Drugs.
The War on Drugs does far more damage to the US than terrorism.
The UK is high on the War on Drugs: ministers insist on "toughness" even though the people, the press and even most members of Parliament are ready to end it.
Interviews with makers of "fair-trade" porn.
I have always been puzzled by those who assume that "porn" means "violent" or "cruel". The arbitrary exclusion of kind, nonviolent sex from the category of porn seems perverse to me.
IPCC Report: Six Graphs That Show How We're Changing the World's Climate.
Corporations demand "free markets" while rigging markets in their own interests.
Violent video games don't make people kill, but they do tend to make people more aggressive and less empathetic.
An ex-thug in Miami says that other thugs talked about how they were framing Krishna Maharaj.
Social Security figures show that US workers are getting worse off, making the US like a third-world country.
Not coincidentally, the number of billionaires in the world has doubled in recent years.
Peter Young gets harassed by the Theater of Security Agency every time he flies, because he has been convicted of a "terrorist" crime.
His "terrorism" consisted of freeing minks from farms. Labeling this as "terrorism" was the first step in the distortion of that term by the US.
I wish this were a mere bureaucratic mistake, but it something much worse: obstinacy for obstinacy's sake, on the part of bureaucrats who think that obstinacy for obstinacy's sake is what the public deserves.
The US government estimates that only 20 or 30 Americans have gone to Syria to fight for various anti-Assad groups, and only some of them are in PISSI.
Such a small number are insignificant, thus no reason for any change in laws or any denial of Americans' human rights.
Why do thugs want armored vehicles? To intimidate people who are not even accused of a crime.
Massive resistance to tar sands oil has done tremendous harm to the oil extraction companies' profits.
Will Coal Or Solar Power Fuel India's Drive to Bring Electricity to Its Villages?
Greg Palast's full report on a secret Republican scheme to block 2 million minority group members from voting by falsely accusing them of registering in two states.
The trick is being sloppy and treating false matches (nearly all of them) as real matches.
Many Republican-dominated states are using other measures to stop college students from voting.
Unidentified drones have been flying over French nuclear plants.
Facebook threatens to take control of many commercial publications; they may publish only through Facebook.
I will probably not read them if they do that.
Although there is some interesting analysis in this article, it suffers from a superficial business-minded outlook framed by referring to publications as "content" and viewing them as "consuming". It assumes that publishers are motivated by nothing except profit. It is interesting as an analysis of what such publishers might be led to do.
As for other publishers — my home page is not dead, and neither is gnu.org's.
You can't trust a server to maintain your anonymity.
The only way to be anonymous is to stop servers from knowing anything about you.
In the US: tell NPR not to cut its climate reporting.
US citizens: tell the FCC that its latest phony network-neutrality plan is still no good.
Here's more information.
Everyone: call on Shell to stop funding ALEC's global heating denial.
US citizens: call on FCC commissioner Wheeler to state why he resists proper network neutrality.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to take action against Georgia's voter-suppression disenfranchisement of 40,000 voters.
US citizens: call on the EPA to close the loophole about pollution made in starting up and shutting down plants.
Sodastream will move its factory out of an illegal colony in Palestinian territory.
Global Supply Chains Link Us All to Shame of Child And Forced Labour.
These complex supply chains are due to business-driven globalization, and that does so many other kinds of harm that we might as well get rid of them all at once.
Sweden has recognized the state of Palestine.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj has won the chance to sue the British government for helping Gaddafi get him and torture him.
Giant reforestation campaigns are starting in Africa.
1/3 of the shrimp on sale in the US carry false labels.
Over a million schoolchildren in the US are homeless.
This is a national shame, and reflects the greed of the illegitimate rulers of the US.
Computerized voting machines in the US are already committing fraud.
97% of US doctors are concerned about the danger of overuse of antibiotics.
The school-to-prison pipeline in Minneapolis starts with arresting black children for "truancy", "disorderly conduct" or homelessness.
Palestinian nonviolent protester has been imprisoned for "disturbing an Israeli soldier".
Using such pretexts to imprison protesters is a sign of tyranny.
Australia's government wants to record all phone calls in a data base it could search without restriction.
This would directly threaten all whistleblowers.
The US is rushing to approve genetically modified salmon, while Panama has fined the operator of the salmon hatchery they would come from.
These salmon threaten to contaminate wild salmon with the artificially introduced gene, which could wipe out wild salmon stocks.
Verizon is funding an explicitly censored technology news site which has a commitment not to discuss network neutrality or massive surveillance.
Many mainstream media hush up or mistreat these issues. What is amazing is to admit it.
UK state schools, which are supposed to be gratis, impose large costs that poor families can't pay. The biggest cost is the uniform.
The US harasses many journalists entering the US, in some cases just to make their lives difficult.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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