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Quand faut-il manger des crêpes ?
Uri Avnery: Israel's first war crime in the 2014 war with Gaza was starting the war. But it committed many more, because the Israeli army will kill hundreds of Arab civilians to avoid one Israeli casualty.
Australia's new law eliminated only one of the two issues raised in a lawsuit against sending refugees to imprisonment in Nauru.
It may be possible to preserve coral reefs by bringing in polyps that have a higher tolerance for heat.
The Greek government has called a referendum on whether to accept the banksters' ultimatum.
I urge Greeks to reject the ultimatum. It is better to suffer for a while from default than suffer forever from impossible debt.
Australia is considering exiling Australians accused of fighting for PISSI, making them stateless. Naturally, the government proposes to do this without trial. Any Australian could be arbitrarily exiled this way.
An Islamist attacked tourists in a resort in Tunisia. The goal of the attack was evidently to harm Tunisia, which has voted against Islamist fanaticism.
Tunisia must resist the lure of attacking it own human rights.
The US, the UK, Australia and France have failed this test, but Tunisia can still pass it.
Islamist terrorism in the US is so small, on the scale of violence, that it is not worth making a fuss about.
That is not true in the Middle East, of course.
The IMF's empirical research conclusively disproves the "trickle-down" theory that concentrating wealth will boost economic growth. On the contrary, redistribution to the poor boosts economic growth.
Of course, we already had plenty of informal proof of that.
Now those businesses that give workers a raise can call themselves "wealth creators".
A few words to Greece.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the sneaky Republican attack on network neutrality.
EU citizens: contact your MEPs to support freedom of panorama.
US citizens: call on Clinton to drop the Monsanto lobbyist from her campaign.
Even more important: support Bernie Sanders for president. This hire reflects what Clinton is (a Republican in Democrat's clothing) and what she stands for (power for the rich). She shouldn't be elected to any office.
In the US: call on New York Governor Cuomo to appoint a strong replacement for policing Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Senate democrats to block the abortion restriction bill with a filibuster.
What happens to a country when its territory is swallowed by the sea?
We can say that the visitors to luxury hotels in the Maldives (each contributing a lot to global heating for one person) are consuming those islands, using them up from under the inhabitants.
The people of the Maldive Islands knew what to do to save their islands, and they did it: they elected a president who began campaigning to curb global heating. He was removed then imprisoned by a military coup that I suspect has something to do with fossil fuel interests.
In the light of what Australia and Europe are doing to refugees today, I think that they will tell the inhabitants of island nations to sit down and drown. The dictator of the Maldives must expect to buy safety for his family when the rest of the population is drowned.
We had better stop doing the things that make so many people flee their homes.
Protesters in Nauru, including 3 opposition legislators, face criminal charges. Their protest was against the government's corruption and its suspension of democracy.
The government called the protest a "riot". Have you heard that one before?
Apple has banned iThing applications that show the confederate flag. Not only those that use it as a symbol of racism, but even strategic games that use it to represent confederate army units fighting in the Civil War.
It is absurd to interpret those games as an instance of use of the confederate flag as racist symbol today. But censorship is wrong; even censorship of racism. We can say we despise racist hatred, but we must not forbid people from expressing it.
This is not the only political position Apple has censored.
It is wrong for Apple to ban applications based on what they say, but the root of this evil is that Apple has designed the operating system for the iThings as a platform for censorship. That should be a crime.
10 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that cities could seize buildings (including homes) to give to private development on the excuse that this would be "good for the community". The result was a popular movement that has mostly ended the practice.
Can we validly "presume" that governments "wouldn't be pursuing a development project in the first place unless they anticipated some benefit to the public"? Not at all. The idea that a handout to a company is "good for the community" was Scott Walker's excuse for handouts.
As this particular case shows, the whole idea of achieving a "benefit to the public" through a handout to the community is stupid. Companies make cities and states compete to offer handouts. Overall, the taxpayers lose and only the companies gain.
Why do so many politicians endorse these foolish ideas? Perhaps someone rich rewards them for it.
The UK welfare system ruled that Mark Wood was not disabled and was capable of working. Apparently it was mistaken, because instead he starved to death. He now has a posthumous art exhibition.
That wasn't the last time the system was wrong about this. Why does it make so many mistakes? Partly because it has quotas for various things it does to cut people's benefits.
Now it seems to have a quota for accusing poor people of fraud.
The unemployed who feel discouraged about finding work are now pressured to attend brainwashing sessions for this "psychological problem".
Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck" as some call it) shows a pattern of defrauding customers through mislabeling weights.
There are other unsavory things about that company.
Everyone: call on Mississippi to remove the confederate flag from the Mississippi state flag.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act.
Particulate air pollution kills around 4 million people a year, according to WHO.
Greenhouse gas pollution's effects kill only 400,000 people per year at present, but those effects will get worse, and kill far more, if we continue as we are going.
The Lancet: Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us… Quitting Them Can Save Us.
Scott Walker set up a "jobs program" that handed $124 million to businesses under his personal supervision, without review. The result was to "create" around 2000 jobs, meaning the State of Wisconsin paid a business $60,000 for each job.
The state could have made more jobs by hiring people directly.
The idea of paying companies to "create jobs" is inherently misguided. from the public's point of view. The state loses a lot of money and gets few jobs — many of which were not actually created, but rather taken away from some other state. The only thing it is effective for is giving money to businesses.
If legislators don't know this, the program is mistake foolish. If they know, it is corrupt and dishonest, I think Walker knows, don't you?
The effective way for the state to use money to create jobs is to give the money to poor people. They will spend it.
A group of 39 whales beached themselves one day in 2011. Scientists now say they did this because underwater bomb explosions damaged their hearing and navigation.
19 of the whales died; the rest went back to sea. Perhaps their hearing was ok and they only followed the others; or perhaps they didn't live long.
Underwater explosions for oil drilling can do the same thing.
Colombia has punished those who reported the army's murders, while promoting the generals in charge.
The current president, Nonsantos, was the minister in charge.
Activists are bringing solar panels to Gaza by boat, since electricity is limited there because Israel destroyed the generating plant.
One Palestinian member of the Israeli legislature is among the volunteers on the boats.
The same Israelis that impose the siege call him a traitor, to distract from the evil of the siege of Gaza.
A UK jobcenter demanded Nick Gaskin come to an interview about putting him into work, or else his support would be cut off. It would be difficult for Gaskin to work, since he is paralyzed from the mouth down, and can communicate only by blinking his eyes.
Everyone makes mistakes, but if this was an error, the jobcenter compounded it by refusing to recognize and correct the error when Gaskin's family reported it. The staff had clearly been told not to accept any excuse for not coming for a work interview.
The absurd case of Nick Gaskin is significant because of the general pattern it is an extreme example of. Jobcenters are constantly looking for excuses to conclude, never mind whether it's true, that disabled people are really fit for work.
Those unemployed who are fit to work (including the many who never claimed not to be) are frequently put through hoops, like requiring them to come to the jobcenter without giving them a way to get there, and ordered to spend many hours a week applying for nonexistent jobs using computers not available to them.
The reason is clear: the state seeks excuses to cut support for the unemployed, so it keeps creating new excuses to punish them.
Nigeria's army has
killed over 8000
prisoners since 2011.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That is more or less
comparable
with the number of people that Boko Haram has killed.
The US made Google turn over Jacob Appelbaum's email data, and forced
Google to keep this secret to avoid a
public
backlash.
Proposing
restrictions on the use of automated face recognition.
The hard part will be to limit the state's use of face recognition.
Facebook admits that it censors for various governments, but when it
censors
for the US, it covers that up.
Due to antibiotic resistance, we must end
densely
packed factory farms for the sake of our lives.
We should also reserve the most effective antibiotics for humans, and
perhaps pets; they should not be administered to farm animals under
any circumstances.
The
FDA's Livestock Antibiotic Policies Still Aren't Enough.
Americans imprisoned in 2001, on vague suspicion without charges, will
be
allowed
to carry out a class-action suit against the Bush regime officials
responsible.
As the UK government attacks the non-rich on
all
fronts at once, Britons must resist on the street.
Baltimore thugs have responded to public resentment of their killing
of Freddie Gray by going on an
unofficial
slowdown strike against poor neighborhoods.
Congress [has been] Warned That Drones Present '
A
Nightmare Scenario for Civil Liberties'.
Rep:
Maloney: "If we don't change our permissive gun laws, we'll never
end gun violence."
Debunking
myths
used to oppose gun control in the US.
Pope Francis's encyclical about the climate threat addresses a broader
issue,
criticizing
extreme capitalism, concentration of wealth for a few, and
frivolous throw-away consumption, which lead to suffering for the poor
as well as to ruining Earth.
It is
radical
at several levels.
Here are
some
quotations.
Overall, the Pope's support for the effort to overcome plutocrats and
curb global heating is a great help, but we must not forget the
areas
where he is mistaken. Women's rights receive skant attention in
the encyclical, and the danger of overpopulation is dismissed.
The Pope misrepresented the advocates of
contraception
and population limitation, pretending they are the enemies of
conservation.
In fact, we see that as a necessary part of conservation. Having
children contributes to humanity's future drain on limited resources.
Reducing reproduction means reducing future poverty, reducing future
pollution, and reducing future extinction.
Everyone:
call
on Oregon not to sell water to Nestle at a cheap price.
US citizens:
Call
on South Carolina to take down the confederate flag, symbol of
slavery.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to let the US Export-Import Bank terminate on June 30.
Don't renew this subsidy to big business.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to set up a commission to review laws and standards that
regulate thugs' violence.
US citizens:
urge the Department
of Agriculture and the Department of Health to resist industry
lobbying and recommend a lower level of meat-eating.
The US Supreme Court voted to legalize same-sex marriage across the US.
This is a victory for a good cause, but perhaps the plutocrats have decided to hand this issue to the progressives precisely because it doesn't reduce their power.
That seems to be what spy agencies are doing.
The Sleazy Congressional Republicans of the United States (SCROTUS), on behalf of the meat industry, aim to stop dietary guidelines from recommending people eat less meat.
I find all acronyms that use "OTUS" to mean "Of the United States" disgusting. I hope that "SCROTUS" will put them all in disrepute.
Goober is meeting resistance in many countries. It comes mainly from taxi drivers, and sometimes from concern about safety, but anyone who values privacy rights should campaign to get rid of Uber.
Facebook claimed it would relax the "real name" rule for the sake of cross-dressers, but never really did that.
Sweden is proposing to add a democracy criterion to its arms sales.
Not surprisingly, weapons companies complain that this might mean less income for them. Tough luck, weapons companies.
For the low-paid, being "self-employed" means getting no benefits, no holidays, being cheated by employers, and making less than minimum wage.
The real "benefits cheats" are employers that pay so little that their employees need government aid.
Jill Stein is running for President again for the Green Party.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2012. If Bernie Sanders doesn't win the Democratic nomination, I will vote for Jill Stein again.
California's drought has promoted wildfires, and makes it hard for firefighters to find water to drop.
Six regions around the world are hit by severe heat waves.
Killing a Nation With Euphemisms: TPP-Eats-Medicare Edition.
Most terrorism in the US is right-wing; only a small fraction is Islamist.
Women and children who fled central America to the US may be released from immigration prison.
Ferry workers in Scotland have gone on strike against privatization plans.
Nauru's excuse for censorship: protecting the imprisoned refugees from "hate speech".
The US government's stated reasons for gagging Google about the non-subpoena for Jacob Appelbaum's data amount to, "Don't show people why they should criticize."
The sort of order that was used instead of a subpoena is very dangerous.
A group of teenagers sued the state of Washington, and got a court to order the state to bring its policies in line with what the state knows about the danger of global heating.
Paying workers a living wage worked so well for Ikea that it is going to give them another raise.
Donald Trump demanded Obama release his birth certificate, but refuses to release his own birth certificate.
The elite in South Africa are so powerful that it has blocked holding anyone accountable for a massacre of miners on strike.
Switching to natural gas (methane) doesn't reduce ultimate greenhouse gas emissions compared with oil, because normally a substantial amount of methane leaks into the air.
Chemicals used in fracking can be toxic to humans or wildlife.
La Quadrature du Net calls on French citizens to resist massive surveillance.
La Quadrature is also resisting in court.
The EU Council (of representatives of states) is proposing to make privacy protections so weak that they are meaningless.
I don't trust privacy policies. Data, once collected, will be misused. We must resist the collection of the data.
The issues that remain for a nuclear deal between the US and Iran.
Embarrassed by statistics on children living in poverty, the UK government plans to reduce the problem by measuring poverty differently.
"Credit rating agencies are miscalculating risks of climate change."
These agencies are not impartial. They may have a business motive for this. Or perhaps they are only slow to adapt.
The Baltimore Thug Department invented an imaginary armed "threat" as an excuse to crack down on the protests over the killing of Freddie Gray by thugs.
These claims were rejected by the FBI, which reported there was no basis for them.
Thugs will keep influencing the public by lying as long as people are willing to believe thugs. It's hard to resist, since (as with any fraudster) most of what they say is true.
Thugs in Maryland killed an unarmed black man, and say they jumped to the conclusion from his posture that he had a gun.
That is effectively a confession of being too quick to kill.
The Champaign Illinois thugs' "officer of the year" is now facing trial for violent rape against two (perhaps three) women.
A heat wave in Pakistan killed 800 people and has put thousands in the hospital with heat stroke.
More ominously, weather conditions are occasionally approaching the point where human beings will die quickly without air conditioning. With a little more global heating, we will see heat waves that kill the whole population of a region.
Unnatural Disaster: How Global Warming Helped Cause India's Catastrophic Flood.
Self-driving cars create an ethical problem, which we could call the autonomous trolley problem.
After 13 years, a Colombian elected official has been sentenced for the murder of editor Orlando Sierra.
Oman is draining its aquifers, so that the ancient and still active system of water tunnels ceases to function.
Using data mining to find corruption.
Since the data being searched describes state actions with businesses, it does not raise any privacy issue.
Despite the terrible surrender on Fast Track, the fight against it has won smaller victories that might help defeat the TPP.
Since the 1950s, the number of large wildfires annually in Alaska has doubled. The fire season has extended a whole month.
This is due to the 3C (around 5F) increase in the average temperature in Alaska in that time span.
Details of the Republicans' three legislative attacks against network neutrality.
Choosing among job candidates by algorithm can avoid unconscious bias.
However, it depends on massive surveillance of the people being hired. If this method is to be used, it must be used in a way that doesn't centralize information about the candidates.
Existing job application sites have been massive surveillance systems for a decade, making them menaces to society in my view.
The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Obama's medical care funding.
That law is an advance, but next we need to replace the private insurance companies and cover everyone. This could resist the gouging of the hospitals and the drug companies.
As usual, Sanders takes the strongest position. But even single-payer is not ideal. Canada's national health system is better. Even the UK's system, undermined as it is by years of right-wing underfunding, is better on the average.
Nation's Wealthiest Families Behind the Effort to Kill the Estate Tax.
18 journalists are in prison in Egypt, where journalism is interpreted as "terrorism".
Egypt's journalists proudly proclaim they publish whatever the state says.
An Indian prosecutor says an official told her to stop prosecuting Hindus who attacked Muslims with a bomb, after Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party won the election.
In the solidarity fridge in Galdakao, Spain, people leave food for others to take.
Fifteen Most Outrageous Responses by Police after Killing Unarmed People.
Greenpeace bought land to block a new runway for Heathrow airport, but economically it was really a two-year lease rather than a permanent purchase.
Greenpeace did not pay again to renew the lease.
The world has an opportunity to eliminate HIV, but if it doesn't take that opportunity, the disease will spread more.
Jetliners pressurize the cabin with air that went through engine compressors. Sometimes toxic gases from the engine get into the cabin. Airplane flight attendants suffering permanent medical problems are suing Boeing over this.
Measuring all the US states against international standards for use of deadly force by thugs.
All of the Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates are harsh on whistleblowers. Sanders is the best of them, but still disappointing.
If Sanders wins, the spy establishment will pressure him to become as bad as Obama, but he might listen to a public campaign.
At large US companies, the pay for CEOs has risen 54% since 2009, but pay for workers is the same as then.
We should tax away that 54% raise.
How housing developers in London game the law to minimize affordable housing.
Three more Australian government lies: the results of a heating-denialist's "research" center will be called "consensus", and his denialism will be called "rational conversation".
Universities are being offered 4 million dollars in bait to endorse these lies.
26 people lived together in a 3-bedroom house in London. They could not afford anything better.
Soon those people will be living in a far more spacious place: the street.
An admired teacher in the UK has been sentenced to a long prison term for initiating teenage boys into sex.
It seems clear that those teenagers enjoyed their sexual relationship at the time, and actively participated in continuing it. Neither apparently claims to have been coerced.
These relationships cannot have been perfect; no relationship ever is. It is not unusual to get into a relationship and later regret it, but if that implies the relationship was harmful, then we would start imprisoning most people who have them.
I have the impression that someone convinced them, based on an ideological position, that some imperfect aspect means the relationships did them grave damage. I am not buying it. Your first relationship is almost sure to be flawed, and you learn from that.
I am sure I'd have had a far happier life if I had learned these things from a teacher when I was 14 rather than waiting years to learn them from someone else.
A regional assembly of a prestigious US church
voted to
oppose
the War on Drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Several Republicans have presented false quotes attributed to founders of the US.
Attaching shame to the confederate flag is worth an effort, but it is just a small step in eradicating systematic US racism.
It appears GCHQ illegally supported US drone assassinations.
Australia's plan for exile without trial could apply to whistleblowers.
It's supposed to be for "terrorists", but for "terrorist" read "dissident or troublemaker".
One ISP in the US is resisting part of its assigned role with the War on Sharing.
Thousands of known species live only in or near Antarctica. Human activity, especially global heating, endangers them.
Meet The Children Who Live In Ghana's Hellish Digital Dump.
We need to require manufacturers to design products for recycling.
In the mean time, computers last longer when you run them with free software, because the manufacturer doesn't have the power to make a hardware upgrade necessary by imposing harmful software changes.
As gentrification takes on the last affordable housing in Washington DC, the tenants' housing aid will become useless as there is nowhere they can go.
Chinatown will finish converting into a tourist trap. It won't have any good Chinese food, once there are no Chinese customers to insist on doing a good job.
The US House of Representatives has voted to strengthen regulation of toxic chemicals.
Unemployed people can be happy without work, if they call it "retirement" instead of "unemployment". Respecting the state of unemployment is crucial to helping society adjust to it.
Not everyone can imitate Money Mustache. It is vital to have no children, or at least that they already be grown. (You can decide to have no children.) But even then, there are difficulties. Not everyone is competent to repair a house. Not everyone has a house, and you surely can't buy one when you're unemployed/retired. Not everyone can ride a bicycle, especially not on roads with cars.
Respecting the unemployed/retired is a crucial step towards for deciding to give them the government help that many of them will need.
Detroit's bankruptcy was not inevitable. It was a political choice imposed by Republican state politicians for harmful ends.
Now other Republican state politicians want to do it to Chicago, but it won't be easy for them to achieve it there.
The cracking of the US government employee records was enabled by subcontracting.
It is a bad practice in general.
An Ethiopian dissident, handed over to Ethiopia without legal process by Yemen, is apparently being tortured into confessing a variety of crimes.
How Politicians, Media, and the Gun Lobby Enable Racist Terror.
Soldiers have been sentenced to prison for committing rape during Bosnia's civil war.
Armenian protests against increased electricity prices bloomed after thugs attacked the protesters.
I won't say that I agree with their goal of cheap energy, though. In general, the price of energy made from fossil fuel must be high enough to reduce its use.
Climate [Mayhem] Should Be Top Foreign Policy Priority, G7 Study Says.
An EPA study tries to estimate the cost savings for the US from curbing global heating. For instance, by 2100, heating is estimated to cost over 100 billion annually in lost work time due to heat.
Dutch people sued the Dutch government for planning to allow global heating to proceed to the point it would damage to their health and property. The court ordered the Dutch government to cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions 25% within 5 years.
A similar lawsuit is being prepared in Belgium.
Such lawsuits may be possible in many countries that have independent judicial systems. They wouldn't be feasible in China.
A French court ordered compensation paid to people who were stopped and searched by thugs for no reason.
Flying abortion pills into Poland by drone, for women's rights.
The ACLU and other organizations call for a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torturers and prosecute them.
The Department of Education should cancel all students' debt for Corinthian Colleges.
US government agencies are talking about judging homeopathic "remedies" by scientific standards.
Experiments show that marijuana does not impair driving skill very much; the current marijuana standards are in effect too strict when compared to the current alcohol standards.
Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush represent two groups of banksters.
That's one reason I won't vote for either of them. If Sanders is not in the race, I will vote Green.
Surveys find that only smokers use e-cigarettes more than occasionally.
The US has arrested 243 people who work in the medical industry for Medicare fraud amounting to 2/3 of a billion dollars. They are accused of billing Medicare for services they did not carry out.
Columbia University has decided to divest from private prison companies, responding to a campaign by students.
Divesting from them is the first step towards eliminating them.
The main Australian parties (including the "opposition") are rushing a law through to strip refugees of legal recourse. The government will be able to do anything whatsoever to them.
Absurdly, the Labor party calls this an act of "compassion".
Just after the French government approved pervasive snooping in France, it is outraged that the US has spied on French officials.
Will this teach Hollande the wrong in what he just did?
Graduates of teachers' college must consider ethical dilemmas raised by the systematic corruption of the educational system.
Russia's internet disinformation army is being sued by an ex-worker for illegal mistreatment of employees.
As conditions inside UK prisons degrade, the state's response is not to allow journalists to see them.
Human rights activists rebuke Obama for deciding to visit repressive Ethiopia.
Australia's definition of "terrorism", for the punishment of permanent exile, stretches to include almost anything.
Particulate pollution in Delhi is damaging the health of children there, perhaps doing life-long damage.
A US court is getting the blowback from the law's absurdity.
Todd Easter says he wasn't raped, because in the usual meaning of the word, he wasn't. The court, however, insists on pretending that he was. Sorry, judge, calling sex "rape" does not make it rape.
Calling willing sex "rape" is a lie. In this case, the lie leads to a retrial. In other cases, it ruins lives.
Easter's lover did do something that was wrong, when he threatened Easter with violence after Easter broke off the relationship. But that's a different issue.
Palestinians imprisoned without charge by Israel are making a hunger strike.
Rating various giant food companies for their policies about buying palm oil.
Israel's "culture minister" is proud that a screenwriter asked her for a list of censorship rules. She promised a precise list in a month.
As fish in the ocean decline, the trend is headed towards zero fish in 2048.
That is a rough, simplistic projection. I don't expect there will be absolutely no fish in the sea in 2048, even in 2148. The point is, there will be no fish available for us to eat, and other disasters as well.
Whistleblowers claim US medical insurance companies massively defraud Medicare.
Let's get rid of the need for private medical insurance companies.
Time Warner Cable is accused of violating the network neutrality rules.
Since "global warming" and "climate change" downplay the danger, we need to say something else. A writer proposes "climate mayhem".
A powerful current is sweeping away public use of confederate flags.
Less progress is being made on gun control, which would have bigger real effects.
Discrediting the confederate flag is merely symbolic, but it will have some real effects. However, for the defenders of racism, it is only a tactical retreat.
Google stuck code into Chromium, the supposedly free version of Chrome, to download and install a nonfree piece of spyware.
Because Chromium itself is free software, users have the power to change it to prevent the download of that module.
This highlights the difference in ideas between free software and open source.
Open source claims to yield practical superiority: better quality code. Free software is about an ethical, political superiority: the users have control over the program.
In this instance, open source did not achieve its stated benefit, but free software is vindicated.
Google has banned an app that protects users from surveillance by apps.
It should be noted that (1) if the Disconnect app is non-free, you can't trust it either, and (2) a portable phone reports your location to the phone company whenever it is communicating with the phone network, regardless of what any apps or ads may do.
GCHQ has a group that works on propaganda and deceit. It justifies existence by claiming to address foreign enemies and terrorists, then operates mainly against dissidents and ordinary domestic criminals.
Medical insurance companies, associated with employment, are starting to impose "wellness programs" that bully people. Disabled people will be penalized if they are unable to follow the orders.
In addition, they may demand you use proprietary spyware, such as the fitbit.
"All abortions should be safe and easy, including ones women have at home."
There's some chance the sun may be headed for a few decades of (slightly) weaker emissions.
Don't relax yet. It's only a 20% chance. And if it happens, it would only delay global heating effects by 2 years.
Journalist Ahmed Mansour says Germany has not explained why it enforced Egypt's arrest warrant.
The plutocratic party in the Senate defeated a filibuster against "fast track" for corporate-supremacy treaties.
I fear the final elimination of even the formal possibility for democracy in the US is approaching. Here's an example of the harm that the older, weaker corporate-supremacy treaties already do.
State harassment has made Russia's "satirical Wikipedia" stop operating.
It is not clear from the article whether it will stop displaying the existing pages.
The UK's intelligence oversight panel accepts spying on human rights groups and on attorney-client conversations, with a few minor limits.
Particulate air pollution seems to harm the brain of old people.
Prisoners in the US are fighting the prison-industrial complex by refusing to work unpaid.
In principal, it is not wrong to make prisoners cook the food that they eat, or wash the clothes that they wear. That's no worse than life for most people. Putting prisoners to work on public service activities can be a form of restitution and rehabilitation (if it isn't twisted into an excuse for cruelty).
However, making prisoners work unpaid for the state's profit, or private profit, is harmful to everyone. It cuts wages for people outside prison, which is likely to force some of them into prison.
Combine this with the system that gouges prisoners for everything, even medical care (which they are entitled to), and it makes sense for prisoners to refuse to work at all without a decent wage.
US prisons abandoned the idea of rehabilitation in the 1980s as part of massive incarceration, but what could be more effective rehabilitation for prisoners than giving them a real job for real pay?
The UN inquiry into Israel's attack on Gaza says that the violence against Gaza civilians seems to have been a policy ordered by the high command.
The US Congress is considering a bill to collect school records and subsequent income records for everyone that goes to a US college.
Justice Kennedy begs for a case to raise the issue of whether long term solitary confinement is cruel and inhumane punishment.
The UK is fighting to conceal data on how many unemployed people have been killed or driven to suicide by the government's cruel cuts.
The Tories are worse than vermin: they are murderers, covering up their crimes.
23,000 species are now listed as threatened.
A "compromise" between the French Assembly and Senate made the surveillance bill even worse.
Mixtures of chemicals can be carcinogenic even though the individual chemicals are safe. Some scientists suspect 20% of all cancers are caused this way.
Everything about the fossil fuel divestment movement.
Saudi Arabia is pushing hard to develop domestic solar energy, to save the oil for export.
Some courts in the US have found that adopting techniques from social work is better than traditional simple punishment for getting convicts to stop committing crimes.
Partly this is because some of those accused are accused of victimless crimes, such as taking drugs or homelessness. Social work and other kinds of help are what they needed. It's a shame that the only way they could get this help is by being convicted of a crime.
The best opportunity to improve human health in this century is to cut back on fossil fuels.
New York City prison thugs will be subject to new measures so that they stop routinely attacking teenage prisoners.
Will the FDA start treating homeopathic "remedies" as the fantasy drugs that they really are?
Turkish journalist Tolga Tanis, a reporter covering the US, is being threatened with prosecution by Erdogan for criticizing him in a book.
The book is in Turkish, published in Turkey, but that is no excuse for this.
The euro is an engine and excuse for reducing wages all across Europe. For any problem, the euro-zone plutocrats have the same answer: wipe out workers' rights so they will get less.
Parachute jumpers who jumped from the unfinished One World Trade Center have been convicted of various "crimes".
I challenge the state to show that this "endangered" anyone, or that it deserves to be considered a crime.
Australia has adopted a repressive anti-sharing law that requires ISPs to impose censorship.
It won't stop determined people from sharing files on the internet, but it will damage human rights in general.
I disagree with Senator Ludlam, though, when he claims that what we need is for publishers to "deliver content in a timely and affordable manner". And not only because, by referring to published works as "content", he adopts the contemptuous attitude that their publishers take towards these works. It is not enough for publications to be "timely and affordable" — they must also respect our rights once we buy them. Commercial internet music distributors don't do this and neither do commercial e-book distributors, which is why I will go to trouble to bypass them — or wait years — or go without — rather than accept their practices.
The Supreme Court ruled that hotels can refuse state searches of their guest registers without a warrant.
This doesn't mean hotels are obliged to protect the privacy of their guests, and mostly they won't. And they can't protect guests from NSA or FBI massive surveillance at all.
Thus, I will continue to mostly avoid staying in hotels if the hotel knows my name.
Germany released Egyptian journalist Ahmed Mansour, who it had arrested at the request of Egypt's military government.
Uber plans to snoop on users' locations and contacts all the time.
Uber has the technical possibility to do this because its app is nonfree: it is controlled by Uber, not by the user. In addition, snooping depends on a nonfree operating system. With a free system, the user could tell the system to lie to the Uber app.
Human Rights Watch: those who criticize World Bank projects for human rights violations often face repression from governments and companies involved in the projects.
Podemos plans to invest lots of money in renewable energy and create lots of jobs.
The law that requires women to stay 3 days in the vicinity of an abortion clinic is a tremendous hardship to those that are not rich.
Albuqerque thugs who killed a homeless man will be tried for second-degree murder.
The UN concluded that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes when Israel attacked Gaza. This will encourage the ICC to move forward in investigating them.
Another Indian journalist was burned to death after investigating corruption.
What this indicates is that the people culpable figured that the state is so corrupt they can get away with this.
Charging high fees for university in the UK (though not as high as in the US) has an effect, aside from leaving graduates in debt: they are more focused on money.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that the main purpose of education was to enable people to think better about issues of concern to society. This purpose is being jettisoned eagerly under the corporate pressure to convert universities into support for business, and the refusal of the elite to pay taxes for the education of other people's children.
Apple's emails inviting bloggers to distribute through Apple's news disservice claim to impose legal restrictions on them as a side effect.
The EU continues pushing to increase surveillance of airplane passengers.
Passengers on domestic or Schengen flights should not be required to identify themselves.
UK pig farmers have joined the call to restrict use of antibiotics on farm animals.
It is big political problem that such businesses can block laws needed for human health, but I am glad they may now support this particular law. However, that's not certain yet. It is well known that businesses sometimes say they support a law while working secretly to block it.
The US operates as a tax haven, along with Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. This article explains how tax havens work and how they give multinational companies an advantage over local competition.
I disagree with the rhetorical trick that occupies the first part of the article: buying from a company that uses tax havens is not morally equivalent to using a tax haven yourself.
Nonetheless, I have very little dealings with the multinational tax-haven-using companies mentioned as examples. Some I reject for other reasons (Apple, Amazon, Skype, most Google services, Microsoft, Facebook, big banks), while others sell things I don't need.
UK plans to block use of tax havens were watered down so as not to cover Luxembourg, Jersey or Switzerland.
Even worse, the plan creates a new tax-dodging scheme.
The UK government demands that EU countries compete to tax businesses less.
Scientific research driven by political concerns is good and often useful. What's bad is when governments disregard or sabotage science for political concerns — exactly what Republicans aim to do by condemning "politically motivated" research.
Thugs in Ohio considered a mother and children at a swimming pool a menace to the public. The mother was merely arrested, but one 12-year-old girl in a bathing suit got pepper sprayed and several of her bones were broken.
As usual, the thugs made false accusations against the victims.
There have been only 9 days this year when US thugs didn't kill anyone, but there are no official statistics about many vital questions about violence by thugs.
Unjustified killings by thugs are extreme cases of police brutality. Lesser levels of violence are far more common, and represent similar attitudes and habits. Thus, we can change thugs' attitudes and habits more effectively by punishing the more frequent lesser incidents.
Perhaps we should apply "broken bones" policing to the thugs, or even "broken word" policing by punishing them when they make false accusations against their victims.
DNA testing of the Kennewick Man skeleton shows that the deceased was related to modern American Indians, and suggests a relationship to the Colville tribe which claims the skeleton, but not conclusively.
I hope that further research on living people and other ancient finds makes it possible to get a more conclusive answer.
If a closer relationship were established, that would be very interesting scientifically, as it would show that a small ethnic group continued to live in the same area for 9,000 years.
Japan is planning to resume whaling in defiance of the IWC.
North Carolina Republicans, fearing their voter ID law may be found unconstitutional, added another option that is very difficult to use so that they can claim people can vote without ID.
"The Abbott government is paying lip service to the renewable energy industry because it knows speaking its mind would be unpalatable to the public."
Abbott is proposing new planning controls on wind turbines in Australia, based on fantasy science which claims that the noise from them harms people. There is no evidence this happens.
Meanwhile, he plans to reduce environmental regulations on projects such as mines which really can do damage.
The UK government is sabotaging an anti-austerity protest by ordering specific activists, some previously arrested though perhaps without real cause, to stay away.
The US has employed a similar practice of using bail conditions to stop people from protesting.
The [US] Government Is Putting a Pathogen-Research Lab in Tornado Alley.
EU citizens: call on your MEPs to defend freedom of panorama: the freedom to take photos outdoors, regardless of what is in the scene, and publish them as you wish.
I suggest that Wikipedia adopt a boycott of all entities that block Wikipedia from publishing free (libre) photos of the entities' buildings, and state that call to boycott in the pages about those entities.
Some US churches are using a face recognition system to identify people who come in.
The software might be recognizing and reporting for another master as well, and if the software is proprietary (as it surely is), there is no way to check what it does.
The right-wing government of Spain is repressing media criticism on several fronts.
The Charleston church murders were not an anomaly. They were part and parcel of the current of violence in the systematic racism in the US.
A racist group which the murderer says inspired him also donates to Republican presidential candidates.
The donations don't make those candidates personally responsible for the murders, but this shows how parts of that system interconnect.
"Smart cities" designed in a centralized way prove unappealing to live in. A truly smart city is one designed by its residents.
The UK government's imposed poverty has made people so poor that many are desperate for discounted food.
"The action of a minority of a group is often the unintended consequence of the practices of the majority, even if they would not support the action."
Wikileaks' release of Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs communications shows "little surprising so far … but the details will hurt a lot of corrupt people."
Saudi Arabia has asked its citizens to ignore the leaked documents, but the US went far beyond that in response to some of Chelsea Manning's leaks: it threatened to punish some government employees if they so much as looked at them.
Everyone: call for a
strong climate agreement
in Paris.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US to
sign the domestic workers' convention.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the text of that treaty.
Santa Cruz County, in California, is considering punishing the big criminal banks by refusing to do business with them for 5 years.
It's a great idea. Beyond moving money ourselves, we should push for our cities to do so.
US citizens: tell Congress not to cancel women's health care and contraceptive programs.
The CIA spies on Americans, but we know very little about how much or how.
Alex Hern decided to actually read the terms of service for all the digital services he used. Here he reports on them.
It was a lot of work for him, because he intended actually to use the services so he had to read the whole terms.
It's a lot less work for me, because when I read the terms of use of a digital service, if I see anything unacceptable I don't need to read further. I just reject it.
In practice, the only digital usage terms I need to consider are for wifi portals, and that's only occasionally. Those terms are usually good enough for occasional use.
About 2/3 of the way through the article, it moves on to licenses for proprietary software. The author does not differentiate between a service (something you communicate with) and a program (something you get a copy of). However, the issues are completely different. You shouldn't even think about terms for running a program, because their existence means the program is nonfree, so you should reject it. When you have a copy of a free program, you are free to run it with no conditions whatsoever.
The author adopted terminology such as "content" and "intellectual property" from the usage terms, without questioning their validity. That's a mistake. Even using those in quotations promotes acceptance of them if you don't explain why they are misleading and wrong.
We should have laws to establish the terms for various common kinds of services.
The "author" of the Snowden-accusing article admits he only repeated what British spooks told to him.
Don't use Mother Teresa as an example of a good person. Here's what she really did.
A plan to develop 3d-printed imitation rhino horn and thus make killing rhinos unprofitable.
It could work, but preventing customers from detecting the fakes may be easier said than done.
Jeremy Daw thanks Berkeley thugs for showing him how thugs lie to hurt second-class American citizens.
Authorized tent cities in Seattle provide housing to a few percent of the city's homeless.
But that's not enough.
Meanwhile, making it impossible for people once convicted of possession of drugs to have a place to live is an injustice, and self-defeating for society. If you wonder why 2/3 of prisoners released are back in prison within 3 years, perhaps it's because there's no room in society for an ex-con.
Behind all forms of homelessness in the US is the fact that there isn't enough housing in the US.
The Catholic Church position on birth control makes for universal poverty and environmental disaster. We of the wealthier countries can share our wealth to lift others out of poverty, but they must limit the size of the job. They must not make an unending series of additional poor people that we then must lift.
I am glad to see the Catholic Church on the progressive and green side on many important issues. With its help, we may perhaps be able to overcome the planet roasters. But we must not forget about sexual freedom and curbing population growth.
Are wearable digital devices good for people? It depends who controls them. If the device is run by nonfree software, you must expect it to mistreat you. However, having control of the device's software and data is only the first step; it gives you the option of refusing to hand over the data to companies, but doesn't stop them from coercing or pressuring you to "agree".
Thus, we need to organize politically to stop employers or insurance companies from pushing people to accept snooping.
Vertebrate species are going extinct at 10 to 100 times the usual rate, amounting to the start of a sixth mass extinction.
Invertebrates and plants also seem to be suffering extinction, but it is harder to compare the rate since there are many species we don't know about yet. Nonetheless, a study about land snails found a comparable result.
This extinction is mainly caused by humans' destruction of the species' habitats. We need to curb the human population and the tendency for frivolous waste.
A UK court struck down the law permitting people to copy CDs, citing the unjust idea of the purpose of copyright in the EU Copyright Directive.
To use the concept of "compensation" for operating on a copyrighted work is already to swallow the erroneous purpose. Coupling that with "rightsholders" makes it worse. The right question, which we must raise instead of that, is how to support the artists.
I suggest that those who want to pull the UK out of the EU pledge to legalize sharing of copies of published works.
Germany has arrested an al-Jazeera journalist at the request of Egypt's military government. The journalist faces charges that seem absurd.
Most genes don't "determine" any visible phenotypic characteristic; they only affect the odds of various characteristics and outcomes. And most visible characteristics are affected by many genes.
Don't be misled by the few exceptions.
The civil war in Yemen seems to have become a stalemate. Is there any sense, other than the strategic interests of Saudi Arabia, in which this is better than if the Houthis had won in March?
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been implemented in a commercial power station. The practice is therefore feasible. Now what?
With solar and wind power, plus more electricity storage, we can eliminate fossil fuel electric generation. That would take time, and lots of money, but so would applying CCS. Which one can we do faster and cheaper? I don't have a calculation, but I think it is the renewable path. If so, developing CCS for attachment to fossil fuel power plants is a distraction from replacing those plants.
Fossil fuels have other drawbacks: extracting them spreads pollution and occasionally causes disasters, and burning them creates other pollutants besides CO2.
The form of CCS that could be more significant is the one that pulls CO2 out of the air. With money, that method could be applied in hot dry places to extract the CO2 made by burning fossil fuels for reasons other than electric generation.
That would be cheaper than suffering the CO2 to remain in the air.
A journalist who has interviewed people that joined PISSI reports on their motives.
Some Muslim women (especially teenagers) attach their hopes for safety or justice to PISSI. The loss of equal rights doesn't worry them because they live in stultifying communities where in practice they have few rights to lose.
US citizens: call on Congress not to cut food stamps.
US citizens: see how your congresscritter voted on "fast track" for corporate-supremacy treaties, then call to express praise or disgust.
Don't accept the description of the TPP, TTIP and TISA as "free trade" treaties. They are not about trade, they are about subjecting democracy to company power.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The dams, coal mines and machinery that move water to Arizona cities constitute a modern marvel, but the power plant that runs it spews air pollution that is a disaster; and global heating is reducing the water available for the system to move.
Note that water that seeps into the ground from Lake Powell and water canals may not really be a waste, if it helps refill aquifers that we are emptying. But I don't know the details of this.
A man whose car was in trouble on the highway made the mistake of appealing to LA thugs for help. They shot him in the head, then cuffed his hands behind his back as he lay on the ground bleeding from the head.
If you don't hang around with thugs or gangsters, you probably have little experience in responding to a command to "drop the gun." If you hear this command and you have a gun, you may understand it quickly. But if you have no gun, it may take you a couple of seconds to realize it refers to the towel in your hand. If thugs don't give you that much time, they have in effect decided to risk killing an innocent person.
This man is still alive, but he may die from the wound. If he survives, he may be permanently brain-impaired.
Some for-profit hospital chains in the US charge patients on the average over 10 times what Medicare pays hospitals for the same things.
The global corporate land-grab includes parts of Europe.
Manual cleanup of the California coast oil spill has cost 65 million dollars so far. The pipeline company is paying.
All pipeline operators should be required to demonstrate that they have the funds on hand to pay the costs of cleanup after a likely accident.
The US imposed a gag order on Reason magazine, aiming to deny the people who were the objects of a subpoena delivered to Reason any chance of contesting it.
The subpoena was absurd anyway, making the danger greater.
A tax on frequent fliers could eliminate the need to expand London's airports and reduce CO2 emissions.
Around 100,000 people protested in London against starve-the-poor austerity.
Most Labour Party MPs demonstrated the parties uselessness by not daring to participate.
The government dismissed the protest with contempt and will proceed with a massive attack against the British non-rich.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your legislators to improve Massachusetts's open records law.
US citizens:
Call on
NOAA to preserve fisheries protection policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: thank Democrats for voting to stop "fast track" on corporation supremacy treaties.
Everyone: call
for dropping all charges against Kenlissia Jones for taking a drug
that may have caused her abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
An NRA board member blamed the people in the Charleston church for not carrying guns to "protect" themselves.
The fact is, in the US only whites are really allowed to carry guns. Even where carrying guns is officially legal — and even when they are toys, or air rifles — black people who carry them risk being killed by thugs.
But it would not really have helped if they had had guns.
To shoot a crowd of unsuspecting people, not caring which ones you hit, is easy. To shoot a specific person who's on guard, and avoid hitting anyone else, is much harder.
Republicans, working as usual for special interests, have stuck text in a spending bill to sabotage the FCC and negate net neutrality.
Clinton talks about tackling Wall Street, but we can't believe this given the money she and her private foundation have accepted in recent years from banksters and other big business.
When Bernie Sanders says these things, his life shows he means them.
By the way, I don't believe most of the people who are appointed or elected in the US government, or in lobbying companies, are seriously looking for the way to do good in a corrupt environment. I think they are looking for the way to make the most money, and trotting out silly excuses to pretend their actions are good.
Qatar Airways treats flight attendants as slaves, in effect. They are forced to stay inside their dormitory.
They can be fired for things as personal as marriage or pregnancy or hidden tattoo, or for things as minor as posing for a picture. Then they are trapped in Qatar.
The first simple thing we can do is never use that airline. I already won't, since I distrust Qatar's government so much I don't want to even transfer there.
Ukraine is at the edge of default, so it simply told its creditors, "Write down debt or don't get anything."
Contrast this with the situation of Greece.
In an act of racial hatred, a white supremacist shot 9 blacks in a church in South Carolina. He reportedly said he wanted to "start a race war."
It is certain that this was racist murder. Does that mean it is "terrorism"? Here is an argument that it is.
I am not sure. If terrorism means anything, it is violence against innocents meant to intimidate people so as to serve a political cause. We don't know whether these murders fit that.
We don't need to squeeze them into the word "terrorism" to say they were a heinous crime.
Another article argues that systematic repression of American blacks is "terrorism".
Systematic repression of blacks exists, and is very bad, and maybe in some cases it has been terrorism, but the two are not the same.
The word "terrorist" has ceased in practice to mean anything other than a smear.
The International Whaling Commission is pressuring Japan to justify its claim that its whaling operations are for scientific research. Japan's response is to stall by giving inadequate answers.
The thug that killed Nicholas Thomas said Thomas was threatening him. However, the autopsy shows he shot Thomas in the back.
That's typical of thugs: they kill you, they falsely accuse you, the other thugs support the lies, and they get away with it.
The officers that won't support the thugs' lies deserve the title of "police." But they face repression from the other thugs and from the state.
In Queensland, Australia, thugs who attacked a helpless handcuffed man face no charges, but the police officer who showed this to the public faces 7 years in prison.
The thuggery here is not limited to the thugs: it includes the prosecutors, too.
When Donald Trump announced he was running for president, he hired temporary actors to be the audience and applaud.
South Carolina flies the confederate flag, symbol of racism and slavery. After the the murders of 9 blacks in a church by an apparent white supremacist, protesters demand the state stop this.
The people who favor showing that flag surly have an argument to show it is not about racism and slavery. I found those arguments unpersuasive when I heard them.
Australia's strict new secrecy laws, covering everything relating to handling of refugees, forces the doctors that treat them to "choose between [not being jailed] and their patients".
The major browser developers plan to support a replacement for obfuscated Javascript code: binary files.
Bytecode as a platform for distributing and running proprietary software does not make it any less of a wrong. The bytecode might offer the opportunity to facilitate statement of licenses and corresponding source code.
"Charleston killings leave US reckoning with race and guns amid 'broken peace'."
A controlled experiment found that some fungicides harm bumblebees. The effect has been seen in agriculture too.
The problem could be avoided, more or less, by not spraying fungicide when plants bloom.
Rand Paul advocates tax cuts for the rich.
The US does not meet international standards for regulating use of force by thugs. None of the 50 states meets them.
British investigator Peter Humphrey "confessed" to crimes in China in order to get medical care he was denied.
TEPCO acknowledged privately that the Fukushima nuclear plants needed higher defenses against big tsunamis, but then did nothing for 2.5 years until one happened.
After the tsunami, TEPCO's management claimed that the disaster "could not have been foreseen."
A "text walking lane" on a pedestrian street in Antwerp was an instant success.
Mexico's tax on soda cut soda consumption 6% in 2014, and the decrease was growing toward the end of the year.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression calls on states to promote encryption and allow anonymous internet use.
I agree, but doing this in simple ways is not enough. For instance, if you use an anonymous cell phone more than just a little, you can soon be identified by who you call.
A progressive president can't change America alone; he will need a progressive mass movement and the progressive Congress that that movement can elect.
Washington Needs to Tell the Truth about Police Violence.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state legislators to support bills to defend and extend abortion rights.
Everyone: Call on the UN to ban big polluters from this year's climate negotiations.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to block Enbridge's new scheme for pipeline expansion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Jerry Hartfield has been in prison for murder for 35 years, but his conviction has been overturned. Will he ever get out of prison?
Carlos Montero has been jailed for 7 years for a stabbing committed by his friend when Carlos was 17. He is still waiting for trial.
A "unprecedented" toxic algae boom running from California to Canada is probably partly due to the unusual heat of the Pacific Ocean.
The result is that people can't eat the seafood. Marine mammals, that have no choice, are being poisoned.
A decade from now, this temperature will be normal, and those seafood resources may be effectively gone. Later some of those species may go extinct because of ocean acidification.
45 former US drone pilots call on the current pilots to refuse to carry out assassination missions.
I don't think attack drones intrinsically raise a different issue from piloted attack planes, or artillery. The difference comes from using them to attack in civilian areas, away from battles.
The European Court of Human Rights dealt a blow to freedom of speech by making a web site responsible for comments posted by the public.
The Dominican Republic is creating concentration camps to imprison just about everyone born there of Haitian descent.
The UK government says it is going to run a budget surplus in normal times "for the sake of future generations", but doesn't recognize that borrowing is only one of many methods of taking wealth from future generations. The government plans to use other methods instead.
Protecting pensions for the old is a good thing to do, but what is there to protect the pensions from? Only their own plan to strew poverty. Meanwhile, the article doesn't mention that this poverty is likely to stunt children for life.
However, that's all small potatoes if they press on with global heating, since the inundation of coastal areas of the UK will be a big loss for future generations. The possible collapse of civilization would make all these gains and losses irrelevant.
Higher CO2 levels in the air impede some food plants' ability to absorb nitrogen. This will make food less nutritious for humans.
Another consequence is that extra CO2 does not stimulate growth as much as global heating excusers would like us to suppose.
The measurement of nitrogen really measures the amount of protein in the food. With less protein, the food is less effective for feeding people.
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 and urge them to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act as long as it permits imprisonment without trial for those labeled arbitrarily as "terrorist suspects".
Also urge them to vote for these amendments:
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop the sneak attack on net neutrality.
Everyone, especially in the EU: tell the EU not to limit the right to make links to someone else's web site.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate methane leakage.
Thugs stole Charles Clarke's life savings on the grounds that his "luggage smelled like pot".
Michigan needs road repairs, so Republicans turn to the poor.
Why get money from the people who have plenty? Republicans would always prefer to take from those who have little.
An OECD study found that growth in a country's banking sector is bad for the country's overall economic growth.
Hong Kong Parliament Defies Beijing's Insistence And Rejects 'Democracy' Plan.
Multi-drug-resistant bacteria, dangerous to humans, has become common in meat in supermarkets in several countries — because the farms feed the cattle antibiotics.
Having it on your skin won't hurt you ordinarily, but if you get cut, or have surgery, you could be in trouble.
Reportedly the loss of Ramadi to PISSI occurred because a temporary commander ordered an unnecessary retreat.
Ukraine is considering a bill to imprison people for spreading "terrorist" ideology, by which they mean support for Putin, Russia or the Russian-supported rebel groups.
Belgium's Constitutional Court invalidated the country's massive snooping law for people's phone records and internet contacts.
Global heating already causes more rain in many parts of the US, and long droughts in other parts. This will get worse.
Ironically, it makes rain areas fall harder, in less time, so in arid areas more of the water runs off rather than soaking into the ground.
Yet the US continues encouraging construction in places that are likely to be flooded. As a short term response to global heating, we ought to stop.
However, what we really need to do is stop causing global heating.
Goldman Sachs has told interns not to work more than 15 hours a day.
Walmart's tax-dodging uses 78 "independent" companies in 15 countries to declare income in places it is not taxed.
The US is having trouble recruiting soldiers to train for the Iraqi army; it is running at around 50% of the intended rate.
This makes me wonder what the additional 400 US troops Obama just sent to Iraq are doing. Supposedly they were sent to assist in training and advising the Iraqi army, but clearly there are more than enough US troops for that already.
A bipartisan bill proposes to require US federal agencies to get a warrant before they do air surveillance over the US.
I hope the 25-mile "border exception" does not apply to the US coasts; if it does, most of the US's major cities will be left out.
UK cuts in support for independent living will stop many disabled people from working, or even going out of the house.
A Swedish court ordered the Swedish prosecutor to accept interviewing Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, but the prosecutor is trying to delay the interview as long as possible.
This confirms what we already had plenty of reason to believe: the prosecutor is more interested in messing up Assange's life than in the charges against him.
Minnesota has kept 700 convicted "sex offenders" in prison indefinitely after their sentences ended. A judge ruled that those who are unlikely to commit crimes again must have a real chance of release.
California has ruled that Goober drivers are employees of Goober.
I am not sure what effects this will have; it may may require Uber to pay them more than goobers (peanuts). If it does, that is very important.
But this ruling will do nothing about the wrong that Goober does to passengers: requiring them to identify themselves, and to run proprietary software on top of a portable tracking device (smartphone) with a proprietary operating system.
UK spooks say Russia and China broke the encryption Snowden used, then they claim they can't break it when terrorists use it.
The US has become rather repressive for people without government-issued ID cards. They are required for too many things.
Whistleblower William McNeilly, who exposed dangerous insecurity in the UK's nuclear missile submarines, was given a dishonourable discharge, but he refuses to let the matter rest.
Mary Lou Miller has been voting since 1934, but current Texas laws say she cannot vote this year.
Agricultural runoff is damaging the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem (as it does many other waterways).
Bruce Schneier: Russia and China probably got the Snowden leak documents, but not from Snowden. They may have got them directly out of secret US systems.
Delay Could Sink Fast Track, But Corporate 'Arm-Twisting' Not Over Yet.
Wild bees contribute billions of dollars a year to human agriculture.
Assignment of monetary value to natural ecosystems and their effects is misleading because it imposes an assumed linearity of value: the false 10% of the wild bees are worth 10% of the value of all of them.
We could cope with loss of 10% of the world's total wild bee population, but loss of 100% of it would be a permanent catastrophe, far more than 10 times as bad.
US stores demand the right to do face recognition without asking permission, because they want to look for known (or alleged?) shoplifters.
That is a legitimate goal, so here is a way to provide for it while preserving our privacy.
The state can provide a list of photos of convicted shoplifters, and legally authorize taking photos and comparing them with this list only, and the store must delete them immediately if they don't match. Furthermore, the cameras and computers that do this must have no connection to any network (because otherwise the US, China, Russia and 50 other governments will crack in and collect them all), only an I/O device to signal "alarm" with a communication bit rate of 1 bit per second.
The idea seems pretty obvious to me. I can't be the first to think of it. I wonder, was it proposed in these meetings?
I get the impression that the store companies really want more than to recognize shoplifters, and they are using that as an excuse to get more.
Turkish editor Bulent Kenes was convicted of "insulting the president". He suggested that the president's mother would be ashamed of his official actions if she were alive.
I know nothing about the political views she had, but I think every Turkish citizen ought to be ashamed of President Erdoğan for prosecuting editors for expressing their opinions. The people of Turkey deserve human rights.
Indonesia angrily presented proof that the Australian navy paid smugglers to turn around, just after Abbott, the suppository of all dishonesty, said the media were fussing about a nonexistent dispute with Indonesia.
Abbott must be taking lessons from Dubya in disregarding the reality-based community.
The sick joke of Nauru's government is getting even sicker: an opposition MP tried to leave the country, and thugs took him off a plane and told him his valid passport was no longer valid.
Privatized prisons make excuses to keep prisoners incarcerated longer, because that's what they profit from.
They hurt the convicts, to no positive end, and they cost the public money, so let's get rid of them.
The "news site" politic365 really presents news, but that's just to provide credibility to its campaigns against solar power and network neutrality.
The EU proposes "data privacy" law which will destroy data privacy and allow businesses to abuse the public.
Privacy activists
walked out
of a US government forum on regulating
business use of face recognition on the public, saying that it was
on the side of businesses that want to track people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Stiglitz: the world needs a bankruptcy law for countries.
This is not only so that countries can get out of unpayable debts, but to discourage predatory lending that encourages corrupt dictators to borrow.
US Border Patrol thugs kill both foreigners and US citizens, and don't get punished even for the grossest wrongs.
The Dominican Republic plans to deport everyone of Haitian origin, since they can't prove they were born in the D.R.
Since these people are not Haitian citizens, I wonder why Haiti will let them in.
The motive for this mass expulsion
is racism, which extends to
the point where the government condones lynching.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US FDA is proceeding with a plan to mostly eliminate trans fats from foods in the US.
It would be an injustice to try to ban eating or cooking with trans fats (or with sugar); however, regulating their use in processed food products, or in restaurants dishes where currently you would not easily find out they are used, is legitimate.
I wonder whether french fries can be made without trans fats, and whether they would be equally unpalatable.
Nintendo Seizes "Pirated" Cookies to Protect Fans.
Supposedly these cookies are dangerous to people's health because they infringe copyright.
Kurds, together with some (I presume) Arab Syrian rebels, are taking a town from PISSI.
The article suggests that supplies flow to PISSI over the Turkish border through the town of Tal Abyad, and now the route is cut. That seems like good news, but it is fishy that Turkey allows these supplies to go to PISSI. If the Kurds can block them, Turkey can surely block them.
As regards Kurds in Turkey, I think that the HD party's electoral success in Turkey will offer Turkish Kurds an attractive peaceful democratic path towards equal rights.
"Associated Press Publishes Hit Job on Tamir Rice."
Current greenhouse gas commitments are way insufficient to prevent global heating disaster, says the International Energy Agency.
Facebook deletes postings for obscure reasons, and even denies deleting them. It is not safe as a platform for journalism.
By the way, I cannot understand why people make a fuss about just how they find out that someone they loved is dead. Compared to the fact of that person's death, such those details seem insignificant.
Israel is working on legalizing force-feeding of hunger striking prisoners, and says this is imitation of the US.
Canada's right-wing government is applying Republican-style voter ID to rig the coming election. It has also made it harder to investigate the sabotage that may have made the difference in the previous election.
Why are there so many thugs, and so few police officers? Because thugs punish anyone that shows concern over killing the innocent.
In most scientific fields, five companies control most publication of articles.
We need to get rid of these companies, for the sake of science.
Obama put 4 billion dollars towards financing advance in renewable energy.
Unfortunately, this may include biofuels. Biofuel in the US means ethanol made using petrolium-based fertilizer, which is not really renewable and doesn't reduce greenhouse emissions.
Renewable energy competes with fossil fuels. Removing 4 billion dollars of subsidy from fossil fuels would be almost equivalent to 4 billion in support for renewable energy.
The UK has returned to social stratification almost impossible for a non-wealthy child to overcome.
I conjecture that part of the cause is that the Labour Party ceased, over 20 years ago, to try to represent the working class. When rich people encouraged changes to ensure their children would dominate other children, no one had the power to prevent it.
However, industrial globalization probably contributed too.
A similar development has occurred in the US, but some details are different. For instance, it is based on wealth rather than class.
An opposition member of Nauru's parliament was arrested for protesting outside Parliament. The protest was about apparent corruption of the president and the justice minister.
The opposition MP may be imprisoned for ten years for this protest. However, perhaps the government will sentence him to two or three years and claim to be "merciful".
To this sick joke of a government, Abbott, suppository of all misrule, has handed the responsibility for imprisoning people for trying to flee by boat to Australia.
Tidal gates will protect Venice from damage by the regular high tides.
I am in favor, but if we keep melting Earth's ice caps, they will need to put a dam around the lagoon — and much of Italy's coast. Up to one meter of sea level rise is predicted for this century. While the predictions usually stop in 2100, the melting would continue.
Full melting of the ice caps would raise sea level by over 20 meters. Will your home be under water?
Sea gulls moving inland take over cities, attacking humans and other birds.
How about using a quad-copter drone to destroy the nests? Or perhaps to collect the eggs. Do gull eggs taste good?
An interview with the makers of the documentary, Merchants of Doubt.
Interestingly, it's not only the same methods that are used to deny the harm of one business practice after another. Often the same people are hired to do these various campaigns.
A team of IMF economists recognized that "trickle down" is a myth: to boost economic growth, put money in the hands of the poor.
Conversely, imposing austerity as in UK and the euro-zone tends to cause contraction.
Egypt has confirmed Morsi's death sentence about escaping from prison.
He was not in prison for any real crime; he was a political prisoner.
Global problems are the natural result of capitalism and plutocracy. No force exists that is strong enough to stop the selfishness of plutocrats from destroying millions of people and millions of species.
A study estimates that humanity has already wiped 7% of the modern invertebrate species.
Clinton refuses to take a stand about "fast track", and pretends Obama's business supremacy treaties are merely trade deals.
I can see only one possible explanation for this: she supports them and knows Democrats wouldn't like it.
A senior prom can be a lesson in how little value an artificially hyped event has, for those who don't know that already.
I didn't go to my school's prom. I had no girlfriend, and it was clear that being there would only rub the isolation in. But I think I had already learned the lesson it can teach about putting on the forms of rejoicing.
France has restricted sale of Roundup.
Islamist rebels in the Philippines have made peace in exchange for an autonomous region.
An autonomous region, as such, may not be a bad thing, but I was told there that this deal includes a separate Islamic "human rights commission" for it. That would almost surely mean disrespect for the human rights of non-Muslims and women, and perhaps for those of Muslims too.
Those Iraqis who have not been killed, or subject to PISSI's enslavement of women, are in bad trouble if they get sick.
Poor women in Texas, who can't afford to raise a baby, now also can't afford an abortion.
Republican abortion impeding measures have the effect of making an abortion so expensive that only wealthy women can afford it.
A study predicts that 40% of current work jobs in Australia will be eliminated by automation within two decades.
It is hard to be accurate in such predictions. Perhaps it will be only 30%, or perhaps as much as 50%.
Things are likely to be similar in the US.
It will surely be possible to replace the lost employment with other employment, if we don't care how little the new jobs pay. There is no assurance, however, that so many millions of people could find employment that will pay for food and shelter.
Therefore, we will have some mixture of rejection of automation, welfare payments such as a basic income, and massive suffering. The only question is how much of each.
I'm against the last one. Either of the first two is ok.
A study of tree rings from a forest in Siberia gives temperature estimates from 931 ad to 2005 ad. The hottest 20-year period was the last 20 years, and the hottest six years were the last six, about 3C above the long-term average.
UK thugs colluded with companies to blacklist workers until at least 2008, at least since the 1930s.
A Bahraini opposition leader has been sentenced to years in prison for political activity.
The Bahraini regime crushed opposition protests with the help of Saudi thugs and the support of the US government.
Obama has deported 260,000 foreigners who were convicted of drug crimes, in some cases for minor crimes such as possession of marijuana that shouldn't be crimes at all.
The US continues efforts to kill the leaders of al Qa'ida, though they will be replaced easily enough.
TSA Response to Universal Criticism of Behavior Detection: More Behavior Detection.
The Theater of Security Agency needs something to justify asking for more money. So it will work computers to track people around the airport, and use that on anyone who appears nervous.
The UK newspaper which published unsubstantiated an UK government smear against Edward Snowden demanded that The Intercept take down a photo of its article.
Legalization of marijuana for adults in some US states has not led to increased use by teenagers.
Indian journalist Jagendra Singh was murdered by thugs, apparently for accusing a state minister of corruption.
Another journalist in the same region was lured to a meeting with thugs (not the official kind) who tied him to a motorcycle and dragged him.
Two Moroccans face imprisonment on charges of standing too close together in public.
Proof that the US government buys exploits, and strong evidence that it buys them to use them rather than to get them fixed.
Greece's pension system is unsustainable, but it is more consequence than cause of Greece's economic woes.
"Kayaktivists" blocking Shell's oil rig were arrested by the US Coast Guard, and the oil rig is now on its way to pollute the Chukchi Sea sooner or later.
Obama does small, weak moves to reduce global heating, but most of the time he is the puppet of any large company.
Obama is considering appointing an SEC commissioner whose business is teaching companies how to hide political expenditures.
That's one way to get Republicans to approve the appointment.
Another piece of B'liar bullshit bites the dust: the Olympic games in London brought only debt and repression, not enthusiasm for sports.
2014 was the hottest year on record, but 2015 is beating it so far.
South Africa's president allowed Omar al-Bashir to leave South Africa, defying the ICC.
The Monsanto Protection Act is Back, and Worse Than Ever. Now it would ban all state oversight of GMOs.
After legalizing marijuana (whether medical or otherwise), we need laws forbidding the firing of employees for using marijuana while not on the job.
The real significance of Obama's defeat on the "trade treaty" TPP is that trade is only a side issue in that plan.
The TPP is a corporate supremacy treaty, and calling it a "trade treaty" is just a disguise.
How to Steal from the Taxpayers While Blaming the Poor.
As the world recognizes that coal investments are likely to lose their value, many pension funds are likely to lose big, as well as some billionaires.
The problem is that they are tempted to try to make the world "burn just a little more" by keeping the carbon bubble swelling. As usual with bubbles, the longer it lasts, the more financial damage its inevitable bursting will do; but this bubble is also broiling Earth's ecosphere.
The world is having the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
The Magna Carta, 800 years ago, was the basis for human rights around the world. As the British government celebrates the centennial, Britons must fight for them again.
Cameron is not a king, but he makes up for that by being far more devious and slippery than King John.
Australia's paying (apparently) people smugglers to turn back to Indonesia has provoked a dispute with the government of Indonesia.
