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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Capitalism in America: Giving Crazy a Bad Name While Subverting Democracy.
Former congresscritter Pete Hoekstra supported NSA surveillance consistently while in office. He was shocked to discover recently that the NSA listened to him.
Obama's policies encourage replacement of coal with fracked gas, but some US cities have policies to head toward renewable energy instead.
The UK's parliament was never consulted about setting up cameras to track all car travel.
Scandal in Brussels! Some soldiers and some thugs had a sex party in the office, while they were sleeping there because transport was shut down.
Why this constitutes a problem or a wrong is not clear to me. It did not hurt anyone.
Afghan journalists suspect that the attempts on their life come from a Taliban-supporting "fifth column" inside the Afghan government.
The question is not, "How likely are we to limit global heating to 1.5C," but rather, " How much damage will it cause if we don't?"
Hunger Threatens Millions as El Niño Causes Drought And Floods.
El Niño events have occurred for a long time, but this one comes on top of the effects of 1C of global heating.
California seals are starving because sardines have had to head for colder water.
About 1/3 of the casualties of Putin's air attacks in Syria are civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Google is shifting Android to use OpenJDK rather than its own Java implementation which used a reimplementation of Java based on the proprietary header files of the proprietary Java implementation.
This concrete result is good for the free software community, but the idea that a compatible implementation of an interface spec might infringe the copyright on header files is very very dangerous. Fortunately, the appeals court that made this decision hears copyright cases only in very rare circumstances.
The FSF urged the Supreme Court not to consider the appeal because we feared it might sustain the appeal court's ruling, which would extend this bad decision to the whole US.
Roughly half the jobs in the US require urine tests to detect use of marijuana. This policy never made any sense, and it is even more absurd in states which have legalized marijuana.
2015's notorious censorship attempts in universities.
A school-sponsored sports team is not a person. I think it is legitimate for the school to exercize control over what ateam does, which would be wrong if directed towards an individual student.
As usual, campaigns to limit Google's snooping on students through their schools demand an inadequate remedy.
If the school makes an account in a student's name on a company's server, or stores any unencrypted information there about the student's activity, that is already a violation of the student's privacy.
Parents must go beyond asking "Please sir, may my child have some more privacy" and organize to put an end to these snooping activities.
In addition, Google services nearly all require the user to run nonfree software (written in Javascript).
The Pentagon is deliberately obstructing the release of prisoners from Guantanamo with a campaign of persistent non-cooperation.
The US commander in Afghanistan says that the US will needs more troops to continue propping up the Afghan government.
The choice, as I expected, is to keep propping it up ad infinitem or let it fall.
The UK's Minister for Cruel Deportation wants to deport Thomas Podgoretsky because he made the mistake of visiting the US, having a stroke and heart attacks there, and staying there until he was well enough to go home to the UK.
The excuses offered to the grand jury for the shooting of Tamir Rice beg questions that were apparently ignored — for instance, why didn't they stay a little further away and take a second to understand the situation.
A Chronicle of Woe: US Policing Culture From Iraq and Vietnam to Jon Burge's Chicago.
Is Flawed Terrorism Research Driving Flawed Counterterrorism Policies?
US thugs shot and killed at least 28 people this year who were holding pellet guns or BB guns.
I wonder what fraction of them were black. I suspect thugs are more likely to take a pellet gun for a real gun when it is held by a black.
In 2008, Hossein Derakhshan's blog was so influential that Iran imprisoned for it. Released in 2014, he encountered an Internet in which Facebook and Instagram discourage people from looking at any other web sites. Real discussion has been replaced by trivia videos.
In London, squatters occupied the former mint site to protest against homelessness.
A six-month truce between Assad and rebels is holding in parts of Syria.
Between US air strikes and PISSI's explosive booby traps, Ramadi is now mostly a ruin.
That's better than what it was a month ago, a stronghold of barbarity. I expect that the civilian survivors will say so. Helping them get their voice out, to show young Muslims what a monster PISSI is, will help them resist radicalization.
Evidence that the key to success is dealing in a useful way with failure.
The UK's budget cuts have come back as tremendous damage.
The US government is concealing parts of its contracts with companies that imprison immigration violators, specifically the parts that show how these contracts financiall pressure the government to imprison more of them.
Prohibiting farmers from repairing tractors is not a side effect of the DMCA. It is part of the core goal.
Americans must not stand for officials' advocating China-style attacks on our encryption systems.
Encryption alone can't protect us from all the sorts of digital surveillance that are being set up in the US. Encryption won't stop systems from recognizing your license plate or your face. Encryption won't enable you to pay anonymously with a credit card, or carry a portable phone and not be tracked.
It appears that global heating is increasing tornado damage in the US.
Facebook's Zuckerberg: If You Oppose Our International Power Grab, You're An Enemy Of The Poor.
I have long challenged campaigns that prioritize people's internet access over their freedom.
An enormous methane leak from an old gas well in California will take months to shut off.
I Revealed the Truth about President Erdogan And Syria. For That, He Had Me Jailed.
Obama's program to help homeowners faced with foreclosure did not function well, and now SCROTUS have abolished it.
UK governments have repeatedly refused to confront the way global heating effects put Britain in danger.
The thug that killed Tamir Rice will not be prosecuted.
Prosecutors often intentionally throw the fight in the grand jury. We need a special mechanism for bringing charges against thugs that shoot people, or make falls accusations.
Everyone:
urge your government to
sign the treaty to protect victims of forced labor.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
More information about the treaty.
If you don't run the Javascript code, you won't see anything in your browser to show that you signed, but in my case it did in fact work; you should get a confirmation email.
Japan has apologized to the Korean women that it forced into prostitution during World War II.
The Japanese army did that in other places, too, including what is now Indonesia. After the war, many of these women never went home because they felt ashamed — in effect internalizing the blame that (according to their culture) their families would have imposed on them.
Combining the Internet of Things with the DMCA creates the Internet without Good Choices.
The TPP is harmful even if evaluated based on the "free trade" ideology.
Of course, that ideology is a mistake because it reduces the effective power of democracy and increases the effective power of businesses. Existing "free trade" treaties are part of the reason that the US has become a plutocracy. This is why I advocate cancelling them.
Part of the article uses the incoherent term "intellectual property". It is always a mistake, without exception, to group together copyrights and patents as if they were a single issue. And that term includes several other laws as well. If you think they are similar than you don't understand what they really do.
No Social Security number? No passport. Why? Are TSA Actions Subject to Judicial Review?
Polio vaccination is advancing again in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Extremist groups have stopped opposing vaccination, and new infections have gone way down.
The US has stopped offering local thug departments the chance to seize people's property and split it with the Federal government. Ironically, this is due to budget cuts imposed by SCROTUS.
Taiz, in Yemen, is suffering from a siege imposed by the Houthis, within the general blockade of Yemen imposed by Salafi (*) Arabia and the US.
The US is supporting this blockade (and the bombing and invasion) to suck up to some private interests, since nothing about the intervention serves any national interest.
* Officially "Saudi Arabia", but its global support for the repressive and cruel Salafist form of Islam (which helped inspire al Qa'ida and PISSI) is the most important characteristic of that country.
Wind energy is becoming the most efficient investment in power generation.
Now think of how much faster we would progress towards curbing global heating if fossil fuels did not enjoy their present subsidies.
Agriculture may be able to sequester carbon in the soil.
Israel's "transparency" law requires human rights NGO to disclose their funding, but right-wing NGOs have been given exemptions.
The transparency requirement, per se, is not unjust, but it is being applied selectively to oppose human rights.
Ethiopia has arrested more journalists and is threatening bloggers.
Flooding in Britain, record US temperatures and Australian wildfires result from El Niño on top of human-caused climate mayhem.
The Iraqi army is slowly recapturing Ramadi. Most of the PISSI fighters have fled, leaving a rear guard which seems to intend to slow the army's advance.
The Iraqi army is not defeating PISSI's full strength. Nonetheless, the loss of Ramadi may weaken PISSI somewhat.
Bernie Sanders: "I can win the backing of Donald Trump supporters."
Trump (and others before him) have distracted them into blaming weak scapegoats. Sanders will show them who they should really be angry at: the plutocrats.
Ground beef in the US, if it isn't "organic grass-fed beef", is quite likely to harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria that kill people.
The organic grass-fed beef will cost more, but that won't bother you unless you eat too much beef (alas, many Americans do).
US airports are kicking homeless people into the cold.
China has adopted a law requiring services to hand over encryption back doors.
This power seems to exist already in the US; it's what forced Ladar Levison to shut down Lavabit.
That doesn't mean it is ok for China to do this — or for the US to do it.
How Peabody Energy exploits poverty to excuse burning coal.
Coal is not going to make poor people better off, beyond a decade or two. The brunt of climate mayhem will fail mainly on the poor — hundreds of millions of them.
China has adopted a law against domestic violence.
Chinese society before the revolution was very very sexist.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Party to schedule more debates and make them more visible.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject measures to "protect" us at the expense of
our human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Twitter deleted a journalist's tweets because a bank asked for this.
Evidence that points to NSA involvement in putting the back door in Juniper Networks products.
The Taliban have taken over most districts in Helmand; Sangin is one of the few still being contested. They may hope to make it their headquarters.
The system of bail in the US pressures poor people to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit — or else it puts them in debt.
"Legitimate" capital markets are thoroughly hooked on cocaine; in laundering drug money, London is more important than the Cayman Islands.
The copyright industry's war on sites that facilitate sharing causes harm to users even when not entirely successful.
Please do not use our enemies' smear term, "piracy", to refer to sharing.
MPAA Funds Pro-Copyright Scholars to Influence Politics.
Advances in recognition technology threaten to enable tracking people easily by cameras through recognizing their faces or irises.
There is no easy solution to this problem, but since it threatens oppression that can make democracy ineffective, it justifies the cost of a difficult solution.
Obama blames Congress for slowing the release of prisoners from Guantanamo, but he and his staff are primarily responsible for the delay.
"Guantanamo" has come to stand for "imprisonment without trial", but they are not the same. Obama talks about "closing Guantanamo prison" but his method of doing so is to move imprisonment without trial to the US mainland. That would make it even more unjust. We could hope that the Supreme Court would consider it more clearly unacceptable — but what if it did the opposite?
The US must end its imprisonment without trial. Every prisoner in Guantanamo deserves to get a real, fair trial or be freed.
California confronts the question of how to manage its diminishing rainfall.
Global heating will make the US midwest hotter and interfere with rain.
The real solution, the efficient solution, is to cut back on CO2 emissions so that the climate won't get more screwed.
A lawsuit seeks to make the TSA change its policy of requiring some passengers to go through a scanner.
Modern gratis game cr…apps collect a wide range of data about their users and their users' friends and associates. Even nastier, they do it through ad networks that merge the data collected by various cr…apps and sites made by different companies.
They use this data to manipulate people to buy things, and hunt for "whales" who can be led to spend a lot of money. They also use a back door to manipulate the game play for specific players.
While the article describes gratis games, games that cost money can use the same tactics.
All this reinforces the point that proprietary software is software for suckers.
The unusually warm December is making some people concerned about their flowering perennials, some of which are blooming now instead of waiting for spring.
However, what concerns me more is that this warm December will not be so unusual at the end of the century.
Beware the Listening Machines.
"Should I let my child take more risks?" Probably yes, up to a point. However, you might consider transporting your child by car to be too dangerous and beyond the limit.
Most of the US has been restructured around automobiles. As people get older, eventually they can't drive any more, so they become stuck at home.
The European Patent Office hired a surveillance company to snoop on its critics.
The American Red Cross spent millions in Haiti to provide shelter and built just six houses with that money.
This seems to relate to its overall corporatization.
In 2013, the US supported the creation of some sort of Salafist "Islamic state" in Syria and Iraq as a way to weaken Assad.
Be careful what you wish for.
Was it the NSA that put the back door in Juniper Networks firewalls?
It has been trying to attack antivirus software.
Bangladesh demands fingerprints from everyone that has a cell phone.
That would convince me not to visit Bangladesh, if I carried a cell phone.
There is no conclusive evidence about whether fluoridation of water supply reduces tooth decay, though there is suggestive evidence that it does.
The UK government tracked people's movements in Hyde Park through their mobile phones.
This particular project did not record their names, but that would have been easy to do.
2000 Syrian Islamist fighters and Assad's forces have made a deal whereby the Islamists will evacuate an area near Damascus, leaving their heavy weapons.
Ten important medical uses of marijuana.
American society pushes people into social isolation, and 1/4 of American adults have no one they can confide in. For old people, loneliness is often fatal.
Work-related diseases kill 50,000 Americans a year. That's more than are killed by guns, and terrorism is a pinprick by comparison.
Meanwhile, we could do a lot to reduce work-related diseases without limiting anyone's human rights.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has become more active in considering endangered species and establishing protection for them. The case backlog is decreasing.
Measures like the Endangered Species Act are adequate for dealing with local threats in a world that is stable overall. Of course, many countries don't have an Endangered Species Act and many governments are not able to really enforce such laws. But even if they did, that won't be enough in the future. Climate mayhem will swamp these local protection efforts, much as rising oceans will swamp sea walls.
A mosquito-borne virus in Brazil is spreading, and its spread can be measured by the thousands of babies born with microcephaly.
Global heating effects are indirectly responsible for the spread of the mosquitos that transmit the virus.
In 1959, a US Air Force proposal for how to target nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union treated killing of civilians as a goal.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Lynch to investigate death of Sandra Bland.
US citizens: Tell Congress not to sell off or cut down Oregon's national forests.
Polls show Sanders doing considerably better against Trump than Clinton would do.
A Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of America was not entirely blocked by the mall management armed with court orders.
Nonetheless, the difficulties they faced show that replacing real public space with pseudo-public space inside malls is dangerous to democracy. People should have the right to protest inside malls.
Seattle has arranged to give Guber drivers a chance to unionize.
This can help the drivers get more pay, but it won't do anything to reduce the surveillance that passengers are subject to, or save them from the requirement to run nonfree software.
It takes a rather large book to describe the range of ideas that fit into Islam — except in the opinion of Salafis.
French President Hollande is getting strong criticism for plans to take away citizenship from people who were born citizens of France.
His other plans, such as the permanent state of emergency, seen even worse.
Google's Gmail and other connected services create psychological profiles of every user — and all the people they communicate with by email. A slowly progressing lawsuit claims that this violates California law.
You can opt out of this by changing to some other mail service, running your own mail server, and/or encrypting the text of your emails with the GNU Privacy Guard.
The US-Korea "free trade" agreement, if evaluated in the conventional terms of exports and imports, has been a big loss for US exports and US employment.
This is on top of the harm that the treaty does to both countries by undermining democracy.
In 1992, Sweden adopted a school voucher system. Since then the Swedish educational system has become more unequal, and less effective overall.
China seems to plan to expel a French journalist whose articles in France have criticized the regime.
The Battle Over Sangin Should Teach the West Some Vital Military Lessons. And political lessons, too, about "attempting cultural change on a management consultant timeline."
I still think the US might have achieved a good outcome in Afghanistan if it had refrained from attacking and destroying Iraq.
Judaist fanatics in Israel had themselves filmed celebrating the murder of an Arab toddler.
Judaist, Christianist or Islamist, they are all enemies of human rights. The worst of them are killers, but the rest are still bad.
India has blocked Facebook's plan to extend internet service without network neutrality.
Access to the internet can be good or bad, depending on whether the internet respects your freedom. If people make the error of assuming that it is good unconditionally, that can lead them to mistake Facebook's power grab for a real gift.
22 US cities reported high levels of hunger and homelessness for the year Sep '14 — Aug '15.
In the US, poverty permanently stunts childrens' IQ, but not in other developed countries.
It is not clear why the US gets different results.
Ground beef generally has bacteria all through it, and some of them can make people sick. Consumer Reports found that US ground beef, unless it is from 'grass-fed organic beef', often contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
It appears the US is blocking many British Muslims from entering the US, often in arbitrary last-minute ways that cause unnecessary trouble and expense.
Blocking 10 family members from traveling because of an objection to their one relative is especially nasty, and gratuitous.
Because there is no way to find out in advance if you will be blocked in this way, British Muslims in general are afraid to buy tickets to the US.
It seems to me that the US should offer a way to ask, before buying tickets, "Will you allow me to fly there?" If the US responds that you can go, and blocks you later, it should compensate you for the costs of your flight and other preparations.
And it is unconscionable to block 11 people because of objections about one.
Australia is slowly shifting away from the anti-renewable-energy policies that Abbott set up.
Amnesty International says Russia is dropping cluster bombs on Syrian cities, even on areas of no military significance.
Leaked documents say that Ecuador's intelligence agency illegally spied on activists who campaigned against oil extraction in the Amazon.
Some officially Muslim countries have demonstrated their intolerance of non-Muslims by banning visible celebration of Christmas.
Will they ban Grav-Mass, too?
The "no fly list" punishes people by surprise, and people are put in the list based on "predictive judgments" which can be based on nothing but noise.
Afghan army reinforcements may kick the Taliban out of Sangin.
If the Taliban melt away when confronted by a relief force, that will not constitute a victory for the Afghan government. Rather, it will mean that the Taliban are following through after a large, successful raid, in accord with standard guerrilla tactics.
To turn this raid into a victory, the Afghan army would need to surround Sangin and kill the Taliban fighters caught in the trap. I don't think they will try it.
44% of the people shot dead by Georgia thugs (since 2010) were either unarmed or shot in the back. That's just the beginning of it.
Israel sentenced Palestinian teenagers to 15 years in prison after they confessed under pressure to throwing stones at a car.
The car was driven by a family that lives in an Israeli colony in Palestinian territory. One of the children in the car died from the attack. The killing was a serious crime, but there is no credible evidence about who did it.
Israel violates international law by taking Palestinian prisoners out of Palestine. Here's why that violation is important.
To the Israeli right-wing, foreign funding for Breaking the Silence is an outrage; foreign funding for extending colonies in Palestine is just fine.
After Israel arrested Jews who killed Palestinians, fanatical colonists attacked another Palestinian family. Fortunately not fatally this time.
Palestinian Christians suffer from the occupation like Palestinian Muslims, but find it easier to move elsewhere.
Mennonites who visited Palestine defend the need for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel's occupation of Palestine.
US citizens: oppose building the Tesoro-Savage oil export terminal in Washington State.
Everyone: call on major toy branding companies to improve wages and working conditions in their factories in China.
Does it work to use the US government drone registration site with LibreJS enabled to block nonfree Javascript code? Please email your answer to rms on the site gnu.org.
Everyone: Stand with the people of Nagpur and tell the World Bank to stop pushing privatization of water.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Companies tend to charge more for their products aimed at women or girls than for comparable products aimed at men or boys.
Why should scooters be meant specifically for one sex? There is no good reason for that. That too is a marketing ploy. Give a girl a blue scooter, and fight against creeping genderization of everything, while also saving money.
What If Sheldon Adelson Buys Your Newspaper? Write About Him, Then Leave.
The US military thought Obama's support for "moderate" Syrian resistance was only helping Jihadis, so it began feeding intelligence indirectly to Assad to help him fight those rebels.
The TSA may stop some passengers from requesting a physical search instead of body scanning.
I don't object to the millimeter-wave scanners now in use, but I still consider this change dangerous. What if they move to another machine that is potentially dangerous, as the x-ray scanners were?
Israel's ambassador to the US has gone out of his way to send holiday gifts made by colonies in Palestine.
Thailand's dictators don't have elections, but they have bogus opinion polls.
Is it wrong for Caucasian actors to wear makeup to appear Asian (or black)?
The article presents an incoherent mixture of perceived insult, lack of Asian role models on TV, and loss of work for Asian actors. Any or all of those issues might be valid, but they are all different, and mixing them up produces only confusion.
If it is a matter of work discrimination, how about making up nonwhite actors up to appear Caucasian? All actors' race would cease to matter.
If it is a matter of visible role models on TV, that's a matter of appearance only. Why does it matter what the actor's real skin color or appearance is, beneath the makeup?
If you feel insulted, please explain why an actor's makeup constitutes a statement about Asians, because I don't see that.
Poland's Christianist extremist government is undermining the Supreme Court, apparently to facilitate a total ban on abortions.
I support ending subsidies for IVF; the world has an excess of human babies and it makes no sense at all to spend public funds on making more.
Once babies are born, we must make sure they get good food, medical care, education, and a good home with parents that are not stressed about a lack of money.
Naturally, the right-wing government plans to cut that. Christianist extremist don't care about real babies.
Officially designating the atmosphere as a public trust might help get some countries to act against global heating.
Exxon shared its global heating research with other major oil companies as far back as 1980.
They have all been knowingly working to make sure the US government does not avoid disaster.
The loss of manufacturing jobs in the US is not inevitable. It is the result of political choices.
The US and various states are prohibiting poor people from spending public assistance on various expensive habits that they can't afford anyway.
The motive might be to fool the public into believing that welfare recipients really have money for luxury foods such as lobster, on ocean cruises, or even on tattoos.
If you can barely afford food at all, you will do without those things anyway.
ARM and IBM have teamed up to make devices that monitor and surveil their users.
The UN is moving towards authorizing Libya's new unified government to invite Western help to fight PISSI.
An intervention in support of Libyan ground troops has a reasonable chance of success.
Israel is considering a Putin-style law to restrict human-rights NGOs that receive support from European governments. The President of Israel was called a traitor for meeting with the New Israel Fund.
The fall of Sangin demonstrates the futility of NATO's trying to hold it.
Once the Taliban started to resurge, the US and NATO never had a plausible plan for defeating the Taliban, since the Afghan government has never generated enough loyalty to do so. The only question is how long to prop it up.
Increasingly, wars involve bombing cities full of civilians, as countries ignore the Geneva conventions.
A tax loophole encourages US companies to increase pay to their CEOs.
A new Web error code has been established for legally imposed censorship.
In rural India, the menstruating women are still treated as "unclean". They are banished to rude huts outside the village. Girls miss school.
Boko Haram Violence Keeping a Million Children Out of School, Says UNICEF.
A racist inspired by Trump built a pipe bomb to attack Muslims with.
Humanity has not acted to slow antibiotic resistance; now it is "almost too late" to avoid losing the most important current antibiotics.
The responsibility is the plutocratic state, which obeys agribusiness and disregards the general good.
Can Laws Keep Up with Tech World?
It should be noted that Amazon, Guber and WhatsApp (proprietary software) are inherently unjust.
US thugs continue to claim that there is a "war on police", violence against thugs continues to be rare. Marauding thugs remain the bigger threat.
Thugs kill a lot more Americans than terrorists do; but they do lesser forms of violence more often than killings.
In response to occasional crimes by a few Muslims, the US wages actual war against lots of Muslims.
I should point out that the guns used by Malik and his spouse were not lawfully purchased in the form he had them, and a stricter system of gun control could have made them difficult for him to get.
Because the US is waging actual war, its innocent victims greatly outnumber the victims of Muslim terrorists in the US. Americans are much more likely to be killed by thugs than by terrorists.
Christianist terrorism against US abortion facilities is a more serious threat because it is concentrated against a few. If you are an abortion doctor, that danger is large.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject a resolution to legitimize Israeli colonies in Palestine.
The Democratic National Committee reenabled Sanders' access to voter data; the Sanders campaign did the requested investigation and took appropriate action.
Lumping together crowd killing sprees with the more common multiple shootings in families and gangs gives the public an exaggerated idea of the level of danger from the former.
If shootings cause around 110,000 casualties in the year in the US, that shows guns are a serious problem, but the sensational killing sprees are a small part of it.
Violent domestic relationships don't make sense in rational terms. The victims are so traumatized that they blame themselves for the other person's violence.
Wild bees are declining in US agricultural areas.
A Proposal for Dealing with Terrorist Videos on the Internet.
Study Documents Extreme Racial Disparity in Arrests for Low-Level Offenses [in a US city].
Clinton has endorsed the FBI's take on encryption.
I had already decided not to vote for her if she wins the nomination. I hope you will join me. But let's try to prevent that issue from arising. Please support the Sanders campaign.
A US court ruled that the US can force-feed immigration prisoners on hunger strike.
This is a violation of their human rights. A sane person has a right to commit suicide and a right to fast to death.
Now that the prisoners have been denied the right to hunger strike, I expect that some will commit quick suicide as a protest.
Treating every rumor or threat of terrorism as serious is an effect of fear and it plays into the hands of terrorists.
Muslim students in US schools, even young ones, face frequent bullying that can go as far as physical attacks.
Violent attacks against Muslims are increasing.
Sudanese Editors Face Death Penalty for 'Inciting an Arab Spring'.
In Sudan, only Winter is allowed.
Many people and governments treat homeless people like vermin. Laws that shove them into obscure corners help others ignore how badly they are being treated.
Ultimately this is done to please store owners (who want them out of the way) and rich (who don't want to pay taxes to give them homes).
The same rich people are responsible for the policies that make people homeless.
Could prison be replaced with a different correctional system?
Spain's parliament is divided; it is not clear who will govern.
A video suggests a Chicago thug may have made a false accusation about Alfontish Cockerham to excuse shooting him dead.
Everyone: call on Columbia University to reveal all the donors to Center on Global Energy Policy, since they seem to include Exxon.
US citizens: Call on Salafi Arabia to free human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to resume tracking and publishing world weapons sales.
Facebook relaxed its "real name" policy, but only
for
people who are being harassed for certain specific reasons.
This relieves a very specific acute problem, but does not enable
ordinary people to use Facebook without being tracked.
How the Government Surveils Cellphones:
A
Primer.
This doesn't include the possibility of using the
universal
back door to turn the phone into a full-time listening device.
And there is also
extracting
data through WiFi.
The UK is planning a law that will
make
victims of trafficking afraid to speak up.
Montreal protester Katie Nelson recognized an undercover thug when he
took off his mask — he was pretending to be a protester —
because he was
one
of the thugs she was already suing for a previous attack on her.
So he attacked her again. She is now in the hospital and preparing
another lawsuit.
Right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson appears to have bought the Las
Vegas Review-Journal just to
set
its reporters to trying to dig up dirt on judges who didn't bow down
to his wealth.
More
information.
The UK's anti-sharing thugs have come down on people who
noncommercially distributed karaoke recordings because they are
not commercially available, and
using
a sleazy trick of language to equate this with commercial
redistribution.
Yemen's civil war, in which the US-backed intervention by Salafi Arabia
has
made
millions homeless and uses cluster bombs, shows that the US
alliance with Salafi Arabia is a disaster.
Most Syrian rebel fighters hold
extremist
views similar to PISSI, even though they are enemies of PISSI.
This shows that defeating PISSI won't eliminate Salafi oppression from
Syria. (There may be no way to do that, in the short term.) However,
those groups might not want to attack outside Syria; it might be
possible to make peace with them.
It will be hard to make peace in a way that includes them and the
secular Kurds.
A UK local government, squeezed for funds, is
planning
to charge old people every time they need someone to pick them up
after falling.
Malicious code in a "smart" watch can tell what you are typing by
measuring
your arm motion.
Anything called "smart", unless all the software is free, is an attack
on your freedom and privacy.
Mandatory minimum sentences are a recent aberration in US history; we
could
get rid of most of them.
Dow continues to disregard criminal court charges in India and
refuses
to remediate the pollution that still leaks from its factory in
Bhopal.
I wonder if DuPont has property in India that could be seized if it
merges with Dow. Perhaps a lien could be put on it now, to stop
DuPont from selling it before the merger.
The Paris conference didn't pay much attention to
meat
production, but to meet the goal requires a big reduction.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Justice to investigate violence against
abortion clinics as terrorism.
Citizens of Florida:
oppose
the state bill to impose fracking everywhere in the state.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Education to cancel all loans to students of
Corinthian Colleges.
If we fight PISSI,
what
would we want victory to look like?
The UK's relentless
pressure
to declare disabled people capable of working has led to around
600 suicides and over 700,000 prescriptions for antidepressants.
Cecil Rhodes Was a Racist, But You
Can't
Readily Expunge Him from History.
The UN has set up a
conference
of relevant powers to try to end the civil war in Syria.
Has anyone proposed a solution to protect human rights for all the
ethnic groups and sects?
The US drone registration system
will
make drone owners' names and addresses visible to the public.
Ambassadors from EU countries
warn
of retaliation for the US's limits on the visa waiver program.
Some have suggested that Europe would retaliate by imposing the same
restriction on Americans, blocking Iranian-Americans etc. That would
be a foolish way to retaliate, since the Americans who support the
recent restriction would be glad to see Iranian-Americans punished.
As retaliation, it would be ineffective.
My suggestion is that Europe should require visas for Americans whose
names begin with "R", or perhaps "Ry". That might be a small fraction
comparable to the fraction of Europeans affected by the new US
restrictions.
Another idea: require visas of Americans related to Republican
congresscritters.
Did
government officials tip off reporters to film the arrest of
Shkreli?
Shkreli is a greedy bastard and we ought to make it illegal to act as
he did with Daraprim. (His arrest was about a
different
matter.) However, for the issue raised here, he's just one
example among many, and the questions posed apply to everyone.
Thugs will
collect
photos in real time of everyone riding in cars in London.
When the state knows where everyone goes, and who talks with whom,
democracy
cannot
survive. That doesn't bother the UK government, which is
applying
Republican-style techniques to effectively eliminate democracy in
the UK.
The FBI
demands a
credit card number to register a drone, as well as other personal
information.
This puts the drone owners at risk.
We now know how broad and sweeping the PAT-RIOT Act "national security
letters" are; and
functionaries
can demand them arbitrarily.
Santa Claus Confirms
NSA
Attack on Naughty-Or-Nice Database.
The Democratic National Committee's data company has repeatedly failed
to keep each candidate's data secret from other candidates. One
Sanders staffer accessed some of Clinton's data, and the campaign
fired him for this.
The DNC took the excuse to deny the Sanders campaign
all
access to its own voter information data base.
The Sanders campaign has
sued
the DNC for this.
In an escalation of the War on Sharing, a US ISP was
fined
millions for not disconnecting users that repeatedly did file
sharing.
Tent cities in the US are the result of
laws
that force homeless people out of downtown areas.
Pete Seeger's FBI File Reveals How the Folk Legend First Became a
Target
of the Feds.
Why Germany
Can
and Should Open an Investigation into US Torture.
30%
of Republicans want to bomb Agrabah (a fictional medieval Arab
country).
Only around 20% of Democrats want to bomb Agrabah.
Al Jazeera deleted and
blocked
access to an article it had published, which criticized Salafi
Arabia's disrespect for human rights.
Here is
the
article.
Loss of Monkeys And Birds in Tropical Forests
Driving
Up Carbon Emissions.
The problem is that hardwood trees need those animals to disperse
their seeds.
A company gives foreign policy "advice" to candidates such as Clinton,
Rubio and Cruz, led and
funded
by companies in the military-industrial complex.
The company says this is not lobbying, but that's what it adds up to.
It looks like Sanders is not interested in their "advice".
Martin Shkreli, whose company Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price
of Dataprim and blocked companies from making generic drugs, has
resigned after being
arrested
on charges of fraud in his previous company.
I wonder whether the new management will reduce the price. But either
way his practices of blocking other companies from making generic
equivalents should be made illegal.
The Los Angeles Thug Department
investigated
over 1300 claims of bias in 2012-2014, and judged not one
of them valid.
Either LA thugs are remarkably free of bias, far beyond what humans
would be capable of, or they are protecting each other.
A study of complaints filed against Chicago thugs found that
10%
of the thugs got 30% of the complaints.
These thugs can influence the behavior of other thugs, so it is
important to get rid of them.
Most thugs don't beat up or kill without justification, but nearly all
of them will protect other thugs that do so. That's why they
generally deserve the name of "thug". Those few who refuse to protect
the violent thugs are the ones who merit the title of "police officer".
SCROTUS, working to help pricey US ISPs, are
pressuring
the FCC to give up on defending municipal broadband in the US.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Kenyan [thugs] Rescue
Hundreds
of Girls Due to Undergo FGM.
When I call them "thugs", that doesn't mean everything the thugs do is
bad. It means that occasionally one of them kills someone unjustly
and the rest then try to protect that one.
India's nuclear industry dumps waste into the Subarnarekha river,
making its water
unsafe
to drink.
Recommendation:
don't
binge on news about a tragedy.
The San Bernardino shooters used
large
magazines that are illegal to sell in California.
It's not hard to buy them in some other state, perhaps Arizona or
Nevada, and bring them illegally to California. However, if they were
illegal in the whole US, it would really be hard to get them.
The guns were also
modified
illegally so they could fire faster.
Those intending to commit murder will not be deterred by fear of
punishment for doing these modifications, but the law could require
designs that make this more difficult to do.
Australia's plain paper cigarette pack law
survived
an attack through a "trade treaty".
This is good news, but many good laws and policies have been destroyed
by these business-supremacy treaties, most recently US
country-of-origin
meat labelling.
We should get rid of all such treaties.
Congress's budget bill includes
tax
breaks for some big businesses.
Global heating is
damaging
lakes around the world.
Pennsylvania has passed a law to
force
charter schools into Philadelphia.
Charter schools
do
not, in general, provide a better education but they are great for
profiteering
at public expense.
A thug in the UK is
being
investigated for shooting a man; some say the victim was sleeping
in his car.
As usual, thugs are organizing to demand an end to the investigation.
US citizens:
call
on Obama and Congress to press for release of human rights
defender Waleed Abu al-Khair, imprisoned by Salafi Arabia.
The country's official name is "Saudi Arabia", but that disguises its
nasty nature.
"Facewatch" connects snooping cameras in stores to a
blacklist
of faces.
We need to abolish this system; I believe it
should
be illegal for anyone to operate cameras in this way, including
the state, except following a court order to put a camera in a certain
place for a certain period.
Everyone:
Call on George
Mason University to disconnect from the Koch brothers' corrupting
funding.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to renew clean energy tax incentives.
The President of China
wants
countries to organize to censor the internet.
The UK's "bedroom tax", a cut in benefits for disabled or unemployed
living in apartments judged to have an extra room,
has
pressured lots of people to skimp on food, but few have moved to
smaller apartments.
That's partly because few smaller apartments are available in the
areas where these people live. Also, some disabled people couldn't
move to an apartment without room for the relatives that take care of
them.
The right-wing government won't mind this outcome. The policy was
meant as an excuse to squeeze the weak, and it has succeeded at that.
As the Thai king gets older and less able, the military is trying to
prop up the royal family's image by
prosecuting
more people.
Bernie Sanders Is More Popular Than Trump, But
the
Press Ignores Him.
Thugs
inexplicably
attacked peaceful protesters who were responding to the mistrial
of a thug involved in Freddie Gray's death.
The Communications Workers of America
endorsed
Sanders for president.
When thugs are suspected of crimes, they get
better
treatment than everyone else.
Global heating has
changed
the seasons in Haiti, screwing up agriculture.
A court in Brazil
blocked
all access to WhatsApp for 48 hours.
WhatsApp requires running a nonfree program, which is a foolish thing
to do; you are making a mistake if you use it. It also involves a
server that will snoop on you for Big Brother. Still, it is wrong for
Brazil to forbid connections to that server.
Forecast:
2016
will be the hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous
record from 2015.
How far do Christianist extremists take their
war
on women when nobody stops them?
Salafi Arabia is
planning
to execute protester Abdullah al-Zaher, who was 15 years old at
the time, after torturing him into confessing to various crimes.
Star Simpson tells MIT why it must provide support for students who
make harmless technological hacks and are treated to
witch
hunts by panicking ignorant fools.
The UK is implementing its supposed CO2 reduction pledge by
reducing
subsidies for solar power. Just not reducing them as much as was
initially proposed.
In 6 months they will make another reduction.
Burundi
On
'Very Cusp' of Civil Conflict, Warns UN Human Rights Chief.
Lightbulb manufacturers have found an
excuse
to overstate the efficiency of their bulbs.
Senate
proposes
to require communications companies to report "terrorist" postings or
messages (not merely actual threats) threaten human rights, and
companies would have a lot of trouble doing so.
I fear also that only companies that mistreat their users in other
ways will make enough money to be able to hire people to carry this
out.
Americans in general have an extreme overprotective attitude towards
allowing children even to
play
in the front yard. Most Americans think children under 10 are too
young.
This is the effect of massive publicity about dangers that are
very
rare.
I suspect this overprotection will tend to make children feel
smothered as well as making them timid.
The requirement to supervise children without a break, and the need to
bring them everywhere they are to go, imposes tremendous stress and
expense on parents. When I was 7 years old, I walked home from
school, used my keys to go in, and amused myself till my mother got
home from work. She did not have to pay for "child care" — I
knew how to read and play without adult help.
I support Sanders's proposal to
tax
the rich more to fund day care. But we can eliminate a
substantial fraction of the expense by teaching parents that children
don't need to stay in day care for so many years.
Some Republicans, fed up with plutocracy, are
organizing for Sanders.
Interviews
with some of them.
Sanders talks about his
support
among Republicans.
Ukraine has infringed political rights by
banning
the Communist Party and even the word "communist".
The UK is
cracking
down on people that evade small amounts of taxes while leaving the
big tax evaders alone.
However, the tax dodging that governments choose to permit is
even
bigger.
Under plutocratist governments, the purpose of taxes is to serve the
rich and crush the rest.
Google funded some congressional campaigns, and the congresscritters
elected performed for Google by
supporting
Google against an EU legal investigation about abuse of its market
position.
We are making a mistake, relying on some mysterious
"progress"
to save Earth from global heating disaster.
Avoiding heating disaster requires a
mobilization
comparable to what would be made for a large war.
Congress used the budget bill as an excuse to surrender to the WTO:
it
voted
to eliminated country-of-origin meat labeling.
Don't pretend that Congress would have the courage to defy the TPP.
Senator Cruz suggested that the NSA's register of Americans' phone
calls may actually have
increased
under the misnamed "USA Freedom Act".
Apparently he was not supposed to let us know this.
The Tories are rigging the UK's political and electoral system
to
eliminate the possibility of resistance.
Tennessee's
prosecution
of a woman for a coat hanger abortion is the armored unit at the
point of the war on women.
"Is my iPhone listening to me?" An iPhone seems to have
heard a user's
conversation about where person was going, and added it to the
user's profile for some Apple service.
The iPhone, like any other mobile phone, tells Big Brother where you
are. Your private destination will be known to the phone network (and
Big Brother) when you get there. Meanwhile, just about all mobile
phones can be made to listen to all the conversation around
them, and send it to whoever did this. This is why I call them
"Stalin's dream". Either of these is so vicious that I refuse to
carry one.
However, that snooping doesn't send data to Apple. The possible
listening feature reported here would enable Apple, also, to listen to
conversations around the device.
The iThings are full of nonfree software; Apple controls the software,
and the users don't. You
can
never rationally trust a nonfree program. Whether or not they
have a functionality that listens for Apple, the device is
full of
malware.
A listening functionality would be the sort of thing you must expect,
whether or not it is present now.
The Australian equivalent of a SWAT team
terrified
13-year-old April Clarke after they woke her by pointing a bright
light and a gun at her.
Sharif Mobley is apparently still alive, and has been
sentenced
to 10 years in prison for (reportedly) shooting a prison guard.
The US Congress is trying to boost global heating by legalizing
export
of crude oil.
The Koch brothers sponsor
"criminal
justice reform" for corporate criminals.
The Federal Trade Commission could block mergers, but Obama's director
of the Bureau of Competition
hardly
ever tries.
This is one thing President Sanders could fix on his own.
Republicans
propose
war crimes as a response to PISSI.
You almost might as well join PISSI, if you're going to do that.
Let's stand together against
sexist
insults on social media.
I am against limiting freedom of speech, but there is a lot we can do
without going that far.
The idea of recruiting support from "moderate Syrian forces" is based
on
oversimplification
and confusion.
Record High Arctic Temperatures in 2015
Having
'Profound Effects' on Region.
The subtle way some oppose Bernie Sanders is by trying to convince us
that he can't win — contrary to the polls that show him
beating
all the Republicans.
If you would rather have Sanders as president than Clinton,
you should campaign now for Sanders. The worst that can happen
is that Clinton wins the nomination anyway.
The UK convicted Wang Yam of murder in a secret trial, and has now
forbidden
him to take the case to the European Court of Justice. He is also
gagged.
Baltimore's thugs are
preparing
for repression when verdicts are announced in the trial of the
thugs involved in killing Freddie Gray.
We have roadmaps for
providing
the world's power needs with renewable energy; don't heed the
naysayers.
US citizens: call on Republican leaders to say they won't support Trump's campaign if he wins the Republican nomination.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote on an authorization for using military force against PISSI.
Witnesses say that the thug that killed Darrius Stewart
misrepresented the circumstances of firing the fatal shot;
Stewart was moving away, not threatening the thug.
If the rest of the thug's story is correct, the thug had just
had a need to defend himself. People cannot digest new information in
a fraction of a second. Perhaps he had no time to consciously digest
the fact that Stewart had started to flee, before firing the second
shot.
Foam for extinguishing oil fires contains toxic chemicals; in some towns these have contaminated the drinking water and cause cancer.
Some Muslims are questioning the assumption that the Qur'an has to be obeyed.
Human Rights Watch says 7000 prisoners of Assad's forces were executed or died after torture.
Sudan plans to execute 25 people for following a different interpretation of Islam.
Shari'a law is an offense against human rights; any state that adopts it is doing an injustice.
A Tory claimed that Obama sent help so that the Tory party would win the UK general election.
Obama is a moderate Republican (they used to exist) in the Democratic Party. That's why I never voted for him.
The American Red Cross picked up new management from AT&T, which has "rationalized" the organization with disastrous results.
Comcast Hit With $26M Penalty For Dumping Hazardous Waste AND Revealing Personal Customer Info.
The death penalty remains legal in many US states, but the rate of death sentences has fallen by almost a factor of 10 since the 1990s.
Sites that ask people to give data about their friends are a fiendish threat to privacy.
Los Angeles and New York City both got hoax bomb threats.
Los Angeles sent all the children home that day, whereas
New York figured out it was a hoax.
Do real bombers ever give advance warning?
Aren't these threats invariably hoaxes?
For once, Israel has treated Jews that attacked Palestinians as real criminals.
Lexmark has fired the leaders of a union in Mexico; the workers are on strike demanding a raise of 35 cents an hour.
Between 100,000 and 250,000 Texas women have done abortions at home, nearly always with drugs.
Bangladesh has banned Twitter, as well as many other digital communications media.
The UN concluded an Iranian missile test violated the nuclear agreement.
State-imposed bankruptcy government in Flint, Michigan, switched to
taking municipal water from the polluted Flint River as a measure to
save money, and refused to acknowledge that it was contaminated with
lead. The new mayor of Flint has declared an emergency and residents
are going to sue the state.
The city has moved back to another source of water, but this is too late
for all the young children of Flint.
Facebook relaxed its "real name" policy, but only for people who are being harassed for certain specific reasons.
This relieves a very specific acute problem, but does not enable ordinary people to use Facebook without being tracked.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to vote against the budget
authorization bill if it has
any
riders that change policies. Whether the changes are for big oil,
for snooping, against Planned Parenthood or against meat labeling,
reject them!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Women in some US states have been
forced
back to using coat hangers.
Major Brazilian politicians are
being
investigated for corruption.
Poland's newly elected right-wing government is
trying
to seize extra power by replacing the supreme court.
William Perry, Bill Clinton's secretary of defense, warns of a new
nuclear arms race and the danger of
accidental
nuclear war.
T-Mobile in the US seems to be clearly
violating
Net Neutrality rules.
A woman in Tennessee
faces
life in prison for trying to give herself a late term abortion.
I wonder why she did not get an early, safe abortion? Has Tennessee
taken measures to make this so inconvenient that she gave up on it?
The DuPont-Dow merger
would
create another seed sales giant, like Monsanto.
Egypt Jails
Record
Number of Journalists (23 as of December 1).
Spanish journalists will ask the European Court of Human Rights to
overturn the
law
that prohibits photos and videos of thugs, [del: even ] especially
when they are at their worst.
3/4 of Britain's butterfly species have declined, some very much,
in
the last 40 years. This indicates that many other insect species,
less beloved by humans, have probably declined too — adding up
to an ecological calamity.
A school in California told a boy to cover up his Star Wars t-shirt
because
it showed a fictional character holding a gun.
It may be a reasonable policy to exclude symbols of violence from the
classroom, not because someone else was shot, but rather to avoid
promoting militarism. It could also be a wise policy to prohibit
shirts with commercial advertising, which this was.
Note that they did not punish the boy. US schools punish students for
absurd reasons, even get them jailed, and that is a very harmful
practice; but it did not happen in this case.
Ted Cruz bases his global heating denialism on
simple,
clear lies. Then he attacks the complex solution of regulation,
ignoring the market-based simple solution, a carbon tax.
A Muslim scholar
defends
the freedom of speech of a Christian preacher who is being
prosecuted — in the UK — for saying Islam is "Satanic".
Islam has bad aspects, like Christianity and other major religions,
but I would not apply the term "Satanic" to it. Nonetheless, I defend
other people's right to do that.
Algorithms derived from "big data"
can
come to implement racial discrimination because the data reflect
the results of discrimination.
The article takes a foolish, naive attitude to companies that collect
data about people, in effect believing their claims that they use it
only to "serve you better", and neglecting the danger that it
becomes available to others such as crackers and Big Brother. But
even though they ignore the principal injustices of collecting data
about you, their point about another injustice in the use of the data
is important.
Drug trafficking gangs
order
Mexican newspapers what to say about drug issues.
In Thailand, even a
"sarcastic"
statement about the king's dog is a crime.
Don't go to Thailand unless you have an urgent mission for some very
good cause.
Claim No Easy Victories. Paris Was a Failure, But
a
Climate Justice Movement Is Rising.
Is it rising faster than the temperature?
If the world takes them seriously, the Paris commitments could
shrink
the fossil fuel industry and avoid global disaster.
But the fossil fuel industry is still strong and still working to stop
governments from carrying out those commitments properly.
An MP in Zimbabwe faces
charges
of "criminal insult" against strongman Mugabe's wife.
Now DRM is in
"smart"
lightbulbs!
If a product is "smart", and you didn't build it, it is cleverly
serving its manufacturer against you.
The DEA reported to a judge that it has
erased
its massive database of phone calls made within the US.
However,
when
phone companies keep these records for the DEA, that is almost as
bad.
Some Alabama thugs
planted drugs on a thousand black men to put them
in prison. They were motivated by racism.
Republicans have learned to make fact-checking useless: when their
claims are shown to be false,
they repeat the claims and accuse the
media of a cover-up.
Dubya and his men did this in regard to Saddam Hussein's nonexistent
weapons of mass distruction, and they convinced a lot of Americans.
I am surprised by the idea that CNN is "liberal." I have no TV, but
from everything I have heard, CNN is rather right-wing.
Obama's Speech
Reminded Americans That the War with [PISSI] Is Still
Illegal.
If you "can't put down" a mobile device, that's because it was
designed
to be addictive.
Sanders has endorsed a carbon emissions tax.
This is the way to
let the market decide just how and where to reduce
emissions.
The
antisocialist opposition won the election in Venezuela.
People were very unhappy with the shortages, which were caused by
foolish government policies; for instance, subsidies for the prices of
certain foods, which encouraged people to smuggle them into Colombia,
and currency exchange controls.
I fear that the antisocialists will eliminate the programs that Chavez
set up for education and medical care. Subsidizing food for the poor
is necessary, and the problems come from the system that the
socialists set upl but I expect the antisocialists to end the
subsidies so as to make life hard for the non-rich.
Humans' food supply is
dangerously biologically concentrated:
three-quarters of our food comes from 12 species of plants and five of
animals,
What's more, the number of different varieties of the plant species
is decreasing.
The UK says that children who question what they are told, or
criticize
government policy,
are terrorist suspects.
Many prisoners in the US are left destitute when they get out of
prison
because
the state sues them for just about everything they have got,
or even more.
If this happened to me, I'd withdraw the money as cash and toss it
onto a street, just to spite the state.
A thug has been convicted of a felony for pointing a gun at a man's
head. The man had done nothing to warrant attention; the thug was
showing off how much power he had.
Five San Francisco thugs shot Mario Woods dead. They said he had a
knife and wouldn't drop it — though he made no move to attack
them.
Maybe he did have one.
If I were in that situation, I might be in real danger, even if I were
holding a gun — since I have no training, skill or experience in
such a confrontation. However if five thugs with pointed guns think
they are in danger from a man with a knife at his side, they must be
incompetent.
The richest 20 Americans
own more than half the population.
To spread the wealth, vote for progressives.
Right-wing groups are 7 states away from triggering a constitutional
convention that could rewrite the US Constitution in unpredictable
ways.
The
TPP would sabotage efforts to curb global heating in several ways.
This is a natural consequence of the way it was drawn up. For each
area of business, the US government asked the companies in that area
what they wanted. The fossil fuel companies asked for policies that
will help them.
Fundamentally, control of greenhouse gas emissions is good for the
people, so it's what democracy will do if it works right.
The TPP is a business-supremacy treaty with some secondary support
for unregulated trade. What these treaties do is weaken democracy
and give business more power.
The
states of Washington and California will allow most women to get
contraceptive prescriptions from pharmacists, without seeing a doctor
first.
US citizens:
call
on the attorney general to investigate Exxon.
Tunisia, despite being more or less democratic,
represses
homosexuals.
Canadian mining companies operating in Latin America often
trash
the environment and the rights of local inhabitants.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service takes action extremely rarely to
protect endangered species. Out of 88,000 proposed projects, the
F&WS approved all of them, and
took
action in just two cases.
Marco Rubio is trying to serve the large US ISPs by
banning
municipal broadband networks.
The foreign intervention in Yemen, led by Salafi Arabia (*) and backed
by the US, suffered a setback:
commanders
of the ground troops were killed by Houthis.
* I refer to Saudi Arabia this way to highlight how it spreads an
extreme and cruel version of Islam around the world.
Shrimp exported from Thailand to major multinational front companies
are
often
peeled by slaves.
India will make the Paris agreement futile by
continuing
to burn lots of coal.
The UK will do likewise if the Tories continue
their
fossil-fool policies.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-877-796-1949 to demand
clear, transparent labels on
GMO food — not QR codes.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to stop big pharma's tax dodging.
Some Syrian rebels have set up
democratic
local councils: dictatorship and theocracy are not the only
options.
One advance in the Paris deal:
emissions
of armies are now counted.
An effective method of reducing gun violence by gangs is
no
longer in use in the US because nobody will pay for it.
"The
Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars."
Their agents in many governments and institutions are still sabotaging
real progress, but they have lost the battle for society's overall
direction. It was inevitable that would happen once the effects of
global heating became sufficiently visible. Thus, what they intended
was a delaying action.
Did they succeed enough to cause the slow destruction of human
civilization and Earth's biosphere? Time will tell.
Inside
the NRA: the Officials Keeping Gun Control Laws Off the US Agenda.
Some of their lobbying is done through
disguised
relationships.
US citizens:
call
on GM to oppose plans to legalize discrimination in car loans.
Free software turns mobile devices into license-plate
recognition cameras.
I've proposed that it should be illegal for anyone to set up
a license-plate recognition camera pointing at a public place except
with a specific court order.
Accusing governments of
lying when
they say that they want encryption back doors to catch terrorists.
The UK needs to make an "energy U-turn" to satisfy its
Paris
commitments.
European banksters, rather than show Greeks the full extent of what
they demand for "saving" Greece, are imposing it a step at a time.
But Greeks are threatening to
protest
and bring down the government.
Syriac Christian Women Take Up Kalashnikovs to
Fight
PISSI.
Bravo!
Climate Deal: the Pistol Has Fired,
So
Why aren't We Running?
Nigeria is proposing to censor internet communication, making it a
crime to post
"false
information". That tends to mean information that the state
doesn't like.
US Nuclear Weapons Complex Leaves
'Legacy
of Death on American Soil'.
Shaker Aamer rebukes extremists and terrorists, telling them
to
leave the UK if they don't love it.
Aamer accuses Tony B'liar and other UK officials of knowing about his
torture, during which
UK
agents were present.
Don't
Ban Donald Trump. Just Keep on Laughing at Him.
17 women have been elected to local councils in Salafi Arabia,
overcoming the tremendous handicaps imposed by that country's
sexist
laws.
However, these councils do not even theoretically offer women a path
to changing the laws that oppress them.
Islamic law is fundamentally opposed to human rights, and deserves to
be considered a gross injustice.
British companies
make
more money than 15 years ago, and workers have less disposable
income than 15 years ago.
This is dooH niboR at work.
Charter schools in the US provide an avenue for private owners get
public money for their
private
businesses.
I suppose that's why so many local and state policies to encourage
charter schools were set up: due to pressure from the businesses that
intended to enrich themselves.
Since charter schools do not in general provide a better education
(this supposed benefit was the ostensible reason for them), we should
phase them out. Creating them was a mistake, and those policies were
a mistake.
People living in Raqqa and Mosul say they are now
simply
prisons.
Can't they find any guns, any knives, any suicide bombs
with which to kill the PISSI militants?
US citizens:
repudiate
Trump's bigotry.
Sweden
will
finally question Assange about the sex charges against him.
Assange and Ecuador both said years ago that they would
let
Swedish officials question him in the embassy. Swedish
prosecutors have dragged their feet in a way that confirms that they
are not really interested in justice on these charges, rather using
them as an excuse.
The acts that Assange is accused of doing are
not
"rape" as the term is normally used. Swedish law is more strict
than in most countries.
Clinton
uses
an altered history of the fiscal crisis to excuse her opposition
to the reforms that are really necessary, such as restoring the
Glass-Steagall act.
I read previously that Bill Clinton had no real choice about the
repeal of Glass-Steagall, because it was passed with a
veto-proof
majority. But this does not excuse anyone from the duty to fight
to bring it back.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
A new chat program tries to provide privacy about who is talking with whom.
I'm not an encryption expert, and I can't judge whether it provides good security.
Inequality Is Now Killing [people in] Middle America.
How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights (if it goes into effect).
After some rebels evacuated al-Waer, in Homs, others have made a cease fire with Assad's rule.
Poles held a large protest against the recently elected right-wing government which seems to be trying to twist the constitution.
With 1.5C of global heating, the Seychelles may still exist. 2C of global heating will probably inundate the flat coastal parts of the islands.
They would still have the mountainous inland areas, but couldn't grow any food there.
Government, Can You Hear Me Now? Cell-site Simulators Aren't Secret Anymore.
A number of interesting points about Bernie Sanders.
If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, I won't vote for her. She's a plutocratist, part of the problem rather than the solution. If we keep voting for the lesser plutocratist, our government will get more and more plutocratist. I will vote Green.
I support Sanders because he's not just a lesser evil. He's good.
"Until governments undertake to keep fossil fuels in the ground, they will continue to undermine agreement they have just made."
Atheists in Lincoln, Nebraska, booked all the exhibition space in the state capitol building so that no sectarian exhibit can be presented about Christmas.
It is not right to promote a religion in a state capitol building. It is also not right to censor any view by cornering the market on places to present it, but the atheists didn't do that. There must be plenty of places in Lincoln, outside the capitol, where manger displays for Christmas can be set up — churches, for instance.
The main points of the deal agreed in Paris.
Paris climate agreement 'may signal end of fossil fuel era', according to optimists.
This agreement could very well start a process leading towards truly curbing global heating. I fear we can't afford to lose that time in getting started. The agreement will still raise global temperatures 3 to 4 degrees centigrade. The problem is, it involves "no action, just promises". When a country adopts a long-term emissions target without policies that will realize it, it may never adopt suitable policies. By the time the target is not met, it is too late.
France's constitution may be changed to support long-term repressive "states of emergency".
Some research suggests that unhappiness does not predispose people to illness.
There are distinct questions here:
The research suggests that the answer to (1) is no. That's fortunate, for unhappy people. But whatever the answer to (1) is, it does not mean that being unhappy is blameworthy. If there is no ethical, reliable way to decide to be happy, then your unhappiness is no more your fault than an injury or a birth defect.
Senator Cruz is proposing to block companies from using H1B visas to bring foreign workers to the US temporarily for training.
It is a good cause, but his solution operates by closing off H-1B visas except for very highly paid jobs. I think the solution should more directly address the problem.
I propose that any company or division hiring H-1B workers should be forbidden to eliminate any US jobs for the next two years, unless it has suffered a big drop in gross sales, or to move any work out of the US or to a subcontractor during that time. Fines for violations should be very high.
Also, workers who are told to train their successors (and then be fired) should refuse to train them, or quit immediately. Resisting oppression calls for some guts.
Making tech companies spy on their users for the state is unamerican, and useless too.
An issue not mentioned here is, which criterion is used to define terrorism? Do attacks on abortion clinics count? They ought to, but so far the US government is not treating them as terrorism.
The Moral Failure of Computer Scientists: an interview with Phillip Rogaway.
Perhaps we need a Bulletin of the Information Scientists.
PISSI seduces naive youths by offering a cause and a community to people who feel that no one takes them seriously.
It would be good to change legally required pension schemes so that they are not connected with any particular employer.
The article's picture of the "future of work" shows distortions. "An algorithm matches you with a gig that optimizes your income opportunity"? Not likely. Rather, it will optimize the income of the company that runs it, as it accumulates data about you that it will sell to someone.
Will you be able to decide when to work? Maybe in theory, but in practice you'll find out at 08:00 that you have to work for 4 hours from 11:00 to 15:00 or go without.
Now that reliable gene editing has been developed, it will certainly
be used to
eliminate
hereditary diseases. To deny people this remedy would
be too cruel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
I don't think it is bad in principle to make enhancements using this technology. However, designing an enhanced human that doesn't already exist is not as straightforward as replacing a defective gene with its normal counterpart. Until a number of people with a certain supposed enhancement grow up, we won't know whether the change is an enhancement or an impediment.
The carbon emissions commitments of some countries are so weak that their emissions will keep increasing. What should we do about this?
Since this is about avoiding global disaster, the response implicitly proposed in the article (Just give up) is stupid. What we really need to do is make those countries reduce emissions.
Given the hundreds of millions of deaths this disaster is likely to cause globally, emitting too much carbon is an act of war. It would be justified to bomb coal-burning power plants to stop their emissions, if nothing less can do the job.
Artificial gene drives make it possible to modify entire wild populations of organisms that reproduce sexually and don't take long to mature. For instance, we could modify wild mosquitoes so that they can't carry malaria. We could wipe out populations of invasive species, such as zebra mussels or asian carp in the US.
Because it is possible to remove the drive later, if any of the drive-harboring asian carp got back to Asia where these fish normally live, we could easily eliminate the drive to protect the species in the range where it belongs.
A web site that generated images in the style of handwritten signs used in the London subway ("Underground") was taken down at the request of the subway. The subway said the site was being used to generate racist signs and presented this as legal grounds for censorship. Racist messages are nasty, but it's wrong to shut down a medium of communication just because some people used it communicate nasty messages. The UK does not respect freedom of speech enough, but I hope that this demand was not legally enforceable there.
I would have refused all along to use a web site to generate parody signs, because doing such a job using someone else's service is SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).
Any digital service automatically gives the service operator power over its users. This service's operator demonstrated that power when he shut it down, thus stopping people from making any more signs no matter what the messages. In addition, users could not freely alter any aspects of how the service worked, except those for which it offered explicit settings. The service controlled that too.
The right way to make these sign images, or do any computing job that involves you alone, is with a free program you run in your own computer. That way, the program's author does not subsequently have power over the users once they get copies.
If the developer had released a free program to do this, he would not have been able to "shut it down" on demand.
Young children are getting addicted to video to the point that they don't experience much real social interaction.
Trump's bigotry is encouraging the growth of racist hate groups in the US.
Everyone: call on the EU not to restrict web linking.
US citizens: call on Obama to pardon Jeffrey Sterling.
Everyone: call on Burkina Faso to save girls from being forced into marriage.
Australia's planet-roaster "environment minister", whose mission is to trash the environment, demanded to be allowed to speak after a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef, which will be destroyed by CO2 emissions along with all the other coral reefs.
It's not just the heat, it's the acidity.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual hopes to get away with having supported killer thugs by giving an "apology" without admitting he did anything wrong.
Emanuel is directly responsible, and he should resign.
After he is gone, Chicago could have a chance to elect someone who would be mayor during the daytime. Emanuel is just a night-mayor.
Pakistan's fighting against the Taliban has pushed many foreign jihadis into Afghanistan.
While this may be difficult for Afghanistan, at least it is a sign of progress.
US citizens: Reps and Senators, oppose sale of arms to Salafi Arabia.
Everyone: call for including the Syrian Kurds in multilateral negotiations about Syria's future.
Rejection of a bill to block gun purchases by people on the "no-fly list" has called attention to the injustice of that list.
That list is punishment without trial, and if that's not bad enough, it is punishment secretly sprung on people after they have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on nonrefundable tickets they can't use. No one lawfully present or resident in the US should be blocked from riding in US airline flights except as punishment for a crime.
As for people not lawfully present or resident in the US, the government has the option of denying them entry, which is both more effective and more legitimate than the no-fly list.
Blocking people from buying guns is more legitimate than blocking people from flying, so it is ok to do that based on weaker criteria. However, there are limits to what this can achieve. Blocking a small list of people will not stop attacks by undetectable small teams. But perhaps nothing can stop that.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill to ban microbeads from soap and toothpaste.
Microbeads are harmful to marine life, and sewage treatment does not stop them from getting into waterways.
Chicago thugs who shot Ronald Johnson dead say he was carrying a pistol. His mother says the pistol was planted on him after he was shot.
DA Alvarez, following her general tendency, is protecting the thugs.
Neither of them merits our unreserved trust. The thugs could be lying to excuse their actions. The mother could be saying what she wishes were true. But the fact that witnesses report that thugs told them what to say suggests that the thugs are lying.
Cory Doctorow: don't think of trying to work for the NSA so as to limit its wrongs. Great heroes have tried and failed.
The low price of oil is making most oil extraction projects unprofitable to invest in. It the price stays low, it will limit the oil extracted to the fraction which is cheap to extract.
That's good, but the low price also reduces the incentive to invest in renewable energy and increased efficiency. And it tends to encourage investment in burning oil in the future (though that may take years).
Increased tax on oil, or a carbon tax, would give us the best of both worlds: the extraction projects would still be unprofitable, while renewables and efficiency increases would be encouraged.
Demonstrating cruelty, the US government stopped a hunger strike in an immigration prison by threatening to force-feed the prisoners.
Remember that most of these prisoners have not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. The US keeps them in prison as preparation for possibly deporting them. It may be legitimate to deport them, but that is no excuse for force-feeding them.
The DuPont and Dow Chemical Merger: Bad Deal for People and the Planet.
The merger of two large companies that operate in the same areas reduces competition in all the areas they both operate in. Splitting that company according to area of operation does nothing to increase competition in any one of the areas. Thus, the overall effect is to reduce competition.
One of General Pinochet's men phoned a talk show to confess to murdering dissidents under orders.
I guess his conscience insisted on this. He said that he would have been killed if he refused.
On the politics and irrationality of Western responses to Syria: "So Why Did Turkey Shoot Down That Russian Plane?"
Oklahoma thug convicted of raping 12 women after intimidating them with is power to threaten them.
If Airlines Care About [global heating] They Should Make Everyone Travel Economy.
Egypt's censorship is being applied repressively to all media.
The UK is sucking up to China so hard that it praised China on Human Rights Day.
Figures demonstrate the decline of the US middle class.
US meat production has decreased since 2009, but use of antibiotics in farms has increased by almost 1/4.
We're going to pay with our lives for this folly.
Never Mind a Third Runway — What Heathrow Needs Is Managed Decline.
1.5C of heating as a maximum target is a lot safer for everyone than 2C.
The farther heating goes, the more chance of triggering some positive feedback which would shove it far above 2C.
An Ohio thug has been indicted for two different killings.
Cuban Dissidents Say 100 Detained in Human Rights Day Protest Crackdown.
Jailed Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi on Hunger Strike.
The US plans to punish Europeans with connections to Iran because of a murder carried out by by Pakistanis inspired by Salafi Arabia. However, neither Pakistan nor Salafi Arabia are affected by this bill.
I suggest that the European Union retaliate by requiring visas from Americans whose family name starts with R. Paul Ryan, for instance. The absurdity of this response will show the absurdity of what the US is doing.
The US announces "progress" in fighting PISSI, but the supposed progress may not mean anything.
The US tends to label any "military-age males" killed by air strikes as enemy fighters, but that's definitely an exaggeration. If air strikes in Ramadi killed 350 military-age males, we have no idea how many were fighting for PISSI and how many were civilians.
The caution of the army attacking Ramadi is likely to result in fewer casualties to soldiers, but could cause more casualties to civilians in Ramadi, which would build support for PISSI.
As for a few leaders killed, such a group can always replace them as long as more people are volunteering.
People have made great progress against malaria using insecticide-treated mosquito nets, but mosquitos are developing resistance to the insecticides.
If we step up the effort, we could cut off malaria transmission in some areas.
Thai Man Arrested for Facebook 'like' of Doctored Royal Photo. He supported a campaign that criticized Thai corruption.
After a Thai investigator fled to Australia fearing for his life, Thailand looks to charge him with "defamation" for saying so.
Thailand's repressive government does not care that he said it in Australia.
To visit Thailand is an act of folly — stay away!
Volkswagen explains that the "defeat devices" that faked emissions levels for tests came from a system that had a tendency to do this.
A small step against overprotectiveness: the US "no child left alone" law has been amended to say that it does not criminalize parents for allowing a child to walk to school.
Western discussion of Islamic terrorists studiously avoids mentioning how Salafi Arabia and Qatar promote their ideology and fund their attacks.
Some US teachers are leading their students to treat Muslim students as terrorists.
I think it would be useful for non-Islamist Muslims to invent a term to describe themselves, so that they can say in a positive way what they stand for, without using a negation. Then, when someone asks them, "Are you an Islamist", they can say, "No, I'm an XYZ, and proud of it."
France is passing a law to require supermarkets to give away "expired" food.
Sanders presents the positive response to Trump's randomly scattered hatred.
Mental health care is unavailable to half the Americans that need it. Perhaps as a result, they are more likely to get killed by thugs.
Global heating threatens to inundate Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay, turning it first into a marsh, then later into open water.
Only 500 people live their now, but it's not the only place in the US that is going to be under water.
Spending money to protect each vulnerable place is stupid. We should spend it to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and thus protect them all at once.
Without Syrians at the Front And Centre of Talks, There Can Be No Lasting Peace.
ACLU: FBI Director Completely Ignores Anti-Abortion, Right-Wing Terror, Focuses Exclusively on Muslims.
The UK's government isn't satisfied with eliminating subsidies for wind and solar energy. Now it plans to tax them heavily.
China has cancelled the punishments applied to children who were born in violation of the one-child-per-family law.
I supported limiting families to one child, but it was wrong to punish the children. They are not responsible for who decided to have them.
A woman raped by a California thug, under the guise of a "cavity search", had the courage to report it and sue.
The Prime Minister of France says France will not ban public WiFi or use of Tor.
It is not clear how broad the requirement for companies to break their client's encryption will be.
Dow and DuPont want to merge.
Large companies should never be allowed to merge. Let's hope that today's weakened antitrust laws provide a basis to block it.
The Venezuelan right wing has repeatedly accused Chavez of stealing elections. We see now that the elections in Venezuela are honest.
However, I fear that the antisocialists, now in power, will change that. Republicans in the US have perfected several methods of rigging elections that they could follow.
China has arrested many labor activists in Canton (Guangdong).
Japan's failure to act against ivory smuggling is impeding efforts to protect elephants.
Thailand's Most Senior Human Trafficking Investigator to Seek Political Asylum in Australia.
The investigations lead to people high up in the army and the thugs.
South Korea is becoming repressive: a union leader who sought refuge in a Buddhist temple has been arrested.
Now that feminism has revived, it can do a lot of good, but also threatens censorship.
I support feminism except when it starts to attack freedom of speech. Calling someone a "slut" is nasty, and foolish as well: it presumes a prudish sexist idea of good and bad sexual conduct. Let's rebuke anyone who calls anyone a "slut" — we could call then "Taliban" — but people have a right to say nasty, prudish, sexist things.
No matter how nasty a statement is, censorship is nastier.
UK right-wing policies of dooH niboR are spreading hunger.
Syrian rebels evacuated the city of Homs, under cease fire.
Many countries feed more antibiotics to healthy animals than the humans use. This provokes antibiotic resistance in the bacteria that inhabit the animals,which spreads to bacteria that can infect humans.
The "reconciled" version of CISA contains all the worst snooping provisions approved by the House and Senate.
Anheuser-Busch is taking advantage of a gap in US competition law to push small competitors out of supermarkets.
This shows one more way that US competition law needs to be strengthened. It should also prohibit the sort o contracts that Microsoft pushed on PC manufacturers, by which they agree to pay for a Windows license even when they sell a computer without Windows.
Under Thailand's tyranny, any criticism of repression can be twistedly labeled as "insulting the monarchy" which makes it a target of repression.
You can't stop vicious ideas, whether those of Trump or those of PISSI, by banning them.
One quarter of Alaska permafrost could melt by 2100 — US Geological Survey.
Since this would release a lot of methane, we'd be truly cooked.
The FBI director has returned to demanding an end to encryption that really works.
Imagine if someone like Trump becomes president and starts using the US spy apparatus to find and imprison scapegoats.
Activists protested at the Louvre against its acceptance of sponsorship from an oil company.
Isn't it cute how the oil company sums up plutocratic rule: "In recent years, the relationship between business and society has changed."
Protests like this are very important for turning fossil fuel companies into the pariahs they deserve to be. Having dealings with those companies should make a person or organization the object of general scorn. This is necessary because it will reduce their plutocratic power to block necessary action to avoid disaster.
Librarians and privacy advocates oppose CISA together.
Ramie Abounaja displayed a Palestinian flag from his dorm window, so George Washington University sent a thug to make him take it down, then made some unclear disciplinary accusation against him.
It is formally prohibited to hang flags from a window, but students that hang other flags never get bothered.
The war in Ukraine has quieted down since August; the cease-fire has held. It is no longer serves Putin's purposes to heat it up.
A total of 9,000 deaths are estimated.
While Obama's officials refuse to read the Senate's torture report, Republicans are trying to destroy all copies, so as to cover up US crimes.
Germany is still paying pensions to those still living of 37,000 Spaniards who fought for Hitler.
"Everything you need to know about encryption: Hint, you're already using it."
This article exhibits a blind spot that is common in writing about the issue: namely, it is unwilling to consider that the US government's official use of a back door might be for evil.
I'm not willing to maintain that blind spot. What if we have President Trump, or someone like him?
Trump and Clinton are both scapegoating the internet.
Community land trusts and public housing can make life better for people that privately owned housing.
The UK is promoting diesel generators over renewable generators.
The Afghan army is having trouble winning support from the people because it kills too many civilians.
The US is on track to make it inconvenient for Europeans to enter the US if they have visited Iraq, Syria, Iran or Sudan.
This will hit Europeans who participated in humanitarian, diplomatic and business activities in those countries. Yet another US attack against Medecins Sans Frontières.
Ironically, it will also hurt any Europeans that worked for the US mercenary companies such as Blackwater (or whatever it's called today).
The FBI will start counting people killed by thugs in the US.
Sanders states how he will achieve big cuts in US fossil fuel emissions, as well as banning some of the most dangerous or polluting forms of fossil fuel extraction.
Sanders told reporters not to neglect US poverty and injustice out of obsession with how to deal with PISSI.
Humanity must invest 7 trillion dollars a year to avoid global heating disaster.
That is 20 times what we invested in this in 2014.
Fortunately, we can get most of that 7 trillion by taking it from investment in fossil fuel use.
A danger from Trump is that he makes serious bigots seem within the range of normal views.
Gun killings in the US today are running at half the rate of 20 years ago. Americans need not feel terrified of being shot.
Although the total death rate from shooting is going down, the death rate from multiple shooting incidents is rising. Common sense gun control measures can't make multiple shooting impossible, but could reduce how often they happen.
Also, prohibiting large magazines nationwide would eventually make them scarce. That would reduce, in many cases, the number that a shooter can succeed in killing.
Philip Coleman was lying on a cot in jail when Chicago thugs came into his sell and repeatedly tased him. Coleman died shortly after.
Global heating denialists for hire, by the hour, to write reports to support planet-roasters.
There may be a real prospect of a cease-fire in Syria among the sides other than PISSI.
Microsoft is attacking computers that run Windows 7 and 8, switching on a flag that says whether to "upgrade" to Windows 10 when users have turned it off.
This, by the way, reaffirms the presence of a universal back door in Windows 7 and 8.
Oil Fuels War and Terrorists Like [PISSI]. The Climate Movement Can Bring Peace.
Clinton: will you take actions to oppose the TPP?
Foreign recruits continue flowing to PISSI.
It is very important to cut off the flow, since PISSI's training turns many somewhat-confused people into expert soldiers. But the only way to do it is to close the border with Turkey. Erdogan won't do it, so it has to be done by ground troops on the Syrian side.
Saudi Arabia is trying to poison the Paris climate conference.
China and India are also blocking a strong agreement.
The UK is planning to cut the support for disabled people, supposedly to give them an incentive to do the work that they can't do.
US citizens: tell Democracy For America who you suggest it should endorse for president. (I chose Sanders.)
Rio Olympics Linked to Widespread Human Rights Violations, Report Reveals.
When the games start, other forms of harshness are likely to start, including chasing away street vendors so certain elect businesses can get the spectators' business. Meanwhile, there may well be new systems of surveillance and new harsh laws that will be permanent.
The city of Boston wisely killed Boston's bid to hold Olympic games.
Planned highways and railroads in Africa could destroy the currently roadless ecosystems they run through.
Demand for ivory in China is falling, which bodes well for elephants.
The question is whether this is due to a change in attitudes or only to China's current economic slump.
MDMA (Ecstasy) is already quite safe, but legalizing it would make it even safer.
Several countries are forcibly handing exiled Chinese dissidents to China. They include Thailand, and even Vietnam, which is not generally friendly with China.
Even without the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian oil exports via the US have almost doubled since a year ago.
Much like PISSI with its beheading videos, Trump attracts support by proposing shocking actions.
His reaction is what PISSI hopes to provoke. So is the success of bigots in French elections.
Iceland has its own counterpart to Pastafarianism: Zuism worships ancient Sumerian gods, and will give its members a refund of their mandatory tax surcharge to support churches.
As Australia pushes for more coal export, some Australian islands are gradually being flooded, and changing weather is killing their crops.
Proposing a mechanism to enforce compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
A commentator suggests that PISSI's loss of profitability might make the groups that support it split apart.
Trump Cites Unscientific Poll From Fringe Group in Call for Banning Muslim Immigration.
Calling on the public to liberate scientific knowledge through forbidden sharing of the articles and books that embody it.
Mubarak's thugs tortured Sayed Abdellatif into confessions that appear to be false, but Australia uses them as an excuse to imprison him.
Global heating is hitting England hard with great floods that would have been extremely rare in the past.
The government continues going all-out to make this worse.
10 criteria for judging whether the agreement from the Paris conference will do what needs to be done.
Finland is considering a universal basic income.
A "liberal" Russian TV channel which disagrees with Putin is being examined for "extremism".
The US, China, Canada and the EU are supporting a 1.5C limit for global heating.
It is necessary to make India accept this target. Flooding other countries is an act of war; perhaps the US and China should convey to Modi that they will preemptively bomb India's coal-burning power plants to stop India from flooding cities such as New York, Washington, Miami, Nanjing and Shanghai.
Of course, this would be hypocritical if the US and China don't do their share to prevent the flooding.
Fossil fuel companies continue funding denialism. Fortunately, one of their events in Paris was a risible failure.
I fear the companies that are "sponsoring" the Paris climate negotiations are having a lot more influence.
A large renewable energy plan could lead Africa away from fossil fuels.
This could make life better for many people in Africa, but if we don't make India drop its plans for burning coal, people may not be able to live there at all.
The WTO will try to fine the US a billion dollars unless it abolishes country-of-origin meat labels.
Let's abolish the WTO instead. The WTO's purpose is to undermine democracy in all the countries that have signed it, transferring power from the legislature to multinational businesses.
The plutocratists try to distract us from this effect by comparing exports and imports, which slips in the assumption that the interests of Americans are nothing but a matter of total economic consumption.
Even aside from questions of whether the economy is sustainable, economic growth in all countries doesn't help most people if it is achieved in a way that benefits the rich at the expense of the non-rich. To prevent that, we need to make laws that assure the wealth is spread around and that businesses don't hurt the public. These laws are precisely what "free trade" treaties attack. They also make it hard to maintain unions.
Don't let the plutocratists distract you from the real issue at stake. And please organize now to defeat the TPP!
Global greenhouse emissions fell in 2015, but they are still so high that disaster will result; and the decrease may not last.
The UK's rightwing government plans to reduce universities to the status of training institutions for the "labor market".
US citizens: Support the BLM's proposed rule to make oil and gas extractors pay for all they extract.
Everyone: call on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and prosecutor Anita Alvarez to resign.
US citizens: call on the attorney general to let victims of US torture have their day in court.
Clinton, like the Republicans, wants more government snooping. She wants to pressure companies into bypassing encryption.
Her bogus premise is that we should keep increasing snooping until it identifies in advance all attacks by small groups. But no amount of surveillance is enough to do that, so she will always have an excuse to demand more surveillance.
Vote for Sanders for president.
The UK spy agency argues it should be allowed to spy on people with hardly any limits, and attack their computers, just because the hypothetical crimes are really bad.
Note the similarity between the argument in favor of massive surveillance and the argument in favor of torture: that it "just might someday" make it possible to prevent a crime. But neither massive surveillance nor torture really does this.
Malaysia Approves Security Law Amid Warning It Could Lead to Dictatorship.
France is following the same path; I fear for France.
Crackpot theories about "chemtrails" are distracting people from the dangerous greenhouse gases emitted by airplanes.
Here's a conspiracy theory. Maybe the "chemtrails" idiocy was funded by the Heatland Institute (*) through ALEC.
* It calls itself the "Heartland Institute", but since its goal is to make the Earth hotter, "Heatland" fits it better.
A US appeals court endorsed a narrow interpretation of the CFAA: disobeying terms of service is not a crime.
This might have saved Aaron Swartz from being hounded to death.
Muslims in London have started a campaign against fanaticism, telling a fanatic who attacked someone in a train that he is not a real Muslim.
Advancing surveillance technology threatens to make it impossible to do anything that the state does not follow.
The US and France may attack PISSI in Libya, where it is expanding and is viewed by most of the public as merely an occupying army.
However, we should take care not to consider its expansion in Libya as a sign of weakness in Syria and Iraq.
Many have lost wars by underestimating the enemy.
The UK government is eager to bomb someone, saying it must try to protect Britons from terrorism even if that is ineffective or backfires. Meanwhile, it rejects the effective measures to protect the British people from the larger threat of global heating.
Earth Has Lost a Third of Arable Land in Past 40 Years, Scientists Say.
We're riding the Earth too hard, and we can't keep it up for long.
Christianist terrorists, like Islamist terrorists, believe that their religion authorizes any sort of crimes.
The Canadian national thugs want to access personal data without warrants.
Elon Musk condemns the 5 trillion dollars a year in damage that the fossil fuel industry is not being forced to pay for.
James Hansen and some other scientists say nuclear power is needed to end carbon emissions.
I respect James Hansen, but I think he is mistaken. To develop nuclear power at the rate he proposes would require ignoring safety. He is talking about hypothetical advanced reactors that could only work many years from now, and certainly won't be available soon.
This amount of nuclear power would be so expensive that it would be cheaper to build an excess of renewable energy, plus power storage capacity.
Another SCROTUS budget bill rider would allow increased consolidation in US television.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
After Janet Alder's brother was killed by UK thugs, she started campaigning for justice, and thugs started snooping on her life looking for some way to throw dirt on her.
If it is impossible to convict the thugs in charge of this operation, the law must be changed so that next time a conviction is obtained.
Businesses surround us with little lies that no one expects us to take seriously. This can devalue truth in general.
Sanders' tax plan for multinational companies would raise all the money the US needs for its infrastructure.
I hope he will put a lot of the revenue into renewable energy.
Multinational oil companies face an investigation for complicity in causing the damage of global heating.
The US mainstream media ignore the drone attack whistleblowers.
When someone was stabbed during an art event in Miami, witnesses thought the attack was theater, part if the performance.
Faking violence as a hoax or "art" can indirectly hurt people by confusing society about how to react. It should not be illegal, but it is wise to disapprove of it.
The official statements of several thugs about the murder of Laquan McDonald were lies — and the video proves it.
Is it a crime to report falsely?
Democrats proposed a law to ban people on the no-fly list from buying guns, and SCROTUS blocked it as a denial of due process.
The no-fly list is already punishment without due process. Being stopped from flying is more of a punishment than being stopped from buying a gun, and this is why the no-fly list must be abolished, or else redesigned so that people are only placed in it by a court's judgment.
At that point, it could also be applied to purchase of guns.
The NSA still has the power to snoop massively on Americans, never limited as the Constitution calls for.
We have evidence from France and the US that this power doesn't prevent terrorist attacks anyway.
US parents would rather their children see violence than sex.
Modi talks about boosting solar power in India, but he still plans to double coal extraction.
To some extent, the new coal mines in India will replace coal imports. However, continuing to burn so much coal will bring disaster regardless of where it is mined.
A week with Hello Barbie: it constantly tells you what good friends you are, then asks you for personal information.
Seems designed to manipulate children into giving personal data.
Why 'Active Investigations' Don't Justify Keeping Police Video Secret.
By 2050, global heating will disrupt food production in every region of the world. This will add to the harm done by population increase.
Clinton Super PAC Donor is Former Goldman Exec and Foreclosure Crisis Profiteer.
Clearly he expects her not to clamp down on the power of the banksters.
The TPP would prohibit laws requiring certain products come with source code, which is needed for their security and for users' right to repair.
The tyranny of Thailand is demonstrated by repeated censorship of New York Times articles that can hardly be said to actually criticize the Thai monarchy.
Many Americans are too quick to assume a killing is terrorism when the killer is a Muslim, but drag their feet against acknowledging Christianist terrorism.
I use the term "Christianist" for Christians that want to impose laws that come from their religion, by analogy with "Islamist". Only a fraction of Christianists and Islamists are violent, but all are enemies of human rights.
Brazil has advised women not to get pregnant now, because a virus once in a rare while causes microcephaly.
It ought to be possible to abort the very few fetuses that develop microencephaly, but I suppose Brazil doesn't respect women's rights that much.
On the other hand, a substantial reduction in births would be quite useful too.
US-supported Salafi Arabia bombed an MSF clinic in Yemen.
Kazakhstan, which is a total tyranny, is ordering all internet users to install back doors in their computers.
This goes only a little beyond how the UK plans to attack all internet users.
The tyrant of Burundi demands that everyone join his party; those who don't are beaten. Those who try to flee are killed if caught.
The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work.
Encryption alone cannot protect our privacy from all the systems of snooping that have been set up in today's "free" countries — only partly from some. We need to redesign systems so that they do not accumulate data about people other than court-designated suspects.
Human population growth continues to threaten humanity, as it is on a collision course with the food shortages that global heating does and will cause.
If we don't want people to remain poor, we must make fewer of them.
We must go beyond "zero carbon emissions" and actively reduce the CO2 level in Earth's atmosphere.
The urgency is in the first step. Once that is done, reducing the CO2 level may prevent the subsequent inundation of some of the cities that are threatened.
Maria Hasankolli overslept and her 8-year-old child walked to school. She faces ten years in prison for this unconscious act.
When I was 8 years old, I walked to school every day. So did everyone else in my school. But that was in Manhattan. Perhaps these nasty fools think that Connecticut is a more dangerous place than Manhattan.
The secret negotiations for the Trade In Services Agreement propose to prohibit subsidies, or any sort of preferences, for renewable energy.
This is typical of how "trade treaties" betray the people: subordinating everything that really matters to business interests.
This is based on the leaked text of one chapter.
Thugs deleted part of the Burger King store's security video recording in order to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald.
A European court case demands that Facebook cease sending Europeans' data to the US.
Around the world corporations are exempting themselves from taxation, forcing too much tax burden onto individuals, especially the non-rich.
In the past, countries have been weakened because too much property ended up in the hands of untaxable churches. Churches or corporations, it's the same phenomenon.
Prosecutors stretch laws and ignore the constitution to attack people that distribute information from the Fully Informed Jury Association about the purpose of juries.
When someone is on trial for handing out a pamphlet, I wonder whether the pamphlet must be entered in evidence for the jury to examine.
Westerners who fight along with the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, against PISSI, are often prosecuted just like those that fight for PISSI.
US citizens: phone the White House at (202) 456-1111 and leave a message for President Obama, calling for rejecting spending bills with nasty Republican riders.
Whether they are tax breaks for companies, or attacks on Planned Parenthood, or attacks on the environment, or attacks on food labeling requirements, or anything else, Obama should reject them one and all.
While SCROTUS continue to cut spending that helps people, they are preparing big tax breaks for businesses.
The thirty meter telescope, which would have been by far the largest telescope in the northern hemisphere, has been cancelled because some of the ground it would be built on is considered "sacred". Faith has, apparently, triumphed over knowledge.
Can any other place can be found to build this telescope?
Another telescope, even larger, is planned for Chile, where it will be able to observe the southern skies — but parts of the northern skies will be outside its range.
Zuckerberg "donated" most of his assets — to a new corporation he owns. And he calls that "charity".
New Canadian PM Trudeau looks great on global heating, but only because he is compared with the over planet-roaster Harper.
Chicago Mayor Emanuel seems to have tried to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald in order to get the black vote for reelection as mayor.
I gave to Chuy Garcia's campaign. I hope he wins next time.
The UK decided to bomb PISSI in Syria, a gesture that will have negligible military effect.
I'm not necessarily opposed to gestures, but gestures are not a valid reason to kill people.
James Hansen calls for a predictably increasing fee on carbon emissions.
How Bernie Sanders proposes to make college affordable for masses of Americans, as we did before.
The other candidates are too much in cahoots with the rich.
US Christianist extremists are trying to cut off American women from contraceptives, but pretend this isn't so.
Everyone: please donate to the Free Software Foundation.
SCROTUS are planning to threaten a government shutdown to abolish some of the laws that regulate banksters.
SCROTUS stands for Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Demanding the resignation of Chicago Mayor Emmanual.
The climate negotiators in Paris hope that nature (physics) will make concessions, if they show good intentions.
Turkey wants to set up a "safe zone" in Northern Turkey — safe for PISSI, that is. Thus, the Kurds are opposed to it.
Human Rights Watch demands prosecution of US torturers.
A state in of Australia will imprison people for having 3D printer files for making a gun.
It is legitimate to prohibit making guns, but any law that makes it a crime to have a copy of some published work is tyranny. It subjects innocent people to great danger from anyone that wants to get them in trouble.
Trump exploits the internet with speeches that are a series of clickbait. They don't need to be coherent to succeed.
I occasionally use Google search, but Google never knows who I am. If you do the same, then your Google search is the same as mine; Google can't tell us apart.
The President of South Korea is repressing labor protesters and tried to associate them with hypothetical terrorists.
Rosa Parks, whose arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, was a mature lifelong activist who had plenty of experience.
People in Raqqa say that airstrikes alone don't change much. Aside from Russian airstrikes, which often hit civilians.
ALEC, funded by fossil fuel businesses, is trying to organize Republican-controlled US states to actively sabotage US plans to avoid global heating disaster.
The UK Tories are adapting Republican techniques of voter suppression and gerrymandering to make the UK government nondemocratic.
A Russian director, authorized to make a deceptive North Korean propaganda movie, found a clever way to show some of the truth.
Right-wing cuts in the UK mean no parks, no public libraries, no museums, no place for young people to do anything but get in trouble.
Rich Countries Should Pay to Keep Tropical Forests Standing.
Avoiding global disaster will be well worth the price, but there are two issues that we must resolve:
Paying a price to preserve forests is one thing; assigning them a value in money is another. It is a mistake to see the issue in the narrow economic terms such as "ecosystem services" and "buying them". That encourages people to treat them as fungible.
The World's Richest 10% Produce Half of Global Carbon Emissions.
The US must do a lot more to switch to renewable energy. This calls for spending money, perhaps instead of some weapons.
Another Egyptian journalist has been charged with "spreading false news" for giving a talk about the Islamist rebels in the Sinai.
China states the plan to make huge cuts in CO2 emissions from electricity by 2020.
This would be a real step forward, but don't forget the emissions from transport, home heating, factories, and agriculture.
The slow struggle to establish protection of marine species threatened by overfishing takes place in the shadow of the CO2 threat to wipe out entire ecosystems and families.
Sending independently operating US combat troops to fight in Syria invites making things worse.
Repression in Turkey has reached the point where a state employee has been fired for comparing Erdoğan's face to that of Gollum.
When Erdoğan doesn't understand is that he is the one bringing Turkey into disrepute.
Putin is expelling Turkish citizens from Russia in the harshest possible way, clearly meant as a gesture to prove what a bully he can be.
The reasons stated for this action include bullshit, plus an accusation that is probably true: that Turkey is protecting PISSI's oil export trade.
Both Turkey and Russia must be lying about what happened in the downing of the Russian jet.
Loan companies, in Africa and the US, make would-be borrowers submit to total surveillance by installing spyware in their phones.
I think we need laws to prohibit companies from requiring or even asking customers (including borrowers) to run any nonfree software.
A "smart" phone is a computer. If your computer runs nonfree software, it is someone else's tool to mistreat you. There are smartphones that can run the free operating system Replicant in the main or "application" processor, but all mobile phones have nonfree software, at least in the radio communication processor.
An arrested protester in Paris has been fined for refusing to be fingerprinted.
Bravo!
However, I do not approve of throwing bottles or cans at the thugs. This plays into the hands of repressors.
Many schoolchildren in the US are being told by their schools to use mobile computers with proprietary software, and the machines typically give the children's personal data to some company (often Google or Apple).
If a school makes an account in a student's name with a company, it has already violated that student's privacy. If the account does not have the student's name or other personal details, sending it unencrypted information about the student's school work violates that student's privacy.
These mobile computers always run nonfree software. Parents shouldn't allow their young children to be given nonfree software by anyone.
I was surprised that the EFF legitimizes the term "the cloud", which is meant to cloud people's thinking about letting companies have their data and do things with it. There is no cloud, only computers belonging to various companies. The term "cloud" is intended to encourage people not to ask, "Which company is getting which data, what does it do with that data, and which country's jurisdiction is it under?" Please, EFF, stop encouraging this cloudy thinking.
Salafi Arabia's expensive PR campaign has close ties to the Clinton campaign.
Billionaires' investments in centralized, subsidized and profitable energy long-shots are the hard way to curb global heating.
Republicans in Congress are trying to sabotage an investigation against some of them for insider stock trading.
After 13 years the US has admitted it put Mustafa al-Aziz al-Shamiri in Guantanamo prison by mistake, but still won't let him go.
Tamir Rice's killer was allowed to testify to his own grand jury. He made claims that can't fit the timeline shown by the video.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn applies practical sense to the question of how to fight PISSI.
Obama plans to station US troops in Iraq to attack PISSI independently.
While I think the aim of attacking PISSI is legitimate, using US troops to do it is asking for trouble. Do they speak Arabic?
Chicago's thug chief has been fired for helping to protect a thug from punishment for murdering Laquan McDonald.
Features in a human brain, which may have a form that is typically "male" or one that is typically "female", can change with experiences, sometimes in 15 minutes.
This suggests that the reason it is most common for the feature to have a certain form in males or in females is that males and females tend to have certain kinds of life experiences.
A global tobacco company bribed officials and politicians in various African companies to undermine laws intended to reduce smoking.
Big Tobacco Targets the Young in Poor Countries — with Deadly Consequences.
It is no surprise that Chicago DA Alvarez prosecuted Laquan McDonald's killer only when compelled to. She shows a pattern of going to any length to protect thugs from prosecution, even prosecuting victims for complaining.
She also defends false convictions, even harassing law students who are working pro bono to investigate them, on the principle that the system should never admit a mistake.
Union organizers in Honduras face murder, in which employers may be involved. The government, set up by the US-backed coup, is firmly on the side of the businesses.
Poor Americans are not lazy. They work harder (on the average) than people who have more money.
General Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, admitted that the US reacted stupidly in response to the September 2001 attacks.
Ten thousand protested peacefully for climate defense in Paris, forming a human chain in defiance of the state's ban.
I love the way Naomi Klein says what's what.
After that, thousands of people formed a protest march.
Unfortunately, the black bloc turned that into a riot.
We need public defiance — with discipline.
Teachers and staff at the City University of New York have held a sit-in and are moving towards a strike.
Assad's forces bombed an MSF hospital, and bombed again a few minutes later to kill medics aiding the victims.
A minister in power when India banned The Satanic Verses says the ban was a mistake — but the book remains banned.
Bombing [PISSI] Is Not Enough — We'll Need to Talk to Them Too.
If we can have a peaceful relationship with a state as cruel and barbaric as Salafi Arabia, in principle we can do the same with PISSI.
People More Likely to Report Suspected Violent Extremists 'If They Trust Police'.
Global heating is already sending climate refugees fleeing to Dhaka from rural Bangladesh.
Planned Parenthood employees receive death threats constantly.
For gun manufacturers, public shootings are good for business.
At least 155 countries still have laws that discriminate against women.
Fish are disappearing from Cambodia's giant lake Tonle Sap. 1/3 of the protein eaten by Cambodians comes from those fish.
The EPA should carry out independent tests of the effects of Dow's new dual pesticide, not accept Dow's own experiments.
Michigan has made it easier for possibly dangerous people to get licenses to carry concealed guns.
Gun nuts say they are opposed to the government's "taking their guns away." But this shows that their goal is not a matter of keeping guns, but rather expanding the possession and use of guns.
(There may be some guns that ought to be taken away from everyone.)
Greater uncertainty about climate change means bigger risks and more reason to act.
If we don't want to take a foolish bet, with civilization at stake, we must work hard enough to make survival almost certain.
Paris Climate Talks: Vulnerable Countries Demand 1.5C Warming Limit.
We all need this, because we can't measure the distance to the cliff — all we know is that we are heading towards it.
A list of possible ways to counter PISSI.
Only the gullible thought that killing Osama bin Laden was going to achieve anything. (And the US should have captured him and put him on trial, since it was in a position to do so.)
In the UK, poverty means a lower life expectancy. Up to 16 years less.
Shkreli, the drug gouger who said he would lower the price, did not really mean it. Just before Thanksgiving he announced he would not lower it.
The asshole is to blame for his own actions, but we should not allow him to get away with them. Specifically, we should not allow him to take measures to block manufacture of equivalent generics.
Public policy journalism in the US is now available only to insiders and businesses willing to pay high subscription fees.
Today's Republicans make Dubya look good on one specific issue: he refused to stir up public hatred towards Muslims in general. However, this virtue was the exception to many other forms of cruelty and injustice towards American Muslims.
Blackberry, in an act of unusual courage, will cease operations in Pakistan rather than betray all its customers.
The UK wants to make such companies secretly betray all their customers.
US soldiers are fighting in Iraq in close cooperation with Kurds.
I don't see any danger in this. They are fighting on battlefields against enemy soldiers, and few civilians will be killed. This is not the sort of situation where the danger of intervention lies.
The elected president of the Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, cannot contribute to saving humanity from global heating disaster. He is in prison, overthrown by tyrants that work in cahoots with the fossil fuel industry.
I have to wonder whether fossil fuel magnates arranged the coup to remove an inconvenient hero of humanity.
Israelis who kidnapped a Palestinian and burned him to death have been convicted of murder.
It is good that Israel can still do justice for some cases of violence against Palestinians. How sad that so many are ignored.
US thugs have killed 1000 people so far, this year.
An American is much more likely to be killed by a thug than by a terrorist.
The latest Christianist terrorist attack murdered two people who were visiting the Planned Parenthood clinic.
Anti-abortion Christianist terrorism in the US has got much worse since the deceptive attack videos that were aimed at Planned Parenthood.
Some of the New Atheists have become supporters of right-wing Christianist policies.
I am disappointed with them.
For the most part, in the West, Christianity is willing to coexist with non-Christians. But Christianism, as a political movement, is dangerous. There are plenty of Christian fanatics who are prepared to lie to stir up terrorism against abortion providers.
People are already trying to spin failure in Paris as the start of a "long road" to curbing global heating in the future.
If only we had that much time to do the job! Slowness now will make doom come faster and harder. This article seems to reach for self-delusion to avoid despair.
Now that the EU has stopped Israel from passing off products of colonies in Palestine as "Made in Israel", Netanyahu has retaliated by cancelling EU participation in the "peace process".
The joke is that the "peace process" involving the EU is pure theater, just like the one that the US tried to broker. Netanyahu used them to pretend he wanted peace. Now he has "canceled" the remaining one, pretending that that makes a real difference and that it is a real punishment for the EU. Who knows, he may fool a few dumb klucks.
Netanyahu is pretending to have sabotaged a real peace process as an act of blackmail. If he had really done that, it would be despicable of him — but since it was a sham anyway, he hasn't really done anything. Somehow he claims that his pretense puts the EU in the wrong.
All this would be risible if the occupation and its effects were not so tragic.
The sham "peace process" shielded Netanyahu effectively from pressure for peace, while he made sure it would never get anywhere. Its demise is one shield stripped away.
The NSA's legal authority to collect everyone's phone call records in the US has just expired.
Will the NSA really stop?
I don't think phone companies should be allowed to keep records of all of everyone's phone calls, either.
A prominent Kurdish human rights defender was assassinated while talking to the press.
We don't know whether the Turkish state was responsible for the Elci's assassination, but we know it was responsible for his completely indefensible prosecution. The Turkish state has often engaged in violence, even fatal, against opposition political groups; this has gone on for decades.
Erdogan's party seems to have got PISSI to help out with a couple of handy bombings of Kurdish rallies. That doesn't prove it arranged the assassination, but I doubt it would have scrupled to do so.
ALEC, with the support of Ben Carson, continues to sabotage attempts to avoid global heating disaster.
ALEC has lost over a hundred sponsors, but it still gets plenty of money from the Koch brothers.
People are looking for clever ways to express protest messages in Paris.
I suggest the way that the civil rights movement used: walk with a sign, chanting, and dare the authorities to interfere.
The TPP and TTIP, ostensibly meant to "liberalize trade" but designed mainly to give business more power, can sabotage efforts to avoid global heating disaster.
US citizens: phone your representatives and senators to support full reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, requiring a search warrant in all cases.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, don't let Republicans put riders in a spending bill to do nasty things such as exclude Syrian refugees, or attack Planned Parenthood, or cancel network neutrality.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the US: call on the TV show Face the Nation to have some guests that support diplomacy in Syria.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate attacks on abortion providers as terrorism.
Everyone: call on the Philippes to start soon their investigation into companies suspected of dishonestly denying global heating.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to support a law to stop identified terrorist suspects from buying guns.
Dubya and B'liar ignored an expert report saying that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
This does not surprise me. After so much effort to manufacture a lie, why would they have cared about the truth?
Many "prosperous" cities are so expensive to live in that ordinary workers can only rent 8-hour shifts in a bed.
Some Republican senators want to send US troops to fight PISSI directly.
They are right that defeating PISSI requires ground troops, but Westerners that don't speak Arabic won't be able to do it. Many will hate the civilians, call them by ethnic slurs, and dehumanize them. They will have frequent misunderstandings with civilians they can't talk with, often fatally. The civilians will consider PISSI the lesser evil.
How do I know? Because we saw this happen in Iraq just 10 years ago, and this is what PISSI came out of.
For Turkish troops to fight PISSI is a pipedream, since they'd have to mutiny first. Erdogan has been protecting PISSI's communications. He wants to attack the Kurds, and PISSI has proved helpful in this.
Troops from Salafi Arabia might fight PISSI, but they would spread Salafism which is the basis of PISSI's ideology. Troops from Egypt might do the job.
Trump demonstrates the power of the repeated lie, as his supporters too claim they saw the nonexistent TV broadcasts.
This wasn't the first time. Dubya succeeded in convincing many Americans that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction in 2003, even though US inspectors after the conquest said he didn't.
The French state has given itself the power to abolish any organization that does things that "might" prove useful to others that "endanger the public order" (for instance, criminals or protests). Organizations that promote encryption, or provide a place for people to meet and talk without being listed to, might be banned.
In addition, may be made a crime simply to look at a web site that the state calls "terrorist".
A state like this, systematically crushing freedom, does more harm over the long term than the terrorists it claims to be protecting people from — unless repression also fuels the terrorists, which is possible.
Clinton wants more war against PISSI, never mind strategy.
She is also against fixing the problems in the US medical system which exist because of the compromises Obama made to insurance companies.
Why The Powers That Be Are Pushing A Cashless Society.
This is partly speculative, and I am not sure it is true, but it might be true.
Global heating denialism has seeped into several public school textbooks in California.
We must suspect this reflects the influence of some rich denialist, such as Exxon or a Koch brother or the Heatland Institute.
Multinational digital companies screw the rest of us out of millions of dollars in taxes. In the US, this adds up to $130 billion a year.
This is why America can no longer do things right: the wealthy in America have stopped providing funds for what America needs to do.
To the extent that international agreements about taxation get in the way of fixing this problem, states must defy the agreements and fix the problem anyway. But that requires voting out the politicians who would rather say they can't do this than dare to try.
A progressive tax on a business's gross income could help fix this.
Right-wing rhetoric calling for killing abortion doctors translates repeatedly into murderous attacks.
The term "pro-choice" represents a weak decision not to defend abortion itself. The issue here is not "choice", it is the right to get an abortion when you want one.
The UK Labour Party is turning against bombing Syria.
The question is not whether to consider PISSI an enemy, but rather what to do about that. Is it wise or ethical to drop bombs on people as an act symbolic participation, without a strategy to win, in a way that is likely to strengthen the enemy by killing lots of civilians which would aid PISSI's recruiting as well as being an injustice in itself?
Cameron responds to these questions with "but the symbol is so important!" and "I have a rabbit in my hat".
The problems presented by the Raqqa exiles are so complex that there may not be way to avoid all of them. However, ignoring them is a recipe for doing harm and losing.
The French, banned from marching to demand defense of Earth's climate, are making a pile of shoes to symbolize the march they would have done.
It would be more effective to defy the ban and march anyway.
A substantial climate protest in Paris was taken over by "black bloc" people that wanted to fight with the thugs.
I can't disagree with what they said, but it was a stupid choice of tactics. A nonviolent confrontation, maintaining the moral high ground, would have put the state in the wrong, but this senseless violence gave the state a victory.
In past protests, the "black bloc" was infiltrated by state provocateurs. Perhaps that occurred this time too.
Companies designing "advanced" nuclear reactors want safety regulations taken out of their way.
Then nothing would stop them from making us guinea pigs for their radioactive experiments, just when the nuclear power is becoming pointless because of the tremendously superior efficiency of renewable energy.
Confronting the flaws of Alcoholics Anonymous — not limited to insisting people surrender to a "higher power" even though they know there isn't one.
Modern bottom-fishing and dredging equipment destroys precious sunken ships, as well as the life on the bottom.
Predicting that work will become more precarious, lower paid, and involve intrusive surveillance, for those who can find work at all.
I don't use computer systems that want me to talk to them, except when I'm talking to a company's computer by phone. In that case, I expect the company to know and remember what I say. But when it comes to my own activities, the server company that would translate the speech to text has no right to know, let alone remember, what I say.
I will also refuse to use a "fitness tracker" that reports to anyone other than me.
How thugs created an avoidable feeling of "danger" in dealing with Tamir Rice.
Women's rights defenders murdered for their activism in 2015.
Arundhati Roy reports on meeting Edward Snowden, and ideas about refugees.
The recent actions of the French government and recent statements of Republican political candidates show how right Snowden is.
Conversing mainly through digital devices may have to do with the decline in ability to empathize seen in young Americans.
A man shot people at Planned Parenthood in Colorado because he had been stirred up by deceptive attack videos.
He's also identifying fetuses with babies, which is a common irrationality among those that want to ban abortion.
The main terrorist threat in the US comes from fanatics like those, who call themselves "pro-life" but they mean "life for fetuses — not for real human beings."
The common theme in US social decay: redesigning various systems to privilege the rich and push the rest down.
Poverty, in today's social system, forces parents to feed their children unhealthful food. Healthful food costs too much, requires time and skill to cook that these parents don't have.
It may not even be on sale in many urban areas where the stores are geared towards those that don't cook.
To touch on the unrelated topic of the last section of the article, I see nothing wrong with protesting a speaker by theatrically walking out of the talk. As long as the protest doesn't compel everyone to participate, those who want to hear the speaker can do so.
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State. The US government is deadlocked, but the president and the executive spy and war agencies are allowed to do almost anything with no checks.
Uri Avnery: the western response to PISSI is feckless and absurd because politicians don't think straight about the problem. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is working to confuse them.
Many Arab countries have banned a film presenting prostitution in Morocco, and the people who made the film are receiving death threats.
From France: "Etat d'urgence climatique: mobilisons-nous!"
Fasting on Thanksgiving in solidarity with the hunger-striking prisoners of Guantanamo.
California has failed to limit farmers' extraction of ground water. They are pumping so much that the land is sinking up to 2 inches a month in some places.
The unequal sinking is destroying infrastructure.
If normal rainfall returns for a few years, these farms may turn into lakes. But they will dry out again, more or less forever, in a few decades.
The foretaste of future global heating did not discourage large climate marches in Australia and New Zealand.
US citizens: call for arresting Trump for inciting violence.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress to press Turkey to free the journalists prosecuted for reporting on arms smuggling to Syria.
The idea of preventing terrorist attacks by collecting more data and banning anonymity is inherently impossible. It can oppress dissidents very well, and crush protests, but can't distinguish a small group of terrorists from any small group of friends.
The bow-to-business government of New Zealand sabotaged efforts to reduce obesity, because they might interfere with the profits of fat-food establishments. (That seems a more accurate term than "fast food").
The excuse these bow-to-business politicians use is, "If it is possible for heroic people to resist, there is no need to help the rest." I've seen people use the same excuse to justify letting companies lure and pressure people into being surveilled.
Australian thugs illegally searched for mocking statements made by Rhys Liam Halvey to his friends. They wanted to prosecute him for mockery.
The thugs withdrew the case against Halvey when a judge threatened to expose their illegal methods of searching for what Halvey had said.
That doesn't seem like enough of a punishment for them.
But supposing they had not used those illegal methods, supposing they had been able to find Halvey's mocking statements in a legal way, wouldn't Halvey have the right to mock them?
Doesn't Australia have any vestige of freedom of speech?
Deforestation in Brazil has increased 16%.
Australia imprisons refugees for years without telling them why.
Bombing PISSI in the cities it holds can backfire.
The EU, desperate for Turkish help in reducing migration of Syrian refugees, is at the point of bowing to Turkish blackmail.
Providing money to support the Syrian refugees in Turkey is both wise and ethical, but aside from that, this is a terrible mistake. Turkey keeps open PISSI's lifeline for money, arms and foreign recruits. To defeat PISSI requires, one way or another, a confrontation with Turkey.
The city of Pamplona calls for an investigation into Franco's murders.
The election in Burma was not free for the Rohingya minority, whose candidates were banned.
The US may require proprietary software in every drone, to implement surveillance and a back door.
The article says the location of every drone will be sent to "the cloud", meaning "don't ask who will store this data or for how long." I think it's not a good idea to fly a drone in a cloud.
Avoiding drone collisions is important, but it can be done using local communication which doesn't track them all. Keep in mind that it won't be hard to disconnect this system entirely. Criminals will easily be able to overcome the system; it won't be able to directly stop them from doing anything. Its total surveillance and back door will fall on non-criminals, who would cooperate willingly with a less nasty system that would achieve the same goal.
The state of emergency in France has become repressive.
People have been arbitrarily placed in house arrest, blocked from working, for no apparent reason. This includes the leader of a charitable organization that helps Muslim prisoners.
But repression is not limited to Muslims. Many people suspected of planning climate protests have been raided and arrested too.
These repressive actions have nothing to do with the officially stated goal of preventing more terrorist attacks. The French thugs know full well that these climate defenders are not terrorists. Their goal is to crush anyone who would dare to disobey — because, to a tyranny, disobedience is worse than terrorism. Terrorism offers tyranny an excuse, but disobedience can make tyranny weaker.
The harm done to France by this attack on liberty will dwarf that of the terrorist attacks — only to be dwarfed in turn by the global heating disaster that this repression is helping to increase.
Cameron's Drive to Bomb Syria Is Macho, Foolish And Must Be Stopped.
Jürgen Todenhöfer: I Know [PISSI] Fighters. Western Bombs Falling on Raqqa Will Fill Them with Joy.
The proposed response has one problem. We can't "help" Turkey seal the border through which PISSI, because Turkey secretly supports and arms PISSI. The border would have to be sealed despite Turkey's interference.
Western attempts to block freedom of communication on the internet are providing cover to China in doing the same thing.
UK data retention plans are based on outdated ideas of what is technically feasible or not.
Famous men who have many lovers are called "prodigious" while women who do likewise are sneered at.
I can't tell from this information whether Ms Murdoch was promiscuous; that's not the same as having multiple lovers.