China is charging even former members of a human rights organization with obviously fabricated crimes.
Hong Kong democracy activists have been arrested, accused of preparing explosives.
Since these are nonviolent dissidents, I suspect a frame-up.
Japanese people and jurists oppose the government's plan to allow the Japanese army to fight other than for defense of Japan.
Elite UK companies reject job applicants who appear to come from working class backgrounds.
Accent and other matters of style serve as indicators that are difficult for outsiders to learn — just as they did a hundred years ago.
The danger of overprotection: cutting risk out of children's life is bad for them in adulthood.
Remember heroic whistleblower Matt Diaz, who published the names of the prisoners at Guantanamo and thus enabled them to get lawyers.
Diaz was imprisoned for this.
Europe Must Save Greece to Save Itself.
The argument made by Baltic victims of the banksters, "We surrendered and some of us survived, so everyone else should suffer too," is particularly despicable.
The state of Montana saves money by providing gratis medical care to its state employees.
If the US were a democracy, it would do this for everyone, as Canada does.
The US claims to have killed an al-Qaida leader in Libya with an air raid.
There is nothing wrong in killing enemies that are waging war, but it is a mistake to expect to defeat a movement by killing its leaders.
A house where Dr. Ambedkar lived in London is being made into a museum about his life.
I admire Dr. Ambedkar tremendously.
The Tories' proposed welfare cuts would hurt the poorest 1/3 of the families in the UK.
A UK government-appointed panel studied the issue of massive surveillance, and recommended making ISPs keep records of all sorts of things internet users do.
The report included one recommendation that the government does not like: ministers would not be allowed to approve use of this data personally. Rather, a special court would have to approve these.
I have not made a link to an article about this recommendation because all the articles I have seen present this court as a tremendous step forward, calling it the "balance" that makes total surveillance acceptable.
I don't think so. The US FISA court has hardly checked surveillance at all, so why expect this one to do any more?
Anyway, government ministers are very unhappy about the prospect of losing this personal power. They want total surveillance and personal control of it.
The UK government responded, through a cronyish newspaper, with a story composed of leaks (!) by anonymous spook officials, claiming that that Russia and China both got copies of Snowden's files and decrypted them.
The article has several claims that are known to be false, and there is no reason to believe a word of it.
Liberty, roughly the UK equivalent of the US's ACLU, says that this is the standard deceptive practice of the surveillance state.
The global financial system is so permeated with corruption, it might as well have been designed for fraud.
Proposal: require UK landlords to include cooking facilities and refrigerators in apartments.
The lack of these means many poor people have to buy expensive prepared meals rather than cheaper ingredients.
There is also the question of what ingredients these people can find in stores. Some parts of London are far from any real supermarket.
The US House of Representatives blocked military aid to a Ukrainian militia because it is Nazi.
Sudan's tyrant Bashir has been arrested in South Africa at the request of the ICC.
Paulo Coelho has published two of his books on the basis of "download, then pay if you wish."
I would be happy to pay if I download a book, but the methods he has permitted are through companies that track the readers, which is intolerable. Amazon is truly vicious and iTunes requires Apple's nonfree software.
I wish he would set up an anonymous way to pay.
Thought control to be imposed on UK schools requires them to report students for "non-violent extremism".
The government has labeled non-violent extremism as "terrorism" on the grounds that it might create an "atmosphere conducive to terrorism". Indeed, that happens. Dawkins has pointed out that moderate believers in any religion, while not themselves fanatics, tend to protect fanatics and make excuses for their violence.
But if the state snoops on nonviolent believers, makes lists of them, and represses them for what their views might lead to, it has abolished religious freedom. The state will call the policy a success because of all the hypothetical terrorist attacks that didn't take place, but what it will really do is make all Muslim students regard teachers as spies that cannot be trusted.
The way to discourage fundamentalism among students is to show them the suffering that fundamentalists cause. That discussion can't happen in school if school is a place of repression.
The "USA Freedom Act" allows the NSA to demand the phone records of everyone that talked with everyone that talked with any specific party.
That's a lot of Americans in any one request.
Prescription drugs cost Americans twice what they cost in other developed countries, because the US lets pharma companies charge whatever they like.
Pharma companies say they need all this money for research, but the new drugs that cure formerly incurable diseases are developed mainly with government research funds. The companies spend more on advertising. They corrupt medical journals to overstate the effectiveness of drugs, so we must not leave the testing of drugs in their hands.
The TPP will impose a similar deadly policy on the other countries that sign it. That would amount to mass murder.
A Texas law to harass abortion clinics so that they must close was approved by an appeals court.
Explaining how the TTIP threatens digital human rights in Europe.
2000 Israeli artists condemned Israel's political censorship.
Even famous international writers face censorship when they speak in Palestine.
A rash of stranded, dead whales in California might be caused by Navy sonar. It is hard to be sure.
The TISA would hard wire the bad policies that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
An interview with an abortion counselor, who says that the procedure of abortion is a secondary aspect; what matters is helping pregnant women think about what they want (to have a baby, or not) and why.
US citizens: call on insurance companies to give women the legally required coverage.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA to stand firm behind the greenhouse gas limits for new
coal plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Bangladesh proposes to move Rohingyas to an "island" which exists only part of the time. Twice a day, at high tide, it becomes ocean.
Since Rohingyas are of Bengali origin, Bangladesh ought to integrate them.
Bangladesh suffers from severe and unsustainable population growth, but Rohingya refugees are just a small part of that. The country must bring its birth rate down in any case.
Azeri human rights defender Emin Huseynov found refuge in the Swiss embassy. Now he has been allowed to go to Switzerland.
It is no accident that the "European" Games are being held in a tyrannical state near the border of Europe — and no accident that the contestants don't talk and probably don't think about this.
I have never considered sports or those who play them to be a model of any kind. It is silly to put so much effort into a struggle with nothing important at stake, and for others to pay so much attention to the outcome. This article argues that high-level sports impose total political censorship on the athletes while disconnecting them from the political issues of life, so that they become unfit to participate in democracy.
Clinton's campaign has published a Spotify playlist, in effect endorsing DRM, corporate surveillance, and denying listeners the few rights that copyright law leaves to them.
Out, out, damned Spotify, and shame on Clinton.
The Islamist/authoritarian AK party in Turkey represents a channel for opposition to a corrupt old order. The progressive HDP can also channel this resistance.
Scientist Ron Naveen has counted penguins in Antarctica for 30 years. He says that global heating's effects are responsible for the decline of several species.
European countries are negotiating to send Eritrean refugees back to repression in Eritrea.
Unlike North Korea, Eritrea has no nuclear weapons. How about asking a neighboring country to arm Eritrean refugees to go back in and change their regime?
The investigation report of the killing of Tamir Rice has been published. The killer claims to have shouted a warning, but other witnesses say the killer shot before the warning.
Pioneering jihadi recruiters proclaim their regret for having opened the path that now leads to PISSI.
One says that the repressive nature of many Muslim families contributes to alienating their children.
US citizens: support the Fair Elections Now Act.
This would overwhelm billionaires' campaign donations with public funds for all candidates that show a wide base of support.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose the pro-ivory amendment.
Since Connecticut adopted licensing requirements for handguns, in 1995, the rate of gun killings has gone down by 40% compared with what would be expected by comparison with other states.
The reason why such research needs private funding is that the NRA has blocked federal research funds for the effects of guns. The NRA would rather that the public not get confirmation that gun control works.
Republicans in Idaho propose to use the bible for teaching pseudo-astronomy and pseudo-geology, as well as pseudo-biology.
US citizens: call on you congresscritter to oppose amendments to harm wildlife (wolves, sage grouse, elephants).
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to oppose "fast track" for the sake of the
environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Governor Baker to extend and expand incentives for installing solar power.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign the letter to Kerry about protecting the rights of Palestinian children.
Tony B'liar and the UK government want to ban views they consider "intolerant". Islamists and Charlie Hebdo would both be criminalized for "group libel".
The UK has already narrowed freedom of speech too far. Of course, France is even worse.
Saudi Arabia has admitted its alliance with Israel.
One town near St Louis and Ferguson has made an agreement in US court not to jail poor people because they can't pay a fine.
I hope we don't have to establish this one town at a time across the whole US.
Americans, is the NSA transcribing all our phone calls? We can't find out.
A music festival in England subjects attendees to face recognition cameras and RFID tracking.
Stay away!
The ACLU is suing to get Mohamedou Ould Slahi released from Guantanamo, but the Obama regime is fighting tooth and nail to keep him there. (Obama, how can you close the Guantanamo prison if you don't let him out?)
Just to be cruel, it has taken away his books, photos, etc.
Some UK schools are already monitoring students' internet use looking for signs of "radicalization".
Will this stop anyone from becoming a supporter of PISSI? That depends on whether they find an effective way to convince students PISSI is wrong.
In the absence of an effective response, the monitoring will only arouse resentment, and that could backfire entirely.
If they find an effective response, they could present it to everyone and do without the monitoring.
Obama is probably trying to buy votes for TPP the way Clinton did for NAFTA.
The US is blocking Poland from investigating its own cooperation with CIA torture.
Racial segregation of housing is now widespread in the US.
A Saudi missile knocked down three buildings in the UNESCO-designated old city of Sana'a, without exploding. Saudi Arabia claims its allies were not the ones who did it.
Since the missile did not explode, I presume it can be seen right on the spot. Who can Saudi Arabia hope to fool? Perhaps those who have motivation to be fooled.
An Australian senator wants a law to recognize "adverse health effects" of wind turbines, although there is no evidence there are any such effects.
The advocates of roasting the Earth's biosphere have no respect for truth. They will use any and every fiction that serves their masters.
Canada's senate approved a vague repression and surveillance bill which several parties have pledged to repeal.
Debunking the "competing with China" myth, which businesses outside China cite as an excuse for mistreating workers, the environment, and anything else more important than their profits.
Since the article focuses on curbing global heating, it does not mention that the only reason western countries "need" to compete with China in permitting mistreatment of workers is due to the business supremacy treaties, starting with the World Trade Organization. I draw a different conclusion: we need to eliminate those treaties.
Japan killed a proposed agreement to end subsidies for coal.
Other countries should do this alone. Japan won't replace whatever subsidies they end, so the result will be good even if not as good as possible. Digging for coal is digging civilization's grave!
Mona Eltahawy links Islamic repression of women's rights to physical and sexual abuse of women.
I second her call for Muslim women to refuse to wear headscarves, because they symbolize the aspects of Islam that repress and abuse women. In the west, at least, it is safe to do this, and it promotes an important cause.
US prisons limit women's access to tampons, as a way to humiliate them.
NSA Backdoor Searches Would End if House Amendment Survives.
Egypt continues putting people on trial simply for protesting on the street, even for witnessing a protest.
Three Iranian activists were sentenced to long prison terms for their publications and activism, including insulting the supreme ayatollah.
The tactic of charging several different crimes for the same act was borrowed from the US, where it has been used against Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Aaron Swartz as well as many others.
The Tamir Rice killing shows how the system is designed so thugs can get away with murder and a variety of lesser crimes.
The London Israeli film festival chose to do without a film rather than exclude men from the showings.
This decision is right, for two reasons. First, because we cannot tolerate gender discrimination in public theaters. Second, because the demand to exclude men is the reflection and symbol of the charedi sect's repression of women.
London drivers working for Goober are organizing a campaign against the company.
I call it "Goober" because it pays drivers peanuts, but the worst thing about Uber is that it violates passengers' privacy by making them identify themselves. It also requires passengers to run nonfree software. As long as either one of those is the case, I will never use Goober, and I hope you reject it too.
Rich countries want to use a proposed corporate supremacy treaty to make India restrict generic drugs.
This would kill thousands or perhaps even millions.
Five Companies Control More Than Half of Academic Publishing.
An oligopoly falls short of monopoly but has harmful economic effects. We need laws to prevent oligopolies and pressure the largest companies in any market to split up.
The US has subpoena'd Reason magazine for information about who posted comments that expressed hatred for a judge.
Under US law, those comments are not threats and not illegal. So it seems the subpoena is either an attempt to reduce freedom of speech, or mere harassment.
Killings of black people by thugs are the tip of an iceberg of pervasive structural racism.
Most blacks don't get shot at by thugs, but they all experience frequent harassment, and intermediate levels of violence are common enough.
The other group that US thugs hate enough to attack them gratuitously is protesters.
France demands Google obey French "right to be forgotten" world-wide.
The Koch brothers are lobbying to eliminate financial regulations that protect against another financial crisis.
A similar occurrence in 1998 (repeal of Glass-Steagall) paved the way for the 2008 crisis. The richest can generally profit from disasters, as they did from 2008; Naomi Klein points out that they even provoke disasters.
US citizens: support raising the salary limit for mandatory overtime pay.
US citizens: tell the Surface Transportation Board to block the Tongue River coal railroad.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter (again!) to oppose "fast track," which would cover the TPP plus any other business supremacy treaties proposed by this president or the next one.
On Friday, the House of Representatives voted in favor of "fast track" but rejected another necessary bill, which also attacks medicare.
The plutocratic forces will surely discard their secondary attack to get their principal attack on democracy passed. We need to change the minds of several congresscritters who voted for "fast track" to make the TPP stay dead.
Everyone: call on Pfizer to stop buying antibiotics from factories that dump antibiotic-laden waste into rivers.
Here's more about the problem: that waste encourages bacteria in the rivers to evolve resistance, and bacteria can transmit the resistance genes to species that infect people.
Canada's [indigenous peoples] Push Back Against Centuries of Murder, Abuse and Neglect.
Iceland's people rejected imposed inequality and let their failed banks disappear. The result, after 7 years, is a triumphant success, for all except the banksters.
Today, banksters and their pet governments are pushing countries such as Greece to suffer imposed inequality.
When it is necessary to do this, it is helpful if banks have been kept small by preventing them from merging.
Executives of telecommunications companies, after years of claiming that network neutrality would impede investment in infrastructure, are now admitting it isn't so.
Don't Be Fooled: New Bipartisan AUMF Greenlights Endless War.
California is cutting water to agriculture.
It is painful, of course, but it has to be done. Now the question is whether we will curb greenhouse emissions so drought doesn't get even worse.
Why fundamentalist Christians tend to overlook or excuse sexual abuse of children.
A male college student in the US was expelled for committing "rape" while he was unconscious.
Seal team 6 has expanded into a berserk killing machine.
Thugs in Little Rock are so ready to see "threat" in any black man that they beat up a blind man. His crime: walking while black.
Shona Banda is threatened with 17 years in prison, denied marijuana to treat the pain of her disease.
How can her son avoid feeling crushed by guilt for having unthinkingly given cruel "authorities" an opportunity to do this to her? I think he could avoid it if he understands that it's not his fault, because it's their fault.
Crackers entered US government systems used for security checks and got detailed personal information about millions of present and former government employees.
Also about their friends and relatives.
A lot of this information interested the government because it might be usable for blackmail.
The ACLU has documented how Philadelphia thugs target poor people when they seize their money without convicting them (often without accusing them) of a crime.
London thugs are using stingrays, which track all cell phones in the vicinity and can listen to any of them, and they refuse to say anything about why, or who they are listening to.
Perhaps some of those uses are justified, but the secrecy is dangerous.
Americans are not happy with exchanging personal data for various services. Rather, they think they don't have a choice — that companies will get the data anyway.
Here are more details.
Those despairing people are right in a narrow sense: refusing to use one site, on one occasion, won't get them control of their data. But it is an error to conclude that it is hopeless to resist. Rather, you need to resist consistently — but that's not really hard. I do it, and you can do it.
Beyond individual resistance, we can organize to require companies to respect our privacy, even to stop asking us for data.
Hunting for [Crackers], N.S.A. Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border.
Everyone: Call on Louisiana Governor Jindal to free Albert Woodfox without delay.
Everyone: Phone the Saudi embassy in your country and call on Saudi Arabia to free Raif Badawi instead of flogging him. His supposed crime is dissent.
US citizens: call on Obama to replace the head of the SEC with someone that is not a minion of Wall Street.
He won't do this, because he too is a minion of Wall Street, but putting pressure on him is desirable anyway.
Everyone:
call
on Hong Kong to put a stop to sale of the endangered totoaba fish.
Catching these fish also kills endangered vaquita porpoises.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to implement the legally required CEO pay disclosure
rule now.
The TPP is
designed
to make medicines as expensive in other countries as they are in the
US.
The US "charter school" (privatized public school) program was
designed to exempt charter
schools from any real accountability to the state or to local
elected officials.
A supposed "accountability" requirement added in 2010
was a pretense without substance.
They are not even accountable for what they do with the
US government money.
Bratton
says, it's not that blacks are forbidden to be hired as thugs, it's
that they are so hostile they won't apply.
I suspect it's both.
AT&T promised (to get a merger approved) to offer
DSL
service to everyone in its service areas, but refuses to install
new equipment to do so.
You can't expect a big company to keep its promises unless it is
punished directly when it doesn't. If AT&T were find $100,000 per
person per year, for each person entitled to DSL and waiting for it,
and the victim got half of that as compensation, AT&T would fix
this.
The greater sage grouse, an endangered bird,
protects
350 other species typically found in the same habitat.
There may be dozens or hundreds other species of microbes, protists,
fungi and soil-dwelling invertebrates that live in that habitat but
that we have not yet discovered.
China has allowed parents to sue a chemical plant for
high
levels of lead in the children's bodies.
Pakistan has closed
Save
the Children without even giving a reason.
This is not rule of law.
Abbott says Australia is considering paying
people
smugglers to take their passengers back to Indonesia. There is
evidence it has already done so, and Abbott refuses to deny it.
Abbott will soon hit on the idea of paying them to drown their
passengers. That is included in "stop the boats by hook or by crook".
When the government acts in secret, democracy depends on
whistleblowers. No wonder Abbott has imposed new punishments on
whistleblowers, and increased massive surveillance so as to catch
them. Instead of accountable government, it's "Don't look behind the
curtain" government.
Senate leaders tried to put CISPA (massive data given "voluntarily" by
companies to the state)
into a spending bill as
a quiet amendment, but this was blocked.
Israel cites
fantasy
evidence to excuse its attack that killed four children in Gaza.
Spain has offered citizenship to descendants of Jews
expelled
by Spain in 1492.
Jeb Bush went to Nigeria to promote a water pump company (while his
father was president of the US). The company was
subsequently
convicted of bribing Nigerian officials.
The US blocked a former prisoner in Guantanamo from
flying
to Canada, using the excuse that the flight crosses US air space.
Canada's acceptance of this should shame every Canadian.
Mourad Benchellali was prevented from giving one of his regular talks,
which teach Muslim youth to resist PISSI propaganda. Why interfere?
I think the US is trying to prove how rigid and mindlessly stubborn it
can be.
Regardless of whether Noel Carter ran away from the thugs, or even
resisted arrest — once he was
sitting
down and helpless, thugs had no right to kick and beat him.
A Russian oligarch advised Putin to
set
up two political parties that would agree on everything except
abortion rights, to distract the Russian people from other issues.
It is not true that the Democratic and Republican parties agree about
everything except abortion. But it was almost true in 2000. They
tended to disagree about whether to openly praise and serve US
oligarchs, or obey them in a veiled fashion.
Nowadays, most Democratic elected officials resemble what Republicans
used to be, and most Republican elected officials are out to sabotage
the country.
Fortunately nowadays we see an increasing number of progressive
Democrats.
The London Israeli Film Festival presented a film and
limited
viewing to women only.
I consider this just as offensive as barring women from seeing a film
would be, or barring them from driving their children to school.
Why do some charedi women want their film not to be seen by men? They
must have internalized the nearly-Islamic misogyny of charedi men. I
am sorry for them.
I would not try to compel them to act in a film that will be seen by
men, if they don't want to. However, gender discrimination must not
be tolerated in public events, and demands for it must be refused
flat-out. If actors demanded that the film-maker impose
discrimination, that is no excuse; the film-maker should have hired
other actors. If the film-maker demanded that the festival
discriminate, that is no excuse; the festival should have shown
another film.
An ALEC-member state legislator admitted that
lobbyists fund the
legislators' participation in the event.
"Investor-state" treaties that
allow
companies to sue national governments for interfering with their
profits were started by the World Bank to give rich countries
another advantage against the sovereignty of poor countries. Now
European countries too are blocked from protecting the environment or
anything more important than foreign investors.
It's not enough to reject new ones, such as the TPP. There must be an
international movement to nullify them all.
US citizens:
call
on Rep. Pelosi to oppose "fast track".
US citizens:
call on Congress to publish the TPP
draft. There are ways it can lawfully do so.
US citizens:
Call
on UNESCO to protect monarch butterflies.
US citizens:
tell Congress not to
raise the Social Security retirement age.
US citizens:
tell the
Democratic National Committee not to limit candidates' debates.
The German government's surveillance hypocrisy has
undermined
movement to reduce state surveillance there.
As China confronts automation of factories, it may be hit with
falling
employment.
Some manufacturing is also moving to India because wages there are
low.
A court ruled that Albert Woodfox should be freed, as
his
trial was unfair and a new trial is not feasible. Louisiana is
using an appeal to
delay
his release, to leave him as little time as possible outside.
Woodfox is 68 years old and clearly no threat to anyone.
PISSI started as a breakaway part of al Qa'ida, and PISSI's success
has turned al Qa'ida into a mere shell of its old self.
The
official leaders of al Qa'ida now regard PISSI as a bunch of
traitors
Latest TPP Leak Raises Burning Questions About
Implications
for U.S. Health Care System.
The reason so many Eritreans are fleeing to Europe is due to
extreme
repression there.
The thugs'
story
about killing Usaamah Rahim is fishy; the video provides little
information to substantiate it.
His own statements may indicate that he was planning to kill thugs,
or perhaps only that he was planning to sue.
Azerbaijan has
denied
entry to Emma Hughes because the human rights organization she
works for has criticized the regime's association with BP, and the use
of the European Games (which Azerbaijan is hosting in conjunction with
BP) to distract attention from repression.
Greg Palast has
reported
on that relationship.
Amnesty International has been
totally
excluded from Azerbaijan before these games.
It seems absurd to permit Azerbaijan to be a candidate for hosting
"European" games, even if its government were a beacon of freedom. It
is no more part of Europe than neighboring Iran is. Would they allow
Japan to host the European Games? South Africa? Brazil?
A
US-backed
Syrian rebel group captured an Assad regime military base.
At least there is one Arab rebel group that isn't al Qa'ida or PISSI
that has the ability to fight and win. I think the
secular
human-rights-defending revolutionary Kurds deserve support far
more, but I don't know whether there is a practical possibility for
Arabs to join them.
Saudi Arabia is
dropping
US-made cluster bombs on Yemen. As usual for cluster bombs, a
child picked up a pretty bomblet, and it exploded.
Cluster bombs
should
be banned.
Teenagers and young adults say
what
led them to care about the danger of global heating.
I don't call it "climate change" because
that
term was promoted by denialists. Why give them what they wanted?
Railroading innocent people for murder occurs
in
Pakistan as well as
in
the US.
US citizens: Call on your senators to
reject Cotton's
amendment 1605, that would block dismantling nuclear weapons or
reducing their level of alert.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to support an anti-torture amendment to the National
Defense Authorization Act.
Also phone your senators and say, vote no to the NDAA if it authorizes
punishment without trial.
Western
volunteers are helping Syrian Kurds fight PISSI.
We should encourage such volunteers. They will absorb the firmness
and esprit de corps of the peshmerga, which training Iraqi troops
hasn't a ghost of a chance of doing. Furthermore that boosts an army
not based on ethnic or sectarian bigotry, one that any Iraqi who wants
peace and justice would welcome in.
A tribe in New Guinea in which people ate the brains of their deceased
relatives, and thus transmitted prion disease down to new generations,
has
evolved
resistance to prion disease.
Lots of them died in the process; this is not a very desirable way to
deal with diseases.
The European Union should boost employment
directly.
Why doesn't it? The banks have too much power.
Los Angeles will increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour but
only
in 2020. By that time, $15 will be too small and another increase
will be past due.
Global heating denialist Willie Soon is in trouble for
hiding
the funds he received from fossil fuel interests.
Serbia's "exemplary" greenhouse gas pledge would allow emissions to
rise
15%.
An Egyptian thug was
jailed
for shooting and killing a protester.
The EU is investigating Amazon for possible
anticompetitive
deals with publishers.
That is good, as far as it goes, but it fails to tackle the worst
thing about Amazon: imposing the
unjust contracts and DRM on
users.
Someone is
spying
on negotiators trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran, through
hotel facilities. Probably some government.
The snooper is not necessary one opposed to the talks. It could be a
participant, such as the US, hoping to get a better deal by knowing
other countries' bottom lines.
Right-wing talk shows are now
opposing
the TPP, which they call "Obamatrade".
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It is our good fortune
that they are right on this.
The persistent incompetence of the TSA, combined with the complete
absence of attacks on US airliners, shows that
we
don't need so much effort at airline security.
Rosa Moreno lost both her hands in an industrial accident, working for
a contractor for a multinational brand. She was lucky to get help to
sue for compensation, but
lost
the suit on a technicality.
Ms Moreno is not entirely innocent. Lacking a sure income, she did
wrong to have six children. Indeed, it is
wrong
for anyone to have six children. But that is a separate issue and in no way justifies the way she has
been treated after her injury, nor the dangerous conditions maintained
at her workplace.
This is what "free trade" does: it enables the multinational to make
countries compete to attract production by allowing the worst possible
working conditions and workers' rights.
If Mexico had had a real compensation system for accidents at work,
the company would have maintained Machine 19 carefully and followed
proper safety procedures, and this accident would probably not have
happened.
That is the basic reason why we must get rid of those treaties. We
must require companies to situate their production somewhere and leave
it there, so that governments will respond to public pressure to start
protecting workers' rights.
Students at Cardiff University exonerated a real murder conviction,
enabling
a wrongly convicted man to go free. Now the group is working on
another case.
It is good to correct these mistakes, but there are so many mistakes
that we need to look at correcting the systems that so often produce
them.
A town in Portugal has started paying
substantial
bonuses for having a baby.
Spain has a similar policy. The satirical magazine El Jueves was
fined for publishing a cartoon showing the then crown prince (now
king) having sex with his wife and saying, "This is the closest thing
to working that I've done in my whole life."
Some countries, such as Iran, try to force women to have more babies
by making birth control harder to get.
In a world where
human population
growth combines with global heating to threaten the survival of
civilization
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That town is not special. To keep that town in existence is not important enough to justify taking any extra risk.
Ebola has resurged in Sierra Leone and Guinea.
You're not safe until it's 100% over. And not even entirely then; men who have recovered must use condoms for months to avoid passing on the virus.
Google, Facebook and Apple are so involved in distribution of journalism that they are in a special position to corrupt it.
Perhaps use of GNU Taler for paid anonymous downloads will help journalistic sites remain independent of those powerful companies.
Tony "suppository of all greenhouse gases" Abbott boasted of cutting the growth of wind farms, and says he wishes he could have cut them more.
It pretty much shows he was lying when he said he supported wind power.
This is par for the course with plutocratist governments. We have seen the same thing in the UK and, partly, with the Obama regime.
A refugee in Australia, facing imprisonment in Nauru, is considering an abortion to avoid raising a child in prison.
People in desperate circumstances should not have children, but that is no excuse for putting people in such desperate circumstances.
The Australian government is not concerned that refugees it imprisons on Nauru are raped.
Here's more about the Australian government's campaign against the president of its human rights commission.
This is a prime example of hounding a dissident over minor details of rhetoric to distract attention from important substantive issues. Critics of the free software movement use the same approach towards me.
Note also the way that they present their own hostility towards Triggs as if it were a failing on her part; for instance, by saying that they have "lost confidence" in her for criticizing them. It is another common pattern. Thus, articles about the economic war on Greece often say that "Greece has no more friends" when what is really happening is that various regimes and institutions (Spain, France, US, IMF) support the banksters.
Those criticizing Triggs back up their distraction campaign by keeping a large part of the Australian government's treatment of refugees secret, or hidden on Nauru. This makes it hard for her to raise the issues that really matter.
Feminists are disputing how to relate transsexuals to feminism.
It should be clear that "feeling like a woman" (i.e., being drawn to female gender) is a completely separate matter from "understanding what life as a (typical non-trans, in a given society) woman is like", or how such women experience that life. But that difference is no problem unless we make the mistake of confusing the two.
Journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan face repression.
Guatemalans are protesting against politicians accused of giant fraud, but there is no ethical alternative on offer.
Massive surveillance of everyone delivers so many terrorist suspects, only a few of whom will ever really become terrorists, that it isn't much use in finding those few.
However, it is great for sabotaging dissidents and imprisoning whistleblowers.
US citizens:
call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to close the
loopholes
in protection of migratory birds.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
A world agreement has been reached on Redd+, a plan to curb deforestation.
But it is likely to fail if it doesn't cope with the corruption that enables plantation land-grabs.
A UK man was convicted of forcing a woman to marry him. He filmed her showering (after raping her) and blackmailed her by threatening to publish the video.
Although the perpetrator bears full responsibility for raping and threatening her, what made her vulnerable to this blackmail was the twisted idea that it is shameful to be seen nude. It is not surprising to me that the victim was a Muslim, because that religion teaches women particularly intense shame about their bodies.
To propagate this shame is to aid future blackmailers.
Release the Congolese Activists Still in Jail for Planning Peaceful Demonstrations.
Guards at NYC's Rikers Island prison have been charged for killing prisoner Ronald Spear.
Hooray!
After Two Years, the Rana Plaza Fund Finally Reaches Its $30m Target.
An Indian journalist was murdered after accusing a minister of corrupt involvement in illegal mining.
Kenlissa Jones will not be charged with murder for causing herself an abortion, only "possession of a dangerous drug".
Charging others with murder for participating in an illegal abortion is just as wrong. A fetus is not a human being, just a potential future human being.
Western plans to "help" Ukraine actually aim at helping multinational businesses take control of Ukraine's resources.
Obama's idea for fixing up public housing is to start privatizing it.
I don't think President Sanders would do this.
The new thug chief in Ferguson spreads falsehoods to defend the thug department's treatment of Michael Brown and the protesters against Brown's killing.
A Turkish thug has been sentenced for teargassing a peaceful protester in Gezi Park: he will have to plant trees, then tend them for 6 months.
Thatcher's pro-business policies, deregulation for business and tax cuts for the rich, did not cause economic growth.
But they certainly transferred wealth from the nonrich to the rich.
The US State Department, when it was headed by Clinton, appears to have aided the coup in Honduras. That makes it likely she personally approved it.
Seattle protesters hope to block Shell's Arctic drilling this year by preventing its drilling rigs from setting out until the season has been missed.
Protesters suggest a "safety zone" around Earth, and that Shell should go wreck Venus instead. Venus is so hot because it has a runaway greenhouse effect; perhaps Shell has already wrecked it.
The Senate is moving to expand massive surveillance by "allowing" companies to give any amount of personal data to the US government "voluntarily".
We can imagine that the government has ways to make them volunteer.
Citizens have petitioned a judge to order arrest of the thug that shot Tamar Rice dead.
If teachers are aware that a student comes from a poor family, they tend to lower their estimate of that student's abilities.
Unconscious bias also operates based on gender roles: teachers systematically underestimate how good girls are at math.
Global heating threatens to flood US naval bases — the effect has already started.
The article says that the rebellion in Mali was caused by drought caused by global heating. The initially ethnic and secular Touareg revolt was co-opted by Islamist fanatics. As millions of people find their livelihoods eliminated by effects of global heating, US military contractors will get even more profits, while everyone else suffers.
The European Commission is pushing a "compromise" to undermine network neutrality.
I suppose they mean that the citizens should cede rights to "compromise" with the desires of the ISPs. The whole idea is misguided, and reflects the nondemocratic nature of the European Commission.
Condemning Elsevier's
latest attack
on libre scientific publishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
When the weak resist arrogant power, they have no obligation to treat all arrogant powerful entities alike. It makes sense to single out Elsevier for a boycott.
Thus, I suggest to scientists, when asked to review an article in an Elsevier journal, that you respond by telling the editors that you won't do this for Elsevier. You can say it's nothing personal but you think that aiding Elsevier is bad for science.
Elsevier is also trying to shut down sites that provide access to scholarly articles.
Please do not use the smear term "pirate" to describe the sharing forbidden by companies such as Elsevier.
A UK oil company funded bribes to get Africans to drop their opposition to oil extraction in Virunga national park.
Detroit is going to be hit especially hard by global heating's extreme weather.
Global heating weather effects are already damaging children's health in Australia, and the problem will get a lot worse.
I presume this is true to of parts of the US as well, but I can't be sure.
This is not even considering the effects that heating-provoked wars around the world may have.
Revealed Emails Show How Industry Lobbyists Basically Wrote The TPP.
France has adopted the law permitting massive surveillance with hardly any oversight.
The Australian government has imposed extremely strict secrecy on everyone involved in dealing with refugees. The Australian senate gave some of them an opportunity to testify about the crimes they saw.
Salafists, Islamists more extreme than Hamas, exist in Gaza and are now at the point of fighting with Hamas.
Australia is falsifying its greenhouse emission forecasts so that it can achieve phony future promised "reductions" without really changing anything.
The UK prosecutors' office will have to pay the legal expenses of protesters that received an unfair trial, but the details of the culpable individuals are being kept secret.
This is no way to end the unjust practice.
A suicide bomber attacked tourists in Egypt.
The Islamist rebels in Egypt have mostly confined themselves to attacking armed agents of the military regime. I suppose this was due to scruples. If they change to attacking tourists, that will mean that tactics have taken over from their scruples.
The US made Sea Shepherd pay over 2 million dollars to Japanese whalers, after issuing an injunction on their behalf.
Shame on the US for protecting whaling. The US should make whaling a crime such that whalers cannot get such injunctions.
In the mean time, Sea Shepherd should move its operations out of the US jurisdiction.
The feedlot system that produces so much beef in the US is unsustainable, but eating that much beef is unsustainable for the human heart.
Interviews with people living in Mosul under PISSI. Some find it oppressive, while others say the Iraqi Shi'ie government was worse.
The widow missing one arm would do better to kill her daughters if she cannot get them out of PISSI's slavery.
Right-wing condemnation of disabled people as dead weight for society inspires increasing numbers to hate them, and sometimes to murder them cruelly.
The plutocrats are a much bigger dead weight on society.
A woman in Georgia has been charged with murder for allegedly taking an abortifacient pill.
Persecution of women is the heart of the Republican Party.
Right-wing school privatization made the Swedish school system less capable. Will the US and UK learn to stop following its bad example?
How Obama Went From Being a Peace Candidate to a War President.
He has used the US power foolishly, to no good — in many cases, not good even for US plutocrats (except military and surveillance contractors).
Obama will send a few hundred more trainers to Iraq.
I see nothing particularly bad about this move, but it is unlikely to make much of a difference. When the Iraqi army abandoned Ramadi in May, they did so in fear of the suicide bombings carried out in humvees that PISSI had captured from the Iraqi army in Mosul. Training alone won't make troops stand up to that. They have to be fighting for something they care about very strongly.
Kurdish peshmerga can do this; they are fighting to prevent a massacre of their people. Does Obama think he can convince soldiers to do this for the Iraqi government?
The EPA recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft endanger human health, so it will implement an international plan to limit those emissions.
Too bad the proposed standard is so weak it will hardly do any good.
Greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, mainly through the risk of food shortages, spreading diseases, and war. We need to act on all the major causes of emissions.
The masters of the euro zone must accept that Greece will never repay its current debts. One way or another, those debts will be cancelled. Why not cancel them now?
The UK's right-wing government is planning big cuts in school funds for non-rich children.
Most of them will only be able to get crap jobs, and right-wingers will say it's their own fault — pointing, as they do, to the brightest few who overcame this handicap, as "proof" that the rest are no good.
Three medical marijuana growers in Washington were convicted by the federal government and now face sentencing.
If the bill to make the federal government leave state-legal medical marijuana growers and users alone is passed, I hope Obama will pardon everyone who was convicted for this.
The G7 made a stronger statement, endorsing big cuts in fossil fuel emissions by 2050.
It is not binding, and important emitter countries are not included, but at least it endorses an adequate goal.
The TPP would especially hurt American women. It may also make medicines, without which many people will die, a lot more expensive. We can't tell.
For the Associated Press, being shot by a thug makes you a "suspect", automatically.
The Mississippi school dropped charges against four people arrested for cheering at graduation.
The officials probably realized they must drop the charges, but delayed so they wouldn't seem like pushovers. They are looking ahead to future injustices that might not arouse enough public criticism to make them back down.
Sanders got almost as many votes as Clinton in a straw poll in Wisconsin.
To call Sanders "unelectable" is an attempt, by the plutocratists, to impose a self-fulfilling prophesy. What they mean is, give up on voting for anyone that their funds don't support.
Americans must vote only for candidates that their funds don't support. If you don't have time to investigate the candidates in your district, here is a simple heuristic: march towards the sound of the expensive TV ad campaigns, and do what they don't want.
Due to bad security in a drug pump, crackers could use it to kill patients.
The US wants a prisoner sentenced to 20 extra years on the grounds that some of his books suggest he is inclined towards terrorism.
The victim is an extremely unsympathetic character, an ideal weak point for an attack on the freedom of everyone in the US.
A report that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are cooperating to fund and arm jihadi groups in Syria to fight Assad. And Israel may be planning to join them.
I fear the ultimate victors will be PISSI.
An Australian Greenpeace staff member was blocked from entering India to meet with the staff of Greenpeace India.
This seems to be part of India's repression campaign against Greenpeace India, and anything that stands in the way of what the megacorporations wish to do to India and Indians.
Michigan's elimination of local democracy is spreading to other states, but Michigan residents are fighting back.
The government of Spain changed its law about war crimes, under US pressure, to end the prosecution of US soldiers for killing a Spanish journalist in Iraq.
US actions to shield its own war criminals have the effect of protecting all war criminals.
A study suggests Israel and Palestine would gain $170 billion by 2024 if Israel removes its colonies from Palestine and the two make peace.
Israel would gain $120 billion and Palestine would gain $50 billion.
US and UK parents have adopted the competitive pressure on children that Japan was once famous for, and it crushes the life out of the children.
The error these parents make is seeking better lives for their own children alone, through competition with other families. Only a few can win that game. If they all worked together, making society treat the non-rich better and reducing income inequality, they could all win together.
In other words, these parents have chosen the wrong aspirations.
The US will help students at Corinthian Colleges shed their debt.
Little pieces of plastic from cigarette filters kill marine animals.
Shell's Arctic Drilling Is the Real Threat to the World, Not Kayaktivists.
An Australian state agency "regularly" asked doctors at the Nauru prison to change the diagnosis of refugees imprisoned there. This was to cover up how sending refugees to Nauru harmed their health.
The minister in charge disregarded evidence of sexual abuse of prisoners as young as two years of age.
Cornell West connects massive surveillance with plutocracy, and says that dark skin doesn't excuse Obama for supporting them.
Identifying how the TTIP threatens digital human rights.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic".
The French constitutional court has doubts about the massive surveillance bill.
RIP, Obsolete Gadget You Once Thought Would Change Your Life.
Zambian Singer Chama Fumba Arrested Over Song That 'Mocks' President Lungu.
Making it a crime to mock the president, or anyone or anything else, is overt contempt for human rights.
PISSI is accused of selling captured girls as sex-slaves to its leaders and its recruits.
It could be true, but this is the sort of accusation that has been fabricated as propaganda before (for instance, against Saddam Hussein's army when it had occupied Kuwait). I hope we will get better evidence in the future.
The Australian government is orchestrating a campaign to smear the president of its Human Rights Commission, who criticizes some of Abbott's plans to trash human rights.
US thugs kill more people in a day than UK thugs kill in a year.
The US has six times the population of the UK, but the per capita rate of killings by thugs in the US is 60 times the rate for the UK.
The fact that the total US murder rate per capita is 5 times that of the UK may be related somehow, but I don't think it reduces the significance of that ratio of 60.
China Calls on US to Follow Its Lead in Eradicating Ivory Trade.
Two global heating denial organizations handed out $125 million in 2011-2013.
If you hear the absurd claim that climate scientists are faking evidence for global heating so as to keep their funding, consider which side can afford to buy more.
Republicans will refuse to confirm any of Obama's federal judge appointments, as a policy of obstructionism.
Obama's appointments are not necessarily good; they may be right wing.
Among the lesser dangers of global heating: shortage of beer, coffee, chocolate, and shellfish.
White thugs tend to dehumanize everyone that lives in poor (minority) neighborhoods, which creates the unconscious racism that leads thugs to shoot before thinking.
But one byproduct of the persistent prosecution of blacks, and in particular New York City's "broken windows" policy, is that it disqualifies many blacks from becoming thugs.
Farmers in Ghana are pushing hard against the seed monopoly law that rich countries want to impose.
Prohibiting farmers from saving and sharing seeds is as wrong as prohibiting you and me from sharing music.
Which is worse: an AI soldier or a human soldier?
I can imagine an AI soldier which firmly refuses to kill civilians or torture prisoners. On the other hand, if the AI is programmed by governments, we should expect a rich government engaged in counter-guerrilla war to do, in programming its AIs, what it does in drone assassinations: make them cover up and deny killing civilians.
Obama wants Greece to make "tough political choices".
Greece faces a choice between the disaster of surrender to the banksters and the disaster of defying them. It is a tough choice — if you think only of avoiding pain. Once you look deeper, the choice is not tough at all: it is better to suffer in freedom than in bondage.
Foreign Minister Wallström of Sweden stands proudly behind her criticism of Saudi Arabia and refusal to sell arms there.
She puts Obama and other "leaders" to shame.
People who have children tend to downgrade their concern about global heating. They don't want to think about how their children will make the problem worse, or what they are probably condemning those children to suffer.
"A prime minister who talks about caring for his disabled son is about to unleash a new wave of benefit cuts on Britain's most vulnerable people."
US citizens: support Bernie Sanders' call to start presidential debates this year.
Erdoğan's party has lost its majority in the Turkish election.
This doesn't mean it will lose control of the government, but I hope so.
Chris Christie believes there's not enough suffering in the US, so if elected president he would persecute medical marijuana users.
Note that the US government has not entirely stopped harassing state-legalized marijuana users and distributors.
Journalistic counting projects have found that US thugs kill two or three times as many people as previous figures suggested.
Across the US, thugs have attacked peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. This article describes an attack in Philadelphia.
The EPA's study of water contamination caused by fracking had a flaw: fracking companies blocked hands-on testing of what they are doing.
How big the flaw is, I am not sure.
The convicted murderer whose case Scalia cited to justify the death penalty has been pardoned. His trial ignored evidence that someone else committed the crime.
There is no word on whether Scalia has learned anything.
Since America's poor can't afford homes, should we really want houses to be even more expensive?
Syriza is continuing to defy the banksters that expected Greece to have to knuckle under.
What the international financial powers demand would be disaster for Greece.
I advise Greeks to choose defiance and resistance. Better to fight, and risk being crushed, than surrender to a certainty of being crushed.
Brad Martinez was healthy when Florida thugs arrested him. When they took him out of the thug van, he was in a coma, from which he died.
There is some sign they strangled or choked him.
When the NSA says it is keeping Americans safe (from a secondary threat) by taking away their freedom, the proper response is Patrick Henry's.
Republicans would rather kill sick Americans than let them receive help from the US government.
Russia has given itself the power to ban foreign-linked NGOs (and businesses) arbitrarily. It merely has to label them as "undesirable" — no trial is needed.
The US has already gone even further; it can arbitrarily shut down any NGO (or business) and imprison the people who work with it. It merely has to label them as "terrorist" — no trial is needed.
The relatives of Yemeni civilians killed by a US drone strike are suing for compensation.
Leaders of the European Parliament say they will reject the TISA and TTIP if those stop Europe from adopting its own regulations.
The thug that shot Walter Scott dead as Scott was running away has been charged with murder.
Since Scott was not threatening the thug, he had no grounds to use deadly force.
Charging killer thugs is an important step forward, but we are only seeing it begin. Meanwhile, convicting them will be hard, especially with all-white juries.
I think we should start prosecuting thugs for lying about what happened. That happens a lot more often. Convicting a hundred thugs for perjury and sentencing each one to 2 years in prison will have a bigger effect on the behavior of thugs than sentencing ten of them to 30 years in prison.
Selling product placement has become widespread in popular "music" just as in movies.
I think it constitutes corruption of the music itself. There is a moral difference between making money from music, and letting the money seep into the music. There is a step for the worse from trying to make music people like in order to make more money, and letting the money override the listeners.
Supply and demand economics doesn't work for medical care.
It used to be that medical insurance protected you from gouging hospitals. Hospital mergers have made some hospitals so big that even the largest insurance companies don't have the clout to stop the gouging.
Protesters call attention to the other pipelines being built to carry tar sands oil across the US.
The G7 countries agreed to end fossil fuel use — by 2100. They are planning to turn off the gas, but only after the biosphere is burnt.
2/3 of the public, in 79 countries, want the Paris climate summit to do "whatever it takes" to curb global heating. The difference between this, and what the G7 have agreed to, is stark.
Civilization may not make it to 2100 if we don't end fossil fuel use much sooner than that. And it has to include more than the G7 countries.
Some US cities have provided housing to all their homeless people, or at least to all the homeless veterans.
These programs show it can be done, but we will never do the whole job if we leave it up to each city to decide whether to do it or not.
Housing the homeless veterans is only part of the job. Veterans are particularly likely to be homeless, because of the harm that being in combat did to them. We ought to provide housing to them when they need it — and to all other Americans, as well.
Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny.
I disagree with him on one important point. Voting can make big changes. As recently as the 1970s, the US government passed laws that greatly restricted business, in response to public demand (for instance, to curb air and water pollution). Plutocracy is a condition, not the nature of democracy.
The TSA has mistreated millions of Americans looking for weapons, but it can't find weapons on passengers' bodies.
The TSA was sloppy in checking the backgrounds of airport workers.
TSA stands for Theater of Security Agency.
Anti-pipeline protesters are still being followed and harassed as suspected "terrorists" a year after the unwarranted investigation was formally shut down.
They think the US government is catering to Transcanada, the pipeline company.
It is Obama's duty to disallow the Keystone XL planet-roaster, and the fact that he has not done so leads me to think he is planning to approve it whenever he thinks he won't take heat for it. The heat will follow, a few decades from now.
New York's thugs have not abandoned (as promised) the "broken windows" scheme in which they look (in certain minority areas) for minor excuses to give people trouble.
This scheme contributes to the criminalization of minorities.
Bratton's claim that it was responsible for reducing crime in New York City was based on coincidence — it was implemented at just the time crime began decreasing all across the US.
Since Irish have won legalization of same-sex marriage, they can win legalization of abortion if they try.
Prisoners in jail in Savannah have a way of dying there. Matthew Ajibade seems to have been bludgeoned to death.
The thugs say he had violently attacked them. It could be true, though we can't take their unsupported word for it. If it is true, that justified jailing him, but did not justify killing him.
A US law which prohibits employers from asking employees for DNA samples is an example of the strictness required to protect privacy in the digital age.
The company whose corroded pipeline polluted the California coast had told the government that its pipeline was unlikely to leak and that its high-tech monitoring would detect any leak immediately.
That's business for you: lie when applying for permission, figuring that they won't get fined enough to take away all their profits.
Many US businesses bully their employees into supporting the boss's political candidates.
There are good reasons why someone might default on their student loans.
Among the isolated communities US Orthodox Jews, some find out about science and doubt their dogmas, but they don't dare admit this and they don't dare leave.
China's greenhouse emissions may peak in 2025.
If so, it is still not soon enough.
Militarized thugs are dangerous to the community even when they are doing a legitimate task. A SWAT team cornered an armed man who had holed up in a house in Colorado, and they blew walls to shreds in fighting him. The owner of the house is not happy.
The Marshall Islands are suing nuclear powers that signed the nonproliferation treaty and fail to carry out the commitment to work towards nuclear disarmament.
On the wisdom of firing teachers because they read poems that make some students uncomfortable.
If you are visiting someone in a US hospital, don't admit that you feel unwell. It gives the hospital an opportunity to gouge you.
Everyone in the US associated with abortion clinics, and their landlords, faces harassment from Christian fanatics.
A judge is investigating whether the US government destroyed evidence that it should have given to whistleblower Thomas Drake when it tried to prosecute him.
A minimum wage worker can't afford a small apartment anywhere in the US.
Coal as a weapon of mass destruction.
Five of the G7 countries increased their use of coal substantially since 2009.
Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans.
The CIA insists it did not drug prisoners in the 2000s, but it appears the CIA never conducted an investigation to determine this.
New York City has exempted multi-million-dollar apartments from property tax.
Well, not totally exempted, only 99%.
The end of "containment" of the Soviet Union in 1990 also left the US military uncontained.
Now it gets constantly more expensive, and (counting mercenaries) ever larger, and can attack anywhere — but victory is impossible.
An employee of the US Department of Veterans Affairs says that the agency spends billions of dollars without going through competitive bidding or contracting.
In California: pledge to boycott El Super for punishing workers that want to unionize.
US citizens: call on your senators to set up a trustworthy system for prosecuting rapes in the US military.
UK thugs are being prosecuted for lying about how they treated a prisoner who died.
US thugs do the same thing, but are not prosecuted for it.
The Federal Election Commission has been paralyzed, so it can't investigate any violations. That enables the plutocratist candidates to disregard campaign finance law.
An Australian medical body called for physicians to stop prescribing homeopathic "medicines" and for pharmacies to stop selling them. This is because they are medically inactive.
Several high-profile college rape accusations have fallen apart. What does this imply?
Germany's law that bans unlocked wireless networks is being judged by the European Court of Justice.
Running wireless networks without a password is an important contribution to your community. What's more, it is the only way you can refuse to be conscripted as an enforcer in the War on Sharing. Even if it is illegal, it is your duty. Don't be afraid of the punishment; it won't kill you, and it is unlikely enough that your expected cost is tiny.
Most Americans want to reduce economic inequality. 68% want to raise taxes on million-dollar incomes.
Governments of the World Agree: Encryption Must Die!
The US government, in trials of supposed terrorists, demands that defendants not mention the name Snowden, not raise issues of whether massive surveillance was used on them, and not accuse the government of entrapment.
Many of these cases are at least pretty close to entrapment.
The recordings they present in court may have been carefully selected to omit the conversations in which the FBI's agent led the defendant to join in the scheme (i.e., entrapped him).
Scott Walker wants the fathers of 20-week fetuses to sue when women abort them.
Late term abortions in the US require specific justification, either on medical grounds, or because the father committed rape. What kind of twisted man would feel "distress" with an operation to protect the woman from danger? Will the bill permit rapists to sue abortion clinics?
Meanwhile, what about the other side of this? Why not allow men to sue for a court order to insist on an abortion? A lot of men feel distress for very rational reasons at learning they will be forced to support an undesired baby.
A father was arrested for leaving his son in a car seat in a truck for two minutes. The child was in no danger, but try convincing panic-stricken Americans of that.
Americans freak out at the thought of allowing a child to be alone. Meanwhile, they are not very concerned about the poverty and stress that scar millions of American children for life.
The DEA avoids federal government rules for collecting evidence by working through state prosecutors that have lower standards.
The TISA would empower multinational companies to suppress democracy in a broad range of service businesses.
It would prohibit countries with real privacy laws from stopping multinationals from exporting data to countries such as the US that snoop on it.
Whether the quoted text would really prohibit a government from deciding to use only free word processors is not clear to me. I am not sure whether that situation falls under the category of "providing services related to" the word processor.
An EPA investigation found that fracking occasionally poisons drinking water but not most of the time.
For the US government's internet army, the distinction between law enforcement and cyber-war is fading away.
The result is that everything is treated like war.
Germany is pushing to impose mandatory data retention once again. It continues to be as useless and as dangerous as it was before.
The US imprisons unauthorized immigrant families in conditions that drove one mother to try suicide.
Jeb Bush's Super-PAC is called "Right to Rise", but based on its actions we could call it "Right to Raise (Money)". Here are some of its donors.
A new party in Turkey, which supports equal rights for women and various ethnic minorities, has a chance of weakening Erdoğan's congealing religious tyranny.
Rather than imprisoning so many people, many kinder approaches do a better job of reducing crime.
Part of London has retreated from the plan to fine homeless people for sleeping on the street.
The Saudi naval blockade is imposing starvation on Yemen.
80% of the population urgently needs food, water, or medical care.
The G8 countries are pushing laws in Africa that subject farmers to agribusiness.
Don't base wildlife policy on romanticizing animals.
I think preserving ecosystems (and thus species) is a more rational goal.
The US Government Could Count Those Killed by [thugs], But It's Chosen Not To.
Senator Warren says the head of the SEC is acting like a wall street crony.
A series of Republican leaders of the House of Representatives had secret sex affairs — all the while trying to impeach Bill Clinton for having oral sex once.
Too bad Hastert managed to keep his homosexual affair secret. Knowledge of it would have hampered his persistent efforts to repress other homosexuals.
Investigating Russia's internet disinformation department, which drowns out opposition in Russia with lies, and smears dissidents and journalists — and tries to cause panic in the US with organized hoaxes about nonexistent disasters.
Majid Khan says CIA agents poured ice water on his balls, held his head in ice water, and hung him from a beam for three days. They also shackled him with metal boots that cut into his legs.
This shows that the published parts of the Senate report on torture was "sanitized" to omit some forms of government depravity.
Quite a few unarmed Latinos are shot dead by US thugs — it's not only blacks.
Tanzania lost lost 60% of its elephants from 2009 to 2014.
40 Reasons Our Jails and Prisons Are Full of Black and Poor People.
More than 2C of global heating will cause a major reorganization of ocean ecosystems.
On the ethics of publishing leaked data.
The most important point I see in this article is that the prohibition of "child pornography" puts you (i.e., anyone and everyone) at the mercy of whoever decides to send you some.
Laws prohibiting possession of something that has been published, or sent to you, are intolerable tyranny. It makes no difference what things they prohibit, or why.
Microsoft's "transparency centers" are a poor substitute for the freedom that you get with free software.
Since the article uses the term "FOSS", I should point at the explanation of why that isn't a good term to use.
The nuclear powers, including the US, are disregarding the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and blocking movement towards elimination of nuclear weapons.
Anti-mining activist José Tendetza was murdered, and the Ecuadorian government seems to be covering up the reason rather than investigating.
Syrian rebels, and the US, claim that Assad's forces are helping PISSI in northern Syria.
This is a very strange claim, given that the two have been fighting each other near Palmyra, further south.
Here is a report that Israel and Saudi Arabia are helping PISSI defeat Assad.
I am not sure what to believe.
US thugs often say they have "no choice" about shooting unarmed people or people with knives. A retired UK thug official says that's nuts: UK thugs are trained to do so.
Texas Lawmakers Are Busy Making It Harder to Vote.
Don't believe Obama when he says that labor standards excuse "trade treaties". They are not really enforced.
Even if they were enforced, they would not excuse the TPP, because it's a corporate power treaty rather than a trade treaty.
Argentine grandmothers continue searching for the grandchildren taken away by the soldiers that killed their daughters. Occasionally they find one.
The repression in Argentina was supported by the US government.
I have a feeling that Laura Carlotto would dislike the religious filter through which her mother sees the reunion.
Austerity Isn't 'Good Housekeeping': It's Dogmatic, Risky And Unjust.
Australia is planning to permanently exile people that are suspected of somehow supporting terrorism.
This will start with people who have another citizenship, but the government already envisions extending it to those who "could apply for" citizenship in another country. Then it could pay Nauru to grant citizenship to, and imprison, anyone at Australia's request.
We have come to regard exile as an unacceptable punishment, and we should not permit it again; but even if we were going to legitimize exile, we should not accept any form of punishment without trial.
A universal basic income would be quite affordable for the US.
US citizens: call on the Department of Labor not to let banksters off the hook for their crimes.
The Obama regime cited part of the "USA Freedom Act" as an excuse to restart the bulk snooping on Americans' phone call records — precisely what that law supposedly was not going to authorize.
Don't expect killer robots to distinguish civilians perfectly, no matter how smart they are.
The Politwoop site, which showed politicians' deleted tweets, has been shut down by Twitter.
Journalists: when you cite tweets, do not display them by embedding from Twitter. Embedding tweets leads to two problems:
The wise method is to copy the quotations in your article, like any other quotation.
Facebook arbitrarily censors and closes the accounts of prisoners.
Israel is about to demolish the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya, again.
Unusual bacteria in Pablo Neruda's corpse suggest he was murdered in hospital, presumably by agents of Pinochet's regime.
Another opposition leader was murdered later in the same hospital.
We now have proof that Pinochet's coup was carried out with US complicity.
Congresscritters asked the NSA for information with which to smear Snowden personally.
The forces opposed to encryption and bitcoin are now citing "child abuse images" as a reason.
The term "images of child abuse" is an open door for a witch hunt. It covers making pictures of raping a child; the rape ought to be a crime. However, the same term is used to describe images of young-looking 18-year-olds having voluntary sex, and drawings of fictional minors in fictional sex.
Australia's mining lobby asks the pro-mining ruling party to cancel the tax exemption of Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups.
Snowden says he sees a "profound difference" in people's opposition to massive surveillance.
Big European electric companies lost a lot of money due to investing it in coal.
Two ultra-orthodox Jewish schools have backed down from banning mothers from driving their children to school. The schools were going to implement the ban by not allowing the children into school if brought by their mothers in a car. They backed down because there is a law against such discrimination.
This should reaffirm our awareness that many religions pose a threat to human freedom. Christianity can be (and generally was, until a few hundred years ago) just as vicious as Islam, and Judaism also has the potential. So does Hinduism. Warning: Taking any church too seriously, even the Church of Emacs, can be hazardous to your health.
A former jihadi, who was in al Qa'ida until he concluded its terrorist methods were un-Islamic, says the way to hamper PISSI's recruiting is to spread awareness of the moral complexities that the PISSI line ignores.
Official harassment and repression has forced the Chinese women's rights group Weizhiming to shut down.
All-options pregnancy centers sincerely help pregnant women, whether it's a baby or an abortion they want.
This will help fight the dishonest "crisis pregnancy centers" that are funded to make those women have babies, by hook or by crook.
Drug Company Profits Are Literally Killing People — And Now Even Doctors Are Speaking Out.
Fraudulent lawsuits to collect student debt are booming.
How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti — and Built [only] Six Homes.
Tyranny and civil war in small countries are sometimes accompanied by internet shutdowns.
Russian troops and proxies in Ukraine are increasing the level of fighting.
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake says the "USA Freedom Act" is "a new spy program".
If UK repression is serious about banning encryption it can't break, it will have to ban lots of other things — such as computers.
When 73-year-old Leonard Batholomuesz bumped into an Australian thug, the thug pushed him to the ground, breaking his bones.
A man who takes out his frustrations with violence against innocent old men can't be trusted to walk around the city without a guard — even less, to carry a gun, a stick, or a badge.
The oil pipeline that ruptured in California had previously corroded, losing 80% of its thickness. Only 1.5 millimeters was left.
In other words, they recklessly invited this accident. If that isn't a crime, it ought to be.
Citizens of Massachusetts: ask your state legislators to end the "war on drugs" in Massachusetts.
Correcting some systematic measurement errors shows that there was no "hiatus" in global heating. It continued straight through the 2000's.
It was Leslie Cauley who first exposed the NSA's mass collection of Americans' phone call records. Snowden repeated the disclosure, and then the world took notice.
Tiny frogs that develop without a tadpole stage have been found in Brazil. Some of these species are limited to a single mountain.
Skipping the tadpole stage is amazing in evolutionary terms. They must have evolved from ancestors that did have tadpoles. This makes them especially interesting for research. I hope we don't render them extinct first.
Honolulu's ban on sleeping in the center of the city chased homeless people into other neighborhoods, so now it bans them there too.
The officials say this is ok because non-homeless people, even tourists, are also fined for sleeping on beaches and sidewalks. But that is no excuse for persecuting the homeless. If businesses find homeless people unsightly, they should pay for a place for them to live.
Shame on you, Honolulu.
Everyone: call for dropping charges against family members for cheering at the the high school graduation of their relative.
US citizens: call on Obama to fully admit the scope of CIA torture, and prosecute the torturers.
Everyone: call on Uzbekistan to free Muhammad Bekzhanov.
US citizens: tell the FCC to support cable build-outs, not buyouts.
Can't afford to buy a meeting with Hillary Clinton? Use Hillstarter to find 10,000 friends to buy it with you.
The juvenile "justice" system of Chicago seems to make things worse: its interventions seem to make teenagers more likely to be imprisoned later as adults.
"Why ban laughing gas? All the best things in life are psychoactive."
In Colorado, a school lunch manager has been fired. She gave adequate lunches to children with no money.
Denying children proper nutrition can stunt them for life. Republican legislators are responsible for this: stunting poor children for life is what their philosophy is about.
A London resident has been convicted of "terrorism" for making (while in Syria) antivehicle mines that were used by the Iraqi resistance against US vehicles.
That was not terrorism, that was war. It is ridiculous to lay charges of terrorism for making munitions for use for fighting soldiers.
If he is a UK citizen, perhaps it would be valid to accuse him of treason or aiding the enemy.
"No mother should have to fear that the police will harm her mentally ill child."
Most thugs, on encountering someone with a mental illness, adopt course of action that predictably advances to violence against that person. The sick person often ends up beaten, imprisoned, or dead.
Similar results occur when the object of thugs' attentions is sane but doesn't understand the local language, or is listening to music through headphones.
People have been convicted in court for disobeying thugs' orders that they cannot possibly have heard.
Pakistan is advancing against polio as its troops advance against the Taliban.
Former chairman of Shell calls for divestment from Shell and other fossil fuel companies.
Florida thugs killed a black man for carrying a BB rifle behind and across his back. Then they lied about the circumstances.
On seeing a man who apparently had a rifle, but not in position to fire it, why did the thugs shoot him?
Everyone: call on Ban Ki Moon to speak in favor of freedom of political activity in India.
The law is an ass again: a woman who invited a teenage boy to have sex (and he did, 4 times) has been sentenced to years in prison for "sexual abuse".
He did not live in her household. Evidently he repeatedly made arrangements to suffer this "abuse". The code word "grooming" probably means, in this case, what we normally call "asking for a date". While I can only guess the specifics, I speculate that he never complained about this "abuse", and the relationship was discovered in some other way.
I wish an attractive woman had "abused" me that way when I was 14. I would have learned many important things and had a much happier life.
The one truly bad accusation against her is that she tried to protect herself by claiming he had raped her. Nothing can excuse that betrayal; but if the law were not an ass about the other things, she would not have faced the temptation to do that.
Bernie Sanders' achievements as mayor of Burlington, VT, show how he directs growth in a way that helps everyone.
The Obama regime can prosecute you for deleting your browser history.
The FBI's policy statement about use of surveillance drones is worthless because it is vague and there is no accountability.
Parts of Professor Kipnis's article about how she was accused of sexual harassment for publishing an article about the unjust way universities handle such accusations.
She further describes a massive witch hunt that has professors self-censoring from fear.
College students should not ask or expect to be coddled in their studies. Whatever issues are discussed in class, they should not be grounds to accuse a professor, or a student.
The residents of Inkster will have to pay a special one-time tax to cover the costs of reparations to Floyd Dent, who was beaten badly by a thug.
If the residents don't like paying this, they should take steps to ensure thugs won't do such things again.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to support the McClintock-Polis bill that would make the federal government stop interfering with state-legal marijuana.
US citizens: tell Congress to preserve the Endangered Species Act, by rejecting Rand Paul's bill (and other bills) meant to render it ineffective.