Salafi Arabia executes terrorists and peaceful dissidents — to those religious fanatics, the difference is insignificant.
Global heating is systematically pushing birds away from the equator, or up mountains.
Those that run out of somewhere to go will become extinct.
US citizens: call on Senators to reject laws that would impose special prejudice against Syrian refugees.
Everyone: call on Republican candidates to condemn racism in their supporters and in other candidates.
Turkey is torturing Syrian refugees into "voluntarily" leaving.
An opposition candidate in Venezuela was assassinated in a rally.
I don't know whether the socialist party is responsible for the killing, but it has arrested and blocked a number of opposition candidates in the past. Their current leaders do not have the stature of Chavez, and they don't seem to know how to correct policies that have bad consequences.
A train station in Germany proposes to discourage pissing on a wall by making streams of liquid bounce back.
I sympathize with those who want to discourage pissing on these walls, but I have to wonder why so many people piss there. Does the train station have toilets? If so, why don't homeless people use them? Is there some obstacle?
A person in Germany confirmed that pay toilets are the usual in Germany, and that's why people piss on walls. Instead of spending lots of money on piss-reflecting surfaces, they should spend it on giving people a proper place to use the toilet.
How to make cities, neighborhoods and buildings porous rather that monofunctional and controlling.
This year, Palestinians have frequently attacked Israelis. Many of the attacks have occurred at a crossroads in Palestine where Israelis travel between the (illegal) colonies in Palestine and Israel.
Those colonies are the root of the current violence. They are not a mere provocation, but a tremendous injustice. They were established as a scheme to take Palestinians' land and water and drive Palestinians to flee. Netanyahu has used them to make sure peace negotiations would be a sham.
The US should demand that Israel tear down those colonies, and should put its money behind it. Aid to Israel should be proportional to the decrease in size of the colonies, until they are gone.
A central goal of the TTIP is to export massive amounts of tar sands oil from Canada to Europe, with disastrous effects world-wide.
The TTIP is a business-supremacy deregulation treaty, and it would abolish the regulations that currently ban import of tar sands oil because it is so toxic.
Business-friendly politicians will find no end of opportunities to betray the public in the name of "growth" (for the rich) and other goals that are not important enough to justify the harm they will do.
Americans, vote for Bernie Sanders for president. He will kill the TTIP.
While the UK bombs PISSI, it continues to prosecute people who have gone to fight PISSI alongside the Kurds.
Replanting mangrove forests may reduce the coastal damage caused by El Niño.
Protesters against airport expansion blocked an entrance to Heathrow airport, and spoke about the need to curb flying in general to put brakes on global heating.
Suicide advisor Philip Nitschke resigned as a doctor so he can continue giving suicide advice to people who want to die.
Turkish journalists are facing charges of "espionage" and "divulging state secrets" for publishing that Turkey armed Islamists in Syria.
Calling this a "state secret" implies the report is true. However, it an act of tyranny to prosecute them, whether the statement is true or not.
The US used to be able to build anything and do a pretty good job. Nowadays, when it tries "nation building", it gets everything wrong. But the corruption extends to the US too.
The reason the US could build anything in the 50s and 60s is due to the high tax rate placed on rich people and businesses under that Republical socialist, President Eisenhower.
A UK politician dares to blame B'liar for provoking terrorism with an unjust war.
Terrorism is wrong, and the terrorists are always responsible for that wrong; however, when the terrorism was provoked by an even larger wrong such as launching a war based on lies, those who did that are co-responsible for the terrorism as well.
Unilever says it will become "carbon positive" in regard to its direct energy use by 2030.
This does not mean, however, that its products would be carbon positive. Its suppliers and its shipping may account for the majority of their emissions footprint.
A new thermometer allows parents, and probably various businesses too, to monitor a child's body temperature all the time.
You Won't Win a War Against [PISSI] If You Don't Know What the Peace Looks Like.
I disagree with one point. PISSI is an army; there is no good in underestimating the enemy. But that is not crucial to the article's point, which I think is valid.
Beware, if you choose what to buy based on a symbol of what sort of person you like to think you are! You are being manipulated by subtle psychology into wasting your money. And it could be a lot of your money.
There is one situation where buying a product to communicate a symbolic message to others is rational and wise: to support a worthy cause.
Very strong marijuana can cause serious harm to long-term users,
but prohibition makes it hard to get milder forms.
Japan Under Fire Over Decision to Resume Whaling.
Microsoft Once Again Disregards People's Settings and Abuses Them, Again Pretends It's Just an Accident.
Paris Attacks Plot Was Hatched in Plain Sight.
Every human's brain is a mosaic of male and female characteristics.
Why a 'War' on Terrorism Will Generate Yet More Terrorism.
US citizens: phone the White House and urge Obama not to give Netanyahu any military consolation prize for failing to block the nuclear peace deal with Iran. Israel carries out collective punishment and continues expanding colonies in Palestine.
The business-dominated, concentrated US media system is not the only possible system.
Many other countries have a lot of newspapers, and even though some are dominated by right-wing thought, they have exceptions too.
US "public" media are also business-dominated, because many programs depend on funding from business or from business owners such as the Kochs. This too is not inevitable; it developed in the 1990s. Now a Koch is on the WGBH-TV board, in a position to limit coverage of global heating so as to protect the effectiveness of the Kochs' paid denialism.
It's proper for news media to cover terrorism, but they don't need to hype and exaggerate in a way that plays into terrorists' hands by traumatizing the public.
The EPA has cancelled its approval of the latest toxic pesticide, which certain GMOs were designed to operate with.
Sanders says he will fix the cruelties of US immigration policy.
MSF says that the Pentagon's report about the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz has suspicious gaps, while showing procedures that amount to negligence.
I pointed out some instances of negligence.
A mother in Sacramento is threatened with six months in prison for letting her child play outside the house.
The point that the child is in far more danger riding in a car with a parent is especially cogent. American society is tied up in knots by obsession with some rare and unlikely dangers, such as child-snatching and terrorism.
US statistics for arrests of "sex traffickers" are grossly inflated: most of them are sex workers and customers. Some pimps that aren't traffickers are also included.
Don't fall into the trap of agreeing that banning strong encryption would be justified if terrorists or criminals ever use it.
On the significance of Turkey's downing a Russian plane.
The article doesn't mention it has been standard Russian practice for the past few years to probe many countries' borders persistently. In a way, that's asking for a violent response. However, that changes things only slightly.
By banning the public parts of the climate meeting, France decided that the people hardest hit by global heating should not be heard.
Bravo for the Swedish government official who wasn't totally distracted from impending global disaster by a crime that killed 130 people. The danger of climate mayhem, perhaps 100 million killed by 2030, and far more afterward, dwarfs that of terrorism.
Indeed, the terrorism is a part of the effect of global heating's climate mayhem, which created the impetus for the Syrian civil war, which in turn led to PISSI.
I urge those in Paris to defy the French state and march anyway.
The cultivation of cranberries in Wisconsin pours fertilizer into the nearby lake. This pollution kills the fish and makes the lake water unsafe.
Would diverting the waste into a holding pond solve the problem? Would the pond have to grow each year, or could it be used to separate the fertilizer and apply it again?
The UK government is determined to bomb PISSI in Syria as a symbolic gesture of commitment — never mind that there is no strategy for actually defeating PISSI.
Britons are planning protests against this bombing.
A proper campaign to defeat PISSI militarily would probably include air attacks as well as artillery and infantry. I would support the bombing of PISSI fighters. However, bombing with no strategy and few militarily justified targets will achieve nothing and tend to kill civilians.
Crackers can take over a Hello Barbie to listen to the kids in the room. They can listen all the time.
It's a lot like a portable phone.
This is what you must expect from devices with proprietary software and a network connection. It's the Internet of Snooping Things, Telemarketers, Cheaters, and worse.
Sweden Is Challenging the World to Go Fossil Fuel-Free.
As Australia suffers "horrific" bushfires, will the Australian government agree to greenhouse gas measures to limit how much worse they will get?
The "dying cat" rhetorical switch — blocking consideration of an important, uncomfortable issue by bringing out a very emotional issue and arguing about which is more important.
US citizens: oppose the plan to make the Export-Import Bank support building more Israeli colonies in Palestine.
Massachusetts citizens: rebuke Governor Baker for saying he wants to exclude Syrian refugees from Massachusetts.
US citizens: phone congressional leaders to preserve network neutrality.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on Saudi Arabia not to behead a poet for unauthorized poetry.
Two Brazilian bloggers have been shot dead, apparently for criticizing local politicians.
Ebola Overwhelmed the World Health Organisation: It Must Never Happen Again.
Trump's latest bullying: mocking a reporter for a visible disability.
However, Trump's bullying goes far beyond mockery. He incited his supporters to physically attack a Black Lives Matter protester who came to his campaign rally.
He should be arrested and charged for this, and I hope soon to post a link to a petition to that effect. If he loses the Republican nomination, and chooses to run independently, he should start the Childish Bullies Party.
Measuring impunity for thugs in Chicago: only 4% of complaints made against them are upheld by the thug department.
60% of the complaints were made by blacks, but only 25% of the complaints upheld were made by blacks.
Australia's government proposes to apply Reaganomics by reducing tax rates — for businesses only. Benefits of this are supposes to trickle down to the people.
Call on officials that tried to minimize the murder of Laquan McDonald to resign, and call for a special prosecutor.
"Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It".
Interviews with people in Ukraine, near the Crimean border, where they have blocked the roads leading into Crimea, which puts pressure on Putin.
Caterpillar vehicles have remote shut-off back doors.
The only reason the Chicago thug that killed Laquan McDonald is getting prosecuted is that a court ordered release of the video showing the killing. The prosecutor delayed the release, and the prosecution, for 400 days.
I don't think we can trust that prosecutor to make a sincere attempt to win a conviction.
A textual study found evidence that global heating denialist organizations were working together.
The push for "criminal justice reform" ran into trouble because liberals want to reduce prosecution of individuals, while the Koch brothers only want to reduce prosecution of corporations.
Pervasive anxiety about security helps right-wing politicians make budget cuts that make everyone's lives insecure.
These budget cuts are likely to kill a lot more people than terrorists, even if you consider only the suicides.
Salafi Arabia fired a UK-made cruise missile at a ceramics factory, for no apparent military reason.
The US Army says that the crew of the plane shelling the MSF hospital in Kunduz thought they were in a different place attacking a different building. Their inability to recognize the error was due to several systems that were nonfunctional or even missing.
Do the rules say that the crew was supposed to continue the mission despite such problems? If so, the US is asking for such mistakes, and must be considered responsible due to negligence.
Americans will protest next to the Guantanamo prison, across the border in Cuba.
Cuba does not respect human rights either, but as a patriotic American I am most pained by these crimes when they are committed by my own country.
The thug that killed Laquan McDonald could easily have remained at a greater distance where McDonald could not possibly have hurt him. If he felt "threatened", his own incompetence was to blame.
Will the thugs who erased the video be prosecuted for obstruction of justice? That is called for.
France is trying to kill ideas by punishing people who express them.
Here in the US, it is possible to speak honestly about the holocaust. There is plenty of evidence proving that it occurred. See, for instance, the book Hitler's Willing Executioners, by Daniel Goldhagen, and Story of a Secret State, by Jan Karski.
However, no honest statements about that question are possible in a country such as France, that imposes censorship on the subject.
France also bans free discussion of the question of the genocide of the Armenians.
Racist terrorists fired shots at Black Lives Matter protesters. The protesters were in a camp, doing nothing noteworthy to anyone, but most of them were engaged in protesting while black.
Thugs were present and did nothing to catch the shooters. Because the shooters were whites?
(I will post about Trump later.)
A particularly vicious thug refused to call an ambulance for the wounded protesters, then claimed that being shot by white supremacists was what the protesters wanted.
Perhaps the thug was projecting — he was the one who wanted the protesters to be shot.
Then other thugs came and sprayed the wounded protesters (and those trying to care for them) with mace.
In Somaliland, global heating has brought a persistent drought. The people cannot survive there.
They deserve help, but if Somaliland can no longer sustain its population, the requisite help includes contraception. Under such circumstances, each birth causes a death.
Uzbekistan's tyrant seems to seek to kill a dissident living in Sweden. Not having killer drones to send there, he sends human assassins.
A university banned sales of bottled water, and found that consumption of bottles increased — people bought soda and juice instead.
A hefty deposit on each plastic bottle might be effective for reducing bottles while not making an incentive to choose something other than water.
Two-faced Exxon: the Misinformation Campaign Against Its Own Scientists.
Brazil's standards for mine waste dams are inadequate; several such dams have burst, and the mine waste is a lot more harmful than water from a reservoir.
Wales will assume by default that any dead body's organs are available for use to save living people.
Christian fanatics in New York beat a teenager to death because he wanted to leave their church.
Saudi Arabia says it will do the same thing to a poet who said he wanted to leave their church.
Saudi Arabia's form of Islam, Salafism, is poison. PISSI is its most extreme form, but it's a threat to human rights in any form.
I will try out referring to that country as Salafi Arabia.
Israel plans to build towns for Jews where Bedouin now live.
These Bedouin are Israeli citizens but they don't have equal rights.
Major sponsors of the coming Paris climate conference have big investments in fossil fuel, even in coal.
If this conference does not reach an adequate agreement, some countries that will be devastated by climate mayhem might launch last-ditch military attacks at the fossil fuel facilities that are trying to kill them.
A merger between Pfizer and Allergan would reduce competition, increase drug prices especially in the US, and help Pfizer taxes.
The US should make it quite difficult for major companies to merge, and it should tax both domestic and foreign companies (when operating in the US) more.
The UK government has investigated how cuts in welfare will hurt poor families, and is keeping the conclusions secret.
Eating Less Meat Isn't Just Good for You, It Could Save the Planet.
The UK says it will start applying human rights concerns in its foreign policy — but not to Salafi Arabia of course.
Tor gives people in Bangladesh a way to bypass tight censorship.
Many supposedly "free" countries censor the internet, including France and the UK.
The Clean Energy Future: a roadmap for moving the US to renewable energy and expanding jobs.
US citizens: phone Senator Stabenow's office to oppose the plan to put GMO labels into non-human-readable QR codes.
Surveillance of voters enables campaigns to say different things to different groups of people, and effectively cover up the difference.
A powerful solar storm, like one that happened in 1859, could destroy electrical grids world-wide. It could take ten years to rebuild.
Preparing to reduce the damage is part of the government's job. To do its job, it needs to collect more taxes — from those that are paying too little.
The Sorry Tale of the PECB, Pakistan's Terrible Electronic Crime Bill.
The US may require quiet electric cars to make sounds to warn pedestrians and cyclists.
Fossil Fuel Companies Risk Wasting $2tn of Investors' Money, Study Says.
Developing Countries Will Need $270bn More to Adapt to [2C of] Climate Change.
A Chicago thug has been charged for murdering Laquan McDonald.
McDonald was perhaps carrying a knife when the thugs confronted him, but he never tried to attack them. A group of 8 thugs with guns should not have had to kill him preemptively in case he might, just might, try to attack them with a knife. They could have waited for such an attack to start before they shot.
Prosecution of killer thugs in the US is on the rise, but what we really need, to change the situation, is to change the way thugs are trained to kill at the first suspicion (especially if the person has a skin color that tends to inspire suspicion).
The UK's "fit for work" tests have normalised the suffering of sick and disabled people.
I think this is a goal of the Tories, not merely a byproduct of spending cuts. Tories believe poor people are morally inferior and suffering is what they deserve.
More Than Half of the World's Primates on Endangered Species List.
Polluters are using the bill to exclude Syrian refugees as an opportunity to attack US water supply.
Sweden has taken all the refugees it can cope with, and now refuses to accept more.
EU countries are diverting foreign aid to pay for the refugees they have admitted.
Economists have claimed that advancing technology enables more production with less in the way of material inputs. But this was just a mirage produced by mistaken accounting.
Alberta's green economy plan sounds great, but it protects tar sands extraction for too long.
Our Culture And Laws Enabled the Colorado Shooter, Whatever His Motive.
US citizens: Condemn Trump's proposed repression of US Muslims.
US citizens: Thank or criticize your senators for their votes on the Congressional Review Act.
Rejecting Campus Consensus, MIT Cozies Up to Fossil Fuels.
The denialists who claimed they had found a "hiatus" in global heating applied criteria that were rather loose.
Turkish planes shot down a Russian fighter plane near the Turkey-Syria border.
Turkey and Russia have been enemies for centuries. They are also at odds in regard to Syria. Erdoğan quietly supports and protects PISSI, while Putin supports Assad and may now actually want to fight PISSI due to the bombed airliner. To have Russian planes operating near the Turkish border is going to be a danger spot.
Russian troops are fighting a Turkic minority in Northern Syria.
Neonicotinoid pesticides are associated with decline of butterfly numbers.
Trump wants to torture suspected terrorists for sheer sadism.
Texas thugs have been arrested and charged with negligent homicide for squeezing a prisoner by the neck and then pepper-spraying him. He died shortly thereafter.
The proposed US regulations for drones are a disaster.
Various cities are pledging to stop municipal use of fossil fuel energy by 2050.
These pledges may stimulate the climate defense movement, but in practice the time scale is too long for them to make much difference. What matters is to get rid of most fossil fuel use sooner rather than later.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says the Vatican should drop charges against two journalists who investigated Vatican corruption.
The Vatican should focus on eradicating the corruption, and thank those who helped shed light on it.
To stop terrorist attacks, the state doesn't need to snoop on everyone. It's enough to watch those that are already known and suspected.
Many tech companies are allying to oppose state demands for back doors.
Most of these companies don't deserve your trust, for other reasons. You must not rely, for your privacy, on proprietary software.
Welcome to Austeria — a Nation Robbing Its Poor to Pay for the Next Big Crash.
Why responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter" is a statement of racism.
Responding with "all lives matter" misrepresents the position of the anti-racists, pretending that their slogan "black lives matter" means "only black lives matter". But they don't say, or mean, "only".
Properly understood, "black lives matter" is not racist at all. It is a compact way of saying that "black lives matter just as much". It is a rebuke to the covert, racist "black lives don't matter" movement, which few overtly endorse but many act to support.
The lockdown of Brussels is starting to chafe.
It's an overreaction which serves PISSI's purposes.
Poland's new right-wing government is starting to censor the theater.
In Somaliland, [climate mayhem] Is Now a Life-Or-Death Challenge.
If it is just to imprison a woman for having sex pretending to be a man, why not imprison an undercover thug that has sex pretending not to be a thug?
Alberta will impose a tax on carbon emissions. The article does not make it clear whether this covers fuel burned in Alberta or fuel extracted in Alberta.
Everyone: celebrate Buy Nothing Day today.
Everyone: call on Goldman Sachs to close the "revolving door" that carries its employees into US government service.
US citizens: call for tightening laws for buying guns so that terrorist suspects can't buy them.
Everyone: call on China to stop torture in Tibet.
US citizens: call on Obama: no more mass surveillance.
Using technicalities, Australia will claim it has met its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; never mind that they are actually increasing.
The View from Hell:
Fungibility
and the Loss of Demandingness.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know how to summarize this one, so I could only quote its title. It is a fascinating idea.
The American Medical Association has called for a ban on direct advertising of pharmaceuticals.
Let's Not Get It Wrong This Time: The Terrorists Won After 9/11 Because We Chose to Invade Iraq, Shred Our Constitution.
Bahrain makes a practice of torturing prisoners. The UK looks the other way. So does the US.
Human Ponzi Scheme of Population Growth Can't Go On For Ever.
Trump and Carson explicitly advocate torture.
They are appealing to the worst side of Americans by saying that since PISSI is evil, we should be evil too.
Obama opened the path to this by failing to prosecute Dubya and his henchmen for their torture. As a result, Trump and Carson expect they can get away with this crime.
Analyzing the situational factors that led to a form of Islamism that incorporates barbaric cruelty.
There seems to be an aspect of human nature that includes dehumanizing enemies. What is unusual about PISSI is that it dehumanizes nearly everyone.
The home robot that listens to you, and sends everything you say to an Amazon server.
Don't fool yourself by calling it "the cloud".
The NSA "shut down" its bulk collection of emails, but only because it had found another way to get them.
Arab "allies" against PISSI are not doing much to fight PISSI.
The easiest method of economic sabotage is to phone and say you put a bomb on an airplane.
There have been real bombs on airplanes, but was there ever been a case where a bomb threat call was made for a flight that had a real bomb?
A fast weeding robot could reduce farm work and herbicide usage.
I think this sort of efficiency improvement is a good thing provided that those who become unemployed can share in the resulting bounty.
In the past, automation handled only a limited range of work, so many new jobs were created and unemployment did not result. But now we are likely to automate away all the jobs most people can get.
Speed cameras systematically issue speeding tickets illegally.
In 2014, US thugs took more money and property from the public than burglars took.
Factory workers in Juarez, Mexico, are trying to start unions.
The aim of "free trade" treaties is to enable manufactures to create the lousy working conditions of Juarez. They do this by threatening to move production elsewhere unless workers lie down and take it.
This is why we must abolish the "free trade" treaties. We must pin down production to some country (whichever one it may be), so that workers in each country have the chance to campaign for better wages and working conditions.
US citizens: call for pressure on Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to start really fighting PISSI.
In the case of Turkey, this is really pressure to stop supporting PISSI.
Ralph Nader: Candidates for public office, especially at the state and national levels, are never asked this central question of politics: "Since the people are sovereign under our Constitution, how do you specifically propose to restore power to the people in their various roles as voters, taxpayers, workers and consumers?"
Sanders spontaneously presents his answer to at least part of this question.
"Biodegradable" plastics may not biodegrade in the ocean — and the label might encourage littering.
Clinton's foreign policy experience provides plenty of reasons not to vote for her.
Clinton's vote for attacking Iraq was a bad decision, but it was not a "mistake". It reflects her bad general positions. I won't vote for Clinton, any more than I would vote for the Republican candidates.
While Sanders is not my ideal candidate in regard to foreign policy, he is superior to everyone else in the race.
The WTO decided that protecting dolphins by allowing tuna cans to carry a "dolphin-safe" label is a forbidden "obstacle to trade".
This stems from the wrong fundamental values of the WTO, which place business profit above everything important.
The TPP would further strengthen the power of businesses to attack measures to protect the environment. We need to abolish all the existing business-supremacy treaties, but we are still on the defensive. First we need to block the TPP, the TTIP, and the TISA.
If you have not done so, I urge you to contact your elected officials to call for rejection of the TPP. We must not put democracy in a trance.
The UK's housing problem comes from allowing the rich to make homes into investments. Even some conservatives see this.
The conservatives' proposed solution is unnecessarily nationalist. Increasing taxes on large houses and apartments, especially those that are no one's primary residence, would do the same job without discriminating against anyone. That would also encourage foreigners to sell the real estate investments they have already bought.
In the UK, talking to your bank over the internet is unsafe, because if someone steals your password and uses it to take your money, the bank holds you responsible.
Does anyone know whether the situation is the same in the US?
Confronting PISSI does not call for revenge, or destructive gestures, or cruelty. It calls for a strategy.
Anxiety to Defeat [PISSI] Must Not Dictate the West's Military Strategy.
Acceptance of other ethnic groups and their religions must never include acceptance of their traditions of oppression.
I agree with the author about this issue, but I think he is making a mistake by claiming that "progressive liberals" take the other side. Some do, but I call myself "progressive" and "liberal", and I don't.
The UK thugs (except the department in London) refuse to commit to stop infiltrating dissident groups and pretending to love female members.
Since PISSI's strategic goal is to make Muslims and non-Muslims hate each other, we must refuse to be manipulated into doing so.
Around the world, the effects of global heating are hurting people.
Paris Attacks: Security and Surveillance Cast a Dark Shadow over France's Love of "Liberté" and "Fraternité".
I've been using those two words in France to rebuke the state for decades now.
The US is the only country that has not ratified the UN Convention on Children's Rights.
The US medical records privacy law doesn't apply to many kinds of medical data including the data collected by exercise trackers.
This is a problem because of exercise trackers that contain proprietary software and are designed to send the user's personal data to a company site. Such products are essentially unethical, and people should not be surprised when the proprietary software turns out to be malware.
The US medical records privacy law (HIPAA) is totally inadequate when it comes to government access to your records.
Christian fanatics in Mississippi fired a teacher for allowing a student to demonstrate, with a cucumber, the correct way to put on a condom.
The Christian fanatics want to keep teenagers ignorant of this so that they will get pregnant, and then the fanatics can claim that proves they should not have had sex.
Do you think I am exaggerating? All that is literally true.
Pfizer misleads about the tax rate it pays by not mentioning most of its income.
Texas officials refused to allow academics to check state textbooks for falsehoods. Miseducating children is their goal.
Trump wants to track all Muslims in the US but opposes tracking all guns.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to support the Sentencing Reform Act.
General hostility towards Muslims is spreading in the UK, whereas in the US Trump called for making all Muslims carry special ID cards.
This is just what PISSI hoped to achieve.
The EU is considering a directive to extend the current "right to be forgotten", which is currently a right for person P to demand that some pages be removed from searches for the name P, so that it would cover comments that others post which say things about P.
This would turn it it into a system of censorship.
Baseless Calls to Expand Surveillance Fit Familiar, Cynical Pattern.
A law has been proposed to require a
local
back door in all mobile devices.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Once the back door was leaked, anyone who stole your device would be able to decrypt its disk.
When citizens can't keep secrets from the state, democracy is in danger.
The UN Security Council called for all countries to fight PISSI.
I am in favor of fighting PISSI, but not in stupid ways.
Saudi Court Sentences Poet to Death for Renouncing Islam.
CNN "suspended" a correspondent for expressing the wrong opinion off the air.
Congress is considering a law to make it a serious crime to send a SWAT team to someone's house by making a false report.
I don't think this will put an end to the practice of "swatting". It is too easy to make these false reports. Meanwhile, the practice is made easier by thug departments that use SWAT teams too readily. The lower the bar for sending the SWAT team to raid your house, the less someone needs to do to get them to send it.
A US court has imposed strict limits on surveillance using stingrays (cell tower simulators).
I expect that the Supreme Court will eventually decide the question.
Even if stingrays were banned, or did not exist, the government could get their location records from the phone company. For me, that is too intrusive already.
The "gray zone" of mutual tolerance that PISSI wants to eliminate is what we should defend.
The Pentagon admitted, in very bureaucratic language, that perhaps some civilians were killed in one of its air attacks against PISSI.
It is impossible to fight a war and totally avoid civilian casualties. This attack was aimed at soldiers and hit some civilians that were near them. I don't think it was a war crime.
But I can't believe that only two attacks in Syria have killed civilians. No army can be that close to perfect. Thus, I suspect the US is still covering up civilian casualties. In addition, the standoffish and bureaucratic language of the Pentagon's statement is likely to offend the very people it is trying to mollify.
PISSI kills civilians brutally and shamelessly. In regard to violence in Syria and Iraq, the US is ethically far above PISSI. That's not sufficient. The US should be frank about civilian casualties. The US must properly respect civilians' lives.
However, the comparison between the US and PISSI is pertinent in a different way. Civilians under PISSI's rule will make that comparison when choosing sides. If we want them to regard PISSI as occupiers, we need to think about how they will judge us and PISSI.
US citizens: Call on Congress to defeat anti-environment riders in spending bills.
US citizens: demand no more Goldman Sachs insiders in the Federal Reserve management.
Islamist fanatics attack a hotel in Mali and took hostages, killing some.
Over 700 human rights activists have been murdered in Colombia in the past 20 years.
Deforestation in the Amazon threatens extinction for thousands of tree species that live only there.
Global heating is likely to wipe out large parts of the Amazon rainforest, through drought and fire.
Rumors say that imprisoned Syrian free software leader Bassel Khartabil is going to be executed by Assad's men.
Unfortunately there is no better source of information about whether this is true. Syrian thugs are even more secretive about their killings than US thugs.
US thugs only occasionally hit, kick or kill people, but they are very frequently stealing under the cover of law.
TV commercials now include ultrasonic surveillance audio, meant to be detected by malware in any nearby mobile device.
The main wrong here is in the malware, which should be prohibited. However, television regulators should prohibit the inclusion of these sounds in broadcasts.
The hypothetical example in China is silly, because it is easy for Big Brother to determine that several cell phones are in the same place, just through the normal tracking that is done. This tracking, and the remotely-enabled capability to listen on all conversations in the room, are why I call those phones "Stalin's dream", and the main reason why I refuse to carry one.
Senator Warren blasted Congress's bill to reduce taxes for multinational corporations.
The low taxes on businesses and rich people are the cause of all the US's fiscal problems.
La Quadrature du Net describes the French government's blitzkrieg against human rights.
Amnesty International criticizes it too.
Certain Republican candidates distribute apps that
collect
lots of personal data, even the user's contact list.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
These apps are proprietary software, so they are software for suckers. They run on proprietary platforms that are also software for suckers. For that reason alone, it's foolish to run them, and wrong to develop them. I won't reject a candidate for having such apps, because I know they are following the usual standards of Americans. But I hope you will learn to reject nonfree apps and nonfree platforms.
Methane-charged undersea permafrost is becoming active in the Arctic Ocean.
This suggests we are approaching the point where lots of methane will be released, causing global heating positive feedback.
A UK thug department has apologized for the undercover thugs that infiltrated various dissident groups by forming long-term relationships with women in the groups.
The thug department has not admitted encouraging the thugs to form such relationships, but that could hardly be false when so many did it.
Protests against racism have spread to many US universities.
There are many things that universities can do to reduce racism, but one demand they should reject is to punish the expression of racist views.
When students demand the university "suspend" Professor Swain, they advocate conduct comparable to that which Professor Salaita received.
I agree more or less with Professor Salaita's controversial statements. I mostly disagree with Professor Swain's controversial statements (*). But whether you or I agree with someone's views is beside the point. We must respect people's rights to express views whether we agree or disagree, and that includes professors.
* I think that Islam is dangerous in some situations, and the same applies to Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and even occasionally Buddhism. Or rather, the bad aspects of human nature can find in religion a field to express themselves.
What we must do to confront antibiotic resistance.
Adapting the Marseillaise to the greatest threat to civilization.
Join a climate defense rally near you, or start one.
Everyone:
call
on world leaders to take strong action to curb global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
France will offer asylum to cultural treasures threatened by fanatics.
Bahrain Refuses to Prosecute Police Who Tortured Journalist.
Technologies being developed today might be able to pull large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Heat stress could be responsible for the death of many farm workers in Central America.
Global heating is going to make people less productive in most of the world.
Our 1C of global heating has quadrupled weather damage to historic properties in the UK.
Massive incarceration in the US goes beyond the war on drugs.
The topic is too big, and I know too little about it, for me to have an overall opinion. All I can say is that we need to eliminate private prisons, and that we should release most convicts that have become so old that they are not likely to commit crimes again.
Thugs killed Linwood Lambert by tasing him 20 times, then lied about the circumstances.
They could have just left him alone, since they did not think he had done anything wrong.
Suggestive evidence that unions and NGOs, such as the League of Conservation Voters, have endorsed Clinton even though Clinton doesn't support their cause as well as Sanders. Maybe they have been corrupted.
Elsevier Says Downloading And Content-Mining Licensed Copies Of Research Papers 'Could Be Considered' Stealing.
This isn't the last straw. Elsevier's last straw was years ago. I urge academics to refuse to review papers for any Elsevier journal except when there is a specific overriding moral imperative to do so.
US ISPs are undermining network neutrality by giving special deals to certain sites and then charging more for access to everywhere else.
A Detroit thug has been convicted of attacking Floyd Dent. The thug punched Dent 16 times in the head, for no evident reason.
Thugs in Minneapolis beat up two women who were protesting the killing of Jamar Clark.
US attack drone controllers have developed a callousness towards killing civilians, even children.
Trump wants to require Muslims to carry special ID cards.
It is unamerican to require people to carry ID cards. Why not make them wear armbands with a star and crescent?
French intelligence knew several of the Paris attackers. If the goal was to prevent these attacks, total surveillance of everyone was irrelevant.
Morocco uses unjust pretexts to repress journalists and human rights defenders.
The FBI entrapped Eric McDavid into a fantastic bombing scheme, then lied to convict him and concealed evidence to support the lie.
When he asked for an explanation for the illegal concealment of evidence, the US responded by threatening to jail him again.
This is what the FBI means when it says it "protects" us.
The FDA has approved sale of genetically modified salmon.
I expect that these salmon are safe to eat, because there is nothing that would tend to make them dangerous. However, the defenses against contaminating wild salmon genetically are not enough. The company wants to get to market now, not in several years after developing more levels of defense. Thus, the company will always tend to take insufficient precautions.
The livestock population is increasing faster than the human population and is a big environmental threat.
The statements in the article about limiting human population growth are self-contradictory. It says, "When there is almost nothing to be done, there is no requirement to act," but then shows that the world could reduce human population growth quite a bit. I am glad I have contributed to this goal by having no children myself, and I recommend you think about it too.
France passed an "emergency" law permitting the state to impose house arrest on anyone with no judicial review, and examine any computer without a warrant.
Poor France, attacking itself at a level that mere terrorists cannot reach.
The UK government is going all-out to keep global heating advancing.
Rallies for climate protection are planned around the world instead of the banned march in Paris.
Activists should defy the ban and march in Paris anyway. There are too many lives at stake here to let the government's minor short-term concerns get in the way.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate methane emissions from old and new oil wells.
Doctors in the UK's National Health Service have voted to strike, as the government's program of spreading poverty and stress targets them.
The Dominican Republic arbitrarily deprived of citizenship four generations of people born in that country if they are of Haitian ancestry. Many of them are not Haitian citizens, and if they can get into Haiti it is only because that failed state can't control its borders.
You Needn't Crave Revenge After Attacks like Those in Paris. I Didn't After 9/11.
What I crave is to defend against the follow-on attack which targets our freedom.
Many tropical countries are investing heavily in renewable energy.
Germaine Greer had to struggle to be allowed to speak in a UK university. She says that a male-female sex-change operation doesn't produce a real woman, and many condemn her views.
I think Greer is right in a narrow sense, but perhaps wrong at a deeper level.
What is the difference between a typical man and a typical woman? It's actually many miscellaneous differences. Changing one of them in a man won't produce a woman. Changing several of them might result in a close-enough woman.
Not all men are alike, and not all women either. Perhaps the man that wants to be a transsexual starts out woman-like on some of those points.
Various countries are shutting down city streets and parks at night. This narrows the life of the city and narrows human rights.
Other cities are promoting walking on the streets.
Europe is suffering from a lasting housing crisis.
This is part of the reason I have not encouraged European countries to take in lots of refugees. They have not got enough housing or enough jobs for their current population. If they don't adopt policies to create a lot more housing and jobs, the refugees will have to compete with the poor for too little.
The Paris attackers did
not use encryption, it seems.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, a district attorney wants to require back door in all operating systems for mobile devices.
Doesn't he know that all mobile phones already have them?
Just as in 2001, the next target is our freedom!
CMU says that the FBI didn't pay for its Tor-cracking investigation, but refuses to answer any more questions.
Maybe it was paid for by some other US agency rather than the FBI.
Our culture is erecting a myth of genetic determinism.
Note that it is clearer to make a clear distinction between a cell's genetic sequence and its epigenetic tagging. They are both found in DNA, but they are quite different.
If you allow emails to embed URLs, you're asking to be mistreated.
I normally look at an email via the ASCII text in it. On the occasions that I look at HTML, I render it with lynx, which ignores anything embedded. None of these tracking methods work on me, and if you use this method, they won't work on you either.
Conservative westerners are attracted by Islamists' subjection of women.
US citizens: call on the SEC to investigate Exxon's climate fraud.
Many bacteria are developing resistance to the last line of antibiotics we have left.
This was caused by feeding the antibiotics to pigs.
All sorts of surgery will become quite dangerous if we don't develop new antibiotics — and stop farms from ruining them!
Walmart workers protested Clinton's failure to endorse a raise in the minimum wage.
Shoot-to-kill Won't Make Us Safe from Terror — Just Sorry.
French Pirate Party: If you want peace, prepare for peace.
The US will sell repressive, Islamist Saudi Arabia over a billion dollars more in weapons.
Human Rights Watch calls on the US to stop selling bombs to Saudi Arabia because it is dropping them on Yemen and killing lots of civilians.
Saudi Arabia, a US "ally", seems to have helped start the Islamist armed revolt in Syria, aided by US "ally" Turkey.
Meanwhile, Saudi money has been behind the spread of Wahhabism, the extremist and oppressive form of Islam that has been pushing out the more humane forms of Islam.
Iran Starts Dismantling Nuclear Programme, Says UN Watchdog.
Neonicotinoids found to impede pollination by bumblebees.
Former US drone operators warn that US drone attacks are important recruiting forces for PISSI and terrorists.
Is UK Climate And Energy Policy Hypocritical or Just Incompetent?
It's a mistake to say that the US (or France) is at war with "radical Islam". Even most radicals don't want to attack western countries.
Islamists are not necessarily violent enemies of anyone, but their views make them political enemies of human rights.
Extremist parties that call for demolishing the al-Aqsa mosque are now included in Israel's government. It is not wild imagination to suppose they might actually do it.
Building the "third temple" is part of what US Christian nuts think is necessary to bring about their prophesied apocalypse. I suspect that some of them are spending millions to help those parties.
Israel jails Palestinian minors as young as 8 in painful conditions and arbitrarily hampers them from talking with their families.
I expect that most of these minors are teenagers, but some really are children.
Palestinians living in part of Hebron face additional harassment designed to drive them to abandon their homes.
Israeli troops forced international human rights activists out of the apartment they had rented in Hebron.
These activists serve as witnesses to how Israelis officially and unofficially treat Palestinians, which makes their presence inconvenient. In practice, the state supports the repeated pogroms carried out by Israeli fanatics.
Demolishing a family home because one person in it committed (or is accused of) a crime is an unjust collective punishment.
Israel says it will carry out unjust collective punishment on any family, but in practice it's only done to Palestinians. And it already has inspired relatives to respond with violence.
Everyone: demand the release of the videos showing the killing of Jamar Clark.
US citizens: support Kerry's efforts for diplomacy to end the Syrian civil war and target PISSI.
US citizens: phone your senators against riders in a spending bill to eliminate network neutrality.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A US appeals court cancelled the approval of neonicotinoid pesticide sulfoxaflor, saying that the EPA must first properly test its effects on bees.
Spain wants to arrest 9 Israeli officials and ex-officials responsible for the deadly attack on the Mavi Marmara.
The Norwegian oil company Statoil has given up on drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
The US government postponed a sale of oil leases in US public land.
These are victories, but we will need lots more of them. We must reduce our combustion of oil, reduce it to zero in not too much time, to avoid climate mayhem.
PISSI wants a war between all Muslims and all non-Muslims. How we can avoid falling into PISSI's trap.
The US has made substantial progress towards the goal of equal pay for equal work, because of the fall in the income of men.
Turkey could cut off PISSI's supply lines, but Erdoğan threatened war against the Kurds just to keep those lines open.
Several African countries have banned borqas to prevent hiding bombs under them.
The OECD countries agreed to reduce funding for coal power in other countries, but Japan blocked eliminating this funding.
This may do some good, but it is not the sort of vigorous action that could save civilization from global disaster. To risk civilization's survival for a comparatively small short-term goal, such as improving access to electricity in some poor countries, is foolhardy. It won't help the people of those countries to get electricity in the next decade, then wiped out in 70 years.
Besides, solar power is much better for providing electricity to dispersed rural populations.
I have to suspect that Japan's representatives were working for the coal interests and what they said was just an excuse.
2C of global heating is probably too much, except under unlikely assumptions.
What it is like to be a US drone pilot and kill hundreds of people by remote control.
France has banned rallies during the climate conference.
This decision is short-termist folly. Rallies for climate defense are necessary for public safety. Terrorists could at worst kill a few hundred people in a rally. Global heating is likely to kill hundreds of millions of people, though over a longer time.
I urge activists to march anyway and dare the state to stop them.
It appears the Paris attackers were all European citizens — most have been identified, and they included no refugees or visitors.
To Turn On Refugees Because Of Paris Is Weak And Absurd.
In France, the victims of PISSI's attack include Muslims.
In Syria and Iraq, most of PISSI's victims are Muslims. Ordinary Muslims and PISSI are natural enemies.
Will France now commit the same errors and wrongs that the US did after the September 2011 attacks? It has already started to.
An Australian court found a Japanese whaling company guilty of killing whales in an Australian marine sanctuary.
It may not be easy to make the company pay the fine.
A secret interpretation may make CISA even worse than its wording appears. The ACLU is suing to find out.
Boko Haram is still setting off bombs in cities and causing hundreds of casualties.
High levels of CO2 in the air impede good thinking.
Global heating is not likely to raise the general world CO2 level enough for this to happen. But it can already happen inside a building in a city, and with global heating, the problem inside buildings in cities will get worse.
Protests in Washington are aimed at the US Trade Representative, the office that promotes antidemocratic treaties such as the TPP.
Parents that make unreasonable academic demands on their children tend to harm their academic success.
Another reason to vote for Bernie Sanders for president: Clinton wants more war.
Haven't we learned how stupid this is?
Whereas Sanders recognizes that climate mayhem is a bigger danger than today's terrorists.
Curtailing Liberty Provokes Terrorism.
Several important science museums have stopped accepting funds from planet roasters.
Does [PISSI] Direct Attacks or Inspire Them — And Why That Matters
The CIA and NSA have not found anyone trying to start a terrorist attack in the US.
But they pretend they have, in order to smear Snowden.
Countries are joining the bombing campaign against PISSI, not because more planes would achieve a military objective, but as a symbol.
We Accept That Russian Bombs Can Provoke a Terror Backlash. Ours Can Too.
I am not a pacifist. Effective military action may be justified even despite blowback. But effective military action tends to be concentrated on enemies, so it causes less blowback. Reflexive, ill-calculated military action "because we must bomb something" will tend to be self-defeating.
PISSI hopes to provoke Western reactions that would create a war between the West and all Muslims. Some politicians are eager to fall into this trap.
Global developments in employment.
When a company tried to reduce the greenhouse gas footprints of its products, that turned out to be a big challenge.
We need a carbon emissions tax so that the market will factor in your greenhouse gas footprint.
The assassinations at Charlie Hebdo have elevated hostility towards Muslims in France — just what terrorists hoped to achieve.
France may block a large climate defense march in the name of safety.
Global heating is a far bigger danger than PISSI. If we can't overcome the plutocrats and make states take adequate action to curb global heating, we might as well be dead.
It is now ascertained that a terrorist bomb destroyed a Russian airliner over the Sinai, killing 224 people.
Stanford Students Begin 'Indefinite' Sit-in over Fossil Fuel Divestment.
The dictator of Angola has charged activists with "rebellion" for a book reading event. The book was about nonviolent resistance.
US citizens: call on the postmaster of the USPS to implement postal banking.
Total surveillance is giving France so much data that the real terrorists can hide in the plain sight of the national panopticon.
The ecological damage from the mine waste in Brazil could last decades and when it reaches the ocean, it will threaten ecologically vital areas.
It is not clear that tasers reduce either killings or injuries from the actions of thugs.
France is sending an aircraft carrier to increase the number of planes it can use to bomb PISSI.
There are some fishy things here. Why use an aircraft carrier rather than sending additional planes to the land base in Jordan? Operating planes from a carrier must be more expensive than operating them from the ground.
And what's the use of more planes if it is hard to find good targets to attack?
On the other hand, the US seems to have found an important vulnerable point: the trucks PISSI uses for smuggling oil.
If PISSI is indeed a gang that raid and loots to propagate itself to loot again, then it can be forced into collapse if it can't get loot and can't sell oil.
Capturing PISSI's territory near the Turkish border is strategically crucial. However, trying to do this with Western troops would backfire terribly.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
Oppose
a bill to ramp up the war on drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters blocked a highway after thugs in Minneapolis shot a black man dead. Witnesses say he was in handcuffs, but the thugs say he wasn't. Who do you believe?
Accusing Saudi Arabia of poisoning the Muslim world with repressive Wahhabism.
PISSI, the pirates of the desert.
Cole's point that it is impossible to "contain" PISSI can be literally correct, but not in the way he asserts. It may be that a stable situation in which PISSI exists for a long time under containment is impossible; if so, that suggests that containing PISSI would lead to its collapse, as it could no longer do profitable raids.
The UK faces ecological derangement all over, as a result of the 1C of global heating we have already caused.
Coal is not an effective way to extend access to energy, even ignoring that it could cause ecological disaster.
Just eliminating coal combustion isn't enough to avoid the disaster; it's just the first step.
The Tor Project says that the FBI-CMU "research" to identify Tor users was a fishing expedition, aimed at finding anyone they could accuse of anything.
Chinese companies are hurrying to bottle water from Himalayan glaciers before global heating melts them.
Ok, that is a slight exaggeration.
Israeli troops carried out a collective punishment, demolishing a house in a refugee camp; local Palestinians threw stones at them, so the Israeli troops shot and killed some of them.
Collective punishment is always an injustice. In my estimation, the culpability in this incident falls entirely on the Israeli troops. They cannot claim the justification of self-defense for shooting if they were on a mission of wrong.
[PISSI] Hates Middle Eastern Civilisation Too.
Lauren's Blog Redux: "Governments of the World Agree: Encryption Must Die!"
UK anti-privacy activists seek to use the Paris attacks as an excuse to skip debate about new mass surveillance powers.
Each terrorist attack, anywhere in the world, provides an excuse for Big Brother to say we should surrender more freedom so he can "protect" us. Aside from the danger of tyranny, which exceeds that of terrorists, it's not even clear that increased surveillance would achieve its goal.
There is no limit to how many people a tyrannical state can kill, torture, or imprison. We need a state, for the many essential things that states can do, but we must make sure it remains under our control, and we can't do that if it knows everywhere we go and everyone we talk with.
Prohibiting expression of opinions, "advocating" this or that, is a form of tyranny. When "extremism" is prohibited, will plutocrats declare rejection of plutocracy "extreme"? We be prosecuted for advocating a return to democracy?
The US and Russia have agreed to ask the UN to broker a cease-fire between Assad and his enemies.
Britain's previous Tory prime minister rebukes the current Tory government for the inequality it has created.
More about the Haitian election and how it relates to the US history of keeping Haiti down.
Raising consciousness about massive surveillance: do you dare call a number that's possibly on an NSA suspicion list?
Reading stallman.org might do the same thing.
Businesses pretend to have human feelings … to exploit grief.
The Facebook feature praised in the article is also a way of manipulating users: after any sort of disaster, they are under pressure to be used by Facebook because not doing so would suggest they were among the casualties.
A former hostage of PISSI warns against the mistake of playing into its hands with ill-calculated violence.
Kenya has succeeded in driving elephant poaching way down.
The Saudi-US coalition is bombing the cultural history of Yemen to bits.
Republicans are trying to block students from doing research on the effect of Republican abortion-harassment laws.
Why it is important not to call PISSI by the names it gives itself.
It's the same reason we shouldn't call sharing "piracy", or call the prohibition of sharing "protection".
Software has been developed to recognize human microexpressions. Most people (maybe all) will be unable to hide their feelings from these.
This may be good in some circumstances, and bad in others. Even if everyone has access to this, it will tend to reinforce the power of those with more power already.
Why Campus Cops Are So Dangerous.
New Mexico has sentenced a man to 18 years in prison for spraying children with a watergun containing water mixed with his semen.
People should not do this, mainly because if they have some disease, there is a small chance they could transmit it this way. But if he didn't have a disease, I can't see that it did them any harm, or why they should be called "victims". This was not really "sexual contact".
Kurdish journalist Behrouz Bouchani fled Iran because he was going to be imprisoned for his work. Now he is imprisoned by Australia for being a refugee.
Many Americans' medical coverage has such a high deductible that they still can't afford medical care.
These insurance plans may be worth their price, because in the event of hospitalization or a major illness they might save the people far more than $3000. But these people are in such a desperate situation that they can't afford to make rational investments.
Haitians are protesting massively against the rigged presidential election.
Global heating is making winter snowpacks shrink; declining water supply will affect two billion people.
The ICC seems to be investigating NATO's responsibility for torture in Afghanistan.
Portland, Oregon, has banned all new fossil fuel infrastructure.
The whole world ought to do this.
As toxic mine waste slowly flows downstream in the Rio Doce, it poisons water and kills fish.
Some towns are emptying as people in them have no water. What I wonder is, how long will it take before the river water is safe again? Will it be weeks, or decades?
Talking of "slow-motion environmental catastrophe", the whole world is facing an even slower one.
Tor Says Feds Paid Carnegie Mellon $1M to Help Unmask Users.
Comp sci "research" aimed at sabotaging Tor reflects an ethical blind spot.
When black Americans deal with a thug, their chance of experiencing abuse from the thug is twice that of white Americans.
ACLU: Thanks to Snowden, we are making slow progress against massive state surveillance.
The Afghan army and Iraqi army and Syrian rebel army that the US spent millions to build turned out to be as corrupt and phony as the construction projects it paid for.
The US government is considering a ban on smoking in public housing.
Tobacco is death, and I implore tobacco smokers to quit; but it is wrong to ban people from smoking in their homes.
Gayle Newland has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for having sex with a woman while pretending to be male.
This verdict seems totally absurd to me. What next? Will people be sentenced to prison for having sex while pretending to be rich? While pretending to be blonde?
Most British Jews strongly support Israel, and condemn Israel's occupation policies and refusal to make peace.
Accusations of vote-rigging in Haiti with UN complicity.
Professor Salaita, fired by the University of Illinois for his political views, sued; the university has now paid him a large amount of money, but he still does not have a job there. He comments that the injustices that motivated his controversial tweets have not been corrected.
A Texan family won $5 million in damages for the fraudulent foreclosure of their home — one home among 6 million that US banksters stole.
Too bad the Obama regime was on the side of the fraudsters.
The State of Oregon systematically investigated everyone that tweeted in support of Black Lives Matter.
A fungus spreading steadily across the US is wiping out bats.
The absence of bats will have grave ecological consequences. If some bats survive, it it will take a century for the bat populations to recover.
Ali al-Nimr, sentenced to death for a peaceful protest, is being denied medical care in prison.
Please sign the petition for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Saudi Arabia.
Walmart workers are fasting as a protest against wages that don't pay them enough to afford lunch.
The US government admits that TSA agents actively look for drugs in luggage.
They are supposed to search a bag if an x-ray scan shows something that looks like drugs.
US citizens: Thank Obama for standing up for the EU's requirement not to label products of Israeli colonies as "Made in Israel" and for recognizing that these colonies are not part of Israel.
I urge everyone to shun television news for the next few days. There were terrorist attacks yesterday in Paris, and footage is likely to be shown.
Repeatedly watching footage of terrorist attacks can traumatize. I know someone in California who became afraid to go outdoors in 2001, after repeatedly watching pictures of the September 2001 attacks.
Whatever you want to know about the attacks, you can find in text.
US citizens: tell the Department of Agriculture to stop suppressing scientific research.
Everyone: call on the government of Burma to free imprisoned protesters.
Anti-racist activists and free speech defenders must reconcile to support a free society.
Mormons plan a "mass resignation" to protest the Mormon Church's policy demanding children renounce their same-sex parents.
The LA thugs' union has condemned an award for avoiding lethal force.
This award is meant for police officers whose job is to "serve and protect". Thugs think they should get awards for killing citizens.
The FSF's LibrePlanet event, which will be held in March, is looking for people to propose sessions.
Jeremy Corbin: it would have been far better for us all if Jihadi John had been held to account in a court of law.
I agree. Killing someone proves he was vulnerable. Convicting him in a fair trial proves he did wrong.
I do not think killing him was wrong under the circumstances; there was no feasible way to arrest him. Corbyn did not say it was wrong to kill Jihadi John, but his political enemies are pretending that he did.
By contrast, the US could have arrested and tried Osama bin Laden, so it should have done so rather than kill him.
Some web advertisements play inaudible sounds to be picked up by proprietary malware running on other nearby computers so as to determine that they are nearby.
It is unlikely free software will do this, but malware introduced by an attack could do it.
I conclude that access to a microphone needs to be controlled like access to a camera. Applications should need special authorization to use the microphone.
Piketty calls for divestment from fossil fuels before the Paris climate conference.
We must follow the laws of war even against enemies that reject them completely.
Global heating means mosquitoes in November in New York City.
A prisoner facing execution in Egypt reports on torture by crucifixion.
He was convicted along with around 500 other people, clearly a joke of a trial.
Some parts of the US have set up funds to provide various small assistance to the homeless.
The trust funds established by the New Jersey law are good, but the stamp tax (as the colonists called it) is a regressive way to fund it. It would be better to tax the rich for this.
Some places go further and provide housing to all homeless people.
Giving Money to Eritrea and Sudan to Stop Refugees is Almost Satire. The corrupt repression of those countries is what drives the people to flee.
Businesses that destroy the natural environment often use slaves to do it.
Some of the inhabitants of Sinjar are returning to the city, from which PISSI has been expelled.
The National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi's party, has won a majority in Burma even counting the seats that the military gets.
The Catholic Church in Australia made a statement opposing same-sex marriage, and faces a criminal investigation, because "offensive" statements are a crime in Australia.
I probably disagree with a lot of things the Church said, but I support its right to say them.
France reproached Kerry for trying to abandon the goal of a binding climate agreement before the Paris conference even starts.
If the US doesn't want one, it can surely make sure there isn't one, or that it doesn't count for anything.
Students in the US protested in many cities demanding an end to student debt.
States with more background checks for gun buying have fewer mass shootings.
Greenland's Zachariae Isstrom megaglacier has started breaking up, a process likely to raise sea level half a meter over just three decades. Nothing we can do (short of engineering considerable global cooling) can stop this.
Another neighboring megaglacier could do likewise as global heating continues, which would cause another half meter of sea level rise.
Every glacier that feeds into an ocean is likely to have similar points of no return, that we will reach at some point.
Anish Kapoor: India Is Being Ruled by a Hindu Taliban.
Society must not learn to trust bankers!
The UK's Environment Agency has become feckless and fails to enforce pollution laws.
I suppose this is Tory policy.
Austerity seems to have caused around 1000 suicides in the UK.
Many had despaired from being forced to apply uselessly for jobs they correctly thought they could not get.
More corrupt dealings of Scott Walker come out.
The World Health Organization has criticized the TPP.
Médicins sans Frontières' report on the attack on its hospital shows that the US air attack concentrated on the main building where operations were then being done.
There could hardly be any armed Taliban lurking in the building unseen. Anyway, unarmed MSF guards maintained full control of the grounds. The US excuse — which would be insufficient if it were true — cannot be true.
The UK wants to curb "extremism" by censoring it.
All the UK government has is a censor, so all publications look like…
After White House Rejects Keystone XL, Battle Against Larger Texas Pipeline Intensifies.
Although Erdoğan says PISSI is an enemy, PISSI's violence in Turkey seems directed to help him. And PISSI seems to be able to attack its enemies in Turkey.
A court decision is a symbolic condemnation of NSA massive data collection.
It might help against other NSA data collection in the future.
US citizens: write to your senators to urge them to leave the EPA's CO2 emission limit plan alone.
A dam burst in Brazil, releasing mine waste that washed away houses and killed people.
The toxic wastes might kill people in the long term, but I have no idea how many.
The US doesn't have adequate regulations for mine waste dams either.
Many large US companies now impose confidentiality agreements to bar employees from revealing wrongdoing to the US government.
The SEC is taking action against this.
Monsanto Accused of Knowingly Polluting SF Bay with Toxic PCBs.
Amnesty International says that China still regularly tortures prisoners: especially human rights activists and Falun Gong believers, as well as officials accused of corruption.
The Chinese government resists efforts to try to stop torture, and so does the US government.
We Americans can't do much to stop torture in China, but we ought to be able to stop it in the US.
German intelligence spied on the FBI, the French foreign minister, and UNICEF.
India's planned fossil fuel increase will break the world's carbon budget.
This suggests the world should make a deal in which India reduces fossil fuel use, and other countries pay for renewable energy development in India.
For social media stars, paid by companies that want to connect with their fans, not only their clothing but even their relationships may be designed to get more fans to sell.
Experience cleaning up a juvenile prison, in which the prisoners and the guards faced sexual harassment and the prisoners were treated horribly.
Mistreatment was not rare, it was the usual case.
Microsoft offers European users services that keep their data in a European computer run by a European trustee company, so that the US government has no jurisdiction over them.
This is a sensible solution for that one specific problem. It does not alter the point that it's unwise to entrust your personal data to any remote storage.
It also does not make Microsoft's proprietary software acceptable, or excuse its malicious functionalities.
Global heating is hitting Tibet: glaciers and permafrost are melting visibly.
Albert Woodfox has spent 43 years in solitary, and will be kept there further until his surrealistic retrial, to stop him from organizing other prisoners.
The National League for Democracy has done very well in Burma's election, and looks set to win a majority in parliament even despite the 25% of seats set aside for the military.
"Public-private partnerships" are touted as an easy way to get infrastructure built, but they are a form of privatization which drains the treasury later.
We simply must tax the rich more.
Comcast admitted internally that its data caps have nothing to do with network congestion.
They are not traffic-shaping, but market-shaping. Comcast is taking advantage of the lack of competition in the US network market.
Wireless networks are too close to a monopoly to be allowed to set their own rules. They should be regulated as utilities.
The UK's snooping bill is "the last policy discussion about surveillance before the mass gagging."
If this bill passes, no debate will be allowed; the entire subject will be secret.
Major US airlines have offshored heavy maintenance to facilities that the FAA can't properly inspect, and in practice does not try. Maintenance workers in the US report serious flaws.
There is no reason to allow US-flag airlines to do maintenance outside the US except in emergencies.
The Senate is considering a bill to ban companies from using contracts to prohibit customers from saying anything bad about the company.
That would be good. Will the bill ban attempts to use copyright to do this?
Will it ban imposing arbitration on customers?
SCROTUS are trying to legalize a kind of racial discrimination in car loans.
Large outsourcing companies have figured out how to use the US H-1B visa program to bring foreign teams to the US, so there are no visas available for other businesses.
An undercover video shows that the USDA's new, "more efficient" meat inspection is almost no inspection at all.
Australia's exile bill would still permit cancellation of citizenship without a trial.
A general strike against austerity is planned in Greece.
Australia plans to deport Ian Whiteman, who has lived in Australia since he was one year old, to a country he hardly knows.
This because of a crime that caused no damage but is considered "serious".
Deportation of criminals is justified, sometimes, but not in a cruel and mindless fashion. A person whose only family ties are in Australia, and who could easily have become a citizen, should not be deported if not likely to be a repeat criminal or if some other country is not "home".
Stopping his parents from visiting him is cruel also.
Several people will be deported to New Zealand because of membership in an arbitrarily banned motorcycle club.
Walmart tried using face recognition to compare everyone in the store to a list of faces of known shoplifters.
If this works, and it is extended a few small steps, I see a danger that anyone who has ever shoplifted will never be able to buy groceries again — in any store. This could be a choice between a death sentence and life imprisonment.
For the most part I don't see a problem in having Walmart (or some other store — I refuse to buy from Walmart, after all) scan my face and not keep records of it. What I object to is if someone scans my face on the street and keeps track of where I go. Especially if this is done by the state.
The Paris climate conference has been set up to fail, just as Copenhagen was, with governments making efforts to spin failure as success.
PEN calls on the US government to stop prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.
Campaigns against racism are spreading to other US universities.
"Mizzou" seems to be an affectionate nickname referring to the University of Missouri, used by people who work or study there. Since I have no relationship with that school, for me to use that nickname would mean pretending to an intimacy I don't have. Thus, I call the school by its official name.
There are no legal obstacles stopping Obama from ending the indefinite imprisonment of Guantanamo, if he wanted to.
Raising the minimum wage is often accompanied by decreased unemployment.
Two 14-year-olds in New York State face felony charges for making a video in which one of them has sex with someone else. Other students they sent the video to are being punished as well.
Provided the other star was involved voluntarily (information not available), then I think it is wrong to punish any of them.
It is even more clearly wrong to punish students for receiving a message containing the video. And parents that examine their children's phones to see if they have been sent sexts are held by this twisted law to have committed the same "felony".
Any law making it a crime to possess a copy of some text, photo or video is injustice, pure and simple.
The UK is giving increased subsidies to fossil fuels.
So this is why they have to make so many families homeless and hungry.
US citizens:
call
for making election day a national holiday.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to support the goal of global zero nuclear weapons.
The Snooper's Charter would endanger computer security researchers in the UK.
There might be one way around this. If you publish info about the back door you found, encrypted, on a foreign site, and send the key to another foreign site that will publish the information in several months no matter what you subsequently say or do, you might then be safe discussing the matter with some foreign colleagues with a view to publishing it in a better way with better checking.
Of course, it's nuts to make security researchers go through these steps to protect themselves from state repression.
Never Mind Pointless Apps — Our Best Minds Should Be Solving Real Problems.
This is not to mention that those apps are usually nonfree software, and often malware as well.
Modern slavery can be found in any industry.
Employers want immigrants to undercut wages for everyone else. Sometimes the immigrants are entirely willing. Sometimes they are threatened, exploited, or imprisoned. Either way, the overall result is that business owners around the world get more money, and workers get less.
Two British journalists imprisoned in Indonesia say that naval officers paid close attention to their case, while the UK's supposed help was incompetent.
Even though they had money to pay for some privileges in prison, they could not avoid the dirty food, and they could not get medicine when they got sick.
Timothy Johnson was convicted of murder based on a false confession, then exonerated as there was no real evidence against him. He says that the thugs dangled him off the side of a bridge to get him to confess.
They also laid false charges against his parents to put pressure on him.
Someone, presumably supporters of PISSI, murdered some Afghan Shi'ites by beheading them.
In response, crowds tried to storm the presidential palace, crying "Death to [President] Ghani, death to the Taliban."
I don't see why they want the former; but if Afghans remain fired up to fight the Taliban, they may have what it takes to defeat the Taliban.
A company that handles prisoners' phone calls, including with their lawyers, records them all. Even when prisoners talk with their lawyers. Someone just got these recordings and leaked them.
Leaking them en mass was wrong, but not as wrong about what this company (Insecurus?) did.
Colorado is considering a ballot initiative for single-payer health care.
I am concerned that this is not a large enough step to work. Many low-paid workers have been forced to be "independent contractors", and I think many of them can't afford to contribute 10% of their pay for medical care.
I don't see how health care for the unemployed would be covered, and I don't see anything to push gouging prices down. Perhaps the scheme has measures for this which are not mentioned in the article. If not, I think it won't work.
In the UK, ever more families are becoming homeless (even though the adults are working), and put into cramped shelters.
In the US, homeless families don't get shelters.
Republican candidates debated why and how to stop American workers from getting a wage.
Trump effectively admitted that globalization driven by business interests imposes poverty on most people. This globalization is not a natural phenomenon; it was imposed by those business interests through bad laws and worse "free trade" treaties. So let's get rid of those laws and treaty.
It is true that wages, and benefits, encourage employers to replace workers with machines. We can reduce this problem by funding Social Security and unemployment benefits from taxes that are independent of employment — taxes that businesses will have to pay even if they replace all workers with machines.
However, we must also block the forms of automation that would put many people out of work, until we establish a universal basic income so that people don't need employment.
Saudi Arabia compassionately released 74-year-old Karl Andree, who had been sentenced to 350 lashes for possession of drugs (specifically, wine).
The US has stopped repressing people for carrying wine, but you can get imprisoned for having other drugs.
New York City's replacement for solitary confinement turns out to be more or less solitary confinement with pepper spray.
Kyle Lydell Canty has applied for asylum in Canada because of racism in the US.
Modi's Hindu-nationalist government presides over repeated lynchings and attacks the pluralist basis of the Indian state.
Legal Battles to Protect The Environment 'Easier to Fight in China Than the UK'.
The EU has adopted requirements that products made in Israel's colonies in Palestine must be labeled specially, not as "Made in Israel".
Of course, the purpose of this labelling is discrimination — like all such required labelling. The discrimination in this case is not against Israel, but against its violations of international law by setting up colonies in Palestine and settling Israelis in them. This labelling will help people practice a narrow boycott against those colonies, much narrower than the boycott of nearly all Israeli institutions that Palestinians have called for.
I support the boycott of products of those colonies ("settlements").
The independent Angolan dictatorship has picked up the practices of the former Portuguese dictatorship that ruled Angola as a colony.
A writer describes how seeing a captive orca made him ashamed.
This article is packed with idiocy, such as the misused cliche "playing god", which is irrational even in its usual meaning.
However, I agree with its basic point that it is cruel to cage orcas.
The US government has ordered executive branch agencies not to read the copies of the CIA torture report that the Senate sent them.
This is based on a bizarre and twisted legal excuse, so it's clear that the goal is to stand up for torturers and torture.
The Tories choose not to see or believe the effects of their spending cuts.
The sale of exotic, endangered lizards as expensive pets could wipe out those species.
Survivors of the 1965-66 massacre in Indonesia continue trying to open investigation into those events, and continue to face censorship.
Australia may block an OECD deal to stop funding coal.
The US is upgrading some nuclear bombs to make them more "usable".
That is going in the wrong direction.
The University of Missouri had started attacking women's rights and was mistreating all its students. Resistance was widespread, and the black football players were joined in resistance by a large fraction of the campus.
Amnesty: Israeli Forces in Occupied Palestinian Territories Must End Pattern of Unlawful Killings.
Some of these Palestinians had attacked Israelis. Others hadn't done anything wrong.
Amnesty's point is that even when they had attacked someone with a knife, that doesn't call for shooting them when it was possible to arrest them, let alone for killing them by denying them medical care.
In Honduras, drug traffickers and palm-oil planters are working together to take land from indigenous people and deforest it.
Congress blocked Obama's plan to "close" the Guantanamo prison by moving imprisonment without trial to the US itself.
Obama's plan might perhaps be a scheme to end imprisonment without trial by supposing that the Supreme Court would grant them habias corpus. If so, it would be great provided it works — but with our current authoritarian Supreme Court, I would not count on that.
The Maldive "president" has cancelled the state of emergency.
Australia imprisoned Iranian refugee Fazel Chegeni in the privatized Christmas Island prison, apparently forever. He died trying to escape, and the other prisoners responded by rioting and destroying parts of their prison.
Thugs moved in and regained control, but it's not clear that's a good thing.
The UK's Snooper's Charter imposes a gagging requirement on everyone ordered to snoop on people. This is "the last policy discussion about surveillance before the mass gagging."
"Note that this section is absolute: it does not have exceptions, for example in relation to the public interest: such as the ability to discuss the benefit or downsides of part interception activities; no exception for talking about this to MPs, or other democratic representatives; or even to exculpate anyone who otherwise would be wrongfully found guilty."
US thug departments train thugs in how to shoot, but not in how to resolve a crisis without shooting. And the training says to shoot fast, without taking time to think. No wonder that's what they do.
Then the Supreme Court upholds an extreme level of immunity for them, so they are almost certain to get away with killings.
Moroccan actress Loubna Abidar played a sex worker in a film which Morocco banned. Then she was attacked by a mob on the street, and hospitals would not admit her. She fled the country.
I blame these events on the prejudice against sex workers. The film made prejudiced Moroccans uncomfortable by showing that sex workers exist there, so they took it out on her.
Many other laws reflect this prejudice, which I have never understood.
Portuguese celebrate because an anti-austerity coalition is going to take power.
The ICRC accused Saudi Arabia (backed by the US) of intentionally targeting hospitals in Yemen.
US citizens: ask congresscritters to sign the Ellison-Yarmuth-Dingell letter calling for a political resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose Obama's nomination of Robert Califf to head the Food and Drug Administration.
He is too much in bed with the pharma companies to regulate them properly, and we must suspect he wouldn't want to try.
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter and say, don't move Guantanamo prison to the US. Each prisoner should be tried in a civilian US court, or freed.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on members of Congress to support the SAVE Benefits Act.
US citizens: call on the EPA to take strong action against methane pollution.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject
the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
A mental health bill now in the US Congress would lead to forced medication.
When thugs say they are deterred from doing their job by the danger citizens' videos will reveal their unjust violence, it amounts to threatening an unofficial slowdown strike to demand restored impunity.
Where the UK Snooper's Charter is leading.
Facebook's app has started scanning photos people take with their phones.
The article says "camera", but that word is misleading; cameras do not have a Facebook app installed in them. This applies only to phones and tablets.
I suspect the face recognition is done by sending the photos to a Facebook server. If so, the server could do other things with those photos. It could save them and send them to Big Brother. From now on, when people want to snap me with a mobile, I will verify it does not have a Facebook app installed before I say yes.
House Anti-Science Committee Attempts to Suppress Climate Change Studies.
One way to fight back is by replacing the weak term that the denialists chose, "climate change", with something stronger such as "global heating" or "climate mayhem".
The EU is considering a law to declare linking to a page a violation of copyright.
It is too bad that the article uses the enemy's propaganda word, "protection", to refer to copyright.
The UK's attack on end-to-end encryption is serious, and its denials are clearly lies. It wants to force computer manufacturers and sellers to sabotage users' computers on demand to make their data decryptable.
However, encryption done in proprietary software can't be trusted anyway. Whether or not a state can force the company to sabotage it, the company might do so on its own initiative at any time. You can't rationally trust nonfree programs: they do computing for suckers.
When the author says "the services you and I use", apparently assuming that you and he use software you and he can't rationally trust, he says he's a sucker and he assumes you are too.
Nigeria Must Own Up to the Blood Shed for Oil.
The officials responsible for the murder of Ogoni environmental activists 20 years ago have not been punished or even censured, and some remain in positions of power today.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled against freedom of speech by endorsing censorship of opinions and even views about history. Evidently it doesn't fully support human rights. Respecting freedom of speech means respecting the right to state views we oppose.
Antisemitism is prejudice against a group of people which (in the usual interpretation) includes me. I disapprove of it, but I respect people's right to state that opinion or any other.
When a state mandates a specific position on a factual question, that makes it impossible to discuss that question frankly in that country.
Egyptian journalist Hossam Bahgat has been freed.
The article does not indicate whether the charges, publishing something that displeased the state, have been dropped.
Teenagers are threatened by laws that could jail them for sexting or inviting others to sext them.
I think it is unkind to pressure someone to sext, and I would not do that, even though pressuring is not equivalent to forcing. However, it is simply wrong to punish adolescents for sexting, or anything else sexual that they willingly do. Sex is the normal preoccupation of adolescents.
Although leprosy is curable, people in India whose bodies show harm done by the disease face various sorts of discrimination and cruelty.
I am shocked by the point about "grounds for divorce". Does India still require people present "grounds" if they want a divorce? If so, the change that's needed here is to eliminate that requirement.
Australia will take citizenship away from dual citizens convicted of terrorism crimes.
At least it is limited to those actually convicted. The previous proposal would have allowed officials to do this without a trial.
A US appeals court overturned Obama's executive order against deporting certain unauthorized immigrant children.
I don't want a large amount of immigration to the US, but people who were brought as children and have spend many years in the US should be allowed to become citizens.
The right-wing concern about "anchor babies" is due to a fear that is not based on facts.
Rightwingers Push 'Moral' Coal Only After They Doomed a Truly Moral Alternative.
The fossil fuel magnates pay lots smart but selfish people to say all sorts of bogus things in favor of using fossil fuels. We will see through them all, but will we do it soon enough to prevent disaster?
The thug whose gratuitous violence seems to have caused the death of Matthew Ajibade has received a light sentence including 15 weekends in jail.
Still, if every violent thug were sentenced this way, it might be enough to deter their violence.
A Belgian court will fine Facebook 250,000 euros per day unless it stops tracking people that don't have Facebook accounts.
The issue is that Facebook sends some visitors cookies. It is not clear that the court realizes that Facebook also tracks people who merely see a "Like" button.
Indian fishermen and farmers are suing the World Bank for investing in a giant coal-fired power plant where they live. The World Bank says it can't be sued in US courts.
Investing in burning coal is planet-roasting behavior. Young people, who may well be killed by climate mayhem, have grounds to use force to block the activities that threaten their lives.
The UK has killed an EU directive to limit trade in wildlife and toxic waste.
Netanyahu Has Never Actually Supported a Palestinian State, Despite What He Told Obama.
Saudi Arabia emptied its aquifer for agriculture; now all its wells are dry and it has no more agriculture. California is following the same path.
UVA Fraternity Sues Rolling Stone for $25m over Retracted Rape Article.
Europe's banksters demand Greece speed eviction of families that can't pay their mortgages, or its creditors won't get the next next batch aid.
It's a mistake to call these payments "aid", if that means aid for Greece.
Sex crimes are common among thugs in the US.
A Russian performance artist set fire to the door of the building used by what was formerly called the KGB, to point out that it's still there and still dangerous.
The author understates the danger from UK spy organizations. What they threaten to do, when they violate privacy, is imprison journalists' sources and thus endanger democracy. Even if they don't torture people like Russian and US spy organizations, that is still a terrible threat. Besides, the UK spy organizations did hand over people to Qadhafi for torture.
Narendra Modi: the Divisive Manipulator Who Charmed the World.
Four employees of a Hong Kong publisher have disappeared, separately. This is apparently the work of Chinese agents, perhaps with the help of Thailand.
The UK's surveillance bill would give the state the power to order companies to sabotage end-to-end encryption facilities that they provide to users.
This is one more reason why you shouldn't trust a nonfree program for encryption, on top of many other reasons. Basically, nonfree programs cannot deserve your trust; they do computing for suckers.
Development aid money is mostly wasted since only a tiny fraction goes to the local organizations that actually do work.
Blaming inequality and massive surveillance on digital technology is a handy excuse for politicians that want to increase inequality and surveillance.
Pollution in Ogoniland is just as bad now as it was 20 years ago when Nigeria executed protest leaders.
The National League for Democracy won the election for parliament in Burma, but the constitution has been rigged so as to limit its political power.
Suggesting a way to protect US teens from radicalization that won't backfire.
Global heating has reached 1C, and is still accelerating.
For plutocratist politicians, poor people's children are disposable: just blame all the consequences of poverty on their parents.
US citizens: call on Obama to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Obama offered Netanyahu a meeting, and used it to show he will do nothing to pressure Netanyahu to end the perpetual occupation of Palestine.
Netanyahu will continue the occupation until he faces enough pressure to make him change. If I were president of the US, I would tell Netanyahu that Israel will get US aid for one purpose only: building replacements in Israel for the colonies in Palestine, and demolishing those colonies.
"Palm oil: why do we care more about orangutans than migrant workers?"
It's simple. An individual migrant worker has more rights than an individual orangutan; but orangutans are an endangered species while humans are reproducing like weeds.
However, that question is purely theoretical; there is no practical reason to compare the two, because it's easiest to protect them both. Anything we do to prevent the enslavement of migrant workers on palm oil plantations will protect the orangutans, by discouraging the spread of palm oil plantations.
Two Thais accused of criticizing the royal family have died in prison.
Merely accusing them of this "crime" is an injustice.
Corruption is common in US state legislators.
Storm And Drought: What Europe Has to Fear from [global heating].
The NSA reports most of the bugs it finds in operating systems, but only after a delay while it uses them to attack computers.
Hossam Bahgat, Egyptian journalist and human rights activist, has been charged with "publishing false news".
"False news", in Egypt, means anything that doesn't come from the state.
Yemen: 'The children have a game called airstrike in which they fall to the ground'.
How long before they start playing "suicide bomber"?
Obama reportedly decided 2 years ago to reject Keystone XL, but waited for a "politically opportune time" to announce it.
Curbing global heating is a battle against time. If he had rejected Keystone XL earlier, the rejection would have boosted our side sooner.
US citizens: oppose building oil terminals in Washington State.
I used this as my text.
The Keystone XL pipeline has been cancelled. Please don't allow it to be replaced with oil trains to Washington State. We need to keep the tar sands oil in the ground, to avoid toxic spills and disastrous global heating. Oil trains will also cause fires repeatedly.
US citizens:
protect
marine mammals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Congress to defeat the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
In the text of the letter, I replaced "Trans-Pacific Partnership" with "TPP", and added "This is a partnership of corporations to attack democracy, with some secondary and unimportant effects on trade."
SCROTUS are delaying the appointment of 32 US ambassadors, as a harassment technique.
Mexican real-life "superhero" Peatónito campaigns for safety for pedestrians.
A deceptive campaign in Florida to check the spread of home solar power just got a boost from a secret donor.
Since we don't know who the donor is, we can make up a fictional name for him without lying. We could call him "John Doe", or "The Crotch Brother".
Black football players at the University of Missouri have gone on strike demanding the resignation of the university president, who has not done much against racism on campus.
They are powerful because they bring in a lot of money to the school, and they are trying to use this to do some good. Bravo for them, but I think it is a shame that many Americans are obsessed with the artificial struggle of football and thus distracted from the real struggle against the plutocrats.
The strike is getting support from others on campus, and the president has resigned.
One of Haiti's presidential candidates, who came in second in the first round of voting, says the election was rigged by Martelly.
The UK's surveillance bill threatens investigative journalism by putting sources in danger.
Here's a case in point.
Another bill would attack journalism on another front, by hampering freedom of information access.
Donald Trump dares to point out that Dubya left the US wide open to the September 2001 terrorist attacks, even cancelling precautions that Clinton had set up.
This was more widely acknowledged 10 years ago than it is now.
I will not take as certain that Dubya didn't do any worse things in regard to the attack. His official investigation of the attacks was weakened and then corrupted.
I support the demand for a new investigation.
US citizens: call on Obama to use executive orders to close some gun sale loopholes.
Everyone: demonstrate on Nov 14 to end subsidies for fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on officials not to include fracking in any climate "solution".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: stand for ending gerrymandering.
The UK's housing crisis could be solved if the disused buildings were made available to live in. Instead, Tory policy is to put squatters in jail.
The UK's plans to chase "extremists" out of positions of influence remind me of McCarthyism.
Journalists in Zimbabwe were arrested for accusing officials of corruption (participating in hunting of elephants).
When globalization destroys local social relationships, it sparks local rivalries; these can attract to previously unimportant religious or ethnic differences and turn into hatred and violence.
A project sets out to summarize how various web services deny users' rights through their terms and conditions.
I doubt that competition will be effective for eliminating nasty conditions. The overall level of competition in this field is too low.
I think we need laws to limit what conditions essential digital services can impose. And rather than judging violations themselves, they should have to go to court in order to cut off service to anyone.
The writers festival in Bali was forced to cancel sessions about the 1965 massacre, but people discussed it anyway, and condemned the censorship.
Australia's secrecy about "special" violent intelligence operations extends to the point of refusing to say whether there have been any.
If an Australian agent on one of these operations kills your child, you will need to escape from Australia before you can safely say so.
The EU's proposed trade secrets directive bows down to business at the expense of journalism, workers, and public safety.
Trade secrecy is harmful to the public interest, and one of the supposed purposes of the patent system is to discourage trade secrecy.
How about discouraging it by not adopting laws to facilitate it?
The UK's threat to the privacy of reading on the internet is extremely dangerous.
So is the surveillance exercised by snooping web sites. We must put an end to all of it.
The thugs that killed 6-year-old Jeremy Mardis face charges of second-degree murder.
They should be prosecuted also for their false accusations.
Denmark's government wanted to sell out to fracking, but the people organized and blocked it.
Many famous Americans do or did support Democratic Socialism.
Unions are very effective at reducing inequality and preventing dooH niboR laws, according to an IMF study.
The summary of public comments about the proposed oil export terminals in Washington State mysteriously omits some comments that indicated dangers.
Mahdi Mohammad Ramadan al-Mohtasib was shot dead by an Israeli soldier as he lay on the ground, already shot and wounded.
Israeli bulldozers have knocked down the Bedouin village of al-Araqib 90 times in just 5 years.
Each time, the villagers return and rebuild.
The 'Ferguson Effect' Is Just a Ploy to Reduce Scrutiny of the Police.
Six myths about the "free market".
The market system is a useful tool, but if all you have is a market system, everything starts to look like it's for sale.
Amnesty accuses Assad's regime of secretly imprisoning 60,000 people. Some were tortured.
Their relatives can't get any information about them, except underground.
You can't trust judges to effectively restrain spies equipped with total access.
The experience with the FISA court shows this is true in the US as well.
As states bind themselves by treaty not to regulate businesses, they are left with no tools except to ask them to "voluntarily self-regulate". And this method usually fails, because businesses don't really carry out the self-regulation.
"Governments are liberating global corporations from the rule of law and leaving them to rip the world apart."
US snooping agencies were ordered to set up contacts for complaints, but they have ignored the order for 17 years.
Canadians are already campaigning to press the new prime minister to take real action to curb global heating.
I wish they would replace the term "climate change", imposed by Dubya's officials because it downplays the danger, with one that does justice to the importance of the issue.
The impunity of thugs in the US goes to absurd lengths: a thug who shot a tased man who was lying on the ground face down was acquitted because she said she was afraid of him.
Even if he had had pulled a gun, and shot, he was not likely to hit her under those circumstances.
Next time, a thug will say, "Yes, he was sitting on the ground with his hands in the air, but I was afraid he would think deadly thoughts and kill me with telepathy." And get acquitted.
US thugs kill so many people because they have been taught to kill whenever they see even a shadow of a shade of a threat. We have to change that training and that attitude. There are other countries that teach a different approach.
Several EU countries want to keep their sleazy low-tax deals with multinational companies secret from investigating MEPs.
Nine Out of Ten of the Internet's Top Websites Are Leaking Your Data. To data brokers, that is.
I follow the recommendations at the end of the article.
Obama wants to "close Guantanamo prison" by transferring imprisonment without trial to Colorado.
This would normalize imprisonment without trial, which is bad; however, it might also make it easier for these prisoners to get the benefit of the US constitution in the courts.
The US must try or release each of these prisoners.
The whole staff of the Elsevier's paywalled journal Lingua have quit to start a new libre journal.
Facebook found another social network to be a source of spam links, so it banned all mention of that site's name anywhere.
A perverse law requires the US government to keep at least 34,000 possibly-unauthorized immigrants in prison at any time, regardless of whether there is any good reason to do so.
The motive for this law seems to be to assure the profits of private prisons.
Hundreds of prisoners in one of these private prisons are on hunger strike. The prison company says there is no hunger strike, but the leaders of the supposedly nonexistent strike are being punished with solitary confinement, persistent cold, isolation from their families, etc.
These prisoners have not been convicted of a crime, and some will win appeals and be granted US residency. Although the prison executives' motive for punishing them for not eating is obvious, they have no grounds to do so.
Who Will the U.S. Declare President of Haiti This Time?
A teacher in Kansas showed a film in class to open students' eyes to what it feels like to be bullied for homosexuality has faced bullying from right-wing parents, but has decided not to resign.
Bravo! Resigning would endorse the bullies' position.
The UK government plans to prohibit renting out a bedroom smaller than 6.5 square meters.
This will make the housing shortage a little worse, though not as much as the other bad things that it is doing. Rather than subdivide a bedroom, several people will sleep in the same bed, medieval style.
The government's responsibility is to make enough space for people to live in available at a decent price. As long as it fails to do this, people will suffer one way or another.
For 15 years, death rates among middle-aged white men in the US have increased: this now adds up to half a million additional deaths.
The natural explanation is that dooH niboR policies made their lives collapse.
It should be noted that blacks still have it even worse.
US retailers recognize that most Americans can't afford to buy much.
The US economy is rigged in many ways to redistribute wealth to the rich.
Let's pass laws to take it back from them.
One day before the US bombed the MSF hospital in Kunduz, a US official asked if any Taliban were "holed up" there. The MSF said that the only Taliban there were disarmed patients being treated.
The MSF in Kunduz called their US army contact about the attack, but the attack continued for 45 more minutes.
MSF reminds the US that wounded patients in a hospital are not legitimate military targets.
US officials continue trying to shut down or pressure organizations by intimidating credit card companies.
The article makes a mistake when it refers to "johns who engage in trafficking". When prostitutes are trafficked, pimps are typically involved in the crime, but johns probably not.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed an old Palestinian woman who was driving a car in Hebron. This seems to have provoked retaliation on various occasions.
Seymour Hersh reported in 2014 that the sarin attack in Syria, attributed to Assad's army, was actually a false-flag attack carried out by Turkey in connection with al-Nusra (al-Qa'ida).
He also said that the US had armed Syrian rebels in cooperation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar since 2012, exporting arms from Libya by way of the Benghazi consulate. The US stopped this after the Benghazi consulate was attacked, but the other three countries continued.
An interview with Noam Chomsky.
The FBI says it has given up on demanding back doors in encryption software.
That doesn't mean it won't try again next year.
Increasing rubber production could lead to massive deforestation and extinction of many species.
Ben Carson's religion is more crazy than fundamentalist.
Arundhati Roy says she was not shocked by murder of secularists in India, because that's what she expected of this government.
Opponents of Nepal's new constitution are trying to force it to change the constitution by blockading imports from India.
Could Assad become Schrödinger's dictator, politically alive and politically dead at the same time?
Lawsuit Targets Rapacious City Fine System in St. Louis Community.
Israelis revel in videos in which real soldiers or thugs, egged on by rabid mobs, really shoot harmless Palestinians.
Arabs in Israel know that anyone can murder them with impunity. All of Israel is Ferguson for them.
The TPP will allow banks to sue for "compensation" for any regulations they don't like, including possible reinstatement of the Glass Seagall Act.
Cruel US policies are driving many middle-aged white males to commit suicide.
Sad to say, the relatives of these men probably won't associate the effect with the right-wing cause.
The article speculates that blacks are better able to cope with poverty; they may be psychologically or socially ready for it.
Ben Carson admitted lying in his autobiography about being offered a scholarship to West Point.
Such lies have ruined many a career, but right-wing crazies are often immune.
Senators Sanders and Warren proposed a bill that would close a tax loophole for hedge funds and give the money to retired people, disabled people, and veterans.
Some of the added tax money would go into the Social Security trust fund.
One page summarizes many specific injustices and damage of the TPP.
This is in addition to the general injustice of allowing companies to sue governments for reducing their profits.
A psychological experiment found that children from secular families are more altruistic and more harsh in judging other people than children from Christian and Muslim families.
Since many psychological studies turn out to be irreproducible results, I would not treat this as thoroughly established based on one study.
Obama has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.
Although he ultimately made the right decision, the fact that he took years to make it means that this is not greatly to his credit.
Obama now has a bigger climate decision to make, in the Paris climate summit, and so far he is not pushing very hard to avoid disaster.
The Keystone XL Pipeline Defeat Is One Goal in the Game, And We're Way Behind.
The UN predicts millions of climate refugees.
The UK took action against the Muslim Brotherhood under pressure from a threat by the UAE to cut arms purchases.
US citizens: call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Saudi Arabia.
Palm oil palms have already been illegally planted on recently burned Indonesian forest areas.
If complicated supply chains make it hard to stop this, then the supply chains must be simplified, whether the companies want this or not. Since the CO2 emissions from these fires threaten all civilization, force is certainly justified.
Now that Google has made location tracking a feature, the state can subpoena a person's location history going back years.
Communicating with a service from your own computer using a mobile device, and not going through Tor, is for suckers.
Injustices in the EU's proposal for snooping borders.
India has ordered Greenpeace India to shut down.
The carbon pledges of the world's countries are only half what's probably needed to remain under 2C of heating.
Obama has acknowledged that there is no prospect of a peace deal between Israel and Palestine while Obama remains in office.
The reason for this is that Obama has no intention of doing what is required for a peace deal: putting pressure on the Israeli government. Netanyahu is against peace, and will reject it as long as the US lets him get away with that.
Lower Austria, one of the states in Austria, now uses only renewable electricity.
This does not mean it has eliminated greenhouse gas emissions. It still burns fossil fuel for other purposes, and that must be reduced next.
Netanyahu's new spokesman called the Iran nuclear deal "antisemitism."
This is part of Israel's persistent dishonest campaign of labeling anything but blanket support for Israeli policy as "antisemitism".
Nuclear energy is too slow to develop to play a substantial role in avoiding global heating disaster. It is so expensive that it sucks money away from the efficient renewable energy that we should be building as fast as possible.
New York State is investigating Exxon's climate lies.
Volkswagen admits understating the fuel consumption of some car models.
Another US thug shot himself (not fatally) and then claimed someone else had shot him.
Perhaps this is the true "Ferguson effect": encouraging thugs to lie even more than before.
The Theater of Security Agency is pitifully incompetent at finding weapons and explosives.
Analyzing the consequences of Bush's conquest of Iraq.
Two Turkish editors published an edgy headline and are charged with starting a rebellion.
This insane exaggeration reminds me of how Aaron Swartz was treated in the US.
Bogus charges resulting from exaggeration are wrong in any country.
US citizens: oppose the plan to build a big shopping mall next to the Grand Canyon.
Seattle's innovative public campaign funding system lets each voter dispose of $100 to municipal campaigns.
Also in Seattle, children are suing the state for not limiting CO2 emissions.
There's a significant chance that global heating, by 2070, will cause catastrophe, and kill them.
Obama has slightly softened the policies that usually keep ex cons out of public housing.
A century ago, ex cons could get most kinds of work, and were not excluded from most places to live. This helped them go straight.
Vacationing parents face charges for leaving their children on the beach, from which they would walk back to the campground along a footpath.
The Pentagon pays professional sports to promote a militarist version of "patriotism".
If patriotism is love of one's country, then the core of patriotism is campaigning to make that country deserve to be loved.
US citizens: call on congress to support peace negotiations for Syria and support compromise rather than continued war.
US citizens: call for an investigation with a view to prosecuting Exxon for lying about the danger of global heating.
President Bush 1 felt bored with his job once he didn't have a war to make it exciting.
Nick Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister, says that very few ministers were informed about massive digital snooping.
The US government funded the Iraqi National Congress which generated false "intelligence" that reported Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
This gave the Bush regime raw material for its distorted intelligence reports, which we now know were used to provide "reasons" for a war that Bush had already decided to launch (but pretended he had not).
The Afghan government made a business deal with a banker that is in prison for corruption.
The UK's planet-roasting government plans to kill off community-scale renewable energy products.
Obama has published the text of the TPP, and it would give foreign companies the power to demand relaxation of food inspection, even to demand approval of GMOs and demand that they not be labeled.
It's literally a treaty to allow Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
It provides handouts to fossil fuel companies. For instance, they could sue states and cities that ban fracking.
It criminalizes whistleblowers that reveal a company's criminal "trade secrets", such as for instance that cigarette companies knew that their products caused cancer and that Exxon knew its products caused global heating.
This in addition to prohibiting breaking digital handcuffs
It's too bad that article adopts enemy propaganda terms such as "protection", "Digital Rights Management", and weak terms such as "digital locks".
Sanders points out that companies could demand "compensation" for increases in the minimum wage.
Here are many other bad things that have just been discovered in the text.
This should be no surprise. The TPP was designed to be a corporate supremacy treaty, mislabeled as a "trade agreement", and that's what was designed.
A SCROTUS has sabotaged a congressional investigation into drug companies that greatly increase prices.
Cheney wanted to use nuclear weapons against Iraq and Iran.
US thugs have organized pressure campaigns against prominent people that criticize them even a little.
They are arrogant as well as dishonest.
Another variation on restoring the Voting Rights Act has been proposed.
Most Republican officials are in favor of voter suppression. They want power, and regard democracy as an obstacle. They appointed people to the Supreme Court that would overturn crucial parts of the Voting Rights Act, and having won that victory over poor and minority US citizens, they are not going to give it up.
"It Will Become a Prison": Palestinians of Hebron Required to
"Register" in Preparation for
Severe
New Restrictions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
This is in the name of "protecting" a group of Israeli fanatics that insisted on living in the middle of an Arab town, and got the government's support to keep them there at any cost (to Palestinians).
Meanwhile, Israel closed a Palestinian radio station in Hebron, accusing it of "incitement" to violence.
The Israeli actions that support keeping those fanatics in Hebron do more to incite Palestinian violence than any radio station could.
A former Israeli soldier, who was stationed in Hebron, says more or less the same thing.
The Israeli's use of a colony in Hebron as the base for continued ethnic cleansing of the surrounding neighborhood of Hebron is a microcosm of the policy of the occupation as a whole.
Israel continues authorizing additional extensions of its colonies in Palestine.
A supporter of Deepak Chopra criticizes Wikipedia's practice in editing the page about him.
Chopra's metaphysical statements are unsupported by what is actually known in quantum physics. They are extraordinary claims, and would require extraordinary proofs. Proofs would entail a systematic series of experiments that Chopra hasn't reported doing. This is pseudoscience, and it is good that Wikipedia makes this clear.
It is also true that patients may die from using "alternative medicine" instead of scientific medicine — Steve Jobs is perhaps the most famous example of this, though we are arguably better off without him — and it is Wikipedia's responsibility to point this out.
However, some of the practices described in the article do seem wrong to me. Two clear examples are those about the Yoga section and the bibliography. That's why I am posting this note.
Real scientists sometimes propose strange metaphysical hypotheses, but they recognize that these are speculative and don't present them as certain truths.
I am disappointed that the article refers to Wikipedia as "open source", thus misrepresenting the meaning of "free" in "free encyclopedia".
Everyone: call on NBC not to have Donald Trump host Saturday Night Live.
Science of the Seance: Why Speaking to Spirits is Talking to Yourself.
It seems unjust to convict Anna Stubblefield of sexual assault, since she believed she had been given positive consent.
Australia's face database lends itself to creeping tyranny, and there is nothing to block the creep.
A Guantanamo prisoner, Ravil Mingazov, wants to join his family in England. A US court found there was no evidence to justify holding him in prison.
Many US thug departments are sloppy about using tasers, and every so often this kills someone — usually someone who was unarmed and no danger to anyone.
US prosecutors systematically exclude blacks from juries using various forms of deceit.
Censorship of criticism of religion afflicts Lebanon too.
A US special forces team in Afghanistan seems to have tortured dozens of prisoners and killed 17 of them.
The UK's snooping bill offers "protections" with loopholes so big that they are hardly meaningful.
The bill is deceptive, presenting so-called safeguards that are not what they appear to be.
A tax on flying could raise a lot of money for dealing with global heating.
But we would be fools to spend it on "adapting" when we could instead spend it on curbing the problem itself.
Curbing global heating is a very profitable investment. The US should go in a lot more.
Scientists warned President Johnson about global heating in 1965.
A research project is trying to breed corals that can cope with heat and acidity.
If the project is successful, it might preserve a few of the hundreds of species of corals. It's better than nothing, but it would be far better to curb our CO2 emissions.
A sculpture in honor of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by a military dictatorship 20 years ago, was seized by the Nigerian government on account of its political message.
San Francisco voters rejected an initiative to limit how many days per month a room can be rented out.
I am not sure this would have helped the problem of high rents at all, but at best it would have done a tiny bit.
What San Francisco needs is lots and lots of housing construction. But the home owners don't want that.
Bank of America says that half the jobs in the US might be automated in the next 20 years.
Plutocratist rulers will use this as an opportunity to cut wages for the remaining jobs, and will shuffle the surplus humans around until they die.
Louisiana thugs shot at driver Chris Few, and killed him and his son.
The are obfuscating the situation by saying that maybe Few had a gun and shot his own son, but this seems to be pure fabrication.
The thugs have admitted that Few was not shooting at them (he didn't have a gun). They claimed Few was backing up his car towards them, but the evidence shows that was false too.
The EU is proposing to take the fingerprints of visitors to the EU.
I think that would mean a lot of countries I would never visit again.
Sanders has introduced legislation to end the federal war on marijuana, leaving the decision about its legality clearly to the states.
The thug who attacked and paralyzed Sureshbhai Patel, an old man who was simply walking next to his son's house, has had a deadlocked jury for the second time.
This indicates that some aspect of the system needs to be changed.
The EU must stop member states from competing to offer businesses the biggest opportunities for tax dodging.
Murdoch has fired hundreds of employees of the "National Geographic" magazine, which he bought from the National Geographic Society. This suggests that all the worst fears about what he would do it are true.
VW says that some of its cars emit more CO2 in real use than in tests.
The Rohingya minority in Burma have been blocked from voting and from running for office.
The US rejected TransCanada's request to delay consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline. This means that Obama can make the decision, if he does not delay it instead.
Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that growing and smoking marijuana are legal.
PISSI may have brought down a Russian airliner with a bomb smuggled on board.
It may have been difficult, but if they did it, it was not impossible.
Clinton distorts Sanders' words as an excuse to call him racist and sexist.
To prevent an opposition rally, the Maldives government has declared a "state of emergency".
The leader of the opposition is the legitimately elected president, who was removed in a coup.
Egyptians protested al-Sisi in London, since he has crushed all dissent in Egypt.
A US thug committed suicide, making it look like murder, because he was about to be caught stealing from charity.
Other thugs tried to use this to condemn Black Lives Matter.
Sanders has proposed a bill to close off fossil fuel extraction from US public lands.
The UK has cancelled its push to impose fracking in "Sites of Special Scientific Interest".
That's good, but fracking elsewhere can poison the water for people and farms.
Corruption and peculation are rife in the Vatican.
A Koch brother admits that he expects something in return for his campaign contributions. In fact, he gets plenty for them.
Iran admits sentencing two poets to around 10 years in prison for "insulting religion".
If you want to see a worse insult against Iran's religion, their sentence is one.
If their appeals are not successful, it may be time for an international poetry campaign to insult Iran's religion for its censorship.
British journalists were sentenced to short prison terms for making a documentary in Indonesia that the Indonesian government didn't like. Their local employees might be jailed for years.
In the name of avoiding inconveniences, public protests in Jakarta have been limited to unusual "free speech zones" and required to keep quiet.
Shame on Indonesia for this censorship.
Renewable energy not only helps avoid disaster, it also helps spread the wealth.
Australia says it is unhappy about the multiple human rights violations of Nauru.
If Australia were serious about this, it could easily make Nauru change its policies. I suspect that Australia has encouraged these policies so as to cover up the treatment meted out to the refugees Australia sends to Nauru.
Ohio voters defeated a corrupt proposal to legalize marijuana, perhaps because they didn't like the corrupt aspect.
Traditional beer brewing has ceased to function in Belgium because of global heating.
The prime minister of Romania has resigned because of protests against corruption.
China appears to be underreporting coal consumption by as much as 17%.
Australia's right-wing government is no longer led by a suppository, but it still plans increased dooH niboR. Now it plans a big increase in VAT (a kind of sales tax), which will put the burden mainly on the poor.
What's really called for is an increase in income tax for high earners, or the progressive income tax on businesses that I've proposed.
Students protested today in London demanding a return to gratis university education.
The Taliban have an assassination program for journalists.
The UK plans to ban companies from offering encryption they can't break.
If big companies surrender to this, other countries will make the same demand.
The UK's new attack on privacy, spelled out.
Conservative food use-by dates tend to generate food waste.
I would not blame the supermarkets so much. They will face public criticism when goods don't last to their "use by" dates.
It is no use urging people to learn and remember rules about how long food lasts. The fraction of people who regularly cook is much less nowadays, and those who don't do this won't be motivated to learn them. We will inevitably depend on what the supermarket says.
When US thugs rape, the victims hardly ever report it. They believe, and I suspect they are right, that the other thugs will defend the rapists.
The EPA concluded that glyphosate is not an endocrine disruptor, but the evidence was provided by Monsanto, which means we can't rely on it.
People who do Google searches for "need money fast" see ads for companies called "lead generators" that put them on a list of potential suckers.
If you do a Google search in a way that doesn't hide who and where you are, including use of Tor, not specifying any account, and blocking cookies, you do seem to be a sucker.
A fanatical Israeli "settler" set fire to Palestinians' olive trees while a team from Rabbis for Human Rights was trying to protect them by serving as witnesses. Official firefighters did not arrive soon, so the president of Rabbis for Human Rights tried to put the fire out himself. The fanatic did not like this and tried to stab him.
The thugs took their time arriving, making sure the fanatic could get away, and then called the Rabbis presence a "provocation" against the fanatics.
I have to wonder if the firemen stayed away because coming to put out this fire would have been considered a "provocation".
Israel has been slowly cutting off the non-central parts of Jerusalem where Arabs live, and those Arabs themselves. Recently it became clear that this is aimed at the goal of cutting them all off.
East Jerusalem has one hospital, so wounded Palestinian protesters all go there. Israel has recently been raiding the hospital and harassing the doctors, even shooting tear gas inside the hospital.
They could kill patients that way.
Qadhafi's forces did not massacre civilians in the Libyan rebel cities they recaptured.
When Clinton warned there would be a massacre in Benghazi, this claim had no support from intelligence.
The intervention was, it seems, intended simply to remove Qadhafi from power. Although for a time it appeared to lead towards democracy, it led to chaotic violence that spread beyond Libya.
I've decided to spell the name "Qadhafi" because that follows the standard transliteration of Arabic. "Gaddafi" is more common, but not correct.
Right-wing US politicians invented the "liberal media" claim in the 1950s. In fact, the US mass media were predominantly right-wing then, before, and since.
Ayatollah Khamenei says that the slogan "Death to America" refers to US policies and arrogance, not the the American nation.
This makes a big difference. If Iran declares a wish for genocide against Americans, we would have to consider Iran an enemy. But when it condemns only how the US government treats and has treated Iran (and possibly some other countries), Americans can easily recognize valid points in that criticism. This provides a basis for patriotic Americans to push for the changes in the US needed for reconciliation with Iran.
The remaining cause of friction between the US and Iran has to do with the Iranian regime's oppression of Iranians. Progressive Americans really care about these injustices. US plutocrats probably don't. If the US were to support Iran totally, that would be wrong, just as it is wrong for the US to support Saudi Arabia and Egypt today.
When Khamanei dies, there may be an opportunity for diplomats to lead both countries to correct their wrongs.
Christiana Figueres, the UN's head climate official, says that China is trying very hard to move to clean energy, while the US is dragging its feet.
In China, the state is a plutocrat. In the US, private plutocrats control the state. As a result, China is capable of making an investment for long-term good, while the US is blocked by the plutocrats.
The UK government is treating help for women facing domestic violence as it is treating renewable energy.
Calling for a Jewish-Arab peace and justice party in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Non-extremist imams in Afghanistan teach the use of birth control.
Russia says it arrested the director of the Ukrainian library because it had a banned book. The deputy director says that the banned book in question was not theirs; that Russian thugs planted it to frame them.
We don't need to ask which one is telling the truth, because the Russian state is wrong either way. It is wrong to ban books.
Companies that try to sell "smart guns" (with access control) in the US have faced violent threats.
The access control in these guns is not DRM, because it is under the control of the gun owner.
Chelsea Manning calls for replacing the FISA court with courts that will make it their mission to resist unreasonable searches.
Limiting access to digital dossiers is not sufficient to protect whistleblowers from being identified. We need to redesign digital systems so that they don't collect digital dossiers, except about court-designated targets.
A thug from near Detroit shows how much violence a thug can get away with in the US. Finally he is being prosecuted.
As UK transfers its spending from poor people to nuclear power plants, more people are homeless. In once city, volunteers have organized to give them breakfast.
That will work for a while, but as the Tories continue cutting further, many of those now giving will join the hungry or the homeless.
As Aneurin Bevan said, the Tories are lower than vermin.
Apple censored an app to display videos presented at the Chaos Communications Congress because it did not censor presenters as Apple demands.
Apple's censorship is wrong, now as always, and designing computers as platforms for censorship should be illegal.
However, it is also wrong to make proprietary apps for the iThing. The Chaos Computer Club should do its streaming on the World Wide Web using a freedom-respecting video format.
TransCanada has tried to delay its application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, hoping to defer the decision to the next president.
Perhaps it is betting the next president will be bought. Or perhaps it's no longer profitable. Obama may still be able to veto it if he wishes.
I often referred to Keystone XL as the "planet-roaster pipeline", because it would enable the export of a decisively dangerous amount of tar sends oil.
This does not mean that avoiding the Keystone XL will make us safe. We need to leave 80% of the world's known fossil fuels in the ground, just to keep global heating to under 2C. There are many fossil fuel projects that could roast our planet, many chances to fail.
In the real World Series, humanity vs plutocrats, humanity is losing. We need to win nearly every game from here on.
Australia's latest horrible idea: passports that are only data in a server.
They call them "cloud passports", using the standard buzzword. There is no "cloud" — only other people's computers.
The passport data would be stored in some computer, but whose? And how will that computer be run?
Storing passports as data in some server will eliminate the problem that tens of thousand of passports are lost or stolen (mostly lost) individually, and introduce the problem that millions could be stolen at once digitally.
I suspect this will also involve a lot more biometric data than now.
An Indian singer faces possible life imprisonment for criticizing the chief minister of Tamil Nadu state.
The chief minister, in India, is the equivalent of a governor in the US.
I don't agree with the singer's position in favor of banning alcohol. I have no idea whether the chief minister profits from sales of alcohol. It is not clear whether the singer accused the chief minister personally, or the state government, of getting profits from alcohol.
What is important is that saying such things must not be a crime.
Soda companies fund "health" organizations to corrupt them so that they won't take action to lead people to drink less soda. They also promote campaigns for people to exercise more, so as to deny space to campaigns to drink less soda.
Soda with sugar leads to obesity, but soda with sugar substitutes is not innocuous; they tend to confuse the brain.
US citizens: call for closing the
carried
interest loophole.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Researchers say that ice in Western Antarctica is irreversibly retreating — there is no way to prevent it from raising sea level by 3 meters, though that will take centuries.
In many countries, the US practices a foreign policy that is wicked (and absurd too).
Why Every Environmentalist Should Care about Inequality.
US citizens: call for prosecution of Exxon for fraudulently denying global heating.
US citizens: call on Pelosi to file a discharge petition for a gun-control bill.
This discharge petition is a step towards reducing the number of discharges of guns.
An LA thug has been sentenced to prison because he let his deputies beat up a man who came to visit his brother in jail.
The rule that visitors can't bring portable phones may be legitimate, but there is no reason to beat them up if they have one. Anyway, doesn't each prisoner have a cell phone?
Pentagon Spent $43m on 'World's Most Expensive Gas Station' in Afghanistan.
There's No Perfect Answer to the Migrant Crisis. We need to change foreign policies that have destabilized so many countries and driven millions to flee.
The replacements for ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons turn out to be powerful greenhouse gases; we need to switch again.
Wang Yam was convicted of murder in the UK by a secret court. Why is the evidence secret? That's a secret too.
Wang Yam is now trying to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but the government has arbitrarily vetoed this.
A discussion of sex-work trafficking in Wisconsin has been totally confused, because it is based on blindly labeling work by teenagers as "trafficking", and equating their customers to pimps.
Thus, when the article talks of "rescuing" minors from sex work, we can't tell how many have indeed been rescued from pimps, and how many saw their customers arrested and felt compelled to pretend to be grateful.
No good can come from willful blindness about this difference.
Minors that do sex work are called "trafficked" even if they do it by choice and have the option to stop at any time. No wonder that, according to the article, many of the minors that are "rescued" from "trafficking" choose freely to go back to it. Maybe they chose it freely the first time, too.
The article acknowledges that they do this because their other options are very bad. That's where they could use some help. But the state of Wisconsin won't give them that.
I wonder how much of their problems are due to Wisconsin's Governor Walker and his attacks on aid to the disadvantaged, as well as political ethics requirements and campaign finance laws.
His policies are just the thing to force poor people into some sort of underground economy.
The Antarctic ice sheet is gaining thickness inland due to increased precipitation there.
This doesn't alter the observed rise in sea level, so it means the increase is coming from some other unknown source.
SCROTUS and Obama imposed the "sequester" as a "compromise" to cut the US budget in all areas. Now they have a new "compromise" that expands the war budget, while threatening Social Security and Medicare.
Selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when the low price suggests buying it instead, is sabotage of the treasury. "Buy high, sell low" is stupid, except when (as here) it is worse than stupid. Ultimately, plutocratist politicians betray the country to their paymasters.
SCROTUS stands for Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
In Burma, Buddhist extremists attack women's rights, sex education, and any discussion about sex.
The Buddha would advise those monks to question their attachment to those prejudices.
I expect there is a word in Burmese for "vagina", but it was omitted from the dictionary because it is considered too rude.
Mandatory, organized fun as part of a job is a form of manipulation.
Japanese companies pushed this to extreme lengths. Someone I know, who had no tolerance for alcohol and had to avoid it, had no choice but to work for a government lab, because all companies would require him to get drunk as part of "leisure" activities.
The suppository of all carbon emissions, Tony Abbott, succeeded in cutting renewable energy investment in Australia by almost 1/3.
Even 2C of global heating will do great harm. Drastic action is needed to avoid climate mayhem, and it doesn't look like leaders are prepared to do it.
It isn't certain that 2C of heating is possible. It might be that once warming goes beyond 1.5C (or 1.75, or 1.25, or some such amount), a positive feedback will kick in and push the heating up to 2.5C (or 3C, or 4C, or 5C, or some such amount). We are playing with fire, and the only certainty is that we must stop.
Ukraine's Russia-supported rebels are unhappy now that Putin is dialing down that war.
Haitian President Martelli is using government vehicles painted with Red Cross markings to carry false ballots to rig the election.
Pacific Islands Make Last-Ditch Plea to World Before Paris Climate Change Talks.
They will be inundated, and their people have no recognized right to go anywhere else.