US citizens:
ask your congresscritter to cosponsor
the Pathogen
Reduction and Testing Reform Act of 2015. It would enable the USDA to
order recall of chicken contaminated with some dangerous bacteria.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress
oppose undersea oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US Trade Representative to show us what he has been telling the banksters about the TPP ( treacherous plutocratic poison ).
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to end sweetheart deals for Big Oil.
Obama has rebuked Netanyahu, saying that Netanyahu appears to rule out peace with Palestine.
Uri Avnery has told us for years that that is the case.
In response, Netanyahu hopes to convince the world to see the Palestinians' boycott campaign as a "strategic threat", rather than the nonviolent movement that it is.
Please do not be fooled. South Africa could just as easily have made the same absurd claim.
A major Indonesian paper company says it will stop destroying forests, but the government still has not acted.
Thugs with hammers attacked the office of the Committee Against Torture in Chechnya.
I call them "thugs" because they were surely working for the state.
The US tries to paper over PISSI's recent victories by counting its casualties.
It makes no difference how many PISSI fighters are killed if PISSI can recruit replacements for them. PISSI will have no trouble doing so as long as Iraqi Sunnis believe they have no other choice. Reportedly PISSI now includes all the forces that were fighting against the US-unleashed Iraqi government ten years ago.
To defeat PISSI requires giving the Iraqi Sunnis a safe way out. The Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government is hardly even trying to do that.
Ukrainians search Russian social networks to document the soldiers that Russia has sent to fight in Ukraine.
Captured soldiers, fighting in uniform, should not be tried as "terrorists". They are prisoners of war. Stretching the meaning of "terrorism" is an affront to human rights, no matter which country does it.
US education, and political life, add up to a big scam.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 877-852-4710 to denounce all the proposed corporate power agreements including the TPP, TISA and TTIP.
"Free trade" is bad, since it makes countries compete to allow worse treatment of workers, when each ought to be doing its best to insist on better treatment for its workers. But these treaties go much further and therefore are far worse, since they give companies power over human beings.
A last-gasp attempt to present denial of global heating in scientific guise roves to be based on gross errors.
Paris Climate Pledges 'Will Only Delay Dangerous Warming by Two Years'.
Graduating students that accept jobs doing evil are choosing to be corrupted.
While the article refers to becoming a bankster, it applies just as much to going to work on proprietary software. The two evils are different in detail, but that is not significant.
The Erdogan regime, going a little beyond Obama's example, has charged an editor with espionage.
The Obama regime charges only their sources, not the journalists themselves, but the effect is the same.
Thugs suffocated Robert Minjarez by sitting on his back and squeezing the breath out of him. He managed to say, a few times, that he was suffocating, until he could not get enough breath to say any more.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro is not afraid to denounce Obama's subservience to business.
Sudan confiscated editions of ten newspapers, and shut four of them permanently.
Part of London is planning to fine homeless people for sleeping.
Since homeless people are generally broke and can't pay fines, I can only suppose this is meant as an excuse to jail them. Since the UK fines people for having been jailed, they will be jailed for life, or until the government decides to forget the accrued fines.
If thousands of homeless Britons choose to pack the jails, as blacks packed the jails in the south during the civil rights movement, they might force an end to this system.
The EFF prefers to see the positive side of the "USA Freedom Act": it represents a step in the right direction, compared with a week ago.
I see the negative side: it is a step in the wrong direction, compared with the actual situation today.
The result is that we have made only a small step in reducing the US government's power of massive surveillance, which threatens democracy.
Boston thugs say video shows Usaama Rahim was charging at them with a knife when they shot him.
Even practiced liars sometimes tell the truth, but they should show us the video rather than expecting us to take their word for it.
NATO bombing destroyed Libya's water management system.
I can't see proof here about whether it was intentional or careless.
The lack of electricity in Gaza can be fatal. It is always an injustice.
The FBI operates over 100 surveillance planes that capture video over US cities and sometimes track all cell phones.
US citizens: support reform of how GMO foods are regulated.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the 90 billion dollar Pentagon slush fund.
US citizens: support a constitutional amendment to roll back the Corporations United decision.
That case is usually referred to as "Citizens United" after the dishonest name used by the organization. I see no reason why we should repeat their falsehoods.
US citizens: phone the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and insist that it move away from extreme fossil fuels.
Watch out for eye-tracking devices; they could be used to put you at a disadvantage.
The Makoko Floating School prevented the slum clearance of the entire Makoko floating neighborhood in Lagos.
The extreme of criminalizing homelessness: in 2014, Albuquerque thugs shot and killed a homeless man for camping in the desert.
The US Supreme Court ruled that talking about doing violence to
someone does not count as a threat unless it is
intended
as a threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
However, it left unclear the question of how to decide what counts as a threat.
When thugs arrested Ginnifer Hency for possession of marijuana, they took away lots of her property, including her children's phones.
Charges were dropped because her medical marijuana is legal, but she can't get her property or her children's property back.
Without section 215, the US government still has tremendous surveillance powers.
Rather than surrendering to the fear Obama and his henchmen are spreading, we need to curb surveillance further. In some cases we need to make the state obey its laws.
The coup-installed rulers of Honduras are facing massive condemnation for taking social security funds for campaigns.
Protesters blockaded a coal conference in London.
US citizens: support requiring labeling of meat raised with routine use of antibiotics.
In TPP countries: Tell your trade minister, don't let TPP overwrite our laws.
List of TPP countries:
ACLU: NSA Surveillance: The Scandal is the Use, Not the Abuse.
"Echo chambers" with little scientific input enable politicians to close their ears to evidence about global heating.
This is not an accident, however; for a right-wing politician who as adopted denialism, it's a means to an end.
US citizens: phone your senators and tell them to reject any "compromise" to bring back some of the massive surveillance that was just ended.
Here's more about how this "compromise" would be a step back from where we are now.
Senator McConnell is trying to make it even worse.
50 years before John Kiriakou, Anthony Russo tried to report on how the CIA tortured prisoners in Vietnam.
However, his report never reached the public.
Clinton is selling meetings for thousands of dollars.
When people argue that a supreme being exist, what they really want is to believe someone powerful is going to make things come out ok for them.
Do mindclones deserve human rights?
I think it depends on how deep the cloning goes. A mockup of a person is just a proxy, but a download of a person is a person.
Shell sponsored an exhibit about climate in the Science Museum in London, then tried to use its influence to hush up the danger of global heating.
Meanwhile, the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History both have a Koch brother on the board of directors.
It is not too late to sign the petition.
The infamous Khan Academy, which develops online courses and releases them under a nonfree license, also applies for software patents.
They do NOT deserve your good opinion.
Russia has ordered ISPs to block access to a site that gives advice about how to get around internet censorship.
Instead of "compromises",
we need
a new Church committee
to get to the bottom of US intelligence criminality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Comparing the response to computer security flaws today with the response to the Tylenol murders around 1980.
Colombia's former intelligence chief is being tried for helping a drug gang assassinate a presidential candidate.
Obama tries to take credit for ending bulk collection of Americans' phone calls, while refusing to reconsider that Snowden deserves merit for revealing the illegal practice.
Wearable or implanted, devices with nonfree software are a plan to data-mine your body. If you're fool enough to use such devices with nonfree software in them.
The Supreme Court ruled against a company that refused to hire a woman because she wore a headscarf for religious reasons.
US companies are far too intrusive about their employees' looks, especially about female employees. Nonreligious people need protection from this too.
Sweden is giving new fathers 3 months of paid parental leave, to go with paid leave for mothers.
The reason why parental leave is important is so that newborn people get a good start on life. Likewise for other programs that support families; skimping on a child's nutrition, medical care, education or causing stress can cause irreparable lifelong harm.
These programs may also encourage some people to have more children. This is a negative effect, but surely small by comparison with the good done for children. We can easily overcome it through birth control assistance to the poor.
Global heating is tied to the position of the jet stream, which leads to blizzards and floods in the US and Europe.
In the US, 15% of whites killed by thugs were unarmed. 32% of blacks killed by thugs were unarmed.
A one-off victory over NSA surveillance is likely to get smaller: the US Senate is on the way to pass the "USA FREEDOM Act" which makes inadequate changes.
But the NSA might not even obey these changes. If so, how will be find out? We will need another hero…another Snowden.
Phone call records tracking is just one element of massive surveillance. We need to organize a stronger movement to limit other forms of pervasive surveillance. We need to require redesign of digital systems so that they don't accumulate dossiers about people in general.
Please join me in rejecting Facebook and Amazon. Support your local physical stores, and protect your privacy, by paying cash to buy things.
Jeb Bush is in bed with coal companies.
Managers at Rana Plaza forced workers to enter the building despite visible cracks in its structure. They are being charged with murdering over 1000 of those workers.
Rwanda's government has banned local BBC broadcasting in objection to a documentary which suggested that the victims of the 1994 mass murder included Hutus as well as Tutsis.
I have seen claims that the distinction between Tutsis and Hutus was created by the British colonial rulers, who desired a privileged minority to help rule the rest of the population. I don't know enough about that subject to judge whether that is true.
Rwanda's government seems to manage the country well, but disrespects human rights.
Prisoners Australia sends to Nauru have only the most basic medical care.
Genetic engineering could be used to elevate the baseline happiness of humans, so that no one would suffer depression.
There may be some beneficial concomitant to the genes that make people vulnerable to depression. Otherwise they'd probably be eliminated.
The CIA punished one of its interrogators for cooperating with an internal probe of CIA torture.
"Go to any predominantly minority neighborhood in any major American city and you'll hear the same stories: decades of being sworn at, thrown against walls, kicked, searched without cause, stripped naked on busy city streets, threatened with visits from child protective services, chased by dogs, and arrested and jailed not merely on false pretenses, but for reasons that often don't even rise to the level of being stupid."
The fraction that get killed by thugs are the tip of the iceberg, but they keep civil rights defenders busy; millions of attacks and arrests of black citizens who can't do anything about it.
It starts with racist policies in thug departments, covered by the figleaf of "stop and frisk" policies, continues through systematic false accusations by thugs, and they bury complaints as a condition of dropping the false charges.
A UK thug has been sentenced to prison for attacking a student protester.
Many other thugs did likewise but have not been charged.
I would not believe any accusations that thugs make against protesters. A thug is simply not a trustworthy witness.
Landlords are driving the quirky unique stores out of the West Village in New York City, by raising their rents.
The landlords would rather have the store stay empty for many years, hoping to land the jackpot of a super-chic store. The result, ironically, is to eliminate what made the neighborhood desirable in the first place.
Bohemians can find another place to live, but it will probably be at the end of a painfully long subway ride followed by a bus ride or two.
Hackers did an intentionally incompetent scientific study, then used the real (but random) results to "prove" to mass media that chocolate helps people lose weight.
Chicago thugs appear to have deleted security camera video footage showing how thugs killed Laquan McDonald.
Republican tax cuts are bad for employment. They don't deliver the "trickle down" benefits that supposedly justify them. They don't even boost the stock market.
Of the ten US states where people are most miserable and discouraged, 9 are ruled by Republicans.
Bernie Sanders champions the "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions.
In addition to collecting money from speculators, it will discourage high-frequency trading, which will reduce instabilities in the stock market.
US politicians choose from a spectrum of possible falsehoods about Dubya's invasion of Iraq, because they don't want to admit that we knew at the time that it was wrong.
For nuclear powers to continue holding nuclear weapons is not "realistic" politics, rather an act of faith that we will never have an accident, or an accidental nuclear war.
If humans were "intelligently designed", the designer was incompetent.
Since Uber pays drivers peanuts, let's call it: Goober.
The US is advancing its plan to let one judge authorize the state to break security on any and all computers anywhere.
Santa Clara County pays dearly to repress the homeless instead of housing them.
Mohammed Soltan was sentenced to life imprisonment in Egypt for the crime of journalism. He launched a hunger strike, and after 16 months has been exiled to the US.
Many others imprisoned in Egypt for the same crime have not had such luck.
French workers fight to their 35-hour work week, more or less.
In the US, where the government has abandoned workers, the 40-hour work week has been lost.
Limiting the work week is a way to give employment to more people. If the minimum wage and other public services (including medical care and education) are sufficient, it reduces poverty.
With all the increased efficiency of 60 years of technological advance, should poor Americans have to work longer hours now just to get by? That is a sign of the wrongs of our plutocratic government.
Businesses argue, "If you do this, you will lose the competition against other countries that allow businesses to make workers work longer and spread poverty there." I turn this around, and ask, why do those governments serve their people badly? Obviously, because they are taking the advice of those businesses.
Instead of corporate-power treaties such as TPP, we need workers-power treaties that will punish governments that don't support their own people against dooH niboR (Robin Hood in reverse).
In the temperature and humidity of the Indian heat wave, physical labor without air conditioning is dangerous, but poor people can't afford to miss work. Thus, the dead are not limited to the old and sick.
We must politicize disasters, such as the floods in Texas, that result from political decisions.
The UK government changing the law to make it very hard for unions to strike. Also, harder for unions to donate to a political party (but it's easy for rich people to donate).
Stephen Hawking says that a student today with his medical problems would not get the support needed to be able to study.
Israel Thanks Obama for Sabotaging Nuclear Nonproliferation Deal.
What Moby Dick Can Teach Us About the War on Terror.
Professor Kipnis published an article about the injustice of Title IX sexual harassment accusations in US universities; in response, students filed Title IX accusations against her claiming that her article was sexual harassment.
I wish we could read her second article, which describes these events, but it seems to be paywalled. The article I've referred to is a stand-in for her inaccessible article.
T. H. White's book, The Making of the President 1960, led to intense scrutiny of insignificant details of the lives of candidates, which he later regretted.
More criticism of the effects of that book.
Bernie Sanders represents mainstream American views, rather than the right-wing positions of mainstream American media.
A woman called for help, non-emergency, for her boyfriend who was talking about suicide. She didn't say she was in any danger. Thugs with rifles responded, and shot him dead.
Washington Bans Political Ads From Public Transit.
[Hurricane] Sandy Victims
Say
Low-Income Residents Got 'Screwed' By
[New Jersey Governor] Christie's Recovery Programs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
America's Growing Inequality Worsens In One's Senior Years.
Budget cuts in the IRS have damaged its ability to handle and prevent increasing digital fraud against taxpayers.
Net Neutrality — Is The European Parliament Ready to Accept Complete Failure?
A disturbingly plausible AI story: The Counselor.
CRPE is a secretive right-wing-linked group of school districts that wants to pay less to school districts whose students don't do well.
To a large extent, the reason the students don't do well is that they grow up in poverty, in a neighborhood afflicted by poverty. Thus, this is another form of dooH niboR.
Verizon cable TV snoops on what programs people watch, and even what they wanted to record.
UK plans to limit welfare benefits threaten to push 40,000 more children into poverty.
The charges against ex-Congressman Hastert illustrate how the US has become over-criminalized.
Malware in phones can track people through the subway using accelerometers.
Nigeria has banned female genital mutilation.
A lot more struggle will be needed to end the practice.
The US corporate media are promoting the fear campaign to extend the PAT RIOT Act.
On the legal reasoning that led to the acquittal of Thug Brelo.
I would not say the reasoning is wrong. If the charge was that Brelo individually was the killer of the two passengers, indeed that can't be proved. Perhaps it was the wrong charge. Would "attempted murder" have been provable?
Is it generally the case that when several shooters hit a person who is killed by their bullets, none of them can be convicted of murder?
North Carolina's gag bill would go well beyond agriculture: it would criminalize investigation into nursing homes and day care centers too.
Most US schools have "shooting drills" even though being killed at school is almost as unusual as getting struck by lightning. When done vividly, these drills traumatize students.
I suspect that these drills spread the sort of irrational fear that leads to arresting parents that let children be alone.
Perhaps schools should have lightning drills instead.
France says that climate summits depend on fossil fuel companies' money.
This is ridiculous. Governments have the money for this. If they want to get these funds from fossil fuel companies, they should cut the subsidies to those companies.
After a contrived mixup in court, Rafael Marques de Morais has been given a suspended sentence over nothing, so that the government of Angola can imprison him any time he writes something disturbing.
Jeb Bush Cosies Up to Coal Industry Barons at Closed-Door Meeting.
Amnesty says that most civilian casualties in Sana'a are caused by anti-aircraft rounds that fall to the ground in some other part of the city.
I wonder what measures other armies take to prevent this sort of casualties which would most often happen to the civilians on their own side.
Chilean abortion rights activists make mock "tutorials" on dangerous ways to try to do an abortion without medical help.
An effective movement against poverty needs to be lead by people who have experienced it. Only they know how to win support from other poor people.
The article misses one point, however. An effective movement against poverty has to fight for abortion rights. Saddling a poor family with another baby is a sure route to poverty, and that extra baby will experience life-long the stunting caused by childhood poverty.
China will "phase out" manufacture and sale of ivory products. It will be good, if they don't take too long about it.
See how US senators and representatives voted on bills to hold companies accountable for their wrongdoing and limit their political influence.
Jeffrey Spector, age 54, lived in the UK, but he had to move to Switzerland to kill himself rather than become hopelessly paralyzed.
AT&T wants to violate network neutrality by having data caps count some video sites and not others.
Cattle and chicken farms promote, to children, a mythical picture of happy animals eating the locally produced sustainable plants.
Propping up this myth are the ag-gag bills that make it a crime to document how farms are really run.
Idaho's ag-gag bill was written by factory farm owners.
A UN report says that governments should respect and encourage encryption.
Women were blocked from voting in the most fundamentalist parts of Pakistan.
Restrictions on smoking in the UK seem to have avoided 11000 hospitalizations of children per year. This is because children are less exposed to second-hand smoke now.
Laws to protect whales apply to drones as well as to aircraft.
This seems correct to me.
Low oil prices are cutting back extraction of highly polluting tar sands oil. Protests and public opposition may be helping.
After the senate refused to renew the PAT RIOT Act, another bill proposes to "improve" it by giving the surveillance state even more power.
And there's another one.
Reddit censors comments in a subtle way: they are visible to those who posted them, but not to anyone else.
The UK plans to block sale of all "legal highs", as well as nitrous oxide.
Some of these chemicals are dangerous, but some are not. In particular nitrous oxide is hardly dangerous at all. There is no need to ban it, just educate people in how to use it safely.
The law would interfere with research into brain function.
This law would be incoherent; really they need to ban neurotransmitters.
In the UK: support the Open Rights Group's campaign against increased (and almost unlimited) surveillance power.
US citizens: call on Congress to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Everyone: call on the World Bank to throw out the mining company's case against El Salvador.
US citizens: call on Bernie Sanders to talk about cutting the Pentagon budget.
The UK government has dismissed Seaman McNeilly's report of safety violations in nuclear missile submarines in a blanket, incredible fashion.
Media make a mountain out of the US debt, to distract from real mountains such as workers' need for more pay.
The Cleveland thugs have agreed to stop hitting people on the head with their guns.
In addition, thugs will be supposed to report when they point guns at people. Not counting the SWAT team, which probably does this most often.
Human traffickers now hold thousands of prisoners in cargo ships and ransom them to their relatives.
They have turned into the equivalent of ancient pirates, who captured people and either ransomed them or sold them into slavery.
Countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation got approval for arms deals from Secretary of State Clinton.
Proposed export restrictions for information about security holes could put security researchers in prison.
I think there should be some laws about how to give notice about security holes, but they should be designed so that honest security research is not criminalized.
I am disappointed that the article uses the term "open source" which is a way to talk about free software and downplay its implications about human rights.
In Japan, players are getting arrested for cheating at video games. So are developers of cheating software.
This is very dangerous, since next they will prosecute people for developing software to break DRM — as the US did to Dmitri Sklyarov.
If you have a program running on your computer, you must be free to change it.
News Flash: The Charter-Time Warner Cable Merger Will Benefit Execs, Burden the Rest of Us.
The SPEAK FREE Act would protect Americans from frivolous lawsuits aimed to censor them.
We also need protection from frivolous DMCA takedown demands aimed to censor us.
What should it mean to protect the privacy of students in school?
I think that schools should not be allowed to hand any information about any students to anyone, outside of certain specific exceptions (reports to parents, and responses to subpoenas). Even making an account in a student's name on some company's server violates the student's privacy.
Putin declared it is a crime in Russia to report the death of a soldier.
This is to repress reports from relatives of the soldiers that are killed fighting secretly in Ukraine.
The Sri Lankan army took the land of many Tamils, decades ago, and is using it for civilian business.
The Trade in Services Agreement would prohibit signatory states from insisting on running free software.
As well as other bigger nasty things.
Canada's Plan to Make Boycotting Israel a 'Hate Crime' is Stupid and Counterproductive. (It also violates fundamental human rights.)
It is important to note the difference between the boycott of Israel's colonies in Palestine and products made in them, advocated by Gush Shalom, and the Palestinians' BDS movement, which applies to all Israeli companies and all Israeli institutions except those that denounce the occupation. The Israeli government treats them both the same, and subjects anyone who advocates either one to the danger of being sued into bankruptcy.
Ireland is prosecuting a police officer for talking to journalists to reveal wrongdoing by the thug department.
By refusing to support thugs when they don't deserve it, he merits the title of "police officer".
A record-breaking heatwave in India has killed at least 1500 people.
Public opposition made Israel back down from its plan to exclude Palestinians from buses headed from Israel to Palestine.
The Israeli government includes many overtly racist ministers who completely reject the idea of a state of Palestine alongside Israel.
Israeli soldiers told a Palestinian family they would arrest the 14-year-old boy if he is standing outside his house when someone throws stones.
When Israelis throw stones at the Palestinians, the soldiers look the other way.
If you want to watch some of the youtube videos, please don't do it direct from the site — that involves running nonfree software. Instead, use the youtube-dl script as described in that reference.
Everyone:
call
on Mexico to bring torturers to justice.
How senate votes were
bought
for Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
The UK government wants the state to
monitor
the contents of your phone calls and other communications, not
only who you talk with.
This follows the examples of
Australia
and
France
in giving authorizing total state surveillance.
All these governments justify total surveillance by pointing at
smaller dangers, such as the occasional religious fanatic.
The EU Climate Commissioner's meetings are mainly with
fossil
fuel and heavy industry lobbyists.
Blacklisted
Workers Seek to Prise Open Secrets of Covert Police Surveillance.
A skull from 430,000 years ago shows
evidence
of murder with a blunt object.
The cave where 28 skeletons were found also shows evidence of funeral
practices.
This does not surprise me, since humans kill each other, and so do
chimpanzees. In the case of chimpanzees, it is typically a group that
does the killing, and that is common for humans too. It seems
plausible that the common ancestor of the two species did this also.
However, the different example of bonobos show that another way
exists.
Peru will
continue
to ban abortions for women who have been raped, as well as
refusing to give them emergency contraception.
PISSI said it
will
destroy only the statues in ancient Palmyra.
This is a sign of the beginning of willingness to compromise with
civilization.
Is Israel looking for a war to
kill
the nuclear agreement with Iran?
If accumulating arms were a crime, Israel would be as guilty as
Hezbollah. As for what they do with arms, both of them tend to commit
war crimes such as firing on civilians. Let's try to discourage them
from fighting each other.
Don't imagine that non-rich people ate healthy, home-cooked meals
before the 20th century. Even in Europe, food was
often
lousy and insufficient, and in cities it was often some kind of
fast food.
Italians often suffered from hunger until 1960, according to Delizia
by John Dickie; the first place that Italians who were not rich were
able to eat as they thought they should was in the US (but only for
Italians who had moved there).
This fact doesn't negate the real problems of today's food system.
US citizen Sharif Mobley was disappeared by the Yemeni government with
US backing, then his prison was bombed by Saudi Arabia with US
backing. In effect, the US has
arranged
to kill him.
Mobley faced charges in Yemen, but even if he was guilty, it can't
justify this.
Another Bangladeshi secularist has received
death
threats.
Norway's national pension fund said it would divest from coal, but
actually it
moved
the money from coal mining to coal burning (and increased it).
The German court case about
relaying
orders through Germany to drones bombing Yemen has been dismissed.
"Zero tolerance" at work: graduating students face
prosecution
for sneaking into school and releasing thousands of ladybugs.
The school's principal must be truly dedicated to cruel rigidly to
think that this called for prosecution, or any punishment.
Ladybugs do not hurt or bother humans; on the contrary, they eat other
insects. They are pretty, and most people are delighted to see them.
Seeing a school corridor with lots of ladybugs must be almost like
visiting the monarch butterfly sanctuary.
It is not clear to me why they thought they had to vacuum up the
ladybugs, rather than let them fly out the windows and eat other
insects in the neighborhood. Perhaps that too was an example of
mental rigidity: "The school has to be clean for graduation!"
American schools have become institutions to inculcate
subservience
to cruel and rigid authority. This example shows how
"zero
tolerance" feeds into the
school-to-prison
pipeline.
We must hold individual
banksters and
criminal banks accountable for their crimes.
They commit lots of crimes.
The Iraqi government labeled its attempt to reconquer Anbar province
with a
Shi'ite
sectarian slogan. This will reaffirm to the Sunnis of Anbar that
they have to support
PISSI.
It will be extremely hard to defeat PISSI except by giving Sunnis a
way to stop supporting it.
Requirements that make work "family-friendly"
can
have costs for workers.
Sometimes the policies are worth the costs; also, the article mentions
ways to fix the policies so as to avoid the problems.
An Russian opposition leader fell ill suddenly, and
poison
is suspected.
Memo
to Jeb Bush: Denying Human-Caused Global Warming Is Ignorant.
Several former State Department officials have resigned to become
lobbyists
for plutocratic treaties.
Time Warner Cable now proposes
another
megamerger.
When companies are this big, their mergers are harmful in general and
always be blocked in general. But we might be able to avoid the
problem entirely with a
progressive
tax on company income.
The war in Yemen has
destroyed
the water supply for 16 million people.
Global heating is expected to bring more droughts and bigger
rainstorms to many parts of the US. Texas got a
drought,
followed by floods.
The Tories' law, supposedly to protect workers with zero-hours
contracts, is so
weak
that their employers' will hardly notice it.
Dubya's lies, the excuses for attacking Iraq (and eventually creating
PISSI), were
worse
than ordinary lies. They played on the fears of Americans who
were already traumatized, thus doing wrong to them.
Shell wants investors to
"bet
against the world".
Ireland's vote to allow gay marriage has been a
big
shock to the Catholic Church. It can't see how to deal with this.
Two
previous mass extinctions seem to have included global heating
caused by burning lots of fossil fuel (all the world's forests).
It took millions of years for the ecosphere to recover.
A sex worker in Northern Ireland will
sue
to overturn the law making it a crime to do business with her.
I don't know whether her case has a chance, but I think
justice
is on her side.
Indian teenage women are
starting
to fight back against marriages arranged without asking them.
International banks are
refusing
to fund the new Australian giant coal mine.
Surely Australian banks realize it is against their interest to do so.
Why have they not ruled it out? Perhaps they are being pressured by
the Australian government, which will stop at nothing to destroy
Earth's ecosphere.
Officials of FIFA, the world football association, have been accused
of taking a
hundred
million dollars in bribes.
Bribery aside, FIFA and Qatar are
made
for each other.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to take firmer measures against smuggling ivory into the
US.
US citizens:
call on President
Obama to appoint SEC commissioners that are not subservient to
banksters.
Denton, Texas, is
not
going to surrender quietly to fracking.
Most
Glaciers in Mount Everest Area Will Disappear with [Global
Heating].
Outsourcing
Can Often Increase Public Service Costs, Not Cut Them.
In addition, it puts the company's owners in the position to profit by
making
the privatized functionaries do a bad job. It also
reduces
accountability, since the laws about accountability often apply
only to state agencies and state employees.
Now that US college graduates can no longer generally expect good
incomes, increasing numbers of them can't repay their college loans.
This creates a crisis for the school loan system. The US tries to
shore up the system by
getting
more rigid with students.
The UK likes to pass laws to authorize more surveillance and attacks
on people's computers in a quiet way.
Public
debate about these issues is called for.
If computers and algorithms control your life in
inexplicable and perhaps cruel ways, don't blame the computers.
Blame
the bureaucratic company or agency which set them up to impose its
goals and cloud its policies.
The
"opentable"
web disservice tracks people's use of restaurants while
encouraging them to spend more.
I'd reject opentable for its surveillance, but I suspect
that I'd have to reject it for
nonfree
Javascript code first.
A Canadian mining company's private thugs killed a Guatemalan community
activist; now
his
widow is suing that company.
The hope is that this will make international companies less arrogant
about the lives of local people.
Farms in California irrigate crops with toxin-laden
oil
field waste water.
Has it been established whether the food grown this way has
significant levels of toxins?
Stop calling the TPP a "trade" treaty. It's about
privileges
for foreign corporations.
The mayor of Oakland is serious about
limiting
local government surveillance to cases where it is specifically
justified.
The concept of an "Anthropocene" epoch has been seized on by a
cunning
distortion campaign which says it would be great for humans to
eliminate the natural world and control absolutely everything.
This is the danger that I warned of in the term
"Anthropocene".
India is planning to
double
or triple its use of coal by 2030.
The arguments in favor of this would be totally logical, if it were
not going to spike last chance of an agreement to avert global
disaster.
India won't be spared this disaster. Does it want to see Mumbai under
water along with its other coastal cities?
If governments of more powerful countries, such as the US, Australia,
Canada and the UK, were not in the grip of fossil fuel interests, they
could (and would) compel India to participate in carbon emissions
reduction. All it takes to build storage systems for solar
electricity is some money, and other countries should contribute to
that.
India also has a responsibility to curb its population growth, not
just project it up and up.
Hamas killed some of its Palestinian prisoners while Israel was
attacking, some of whom had been
previously
tortured.
Pipeline company Kinder Morgan
hired
off-duty thugs to "deter protests".
It should change its name to Unkinder Morbid.
Protests
have made the University of Edinburgh agree to divest from some large
fossil fuel companies.
This replaces a policy of "engagement" with them, an approach that is
as useless with those looters as it is with a gang of
narcotraffickers.
Making life nasty, brutish and short for the unemployed is a route to
doing
the same for most of those who are employed.
Many of the prisoners freed from Boko Haram were under 5 years old.
The group
uses
children as suicide bombers, so all children are now suspect.
Angola has
cheated
on the deal to drop charges against journalist Rafael Marques de
Morais.
The Worst of All Possible Worlds:
Did
Market Leninism Win the Cold War?
The Justice Department has imposed reforms on the Cleveland thug
department, intended to curb its
rampant
violence.
However, since the previous set of reforms imposed 11 years ago didn't
solve the problem, what would enable this new set to do a better job?
Poachers
Killed Half Mozambique's Elephants in Five Years.
On Saturday May 30, join UK Uncut's
protest
against dooH niboR — planned budget cuts aimed at the non-rich.
US citizens:
tell
your congresscritter to protect fisheries management by opposing
HR 1335.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to stop corporate tax evasion through "inversions".
US citizens:
Oppose
Republican plans for sexual discrimination.
Japanese historians and foreign scholars
call
on Japan's prime minister to acknowledge Japan's wartime atrocity
of forcing women into prostitution for the army.
Increasing numbers of poor Britons are given fines they can't pay.
They are already
struggling
to pay for food. Ferguson shows where that road leads.
Riots in Baltimore are the real life equivalent of the Hunger Games.
Yet many white Americans identify with the oppressed people in the
hypothetical future Hunger Games world,
but
not in Baltimore.
In the US (and Europe),
stop
drinking bottled water!
The US Justice Department published a report saying that section 215
of the PAT RIOT Act did not produce "any major case developments". On
the same day, Attorney General Lynch
claimed
the FBI desperately needs section 215 because it has been important
for major cases.
What Lynch is doing is called "fear-mongering" and "lying".
Russians targeted by the regime report on the
hate
messages and threats that people are paid to send them.
Jammers can
stop
radio car locks from functioning, and some cars have no manual
keys to substitute for them.
Tylenol or paracetamol is
very
dangerous, and many people don't get much help from it.
I mostly don't use it.
Austerity especially targets children, and the effects of growing up
in poverty can
stunt
them for life.
BP tries to cut costs by keeping rarely used equipment for handling
oil spills
far
away from the places it may need to be used.
That's very efficient as long as nothing goes wrong. But if a well
near Australia blows, it would take weeks to bring that equipment to
the spill. This would guarantee a regional disaster before they can
even try to act.
Even if the equipment were stored nearby, a spill could still cause a
regional disaster, as shown five years ago in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP and its contractors will surely cut costs in other ways, while
lobbying for weak regulations to "reduce costs" — their
costs. What this really means is that they get the profits and the
whole world pays the eventual costs.
We need to leave
80%
of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Let's start with
undersea oil in places where a spill would pollute a clean area.
Mexico
City Taxi Drivers Stage Mass Protest over Uber.
There are
many reasons to boycott
Uber, but even if Uber stopped mistreating everyone else, I will
refuse to use Uber as long as it mistreats the customers by tracking
them.
Bonuses for oil executives are
directly
tied to spending a trillion dollars on projects to extract
difficult fossil fuels that ought not to be extracted at all.
Medical research on animals, including monkeys, is
crucial
for advances in human health care.
Save
the World's Small-Scale Farmers.
Obama celebrated Memorial Day by
claiming
that the US is not currently in a major war.
That seems to disregard the US bombing campaign in Syria and
Iraq, and the drone assassination campaign around the world.
2015
Memorial Day: Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War?
Valerie
Tarico: Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice.
I am even more pro-abortion than that. Having a baby is dangerous for
the mother, and it contributes tp the population growth that
exacerbates many global problems. I encourage women to choose an
abortion rather than a baby.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Self-driving trucks could push 10 million Americans into unemployment in a few years.
Truck driving is the last form of work that provides a good income to people without college or professional degrees.
Meanwhile, Watch out for self-driving cars; they may be a surveillance system. Any car made by Google, Apple or Uber will tell a company where you go. We must not allow vehicles that track us to become the usual mode of travel.
Uber is already a surveillance system, which is one of many reasons why we should refuse to use it.
See surveillance vs. democracy for more about this point.
Killing the TPP might lead to less corporate-power items in future trade treaties.
China Warned Over 'Insane' Plans for New Nuclear Power Plants.
The Welfare State Saved Me. To Need It Isn't A Moral Failure.
Poverty is principally the fault of systems that shoot poverty arrows. Those who are more capable can dodge better, but anyone can get hit. Right-wing policy is to shoot more arrows.
The UK government has started limiting the offshoring of sales income, and Amazon has given up trying to evade it.
Australia's budget cuts hurt the poor most.
The NSA made a plan to find Osama bin Laden by putting spies in medical devices that he might get.
These people don't seem to consider what social systems they might poison.
Due to treaties (like the TPP) that give foreign investors special rights, foreign investment is now a direct threat to human rights.
Palestinian minors report how they were tortured in Israeli prisons.
As "free" countries' governments arrest whistleblowers and hacktivists, their legal defense campaigns are hampered as companies refuse to raise funds for those campaigns.
Growth At All Costs: Climate Change, Fossil Fuel Subsidies And the Treasury.
The FBI interrogated Matt DeHart about charges of "espionage", apparently giving him drugs that caused psychosis (which he didn't have before), then charged him with "child pornography".
That was 5 years ago. His case is still in process.
To prosecute anyone for seeking, receiving or possessing copies of some publication is extremely dangerous to a free society because it is easy for the state to plant them on people. Thugs used to plant drugs on people to jail them; now they need only plant some "child pornography" in a memory stick.
We must reject this witch hunt, and the fear-mongering that supports it.
When the border agents searched the reporter's car, it is possible that they were installing something nasty in the car or one of its computers. She now lives in Berlin.
Michael Robertson tried to make San Diego give him the records about tracking his car by its license plate, but he lost.
A county in California has used a stingray (which tracks all cell phones in the vicinity) 300 times and never asks for permission.
Everyone: tell Dow to
cancel its new toxic herbicide,
which combines
Roundup with Agent Orange.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UN, directed by most of the world's countries, is pushing for a system of bankruptcy for countries.
I think a distinction should be made between debts contracted by democratic governments and debts contracted by dictators. It should be easy to repudiate the latter; that will teach banksters not to rush to make loans for tyrants to put in their pockets.
US citizens: phone your congressional representative
to oppose the TPP. Then use
this page
to send a message. The capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
An experiment will use underwear with sensors to monitor the mental state of inmates of psychiatric hospitals.
To judge this ethically depends on the guidelines for treatment of the mentally ill, which are more or less reasonable, and on guidelines for respecting people's personal data, which are far too weak. Society has failed to establish is guidelines for the rights of computer users in general.
Wearable sensors should make their output directly available to the user, and to no one else except if the user supplies it. Companies should not be allowed to ask for that data as a condition for services.
Meanwhile, if this sensor-clothing is skintight, it could be painfully hot. I would rip it off just because of that.
US citizens: oppose the TPP as an obstacle to saving the Earth from global heating.
Republican opposition to Obama's medical insurance program is based on one simple goal: denying the Democratic party a success that could win support from millions of appreciative Americans.
The fact that they turned against the Massachusetts system, that Romney himself turned against his own success, demonstrates this.
Obama's law failed to get the insurance companies out of the system, so it did not reduce the costs, but it does provide medical care to millions of Americans who couldn't get it before (though not everyone).
You will now find Republicans and other right-wingers attacking it for the high costs, which it did not cause. But none of them wants the solution that will really reduce the costs: a National Health Service.
Economists report on how a treaty to give foreign corporations more power, such as the TPP, can do economic harm.
This is in addition to the other forms of injustice, such as bad copyright law, and forbidding many sorts of protection of the environment and public health.
It's not enough to punish criminal banks and banksters, even if it were done properly. We need to regulate the system so that they don't have an opportunity for crime.
Part of the necessary change is to eliminate complicated financial derivatives. The reason banksters create these is because nobody knows how to regulate them well enough to prevent the banksters from using them to cheat people.
We need to regulate banks to the point that being a banker is not an opportunity for creativity.
US citizens: if your senator voted for the "fast track" bill, phone and rebuke the senator.
Then phone your representative and say to vote against "fast track" and against all so-called "trade treaties".
US citizens: call on Congress to
reverse the Corporations United decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Officially it's called "Citizens United", but we should not repeat the falsehoods of the plutocrats.
Everyone: support the German campaign to end the US-German drone relay.
US citizens: call for restricting for-profit colleges.
US citizens: call on the US government to defy the WTO and maintain the requirement for country-of-origin labeling for meat.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the Shelby bill that gives Wall Street whatever it wants.
US citizens: call for strict requirements for in-situ leach mining for uranium.
The process spreads toxic minerals and chemicals as well as uranium in the ground.
Jailing banksters for their crimes is difficult, but Iceland proves it can be done.
If the system makes it too hard to assign responsibility for bankster crimes to individuals, we should change it to make that easy.
Republicans are starving Amtrak to force privatization.
I will not campaign for Amtrak because I condemn its surveillance. In fact, I refuse to use Amtrak until it sells tickets anonymously and I hope you will do the same.
Ukraine has made it illegal to criticize past national liberation groups which fought against the Soviet Union, and fought sometimes for the Nazis. These groups helped kill tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews.
Of course, any law making it illegal to criticize some group, person, belief or practice is incompatible with human rights. Making it illegal to criticize communism, or capitalism, are equally wrong.
New home rental companies package houses as a kind of stock shares. They act like bullies whenever a tenant is even a day late in paying rent.
Large parts of the US are badly prepared to cope with the severe earthquakes that they are likely to experience once in a rare while.
The CIA will end the "Medea" program that allows climate scientists to use secret US data from submarines and spy satellites for scientific purposes.
They should have called it "Cassandra", since the fossils that control our government ensure that the warnings climate scientists generate will be ignored.
The UK government, in the name of reducing poverty in other countries, donates money to help megacorporations take control of their economies.
One more indication of who that government really works for.
Court-imposed radio tracking of people is a sort of digital house arrest, and the tracking device causes injuries.
The article ends by changing the subject, suggesting that no one should ever be deported. This appears to claim that anyone who wishes to live in the US (or country C, whichever it is) must be allowed to do so. I don't agree with that position at all.
The UK right-wing is planning a new kind of "small government": it is small in spirit.
Edward Snowden says that eliminating section 215 of the PAT RIOT Act is only the beginning of what we need to do.
Here's my view of what we need to do.
Vietnamese children are smuggled into the UK as slaves. Probably into other countries as well.
I wonder why Vietnamese parents do not learn will really happen to their children if they accept this temptation. Who spreads the misinformation, and why isn't it countered?
The Treacherous Plutocratic Poison would give fossil fuel companies more power to block clean energy measures.
Joseph Stiglitz tears austerity to shreds.
It is interesting that, even in brute terms, the UK's economy is still doing worse than it was in 2007. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that per capita GDP is a good measure. When inequality is increasing, as nowadays, it overestimates the picture.
The US Secretary of Defense says that the Iraqi army abandoned Ramadi the same way it abandoned Mosul — it lost the will to fight.
I am glad to see frankness from the Obama regime for a change. Obama is resisting pressure from hawks that want the US to send an army to fight PISSI. That would be as futile as it was in 2005.
The only way to defeat PISSI is to give Sunnis in that region another alternative.
Senator McCain mocked Obama for calling [global heating] a worse threat.
Obama is right. What McCain ignores is that the civil war in Syria was caused by the effects of global heating. That gave the PISSI a place to move to, when it could not succeed in Iraq.
PISSI is an example of the wars that global heating will create, around the world, if we don't take the danger seriously.
Too bad Obama isn't taking the danger seriously in his policies.
Assad's TV says that PISSI has massacred 400 people in Palmyra.
That is not a reliable source, but I'd expect some massacres.
Assad has used chlorine bombs 35 times.
Unfortunately, "three strikes" laws apply only to people, not to banks.
Ethiopia held an "election" but the opposition is getting harassed.
There were large protests around the world against Monsanto and genetically modified crops.
Burma will put a limit on how often a woman can have children, in areas of high population growth.
It is wrong for people to have too many children, and it is irresponsible for poor people to do so. Thus, this law is basically justified. However, perhaps it is wrong to discriminate among people based on which region they live in.
If the state plans to enforce this, it had better provide women with modern, reliable birth control, and gratis abortion when necessary as a backup. It is wrong to punish people for something they are not in a position to avoid.
Many avenues are being pursued to reduce, eliminate or cure dengue fever.
One idea for stopping poaching of rhinos is to flood the market with artificial imitation rhino horn.
If the imitation is good enough to fool people, sellers will all switch to it. Since they are willing to wipe out a species illegally, they won't mind lying about the origin of their product. However, making the imitation that good may be difficult.
Qatar forbids Nepalese workers from going to Nepal for the funerals of their relatives.
Saudi Arabia and some other Middle East countries are sending lots of weapons to the non-PISSI enemies of Assad's Syrian government, which include al Qa'ida.
The head of an opposition party in Burundi was assassinated during a protest.
Some cities in the UK want to fine people for sleeping on the street.
Most of these people don't have money to pay the fines, so what will the cities do? Jail these people for a while, then demand they pay fees for being jailed, I suppose. Then they can jail these people again for not paying the fees.
Ira Glass, a major star on National Public Radio, wants stations to stop asking listeners to donate, and become "capitalist" instead.
This would formalize and complete the conversion of NPR into merely another business-controlled network. The change has already happened to a large extent; I noticed 20 years ago that NPR was playing commercials, and stopped donating.
Identifying and refuting common ways that US media sneakily advocate censorship of opinions.
Uri Avnery: The Israeli right wing is pushing Israeli democracy to the wall: intimidating the Supreme Court, breaking the media and converting schools into right-wing propaganda outlets.
Jews who want to live in a democracy need to find a new homeland.
Maryland's governor spent 30 million dollars on a jail for minors instead of schools.
With better schools, they might not need this jail for minors. But Republicans don't want to reduce crime — they want to be cruel to criminals. If there were no teenage criminals, they'd be unable to demonstrate toughness against them.
Existing "trade treaties" allow countries to sue against good laws, such as limiting tobacco to plain packaging and labeling meat by the country of origin.
New "trade" treaties will empower foreign companies to sue directly, if we don't defeat them.
Ireland voted to legalize same-sex marriage, with a majority of 60%.
Next step: freedom of abortion. Irish women are not incubators, any more than the rest of the world's women.
The US says PISSI is recruiting supporters in Afghanistan, and the Taliban does not like that.
In Michigan, fraudulent phony insurance agents swindle poor families, then the thugs complete the process by seizing their cars.
A thug charged with shooting dead two passengers trapped in a car that couldn't move has been acquitted of the ridiculously weak charge of involuntary manslaughter.
The legal system gives thugs so many levels of protection that it is hard to hold them responsible for even murder.
An Israeli judge ruled the army is allowed to expel the whole population of a Palestinian village. He lives in a nearby Israeli colony that grows by dispossession of Palestinians.
US citizens: call for a special prosecutor in Pasco to investigate the killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes.
Union leader Gilberto Torres, who was kidnaped by Colombia's paramilitaries, is suing oil companies related to the Colombian company that arranged it.
The paramilitaries, which have support of the army and parts of the civilian government, are the worst terrorists in Colombia, much worse than the FARC.
The extinction of large animals in the Americas, Australia and Europe has been an ecological disaster. Humans helped kill them off. Now we are doing the same thing to Africa and Asia. The absence of large animals has drastic effects on the growth of forests.
Israel's foreign minister says the Palestinians' land belongs to Israel.
France will require large supermarket chains to give to charity whatever food they do not sell.
Google, Twitter and Facebook face pressure to impose censorship and surveillance for Russia, or else be totally blocked there.
Will they have the courage to refuse?
Opposition parties in Australia are organizing against the TPP.
A vulnerability in HTTPS servers was due to NSA meddling that weakened some of the software.
US citizens: call for banning elected judges from personally asking for campaign funds.
I think judges should not be elected at all.
US citizens: call on TV producers whose shows laud torture to say they recognize torture doesn't "work" to get the truth.
Torture would be wrong even if it did "work".
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban use of plastic microbeads in cosmetics and
products for people's skin.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama not to approve oil drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens:
call on
Congress not to permit discrimination against employees for things
such as having abortion, using birth control, or doing in-vitro
fertilization.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to disapprove genetically engineered salmon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: pledge to boycott Nestle water and tea until it stops bottling water in California.
Nestle water is sold under many other brands including Acqua Panna, Perrier, Poland Spring, San Pellegrino and several more.
All six of the thugs involved in the killing of Freddie Gray now face charges.
Being bankrupted by medical costs taught one Republican to support a national health service, and to stop being a Republican.
A woman in California could be cured of hepatitis C, but insurance won't pay for the superexpensive cure because she isn't sick enough yet.
To put an end to this, the US need a national health service.
The US pressures other countries to bow down to Monsanto, while Monsanto seeks an opportunity to stop pretending to be an American company.
Russian "public opinion" consists of lies that Putin's millions of supporters repeat, because they are happy to lie for Putin.
By contrast, US right-wingers really believe Dubya's lies about Iraq.
French Feminists Demand Rewording of 1789 'Rights Of Man' Declaration.
I've been bothered by this too, so speaking recently in France I decided to say "Droits de l'Humain" instead.
However, even more important than the sexist wording is the French state's failure to respect fundamental human rights, by making it a crime to insult some state officials or express certain opinions. Now a law to permit total surveillance is being pushed through.
One of the special advisors permitted to read the text of the TPP says that Obama is being more secretive about it than Clinton was about NAFTA. Even these advisors are not allowed to see the changes that are being made.
Their specific criticisms are private; in public, they are only allowed to say very vague things, so Obama dishonestly rebukes them for being vague.
This is where Obama shows he is an enemy of the American people.
NAFTA was a disaster. If the TPP is no worse than NAFTA, only bigger, it will be a bigger disaster.
An Australian law, to come into force in 2016, appears to ban teaching about encryption algorithms.
This could well prohibit hosting a mirror of any real GNU/Linux distro in Australia.
A proposed UN resolution would demand that Israel and Palestine agree on peace in 18 months.
It is not clear what the resolution would have the UN do if peace is not achieved in that time.
As Israel explicitly rejects peace, and tolerates advocacy of genocide against Palestinians, Canada says it will have "zero tolerance" for pressure on Israel.
Global heating's heat waves won't kill a lot of people directly in temperate zones.
That doesn't mean you should feel safe. Poverty kills a lot more people than heat waves.
Israel is contemplating attacking Hezbollah again, and has prepared its excuse to for killing and wounding lots of civilians.
The proffered grounds for the war are that Hezbollah has got more arms. Would it be legitimate for Hezbollah to attack Israel because Israel has more arms now? I don't think this excuse is valid in either direction.
Israel has ordered a whole village of Israeli Arabs to move so that it can settle Jews there.
Another Bedouin village in Israel has been demolished 83 times; each time, the inhabitants rebuild. Now they have been ordered to pay for the demolitions, which they can't possibly do.
This is like the fines for being jailed that keep poor people in Ferguson (and cities across the US) down.
The diplomatic and conceptual support of Israel's occupation of
Palestine is
the
pretense that Israel and Palestine have a symmetric relationship.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Refugees permitted into Australia are afraid to speak publicly about how Australia treats refugees.
PISSI has captured Palmyra and will probably soon destroy it.
This means PISSI now controls half of Syria.
The US Senate blocked extension of the "collect all business records" section 215 of the PAT RIOT Act. However, the leadership is pro-surveillance and will try again to push it through.
The big US banks pled guilty to tens of thousands of instances of perjury, but the penalty is a fine they can afford.
We need to jail these banksters.
An unofficial group puts voice recorders in cafes in New York, listening to people in the name of the NSA.
Wire snares set by human hunters maim animals from chimps to elephants.
Courts are slow to recognize that women that kill the men that abuse and enslave them are acting in self-defense.
Maryland's governer vetoed a bill to limit forfeiture (seizure of people's property without convicting them of a crime).
The governor said he was against "government over-reach".
A week after killing Tamar Rice, the thugs drew up a charge sheet of bogus accusations they would pretend to make against him.
In the UK, more than 2 million children's families have cut back on food, clothing or heating due to government cuts in welfare.
South Africa is proposing a law for arbitrary internet censorship orders.
Obama's task force on education recommends starting to step away from the "zero tolerance" attitude.
The article presents an instructive example of how zero tolerance turns into oppression.
The Wall Street Journal continues to promote the thoroughly discredited claim that punishing lots of minor infractions was responsible for the decrease in crime in NYC since the 90s.
The decrease occurred just as much in cities which didn't adopt that policy. Recently, as the thugs reduced their arbitrary searches of people on the street, crime continued to go down.
The Taliban and Iran are trying to reconcile their differences.
The UK government plans to impose prior censorship of TV broadcasts.
PISSI is using Palmyra to consolidate its grip on the surrounding region.
A long-time Guantanamo prisoner, recently freed, has died of kidney failure, apparently caused by his imprisonment.
Meditation has different effects on different people. The effects are not always good, and when good, they may not be very large. We don't know enough to forecast the what the effects will be for any particular person.
US fear-mongers and Hezbollah fear-mongers use the same arguments.
The Netherlands plans to ban face veils on public transport.
The details have not been written, but I fear they will ban hiding your face from face recognition software.
Science Seeks to Unlock Marijuana's Secrets.
RFID-sending trash cans could offer cities a new way to raise funds from inhabitants, and business will just love to sell them the technology.
Obama's new limits on military equipment for thugs turn out to mean nearly no change. Out of the 7 items he removed from the list, 6 have not been distributed recently anyway.
The military equipment that thugs use to regularly endanger citizens is still authorized.
Navy war games in the Arctic will harm the sea with toxins and loud sonar that damages whales' hearing.
The University of Hawai'i will divest from fossil fuels.
The EU was going to regulate or ban pesticides that contain endocrine disruptors, which cause illnesses in humans, but the US used the proposed TTIP deregulation treaty to kill the project.
Microsoft used its R&D facilities in England as weapons to pressure MPs against adopting ODF format.
The oil pipeline leak in California is much bigger that was thought. Many kinds of sea animals are being killed.
The operator, Plains All American, has a history of leaks and safety violations.
The spreading oil
will soon reach
threatened birds nests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's CIA Deputy Director Morell said that Dubya misrepresented the CIA's intelligence briefing when he claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
That wasn't the only intentional lie used to justify conquering Iraq.
President Goodluck Jonathan, though he did not win reelection, succeeded in reforming the Nigerian army enough to start defeating Boko Haram. What the army needed was discipline and leadership.
However, it seems that Boko Haram is not defeated yet. It still holds thousands of female captives.
What about abortions for the females that have been freed? It is hardly a rescue if they are forced to give birth to rapists' babies.
Amnesty says Qatar has not improved much for foreign workers.
Revealed: BP's close ties with the UK government.
Sexual repression in Uganda is increasing; a singer faces prosecution for a music video clothed a la Lady Gaga.
Louisiana Governor Jindal made an executive order legalizing discrimination against same-sex marriage.
Books translated for publication in China may be quietly censored, without informing the authors.
Los Angeles has adopted a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
Charges against Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais have been dropped.
The FBI used the PAT RIOT Act to get "large collections" of data about Americans.
In the period 2007-2009 this was done 51 times.
A paralyzed man can control a robot arm usefully via a chip in his brain.
I wonder if this could work for people who are "locked in" and unable to communicate.
The Southern Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet started melting in 2009 and is now raising sea level by .16mm per year.
Obama recognizes that only Iraqis can liberate Iraq from PISSI.
Peter Greste is likely to be convicted of "terrorism" in absentia in Egypt; so he wants to testify by video in the hope of getting a just result.
To hope for justice in an Egyptian trial is silly, I must say. It is better for the rest of the world to spit whenever Egyptian trials are mentioned.
Writers call on Bangladesh to prosecute the murderers of writers and provide security to others.
Ukraine has banned advocating communism, and officially supported the pro-Nazi militias of World War II.
Russia is operating surveillance over Ukraine.
We must end deforestation before it pushes global heating to the point that it kills the remaining forests.
Gradual heating, at a time before humans filled the world's surface, would have caused forests to move. But no forest can move into a place occupied by agribusiness. Those forest species will instead go extinct.
Fossil politicians distort science about global heating, and compare the denialists with Galileo.
The comparison is interesting, because Galileo represented science, and the powers of the time were trying to suppress it. Today, nearly all climate scientists are Galileos and the powers, the fossil fuel companies and their pet politicians, are trying to suppress it.
Children who are bullied are more likely to be obese in middle age.
Executive stock options encourage executives to take foolish gambles with the company, since they gain if the gamble succeeds, but don't lose if the gamble fails.
It would be wise for Canada to abolish its tax exemption for executive stock options, but why not prohibit them entirely?
The US federal death penalty was largely a recent political creation, to enable Clinton to look tough. The result, recently, was to impose the death penalty on Massachusetts.
LA Minimum Wage Campaigners Target Nearby Cities After Winning $15 Fight.
An abortion harassment law in Tennessee requires doctors to give false information to women, then keep them waiting 48 hours.
The EU's latest plans endanger net neutrality in Europe.
Canadian scientists have publicly called on the government to stop
gagging them.
A lawsuit intended to force backpage.com to stop carrying escort ads
was defeated.
This is good, because the aim of the lawsuit was to hold the company
responsible for the fact that some escorts were trafficked. If the suit
had succeeded, no one would be able to publish ads for escorts that
are not trafficked.
An Iranian women's rights activist who criticized plans to restrict
birth control has been brutalized in prison and will probably be
sentenced to a long prison term.
Making it a crime to insult someone, whether the supreme leader, the
president of the republic, or you or me, shows contempt for freedom of
speech. Few countries properly respect freedom of speech.
The thug accused of killing Freddie Gray threatened witnesses with
violence, to stop them from taking note.
A program that gives a poor family some assets and some coaching
seems to make a long-term improvement in the family's life.
The NSA planned to use Google's app store to inject malware into
Android phones, and send dishonest messages to them to cause havoc.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give a preference in federal contracts to companies
that treat workers better.
Please don't use "who" in reference to companies;
companies are not people.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to hold a debate with Senator Warren about the TPP.
US citizens:
sign this
petition to kick the big polluters out of the climate
negotiations.
US citizens:
Call
on the Senate to debate military spending publicly.
Massachusetts citizens:
urge your
state representative to support bills for abortion rights.
If all bees die, that won't wipe out humanity, but you will really
hate
the
loss of so many foods.
Heating tends to kill the
oldest,
tallest trees.
Their replacement with shorter trees will tend to feed more
CO2 into the air, in a positive feedback.
Many dolphins died in the Gulf of Mexico after the Big Spill.
Autopsies now
tie
their deaths to the oil.
Republicans say that government regulation is always bad…except
as regards
abortion.
William McNeilly published a list of dangerous and insecure practices
in the UK's
nuclear missile
submarines. He says that they threaten accidental nuclear war, as
well as other lesser
accidents.
It seems he will not be prosecuted, as an effort to
avoid
court investigation of the problems he reported.
India's tiger census uses a method that is
fundamentally
unreliable, so we have no idea what's really happening to the
population.
Republicans criticize Obama for not
catering
enough to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is the root of most of what is bad in Islam today; its
money has promoted fundamentalism around the Muslim world. It is no
accident that most of the September 11 hijackers came from Saudi
Arabia.
Ironically, these same Republicans claim there is a war of cultures
between the west and Islam.
Wars nowadays are
increasingly
deadly.
Amnesty International says, torture of suspects and dissidents is
standard
practice in Morocco.
Morocco
banned
a man from journalism for ten years; now that the ban is over, it
is stopping him from starting a newspaper by denying him a national ID
card.
National ID cards are generally
a
form of oppression.
South
Korea's New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware
On Teens' Smartphones.
Crowdfunding of medical care is no substitute for a proper public medical system.
It even gives Christian fanatics power to block others from donating for abortions.
Australia remains directly responsible for the wellbeing of imprisoned refugees, even if it sends them to another country such as Nauru and hires a company to guard them.
Damage to ecosystems is tied to global heating and GMOs.
A Turkish singer was shot by men who didn't think singing on TV was an acceptable activity for a woman.
Israel will ban Palestinians from Israeli buses to the West Bank; they will be for Israeli citizens only.
The Palestinians will have to go home through checkpoints, which will take hours of extra time.
Seeds in a seed bank are better than nothing, as long as we do not suppose they substitute for diversity in agriculture.
What is reducing diversity? Partly globalization. Partly it is larger farms. Partly it is seed companies. And partly it is the laws that seed companies impose: plant variety monopolies, patented genes in plants, even laws against distributing seeds of unapproved varieties.
In the European Union, for instance, it is forbidden to sell seed varieties not specifically approved.
Hong Kong to Get New Crowdfunded Independent Newspaper.
It looks like the Senate will pass the tiny reforms of the "USA Freedom Act". But we should keep fighting to oppose that.
The death penalty, seen by a "mitigation specialist" who finds reasons for the jury to see a convict as a human rather than as a monster.
Arizona has limited welfare benefits for families to a maximum of one year.
This is a consequence of Clinton's welfare "reform", which progressives called "welfare fraud".
This should be a lesson about military interventions: they tend to create secondary problems, and sometimes those are bigger than the one the intervention was supposed to fix.
How the Right Deliberately Confuses the Loss of Power with the Loss of Liberty.
While the Pentagon says that global heating threatens US security, the FBI calls protesters against the Keystone XL pipeline as threats; strangely, it considers that proposed pipeline "vital to security" rather than as the threat to security that it really is.
The FBI should stop acting like Keystone Cops.
Establishment Journalists Pride Themselves on Staying on the Official Rails.
Intense measures are being considered to protect the Hainan gibbon, which is nearly extinct.
Black Americans still suffer the effects of slavery and the legal discrimination that followed it.
The WTO ruled that the US law requiring labeling of meat by country of origin is a forbidden "trade obstacle".
The WTO is an undemocratic organization that exists to impose the demands of businesses on the countries involved.
The Canadian government, a stooge of business, claims that the "Volcker rule", the US's weak replacement for the Glass-Steagall law that prohibited banks from making risky investments, violates NAFTA.
We must abolish NAFTA and the WTO, and we certainly must not sign other treaties that would extend the dominion of foreign companies over the US and other countries.
The Obama regime proposes to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act so that citizens' petitions for protection of species become almost prohibitively difficult.
The process is already too slow: 40 species have gone extinct while protection for them was being considered.
Radio Shack collected lots of information about its customers (but not me — I refused). The store said it would keep this information private, but now, in bankruptcy, it wants to sell some of that data.
The Rohingya crisis is a foretaste of what will happen around the world as global heating ramps up the difficulty of the game of life. Instead of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing, we may have hundreds of millions.
Palmyra is part of the memories of humanity; a part of human heritage that we must defend for the sake of future generations of humanity.
A whistleblower and a journalist are being prosecuted for leaking information about how Luxembourg helps companies evade taxes in other countries.
These maneuvers are legal, but that doesn't make them acceptable; rather, it inculpates various states that have failed to prohibit them. We must reject the idea that whistleblowing, to be legitimate, must limit itself to revealing crimes.
Burundi dissidents are fleeing into permanent exile after death threats from organized supporters of the ruling party.
An oil magnate tried to pressure the University of Oklahoma to fire scientists that were demonstrating a relationship between fracking and earthquakes.
1000 Japanese have sued their government for planning to impose Treacherous Plutocratic Poison on their country.
Republicans in Florida demand federal funds for health care, but refuse to take them under the title of Medicaid since that's Obama's law.
The Egyptian government has made sexual violence a part of its strategy of repression.
Documents pin mass murder in Zimbabwe on Mugabe.
The Rise And Rise of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement.
Only 1/4 of the world's workers now have permanent contracts.
This measures the extent to which steady jobs and a stable life have been replaced by precarity.
Various ways of countering deforestation.
In Canada and the US, massive deforestation is occurring because trees have been killed by drought or insects, both brought by global heating. For instance, many trees in California have been killed by the current drought, and the drought will also promote fires that will burn them up and release their carbon as CO2.
The South African government stands to be embarrassed by publication of an investigation into the massacre of striking miners by thugs.
Scientists are on the verge of making GMO yeast that produces morphine.
Some day it will be possible to get bacteria that will live in your gut and steadily produce whatever drug you like. Using them might not be wise.
Shell plans its business on the assumption that global heating will not be curbed, and will proceed to global disaster.
Because these giant companies have so much influence, whatever they assume about the future is as much a decision as a forecast. If you suppose that global efforts to avert disaster will fail, that is pessimism; when Shell supposes this, that is sabotage.
This shows that the fossil fuel companies recognize what CO2 will do to the Earth, even as their pet politicians deny it.
Koch henchmen are repealing US state laws that support renewable energy.
Rand Paul says the government should not meddle in your life — unless you're a woman and you don't want to have a baby.
Hong Kong ostensibly has no censorship, but China has imposed de facto censorship of books through influence on a few big bookstore companies.
Cartoonists face repression around the world.
Everyone: reject Facebook's fake internet.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support a Massachusetts law requiring medical insurance to cover contraception.
US citizens:
support
and protect the CFPB.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Pizza Hut to keep its pledge and stop its franchised operator from deforestation in Sumatra.
Everyone: Call on McDonald's to pay workers $15 an hour.
A militia in Ukraine claims to have captured two Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
To confirm it calls for letting independent journalists examine the proof. If this is confirmed, it will provide additional proof that Putin provides the muscle for the rebels. We already have clear proof of this.
Reportedly these Russian soldiers will be put on trial for "terrorism" and might be sentenced to life in prison.
This is ridiculous. Enemy soldiers are not "terrorists". By all means capture them if you can, but don't put them on trial simply for fighting.
Trigger Warning: 10 Shocking Truths about Gun Violence.
Internet.org Is Not Neutral, Not Secure, and Not the Internet.
Texas has imposed fracking state-wide, denying towns and communities control over whether to permit it.