Erdoğan's party won the election in Turkey. His war and his repression of the press have paid off, leading Turkey towards tyranny.
Monitors say that Turkey's election was unfair.
Haiti's US-imposed president Martelli unilaterally gave each minister a golden parachute of $46,000, although the treasury is supposed to be empty.
The whole dirty story about the school thug's violent attack on the orphaned teenager because she would not give her phone to the teacher.
The teacher, the principal, and then the thug, were all defending the principle of total obedience.
The clash of two world-views about wolf-whistles and compliments.
In the posted highlights of the hours of video made by a woman walking in New York City, some men were very pushy and wouldn't take no for an answer. That's clearly harassment. Even some brief remarks were harsh in their attitude. It is unkind to treat someone that way.
However, there is no need to consider kind complements as harassment. This is not a subjective question. You can get offended when someone says "hello", but that doesn't mean we consider your offense justified.
Billionaires including the Koch brothers suppress criticism by donating money to universities, museums, public TV, etc.
The Gates Foundation has done something similar in the field of US education.
For a university to do what Florida State University did, and let donors choose their professors, is a despicable surrender. It would be well for students there to picket the economics department ever year for this.
Ohio proposes to legalize selling marijuana, only for certain specific companies that have invested in advance.
The 'anti-Knowledge' of the elites in Washington goes unchallenged by the established press.
Standardized tests can have the effect of racial profiling.
The English Regent's Exam tests for a real skill, and the people who fail that test really lack that skill. Is that important? That depends on what they are going to do.
I speak French well enough to give speeches, have useful meetings with public officials, and write articles for publication (though they require editing by others). But I could not pass the French equivalent of the English Regent's Exam, because there are many French words and idiomatic expressions I don't know, and many references I would not catch.
Would my failure on that hypothetical test be significant? Is my command of French adequate or not? That depends on what activity I am going to do. For understanding le Canard enchainé, I am hopelessly incompetent; for championing free software in French, I seem reasonably capable.
Likewise, whether someone's failure on the English Regent's Exam is a real shortcoming depends on what you want that person to do. If it is to have sophisticated conversations in English the way an educated native speaker can, it is a real shortcoming and you should look for someone else. For college study in a field other than English, the failure at that exam may not matter.
SXSW cancelled panels about online harassment, giving way to online harassment. In response to criticism, it has brought them back, and added more.
Gamergate Didn't Fade Into Obscurity. We Just Stopped Noticing Its Existence.
It is cowardly to cancel an event because of threats — especially online threats, which are generally nothing but bombast.
A fungus is going to kill 90% of the UK's ash trees. Should genetic modification be used to make ash trees that can survive the fungus?
It seems plausible to me. These trees won't be fed to people, and pesticide won't be used on them; that eliminates two of the main issues. Furthermore, since the wild type is being wiped out anyway, there is no need to be concerned that it will be contaminated by the inserted gene.
Hurrah for Female Bosses, But Let's Not Forget Their Cleaners.
I would go further. What matters about the people corporate boardrooms is not their gender, but that they have too much power and get too much money. The poorly-paid female employees, and male employees too, deserve a higher wage.
The state can learn a lot about you from your phone call metadata.
6 Spooky Ways Local Law Enforcement Is Watching You.
I think we must prohibit several of these systems.
Upcoming UN Climate Summit Can't Overlook China's Support of Global Coal Power.
When US officials prosecute thugs, thugs organize retaliation, in the form of private and even official noncooperation, as well as frame-ups.
This is why they all deserve the name of "thugs". Anyone in Albuquerque who claims the honorable title of "police officer" should validate that claim by publicly denouncing these retaliation campaigns and affirming that thugs shouldn't get away with murder.
Moving your money out of the big Wall Street banks can be 20 times as effective as it appears.
The Library of Congress approved several specific three-year exemptions to the DMCA's prohibition on breaking DRM (digital restrictions management).
However, since the exemptions do not allow distributing the means to actually do so, they may in some cases be impossible to take advantage of.
The campaigns for these exemptions are a harmful distraction which saps energy from what we really need: to repeal what the DMCA says about DRM. It should be a crime to make systems with DRM.
The article uses the ill-advised term "digital locks" to refer to digital restrictions mechanisms. See the explanation of why that term is a bad analogy, and please join me in not using it.
The Corporations United (*) decision allows companies to tell their employees how to vote, and one big investor is trying to do this through all the companies he invests in.
This shows why we need a constitutional amendment that denies across the board that corporations are entitled to human rights — not just in regard to campaign spending.
* The front group used the misleading term "Citizens United"; there is no reason for us to join it in misleading people about what it represented.
Republicans in several state legislatures have passed laws to pre-empt cities from regulating areas such as minimum wage and fracking; and they remove local voter initiatives from the ballot, so that the city cannot challenge the validity of the state's pre-emption.
A German investigation has determined that the NSA spied pervasively on the German government.
Intellectual freedom in in the UK is threatened by the right-wing state and by left-wing students.
Now that the Somali pirates have been suppressed, illegal foreign fishing boats have returned to the area.
Shaker Aamer suffers from PTSD and will need years of treatment.
US citizens: insist that BP get no tax break from its damage payments.
US citizens: call on Obama to adopt the People's Climate Test.
US citizens: call on the Senate to maintain the rules for labeling meat by country of origin.
Indonesia's forest fires, a scheme for deforestation, have made half a million people sick in the region.
Four more secularist publishers and writers have been attacked in Bangladesh.
Obama said he has become disenchanted with standardized tests, and proposes a limit on them — but not a real reduction.
The issue is not how many hours students spend taking the tests, but how much their studies are shaped around the tests, and how the tests are used. Bigger policy changes are needed.
The FBI director admits he has no objective basis for claiming that Black Lives Matter protests caused a recent increase in crime. But he will blame them anyway.
He also blames the fact that people can use videos to demonstrate the crimes that thugs commit. His argument is that anything that makes thugs hesitate to beat people up and lie about it constitutes an impediment to their work.
Indonesia's Forest Fires Threaten a Third of World's Wild Orangutans.
The UK refused to investigate whether "sanctions" against the unemployed are achieving any of their supposed purposes.
Israeli troops told Palestinians: "Throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you all die — the youth, the children, the old people…You will all die. We will not leave any of you alive."
Palestinians are already being killed regularly by tear gas.
Money Flooding State Court Elections Threatens the Promise of Equal Justice.
How presidential candidates stand on the US options in Syria, which all have major drawbacks.
The article has one section entitled "'Safe zones' and special forces", but the section discusses only the safe zones, not special forces.
Women in Ireland and Northern Ireland have to borrow money so they can travel to England to get an abortion.
The way to end the stigma placed in Ireland on abortion is for women to talk about their abortions unapologetically. It is imperative for women in Ireland to stop acting ashamed.
Al-Sisi offers Britain the sort of tyrant that Britain is accustomed to doing business with.
"I got 643 days of torture [in Egypt]. My tormentor gets Cameron's red carpet."
Parts of the US no longer have tap water that is safe to drink.
Lesbians occasionally bear, like blacks, the brunt of thugs' persecution.
Transparency for the State, Privacy for the Rest of Us.
Diets generally do not achieve much weight loss.
Low-fat diets are the least effective, but perhaps that is because low-fat food products have added sugar.
Sanders calls for ending the death penalty, legalizing marijuana, reducing incarceration, and helping ex-cons get back into society.
The thug's vicious attack on a sitting high school girl is the extreme example of a systematic repression imposed in US public schools generally. Any student can be punished or suspended for minor or even fantasy "wrongs", but black students generally face worse treatment.
Suspension from school is extremely frequent: high schools suspend, each year, almost as many students as they graduate. Smaller punishments are probably far more frequent.
This system resembles a training program for living in an occupied country, and students could understand it as such. The thugs in the schools are soldiers in the occupying army, and the school officials are the local collaborators, quislings (that's why they order quizzes).
The teachers are mostly sincere, trying to provide what education they can under the occupation which they cannot defy, but that is easier said than done.
The goal is to make trouble for the occupation without letting the soldiers figure out who did it or how.
Obama is sending a contingent of US special forces to assist the Syrian Kurds.
This seems like a good idea to me. A limited amount of help for the Kurds could make a big difference for them in fighting PISSI, while avoiding the harm that a large US intervention force would do.
If the Kurds can cut off PISSI from the Turkish border, it would crimp PISSI's funds (obtained by selling oil) and recruitment (foreign recruits come through Turkey).
Obama should ask Congress for approval of the US intervention against PISSI. I expect he would easily get approval. The point is to maintain the system of checks and balances.
A black man is suspected of setting fire to churches near Ferguson.
Uri Avnery says: in blaming the holocaust on a factional Palestinian leader, Netanyahu went beyond the realm of dishonesty and manipulation, into the realm of lunacy.
Australia will give pregnant refugee Abyan another chance to get an abortion.
Even Sanders goes along with official US foreign policy lies some of the time.
Chavez won elections honestly, but his successor, Maduro, represses the opposition increasingly as it grows in strength.
Sanders doesn't do everything right, but he's a lot better even on foreign policy issues than the other candidates.
Sara Khan tries to convince British Muslim girls to reject extremism because it is a form of patriarchy.
I strongly dislike religious extremism, in any religion, even in the Church of Emacs. However, people have a right to profess those views, and it is wrong to prohibit them. The UK government has trashed so many human rights already that I expect the worst.
A scientific review finds that experiments demonstrate that neonicotinoids harm bees, but it is not yet proved that they are responsible for colony collapse.
Since bees are crucial to agriculture, and to the survival of many species of plants, we can't afford to risk it.
The UK government is about to demand ISPs record everyone's browsing history.
An NFL team wants to drain St Louis of millions for a new stadium; a movement of citizens opposes the fans.
NFL teams are businesses. It's too bad so many Americans direct their loyalty at businesses.
Major Indian historians have condemned the "climate of intolerance" that encourages violence and censorship of dissent from Hindu nationalist ideology and myths.
UK students will protest to oppose the adoption of a US-style market-dominated university system.
Shaker Aamer has been released from Guantanamo and has returned to Britain.
Rebellious officials in the Pentagon delayed his release for 5 years by refusing to let him go back to the UK.
He is going to sue the British government for complicity in his imprisonment and torture.
He certainly deserves compensation, but if the UK government settles the case to avoid exposure of its wrongs, that will not do justice.
"Unarmed civilian protection" persuades armed groups in South Sudan to refrain from violence, at least some of the time.
Assad's forces fired missiles at a market and killed at least 40 people. I would expect most of them were civilians.
Indonesia Is Burning. So Why Is the World Looking Away?
Everyone: call on CNN to replace commentator Harry Houck, who never saw a violent thug he didn't like.
Criminalizing criticism of officials threatens democracy in Malaysia.
Democracy in Malaysia was never very strong, which makes it even more vulnerable now.
A large forest fire is burning in the Amazon "rainforest", and has been burning for two months. This suggests o me that there is not as much rain as there normally used to be.
Large parts of Brazil have suffered from an unprecedented drought.
Global heating could play some role in this, but the cutting down of much of the forests are responsible for both.
The UN says that current carbon pledges will probably keep global heating to under 3C.
That is still taking too big a risk. Even the 2C target is somewhat arbitrary, since we don't know it will avoid disaster (or positive-feedback tipping points that would push warming further).
In addition, without an enforcement mechanism, we can't be confident all the countries will carry out their unilateral pledges.
Various organizations demand internet censorship in US universities to eliminate racist statements and insults.
I find some of those statements disgusting — others are merely foolish — but censorship is far more disgusting.
The scariest thing is that this sort of censorship has already become deeply implanted in many otherwise free countries. And in some of them, such as France and the UK, it is spreading to other kinds of censorship.
Pennsylvania has jailed a man for telling children on the street that he was on the way to a cabin in the woods.
A paranoid US parent, who has probably heard exaggerated stories about the nearly nonexistent "stranger danger", reported this as suspicious.
Perhaps thugs regarded the man as dangerous because he is autistic and could not rebut the suspicion.
Haiti's "president" Martelly is trying to impose a successor by rigging the election.
The US imposed Martelly through blatant contempt for the Haitian electoral system.
Following Guber, a new service matches up PR companies with piecework "journalists" that will take pay to write their press releases into "news articles".
I call it "Guber" because it pays drivers peanuts, but there are many reasons why we should refuse ever to use Guber.
Censorship on Rise as Global Internet Freedom Continues Downward Spiral.
The Gulf of Maine is now too warm for cod to live there.
This area of the sea used to be a major cod fishery, though they were mostly wiped out by overfishing a few decades ago. Massachusetts must now replace the Sacred Cod with Sacred Car.
Challenging the NSA to say how many Americans it snoops on as collateral damage.
The European Parliament voted symbolically in favor of offering asylum to Edward Snowden. It has no power to actually do this, but it is good to endorse his cause so visibly.
I think the US should welcome Snowden home with a medal.
Deforestation "May Have Started West Africa's Ebola Outbreak".
In Russia, everything about the Soviet Union is being sentimentalized, even prison camps and executions.
California has limited solitary confinement in prisons, but it is still done in jails, where many of the inmates have not been convicted of a crime. Sometimes it is done "for their protection".
China has relaxed the one-child policy, allowing all families to have two children.
This policy has done tremendous good for the Chinese people, and for the world as a whole. Perhaps China has gone through the demographic transition and the policy is not needed any more. If so, that's nice, and partly the consequence of having that policy.
The "demographic catastrophe" is an exaggeration. If there is a shortage of labor in China, factories can move to India, which has plenty of poor people who could use jobs.
With modern medical care, old people who are still well can delay their retirement. If there is truly a shortage of labor in China, those older workers can fill the gap. That won't cause harm.
The situation where delaying people's retirement is unjustified is when there are too few jobs, as in the US. In these circumstances, requiring old people to keep working forces younger people into unemployment.
As for men that can't find female mates, they should learn to share.
Laying out the evidence proving that Tony B'liar lied about Iraq's weapons programs to create an excuse for the war he and Dubya had already decided to launch.
If the US reduces its military spending, what other related policy changes should it make?
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas says that corporate-supremacy treaties such as the TPP contradict the UN charter. This could be used to argue that parts of them are void.
The Tories express open contempt for Britons that go hungry, and the food banks that help them when the state will not.
Aneurin Bevan had it right: the Tories are lower than vermin.
I hope they are sentenced to experience the same hunger, some day. But not their children.
The Koch brothers are running a campaign in Wisconsin for laws to permit more corruption.
Everyone: call on the Richland schools
to
change the practices hat put students in danger from thugs in their schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the historical background of these practices, which created today's school-to-prison pipeline.
Everyone: call for prosecution of the thug that grabbed and attacked the sitting high school student.
US citizens: call on Obama to require government contractors to disclose their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the European Commission to cancel its approval of a new neonicotinoid pesticide, sulfoxaflor.
Thousands of Afghans flee each day, trying to get to Europe. They fear the Taliban will win.
If all of them joined militias to fight the Taliban, they would defeat it. But the government does not inspire that kind of loyalty.
Reportedly North Korea has sent 50,000 people as forced laborers to foreign countries, including well-known tyrannies, but also Poland.
How could this be occurring in Poland, a part of the EU?
The director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature, in Moscow, has been arrested because the library has banned books.
Poachers that kill mammals in Africa kill vultures too. The lack of vultures can cause disaster.
Indonesia is temporarily the biggest CO2 emitter due to large forest fires that were intentionally set for the purpose of deforestation.
The motive for the deforestation is to produce palm oil.
The deepest lesson here is that if we don't take strong measures, there will be less and less room for anything but human activities to survive, until eventually global heating destroys civilization. Then a large fraction of the human population will die, and the rest will swelter in poverty.
The history of Selahattin Demirtas and the HD Party.
Erdogan's men blame the two most notorious bombings of Kurds on PISSI, and this could be true, but it doesn't mean Erdogan's men were not involved. Turkey under Erdogan has given PISSI considerable support, including allowing free passage to jihadi recruits.
Erdogan's censorship has convinced most of the public that the Kurds carried out the bombing.
This reminds me of how Dubya's support from right-wing US mass media convinced many Americans that Saddam Hussein collaborated with al-Qa'ida.
A refugee in Australia hanged himself because he feared being deported.
UK thugs seized the laptop of a BBC journalist who was interviewing people in PISSI.
The US could deal with its national debt by making a few trillion-dollar platinum coins.
If the US expanded its money supply too far, whether this way or via debt as it currently does, eventually that would cause high inflation. But there is a substantial way to go before that happens.
In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, a US nuclear missile team received erroneous orders to launch. The commander of that team saw something fishy and verified they were sent by mistake, thus averting a nuclear war.
There have been many other near escapes, including that of the bombs that could easily have detonated when they fell over the US.
We can't rely on lucking out every time, so we can't regard the current nuclear deterrent situation as safe.
London protester Shao Jiang will face no charges.
The minister in charge of thugs refused to comment on the arrest of Shao Jiang, saying that to do so would interfere with the "investigation". This is obvious bullshit for two reasons; but now that there is no more "investigation", what excuse will he give?
The lengthening fire season in the US west, caused by global heating, is replacing forests with shrubs.
Bernie Sanders proposes to remove marijuana from Schedule I, so that states could legalize it and it could easily be prescribed.
EU Caves In to Auto Industry Pressure for Weak Emissions Limits.
Clinton remains a militarist, and wants more US intervention in Syria now.
Mahmoud Abbas Appeals to UN for International Protection for Palestinians.
Now the UK is destroying public libraries.
Survivors report two massacres committed by Mexican thugs.
"When Isis blew up three captives tied to the Temple of Baalshamin's columns, it proved the inseparability of violence against art and violence against humans."
When victims of domestic violence or rape call thugs for help, they often receive contempt or even legal trouble.
Imagine If Exxon Had Told the Truth on Climate Change.
For one thing, activists wouldn't be using the term "climate change", which was imposed by political supporters of Big Oil precisely because it is vague and doesn't clearly present the danger.
The UK will require large companies to publish the policies they use to avoid buying from firms that use slave labor.
This will not automatically end the problem, since these policies may have clever loopholes and may not really be carried out. Or they may be null. Nonetheless, this may help.
It would be more effective to prohibit the importation of goods made with slave labor.
David Nutt: Why are drugs illegal?
David Nutt was a scientist advisor to the UK government about drug policy.
The Turkish government's thugs attacked the offices of an opposition media group with TV channels.
It is talking about prosecuting more newspapers after the election.
Large animals' dung fertilizes plants; by killing them off, humans have damaged ecosystems.
Arguing that it is a mistake to try to help Eritreans to remain in Eritria, because the state is too oppressive.
What should we do in such situations? There is the obvious option of invading, but how can we tell if that would make things worse?
Southeast Asia could lose 16% of its labour productivity in 30 years due to the effects of global heating.
I am not sure if this really applies to Singapore, because people live and work in air conditioned areas there.
Curbing global heating provides a way to make lots of jobs — economic growth focused on the non-rich.
US citizens: call for a terrorism investigation into the series of attacks against Planned Parenthood facilities.
A dozen US thugs have been prosecuted this year, yet the proportion of deaths leading to charges remains small.
Few of the thugs that are prosecuted are convicted.
The UK seems to make a much firmer line towards thugs that commit crimes.
Netanyahu says he intends to continue Israel's occupation of Palestine indefinitely.
By rejecting both an independent state of Palestine and equal rights in Israel for Palestinians, he chooses permanent oppression, and no longer even hides it.
Palestinians have no partner for peace, so they are turning towards the idea of a competition of birthrates.
The ultra-orthodox Israelis and the right-wing fanatics are competing back, bringing the prospect of an overpopulated country which can't survive at all, especially if global heating goes to work.
Chevron's US case against Ecuador (to avoid paying the damages Chevron owes for pollution from oil wells) was based on one corrupt witness, a former judge in Ecuador, who has now testified that Chevron paid him to lie.
It appears that the US judge that presided over the trial split hairs so as to find in Chevron's favor despite the untrustworthiness of this witness.
I wonder what convinced him to do that.
The Pentagon is very concerned that global heating could start more wars in the near future.
The US must give all ex-cons legal aid in getting over the barrier separating them from a life of non-crime.
While I agree, I think we need to do much more. Mere legal aid won't enable ex-cons to have an option other than stealing food.
London thugs have not told protester Shao Jiang and his wife what "conspiracy" they suspect him of.
Ben Carson wants to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. He would replace these with "health savings accounts", which only America's shrinking middle class could afford to put money in.
He also compares women that want abortions to slave owners.
France has made it a crime to advocate boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. France has adopted the bogus position that this constitutes anti-semitism. (In fact, the campaign explicitly rejects the idea of boycotting Israeli individuals, let alone Jews in general.)
You can't find a clearer form of political repression than that.
As it happens, France still permits advocating sanctions against any other country, but that does not alter the principle at stake here.
Director Quentin Tarantino joined a protest against thug murders, saying "I'm on the side of the murdered." New York thugs respond by calling for a boycott of his films.
What is notable here is the way thugs organize to attack anyone that doesn't bend over backwards to overlook their violence.
I recommend staying away from Tarantino's films, because I find the (fortunately fictional) violence in them hard to bear.
Meta-analyses of tests of antidepressants have been pervasively corrupted by influence of big pharma companies, and that affects their results.
Senate Rejects All CISA Amendments Designed To Protect Privacy, Reiterating That It's A Surveillance Bill.
A Venezuelan prosecutor says that the government planned to prosecute Leopoldo Lopez before his supposed crime was supposedly committed.
The thug that shot Zachary Hammond will not face charges even though video contradicted his statements about the reason.
It appears Hammond was really committing a crime, and had driven his car at the thug (which was a real threat to him), but the threat had already ceased when the thug killed him.
I Get Why Women Are Angry — But I Still Want to Listen to Germaine Greer.
A conclusive experiment shows that sugar is much worse for children's health than the equal number of calories from other sources.
This argues for imposing a tax on sugary drinks.
Note that sugar substitutes are also bad for people.
US courts used flimsy excuses to deny justice in cases about torture and massive surveillance.
The Paris conference has given up on establishing a global carbon price. It seems they are not even thinking about the carbon tax that we really need.
The European Parliament adopted a "network neutrality" directive that is too weak and vague to do much good.
Obama is planning to increase US ground combat against PISSI.
US troops cannot defeat PISSI on the ground, just as they could not defeat the Sunni resistance in Iraq in the last decade. They can only suppress it locally temporarily.
However, he is also willing to include Iran in negotiations about the future of Syria.
This might unblock some log jam.
Texas raids on Planned Parenthood are collecting patients' health records.
Americans worry about nearly all sorts of problems more than about climate mayhem.
I suppose that's because they have short time horizons. The danger of global heating will grow across decades, but unless you're living in certain drought areas, the chances it will hurt you in the US in the next few years are small.
A student who threw a baby carrot at a teacher faces criminal charges.
This is the school-to-prison pipeline at work.
US Admiral Losey punished subordinates for no reason, but his punishment is a promotion.
CEOs get too much credit (and blame) for a company's success (or failure). In 70% of the cases, the results were due to chance.
The Obama regime campaigns against debt relief for US students.
Modern bankster crime is often impossible to prosecute because it is so complex that juries can't understand it.
Such complexity provides many places for fraud to hide, so I suggest regulating banks by limiting them to the simpler practices of the past.
The UK's extremist government plans to take children away from their parents, if the parents are suspected of possibly radicalizing them in the future. This will be done based on secret evidence that the parents cannot challenge.
US companies have found a way to write their own rules for workers' compensation, which enables them to pay less or even nothing to workers that are injured.
A Saudi prince, accused of rape by his domestic servants, has inexplicably not been charged with rape.
One must suspect political influence was brought to bear.
Arsonists have burned
five black people's churches
in the St Louis area.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
UK, Germany And France Lobbying for Weakened Cap on Toxic Car Pollution.
Companies always argue that they will make less money if we don't give them more and more and more leeway.
Bernie Sanders Is Actually Quite Serious About This 'Political Revolution' Thing.
He sees the same factors that have made many Americans cynical, but instead of responding with defeatism, he calls on Americans to do what is required to overcome them. Americans, do it!
Society has done little to adapt to the global heating of the past 50 years or reduce the harm it has done to productivity.
Saudi bombs destroyed an MSF hospital in Yemen. The article does not tell us whether the attack was an accident.
Over 90% of the people killed by this bombing campaign — and by the other explosive weapons of both sides — are civilians.
Since this bombing campaign is endorsed and supported by the US, the US is indirectly responsible. If the US and Saudi Arabia had not launched this campaign, the Houthis would have won the war in Yemen and there would be less fighting there now — perhaps none.
Local and foreign activists have blocked construction of a dam in Cambodia that would have harmed endangered species.
UK opposition leaders call for cancellation of the invitation for al-Sisi to visit the UK.
Indonesia is returning to the censorship of the Suharto era, under the influence of the military and Islamists.
An Indonesian exile was deported to Sweden for trying to visit the mass grave of his family, slaughtered in the massacre of 50 years ago. Assuming he was an Indonesian citizen who fled, I wonder on what excuse they could deport him from Indonesia. Did Indonesia revoke his citizenship when it was unable to murder him?
When Is Saving a Life 'Too Much Medicine'? This Is a Lifelong Test for Doctors.
It seems to me that Davey died as a person long before he arrived in the hospital. His wife must have spent some time taking care of a zombie (though not dangerous like fictional ones) because she couldn't bear to recognize that that's what he had become.
I saw my father once after he had got Alzheimer's, and he could barely recognize me. I concluded that he was dead. It was painful to see him that way, but since he was not going to remember it, it wasn't doing him any good; and didn't mean anything to me except to show me that he was dead. I missed him but there was no point visiting his occasionally walking corpse.
Although the anti-austerity parties have a majority in Parliament, Portugal's president asked the right wing party to form a government (which it can't possibly succeed at).
A thug, apparently with a chip on his shoulder, grabbed a high school student and manhandled her when she did not obey his demand for her to leave her desk.
This is the school-to-prison pipeline at work.
What was the thug doing in the school? Was there any legitimate reason for him to be present there?
Sanders explains the need for postal banking in the US.
Egypt Arrests Three Journalists in Five Days, Whereabouts of Two Unknown.
A heating-denialist congressman wants to investigate NOAA's emails about calibrating older and newer temperature measurements.
He doesn't like the results they demonstrate.
Top German Official (or rather his computer) Infected by Highly Advanced Spy Trojan with NSA Ties.
It is too late for "building bridges" between Israel and Palestine to do any good. Substituting that for pressure is misguided.
I used to try to invite Israelis and Palestinians to work together on free software, hoping this would aid the cause of peace. But Israel since 2000 has become too right-wing for anything like this to help.
The biggest hurricane ever seen in the western hemisphere was the result of El Nino piled on global heating.
El Ninos come and go, but we are driving the base temperature they rest on steadily upward. In a few decades, the current record sea temperature will be incredibly low for this time of the year.
More evidence suggests that the US military knew the target was an active MSF hospital.
Anti-austerity parties have won a majority in Portugal's parliament.
Netanyahu's bizarre gaffe — scanning the horizon with binoculars without removing the lens caps — shows the dishonesty of his character.
By 2070, global heating could expose the land around the Persian Gulf to heat waves that are fatal to humans.
Journalists are being repressed heavily in Yemen.
US citizens: call for a Democratic presidential debate about Black Lives Matter.
US citizens: call for a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torture.
Everyone (but particularly Jews and those of Jewish descent):
reject the Jewish
National Fund, which funds land-grabbing and practices housing
discrimination.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Democratic senators to stand firm against the DARK Act.
Facebook Quietly Lobbying for CISA While Being Shielded by Trade Associations.
The Tories plan to permit fracking in areas important to water supply and biodiversity.
Calling for a world-wide ban on expansion of coal mining.
Higher Education [in the US]: Capitalism At Its Most Despicable.
The World Health Organization warns that bacon, sausages and ham are carcinogenic.
Although there is strong evidence that they sometimes cause cancer, the magnitude of the risk is much less than the danger of smoking.
The US says that Russian submarines are patrolling intensely around undersea communication cables.
This may be true, but I doubt that Russia is interested in cutting these cables. What would be the point of doing so? That would alienate the whole world, not just the US.
Standard intelligence strategy is, "Don't block the enemy's communication, listen to them." We already know that the NSA taps cables; I suppose Russia is looking for ways to do likewise.
With the high rents in London, people can't even afford private beds.
Protesters have blocked a large UK coal mine owned by a global heating denialist.
Morocco is building large solar-thermal electric plants that can keep producing electricity for hours after sundown.
The idea of exporting solar electricity from Morocco to Saudi Arabia seems silly to me, simply because it would be more efficient to site the solar generators in Saudi Arabia than to transmit the electricity there from afar. Can the electricity be used to condense water out of the air and grow plants?
South Park explains gentrification.
Once in India I stayed in a hotel called South Park. Apparently the TV show was not known there. There is also a chain of fine Bengali restaurants in India called "Oh! Calcutta!". The people who work there do not know about either the theater piece or the painting that made the name notorious. It was a lot of fun giving them copies of the painting and the publicity photo of the theater piece.
The UAE prosecutes many women for being raped.
This is among the most extreme of the many injustices of Islamic law, which generally displays contempt for human rights, especially those of women.
The background of Sunday's election in Haiti.
The US government argues, in court, that Apple is obliged to make iThings decrypt users' data because Apple claims it owns the software running in them.
In Wisconsin, many government searches were carried out ordering the targets not to tell anyone, not even their lawyers.
Some of these searches appear to have been part of the investigation of Governor Walker for campaign finance violation. It was correct to investigate them, but people should not have been told not to tell their lawyers about it.
The US government hinted that Israel was using excessive force against Palestinian protesters, but timidly pulled back after a reprimand from Netanyahu.
Alarm Grows over Summary Executions of Palestinians.
Sometimes it is necessary to shoot a person who is trying to kill others. The problem is that Israeli troops do this whether or not it is necessary, even to innocent victims.
Israel arrests Palestinian activists to prevent protests.
Netanyahu is trying to push Palestinians to use violence because that makes it easy to put them in the wrong. Israelis can get away with violence against Palestinians, by the state and by groups of fanatics, but the world condemns all Palestinians when some of them are violent.
Poverty today is not a natural problem — it results from plutocratic policies that concentrate wealth.
Europe Is Becoming an Undemocratic Continent Where Force Matters More Than Law.
As cruel policies make more Britons homeless, US-style prohibitions on sleeping are following.
The article says that this ban would only apply to people who are offered a place to sleep and refuse it. Not many homeless people would refuse a decent place to sleep, so why bother to prohibit this? There has got to be some sort of catch in it.
Putin directly controls nearly all Russian media, the few exceptions being foreign-owned, and Putin is now getting rid of those.
New Pun: "The dependable friend"
US citizens: tell Obama to stop farting around and cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.
Everyone: call on McDonald's to stop the McTeachers Nights where school teachers teach bad eating habits to their students.
US citizens: call on Obama not to allow more undersea oil drilling in US waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Standard Chartered not to lend money to Felda, which uses slave labor.
The president of the National Black Police Association has direct experience with how UK thugs assume blacks are criminals.
As thugs beat up helpless Donovan Gardner, TV commentators disagreed about whether this abuse was justified.
An old radioactive waste dump in Nevada caught fire.
The UK Gets Set to Welcome Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy.
Why Syrian refugees increasingly try to get to Europe.
B'liar admits that without the conquest of Iraq, which he and Dubya engineered, PISSI would not exist.
Congress threatens to prohibit security research into flaws in car software.
The article fails to mention the car owner, but that person should also be allowed to study and change the software in the car.
Here are recommendations for changing the bill.
It is not easy to design car-to-car communication systems that don't allow tracking all the cars.
Some US thug officials want to send fewer criminals (and non-criminals) to prison.
Iraqi PISSI fighters that have been captured usually don't understand Islam very well, and most of them are motivated by resentment for the US conquest of Iraq.
The US-backed destruction of Yemen could motivate lots more bitter young men to fight for PISSI in the same way.
Arguing that the disintegration of Libya was inevitable once Ghadhafi was overthrown.
This may have been true — but the article overlooks the point that the west did not start the civil war in Libya. Libyans did that. The western intervention initially prevented Ghadhafi from massacring the rebels of Benghazi, then was redirected toward defeating him.
You can argue that Libya would be better off today if Ghadhafi had reimposed his power and killed the rebels. The author of the article would probably assert that. I can't say it wasn't true. However, we must be skeptical of the hindsight that claims something was predictable.
The Liberal Party in Canada probably has no intention of giving Canada the progressive vision it appeared to promise, but perhaps Canadians can pressure it to do so.
There is nothing to lose by trying.
The FCC has slashed the cost of interstate phone calls for prisoners by a factor of as much as 100. They remain shockingly expensive by modern standards.
Meanwhile, gouging is still allowed on phone calls within a state.
What Putin says appears much nastier when mistranslated.
US troops joined with Kurds to rescue Kurdish fighters captured by PISSI.
The rescue is a good outcome, and I hope the US will cooperate increasingly with the peshmerga. However, I hope this does not mean the start of a continuing US ground intervention.
If Jesus lived in the UK today, he's be punished for "extremism".
Christians have committed plenty of extremist oppression, when they have political power, but I am not sure that can be blamed on Jesus, given that we know little about what he actually said and did. The earliest documents were written many decades after he died.
Palau is creating a giant protected marine area.
Russia has bombed three hospitals in Syria, so far.
The EU's program to stop import of timber from illegal logging is not working.
Why genetic engineering is not much like software development.
Fight Climate Change for Global Stability, Say US Defence And Diplomacy Leaders.
The EPA disregarded medical advice and proposed limits for ozone that are too high to avoid causing health problems.
US citizens: Tell the Securities and Exchange Commission: Don't help Wall Street hide the truth from investors.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose CISA.
Everyone: call on the New York Times to stop dehumanizing Palestinians and cease covering the Israeli-Palestinian violence in a one-sided way.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the DARK Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Indonesia's repression of West Papua includes frequent rapes of the indigenous women.
As a practical matter, journalists are still effectively excluded.
The US Border Patrol operates checkpoints inside US territory as an arbitrary and irresponsible "stop and frisk" scheme, which appears to be intended to catch drugs rather than unauthorized aliens. And it does not keep proper records of what it does.
If they want to search your car, all they need to do is tell the "drug-sniffing dog" to act as if it had sniffed some drugs.
The International Energy Agency is about to publish a report lauding falsified "benefits of coal", as a "disinformation tool".
To save money, companies propose to "care for" old people with robots and no human contact — while spying on and managing their every move.
Google can easily manipulate election outcomes through search results.
It might be doing so without anyone's intentionally trying.
The UK systematically sabotages protests by arresting protesters and giving them bail conditions barring them from future protests.
South African students protested massively and won roll-back of a tuition fees increase.
Under US government pressure, professors are being fired for academic discussion of issues relating to sex.
The Democratic National Committee is now giving lobbyists privileged participation in next year's convention.
Paul Ryan, hypocrite and bullshit artist, often gets the press to repeat his claims uncritically.
Oil companies in Colombia work with the paramilitares to kidnap and torture union organizers.
Leaked Map Reveals Big Gas Eyeing Most Biodiverse Place on Earth.
Domestic workers in Saudi Arabia take a risk they will be worked to death.
Lego refused to sell in bulk to Ai Weiwei for an art project.
Fortunately, others have offered to give him the Lego pieces he needs for that art work.
Shame on Lego for censorship.
Our Chance to Defeat Polio Once And for All.
Iranian exile Shappi Khorsandi talks about growing up in London and worrying that her father would be assassinated.
Shao Jiang protested at Tiananmen Square, then fled to Britain. UK thugs raided his house, apparently because he protested the visit of Chinese strongman Xi Jinping.
He was arrested too, just for holding a sign. Protesters who held Tibetan flags to protest Xi Jinping's visit to London were also violently arrested.
Looks like Britain has a new "special relationship". Will Cameron become Xi's poodle?
UK thugs arrested housing activist Lisa McKenzie for allegedly helping someone else put a sticker on a building.
McKenzie says they picked her out because of her organizing role in the campaign.
TTIP: EU Negotiators Appear to Break Environmental Pledge in Leaked Draft.
The New York Times and Washington Post are Ignoring Civilians Killed by US Drone Strikes.
A drug company will require patients, unless they pay the exorbitant full price, to give up confidentiality for their medical data.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
This is an illustration of why "you must get the subject's permission" is not good enough to protect privacy.
Large fires in Indonesia are deliberately started in order to eliminate rainforests to make room for palm oil plantations.
This not only causes respiratory illness, even in Singapore and Malaysia; it also emits so much CO2 that it is globally significant.
A large Indonesian palm oil producer has adopted a policy to protect forests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
This is just a first step, since we can't take for granted that companies will keep their promises.
Pro-Israeli fanatics attacked a journalist in Paris.
Iceland has convicted the executives of failed banks for their frauds, and sentenced them to prison.
Uri Avnery reports on how Israel provoked Palestinians to the string of knife attacks, and how Israelis lynched an innocent man in response to one of them.
The Best Lesson China Could Teach Europe: How to Play the Long Game.
Although democracy is pretty sick in Europe and the US, there remains much more than in China.
A US court quashed the ACLU's lawsuit against NSA's massive surveillance on the grounds that the NSA doesn't admit it does the massive surveillance.
US government money is handed to charter schools (privatized "public schools") with weak supervision. Millions have gone to schools that never even opened.
US government restrictions are blocking research into the effects of marijuana.
Paul Ryan wants to abolish large parts of the US government — the parts that help people rather than killing people.
Second-hand smoke seems to encourage tooth decay in babies.
A giant Chinese arse visits London.
In most US states, having any sort of connection with a crime, in the course of which someone else kills someone, can get you convicted of murder.
This seems thoroughly unjust in most cases.
Twitter is going to help companies track the movements, actions and views of people talking about their products.
Perhaps this is part of why Twitter has been making trouble for users that try to connect through Tor so as not to reveal where they are.
Twitter will not show those companies the movements of individuals, but it will have to show those to the US government.
The parents of Furkan Dogan, who was killed when Israeli troops attacked a Gaza aid boat, have sued then-minister-in-charge Ehud Barak.
The best temperature for economic productivity is 13C. As the average temperature rises above that, productivity goes down.
The US and China are at that peak now, so global heating will harm productivity in both. However, places that are already hotter will suffer a bigger decline.
UN help has enabled Guatemala to make its formerly corrupt and useless judicial system work honestly.
72% of Saudi Death Sentences Handed Down for Non-Violent Crimes.
When spring is warm, oak trees produce fewer acorns.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board members used private email accounts (which was lawful) while trying to investigate Governor Walker, because they couldn't trust their state email accounts not to be monitored by his men.
Having arbitrarily quashed the investigation (apparently because Walker was guilty), Walker's Republican allies in the legislature are citing this as an excuse to eliminate the Government Accountability Board.
No constitutional arrangements are strong enough to prevent shameless scoundrels from destroying them.
US citizens: call on the USDA to reject GMO wheat.
Everyone: call on Justin Trudeau to cancel Canada's purchase of the overpriced and troublesome F-35 fighter.
Everyone: call for a special prosecutor for the killing of Tamir Rice.
Germany has instituted phone and internet data retention again. The new retention is shorter and has safeguards that might protect against the danger. However, it may also criminalize receiving leaked information from whistleblowers.
There is no need to point to Scandinavia as a model for democratic socialism.
The ideas have been advocated in the US for centuries.
Fanatical Muslims in Aceh, Indonesia, attacked a Protestant church, as part of a campaign to dismantle them.
Shari'a law tramples human rights. It hits women especially hard, but it hits men also. It is an inexcusable injustice.
Global heating endangers snow leopards: the snow they blend in with is melting.
A Tory voter suppression scheme may be thwarted.
Ben Carson wants the US government to censor universities to resist social pressure for political correct speech.
Stephan Templ reminded Austria about properties confiscated from Austrian Jews by Nazis; the state seems to have punished him by convicting him of a theoretical crime that didn't really occur.
Proposing an international force to protect Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
The UK says it will give unemployed people 14 days to argue against a fine before imposing the fine.
This change may make the system less cruel, but it may still run people ragged.
The Houthis are filtering the internet in Yemen.
I suppose that their main enemy, Saudi Arabia, filters the internet too.
A company has found a way to sell a generic replacement for Daraprim and undercut Shkreli's gouging price.
The Tories promised extra money to the UK's NHS, taking it from public health services. Cutting them will put extra burden on the NHS and cancel out the benefit.
The International Energy Agency projects future demand for fossil fuels which are systematically exaggerated. Fossil fuel companies use these figures to influence government policies.
The Tories are killing off the UK's booming renewable energy sector.
Obama vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act because of provisions that would interfere with closing Guantanamo prison.
We often use "Guantanamo prison" as a stand-in for the unjust and un-American practice of imprisonment without trial. It is not clear whether, when Obama talks about "closing Guantanamo prison", he means ending imprisonment without trial, or just moving it elsewhere.
As the UK fawns on China's repressive rulers, one British lawyer confronted participants in the expensive support rally that Chinese officials organized in London.
If you want to see the video, please don't let it lead you to run nonfree software (Flash or JS code) or be used by Facebook.
A UN special rapporteur takes governments including the US to task for demonizing whistleblowers they ought to protect.
Just after University of Washington Center for Human Rights sued the CIA about a possibly US-supported massacre in El Salvador, someone stole its computer which held testimony from survivors of the massacre.
The article does not say whether they had a backup copy elsewhere. They are afraid that the stolen data could be used for reprisals. It is too bad they did not encrypt the data with GPG.
They did have backups, but apparently did not keep the files encrypted.
Australia's "moral case for coal" was developed by a PR flack for the Koch brothers as a last-ditch attempt to keep humanity headed towards maximal climate mayhem.
Prison for Exxon Execs? Lawmakers Seek Probe of Oil Giant for Hiding Knowledge of Climate Change.
Government pressure forced a writers' festival in Bali to cancel events concerning the massacre of a million Indonesians in 1965.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says doctors should check their child patients for signs of hunger.
This is the result of the plutocratist policies that have spread poverty in the US.
In Papua New Guinea, women accused of being witches are tortured, sometimes to death.
As food banks step in to fill increasing gaps in the UK's welfare system, the state dumps more of the poor onto them.
The ACLU is suing Biloxi, Mississippi, for running a debtor's prison.
Children of non-Catholics face exclusion from school in Ireland because around 95% of schools are run by the churches.
A crowdfunding project raises funds for court costs for poor people in the UK to sue.
Abortion clinics publicize the good that abortions do.
A US court ordered an end to federal raids against state-licensed California medical marijuana dispensaries.
Laws against "hate speech" are dangerous, in various countries including the US.
A thug, not in uniform, shot Corey Jones dead as Jones was waiting for help beside his disabled vehicle.
The story told by the thug is not credible, and information is not being released.
Thugs are to murder of blacks
as priests are to sexual abuse.
The Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) shut off the internet to sabotage protests.
"Self-encrypting" disk drives do the encryption with proprietary firmware so you can't trust it. Western Digital's "My Passport" drives have a back door.
Obama has nominated an SEC commissioner recommended by Senator Warren.
Killer robots may be just a few years in the future, if we don't set up a treaty to stop their development.
The US and Russia have set up a system to avoid fighting each other in the air over Syria.
To provide housing to the poor and homeless, the UK needs to increase the tax on expensive houses and thus encourage the wealthy to release space to others.
A Fukushima reactor cleanup worker has developed cancer attributed to the radioactivity.
Hawaii Follows Los Angeles in Declaring State of Emergency Over Homelessness.
US citizens: Obama, stop abusive boyfriends from buying guns.
US citizens: support an investigation of the lack of proper legal representation for poor people charged with crimes in the US.
US citizens: Call on your state to ban fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to defend bottled-water bans in national parks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
The very rich are very lonely, being disliked by the many people they impoverish.
Many of them have a callous attitude towards the non-rich, which will inspire even more dislike.
Armed fanatical "settlers" launched a pogrom against Palestinians trying to harvest their olives, wounding some of them, then started a fire.
Israeli troops watched this and told the Palestinians they need a permit to pick their olives, then kept Palestinian firefighters away.
The proposed Paris pledges would stop the growth in CO2 emissions, but would fail to reduce them.
That is still the road to disaster.
Netanyahu tries to falsely blame the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for Hitler's decision to exterminate Jews. Historians pound him for this.
Australia is planning to collect photos from Facebook for a national data base.
Subcontracted janitors that clean the UK's foreign office have responded to a series of cruel laws by organizing a union and planning to strike.
Sunscreen is killing young coral organisms in reefs near tourist areas.
Sunscreen in sewage released into the ocean also contributes to the problem.
But this doesn't matter much if we're going to wipe out the reefs entirely.
Carbon Pollution: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, And the Denial.
Harper's attack on science in Canada went so far that government scientists' union is campaigning for a contract that respects scientific integrity.
The Liberal Party says it will reverse these changes.
Russia is giving military support to the Afghan government and that of Tajikistan.
Russia, unlike the US, has a real interest in propping up the Afghan government indefinitely.
How many ironies there are here. If the US had not attacked Iraq, PISSI would not exist and fanaticism in Afghanistan would not go beyond the Taliban's level.
Diesel cars emit more NOx pollution than a bus or a large truck.
Even some executives and lobbyists now advocate publicly funded elections for the US.
The UK has made a crazy deal to build nuclear power plants to be owned by China.
Uzbekistan is arresting and beating up human rights investigators.
Israel's unending war against occupied Palestine is not for its security but for territorial expansion.
In East Jerusalem, Israel's policy amounts to gradual, slow ethnic cleansing.
The EU has ruled that a common multinational tax-dodge set up through Luxembourg or the Netherlands is illegal. Many large companies will have to pay lots of tax.
The UK plans to drive out unauthorized immigrants by making it impossible for them to rent housing.
Clever hackers discovered they can give voice commands silently to other people's phones by radio.
According to conservative models, sea level could rise over a meter by 2100. This would be disastrous for many islands, whose people could be forced to stay there and die, and for big cities such as Miami, New York, Houston, New Orleans, and Guangzhou (Canton).
However, these models may be underestimates. Others say 6 meters of rise is possible in this century.
This is uncertain; we might get lucky and have just one meter of rise. Should we bet on that, or should we take precautions?
Everyone: call on Pop Secret and Pop Weaver to use corn made without neonicotinoid pesticides.
US citizens: call on California to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen.
US citizens: object to appointing pharma insider Robert Califf as head of the FDA.
The leader of the French extremist party Front National is being prosecuted for "hate speech".
This prosecution is an injustice. What Le Pen said is a ludicrous exaggeration, but she has a right to say it.
Many American men consider wasteful practices to be "masculine" and therefore refuse to give them up.
Russia has hounded an anti-nuclear activist into exile.
Proposed UK laws to discourage "extremism" attack human rights.
Israel continues collective punishment, demolishing the homes of families of killers.
The Conservatives in Canada were defeated by the Liberals.
In regard to global heating, it is not clear this is much of an improvement.
It is dangerous to punish web sites or journalists for failing to censor "terrorism".
Finally Nauru allowed a foreign reporter in. Apparently he was chosen for his political views.
Japan is going to disregard the World Court and continue killing whales for bogus "scientific research".
The Libyan unity government plan has failed — one government is Islamist and the other isn't.
Some of the victims of Chicago's Homan Square torture station are suing the city.
It's not enough to make the city government pay for this. The thugs who tortured people, who denied them access to lawyers, must be prosecuted for this.
US drone registration may exempt short-range toys.
Italian writer Erri De Luca was charged with "incitement" after he stated the opinion that sabotaging a new train tunnel would be legitimate.
I have nothing against building a fast train line from Turin to Lyon; indeed, I wish it were operating now. But it is tremendously important that people be free to say they think that violating some law is legitimate.
After Assange invited Swedish prosecutors to question him in the Ecuadorian embassy, the UK urged Swedish prosecutors not to do this. "Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request."
More confirmation that this case — regardless of its actual merits — is being used as an excuse to harm Assange.
Defying censorship in Belarus, where publishers must get state permission for each new book.
A similar system in England in the 16th century was the origin of today's copyright.
The UK is cutting subsidies for solar power but pushes ahead with subsidies for nuclear power.
Even in 2002, as Dubya and B'liar pretended they had not already agreed to invade Iraq, there was evidence of the truth that they had done so.
The latest bogus argument for burning more coal — for rural poor who are not on the electric grid and thus can't make use of coal anyway.
Solar power is what those people could really use.
Former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa, accused by Italy of participating in a CIA kidnaping there, has been arrested in Portugal and may be sent to Italy.
She was convicted in absentia, and I think she will get a new trial if she is delivered to Italy.
This is so juicy!
The EFF summarizes several systems of governmental massive non-internet surveillance in the US.
https://www.eff.org/files/2015/10/06/eff_police_tech_primer_-_nacole_2015_v.3.pdf - eff-police-primer.pdf
It doesn't mention remote-viewing cameras mounted at fixed sites, but these do massive surveillance in places such as New York City.
Merely putting limits on the use of the massive dossiers that these systems collect about each person is not sufficient to reduce our level of surveillance to below that of the Soviet Union. We need to eliminate these systems or redesign them so that they can only "see" court-designated targets.
The US Justice Department prosecutes fewer corporations nowadays, though the number of potential cases has risen.
Putting body cameras on thugs won't help without good policies for their use.
I've proposed an automatic system to stop thugs from turning them off before attacking people.
Campaigning to legalize abortion in Ireland, where women have been killed by the ban.
An interesting set of political proposals, which I agree with nearly all of.
SCROTUS have directed the Congressional Budget Office to publish alarmist figures about imaginary future US debt.
SCROTUS: Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
The UK government wants to require unions to get advance permission from the state before posting on the internet.
The UK's relentless attack on public sector salary and working conditions is driving doctors, teachers, and even thugs to quit.
Sherry Turkle: "I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation".
The US and Russia are both fighting in Syria, and could get into war by accident.
I find it peculiar that people in the West defend Putin's intervention on behalf of Assad. Assad is a mass murderer and doesn't deserve support. Alas, his main enemies (al-Qa'ida and PISSI) are just as bad.
CISA, supposedly a bill to improve companies' cybersecurity, would actually encourage weak security.
The US government plans to require registration of all drone aircraft.
Does this include even toys?
Bernie Sanders' position on the various US wars.
A US document (written by Colin Powell) shows that Dubya and B'liar agreed to invade Iraq a year before the actual attack — so their claims this was not true were lies.
The Australian government is aware that it puts refugees into prisons where their treatment ranges from cruelty to rape, so its priority is to prevent any information about this mistreatment from leaking out. Lawyers and journalists are kept out by the puppet regime of Nauru. Workers who observe crimes are threatened with imprisonment if they report these crimes.
Nauru confiscated the employees' phones and computers so that they could not talk to journalists.
I suggest that ex-employees seek asylum in another country and then report the crimes they have seen.
The TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic) is likely to require Europe to drop its food safety standards.
In Houston It's Illegal to Feed the Homeless and for the Homeless to Feed Themselves.
The law against taking things from garbage bins does wrong to others, too, including freegans, and would tend to cause more waste of food and other useful trash.
Missouri Republicans want to require women to get permission from the father of the fetus before they can get an abortion. If they were raped, they would have to prove it.
How about requiring women to get permission from the father of the fetus in order to not get an abortion?
The Koch brothers own the largest tar sands lease in Alberta. They must be paying politicians to support Keystone XL.
US citizens: call on Obama to remove US troops from Afghanistan.
We achieve no good by propping up a government that can't inspire enough loyalty to defeat the Taliban.
The TPP calls for destroying your computer, if you break DRM. This would even apply to security researchers who study devices with DRM or that have locked-down software.
A study finds that half of economists' papers' results can't be replicated even with cooperation from the authors.
Professor Sussman taught me in the 1970s that publishing the data that the paper is based on is part of proper science.
A thug tased store clerk Damian Words for no reason, then lied about it.
Words is suing the city, but that will not punish the thug. If Words wins the suit, the city's taxpayers will pay, not the culprit. Thugs that lie must be prosecuted for it, and jailed.
More about the Google Books fair use victory.
A Faux News "terrorism expert" who claimed to have worked for the CIA was arrested for telling the same lie to the US government.
Budget cuts in the UK have one great benefit: fewer people are being arrested for possession of marijuana.
The UK goes to great lengths to welcome the ruler who is crushing freedom in China. "This fawning insults the people of both countries."
Egypt's parliamentary election has no real opposition candidates.
A Palestinian appeals to Israelis and Palestinians to choose peace instead of military occupation.
Indigenous peoples in Canada are blocking a tar sands export pipeline to the Pacific Ocean.
Refugee Mohammad Albederee, dumped by Australia in Papua New Guinea, has been on hunger strike for six months because he could not get medical care.
Australia deported a paralyzed New Zealander away from his family which lives entirely in Australia, because he committed the crime of taking painkillers without prescription.
The general policy of deporting non-citizen residents that have committed serious crimes that harmed others seems valid to me, but it shouldn't be done rigidly. Taking pain killers doesn't harm others, anyway.
Apparently ordinary Palestinians are suddenly flipping and attacking Israelis suicidally with knives.
It seems that they can't bear the occupation any more, and see no effective way of campaigning to end it, so they do this.
By contrast, when Israeli "settlers" attack Palestinians, they do it in organized groups.
The Conservatives in Canada were defeated by the Liberals.
In regard to global heating, it is not clear this is much of an improvement.
Kruger Park rangers have killed hundreds of rhino poachers, but more keep coming.
An analysis of Turkey and Erdoğan's oppressive strategy.
Many old Serbian churches and historic sites in Kosovo are being desecrated or destroyed.
Since the Albanian Kosovars won control of Kosovo, they should now put their anger at Serbs to rest.
The pope sent a letter of support to an squatters' group in Rome that occupies buildings to help the poor.
Hawaii kicked 300 homeless people out of a tent city, and plans to compensate this by building housing for a fraction of them.
It would be kinder to build housing first and invite some of the homeless people to move to it.
UK residents from other EU countries face deportation from the UK for participating in nonviolent protests.
There is a perverse movement among women to think that they should carry fetuses with Downs' syndrome to term, rather than abort them and try again.
The overall effect is to increase the number of people that have Downs' syndrome. I see nothing virtuous in that. The current fetus is no more worthy than one without Downs' syndrome that they might conceive later.
Next, people will take thalidomide to demonstrate how they can love babies born without limbs.
Remember, a fetus is not a baby.
Why scientists need to collect examples of newly discovered species of birds (and other animals).
Obama has effectively banned oil drilling in American Arctic waters.
We pushed and pushed for this, and he eventually did it.
Google's book scanning has been ruled fair use.
I was one of many who objected to the proposed settlement between the Authors' Guild and Google, which would have given Google alone the right to do such scanning.
Ankara Bombing And the End of the Turkish Republic.
Pictures and videos of food can make people overeat.
Did corruption play a role in getting UK thugs to try to frame someone for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, or was it solely racism?
About once a week, a small child in the US shoots people with a gun.
Kenya has made it a crime to "defame" members of parliament, for instance accusing them of corruption.
How slot machines are designed to be addictive for a certain segment of the population.
Snowden refutes Clinton's false claims about what he could have done.
The new wave of corporate supremacy treaties, which allow foreign companies to sue governments in secret, "is tantamount to a revolution against law, it is retrogression in terms of legality and predictability, a no-man's land of arbitrary arbitrations."
EU citizens: phone your MEPs to defend net neutrality. A recommendation from the Pirate Party says to tell your MEPs, "Please in any case make a stand FOR net neutrality on 27th of October; this means: If Martin Schulz allows amendments to the telcom-package, which regulates net neutrality & roaming, then vote for the amendment of Julia Reda, and if Martin Schulz doesn't allow amendments to the telecom-package, then vote against the telecom-package."
It came with this link for making a call gratis:
https://piphone.lqdn.fr/campaign/call2/NetNeutrality_2015_2
Canadians: dozens of reasons to defeat the Conservatives, and a suggestion for how.
Sanders rejected a donation offered by drug gouger Shkreli.
Many large internet companies have come out against CISA, the "cybersecurity" bill that would encourage those companies to "voluntarily" hand over people's data to Big Brother.
Clinton says she "supports" social security, but there is something fishy in the details.
Polls suggest that Sanders won the debate, but pundits say it was Clinton.
The leaks about Obama's drone-based assassination program show that the "precise" system for finding targets is actually quite unreliable, and the "limited" criteria are actually sloppy.
Drones, used on the battlefield, are not morally different from airplanes or artillery. Drones used for assassination are a completely different issue.
What sort of investigation is needed?
The FBI is persecuting sex workers and disguises it as freeing victims of trafficking.
Occasionally the campaign does free victims of trafficking, which is a good thing, but they could do that without persecuting other sex workers.
Everyone: Call on Alabama to cancel its efforts to stop blacks from voting.
India has legalized adoptions by unmarried people. In response, Mother Teresa's orphanage has shut down all adoption of it inmates, in effect using them as hostages.
This is entirely
in the
spirit of Mother Teresa, who
used
poor Indians to boost the Catholic Church.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Selfish scientists use copyright to prevent replication of an experiment.
Connie Bryson describes the abortion that she had, illegally — a horrible experience that no women should have to have recourse to.
Users report Microsoft is forcing them to replace Windows 7 and 8 with all-spying Windows 10.
This seems to involve use of a back door in Windows 7 and 8.
Australia dumped Somalian refugee Abyan in Nauru, where she was raped, and brought her back to Australia for an abortion — then sent her back to Nauru before a court could rule on whether she could stay there.
Egypt's government will require women to uncover their heads in certain special circumstances.
I think limited measures of this sort are a legitimate way to discourage oppressive practices imposed by social pressure.
The article is wrong about the goddess Isis — far from being crushed by worship of Ra and turned into a demon, her cult spread along with that of her brother/husband Osiris, and then under Roman rule spread around the empire (without Osiris). It was intolerant Christianity that put an end to worship of Isis.
Babies in homeless families are dying in the UK.
As the government tightens the vice on the non-rich in general, some people inevitably get squeezed out the sides of the vice. It's part and parcel of what the Tories want to achieve.
If Chinese become restive, future Chinese rulers decide to attack someplace to win domestic support.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate methane strictly.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for an end to predatory prison phone charges.
Web advertising that tracks users also exposes them to attacks.
The long duration of copyright hampers creative production of the great plays of the 20th century.
Obama says that "we" are writing the rules of the TPP. But this "we" does not include you or me.
The TPP is not really about trade anyway. It's really an antidemocratic corporate supremacy treaty with a little about trade on the side.
A study found that pregnant women in Pennsylvania were 40% more likely to give birth prematurely if they live near a very active frack well.
Uri Avnery: the real battle for Israel is to stop the fanatical "settlers" from taking over.
Ethiopian bloggers were acquitted of charges.
Deforestation makes El Nino more severe; planting large forests can make it milder.
US Border Patrol agents can search anyone's car; they just have to say the dog told them to do it.
An anonymous whistleblower reveals that the US is systematically lying about casualties from drone attacks.
In particular, US authorities knowingly label unidentified civilian dead as "enemy combattants", thus inflating the "body count" while disguising the numerous civilian casualties.
Amnesty International says this calls for a specific investigation.
Texas is using alternatives to imprisonment, as a way to save money.
It could save additional money by investing in education, in prenatal care, in abortion, in contraception, and in a welfare system that saves families from stress.
The CIA used a form of water torture on additional prisoners.
An Angolan dissident rapper, imprisoned for "planning to overthrow the government", has been on hunger strike so long that his health is affected.
The UK increasingly uses secret courts and develops a body of secret laws.
Obama pledged to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, but he can't find a way to do it without letting the Taliban win, so he is opting for a war without end.
The prime minister of Australia in 1974 ordered Australian intelligence to cut its ties with the CIA. Australian intelligence disobeyed the order.
A hospital sequences sick newborns' DNA to diagnose them in 26 hours.
The article suggests that in the future hospitals should sequence every baby's DNA. This could be a bad idea. There's a chance that the data will be medically helpful to them, a chance it will hurt their prospects for insurance, and a chance of exposing them to state injustice.
A microwave camera being developed at MIT can see people through walls.
What do we need to put in our walls to block this camera? I think screens on a window will probably block microwaves except perhaps for the lowest wavelengths.
A presidential candidate in Uganda has been placed under house arrest to stop him from holding public campaign rallies.
Obama will direct the EPA to reduce use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are immensely powerful greenhouse gases.
Many common surgical operations, and chemotherapy for cancer, will become dangerous if we don't stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
If we end the tightly-packed factory farms for meat, and eat less meat, we will need fewer operations, and we will be less likely to die of an infection when we do need one.
Some notable New York restaurants will abolish tipping and pay higher wages to waiters.
I am totally in favor of this.
A Saudi siege has deprived Yemen of drinking water, which risks making many people sick.
This could kill more people than the bombs.
Planned Parenthood decided to stop accepting reimbursements for collecting fetal tissue for research — for no reason except that right-wing lies have made it appear dirty.
I hope this will not crimp the supply of fetal tissue for research to develop cures for diseases.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland could not make it a crime to deny the genocide of the Armenians.
This may overturn the French law that prohibits denying the genocide of the Armenians. Alas, the court found an excuse not to apply this principle universally to all questions about history.
Here in the US, we can speak freely on the issue. From what I have read, I do believe there was a genocide of the Armenians. However, freedom of speech includes the right to say otherwise. I greatly admire Hrant Dink, who was assassinated for affirming the genocide of the Armenians, and condemned the French law because he respected the freedom to state the opposite opinion.
Many nations have committed great crimes — Turkey is far from unique. Every nation should admit its crimes, so it can pay its debt to humanity and move on.
Hong Kong thugs have been charged with beating up a protester.
Hong Kong is not really a democracy, but here it is putting the US to shame.
"Sex work criminalization means potential employers and landlords treat me as a person who was arrested for prostitution, not a survivor."
A Catholic hospital put a woman's life in danger by refusing her a tubal ligation because "that's sterilization". Catholic doctrine says that women should get pregnant even if it is likely to kill them.
We should give Catholic hospitals three choices: disconnect from religious rules, sell to secular owners, or shut down.
Erdoğan's men are trying to associate Kurds with PISSI in the public mind by talking about them together.
Never mind that the Kurds are secularist rather than Jihadi, and that the Kurds and PISSI are at war in Iraq and in Syria.
As pharma companies merge, they neglect diseases that kill lots of poor people in favor of trying to make the next viagra.
The idea of giving these companies "incentives" to do research is a dead end. They spend the money instead on advertising, and on corrupting doctors, research, and scientific journals.
We should tax the companies more so we can fund the research that is really important.
Human beings that care only about their own gain are antisocial. We rebuke them, even shun them. It is a mistake to acquiesce to totally selfish behavior from a company. Indeed, the idea that a company's only duty was to its shareholders is a recent change imposed by right-wing domination; in the 1970s, companies were supposed to value others, such as employees, customers, and the public.
An Israeli wanted to carry out random violence against Arabs, so he stabbed a stranger who turned out to be an Israeli.
This is an unusual example, but killing of Arabs goes on all the time.
Lack of birth control kills thousands of women and children; religious organizations must act on compassion and offer birth control.
Propaganda Trumps Journalism in Conservative Media Climate Reporting.
In Indonesia, people are tortured into signing confessions, convicted in careless trials, then executed.
A graffiti drone in Mexico campaigns against the president.
It is a fun hack, but I think automating graffiti in unfair. If we stand for it, businesses will do it.
The "independent" consultants that said it was "reasonable" to shoot Tamir Rice dead are not really independent, and they closed their eyes to important questions.
Parents are organizing to protect the climate for their children.
Brazil is considering tracking all internet users and blanket deletion of criticism of any person or organization.
The barbarism that threatens Canada comes from the Conservative Party.
Canadians, look at the US, see how bad right-wing policies are, and save your country from them.
State Farm Insurance envisions tracking drivers' emotions as well as their driving.
Getting a patent on this noxious idea does not mean implementing it. Patents on business methods should not be allowed, not even on business methods that should not be used.
New York City is building more flood defenses, but refuses to confront the certainty that they won't be enough a few decades from now.
If it did, it might lend more impetus to the vital efforts to reduce sea-level rise.
Morocco systematically represses journalists and human rights defenders.
Ecuador Asks Britain to Allow Julian Assange 'Safe Passage' for MRI Scan.
Playboy's suppression of nude women is a step back towards medieval repression. Fortunately it won't change much.
The 1% of wealthiest people now own 50% of the world's wealth.
An injured US woman sued her nephew — perhaps to get her medical bills covered by his family's homeowner's insurance.
Checkpoints have been set up in Jerusalem to keep Palestinians out of Jewish neighborhoods.
This is likely to make daily life difficult for thousands of Palestinians; they may be unable to get to work.
There will be no checkpoints to protect Palestinians in Palestine from fanatical Israeli "settlers" and their "price tag" attacks.
Risk Is Essential to Childhood — As Are Scrapes, Grazes, Falls And Panic.
Which means that the state had better stop forbidding parents to let children play on their own.
Australia has imposed total tracking of internet contacts and phone locations, pretending as is customary that this is to "fight terrorism".
The US has a similar system of massive surveillance of internet contacts and phone locations. Wherever it is done, it is the same injustice.
The Web is becoming dangerously ephemeral and may be unsuited to the purpose of keeping humanity's knowledge.
Clinton, in the debate, spread subtle lies about Snowden.
India's Hindu-sectarian government is encouraging violence against secularists and non-Hindus. Leading Indian artists are calling attention to this.
Turkey, Russia, PISSI and the Kurds — and the US.
When a thug shoots an innocent person, the legal standard assumes that the thug's life is the only one that matters.
Ancestry.com is collecting DNA from the public and sequencing it.
If your relatives do this, it could be dangerous for you.
DC thugs grabbed Jason Goolsby violently after someone thought it was suspicious that two black youths would be seen near a bank.
Aren't blacks supposed to use ATMs to withdraw money?
Pacific Nations Beg for Help for Islanders When 'Calamity' of [climate mayhem] Hits.
Exxon's global heating lie was an unparalleled act of evil.
The Egyptian government has abolished the charities of the Muslim Brotherhood, on which many poor people depended, and equated defense of human rights with "terrorism". All with US support.
GCHQ has been given official permission to spy on members of parliament.
This will be a big help to them in constructing false accusations to sabotage the parties they don't like.
The Taliban openly say they will make war on journalists.
Bad as the US has been in Afghanistan, the Taliban is much worse; it kills a lot more civilians, too, and rejects on principle the idea that it shouldn't do so.
US citizens: support the Voting Rights Amendment Act.
Right wing government in Bologna is evicting anarchist squats to make room for emptiness.
People generally underestimate the goodness and unselfishness of most other people.
Biological spring will happen 3 weeks earlier (in most of the US) by 2100.
Facebook has started paying income tax in the UK. About $6,000 worth.
Election fraud in Canada, tied to Conservative Party.
One of the thugs that killed Matthew Ajibade was already acquitted of manslaughter.
Ridiculous!
The history of Obama's war tactics, now adopted by Putin in Syria.
The US-trained Afghan army, like the US-trained Iraqi army, shows a tendency to panic and run when attacked by numerically inferior forces.
I predicted years ago that this would follow the path of Vietnamization.
Years of Republican misrule set up South Carolina to make the hurricane do a lot more damage.
Thugs in Savannah tortured Matthew Ajibade to death, The torture included tasing his genitals while he was strapped down.
Saudi Arabia has destroyed a UNESCO-listed medieval town in Yemen.
This town was not as precious as the 1800-year-old city of Palmyra, which in turn was not precious as the 4000-year-old sites in Iraq that were looted after the Bush forces conquered Iraq. But that does not excuse the Saudi actions.
It's not too late to stop Antarctica from melting … if we try really hard.
It is too late to save Miami and New Orleans from eventual inundation. But many other cities can still be saved, if we act strongly enough.
Stephen Hawking agrees: if the robots make our goods without need for our work, the goods must be provided to all.
Chinese schools force their students to work in factories without pay.
Israel has
arrested
and imprisoned 650 Palestinians in October and the month is less
than half over. The arrested people have been denied basic human
rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Since Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians who are doing nothing wrong is well reported, it should be noted that Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians who are doing nothing wrong has been going on for a few years now, and continues.
There's No DRM in JPEG — Let's Keep It That Way.
Obama is trying to "close the Guantanamo prison" by shifting imprisonment without trial to the US.
That would make things even worse, in principle. However, it's possible that the prisoners' presence on US territory would lead the Supreme Court to rule that they must be charged or freed. On the other hand, the Supreme Court might essentially abolish the rule of Habias Corpus.
Wisconsin Republicans want to permit unlimited secret money in political campaigns, cripple ethics and election law enforcement and make it harder for many people to vote.
In the Republican Party's ideal world, only millionaires could vote.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Party to hold more debates for the candidates.
US citizens: support the Prescription Drug Affordability Act.
Now the Tories Are Allowing Big Business to Design Their Own Tax Loopholes.
Marine Food Chains At Risk of Collapse.
Amnesty International condemns the Syrian Kurds of driving Arabs to flee their villages.
The Kurds say this is because there were PISSI supporters in those villages.
Erdoğan's censorship and "anti-terror" tyranny makes it hard for Turks to voice their opposition, and their distrust for the state.
Turkish opposition says the government left the peace rally without protection.
Japan condemns UNESCO for recognizing the Japanese massacre in Nanjing.
Whether the victims numbered 300,000 or merely 100,000 is a detail there is no need to argue about. Japan should stop denying its war crimes, just as the US and other countries should.
How the sugar/food lobby campaigns against efforts to discourage excess sugar consumption, which is very harmful to health.
Giving voice commands to a computer means that a server records them all.
In this case, I won't accuse Google of snooping, since users know that they are talking to a Google server. But I do think it is foolish to use such a thing.
A new Yes Men hoax: presenting Edward Snowden, live in the US, saying he had been pardoned.
Women directly confront the taboo and stigma attached to many aspects of their bodies and sexuality.
Not everyone wants to live the male or female gender roles.
In Cambodia, parents regularly rent their 13-year-old daughters for 2 months of "domestic work", then everyone is disgusted when the girls return from 2 months of prostitution.
Note how irrational condemnation of non-virgin girls plays a crucial role in this system.
A group of 300 Afghan women campaigns against the Taliban ideology of misogyny.
The UK has cancelled its offer to operate prisons for Saudi Arabia, rejecting the way Saudi Arabia treats prisoners.
The official investigation concludes that flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile. It did not address the question of who fired it.
I think it is pretty clear that the Russian proxy rebels fired it, thinking they were firing at a Ukrainian fighter plane. The rebels did not have fighter planes, so Ukraine's army would have had no occasion to make that sort of mistake.
In an apparent coverup, someone operated on the flight captain's corpse, removing some of the foreign objects that killed him. The only ones in a position to do that were the rebels.
Torture victims and relatives of a dead victim have sued the psychologists who designed the CIA's torture.
IPCC climate models do not take account of the effects of methane release from melting permafrost.
What that means is, avoiding 2C of heating requires even more emissions reductions than previously supposed.
The reductions plans now on the table were already insufficient.
Students in Texas, where it is a crime to carry a dildo but legal to carry a gun, will protest carrying dildos.
"[Dildos are] just about as effective as [guns in] protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play."
Antarctic Ice is Melting So Fast the Whole Continent May Be at Risk by 2100.
Reporter Jason Rezaian has been convicted of espionage in Iran, after a bizarre and unfair trial.
If the US gets its hands on Edward Snowden, it will convict him of espionage after a bizarre and unfair trial.
Monsanto claims its critics are opposing science. But Monsanto seems to have bent scientists to make that appear to be the case.
Five ironic contradictions of US policies.
The HD party has refused to respond with violence to Erdoğan's violence.
Even if the AK party didn't arrange the Ankara bombing and the one in Suruç, plenty of other violence against the opposition is clearly its responsibility.
A journalist faces prison in Thailand for having a flak jacket and helmet, which are sensible tools for covering violence committed by others.
Oxfam and 23 other charities support MSF's demand for an investigation of the US's hospital bombardment by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission.
American college students nowadays have trouble coping. Perhaps it is due to helicopter parents, but it might also be because they are rationally anxious about the harsh and hopeless plutocratist society they will graduate into.
Terrorists kidnap children to brainwash them into suicidal fanatics.
PISSI's hatred of ancient buildings comes from Saudi Arabia.
US citizens: call on Obama to insist on no "golden parachutes" for anyone he appoints to federal office.
A woman has been jailed in Florida for not showing up to testify to the trial of the man she lived with, who she accused of attacking her.
What I think about is, why is she unwilling to testify? Is it due to financial dependence on him? Is she terrified he will take revenge? What is needed to really help her?
An Irish bankster who helped cause the financial crisis faces prosecution.
Turkey censored the internet very hard to block discussion of the bombing of a peace march.
The European Union has an explicit policy of giving businesses special influence in how to regulate them. Turns out the tobacco companies lobbied hard for that.
UK schools are running short of teachers.
This article does not say why, but I suspect it's due to the harsh policies that the state has imposed on schools and teachers.
How bottled water companies are trying to stop US national parks from putting an end to bottled water sales.
In the US and other countries with safe water supplies, bottle water is a foolish waste. Please stop buying bottled water!
What I said before about the TPP and secrecy was an understatement. It appears the TPP really says that country A can order country B to quash a lawsuit, to cover up the secrets of country A.
This would be another nail in democracy's coffin.
The TPP imposes unjust US-style copyright rules, so in the US it would be an obstacle to repeal of the DMCA. In addition, it attacks journalism.
The leak also shows that the TPP would give pharma companies additional power (though not as much as they demand). This would kill people.
Some of these articles make the mistake of adopting the pharma companies' and copyright industry's propaganda term, "intellectual property". That term spreads confusion every time it is used. If others use it, we should not help our enemies by repeating it.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Ellison-McGovern-Lee-Grijalva letter for an independent investigation of the bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz.
We are very far from being able to capture all the crucial information in a brain, which would be needed to upload it.
The article speaks only of neurons, but the astrocytes also engage in communication in ways that we don't understand very well. They too may be part of what makes you you.
Despite having an ersatz "Nobel" prize, economics is not a science.
Some US states and cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as well as, or instead of, Columbus Day.
It is true that there was discrimination against Italian-Americans, but that is fortunately a thing of the past, and no reason to cling to Columbus Day now.
The US shouldn't try to do more to overthrow Assad. It is paying too much attention to that goal already.
In the US: participate in a global heating action protest on Oct 14 if you can find one near you.
The site where they are announced does not work without Javascript so I cannot recommend looking there.
Everyone: call on Pepsico to stop deforesting Indonesia.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Alabama's latest voter-suppression move.
Canadians: call on your political parties to oppose the TPP.
Israel's Domination of Palestinians Makes Violence Inevitable.
Don't forget that Israeli "settlers" have been carrying out violence against Palestinians regularly for some years — so-called "price tag" attacks.
That's not to mention the seizure of Palestinians' land and water.
Dalits in Berdo Ka Baas are afraid to go to school, after the teacher beat up one of them for touching a plate of food belonging to a non-Dalit.
California has restricted administration of antibiotics to farm animals.
This will now require a prescription.
Thus, they can be used to cure specific animals but could not be given by default to all animals.
If only we had adopted this law 30 years ago, we might still have some antibiotics that no diseases are resistant to.
Bradley Podliska, former investigator for the Congressional probe into what went wrong when Benghazi was attacked, says that SCROTUS told him to look for dirt on Clinton rather than to do an unbiased investigation.
There are signs that Clinton did bad things, such as supporting the coup in Honduras, but SCROTUS is not interested in investigating those.
Coral Reefs Are Not Just Pretty — They Are Vital to Life.
Experts warn: the greenhouse gas pledges offered so far for the Paris conference are insufficient to keep heating within 2C.
We don't know that keeping heating under 2C will avoid disaster. If we are wise, we will do even more to reduce the heating as much as we can.
Research suggests that global heating might lead to big sudden climate changes when certain tipping points are reached.
A forged "letter from Moscow", which helped defeat Labour in the 1920s, was written by someone who later worked for MI6.
This gives rise to suspicions that MI6 helped arrange for the forgery, helping the Tories against Labour.
PISSI took advantage of Russian air strikes to capture territory from other enemies of Assad.
Israelis strategists have proposed since the 1980s the goal of making Iraq and Syria split along sectarian and ethnic lines. Perhaps the US intended to do this.
Other countries such as Saudi Arabia might have wanted it too, and influenced Dubya to invade Iraq.
California has required pension funds to divest from coal.
New York thugs broke Thabo Sefolosha's leg for the hell of it, then prosecuted him on false charges. This time, they lost.
A lawsuit against the city will not punish the individual thugs that attacked Sefolosha. Didn't they commit gross bodily harm? Jail them for it!
Imagine a world in which thugs can't get away with breaking anybody's leg.
Reducetarianism is a movement to eat less meat.
The US has returned to its old policy of supporting dictators in the Middle East in the name of "stability".
With secular opposition crushed, people may turn to jihadis as the only plausible way to oppose the dictators.
Wikileaks has published the final TPP "intellectual property" chapter, and it is even worse than we knew. It says that countries can suppress lawsuits in order to keep companies' embarrassing information secret.
The term "intellectual property" represents fundamental confusion, so any agreement, law or plan formulated based on that term is sure to be a bad one.
Four men convicted of murder in Chicago were probably innocent, according to a city investigation, but the prosecutor insists on keeping them in prison anyway.
The Cleveland thugs that killed an unarmed couple in their car will not be punished, but they may be fired. Or maybe not.
250,000 people protested in Berlin against the proposed corporate supremacy, TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic).
A bomb in a peace march in Turkey killed dozens of people.
The regime could have set this bomb; it has engaged in lots of other violence, including (it appears) the attack that was its excuse for resuming war with the PKK.
Turks are protesting, blaming the state for this attack and condemning Erdogan's suppression of media criticism.
Sanders rejects Obama's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration, who has ties to big Pharma.
Extracting natural gas in the Netherlands sets off earthquakes, and these have made many houses uninhabitable.
Parents in Swainsboro, Georgia, are suing because their child was punished for not joining in prayers.
Vyara Glaser is being prosecuted in London for "damaging" a military vehicle. She wrote on it with washable ink, as a protest.
Sanders explains his views on gun control.
California has a new law requiring that the state get search warrants before accessing people's digital data, in their own devices and in online services.
This is good, but it is not enough to excuse avoidable collection of data about people. I will continue to pay cash so as not to be tracked.
Libya's two rival governments have agreed to unite.
I hope that this works.
It's been ten years since Sony Music infected the world with its rootkit.
A US appeals court ruled that a sequence of yoga poses (such as Bikram yoga) cannot be copyrighted.
Copyright law explicitly covers only creative details of expression, not anything with practical significance.
Purdue University destroyed the video of a public talk, on US government orders, because the talk's slides showed material from Snowden revelations.
This is part of the US government's policy of refusing to recognize that formerly secret information has been published. It sounds like sheer insanity, but it has real repressive consequences.
Universities must reject secret government research entirely if it comes with conditions that apply to the rest of the university.
The US Supreme Court has given companies more power by allowing them to impose their choice of arbitration systems on employees and even customers.
The reasons Amerindians have high rates of alcoholism are high rates of stress, trauma, and poverty.
Conjecture: conservative Catholic officials tricked the pope into meeting with Kim Davis.
Wyoming has adopted a law specifically prohibiting collecting data (such as water quality) to report to government agencies.
The bar codes on airplane boarding passes have lots of personal information. Don't just throw them away.
Prisoners in Pennsylvania that file legal complaints about abusive treatment are punished with violence, torture, and self-contradictory criminal charges.
NYC thugs put Kamilah Brock in a mental hospital because she claimed to work in banks and own the BMW she was driving — while black.
Defendants Should Have the Right to Inspect the Software Code Used to Convict Them.
Collections of personal data compared with nuclear waste: potentially dangerous for a long time.
US students and professors that criticize Israel's occupation of Palestine face pressure from an organized network that uses gifts, threats, and bogus legal complaints to promote censorship in schools.
The TPP has labor and environmental standards, but without enforcement, so countries could ignore them. Meanwhile, the power it gives to foreign companies has a strict enforcement mechanism attached.
A French prisoner won damages because he had to share a poorly ventilated cell with smokers.
The biggest crime gang in Japan has split, and if it develops into a gang war, they might use drones or 3d-printed guns to fight it.
It seems plausible that sophisticated gangs will make and use 3d-printed guns, but I have a feeling (though I can't prove it) that most crazy mass shooters will be deterred by the difficulty.
I am almost certain that few depressed people will 3d-print guns in order to shoot themselves. If you're depressed, you're not going to go to such effort.
Thus, I don't believe that 3d printing makes gun control obsolete.
One effect of prohibiting drugs is that you can't be sure the drug is pure. This has killed at least a thousand Americans, perhaps far more.
12 congresscritters got "donations" from payday lending companies just before or after they sponsored bills to restrain the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from curbing the companies' abuses.
US religious nuts (who are numerous) want to ban research using fetal tissue because the tissue comes from abortions. Since this research is necessary for progress in some areas of medicine, their fanaticism could kill your children or even you.
Ben Carson claims that Jews could have prevented the Holocaust, if only they had had guns.
This is an absurd fantasy. The Jewish minority in Germany could not have defeated the state and the majority of Germans with personal guns. Nor could Jews have defeated the occupying German army in other countries. It took a stronger army to do that.
Some Jews who were young and fit joined resistance groups, but those groups could not defeat the German army on their own. They could only weaken it with guerrilla tactics. They could not have protected the rest of the Jews.
In the Warsaw ghetto, the Jews did have guns, and they fought tenaciously for their lives. They threw back a German division … but ultimately they lost. The Germans had reinforcements and resupply, while the Jews did not. I think those Jews realized that the best they could hope for was to go down fighting.
Burma has accused China of asking rebel groups to reject a peace deal.
Eight women talk about their abortions, to reject the stigma on abortion.
Belarus continues to repress the media.
Malaysia arrested a lawyer who criticized the prime minister's corruption.
The OECD's proposals for reform of how businesses are taxed are small changes and would not solve the problem.
I have a solution for this.
The US has given up on training non-jihadi Syrian rebels, since that didn't work. But it does not have a better plan.
The only useful plan that I can envision is to reinforce the Kurds, but it is clear that the US is unwilling to do that.
The Obama regime has backed off on the idea of requiring back-doors in products that do encryption.
They may try again at any time.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Dingell-Ellison letter, calling on Obama to restrain Saudi the attack on Yemen and pursue diplomacy.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.
US citizens: call on representatives to vote against the TPP.
US citizens: support regulation of guns.
It falls to a book fair to rebuke Saudi Arabia for its plan to execute a protester.
The American Bar Association's president explains many ways that the US legal system is biased against blacks.
Julie Bindel condemns the student unions' "no platform" practice that has banned her from debates at UK universities.
I disagree with Bindel about sex work and some other issues. As for whether posing nude is a way to liberate women, that's complicated because patriarchy is complicated. It includes pressure for women to be ashamed of their bodies, and a tendency to judge women solely in terms of sex and attractiveness. Posing nude resists the former but may promote the latter.
Regardless of whether I agree with her, I think it is wrong to exclude her from speaking at UK universities.
Wisconsin Republicans are embarrassed that Scott Walker apparently violated campaign finance laws, so they are going to repeal the laws.
Why do companies repeat the same wrongdoing after being caught?
I'd say it's because the punishments are insufficient to dissuade them.
Individual Jews and Arabs continue violent attacks.
I wonder why Israeli soldiers shoot to kill when Palestinians throw stones or roll burning tires at a fence. Wouldn't tear gas suffice?
Many Ebola survivors have long-term damage, and they may transmit the virus sexually.
The Tories want Britons to work harder and die younger, like Americans.
California has banned use of microbeads in some products, because they get into waterways and harm wildlife.
California's snowpack is at a record low level; apparently it has never been so low in 500 years.
Global heating appears to be involved.
Shkreli said he would reduce the price of Daraprim, but then he didn't.
This seems to have been a PR manipulation false promise, like when Amazon promised to stop remotely erasing books in Swindles.
Svetlana Alexievich: The Gulag can be restarted at a moment's notice.
Chilean dictator Pinochet directly ordered the assassination of exile Orlando Letelier, who was in exile in the US.
The US backed Pinochet before and during his coup, and afterwards too I suppose.
Everyone:
Call on the World
Bank to suspend loans to Uzbek government because of its use of
conscript labor.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
With Javascript disabled, it was not immediately clear that the page had worked, but it had in fact worked — I got a confirmatory email.
Salman Rushdie warns that western intellectuals cater too much to Muslims that demand others not insult them or their religion.
I see plenty to disapprove of in lots of religions, though some of them are quaint.
US citizens: call on Obama to allow an independent investigation of the attack on Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz.
US citizens: call for
banning
fracking on public lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
The current mass coral bleaching event could result in the biggest coral die-off humans have recorded.
But it will only get worse in subsequent decades. By 2030, such events could occur annually.
In addition to thousands of species that live in them, coral reefs provide a value to the human economy estimated at 6 trillion dollars per year. Around a billion human beings live on sea food, and a lot of that food comes from coral reefs.
US citizens: demand strict environmental standards for mountaintop removal coal mining.
Ben Carson is being condemned for recommending that people mob a shooter to stop the shooting.
Carson could be right on that point: fighting back, the crowd could limit the number of people that the shooter can kill. When the shooter's magazine is empty, the crowd will stop him from reloading.
It is a mistake to claim that that statement blames the victims. It isn't about blame at all — it is practical advice. As for the blame, that falls on the killer in any case.
I think this advice applies to many situations where people are subject unjustly to violence. Think of the Stonewall riot. Think of evictions.
The rest of what Carson said is mistaken.
Canadians, vote for the New Democrat Party — it is the most likely to reject the TPP.
I wish it took a firm stand, but even partial opposition is better than none.
"An unfair global tax deal backed by the world's richest countries will do little to curb tax dodging by multinational firms in developing nations."
Saudi planes attacked a Yemeni wedding party and killed three men who were going to get married.
Amnesty International has condemned this intervention and called on the US to stop supporting it.
The IMF suggests that another financial crisis is coming because bubbles will have to pop. Furthermore, governments have failed to fix the broken banking system. Banksters have resisted fixing it.
The UK government is triumphing over the UK solar power industry.
Violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories: "Can leaders on both sides contain the violence?"
Containing the violence cannot be the sole goal: justice is required too, and that means ending Israel's occupation of Palestine.
We don't think of England as arid, but in parts of England rivers sometimes dry up. Where they do flow, they're poisoned.
Massive civil disobedience is planned for the Paris climate conference, to demand that they really solve the problem.
Russia has forced the Committee Against Torture to close, through unjust fines.
Now Putin's men can torture just like CIA agents.
Investments in equipment and infrastructure for using fossil fuels risks being a total loss.
China's Nightmarish Citizen Scores Are a Warning For Americans. A warning of what Facebook could be turned into.
The ACLU is helping homeless people sue Sarasota, Florida, to overturn the law prohibiting sleeping in public.
Police Sweep Dozens Of Homeless Out Of Former Seattle Times HQ Where Developer Plans High-Rises.
Patriot Coal's bankruptcy will deprive some coal workers of their health care.
This "coal company" was split off specifically so as to go bankrupt so that Peabody Energy would escape paying their pensions.
Cameron's " assault on poverty" will help poverty in the UK by making 200,000 additional working families poor.
Clinton has started expressing doubts about the TPP, though not on fundamental grounds.
I am glad about this change, because it will help defeat the TPP, but I think she is making a political calculation, unlike Sanders' sincere stand.
US citizens: tell Obama not to allow more oil drilling in Gulf of Mexico.
Global heating is gradually harming the production of canned pumpkin. This year, due to bad luck, there won't be enough.
Everyone:
tell Chicken of the Sea
to clean up its treatment of fish and fishermen.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Congress that your "thoughts and prayers" are not enough — we want real action to control guns.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the DARK Act. It would abolish state and local regulations on GMOs, including requirements to label them in food.
US citizens: oppose the Republican-Clinton proposals for a bigger military intervention in Syria.
Everyone: call for rejection of the TPP.
The UN works with the government of Guatemala to prosecute corrupt and repressive politicians.
Although apartheid has ended, inequality in South Africa keeps increasing.
Indigenous people in Bolivia are campaigning to stop oil extraction from their land, and meeting with repression from the thugs.
Israel is punishing the families of Palestinians that killed Jews, by demolishing their family houses.
Collective punishment is repression, not justice.
The US and UK are trying to block or delay a UN treaty to limit autonomous killer robots.
Prematurely ruling some killings as "suicide by cop" prejudges the question of whether the thugs were justified or not in killing those people.
US nurses denounce the TPP.
Howard Zinn on the US empire.
Billionaire Polluters has to pay 20 billion dollars for the Big Spill, but it will get 5 billion back as a tax deduction.
Thugs in Manchester, UK, were posted to "observe" protesters through the telescopes of sniper rifles.
The thugs' spokesman said, "Don't worry, they aren't there to shoot."
But why is it necessary to observe protesters through powerful telescopes?
Thugs got some backlash from Black Lives Matter in donut stores. Donut unto others…
To refuse to serve thugs is going too far, but reminding them of their responsibilities is legitimate.
It is hard to use your own gun to stop a massacre. It takes special training to stay calm and not be confused by the stress and fear people feel in such situations. In practice, you usually shouldn't even try.
Imagine treating men that want to get a gun like women that want to get an abortion.
SCROTUS cancelled the fees that offshore oil and gas extractors paid to fund national parks.
Right-wing US Christians worship the "supply-side Jesus".
Computer companies that explicitly endorse the TPP: Apple, Facebook, HP, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, Xerox.
Supporters also include Disney, Time Warner, Wal-Mart, Target, Gap, Exxon, Chevron, Mars, Kraft, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Procter & Gamble.
People with religious convictions in favor of abortion rights might be able to use the Hobby Lobby decision to justify ignoring the Republican laws that make it hard to operate an abortion clinic.
Why is Donald Trump's tax plan ridiculed but the TPP deal gets a pass?
The US has now changed its story 4 times about bombing Médecins Sans Frontières.
It is difficult to hit a moving target.
This attack was probably a war crime.
The European Court of Justice ruled that Facebook (and other companies) cannot send Europeans' personal data to the US.
Fiorina's "abortion" video actually shows a miscarriage, not an abortion.
Netanyahu's government has retroactively authorized large "outposts" built by Israelis in Palestine, without Israeli authorization. Thus he demonstrates that Palestinian President Abbas's statements are correct.
Supporters of the Palestinian boycott-divestment-sanctions movement face systematic harassment from an organized group which says it aims to intimidate people. The harassment is often followed by threats of violence.
The University of California is being pressured to impose unconstitutional censorship.
A textbook that presented Israeli and Arab descriptions of the history if Israel/Palestine, side by side, was rejected in both Israel and Palestine.
Australia has killed a UN plan to help people move to escape destruction by climate mayhem of the land where they live.
The Australian government, while cutting back on efforts to curb global heating, thus endeavors to make people drown on the islands and shores that will be flooded.
I suspect the specific reasoning behind this is that supporting this plan would mean admitting that global heating will cause a problem.
Israeli troops in disguise raided a hospital in Palestine and carried off a patient. The troops tried to disable the security cameras but did not get them all.
Medecins Sans Frontieres demands an independent investigation of whether the US violated the Geneva conventions by bombarding the MSF hospital in Kunduz.
Why is U.S. refusing an independent investigation if it's so clear its hospital airstrike was an "accident"?
Other US attacks on civilian facilities.
In Vietnam, the US sought out hospitals as targets for bombing.
In the UK, all the services that helped mentally ill people cope with life mean that requiring them to work is in some cases killing them.
Britons, the banksters will kill you, one way or another, if you don't defeat them.
Amanda Kimbrough was sentenced to ten years in prison for "endangering" the fetus she was carrying. This is the latest right-wing excuse for punishing women by pretending that a fetus is a human being.
Ms Kimbrough did something very bad: she chose not to abort a fetus known to be badly deformed. However, she wasn't prosecuted for that (and it doesn't serve the right-wing agenda to prohibit that).
If Apple Didn't Hold $181B Overseas, It Would Owe $59B in US Taxes. And many other big companies likewise.
Indonesian Forest Fires on Track to Emit More CO2 Than UK.
Women in El Salvador have been sentenced to as much as 40 years in prison for having miscarriages, which were presumed by the state to be abortions.
Senator Graham wants federal aid for South Carolina, which has been hit hard by a hurricane, and can't recall why he voted against giving aid to New Jersey when it was in a similar situation.
Cindy Hahn made a video of thugs and suffered violent retaliation, followed by false accusations.
Bills in various US states would impose restrictions on obtaining viagra or vasectomies. The idea is to illustrate the wrong of laws that impede access to abortion.
I think these bills are good as argument, but it would be wrong to adopt them, just as it is wrong to adopt laws to impede abortion.
A futurologist unwittingly shows how bad the current changes in the structure of the economy could be, if we don't use democracy to stop them.
Verizon, sued for inserting tracking headers into users' web browsing, is about to track them even harder.
A major UK bookstore chain will stop the self-defeating sales of the Amazon Swindle.
The Amazon Swindle swindles users out of the traditional freedoms of readers of books.
US citizens: call on California to require search warrants for phone location data.
US citizens: Phone your senators to oppose a bigger intervention in Syria.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
I am not opposed to all kinds of intervention in principle. I'm opposed to useless bloodshed, and Syria is not worth fighting Russia over.
US citizens: phone Senator McConnell's office at 202-224-2541 and say, start confirming federal judges.
Nauru Refugee 'Release' Shows Neither Detention (of refugees) Nor Drawn-Out Processing Were Ever Necessary.
Users Have Been Betrayed in the Final TPP Deal — Help Us Tell Washington How You Feel.
A campaign to pressure Facebook to stop requiring its users to give their "authentic names".
California has legalized assisted suicide, but only for the terminally ill. People who are bedridden and condemned to years of useless suffering are excluded.
The Pentagon is having trouble spinning its bombing of the MSF hospital so as to deny its responsibility for the act.
Afghan Doctor Slaughter Pulls Back Curtain (on the casualties US interventions keep on causing).
Occasionally war is an intelligent and necessary policy, but most US wars don't make anything better.
Drone Flies Over NSA Complex in Germany, Dropping Leaflets.
Syria's "Moderates" Have Disappeared … and There Are No Good Guys.
Actually, there are some (mostly) good guys: the revolutionary Kurds.
Earth's Rising Population Spells Trouble Ahead.
Palestinians are so desperate and hopeless that some of them are engaging in random acts of violence against Israelis.
Negotiations are hopeless as long as Israel is dead set against peace, but the US could change that.
"Arm the opposition" has become a standard simplistic US method of intervention. But it usually does not work.
Global heating made the record-breaking rain and floods in South Carolina worse.
New tax rules to stop offshoring of profits were weakened by UK lobbying.
US officials won't turn their attention to the suffering the US is helping Saudi Arabia to cause in Yemen.
This could be related to Saudi Arabia's paid PR in the US.
The residual radiation around Chernobyl is not as bad for wild animals as the presence of humans would be.
It is good news that the radiation doesn't do worse harm, but this doesn't imply that we should consider the area safe to live in or farm.
Britain's Role in Shaker Aamer's Torture Demands an Inquiry — Now.
1/3 of the world's cactus species are endangered by human demand for exotic houseplants.
We're All Racist. But Racism by White People Matters More.
Organized American Atheists are starting to campaign for abortion rights.
The US and Russia both twist the definition of "terrorist".
Terrorists are people that try to gain their ends by threatening or committing violence against civilians. Maybe all the armed groups in Syria are terrorists, except perhaps the Kurds.
The Committee for Public Safety (officially "Department of Homeland Security" confiscated the computer of the Mayor of Stockton, then kept him prisoner until he handed over the passwords).
I don't think they have a legal right to demand passwords.
Dairy farming, when carried to excess, causes major environmental degradation.
Don't forget the methane that the cattle produce.
The CIA continues to shield the Salvadorean officer whose troops committed a US-backed massacre in 1981, now that he faces a criminal investigation for it at home.
The US has published a series of false excuses for bombing the MSF hospital in Kunduz, suggesting that they are inventions rather than facts.
The Lords Resistance Army has been weakened, but remains dangerous. We should finish it off.
Making a giant no-fish zone around Easter Island.
US citizens:
call
for a careful investigation of Monsanto's new pesticide-resistant
GMO corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban toxic fire-retardants.
China uses universal total surveillance to punish people who communicate with dissidents or other undesirables.
Banksters have been found colluding to manipulate a market — again.
Computers can now imitate a chosen person's voice well enough to fool software and other persons.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Wants to Make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Even Easier to Abuse.
The water in Flint, Michigan, has so much lead that it poisons children who drink it.
A massive protest against cruel policies greeted the Conservative Party meeting in the UK.
The US claims that Taliban were firing from the MSF hospital. MSF says this is false.
Afghan officials say the Taliban were in the hospital's "extensive" garden; if so, why did the US keep bombarding the hospital instead?
Four ways people can help Planned Parenthood.
Akros Middle School suspended student Iverson Sibley for having a bag of sugar and flavoring. The staff had thought at first that the bag contained cocaine. When they found out what it really was, they felt that a punishment already decided on had to be carried out.
Some courts and officials take the same attitude towards the death penalty. "The system, by definition, can't be wrong."
The disputes among the governments in the TPP negotiations are about how to manage and control trade — for the benefit of which companies?
State laws that require colleges to allow guns on campus did not prevent the Oregon school shooting.
Ai Weiwei found suspected listening devices in his studio, and posted photos of them.
Guns give people an illusion of strength and security.
The UK and Saudi Arabia made a deal to get themselves voted onto the UN Human Rights Council.
The UK is not as bad as for human rights Saudi Arabia, but it is getting there.
"In the United States, you're more likely to be crushed by falling furniture than killed by a terrorist—but try telling that to Washington."
It might appear that Americans are safe and secure, if you ignore the big danger we face: poverty spread by plutocracy.
The complicated relationship between GMO cotton and farmers' suicides in India.
Based on the information in the article, it appears that Bt cotton was among the last steps in the process that led farmers to ruin in some regions.
Although millions have tuberculosis, drug companies are not interested in developing new drugs to cure it. They want to develop drugs people will have to take over and over.
The UK has made innocent people plead guilty by means of US-style plea bargaining and heavy fines for those who don't plead guilty.
In the US, Is It Time for a New New Deal?
Increasing the birth rate would be bad, but proper gratis provision of birth control and abortion would be able to prevent that byproduct.
The US bombed Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz for over 30 minutes as the charity's staff called for a halt.
It is impossible to completely avoid such errors in war, but the US may not have done enough to avoid the attack or to halt it.
Berkeley report on US legal threats to the right to do computer security research.
Argentina has proposed a horribly long extension of copyright for photos. Via Libre, a good free software organization, is organizing against this.
The Bern Convention is bad, and rather than scurrying to obey it, countries should tear it up.
EFF: Breaking Section 230's Intermediary Liability Protections Won't Fix Harassment.
How Opponents of Raising Minimum Wage Pit Workers Against Each Another.
Eight Ways to Stop Gun Massacres in the US.
The Diderot effect: buying one "cool" product can manipulate you into feeling you need a bunch of other "cool" products to add up to a new "cool" lifestyle.
I think it's silly to buy anything with the idea it will change something else.
Miami prison thugs made a habit of bribing teenage prisoners to beat up other teenage prisoners. Then one was beaten to death.
Proposing the Logo Sea Turtle — for Whales
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support gun control laws.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the Senate to support diplomacy in Syria.
The Federal Trade Commission is starting to act against companies that make customers sign promises not to criticize the company.
This practice is part of a larger range of unjust practices, which also includes imposing arbitration agreements on customers or on employees.
Wisconsin is hell for black children. Madison, the capital, is egregious: around 3200 black children age 10-17 live there, and thugs arrested such black children 1000 times last year. They are arrested for protesting, for running, for picnicking.
The US issues special visas for temporary immigrant workers that are tied to a single employer, which makes them vulnerable to enslavement.
Congress is trying to make it essentially impossible to release anyone from Guantanamo prison, even prisoners who have been officially cleared of all suspicion.
The US must release or try each and every one of the prisoners in Guantanamo, because imprisonment without trial is tyranny.
The EPA has tightened standards for ozone pollution a little, but it's far less than doctors say is needed to protect human health.
There is a proposal to exclude tobacco from TPP rules — the ones that would allow companies to sue governments over any laws that interfere with their profits. But tobacco companies are pressing hard to be included, so they can block measures to restrain the promotion of their deadly product.
This is just a sample of the evil spirit of Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
Billionaire "philanthrocapitalism" is so powerful that it buys the support of entire fields of endeavor; hardly anyone dares question its decisions.
When Gates referred to opponents of computational idea patents as "communists", I think he meant me.
This was my response.
Unfortunately the article falls into repeating the confusion term "intellectual property" that Gates himself uses. Please don't ever use that term.
The Nation's views on resolving the Syrian civil war through negotiation.
I mostly agree, but I think we should support the revolutionary Kurds more. They are the only side in Syria that isn't made of monsters.
Ferguson's thug department made itself more repressive by overpromoting thugs with SWAT training.
In other words, the psychological side effect of militarization was what counted.
Why Science Can't Say When a Baby's Life Begins.
I think it is better not to try to save a premature baby if it will probably have major defects. If it makes sense to prohibit harming a fetus, that should apply to this.
The "internet of things" could mean being snooped on by roommates or family. It could promote even more intrusive and pressuring control of children by their parents, with never a moment on their own.
Canadian artists say they will vote for whoever will repeal the recent massive surveillance law.
World's Energy Systems At Risk From Global [heating], Say Leading Firms.
Today's UK workers will face poverty when they retire.
An enormous dispute has arisen about how to get drugs for executions in the US.
I can't see why people object to the specific method, rather than objecting to the death penalty.
We are shocked at reports of how "child protection" agencies harass and threaten white parents, but they do it a lot more often to black parents.
They need to relearn that their job is to deal with abuse of children, and failure to overprotect is not abuse.
Civil Rights Groups Condemn Draft Mass Surveillance Bill to be Adopted in France.
How gentrification is making New York and other great cities boring, except for the very rich.
A dumb system is an unbiased system. If they make it "smart", we can't trust it to be fair.
However, the recommendation for "transparent" code in cars is insufficient — what we need is free software, software that the users control.
When a man loves a bonobo.
Saudi Arabia benefits from Western support so it can carry out its barbaric religious extremism.
14 European countries have decided to ban genetically modified food crops.
Genetically modified food crops are not inherently and inevitably bad. In practice, they tend to do harm because they (1) use lots of pesticide and (2) spread patent pollution. With companies pushing for them, their effects on consumers, farm workers and wildlife are not tested properly.
Liberal Mormons can switch to an alternative church.
In Kenya, the thugs do not regard rape as a crime.
A bipartisan senate bill proposes to cut back on mandatory minimum sentences.
Planned Parenthood provides medical services for men, too.
People outside France rushed to criticize the satire in Charlie Hebdo without understanding its anti-fascist basic idea.
I don't personally know Charlie Hebdo very much; I never read it myself.
Burundi Is Burning — Help Us Put Out the Fire Before It's Too Late.
I don't know enough about Burundi to have any idea what sort of help might make things better rather than worse.
The need for humanitarian assistance is ballooning, and the organizations that provided it are stretched to the limit.
This is not surprising: too much human footprint is pushing everything to the limit.
The Vatican says that Pope Francis did not give support personally to Kim Davis.
A vigilante virus tightens the security of systems it enters, and appears to do nothing nasty.
To be truly ethical, it should make all its source code available (under a free license, of course), and should ask before it changes things.
Ebola is still infecting people in Sierra Leone.
Is the vaccine ready?
The US smears its name by supporting the Saudi regime, whose cruelty resembles PISSI.
The Saudi regime even destroys ancient relics too — mainly those from early Islam.
The European Court of Justice ruled that an internet-based company which specifically markets to any particular country and has operates in that country must follow that country's data protection rules for citizens of that country.
This decision looks correct to me. The multinational Companies should not be able to shop around between countries for the weakest data protection and apply that to everyone. Meanwhile, smaller companies that operate in one country will still be covered only by that country's law, even though they sell to people in other countries.
Amazon will try to kill Google and Apple video streaming products by not listing them for sale.
Those products are just as proprietary, and probably just as nasty, as what Amazon offers. People shouldn't buy or use any of them. However, that doesn't detract from the main point of the article: that Amazon's market power is dangerous.
I urge people not to buy anything from Amazon under any circumstances. I have never done so.
An NHS physician describes the corrupting influence of private medicine.
The Obama regime is going to the mat to avoid apologizing to Faisal bin Ali Jaber, whose family was killed in a drone attack in Yemen.
Robert Reich: the Washington Post attacked Sanders' plans for health care and education, with bogus arguments based on misrepresentation of the facts.
Many cars advertise high miles per gallon and don't seem to deliver.
Is this another case of lieware, or do they use only physical hacks?
DRM and the DMCA are additional barriers to investigating lieware.
A collection of emails revealed by a freedom-of-information request seems to show Monsanto organizing many professors to publish and speak in favor of GMOs, often claiming dubious benefits.
Richard Parry says that Israel is secretly helping al-Nusra (a part of al-Qa'ida) in Syria.
It doesn't state evidence; I would not put this past Israel but I don't consider the claim proven.
The larger question is, what should the US do in Syria? The article does not even consider the possibility of aiding the one side that isn't monstrous — the revolutionary Kurds.
'We Could Have All These Drugs Available at Generic Prices'. Bad policies, which cater to Big Pharma, make drugs too expensive.
Toys 'R Us used special visas to bring in temporary workers to study American workers' jobs. Then it fired those workers.
Workers need to have the guts to say "I will quit now rather than later." And the fortitude to organize unions. And to vote against any anti-union politicians.
Reaganism Has Been The Problem — Bernie Sanders Is The Solution.
Wyoming has made it a crime to collect data (for instance, pollution measurements) from open land and report the data to government agencies.
The law's motivation was undisguised corruption by businesses that want to pollute.
Organizations campaign to repeal the law banning federal funding for abortions.
It is vital to demand more than mere preservation of the status quo. To defend the status quo is to set up a discussion in which every possible compromise is a change for the worse.
The "fertilizer lobby" campaigns against plans to reduce global heating due to agriculture.
UK thugs tracked MPs including Jeremy Corbin.
Snooping on Labour politicians has a long history in the UK.
Israel's most senior diplomat has recently rejected outright the idea of a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu did this around the time of the election. The US can no longer go along with Israel's pretend peace negotiations. It looks like Obama has decided to completely drop the question.
I think this calls for an increased level of private pressure on Israel to make peace.
Meanwhile, students that criticize Israeli policy face organized censorship and intimidation on campus, including false accusations of "antisemitism".
The New York Times understates the success of their movement.
Killer robots are already being built.
Canadian scientist Tony Turner was fired for criticizing right-wing science saboteur Harper outside work, so he will spend full time campaigning against the Conservatives.
Americans are becoming more concerned about how digital technology harms their privacy.
If we want to get privacy back, we need to stop giving companies the choice about how much privacy we can have.
Mass shootings (four or more people shot) are happening over once a day in the US.
The overall US murder rate is still much lower than it was in the 90s. But the rise in mass shootings indicates a systemic problem.
India offers a pledge to get 40% of electricity from renewables by 2030.
This is comparable to many other inadequate pledges. Electricity is a small fraction of energy use in India.
The legal framework for eliminating the NHS in the UK has already been put in place, with no public debate.
Actual privatization and elimination is proceeding rapidly.
The Tories' goal, all along, has been to eliminate most medical care for the people that don't matter to them (the non-rich). They don't admit this, but their actions show it.
A court says Birmingham thugs violated students constitutional rights when pepper-spraying them for arguing.
The vicious cruel intentions of the thugs are proved by the way they acted afterward to maximize the students' suffering.
Self-driving cars offer tremendous advantages. We must fight to prevent them from imposing dangers, such as total surveillance of the passengers, and proprietary software for the driver or the passengers.
We must prevent them from being operated as a Guber-style taxi system if, as Guber does, it requires users to run nonfree software to call a car and to pay for the ride.
We must insist that, if you buy a car, you can change the software in it.
Sanders is raising a lot of campaign funds in small donations, not from billionaires — but we need campaign finance reform anyway.
Alabama passed a law requiring voters to have state ID, then closed the offices where most blacks live.
An artificial media hype bubble about refugees collecting in Calais to push their way into the UK has vanished, illustrating how the media can focus attention on distractions by making them look big.
50 years ago, the Indonesian army stirred up a massacre that killed up to a million people, with implicit US support.
The numbers killed are uncertain because Indonesia has discouraged investigation of the massacre.
Turkish journalist Ahmet Hakan, who has criticized the regime, was attacked by a gang outside his home. This was clearly a targeted political move, presumably arranged by Erdoğan's thugs.
Samsung TVs seem to burn more energy in real use than in official tests. Is it because of lieware?
There are gray areas at the edges of lieware, which mislead in the same way but perhaps were not designed specifically to do so.
Compare with the issue of how banks could generate illegal practices, such as refusing home loans to blacks or in certain neighborhoods, through algorithms without explicitly programming them to exclude specific groups or neighborhoods.
The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics warns that we are filling the environment with chemicals that can have harmful effects at very low levels.
I presume this refers to endocrine disruptors, among others.