The state government has shown that its first loyalty is to the fossil fuel industry, above its citizens.
The US population is shifting to areas where global heating is going to hit badly.
It's not wise to buy a house in those places unless you plan to sell it pretty soon.
New Evidence That Global [Heating] Will Hurt US Wheat Production.
Obama has reduced the range of military equipment available to US thugs.
However, thugs have already learned to act like an occupying army, and this alone won't teach them different.
"Trigger warnings" about sexual violence in fiction may rule out a lot of literature.
It won't be easy for Shi'ite militias to capture Ramadi. The inhabitants, Sunnis, fear them just as they fear PISSI.
Burundi's president declares that protest is rebellion so protesters will be punished as rebels.
The coup has nothing to do with the protests, except that both opposed the same president. To equate them is blatant contempt for logic, such as we frequently see from right-wing politicians in the US and the UK.
Some "trade treaties" require certain minimum standard of rights for workers, but the US government hardly enforces them; it says that even repeated assassination of union leaders doesn't count as noncompliance.
Qatar invited a BBC team to observe its progress in improving the treatment of foreign workers, then arrested them for two days for not sticking to the official tour.
Perhaps some improvements have been made, but most of the unjust system remains in force.
Baltimore is shutting off poor people's water, while businesses get away with owing much larger water bills.
A Russian exile in the UK appears to have been killed with a rare poison.
Politics in Britain is all about distraction. For instance, shock and alarm when a union openly makes demands on the party that is supposed to represent working people, but it's normal for businesses to make demands of the party they sneakily fund.
In the US, it's basically the same except for details.
Japanese Government Intimidating the Media, Says The Economist.
Fossil fuels cost the world 5 trillion dollars a year beyond what users pay to burn them. Or perhaps even more; about 1/4 of that figure is due to CO2 emissions, but the estimate of the cost per unit of CO2 may be too low.
Greece should drop the euro rather than surrender to euro-austerity; in a few years it will be better off out.
The Department of Transportation's new rules for oil tank cars are weak and inadequate to prevent fires.
The conviction of Megan Rice and other protesters against nuclear weapons have been reversed on appeal.
The judges ruled that the protesters' symbolic acts, followed by surrender, could not be considered a serious attempt to harm US national security.
They rejected the government's outrageous claims, such as that putting up a banner, hammering on a concrete building, or embarrassing the government for its incompetence, can count as damaging national security. However, the fact that officials made such claims is damning in itself. Those officials are trying to make the US a police state.
Iraq plans to send Shi'ite militias to reconquer the Sunni city of Ramadi.
Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans.
One of Putin's judges has accused an anti-torture group of trying to change state policy. This is an admission, in effect, that torture is state policy in Russia. But Putin does not want to admit that.
The US has at least admitted that torture was state policy, which is the first step towards making sure it won't recur. (The next step is to punish the torturers.)
Of course, the idea that it is a crime to try to change state policy is directly against democracy. By making that an accusation, Putin commits an even larger crime.
US citizens: support Senator Sanders' proposal to break up big banks.
Sea level rise has accelerated steadily over the past two decades.
Bernie Sanders has opposed the PAT RIOT act since it was first proposed.
The Open Rights Group will fight to block the UK government's planned attack on human rights on and off the internet.
Falkvinge: You Can't Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing.
Today's publishers, far from defending public libraries, are corrupting them into retail outlets for DRM.
Myrna Arias is suing her employer for firing her; the company had demanded she let the company track her 24 hours a day through her phone.
I don't think the phone company should be allowed to track people, and neither should their employers. Companies should not be allowed to treat their employees badly merely because people are desperate for jobs.
Official Syrian documents provide a basis to prosecute Bashar al-Assad for imprisoning and killing opposition in 2011.
What makes the situation in Syria so difficult is that Assad and PISSI both deserve prosecution for many grave crimes, yet hurting one helps the other. I don't see how a government that doesn't deserve prosecution could emerge in Syria, let alone win.
A judge rejected the idea that federal officials can seize a laptop without a warrant just because someone is leaving the US.
An article about the Bakken pipeline which will endanger water supplies in Iowa.
Since that article was published, they have made petitions to the Iowa Utilities Board. Here's a newer article.
Here is a statement of why the pipeline should be blocked.
You Can't Read the TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can.
After so many "trade" treaties have not fulfilled the politicians' promises, Americans are fools if they believe the TPP will benefit America's trade.
However, trade is a secondary aspect of the TPP: its main purpose is to give companies (especially foreign companies) power over the US and Americans, and that is so bad that it trumps any trade effects.
The US has put 3 billion dollars into building up charter schools, following a system designed to make it easy for that money to be wasted or siphoned off.
I think this explains why there has been so much hype about charter schools and so much political support for them.
Part 2 of the article.
The North Carolina thug that killed Nijza Lamar Hagans appears to have told a false story to present it as self defense.
We cannot trust their claims that he had a gun (which in any case he never used).
A party in Denmark proposed permitting stores not to accept cash.
In the US, there is no regulation about this, and there are some sellers that don't accept cash. What is really dangerous is to reward them. Since I only pay stores with cash, I never buy from them. Please join me in insisting on paying cash — and don't back down when a store refuses to take cash.
The proposal in Denmark was rejected, but in my speech there I urged people to insist on paying cash.
The water rationing in San Juan, Puerto Rico is so strict now that people have water supply only on alternate days.
ACLU of Virginia Sues Fairfax Police over Illegal License Plate Tracking.
Burma has put many of the Rohingya, Muslims whose home is in Burma, into concentration camps.
Going by Wikipedia, the Rohingya are mostly descendants of Bengalis that moved to Arakhan during the time of British rule, before World War II. It follows that nearly all the Rohingya living today were born in Burma. Some have fled to Bangladesh but apparently Bangladesh does not let them integrate into the population.
Genentech is blocking the use of Avastin for treating macular degeneration, by not applying to license it in Europe, apparently so as to pressure countries to use another drug for which it charges far more.
I think the basic mistake is the system of letting companies be in charge of obtaining approval for new drugs.
The US is about to fine 5 big banks for felonies, with fines too small to dissuade them from repeating, then exempt them from laws restricting the actions of felonious corporations.
We need a way to break up these banks, either as punishments for the giant crimes that they are regularly caught committing, or as a precaution.
1% of the population of the Republic of Macedonia is protesting in the capital, calling for resignation of the government. Massive state surveillance is one of their grievances.
They say their protest will be peaceful, but the thugs are preparing for violence.
China's planned cross-South-America railway threatens to wipe out indigenous peoples and indigenous species.
Boko Haram sent a 12-year-old suicide bomber to kill people randomly at a bus station.
A professor says he has developed long-range iris scanning, which means cameras could recognize everyone who walks down the street.
Iris scanning can help governments imprison whistleblowers, which can enable governments to get away with killing thousands or hundreds of thousands, but he thinks he's going to "save a life". Well-meaning but sad.
The professor makes a calculatedly ambiguous statement that "people" are being tracked in other ways. Indeed, many people carry portable phones and pay with credit cards, so they are tracked in other ways. Many people, but not all!
Some of us protect our privacy by refusing to do those things. It is still possible to do this. Many people do this, part of the time.
If his statement is criticized, he can claim that he didn't say "absolutely all people". He only said "people", which means "some people". Strictly speaking, that statement is true -- but it fails to support his conclusion. This gap makes his argument false.
It is true that people are under strong pressure to do those foolish things. Due to that pressure, we cannot dismiss the harm of those practices by saying "They do those things voluntarily". We need to take that pressure off people in general. But at the same time, it is also false to argue that "Everyone does them, so further surveillance does people no harm." That's equivalent to, "He has cancer, so if we give him pneumonia on top of that, that will do him no harm."
Can we develop technology to protect ourselves from iris scanning?
The internet data companies have become feudal lords, and today's ordinary use of the internet requires submitting to one or another of them.
The article errs in claiming that it is impossible to refuse to submit. The title, in its use of "we", inspires me to respond, "What you mean 'we', white man?" I refuse, and I am not the only one.
Of course, we must go beyond resisting individually: we must organize to require redesign of internet systems so that they do not track us. But this activism often springs from individual resistance, so endorsing the idea that individuals cannot refuse to submit is debilitating for resistance.
Economists find that banks deserve their reputation for injustice.
US citizens: tell Congress not to cut Medicare to compensate for a small part of the harm that that the TPP would do.
That the "victory" Democrats won is as much harm as good shows how twisted their ideas are. The wrong of Treacherous Plutocratic Poison would be immense, and retraining a few workers would not come near compensating.
The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World.
The US finances Saudi Arabia as it devastates Yemen and represses its own citizens.
A motorist in New York State objected when a US not-just-border patrol immigration checkpoint wanted to search her car for drugs without cause, and forced her to wait for a drug-sniffing dog which failed to give them anything.
Laying assault charges against the victims of thugs' assaults is the standard arrant dishonesty of US thugs. In the case of the not-just-border patrol, they can beat people up for no reason too.
The US still owes Peter Watts an apology for its vicious treatment of him, which we should never forget.
In the UK, some courageous young people raised as Muslims dare to reject their religion, braving pressure from family as well as potential threats from fanatics.
We scorn the Church of Scientology for systematically making members ostracize ex-members; Islam deserves the same scorn for that.
For Muslims to have a place in a free society, they must learn to fully respect the right to have other views, including the right to leave their religion, just as every other belief system must.
This is what we should demand of Muslims, rather than a "reformation".
When Is a Campaign Not a Campaign? When It's a Super Pac.
Burundi's president-turned-tyrant is starting to repress journalists.
Naturally, he calls protesters "terrorists".
Shellfish will be hit hard by human-emitted CO2 in the ocean. Those not killed outright will be shriveled and small, which could make them vulnerable to predators as well as not useful for us to eat.
How
Climate Change Could Increase Ragweed Allergies, Air Pollution, and
Asthma: 2015 Update.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Stranded: How America's Failing Public Transportation Increases Inequality.
In housing for old people, residents hide developing impairments from fear the staff will take away their autonomy.
Those who can still take care of themselves are terrified of being labeled as "memory impaired", and tend to shun those who are closer to death as if fearing magical contagion.
I sympathize totally with the former. The latter is an unfortunate mistake; associating with those who are dying won't speed your own death, but irrational fear of contagion is a general human error tendency.
Those who fear that the staff are watching them (and listening to them) may well be right.
We have seen details about many NSA massive surveillance programs, but
adding them up to get an overall picture is difficult.
Most Americans still don't realize how far the NSA has gone.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Washington State is being hit by drought along with California; agriculture is at risk.
Duke Energy's record fine, for pollution by coal ash, is still not enough to deter further crimes.
The Cult of Youth Cheats Young And Old Alike. Let's Reclaim Adulthood.
Edward Snowden's most famous leak is now vindicated by the appeals court which ruled that his revelation was a violation of constitutional order.
I didn't need an appeals court to recognize that Snowden is a hero.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose reauthorization of parts of the PAT RIOT Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to
respect Washington, DC's law against discrimination
based on abortion, contraception, and pregnancy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to
reroute shipping in California
to protect whales.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US to ban use of glyphosate on federal land.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the Republican ban on some abortions.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the KOCH Act.
US citizens: state your
support for Bernie Sanders
for president.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the KOCH Act.
Everyone: call on the Associated Press to
stop calling global heating
denialists "skeptics".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: help stop the TPP in the House of Representatives.
US citizens: support the Community Broadband Act.
6000 boat people have been denied entry to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
This reminds me of what happened to a shipful of Jewish refugees on the MS St. Louis trying to escape Germany in 1939.
Making the Labour Party good for something depends on bottom-up community organizing. Acting like a right-wing party produces a right-wing party.
Perhaps instead of revitalizing the Labour Party, Britons should go Green.
Texas is considering a bill to require thugs to get a warrant for body cavity searches, so they can't arbitrarily do this to people at traffic stops.
The Obama regime is stirring up fear again, while trying to get the PAT RIOT Act renewed.
It is using generalized fear to make the US a nation of snitches.
Facebook threatens to take control of how suckers read news and other publications.
The US Senate turned around and allowed "fast track" to pass.
Apparently some senators wanted to claim they tried to defeat the TPP while actually surrendering to it.
A Tory-chosen economist proposes to pay pharma companies a bonus for developing new antibiotics.
It is worth spending our money on developing new antibiotics, provided we make sure they won't be ruined soon by feeding them to animals as a default practice. However, the method proposed is simultaneously a system for subsidizing big businesses wastefully.
Big pharma companies don't do much lifesaving research anyway; that's usually funded by governments. So let's fund the whole process, and make the new life-saving antibiotics available with no patents to save lives of poor people too.
For Qatar's Foreign Workers, Global Scrutiny Is Working — to a Point.
This example of a country without labor laws shows why we need them.
Part of the army of Burundi held a coup to stop the president from ending constitutional government.
I expect that neither side is acting in accord with the constitution, but there is no way to follow the constitution.
Now the two sides are in heavy combat.
Indonesia requires female recruits to the military to be virgins, on the bizarre grounds that non-virgins have "bad mentality".
Strangely, Indonesia makes no attempt to determine whether male soldiers are virgins. I wonder what sort of "bad mentality" they think goes with having sex.
India's "labor reforms" show how far neoliberals really want to go: restricting unions, allowing gender discrimination, legalizing child labor.
This goes with attacking NGOs that stand against abusive practices.
30,000 people in Detroit face homelessness because they have not paid taxes on their houses. Unlike companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google, these people don't pay because they are poor, which is why the state of Michigan is cracking down on them.
The UK's right-wing government plans to end the overt subsidy for wind power.
No doubt they will say that subsidies distort markets, but preventing worldwide disaster justifies a lot more subsidy than now.
Meanwhile, they show no sign of ending the much bigger subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which distort markets too.
The thug that shot Tony Robinson will not face charges. He says that Robinson attacked him with fists and he was afraid of losing consciousness, and that he had been informed that Robinson was intoxicated.
Intoxicated people are not effective fighters, and a trained officer should not feel fear of an unarmed intoxicated person.
Californians are pouring scorn on rich water-wasters.
The spirit of plutocracy is that the rich should not have to share the sacrifices imposed on society by their expensive life styles. In 40 or 80 years, the plutocrats will try to buy their way out of the problems that their fossil fuel policies are causing.
When Australia sends refugees to imprisonment in Nauru, their conditions are atrocious. Their toilets and water supplies are so far away that those who are pregnant can't walk that far.
Some of them may be pregnant because they were raped by the prison guards.
I wonder if their prison offers reliable contraception to prisoners. I have a hunch Australia doesn't want to pay for that.
Nauru is a repressive state maintained by Australia as a place to make refugees disappear.
Canada's plutocratic government is extending copyright on musical recordings as a rider in a spending bill, with no public consultation.
Plutocracy means businesses pull the strings and the state obeys. Plutocracy is not a legitimate system of government.
GCHQ was being sued by victims of computer intrusion, so the UK government passed a law to retroactively legalize that.
Former President Morsi has been sentenced to death.
It is not clear these charges even make any sense. What does it mean to accuse the president of "espionage"? But that's Egypt for you: people can be sentenced to death for just about anything.
Greenland's glaciers are flowing faster — increased crevasses demonstrate how much faster.
Colombia will stop spraying glyphosate to kill coca plants.
In the UK, you can divest from fossil fuels by moving your money out of the five big banks.
In the US, people moved money out of the big banks after they caused the financial crisis. It's still a good idea to do that.
Nepal has been very effective at blocking poaching of rhinos. The population has increased for 10 years.
I fear that poachers will take advantage of the distraction of the earthquake to come back in.
Banning mobile phones in school seems to help students succeed in school, especially those from disadvantageous backgrounds.
I will not support campaigns to increase Amtrak's funding while Amtrak continues to demand ID from passengers.
Facebook's corporate-only news feed both directs users away from independent journalism and tracks their reading.
The copyright lobby is trying to bring back SOPA through a different path.
California proposes to review "computer crime", inviting thugs, prosecutors and businesses only.
Climate scientists have been intimidated by denialist campaigns into presenting facts as uncertain.
Thugs in Minneapolis pepper sprayed protesters without warning, which is something thugs do. This time, one of the protesters was 10 years old, so people are noticing.
The president of Burundi, who has staged a sort of coup himself, defeated the military coup attempt to remove him.
Counting the cost of America's wars usually doesn't consider the hundreds of thousands of soldiers disabled by wounds, and more hundreds of thousands driven half-mad by their experiences.
PISSI is advancing in Ramadi against the Iraqi army, although that is not crumbling.
Canada has let tar sands oil override its previous pledges to reduce greenhouse gas.
The US refuses to recognize that its bombing of PISSI kills civilians.
That sort of denial breeds hatred, and it isn't necessary.
The copyright industry gained very little benefit from shutting down a forbidden sharing site in 2011. Mostly, the public had less access to published works for a while, until replacement sites arose.
The article uses propaganda terms such as "pirate" and "consume" that we should avoid.
Two Palestinians who had fled Syria were trapped in Dubai airport as no country would let them in.
Facebook is under legal pressure in Europe for its practices of tracking people's browsing through Like buttons.
Global heating in the upper troposphere has been found, as predicted.
US private water companies are seeking an excuse to raise rates in the continuing bad economy and government situation.
I think governments should raise water rates to businesses, including farms and bottlers. Just not to poor people.
Saudi Arabia is about to execute a dissident.
Rand Paul wants to jail people for attending political speeches.
Wyoming has made it a crime to collect a sample of pollution, or even take a photo of it, to show to a government agency.
This is typical of laws adopted by plutocratist politicians. They don't make any sense except as a reinforcement of illegitimate rule. The first one I know of was the DMCA, which made it a crime to break DRM.
DefectiveByDesign.org
At the site of the big spill, an area of sea floor is covered by a two-inch blanket of oil.
It's going to stay there for a long time. Microbes consumed 5/6 of the big spill. What's left spill is the part that was too toxic for microbes, mixed with corexit making it even more toxic. That will remain for a long, long time.
Meanwhile, the US gave another company a lease on the same area and it is going to start drilling soon.
The EU has a "research" fund that subsidizes coal mining, about 15 million dollars a year.
The Larsen B ice shelf is expected to break up by 2020. This will remove an obstacle that slows the flow of ice from the nearby land-based ice sheet into the ocean, and that will lead to faster loss of ice — faster sea level rise.
Russian repression has promoted the spread of HIV infection.
The name "heartbleed" was coined as a PR move by a company closely related to Microsoft.
Apparently the PR goal was to direct special public attention to one of the many bugs discovered each year in various programs, free or nonfree.
Facebook wants to give millions of poor people access to a small part of the internet.
The danger of such censorship (and tracking, since it doesn't include access to a VPN) is more important than any good of giving people internet access sooner. (They will get access by and by.)
The journalist that revealed torture in Angola is being prosecuted for libel.
To make libel a crime is prima facie injustice.
The US also jails people for revealing US torture practices, such as John Kiriakou.
The House of Representatives passed a weak NSA reform bill which is far less than what is needed.
The City of Portland has killed a fracked gas export terminal.
They will look for other places to put it, and other terminals are planned.
The Emerging Populist Agenda (in the US).
The US must convert its decaying suburbs into more like the newly desirable cities.
The "luckwarmers" accept that humans are causing global heating, but want to bet civilization's future on the chance that it won't be as bad as it appears.
It is a mistake to compare these postures with personal grief. These people are not acting out of a sense of loss. The loss has not yet occurred, although climate scientists tell us that it will. These are not stages in grief, they are stages in a campaign of persuasion that abandons an untenable position to take the next line that will justify the conclusion it wants.
A school for doing sex well has opened in — of all places — Kyrgyzstan.
The UK's new government is planning tyrannical measures to repress opinions that are "anti-democratic" and/or "spread hatred".
I wonder whether that will include condemnation of "democratically" imposed austerity and hatred of tax-dodgers. Would UK Uncut's protests be banned, and its leaders forbidden to speak in public?
30 years ago, thugs in Philadelphia dropped a firebomb on the home of a radical black group called Move, then chose to allow the whole block to burn down. 250 people, mostly or all blacks, were left homeless.
A judge ruled that US agents can't search a computer without a warrant just because its owner is near a border or flying out of the US.
Labour basically accepted Tory austerity plans aside from a few details, so there was little reason to support it.
Bernie Sanders challenges Clinton on the TPP and global heating.
The continuing drought in Queensland (the northernmost part of Australia) is even bigger than it was a year ago.
Europe is considering a ground intervention in Libya to block smuggling of people from there to Europe.
It will be hard getting approval of the two competing governments of Libya, which are in civil war.
Cuts in support for the disabled make them more disabled — it can take away their ability to leave the house, or even to leave the bed.
Nauru, where Australia has forcibly sent refugees, is planning to make protesting a crime. The conditions of their exile give them a lot to protest about.
Torture Still Routine in Chinese Jails, says Human Rights Watch.
I wish the US were in a position to criticize this with moral authority.
French President Hollande acknowledges France has a debt to Haiti because France demanded Haiti pay dearly for ending slavery and colonization.
Arresting people for being homeless, or for doing things homeless people must do, turns out to be very expensive as well as cruel and unjust.
The US seizes prescription of records of hundreds of people at a time to fish for something to charge them with.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Added Hidden Fees to Hospital Claims, thus defrauding its clients.
The ACLU's court victory against NSA's massive phone surveillance was
an incremental step forward, but decided
only
parts of the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ending this kind of surveillance will depend on Congress to let that part of the PAT RIOT Act expire.
Meanwhile, there are many other surveillance systems and more are being created.
Conscientious objectors in South Korea face persecution.
Israelis of Ethiopian descent protested after thugs beat up one of them (a soldier, as it happened), and the thugs attacked them violently.
Apparently racism against blacks in Israel is comparable to that in the US.
Whistleblowers' evidence shows that ALEC is violating tax law by pretending to be a charity. Will the IRS prosecute?
Under Bernie Sanders' proposed socialist policies, the US would be in danger of becoming like Scandinavia. Look how bad that would be.
The US is facing criticism of its human rights record in a periodic UN review.
A black man who tried to use a gun to fight off robbers made the mistake of calling 911. A thug came and shot him, because their standard assumption is that a black man with a gun must be a criminal.
I expect that the thug perceived a black man with a gun as a threat due to unconscious racism.
Everyone: call on Wal-Mart to stop bottling water in California.
Even if you shun Wal-Mart in general, that doesn't stop you from signing.
US citizens:
protect
marine mammals by supporting a ban on driftnets on the West Coast.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Death of bee colonies is at peak levels again in the US, and ominously many colonies died last summer when they would normally thrive.
Monsanto, a giant seed company, wants to merge with Syngenta, a giant pesticide company.
This shows an inadequacy in today's antitrust law. A merger of large companies can be very harmful when the companies make coordinated products rather than competing products. The state should forbid such mergers.
Hawaiians are protesting the construction of another large telescope on Mauna Kea.
The article claims that astronomers have "expressed doubts about the project", but these doubts are not about its merit. Some scientists feel they should cater to religion.
I don't agree: advancing real knowledge is more important.
The Free Software Foundation is looking for possible candidates for a deputy director.
Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes Not From Terrorism, But From Those Claiming to Fight It.
Michael McAlister has been pardoned and will not be imprisoned for life as a "sex offender" for the rape it is established he didn't commit.
He was caught in a loophole where he couldn't be freed unless he confessed to the crime.
A US government agency acknowledged that the war in Afghanistan is not going to end in the foreseeable future.
Online Voting Is Convenient, But If the Results Aren't Verifiable It's Not Worth The Risk.
Simply using computers for voting is already unsafe; to even consider doing it over the internet is the work of clowns.
Thugs present a possibly imaginary medical condition, "excited delirium", as an excuse for the death of prisoners.
Even if "excited delirium" is real, it is quite likely that the taser contributed to her death.
Americans spend 70 billion dollars a year on lotteries, a tremendous waste, and half of it comes from people who can't afford it.
You can think of the lotteries as a "tax on stupidity", but it really is more like "encouragement of bad decisions".
States use lotteries to raise money because there is resistance to using taxes for this. But the taxes could be aimed mainly at the rich and businesses that can afford them.
John Deere Clarifies: It's Trying To Abuse Copyright Law To Stop You From Owning Your Own Tractor, Because It Cares About You.
Sharif Mobley found a smuggled phone inside the prison in Yemen, and said that guards were attacking him.
The US government helped Yemen's government capture him, 5 years ago, and has protected Yemen's disappearance of him.
The Australian government is frantically trying to stop Unesco from recognizing how its policies threaten the Great Barrier Reef.
Google and the movie and record companies work together to automatically enforce false copyright infringement claims; one victim is suing.
Thousands of people have signed a petition asking to include northern England in an independent Scotland.
Does this make sense? It wouldn't be Scotland any more, if it included part of England.
I wonder if people in southern England would also prefer to be part of Scotland.
This demonstrates the idiocy of the "English identity" that the Tories want to promote. It also suggests that Scottish nationalism is a stand-in for rejection of plutocratic rule by the City of London.
Texas Republicans think poor people should feel ashamed of getting a subsidy for health insurance.
It's the Texas Republicans who should feel ashamed of wanting to make poor people sick or dead.
When non-rich vote for the right-wing, they are "turkeys voting for Christmas" (or, in the US, for Thanksgiving, which is when we tend to eat turkeys in the US).
The article also shows, almost without intending to, a crucial part of why they do this: right-wingers in control of the state have done them harm over and over, and taught them to blame this on the state rather than on right-wing government. Thus they give up on the only avenue that they could use to stop this.
It's not the only reason many poor people didn't support the Labour Party. The article is right that it didn't try to offer them much.
US politicians, to give more money to rich idlers, want to cut support for poor people that work (or can't find work, or are disabled).
PISSI is close to capturing Palmyra, which it would then destroy.
US citizens: tell Obama to stop smearing Senator Warren.
A Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem reports on what it's like to be arrested "by mistake" while covering a protest. It's even worse than in the US.
Several Israeli army policies combined to guarantee killing lots of civilians in Gaza. For instance, after they dropped leaflets on a large area, they presumed that anyone left there was an enemy combatant — never mind that that wasn't true. And once the "target bank was depleted", their policy automatically called for firing closer to civilians.
The Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya faces imminent demolition as part of Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing of the land near the Jordan River.
Detroit's imposed, nondemocratic government is planning to cut off water for 25,000 people who are too poor to pay their water bills.
The city demands that they pay even more to avoid a shutoff, which evidently they can't do.
A teacher brings his students to visit a prison, one of the few that still allow visits.
The long-term and harsh prisons are so cruel that they don't want anyone outside the system to see what they are like.
The Canadian company that wanted to run a mine in El Salvador, which was blocked because it might pollute the country's main water supply, is suing in an international kangaroo court established by a corporate power treaty. A delegation of Salvadoreans is visiting Canada to teach them about how dangerous this is for all countries that get involved in it.
Former ministers of EU countries called for stronger measures to pressure Israel and the Palestinians to make peace. Each side should be pressured when it rejects peace.
The best part is that they dismiss the pretense that Netanyahu negotiates sincerely for peace.
The US college class of 2015 is the most indebted ever, but that record will surely fall a year from now to the class of 2016.
In Iowa, a pipeline company is facing opposition which is promoting a law to stop the company from using eminent domain.
Verizon's Just the Latest Big Evil Media Conglomerate Waiting to Happen.
DEA agents took $16,000 in cash from a black teenager who was heading to LA to make a music video with it. The DEA says it presumes "the money is guilty".
Money is not a moral actor; it can't be guilty of anything. It is the person whose money they took that they treated as guilty, without trial. What the government calls "civil forfeiture" is really arbitrary confiscation.
Washington State has required thugs to get a warrant before they can use a stingray cell phone detection and attack device.
Note that they can also get the location data of cell phones from the phone company.
The US Senate rejected "fast track" for the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison (and other corporate power treaties — the bill is a blank check for a certain time period).
Since Syriza says Greece will kill This Treaty Is Plutocratic, we may have fouled off this round of attacks on democracy. But we can't depend on fouling off all the corporate power treaties they pitch at us, one by one, forever. We need to elect a congress and president that reject the idea of making treaties to give companies power. Then we can campaign to abolish the existing ones.
Bernie Sanders for President!
Michelle Obama affirmed that racism against blacks is still real and still doing harm. Reactionary whites condemn this as "reverse racism".
Identifying and condemning bigotry is not an instance of bigotry.
Many of the NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors.
In 2012, Shell tried to drill in Arctic waters and is safety equipment (among others) malfunctioned. It is not much better now.
Avoiding climate disaster will require converting 1/3 of humanity's energy use to renewables by 2050.
Edinburgh University proposes to "engage" with fossil fuel companies rather than selling stock in them.
It sounds nice, but I don't think Edinburgh University's investments are so big that these companies will make concessions to keep them.
Basically, "engagement" with fossil fuel companies is a way to keep supporting them while pretending to others, and/or perhaps to yourself, that you're getting them to change.
Friends of Boris Nemtsov have published a report on the details of how Putin sent Russian troops to fight in Ukraine: something like what Nemtsov was reportedly working on when he was assassinated.
The report is a summary of information already published, and doesn't contain surprising new recommendations. I don't think anyone would have had Nemtsov killed to avoid the publication of a report like this. Thus, I wonder whether Nemtsov had other information that died with him.
Most e-waste is discarded illegally.
Only one male northern white rhino remains, and seems unwilling to mate, so it appears the species will soon become extinct.
Do we know how to do artificial insemination on them? In-vitro fertilization?
The FBI spied on protesters against the Keystone XL pipeline in disregard of its own rules.
If the FBI and its head don't pay a penalty for this, why won't they do it again?
Refineries of big oil companies are getting big subsidies in the US, thanks to politicians that these companies support generously.
Upper caste villagers attacked a Dalit's wedding procession with stones. They say he wasn't supposed to ride a horse as upper caste Hindus do.
When Charlotte Campbell-Stephen was raped in Kenya, the state told her it was pointless to try to prosecute. She had to struggle to get them convicted of violent robbery, since it is impossible to convict anyone of rape in Kenya.
Senator Sanders exposes the top corporate tax-dodgers and job-exporters.
Florida Governor Scott admits he was lying when he said that he had come to appreciate the value of extending Medicare.
He justifies the lie by saying it was meant to trick the US government with a deal he did not intend to keep.
Sri Lanka will fund coastal women to protect all its mangroves.
Rick Falkvinge: You Can't Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing.
The paucity of black lawyers in the US has legal repercussions
for blacks who are accused of crimes, or victims of crime.
Manicurists in New York City are being cheated of their pay
and are using chemicals that injure them.
Women face discrimination in the workplace for being pregnant,
and then are pressured not to talk about it.
Jeffrey Sterling, accused of telling reporter James Risen about the
failed CIA attempt to deceive Iran about nuclear weapons designs, has
been sentenced to over 3 years in prison.
A sentence of 20 years was proposed.
Two independent lines of research lead to the same conclusion: Osama
bin Laden was being kept under house arrest by Pakistani intelligence,
and an inside source leaked the information to the US.
Thus, the official story about how he was found was fabricated (
to protect the inside source, I suppose) with the side effect
of connecting polio vaccination with US war and turning fanatical
Muslim idiots against vaccination.
Chelsea Manning has proposed a law that would protect journalists from
repression and make the government more transparent.
Here's an analysis of the specific provisions.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to require public companies to disclose political
spending.
US citizens:
call
for a ban on oil tank cars that easily catch fire.
Bangladeshi Atheist blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was
stabbed
to death by a gang of masked men.
Forget the rumors: Keurig has not said it will get rid of
its
DRM. It plans only to relax it a little bit, and hopes people
will now accept it.
Keep on rejecting Keurig, and all products designed to restrict you.
Satellite measurements show that West Antarctica is losing ice
faster
than previously believed.
UK Labour was defeated because instead of having a vision of a country
that offers everyone a decent life, it
chased
after the label of "center".
The
Oil Industry Is Pumping Toxic Chemicals Into California's
Aquifers.
We
Need a Full, Transparent Review of the US Targeted Killing
Program.
Alas, I think a panel appointed by Obama will be a whitewash.
The UK government
plans
to reject European human rights principles.
The appeals court's rejection of the NSA's massive collection of phone
call records also endorses fundamental arguments of the
opposition
to the "we can collect anything and everything" stance of the
Obama regime.
Norway will impose a
national
biometric ID card.
An anti-austerity group plans a
summer
of protests in London.
Protection of green sea turtles in Florida has been a great success,
but it
took
decades, since those turtles take 40 years to mature.
The ACLU has sued Virginia about
storing
data from license plate readers. This was used in 2008 to track
people attending election rallies.
The EU is considering a trade secret directive that
would
prosecute journalists for publishing companies' secrets.
It would also make it dangerous for employees to move to
a competing company.
Under the EU's pitiful excuse for democracy, if the Parliament
amends the directive to fix these things, the Commission can change
them right back, and it is hard for Parliament to resist that.
The only safe thing for Parliament to do is reject the directive.
US citizens:
call for a
ban on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
Syriza may be unable to keep Greece in the euro zone without
breaking
its commitment to end austerity.
Greeks wanted to end austerity and stay in the euro zone, and believed
it was possible. If that is not possible, it would be treachery for
Syriza to surrender to austerity and become a government of
occupation. I am glad that Tsipras says he will ask Greeks to vote on
which of those two goals to give up.
The article's author takes for granted that surrender to austerity is
the right choice. That reflects an attitude of defeatism in
confronting the tyranny of the banksters. I think Greece should do
whatever hurts the banksters the most; in the long run, that is best
for all the world except the banksters.
Belize plans to allow undersea oil drilling in places
near
UNESCO world heritage sites and the world's second-largest coral
reef.
Some senators called on CIA director Brennan to
admit
he lied to them.
US spook leaders
bring
out their standard fear-mongering to claim, yet again, that
massive surveillance is needed to prevent a minor terrorist attack
that was stopped by security personnel.
Glenn Greenwald, in an interview,
relates
the NSA snoops to the Baltimore thugs.
He also says that Loretta Lynch is likely to do a bad job as Attorney
General, based on her record. While it is good to show that a black
woman can have that office, what matters most is what an official
does, not what group the official belongs to.
Macedonians protested after learning that high officials plotted to
cover up
the
state's responsibility for a murder by thugs.
A thug from Delaware faces charges for
kicking
a man unconscious.
Comcast
demands
customers sign an NDA before giving them a refund.
It ought to be a crime for a company even to ask for this.
You'll note that I often suggest laws to make it a crime for a company
to do certain things. Companies have power to intimidate mere people,
so we have to treat them like gangsters.
New pun: bread.
New pun Digital
Church.
In Ayotzinapa thugs and/or gangsters attacked students with guns for hours.
The state's story about what happened to those students seems to be fabricated, perhaps to cover the involvement of the army in their disappearance.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to suspend use of glyphosate now that it is suspected
of causing cancer.
Everyone:
call
on Chik-Fil-A to cancel firing employee Ashante Rush for wearing
her hair in braids.
EU citizens:
call
on the European Parliament to take firm action against use of
conflict minerals.
Indonesia says it will allow foreign journalists into West Papua,
and has
freed
some political prisoners. Many more, including nonviolent
independence protesters, remain in prison.
Former military dictator Hosni Mubarak has been
convicted
by the current Egyptian military government.
Now that an appeals court
ruled
that the NSA is going beyond the excessive latitude of the PAT RIOT
Act, the US must apologize to Snowden and welcome him home as a
hero.
Singapore has
shut
a news web site, claiming it harms "the public interest, public
order, and national harmony."
When unjust regimes repress dissent, sometimes they give excuses like
that, and sometimes they fabricate accusations of unrelated real
crimes such as fraud, tax evasion, sodomy, etc.
The US government
paid
football teams millions to "honor" local soldiers. This is part
of what convinces so many Americans that they have to "support the
troops" (which, in practice, means don't criticize wars).
The most important support Americans should give US troops is not to
send them to fight a war that isn't morally imperative. They signed
up to serve their country, not to build somebody's empire. War is
hell in any case, but war for an unjust cause is hell at two levels.
I refuse to endorse some secondary kind of "support" which serves as a
distraction from this essential one.
The Baltimore thug department posted
false
reports that it was under attack from the public, apparently to
stir up fear and demonize protesters.
You can't blame Baltimore blacks for
responding
to violence with violence.
1/4 of US greenhouse gas emissions come from
fossil
fuels extracted from public land. The US should charge for this
based on the harm that the emissions will cause.
A major US TV news show, whose host is "obsessed with elections",
mentioned many possible presidential candidates, but not
Bernie
Sanders.
Apparently someone powerful doesn't like him. Which is why I am going
to vote for him.
The New York Times presented various Republican candidates, but
mentioned
no Democratic candidate other than Clinton.
A
summary
of Snowden's recent talk about the range and methods status of NSA
mass surveillance.
The Republican-dominated government of North Carolina is doing
something to
obstruct
voter registration by citizens applying for food stamps.
This appears to violate a federal law, and various organizations will
sue.
A Georgia thug
shot
a woman, who may yet die from her wounds, and claimed it was a
"training accident".
Growing up in a US better neighborhood
greatly
aids a child's success, independent of what the child's parents
are like.
US citizens:
call
for enforcement of the law that medical insurance companies must
cover birth control.
Citizens of British Columbia:
oppose the tar
sands oil pipeline.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the REINS Act that would block regulatory
agencies from doing their jobs.
Everyone:
call
on Paraguay to allow the raped 10-year-old an abortion.
Customers of Wells Fargo Bank are suing the bank for fraud. It seems
that bank staff were pressured to open
phony
accounts in customers' names. When they were caught doing so, the
bank hardly punished them.
If our government were not working for the banksters, it would
prosecute the bank and specific executives.
US thugs are aware that videos
threaten
their ability to commit crimes with impunity; they often attack
the people who make the videos, frame them, and steal the equipment to
erase the videos.
We need to prosecute and jail the thugs that attack the citizens'
truth squad.
Banks are studying the idea of using clients' phone call and location
records
to
decide about loans.
The algorithms used to evaluate the call records would be created by
"machine learning", meaning they are opaque. Thus, a bank could
easily develop an algorithm that effectively discriminates based on
race, without making it explicit. It would be easy for some algorithm
to use the phone data to produce a result 99% equivalent to "You're
black" or "You live in neighborhood X".
We must make it illegal for banks to ask for or obtain these data.
Arrogant Baltimore thugs threaten to sue prosecutor Mosby,
claiming
she is "unprofessional". By their definition, a "professional"
prosecutor would never prosecute a thug.
Edward
Snowden Says Australia's New Data Retention Laws Are 'Dangerous'.
The US government
claims
its right to secrecy is absolute, that courts cannot order release
of any secret materials even if they are being concealed only to cover
up wrongdoing.
Thug Brian Rice, charged with the killing of Freddie Gray,
demanded
the arrest of his ex-girlfriend's husband, who he had previously
threatened to kill.
The US is providing millions in training and investigation support to
Mexico, but it doesn't check the
spread
of massacres by the army.
Obama held a fund-raiser at a company famous for outsourcing to
spread
his bullshit about the TPP.
The wave of US foreclosures hit mainly racial minorities, and caused a
big
increase in racial segregation.
Keep in mind that many of these foreclosures were
carried
out by fraud.
Universities must defend
the
right to criticize Islam (or any other religious position), not
cater to sensitivities of those who resent being criticized.
Muslims are a paradoxical case. In Western countries, they are a weak
minority, sometimes targets of discrimination and bigotry. Meanwhile,
in countries where they dominate, they often
punish
anyone that criticizes their views and
deny
religious freedom to ex-Muslims. We should defend minority
Muslims from bigotry, while insisting they (like everyone else) learn
to live with freedom of speech, so as to give no comfort to the
oppressive policies of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia and so many
more.
The latest spin maneuver of the educational testing industry is to
claim, falsely, that only affluent whites are against these tests.
A record 38 million people are now refugees within their own countries.
I can't trace this directly to human overpopulation and resource shortages,
but I think that must be indirectly responsible.
A Baltimore thug kicked Geremy Faulkner, stepped on his hand, and
jailed him for almost two days for making a video of Baltimore
thugs pursuing an alleged looter.
He is not alone.
Thugs that mauled people must be prosecuted even when they do not kill.
USA Today tries defending the TPP and gets the numbers wrong.
Drought has killed 12 million trees in California, fires are coming next, which will pour CO2 into the air and cause
more heating and drought.
India wants to be thought of as working to curb global heating
without committing to really do so.
The Theater of Security Agency plans to use the privilege of shorter
security checks (TSA-PRE) to get Americans to hand over lots of
personal information, as well as their fingerprints.
One anomaly is that I got TSA-PRE without applying for it.
I wonder how common that is.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect NASA climate research.
What
Can the Lusitania Teach Us about the Fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight
MH17?
Protesters in Seattle are using kayaks to
block
Shell's Arctic drilling plans.
The ACLU wants to know what the
surveillance
planes are doing over Baltimore.
Water privatization is the point where Irish are
resisting
plutocratic rule.
Recycling oilfield water for irrigation sounds logical until you
wonder whether pollutants from the oil are getting
into
the food. Without more investigation, there is no way to tell
whether this is a significant danger.
Omar Khadr has been
freed
on bail in Canada while he appeals his conviction by a
US kangaroo
court in Guantanamo.
It appears that Khadr was a child soldier fighting against US forces.
If he didn't throw a grenade at US troops, he presumably wished to.
That was a valid reason to take him prisoner. It would have been a
valid reason to shoot him, if he hadn't been incapacitated already.
That's war.
However, prisoners of war are not supposed to be accused of a crime
for waging war against our troops. And they are not supposed to be
tortured — not even adult soldiers. (Khadr's "confession",
extracted by torture, counts for nothing.) As for child soldiers,
they are all victims. It appears Omar Khadr does not want to fight
that war any more.
As for the Canadian government, when it called for keeping a Canadian
in prison to cater to a foreign government, it reached a low point of
servility.
German intelligence says it will henceforth spy for the NSA
only
when given specific reasons for specific targets.
Why did the US use Germany to
spy
on Airbus? Perhaps so that the US can say "our agencies don't spy
for companies" without an outright lie.
Cody Wilson has
sued
to affirm his constitutional right to post instructions for making
a 3D-printed gun.
In the case of weapons, there is a valid public interest argument for
prohibition, though it has to contend with freedom of expression.
The US already has a law prohibiting publishing code to do a certain
job: the DMCA, which makes it a crime to publish a recipe for breaking
digital handcuffs. There was never a public interest argument for
this prohibition; this law was a simple sell-out to media companies.
I am concerned that the DMCA, which is pure injustice, will be cited
as an argument in Wilson's case, and that if he loses it will be used
to legitimize the DMCA.
Range voting
seems to be better than other systems for voting.
There is no system of voting that satisfies all the criteria
that we intuitively believe elections should satisfy.
Every system has an imperfection.
In the case of range voting, the imperfection is that it does not
strictly satisfy the majority criterion: a candidate A preferred by
the majority of voters must win. With range voting, another candidate
B can win, if most voters say that B is nearly as good as A, while a
fraction strongly prefers B to A. That seems like a reasonable
outcome to me, given those stated preferences.
Plutocrats are happy that their party
won
the UK election.
For disabled, unemployed and working people, it means life will get
worse, and many will give up on voting.
The prosecution of the murderers of Farkhunda may mean a step forward
against the
oppression
of women in Afghanistan.
However, the reaction disregards the fact that this murder was an
instance of religious intolerance as well as an instance of misogyny.
To say that killing Farkhunda was wrong because she didn't in fact
burn a Qur'an is to suggest that it would have been ok to kill her
if she had done so.
Burning a Qur'an is anyone's right, just like burning a Bible, a copy
of the US Constitution, or a copy of my writings or your writings.
This is what freedom of speech means.
We must be careful not to legitimize religious intolerance for a
religion that is deeply entwined with misogyny.
The US labeled a prominent journalist as a member of al Qa'ida
because
he interviewed some of them.
The US
will
investigate racist practice of the Baltimore thug department.
Baltimore thugs arrested 49 children, of whom
39
should legally have been released.
The US government makes forecasts about future use of energy sources,
and they
repeatedly
underestimate growth of renewable energy.
How much renewable energy is used in the future depends on government
policy decisions. Thus, these forecasts are to some extent a
self-fulfilling prophecy that we will stay on the road to disaster.
Science
explains why the right-wing lie machine works: the only effective
way to correct a false rumor is by someone perceived to be on the same
political side.
The Department of Transportation decided to allow current oil tank
cars to be used on railroads for
8
more years, even though they continue to catch fire in
derailments.
Senator Sanders introduced a bill to require
breaking
up "too big to fail" banks into smaller pieces.
I think a variant of my
progressive
tax proposal would do a better job since it would induce them to
split up without requiring the government to take action on each one.
The US still
has
not corrected the policies that permitted banksters to cause the
2008 financial crash.
This is demonstrates the extent of banksters' control over the US
government. They don't have total power over it, but they have far
too much.
A US appeals court ruled that the NSA's mass collection of phone call
records is illegal,
not
authorized by the PAT RIOT Act.
More court procedure is required before the NSA may be ordered to stop.
And only a future Snowden will tell us whether the NSA really did stop.
If it instead invented another pretext, only a future Snowden
will enable us to find out about it and sue again.
Keep in mind that there are many systems of massive surveillance. To
make journalism and democracy safe, we must curb
all
of
them.
The Clintons and Their
Banker
Friends.
A US-supported ground intervention in Yemen is
on
the way.
Chicago
will pay compensation to people tortured by the thugs in the 70s
and 80s.
It appears that torture by Chicago thugs
continues
today.
India wants to build 100 "smart cities" on confiscated land, appoint
businesses as their local governments, then require everyone in them
to wear a tracking ID all the time.
"Smart" is a pretty face for "elitist, authoritarian and oppressive".
"Friendship", when quantified and managed on the internet, becomes a
tool to introduce the market into personal relationships.
America Needs More Government Surveillance — On Fish.
Fish are not entitled to human rights, so surveilling them to any conceivable
extent is not an injustice.
Just What the Doctor Didn't Order: More Media Consolidation.
The Earth's atmospheric CO2 level has now exceeded 400 parts per million.
The rough limit for (probably) avoiding disaster is 350 parts per million.
We need to cut emissions drastically so that they are less than the Earth's
natural absorption.
Human rights organizations called on the UN to end the "war on drugs".
When a war is on drugs, you must expect it to victimize people
indiscriminately.
Clinton is going to great lengths not to take a stand about the TPP.
Perhaps she hopes the issue will be resolved before the 2016 election.
That might indeed happen. Perhaps she is waiting to see how much money
she can raise without giving explicit support to something the plutocrats
want very much.
Either way, this confirms that she cannot be relied on to protect
Americans against plutocracy, and is therefore unfit for public
office.
Texas is considering a bill to abolish use of "prison snitch" testimony,
in which a prisoner is effectively bribed to testify that someone else
confessed to a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
Invasive 'French Patriot Act' Moves Forward, Spurring Privacy Concerns.
A UN tribunal ordered the UN to reinstate Anders Kompass, who leaked a report about rapes committed by French peacekeeping troops.
How about telling the thugs that "violence isn't the answer"?
Dams on the Mekong river could be devastating to fish populations.
There is one good thing in which the US is still number one: protection of freedom to express views that others find offensive.
European "free" countries frequently punish people for expressing their views; remember the Frenchman who was prosecuted for saying, "Sarkozy, I see you", to criticize a government policy.
We weaken freedom of speech at great peril.
South Carolina is sitting on the gruesome video in which thug Justin Craven repeatedly shot unarmed Ernest Satterwhite as the latter was sitting at the wheel of his car.
Everyone: call on AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to quit ALEC.
2/3 of America's winter vegetables come from the hyper-dry Imperial Valley. It gets irrigation water from the Colorado River, which is very low due to drought.
Hillary Clinton Isn't Ready to Disclose Who's Funding Her Campaign.
Indian citizens: demand that the government
unfreeze Greenpeace
India's accounts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama challenges opponents of the TPP to state exactly what text they disapprove of.
After Ramsey Orta recorded the thugs' killing of Eric Garner, thugs stalked him until they found an excuse to arrest him. In jail Orta refuses to eat, expecting to be poisoned — and other prisoners have found rat poison in their food.
Militarized thugs' new tactics for attacking protests.
The National Lawyers Guild says that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being denied medical care for a life-threatening illness.
Officials looked at the medical records of Veterans Administration whistleblowers, apparently looking for a way to discredit or harm them.
After the US-Korea "free trade agreement", US exports to Korea have decreased and imports from Korea have surged. In terms of national competition, the agreement was "bad for the US". In those same terms, you could say it was "good for Korea."
However, if we look beyond national competition, we see that the agreement gave companies additional power over both countries. It was bad for both.
A toxic fracking chemical has appeared in Pennsylvania drinking water.
Arctic ice is melting faster than expected, and the winter peak was the smallest ever observed.
The heating of the Arctic Ocean endangers arctic cod, seals, and polar bears. Worst of all, the loss of ice speeds global heating, since liquid water absorbs sunlight that would have reflected from the ice.
The USDA is accused of harassing its own scientists whose research is inconvenient for agribusiness. Specifically, they have found danger in pesticides or GMOs.
Greenpeace said that experts agree fracking won't cut energy prices. The UK government said this was a false claim because the prime minister says that it will.
He is no expert on this; his field of expertise is serving plutocrats, not energy prices.
The question is a distraction anyway, since short-term savings in costs could not justify fracking.
The Keystone 1 pipeline suffers
from dangerous
corrosion after just two years of carrying tar sands oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That's not coincidence. Tar sands oil is very corrosive. Spills are a certainty. The Keystone XL would spill oil too.
Extending Europe's financial transactions tax to the US would raise substantial funds while stabilizing markets — a double win.
Stability was the reason that Tobin gave when he proposed this tax.
A bunch of whites protested Baltimore racism by violating the curfew in an affluent area to demonstrate that the thugs would treat them differently.
Computerizing citizens' interface to government services is a systematic recipe for injustice to people with disabilities or principles.
I expect some day I will be denied legal rights for refusing to run nonfree software, refusing to carry a portable phone, and so on.
I think there should be a general rule that algorithms can never make a final decision about a person's rights: there must always be an appeal to a human who can override the computer.
In addition, the criteria to be judged by the computer should be published and chosen democratically. We would not allow humans to deny people rights based on secret criteria; why permit a machine to do so?
Baltimore thugs arrested Kevin Moore, who made a video of the violent arrest of Freddie Gray.
They also arrested his visitors from Ferguson who had come to set up a branch of Copwatch.
People are starting to travel on foot in downtown Los Angeles, but thugs leap at the chance to fine them.
It would be an awful shame to use pedestrians as an excuse to repress homeless people more. If you live in LA, please oppose this.
It appears that the fine of nearly 200 dollars for crossing a street is a scheme to squeeze money from the people who are too poor to push back the Ferguson spirit at work.
In addition, it is inexcusable to judge the question of jaywalking by when the pedestrian starts to cross. This is an example of a law that's an ass.
Obama said the war in Afghanistan is ending, but the government argues in court that he didn't mean it.
Integrated pest management is effective for producing more food with less pesticide.
US farms often used integrated pest management before GMOs became prevalent.
Even "not for profit" universities in the US are being pervasively corrupted by the everything-is-business market society.
US Tops for Income Inequality and Incarceration, but Near Bottom for National Health.
A group of Dutch people are suing the government for failing to protect the citizens from the disaster of global heating, which threatens to inundate their country.
US citizens: phone Rep. Pelosi's office at (202) 225-4965 and call on her to oppose "fast track" (for the TPP and other proposed corporate power treaties).
US citizens:
call
on Obama to preserve country of origin labeling for food.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The government of India is forcing Greenpeace India to shut down by freezing its funds.
The government is trying to serve the large companies that wish to trash the environment in parts of India. Greenpeace India has been an effective obstacle.
The Tories have not said how they will cut billions from welfare benefits, but all ideas for doing so are crushingly cruel.
The Green Party would put Britons back to work implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency.
A Ukrainian oligarch (comparable in power to the Koch brothers in the US) claims that he arranged for Poroshenko to win the presidential election by persuading his main opponent to step aside.
That is a little stronger influence than US oligarchs exert; they normally don't pressure someone not to run, only make it hopeless to win.
Two innocent blacks were shot dead by Ohio thugs, months ago; neither one is getting justice.
In both cases, the thugs rushed to kill. If they had taken a couple of seconds to observe, they might have seen that the victims were innocent and not threatening anyone.
Something must be done to teach US thugs the habit of waiting a couple of seconds before they shoot. This does not necessarily mean prosecution. If the killers were not thugs, and did not enjoy that special immunity that incites thugs to kill and lie, and supposing that the victims were white, would charges be brought against them? I don't know; can anyone tell me?
Perhaps this is what the "stand your ground" laws are about.
Heat waves cost Australian businesses 8 billion dollars a year. This does not include the danger to people's health, agriculture, fire, etc.
Pregnancy is dangerous for a 10-year-old; Paraguay's government is not just oppressing her by forcing her to give birth, it may kill her.
Human Rights Watch says that Saudi Arabia is dropping US-made cluster bombs on Yemen.
Cluster bombs scatter lots of bomblets. Some of them remain unexploded and kill children in subsequent years.
Amnesty International finds that Assad's air force is dropping barrel bombs on Aleppo.
The Department of Education refuses to forgive the debt of most Corinthian students, and recommends they transfer to other for-profit colleges.
A bogus viral video stirs up false fear of kidnaping of children by strangers (which almost never happens in the US).
When thugs tased Natasha McKenna to death, she was handcuffed and her legs were shackled.
Thugs took Freddie Gray on the long ride, during which he was fatally injured, when they were two minutes away from the station where they were supposed to take him.
People are starting to recognize that it is an injustice to imprison 16-year-olds for sexting.
It should not be a crime to make a nude photo of yourself or your lover. Perhaps it should be a crime for anyone other than the subject to distribute copies without explicit written permission of the subject.
The NSA can automatically transcribe phone calls, so it can convert all calls to text and search them.
Standard Chartered bank says it does not fund fossil fuel projects but it has lent 2/3 of a billion dollars for a new coal mine in Australia.
The UK Greens reject the practice of scapegoating immigrants for the country's problems.
Plutocracy is responsible for them.
Two gunmen attacked a "draw Muhammad" cartoon competition and were shot dead.
The attack was announced in advance by a tweet which proclaimed it as an act of religious terrorism.
Either the attackers were real murderous fanatics, or they pretended to be murderous fanatics (but that is implausible).
The organizers of the cartoon contest were deliberately provocative, but not violent.
Ms Geller is wrong about some things. There are millions of moderate Muslims. Even fanatics don't suppose they can impose Islam on the US in the short term.
What Muslim fanatics typically demand, in Europe and the US, is "respect" for Islam, respect to a degree that no person or belief is entitled to.
Many Muslims who do not engage in violence nonetheless support this demand. While their methods are not wrong, the demand is still wrong. Persistently exercising the right to criticize Islam (and any other religion whose adherents demand to silence criticism) is a valid way to defend that right.
If we don't cut greenhouse emissions soon, we will commit the world to perhaps 17 meters of sea level rise, though it will take a few centuries to occur. By 2100 we may get 3 meters of rise.
These models are uncertain. Should we bet the world's major cities on the possibility that the real rise is less? We would lose parts of nearly every coastal city.
Why did it take so long to catch Corinthian Colleges for its illegalities and shut it down? Its political and lobbying donations may be the reason.
If you want to feed birds, take care that your feeder doesn't encourage introduced species at the expense of native species.
You might want to set up a bat house to shelter insectivorous bats, if any live in your area. They are really great for keeping the mosquitos down.
The BRIC Nations' Response to [global heating] Is Critical to the Fate of the Planet.
Reducing pollution and environmental degradation in India is a big challenge combined with reducing poverty.
The comparison between India and China is partly misleading. Large parts of China are deserts, and the size of "China" probably includes Tibet.
Nonetheless, India is clearly overpopulated. The article has a blind spot in treating population and population growth as beyond control. Population growth is not a natural phenomenon; it is the result of failure to make birth control and abortion easily available to women.
India's law against sex-selective abortion, to the extent that it is enforced, promotes future population growth. It will be limited by the number of women; men that don't have children won't contribute. Thus, parents that choose to have boys rather than girls will reduce the size of future generations. We should not discourage them from helping to reduce the pressure on one side of the vice.
The predominance of bicycles in Dutch cities is due to an activist campaign that started in the 1970s.
A solar-powered lamp that costs $25 can pay for itself in fuel savings in under two months.
Evans Wadongo is doing a great job as an individual alone. But he has only distributed 50,000 solar lamps in Kenya in 10 years. At this rate it would take millennia to reach the people that need them in Kenya alone.
If the world were on a war footing to save itself from the danger of global heating, it could easily have provided them to billions of people by now.
A judge on Burundi's Supreme Court fled into exile, citing death threats demanding he approve the president's unconstitutional attempt to run again.
Qatar's minister says he "hopes" its semi-slavery system for construction workers will be abolished this year.
I guess this "hope" is meant to substitute for real change.
The Uphill Battle to Better Regulate Formaldehyde.
A Mexican drug gang is fighting the state in what is nearly a war.
Mexico needs to legalize drugs; that is the only way to stop fueling these gangs.
Most of the world's countries (not including the US) are meeting to reduce the use of various persistent toxic pollutants.
It should be noted that Asbestos and mercury are not organic: they don't contain carbon.
Shell has agreed in court to start cleaning up some oil spills in Nigeria.
Whether it is actually possible to clean them up is less clear.
The EPA's proposed CO2 emissions limits would have the byproduct of preventing thousands of deaths and heart attacks each year.
Pregnant 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Denied Abortion by Paraguayan Authorities.
Once collected, that data will be available to the NSA and also by subpoena for anyone's divorce case. In addition, as the article says, others might get the data by cracking the company's system.
If we don't want privacy to be a luxury available only to the rich, we need laws to limit what data companies can collect.
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Calls on Journalists to Tell 'Full Story' of US Torture.
The TPP is more bogus trickle-down economics.
Politicians advocate trickle-down economics because, directly or indirectly, they are paid to do so.
US citizens: call for ending mining companies' access to cheap coal on US public lands.
Shawn Carrié reports on his arrest in Baltimore by thugs that knew full well that he was a reporter. And on his 49 hours in jail, during which time everyone's requests for water, toilet paper and medical attention were denied.
More soldiers' testimony about atrocities in Gaza. Some violence shocked Israeli soldiers as gratuitous, but nobody was punished.
GOP House Leaders Create "Action Group" To Seize And Sell America's Public Lands.
Rand Paul is the latest target of Youtube's "content ID", which automatically deletes posted videos in a way copyright law does not require.
US citizens: oppose the weak "USA FREEDOM Act": insist on letting the PAT RIOT Act expire.
Think twice before letting a company analyze or store your DNA.
Run a Wi-Fi Network? HBO and Showtime Want You to Police Your Users.
Israeli soldiers say they were ordered to consider anything in Gaza as a valid target. Some were ordered to shoot any anyone looking from a window at Israeli forces. Others were told to shoot at any adult man.
When the US kills people in Pakistan, it labels all adult males killed as "enemy fighters". Israeli forces went one step further when they labeled two unarmed dead women as "terrorists".
Sometimes Israeli soldiers shelled buildings randomly, out of hatred or as revenge for a dead soldier. They also had a scheme for intentionally shelling protected areas (such as UN compounds) and disguising their acts in official logs.
Here are quotations from the soldiers.
The UN climate chief says there is no room for new coal development.
China's large construction projects are threatened by global heating, as China is heating faster than most of the world.
I suppose agriculture will be threatened too.
Prisoners of Boko Haram said that the fanatics killed the captured men and boys immediately, then took the women and girls into the forest where many died from insufficient food. Even after rescue, a few of them have died from the effects of privation.
US citizens: thank DA Mosby for prosecuting the killers of Freddie Gray.
Most buildings in Kathmandu need repairs before they can be safe to live in.
I fear the available construction crews would take years to do this work. If so, it will be necessary to bring in Indian construction workers.
Assad's air attacks kill Syrian civilians, too.
US thugs killed twice as many people in March 2013 as UK thugs have killed since 1900.
That is not a typo. US thugs are killing people at 2000 times the rate of UK thugs.
Of course, the US is more populous. Its population is four times that of the UK. So US thugs are killing people 500 times as fast as they would in a country like the UK but as big in population as the US.
US citizens: call on newly confirmed Attorney General Lynch to end "too big to jail".
Madison, Wisconsin, has banned discrimination against Atheists.
Religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion, and laws against discrimination based on religion should be interpreted as including a prohibition against discrimination against those without religion.
Xnet's positive agenda for copyright law.
US citizens: stand by senators Brown, Sanders and Warren in calling on Obama to publish the text of the TPP and other so-called "trade agreements".
We know that these treaties are nasty. If they weren't nasty, they wouldn't serve the interests of the plutocrats. However, not everyone follows that reasoning. As long as the text is secret, we can't point to specific nasty things in it, and that enables Obama and the Republicans to get away with misrepresenting it.
Since it looks like the world is ready to give ICANN temporary control over internet addresses and protocols, ICANN is demanding that that be made permanent or it will go on strike.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to immediately investigate candidates such as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, who are pretending not to be candidates and claiming that excuses their violations.
Bernie Sanders says the US needs a "political revolution" against the billionaire class.
Note that he did not say that candidates for federal office are billionaires. Most of them are merely millionaires. The point is that they work for and report to the billionaires.
Run a Wi-Fi Network? HBO and Showtime Want You to Police Your Users.
Think twice before letting a company analyze or store your DNA.
The UN climate chief says there is no room for new coal development.
Israeli soldiers say they were ordered to consider anything in Gaza as a valid target. Some were ordered to shoot any anyone looking from a window at Israeli forces. Others were told to shoot at any adult man.
When the US kills people in Pakistan, it labels all adult males killed as "enemy fighters". Israeli forces went one step further when they labeled two unarmed dead women as "terrorists".
Sometimes Israeli soldiers shelled buildings randomly, out of hatred or as revenge for a dead soldier. They also had a scheme for intentionally shelling protected areas (such as UN compounds) and disguising their acts in official logs.
Here are quotations from the soldiers.
China's large construction projects are threatened by global heating, as China is heating faster than most of the world.
I suppose agriculture will be threatened too.
Prisoners of Boko Haram said that the fanatics killed the captured men and boys immediately, then took the women and girls into the forest where many died from insufficient food.
Even after rescue, a few of them have died from the effects of privation.
Most buildings in Kathmandu need repairs before they can be safe to live in.
I fear the available construction crews would years to do this work. If so, it will be necessary to bring in Indian construction workers.
Assad's air attacks kill Syrian civilians, too.
US thugs killed twice as many people in March 2013 as UK thugs have killed since 1900.
That is not a typo. US thugs are killing people at 2000 times the rate of UK thugs.
Of course, the US is more populous. Its population is four times that of the UK. So US thugs are killing people 500 times as fast as they would in a country like the UK but as big in population as the US.
Madison, Wisconsin, has banned discrimination against Atheists.
Religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion, and laws against discrimination based on religion should be interpreted as including a prohibition against discrimination against those without religion.
Xnet's positive agenda for copyright law.
Since it looks like the world is ready to give ICANN temporary control over internet addresses and protocols, ICANN is demanding that that be made permanent or it will go on strike.
Bernie Sanders says the US needs a "political revolution" against the billionaire class.
Note that he did not say that candidates for federal office are billionaires. Most of them are merely millionaires. The point is that they work for and report to the billionaires.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop feeding the Pentagon slush fund.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to forgive the loans of students of Corinthian Colleges.
Freddie Gray's relatives called for an end to rioting in Baltimore; having thugs charged with crimes is a path towards justice.