These chemicals are not poison in the usual sense; there is no danger you will ingest enough today to make you immediately sick. Rather, they cause birth defects, cancer, and various impairments, over the long term.
Several cities face slow annihilation, many of them due to global heating effects or local ecosystem degradation.
It appears Miami's politicians represent the fools that hope to sell their assets to a bigger fool who won't realize it's a rip-off.
The Afghan army says it has recaptured most of Kunduz after heavy fighting.
I'm impressed.
Smuggled official photos show that Assad's men tortured lots of prisoners to death.
Various plutocratist governments are trying to finish the TPP, but there is a disagreement about whether it should allow tobacco companies to sue governments about laws to reduce smoking.
This is not a quirk. It reflects the basic spirit of the treaty, which is why it is a mistake to think that fixing a few details might make it better than nothing. It is Treacherous Plutocratic Poison, and its purpose is to give companies more power against democracy.
We must kill it!
Moscow is winding down the war in Ukraine, and might be considering peace.
It seems that Putin started it for political purposes, and is willing to throttle it up and down as suits him politically. The economic sanctions could even be working (which they wouldn't if Putin considered the war inherently important).
Mexico has extradited some gangsters to the US, since even Mexico's highest-security prison is too corrupt to hold them.
Thugs in Rio de Janeiro have been arrested for killing a teenager and putting a gun in his hand. They were so careful as to shoot the gun after that, to create false evidence supporting their claim that he had fired it.
Britons demand that the state issue a compulsory license for a very expensive cancer drug, that the NHS can't afford.
Microsoft accidentally posted a "test" upgrade for Windows 7 which seems to have a lot more malware in it than ordinary Windows. There is no way to tell just what it does.
Everyone makes mistakes, and I don't think this mistake constitutes a reason to condemn Microsoft in particular. (There are plenty of such reasons in things that Microsoft intentionally does, from making nonfree software to many malware functionalities.)
However, this does show that forced automatic unblockable updates, such as imposed in Windows 10, is not the security solution that people take it for.
The War on Sex Trafficking threatens to enmesh large numbers of Americans who are not traffickers. This article compares it to the War on Drugs.
The two cases are not identical. People who are forced into prostitution suffer a real wrong, whereas drugs are not human and can't suffer. However, in both cases a conservative drive to punish whenever they can find an excuse comes into play, and provokes a response that can do great injustice.
Many Americans with mental illness are jailed for a long time over minor crimelets. Jamycheal Mitchell was jailed for 5 months for stealing a few snacks, waiting for transfer to a mental hospital, and died of neglect.
Teaching the idea of "yes means yes" in high school respects human rights, unlike imposing that as a standard for punishment in college, and will reach far more people.
It could also provoke less hostility and be received better.
Mining and fossil fuel extraction threaten nearly 1/3 of the natural UNESCO world heritage sites.
Rio de Janeiro has banned Guber.
I call it Guber because it pays drivers peanuts, but it does many other things that are likewise unjust, including surveillance of its users.
The sheriff of Tulsa County has been indicted for trying to protect a killer thug from prosecution.
It is extremely important to show thugs that there are consequences for this sort of thing, since this is the most widespread thuggish practice found among thugs. Most thugs are not disposed to commit violence themselves, but nearly all will support the lies that violent thugs tell to gain impunity for their violence.
The pope's meeting with Kim Davis has fired up the antiabortionist campaign to fight against LGBT rights through refusing to do their jobs. based on misguidedly applying the notion of "conscientious objection" to a situation it does not fit.
As we fight back against this, we may be able to target other forms of religious tyranny in the US, such as the Catholic hospitals that endanger patients' lives in the name of fetus adoration.
The banking system almost crashed in 2007 because it had become corrupt in its structure: every bank trader has an incentive to cheat clients and take mad risks with its investors' money, and they are so powerful that they defy governments.
I am confident we can defeat the banksters, if we have sufficient political will to cancel any treaties that they try to hide behind.
Manchester, England, is putting homeless people on trial, saying that their tents are an illegal protest. The homeless people say they are just trying to shelter from rain, after they were stopped from sleeping under a bridge. They face two years in jail.
If they were not protesting, they should have been, and it is wrong to punish homeless people for protesting a state that makes them homeless.
If you find the presence of homeless people on the street inconvenient or annoying, remember that being homeless is a lot worse.
Flagrant liar Carly Fiorina should not be elected president.
We've had plenty of those as president and they have done lots of harm.
Why Obama and Putin are Both Wrong on Syria.
The US Border Patrol destroyed videos, which a judge had ordered handed over, to cover up its cruel treatment of prisoners.
Despite decriminalization of marijuana in several states, and legalization in a few, over 700,000 Americans were arrested in 2014 for possession of marijuana.
The new elected leader of Alberta talks about winding down fossil fuel extraction — in a century!
Doesn't she understand?
Russia is bombing one of the Syrian rebel groups that the US supports.
A plan to reduce the flow of plastic waste into the ocean.
Report: Matching [government] Funds [for election campaigns] Would Give Huge Boost to Sanders, Cruz and Carson.
Obama keeps claiming to have "ended" the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As late as July, he made this claim.
A thug, off duty and not in uniform, was relaxing with his son when He saw a driver flee from the scene of a car crash (which is a illegal, for good reason).
Instead of shooting the driver, he tackled the driver. Several more thugs showed up, so they beat up and arrested the first thug, perhaps because he is black. Not yet satisfied, they beat up and arrested his son, who is probably also black.
I wonder what happened to the driver.
In the US, if you have any relationship to a crime, before telling thugs anything at all, always consult a lawyer.
A British judge was put under investigation (and then quit) because he paid, himself, a destitute refugee's fine for not paying a previous fine. The refugee would have been jailed, then charged more fines for being jailed, unless he managed to steal enough money to pay all the fines.
This is similar to the situation that residents of Ferguson, and millions of Americans, find themselves in, as cities, starved of money because rich people and businesses no longer pay taxes, find ways to gouge the poor. But this judge, unlike those in Ferguson, recognized it was wrong. He followed the law but shielded the refugee himself, and for this was dismissed. Shame, England!
Nidal Abu Aker, imprisoned by Israel without trial in solitary confinement,
has stepped up his hunger strike by
refusing
to drink water.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
A human cannot live long without drinking. Perhaps he is willing to die rather than spend years in solitary confinement under an occupying regime.
A poll finds that Palestinians have mostly given up hope on negotiating an independent Palestinian state, and are ready for an armed uprising.
Armed rebellion against a military occupation is not in itself terrorism, but they will face the temptation to engage in terrorism as well.
Right-wing domination of US media is crucial to their imposition of a long series of unjust policies.
Will the world react more swiftly to the next epidemic than it did to Ebola?
It is a mistake for the government to support uterus transplants with public funds.
Likewise it is counterproductive for the government to support in-vitro fertilization, or anything else to help people make babies. The world does not have a shortage of young humans.
Having children is not a necessity of life. It is a desire that some people have. We should not treat a lack of children as tragic, any more than we treat the lack of some cheaper luxury, such as a Humv or a yacht, as tragic.
Prohibition of synthetic substitutes for marijuana, together with continued prohibition of marijuana in most of the US, may be partly responsible for the recent increase in murder rate.
Has the murder rate increased in Colorado?
FAQ about the UK and reparations for slavery.
The UK does deserve credit for banning slavery, a traditional practice which had existed since long before England came be.
Indonesia's president Widodo, who promised to confront Indonesia's human rights violations, has not kept his promise.
The article accepts without comment the idea that there is something bad about being an Atheist. One of Indonesia's human rights violations is that being an Atheist is not recognized; citizens must claim adherence to one of the six officially approved religions.
Mayor de Blasio called on the city's pension funds to divest from coal.
5 million Americans' fingerprints were taken by crackers out of the US government's records.
Thus, as the FBI collects and holds ever more Americans' fingerprints, even from Americans not accused of any crime, it exposes Americans to danger from criminals as well as from the state.
The UK's sanctions against Britons that went to fight for PISSI are ludicrous — locking the barn door after the jihadis have got out.
PISSI deserves all the hate it gets (though it makes no sense to exempt Saudi Arabia), but purely symbolic public expressions of hate won't defeat it.
The US wants to expand its search powers so that it can subpoena a part of the data on a hard drive, then fish through all the rest of the data for something to prosecute.
A campaign supported by whistleblower Thomas Drake offers to help surveillance agents quit the NSA and GCHQ.
US citizens: call on Obama to prosecute Exxon for lying about the danger of global heating.
Right-wing strategy, after reducing what is available to the non-rich, is to make them fight among themselves for a share of the reduced pie. To win, the non-rich must refuse to be divided.
Would it be legal for a bank to deny a loan based on Facebook data about you?
The article suffers from the common confusion between inventions and patents. The method of judging loans based on a person's Facebook data is an invention. The patent is a government-created monopoly that might stop or hinder some companies from using the invention. Patents on business practices are really a form of computational idea patent, so they should not be allowed.
But that is a separate issue from the issue raised by the proposed method. Innovations can be good or bad.
What worries me most about this proposed method is that it might pressure people to be used by Facebook.
US court denied the possibility of suing Saudi Arabia for involvement in the September 2001 attacks.
Defending the records of Syria's past from PISSI, and from others that just want to steal it.
Indonesia threatens to imprison British journalists for five years for having entered on tourist visas to make a documentary.
It is wrong to require special visas for journalists. One must suspect that this is a scheme to conceal dirty deeds. (In the case of the other journalists trying to cover West Papua, we can be sure of that.) All the governments, including the US, that have such a policy, deserve a rebuke.
The Afghan army has sent reinforcements to the outskirts of Kunduz but the soldiers lack the morale and fighting spirit to fight to retake the city.
As for the death of an important Taliban leader, that sort of thing causes only a small setback to an army with strong morale.
The Afghan government has the same weakness that the South Vietnamese government had: everyone knew its main purpose was corruption, so it could not inspire the sort of loyalty that motivates soldiers to risk their lives.
The thug that shot Zachary Hammond first told him, "I'll blow your...head off," as Hammond was looking away.
Corbyn calls on the UK government to stop providing advice to Saudi prisons.
Evidently the advice is not doing much, if any, good.
Trump proposed a big tax cut for the rich. To poor working Americans, he offers to cut their tax rate from 0% to 0%.
3 million EU citizens have signed a petition to kill the TTIP, and it may get killed.
That would leave several other corporate supremacy treaties in the works: TPP, TISA, CETA, and perhaps others.
The EPA has improved regulations for protecting farm workers from pesticides.
Current pledges for the Paris climate conference would still lead to 3.5 C of global heating.
Rich people have reshaped US laws and business practices, across the board, to benefit the rich and push the rest else down.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the confusing term "intellectual property", lumping together laws whose requirements and operation are totally different.
Big companies have managed to avoid 2/3 of the taxes they ought to pay to US states. This starves the state governments of funds.
When DEA agents were found with prostitutes in Colombia, the head of the DEA had to resign, but few agents have been punished.
I don't think it matters in the slightest if US agents have fun with prostitutes. However, if the prostitutes are paid by organized criminals, that's bribery. Why haven't those agents been prosecuted for taking bribes?
Republicans have found another way to demonize the poor: prohibit buying meat and fish with food stamps.
The UK's "work program" bullies unemployed young adults to submit useless job applications and be exploited for no pay.
A Chilling Handshake Between Obama And Putin, While Syria Disintegrates.
If you give a store your email address, it can now use that to give Google information about your interests.
Don't be tracked — pay cash, and don't tell the store who you are.
Now that it is established that Exxon's scientists recognized the likelihood and danger of global heating back in the 70s, it is time for a RICO investigation of these companies for carrying on while concealing the harm they knew they were doing.
Courts everywhere seek excuses to ignore newly presented reasons why someone should not be punished. A court in Afghanistan ordered a murderer to be hanged, although the law said he should not be executed since he was a minor when he committed the crime. The court said his birth certificate was presented too late.
In other words, the court found an excuse to disregard an undisputed fact.
I think it is a distraction to focus on details of the criminal, such as age or sanity. The death penalty is wrong in all cases.
The Taliban captured a provincial capital, Kunduz.
This is starting to look like Viet Nam.
Jamaica Calls for Britain to Pay Billions of Pounds in Reparations for Slavery.
France should repay to Haiti the ransom it demanded to allow Haiti to escape from slavery.
Humans have nearly eliminated sharks; this can have a surprising byproduct: lots of carbon emissions.
Humans have nearly eliminated sea turtles, too. Does that reduce carbon emissions?
The US and Switzerland are investigating large banks for manipulating the price of metals.
Too bad the US has a policy of not putting banksters in jail.
In America, the Poorer You Are, the Poorer Your Children Will Be. The rich have nearly eliminated social mobility.
UN Women, a UN agency for empowerment of women, has called for a world-wide system of censorship to be applied to the internet so that people can be stopped from threatening or insulting women.
It does this by conflating insults with "violence".
US citizens: tell Congress not to give Wall Street any gifts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
"Carbon lock-in": investment in oil, gas or coal extraction tends to create economic forces that demand we extract it.
Carly Fiorina has endorsed torture, specifically waterboarding, and further makes the claim that it gets true information rather than falsehoods.
Shame on the Guardian for suggesting that there is any doubt that it is torture.
She also brags about providing servers for the NSA's massive general surveillance.
No one would be safe if she is president.
In a video game, the male players that harassed female players tended to be those who played badly.
New Zealand will create a vast marine protected area.
In the UK, cuts to doctors' salaries are driving many doctors to quit the NHS. But first they are going to try going on strike.
Expect US officials to start insulting Shaker Aamer in the media, to discredit what he says about how he and other prisoners in Guantanamo were tortured.
You may find my song parody, Guantanamero, pertinent in this context.
The UK government plans to make lawsuits over environmental damage so financially dangerous that people won't dare sue.
The US government, when it can justify a warrant, has many ways to get the data from someone's computer. Even if we assume it only does good, and ignore its potential for bad, it can't possibly justify banning encryption.
Please don't call security-breaking "hacking". The right name for that is "cracking."
A wedding in Yemen has been bombed. The article does not say which country's planes did it, but it was some US ally.
In Iraq, the wedding was bombed by US planes.
Shell gave up on drilling for oil in the Chukchi Sea, saying test wells did not find enough oil. Perhaps this is an excuse, a deniable way to yield to public pressure.
Brazil has pledged a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
It is still not enough to save our ecosphere, but at least it is getting serious.
The illogically defended Kim Davis's refusal to sign same-sex marriage licenses, incorrectly calling this "conscientious objection".
The concept of "conscientious objection" applies to jobs people are compelled to do, such as when they are conscripted into the army. Conscripts that object to killing cannot avoid it by resigning from the army, so they have campaigned for and won the right to do some other duty, such as being a medic.
This is not pertinent to Kim Davis because nobody is conscripted to work as a county clerk. If Davis doesn't want to do that job, she can simply resign.
Although the pope continues the opposition to birth control and abortion, he is putting the main emphasis elsewhere.
Erdoğan's repression has pervasively undermined the Turkish state and courts.
The UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development calls for state licensing of social media platforms, which would be required to censor every post before it goes up.
That goes beyond even the actual Chinese censorship.
The UK will send troops to Somalia, ostensibly for training the Somali army, and calls this "keeping the peace".
It is dishonest to speak of "keeping the peace" during a civil war.
Cameron says he never screwed a dead pig. He was saving himself for when he would screw millions of living, human non-rich Britons.
Some industries convert CO2 to useful products. This is a fine thing to do, but we would have to do it on a tremendous scale for it to slow global heating.
The UK's right-wing government is cynically exploiting Syrian refugees as an excuse to get more involved in war.
Lessons from the Spanish political party, Podemos.
The pope spoke in a US prison and called on the US to care about what happens to prisoners.
I hope we can make US politicians start funding rehabilitation programs again. Putting an end to private prisons, as Sanders proposes, is a necessary step but would not, alone, offer prisoners help in rehabilitation.
However, we need to further than this. In order for ex-cons to go straight, we need to stop excluding them from nearly all opportunity other than crime.
The proposed EU-US agreement on cooperation in regard to subpoena'd data lacks basic protections.
The massive democracy protests in Hong Kong a year ago did not achieve their goals; people disagree about whether they have achieved anything.
Dropping a few bombs on PISSI is now de rigueur for some countries.
It is dishonest for these countries to claim that they are "defending themselves" with this. With the US already bombing PISSI, the extra bombs those countries can drop will not change anything; it is only symbolic. Defeating PISSI can't be done by dropping a few more bombs.
US citizens:
oppose a new
anti-net-neutrality rider by Sep 30.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
The UN is considering investigating Saudi war crimes in Yemen. The Saudi king is using its money to try to prevent this.
The US will keep 10,000 troops in Afghanistan for another year. Perhaps for another decade or two.
Pope Francis, addressing the UN, rebuked austerity and oppressive lending.
Many countries are subjugated by repayment of loans that were unjustly made in the first place.
He also asserted that the environment should have rights. Humanity and the environment are interconnected, so damaging one damages the other.
In South Korea, old women become prostitutes for old men, because they have no other income.
From time to time, Americans are hassled by thugs for wearing a shirt with some Arabic writing on it.
Ironically, the shirt in question was made by an anti-war group.
A student union in the UK has blocked Maryam Namazie from speaking at a university. Namazie defends the human rights of non-Muslims and ex-Muslims against repressive Muslim rule.
Subsequently the student union changed its decision and will permit Namazie to speak.
Mother Teresa told a woman, "Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that he can kiss you." Her response: "Tell Jesus to stop."
Catholic hospitals in the US have a similar attitude towards suffering patients.
The UN Special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants cancelled a visit to Australia, because the government would not promise not to prosecute people for speaking to him.
Compare this with Israel, that blocked a UN mission to investigate war crimes in Gaza.
Islamist rebels, allied with al-Qa'ida, have made a tentative peace deal with Assad.
A clear example of how systematic right-wing irrationality and obtuseness wins battles by repeating false insults.
If Republicans care about human life, why don't they celebrate avoiding war with Iran?
US citizens: say no once again to the TPP.
We have not won yet!
US citizens: call on Congress to ban privatized prisons.
Everyone: Urge the Philippines Congress to kick the tobacco industry representative off the state's tobacco control committee.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission cancelled a study meant to check for high levels of cancer within a few km of nuclear power plants. The author of this article says that this was done to avoid embarrassing the nuclear industry with a positive result.
I don't know whether the result is likely to be positive, but the cancellation stinks.
US mothers of newborns face imprisonment for long periods of time if they take drugs, even prescription drugs, that are judged harmful to fetuses.
There are many practices that pregnant women would do best to avoid, but imprisoning women for not avoiding them only makes things worse.
The EU must stop letting European companies entrust their data to US servers, but that's only the first step. The EU needs to establish sufficient privacy protection for users when the data is in Europe.
In my opinion, countries should not allow services to be designed as excuses to collect data about people.
The new prime minister of Australia has committed to defend a bogus plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ignoring the objections that he himself pointed out before.
GCHQ profiles the internet usage of nearly every internet user. This includes browsing, searching, emails, internet radio listening, and more.
The Supreme Court's right-wing majority bent over backwards to come up with the Corporations United decision. (The plaintiffs' organization was officially known as "Citizens United", a demonstration of the dishonesty at the root of their cause.)
Men Stab, Rape and Kill Women Because They Can. It's Time to Say They Can't.
People who claim that those who are raped are responsible for it are probably failing to distinguish between moral responsibility and practical responsibility.
Volkswagen says that only a small team of engineers was responsible for the lieware. Some are skeptical of this claim.
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu the fear monger can't use the hypothetical Iranian nuke any more, but he will find someone else.
How the NSA's Mass Internet Spying Poisons Society.
The German government plans to spend lots of money to increase surveillance of everyone.
Germany is considering requiring every "thing" connected to the internet to have a unique ID.
That is a horrible idea, since it would tent to cement total surveillance.
More than 100,000 people a year are killed by poisonous snakes, and no one keeps track of how many. And the company that makes antivenin has stopped.
Planned Parenthood supporters threw condoms at Carly Fiorina, who made false accusations against Planned Parenthood.
An unprecedented large mass of cold water in the North Atlantic threatens to shut down the currents, including the Gulf Stream.
US citizens: call on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop selling mortgages to gougers.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Education to declare a moratorium on
garnishing Social Security payments for student debt.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government has secretly lobbied against an EU proposal to require realistic tests of car emissions.
A Barbie doll connected to a company's server can converse with a child and get lots of personal data about that child.
Harlem residents are pushing homeless people out, while they have nowhere to go.
The UK government has no compassion for people brought or sent to the UK as children, without permission, who have no other home to go to. They are run through an expensive wringer, paying lots of money to file requests that get turned down.
The US is similar, which is one of the issues proposed for immigration reform in the US. This stalled a few years ago when Republicans turned against it.
Chile shows how planning, and enforcing strict building codes, can prevent an earthquake from becoming a disaster.
An excerpt from the book "Adventures in the Anthropocene" displays the twisted pride I warned that the term might inspire.
It is not too late to change to a name that won't inspire pride, such as "Thermocene", "Pyrocene" or "Obscene". All that is required is for a few prominent scientists to stop believing the self-fulfilling prophesy that "it is too late".
A court in Malaysia asserted independence from the authoritarian prime minister by ordering that some magazines can resume publication.
The latest clever idea for gouging the poor in the US: make them pay to "rent" a radio tracking ankle bracelet from a company, when on bail.
Antonio Green decided to go back to jail as the cost of this destroyed his life.
You might wonder why they make someone wear a radio tracking device when on bail for unpaid traffic tickets. Perhaps the motive for this practice is to enrich the company. When officials sign a deal like this with a company, one must suspect that they have an interest in it.
Cruel fallout from the right-wing War on Women's rights: women who take any sort of drug while pregnant are imprisoned for many years.
Ohio's governor offers food stamps to poor rural whites that vote for him, but not to poor urban blacks that vote Democrat.
David Stojcevski was jailed for not paying a parking ticket, then killed by inhumane treatment by thugs that paid no attention as he died.
School privatizers consider municipal bankruptcy an opportunity to seize and chew up public school systems.
Hillary Clinton secretly supported the coup in Honduras, while publicly claiming to oppose the coup.
This continues all the worst foreign policy practices of the US. I do not want someone like this as president.
Without Clinton's subtle support, the coup might have been reversed as recently occurred in Burkina Faso.
The Australian government is trying to make schools harass potential nonviolent environmental "terrorists" who might do things such as spiking trees to prevent logging.
This is no surprise. The Australian government works for the companies that do things such as mining and logging.
Thailand is planning a new central filtering system for the internet.
The right-wing Supreme Court has undermined the main restraint on thugs' illegal investigations — the exclusionary rule.
US-trained Syrian rebels traded some of their US-provided supplies to al-Qa'ida, in exchange for not having to fight al-Qa'ida.
The US training activity for Syrian rebels is not a serious effort, only a pretense. An "army" so small, and so little pugnacious, that it faces this sort of extortion would make little difference against Assad's forces which they are supposedly intended to defeat.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congressional Democrats not to yield to Republican hostage-taking.
The OECD countries have had 16% economic growth with a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 6%, over 10 years.
Keep in mind that economic growth, as such, does not necessarily make the economy better for people in general. That result occurs only when the growth is distributed so as to reduce poverty and suffering, which may or may not be the case. Since 2008, that has generally not been the case. This is a separate issue, and doesn't invalidate the article's point, but we should not say "Growth, hooray!"
A year later, the disappearance of 43 Mexican students is still a mystery, lost among hundreds of such mysteries in a state pervaded by gang corruption.
US citizens: support the Prescription Drug Affordability Act.
US citizens: tell the EPA that the proposed new regulations for toxic pesticides are not strong enough.
Everyone:
call
for a strong climate agreement
in Paris.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Call for amending the constitution to reverse the "Citizens United" decision.
I think "corporations united" is a more fitting name for it.
The US and China agreed on new rules for ivory, to try to discourage the killing of elephants.
Aging is the great holocaust.
A religious fanatic will be tried in the Hague for destroying a historic Muslim monument in Timbuktu.
The major pharma companies are gouging in the US, and their gouging appears small only when compared with the super-gouging of Daraprim.
Even worse, US drug companies are arguing in court that their "freedom of speech" entitles them to make unproved claims about what their drugs will do.
This is an additional reason why we need a constitutional amendment that says that human rights do not apply to fictitious "persons" such as corporations.
Everyone: call on Iran to free imprisoned cartoonist Atena Farghadani.
The Internet of Things would mean that any "thing" might be acting maliciously. The VW lieware is the first example.
Citizens of Ireland: sign the petition for a referendum to legalize abortion.
Protection measures have helped cod start to recover in the North Sea.
Keith McLeod was shot dead by a Baltimore thug who claims he had to protect his life from McLeod's pointed finger.
My first response is to wonder what really happened. Thugs sometimes tell the truth, but in situations like this we must not presume they did.
Supposing things happened as reported, McLeod was asking for some kind of confrontation, but that is no reason for his summary execution. A finger doesn't shoot bullets, and saying "I'm going to kill you" does not put someone's life in immediate danger. If the thug reacted as if they did, he must have been predisposed to kill.
The University of California may adopt a rule to expel students for "antisemitism", interpreted as criticizing Israel in certain ways.
It is wrong to expel students even for statements of real antisemitism, or any other form of bigotry, or any other position that some disagree with. The very idea of trying to stop "hate speech" is inimical to human rights.
Israeli soldiers attacked journalists and destroyed their equipment.
Due to the geography, Russian ground troops in Syria will mostly fight groups opposed to PISSI, rather than PISSI.
New pun: Des poissons peuvent abimer une rivère.
California has limited the use of solitary confinement, but screws continue to drive prisoners crazy by waking them every half hour.
School officials are "investigating" a teacher who explained the controversy over the name "Washington Redskins" by comparing "redskins" with "niggers".
Teachers should not use insulting racial terms, but it is ridiculous to order them not to explain to their students what racism is.
Shaker Aamer will probably be released from Guantanamo in a month.
The US's treatment of him has been abominable.
The Obama regime continues to conceal what prisoners say about how they are treated.
Colombia's second-worst terrorist group, the FARC, has agreed to peace with the state.
The worst terrorist group, the paramilitares that are linked to the military and to former president Uribe, has only pretended to demobilize.
El Nino's strong rains may not relieve California's drought, as the water may not soak into the dried earth.
Why the UK Must Fight Tooth And Claw Against Social Housing Sell-Off.
Greenpeace proposes a plan for the world to move to 100% renewable energy by 2050. This means ending use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
AVG says that its anti-virus program will collect data about users for AVG to use.
Simply removing the user's name from a data record does not prevent others from reassociating it with the user, and in practice it is common to do that.
This program is gratis, but not free software. It is commonplace for such software to mistreat its users.
The principal advisor of the European Court of Justice said that the "safe harbor" fiction, which allows European organizations to entrust personal data to US companies, should be declared invalid.
Drug-Price Hikes Don't Lead to Better Cures. We Must Find Another Way Forward.
Pope's Call to Congress to Abolish Death Penalty Comes at a Critical Moment.
China will start a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.
This could be a big help in curbing global heating, or it might do nothing at all. A cap-and-trade system tends to be ineffective when the economy shrinks, and corruption can make it a no-op as happened in Europe.
By contrast, a tax on substances and activities that emit greenhouse gases is easier to enforce, and has its effect even if the economy shrinks.
Here's a proposal for a different way to do cap-and-trade, using a fixed total carbon emissions budget. Would that avoid the flaws? I don't know. But I think it is important to design the system so that the budget can be reduced.
US medical insurance deductable amounts (what you have to pay in bills before you start to be covered) are rising 7 times as fast as wages.
If Volkswagen used "defeat devices" in all countries, its cars' disguised pollution is likely to kill between 74 to 400 people per year.
A far larger number become ill, miss days of work, etc.
100 million people live on seafood from the world's major coral area, the Coral Triangle. Global heating puts the reefs, and their usable animal life, in danger.
PISSI's terror attacks have destroyed Tunisia's economy.
Perhaps the US should donate money to employ people in Tunisia, partly to defeat PISSI and partly to give young Tunisians an alternative to jihad.
US citizens: Call on SEC Chair Mary Jo White to recuse herself from choosing an important subordinate, because of her personal conflict of interest.
The Supreme Court under its right-wing majority has nearly eliminated the possibility of taking action for school desegregation.
Meanwhile, US schools are becoming increasingly segregated again.
Women are publishing, through a web site, descriptions of how to give them sexual pleasure. It appears that a certain kind of rough and unrealistic porn has given boys and even men the wrong idea about the question. (I think it is a mistake to narrow the word "porn" to this particular kind of porn. Any work designed to arouse sexually is porn.)
Some teenagers have the good fortune to learn how to please a lover, and they move on to a life of sexual success. Others have worse fortune and have to wait years, even decades, to learn this. It is so sad, and so unnecessary. This is why I think every high school (and perhaps middle school too) should offer practical hands-on lessons in how to please a lover. Every graduate should have a basis to be confident that, "Anyone that I make love with will be glad we did."
Younous Chekkouri was sent from Guantanamo to Morocco, where he faces a likely unfair trial.
I don't object in principle to handing over prisoners of the US for trial in other countries. But we should make sure that the trial is a fair one.
Biden opposes abortion, and only reluctantly advocates allowing abortion rights.
We cannot trust a person like that to defend abortion rights.
Carly Fiorina's supporters have produced a phony video to support her false claims about Planned Parenthood.
In the right-wing echo chamber, lies are as effective as truth.
Homeless people must now sleep on the street in London, as the government's pressure on the poor builds up on all sides. Some lucky ones get a bus ticket from a charity so they can sleep on a night bus.
A student in the UK was questioned as a suspect for reading a textbook about terrorism in the university library.
He's lucky to have been reading it in the library, because if he had a copy in his possession, he could have been prosecuted for it.
A US border thug has been indicted for shooting and killing a Mexican standing on the other side of the border fence.
The pope rebuked Congress for the military-industrial complex and the wars that it fuels.
Many car companies cheat on emissions tests and mileage tests, and European governments are often complicit in the cheating.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 888-907-6639 and call for action to curb global heating. We can build on the momentum created by pope's speech.
You can cite the pope if you wish, but I don't think that is crucial. His support is a big help, but the world's climate scientists are pertinent authorities.
US citizens: call on the hedge fund manager that increased the price of Daraprim by 50 times to put the price back where it was.
A vague statement that he will lower the price somewhat should not suffice to take the heat off him.
Ten Reasons to Oppose the Saudi Monarchy.
A gang of billionaires are conspiring to convert half the schools in LA to nonaccountable privatized "charter schools".
A New York thug is expected to plead guilty after walking up to a car and shooting someone in it, for no rational reason. But will his punishment be anything more than a paid vacation?
Emilio Mayfield, who was attacked by a thug on his way to the bus who then accused him of jaywalking, did not in fact jaywalk.
Not that jaywalking would excuse the attack.
Explaining how Copwatch activities work and what they achieve.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose CISA.
We have to fight hard now, because Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Symantec just endorsed the bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign Rep Himes's letter calling for negotiations about Syria.
Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan was apparently tortured to death in Assad's prison.
The TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic) would strip local government of the power to regulate toxic chemicals, including fracking fluids and pesticides.
Responding to criticism of the TTIP, which would offer foreign companies the opportunity to sue when European laws get in their way, the European Commission has proposed to change a few details of the plan, such as its name.
Offering foreign companies this power would be damaging and wrong. Offering domestic companies this power would be damaging and wrong. It's good that the TTIP won't offer domestic companies this power. Even better, it should not offer this power to foreign companies either.
Then they might as well cancel the whole thing.
Paul Erlich notes that ending global heating won't be enough unless we also end human population growth.
Humanity has postponed the disaster that Erlich predicted, by lowering its birth rate, but population continues to grow and the danger is not gone. To lift all humans out of poverty, we need to redirect some of wealthier humans' income to the poor; but this won't work if the poor humans keep making more poor humans.
A journalist in Ghana made videos of 34 judges accepting bribes.
UK, France and Germany Lobbied for Flawed Car Emissions Tests.
Clinton made a proposal for greenhouse gas reduction, which is not very strong.
Clinton says she wants to limit gross increases in drug prices, but her plan appears to be weak. Sanders has a real plan.
Jimmy Carter acknowledges that the US has lost its democracy.
The US government is once again trying to bully US states into cooperating with "Real ID", which turns drivers' licenses into more rigid mechanisms of control.
The US will surely back down on this threat if any state refuses to comply with the demand. We should make sure states do not. Indeed, we should urge other states to stop complying with Real ID.
Crackers obtained fingerprint records for 5.6 million Americans when they broke the security of government computers.
Another Turkish journalist has been arrested and charged with "subversion".
Over 10 years, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has persistently served the powerful at the expense of other Americans.
Arguments that bullet-list presentations undermine careful thought and make it hard to notice errors.
Shortly after the US sent 70 trained Syrian rebels into Syria, one is reported to have defected to al Qa'ida.
The idea of training "moderate" Syrian rebels is just a fig leaf. What the US needs to do is stop shielding Saudi Arabia, which spews an extremist form of Islam around the world; but Obama is extending US support for Saudi Arabia.
The Ferguson commission did a serious job and recommended almost 200 changes in laws to eliminate the pervasive injustices observed in Ferguson and many other places in the US.
The Case Against Richard Glossip Is Crumbling, But He Is Still Scheduled to Die in a Week.
US construction of nuclear bombs and missiles is hidden in the "Department of Energy", but it's actually done by companies. These companies spend millions on lobbying to spend too much money on nuclear bombs and missiles.
After New Jersey thugs shot 14-year-old Radazz Hearns, they needed an excuse, so they claimed he had a gun. After days of searching they found a gun, 150 feet away, and claimed Radazz had thrown it there.
I hope Radazz's injuries do not foreclose his brilliant career in shot put.
Coca Cola has been caught funding distraction campaigns so people will think about exercise rather than what they eat.
One advantage of a national health service is that it can push down the price of medicines. But this is not working as well as it used to in the UK.
After each random blip in killings of US thugs, they claim it is a "war on cops".
James Roux went to a "remembrance ceremony" for the Sep 2001 attacks because his father was killed in them. When he found a "program of military force", he protested. Thugs arrested him and framed him (as usual for thugs), and right-wing media lied about him.
Canada's prime minister admitted that, in the TPP, he's working for auto parts companies. He also implied he would accept a bad deal for Canada in order to serve them.
The criticism of Harper concedes too much to the TPP. It endorses the mistaken idea that the TPP is a trade deal, and that Canada ought to try to negotiate a "good deal". The TPP is a corporate supremacy treaty, and its whole purpose is to benefit companies at the expense of democracy. Instead of getting distracted with details, Canada should pull out.
Some oil companies ask for a "global price on carbon", but if this means a global system for trading permits, we see from the failure of the European example that that approach is too easy to game.
The US "Department of Justice" is shirking its duties by not prosecuting CIA torturers.
Dozens of thugs invaded a housing project in London to evict the hundreds of residents, making most of them homeless.
People are personally responsible for the actions they agree to be paid to do. The thugs who did this cannot excuse it by saying that it was their job.
Can anyone find out, and publish, the identity of these thugs? They should be shunned and despised by all good people, until they apologize and resign from their jobs.
Travesty: Saudi Arabia as head of a UN human rights panel. Even worse travesty: the US "welcomes" that.
Cory Doctorow suggests a way to protect on-line advertising: a special privileged tracking snoop that we would all decide to trust to track us.
If I can't visit a site without being tracked, I won't visit it. If I won't visit it, I don't mind if it disappears.
My solution is to pay sites anonymously to visit them.
Egypt has pardoned the two imprisoned al-Jazeera journalists.
That's only a small step towards reestablishment of a free press.
Clinton now opposes the Keystone XL pipeline.
While this is obviously the right position on that issue, her slowness to adopt it means she hesitates to support proper action against global heating.
Other pipelines for shipment of tar sands oil also need to be blocked.
LA plans to spend $100 million on the homeless, but since that's nowhere near enough to house them, people worry it could just mean shoving them out of the way.
Pope Francis is rushing the process of canonizing Junipero Serra, and could just as easily slow it down for reconsideration.
Víctor Hugo Saldaño is surely a murderer, but he was sentenced to death because of his race. The pope has taken up the cause of commuting his sentence, condemning the death penalty as unjust.
I agree.
Apple systematically bans apps that endorse abortion rights or would help women find abortions.
This particular political slant affects other Apple services.
A US court ruled that Warner/Chappel does not have a copyright on the words of "Happy birthday to you".
It is conceivable that someone else has one, but it is unlikely that this could ever be established.
China demands US companies give it backdoors into computers and software.
The clear need to resist this demand from China should show why we need to resist the same demand when it comes from the US.
US colleges and universities keep increasing the number of administrative staff. This is part of why they are now so expensive.
High salaries for executives and managers also contribute.
The UK government plans to take 12 billion pounds in government support from the working poor, and give them 4 billion pounds of increased wages with a raise in the minimum wage.
It adds up for a big heap of dooH niboR.
New Russian planes are helping Assad's army fight PISSI.
I suppose they will be used against the other forces in Syria, such as al Qa'ida and any remaining non-jihadi Arab rebel groups, and maybe even Kurds, though I think they are not close to Assad's slice of Syria.
The ShoutYourAbortion campaign puts an end to the compulsory expression of regret about abortions.
When defenders of abortion rights treat abortion as a drastic step, when they dwell on sadness that a woman needed the drastic step rather than rejoicing that she wasn't forced to have a baby, they hand the anti-abortion movement a victory. It is a mistake to use the slogan "pro-choice", because that implies reluctance to defend the abortion itself.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to deny funding to the two Democrats that voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
US citizens: call on the US government to tax hedge funds properly so as to provide support for Syrian refugees in countries near Syria.
US citizens: call on the Senate to preserve the requirement for country-of-origin meat labeling.
A model suggests melting Arctic permafrost will release hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 and methane during this century.
US intelligence analysts say they were specifically "bullied" to distort their reports to exaggerate success against PISSI.
In addition to outright falsification, the US government is repeating the Vietnam-War distraction of citing enemy body counts as if they counted for something. PISSI can easily recruit replacements; attrition simply is not effective against PISSI.
The entire Bastrop County sheriff's office colluded in lying to excuse the murder of Yvette Smith.
Witnesses in Boston convinced a couple of thugs to put away their guns when they were dealing with a small crazed unarmed woman who was resisting arrest.
Both of the thugs were too quick to go for their guns. Apparently that is a habit; I think that is the culture of thugs nowadays, and maybe reflects how they are trained. If your first response to any shadow or shade of a threat is to grab your gun, one day you're going to shoot someone for no good reason.
Most teachers in US universities are poorly-paid part-timers. Some are trying to unionize.
The growing expense of college in the US is going to the administrators whose numbers keep increasing.
It would be interesting to ask colleges to list the ratio of total pay and benefits for teachers to total pay and benefits for non-teachers.
The fighting between Egypt and Islamist rebels in the Sinai has become an overt civil war. Civilians are accused by each side of supporting the other side.
Because Egypt has criminalized independent reporting of news about the fighting, the state's reports of success do not tell us who is really winning this war.
Human Rights Watch says, "Destroying homes, neighbourhoods and livelihoods is a textbook example of how to lose a counterinsurgency campaign."
Volkswagen has admitted programming its car engine computers to detect the EPA's emission tests, and run dirty the rest of the time.
It wasn't just a little. Cars exceeded emissions standards by up to 35 times, in real driving.
High Brazilian officials were sentenced to long prison terms for corruption.
The UK is trying very hard to protect girls (typically of Pakistani descent) from being forced into marriage by families.
The gouger who increased the cost of the drug Daraprim 50 times says, in effect, "If something is going to save your life, it should cost you $50,000."
Most Americans can't raise $50,000 to save their lives. Others can do it once, but then they will be broke and perhaps homeless.
People are impressed with what Clinton said, but Sanders advocates the larger reform that would take care of this problem and many more.
The Mulanje cedars of Malawi are nearly wiped out. Humans cut them down at a high rate, and they grow back very very slowly.
Scott Walker is out of the Republican race, despite lots of money from a few rich people.
Rich people's money for a certain candidate doesn't guarantee victory, but if it is hard to win without rich people's money, all the major candidates will tend to be plutocratists. No matter which plutocratist wins, we lose.
Thus, I support Sanders.
Seabird populations have fallen 70% in the past 60 years, due to various human activities that tend to kill them.
Side effects of global heating could wipe out many species of seabirds.
Women are speaking up about their abortions, to reject the stigma that right-wingers want to put on it.
The idiotic things anti-abortionists say to women who talk about having abortions, and people who advocate abortion rights.
El niño might end California's drought, and cause natural disasters in other countries in the Pacific.
Sumatran rhinos will go extinct if we don't save them soon.
Human rights organizations address how far a person's religious freedom should apply when carrying out functions to serve the public.
When the US released Younous Chekkouri from imprisonment in Guantanamo, the soldiers blindfolded and chained him for 10 hours of transport.
That is a strange way to treat someone after concluding there was no reason to imprison him in the first place.
Now Mr Chekkouri is imprisoned in Morocco.
US border thugs regularly turn back refugees from Central America, illegally denying them a chance to ask for asylum.
When they come from Honduras, the US is partly responsible for the conditions that drove them to flee.
US citizens:
support the EACH Woman
Act, to provide abortion coverage to all US women.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Michael O'Sullivan committed suicide after the UK government (or its private hatchet-company) ruled he was "fit to work". He apparently could not bear to face the rat-race of futile job applications and punishments that the UK calls "support to return to work".
No system can perfectly avoid mistakes. The UK's austerity government applies great pressure to rule people "fit to work", even applying quotas, which makes this kind of mistake very likely.
Americans may be disappointed if they hope Pope Francis will make substantial changes in religious doctrines.
Yanis Varoufakis: "The lenders are the real winners in Greece — Alexis Tsipras has been set up to fail."
Fossil fuel subsidies amount to $200 billion a year.
Fear of the no-fly list is a powerful factor for intimidating people in the US.
In Europe, BP is the worst of all the saboteurs opposing policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
BP could stand for "Boost Petroleum".
Now that western "leaders" are more interested in China's business than China's freedom, it falls to writers to call on Xi Jinping to free the imprisoned writers of China.
Indonesia offers to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 if it is given financial aid.
That is starting to reach the level of cut that might really make a difference. The wealthier countries must fulfill their responsibility and must tax global business to do it.
Correcting a naive attempt to claim that money doesn't buy US elections.
Pharma companies are making some old, proven drugs so expensive that the prices will kill people.
These drugs are no longer patented, but the makers control the distribution of the drug so that would-be competitors can't get samples. We should make such anticompetitive behavior a felony. (I wonder if it already is.)
Freedom of speech in British universities is under attack from the right-wing government and from leftist students.
The National Union of Students' "no platform" policy started out as a campaign to refuse to legitimize talks by fascists and racists, and officially that's still how it operates. However, nowadays its real activity is to prevent or shut down talks by adherents of a range of views that certain leftist groups disagree with.
When a speaker proposes to do great harm to people it is understandable that they protest the speaker forcefully. Once in a while, the community's opposition may interfere with a speech, but they did not stop the guest from speaking. A systematic effort to prevent someone from giving speeches is going too far.
Suggestion: protect and aid defectors from PISSI.
Freedom of speech is threatened in the UK by the state and by private intimidation.
Sometimes private intimidation takes advantage of state laws that impose censorship. The UK libel reform campaign (successful except in Northern Ireland) was needed because UK libel law lent itself to censorship.
Laws against "hate speech" are also wrong in themselves, because they punish expression of some opinions. They must be repealed.
The UK has many other unjust censorship laws, such as the one against "extreme pornography" for which no justification other than prudery has been offered, and the one against possessing documents considered suspicious. They must all go.
US citizens: support the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act.
Everyone: call on Canada not to let Shell drill in the Atlantic near Nova Scotia.
Shell wants to be allowed 21 days to even start to cap the well, if there is a blowout.
US citizens: call on your senators not to sponsor Cardin's bill which is designed to kill the nuclear deal with Iran.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose the anti-abortion bill HR 36.
Syriza won the Greek election, with about the same not-quite-majority as before.
Greeks may have decided not to blame Syriza for surrendering to the banksters' economic war. I think, however, that Greece will suffer more from this capitulation, over a longer period.
The FBI plans to keep fingerprints from everyone that gets a background check, and put them in a searchable database along with criminals' fingerprints.
The FBI also wants to build up a searchable face recognition data base from photos taken on the street.
This looks like the first step in a plan to track all Americans. We must campaign to stop it.
Australia plans to check people's faces against national ID data bases to identify them.
This is dangerous because it is unreliable, but it would be even more dangerous if it were reliable. You can hardly trust the Australian government, with its harsh laws against whistleblowers, not to use this power for evil. What that government calls "national security" is just as likely to mean "national repression".
James Hansen says that we face a "climate emergency" because positive feedback loops can cause global heating to speed up.
The Canadian government has stealthily and systematically destroyed, corrupted or stopped collecting data necessary to manage Canada's economy or protect Canada's environment.
Deletion of historic data sabotages future historical research.
Nicholas Merrill won a case to cancel of the gag order which said he could not talk about the FBI's arbitrary demand for data from his business. But it's not final — the government will appeal this decision.
Around two million Americans live in extreme poverty, with an income of 2 dollars a day or less.
They are essentially compelled to commit crimes to survive, though they may not like that.
Welfare benefits are no longer available to people in that situation. When President Clinton proposed his "welfare reform", it was clear that it would lead to this. That is why I did not vote for Clinton in 1996.
As right-wing Democrats see Sanders advance, their last argument is the attempted self-fulfilling prophesy, "Sanders can't win".
They also claim that the US has "moved to the right", but really it is only the government and the media that have moved to the right. Most Americans continue to support the policies Sanders champions.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, to his son : 'In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body'.
Protests in Burkina Faso convinced the military coup leaders to step down.
The UK's previous health minister says the NHS is about to collapse, due to the Tories' disguised attempts to destroy it.
Our Seas Are Being Degraded, Fish Are Dying. If we keep this up, it will hurt us too.
The school officials and the thugs never really thought Ahmed Mohamed had a bomb. They wanted to pretend they thought he had a bomb.
Treating US schools as preparation for prison reflects the attitude that children are a threat, not our future.
Missouri has authorized companies to run thug departments. Their staff would have the same legal powers to arrest people and take their property, and I suppose the same extralegal powers to beat and kill people and get away with it.
The Disabled and Jobless Need Help, Not Harassment.
New Orleans has been sued for systematically jailing the poor to make them pay fine after fine.
Security cameras to watch your children won't make them safe, they just promote and exploit distrust for everyone.
The pope is about to canonize Junipero Serra, who established Spanish missions in California that operated on a system of slave labor.
Serra generally has a very positive image; the missions he established have been made into big tourist attractions.
A school in Virginia kicked out a student for a year because he brought a leaf to school from a Japanese maple tree. A school official thought it was marijuana.
The crucial point here is not that the official made a mistake, but that once he knew it was a mistake, he still insisted on punishing the child. This attitude towards mistakes characterizes the most cruel and self-righteous officialdoms. We see it when people are convicted of crimes and then proved innocent: the legal system resists exonerating them. And now, under the guise of "zero tolerance", we see it in schools.
Even if it had been fairly harmless marijuana — or even some dangerous poison — that would be no reason to punish the child for it in such a harsh way. A reprimand ought to be enough.
Sanders' bill to eliminate privatized prisons would also forbid gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans want to make the Government Accountability Board partisan, so that they can stop it from investigating any crimes they may commit.
Government Argues: If Your Mobile Phone Provider Knows Where You Are, Why Shouldn't We?
My conclusion is, the cell phone company should not be allowed to record where you have been, absent a court order to keep track.
Indonesia has arrested executives, including one from Asian Pulp and Paper, for setting forest fires.
The new Greek "government" will have no autonomy; its actions will be directed in great detail by the banksters. It will be a puppet government of occupation.
Anyone that wants to run to be the puppet does not deserve a vote. But not every party has agreed to this. The part of Syriza that voted against the capitulation has not agreed.
Patriotic Greeks resisted German occupation in the 1940s; maybe there are ways to resist the banksters' occupation with underground activity.
Greece needs to increase its domestic production of food so that it can survive a siege after cutting ties with the EU. Perhaps Greeks can organize underground ways to interfere with food imports, so as to increase the market for local farmers. Is it possible to steal durable food and stockpile it?
An audit of a sample of mortgage assignments in Seattle found that all of them were done illegally, thus void. If that sample is representative, nearly all foreclosures there are invalid, and that has perhaps been the case for years.
Several rhinoceros species are on the verge of extinction. What can be done to save them?
I think that synthetic rhino horn could work if it is much cheaper than natural rhino horn — and similar enough to fool purchasers. Anyone who claimed to sell "natural rhino horn" would probably cheat.
In the long term, even if we eliminate the threat of poaching, not much wildlife will remain if humans convert all wild areas into farms and cities. We must curb human population growth to enable most wild species to survive.
US thugs pick on protesters as well as blacks; the repression against Occupy Wall Street protesters has not ended.
Don't Just Fire Officer James Frascatore — Arrest Him.
The head of the New York thugs' union says that Amy Goodman is unamerican for saying that. He also claims that we don't understand the dangers that thugs face.
However, everyone who is black, or tries to exercise the right to protest, is fully aware of the danger from thugs.
GM sold cars with a defect that killed 124 people in accidents. GM knew about the defect and covered it up rather than fixing it. The US settled the dispute for a fine that GM can easily afford, and did not prosecute anyone.
The ACLU is suing Honolulu for systematically throwing away homeless people's belongings.
No one wants to be homeless. They are being stepped on by life. A city should prioritize kindness to the homeless.
A court in British Columbia says it is illegal to leave a child under 10 alone for any period of time. Overprotectiveness is now mandatory.
When I was 8, the occasional hours alone after I returned from school (on foot in Manhattan) were times I could study or play in peace.
When Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for his clock, prejudice may have played a role, but "zero tolerance" played a role too.
If someone brings a real bomb into a school, that is a real threat and calls for a real response. But there was never any serious reason to believe Ahmed's clock was a bomb, and the thugs must have seen quickly that it lacked the crucial ingredient of any bomb: explosive. So why arrest him then? "Zero tolerance", the idea that being mistaken for a threat makes you guilty.
Twitter has
rejected
anonymous communication, saying that it gives priority to tracking
trolls rather than protecting dissidents.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
For instance, Twitter blocked Magnus Hedemark's account because he used it through Tor.
The article suggests that this includes blocking access to his old tweets.
This is one reason why you should never cite a tweet by means of a link to twitter.com. Proper practice is to copy it directly into your article, like any other quotation.
An additional reason for this is so that Twitter does not get information about who reads these quotes and the article where you cite them.
Twitter says it blocks the accounts because their postings look like spam. But if you're willing to consider blocking an account, surely you could first try some less abrupt response that would teach the user about the perceived problem.
To make life impossible for unauthorized migrants, the UK plans to make it impossible for them to rent housing or drive a car.
The new Australian prime minister, who 5 years ago called for moving to renewable energy sources, has changed sides.
A California thug went wild against a teenager who was walking in a bus lane towards his bus.
The thugs will try to excuse this by applying a perversely strict standard to the teenager's conduct and a perversely loose standard to their own.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to let Arctic oil leases expire and not issue new ones.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act
of 2015.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
With Javascript disabled, the page does not acknowledge that you have signed, but it does work.
Donald Trump is trying to exploit groundless fears about vaccines. This will do harm even if he loses.
He is also giving support to lies about Obama's birth and religion.
Congress is in a tizzy because US air marshals made porn videos with prostitutes using government-issued phones.
As far as I can see, they didn't cheat the taxpayers, or do wrong to anyone. It should not be a scandal. It would be wrong to punish anyone for shocking some prudes.
The article mentions a disability claim that is being investigated. That is a different issue.
US citizens: call for kicking fossil fuel interests out of the Paris climate negotiations.
US citizens:
ask
your congresscritter to oppose H.R. 1737, which would top the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from blocking racist practices in
car loans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Mexican tourists say their Egyptian tour was bombed five times across three hours. Apparently the ground forces that identified them as tourists was not in communication with the air force.
Mistakes like this tend to happen in war. A poorly trained force makes more of them, but there is no way to avoid them. Basically, tourists and war zones shouldn't mix.
Hungarian thugs beat up seven journalists covering the movement of refugees.
Facebook will start making real use of surveillance data gained via Like buttons, even about people who are not useds of Facebook.
The EFF campaign proposes a partial solution. In this case, a full solution is available: use a browser such as IceCat which blocks Like buttons and the other similar third-party tracking schemes.
China is demanding foreign companies build back doors into digital products. That injustice in China offers a lesson to Americans about why it would be an injustice in the US.
The article uses the vague confused term "intellectual property", which can mean so many unrelated things that in this context it has no clear meaning at all.
US wages are still not increasing, belying claims of a "recovery".
The cost to society of mass incarceration is much larger than the cost of running prisons.
Over half of former prisoners remain unemployed five years later. They'd need a conscience of iron to resist crime when it's the only opportunity they will ever get.
The library of Lebanon, New Hampshire, will resume running its Tor node, standing up to the US government campaign to eliminate privacy.
The IMF has imposed more suffering on Honduras. The likely result is for thousands of Hondurans to sneak into the US.
Instead of militarizing the US border, the US could tell the IMF to lay off Honduras.
Sanders and other senators have proposed a bill to ban private prisons.
Nixon arranged to sabotage Vietnam peace talks in order to get elected president in 1968. The evidence comes from an official whose secret report is still secret.
LBJ privately called it "treason". Whether it is literally treason, I don't know, but it is clear Nixon betrayed his country to gain control of it. And the following elected Republican president did likewise.
The arrest of Ahmed Mohamed illustrates one reason why people with nothing to hide do have something to fear.
Here are some more reasons.
Every month this year has set a heat record, so 2015 will almost surely be the hottest year ever measured by humans.
I don't think the record will stand for many years.
The Theater of Security Agency does not care that it foolishly showed how to unlock all the TSA-permitted baggage locks. The TSA's comment is that this doesn't endanger airline security, which misses the point that they've wiped out passenger's baggage security.
The TSA recognizes there is essentially no threat against airlines, and the TSA would be ineffective against it if there were one.
Cameron confirmed that he's fossil-all-the-way by appointing an oil consultant as his "energy and environment" advisor.
The consultant will advise on how to convert the environment into exhaust.
The cost of degradation of farmland is 1/6 of the human world's production.
We can't keep degrading a vital resource at this rate and continue producing as much as we do. We need to improve this, but we also need to stop increasing the human population.
Sanders' talk at the fundamentalist university won over one evangelical Christian who is now his passionate supporter.
If we ignore the question of whether a god exists, and consider only ethics, Christianity has a good side and a bad side. Here we see the good side in pure form.