Tunisia is considering a law that would imprison whistleblowers for 10 years for revealing state secrets including crimes such as torture, criminalize making a video recording in a jail or police station, and criminalize insulting the army (on vague conditions that don't protect human rights).
Reference
in French.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The USA Freedom Act: a step in the right direction, but doesn't eliminate all the wrongs in the PAT RIOT Act.
Even if the PAT RIOT Act were eliminated and FISA were made just, other systems collect data about people in general and make digital dossiers that threaten democracy and human rights.
Big Banks Claim Reform Will Hurt the Economy. If We Don't Fix This House of Cards, It Will Fall on Us Again.
Some mentally ill fanatics fantasize about terrorism. The FBI, rather than help them steer away from this, pushes them into making concrete plans — so it can imprison them permanently.
Meanwhile, fear of prosecution causes communities to eject such people, which can encourage them to move towards real terrorism.
UK politicians expect voters to expect them to break their promises. Therefore they now try out special terminology for "promises meant to be kept".
In a minority or coalition government, parties won't be able to do everything they wanted to do. Recognizing this, we should choose politicians with the right priorities, who will do their best to fund the important programs and collect enough taxes for them.
If you feel the need to ask a politician to make a concrete promise about a specific program, that is because you suspect that politician doesn't give it as much priority as it deserves. If you're right, that suggests you should vote for someone else with better priorities.
We must not reduce art to a "creative industry" whose mission is profit.
South Africa proposes to legalize sale of lion carcasses because its lion population is thought to be increasing under protection.
There is some logic in the idea of selling excess lions, but the danger is that this will fuel the demand for poaching lions elsewhere. The demand for lion parts is based on ignorant superstition, and a campaign of education could put an end to it.
Proposed state laws could make thug body cameras fail to do their job.
The question of when and how these recordings can be used requires regulation, but it has to be the right regulation.
Astronauts heading for Mars might suffer severe brain damage caused by cosmic rays.
Wikileaks has its submission system working again.
Rep. Lieu dismissed spies' demands to eliminate encryption: "Just follow the damn Constitution."
A Lego store in the US arrested a boy for coming there with money to spend it — alone.
I hope he decides to spend his money somewhere else from now on.
Storage sites for toxic coal slurry, a byproduct of coal mining, are potential accidents.
The Iraqi government isn't officially theocratic, but it oppresses women as if it were. And that's not even counting PISSI.
Forest fires are destroying California forests faster than they can regrow, making them a source of greenhouse gases.
Vietnam still suffers the damage of Agent Orange, which the US knew at the time was toxic to humans. The US has never paid compensation.
Thug unions recently defeated Maryland bills to increase the accountability of thugs who commit murder or mayhem.
Six Baltimore thugs have been charged with the killing of Freddie Gray.
Genetic editing of human embryos ought to be permitted, at least to get rid of disease-causing genes, once the technique is reliable and safe.
Prosecutors say Scott Walker is lying as he tries to sabotage the criminal investigation of his campaign finance.
The US National Petroleum Council is an oil company lobbying organization pretending to offer neutral advice.
Australian TV commentator Scott McIntyre made controversial tweets that criticized Australia's official self-image about its wars, on the day reserved for boosting that self-image.
The minister in charge of Australian public TV was outraged, so the head of the channel fired him immediately, claiming that to question the official story constituted "disrespect" for the audience.
I mostly don't agree with McIntyre's statements. First of all, I see nothing immoral about the Gallipoli landings. They were run badly, and failed, but that's not immoral. (The allies' armies suffered generally from bad and rigid leadership.) The use of the atomic bomb against Japan is a complicated subject when it applies to the US (bombing of cities with military installations was considered normal at the time) but Australia was not responsible for it.
However, it is important to respect the right to criticize the nation's conduct even if one disagrees with the criticism.
The feature is a good one; what will be its price in privacy? If the phone is on all the time, and ready to make a call, it will be tracked all the time.
This could be prevented by turning the phone on only when it needs to call. But will they do that?
Jane Goodall: apes could be wiped out by global heating. They can't adapt to very different environments.
Humans can't be wiped out by global heating; we are good at adapting to many different environments.
What might get wiped out is technological civilization based on global trade. That is rather fragile. I expect a few hundred million humans could survive with low tech agriculture and fishing, once 6 to 9 billion have died.
Heating won't make solar power stop working, and won't make computers stop working. But the wars it stimulates can destroy the globalize manufacturing system, so that solar cells and computers can't be replaced when they break.
The Tories' gradual privatization of the NHS is taking a big leap as companies will be invited to provide "services" directly to patients.
As usual, the Tories deny that they are privatizing and destroying the NHS. They hope that some will be foolish enough to believe this claim and fail to resist.
The US has had a series of systems for oppressing blacks: slavery, segregation laws, and now repression by thugs leading to mass imprisonment.
The victims don't have to be limited to blacks. Rather, when economic pressure is the motive force, it catches whatever groups are easiest to catch. That often tends to be the groups that are already in a weak position, perhaps because of lingering effects of an earlier system of oppression.
To the extent that bigotry is practiced (consciously or not) by thugs, the target group must be one they can recognize. But that doesn't mean it has to be a racial group. It can be the poor, if they can be recognized as a group by how they dress and where they are found.
Baltimore thugs arrested legal and medical volunteers at a protest.
Journalists in Kenya are threatened by repressive laws and murderers.
Clinton is trying to appeal to progressive voters by
I don't trust her. If she doesn't condemn the TPP, she is a bogus
progressive like Obama.
Obama's push for the TPP ( Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
) demonstrates once again that a right-wing "Democrat" is not
much different from a Republican. Shame on Americans who fall
for this trick again.
I support Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination,
and if he wins it, I will vote for him for president.
If Clinton wins the nomination, I will vote Green.
The UK has pardoned Turing for the "crime" of homosexuality.
Now it should pardon 49,000 other people convicted of the same "crime".
UK thugs are trying to starve out activists who have seized a disused
bank building to shelter homeless people.
Has any political party said anything?
Nepal denies blocking aid in customs, but it appears that private
aid convoys are being stopped and seized.
Kerry says Yemen is not a failed state…yet.
The Saudis are still working on it.
A US air attack in Syria killed 50 civilians.
It is not clear from the article whether the target was in a battlefield.
Ralph Nader: Obama, if you want Americans to believe you that the TPP is good, you had better prove it.
Colorado's IUD funding program reduced teen pregnancies by 40%
and teenagers' abortions by 35%, but Republicans voted to cancel it,
citing a strained excuse.
Republicans value every embryo more than a real human being.
Liz, in Kenya, campaigned successfully for her convicted rapists to
get sentenced to more than cutting the grass; but the rapists'
families, standing up for the rapists, drove her and her family to
flee into hiding.
Aid for Nepal is piling up at the airport, government agents insist on
inspecting it slowly.
The Maldives arrested all the leaders of the opposition, after a protest calling for freedom for overthrown president Masheed.
US citizens:
call
on Bernie Sanders to help get the sneaky endorsement of Israel's
colonies in Palestine out of the "fast track" bill.
Of course, Sanders opposes "fast track", as everyone should.
But he may still be able to do this.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to pay attention to predictable flood damage
due to global heating.
US citizens:
co-sign
the anti-Keystone Unity letter.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to ban genetically modified salmon.
These growing these salmon can
endanger
wild salmon populations.
A robot has been developed to
debone
chickens.
This article repeats some of the usual bogus arguments businesses make
to get their own way. They cite economics in these arguments then
ignore the economics that refutes them.
If profit margins are small, that implies nothing about automation
since automation won't change that. In such a Red Queen's race, no
advance in efficiency is objectively necessary. If one competitor
adopts an advance, the others must; but once they all adopt it, their
competitive situation has not changed much. Meanwhile, if the advance
did not exist, or were prohibited, none of the competitors would miss
it.
Concerned about whether workers can handle an expected increase in
chicken production? No need to be; they certainly can, if the
companies hire more workers in proportion.
Do workers suffer from fatigue and repetitive strain? If so, slow
down the line and hire a few more workers. A non-plutocratic
government would require this. It would increase costs per chicken a
little, but since that increase will apply to all competitors, they
will cope easily by increasing prices a little.
If it were solely a matter of how to debone chickens, I'd rejoice if
people no longer had to do this grueling, dangerous and gory job
— provided they were not made homeless as a result. Under
plutocratic austerity, that's the probable outcome. We must not
permit more automation until we provide decently for those whose work
is not needed.
This is why I shout out to people using the automated self-checkout
machines: "If you use those machines, you are putting Americans out of
work."
Yesterday, an employee stationed near the machines at a Safeway store
responded with "Yes". Someone got the message.
Iran's foreign minister claimed that Iran does not imprison people for
their views. In response, people posted many
examples
of people in prison for their political views or for their
religion.
It is standard practice for any state that calls itself "Islamic" to
trample
freedom of religion.
Tesla's battery may smooth the path to
using
solely renewable energy.
Even though this product may be very important, it should not have
been given an exemption from income tax. That should be forbidden
entirely.
Aden is besieged by street fighting as
Houthis
continue trying to take the city.
If not for the Saudi intervention, the Houthis might well have won
this war already with much less violence. But now the fighting is
likely to drag on indefinitely, with no winner but many losers. It
could end up like Iraq, with a cycle of massacres back and forth.
Even if it does not reach that point, it will be another failed state
in which al Qa'ida will have every opportunity. I have to wonder, is
the US making sure its favorite bogey man remains threatening? Is the
US being macchiavellian, or idiotically incompetent?
Poor
Britons have to walk miles to a food bank because they have no
money for a bus, and some have to return spaghetti because they have
no money for electricity to cook it.
This is what austerity means: slowly starve the poor and pretend it is
their fault that the rich are getting paid instead.
The Tories plan to make it
even
more cruel. Anything to give those billionaires more billions.
Global heating will impact coffee. It won't be extinct in 2050, but
the
supplies will be limited.
UK police are
monitoring
the public speaking of a Green Party candidate for MP.
Colombia's ex-president Alvaro Horrible faces investigation, accused
of organizing a spy ring that
snooped
on his electoral opponents.
Horrible is also associated with Colombia's worst terrorists, the
army-sponsored
paramilitares.
The Church of England
will
divest from some fossil fuels.
Republicans aim to eliminate NASA's climate research.
Like tobacco companies before them, the fossil fuel companies want to pretend that their products may not be dangerous. One way is to hamper efforts to observe the results.
Paul Krugman: the world has demostrated (yet again)
that government
spending cuts make a recession worse, but US and UK politicians
still insist on more cuts.
Krugman theorizes that this is a front for knocking down the poor.
That helps business by making workers desperate to accept low wages and precarious conditions.
This year's US May Day events called for ending racism and thug violence as well as better working conditions.
The TSA's PreCheck Program: a Whitelist or a Blacklist?
Erdogan crushed the annual May Day protest in Istanbul to prove the Turkish state is serious about repression of protest.
Many governments have responded to the Charlie Hebdo attacks with
cenorship of one kind or another, demonstrating how freedom of the
press remains threatened.
$200 million in fraud by charters schools has been identified, but the
investigators think they have barely scratched the surface.
Perhaps this explains why state legislators have been so eager to
create charter schools.
Marx pointed out that the crucial issue for everyone is what relationship to have with capitalism.
Unlike the author, and unlike what he supposes "we" want, I do not
make "reward and leisure" my goals. I want to do as much as I can to
make the world better, while avoiding extremes of pain and insecurity.
Unlike the author of the article, I don't think I'm a hypocrite, and
it's not so hard to avoid. You can avoid it too. Refuse to be drawn
into consumption for the hell of it or for competition.
The moose populatoin in Minnesota is crashing. It is not clear why,
but global heating is suspected.
Baltimore thugs claimed that the other prisoner said said Freddie Gray
intentionally injured himself. The other prisoner says this was a
lie.
The lie was in a document that was leaked.
Perhaps the leak was intentional.
What path exists to lead from the insufficient Paris agreement to
a chance of avoiding global heating disaster.
The UK offered an easy amnesty to known rich tax evaders.
The condemnation of Baltimore riots by whites is part of the system
that
drives
the blacks of Baltimore to riot from despair.
Robert Liese wasn't killed by a thug, he only got a
broken
spleen that had to be removed.
Income inequality is killing Americans: since Reagan instituted
plutocratic government, the US has fallen behind other advanced
countries in
survival
rates for young and old.
The article exempts globalization from blame, but that was no natural
phenomenon; it was a policy crafted by the plutocrats and imposed by
right-wing politicians such as
Clinton,
and
Obama.
A thug
entered
Terrance Kellom's home with no warrant, shot Terrance dead in cold
blood, then procured a warrant and claimed Terrance was attacking
him with a hammer.
Jimmy Carter says he couldn't have afforded to run for president under
today's
corrupt system.
Spain is now enjoying a "recovery"
for
the rich alone, like the US and many other countries.
That's what happens when a government aims to create "economic growth"
according to totals by means of policies to knock down workers.
Banksters call this worthless "recovery" a
"shining
example" for other countries that knuckle under. Have faith in
trickle-down, they say, and pretend you're getting a share of the
plutocrats' loot.
The
UN attacks whistleblowers, just as many governments do.
Governments and other large organizations need powerful schemes to
protect whistleblowers.
The mayor of Ankara accused the US State Department of hypocrisy for
criticizing Turkish repression in Gezi Park and
failing
to criticize US repression in Baltimore.
His argument is right; his conclusion is backwards. They both deserve
to be condemned.
1/6
of living species face extinction due to global heating.
Here are
some
examples.
Many more species face extinction due to other human activities such
as destruction of habitats.
Mohamed Nasheed's trial was a
sick
joke, an excuse to imprison someone politically undesirable.
Rand Paul is
trying
to kill the FCC's net neutrality regulations.
SETI has looked for galaxies showing signs of highly advanced
civilizations filling their galaxies with Dyson spheres, and there are
none.
Perhaps every intelligent species soon learns to live with lower
energy use or wipes itself out.
Or perhaps Dyson spheres are not feasible.
The Albuquerque district attorney that is prosecuting thugs for murder
has been warned
thugs
might murder her.
They already tried framing her son.
Global heating is causing icebergs to break off and move away from
Antarctica. They
scrape
the sea bottom clear, eliminating life much the way a trawler
does.
Many US medical insurance companies
violate
the contraception requirements of Obama's health care law.
Men involved in planning the assassination of Malala Yousafzai have received
long prison sentences in Pakistan.
US citizens:
defeat
Obama on "fast track" — phone your congresscritter today to
oppose it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell Congress
to let section 215 of the PAT RIOT act expire.
We must
eliminate
the PAT RIOT Act's massive data collection, not try to "fix" it.
US citizens:
call on
Obama and Kerry to quash Enbridge's pipeline development that was
approved secretly in an illegal manner.
US citizens:
call
on Attorney General Lynch to prosecute US torturers.
Everyone:
call
on Maryland Governor Hogan to have the state attorney general
investigate the killing of Freddie Gray, and to step back from
militarization of thugs and repression.
Republicans have crafted an
excuse
to hamstring the EPA: to prohibit it from considering the results
of scientific studies unless all their data and software are
published.
In medical studies, the data is personal medical data that and can't
be released. Aside from that, ideally the studies should be published
as specified here. The problem is that the EPA looks at some
50,000
studies each year, and the EPA does not run them, so it would have
to disregard them.
If Congress wants to improve scientific publication standards, it
should require funded researchers to publish more of their data,
methods and code, and provide funds to do this.
The US Congress has sneakily voted to
pressure
European governments through TTIP not to boycott or label products
made in Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
This would add one more to the many reasons why the TTIP must be
defeated. That Treaty Is Plutocratic.
People arrested at protests in Baltimore are having
high
bail imposed; most will therefore be jailed until trial, perhaps
months in the future.
Does Maryland charge people fees for being jailed? Some of these
people may spend their whole lives in jail because they can't pay the
fees.
However, the state backed down on one point, and
freed
those who were not yet charged with anything.
The
House Just Passed a Major Expansion of Government Surveillance in the
Guise of Cybersecurity.
Pope Francis offered the Vatican's archive to help Argentines find out
about the
fate
of their disappeared relatives.
Prosecutors in St Louis have
dropped cases to avoid
disclosing Stingray capability in court.
A Pennsylvania law effectively
bars
convicts from publishing statements about their cases (or anything
else that victims dislike).
This means they can't say they are innocent, or ask for help proving
they are innocent.
300
female captives were rescued from Boko Haram last week. Some of
them had become supporters of Boko Haram.
I am not sure what conclusion to draw when captives say that they had
been treated well. What is the boundary between brainwashing and
recruiting?
Facebook
Is Eating the Internet.
German
Measles Declared Eradicated from North and South America.
Fossil
Fuels Are the New Tobacco When It Comes to Health Risk.
The
conditions
in Baltimore that led to the killing of Freddie Gray and to the
riot as a response.
More.
Joseph Kent, Baltimore activist, was snatched by thugs and
disappeared
for 16 hours until a lawyer found him.
Martin Luther King Jr. explains black rioting: by taking property, the
rioters shock a society that
values
property more than it values some people.
A UK intelligence court ordered GCHQ to delete its
recordings
of discussions between Libyan plaintiffs and their lawyers.
Some on-line universities
make
students install proprietary spyware to take tests.
If you are considering taking an online course, I urge you to verify
in advance whether it will require this or any other nonfree software
— and, if so, complain and don't sign up.
Many US states have laws giving
special
privileges to thugs who are being investigated for wrongdoing.
A few of these ought to be rights for everyone that is interrogated;
most of them should simply be eliminated. What is clear is that we
must not shield criminal thugs, and we must facilitate civilian review
boards for thug departments.
Because libel reform in the UK did not cover Northern Ireland,
the
entire UK is still subject to libel censorship; for instance, the
film Going Clear which exposes the Church of Scientology cannot be
broadcast there.
However, self-defeating licensing arrangements are part of the cause
of the problem.
Japan has increased its greenhouse reduction targets
It is a good step, but the proposed pledges are still terribly inadequate.
The bulk of evidence points to a higher "climate sensitivity".
It appears doubling the air's CO2 will cause 3C of heating, not just 2C.
Bernie Sanders is running for president.
He's going to have my vote.
Indonesian Government Must Halt Road through Orangutan Reserve.
The American Psychological Association ran a conference together with the CIA, back in the days when the two cooperated on torture.
I thank the APA for changing its rules back and banning its members for participating in torture. Other US institutions such as the US need to take firm steps against torture, too.
German intelligence spied on French and EU officials' data for the US.
Germans were incensed that the US had spied on German chancellor.
I hope they draw the ethical conclusion (we shouldn't do this to each other) rather than the cynical conclusion (if they do it, why not us).
Pakistan has launched a criminal prosecution of a CIA official believed to be involved in planning drone attacks.
I am sure they will probably not be able to catch him, but this will have a political significance anyway.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the DARK Act
which would
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Everyone:
Support
the Chevron shareholders' measure to recognize the danger of
global heating.
The FBI still
wants
Congress to ban encryption, more or less.
The archeological sites of northern Canada are
being
destroyed by global heating. In a century they will all be
spoiled, if not washed away.
Sudan is repressing opposition leaders that asked people to boycott
the phony election. They face the
danger
of execution, or disappearance.
UK spy agencies have repeatedly acted to
sabotage
and smear the Labour Party, back before that party betrayed its
own cause.
Gezi Park protesters were
acquitted
of all charges. The trial was pure politics, just like some that
we saw in the US after the Occupy protests.
Iran calls for
global
nuclear disarmament.
Global heating will harm Australians' health,
spreading
diseases and causing shortages of food and water. The poor, the
old and the sick will be hardest hit.
Starbucks and Safeway are
bottling
water in drought-stricken parts of California.
Even the famously rainy Pacific Northwest is
feeling
some drought.
Corinthian Colleges has closed, due to a
big
fine for fraud.
Despite the short-term difficulties for current victims, this is a
good thing. For most of those current victims, who wouldn't have got
much benefit from their eventual degrees, it's good that they stop
going uselessly further into debt.
Florida is
pushing
a bill to stop towns from regulating fracking.
Israel's Supreme Court
approved
seizing Palestinian property in Jerusalem by declaring the owners
(who live nearby in occupied Palestine) "absent".
Arab citizens of Israel protested at the
former
site of Hadatha village and ask why they can't move back to
villages that were demolished.
In Israel it is permitted to call for a boycott of anyone or anything,
except
the products made by colonies in occupied Palestine. If you speak
in favor of that, you face the threat of bankruptcy.
This is part of a general pattern: to protect the occupation, Israel
abolishes human rights within Israel.
Europe
should
go beyond talking about labeling those products.
Paul Krugman
condemns
the Tories' redoubled austerity, and Labour's planned austerity lite.
If
Schools Are Teaching about Porn, Should They Show It Too?
I think schools should show videos of realistic sex (various kinds) to
provide a basis for comparison for understanding porn. They should
also have courses and clubs for teenagers to learn to be good lovers,
so they can avoid feeling anxious about whether they can please their
partners.
Burundians are protesting the president's
plan
to run for reelection despite what the constitution says.
The thugs that kicked and maimed the (handcuffed) Floyd Dent made a
video gloating about their crime, to pass the time as they
ignored
his calls for a medic.
Those sadistic thugs apparently expected other thugs to enjoy this.
They surely know what their fellow thugs think.
The day when we can count on nearly all cops respond to such actions
by arresting the perps, I will agree they are not thugs.
In Finland, fines for speeding and other similar things are
based
on one's income, so that the wealthy cannot shrug them off.
Which
is worse for your chances of getting a job in the US: being black,
or having just got out of prison?
A study found they were equally damaging. In other words, the
prejudice against blacks equals the distrust of ex-cons.
Children in the US today are much safer than in the past. For
preteens to be killed or kidnaped is so rare that it is silly to worry
about it. There is no reason to treat them as
helpless
prisoners.
The UK's right-wing government served Big Food by
cancelling
a life-saving plan to reduce salt levels in processed foods.
National
Security Whistleblowers Call for Repeal of Patriot (sic) Act.
The right-wing government in the UK is twisting up the NHS with "reforms" as well as starving it.
Only the Green Party offers the added funds that it needs.
Protests broke out in East Jerusalem after Israeli thugs shot a teenager dead.
The thugs say that the teenager tried to stab them. It could be true, but you can't take their word for it.
If the Pope wants women's equality, he must support reproductive rights.
Australian Copyright Censorship Bill could block VPNs and Circumvention Information.
Cutting taxes for the non-rich boosts the economy; cutting taxes for rich has no such effect.
The poor pay little in the way of income tax, but they pay social security tax and sales tax. Cuts in sales tax could boost the economy, if we compensate by increasing income tax for the rich.
US citizens:
support
changing US dietary advice to encourage eating less meat.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to acknowledge and explain the killing of Mamana Bibi.
Western prisoners of the Taliban are not the only unintended victims
whose lives matter.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to oppose HR 1732 and protect the Clean
Water Act.
Only a small fraction of black males growing up in Baltimore are
killed by thugs, but
they
all experience the contempt and repeated harassment that
occasionally becomes fatal.
It is common for Baltimore thugs to
injure
people they have arrested.
We should not hold victims of systematic oppression to the
"perfect
victim" standard.
Why pent-up resentment shows up in looting and burning nearby stores:
blacks
feel hatred every time they go in.
The thugs in Baltimore inexplicably shut down buses and trains just as
high school students got out of school. Finding themselves
trapped,
they were easily led to riot.
What's the difference between drone assassinations and slitting a
designated target's throat?
The
former looks cleaner, because it is easy to close your eyes to all
the other people that it kills.
The future, it is said, is already here, but not evenly distributed.
With increasing automation, the future for the US may be that
most adults have no work and subsist on whatever crumbs they can find.
This future can be seen today in some
American
Indian tribes.
In London,
just
43 homes for sale are affordable for typical young families. In
some parts of the UK, all homes on the market are too expensive.
This is the result of many years of policies that drive up the price
of housing.
The poor need more help, but the Tories make the
unhelpful
promise not to raise taxes on the rich, thus, not to raise money
to help them.
The
cataclysmic changes of coming global heating disaster are starting
and visible all around the world.
Obama is spouting
flimsy
lies and half-truths to support the TPP.
For 25 years, the US has tried to defeat organized activities by
taking out their leaders. It is
not
very effective.
Assassination of leaders used to be scandalous, but the US has
normalized
it.
Protests against same-sex marriage outside the US Supreme Court
have been
funded
by the Koch brothers.
Big
Coal's Big Scam: Scar the Land for Profit, Then Let Others Pay to Clean
Up.
The Saudi bombardment of Sana'a airport has
prevented
humanitarian aid flights from landing.
Air pollution causes low birth weight. This has been
established
from statistics in Beijing, because of strenuous measures to
reduce pollution during the olympics there.
A big step in reducing antibiotic resistance:
Tyson
will stop feeding antibiotics to chickens by 2017.
Several
provinces in Canada want to limit greenhouse emissions, and are
trying to do so even without the help of the government of Canada.
Half
a million square miles of forest could be lost by 2030.
Hydroelectric power in California is
60%
idle because of the drought.
A coalition proposes copyright reform in the US.
The concepts it uses to formulate its ideas ("creators" and "consumers") discourage consideration of any but superficial changes, and these ideas seem to call for small change.
US citizens:
support
Senators Warren and Brown against Obama on the TPP.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to preserve the estate tax.
US citizens:
tell
the US Ex-Im Bank, don't finance Australian coal mines!
US citizens:
call on
Congress to fully fund the food safety modernization program.
It is a good investment: for around
$100
million a year, we can save thousands of lives and avoid $15
billion a year in costs.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to publish the full text of the TPP and all pending "trade"
agreements.
Canadians:
oppose
the Anti-Civil-Liberties Bill, C-51.
Defending freedom of speech, including the freedom of Charlie Hebdo
and others to criticize Islam, and defy its censorship demands, is a
separate matter from
evaluating
Charlie Hebdo's statements in either political or artistic terms.
Courage is a third separate matter. If the Charlie Hebdo writers had
previously received death threats (I think they had), and carried on
despite the threats, that was courage. Recognizing that is separate
from evaluating what Charlie Hebdo said.
I think there is a lot of arrogance and injustice in Islam that
deserves condemnation and ridicule.
Iran seized a cargo ship that isn't American, which the US has
accepted
the obligation to protect.
I suspect that the Marshall Islands are one of the "flags of
convenience". Most of the world's cargo ships fly the flag of one of
the countries that impose little requirement on ships. This enables
the owners of the ship to save money by skimping on safety
requirements. Apparently the Marshall Islands flag carries protection
by the US Navy as well.
I think the US should cancel arrangements for protection of any
shipping unless it flies the US flag and, therefore, complies with US
regulations for safety, pay rates, and so on.
Global heating and sea-level rise are
pitting
humans against tigers in the Sundarbans.
In a century or two, the Sundarbans will be inundated entirely. With
time, adjoining areas now inland might become like what the Sundarbans
are now. But those areas are full of farmers who will not relinquish
their farms willingly to mangrove trees and tigers.
Obama announced with great fanfare new, more strict criteria for
drone attacks. He didn't mention that they
did
not apply to Pakistan.
Poor Americans desperately need their welfare benefits, which add up
to a small amount compared with the
government
benefits for rich Americans.
Thousands attended the funeral of Freddie Gray, which became a
protest
against the violence and impunity of uniformed thugs.
However,
a
riot followed, partly provoked by
obnoxious
racism.
While I don't feel much sympathy when uniformed thugs are attacked,
doing so plays into their hands. Meanwhile, burning cars and looting
stores is no more justifiable now than at any other time. But this
property crime is less grave an issue than homicide.
Nasty statements by some thugs
helped
provoke the rioting. Eventually the riot was suppressed by
soldiers.
UK "aid" to poor countries
promotes
privatization of medical care and education in them.
UK ministers meet with fossil fuel lobbyists
far
more than with renewable energy lobbyists.
This is a quantitative way of measuring the UK government's general
preference for fossil fuels.
Bills to reform how Maryland deals with thugs that kill and maim were
weakened
by pressure from thug unions.
Over 100,000 children are trafficked each year in India, many of them
sold
into domestic slavery.
Saudi Arabia
continues
bombarding Yemen heavily; the supposed end of the bombardment
campaign appears to have been a Putin-style pretense.
In Mexico City, a woman was
kept
chained and forced to do ironing in a dry-cleaning store.
Systems that make profiles on people to help companies sell to them
could be a big help to every unscrupulous company,
if
they work.
They need a source of personal data. The ones you can't refuse to
contribute to are the email services such as gmail that profile
the people they receive mail from.
The UN concluded that Israel directly targeted UN facilities in Gaza
and is responsible for
killing
and wounding 250 Palestinians who were sheltering there.
Extreme heat and rain events are happening
much
more frequently now than over the 20th century, and this has been
tied to global heating.
Iran banned a magazine,
Today's
Women, for writing about unmarried couples that live together.
Iranian officials say that their laws which discriminate against women
are not discrimination, on the grounds that they come from religion.
I'd say that indicates a religion that discriminates against women.
Poverty
in the UK Is As Bad As the 1940s.
US citizens:
support
debt-free education in public colleges.
Everyone:
encourage
Montana Governor Bullock to veto anti-abortion bills.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to
support
the constitutional amendment to authorize campaign spending
restrictions.
Here are the
details.
This doesn't entirely fix the problem of the
Corporations
United decision, since it does not reject the idea that
corporations are entitled to human rights. But it would be a
significant step forward.
US citizens: tell Congress to oppose the "fast track" bill for two
reasons: not only that the TPP is bad, but
because
it now defends Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Everyone:
call
on BP to accept responsibility for the Big Spill.
Allowing any group to cry "racism" to deflect substantive criticism
creates a sheltered opportunity for crime and oppression. Here's
one
example of a Bangladeshi politician in the UK.
Another
example is Israel, which falsely labels all criticism of its
occupation policies as "anti-semitism".
Imprisoned Ethiopian blogger Natnael Feleke
asks
the US to stop supporting the Ethiopian tyranny.
Ethiopia is a faithful client state that even went so far as to invade
Somalia for the US. The terrorist organization al-Shabaab is the
result
of that invasion. More often, Ethiopia kicks peasants off their
land for the sake of multinational business.
The coup in Honduras was based on the excuse that President Zelaya had
a plan to change the constitution — after he left office —
so that future presidents could run for reelection.
Now the coup-installed government has
convinced
the Supreme Court to make that very change.
The coup had
signs
of support from the US, and its real motive was
protecting
plutocracy.
A
new coal mine in Australia is likely to wipe out the rare
black-throated finch
as well as parts of
the Great Barrier Reef.
Burning the coal will wipe out a lot more.
US citizens:
oppose
seismic blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. These blasts damage the
hearing of marine mammals.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
US citizens:
call on
Democratic leaders to endorse Warren's reform agenda for Wall
Street.
US citizens:
support Senator
Warren: publish the TPP text before any vote on "fast track".
Senator
Warren to Those Promising TPP Would Be So Great: 'Prove It.'
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 202-224-3121 and say, "Vote
against fast track for the TPP, and oppose all secret trade treaties
negotiated together with businesses."
Everyone (especially those in the UK): write to
office@greenparty.org.uk
to tell the UK Green Party you support its plans to
reconsider
copyright power. Urge the party not to bow to pressure from the
publishers and some egoistical authors.
You might wish to cite
http://gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-vs-community.html.
You might also wish to spread the word via email, blogs and social
media.
According to
IMF data, the total economic benefit from "reduced trade
barriers" amounts to about 5 dollars a year per worker. 43 cents a
month,
more precisely.
This benefit is the purported justification for knocking down wages
and working conditions, and the suppression of democracy
through international
"trade tribunals".
These results confirm that we must demand abolition of the WTO
and all the subsequent "free trade" treaties.
Detroit is
planning to evict 1/7 of its population for not paying
property taxes.
They are too poor to pay.
This surely has some relationship to the
bankruptcy of Detroit
and the state-imposed nondemocratic city management.
In effect, the State of Michigan plans to impose mass homelessness for
the sake of the creditors. If lackeys like that could not be found to
implement the policy, the creditors would be stymied. All these
lackeys, from the appointed city manager to the functionaries that
order evictions to the thugs that carry them out, should be sentenced
to homelessness so people passing by can spit on them.
I admire the lady who threatened to strip her house of every usable
thing if it were foreclosed. The next logical step would be to wreck
foreclosed houses — or squat in them.
US citizens: call on Obama to
end offshore oil drilling.
US citizens:
call on Obama to veto security bills that endanger
privacy.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass a moratorium on mountaintop
removal mining.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call on Congress to reject bills to ban abortion after 20
weeks.
Elective abortion is allowed in the US up to 3 months; after that, a
special reason is already required.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
US citizens:
ask Obama to choose a new head of the DEA who will
reduce mass imprisonment of Americans.
US citizens:
call on Virginia governor McAuliffe to sign the bill
restricting surveillance in Virginia.
500 million dollars worth of US weapons have gone missing in Yemen.
One comforting factor is that that probably is fewer weapons than you
might expect, given the wacky military prices.
US citizens:
call on Congress to avoid an indirect endorsement of
the occupation of Palestine.
US citizens:
oppose the Vitter-Udall bill that would block states
from regulating toxic chemicals.
You could get turned down for a job based solely on how a
program
evaluates the sound of your voice. The issue would not be very important if there were enough good jobs.
The policies that spread poverty are the root of the problem.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
North Korea is less different from other tyrannical states than we normally suppose. It cannot block the people totally from information about the rest of the world.
Nonetheless, North Korea is unusual among tyrannies to some extent. Its two special characteristics are the continued state of war with South Korea, and the trade embargo imposed by most of the world as a result.
The US poor are now poor in social bonds and relationships as well as in money.
The Senate's Victims of Human Trafficking Act is dangerous in several ways.
When it talks about having the customs agency do more to enforce "intellectual property", I am sure that refers to something bad. Whenever that term is used, something nasty is afoot.
The way to protect children from being forced into prostitution is to legalize prostitution by licensed prostitutes. Customers could be required to check the prostitute's license. If the customer fails to check, that concrete omission would be legitimate grounds for punishment.
Minors should not be denied prostitution licenses in a blanket way, but the state should ask them why they want one and probe their situation, then offer help so they can avoid prostitution.
Don't identify middle-class white Americans with the 1%.
The white Americans who are (still) in the middle class are not downtrodden, but as plutocracy replaced democracy, they too lose political power. Those who have political power today are fewer than 1 percent.
In Australia, due to the recent state secrets law, journalists face the threat of imprisonment for reporting on serious government wrongdoing.
Reducing Australia's greenhouse emissions will be expensive if the only method used is state expenditure.
There is plenty of evidence demonstrating that the genocide of the
Armenians
was centrally ordered,
and centrally covered up.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Shell Lobbied to Undermine EU Renewables Targets.
Insurance companies sell information about their customers to lawyers who then pester customers looking for their business.
The "affordable" apartments behind the separate "poor door" in New York are unaffordable for any poor person.
New York City has insufficient living quarters for the non-rich. What could fix this? One idea is to increase the taxes on dwellings that are the principal residence of too few people for their size. Another is to change zoning law to allow construction of lots more dwellings. I don't know whether these would be sufficient, but they have to help.
New York City has deployed almost 150 E-ZPass scanners in places that have nothing to do with paying toll.
As usual, the proposed solution is inadequate, because it would not prevent massive state surveillance of people's movements. Systems like E-ZPass should be illegal; toll payment should use anonymous digital cash instead.
Edwin Lyngar explains how, when he was poor, he voted for politicians who wanted to crush the poor — because he thought poverty was a sign he deserved to suffer.
It's illegal for lobbyists to give material gifts to a congresscritter, but not apparently illegal for the lobbyist to go to bed with one.
Chicago may compensate the victims of 30 years of torture by thugs.
Torture is not an effective way to get true information, but in Chicago as elsewhere it works well for extracting false confessions.
The laws against public sitting or lying down, aimed at punishing homeless people, were strangely ignored when people queued up to spend money on iThings.
The US is full of door-to-door magazine salesmen, operating as "independent contractors" for companies that hardly pay them, or even keep them in debt slavery. Many of these companies defraud the people who purchase subscriptions, too.
Several aspects of these companies' practice ought to be banned. I see no harm in prohibiting the practice of contracting non-employees to do this kind of work.
However, the root cause of this problem is the spreading poverty in the US, the cutbacks in welfare, and lack of work through which people have a chance of supporting their families. In other words, dooH niboR.
That's what makes people so desperate that they will come back to this exploitative work.
As Beatriz Paez was making a recording of US marshalls arresting someone, one of them ordered her to stop, then grabbed her phone and crushed it.
Fortunately that criminal attack was caught on another phone.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the thugs that killed a captive also tried to confiscate a video recording of the killing.
The US government claims that Jeffrey Sterling is not a real whistleblower, because he "sabotaged" an operation by revealing to the press that it was misconceived, failing, and useless.
Sabeen Mahmud, Pakistani progressive activist, has been assassinated.
Gene-editing techniques now make it possible to create viruses more dangerous than those found in nature.
Reducing School Bus Pollution Improves Children's Health. And their education, since they are absent less from school.
When the NSA puts a spy or attack technique into use, other countries are sure to follow.
The TTIP would create an international commission to veto business regulations in the US and Europe on behalf of businesses.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty is Plutocratic".
Over 100 defenders of the environment and indigenous people were murdered in 2014. The rate of murder is increasing.
Russia crushes organized opposition by labeling NGOs as "foreign agents", and various sorts of sabotage and harassment.
It's possible some of them really are foreign agents, but working for Putin is more of a betrayal of Russia than working for the US.
How the Tories Dehumanise Low-Paid Families — Or Should I Say, "benefit units."
Some of the Baltimore thug leadership recognize that they need to replace the department's culture of thuggishness.
Due to reforms in the governance of the Los Angeles thug department, thugs that attack citizens are prosecuted, even if the victims survive.
How one middle-class white man discovered how thugs lie in cold blood.
Using a computer network for train signaling creates an opportunity for sabotaging trains through the computers.
Legalization of marijuana is hurting Mexican
drug traffickers and the
DEA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hitting two monsters with one stoned.
French citizens: oppose the massive surveillance law.
Cory Doctorow: The regulations applied to internet services have been designed by compromises with the biggest companies, and frequently they would be impossible for any smaller competitor to meet.
Hong Kong has unveiled its system for phony democratic elections, with all candidates to be chosen by China.
When this system is put into effect, I predict they will choose one bad candidate (the equivalent of Clinton) and a few horrible candidates (comparable to Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush), aiming to lure people into campaigning for the bad one. Then they will tend to convince themselves that they really agree with and support that bad candidate, like the majority of Americans whose views on issues are more progressive than Clinton's and Obama's but support them anyway.
The TPP could mean foreign banks could sue the US if it restricts financial derivatives that could cause a financial crisis, and their investors could sue the US if it declines to give the bank a bailout.
In effect, it means the US (and each signatory) would have to align each and every policy to what businesses want, or pay dearly for each divergence.
TPP stands for Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
Google proposes to give people robotic personal assistants…that spy on them.
Thugs arrested Ervin Edwards for sagging pants, tased him to death in a cell, then lied about what they did.
The first wrong was the initial arrest. Yes, sagging pants are often a gesture of hostility — but freedom of speech includes the right to make gestures.
Deutsche Bank pled guilty to pervasive fraud, and yet nobody was jailed.
Obama admitted that a drone attack killed two western captives of the Taliban, but still refuses to recognize that it was a drone attack, even though we all know this.
The president is unable to remove from our brains the knowledge that these assassinations are done with drones, but his refusal to be straight with the American people about his assassination program is dangerous and unacceptable.
The EU's plan for collecting air passengers' personal data is still too much.
Popeye's acted quickly to offer a new job to Marissa Holcomb.
I once went into a Popeye's, but when they told me they did not sell any spinach, I told them "How can you call yourself Popeye's and not have spinach?" and left without buying anything.
I did this partly on a lark, but I really love spinach and would eagerly have bought some.
International cooperation created a way to receive millions of refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It could be applied to today's refugees.
We must also provide more support to refugees in neighboring countries.
There is another attempt in Congress to narrow the CFAA to protect the next Aaron Swartz.
Shortages of water create increased need for electricity, while interfering with generation of electricity. Fracking uses lots of water to extract natural gas.
Thus, when global heating causes drought, we are pushing ourselves into a corner.
Declassified Report Shows Doubts About Value of N.S.A.'s Warrantless Spying
The UK government is privatizing the NHS very fast, and quietly.
Can US propaganda counter Russia's conspiracy ideation?
It is hard to convincingly advocate democracy while practicing plutocracy. The US needs to make itself more honest if it is to get any honest support.
Along with hair identification, other forensic methods may be unreliable; even, in practice, fingerprint identification.
Politically motivated denial of the genocide of the Armenians is comparable to politically motivated denial of the genocide of the Jews.
It won't be easy to stop Libyan people-smugglers by force.
Convincing the government of Eritrea to be less oppressive would reduce the flow.
Researchers found systematic brain differences between 6th grade students from low and high income families.
The Republican Party is having a billionaires' primary.
California presents an example of school reform that rejects the austerity and standardized tests that plague most of the US.
The harm done in the US by mismarketing of drugs is around $27 billion dollars a year, which is comparable to the amount that Big Pharma spends on research.
Patents encourage mismarketing just as they encourage research spending, so it could be that patents do so much harm through mismarketing alone that it outweighs their incentivization of research. But the raw numbers exaggerate the benefit of Big Pharma's research, since it focuses research on developing the next viagra rather than on curing dangerous diseases.
A judge sent General Petraeus a message about leaking government secrets by fining him less than he gets paid for one speech.
That is because Petraeus leaked the secrets for private selfish reasons. Heroes such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who leak secrets for ethical and patriotic reasons, are treated much worse.
A business-motivated scare campaign says Iran carries out lots of cyber attacks against the US, but the claim is bogus. Many are not real attacks, and the rest might not be by Iran.
NYU tried to insist on respect for rights of workers constructing its Abu Dhabi branch, but local contractors took advantages of exceptions to mistreat 10,000 workers.
When will the US apologize to the non-western unintended victims of drone attacks?
Inside Obama's Drone Panopticon: a Secret Machine with No Accountability. Choosing targets based on probabilities implies frequent errors, and frequent killing of civilians.
The root cause of killing so many innocent people is that these attacks are directed at people's homes in areas that are not battlefields. We must recognize the difference between war on a battlefield and assassination of people off the battlefield. The latter is more like terrorism than like war.
It is hard for poor people to avoid getting angry at the rich.
It would be wrong to blame the rich for being rich. We should not give in to envy. The correct and valid reason to blame the rich is that most of them support dooH niboR policies that hurt the poor.
The FBI has replaced integrity with "the end justifies the means".
Marissa Holcomb was working in Popeye's when an armed robber forced her to hand over $400 from the cash registers. The boss told her to repay the money or get fired.
It is wrong to punish Ms Holcomb this way, but she's doing something else that she should not have done. She should not be having another child while her ability to support her existing children is precarious.
Exhaustion of soil is connected to other global environmental problems as well as injustices of the global economy.
We can help reduce all these problems by having fewer children, and make our lives easier and less stressful at the same time.
The Baltimore thug union compared protesters to a "lynch mob".
They are inverting the truth — that it was thugs that killed someone unjustly.
Koch Funding of Universities Shrouded in Secrecy.
A study predicts that clouds (which tend to cool the Earth) will give a little less cooling as global heating continues.
In the sentencing phase of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial, the prosecutors selected one frame out of a video and blocked the defense from explaining the significance of the whole video.
It seems they are trying to mislead and manipulate the jury into a decision to do something wrong (an execution).
The USA Freedom Act has returned, without last year's undermining by Obama.
Ideas for teaching people to reject the War on Poor People.
Refuting Senator Wyden's TPP snow job.
The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Condemning Us to Climate Disaster.
A Korean woman who was forced into prostitution by the Japanese army calls on the prime minister of Japan to stop denying Japan's crimes in World War II.
A project to cover the exploded reactor at Chernobyl is short 300 million dollars.
A nuclear disaster sucks up money for decades. Let's not make more of them.
US drone attacks often kill civilians, but the state tries to duck the issue. When, by luck, one of the victims turned out to be an American prisoner of the Taliban, the US had to admit it, which shone a spot of light on this.
Drones plus secret policies for using them add up to secret wars.
The sloppy antirationality of New Age thinking proved to be fertile ground for dishonest business.
Most Muslim countries deny religious freedom to its citizens. Here's a list of countries
that forbid ceasing to be a Muslim:
Afghanistan, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, UAE, Yemen.
In addition, the situation in Morocco is unclear; there is no law punishing this, but there is a fatwa threatening to kill.
Some parts of Northern Nigeria have adopted Muslim law. They are not supposed to apply it to non-Muslims, but it is not clear that Muslims there can safely stop.
I think countries should require immigrants and permanent residents to affirm, in a video for publication, that the principle of religious freedom applies to everyone, and that it includes the freedom to leave any religion as well as the freedom to join any religion.
Documents prove that Franco's forces singled out Federico García Lorca and murdered him.
The proposed FAA regulations for drones do not consider the surveillance issue.
To protect the public's right to anonymity, we need to regulate systems that record, including fixed cameras as well as terrestrial, aquatic and aerial drones. More generally, we need to prevent the collection of information about people's movements in public places, except for individuals subject to court-ordered surveillance.
Obscurity, making it hard to find and correlate all the data about you, can play a useful role. However, in order for obscurity to block governments from collecting and correlating all of that data, we need more than procedural limits. Systems must be designed so that collecting and correlating the data about any one person is substantial work, and there is no economy of scale to doing this about everyone in parallel.
Protesters are marching every night in Baltimore over the killing of Freddie Gray by thugs.
Exxon was fined half a day's profits for the pipeline break in Mayflower, Arkansas.
Earth Day has been coopted by businesses for greenwashing.
Clinton has been more of a militarist than Obama, and has been a good friend of dictators.
US standardized tests threaten both teachers and students with punishment if they talk after the test about what was in it.
Teachers are required to sign a commitment never to fail to enforce this cruel policy.
Lying to a tyrant is no wrong. These agreements are morally void, just like the End User License Agreement of a proprietary program. Teachers who can't refuse to sign are morally obligated to disobey.
Parents should tell their schools, "I don't want my child to be taught by people that sign such an agreement, unless they promise me they will not carry it out."
Medical marijuana activist Shona Banda's son was taken away, apparently because of her use of medical marijuana.
"Right to work" laws in some US states should be called "right to less pay" laws: where they exist, they cost the average worker $1500 a year.
Landowners in Brazil are pushing a constitutional amendment to make it easier to take land away from indigenous people.
Azerbaijan has imprisoned two human rights defenders based on bogus charges for the sake of an appearance of tranquility for the European Games.
Prominent sports events tend to create pressure and opportunity to make political problems worse.
Comcast's proposed merger with Time Warner Cable is probably dead.
Thanks to those who signed petitions against this.
The idea of requiring drone software to restrict where drones can fly is very dangerous. It would amount to a ban on free software for drones.
The article gives far too much legitimacy to the idea that people should not be allowed to change software in cars. As a possible cause of accidents, that will be tiny compared with (1) working on the mechanical part of the brakes and (2) driving while tired, distracted or ill.
The Sun Must Go Down on the Patriot [sic] Act.
That law's proponents called it the "USA PATRIOT Act" to manipulate Americans; the name is propaganda for the idea that a patriotic American should favor warrantless surveillance of Americans. Using that name endorses that position.
I call it the "PAT RIOT" or "U SAP AT RIOT" act to show my rejection of that position.
Since "USAPATRIOT" is an acronym, we can split it into separate words as we wish with equal legitimacy. "U SAP AT RIOT" is just as correct as "USA PATRIOT".
The Canadian government plans to extend copyright on phonorecords: a windfall for record companies with a large expected cost to society as a whole.
The US-supported bombing of Yemen has protracted the civil war. The continued fighting is causing great suffering and ingraining hostility on both sides.
Coral reefs may disappear by 2050 due to our CO2 emissions.
Morocco has influenced the Clintons by giving money to their foundation.
A journalist from The Intercept was barred from the "Counter Terror Expo".
We Can't Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership.
I'm glad that they have got out of the DMCA exemption rut and returned to advocating permanent change to the DMCA itself.
European governments are planning to send most boat refugees from Africa back to Africa rapidly without considering their cases for asylum.
Those who are fleeing repression, in places such as Eritrea, should not be forced to go back there. But perhaps they can find a safe asylum in another African country.
House Passes Cybersecurity Bill Despite Privacy Protests.
The claim that improving security protects privacy is disingenuous, because protecting privacy from crooks does not substitute for protecting privacy from the state. The state has far more power, so the danger of its knowing too much about everyone is far greater.
The Biggest Threat to the Earth? We [or most of us, at least] Have Too Many Kids.
China's one-child policy has done tremendous good; it is too bad that India didn't have one, as it might have avoided suicides like this one.
In China as in India, people often get no compensation when driven off their land, but in wealthier China you might find another way to get by.
Programs that can recognize people's emotions will enable companies to manipulate people.
Helping to protect gorillas by providing contraception to humans around their habitat.
Several LA thugs are being prosecuted for attacking people with kicks, punches or sticks — people who were shackled or not resisting.
When work is "flexible" for the employer, it becomes an inflexible shackle for the employee, who can't make plans and often can't get enough work.
One proponent of an "anti-cancer diet" admits fabricating her claim that it cured her. She never had cancer at all.
Even without an intentional liar, people easily convince each other that a remedy is working when really it does nothing. You should not believe an alternative remedy works without a controlled experiment demonstrating efficacy.
Companies are now organizing state attorneys general to lobby for them.
Bees cannot taste neonicotinoids, so cannot choose to avoid them. But they may get addicted to them.
In the UK, the Tory and Labour parties plan to increase massive general surveillance.
Reject them — vote Green.
People in New Guinea still believe that deaths are caused by curses, and seek to kill the "witches" responsible.
Persecution of "witches" is common in Africa. The idea that it is possible to kill by magic seems to be a world-wide pattern of superstition; it was found in most places in the world. The awareness that this is impossible is due to modern rationalism.
In Mexico, according to a book I read, some "witches" really can kill — with toxic bacteria or fungus they find in caves, not with curses.
It is not easy to convince men in Sierra Leone to stop transmitting Ebola virus through sex.
A cook in the (outsourced) US Senate cafeteria is on strike. He has to work 70 hours a week and still needs food stamps, so low is the pay of the company that has the contract.
Don't confuse trafficking people with smuggling people.
The Missouri National Guard, in reacting to protests in Ferguson, officially referred to protesters as "enemy forces".
That's what you'd expect the forces of a government of occupation to say about the occupied people.
The thug who beat up Floyd Dent in Inkster, near Detroit, faces three criminal charges.
It would be great, for once, to see a uniformed thug get punished for such crimes. But it won't be easy: many in the criminal justice system have surrendered their honor to the desire for a good cooperative relationship with the thugs.
Israelis and Palestinians are trying to organize a joint event in Israel. Fanatical Israeli colonists have asked the government to sabotage it by keeping the Palestinians away.
When Israeli thugs arrested 'Ali Talji Ya'qub, they also punched and kicked his brother and left him unconscious on the street.
Israeli intelligence regularly uses torture on Palestinians and extracts false confessions.
Israel treats shooting an unarmed Palestinian dead as a minor infraction.
This Declassified CIA Report Shows the Shaky Case for the Iraq War.
Overfishing threatens the ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef.
A killer thug in Chicago was acquitted of manslaughter because the judge said the killing was more like murder. But the prosecutor was unwilling to charge the thug with murder.
Vietnam has gone from oppressive communism to corrupt capitalism.
A Vietnamese novel by Duong Thu Hong, that I read in French, presents junior party leaders as corrupt and cynical already in 1975. What is certain is that the Vietnamese state established an oppressive system of labor camps after capturing Saigon. But it appears, from this article, that it tried to protect workers — until it surrendered to US economic warfare.
I visited Vietnam in 2004 when it was about to join the WTO. I told the people I knew, "You fought to kick out France, then the US. Now you are going to invite in the WTO, which is the empire that rules France and the US. What foolishness!"
Later, at a meeting in Cambodia in 2005, a representative of the Vietnamese government compared the WTO's rules to the rules of soccer. My response made everyone laugh at him, since the rules of soccer are designed to be fair, whereas the rules of the WTO are designed to be unfair. Alas, that minor embarrassment didn't alter the trajectory of the Vietnamese state.
The US is considering spending billions to make energy systems cope with the damage from global heating.
We really should be investing billions in reducing global heating. Even better, reduce global heating by eliminating the tax breaks for fossil fuels. That would save the treasury money.
A single trader is accused of manipulating markets with rapid computerized trading which allegedly caused a 1000-point stock market crash in 2010.
Bloomberg: Break the NRA's Ban on Gun-Violence Research.
Michael McAlister's prison term of 29 years is over. It is now almost certain he was not guilty in the first place. But he will be kept in prison for life, unless he confesses to the rape he did not do.
We Didn't Learn Anything From Deepwater Horizon — And We're Going to Pay For It.
None so blind as officials paid not to see.
The principal lessons of the Big Spill: undersea oil well leaks can't be cleaned up, but they can be prevented by not drilling.
The US role in creating the current civil war in Yemen.
The article doesn't explain why the US went from using its arms to defend Saleh to supporting Saudi Arabia in bombing Saleh's allies.
Sony is making legal threats against media organizations, demanding that they not report on the leaked Sony emails.
As governments propose inadequate measures against global heating, environmental activists in many countries are getting murdered.
Obama provided his campaign email lists to send out nonsensical spin in favor of the TPP.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Americans were falsely convicted based on the bogus technique of hair identification. The FBI has admitted it is bogus, but states resist freeing the victims of this.
The cause is, prosecutors simply hate to admit that the legal system can make a mistake. Some can overcome this, but many aim to defend every last error.
US citizens: phone 202-224-312 and ask your congresscritter to sign the Schakowsky letter in favor of nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
Everyone: call on Nestle to stop bottling water in California.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and your senators to oppose the TPP. Say it is wrong to give foreign companies more rights than US citizens, and urge them to oppose both "fast track" and the TPP itself.
I've read (in a mass emailing) that many members of Congress are undecided on the issue. We need you to influence them.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: Call on the US Justice Department to prosecute CIA torturers.
Citizens' groups of many countries urge the European Commission to defend people's privacy.
The usual bad computer security, in a "smart city", makes it a sabotageable city.
Insurance companies are trying to prod the US government to change its policies towards the likely future not-so-natural disasters.
The cheapest way to prepare for these is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but fossil fuel companies don't want that to be discussed.
How To Tell If The Article About Climate You Are Reading Is B.S., In Four Easy Steps.
Baltimore thugs broke Freddie Gray's neck, and denied him medical attention for hours. He subsequently died as a result. How much they maimed him when arresting him, and how much they did it inside the thug van, is not clear.
His relatives believe the thug department is keeping evidence secret so as to construct an excuse to protect the thugs responsible.
U.S. and Russian Generals Call for Reducing the Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear War.
A robot cook will pave the way for proprietary recipes that users can't see.
United Airlines tried to protect itself from thinking about the bad
security of airplane systems, claimed by a security researcher, by
banning
him from flying.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
In developed countries, we must reject the expensive habit of bottled water.
Günter Grass, Haruki Murakami And the Importance of National Guilt.
Australia plans to deny tax exemption to organizations that give legal aid to people protecting their rights from abuses by businesses.
The sanctions against Iran hit medical charities, students, even architecture competitions.
Sanctions enforcement inevitably has uncertainty. To prevent that uncertainty from being gamed by Iran requires turning all the uncertainty into fear for banks, universities, contests, etc. That inevitably leads to over-application.
An Australian university offers a course in refuting the arguments of global heating denialists.
Israeli fanatics object to including a murdered Arab boy in the memorial to victims of terrorism.
Morsi was sentenced to prison for a fatal fight between his supporters and protesters, while he was president of Egypt.
Will al-Sisi be tried for the murder of over a thousand Morsi supporters by thugs, shortly after the military coup? Not likely.
A year after Boko Haram kidnaped 276 girls from Chibok, there is still no school in the town.
It makes no sense to build a new school there if it would be a magnet for another kidnaping. If security been reestablished sufficiently to make that unlikely, it is important to restart school there.
Students at the University of Western Australia are protesting the government's plan to establish a global heating denial center there.
The government is a tool for the fossil fuel companies and has already promoted denialism.
Machines are becoming able to make fine judgments better than humans can. Many jobs that require training and skill are in danger of elimination. They also give employers more power over employees in other jobs.
In the short term, we should ban some kinds of machines that would automate many jobs. In the longer term, we need to reorganize society so that people don't need to find work.
Russia's Leading Environmentalist Flees to Estonia to escape threats to take away her children.
Such threats happen in the US as well.
In Louisiana, a state senator that supports the interests of the oil companies is openly on their payroll.
The Summit of the Americas is principally an opportunity for businesses to scheme and lobby.
1/6 of black men in the US are absent from society — they are either in prison or died young.
The reason so many Eritreans try to flee to Europe is that their country is ruled by a dictatorship which uses the people as slaves.
Ukraine is planning a law to ban Communist and Nazi symbols and criminalize disagreement with the official line on history.
This is inexcusable tyranny, comparable to the tyranny found in France and Turkey.
The UK Green Party manifesto has many good proposals.
I am disappointed by the absence of a proposal to repeal the crime of squatting.
A oil leak running since 2004 may have leaked more oil than the Big Spill, but the public can't tell because everything about it is a trade secret.
WHO said that its initial response to the Ebola outbreak was not strong enough to quash the outbreak, so it plans to develop a large response team for the future.
After publishing a statement, it then edited the statement to be less self-critical.
Chelsea Manning's diplomatic cables included a warning of the Big Spill, because one reported that BP had had a similar explosion in the Caspian Sea.
Oil companies sponsor art projects as a way of buying favorable public opinion.
Those fossil fuel magnates, the Koch brothers, sponsor science museums.
Restoring the estate tax as it was before Dubya's cuts would cover the cost of college education for all Americans.
It would have the side benefit of curbing the increase of inequality, which harms society overall in many ways.
The "USA Freedom Act" would only correct part of the PAT RIOT Act. It would continue to be used to excuse massive surveillance. We need more than that.
Not all massive US government surveillance is based on the PAT RIOT Act; even eliminating it would not solve the whole problem. For instance, surveillance by license plate cameras has nothing to do with that law, but it is dangerous.
Everyone: support the campaign to protect the right to post links.
US citizens: oppose privatizing US public land.
US citizens: call on the Forest Service to stop Nestle from extracting water in California. Since Nestle's permit has expired, it is not legally entitled to extract any more water.
US citizens: call for elimination of tax subsidies for fossil fuels.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
oppose "fast track" for the
TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
TPP: Treason, Plutocracy, Plunder
It means paying foreign corporations not to pollute.
It means trashing consumer protection, and unsafe food.
US citizens:
oppose
increases in military spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Some colleges now track a student's every keystroke, and use algorithms to predict whether they will fail.
It is a short step from there to presuming who will fail. But even collecting this data is a violation of privacy.
Hamas reports capturing an Israeli "butterfly drone" the size of a small bird.
Five Disturbing Things About The FBI And Local Police Stingray Surveillance Programs.
An anti-eviction protester in the UK is threatened with a long prison term for "squatting".
Squatting must be legalized again. Does any party say it will legalize squatting?
Ocean 'Dead Zones' a Growing Disaster for Fish.
US hotel chains that make billions say they can't afford to pay workers a living wage.
Fossil fuel companies are trying to smash Germany's greenhouse gas emissions goals.
It is the usual short-term idiocy, arguing for global disaster later rather than some hardship sooner.
The UK Greens understand how serious the situation is. They propose to increase renewable energy as fast as possible, as if it were a war for survival. Which, in fact, it is.
We can't afford to slow down merely because that would be more efficient, as if we had all the time in the world.
Israel's slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians proceeds through an intentionally kafkaesque application of laws.
A
campaign
against mass imprisonment in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Australia's anti-protest repression was very effective: when 120,000 protesters were expected at the G20, only 1000 dared come.
The latest version of the US "cybersecurity" bill still has the big flaw that companies could disregard users' privacy "voluntarily".
Unacceptable Surveillance of French Citizens Soon To Be Adopted!
Carbon Reserves Held by Top Fossil Fuel Companies Soar.
The EU's anti-trust case against Google doesn't even try to alter Google's collection of so much data about people.
Existing anti-trust law, by focusing on whether companies engage in unfair competition, fails to protect the public interest. Even if a company gets big only by "doing a good job", the resulting situation enables it to engage in various abuses, and by that point it may be too late to arrange for it to have competitors again.
Beyond that, the sheer size of companies makes it had for businesses
to regulate them, and that is dangerous in itself. We need to go
beyond laws to protect competition and start
preventing
companies from getting too big.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's Supreme Court approved the law that bans advocating a boycott of products made by Israeli businesses in the illegal colonies in Palestinian territory.
We who are outside Israel must push this boycott.
Towns in the Wild West had stricter gun control in the 1800s than they have today.
A 14-year-old in Florida faces a felony charge because he changed the desktop picture on a teacher's computer.
Little harmless pranks are hacking. This should not be a crime at all.
Germany carried out genocide in Namibia at the start of the 20th century, and has apologized for it.
It is useful to report on this crime — I did not know about it, and I am glad to inform people. However, the article is too harsh on Pope Francis for not knowing about it. Give us a break!
A study estimates the value of public domain photos in Wikipedia as
around
$250
million dollars per year.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
In other words, this is the value of just part of the benefit that we get from the fact that the copyrights on photos thru 1923 have expired in the US.
If we wipe out the copyrights on more recent photos, the additional benefit will probably be substantial too.
The War on Terrorism Targets Democracy Itself.
Germany finds that mandatory data retention makes very little difference to preventing crime or catching criminals.
Censorship is wrong; catching people who distribute censored publications can't justify anything.
Nevada passed an anti-SLAPP law two years ago. Now some legislators have sneakily planned to get rid of it.
Some restaurants in the UK now ask patrons to pay however much they wish.
The Tulsa thug that shot Eric Harris dead "by mistake" falsely claimed to have suitable training, and other deputies were ordered to support the falsehood.
The US has a social media manipulation program to match Russia's.
Syrian rebels kidnaped Richard Engel and pretended they were Assad supporters. Engel was initially fooled, later found out the truth. NBC then disregarded the correction and broadcast the initial lies.
A student's mother reports what abstinence-only sex "education" really teaches.
150,000 students in New York State boycotted standardized tests.
For journalists to pay officials for the government's dirty secrets can be legitimate journalism.
An example of "investor-state" treaty injustice: an international corporate "court" ruled that Argentina owes a French company $400 million for cancelling privatization of water in Buenos Aires.
That the company did not keep its promises was considered irrelevant.
This is the most important reason we must defeat the TPP and the TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic).
Japan's population is slowly falling.
If only the same were true for the rest of humanity, our problems would be a lot easier to cope with.
I think public water should be sold at market rates, except that each person should get a certain reasonable amount gratis. ("Person" does not include corporations; they are not persons.)
US Military Working to Build Sensors That Never Die, Enabling Persistent Surveillance in Remote Places.
The head of the Labour Party asked for support from "moderate Tories".
It should change its name to the "Moderate Tory" party; then non-rich Britons can start a new Labour Party that stands for the non-rich.
Bigotry against dalits is pervasive in India. Teachers in a school forced dalit students to clean the toilets after school hours, which is not unusual, but this time it sparked protests.
With work spreading into non-work life, increasingly people are ordered to smile all the time.
Although humanity has curbed emissions of chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone hole they produce is just beginning to heal.
Despite what Billionaire Polluters says, parts of the gulf coast are still missing species that they used to harvest, and people carry toxins from the oil and the dispersant in their blood.
BP is spending some of its billions to brainwash the local people that the problems they see don't exist.
Six questions progressives insist Clinton must answer.
I could add another one, about pervasive surveillance.
World Bank-Funded Projects Fueling Land Grabs, Displacement of Global Poor.
The World Bank and the Battle for the Future of Farming.
World Bank Fossil Fuel Financing Leapt in 2014 Despite Its Calls to End Subsidies.
A study finds US teachers judge fictional students more harshly when the students have names associated with black Americans.
Xochimilco's canals and farms are threatened by construction promoted by a violent network of corrupt officials.
In the name of fighting racism and terrorism, France has increased repression for insulting thugs. The punishment is not limited to insults by terrorists, or to thugs that belong to minority groups. It applies to anyone that insults any thug.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize, offend, insult or mock any person, organization, idea or practice. It includes the freedom to say things we disapprove of. France does not respect freedom of speech.
You can't crush an idea by banning it — not even a bad idea, such as bigotry.
World Bank Fossil Fuel Financing Leapt in 2014 Despite Its Calls to End Subsidies.
Corrupt Senator Dodd has become even more corrupt: he is now a lobbyist.
TSA agents steal from passengers' baggage, and sometimes destroy suitcases, even suitcases that are not locked.
Arkansas lawyer Matt Campbell gave the thugs a disk to load with evidence they were legally required to turn over. They put trojan horse programs on it along with the data.
Chef Joan Cheever gave food to the homeless with her car, rather than her food truck, and faces a fine of $2000 for this.
Cheever will argue that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act permits her to give food to the homeless as a loving expression of her religion. Amen! But Atheists like me should also be allowed to help the hungry.
Relatives of civilians killed by a US drone attack in Yemen are suing the US in Germany.
Germany provides support to drone attacks in Yemen.
The US has manufactured excuses to disregard all such cases, so they have to look for some other way to demand compensation.
Facebook's scheme that favors certain internet sites, making them gratis for users to access, is as noxious to net neutrality as schemes that artificially slow sites down.
Cutting the Amazon rain forest in Peru to grow cacao and palm oil.
The US government will now admit that a person is on the no-fly list, but only after that person asks after having been blocked from a flight.
Blocking a person from flying is a denial of that person's ordinary rights, so it can only be justified as a punishment for a crime.
A gay TSA agent finagled excuses to "pat down" attractive male passengers. At least someone got something positive out of the Theater of Security Agency.
I generally ask the agents if I could be patted down by woman. "Why should only gays get to enjoy this?"
Wikileaks republished the Sony emails and documents to demonstrate the connections between Sony and the Democratic Party.
Part of what these emails reveal is how media companies are lobbying for the TPP.
Halting Intentional Climate Inaction.
Los Angeles has dropped its program to give an iBad to every student.
Good riddance — but many students will encounter schools that try to make them carry computers with proprietary software. Defending your freedom entails refusing to use them.
The new face of France's extreme right-wing.
The Front National generally has a policy of both encouraging and forcing women to have babies. That is not only unfair to the women, it is dangerous for society.
A Hong Kong protester demands to know the names of the thugs that attacked him, so he can prosecute them.
Bravo!
Australia's proposed copyright repression could ban VPNs.
The international copyright censorship system increasingly comes to resemble China's political censorship system. Evidently the motive for censorship is a minor detail: it comes to the same thing.
We must reject the War on Sharing at the root, not quibble about the details of its repression.
After the Big Spill, which pushed the limits of undersea oil drilling, oil companies have pushed the limits even further.
Cost presents pressure to cut corners and increase the risk. This tends to create a feedback loop which servos the level of risk to one where accidents happen as often as the public will stand for.
Mohamed Nasheed, climate hero, has been imprisoned by a military coup. We should campaign to have him released.
I wonder if fossil fuel companies' money had something to do with the coup.
Blackwater's legacy: spreading the use of mercenaries around the world.
Hiring companies to do fighting is dangerous because it augments the military-industrial complex.
Elizabeth Warren rebukes the SEC and the Justice Department for not trying to prosecute Wall Street criminals under existing laws.
China confirmed a plan for more repression by imprisoning the journalist that published it.
A private probation enforcement company in Georgia holds people for ransom, imposing arbitrary fees and jailing them if they don't immediately pay.
In the US:
tell
the School Nutrition Association to stop lobbying against fruits
and vegetables in school lunches.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That organization's name, like those of many lobbying associations, is deceptive. It should be called the School Junk Food Association.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to support the FAIR Act, which would
partially eliminate the injustice of "civil asset forfeiture".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
New Yorkers: call for Bratton's militarized thug unit to be canceled.
US citizens: call on Congress to respect network neutrality.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose "fast track" for the TPP.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
support
the EPA's plan to require big efficiency improvements for heavy
trucks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Clinton to endorse a ban on fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
I do not support Clinton, because I do not expect her to support good policies like this. But let's pressure her and give her a chance to be better than we expect.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of the Interior to block Shell's Arctic oil
drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban neonicotinoid pesticides.
Everyone:
call
on Wisconsin to retract its order for some officials not to use
the term "climate change".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ironically, the term "climate change" was imposed by Republicans around 13 years ago in an attempt to disguise the issue that was then called "global warming".
I call it "global heating" to show the gravity of the problem.
US citizens: oppose coal mining in "roadless" Colorado public lands.
Everyone: Tell Ace and True Value to stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides.
PISSI is attacking again in Iraq, and capturing Ramadi.
Privatization of water supply is a scheme for private profit from public investment.
When for-profit businesses get involved in public services, the profit comes from shafting the public or the employees.
A protest against a chemical plant's pollution in China was crushed by 2,000 thugs. It must have been a rather large protest.
The people are probably getting sick from the polluted water.
The Australian government has no money for the poor, but it is funding global heating denialism.
The genocide of the Armenians was started 100 years ago.
In Turkey, as in France, it is impossible to speak honestly about this issue. Under those countries' censorship laws, one must choose between risking prosecution and parroting the official line. Hrant Dink, hero of freedom of speech, was prepared to defy both countries to prosecute him for talking about history. If you are in one of those countries and not prepared to go to that length, I recommend that you respond to the subject by saying that censorship makes honest discussion of the question impossible in that country.
Since I am not in Turkey or France, I can speak freely about the subject. I condemn the genocide of the Armenians.
This does not mean condemnation of Turks or Turkey today. Those who carried out the genocide of the Armenians are dead. Turkey's duty today is to confront its past honestly. The Turks and Turkey of today cannot inherit culpability for a wrong committed 100 years ago, but if they deny or defend that wrong, they make themselves culpable for it.
Every country with a long history has crimes in that history. Every country needs to acknowledge these crimes to go forward honestly, and apologize for them to go forward ethically. To deny national crimes corrupts the spirit. To ask which country's crime is worse is a distraction.
The government of Turkey corrupts the national spirit by denying the genocide of the Armenians. The government of Japan likewise corrupts the national spirit by denying its past crimes, including forcing women into prostitution.
The US has recognized that it stole land from indigenous peoples, and apologized for imprisoning Japanese-Americans. But Republicans in the US are actively campaigning to cover up a more recent crime: Dubya's lies that were the pretext for the conquest and invasion of Iraq. Woe to the US if it swallows this lie.
A professor at Northwestern University faces the threat of disciplinary action for expressing disagreement with current policy towards handling accusations of rape or not-quite-rape.
Big businesses use "trade associations" to lobby the EU to continue unchecked fossil fuel use.
If your MEP has given a phone number to a representative of a "trade association", you need a different one.
Shell's "plan" for handling an oil spill in the Arctic is pure fiction. The only purpose it serves is as an excuse to pretend there is a plan.
A new treaty indemnifies nuclear reactor companies from essentially any harm that the reactors might do.
The US recognizes that it put Ahmad Rabbani in Guantanamo based on mistaken identity, but still refuses to release him.
TV coverage of the California drought hardly ever mentions "climate change" or "global warming".
Neither of those terms reflects the magnitude of the danger. That's why I call it "global heating".
Senator Sanders exposed the cruelty of Rand Paul, who wants the state to tell old people with no food to turn to "noble private charity". When "noble private charity" doesn't show up, they will have to beg.
If Republicans think that poor people should beg, why do they pass laws against begging? Why do they make so many people homeless, if they hate the homeless so much?
I think they regard anyone not useful to the plutocrats as superfluous, and would like to get rid of them — not Nazi-style with death camps, but out of sight by hunger and sickness.
Ex-thug Jeffrey Walker admits he planted drugs (i.e., framed people) so many times he has lost count of them.
I would be skeptical of anything a thug says as a witness; they are habituated to "testilying" (as they call it) so they know how to make it appear they are telling the truth.
California is considering a bill to ban thugs from looking at their own camera footage before reporting what they did.
This is very important.
Coal polluters' latest lie: that burning a lot of coal would help the world's poor.
The global heating effects would be disastrous for them.
In Spain, protest of nearly any kind is forbidden by blanket repression. The only kind of protest remains possible is a hologram.
It's clever, but it won't defeat the repression. What that requires is for masses to occupy the city and spit on the fines.
Shona Banda is a medical marijuana activist. Her son talked back to a prohibition propaganda presentation in school, so thugs grabbed him, searched her house for marijuana, and now are trying to take away custody of her son.
The article refers to a youtube video. Please do not watch it directly, since that would require running nonfree software.
Voter ID in Australia has the same effect as in the US: it tends to disenfranchise old people, disadvantaged minority groups, and the disabled.
US thugs still arrogantly interfere with people recording them, and make threats of revenge.
We need to jail them for this.
Rouhani says Iran will not accept a nuclear deal unless all sanctions are lifted immediately.
This demonstrates that sanctions can be effective in convincing a country to make a deal. But this effectiveness depends on willingness to end the sanctions in exchange for a reasonable deal. If the US offers no carrot, it will get nothing.
Perhaps the sanctions could be reimposed automatically if the the deal collapses.
A German air traffic control organization calls for a remote control piloting feature for airplanes.
As a step toward this, it may already be possible to take control of an air liner using the WiFi on board.
But I won't do it, because they typically require nonfree Javascript, and require users to identify themselves (I won't identify myself to connect to the net).
When Khalifah al-Akili realized the FBI was trying to entrap him as a "terrorist", he called in journalists to document what was happening.
On many dimensions, humanity is pushing the world past safe limits.
Blackwater mercenaries were convicted of murdering civilians in Iraq and given long prison sentences.
Al-Shabaab's massacre at Garissa University continued hours longer because corruption delayed the arrival of the commandos who were sent to defeat the attackers.
Using the operational plane for training seems like a mistake, too. It's not corrupt, but it's asking for trouble. They ought to have another plane for training.
A new lawsuit against SeaWorld demands only that it cease its false statements about the welfare of orcas.
Let's not romanticize orcas. The name "killer whale" is a transposition of "whale killer". In fact, some groups of orcas make a habit of ganging up on a family of larger whales in order to kill the family's young, then eat only the tongues and leave the rest. (Orcas are intelligent enough that different groups have different practices.) That's nature for you.
But that doesn't make it good to capture them and treat them with prolonged cruelty.
Congress and Obama agreed on a scheme to permit a possible nuclear deal with Iran.
Congress Is STILL Trying to Destroy Net Neutrality.
The dispersant used by Billionaire Polluters after the Big Spill is more toxic to coral than the oil.
Suing Facebook based on an Illinois biometric law that covers face recognition databases.
Antarctica is melting faster; NASA now projects 10 feet of sea level rise by 2100. However, other catastrophes will come faster. Forests in North and South America are dying already.
Obama grasps at straws to claim environmentalists support the TPP.
Obama's own support for the TPP reveals he is really on the side of business against the US.
The danger of driving while black has increased since 2002.
Fracking in Pennsylvania is releasing radioactive, carcinogenic radon gas, increasing the amount that seeps from the ground into people's homes.
Here's the
full data.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Murdoch media still publish articles full of nonsense about CO2 emissions and their consequences.
This is a conspiracy — between media companies, mouthpieces for hire, and fossil fuel companies which have lots of money to spend to keep us burning too much fossil fuel.
A disabled Briton expected that Cameron, who had a disabled son, would feel compassion for the disabled.
If Cameron were capable of compassion, he would not be a Tory.
Billionaire Polluters abandoned large renewable energy projects in the 1990s to focus on fossil fuels.
The tyrant of Belarus has done what many right-wing politicians would like to do: make it a crime to be unemployed.
World Bank projects force poor people out of their homes with no compensation, then burn fossil fuel.
New Zealand's spy service operated in Bangladesh, giving information to Bangla spy agencies that practiced torture and murder.
The UK's supposed initiative to close some tax havens was a sham to forestall real action against them, a minister at the time told one of those tax havens.
You would not expect right-wing plutocrats to shut down tax-dodging by rich people or big businesses. Those are the masters they have sold out their country to.
Finland is having a long-term economic decline.
Finland should vote for a government that will insist on saving Greece now, so that Finland can be saved later.
Metal detectors at major league baseball games are an example of irrational fear-exaggerating security theater.
Six former Ukrainian politicians have died in suspicious circumstances in two months.
It is not clear whether they are suicides or murders.
Tens of thousands of low-paid US workers protested demanding a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
I am in favor of it.
Ethiopia has repressed journalists and political opposition as well as the peasants that objected to the loss of their land.
Pakistan officials are hiding and altering documents to ensure that Shafqat Hussain gets executed.
Doug Hughes protested against buying of laws by landing an ultralight gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn with letters for congresscritters.
Of course he was arrested. We will see how eager the US government is to find excuses to imprison dissidents for harmless protests.
If we value art, we must not let art schools become expensive finishing schools for the children of the elite.
The low wages paid restaurant workers in the US place a large burden on the public, paying for welfare benefits so the workers can get by.
Divest Harvard has blockaded two administrative buildings as a protest.
Alumni camped out in a building where the Alumni Association had refused to talk with them.
The Veterans Administration accessed medical records of whistleblowers looking for some means to discredit them.
The EU group which is supposed to study the environmental dangers of fracking has been taken over by representatives of fossil fuel companies.
Some courageous Muslim women call for reinterpretation of their religion to respect women's equal rights.
Thugs grabbed the Meitiv family's children simply for being outdoors, and held them for hours without telling their parents. Later they demanded the parents ransom them by agreeing never to leave them alone.
I do not think the parents should have caved in on this vital point. Since one of the children is 10 years old, I think that they could understand together what it means to be kidnaped by "authorities", and that an honorable rescue may take time.
When I was 10 years old, today's insane American overprotectiveness had not yet developed. It did not occur to anyone to claim that children shouldn't go out by themselves in Manhattan.
Tracking devices for children are very popular. Their marketing build up parents' anxiety so that they will buy "protection".
The result is to teach young people to accept being tracked all the time.
Republicans propose another tax cut for millionaires.
A black 14-year-old was executed in 1944 after being pressured into a confession. Most of what happened to him could still happen today.
Being working poor in America is even worse because of the callous tendency to tell the poor that it's their own fault.
It's the fault of the plutocrats who imposed policies to give themselves more and the rest of us less. So let's attack those plutocrats and take back what they grabbed.
Researchers identified some of the toxins intentionally added to fracking fluid to kill bacteria in the well. If they leak into groundwater, they can poison it.
If you have a miscarriage in Georgia, religious pharmacists may refuse your prescription for misoprostol.
A US trade court claimed additional power that could offer movie companies a way to impose censorship as in SOPA.
This illustrates the sort of harm that the bogus concept of "intellectual property" can cause. By associating unrelated laws and treating them as one "thing", it encourages policies that treat all these laws the same way.
The MPAA is a face of the big movie companies. Whatever it does, they are really doing. Don't let them attack you with one face while pretending with the other face to be something other than your enemy.
The Hedge Clippers protest the billionaires getting rich by squeezing the poor.
Towns across the US are unprivatizing their water supplies, but the TPP could put an end to that.
Everyone: ask the Washington Post to treat killer thugs as it treats other killers, by publishing their names when writing about them.
Thatcher's "right to buy" public housing apartments left Britain with insufficient public housing and thus contributed to today's homelessness. The Tory solution: do more of it.
What the UK needs is to legalize squatting again.
Does the Labour Party advocate this? What about the Green Party?
Ethiopians Talk of Violent Intimidation As Their Land Is Earmarked for Foreign Investors.
Under a dictatorship such as Ethiopia, nothing that the government encourages is truly voluntary.
A Japanese court blocked plans to restart of some nuclear reactors. The court simply followed the applicable safety criteria and concluded that the plants are unsafe and vulnerable to earthquakes.
Japan should start building up solar and wind power. It is a great way to boost the economy, too.
Iran will finally give Jason Rezaian a chance to discuss the charges against him with his lawyer — for a total of one hour before the trial starts.
It's not quite as bad as Egypt.
Thugs in the LA region chased a fugitive who surrendered. Just to handcuff him would have been enough, but they tased him, kicked him 17 times, punched him 37 times, and hit him with a stick 4 times.
After that treatment, he lay still on the ground for 45 minutes, without medical attention.
Unfortunately the video of the incident can't be watched without nonfree software. I wouldn't run the nonfree code to see it. I expect that LibreJS will block it.
His injuries still hurt, but there is no word on how serious they were.
The right-wing owners of the mass media create a myth that each one opposes a fictional "leftist media bias". The latest iteration is the "metropolitan elite".
St Anne, Missouri, jailed Juan Thompson's mother until she pled guilty to accusations against another woman, and her family had to pay $1000 to get her out of jail.
The state later acknowledged this was mistaken identity, but the guilty plea remains on her record and they can't get the money back. They don't take trouble to correct mistakes for a poor person.
Juan's aunt has been unemployed for six years because of a car fine she could not pay, and his uncle is in jail because he can't pay the fees for a previous jailing for an unpaid ticket.
The complexities of defining what constitutes a killer robot.
I am confident a good criterion can be worked out. If it is more than one sentence long, that is not a flaw.
The UK Green Party says it will abolish the cruel austerity policies.
Vote Green!
In the Netherlands, citizens are suing to demand stronger action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Sea-level rise is a serious matter for the Netherlands.
Some US special tax breaks that mainly benefit rich people.
Virginia is the worst state for the school-to-prison pipeline. An 11-year-old boy was convicted of a felony because he pushed back when a thug stationed in his school grabbed him.
The thugs in our schools are there to ruin children's lives.
US citizens: call for managing herring to protect the ocean ecosystem, not just the herring catch.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to end "too big to jail" for banks.
US citizens: Call on the EPA to regulate the use of toxic oil dispersants in response to oil spills in the sea.
Many US workers are paid so little that they need, and get, various sorts of welfare benefits.
If we raise the minimum wage, they won't need these benefits.
The thug that killed Walter Scott has a pattern of violence. Another man is suing, saying he has proof that the thug shot him with a taser as he was lying face-down on the street and not moving.
If Facebook achieves its goal of becoming the main publication site for journalism, it will be a new chokepoint for censorship.
Governments that make surveillance of journalists easy may find that whistleblowers dump unredacted data to the public for their own safety.
In the St Louis area (which includes Ferguson), death sentences are given preferentially to blacks, after using various subterfuges to keep blacks off the jury.
Schools that divest from fossil fuel companies can reinvest the money profitably in reducing their own energy use.
French hosting companies threaten to move out of France if the latest snooping bill passes.
The Istanbul International film festival cancelled showing a film that the government doesn't like, so dozens of other films have been withdrawn in protest.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies Tempt Us to Burn More Carbon, Says World Bank Chief.
This has been said before, but not often enough.
The Labour Party is trying to prove how right-wing it is.
If I were in the UK I'd vote Green.
In France, rich people are being prosecuted for tax evasion.
Global heating is hitting the North Sea, off Britain, especially fast, and some fish species can't live there any more.
The article does not say whether these species could survive elsewhere in the world.
The US is a leader in child poverty. As the total wealth grew by 60%, the number of homeless children in the US also grew by 60%.
The discovery of oil south of London is a threat, not an opportunity.
A baby in Cleveland found a loaded gun and shot another baby, which died.
Handgun killings in the US are rising as deaths from car accidents fall; in 17 states, guns now kill more people than cars.
The US government's arguments for the DEA's massive collection of phone call records fail to show it is either necessary or constitutional.
Republicans push to control how poor people spend their government benefits, but there is no push for such controls on how the rich and the middle-class spend their larger benefits. Many Americans don't even understand that those are government benefits.
South African writer Zainub Priya Dala says she was forced into a mental hospital by her Muslim relatives to coerce her to withdraw her praise of Salman Rushdie.
This comes after fanatics tried to stab her on the street.
There is a strong current among Muslims of believing that people have no right to criticize their religion, or even talk about it lightly which is what Rushdie did. People who think that way are the enemies of human thought and human rights. They deserve the disgust of every decent person.
The same applies to some Christians who hold similar views. Even the Church of Emacs is not entitled to be immune from criticism.
"Hate speech" laws in many countries, that ban insults to religion, encourage fanatics to believe they are entitled to suppress criticism of their beliefs. These laws not only infringe freedom of expression directly, they encourage fanatics to go further.
Fargo Café Praised After Banning GOP Lawmakers in Fight for Gay Rights.
Boycott, Divest and Sanction Corporations That Feed on Prisons.
According to the article, corporations currently exploiting prison labor include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Caterpillar, Chevron, the former Chrysler Group, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, GlaxoSmithKline, Galxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, International Paper, JanSport, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Koch Industries, Mary Kay, McDonald's, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sears, Shell, Sprint, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Victoria's Secret, Wal-Mart and Wendy's.
I'm not going to boycott all of them, but I will boycott some of them which have easy alternatives. (Of course, many of them I would never do business with anyway.) You can probably boycott those oil companies, clothing companies, food/beverage companies, and stores.
It might be a good idea for the campaign to focus on a few of those targets first, and help boycott participants inform those targets.
Rahm Emanuel: Symbol of a Sick America.
The US Isn't Winding Down Its Wars — It's Just Running Them At Arm's Length.
Fight215.org is a coalition dedicated to repealing the part of the PAT RIOT Act that is used to excuse collection of phone call records of everyone in the US.
YouTube's new focus is marketing junk food to children, collecting data about them all the while.
Letting children watch YouTube is much worse than letting them watch TV.
Another dangerous digital practice: small discounts on life insurance in return for being tracked (and following an imposed regime).
As with all such "pay the user a little for being tracked" schemes, the tendency is to put pressure on everyone to be tracked. Individually rejecting them is just the first step; we should prohibit them instead.
The strategems used by 288 big US companies to reduce their tax rate to under 20%.
CBS, General Electric, Interpublic Group, Jetblue Airways, Mattel, Owens Corning, PG&E Corp., Prudential Financial, Qualcomm, PEPCO Holdings, Priceline.com, Ryder System, Time Warner, Weyerhaeuser and Xerox pay no tax at all.
Someone "freed" goldfish in a lake in Colorado. They reproduced and are driving out the native species.
Don't ever release pets into the wild without consulting experts about whether it is safe.
Florida is considering an inadequate plan to protect part of the Everglades from agricultural runoff, so the "Tea Party" held a protest — with paid "protesters".
With current levels of Republican dishonesty, one must suspect all their "protests" of being paid.
China has a new system for injecting malicious Javascript into users' machines to make them attack any chosen target site.
A more technical analysis of how it works.
Subtle sexism, impossible to prove in a court, holds women back in their careers.
This issue is far more important than the Ellen Pao case itself, because it affects a lot of women, not executives only.
Enslavement of workers occurs in many areas of work, and the methods used and patterns of mistreatment are surprisingly similar.
US citizens: call on Obama to close tax loopholes by executive order.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass mandatory labeling of GMOs.
Cuba and the US are moving towards further reconciliation.
To end the pointless and harmful embargo of Cuba is a good thing, but as we all know, the friendship of the US does not necessarily lead a country to respect human rights — and does tend to lead to subjugation by the multinational corporations. Cuba will need to take care not to go too far in "opening up" to their power.
Campaigning to ban "conversion therapy" which amounts to forcing minors into torture.
The US government repeatedly goes to extreme lengths to stop us from knowing how it spies on us.
Thugs in Minneapolis stopped two Arab-Americans in a car and handcuffed them, then threatened to break their legs.
The thugs say they thought the two men were thieves, but they have not demonstrated any basis for that suspicion (the car was not stolen). they needed a basis to justify making the men prisoner.
But even if they had had a reason to handcuff those men, that couldn't justify threatening to maim them.
The White House's New Executive Order On Cyber Crime is (Unfortunately) No Joke.
It empowers officials to designate anyone as guilty of materially providing support for "cyber-attacks", without a trial.
This fits the pattern of letting officials ban organizations without a trial and letting thugs take people's property without a trial.
It is obviously unconstitutional, but we can't count on the US Supreme Court to defend constitutional rights — except for non-human "persons" and religious nuts.
Malaysia has augmented its law that makes sedition a crime.
There is nothing in such a law other than an attack on human rights.
Vancouver pledges to run 100% on renewable energy by 20 years from now. That will include transportation.
The FBI has organized a national conspiracy of local governments to keep courts in the dark about Stingray surveillance of cell phone activity.
Wall Street has been unable to figure out that destroying the environment means stocks will lose lots of value.
Wisconsin is considering firing all the scientists in its Department of Natural Resources, and one agency has ordered its employees not to talk about climate change.
They should talk about global heating instead.
Various groups are suing the State Department for secretly approving two oil pipelines.
Western Canada's glaciers will be mostly gone by the middle of the century if we don't stop broiling the Earth.
It turns out that Iraq had some old chemical weapons in 2003; but Saddam Hussein was not hiding them.
Some were too dangerous even to dispose of, and international inspectors had sealed them off. Some had been lost.
Either way, they were no justification for war.
Bank staff are going to protest against orders to take advantage of other low-paid people.
The extractive US system of fees and fines has been applied to pets too. Sometimes the result is to kill poor people's dogs.
Defenders of Wealth Blame Workers For Lousy Recovery, Not Policies Protecting Profits.
In Lincoln, Nebraska, cameras in the downtown area have not reduced crime or helped identify culprits. Most other cities report the same result.
Since the cameras do infringe privacy, let's get rid of them!
Why Don't Surveillance State Defenders Seem To Care That The Programs They Love Don't Work?
I have another theory. I think that the plutocratist government of the US, which is democratic only in form, wants these tools to keep the people down.
PISSI is massacring the 15000 or so Palestinians that remain in Yarmouk refugee camp after two years of siege by Assad's army.
With Syria being fought over between Assad's forces and jihadis, both sides are horrible, so what should the world do? I don't see any answer, except to defend the Kurds.
I blame this state of affairs on the rich Arab countries that stirred up the violent jihadism when Syrians were doing peaceful protests for democracy. As I recall, they were Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But the US is also to blame, for supporting them (which it continues to do).
Ancestry.com has government contracts to digitize old census records and other public records. Often it does the job by throwing the records away.
The article supposes that contracting services is typically cheaper than doing them in-house, but that is often false.
Meanwhile, they usually screw the public or their workers, because the profit must come out of something.
The UK election is now a pseudo-event, like most of US national elections.
Marine ecosystems harmed by climate change can take a thousand years to recover.
US carbon emissions are decreasing without special pressure, and the 2020 target may be reached early.
That is because the 2020 target is far short of what we need to do to avoid disaster.
For every 10 executions in the US, one innocent person has been freed from death row.
Argentina is once again trying to demand control of the Falkland Islands. Aside from distraction in Argentina, the main motor of the dispute is undersea oil.
Since we must leave most known oil reserves unextracted, Argentina and the UK should make an agreement that neither one will extract oil there.
Mohamed Soltan, visiting Egypt from the US and translating Arabic to English for a journalist, was shot by thugs, then tortured in prison. Now he faces a long sentence or execution based on charges nobody bothered to prove.
Our rate of CO2 emissions today matches the rate that seems to have killed 90% of all marine species at the end of the Permian epoch.
Saudi bombs are killing lots of civilians in Yemen. The continued fighting between the Houthis (who may still be winning) and the Hadists is causing devastating conditions (no water for a week) that will surely kill a lot more.
It is likely to lead to more wars.
9 states join many students calling for the US to forgive student loans that were given out to pay for-profit "colleges" that systematically mislead students.
When John Booker was released from mental hospital, two unofficial FBI agents began luring him into a fantasy terror plot.
It is legitimate for the FBI to keep tabs on mentally ill people who show an interest in terrorism. A few of them might proceed to real terrorism. It is also legitimate for the FBI to run people in terrorist circles to find out about real terrorist plans.
However, when the FBI lures Americans into fantasy plots, who would never have done anything on their own, it does nothing but harm.
Obama is under pressure to retract the bogus claims that Venezuela threatens US national security.
The only reason for these claims was a desire to impose trade sanctions that violate some of the trade treaties that plutocrats have imposed.
If we extract and burn all the known fossil fuel we could extract, we will heat the Earth by something like 9 degrees C (16 F).
The Australian Greens propose to make their tax system progressive in effect again.
Australia's government is concealing the names of companies that dodge taxes by shifting profits to tax havens.
It maintains a "transparent" relationship with them by refusing to have one with the people. It is clear who it really serves.
Human rights groups are suing the DEA for its massive surveillance of phone calls from the US to 116 other countries.
Rand Paul says it's unfair to bring up anything he said in 2009 when he ran for the Senate.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to
support the CARERS act
to respect state legalization of medical marijuana.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Clinton approved a "trade treaty" with Colombia after oil companies donated to a Clinton foundation.
That treaty is bad for democracy, like all the similar " trade treaties". We need to elect people that will cancel the existing ones, starting with NAFTA.
North Carolina Republicans want to restructure local governments to give control to Republicans.
The Republican Party's motto is, "Take power by any possible means."
India has blocked funding to Greenpeace, accusing the organization of "opposing development".
When you leave things up to businesses, "development" often means damaging the environment.
Oklahoma and Kansas passed laws that arbitrarily ban a common method used for late abortions.
Late abortions are allowed in the US only for medical reasons. The method that was banned is sometimes the safest way to do them.
A Russian who lead a pro-Russian unit in Ukraine said he killed 15 prisoners after the capture of Donetsk airport.
Everyone: call on California to apply water restrictions to
agriculture,
fracking and water bottling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
Call
for protection from toxic fire-retardants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for repeal of parts of the PAT RIOT Act.
Kansas plans to limit welfare benefits spending to $25 per day.
So if a poor person faces debtor's prison if she doesn't pay a $50 fine, she will go to jail.
If she needs to get her nails done to apply for a job, that will be excluded too. Kansas legislators would rather she stay unemployed.
(It is unreasonable to require employees to to get their nails done, outside of a few occupations where beauty is the job, but they do.)
Blackwater (now calling itself "Academi") has been paid
half
a billion dollars to train the Afghan government forces to stop
opium production. Result: opium production has increased.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Netanyahu admitted that he wants to block the nuclear deal because he wants to continue sanctions against Iran and keep it poor.
Voting machines used in Virginia and Pennsylvania allowed election-rigging via wifi, for anyone that could crack the machine's WEP password.
To make it even easier, they used the password "ABCDE". But that is the icing on the cake. There are programs that reliably guess WEP passwords. No matter what password they had chosen, the machine would still have been vulnerable to anyone with some expertise.
Today's voting computers might have a little better security, but that doesn't mean they can be trusted. Even if the security is enough to thwart random passers-by, that does not mean it will stop people from the company that made the machine, or people from the election authority, from rigging the election undetectably.
Virginia has decertified this machine, but is the replacement good enough for your elections? The proper criteria are more than a little more strict.
Even if the computer's security isn't so weak that outsiders can crack it, that doesn't mean you can trust it. The manufacturer might rig the election; the election authority might rig the election.
Malaysia is using terrorists, that may or may not really exist, as an excuse to crush human rights.
The US, UK, France and Australia have followed this path before.
Afghan government soldiers continue shooting Americans inside bases.
A UK university cancelled an academic conference about the legitimacy of Israel as a state, under pressure from politicians, using concerns about "safety" as an excuse.
Many colleges track their students in intrusive ways.
I don't think college students should be required to swipe ID cards.
Rand Paul is a typical right-winger except for a few niche issues.
Rolling Stone's fraternity rape accusation article, that it later had to retract, had shoddy journalism, and Rolling Stone covered it up.
A bill pushed by Republicans in Missouri would ban using food stamps to buy sea food or steak.
The people who get food stamps can't afford to buy steak or fresh sea food even with help. So why bother prohibiting it? As an expression of contempt for the poor.
An Israeli faked his own kidnapping, and Israel activated its standard harsh response that applies only when Palestinians are the suspects.
Israel imprisoned Khalida Jarrar for remaining in Ramallah (where she lives and works) in defiance of an arbitrary order exiling her from there.
Comcast has donated to many organizations; now it is telling them to endorse its proposed merger.
Was a family in Maryland killed indirectly by lack of a living wage?
The article doesn't give enough information to tell for sure, but I wonder why someone who was employed couldn't afford to pay an electric bill.
British women are dying younger as a result of government cutbacks.
I suppose Cameron and Osborne are secretly glad.
US companies impose nondisclosure agreements on employees and ex-employees to block them from talking to government regulators. The SEC just fined KBR for using this to cover up fraud.
There may be a gap between the US version and the Iranian version of the framework nuclear deal.
Scott Walker has changed Wisconsin's election system to make them easy to buy, and he took control over Wisconsin's Supreme Court so it will ignore his violations of campaign finance laws.
A thug shot Walter Scott dead, and accused Scott of stealing his taser. Due to a video recording we know that accusation is false and that the thug shot Scott in the back as he was running away.
The thug has been charged with murder.
Here's the news report we would be reading if the video had not proved the thug lied.
North Charleston is another one of the US cities where a lot of the population is black, most of the thugs are white, and their conduct is generally racist.
Saudi Arabia is extracting oil at a record rate.
The decrease in the oil price in the past year must have something to do with this. It is clearly an intentional policy rather than an economic response. Perhaps it is intended to screw other oil exporters such as Russia and Venezuela.
Jamaicans have been getting poorer for 20 years under the dominion of the IMF.
Rand Paul is a global heating denialist, like the other Republican candidates.
Wealthy people and companies are corrupting America's cultural institutions — buying support for their political maneuvers, and buying a clampdown on opposition to those wealthy donors.
Thus, Big Money is now corrupting every level of US community life.
The CIA had Maher Arar tortured in Syria even though many CIA agents said he was the wrong man.
It's wrong to torture the "right" man, too, but this reveals an incredible level of contempt.
Libya, as a failed state, is generating the usual bad results of failed states in regions of Muslim population: more radicalism and more bloodshed.
An Australian court made ISPs help a film company bully people who shared copies of a film.
Sharing copies of any published work should be legal; governments that aid the publishers' War on Sharing are doing evil.
China plans to test Tibetan monks on their "patriotism". I don't suppose this means patriotism for Tibet.
The Class War party aims to represent working-class Britons whom Labour has abandoned.
I don't think that class war is inevitable; but when the rich start one, as they have done in Britain and the US, the rest had better get organized to defeat them.
Everyone: call on Nestle to stop bottling water in California.
Everyone: call on Shell to stop lobbying against curbing global heating.
Everyone: call on chocolate companies to keep out the lead and cadmium.
Everyone: call on Indiana to pass the Fairness for All Hoosiers Act, which would prohibit discrimination against queer people.
The people that dominate the Republican Party are not conservatives. They are radical fundamentalists that call themselves "conservative".
Australia diverts refugees to Nauru, which accepts them in return for Australia's money. But the conditions of refugees in Nauru are like a prison — they could plead for asylum somewhere else as refugees from Nauru.
Nauru also tries to exclude journalists to cover this up.
I think it is not inherently wrong for a country that is the target of economic illegal immigration to send refugees to another country. But that doesn't excuse doing it in a cruel way like this.
Georgia wants to tax electric cars to make up for the gas tax revenue their owners don't pay.
To reduce fossil fuel use, Georgia ought to raise the gas tax, and tax fossil fuels used to make electricity. But that's the opposite of the orders Republicans get from their plutocratic masters.
US gun nuts encourage harassment of the author of a program that reports areas where guns are used or carried in dangerous ways.
The chief of San Francisco thugs has fired some thugs for showing racism.
Making racist statements should not be a crime, but those with an official privilege must meet a higher standard than merely not being a criminal.
Firing those thugs is not enough for me to call the chief a police officer, but it is a step in the right direction.
Five Years On, the WikiLeaks 'Collateral Murder' Video Matters More than Ever.
The US is using its own helicopters less; now the killing is done by drones, and by the aircraft of US-supported tyrannical governments such as Saudi Arabia.
Backlash to Anti-Gay Laws Not a Movement, But the Result of One.
California's "water conservation" measures do not cover farms and frackers.
Oregon is considering bills to regulate antibiotic use in the 100 biggest animal feeding operations in the state.
World Leaders Lack Ambition to Tackle Climate Crisis.
Or, rather, fossil fuel interests control their decisions.
The US-backed air intervention is creating chaos in Yemen, and al Qa'ida is capturing some areas.
If the US had stopped Saudi Arabia from intervening, the Houthis would have won by now and there would be no room for al Qa'ida to take over areas.
Canadian tar sands mines destroy large areas of land and forest — they are not like ordinary oil wells. And they poison land with oil spills. The Beaver Lake Cree Nation is trying to stop this with a lawsuit.
How government policies could be designed to reduce inequality instead of increasing it.
It's understandable that many Iranians hate the US after the things that the US did and planned to do to Iran.
Fortunately the Iranian state has the vision to consider a deal nonetheless.
Science is plagued by widespread falsification of data.
The cockpit recording from the plane crash that killed the Polish president shows the cause was not foul play. The passengers pressured the pilots to land although they thought it was dangerous. This is a common cause of flight accidents.
Indian thugs plan to attack protesters with pepper-spraying drones.
40 years ago, the US Senate investigated secret CIA crimes thoroughly and passed laws to curb them. The US needs to do this again.
Being used a lot by Facebook encourages depression; since people generally post an exaggerated positive picture of their lives, their lives appear to be better than your own.
Pakistan has brought murder charges against CIA personnel accused of being responsible for a drone attack.
City "outreach to the homeless" staff in Berkeley attacked two homeless people, then tried to frame them with false accusations. One of them pled guilty! But a video proved they had attacked the homeless people without grounds.
I am glad the courts dropped the charges that he had pled guilty to. You can't count on courts to have that much sense of justice.
Will the employees be prosecuted for their attack?
Barrett Brown in prison was banned from using email because he talked with a reporter. John Kiriakou was treated as suspicious in prison for publishing articles about the prison.
What it adds up to is contempt for prisoners' constitutional rights.
Better education would not reduce economic inequality in the US much. That's because the good jobs that people could get via education are too few to benefit most poor Americans.
We need to pay a living wage to everyone, not just the best educated.
Censorship of one blog is already too much.
Systemic racism in the US starts in elementary school and continues on through adulthood.
How Elizabeth Warren Made Expanding Social Security Cool.
She rejected the idea of making various groups of poor people fight over the "crumbs" left by the rich.
Greenpeace protesters have boarded a Shell drilling rig on its way to create an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean.
I say this with confidence because the US government estimates that the probability of a major oil spill if Shell goes ahead and drills is something like 75%.
PISSI captured 1700 Iraqi soldiers when it captured Tikrit, and massacred them. Their grave has apparently been found.
The captain of a boat that did illegal fishing, which was followed by Sea Shepherd for 117 days and could not get away, sank the boat to destroy evidence of the crime.
I think this is a victory for Sea Shepherd. I don't think many boat owners will risk the loss of the boat.
The TSA's behavior detection program is useless for finding terrorists, but catches lots of illegal immigrants, and may in fact have been designed for that.
Netanyahu is trying to stir up US Republicans to block peace between the US and Iran.
Netanyahu calls any deal "bad" unless Iran would reject it.
An unauthorized statue of Edward Snowden appeared in a New York City park. City staff covered it up and removed it.
Ukraine is considering a federal constitution that would enable people in the Donbas region (for instance) to have some autonomy.
It's too bad this was not considered a year ago.
China has set up a chain of "Confucius Institutes" around the world to teach Chinese — under the political control of the Chinese government.
Millions of Indians are giving zero-rupee bills when asked for a bribe, as an anti-corruption campaign.
I occasionally distribute zero-dollar bills as a pretend bribe, but I don't expect US officials to want a real bribe.
Saving money on probation will lead to more people in prison.
Omitting part of the data can make the rest point to a desired conclusion.
Malaysia will imprison people without trial.
The US set the example for this. A few years ago, Congress and Obama passed a law saying that the president can imprison anyone without trial.
The UK government dumped a surprise on communities: they can't block nuclear waste dumps.
Iraqi Sunnis are changing their names so as not to be persecuted by Shi'ites.
We may be headed for a "sofalarity", in which people spend so much time in fantasy worlds, that are presented as vividly as reality, that they care less about reality.
Unfettered Religious Freedom Really Does Mean the Freedom to Do Harm.
The Center for Democracy & Technology reported to the UN how Australian mass surveillance violates human rights norms.
That was before Australia passed a law imposing even more surveillance.
In Britain, children go to school sick because their parents can't afford to miss work.
These are the same poor people that right-wingers call "lazy scroungers". If you systematically pour a sea of obligations on people, while cutting out what they stand on, by and by some of them will sink.
The US government and the Gates Foundation are trying to
impose commercial seed
on African agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli soldiers shoot ordinary bullets at Palestinian protests, and many Palestinians have been injured. Some killed.
Will French citizens accused of sharing be banned from flying?
There is no reason at all to ban most ex-cons from flying (unless they are being sought).
The US government will try to duck responsibility for a nationwide license plate tracking database by confiding it to a company.
The fossil fuel companies owe the public so much, for undeserved subsidies and for damages, that it justifies nationalizing them.
Then the state could order them to stop lobbying against curbing global heating.
The Tories plan to force UK ISPs to block access to sites that have porn and don't strictly identify their users.
This won't achieve the supposed goal of stopping teenagers from accessing porn. They will find other ways, perhaps via friends that are over 18. However, the attack on internet freedom could be successful anyway.
Research has associated various kinds of air pollution with increased vulnerability to the flu, increased vulnerability to allergies, and with brain damage.
Businesses and Obama agree on a bill to expand NSA surveillance by letting companies "voluntarily" give data to the government.
It is more reason not to identify yourself or your activities to any American company. However, for some purposes it is hard to avoid that.
A former Guantanamo military court prosecutor says that the military courts are a failure — those prisoners who have charges against them should be tried in ordinary federal courts.
Amen.
Those that have no charge to try should be released.
New York State's proposed bitcoin regulations still have problems.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to vote for a bill to stop feeding
antibiotics to farm animals, except individual animals that have
infections.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Talking with Nicaraguan farmers that oppose the planned Nicaragua canal.
There are two issues here: proper compensation for farmers' land, and the ecological health of Lake Nicaragua. The former is simple and easy to fix; the failure to do so indicts the state for surrender to plutocracy.
The issue of whether this canal can be built and run without causing a local ecological disaster is not so clear, but a state that won't even make the canal company pay proper compensation today can hardly be trusted to make it preserve the lake for a hundred years.
Russian-sponsored rebels continue daily artillery attacks on Ukrainian trenches near Mariupol.
Anthony Ray Hilton was imprisoned for 28 years because the state did sloppy ballistic testing.
The failure of his defense to hire a proper expert was icing on the poisonous cake, because that should not have been necessary; the state should have made sure its own ballistic tests were done right, and not prosecuted Hilton in the first place. Prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not convictions based on fudging the truth.
How sad to give Hilton an iThing. From one kind of prison to another.
Construction workers in Abu Dhabi are still treated like slaves.
The intrusion of advertisements into every cubic meter of public space, and many physical objects as well as web sites, can be seen as enclosure of a commons — the commons of attention.
There's an element of truth to this, but at the same time, it is possible to refuse to pay much attention to them.
Adam Crapser, age 39, was brought to the US at age 3 for adoption. His adoptive parents never made him a US citizen, and he now faces deportation away from his family to a country he has no memory of.
The minor crimes he has committed seem, according to the article, to be consequences of his lack of citizenship.
A movie licensing group demands 1/3 million dollars as a blanket license fee from the schools of one small region of Spain, for showing some movies.
If Spain adopted US-style fair use, schools would clearly not need a license. Basically, this is another way in which Spain's right-wing government is the enemy of Spain.
5 years after the Big Spill, many species of wildlife are still being harmed by oil and by the dispersants the Billionaire Polluters poured into the Gulf of Mexico.
Israeli troops arrested Palestinian feminist Khalida Jarrar, who is also a leader in defending the rights of Palestinian prisoners.
Khalida Jarrar has been imprisoned for six months, with no charges or trial.
A veteran called on Karl Rove to apologize for his part in the conquest and invasion of Iraq, but Rove refused.
Transcanada's planned tar sands oil pipeline to the Atlantic has been delayed for two years due to rejection of one planned terminal on environmental grounds.
Facebook predicts who new useds know, based on their phone lists and email address lists. Along with the phone and email lists of all the other useds.
This is a measure of how complete and dangerous Facebook surveillance is.
It implies that giving your email or phone list to a company is mistreatment of everyone in that list!
Ireland forces women to have babies against their will, then makes them suffer poverty as a result.
Nabeel Rajab has been imprisoned in Bahrain for denouncing cruel treatment of prisoners there.
Bahrain is a US ally and its repression was imposed with help of Saudi Arabia.
Everyone:
call
on Indiana to free Purvi Patel and repeal its law against
"feticide".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
You could call that law a form of fetus feticism.
US citizens: call for a federal investigation of fast food shops' disregard for workers' safety and injuries.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose right-wing proposals to endanger wildlife.
US citizens: call on states to treat fracking waste as toxic, or invite the federal government to do so.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to commute the sentences of more victims of the War on
Drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
I said, "Please commute the sentences of all the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are in prison with long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses."
Even when people try to provoke thugs into killing them, the thugs in many cases do not need to rush to kill them, if they take some care.
A big illegal mining operation on Bangka Island, approved in a way that suggests corruption, threatens the surrounding coral as well as the people who live on the island.
The general framework of a deal with Iran has been published.
It remains to work out the details. Meanwhile, Netanyahu opposes the deal with paranoid ranting. This would be insignificant, except that he will incite Republicans to sabotage the deal.
Obama approved oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
GMOs are not making a big contribution to feeding the human world.
Four Chicago teenagers face imprisonment and a life of punishment for having sex and making a video of it.
A Malaysian cartoonist, and his webmaster, face imprisonment for charges of criticizing the government.
France is considering a bill to threaten journalists, sources and dissidents with arbitrary surveillance without a court order.
New Jersey thugs weren't satisfied to kick unconscious Phillip White. They even had their dog bite him. No wonder he died.
Someone has sent phony anti-net-neutrality messages to members of Congress, putting on the names of people who did not approve.
California's governor has imposed new water conservation rules, but they don't go far enough — for example, they don't include shutting down the plants that extract water and bottle it.
If these measures achieve the stated goal of reducing water use by 25%, that will delay the arrival of extreme hardship for 3 additional months (15 months from now instead of 12 months).
Generous Welfare Benefits Make People More Likely to Want to Work, Not Less.
Plutocrats don't care about this because they don't need most people to work, not any more.
Anthony Ray Hinton will be freed after 30 years on death row. His trial was crap, and there was no real evidence he was guilty.
The inhabitants of south Yemen are not very happy with being conquered by Houthis. The latter shot and killed protesters.
Purvi Patel has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for trying to give herself an abortion.
But maybe she didn't even do that. The conviction is based on supposition — it might have been just a miscarriage.
The genocide that wiped out the aborigines of California.
Al Qa'ida took advantage of the fighting in Yemen to free its supporters from a prison in Yemen.
Israeli soldiers regularly block Palestinian Christians from access to Easter ceremonies in Jerusalem.
The World Bank funds private companies, even hedge funds, in an occult manner.
Supposedly this funding is to promote social goals, but those companies will eagerly redirect the money to grasping unjust practices. The World Bank should not fund them at all.
Ghoncheh Ghavami has been released from prison in Iran.
I don't understand why either women or men make such a fuss about sports, but they shouldn't be imprisoned for it.
The UK right-wing has increased taxes for the poor.
It is the UK's version of the Ferguson fine-debt trap.
An increase in the UK carbon tax will close some coal-fired electric plants. Unfortunately, the replacement will be natural gas. But increasing the tax will encourage renewables.
The Houthis have captured parts of Aden, despite the US-backed Saudi air campaign.
The Houthis are allied with the faction of former President Saleh. In other words, this is a battle for power between Yemeni factions. Meddling in this is really foolish, not least because it often backfires.
The main effect of the bombing campaign will be to make the new government of Yemen a firm enemy of the US (and of Saudi Arabia, but it hardly deserves any sympathy).
Fires in Canada and Russia are a very large contribution to global deforestation, and these forests regrow very slowly.
Domestic workers, amounting to 47 million people, lack the usual rights of workers. They may be required to work up to 22 hours a day.
When faraway fanatics "join" PISSI, it makes PISSI appear more powerful than it really is.
PISSI, it makes PISSI appear more powerful than it really is.
The US media contribute by reporting fantasy PISSI plots as if they were real.
Factory Farm Meat: Why Vegetarians, Ranchers and Conscious Omnivores Need to Unite.
The UK NHS loses money by hiring temporary staff instead of training additional permanent staff.
The CIA document that supposedly proved Saddam Hussein was developing WMDs initially said there was a lot of doubt about this.
The psychology of why people keep voting for politicians that take foolish positions.
The article doesn't mention the intentional influences, such as the powerful companies and rich owners that promote trickle-down and get it fixed into treaties so that any correction seems impossible.
A massive boycott campaign has pressured Indiana into amending the "religious freedom restoration" law so it does not authorize businesses to discriminate against persons based on characteristics such as sexual orientation.
Governor Pence of Indiana had previously defended the law by pretending it didn't authorize that.
Obama's greenhouse gas pledge sounds good in terms of politics, but it's inadequate in terms of physics.
Greenpeace says it "begins to treat the wound, but does not stop the bleeding".
For Alice Rothchild, being pro-Palestinian is also being pro-Israeli.
What I said about Hrant Dink in my talks in Turkey (Apr 2015)
Searching the internet for information inflates people's sense of how much they know and how smart they are.
Americans have been led to forget their tradition of massive strikes against the plutocracy.
The ACLU has become concerned with some of the consequences of nonfree software designed to restrict people.
I hope the ACLU will recognize that the fix for this is free software.
The UK government is underfunding the NHS so much that it will face pressure to start charging for medical care.
Part of the reason for the absence of congressional scrutiny of US massive surveillance programs is that congresscritters not on the intelligence committee are denied information about them.
Ukraine is in the grip of pervasive corruption controlled by oligarchs.
Everyone: call on Obama to press for a diplomatic solution in Yemen rather than supporting Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign.
The Houthis do not like the US but they do not want to fight the US. Intervention in Yemen means making enemies avoidably.
Everyone:
call on the
governor of Georgia to veto the religious-based discrimination
law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
for regulation of payday loans so they don't push people further
into debt.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is treating the symptom — what we really need is to raise the minimum wage — but the symptom is worth treating.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to reject banksters' money.
US citizens: call on Kerry to drop the plans to export armed drones.
Facebook has a new trick to get people to identify their spouses and babies in photos.
Gaza fisherman Tawfiq Abu Riyala had an idea: build an artificial reef to stimulate fish to catch. Israeli soldiers killed him for it.
A college in California tried to ban its Students for Justice in Palestine from holding an event with a mock-up of the annexation wall.
The reason given was that "people might complain". So what if people complain?
Israel holds Palestinians prisoner without trial, renewing sentences over and over.
Thugs in Oxnard, California, get tattoos for each person they kill.
They treat the people as an enemy that they are at war with.
Comcast suckered a man into buying a house by saying he could get broadband there. Then it said he couldn't, so he has to sell the house.
Melting ice from retreating glaciers is pouring into the Gulf of Alaska.
This contributes directly to sea level rise, and as land in Alaska is denuded of ice, it absorbs more sunlight.
A Republican Christian legislator said a violent attack on a woman was a punishment inflicted on America by his vindictive deity, for allowing abortion.
Alas, he's not a freak. This sort of superstitious belief was common in Christianity (as in many other religions) until it was mostly cleaned of such things; but US theocratic protestants are bringing it back.
California activists blockaded a Nestle water bottling plant, which extracts water that California can't spare.
While Egypt's regime carries out repression almost like Stalin's, Obama assures Egypt of continued military support.
The high pressure on US students, teachers and schools from standard tests led many teachers and officials to organize massive cheating.
Schools are not factories, and the pressure from these testing policies seems to harm education.
The Vatican has cleaned up corruption in its bank.
While the US and UK support the Kurds that are fighting PISSI, a British Kurd that tried to go to Iraq and fight for the Kurds faces imprisonment for it.
Absurd.
Let's Call It: 30 Years of Above Average Temperatures Means the Climate Has Changed.
Russia has closed the Crimea's Tatar news TV station. Even mild criticism of the state is repressed on TV in Russia.
Syracuse University will divest from fossil fuel companies.
Polar bears seem unable to adapt to eating the foods available on land. Thus, the loss of polar ice is likely to wipe them out.
We could maintain a few in zoos, for as long as human civilization is wealthy and organized enough to have zoos. When hunger causes wars, people will eat the animals in the zoo.
The Philadelphia-area mass transit system was ordered to publish ads equating Islam with antisemitism.
The Grand Mufti did support Hitler, but it is a mistake to claim the Qur'an endorses antisemitism. It says that Jews and Christians are to be tolerated as second-class citizens — while other non-Muslims didn't even have that level of rights. While this is far from respect for religious freedom, it is not antisemitism (hatred specifically of Jews) either.
Compared with the Christianity of the 7th century, Islam in the 7th century wasn't bad. (On the other hand, China in the 7th century was far more tolerant.) The unfortunate thing is that Islam's respect for human rights has not advanced since the 7th century.
Facebook's tracking of users through cookies combined with Like buttons violates EU law.
Why general surveillance such as Australia is doing makes individuals and society less safe.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to urge Senator Wyden to oppose fast track for the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The TPP is a plan led by sell-out-to-business politicians such as Bush and Obama to give companies (especially foreign companies) deregulation and more power over the citizens of the US and (initially) 11 other countries.
The Wellcome Trust says it invests in fossil fuel companies so it can use "shareholder engagement", but the change it aims for is inadequate.
It is already abundantly clear that "engagement" with them does not get them to change.
The nuclear negotiations with Iran have resolved most of the issues with a broad framework.
Texas legislators threaten women's lives in order to interfere with abortion and birth control.
Aramark feeds prisoners food that was in contact with rats, food taken out of the trash, and moldy food.
That's what privatizing government activities tends to lead to. It's also typically more expensive than doing the work with government employees.
Apple is still working people to death to build phones which are jails.
The Council of Europe says that Ukraine failed to investigate the behavior of the thugs during the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev.
The US had Yemen disappeared Sharif Mobley. Now the US-supported Saudi bombing campaign is attacking the airbase where he is imprisoned.
China is building artificial concrete islands in the South China Sea as military bases and excuses to claim the undersea oil.
US states have passed vague constitutional amendments that allow big farms to claim the right to disregard environmental protection laws and laws against cruelty to animals.
Israel is going to make refugees from Africa go to some African country or else be imprisoned.
People fleeing persecution are entitled to asylum; economic migrants are not. However, the distinction is not so sharp. Sometimes a person flees real persecution, and chooses to flee to a wealthy country as a way to get more money. This is why many people try to get to the US, Israel, the European Union, and Australia. It is wrong to send those people back to where they will be persecuted, but that doesn't have to imply they are entitled to entry to the country of their choice.
However, these countries currently subject the refugees to horrible treatment to make them go somewhere else. That can't be justified and can't really be necessary.
If we didn't have so much war, so much tyranny, and so much environmental disaster, fewer people would need to flee persecution.
Several presidential candidates are pretending they are not even "testing the waters" hoping to evade campaign funding rules. At the same time, they acknowledge that they are pretending.
The tyrant of Thailand says he will convert himself from military ruler to civilian dictator.
Not much of a change, it seems.
Clinton said she ran a private email server so she could send all her email through one device, but she didn't use only one device.
This dishonesty is minor compared with the fundamental dishonesty that she as a "Democratic" plutocratist shares with the Republican plutocratists, in pretending to support democracy. I will not vote for a plutocratist candidate.
An interview with a reporter for a feminist rural newspaper in India.
Mockery of US presidents is prohibited at Dixie State University.
That prohibition is un-American. Mockery of presidents is not. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to disparage someone, especially any politician or official, and anyone like me that publicly campaigns for anything.
Scientists are suing the US Department of Agriculture, claiming that they are being censored and harassed by the USDA for trying to report results inconvenient for agribusiness.
To correct the root of this problem, we need to do away with agribusiness companies that are so powerful they can corrupt the USDA (i.e., cause "regulatory capture"). Family farms would pose no such danger.
The US government used the FISA system to investigate two Chinese accused of a crime that has nothing to do with national security.
Another reason to cut standardized tests: the companies that do it spend millions to lobby for more standardized tests, and against privacy protections for students that are tested.
As a general principle, large companies threaten democracy.
The UK government refused to stop its lawyers from reading the privileged communications with lawyers of two victims of "rendition".
A good welfare system encourages people to start more businesses.
A society which people need to be "entrepreneurial" is a harsh one. Being an entrepreneur means taking a gamble, and you shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Society should not make people gamble what they can't afford to lose.
In Australia, warrant canaries are forbidden.
I hope that thousands of Australians will defy this law by stating that they have never received one of these journalist information warrants.
Brazil and Indonesia give enormous subsidies to exports that require deforestation, dwarfing the subsidies they receive to avoid deforestation.
Stress during childhood makes diabetes more likely.
Sheldon Williams is suing North Charleston, saying that thugs stamped on his face and broke bones while he was lying on the floor handcuffed. Williams had to wait two hours for medical attention to his fractures.
That was not murder but it was a crime. Why isn't it being prosecuted?
Another man is suing because the thug that killed Scott tased him for no reason.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say you support the framework agreement with Iran, and to oppose any bill to block diplomacy. You can call 1-855-686-6927.
A study suggests that melting permafrost won't create sudden catastrophic global heating — the release is likely to take a longer time.
Europe planned to start 10 trial carbon capture and storage plants this year, but the technology is too hard to master.
I see nothing wrong with CCS in principle, but there is no reason to be confident it will work — and even if it does, I doubt fossil fuels with CCS can compete with renewables on a fair basis.
I think the real motivation for CCS is as an excuse to continue the current highly subsidized use of fossil fuels. They say, "Don't worry about using fossil fuels; CCS will come to the rescue."
If we put a proper tax on greenhouse emissions and eliminate the subsidies, as we ought to, the fossil fuel companies would be welcome to try to make CCS work cheaply enough to compete. We wouldn't have any stake in whether they succeed.
The video of the shooting of Walter Scott exposed the functioning of the thugs' lie machine, which accuses crimes up to murder by framing the victim.
France will investigate HSBC's global holding company on suspicions of aiding tax evasion.
In the UK, unemployed people are required to waste 35 hours a week applying uselessly to jobs they won't get. They are required to do this by computer, and those without a computer available find this an expensive struggle. When anything goes wrong, they have to skip the rent or the food.
The overall picture is that people's lives have been made so difficult that an occasion to punish them is sure to arise. The comparable thing in the US is the extractive system of fines and debtor's prison.
It is fine to employ people in jobs that serve the community, as long as we pay them prevailing wages. Otherwise it is merely a scheme to knock down wages.
The staff appointed by Congress to "oversee" US spying include lobbyists for spying.
They are the foxes, and the US is their henhouse. Woe is us.
Proposing a constitutional amendment to affirm that every US citizen of legal voting age has the fundamental right to vote.
I suggest that the amendment should take additional concrete steps to block the now normal practice of blocking on pretext what it would be unconstitutional to overtly ban — currently applied to abortions, voting, and being homeless.
Multinational seed companies lobby for various kinds of laws to stop farmers from sharing seeds, but the farmers fight back.
Chevron lied about cleaning up oil spills in Ecuador; a whistleblower provided proof.
US citizens: call on Clinton to come out against the TPP.
Cleveland thugs disregarded all the witnesses to a shooting and prosecutors convicted three innocent men for the murder. The three have been exonerated after 20 years in prison.
I wonder what motivated this gross injustice. This case is far from unique; the explanation might teach us something about how to prevent more such cases.
US citizens: call on your federal legislators to thwart plutocrats' dishonesty and stand up for network neutrality.
The greatest damage from a global heating disaster will come in the tropics, as a changes in rain will eliminate entire ecologies such as the Amazon rain forest. The millions of species that live in them will go extinct.
US right-wingers believe their religion legitimizes bigotry.
A former leader of the South Carolina Republican Party showed that his hatred extends beyond trans people and foreigners, and includes his wife.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to uphold the Department of Labor's plans for regulations to protect workers from being swindled out of their pensions by lying brokers.
Greece is giving international support to Russia, clearly hoping Russia will rescue Greece from the banksters. So far, Russia has not done it.
The leaders of Syriza need help against the banksters, and Western governments are on the banksters' side. I can't blame them for asking Russia for help. The West ought to give that help.
Children in the UK are now growing up in hunger and deprivation that can stunt them for life.
There is no excuse for voting for a party that won't end this.
Whaling is dangerous for humans that eat whale meat, as well as for whales.
The witnesses who saw Shaimaa al-Sabbagh shot at a protest are now on trial in Egypt for being near the protest.
The Egyptian government has the full support of the US.
Japan's CO2 cut pledge is absurdly inadequate.
Russia's approach to "information warfare": spread so many different lies that the truth can't be separated from them.
This gives everyone an opportunity to blame whoever they want to blame. Those who want to blame the US (and the US does plenty to inspire such an attitude) can find grounds to blame the US for everything.
UN Urged to Ban 'Killer Robots' Before They Can Be Developed.
Watch out for the Internet of Kafkaesque Things.
And that's aside from their snooping.
A study estimates that sprawl costs the US a trillion dollars a year.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Tobin tax (a tiny tax on financial transactions).
Everyone: call on Pepsico to get sustainable palm oil.
The Rise of the Working Poor and the Non-Working Rich.
Countries are making greenhouse gas pledges that are insufficient to avoid global disaster.
The Australian government chose to quietly disregard sexual assaults against refugees dumped in Nauru.
Wildlife in Indochina is threatened by massive hunting in even the isolated areas of the jungle.
Editors of Malaysian Insider were arrested for "sedition" for publishing an article about steps in legislation.
To have a crime of sedition at all is an attack on human rights. Malaysia has never respected human rights very well, but it is getting worse lately.
Plutocratist politicians, organized through ALEC, are using captive state legislatures to forbid city initiatives that are inconvenient for business.
Their masters, the businesses, are also suing cities that try to do this.
The replacement of democracy with plutocracy is converting the US government into a government of occupation by the rich. Only democratic governments can be legitimate.
Global heating is exacerbating drought in Australia. This threatens agriculture and cities' water supplies.
The Tory logic of austerity is to stigmatize a part of the poor and desperate as "undeserving" to win support for kicking them while they're down.
If you have been driven to the point of suicide, that means you have nothing to lose. Rather than handing your killers an easy victory by dying quietly, you may as well strike a final blow against them.
The American Pharmacists Association has adopted the position that its members should not provide drugs for execution.
This is non-binding but may have an effect nonetheless.
In the US, "predictive policing" typically predicts that if you're black, you're a criminal. Blacks are targeted by merciless surveillance.
Curbing global heating would have tremendous side benefits for public health and for the real economy.
Plutocratist governments are more concerned with the banksters' economy than with the real economy of real work and real benefits for people.
China is planning to ban foreign NGOs from operating in China unless they get government sponsorship.
DEA agents that investigated the head of Silk Road appear to have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from him through private blackmail.
Amazingly, they are being prosecuted for this.
A Days Inn fired Shanna Tippen for talking to a news reporter about the low wages.
Censorship in corporate-dominated Mexican radio news broadcasting is now officially part of the rules.
New Canadian Counter-Terrorism Law Threatens Environmental Groups.
Dissidents know better than to believe that the Canadian government wouldn't apply "anti-terror" measures to them. The US and the UK have already done the like.
The US has gone even further and labeled dissidents as "terrorists".
US citizens:
call
on your state governor to make a Clean Power Plan for the EPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Over 1500 Americans convicted of crimes have been exonerated — found to be innocent, and released from prison.
This must be a small fraction of those who were wrongfully convicted.
What can we do to prevent false convictions in the future? Often they are due to trials that are grossly bad.
The FBI Used to Recommend Encryption. Now They Want to Ban It.
New web services that allow everything to be traded and rewarded monetarily force all corners of life into the market.
I am glad that I don't use any of them, but I fear that they will force us to.
An Irish ISP has been forced by a court to punish users for sharing, even though there is no law that says so.
A former SeaWorld orca trainer says that the company is cruel to animals and covers it up with falsehoods.
The State Is Spying on You Right Now. Where's the Outrage?
The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has doubled since September.
It seems to be due to the bad law forced through by pro-deforestation parties.
One of the underlying causes is population growth. By having no children, you can avoid increasing all environmental and resource problems.
The Republican-controlled US Congress is moving to pass a budget that will shaft non-rich Americans.
Elizabeth Warren is putting the heat on banksters; they are threatening to stop giving money to (other) Democratic candidates as punishment.
The "Democrats" that serve the banksters only slow the adoption of dooH niboR government policies. To stop it and reverse it, we need people like Warren.
Republican governors that reject Medicaid expansion are squeezing hospitals. Some hospitals in areas of poverty are closing, or closing their emergency rooms; many more will soon join them.
The article seems unfair in blaming Louisiana's deficit primarily on Governor Jindal, since the world fiscal crisis occurred shortly after he took office in 2008. The article does not tie Louisiana's deficit to specific decisions on Jindal's part.
High fees for college drive a substantial number of students into sex work.
It must be more so in the US where the fees are higher.
Many methods of execution were promoted as humane, then rejected later as inhumane.
A bunch of nondemocratic Arab countries propose to set up a regional alliance to fight against anyone supported by Iran. Apparently with US support, too.
People who suffer from depression are unlikely to want to hurt anyone else; we must not stigmatize depression even worse.
It seems that co-pilot Lubitz had problems beyond depression.
Indonesia banned foreign boats from fishing there, so the boat operators dumped their crew on remote islands, and the crew are stranded there. Many were effectively enslaved in their ships, and some still are enslaved.
See the enslaved workers page.
Theocratic Christians endorse the right of parents to kill sick children for religious reasons; it's only fetuses they want to protect. This is because they regard women and children as property, like cattle.
California has dropped its plans to let thugs around the US use California driver's license photos for face recognition.
What about other states?
Mexico set an example by proposing a greenhouse emissions limitation plan, but it is too little and too late.
Having thugs permanently stationed in schools is already bad; giving them body cameras adds up to a big invasion of students' and teachers' privacy.
A few rich Americans get big subsidies as public-land ranchers, and the government resists telling us who they are.
In California, illegal marijuana plantations are using up the water that water bottlers don't take. Endangered fish could be killed by this.
If marijuana were legalized, it would be grown in ways that are not so illegal.
The Tories are considering big cuts in welfare for the poor. For right-wingers, welfare is supposed to be for the rich.
One proposal is to cut off support for children after the second. Governments should aim to decrease the birth rate, but making extra children grow up in poverty is not a good method. It probably won't even reduce the birth rate much.
The UK suddenly imposed a gag order on all government employees including scientists.
Canada's right-wing government did the same thing, and we know the reason: to help business suppress science.
Cleaning up plastic bead pollution in California. These beads can kill animals by starving them.
Netanyahu yielded and agreed to give the Palestinian Authority its customs revenue.
San Francisco thugs (prison guards, not police this time) forced prisoners to fight each other in order to bet on the results, on pain of being tortured.
The UK wants to show it is really serious about stopping modern slavery by sentencing perpetrators to life in prison.
Since it is an economic crime, such a heavy sentence is neither called for nor necessary. I'm sure most people would refrain from trying to enslave workers if they expected to be sentenced to five years in prison for it.
The crucial point is "expected to be". Even life imprisonment can't deter criminals if they are confident they won't be caught. To be effective in reducing enslavement, what is needed is a series of measures to put migrants on guard against enslavement, and to detect enslavement when it occurs. Also, changing laws that stop slaves from escaping, as the UK just decided not to do.
One reason schools for non-rich Americans do a bad job is that they are not given enough money.
Although the schools in poor districts get too little, it still adds up to a large sum. This enables the plutocratist politicians to say, "Look how much money we've wasted on failing schools" as an excuse to underfund them even more.
Congress and Obama are planning to make medicare pay doctors more, necessary because many doctors are refusing medicare patients, but the cost is being placed on patients.
DEA agents visiting Colombia had sex parties funded by narco gangs.
I don't see any reason DEA agents should not participate in sex parties, but if they get anything from drug traffickers, it's a form of corruption. Those agents must be booted out.
However, this incident is part of a general pattern. Prohibition of drugs makes trafficking profitable, and that money is used to corrupt officials at all levels. Even for drugs that are really dangerous, drugs that are foolish to use, prohibition is a bad response.
Banksters hate Elizabeth Warren, but they don't hate Clinton, and there's a good reason for that.
A few decades ago, musicians could succeed without being beautiful. Now they are under a lot of pressure to look good; it almost trumps how well they can play.
Poverty correlates with less brain development in schoolchildren.
Since this is not a controlled study, we don't know whether poverty causes the reduced brain development. It is implausible that the children's reduced brain development causes their parents to be poor. But there may be some other factor that causes both the parents' poverty and the children's reduced brain development. It would not be genetic differences, since the study controlled for that.
The UK's former "climate change" diplomat says that Shell is "cynically" trying to block an agreement to curb global heating.
Nemtsov's colleagues are trying to continue investigating the Russian troops in Ukraine, but after his murder people are afraid to talk.
Journalist Peter Greste, who was imprisoned for months in Egypt for reporting, calls for a world-wide charter of media freedom.
He recognizes that the threat to journalism is not limited to outright tyrannies.
The UK government did an experiment with bees and claims that shows neonicotinoids do not hurt bees. However, the data from the experiment show that they do hurt bees.
Australia has imposed general surveillance of phone and internet contacts.
The law offers a supposed shield for journalists' sources, but it is so easily overridden that no one should ever rely on it.
Republicans, asked to rate threats to the US, rate Obama as a bigger threat than Putin or Assad.
That is rational. Putin and Assad are much worse as rulers than Obama, but they do not threaten the US. Obama, however, threatens the freedom of Americans through massive surveillance, and threatens American democracy with his war on whistleblowers.
Australia's [global heating] Policy on Course for 'Disastrous' 4C Warming.
US citizens: tell Congress to pass the bill to repeal the PAT RIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act.
Here's what the bill does. It's quite a lot!
An argument in favor.
US citizens: call on Congress to extend CHIP funding for 4 years.
US citizens: call on Obama to order federal agencies to consider climate effects when judging new policies.
Bans on indoor smoking have resulted in substantial decreases in pollution levels and in heart attacks.
Due to world-wide adoption of concrete for construction, the world is running scarce on sand resources, leading to environmental degradation, corruption, and even murder.
The fracking boom is over in North Dakota, but unemployed Americans continue moving there looking for work.
The long-term harm done by fracking outweighs the benefit of employing people for a while. The US government could give a lot of people employment if it were willing to defy the plutocrats. All we need to do, to make this happen, is vote for anti-plutocratic candidates only.
The EPA has bent over backwards for decades to ignore evidence suggesting glyphosate is carcinogenic.
What It's Like to Teach Evolution at the University of Kentucky.
Promoting free software takes the same sort of patience.
Cuts in UK funds for poor people's housing are being converted directly into rent raises.
Surveillance should worry journalists and the public — whatever politicians say.
US citizens: tell Congress to
restore the Voting Rights Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Clean Air Act.
US citizens: tell Senator Schumer, support diplomacy with Iran if you want to be minority leader.
Boehner says that Iran would not carry out a nuclear deal, but it is US Republicans that threatened to disobey such a deal.
It is standard practice for politicians that have contempt for most people to accuse others of the wrongs they themselves are guilty of.
Everyone: stand by Máxima Acuña de Chaupe, who won a court case to stop Newmont Mining from destroying her community with a gold mine, and now is facing violent retaliation.
US citizens: oppose the DARK act, that would prohibit states from mandating labeling of GMOs in foods.
Even the Rockefeller family was unable to persuade Exxon to stop denying global heating.
Now they will divest, slowly, from fossil fuels.
The UK plans to make people convicted of crimes pay an extra fine of around 2000 dollars for having insisted on a trial. Some people might plead guilty to avoid this extra fine.
Egypt sentenced Hany Amer to death for "crimes" that occurred after he was disappeared by the state.
The Egyptian judiciary is a gang of killer clowns.
Ukraine must respect the rights and culture of Russian-speaking people.
Dubya's use of "state secrets privilege" to block lawsuits was a big injustice, but the Obama regime has taken it to the absurd limit.
The UK has imposed high fees on health care for immigrants, so pregnant immigrants skip prenatal care. That leads to evitable serious medical problems.
Some give birth at home to avoid the crushing charges for the hospital.
The UN's "green climate fund" decided to fund coal power.
In the UK, thugs have a general "
The practice of imprisoning lots of people in order to use them as
slave workers has a
long history in the US. Southern states did this
to repress blacks.
A study in 1995 concluded that
at least
10,000 people were wrongly convicted of crimes in the US each
year. Most instance were due to mistaken eyewitnesses.
The US started attacking PISSI forces in Tikrit, but the Shi'ite
militias that are leading the attack on Tikrit are
not
happy with this.
I don't see why US air strikes on Tikrit would be wanted at all.
Doesn't the Iraqi army have artillery that it can bring into range to
fire on the dug-in
PISSI
troops.
Today
Big Brother Watches Truckers, Tomorrow He'll Watch You.
This has already started with
insurance
companies that charge extra if you refuse to let the company monitor
where you drive.
We should prohibit that practice.
US citizens: phone your congresscritters to support
FASTR, and to ask for the bill to be strengthened to require the research
papers to be published under a
free/libre
license.
US thugs' unofficial motto is
"comply
or die"; but even if you comply, they may still kill you.
Most thugs would not, I suppose, do the vicious things described in
the article (and in many political notes here). But nearly all of
them would support a fellow thug that has done those things, by lying
in court if necessary, and that is why they deserve to be called
"thugs". The few who refuse to support thugs are those who merit the
title of "police officer".
To change this, we must go against the social pressure to presume all
thugs are admirable except those who have been proved to
beat, kill or frame someone. We must refuse to speak with deference
about them or presume that they are in the right in a dispute. When
thugs make accusations, we should distrust what they say about the
facts.
The Ferguson thugs have
agreed
not to use tear gas on protesters.
Ferguson is one town out of thousands in the US. This needs to be
adopted for all of them.
The US government has proposed to plan to reduce the frequency of
antibiotic-resistant infections, but the crucial step of ceasing
to
feed
antibiotics to farm animals that aren't sick is not part of the
plan.
Antarctic ice shelves are
melting
rapidly. This has no direct effect on sea level, since they are
floating. But with them gone, the ice sheets on land will be able to
melt faster.
The Spanish government claims the "economy" is recovering, but this
refers to totals. Apparently it is another bogus
"recovery"
for the rich only.
US citizens: Phone Senator Wyden and call on him to oppose
"fast track" for the TPP. (202) 224-5244 and (503) 326-7525.
A new leak on Wikileaks shows that the TPP
would
give 9,000 foreign companies special rights in the US, beyond
those of any US citizen (or US company).
Here's an
example
of this danger, found in the TPP and in the similar proposed TTIP
agreement. NAFTA has already imposed a similar injustice on US,
Mexico and Canada. Canada will have to pay 300 million dollars in
compensation for blocking a quarry whose pollution would have harmed
endangered species.
US citizens:
oppose
a trojan horse "chemical safety" bill.
US citizens:
support the
21st Century Women's Health Act.
The UK will send soldiers to train
"moderate
Syrian rebels", if they can find any.
Omani journalist/dissident Muawiyah Alrawahi was
disappeared
as he tried to flee to the UAE.
Microphones installed in New York City, supposedly to detect and
localize gunshots,
record
conversations on the street as well.
US presidential candidates are
not
interested in those who can obtain mere millions of dollars for
them.
Google Fiber will
track what TV
shows people watch.
I think it should be illegal for cable TV to take note of that.
Erol Incedal was acquitted of planning an act of terrorism, but the UK
stands convicted of
using
secret trials, a prima facie attack on human rights.
There is no reason to believe any claims officials make to justify
this. Such officials see no harm in lying to the public; what they
say is only what they would say.
Whatever act of terrorism Incedal was suspected of, it would have been
less dangerous than secret trials. Governments have a lot more
potential for violence than individuals, and it is not very long since
the UK used this power for evil by supporting Dubya's invasion of
Iraq.
Making it a crime to have a book like the Anarchist's Cookbook —
beyond that, anything that leads to "suspicion" — is also
tyranny.
Australia is using an
insecure
internet voting system.
In addition to the software vulnerabilities, remote voting opens the
door for voters to be coerced by their bosses, by abusive spouses,
etc. It is a foolish risk to permit remote voting except in special
cases such as when people are travelling or in the hospital.
If young people are not voting, it's because they see the candidates
that might win are working for plutocrats. Making it less work to
vote is no solution.
As a pessimist by nature, I expect them to kill it.
It appears a pilot may have
intentionally
crashed an airliner in the Alps.
Until a few decades ago, large airliners generally had three cockpit
flight crew: pilot, copilot and flight engineer. It would have been
impossible for one pilot to dive the plane into the ground.
The switch to just two cockpit was implemented as an efficiency
measure.
Saudi Arabia (with support from other US allies) is
intervening
militarily in Yemen's civil war.
This must have been approved by the US.
It seems really stupid for the US to take a side in that civil war, an
opportunity to make enemies — but the consequences will be used
to justify further war.
The Australian government's substitute for CO2 emissions reduction
will at best do no good. It could do
much
worse.
The Australian government is simply
obeying
fossil fuel interests.
Thugs in Arab countries are
even
worse than US thugs, and this played a role both in stimulating
revolutions and defeating revolutions.
Amnesty International accused Gaza militants of war crimes for using
of
non-aimable
missiles and mortars.
(Mortars normally are aimed, like artillery.)
Some stores are
selling
imperfect but fresh fruits to reduce food waste.
Why
We Execute People Is the Big Question, Not How.
It appears that US thug departments have
systematically
ignored many accusations of rape, often being cruel to the victims in
the process. The estimate is that roughly a million rapes were
omitted from statistics between 1995 and 2012.
A Republican bill would
require
US Air Force cadets to swear a religious oath.
These harassment policies can be quite effective in excluding people
who are not religious fanatics. An Atheist in the Air Force Academy
has
sued
against religious coercion there.
John Menard gave Scott Walker 1.5 million in campaign funds, and
received
almost
2 million in Wisconsin tax credits for it.
Naomi Klein: we must take advantage of the low oil price to
cancel
fossil fuel drilling projects.
I think we should put heavy taxes on fossil fuels, so that the price
for use will be high enough to encourage conservation, while the price
paid to extractors will be low enough to discourage drilling.
Israel's interception
of Palestine's customs revenue is devastating the Palestinian
economy.
Palestine's application to join the ICC is no valid grounds for
punishment even if Israel fears that some of its officials or soldiers
will be prosecuted for war crimes they committed.
The merger of Kraft and Heinz would create a giant company with
dangerous
economic power.
Thugs in Michigan arrested a man and
beat
him nearly to death.
They accuse him of possession of some (unstated) sort of drugs.
Whether possessing them is a bad thing, I am not sure. Whether he
really had them is hard to know, since thugs do frame people by
planting drugs on them.
The UK's commission for investigating crimes by thugs
upholds
their subjective impressions to exonerate them.
UK thugs
spied
on Labour politicians even after they had been elected to
Parliament.
They need not have bothered, given that the Labour party had by that
time become the
center-right
New Labour.
Radio Shack promised not to
sell
customer identifying information, but the bankruptcy court is
planning to do precisely that.
In other words, a company's privacy policy is valid only if the
company does not fail. But then, most privacy policies are worthless
anyway, because they have
loopholes
permitting the company to screw you.
If it occurs to you that a site or store's privacy policy would be
relevant, just don't use that site or store. I have bought things
from Radio Shack, but I paid cash and refused to identify myself.
Most accidents (more than half) of teenage drivers are caused by
distractions such as
phones
or conversation.
UK prisons have become
cruel
warehouses for prisoners; all attempt at rehabilitation has been
abandoned in the name of hyper-punitivity and cost-cutting.
The same is true
in
the US.
A black American male who does not finish high school has a
70%
chance of going to prison.
This is partly because thugs are biased, and partly because the US has
made life so much harder for poor people.
A new US "cybersecurity bill" is
still
inadequate as regards privacy: the ACLU rejects it.
Please don't use the term "hacking" to refer to breaking security
— that insults us
hackers.
Electric utilities keep on
proposing
laws to impede home solar power installations. We need to fight
off each one.
In addition, each legislator who supports one of these attacks
should be condemned personally as for sale.
US citizens: phone the white house to
oppose
oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Everyone:
reject
the idea of allowing guns in school so women could supposedly protect
themselves from rape.
This "protection" would hardly be usable in parties and with friends.
Meanwhile, men would carry guns too…
I think the idea of this is to promote the Guns Everywhere agenda
while misleading people about how rape typically occurs on campus.
Everyone:
call on
California to make Nestle stop pumping out and bottling water.
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to support amendments
that reduce Pentagon spending. Also phone your congresscritter to
vote for the People's Budget.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
A high school near Ramallah can be reached by students only
through sewage channels, as Israel has
cut
it off from all other directions.
The Israeli pressure group
tried
to make the University of Southampton cancel a conference about
the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Indiana is going to pass a law
permitting
discrimination against anyone, as long as its motive is religious.
A bill in Wisconsin would allow companies to
compel
workers to work 7 days a week.
Nominally, the workers would have to "agree" to this, but they won't
dare say no.
Montana
proposes
to ban use of food stamps to buy cookies, potato chips, seafood or
steak.
Considering what a struggle it is for the people that receive food
stamps to afford their necessities, I am sure they hardly ever buy
those things. The real purpose of this bill is to mislead the public:
to give the impression that being poor in American is painless and
that it is ok to support the poor less.
Oil companies are
still
funding global heating denialists. They now use less prominent
channels, rather than ALEC.
Thailand's military ruler
threatens
to kill journalists that don't uphold the government's line.
Global heating is going to claim
several
British train lines.
To think of
"the
economy" as a system of making stuff is missing the point.
Canada is preparing for
"false
flag" attacks on computers.
Jeb Bush had a second private email account
that
he does not remember.
An Australian member of parliament poured bunker oil on his hands to
show how disgusting it is, asking to ban cruise ships from using it.
Parliament decided to
shoot
the messenger.
"Getting
rid of red tape" is an excuse for letting business trample people.
An interview with a Russian conscript soldier who was
sent
to fight in Ukraine.
Netanyahu's rejection of peace with Palestine calls for
sanctions
against Israel.
US coal companies have
lost
3/4 of their value, and 200 mines have shut.
This good news is somewhat undermined by the fact that most of the
decrease in coal use has been replaced with fracked natural gas. In
order for this to have truly good results we need a policy that will
move aggressively to prevent coal mines from being reopened.
Afghanistan:
'Fiction' of Sovereign Government, US Funding 'War of Attrition'.
Rafael Marques de Morais reports on corruption in mining in Angola
and faces
9
years' imprisonment on charges of "defamation".
To make "defamation" a crime is a fundamental injustice, an attack
on human rights.
European
countries
take
note!
This includes
fossil
fuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi is being punished for his Guantanamo hunger strike by torture in solitary confinement, as well as by force feeding.
The US cannot justify continued imprisonment without trial by the argument that some released prisoners would fight the US. In fact, the wrongs done to those men inspires many others to fight the US. They should be freed with an apology and compensation.
The Republican Party adopted a resolution written by a lobbyist from Taiwan.
A Pennsylvania thug faces charges of homicide for shooting a motorist who was lying flat on the ground after being tazed.
From this and other incidents I get the impression that US thugs have learned to shoot whenever they feel some anxiety.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject proposals to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, directly or indirectly.
India's Supreme Court overturned an internet censorship law.
Everyone: call on US science museums to kick the Koch brothers off their boards.
Don't sell out science for a donation from an anti-scientist.
US citizens: support big, bold, economic-populist ideas in the 2016 election.
The Gates Foundation is planning with seed companies and government agencies how to help seed companies take control of agriculture in Africa.
12 percent of the voters in Wisconsin will be disenfranchised by Scott Walker's voter ID law.
A proposed Arizona bill would conceal the names of killer thugs. It would also conceal information about thugs that have been punished, to keep the public from spotting thugs that have a pattern of attacking people.
Debra Milke has been freed after over 20 years in prison, where she was sent by a lying thug.
Overt racism against blacks persists in the US; it is not disappearing.
Chicago searches innocent people on the street far more often than New York City used to do so.
A White House official told an audience of pro-peace American Jews that Israel must end its occupation of Palestine, and that the US doesn't trust Netanyahu to try.
The UK system to create excuses to starve the unemployed is so cruel that it resembles the exaggerated villains of comedy movies.
This was done by the same party that set quotas to report disabled people as fit for work.
Converting employees into "independent contractors" is an excuse for closing down the business and cheating them of their back pay.
Costa Rica has got all its electricity from renewables since January 4.
Black Duck, founded by a Microsoft employee, tries to convince you not to copyleft your code.
Everyone:
Call on Mauritania
to free imprisoned anti-slavery activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
When you disable Javascript, this petition may appear to have failed, but it does in fact function.
US citizens:
call
on the Securities and Exchange Commission to make a strong
pay-ratio rule.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Anheuser-Busch to support new clean water regulations.
Everyone:
call
on Louisiana Governor Jindall to pardon Bernard Noble.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Calling on US science museums to stop investing in science-denying fossil fuel companies.
African Elephants Could Be Extinct in the Wild Within Decades.
The UK government is covering up the barbarity of its privatized prisons by barring campaigners from seeing them.
The US "War on Drugs" has created gangs in Mexico that are as violent as PISSI, only without the religious aspect.
The US has quietly stopped protecting some murderous Latin-American officials.
Afghans demand prosecution of the leaders of the mob that burned a woman to death based on mad rumors.
Global Warming 'Set to Speed Up to Rates Not Seen for 1,000 Years'.
The FBI has disregarded the part of the PAT RIOT act that requires it to inform Congress of how it is using the massive surveillance power.
Just informing Congress is not enough; that power must be eliminated. Members of Congress should take the FBI's contempt for Congress as an additional reason to abolish it.
The Orwellian Re-Branding of "Mass Surveillance" as Merely "Bulk Collection".
How the European Central Bank dictates to European governments in order to colonize entire countries as debt farms.
The industrial food system claims to deliver "food security", but more Americans are suffering food insecurity nowadays, and that includes new kinds of food insecurity (such as obesity due to adding lots of sugar) created by the food industry.
The right-wing UK government tried to sneakily privatize a large part of the National Health Service.
Its goal is to make health care for the non-rich as inaccessible as in the US. Over the long term, that will get rid of many superfluous (no longer worth employing) Britons, a few at a time, and the government will be able to deny responsibility.
Senator Wyden says Obama is permitting too much general snooping on Americans.
UK intelligence agencies, found to have disregarded the law, have decided to admit this as a basis for changing the law to legalize most of what they have done.
Privacy Advocates Decry UK Parliament Mass Surveillance Report.
The FBI wants permission to sabotage any and all computers at will, and Congress is working to authorize it.
Please don't use the word "hacK" for this.
The Australian government is making a sham of protecting journalists from massive surveillance.
The suggestion that journalists and sources should use encryption is not adequate. Simply seeing who a journalist is talking with is enough to catch the sources.
The Australian right-wing was so eager to increase logging in Tasmania that it started cutting down the habitat of an endangered species of parrot.
Global heating denier Senator Inhofe has been paid campaign funds by BP.
The sexual revolution has been largely replaced, in the US, with an inexplicable sense of obligation to find monogamy and reproduce.
Bleah.
New Zealand wanted its trade minister to become head of the WTO, so its spy organization read the emails of other candidates.
This is embarrassing since New Zealand can hardly claim that this was a matter of national security. In fact, the security of New Zealanders depends on getting out of the WTO, whose purpose is to give businesses power over countries, thus suppressing democracy.
The WTO ought to be abolished.
In the UK, 500 minority group members have died suspiciously while in jail or prison, but no one has ever been prosecuted for this.
Allowing MDs to give heroin to addicts has reduced the harm of the drug in countries that have tried it.
The US Senate is considering a bill to cut the mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.
Scott Walker: raider against women's rights.
Thugs in St Paul arrested a black man for the crime of sitting while black.
If you view those youtube videos, be sure to download them with youtube-dl, because viewing them from the site itself requires running nonfree software.
"Returning" a tribe of domesticated gorillas to the wild is causing their deaths.
The battle successes of the Shi'ite Houthis are pushing the Sunnis of Yemen into the camp of al Qa'ida.
Pakistan's army fought a substantial battle against the Pakistani Taliban.
Trying to catch the Taliban when they retreated from the area bespeaks a serious intention to defeat them, not merely make a show of fighting them.
US citizens:
insist
on no abortion ban in victims of trafficking bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose the Tesoro-Savage oil export terminal, for which the oil to export would arrive by train.
US citizens: call on Obama to stop the automatic support for Israel in the UN Security Council.
US citizens: oppose cuts in food stamps.
US citizens:
support
banning fracking on public lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Why the proposed rules are inadequate.
GOP Budget Slashes Tax Rates for the 1 Percent, Safety Net for Everyone Else.
Jeb Bush's emails show that he granted public favors to political supporters.
In Honduras, leading women's rights activist Gladys Lanza has been convicted of "defamation" for taking the side of a woman who accused her boss of sexual harassment.
To make "defamation" a crime is in itself oppression.
A bus driver was fired because tested positive for cocaine on account of having handled lots of paper money.
This particular driver had not used cocaine at all. But suppose he had — on a vacation, not on duty. That is no grounds for firing someone.
The only sort of drug test that is legitimate to give is one that tests for intoxication while on duty.
The UK has sentenced whistleblower Bettina Jordan to 10 years in prison. She revealed embarrassing failures that the government wanted to cover up.
That she accepted money from journalists makes her less noble than Snowden, but doesn't alter the fact that her activity served her country rather than its enemies.
The French Socialist Party has neglected working people, who are turning (absurdly) to the racist nationalist party, which uses the typical "blame the foreigners, not the plutocrats" approach.
It is a mistake to prejudge men that adore girls age 8 to 12 as "predators".
France plans to abolish privacy rights by allowing an executive body to authorize the most intrusive kinds of surveillance, even planting cameras, microphones and keyloggers in people's homes, without a court order.
Among the permitted excuses for unrestrained surveillance are "the protection of France's economic interests" (such as spying on those who would denounce a company's wrongdoing) and "the prevention of collective violence" that could seriously disrupt the public peace (i.e., sabotaging protests).
This is a grab for tyrannical power.
Africa shows little political will to stop the slaughter of rhinos and elephants. The northern white rhino is now extinct in the wild.
The terrorist attack on the Bardo museum was meant to crush Tunisia's tourism-based economy.
Thailand's military rulers are trying to crush logic and consistency as well as democracy, human rights and environmental protection.
When thugs try to take psychiatric patients to the hospital, often things go predictably wrong leading to the patients' death.
WHO says that Roundup 'probably' causes cancer.
US radio chains want the FCC to legalize payola.
Measuring how much advantage Republicans get from drawing election districts that favor them.
Florida can stop officials from saying "sea level rise" but can't stop salt water from seeping into the aquifer.
Sheriff Arpaio confessed to violating the court order to cease racial profiling, and hopes to buy his way out of punishment.
Dow, the evolution denialist.
Why the US is stuck in perpetual war.
Whistleblowers have accused Transcanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, of doing faulty work on pipelines and covering it up.
This is why the Keystone XL pipeline poses a high threat of local damage from leaks, as well as a threat to all civilization from burning the oil that would be shipped through it.
Everyone:
Call on 33 US mayors
to legalize giving food to the homeless.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
33 US cities currently ban giving food to the homeless or are considering that policy.
Everyone:
Call on Shell
to stop funding ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Censorship-avoiding site Greatfire is facing a sophisticated DDS attack, perhaps done by China.
States are proposing laws to limit access to thugcam recordings. There need to be limits, for privacy's sake, but the recordings must be available when they show violence without depending on the thugs' good will.
David Graeber: since the 70s, society has generated "bullshit jobs" (that contribute nothing to society's well-being overall) to keep people employed and and keep leisure time down. Meanwhile, academia has kicked out the oddballs, who have been forced into bullshit jobs.
It seems plausible for the period 1970-2007. This does not have to be an intentional scheme — here's a way it could happen without any plan. Suppose there are many ways that businesses could get into an arms race of nonproductive competition. The extent of nonproductive competition actually practiced will be controlled by macroeconomic factors such as the level of unemployment. Thus, as productive work becomes obsolete, it makes room for bullshit to expand.
However, I think this changed with the financial crisis. Nowadays, business tends to leave people in Mcjobs rather than employing them for bullshit. Why the change? Perhaps there used to be enough residual democracy that business was pressured to employ people. Now the plutocrats have defeated democracy, so they can please themselves.
Abbott's "long term" plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef addresses some of the shorter-term problems, but disregards the danger that global heating will kill all the coral.
[PISSI] Destroys Historic Christian And Muslim Shrines in Northern Iraq.
Two would-be Islamist terrorists have been convicted of planning to attack a train in Canada.
It looks like a typical FBI-led fantasy entrapment. What they talked about doing sounds bad (though the article is sketchy about what it was), but if the FBI led them to make the plan, they probably never would have done anything if left to themselves.
If it is possible to make contact with known potential terrorists, it is surely possible to monitor them to see if they ever plan any specific crime, without encouraging them to do so.
The question of independence for Scotland (or Catalunya, or any other European region) is secondary, a distraction from poverty and plutocracy.
Around 600,000 people in Syria are in besieged communities.
A thug in Maryland held a gun to a man's head saying "We're [thugs], we shoot people." What's amazing is, the thug is being prosecuted.
New Jersey has passed a law requiring local government to approve the acquisition of military weapons and equipment by thugs.
Some US schools are reconsidering whether having thugs on the premises is good for their students.
US citizens: oppose the Cove Point fracked gas export facility.
US citizens: Support the people's budget in Congress.
US citizens: support taking account of sustainability in US nutrition recommendations.
The University of Arkansas hid the diary of former senator Bumpers, apparently because it said unkind things about the Clintons.
Muslim women who cover their heads "because women are supposed to" are making a reactionary political statement against feminism and enlightenment, though they may not realize it.
They have a right to make that statement, but we should confront them with our opposition to it.
I have a Turkish friend who, on principle, absolutely refuses to cover her head as a dress code. She would not do it even for 10 minutes to accompany me in touring a mosque. Bravo!
Hong Kong Fears Beijing Crackdown on Academic Freedom.
The UK is still investigating journalists that reported on Snowden's revelations, and claims that everything about the investigation must be secret to avoid helping terrorists.
For "terrorists" read dissidents, journalists, and sources.
How to reduce the danger of re-identifying "anonymous" personal data?
ActionAid, Greenpeace, Oxfam and Civicus say that the power of the global rich is the obstacle to ending poverty.
When governments make union action methods illegal, unions must break these laws.
Beyond Happy Meals: 5 Devious Ways McDonald's Markets to Kids.
Drones Aren't Just Toys That Cause a Nuisance. They're Still Killing Innocent People.
The EU says Israel's continuing land-grab in Jerusalem is escalating division and violence.
California campaigners want to stop Nestle from pumping large quantities of water to bottle, and paying a pittance for it.
A report says that a right-wing activist tried to send provocateurs into Black Lives Matter protests to stir up violence.
A big pharma company is imposing tight control on administration of a hepatitis C drug in poor countries.
Three Chicagoans are suing the thugs for kidnaping them.
Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui and her colleagues were fired after they revealed a corruption scandal that embarrassed the President.
Does corruption involving the president of Mexico qualify as news?
Erdoğan is on a rampage against journalistic criticism: 61 journalists have been convicted of "defamating" him.
The very idea of prosecuting someone for "defamation" represents contempt for freedom of speech.
To handle California's water crisis requires big cuts in water use by business, including agriculture.
If you are anxious about missing your flight, TSA pseudoscience could suppose you look like a terrorist.
ACLU Sues TSA for Records on Discredited 'Behavior Detection' Program.
A UN court ruled that the UK must give the Chagos islands back to Mauritius.
This might allow the Chagos islanders to return home, if the UK does not disregard it.
France has mandated "green roofs" for new commercial buildings.
Facts can't be racist, but the selection of which facts to present can be racist.
Saint Mary's Cathedral, in San Francisco, set up an automatic sprinkler to drench homeless people who slept in its doorways. How typically San Francisco.
If people sleep in doorways it is because society has failed them.
The Mall of America maintained a fake Facebook account since 2009 to infiltrate various activist groups.
Palestinian teenagers were tortured into confessing to throwing stones, and have been imprisoned for two years now.
Proprietary software increasingly asks users keep paying and paying.
This annoyance is a secondary consequence of the fact that the software isn't free/libre.
Pitcairn Marine Reserve Is an Incredible Win for the Oceans.
The new order in the US is a plutocratic/military state.
Netanyahu is trying to resume pretending he will accept a Palestinian state.
Barton Bibler of the Florida environmental protection agency violated the ban on using the term "climate change", and was told to get a mental health evaluation.
France has legalized keeping terminally ill people unconscious at their request.
Create UN military unit to protect ancient sites from [PISSI], says Italy.
I am in favor of it, but it shouldn't be thought of as a like a "peacekeeping" unit. It will have to fight to capture and hold the sites it protects.
Meanwhile, antiquities in Italy are decaying for lack of money to preserve them.
That sort of thing will happen a lot more, a few decades from now, as global heating leaves many countries barely able to hold on.
War drags on as Obama keeps postponing the closure of US bases in Afghanistan.
Arctic ice has set a new record low for winter.
The Gates Foundation has 1.4 billion invested in fossil fuels.
Eritrea Blighted by ' Ruthless Repression' And Human Rights Violations, says UN.
US citizens:
Call on Obama
to order companies with federal contracts
to disclose their election spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama regrets that he did not hurry to close the Guantanamo prison.
Thousands of Tunisians take to streets to denounce Bardo museum attack.
A German couple paid some of the war reparations that they say each German owes Greece.
The UN says PISSI's killing of Yazidis may be genocide.
PISSI clearly aimed for genocide.
Developed Nations Have Sown the Wind, Vanuatu Has Reaped the Whirlwind.
Our turn is coming soon.
Weapons provided by the US to client states have often ended up in the hands of enemies.
US citizens: phone the White House at 1-888-369-5791 and call on Obama not to allow Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic. (You will hear a message from Greenpeace first.)
Maybe you can mention the Atlantic Coast too.
Turtle egg poachers in Costa Rica are murdering conservationists to stop them from protecting the eggs.
1/10 of bee species in Europe are threatened with extinction.
The US threatened to punish Germany if it gave Snowden asylum or protected him.
Israeli soldiers arrested international volunteers who were escorting Palestinian children home from kindergarten.
Israelis often regard anything that keeps Palestinians safe as an attack on Israel.
An Israeli army unit invented a rule to put land off limits for Palestinian shepherds as "Jewish grazing grounds".
Students have occupied a part of the London School of Economics as a protest against "marketisation of higher education".
Among other demands, they want the cleaning staff to get predictable hours.
One beneficial effect of the low price of oil is that many oil wells are being closed, or not started. That's a step in the right direction: leaving 80% of fossil fuel in the ground.
The UK government's response is a tax cut to stimulate oil extraction.
Google cut off its advertising service to antiwar.com because that site displays photos of torture carried out by the US military.
Google ads track the user, so when a site displays them, it treats its visitors badly. (I think IceCat blocks them but I don't have a way to verify that quickly.) Sites that take a controversial position, or have material some people might criticize, have a special duty not to display ads that work this way.
Senators have proposed a bill to regulate the chemical industry, apparently written by the chemical industry.
Australia finds that plain packaging for cigarettes reduces smoking, especially among teenagers.
Dallas thugs shot Jason Harrison dead because he didn't drop his screwdriver quickly.
Obama said he will reevaluate the US approach to the Israel-Palestine issue in response to Netanyahu's rejection of peace.
Female family mediators in Gaza try to reduce the effects of the
oppression of women introduced by Hamas. But they too face the
obstacle of
unequal
treatment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli fanatics trying to push Palestinians out of Hebron are supported by a US charity with a tax exemption.
Israel is trying to force the Sub Laban family out of a house in Jerusalem where it has lived since the area was under Jordan's control. The case uses a bizarre and unfair technicality, claiming that the family "abandoned" the house during many years when Israel fanatics blocked it from using the house.
UK banks are closing the accounts of many people and organizations associated with anything that banks fear might cause some sort of trouble.
Tarawa, and Kiribati in general, are being inundated as our carbon emissions make sea level rise.
Rachel Corrie's family presses the US to obey US law and withdraw funding for Israel on account of its contempt for Palestinians' human rights.
The US Border Patrol was expanded so fast that there was no chance to choose good people or train them right. So it is no surprise that one of them murdered a border crosser and raped another.
The question is, will it maintain the impunity typical of thugs.
To stop thugs from going hog-wild writing tickets, don't let the fines go to the organization that employs them.
Serbia Arrests Seven Men Over 1995 Srebrenica Massacre.
A lawyer in Pakistan was assassinated; he had defended the doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden.
Forest Sustainability Certification Gains Ground.
Islamist terrorists attacked tourists visiting the Bardo museum in Tunis.
Those fanatics hate the Roman mosaics as well as the tourists that come to see them.
I hope Tunisia does not use this as an excuse for trampling human rights.
Lots of baby sea lions are dying on the California coast. The heat of the ocean has pushed the fish away.
We're going to be seeing thousands of such problems around the world.
Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Chris Christie have scandals about using private email accounts, like Clinton.
A now melting Antarctic glacier could raise sea level 11 feet (3.5 meters).
Virginia has passed a law that data from license plate cameras can only be kept for a week, unless relevant to an active criminal investigation.
I wonder whether thugs will circumvent this rule by giving copies of the data to other agencies, and private data base companies, which will not be subject to this rule.
Oxford University refused to decide about divestment from fossil fuels, so alumni occupied some university offices, and others are planning to return their diplomas as a protest.
The Amazon rain forest is sick, even where it has not been cut down. Its ability to sink carbon has been reduced.
This is a positive feedback effect. We may have pushed the climate so far that it is going to roll over the cliff even if we stop pushing.
French commedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala was convicted of "condoning terrorism".
Dieudonné's statement, "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly", is not explicit about its meaning; it requires interpretation. I think it means he identifies with both the killers and the victims. It is certainly not an endorsement of the killings. Thus, I think that this was a miscarriage of justice, even granting that "condoning" can be a crime.
However, making the expression of opinions a crime is an attack on human rights in the first place.
Switzerland will return 2 billion dollars of dictator Abacha's loot to Nigeria.
Republicans are pushing state laws to permit discrimination of any kind, as long as it is based on religious.
Shi'ite militias destroyed Sunni entire villages last year, fighting against PISSI.
Ghana is making a success of democracy, providing education and health care to everyone.
Will the US catch up with Ghana?
10,000 protesters are attacking the poverty-inducing policies of the European Centray Bank.
Netanyahu won reelection by stirring up fear and calling opponents traitors.
He explicitly rejected allowing a Palestinian state, putting him openly against peace and against most other powers (including the US).
I hope some of them will have the courage to downgrade diplomatic and economic relationships with Israel until it changes this policy and starts evacuating its colonies in Palestinian territory.
The biggest threats to Iran are degraded water, land and air. The US and Israel are minor worries by comparison.
Hertz puts cameras in rental cars and says, "Don't worry, we won't watch you."
I ask Hertz: do you track cars everywhere?
California's measures to reduce water use seem too weak to do the job.
This UK is considering a massive tidal power scheme.
A large subsidy makes sense for projects like this because they help avoid global heating disaster. What better use could our money be put to?
Benito Vasquez-Hernandez has been jailed for almost 3 years as a "material witness". He is going crazy and does not understand the situation enough to handle a hearing properly to get out of jail.
France is censoring web sites for political opinions, and Canada is proposing legislation to do the same.
UK thugs still fear legal reprisals if they talk about the MP they reportedly found in a sex party with teenagers.
Thugs that attack protesters are protected in Egypt, too.
US citizens: call on Congress to support several bills to reduce the influence of rich people's money on elections.
Within a decade, wind generators will be cheaper than fossil fuel power plants.
Unfortunately, we haven't got a decade to wait lackadaisically to cut down on fossil fuels. We must take strong measures by 2017.
Wind power would be cheaper already if fossil fuels were taxed to cover the cost that their emissions impose on society.
For gasoline, that is estimated at almost 4 dollars per gallon, more than the price of gasoline in the US.
I advocate taxing fossil fuels to cover these costs, mainly so as to use the market to move society away from them. As for politicians that say they will make gasoline cheaper, they are pandering to the foolish side of human nature.
Palestinians are resisting the occupation by trashing Israeli products brought into Palestine.
This accompanies a growing series of regular and permanent nonviolent protests against the occupation and theft of Palestinian land.
Syriza is negotiating with Russia as a possible saviour from euro-austerity.
It makes perfect sense to me.
Although Israel rejects its responsibility for crushing Rachel Corrie to death, activists still rally around her name.
The US is still playing games over Shaker Aamer.
Pakistan has gone on an execution spree, including someone who was tortured into a confession at age 14.
Obama followed Bush in excluding White House emails from the Freedom of Information Act.
Three UK judges have been dismissed for the shocking practice of watching porn.
I expected such an idiotic policy only from the prudes in the US.
A flame retardant common in digital devices may cause weight gain.
The US Government Is Pressuring Europe to Dial Back Its Pesticide Rules.
The Tories want to reduce inheritance tax. As if the rich people in the UK didn't have enough advantages already!
Two scientific teams concluded that Yasser Arafat was not poisoned; one team says it seems that he was.
Obama's War on Whistleblowers Leaves Administration Insiders Unscathed.
Anwar Ibrahim's daughter has been arrested, unconstitutionally, for making a speech in Malaysia's parliament.
This defiance of parliamentary immunity shows that the state is blatantly crushing opposition.
A Deputy Secretary of Energy (through 2014) who promoted nuclear power while in that job has gone to work for a nuclear fuel company.
200 domestic workers the Philippines are stuck in the Philippine embassy in Saudi Arabia, much like Julian Assange, unable to leave because of charges of illegal sex. In some cases, this is because they were raped by their employers.
Islamic law treats a woman's testimony as less than a man's, so a woman who claims to have been raped gets convicted and punished. That is one of many gross injustices in Islamic law.
Many Muslims disapprove of that approach to law, but there is no denying that Islam is where it comes from.
Cruelty in the name of Islam is no less evil than cruelty in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Buddhism. There are people who advocate making a special case for Islam, in response to western colonialism and US aggression against some Muslim countries (though Saudi Arabia isn't one of them). That's no excuse!
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are not alone in this. The UK has a similar law which is ' turning domestic workers into modern-day slaves'.
Domestic workers are enslaved in other places too.
This is why I do not support calls to prevent enslavement of prostitutes by banning some aspects of prostitution. Shall we ban domestic work, or employing domestic workers? The methods of trafficking and enslavenment are used in many areas of work.
North Koreans are working in slave-like conditions in other countries.
I suspect they have been sold into slavery by the North Korean regime.
See the enslaved workers page.
Police Officer Regina Tasca won her job back. She sued after being fired for trying to stop her coworkers from acting like thugs.
She deserves the honor of being called a police officer because she has demonstrated she isn't a thug.
People have been sentenced to prison in Burma for "insulting religion" by advertising their bar with a poster of the Buddha listening to headphones.
What would the Buddha tell the Burmese authorities, if he were there today? "The poster makes me smile. The pain you felt when you saw that poster comes from your attachments. For your spiritual progress, you should meditate more and prosecute less."
UK thugs caught an MP having sex with teenagers in the 1980s, and were ordered to destroy all the evidence on pain of prosecution.
The controversial Mars One project seems to be a hollow shell.
Perhaps it was just a publicity stunt.
Doing most of our interaction through computer screens can affect the nature of social relationships.
The EPA disregarded legal requirements when approving the pesticide flupyradifurone, which resembles neonicotinoids in that it pervades all the tissues of the plant.
Obama promised transparency on the use of drones for targeted killings, but has not followed through with it.
Conservation measures for Florida manatees are effective; it seems that numbers have increased a little.
California has one year of water left, according to a leading scientist.
Iran's repression is getting worse, according to UN special rapporteur.
Egypt plans to build a new capital city in the desert. So far it is not clear where the energy and water will come from.
A campaign for the UK government to allow undercover thugs to tell the public what they did.
US citizens:
call on the US
to cancel all student debt.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the US government to support the revolutionary Syrian Kurds
that are fighting PISSI.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The expense of reliable contraception is a force that increases inequality, pushing American women from poor families into poverty via unwanted pregnancy.
Eating a lot of salt makes autoimmune diseases more likely.
The US credibility problem in the Middle East comes from being ineffective and inconsistent. It's not a reason for bullheadedness.
Thousands of low-paid college teachers in Toronto are on strike.
Judge Brockmeyer, who sentenced many poor people to debtor's prison in Ferguson, has resigned.
That does not mean victory. This issue is much bigger than one judge in one court.
World Cannot Prosper Without Cutting Carbon Emissions, Says Climate Group.
The Argument for Divesting from Fossil Fuels Is Becoming Overwhelming.
How the rapid heating of the Arctic leads to heavy winter snow and intense summer heat in the US and Europe.
The FBI inveigled Sami Osmakac into agreeing to a fantasy terrorist plot. Are we any safer?
The growth of US poverty paces the growth of US extreme wealth.
A Global War on Nature and the Politics of Extinction.
Burmese monks have sued the interior minister for burning protesters with chemical spray.
Substances have different biological effects when in nanomaterial form, and science knows very little about what they are. Meanwhile, regulatory systems treat them as equivalent.
The FBI intentionally strands US citizens abroad by putting them on the "no fly" list, to pressure them to become informants. Sometimes the FBI has another country torture them, too.
Vanuatu has been devastated by a hurricane, and its president points out that global heating is part of the cause.
Bread is not a good food for ducks.
Poor people in Britain impoverished by the "bedroom tax" have in many cases become ill.
Surprisingly many Fukishima children are being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, but it is not yet clear whether this is due to examining them for that disease with special care.
There should be a similar project to examine Japanese children of the same age from comparable district far away from Fukushima. It would provide a control group.
The FCC's form of network neutrality has a big flaw: it encourages ISPs to punish their customers for the copyright industry.
Park Yeon-mi, who escaped from North Korea, now faces efforts to kill or discredit her.
The UK right-wing Conservative party and centrist Labour party both rejected a demand from MDs to fund the National Health Service properly.
That would require taxing the rich and their businesses, and these parties have both surrendered to them.
Bruce Schneier gave an interview on his book about surveillance and what it does to society. Part 2.
US rivers are being polluted by salt applied to roads in winter.
This affects the humans who get their water from the rivers, as well as the animals that live in them or drink from them.
Under the pretext of preventing abuse Twitter is harassing tor users to give up their anonymity, but it's a dumb way to fight trolls.
PISSI taught prisoners to appear calm when beheaded by subjecting them to repeated mock beheadings.
The US Supreme Court ruled Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko cannot sue for damages for the torture he experienced in Guantanamo.
The proper redress is to prosecute those responsible for torturing him and many others — starting with Dubaya. Shame on the Obama regime for protecting torturers!
The high efficiency of massive digital surveillance makes it possible for the rich to flaunt their riches without fear the rest will rise up against plutocracy.
In a few decades, the effects of global heating will mean that the rest, instead of lingering in poverty, start dying instead.
US citizens: support the Student Loan Bill of Rights.
I support this and the proposal to forgive student loans.
UK reporter John Key is being prosecuted for paying an official for secrets, which he published and revealed big scandals.
US citizens: thank the FCC for supporting net neutrality.
US citizens: tell Senate Republicans not to sabotage a bill to aid people who have been trafficked by adding an anti-abortion rider.
Everyone:
call on the
government of India not to allow GM corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
China demands that the Dalai Lama must reincarnate in Tibet so that China can choose the next one.
Kalpona Akter, Bangladeshi labor leader, was arrested by The Children's Place for trespassing as she tried to deliver a petition.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change endorsed the divestment movement.
The Michigan Attorney General tried to harass a reporter with unjustifiable subpoenas.
[PISSI] Are Not The Only Ones Committing Great Acts of Vandalism.
US citizens:
call
on your representatives to oppose bills to strip wolves of their
endangered species protection.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone:
call
on Florida to investigate the order not to talk about "global
warming" and "climate change".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for blocking court access to rape victims' therapy records.
Everyone: stand behind striking Shell oil refinery workers who demand more attention to safety.
US citizens:
call
on the CFPB to ban banks from imposing arbitration on their
customers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the big US banks to say what they pay executives, especially those that move to government jobs.
The government should never hire anyone who has worked for a big bank in the past 5 years as anything more than a teller.
The US is gradually building up a DNA data base about everyone, taking samples from everyone who is arrested and all newborns.
Put this together with the fact that false DNA evidence can be constructed to frame someone, and you have a real problem.
At present, scientists cannot identify anything in a person's DNA that would show the person is prone to crime — except a Y chromosome, which shows that the person is male. (Most criminals are male.) In 50 years, maybe that will be possible. The question would be, what is the right use to make of that information?
UK libel law continues to hamper publication there.
Projecting how global heating will impact food production in Australia. It doesn't look good.
Avijit Roy's widow demands Bangladesh identify and prosecute the thugs who watched as he was killed.
Kurds say that PISSI used chemical weapons.
CISA is much worse than CISPA — think of it as PAT RIOT Act 2.0.
Some supermarkets in Venezuela now check purchasers' fingerprints.
This applies to public supermarkets in provinces near the frontier, where there is a lot of smuggling. The smuggling occurs because the state subsidizes certain commodities for the sake of the poor. It would be better to switch to a system like US food stamps.
Australia's right-wing government claims that it can't afford to support so many old people, so it will have to hang them out to die.
The argument is fallacious, as usual, and surely based on the assumption that tax rates on the wealthy will be kept low.
The effects of global heating are destroying ancient relics from Chile to Siberia.
1/4 of British adults before middle age are delaying having children because the costs of living are too high.
Fewer births is a good thing, but there are better ways to achieve that than by pushing many people into poverty.
Global heating tends to reduce the summer storms that bring cooler air from the ocean. As a result, it will tend to increase summer heat waves, above and beyond the general heating.
If you want to watch the video on YouTube, please do not view it directly from the site, since that will run nonfree Javascript code in your browser. Protect your freedom by using youtube-dl to download it.
Last week it emerged that Iraqi Shi'ite militias were torturing and killing Sunni prisoners. The US and Iraqi governments said they were surprised.
They said the same thing 10 years ago, after Bush forces troops found Iraqi government agents torturing and killing prisoners. The troops were ordered to go away and say nothing about it.
None so surprised as he who will not remember.
Reports say that US air strikes in Syria have killed over 100 civilians.
All in all, that is not very many compared with the 76,000 killed last year in Syria.
Most of the US air strikes in Syria have been done on the battlefield. I expect Syrians to understand that there is no way to make battlefields safe, and civilians try to stay away from them.
However, attacks on Raqqa are a different case. That is not a battlefield, so air strikes there are more likely to bystanders. It is hard to flee Raqqa; even harder for women.
Swedish prosecutors have agreed to interview Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
There are good reasons to believe that the real purpose of this interview was only to get their hands on him and render him to the US. But the Swedish Supreme Court told them to stop dragging their heels and get the interview done.
A Chilean officer, accused of murdering prisoners for Pinochet, was allowed to teach for years in the US National Defense University which disregarded the complaints against him.
The US coordinated and encouraged the repression in Chile and other nearby countries in the 1970s, and it continued afterward to shield many of those that carried it out.
I disagree with one person quoted in the article. These murders were not terrorism. Murder of prisoners is a different crime. Stretching the meaning of "terrorism" is an obstacle to clear thinking, so let's not do it.
How We End The War Over Standardized Testing.
There is broad opposition to Canada's proposed law for more state surveillance.
The opposition says general surveillance should have more oversight, but the problems are much bigger than that.
Is the Washington Post a state-funded newspaper? Not directly or explicitly, but its owner gets lots of money from the CIA and other US agencies.
It appears Tony Robinson had taken psychedelic mushrooms and was acting strangely when he was shot dead by thugs. A friend had called them to get help for him. They could have dealt with him without shooting him.
We see a pattern of situations where a black or hispanic person is the object of suspicion — even for something not the slightest bit wrong, such as carrying an air rifle to the sales clerk in order to buy it — and thugs resort immediately to deadly force.
The former (and only elected) president of the Maldives was convicted of "terrorism", i.e., illegally arresting a judge.
I don't know whether he arrested a judge, and if so I don't know whether it was illegal, but it certainly wasn't terrorism. Therefore it is clear that this trial was bogus.
The CIA director confirmed that the CIA still hands over prisoners to other governments and still interrogates prisoners in collaboration with them.
That would not be a bad thing if we could count on both countries to do this in an acceptable way. However, in the last decade the US has been known to turn prisoners over to governments that tortured them and even cooperated in the interrogation while letting the other country's thugs do the torture.
The New York Thug Department tried to whitewash the killing of Eric Garner in Wikipedia.
Inequality means two parallel human societies, increasingly with different rules for the poor and for the rich.
The current low price of oil is because renewable energy and economic slowdown have slowed the expected increase in oil demand, resulting in a glut.
The low price is causing cancellation of many dangerous oil extraction projects. The article says that the low price will not increase consumption much. I hope that is true, but in general one would expect the demand to be somewhat elastic.
Spain's senate approved the law to impose big fines on protesters and ban publishing images of thugs.
Ferguson protesters were arrested in their house by a SWAT team with guns pointed at them. They were suspected of shooting two thugs, simply because they ran away from the protest after the shots were fired.
I wonder: was the confiscated pistol legal? If so, why was it confiscated?
Due to the economic slowdown in China, and high investment in renewable energy, the world's CO2 emissions did not increase in 2014. That is a step towards avoiding disaster.
It is not enough, however, because in 2013 we were already emitting much more CO2 per year than the Earth's systems could dispose of. Thus, the CO2 level in the atmosphere did increase in 2014, just as in 2013.
Under Putin, people in the Crimea that express support for Ukraine are jailed, fired, even exiled.
However, charges have been dropped against Svetlana Davydova, who informed Ukraine of evidence that Russian troops were invading Ukraine.
CISA Cybersecurity Bill Advances Despite Privacy Concerns.
This was formerly known as CISPA.
The racist chant of the SAE students was despicable, but they should not be punished for saying things we don't like.
The fraternity isn't a person and doesn't have the same rights that students have. There is room for taking systematic action to teach people the wrong in racist views, without violating their rights.
US snoops are claiming, yet again, that ending massive surveillance would help terrorists. That is bullshit, since massive surveillance never caught any terrorists.
They know this is false, or should know, which makes them dishonest or incompetent.
In Portland, Oregon, thugs arrested homeless people and charged them with theft for using a "privately owned" electrical outlet on the street to get less than one cent's worth of electricity.
The word "thugs" is hardly adequate for this gratuitous cruelty to people who are down and out and are not hurting anyone.
Rutgers University sprung a surprise: mandatory face recognition for online courses.
McDonalds is suing to overturn Seattle's new minimum wage law, claiming that it violates McDonalds' "rights as a person".
Judge Brockmeyer, who jailed Ferguson residents for small fines they could not afford to pay, owes $170,000 in back taxes himself.
This problem is bigger than one selfish jerk. We must abolish debtor's prison in the US, no matter what disguises it adopts.
Thomas Piketty's recommendations for how to fix the euro-zone's austerity.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics made a revised, higher estimate of how many Americans are killed by thugs. Human rights researcher Patrick Ball explains why that is probably still an underestimate.
Armand Martin's widow asked the Albuquerque thug department for videos of the shooting of her husband. They arrived encrypted, so she has to sue them to get the key.
In the US, if you get cancer before you are old, you are likely to get fired and become unemployable. And maybe your spouse as well.
The solution to this is a national health service. Properly funded (with less than what we pay now), it would provide better care on the average.
By funding this from income or wealth taxes, rather than payroll tax, we would eliminate a big incentive to replace workers with machines.
US citizens:
object
to buying possibly contaminated chicken from China for school
lunch programs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Many US policies amount to bias against children of unmarried parents.
UK thugs infiltrated unions to spy on them, until 2008.
The Blurred Lines Copyright Verdict is Bad News for Music.
It is not a precedent, but it indicates a danger that may occur in other cases.
Bulgaria's Constitutional Court rejected mandatory data collection about everyone's phone and internet connections.
From 1951 to 2010, Democratic presidents have reduced unemployment while Republican presidents have tended to boost the stock market.
Wall Street's bonuses add up to the pay of a million workers at minimum wage.
Why Was an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Tracking a Black Lives Matter Protest?
The Thai military government's new method for knocking down the Shinawatra supporters: voting to ban 250 of their former elected officials from politics.
The greatness of Dr Ambedkar.
Lower fishing quotas in Europe would allow fish stocks to double, and the sustainable catch would double too.
Fishing policy is always based on the short term.
How could Obama intervene in Syria against PISSI.
There is no obvious feasible way for the US to fight PISSI in Syria without helping Assad. The non-jihadi Arab opposition to Assad is almost nonexistent, and supporting it would be meaningless.
The only other forces in Syria opposed to Assad and PISSI are the democratic-socialist Kurds. I'd love to see them get support, but they may not want to do more than defend their own territory, and they may not be welcomed by Arabs.
Greece demands $500 billion from Germany in reparations for World War I and World War II.
This is in response to Germany's current economic warfare against Greece, carried out through the eurozone austerity.
Afghan performance artist Kubra Khademi walked around Kabul wearing steel armor fashioned to look like a sexy woman.
The curses and death threats she received demonstrate the arrogance of misogynous men. Misogyny is found in many parts of the world, but Islamic countries are the worst extreme; men claim the right to murder women and feel no shame about it.
This is why we must fight and defeat PISSI and other Islamists — though indiscriminate use of armed force is not a likely way to win.
Mexico effectively offered $20 million to movie companies for changes in the story of the next James Bond film.
The article does not say explicitly that the movie companies accepted the deal, but that appears to be the case.
The US military has a similar practice: it cooperates only with films that will present a pro-military point of view, thus discouraging the making of films that criticize the US military or US wars.
Companies are pushing school software applications into classrooms with no checks about whether they respect students' privacy, or even whether they work.
The article notices only the tip of the iceberg. These programs are proprietary software, and teaching students to use proprietary software is wrong. If they send any data about a student to a company, even the student's name, that violates the student's privacy.
Americans, don't use tax preparation companies, says a former employee of one.
The Republican letter to Iran crowns a 6-year Republican career of sabotaging the US and taking state programs hostage.
The size of student loans in the US makes them an economic problem for the country as a whole, as well as a chain on the leg of students that did not get good jobs.
Ethiopia seems to be spying on the journalists of an independent TV channel based in the US and directed at Ethiopians.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats not to join Republicans in sabotaging diplomacy with Iran.
US citizens: urge your congresscritter to oppose Blackburn's anti-net-neutrality bill.
US citizens: call on senators to preserve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Everyone: call on California Governor Brown to ban fracking and stop injection of toxic wastes that can pollute water supplies.
Obama absurdly declared Venezuela a "threat to U.S. security", as an excuse to impose economic sanctions.
He is also "concerned" about Venezuela's "human rights violations", such as accusing a few opposition politicians of joining a coup plot allegedly organized by the US (which organized one around 12 years ago) but strangely unconcerned about Saudi Arabia's across-the-board human rights violations or Mexico's.
I really am concerned about the charges against those opposition politicians. They could be valid, but I can't be confident of that, and that is the cause of my concern. I hope they will get fair trials and that they won't be convicted without real proof of complicity.
Jessie Hernandez' autopsy suggests thugs lied about the circumstances of shooting her dead: the car was passing them, not heading for them.
Mark Lynas insists that humanity will triple its energy use, whether that brings global disaster or not; then he hopes it won't. It is the arrogance of shut eyes.
Lynas misrepresents Naomi Klein, who did not call for eliminating the free market, capitalism, and growth. She said we must defeat what I call the plutocratic political system: "privatisation of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending."
That system gives the fossil fuel companies the power to block the measures that are needed to avoid disaster, and they are using it with great skill to ensure we charge headlong off the climate cliff.
To reestablish democracy, we must abolish plutocracy. But we can still have private businesses, and economic growth insofar as we can achieve it while keeping resource usage to a sustainable level.
35 years from now, every year will be hotter than today's record heat.
Egypt censored a newspaper article that claimed government departments don't pay their workers employer-taxes.
If the failure to pay causes the workers not to get the pensions they are entitled to, or makes the workers pay that tax instead, that is a real wrong — to the workers. Otherwise, it is not clear to me that this "evasion" of taxes from the state to the state really affects anything substantial.
The censorship of the article is a real issue even if the article's subject is not.
Thugs in Georgia shot an unarmed man who was walking nude outside. The man was manic-depressive, which is hardly a reason to kill him.
It seems thugs today are quick to shoot whenever they get the idea that something might be wrong.
The UK government underfunded the NHS, causing a backlog. Now it is using that as an excuse to take another step towards its medium-term goal of privatizing the NHS.
Its long-term goal is to get rid of universal healthcare, so that the poor can't afford it.
Someone shot and wounded two Ferguson thugs while others were protesting.
It seems plausible that this is a response provoked by the systematic violence and dishonesty of US thugs. Nonetheless, trying to kill them (I presume that was the intent) just because they are thugs is going too far. It is also a self-defeating response, because thugs will use this to try to put blame on nonviolent protesters.
A mother found shocking racism as her child began to read The Travels of Babar.
Books from the era before people learned to condemn racism often reflect the racism that was common at the time. If the book is of no great importance, we may as well forget it. But what if it is greatly loved for other reasons?
The racism of The Merchant of Venice has bothered people for a long time, and so has the sexism of The Taming of the Shrew. Rather than rejecting them, we discuss the issue of the bigotry. Perhaps it is better to do the same with Babar than to burn it.
An Indian court ordered removal of anti-coal-mine activist Priya Pillai from a list of people not allowed to travel abroad.
In Japan, some people have funerals for robot pets that have broken down.
I will be the first to admit that in principle a robot could have the same qualities that merit whatever-it-might-be as a dog, or a human. In principle, a robot could love as a human does, or at least as a dog loves a human. I am sure that these Aibos are not capable of that. Those people are fooling themselves.
But then, I've never seen much sense in funerals. When I miss someone who has died, it is a private sadness; a ceremony won't help me, but I can cope.
The person's body was important only because it housed a living person; with that person's death, the corpse is just a relic, and I don't see a point in fetishizing the relic. The only real importance of the corpse is that it can hurt or help living people.
Corpses of humans and other animals need safe disposal; burial and cremation are ways to dispose of a corpse safely and recycle its elements. That doesn't apply to robots, for which burial is not effective recycling.
Corpses of humans can also help people. Have you signed up as an organ donor? Have you willed your body for student surgeons to practice on? Those are important needs of society.
A Dutch court struck down collection of data about everyone's phone calls and internet contacts.
The financial crisis is responsible for over 12,000 suicides in Europe and the US from 2008 through 2010.
Banksters are more dangerous to our lives than terrorists, and this is not counting the other suffering (poverty, homelessness) that they cause, or the deaths due to lack of medical care, etc.
Parents of children used by Facebook are suing for a refund of money Facebook let the children spend using the parents' credit cards.
The civil war in Syria has cut life expectancy there by 20 years.
Global heating created the tinder for this war. When we talk about the effects of global heating in 30 years, imagine lots of such wars.
About B'Tselem, which reports the effects of Israel's occupation policies and war against Palestinians.
For mainstream Israel, merely reporting these effects is considered treason.
The increased poverty rate among Americans in some racial minorities result from bad policies.
The UN's top torture investigator has been waiting two years to visit Guantanamo, and federal and state prisons.
A lesson in how plutocrats bring rogue (i.e., ethical) governments to heel.
They haven't yet succeeded with the Swedish government, and I hope it tells them to jump in the lake.
Campaigning against the Barbie doll that listens (and snoops, and advertises).
The movie and record companies are transforming ICANN into an enforcement scheme for the war on sharing.
Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli ex-soldiers, shows Israelis how their occupation of Palestine is inherently based on cruelty and fear.
Pressuring and bashing teachers failed to improve education, but applying sports training methods to the activity of teaching enables many teachers to do it better.
An Australian report surveyed many experimental studies of applying homeopathy for many medical conditions and found there is no evidence it is effective for anything whatsoever.
Edzard Ernst spent 20 years looking for evidence that homeopathy was effective, but his experiments all said that it wasn't.
Everyone: call on Chris Christie to cancel the settlement that surrenders to Exxon.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the CARERs act, which would recognize
that marijuana has medical uses and get out of the way of
state-authorized medical marijuana distribution.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Justice Department not to let BP get tax deductions for further settlement payments for the Big Spill.
Everyone:
Tell
Big Tuna brands: stop destroying endangered sea life in catching
tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Kerry not to export armed drones.
Everyone:
call
on the mutual fund Franklin Templeton to get Sagent to stop making
drugs for executions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the US government to require food labels to state the amount of
added sugar.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Chicago thugs stole from some of the people that they temporarily disappeared in their Homan Square black site.
One of the men accused of killing Nemtsov said he was tortured into a false confession.
The owners of an apartment building in Florida make tenants agree to assign copyright on all reviews of the place, and even photos of the inside or outside of the building.
The article says this practice is already illegal. But you can also bypass it by showing a friend the problems and letting your friend (who hasn't signed such a contract) write about them and photograph them.
Identifying the "surveillance-innovation complex".
See also http://gnu.org/philosophy/stallmans-law.html.
The conventional method of economic development are supposed to bring everyone out of poverty while some get rich. As the rich claim an ever larger portion of humanity's production, this method is ceasing to bring the rest out of poverty.
One of the British women suing about being exploited by an undercover UK thug recently learned there was a tracking device in her car.
Australia agrees to avoid dumping dredging spoils on the Great Barrier Reef, in order to continue with the plan to damage it by shipping coal and then wipe it out by burning the coal.
Amnesty International is suing to end massive surveillance since that exposes people reporting human rights abuses to retaliation.
Wikipedia is suing too on behalf of its contributors, who might be endangered.
How Burmese thugs first approved, then attacked a protest by students against a law they say threatens academic freedom.
Someone I know wrote:
The Myanmar Police went completely out of control today in Letpadan, which is a reflection of poor discipline, training and leadership. Senior police officials let things get out of control and this was a huge failure on their part and they bear full responsibility. Where were they when their officers were pummeling unarmed students who were in no way fighting back or resisting? Where were they when marauding police entered houses and blocked highways in their effort to find students who were trying to escape capture and beatings? Protesters did try to push their way out and they did destroy the barbed-wire barricades, but the violent and brutal police response far exceeded what the police needed to do. To their credit, I did see small groups of Myanmar Police working hard to keep their undisciplined colleagues from beating students, and in some cases it looked like police were fighting among themselves as the good cops tried to protect the students and activists with their own shields. In one instance, I saw police put a helmet on the head of a Buddhist monk and hold their shields over his body while he was being taken away. So maybe some of that EU police training paid off.Here is what happened after.
We Need to Attack the Morality of Fossil Fuel Investment (not only point out that it may lose monetary value).
Acceptance of "smart watches" could teach people to regard their bodies as machines to be monitored and quantified, distracting them from other thought.
A leading global heating denialist is threatening to sue the authors of "Merchants of Doubt".
A Russian expat claims that around 42,000 different Russian troops have participated in the fighting in Ukraine at some time.
He also claims that many of them are conscripts and that special troops are deployed behind them to shoot them if they run away. The "Dzerzhinskiy division" is apparently named after the man who lead the Soviet political repression police agency.
I don't know how much confidence to place in the author of this report and I won't treat this as certain truth.
Saudi human rights campaigner Mohammed al-Bajadi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
An interview with Herbert Ziegler, who rejected Japanese government demands that he delete forced prostitution for the Japanese army from his history textbook.
Just about every nation has crimes to confess to. The US has plenty. So does Japan. The US has confessed to some, including mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and this made the American nation more ethical and humane. Japan should confess to its crimes in order to make the Japanese nation more ethical and humane.
Likewise, Turkey should confess to the genocide of the Armenians, to make the Turkish nation more ethical and humane, instead of prosecuting people that talk about it.
And all governments, including that of France, should stop legislating what history should say.
Racism in the SAE fraternity goes beyond one local branch.
Cuba has a shortage of food, and rations are not quite enough. But since Cuba has allowed some capitalism, most Cubans now envy the few who can use convertible currency to buy more food.
The question is, how to use capitalism rather than being used by it, as so many poor countries' non-elites are.
Justin Levitt has tried to list all cases of alleged voting under the wrong name in the US since 2000. He has found only 31 such accusations.
This is the measure of the fraud that supposedly justifies voter ID laws.
Israeli transportation planning has isolated the mainly Palestinian city of Nazareth.
For a change, it was Israeli soldiers rather than "settlers" that destroyed Palestinians' olive trees.
Netanyahu let slip that he opposes returning any of the seized Palestinian land as part of a peace agreement.
A Spanish court ordered a brothel owner to pay social security contributions for workers.
Clinton turned over the emails her people judged to be government-related, then deleted the rest.
This means there is no way anyone can check whether she omitted (intentionally or accidentally) some that were government-related.
Ferguson's city manager has quit/been fired. He pushed the harsh policy of using fines and jail to extract money from the poor. Other officials have quit after their racism was exposed.
This is good, but small-scale. A similar jail-the-poor system (tantamount to debtor's prison) exists around the US. We need to cure it generally, not just in Ferguson, and not city-by-city.
Iran's theocratic ruler wants to ban vasectomies and end subsidized contraception, to force women to have more babies.
Increasing the human population exacerbates all resource and environmental problems. If a government wants to population increase, it should invite immigrants. Of course, hardly anyone would want to go to Iran and live under a theocratic regime.
Sugar Industry Shaped NIH Agenda on Dental Research.
In Syria, a Kurdish libertarian socialist revolution that champions women's equality is standing up to PISSI.
Saudi Arabia blocked a speech by Sweden's foreign minister to a meeting of the Arab League; she was going to talk about democracy and human rights. So Sweden decided to let lapse an arms sale agreement with Saudi Arabia.
Bravo for Sweden, daring to criticize the injustice of Saudi Arabia's medieval policies and stop facilitating arms sales to their perpetrators. Every country should do this.
The shari'a law that the Arab League ministers praised is the enemy of human rights, especially for women but also for men.
Since the sales are legal without the agreement, I wonder what benefit the agreement actually provides to that company. Does it provide financing? Bypass regulatory requirements?
A United Nations human rights expert strongly condemned the U.S. on Tuesday for being the "only State in the world that still sentences [minors] to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole."
The expert actually said "children" but we don't need to stretch that word to make this point.
Regular feeding of antibiotics used to make pigs grow faster — but since 2000 it no longer has that effect.
The UK government is scapegoating the tiny fraction of people who are incapacitated by obesity, by threatening to bully them unless they get treatment. This is to distract from cutting the funds for mental health care that might provide useful treatment.
A call to abolish college fraternities.
A financial transactions tax could provide a lot of revenue to avoid austerity.
I am surprised by the idea of taxing derivatives less. Derivatives can destabilize the whole financial system, so it makes sense to tax them enough to discourage them somewhat.
Later: the explanation is that the tax on derivatives is stated as a fraction of the underlying assets, rather than the value of the derivative itself. Usually the value of the derivative is much less. I wonder, however, whether it is possible to create derivatives whose price includes the price of the asset and whether they would be a loophole.
American parents, let your children walk home from school — even just once.
There is hardly any danger to your children from random people on the street. It's the plutocrats and fossil fuel companies that are likely to really do so. Not this decade, of course — it will take time for things to get that bad.
Thugs in Madison, Wisconsin, entered Tony Robinson's apartment based on an accusation against him, and immediately shot him dead.
Madison's population is very liberal, and even its thugs are liberal, but the city has a big race problem.
The fight against global heating must target the extraction of fossil fuels, not just their use.
To win this fight, we need some courage. Do you have the courage to say "global heating" instead of the weaker-sounding "global warming" or "climate change"? This won't cost you anything except that a few people may ask why you use that unusual term (and that gives you an opportunity to explain). Can you take this tiny first step?
The Gates Foundation talks about women's rights but doesn't mention the fact that banning abortion kills women.
Islamist Egyptian rebels continue attacking regime forces in the Sinai.
These rebels want to impose a theocratic dictatorship, in place of the current military dictatorship that imposes unjust Islamic law in a less strict form. On the other hand, they seem to be more principled than PISSI: they only attack regime thugs and soldiers, not civilians.
I cheered the Egyptians who overthrew Mubarak to win freedom. Now Egypt has a choice between two forms of tyranny, each worse than the other.
The Cape Wind wind power farm is ready to proceed.
However, this is not the sort of urgency that we need if we are to avoid causing global heating disaster.
Obama criticized Republican senators for "wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran".
It is a valid point. Taking something important hostage and threatening to ruin it is standard Republican tactics, but this takes them further than usual.
Syriza talks about holding new elections if the eurozone's plutocrats reject its plans to end austerity in Greece.
The criticism of Syriza by Dr Bastian amounts to, "Syriza isn't playing ball with the plutocrats as it's supposed to."
In group decision making, those who are most confident tend to win, even if they are confident because they don't understand the issue.
The CIA worked for years to break the security of iThings. It is not clear how much their efforts succeeded or how much they were used.
A UN report says that Mexico makes a general practice of torturing suspects. All kinds of thugs are involved, and the military.
Senate Republicans are trying to convince Iran that it is useless to make a nuclear deal with the US.
Legally, their point is valid, but politically it is not. Any future US administration that considers ending a deal by which Iran proves it isn't building nuclear weapons will realize that the deal is better than no deal.
Unless that administration is seeking an excuse for war, as Netanyahu would want it to do.
In most of Australia, the state can order you not to talk with certain people any more, if they were ever convicted of any crime. In some parts, the state only has to declare them "suspects".
The Taliban-ridden Northwest Province of Pakistan is planning to impose official censorship of CDs.
Italy's Hacking Team Allegedly Sold Ethiopia's Despots Cyberweapons Used to Attack Journalists.
New Zealand's prime minister pledged to resign if New Zealand were doing massive surveillance. Now that we have proof that it does, he has retracted the pledge.
Pennsylvania and North Carolina also have some state agencies banned from mentioning "climate change".
People
On Food Stamps Make Healthier Grocery Decisions Than Most of Us.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
10 Myths about Fossil Fuel Divestment Put to the Sword.
Ecologically Disastrous Dams [in India] May Get the Go-Ahead.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s won voting rights for black Americans, but Republicans are taking them away again piecemeal.
Wyoming's legislature passed a bill to limit seizure of people's property without a trial, but the governor, a former prosecutor, vetoed it.
WordPress won a court case against the source of a false DMCA takedown notice. Unfortunately, the culprit has disappeared.
Activist Arrested for Showing Rape Documentary in Indian Village.
China Detains Feminist Activists over International Women's Day.
The US government wants to develop a remote medical scanner that can measure sensitive personal medical data without touching a person. It proposes to apply this to people en masse without probable cause to suspect them of anything.
The Rhino Rescue Project to protect rhinos by infusing dye and toxins into their horns. This is intended to make them unsalable, and beyond that, to make people scared to ingest any rhino horn, thus driving down the commercial impetus to kill rhinos.
The South African government opposes the plan, claiming it is untested and won't work at all unless it is done to all rhinos.
Here's the RRP's rebuttal.
It claims the government is trying to keep up the value of its stockpile of rhino horns, which it plans to sell.
I don't know whether the infusion method will be effective at driving down demand. If the toxin is not enough to cause noticeable symptoms to users, they may ignore it. Those who buy rhino horns as trophies may not care about it. Still, the idea is worth trying.
As for the need to do this to all rhinos, that gets easier and easier as the number of rhinos goes down.
The thugs of St Lucia are especially thuggish — they made a list of people to murder.
UN: Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers amounts to torture.
Abbott's response: tell Australians to blame the UN for "lecturing." The last thing Australians should do is think about substantive issue.
Putin admits ordering the military conquest of the Crimea. This conquest was disguised as a rebellion, but that was only a flimsy excuse for supporters to fool themselves. Some of the population may well have wanted union with Russia, though the Putinesque "election" gives us no real information about how many they were. But that doesn't change the fact that it was an invasion.
The "rebellion" in eastern Ukraine has some real supporters, but that too is an invasion.
Under Republican global heating denialist governor Scott, Florida's Department of Environmental Protection ordered employees from using the terms "global warming" and "climate change".
Also forbidden are "sea-level rise" and "sustainability".
Ironically, the term "climate change" was imposed by Republicans under the orders of Bush II, instead of "global warming", so as to downplay the danger.
I think that neither term does justice to the disaster we are causing, so I call it "global heating". Please join me.
NATO misrepresented what Gorbachev said about extending NATO to eastern Europe.
Proposing to include Ukraine in NATO was a foolish provocation of Russia.
Several Chechens associated with Kadyrov, the lord of Chechnya, have been accused of killing Boris Nemtsov.
Kadyrov has total power in Chechnya, but does so as a vassal of Putin. His henchmen would not kill someone in Moscow without orders from him, and he wouldn't give such orders without clearing it with Putin. If indeed his henchmen killed Nemtsov, Putin must have ordered it.
Apparently the plan is to claim they did it from Islamist fanaticism. But why pick Nemtsov, of all people, as their victim? It does not make sense.
An ex-ambassador said he was fired by Clinton for using Gmail, which State Department staff had been told not to do.
This may not mean that Clinton was hypocritical. Clinton did not use Gmail. If the rule was "Don't use Gmail", it is a wise rule, and she didn't violate it herself.
Puerto Rico is considering a law to fine parents of obese children.
Before trying this harsh method, how about helping parents, educating families, and so on?
Enbridge is building another large pipeline as an alternative to Keystone XL, stealthily piece by piece.
Scott Walker says plainly what he plans to do — then does something else really nasty.
The euro-zone, a monetary union without a political union, will cause increasing suffering, perhaps until it is ripped apart.
The southern countries that are suffering are going to suffer increasingly from global heating, too. Parts of them will become even drier than they are now.
A minority can find itself objectively oppressed even if the people in the majority are not individually worse.
Naomi Klein: Deregulated capitalism (plutocracy) blocked correcting the global heating problem when it would have been easy. The bigger changes needed now are blocked also by the "let's be calm and not make any rapid changes" attitude. But we have to take strong measures by 2017 to avoid catastrophic heating (beyond 2 degrees).
I think it is urgently necessary to show the plutocrats that if they kill hundreds of millions of people with global heating, they won't be permitted to keep their own families out of the collective disaster.
Political parties hardly ever touch substantive political questions any more, because they take for granted that anything "bad for business" is out of the question.
The survival of civilization is bad for business, so which side are you on? Plutocracy, or democracy?
Nairobi National Park is being chopped up by human activity and many species' numbers are dwindling.
The US investigation of Michael Brown's killing concluded he had had a fight with the thug while the thug was still in his car, and also that he was facing the thug when he was shot dead.
I am concerned about judging witnesses as credible because their testimony agrees with "other testimony". There may have been a more objective basis not made clear in the article, but the words of the article are consistent with calling witnesses "credible" if they support the conclusion that the investigators have reached.
However, the evidence from bloodstains seems to show it was not murder.
Uri Avnery on Netanyahu's speech to (not all of) the US Congress.
Melting ice on Greenland leaves a thin smattering of dust on the surface, which is enough to absorb more sunlight and speed up the melting.
If the Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level will rise by 7 meters (23 feet). Great cities will be inundated.
Why Fresh Water Shortages Will Cause the Next Great Global Crisis.
The causes are wasteful use, human overpopulation, deforestation and global heating.
The crisis is already starting, but since all the causes are increasing, so will the shortages. Decades-long droughts are predicted for California and the US midwest.
Mandatory drug tests for welfare applicants, in the states that have them, find that very few parents applying for welfare use illegal drugs. And denying welfare even to those few punishes their children horribly.
A company proposes to make 230 square km of palm oil plantation in Peru by cutting down rainforest. The Peruvian government is not blocking it.
Jeb Bush and Scott Walker have used private email addresses to conceal some public business while in public office. Other Republican presidential hopefuls have their own email scandals.
9 Social Panics That Gripped the Nation, Were Totally False, and Did Horrible Lasting Damage.
Colombia and the FARC agreed to truces to remove land mines.
The English middle class decreased 43% from 1980 to 2010. It must have decreased again in the past 5 years.
Better air quality helps children's lungs develop better.
Gasoline in the US ought to cost more than twice its current price to cover the damage caused by burning it.
Big "US" companies are using their billions, not to invest, or to pay workers, but merely to push up the stock price.
The gas emission cut pledges for the Paris conference fall far short of what is needed to prevent global disaster.
The US is being dragged towards an alliance with Syrian militias which are as theocratic and cruel as Saudi Arabia, and have been (or are) affiliates of al Qa'ida.
The UK is blackmailing Germany to keep secret what Germany leans about US/UK spying on German officials.
Human institutions (including major media) tend to ignore the coming global heating disaster, for psychological reasons as well as sometimes corrupt ones.
To overcome this requires many people to start to focus attention intensely on "leave it in the ground".
A Canadian faces the threat of a year in prison for refusing to tell his phone password to border thugs.
More about the voice spy Barbie doll.
The dentist who made patients agree to assign copyright of any reviews they made about the dentist has lost in court.
State laws to let science teachers teach imaginary scientific "controversies" are an excuse to replace science with established religion.
India Censors a Rape Documentary, and the Streisand Effect Goes Nuclear.
Unfortunately, the BBC got it removed from YouTube. It may not be available any more.
Since I have mentioned YouTube, please note that watching videos there in the usual way requires running nonfree software, which you shouldn't do.
Instead, use youtube-dl.
The Palestinian Authority has ended "security cooperation" with Israel, saying in effect that it won't maintain control for Israel.
Don't Believe Mainstream US Media Coverage of Venezuela.
Lots of federal officials are about to become lobbyists for companies they used to regulate. This has a corrupting effect on them while they are officials.
PISSI and other armed groups in Syria are looting and selling antiquities.
Removing them from a site without documenting them is not as bad as destroying them. But it destroys all the information that could have been obtained from their context. It is a tragedy that can never be repaired.
PISSI's affiliates in Libya may destroy ancient remains there.
A substitute teacher was told to teach a subject she didn't know, so she showed a gory and sexual horror movie, and was imprisoned for it.
It wasn't a good thing to do, but shouldn't be a crime.
US citizens:
Oppose
the natural gas export port in New York City.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Hillary Clinton to make the Clinton Foundation return the money donated by foreign governments.
US citizens: call on the Senate to oppose any treaty that proposes "investor-state" lawsuits for foreign companies.
US citizens:
call
on senators to oppose bills to sabotage negotiations with Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone:
Tell
Pfizer to quit ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: oppose development of a large mall and transport system in a part of the Grand Canyon.
Here is some more information about the proposed project.
The developers argue that if a small project (the skywalk) at the top of the canyon is ok, then a larger project going down to the bottom must be ok too. They think we are idiots.
An up-and-coming NYC businessman gained his success by stealing wages from the workers at his Papa Johns restaurants.
Senator McConnell called on states to refuse to design their own CO2 reduction plans. This means they will get the EPA's standard plan, which may be more inconvenient. Then the Republicans will blame this on the EPA.
Foreign governments donated millions to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Yet another oil train derailed, with cars bursting into flame.
Proper regulations could reduce the danger, but what we need to do is ship less oil.
Federal "forfeiture" policies inspire the sort of extractionist "law enforcement" found in Ferguson.
A proposed California bill would stop the state from doing business with companies that discriminate against transgender employees.
I think it is a step in the right direction.
"Flood Wall Street" protesters have been acquitted of charges; the thugs' order for them to disperse was ruled unconstitutional.
It is good that they were acquitted, but there must be some penalty for thugs that violate protesters' rights.
Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Help Me Tackle Student Debt.
UK thugs have continued compiling a data base for face recognition even though a court ordered them to stop.
Law is vital to limit the state, but thugs see it the opposite way. They cite laws (often together with lies) to attack mere citizens, then show contempt for the law when it gets in their way.
Jealous Indian students threw kerosene on a Dalit student and set her on fire.
Dams and other large projects in Brazil are run for the sake of kickbacks.
Leading politicians are being investigated.
China allowed an environmental documentary for a while; it was seen by 1/4 the population of China. But then the state began deleting it.
Political satire in Russia finds it hard to get any funding, as Russian TV won't show it.
Tumblr has banned the word "torrent" from its searches, claiming that the word is "offensive".
Another Republican bill to block network neutrality.
Paraguay is threatened by mandatory "data retention" (snooping by phone companies by ISPs).
New York City's quota system for thugs to be nasty to the public is a considerable cause of the cruelty of their practices.
Watching Faux News makes people worse informed.
(The article says "stupid", but I think it is more accurate to say that watching it is foolish, not stupid.)
The perverse expression "news consumers" treats news articles as a commodity. That might be the attitude of Faux News but it shouldn't be yours!
The damage done to human health by hormone-mimicking chemicals in products is enormous, and so is the economic cost of it.
The atrocities of the war in the Congo (DRC) have been given low priority even though they are bigger than anywhere else.
Companies that do speech recognition for phones and TVs distribute recording snippets for people to listen to, to get feedback on the recognition quality.
This is not a problem in itself, but illustrates the potential of these devices to spy on you — which is why you shouldn't trust speech recognition unless it is done inside your computer by free software.
Houston thugs target prostitutes and their customers, and present it (for no obvious reason) as a way to prevent trafficking.
Due to "three strikes" laws, Americans are sentenced to life in prison for crimes like accepting 5 dollars to go and buy pot for someone.
Because blacks are accused of crimes disproportionally often, things like this happen more often to them.
The Kansas Senate passed a bill allowing prosecution of teachers for giving students works that are "harmful to minors".
Under the rule of religious lunatics, that criterion will be stretched to include all sorts of things you would consider legitimate, including textbooks for sex education classes.
Obama's proposed commercial privacy law is pretty weak.
One good aspect is that it proposes, in principle, to limit what data may be collected. But that's not enough to make it worth anything.
US government surveillance is being concealed from the public by the convenient involvement of private companies, which make local governments sign contracts of secrecy.
This ought to be outright prohibited; whenever it is done, it is our duty to assume the worst about the secrets.
The total sea ice on Earth has been declining for decades. Sea ice is increasing near Antarctica, but the loss of sea ice in the Arctic is much greater.
US citizens: tell the US government not to let BP claim any more tax deductions for compensation for the Big Spill.
Petraeus Won't Serve a Day in Jail for His Leaks. Edward Snowden Shouldn't Either. Daniel Ellsberg points out that the charges Petraeus admitted to are just as serious as those against Snowden and other whistleblowers prosecuted by Obama. The main difference is the whistleblowers published dirt to serve the public, whereas Petraeus had only personal motives.
US citizens: call on Obama to curb militarization of thugs.
Everyone: sign the anti-Keystone-pipeline Unity Letter.
Some French politicians want to ban university students from wearing headscarves.
I fear such a ban would convince many Muslim women not to get an education.
Symbols of religion, such as headscarves and veils, should not be banned. The right to cover the face is important for everyone for other reasons.
However, symbols have meanings, and symbols of Islam stand for oppression of women (and, to a lesser extent, of men). The wearing of them deserves to be criticized (but not banned) by supporters of women's rights.
In Mexico, the arrest of drug gang "kingpins" causes the gangs to fragment, but this doesn't stop the drug smuggling or the corruption of politicians.
PISSI bulldozed Nimrud, an ancient Assyrian capital. The motive was sheer blind hatred for any thought that isn't Islam.
I think that the US should protect ancient sites by bombing any bulldozers found near them.
It was Dubya's invasion of Iraq that opened the doors to the looting of ancient sites, and the Bush forces didn't try to prevent it. That was an irreparable tragedy, but there is no reason to continue the inattention and allow more irreparable tragedy.
US citizens: phone Senator Wyden at 202-224-5244 to call on him to oppose the TPP for the sake of Internet freedom. (And all the other reasons, of course.)
Also phone your own congresscritter about it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The TPP would expose Americans to import of uninspected food products from countries with a history of food fraud.
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to ban glyphosate and 2-4,D.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
HSBC defrauded credit card users out of 1.5 billion dollars, and the UK regulatory agencies have tried their best to look the other way.
Instead of protecting the Great Barrier Reef, Australia is working hard to influence journalists to influence governments that are in UNESCO hoping it will wink at Australia's endangerment of the reef.
Thai protest leaders have been convicted of protesting.
This is part of a decade-long campaign of democracy suppression.
US Continuing Aggressive Probe Into WikiLeaks, Court Docs Reveal.
US citizens: support the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act.
As a Koch-funded court case threatens to leave 8 million Americans without medical coverage, but the real problem with Obama's health care system is that it leaves 50 million other Americans without it.
The case is based on a lie about how some states decided not to set up their own medical care exchanges.
The Clinton email "scandal" shows how US politics tends to turn substantive general issues into personal scandals.
The Demonisation of Russia Risks Paving the Way for War.
There are points in the article that I think are mistaken. For instance, the threat to Mariupol is not an uprising — none occurred there. Rather, what Ukraine's forces are defending Mariupol from is a straightforward military attack based on Russian artillery.
Also, the focus on Putin personally may be valid, because he runs a personal tyranny rather than a party-based one. He is much less bad than Hitler, but that is still very bad. With so many thugs stationed in the area, it seems likely that Nemtsov's killer was supported by someone who could order the thugs to look the other way.
Nonetheless, I linked to the article because its criticism of US and NATO actions seems to be valid.
What should we make of a sexual experience "halfway between a stolen kiss on the cheek and a full-blown rape."
A UK court ruled that suspicions about some violent protesters justify surveilling all protesters.
Turkish journalist Mehmet Baransu faces imprisonment for publishing a leaked document that disclosed plans for a military coup.
I wonder if Erdogan is imitating Obama's War on Journalism.
Berlin wanted to build on former Tempelhof airport, but the people insisted on making it park and garden instead.
An increase in business flexibility is making North Korea more productive.
It is starting on the same road that China has followed, which leads to capitalism without democracy.
The US is following a different road towards the same destination.
Iran is blinding a criminal, one eye at a time, as a punishment.
Throwing acid at someone is very cruel, and Iran's response endorses that same cruelty.
Road construction threatens the world's wildernesses.
Michael Brown's family will sue the city of Ferguson.
Some examples of the oppression of the thugs in Ferguson.
If the US has a Fukushima-like nuclear meltdown, will the US respond like Japan and designate a higher level of radiation exposure as "acceptable"?
US citizens: call on Obama not to allow Billionaire Polluters to get a tax deduction for fines for big spill.
Sex workers are campaigning world-wide against criminalization of their profession or their customers.
I am very disturbed by Washington State's proposal to seize property from customers. That sounds like "civil forfeiture", which usually amounts to punishment without trial.
McDonald's pledge to stop regularly feeding antibiotics to chicken has a big loophole that might make it mean nothing at all.
Everyone: Call on Saudi Arabia to stop punishing Raif Badawi and others for expressing their views.
A UK thug commander told thugs under his command to gather evidence to blame soccer fans for a deadly disaster.
Florida citizens: tell your legislators to reject the bill that would criminalize publication on anonymous websites — perhaps not just in Florida.
This is being done in the name of the War on Sharing, which means it is likely to be unjust.
US citizens:
call
on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management not to allow drilling near
Atlantic and Arctic coasts.
Everyone:
call on Florida's
legislature not to imprison people for using a toilet without a
birth certificate to prove gender.
Lessons
US progressives can learn from Syriza.
Due to continuing deflation, the UK's
median
income is now back to what it was before the crisis.
But that's because retired people are doing better. Those not old
enough to retire remain
worse
off than in 2007.
The rich and big businesses are much richer now. It's time for some
redistribution.
Leaks attributed to al-Sisi's office show gross illegality and
corruption; the question is
whether
they are authentic.
Arctic sea ice is getting thinner, fast. It has
lost
2/3 of its thickness since 1975.
European governments allowed businesses to weaken
Europe's
proposed standards for coal power plants — they are weaker
than what China already has.
Sunnis are
fleeing
Tikrit, afraid of being massacred by Shi'ite militias if they
defeat PISSI.
It is vital to win Sunnis away from supporting PISSI somehow, but is
easier said than done. It would help if there were more Sunnis in the
army fighting PISSI.
I've proposed training and arming some of the thousands of women that
PISSI raped. That would take time — months at least. But if
that is a way to avoid proving to Sunnis that they have to support
PISSI, it would be worth waiting.
Florida has been
stopped
from requiring welfare applicants to do drug tests.
The contrast with General Petraeus highlights the
injustice
of Chelsea Manning's sentence.
EU commissioners are
gutting
the parliament's proposed privacy rules.
I would guess that the parliament's version was inadequate to start
with, limiting the use rather than the collection of data. That is
inadequate
in general.
Leaders of a right-wing party in Chile have been
charged
with fraud and bribery.
Donations for aid to refugees in the Middle East are being blocked by
banks that are
hypercautious
about being accused of supporting terrorism.
The War on Drugs is
interfering
with research into whether mind-affecting drugs can help treat
depression or addiction.
The example of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shows
flaws
in the prevailing approaches for discouraging people from becoming
violent islamists.
Michael Brown's killer
won't
face charges of violating his civil rights, because there is no
proof he was acting out of conscious racism.
Given the narrow terms of this decision, I can't say it is wrong.
Rather, it shows that this particular law can't overcome the impunity
of thugs, which needs to be corrected in a more general way.
Part of the weakness is that it addresses only demonstrable
intentional racism on the part of thugs. It is already clear that
unconscious
racism is enough to lead thugs to kill lots of black men and black
children.
Meanwhile, killing an unarmed white or women is just as bad, though it
happens less often.
Ignore
the Drumbeat of Doom, the NSA's Call Records Program Didn't Stop a
Single Terrorist Attack.
McDonalds
says
it will switch to chicken not routinely fed antibiotics.
This may be an advance towards what we really need: to
forbid
routinely dosing farm animals with antibiotics.
However, McDonalds made a similar pledge two years ago and
did
not implement it.
The Department of Justice accused Ferguson's thug department of
systemic
and individual racism and unconstitutional harassment of the
public, and says it will impose changes.
More
about these racist practices.
Snowden continues to
negotiate
to be able to return to the US without facing an unfair trial, but
there has been little change in the situation.
Texas State Senate leaders are trying to
ruin
public education and subsidize religious schools.
Benjamin
Netanyahu's Fantasy World (about Iran and nuclear weapons).
New Zealand
records
all the phone calls and emails of many countries in the Pacific
Ocean and makes the contents available for the NSA to search.
The Indian state is trying to suppress a
documentary
about a shocking rape and murder. The officials object to showing
the world the misogyny that prevails in India.
The BBC
showed
the movie early to forestall Indian pressure to block the showing.
Selling off profitable state assets is
bad
long-term policy if the goal is to support the state.
I think it is clear that the reason for this practice is that the
private interests that will profit have control over the state.
The FBI's reports of people killed by thugs
omitted
more than half of them, for 8 years (or more).
Media coverage of alternative "cures" for cancer is
dangerous
if it fails to show they don't work.
Mexico has
arrested
two drug gang leaders recently.
Such arrest do not interfere much with drug gangs' operations, though
they might set off wars of succession. However, the fact that two
have recently been caught suggests that some victory has been won over
the corruption that has enabled them to hide before.
Twitter is
blocking
users from accessing using Tor unless they register a mobile phone
number.
This is a big change for the worse. And I wonder what happens to
someone that hasn't got a mobile phone.
Chomsky: Snowden should be honored by the US for
exposing
massive surveillance whose purpose is to control the population.
(Nothing to do with terrorism; that's just the excuse for it.)
Ireland has legislated a
requirement
to sell tobacco in plain packaging.
The "trade" treaties that enable tobacco companies to interfere with
such laws ought to be abolished for many, many reasons.
Australia is
moving
to impose total surveillance on Australians' phone calls and internet
use; this will be available for nearly any sort of investigation,
without a warrant.
All this because of one criminal incident. It's an insane
overreaction.
US-imposed weak encryption in exported products makes them
vulnerable
to snooping by anyone.
The US law exempts free software, so free versions of GNU/Linux won't
be affected. Linux,
the kernel, has
nothing to do with this issue.
The UK government has found an
indirect
way to favor fossil fuels over renewables.
It's fossil fuels vs civilization, and the UK government is on the
wrong side.
Most birdwatchers are whites. Those who are blacks are
likely
to be accused of something by thugs.
Clinton's brother is a director of a mining company
with a concession in Haiti, and its operations
won't provide much
benefit to Haitians.
Racism in the thugs'
excuses
for shooting Tamir Rice.
Israel has repeatedly destroyed the homes of the Palestinian village
of Khirbet Yarza. Most recently it
destroyed
the village's water pipes.
The fanatical "settlers" that seize parts of the West Bank
call human
rights organizations "anti-semitic" and likewise everyone that
supports them.
These fanatics recently
burned
a seminary, a mosque, and a school in Palestine.
Israeli ships continue
shooting
at Palestinian fishermen; Israel agreed to permit them to go
further from the shore, but refused to do so.
A Republican senator
wants
to give US children lower quality lunch.
US citizens:
oppose TAFTA
because it will authorize chemical companies to demand to be paid not
to pollute.
US citizens:
call on the FDA
to ban feeding rBST to cows.
We
Have Been Losing the "War on Drugs" for Four Decades — End It
Now.
When a war is "on drugs", it will destroy people indiscriminately.
Clinton used a personal email address for all her official mail while
Secretary of State. This
could
facilitate a cover-up.
I am sure she had a lot to hide — we don't need to know about
her emails for that.
The point that you can't trust a vague "cloud" applies just as much
to your email as to hers.
While the eastern US got heavy snowfalls,
California's
mountains got very little, ensuring that the severe drought will
get worse.
Research has shown that droughts have become more frequent in
California in recent decades, which implies global heating is having
the expected effect.
This drought is a small foretaste of what global heating will do to
California, if we don't take vigorous action to limit global heating.
General Petraeus pled guilty to leaking secrets to his lover, but
unlike whistleblowers who served the public, he was
let off with no
jail time.
Feds
Refuse to Release Documents on "Zero-Day" Security Exploits.
The use by one state of unreported bugs in software weakens security
for all users of that software, against all attackers.
In the US, private thugs have some of the special privileges of
official thugs, but
less
training and less legal supervision.
Converting cockroaches into
computer-controlled
cyborgs.
Do you think they will be used only in collapsed buildings?
Or also in your house?
Refugees sent to Nauru against their will held a
peaceful
protest about the arrest of other protesters. They were attacked
by thugs who then arrested 70 of them.
Victims say that
violence
by Chicago thugs is "as routine as traffic lights".
Is
[PISSI] the Ultimate Evil? They Would Love You to Think So.
France has passed a law
requiring
a two-year warranty for all products sold.
I think it is a good idea, but perhaps should be joined by more
specific laws, such as that electronics with batteries must permit
them to be replaced.
The UK government is accusing RT TV of bias, which is probably true,
but it strangely fails to notice the
bias
of pro-government TV stations.
I don't have a very high opinion of RT, which is designed to spread
confusion to serve Putin. But the other channels may not be any
better, and banning them is not the solution in either case.
Students in Burma are protesting against new
repressive
control of universities.
Caracas Mayor Ledezma has been
charged
with participating in a plot to hold a coup and overthrow the
government of Venezuela.
That could be true; some in the Venezuelan opposition have done that
before.
In Maharashtra (which includes Mumbai), possession of beef is a crime
punishable by
5
years in prison.
This is almost as nuts as jailing people for possession of marijuana.
But it's worse, because it is imposing the rules of one religion on
everyone.
President Karzai and his officials presided over
murder,
torture and rape.
Sound so loud that it damages human hearing is becoming
increasingly
common. In many cases, it would be easy to avoid.
Offering earplugs in music venues would be a solution if everyone used
them; given that they won't, it is merely an excuse for not correcting
the problem.
But what about people that need to commute for more than 47 minutes
a day on an underground train?
Ugandan
Farmers Take On Palm Oil Giants over Land Grab Claims.
Girls in England who were being repeatedly raped and treated as sex
slaves asked for help, but
thugs
and other officials blamed the victims.
Teenagers' sex is often dishonestly called "rape", but the two are
totally different. This case is about real rape, not voluntary sex
mislabeled as "rape". We should resist the efforts of governments to
conflate the two.
Reporting rape in the US military usually means
reporting
it to the boss of both the victim and the rapist. Thus, victims
often consider it futile to complain.
An Indian rapist was interviewed in a film; he callously
blamed
the victim. You can see how he seeks and accepts excuses to hurt
women, even in nonsensical ways.
A psychological survey found that Atheists
tend
to be no more angry than religious believers.
We Atheists that criticize religion encounter many things that make us
angry. But that's not all Atheists, just us.
The
official
portrait of President Clinton has a little sign to refer to his
affair with Monica Lewinsky, but that of Dubya has nothing to indicate
his devastating invasion of Iraq.
Clinton's portrait should have something to indicate the evil of
NAFTA
and the World Trade Organization.
And Obama's should show the shadow of
the
TPP.
The Republicans
want
to cut off knowledge of American history so that future Americans
have no basis to see how much harm those policies did before.
The article also mentions the right-wing media strategy (since the
1980s): accuse the media of a "Liberal bias" unless it is slavishly
right-wing (which most mainstream media now are).
Governor Christy of New Jersey
settled
a 9-billion dollar lawsuit against Exxon for a mere 250 million
— 3% of the damage done.
Plutocrats are taking the US economy and political system
back
to the 19th century, eliminating the gains of the 20th century
progressive movement.
Haitians held a
large
protest against racism and lynching in the Dominican Republic.
Four
Reasons Young Americans Should Burn Their Student Loan Papers.
It used to be that we considered college education as more than just a
way for students to increase their incomes. It was meant to give them
a deeper and broader understanding of life — a benefit for
society, not just for them. Even if college no longer increases
incomes as much as it did, the benefit of an educated public is still
a good reason to educate people.
Oh, I forgot, the public no longer makes decisions and the plutocrats
prefer citizens they can easily manipulate.
Sacramento, California, is
threatening
legal proceedings against people who hold give-aways for the
homeless, invoking a law against having too many "lawn sales"
— but they are not selling anything.
One contribution to Syria's revolution was the failure of agriculture
in Syria, which was
exacerbated
by global heating.
In a few decades, such wars are likely to break out in many countries.
And global heating will keep getting worse afterward, unless we take
very strong measures.
A genetic modification could
protect
cows from tuberculosis.
I can't immediately see any downside to this genetic modification, but
let's see what scientists warn about.
The small group of Syrian rebels that the US most preferred has been
defeated, and has
disbanded.
Al-Nusra, associated with al Qa'ida, captured the US-provided
missiles.
In general,
arms
provided to any Syrian rebel group tend to circulate around.
After Dubya's spokesmen said that the US treated prisoners humanely,
the head of the CIA asked Cheney and Condoleezza Rice to
confirm that
torture was still authorized.
The tourists that climb Mount Everest are leaving so much human waste
that it the pollution is causing a
health
hazard.
Everyone,
call on Pasco to
fire and prosecute the killer thugs.
The EFF says the FCC's network neutrality vote looks good, but
has
not yet evaluated the fine print.
The Hindu-nationalist BJP has
agreed
to share power in Kashmir with a Muslim party.
This might give some hope for reconciliation in a state that has
experienced guerrilla war and military repression.
A general tendency to reject science is
very
popular in society.
Alas, nowadays there is a valid reason to distrust scientists'
conclusions: some of them have been corrupted by companies.
For instance, the article cites a valid scientific reason why
genetically modified foods are unlikely to harm humans that eat them,
but it is a mistake to infer from this that they can't be harmful.
For instance, roundup-ready crops in the US are
endangering
the survival of monarch butterflies, and perhaps other species as
well. The crops themselves don't hurt monarchs, but the roundup does
(indirectly, by killing milkweed).
Genetically-modified salmon
threaten
to weaken and wipe out wild salmon.
I don't suppose genetically modified apples are directly harmful to
eat, but the modification is meant to disguise the fact that the
apples have been
sitting
on the shelf for days, and that might open the door to other
things that are bad for the health of people who eat them.
As long as many scientists' income depends on rushing to a certain
conclusion, they will make statements that shouldn't be trusted.
We need to put an end to this corruption of science by business.
Mandatory cell phone "remote kill switches" make the phones
fundamentally
insecure.
Nearly all cell phones are already insecure because of the universal
back door that allows the phone company (and others) to remotely
convert them into listening devices. However, the "kill switch" is an
added insecurity, pushing the phone even further from being
acceptable. We suspect (and we are checking) that this makes it
impossible to replace some of the proprietary software with free
software.
A
history of the Canadian government's war on science and the
environment.
Hollywood lobby groups wrote a
soppy
love-letter to the TPP. If they love it, it has to be horrible.
The article unfortunately fails to criticize the concept of
"intellectual
property", accepting it as if it were meaningful and legitimate.
An
analysis of how capital works to suppress democracy around the
world.
Chicago thugs kept some accused people shackled for as much as 3 days
in their "black site", and
applied
hunger, heat, and punches as torture.
Night-Mayor Emanuel
supports
the thugs in claiming they never did this.
Surveillance-Based Manipulation:
How
Facebook or Google Could Tilt Elections.
Paypal
Cuts Off Mega Because It Actually Keeps Your Files Secret.
I criticize the article for accepting the idea that there is something
illegitimate about sharing copies of published works. That repeats
the propaganda of the War on Sharing.
Alas, Mega has a grave ethical flaw: it can't be used in the Free
World because it requires users to run nonfree Javascript code.
Law professors warn that Canada's latest police powers bill
endangers
human rights.
Here's an analysis of some
dangers
in the law.
Canada's spy agency is
twisting
existing law to do massive surveillance on Canadians' email.
50
selected Faux News lies and their refutations.
The Supreme Court will rule on whether Monsanto controls all
planting
of ordinary soybeans in the US.
A Philadelphia man
saw
thugs attack helpless Devon Davis and break his leg, while telling
him to "stop resisting" as preparation (evidently) for making false
accusations against him.
These thugs are arrogantly confident that they are above the law. The
shame of our governments is that it is usually true. To change the
thugs' culture of violence and dishonesty, we must punish them for it
often.
Much is still secret about how UK thugs operated their
construction
industry blacklist.
How Netanyahu's speech is
designed
to influence his reelection.
Clumsy and nasty interventions by UK spy agencies
may
encourage radicalization of their targets.
However, the problem of dealing with many known people, each of whom
has a very small possibility of being radicalized, is
not
easy in any case.
What is clear is that an increase in massive general surveillance will
not help.
A political opponent of Putin was
shot
dead right next to the Kremlin, an area always full of thugs. But they let
the killer get away.
High officials closely related to former Colombian President Horrible
have been convicted of
spying
on opposition party leaders.
Fears
for Macedonia's Fragile Democracy amid 'Coup' And Wiretap Claims.
The UN says the US forces in Afghanistan
have
still been torturing prisoners recently.
False statistics encourage US parents to think their children are in
danger of being kidnaped by strangers — but that is
extremely
rare.
A Florida sheriffs's deputy says that
planting
false evidence to frame people is standard practice in his
department, with the approval of the sheriff.
Marijuana proves to be
far,
far safer than alcohol or tobacco.
Scott Walker showed his true opinion of Wisconsin's anti-plutocrats by
comparing
them to Islamist terrorists.
Defense Firms
Expect Increased Spending from Republicans as Republicans Decry
Increased Spending.
UK health and education workers are paid too little to live on, so
many
of them become prostitutes.
This
article expresses most of what I feel about "small talk".
The only thing worse than asking me broad unimportant questions in
English is asking them in another language, because then it is work to
understand and work to respond.
The USDA's "pilot program" for slaughterhouses to have their own
employees inspect the meat has led to exactly the sort of
corruption
you'd predict — and the USDA closes its eyes to the problem.
There is some reason to believe that the corruption of the revolving
door is responsible.
A proposal to add ketamine to the "war on drugs" could deny women
in poor countries anesthesia for cesarean section.
Many
women might die.
The US cooperated as Yemen's old government disappeared US citizen
Sharif Mobley. Then the Houthis overthrew that government (which has
reformed in Aden), leaving Mobley
in
prison in an unknown location.
In 1998, the fossil fuel companies funded a plan to confuse the facts
about global heating and prevent action in the US to stop it. Most of
the lobbyists involved are
still
doing similar work.
Nemtsov's friends say that he was
about
to expose facts about Russia's intervention in Ukraine when he was
killed.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Corker-Graham Iran bill
(S. 615) and the Menendez-Kirk sanctions bill (S. 269), both of which
would interfere with a possible nuclear deal with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Everyone:
call
on New York City to defund Bratton's army.
More
evidence connecting use of lead with rates of violence in the US.
Everyone:
tell
Bayer to stop making bee-endangering neonicotinoid pesticides.
US citizens:
call on the
Federal Reserve to replace its lawyer Scott Alvarez, who is on the
side of the banks.
In Chicago:
the
Homan Square protest against Chicago thugs' torture site.
Avijit Roy was hacked to death for his secular views. Let's share
his
story.
An Islamist extremist has been
charged
with the murder.
As Shi'ite militias join in trying to capture Tikrit from PISSI, there
is a
danger
that they may massacre Sunni civilians for revenge.
I expect that the Iraqi army is mostly made up of Shi'ites too.
I heard on the BBC that 2000 of the 30,000 soldiers in this attack are
Sunni militias opposed to PISSI. That is not enough to show that this
danger does not exist.
As for the possibility of increased Iranian influence, there is no
help for it. The government of Iran is an Islamist tyranny which
spits on human rights, but not as much as PISSI does, and it does not
state global expansionist goals like PISSI either.
To reduce recidivism, we need to
make
it easier for released prisoners to get some lawful job.
UN treaties for drug prohibition have
completely
failed in the goal of making them hard to get.
However, they have
blighted
millions of lives and
fueled
gangs.
The fossil fuel companies, like tobacco companies,
pay
a few scientists to produce "research" that denies the problem and
push each others' work through peer review, so that paid pet
congresscritters can cite them as "proof" there is no problem.
Tariq Ali comments on how the US and Europe have nearly crushed
dissent by
showing
that the people have no say.
Let's
stop providing PR for PISSI's movie stars.
Rauf Badawi
could
be executed on charges of ceasing to be a Muslim.
For a country to be "Muslim" generally means it treats human rights
with contempt. Here we see how such countries trample the religious
freedom of anyone who is currently a Muslim — specifically, the
freedom to cease to hold that belief.
Lots of criminals are using Apple Pay for
fraud
against banks.
Use of fingerprints for authentication is dangerous because it
accustoms people to giving their fingerprints. That threatens to
reduce the resistance to biometric identification, which then
facilitates dangerous massive surveillance.
More about the Brazilian deforestation ring whose head
faces
charges.
A crucial question is, can Brazil return these areas to forest? I
wonder, to what extent is the disastrous drought in Sao Paulo due to
deforestation, and to what extent to global heating? If deforestation
is a major cause, it may be both necessary and feasible to field a
reforestation army combining tree-planters and police.
A birth reduction campaign is needed to, so that Brazil ceases to
generate millions of landless poor who want to tear down the forest
because they can't find another option.
A former general in Peru has been charged with murdering
journalist
Hugo Bustios.
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, a faithful servant of Big Agriculture,
proposed a
substitute
for GMO labeling that would work only for the wealthy (and nearly
requiring nonfree software).
Note that evidence suggests the NSA doesn't break in to most
computers, only selected ones.
Some
kinds of internet use teach people very short-term thinking, which
could be bad intellectually and economically.
It's an oversimplification to say that "the internet" or "digital
communication" has a particular kind of influence. Different forms of
digital communication have different social effects, as described
by Sherry Turkle in "Alone Together".
Greeks support Syriza
even
more than before despite the compromises it has made.
If the US rejects Keystone XL, the pipeline company
could
use NAFTA to sue the US.
If so, the US should refuse to pay, and cancel NAFTA. That would
benefit Mexicans and Canadians as well as Americans; only the
plutocrats that have taken control of these countries would lose.
A new beehive has been invented that
can
make honey flow out — no need to remove a honeycomb. What
could go wrong?
Walmart's raise is
not
enough to end its employees' dependence on public assistance.
8
ways to reduce global inequality.
On
rehabilitating
sex offenders.
Silicon
Valley Likes to Promise "Digital Socialism" — But It Is Selling
a Fairytale.
Every few years, another cash-for-access sting
catches
some UK politicians who are eager for the money.
Kenan Malik: Young European Muslims turn to jihadism
looking
for some sort of identity to feel attached to.
The fact that they have little contact with life under PISSI makes it
easier to imagine it as a paradise.
It appears that underground Arctic deposits of methane are
bursting
out into the air, leaving craters behind. The methane contributes
heavily to global heating.
2/3
of Americans believe world leaders have a moral duty to cut down
greenhouse gas emissions.
If we still had a democratic system, our government would tackle this
job with greatest urgency.
What Syriza has
gained
from his negotiations with Europe.
Forced
Blood Draws, DNA Collection and Biometric Scans: What Country Is
This?
The nutritional quality of food has
generally
declined in the US; it is not clear why.
LA thugs
shot
a man dead, then lied to fabricate an excuse.
Paying his family 5 million dollars won't convince thugs to change
their behavior patterns.
Victoria Maureira is
begging
to be allowed to die peacefully from cystic fibrosis, but the
Chilean government is obdurate she must suffer out all the way.
Why did the Maureira family have two children with cystic fibrosis?
The Chilean government is partly responsible. Parents susceptible to
passing on cystic fibrosis genes normally avoid that by selective
abortion — but not in Chile, where abortion is illegal.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to sabotage diplomacy with Iran.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to block Shell from drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens: call for allowing people to sign up for
subsidized health
care when they become pregnant, regardless of the time of year.
Republicans are
more
likely to reject evolution than to recognize its validity. 2/3 of
them claim that global heating is not even happening. Most of them
want to shred the US constitution and establish Christianity as the
official religion.
Loretta Lynch is likely to be the next Attorney General of the US,
and she already has a
record
of bowing down to banksters.
Avijit Roy, an Atheist blogger in Bangladesh, was
assassinated
in the street, apparently by Islamist fanatics.
Minnesota has boosted employment by
taxing
the wealthy more and raising the minimum wage.
"Trickle-down" policies are a fraud that hurt the poor, but
"pour-down" makes a better society and can help just about everyone.
The FCC has
pre-empted
laws in two states that blocked local governments from offering
broadband connections.
Two climatic cycles that operate over periods of decades both entered
their cold phases in the 2000's,
temporarily
cancelling out global heating.
Later, as they move to the hotter phase, they will speed up heating.
Maajid Nawaz, former Islamist:
Racism
And Violent Islamism Feed Each Other in a Vicious Circle.
Here's the
background
information.
The FCC
voted
in favor of network neutrality.
Before I celebrate I will wait to see what experts say about the fine
print.
Rebuilding housing in Gaza is going so slowly that it
would
take 100 years at this rate.
Why did thugs shoot a taser at an
old
man who had his hands up?
PISSI destroyed
irreplaceable
ancient manuscripts and art in Mosul.
Netanyahu said his main goal in his partisan speech to the US Congress
is meant to
scupper
a nuclear agreement between the US and Iran.
That he said this doesn't mean it is true. I suspect his real reason
is for the American and Israeli elections.
There is no way the US can limit Iran's nuclear program
except
through a deal.
Amnesty International says that
2014
was a low point for human rights around the world.
Since 2010, 8 US states have stopped subsidizing movie-making. But 32
states sill do it, and it adds up to
hundreds
of millions of dollars a year.
I can think of better uses for states' money than competing to take
jobs away from other states. The movie companies purchased
unjust laws such as the
DMCA
and support unjust treaties such as the
TPP.
I don't think they ought to get a cent. In fact, if I could, I'd
drive them out of business entirely.
In Wisconsin, due to Scott Walker and the Repression Party, any
teenager who gets a sext photo faces a
minimum
sentence of 3 years in prison.
It should not be a crime at all.
Belarus and Russia are
going to ban Tor
and VPN usage.
However, if they keep on down that path far enough to really
stop use of proxies, hardly anyone would consider going there
to discuss business.
A call to
ban
selling "energy drinks" to children. Those drinks are full of sugar.
Qantas wants to continue cutting jobs
even
though it has become profitable. The workers say that cuts should
stop.
Dr Craig Spencer
criticizes
the US media for turning medical volunteers into pariahs, instead
of educating the public about what really is or isn't dangerous.
Astrology
Should Never Have Any Role to Play in Healthcare, because it is
total nonsense: in fact, Chinese astrology tends to kill people who
get diseases for which their natal charts recommend the wrong
treatment.
Why
Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
Are Such Grave Threats?
I don't use the name "ISIS"; I call that gang of barbarians "PISSI",
for Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Chicago thugs, confronted with reports of their illegal "black site"
for interrogation, respond by
repeating
their claim that nothing they do could ever be wrong.
Chicago's night-mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has
opposed
better oversight of the Chicago thugs.
Chicago deserves a full-time mayor instead of a night-mayor.
Vote for Garcia for mayor of Chicago!
Frackers effectively bought the Ohio Supreme Court, which
ruled
that localities can't ban fracking locally.
One of the dangers of the bogus concept of "intellectual property" is
that it encourages legislators and judges to copy specific details
between copyright law and patent law (and various other equally
unrelated laws). Here is an
example
of where that could lead to disaster.
Republicans have started a
phony
"consumer association" to attack the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.
The IAEA will review its evidence about Iran's nuclear program
to
see if any of it contains lies planted by the CIA.
Georgia is
considering
a small but useful limitation to the system that imprisons poor
people because of fines they can't pay.
This injustice, found in many places in the US, is both an important
cause of poverty and a consequence of poverty. If most Americans had
money to pay their fines, this wouldn't happen to them. But in the
communities which are poor, such as Ferguson, this drains money out
of them steadily.
The widely implanted right-wing idea that it is wrong to tax the rich
leads towns to use this system, in effect taxing the poor instead.
Everyone:
tell New York
that going limp when arrested should not be a felony.
It is dishonest to call that action "resisting arrest" at all. A limp
person is not actively resisting, or actively doing anything. It is
twisted to make it a crime for you not to help the state hurt you;
that is the road to tyranny.
EPIC has filed a
complaint
with the FTC about Samsung's always-listening TV.
Giving
special
preferences to traffic from a particular web site violates network
neutrality just like slowing down a particular site.
Obama, to promote the TPP, is
repeating
arguments that Clinton gave for NAFTA — and which proved
false then.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to make sure the bee protection task force really
protects bees.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose permitting states to
divert federal education aid money to private schools. (That would,
naturally, mean religious indoctrination schools in many cases).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Russia is flying planes, including nuclear bombers, near Norway
in
an intimidating way.
The same is happening
near
England and in the Baltic sea.
The result will be increased military preparation — and spending
&mash; all around NATO. Ultimately Putin won't have gained anything,
but poor people in those countries will be the losers.
Three journalists for al-Jazeera have been
accused
of flying drones over Paris without a license.
The Eiffel Tower has new wind turbines that
can
generate enough power for its shops.
However, it would take a over million such installations (or
equivalent) to avoid global heating disaster.
Three men were arrested in the US and
charged
with planning to go to Syria and fight for PISSI.
It appears they were
encouraged by a
secret FBI provocateur, without whom they might never have planned
to do anything.
Predicting people's appearance from DNA
brings
a range of dangers.
How
Wall Street Siphons Billions From Retirees — And Gets Away With
It.
Banksters
swindled
California school districts too. Then the Federal Reserve pushed
them to hand the banksters even more.
Global heating
could
turn parts of Mexico into a dust-bowl, sending tens of millions of
people fleeing to a US which is suffering from its own dust-bowls.
The
right-wing
attack on teaching US history is a long-term plan to roll back
advances in human rights.
Apple said it would monitor its supply chain and prevent abuses, but
that
doesn't
seem to have done much.
The reason is, Apple (or any other company that outsources production)
is under no economic pressure to really prevent mistreatment of
subcontracted workers. Its interest is only to silence critics.
For Apple, the ideal response to the issue would be to silence critics
with as little effort as possible.
These companies should be legally responsible for how those workers
are treated.
A few UK thugs
may
be disciplined for trying to bully and bribe dissidents into
spying on fellow activists.
However the rot goes deeper, and punishing a few thugs won't cure it.
Scotland
plans
a national ID data base like the one rejected at UK level some
years ago.
Mexican thugs
killed
protester Claudio Castillo, a retired teacher who was sitting in a
truck and addressing the protest through a PA system.
They also attacked a news photographer, smashing his camera, perhaps
to get rid of evidence against them.
The methods of the "war on drugs"
harm
farmers, the environment, medical care and women's rights.
Something similar is being planned for
Haiti.
A unit of unarmed women patrols a wildlife reserve in South Africa
which has
prevented
poaching for the past year.
Ebola
could
develop a permanent presence in West Africa if we don't continue
efforts to quash it.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
resist
fossil fuel lobby attempts to slow solar power development in
Massachusetts.
Emma Thompson and Greg Wise say they will
refuse
to pay their taxes until the HSBC tax-dodgers are prosecuted.
China's
Top Court Rejects Judicial Independence as 'Erroneous Thought'.
Syriza has won
some
concessions from Europe.
A Florida thug attacked a homeless man
to
stop him from using a toilet. The thug has been punished with a
paid holiday.
A "flat income tax" is unfair because it
makes
the non-rich pay the same tax rate as the rich.
A tax rate that rich people can easily cope with is a great burden
for those who have less.
The decrease in tax rates for the rich, in many developed countries
since 1980, is part and parcel of the loss of government revenue which
is cited as the cause of cutbacks in vital activities.
In Louisville, a homeless man
died
on the steps of a homeless shelter which did not let him in.
The root problem is that the US has too few homeless shelters and does
little to house homeless people. Thus, they have to compete to get a
slot and inevitably most of them are denied one.
Republicans no longer try to cover up their dirty tricks; they think
their grip on the US is so strong that they can openly attack the poor
in any and every way.
Pakistan is
requiring
all cell phone users to register their fingerprints.
This is a direct threat to human rights. Perhaps in Pakistan it can
be justified as a temporary emergency measure for the guerrilla civil
war now going on, but do they say it is temporary?
Last
Week's Texas Prison Uprising Wasn't a Surprise: Inmates Had Threatened
to Riot for Months.
Is
The Junk-Food Era Drawing To A Close?
Sao Paulo is
on
the brink of disaster due to the failure of the usual rains.
This drought is no accident. It was caused by deforestation of the
Amazon.
San Francisco may end up the same way.
The UK's teenage pregnancy drop is a
triumph
of progressive politics.
Murders,
Threats And Duopoly: the State of Press Freedom in Mexico.
Assad's air force is
dropping
barrel bombs frequently on civilians.
Jamaica has
decriminalized
marijuana.
Banksters' bonuses in the UK since 2007 will soon add up to
100
billion UK pounds. That is 1500 pounds for each inhabitant.
It adds up to a giant drain of wealth from the rest of the UK.
The mayor of Caracas has been arrested and
accused
of planning to overthrow the government of Venezuela.
Greece's deal with Europe preserves a few gains, but it looks like
Syriza
has had to surrender most of its goals.
Greeks did not want to exit the euro zone, but they had hopes of
getting a decent outcome without it. Now that Germany has declared
Greece a colony, the question is whether Greeks want to take radical
measures or surrender.
I am worried that Syriza will be corrupted by the desire to present
this as something other than surrender.
At the same time, I don't see clearly what concessions Syriza has
achieved, so I can't tell if they are enough to constitute a
significant success.
Existing US laws provide
a
way to resist businesses that push workers into being "independent
contractors".
I don't know whether this works for subcontracted workers, which is
the case that is really needed.
The obstacles Greece faces in
collecting
taxes.
Al-Jazeera published a leaked tape in which an Egyptian minister
called
for shooting protesters with machine guns.
Changes in criteria makes it
very
easy to diagnose adults as having ADHD and prescribe medicines for
them. It is great for business. Whether it is good for the
people who take these drugs is not yet clear.
Underlying the issue of whether diagnosis is being done carefully
there is the subtle question of how to decide that a part of the
normal range of personality variation ought to be called a "disorder".
Also the related but different question of whether these drugs do good
for the people who take them.
The abortion and birth control clinic in Belfast is besieged by
religious
nuts that try to harass all women coming in.
It seems that the clinic needs to be able to transport women in and
out by after meeting them at remote locations.
60% of Germans believe the
political
power of business denies them democracy. One third blame
capitalism for poverty. 27% consider that government snooping is
leading towards a dictatorship.
Is there a possibility in Germany to start a Spare Greece movement?
South
Africa may copy Obama's War on Whistleblowers.
Transcript:
NSA
Director Mike Rogers vs. Yahoo! on Encryption Back Doors.
Verizon is slowing down phone line repairs in Manhattan
to
pressure customers to switch to fiber (which has disadvantages).
AT&T says that it charges $29 (i.e., about 30 dollars) a month for
not profiling customers' browsing, but the real charge is
$44
or $66 a month, for those clients who can find the option at all.
That deception deserves condemnation, but the worst part is that this
doesn't even offer real privacy. AT&T still makes a list of the
customer's web contacts, for Big Brother. All that money buys is that
AT&T refrains from using that data for other purposes.
Chinese laws discriminate against women
in
many ways.
Around the US, children accused of crimes are often shackled in court,
which
can
do them psychological damage that can steer them into a life of
crime.
The US foresees around
10
oil train derailment accidents a year. Many of these will cause
explosions.
The head of HSBC
had
a hidden Swiss bank account himself.
US citizens: Congress Is Poised to Introduce a Bill to Fast Track TPP
so It's Time to Act Now.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2022-07-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
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Copyright (C) 2015 Richard Stallman
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