Democrats have proposed a bill to have the National Labor Relations Board actively protect workers from wage theft, etc.
Demand from China has accelerated illegal deforestation in Burma.
The first victim of the PAT-RIOT Act explains how the secret snooping order cut him off from his family for a decade.
The last person quoted misused the word "fulsome". He meant "full".
Hungarian thugs beat up two reporters that crossed the border with a bunch of refugees.
US government programs including Obama's medical care program are helping millions of people climb out of poverty.
However, millions of Americans remain in poverty. These programs are not sufficient in their present form.
Uruguay has pulled out of the Trade in Services Agreement, one of the corporate supremacy treaties now being negotiated.
Hooray for Uruguay, but now we have to make our own countries pull out of it too.
What's the Point of Peacekeepers When They Don't Keep the Peace?
The students and faculty of Flinders University are still fighting to prevent a government-funded global heating denial center from being established there.
Mozambique's many minefields have been demined, after 30 years of work.
Demining is a hard and dangerous job, but as long as the mines remain, they tend to kill people from time to time. Especially children.
A few scattered mines may remain because no one knows about them.
Ahmed Mohamed will not face criminal charges for making a clock.
Note how the idiots tried to blame Ahmed for their own stupid mistake. That's exactly what Massachusetts thugs did to Star Simpson. Fortunately this time they had to drop it.
Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for making a clock and bringing it to school in Texas.
The teachers and the thugs had no reason to think it was anything but the clock it really was. They arrested him because, he being a Muslim, they decided to regard him as a probable terrorist.
This idiocy is not limited to Texas. A similar thing happened to Star Simpson in Boston, who was punished for an absurd "crime".
The US Department of Agriculture will strive to cut food waste in half.
Did Clinton's private emails conceal something about Haiti?
Human Activity Pushing Marine Life to the Brink of Collapse.
1,400,000 children have been sent away from the areas where Boko Haram might kidnap them
Uri Avnery calls for allying with Assad (and the Kurds) to crush PISSI.
US citizens: tell the Register of Copyrights you want a serious plan to allow republication of orphan works.
Since orphan works are not the only ones for which copyright is too restrictive, I also suggested that the best thing to do is to legalize noncommercial redistribution of all published works. I also suggested http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html as a way to distribute any money people must pay as licenses for the scheme.
Scott Walker wants drug tests for people applying for food stamps, as if anyone that smokes pot deserves to starve.
Occasionally smoking pot does not incapacitate a person. Why should it even matter, unless you're looking for someone to demonize?
Mergers between US medical insurance companies could paradoxically be a good thing. If they all merge, the resulting organization could be nationalized and merged with Medicare.
Donald Trump's speaking technique is a form of "negging" — meant to pressure the American people into bed with him.
Each day, 1/3 of US children eat fast food.
I would guess that they include many poor children, whose parents have trouble paying for fast food but can't provide anything else, because they are working long hours, because they have no cooking facilities, or because nothing else is available in their "food desert".
The Olympic Games organizers in South Korea knocked down a 500-year-protected forest with trees even older. They say they will make another one on the same site after the games.
This reminds me of a Roman joke. When Mummius looted Corinth, he confided some famous old art works to a ship captain for transport and said, "Remember, if you damage these, you will have to provide replacements just like them."
Russia has asked to discuss fighting PISSI with the US.
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Some evidence that Reagan made a deal with Iran to keep holding American hostages so that Jimmy Carter would lose the election.
Richard Glossip's execution has been postponed 2 weeks to reconsider whether he is guilty.
American Wages Remain at 1997 Levels as Recovery Fails to Lift Middle Class.
Air pollution kills more people than malaria and HIV.
With half a billion dollars, the US has trained "four or five" Syrians to fight against PISSI.
The only plan that might succeeds is to help the Kurds strengthen themselves, but Obama clearly is unwilling to do that, so he chooses among the useless plans.
Journalist Ali Lmrabet continues to criticize Moroccan repression in Western Sahara, despite being imprisoned, banned from journalism, and exiled.
Anti-privacy US officials are praying for a terrorist attack, or something they can spin as one, to get an opportunity to attack our freedom some more.
About 5 million people die each year in the US. Each death is unfortunate, but death will happen to all of us. If someone kills a few more, is that a reason to tear up vital freedoms? We need to remember that an all-seeing government is the bigger danger.
Almost 300 scientifically important English wildlife sites are at risk of being fracked.
Fracking won't poison the water in all of them, just some fraction.
Around 1/5 of teenage girls are so caught up in addictive corporate social media that it damages their mental health.
This should not be too surprising. These apps are proprietary software, designed by companies to manipulate their users. It is common to many fields of production that designers make their products as addictive as possible. The addictiveness of these networks constitutes success in their eyes.
The year's minimum Arctic sea ice area is nearly a record. Only three years (all recent) have reached a lower level.
Bernie Sanders' single-payer medical system would cost a little over half what the US spends today, but the Wall Street Journal compares it with zero rather than with our current system.
Corbyn advocates making the UK a republic, so he kept silent at a ceremony as "God Save the Queen" was sung. Plutocrats are spewing dishonest venom over this.
They will throw any sort of insults, trying to make him look bad. Then they will criticize him for being the target of their smears.
Corbyn had to act according to his views, or become another dishonest politician.
I don't have any opinion about that issue. I am concerned with the policies of the British government, not about who is the symbolic head of state.
Small interfering RNA molecules could be used as species-specific pesticides.
This would work on crops that are not genetically modified, by spraying on the RNA.
Getting them into the cells of the targeted species is a difficulty. An idea that occurs to me is to build them into a genetically modified version of a virus that targets that pest species.
The RNA molecule might randomly interfere with other genes in other species. However, the virus probably won't get into cells of most other species. With two keys that need to fit two locks, the chance of affecting other wildlife would be much less.
The idea is very interesting, but it is not without danger to the environment. It could also conceivably hurt humans — that is unlikely but needs to be tested.
I don't trust Monsanto to test this carefully, because its interest is to be careless.
The Moto X phone was designed to track users more than any phone before.
The article assumes readers value convenience more than freedom, but I hope that's not true of you.
Everyone: call on the World Bank to rule that the people of El Salvador can appropriate water supplies to their real needs, rather than to mining companies. Human rights must prevail over business interests.
Australian aborigines care in oral transmission of history has preserved accurate reports of the huge sea level rise that ended 7,000 years ago.
Sea level rose 120 meters, or almost 400 feet, because of global heating (the end of the ice age).
Overfishing of tuna and mackerel have knocked their populations down by 3/4 in 40 years.
Even 2C of global heating will increase the mosquitoes in the Arctic by 50%.
Australia's new right-wing prime minister is less wacky than Abbott, but he still represents dooH niboR.
The UK anti-union bill, that would make strikes nearly impossible, is a militant attack on workers.
But this approach is typical of today's right wing. The Tories don't admit they intend make poor people homeless; they do it with a bunch of cuts and pressures. They don't say that they intend to make disabled people starve if they can't work, rather than find excuses to punish them by denying them disability support. They claim to support greenhouse gas emission reduction while launching a series of attacks against programs to achieve this.
Likewise, the US right wing, since it can't block abortion by prohibiting abortion, creates arbitrary requirements that are impossible for clinics to meet.
Ending US and Australian subsidies for coal would slash carbon emissions.
A woman in the UK has been convicted of sexual assault because she had told her lover she was male.
Whatever we think of this pretense, it clearly was not "assault". If they want to make gaining sexual consent via misrepresentation a crime, they should pass another law and call it something else.
But what kinds of misrepresentation should be criminalized? Claiming to be over 16? Claiming to be under 30? Claiming to be a virgin? Claiming lots of experience? Claiming to be unmarried? Claiming not to have other lovers? Claiming to have been at work the previous Tuesday night? Claiming a high income? Spending like a person with a high income? Claiming to have read a certain book? Pretending to have read it but without an explicit claim? Wearing a padded bra or platform shoes? Wearing a wig? Dyeing hair? Cosmetics?
If a prostitute lies about what is on offer, that is false advertising, but not assault.
Obama has deftly rebuilt US global influences, mending relationships with countries that were hardened enemies. Unfortunately, some of the steps also build the influence of multinational corporations that the US bows down to.
Reducing Chinese influence is to a large extent a good thing, when you consider the pervasive corruption and deepening political repression of the Chinese state. But the US is not immune to these things; industries including fossil fuel extraction, pharma, medical care, publishing, and plenty of others have corrupted the US government, while massive surveillance threatens US democracy. We can't take for granted that the US will be better than China.
Iranian troops are in Syria, fighting against militias that support al-Qa'ida.
As long as they are not fighting the revolutionary Kurds, I won't feel much outrage. The sad thing about Syria, since several years ago, the main military powers are all monsters.
Traffic fatalities in Colorado have decreased since it legalized marijuana.
Bernie Sanders' speech to students at a Protestant fundamentalist university.
I'd suggest inviting them to think about who Jesus would vote for. If a historical Jesus said things like what the gospels report (which is not at all established), I think he would vote for Sanders.
Most US states automatically shackle all minors accused of crimes, regardless of whether there is any reason to do this.
The Paris climate conference is not paying attention to developing water shortages.
The most important conclusion to draw from today's droughts is the same one that we draw from all the other consequences of global heating: we should launch a crash program to cut emissions.
Alas, this is precisely what many governments have already decided not to do.
The second most important conclusion is that we need to limit human births, if we don't want deaths due to water shortages (and crop shortages) to limit population.
FBI Keeps Telling Purely Theoretical Encryption Horror Stories.
Even if there were some real ones, it would amount to a smaller danger than the danger of a state that watches everyone.
It looks like murderer Sneed claimed Richard Glossip pressured him to commit the crime, so that Glossip would be executed instead of Sneed.
This sort of thing seems not to be unusual.
Once again, thugs shoot first, think later. This time they saw a man with a phone and instantly assumed it was a gun.
The victim is Hispanic; whether unconscious racism played a role in the hasty action is not clear from this article.
A prominent Thai journalist has been imprisoned without trial for an "attitude adjustment". His attitude towards the military regime was not slavish enough.
Erdoğan's men seized all copies of a Turkish magazine.
He is massively attacking Turkish media that dare criticize him.
A company in California is getting sued for trying to track an employee outside work.
Will the US become the refuge for all the world's torturers and war criminals?
It is already the refuge for American war criminals such as Bush and Cheney.
To replace privatized public housing with expensive condos, a UK company offered a wheelchair-bound man an inaccessible replacement apartment.
Since he rejects that useless offer, he gets one more option: homelessness for him and his family.
This is an instance of how privatization of government services creates both opportunities and pressure to cheat people. In practice, those companies get their profit by underserving the public and/or paying workers less.
There may be some public services that don't really need to exist as public services, but the rest should not be privatized.
The Thai government says that a deadly bombing was human traffickers' revenge for a crackdown, and was not motivated by politics.
Working in a US chicken processing plant is hell on the workers, because they are forced to work too fast.
The PR company Edelman has been pressured into ending its work for global heating denialism.
Thanks to those who signed the campaign which helped bring this about.
Uber could be a sign of what privatized city governance might be like.
All the more reason to fight it.
3 years ago, a Russian ambassador offered a deal by which Assad would be replaced. It appears the US distrusted and ignored the deal.
I would not put great faith in Putin, but such deals don't always depend on faith.
All experts: explain to US court the need for network neutrality.
US citizens: Tell President Obama to designate the New England coral canyons and seamounts, and Cashes Ledge, as marine national monuments.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Congress, defend Planned Parenthood funding; — don't surrender it as a "compromise".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Senate to oppose the pro-fossil energy bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Arbys, stop helping thugs bully your employees!
US citizens: call on Obama to end garnishing Americans' Social
Security benefits to repay student loans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on National Geographic Magazine to appoint a Public Editor.
This might reduce the harm done by letting Faux News take control of it.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to investigate whether Malaysia was whitewashed to grease the skids for the TPP.
US citizens: oppose government plans to build a road through an Alaskan wildlife refuge.
That they plan to spend our money on it is adding insult to injury.
Iran's law compelling women to hide their bodies is supposedly so men won't be attracted to them. But the "solution" doesn't work.
I think it actually backfires by causing men to obsess over what they cannot see.
Leaked messages indicate Ashley Madison staff discussed how to mislead customers and the State of California about its "female" chatbots.
About 35% of the messages men paid to send to "women" were actually to chatbots, and real women numbered about 5% of the men.
"Lesbian" chatbots occasionally sent messages to each other, like making the doctor program talk to itself.
A thug complained after the barista in a Starbucks would not give him special permission to use the toilet unless he bought something.
For once, I am on the side of the thug. Perhaps the thug complained because he expected privilege, but use of a toilet should not be a privilege. That Starbucks' policy is nasty no matter who it applies to. Every establishment with a toilet for customers should offer its use to anyone who is not causing trouble.
A US right-wing troll gave bomb-making advice to someone he thought was an Islamist extremist, to bring about a terrorist attack this September 11.
Such an attack would have provided an excuse for additional attacks on Americans' freedom. The PAT RIOT Act didn't get them everything they want.
Instead he got arrested.
In general, the US "terrorists" that the FBI arrests are feckless Walter Mittys that the FBI has to cajole into their "threats", but there is finally one exception.
A Denver prosecutor has been ordered to explain to a judge why he didn't prosecute a thug who gratuitously attacked and maimed a man in the court.
The US has hundreds of foreign military bases, which harm Americans by facilitating wars as well as costing lots of money.
Wikipedia has a started a damaging "partnership" with parasitic publisher Elsevier.
For editors to see Elsevier articles is not particularly harmful, but making links to them would work against Wikipedia's goal, as well as strengthen the power of a company that strangles science.
I think Wikipedia should prohibit links to sites with strict paywalls, and automatically delete them and block insertion of new ones.
The US Navy has been ordered to limit loud sonar to avoid deafening whales.
Brazil's president is dealing with a budget deficit, and plans to handle half of it with a tax on financial transactions.
At least she is getting things half right, unlike the right-wing governments that take it all out on the poor.
Residents of California: phone your state legislators to oppose S.B. 249, which would impose tracking RFIDs in driver's licenses.
Say you don't want to have any tracking device in your license. These "enhanced" drivers licenses are actually sabotaged drivers licenses, and they shouldn't exist at all.
US citizens: call on Congress not to push a road through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.
The refugees Australia imprisons on Manus Island have to buy their own medicine after guards attack them, and they can't afford both that and food.
What's happening is that Australians don't want to admit most refugees, but since explicitly rejecting them would violate a treaty, Australia concocts underhanded, deniable, even secret pressures to push them away.
See this other article on refugees.
The UK's anxiety-provoking tests to see if someone is fit to work trigger relapses of multiple sclerosis.
UK businesses want to replace taxes on businesses that emit lots of CO2 with subsidies for businesses that emit less.
Supposedly this is for the sake of simplicity. We're not supposed to notice that it adds up to an increase in corporate welfare payments.
Anyone who gets fooled by this must really want to get fooled — like a plutocratist pollutician.
Across Turkey, mobs have attacked offices of the HD Party, while the army attacks Kurdish towns.
The author fears that Erdoğan will sabotage the coming election, perhaps by preventing Kurdish regions from voting, or set the election aside entirely.
The US ought to disconnect itself from Erdoğan, so that it can support the Kurds in Syria and Iraq and thus destroy PISSI, and at the same time support democracy in Turkey. The success of the HD Party shows that Kurds and Turks could live together under democracy if only there were no rabid nationalist ruler to prevent it.
The ISPs of Portugal have made a deal with the copyright industry to "voluntarily" rat on their customers.
Burundi seems to be creating excuses to close the main remaining independent newspaper.
The UN punishes whistleblowers much as the US does.
Hawai'i's coral reefs are facing an extreme bleaching event due to the unusual heat of the water. It is 2C to 4C hotter than usual.
If two bleaching events in successive years is deadly, 50 years from now nearly every year would be a hot enough to cause a bleaching event. But it won't matter by then, because the increased level of CO2 in the water will kill all the coral.
Ralph Nader: pushing to do most things faster makes people do many things worse.
Nader doesn't notice that massive surveillance is one of the wrongs done by ordering things on line.
The only thing I really wish I could do faster is answer my email. But there is no hope of that — it's the thinking that takes most of the time.
It's a mistake to refer to legislative "compromises" between free states and slave states, before the US civil war; since the free states mostly gave slave states what they wanted, in response to threats to secede, these are properly call "appeasements".
The Internet of Things doesn't inherently have to be an Internet of Telemarketers and Snoops. It could be made of personal devices which keep the users' personal data to themselves, while receiving published data from businesses.
The only practical way to ensure the devices don't snoop is if their software is free.
Many baby monitors (internet-connected cameras, really) have been left vulnerable to snooping by unknown third parties.
The immediate cause is bad design, but the root cause, in some cases, is routing the video through the server of a company that shouldn't be trusted with a view of the inside of your home.
Edward Snowden explains the experiences and thought path that led him to blow the whistle on US massive surveillance of essentially everyone.
It is interesting that there is proof that another whistleblower exists within the NSA. I wonder if someone has heeded the patriotic exhortation that I put in my emails.
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
The US Justice Department now says it will try to prosecute executives responsible for corporations' crimes.
President Sanders, if supported by Congress, would put real teeth into this policy.
If a company stalls for time until its employees can't be prosecuted, is that obstruction of justice?
For companies, data that isn't essential is a liability.
If that helps convince companies to keep less data about people, that's a good outcome. But we should not let our privacy rights be defined by the interests of companies. Human rights should take priority over business interests, and privacy is a human right.
Scott Walker is the Koch brothers' point man for nearly eliminating labor unions in the US.
They want to drive nearly all workers into poverty.
New Study: Racism Can Make [Teenagers] Sick — for the Rest of Their Lives.
The thin Sierra Nevada snowpack of last winter was the thinnest in at least 500 years, according to a study based on tree rings.
Jeremy Corbyn, new leader of UK Labour, is a peace activist. He seriously opposes US/UK militarism and wars. He even dares to criticize Saudi Arabia and Qatar for promoting jihadis in Syria.
I don't oppose war under all circumstances (I don't know whether Corbyn does either), but I agree with most of his criticism of what the UK and US actually do.
I support arming the Kurds, and the women that PISSI has raped, to fight PISSI, but that's not what the US and UK consider doing.
Koch Industries wrote letters which congresscritters then signed their names to.
Don't fall for the pressure to spend a lot of money on a funeral for a pet.
Or a human being — all that matters is remembering the person who died, not material trappings.
The Australian right-wing government has switched prime ministers, and the new leader Turnbull formerly favored strong action against global heating.
However, that may not matter, since he says he doesn't plan to change the current policies.
Prisoners in the San Jose jail say that it is common for the guards to punch and beat them; the only unusual thing about beating Michael Tyree is that he died.
Erdogan has charged the co-leader of the HD Party, which supports human rights, with "crimes" such as terrorism and "insulting Turkishness".
In effect, Erdogan has declared open war on democracy in Turkey. He is the biggest insult to Turkishness that has ever been seen. I hope that Turkishness defeats Erdogan.
The US fraudulent foreclosure scandal has spread into the US system of property records.
Pakistan's official censorship is now backed by military threats to fabricate accusations against journalists.
Germany has been overwhelmed with refugees and will reimpose border controls, effectively ending the Schengen free travel zone.
There was no way that the welcome for refugees could continue indefinitely. There simply can't be room for millions of migrants.
Thus, when there are so many people fleeing, we need to address the causes, which include climate mayhem, wars (many created or made worse by the US), local tyranny, and corporate land grabs.
Those are the immediate causes that make people flee, but there is also the deeper long-term cause: world population growth. We need to reduce the birth rate to the point where the human population starts to decline.
An appeals court overruled the EPA's approval of a new neonicotinoid pesticide, sulfoxaflor.
It is ironic that the chemical was given a name suggesting the flowers that would kill bees if this pesticide has been used on them.
US Republican leaders are now actively campaigning against any climate safety agreement in Paris.
The US government's policy towards journalists covering a war: if their coverage doesn't suit the US, they are considered spies and may be shot on sight.
The US did exactly that to some al-Jazeera journalists in Iraq.
RT is a propaganda outlet for the abuse of power. So is Faux News. That doesn't justify shooting their reporters.
In 2007, Brandeis University tried to discipline a professor for explaining the pejorative term "wetback". This led to a dispute between the faculty senate, which defended him, and the administration which judged that this was "harassment".
Hindley did not really make a racial slur, but what if he had? In general, real use of racial slurs should not be formally punished. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say nasty and foolish things.
Teachers are a special case, though; they should not gratuitously insult their students and should not set an example of racism.
The faculty-administration dispute was resolved as the administration agreed to give somewhat more respect to faculty decisions, but Brandeis never rescinded its unjust decision against Hindley.
In 2014, people attacked him for describing the Israeli occupation of Palestine as "ethnic cleansing" and comparing it to the holocaust.
The occupation does include slow ethnic cleansing on certain parts of annexed Jerusalem and the West Bank, but comparing it to the holocaust is an exaggeration. Israel does not do things that would ever kill millions of Arabs. Nonetheless, he has a right to say such things on the faculty mailing list.
An example of a widespread self-undermining way of warning about dangerous practices — in this case, the insecurity of letting companies have your personal data: to say that "we" all do it.
I suppose the writers see this as a way of chumming up to the readers so that they will pay attention, but it defeats the purpose, because it tells readers, "Of course you use those disservices? Everyone does. No one would expect you to do otherwise."
Use of the term "the cloud" compounds the problem. The only "cloud" is in the minds of people who formulate their thoughts in terms of a "cloud".
Readers will go away thinking, "What a shame we are all trapped in this" rather than "I am going to stop now!"
U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse.
Camp Clark and the Demise of Free Speech.
Austria is moving to legislate nearly total surveillance.
Austrians, take action here.
Governments around the world are launching a broad front pre-emptive attack against the privacy needed for democracy and the press to function.
Parts of the Tunisian state are blocking investigation of crimes of the old regime.
This is perhaps because the new president comes from a group linked to the old regime. I fear it is taking advantage of terrorist attacks to permanently clamp down on human rights.
The study that found that children of holocaust survivors inherited evidence of stress was too small and not well designed. It may be invalid.
Yazidi women have formed a militia to fight PISSI(*).
I suggested arming PISSI's escaped female captives. The US didn't, but the Revolutionary Kurds did. The US doesn't help the Kurds because it is more interested in being nice to Erdoğan and the sectarian Iraqi state than in defeating PISSI.
* PISSI: Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
As Tariq Ba Odah wastes away in Guantanamo, the US government denies him rights he is entitled to either as a military prisoner or as an arrested person.
A few dozen prisoners in Guantanamo may have committed real crimes. There are a few handfuls who might fight against the US if released — but given the thousands of jihadis now fighting for PISSI, these few would change nothing. Some of them might find PISSI so barbarous (by the standards of the jihadis of 2000) that they fight against it.
It would be better to release all the prisoners in Guantanamo immediately, than to undermine everyone's human rights and the rule of law by continuing to holding them without a fair trial.
I have no objections to holding some to prosecute them in a proper court, where there are grounds to do so.
Why We
Positively, Absolutely, Can't Trust the Government with
Encryption.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Overprotective parenting may be steering the US into a "culture of victimhood" in which people are quick to perceive slights, but can't resolve the disputes on their own.
I say "may" because I don't consider this proven. And there is another side to the issue. In the past, while some groups of children learned to relate well, others bullied or were bullied, and the bullied children who couldn't find a way to protect themselves on their own learned that they were helpless.
However, there seems to be some truth in the article's point.
The UN General Assembly gave its support to setting up an international bankruptcy system.
The General Assembly has little power, so mainly this applies pressure to those countries, such as the US, which are blocking the plan. I am sure the US will stop blocking it if we elect Sanders president. That is one thing that the president can change alone.
The Netherlands allows people to get assistance for euthanasia under a broad range of circumstances.
I think that euthanasia assistance should be available to anyone whose situation or condition makes suicide effectively impossible for that person. We don't need to give help to others, since they can commit suicide without help if they choose to. But we should make sure that no one is denied that choice by practical obstacles.
I feel sad for each person who needs euthanasia to avoid a fate worse than death, but I understand the choice.
However, I am not suicidal. I would choose to live forever, if I could do so in good enough health to make it a worthwhile and productive life. But that technology is not likely to be invented soon enough for me.
After a truck almost ran into community leader Wesley West, who leads Black Lives Matter protests in Baltimore, the thugs charged him with absurd crimes, reminiscent of China or Azerbaijan.
Cormega Copening is being charged in North Carolina as an adult for making sexy pictures of Cormega Copening, because Cormega Copening is a minor.
It's another example of America's prudish and twisted attitude towards teenagers and their natural occupation, sex.
Garment workers in Los Angeles may not get the benefit of the increased minimum wage, because those companies flout labor law frequently.
From a short-term perspective, a job where you are overworked, injured and then cheated might seem better than no job at all. It might seem like valid reasoning to say we should tolerate companies that cheat workers in the US, rather than have those companies move and cheat workers in some other country.
Taking a longer view, why are those the only choices? Because of acceptance of that short-term reasoning.
I see no reason to allow importation from countries where workers are treated so badly. We should tear up the plutocratic treaties that say we "have to" allow this.
President Allende warned against the power of multinational corporations, and fought against them in Chile. Now the Chilean state is planning to complete their victory over Chile, by signing the TPP.
Don't make the mistake of calling the TPP a "trade treaty"; its main purpose is to give those companies the ultimate power and rewrite laws to suit them.
There are ways to assess a school, other than giving the students standardized tests.
However, the focus on assessing schools, and assessing teachers, misses the point that many schools in the US don't get enough funds. Moreover, the children in them are growing up in poverty, which means they are also under daily stress. It is very hard for a school to overcome the mind-damaging effects of such upbringing.
In effect, arguing about assessing the school is a way to draw the conversation away from those issues.
Everyone: urge the Kilton library to turn its Tor node back on.
Fire conditions in California are nearly explosive: a fire grew from 1 sq mile to 100 sq miles in one day.
Some states have passed laws that allow local officials to stop performing any marriages, so that they won't have to perform same-sex marriages.
No individual is coerced to hold public office in the US. If these officials don't want to perform some of the duties of their offices, they need only resign, and they will no longer have that duty.
The leftist candidate Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party.
The "New Labour" Party set up by Tony B'liar was a right-wing party Tory Lite. Even when it won, the people didn't win, they only lost more slowly.
Here is what Corbyn stands for.
Two vital issue not mentioned here are curbing global heating and curbing surveillance. I would like to see where Corbyn stands on those.
Recommendations for what Labour must do now.
I would like to see Labour and the Green Party merge.
Despite a reduction in catching sharks only for their fins, sharks are still being overfished.
India is covering up murder and torture committed by hundreds of soldiers and thugs in Kashmir.
Iraqis are protesting against government aligned with sects.
I hope that this is serious, and not a movement of Shi'ites looking for a way to take all the offices.
American Special Forces Are Still Conducting Training for Some of Africa's Most Notorious Paramilitaries.
Rules for girls' school uniforms spread prudish attitudes about female bodies.
I wish today's students were inclined to go on strike against school uniforms, but (according to what I have read) they have been brought up to an attitude of desperate competition combined with immaturity.
Someone in a wealthy town in Massachusetts called 911 simply because some black kids were riding bicycles.
Campaigning to end the "Urban Shield" trade show which promotes massive surveillance and militarization of thugs.
A model predicts that burning all fossil fuels would melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, eventually. This would raise sea level around 160 feet, adding to the 60 feet or so that would come from the Greenland ice sheet. Most of today's large cities would be inundated.
The complete melting would take many centuries, but even the first dose is a bad problem.
Prudery alert, men are being castigated for saying their daughters are attractive.
This comes out in the middle of a dispute about a female lawyer who publicly rebuked a male lawyer for privately saying that her profile photo was "stunning", at a time when they had no business to discuss.
Sexism sometimes takes the form of a man's refusal to take a female colleague seriously as a professional. Such refusal is a pattern that occurs over time. It can take the form of focusing on the female's appearance rather than the professional matters at hand.
A statement of attraction is sometimes part of such a pattern of disrespect, but not always. It might be an expression of being swept away by beauty (it would be if I said it), a polite attempt to put the woman in a good mood (this was standard etiquette), or looking for a date. None of those is inherently incompatible with professional respect.
Professional women have encountered many compliments that were part of a pattern of sexist disrespect, so they have learned to associate the two. Hear a compliment, suspect disrespect. It is not an absurd suspicion, but that doesn't mean the man is guilty.
Since the compliment isn't necessarily disrespect, why not wait a while and see if that man respects you or not?
After ordering a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers, NY Governor Cuomo proposes to legislate a $15 minimum wage for all workers in New York State.
Parents in Seattle give support to the teachers' strike.
The Tory's plan to kill the NHS by underfunding it has caused many doctors to be overstressed and plan to take early retirement.
Many cities in the US have laws to evict tenants that call 911 too much. The ACLU got rid of this in Pennsylvania.
One New York City thug has a history of beating people up and pepper spraying them, then arresting them, for no reason.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress to support more negotiations with Iran.
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop selling Glyphosate.
I urge people not to buy anything from Amazon, for many reasons unrelated to this, and I will continue to do so even if this campaign is successful.
I hope you do the same. There is no incompatibility between that and signing this petition.
Citizens of California: phone your assembly member and call for passage of the bill to end forfeiture (i.e., seizure of assets) unless the person involved is convicted of a crime.
The bill does not go far enough: it allows the assets to be seized first and the person prosecuted later. If your car is seized and you lose your job, and thus your home, you might plead guilty so to get a place to stay in jail.
But it should still be passed, as a first step.
The overall rate of human violence continues to decline.
Even counting the contributions of PISSI, the number of people killed by violence is less now than it was 10 years ago. It has been declining ever since the second world war.
Apple has allegedly agreed to store data about Russian users in Russia so that Putin can spy on them.
Most Russians, those who have nothing particular to fear from the US government, would be safer with their data in the US. Most Americans, those who have nothing particular to fear from the Russian government, would be safer with their data in Russia.
The poor health and life expectancy caused by poverty falls on everyone that isn't rich, to some degree.
Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was sentenced to a long prison term after a secret trial.
It is not implausible that a Venezuelan opposition leader would conspire with the US to commit some sort of crime; in fact, that happened ten years ago. But that alone doesn't mean Lopez did so, or make it legitimate to convict him of doing so other than with proof in a fair trial.
Clapper is suspected of pressuring a Pentagon intelligence analyst to deliver rosy reports of fighting PISSI.
The US is not interested in military cooperation with Iran, although that might be the way to defeat PISSI.
The UK's fossil fool government is now blocking sea-based wind farms as well as land wind farms.
Nuclear power lobbyists convinced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to cancel a study of cancer rates in the vicinity of US nuclear power plants.
That agency is considering adopting a theory that low doses of radiation are good for people.
To have real facts about the matter might get in the way.
Australia and New Zealand rejected the complaints of Pacific Island nations that will be inundated by global heating.
The callous Australian ministers joked about the coming inundation, when they thought they were not being recorded.
Abortion and contraception are a tremendous moral good: the gateway to a world in which every child born is born healthy, and is wanted by unstressed and prepared parents.
Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to house arrest for giving an interview.
Israel should let Vanunu go.
The Maldives government snooped on deposed president Nasheed's conversations with lawyers.
The Maldives government is hardly legitimate, but the UK government has done similar things, and I'd expect the US has too.
Ghost gear — abandoned or lost fishing nets and traps — goes on catching fish, which die as a result. The losses are enormous.
Fishermen must be made responsible, one way or another, for the damage or cost imposed by their discarded or lost gear. Perhaps autonomous vehicles could be designed to collect it, and the cost borne by fishermen through taxes.
Microsoft is nagging some users to install Windows 10.
Teenager Zach Anderson, who was sentenced to 25 years of public scorn for having sex with a girl who said she was 17 years old, will have a new trial.
The judge in the first trial condemned Anderson for participating in a general sexual culture that the judge detests. I have my doubts about the wisdom of hook-up culture, but that's no reason for prohibiting it, let alone cracking down on individuals for participating in it.
Two UK teachers that had an affair in an office in the school where they taught have been banned from teaching, and the stated reason is only that a lot of people are expected to think that there was something wrong with that.
Apparently punishment need not be justified by an actual wrong. Prejudiced disapproval by others is considered sufficient reason.
The UK government falsified a study of conditions in Eritrea to create an excuse to send back Eritrean refugees.
The people who did the field work have resigned, condemning the way their work was distorted in the report.
A world-wide plan to cap fossil fuel extraction could be best for oil consumers as well as fossil fuel companies.
The University of California has sold 200 million dollars of fossil fuel stock, but not on principle — it judges them not to be a very good investment.
If a drop in demand just happens to reduce the use of some fossil fuels, that may help us avert disaster, but we'd be fools to count on that to do the whole job.
Barcelona has fined banks for leaving some houses empty.
If applied on a large enough scale, this could do a lot of good. But the UK needs a much broader policy, heavily taxing anyone that owns a dwelling that isn't anyone's primary residence.
Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, perhaps to hide important State Department emails, continues a tradition followed for decades.
We don't know whether she hid anything important, but Bush regime officials certainly did so.
Global heating is bringing exotic tropical diseases to the US.
A UN intern in Geneva was living in a tent because he could not afford to rent any place to live. Shockingly, he felt compelled to resign when this became news.
Why should he resign? He didn't do anything wrong.
Egyptian officials responsible for the massacre of protesters might be arrested if they visit London.
Kurds say that PISSI is using chemical weapons now.
A driver bulldozed through a group of protesters in Ferguson with an SUV, and a protester kicked the SUV as it passed. The kicker faces 4 years in prison; the driver was not charged at all.
At last, some recognition that the "internet of things" will mean that every thing in your life spies on you.
Chelsea Manning may be put in solitary confinement as a punishment for absurd "crimes".
The City of Los Angeles will promote use of bicycles.
The City of Los Angeles is a small part of the urban area we think of as "Los Angeles". And, sad to say, living in that area and socializing with friends — unless you met them in your neighborhood — require travelling a lot more than 3 miles. The area needs a train system that will really reach everywhere, and it needs to condense from single-family homes into apartment buildings.
Sanders responds to Black Lives Matter pressure with several important plans to end systemic imposed inequality.
Many of these measures are vital for other reasons.
Julian Assange rebuked the Swedish prosecutor for letting 5 years go by without bothering to interview him in London.
Whatever Assange may have done in Sweden, it is clear that the Swedish government is not really interested in prosecuting him or potentially punishing him for that. Rather, it is using the prosecution an excuse to harm him.
Egyptian photographer Shawkan has been imprisoned for two years.
Azerbaijan is using its oil, and oil money, to get European governments to overlook its tyranny.
In Greenland, in addition to melting the ice, global heating has caused a big increase in mosquitos, which now endanger caribou.
Boston thugs rebuked (erroneously) Obama for supposedly not caring if they are killed, but really what bothers them is that Obama is also concerned about non-thugs. The thugs consider that a lack of the respect they deserve. It may tend to erode the impunity they currently enjoy.
I hope so.
Vox Media published an "article" which was really PR for its big investor, Comcast.
It's not the first time Vox did something like that.
Melting Arctic ice (including that of Greenland, which is fresh water) might slow or shut down the Gulf Stream, which would expose the US and European Atlantic coasts to great cold in winter.
Poverty is spreading in Europe, the natural result of policies that reduce workers' rights and social support.
National Geographic's magazine, TV channel and other media have passed under the control of Faux News.
Faux News has already injected embarrassing things into the National Geographic TV channel, which has for some years been run jointly with Faux.
It would have been better to shut down the magazine than let it become a propaganda outlet.
A prominent doctor says that inequality in the UK is killing 550 people every day.
That is 200,000 per year, making the September 2001 attacks look like a pinprick.
Don't let Ancestry.com analyze your DNA — it will use the information in ways that can do various kinds of harm.
Republican presidential candidates seek support from a Republican power-broker who openly supports plutocracy over democracy.
California's assembly to legalize doctors to assist suicide, but only for those expected to die anyway within 6 months.
Once again, people facing a future of years of untreatable pain or years of immobile helplessness have been left out.
Women's Prospects Limited by Law in 155 Countries.
Russia is building a new base near the border with Ukraine to support the Russian troops fighting inside Ukraine.
Clinton says that Obama has been insufficiently militaristic. She says she will be much quicker to invade, and will deny Israel nothing.
If that's what she says when Sanders in the race, imagine much more militarism if she defeats Sanders' challenge and becomes president.
Osama bin Laden's colossal victory: giving US politicians a chance to unleash endless wars abroad and military tyranny at home.
Pope Francis's political views are great, with one giant exception:
women's control of whether to have babies.
A man asked a 12-year-old for directions in Australia. A bystander interpreted this as a threat, and so did the thugs who seek witnesses for this non-event.
I thought this paranoia was limited to the US.
Another danger from fracking: spills of toxic wastewater.
Sanders has taken the lead over Clinton in the Iowa primary.
Fossil fuel lobbyists killed California's bill to reduce gasoline use 50% by 2030.
Another victory for those who want to fry the Earth. Technological civilization may collapse in 2080, but at least we will avoid gas rationing 10 years from now.
If the lobbying campaign builds opposition to monitoring of where people drive, we may be able to use that for something positive. We need to reform and regulate car manufacturers, insurance companies, car rental companies, license plate recognition cameras, and toll payment systems.
The UK is lobbying secretly to block EU environmental safety regulations on fracking.
The UK government is the lackey of fossil fuel companies, putting on a front of supporting renewable energy.
The growing inequality spread by global business means that in Nigeria, as in the US, economic growth excludes most people.
A tribe in Brazil is defending its land from illegal loggers by fighting them, because the government has done nothing.
Turkish MPs tried to enter the besieged town of Cizre and were stopped by the army.
Netanyahu, visiting the UK, meets protests calling for him to be arrested and tried.
The occupation of Palestine, wrong in its own terms, has also played a role in inspiring Islamism. In effect, the occupation pulled, while Saudi Arabia pushed.
A UN commission gathered the evidence on which the president of Guatemala was indicted for corruption.
New Comic: British politics
Mariam Malak says that her school (in Egypt) swapped her exam paper with someone else who paid to pass the exam.
New York City will require restaurants to label dishes that have lots of salt.
New Zealanders are protesting forcefully against the banning of a children's book.
Two Indian women, recruited as domestic servants for a Saudi diplomat, were freed from imprisonment in his apartment and said he had repeatedly raped them.
US citizens: call for an end to US coal leasing.
I said, If the lessees had to pay enough to cover the damage of mining and burning coal, they wouldn't want the coal.
Lawyer Myles Jackman defends people in the UK charged with possession of "extreme pornography", while campaigning to repeal that law.
People are often prosecuted for copies they received unsolicited and did not know about, or tried to delete.
But even if we consider only people who possess the images intentionally, the law is unjust and dangerous. No attempt has been made to show that those people are hurting others. The only justification offered for prohibiting "extreme pornography" is that many people find it disgusting to see — and that is no justification at all.
The precise details of what this law prohibits are absurd, but the details are a side issue. Any law that prohibits possessing copies of some sort of work is dangerous to people in the same way.
Throw the dice, and if you roll 4 or less, go to prison!
A Mexican-American fears Donald Trump can win the election by promoting racism, and reports he seems to be already encouraging expressions of racism.
SCROTUS's hearings about imaginary criticisms of Planned Parenthood are unabashedly one-sided: Planned Parenthood is not even invited.
Homosexuality of various kinds was accepted in Africa until Christianity brought condemnation.
It is, however, a mistake to speak of "true African culture", just as it is a mistake to speak of "true American culture" or even "true Yoruba culture". The one universal in human culture is that any group may adopt ideas and practices from other groups of humans. We must reject the idea that some practices belong to a particular descent group, or that a certain descent group is obliged to stick to certain cultural practices.
The Tobin Tax could provide plenty of funds for refugees.
It could also support education and poor people in our own countries. We need to make the wealthy pay more tax.
Microsoft is appealing a US court order to hand over data stored in Ireland. Microsoft realizes that losing this would make individuals and companies outside the US reluctant to store their data in any Microsoft server.
Of course, they should be reluctant to do that for other reasons.
While I hope Microsoft wins this case, a defeat might help dispel the "cloud" in the minds of many users that leads them to confide their data to companies' servers.
The manifesto of the Popular Unity party in Greece.
US citizens: call on Obama to stop the endless wars needed to get fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on reps Grayson and Wasserman Schultz to support the Iran deal.
US citizens: call on the US to cancel future Arctic oil lease sales.
A Burundian opposition leader was assassinated. We must suspect the president/tyrant ordered it done.
Putin's internet censorship lesson: a tyrannical government does not need to control every byte on the internet to prevent unpleasant news from reaching the general public.
A neuroscientist calls for starting school at 11am to let students sleep later.
Turkish thugs are now authorized to shoot protesters, and snipers shoot even non-protesting Kurds just for walking in the street. A town has been surrounded by thugs, who shot people trying to go to a hospital.
It sounds like occupied Palestine.
Back doors introduced for one government's use can easily become open to others.
Tests show that Argentine Prosecutor Nisman was murdered.
This year's dry conditions in the Pacific Northwest will be typical weather in 2070, and the amphibians there will be in big trouble.
So will the trees, unless we curb our greenhouse emissions fast.
Global heating, and the melting of Arctic sea ice, is spreading toxic methylmercury which gets into the food chain.
I suspect it will concentrate in predators higher up in the food chain, which are the species humans typically eat.
The US recognizes that training Syrian rebels was a flop, and says it will do better.
To succeed at this would require training thousands, and they'd need real combat experience to get good. Where could they get that combat experience without being cut to bits? Perhaps if they joined up with the Kurds.
Corruption by banks is built into the structure of the UK government.
A notary working at a bank refused to notarize forms for American Atheists.
This refusal may have been illegal.
The article has a misleading title, because the beginning is written in a way that is too clever.
Everyone:
Call on
Etsy to stop using the Irish tax loophole.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Warren Buffett to stop attacking home solar power promotion anywhere.
China shows a pattern of banning concerts by bands that have in any way acknowledged the Dalai Lama. It even tries to intimidate activities in other countries.
US citizens: support Sanders' Workplace Democracy Act.
Everyone: call on Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour and give them full-time work.
Germany has ordered Facebook to follow German limits on freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize, offend, insult or mock any person, or any group of persons. It includes freedom to say things that you despise, and things that I despise, even things that we both despise. Most countries do not respect freedom of speech very well.
What we see is that as commercial communication platforms move from offering service to people in lots of countries to actually doing business in lots of countries, they become subject to ever increasing censorship.
Thus, the growth of any communication company into a global business is inherently dangerous to freedom of speech, regardless of the details of that company.
The UK targeted and killed some British supporters of PISSI, in Iraq. Is this a sensible strategy?
Was it legitimate to kill them with a missile? In practice, PISSI and the UK are fighting a war, and in those circumstances it is morally justified for the UK to kill PISSI fighters. Were these men PISSI fighters? The articles I have seen have not given that information.
The UK government says that they were talking about committing crimes in the UK. However, that's not the same as waging war, and is not grounds for killing them in Iraq.
It seems they did not even have concrete plans. If they were talking in a vague way about committing crimes in the UK at some indefinite time in the future, that shouldn't even be a crime until they make it concrete.
Ohio has created excuses to shut down nearly all abortion clinics. The next absurd restriction is to ban abortion of fetuses with Down's syndrome.
This is apparently meant to ensure the birth of people who will vote Republican.
A proposal to deploy sleeping pods for San Francisco's homeless people is blocked by lack of cooperation.
The criticisms officials present in the article may be valid in a narrow sense. They might be valid reasons to change something in the plan. But they are not valid reasons to give up.
Officials, if these shelters look like dog houses, could you make them look different?
If we ought to do better, does that mean you should do nothing?
If Gopman's ego is a problem, have you tried to do the project without him?
It appears these objections are being used as excuses.
The US will investigate a special forces unit that appears to have systematically murdered prisoners in Afghanistan.
Berry farm workers in Mexico and the US are organizing to demand more than hunger wages.
Bravo for the striking farmers that fought back when Mexican thugs attacked them.
The ones that thugs ought to be arresting are the business magnates that try to create "the world's berry company", or "the world's XYZ company" for any value of XYZ. Back before Reagan, when anti-trust law was more than a hollow shell, they wouldn't have dared announce such a goal.
A private tutor who had a long sexual relationship with an eager teenager, 20 years ago, is now described as "abusing" and "assaulting" him. Thus speaks the voice of dogmatic crusading prudery.
The "victim" recognizes that he enjoyed his first sexual relationship. He probably learned a lot from it. I wish I had had such a chance for learning about sex when I was a teenager.
We don't have enough facts to be sure, but I suspect that the reason he claims now that it hurt him is that he was swept along by the general revulsion against such sexual relationships into believing that something bad had been done to him.
Once he started looking for bad, he could surely find some. No doubt the relationship was not ideal. Probably she didn't love him, just wanted sex with him. Some aspects may have been disappointing. That's normal in any relationship, and especially any first relationship, but if you're predisposed to find "abuse" you can perceive any disappointment it as a sign of such.
US citizens: call for making oil and gas extraction companies really pay for extraction from public lands.
Everyone: call on big coal companies to disclose their funding of global heating denial.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Support Sanders' plan for breaking up the big banks.
US citizens: call for limiting federal "forfeiture" to people convicted of a crime.
"Forfeiture" without criminal conviction is punishment without trial and should be considered unconstitutional.
US citizens: call for fully decriminalizing industrial hemp.
Ecuador's president Correa unofficially threatens the free press.
Peruvian officials ignore a massive illegal logging business, which is easily seen from the air.
The fighting between Turkey and the PKK is escalating.
Turkey is accused of starting the fighting with a false-flag attack against the PKK, and people suggested that this was Erdoğan's maneuver to increase his party's vote in the elections that would come.
I think everyone in Turkey — not just the Kurds — deserves independence from Erdoğan's government.
New Zealand has completely banned a published novel.
It doesn't matter that the novel won an award. Banning even a crappy book is wrong.
That Christian bullies are behind this doesn't alter the wrong, but does mean they share the moral onus of the wrong.
It is dangerous to get this book from Amazon, since that requires identifying yourself. Get a copy of the e-book from someone that has one; that is the only mode of distribution of this e-book that doesn't do wrong to the person it is offered to.
San Francisco's prosperity, for some, leaves no room for those who become homeless.
A sufficient infusion of money would fix most of this, if it were spent on toilets, on SROs, and on the mental health facilities that some homeless people need.
In California, a black male is 8 times more likely to be killed by thugs than a while male.
Although we don't know the cause in each case, I am sure this is due in one way or another to racism. It may be unconscious. A thug sees a black man and feels threatened; a thug sees a bulge in a pocket and immediately thinks, "It's a gun." Then the thug shoots. What it adds up to is a practice of "shoot first, ask questions later", which is wrong to apply to anyone.
The rate of deforestation has been cut by half since 1990. but it is still too high.
Failure to Act on Climate [Mayhem] Means an Even Bigger Refugee Crisis.
Peter Greste and two other journalists were convicted in Egypt of ridiculous "crimes" that would not have violated any law, even supposing they had really occurred.
But if there had been a law against journalism in this way, it would be tyrannical. Even requiring journalists to register is an injustice.
British Airways is making huge profits but just imposed a 25% pay cut on flight attendants.
BA says it will fire them all, then rehire them for a "new job" with a different name and lower pay.
I hope workers shut down the whole line, but it is hard to do this when the government is anti-worker.
A new, clever, but perhaps misleading way of studying the income profile of society, based on comparing the income of the mass of families over time, shows that under presidents Reagan and Clinton, the incomes of most individual American families rose steadily. Under Bush I, and since 2001, incomes have fallen for most families.
This is interesting, but it is the wrong way to measure how the economy is treating workers. It opens the way to an illusion comparable to the Shepard tone, in which each worker's income rises all the time, but the overall income profile of society does not change at all (or even goes down). Based on the article, it seems that this is what happened to the US economy under Reagan and Clinton: almost everyone's individual income slowly rose as the income profile of society fell.
The customary measurement of income profile is done by comparing workers of any given age group in different periods — for instance, workers of age 25 today with workers of age 25 in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The result shows how society's treatment of people in a certain situation has changed over time. That is what matters for public policy.
Israeli demolition orders cover 17,000 Arab buildings in West Bank.
Alaska has invested income from oil leases in an endowment to permanently provide a basic income.
The funds for this don't have to come from oil leases.
Labor Day 2050: How Unchecked Global Warming Threatens Labor Productivity.
The companies that are making us roast the Earth are probably connected with those that want to replace these workers with robots. The robots won't slow down, so the unemployed humans can lie down and survive on less food.
Violent crime has not increased due to protests in Ferguson. Even violent crime against thugs has not increased due to protests in Ferguson. On the contrary, the rate of violent crime is down this year.
Evidently we need more protests to bring the rate of violence down further.
Monsanto has used its money to get scientists to lobby for GMOs.
Mexico's official explanation for the 43 disappeared students is not just false, it's impossible.
It's easy to make an autonomous car stop — for any amount of time — by sending it a signal that it mistakes for a pedestrian.
This may not matter for most cars. After all, you can stop the subway system for ten or 15 minutes by standing in a door. Mostly, people are cooperative enough not to do this. But it might be dangerous in some special cases.
Turning National Parks into Corporate Profit Centers.
I think it is a shame to sell naming rights for stadiums or other civic buildings. That act says, "Everything about us is for sale", and the only reason it happens is that we stopped taxing those companies enough.
Wealthy countries pledged 10 billion dollars to help poor countries cope with the beginnings of climate mayhem, but almost 6 billion of the funds have not been provided.
Basically, spending money to cope with climate mayhem is a foolish approach. We can afford it now, but as mayhem gets worse the costs will double, and double again, and eventually it will be too much. The only approach we can afford is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The TPP would (it appears) ban a simple legal change that would reduce the danger of republishing many copyrighted works.
The article ends with an absurd statement that this "might not be enough for me to want to throw out the whole deal" — as if there were something good in it! But the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison is nothing but bads. It is a collection of wrongs proposed by the big businesses that helped write it.
As for the orphan works, what we should do is legalize sharing copies of all published works, then let people go to work on them.
A French diver apologizes for his part in sinking the Rainbow Warrior.
Deforestation in 2014 eliminated an area of forests equivalent to twice the size of Portugal.
Childhood [in the US] Has Become a Period of High-Stakes Preparation for Life in a Stratified Economy. "If Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark."
The Thai military have failed to get civilians to accept a proposed new constitution that would allow the military to take control again.
Gucci and the MPAA are both engines of broad internet censorship.
We shouldn't get distracted by which one was first.
Burundi's president/tyrant is using torture against political opposition.
The punitive reactions to teenage sexting, and teenage sex, are tied up with the consequences of two prejudices: against male homosexuality, and against females that don't deny their heterosexuality.
Knowledge alone is next to useless in countries whose rulers enforce self-censorship.
California has listed glyphosate as a carcinogen. This is a step towards limiting use of glyphosate.
NPR commentator Mara Liasson, discussing the Democratic nomination race, not only didn't mention Bernie Sanders — she effectively denied his presence in the race.
I've had a feeling since the 90s that "NPR" stands for "Non-Progressive Radio". Its criticisms of President Clinton frequently came from the conservative direction.
If you listen to an NPR station, call or write to say you'd like them to present Democracy Today to counterbalance All Things Conservative.
The main "crime" of the British journalists arrested in Turkey is that they used strong encryption.
Obama and Cameron want to follow the same tyrannical path of denying privacy to journalists (nowadays everyone is sometimes a journalist), and to you and me.
The US-backed intervention in Yemen includes lots of ground troops from the UAE and Bahrain.
Bahrain's regime crushed peaceful protests with the help of Saudi Arabia. It is thoroughly despicable.
It is strange to claim that shooting a missile at an ammunition dump is "cowardly". What they could one say about bombing a city?
An arson attack against Planned Parenthood.
Teachers in Israel are threatened with dismissal if they are found to oppose the occupation of Palestine.
In one town near Fukushima, the radiation levels have gone down and the inhabitants are allowed to return.
Afghan Activists Urge Donors to Make Aid Conditional on Women's Rights.
India will ban large vials of diclofenac, to protect vultures.
Samsung has a product to monitor whether someone is asleep. People will start checking on their lovers this way.
Don't use a sleep monitor that sends data to a company!
Just as Syrians are fleeing to Europe en masse, the wealthy countries gave them another reason to do so: they have not given the UN enough to provide them with food where they are.
US citizens: call on Democrats to support Planned Parenthood funding firmly.
Everyone: call on Obama to leave the oil in the ground.
In a market-based economy, the way to reduce demand is to make the product expensive. Leaving oil in the ground will help do that. Taxing it more will be even more effective.
Everyone: call on Craigslist to make sure it isn't used for selling ivory.
US citizens: call on Boehner to support putting George Washington's name back on National Airport.
I have never accepted referring to National Airport with the name of the man who redirected America towards poverty, and whose response to terrorists that kidnaped Americans was to trade weapons for their release.
US citizens: call on Obama to tell Federal government employers to stop asking job applicants about their criminal record before considering them as candidates.
Executives of fossil fuel companies get rewarded for increasing the company's known reserves, regardless of whether those reserves can ever be used.
The US punishes people for life after they get a criminal conviction, in many ways. One is denying various forms of social assistance.
These people are also permanently excluded from many kinds of employment. The jobs that they can get don't pay a living wage, which means that without some sort of social assistance, they are almost compelled to try more crime.
Popular resistance against standardized tests in New York State: 20% of the students that were suppose to take the test refused to participate.
A Christian preacher in the UK faces prosecution for saying that Islam is "Satanic". He refuses to retract and dares the state to put him in prison for stating his views.
The UK doesn't respect freedom of speech very well.
I would not call anything "Satanic", not seriously, because that accusation presumes that devils exist. But there is plenty to condemn as evil in various religions.
Canada's corrupt government snuck a 20-year copyright extension into the law as a rider on a budget bill.
A constitution that permits an irrevocable attack on people's rights to be made so easily needs to be amended. It must be possible to shorten copyright just as easily as to lengthen copyright.
A study in the UK found that children who spend more time watching screens (TV, games, videos) have substantially lower test scores.
This doesn't prove the watching causes the lower scores.
US universities are campaigning to push students even further into debt.
The UK Tories bend over backwards to block wind power, saying they are protecting from having to live near wind turbines. And they impose fracking against the will of people who live nearby.
Curiously, a poll shows that Britons (even Tories) would much rather have wind farms nearby than fracking.
This confirms that the government is working for the fossil fools rather than for the country or the people.
Princeton Review charges more or less for tutoring according to the student's zipcode.
It's not illegal, but it ought to be.
Chicagoans are on hunger strike against the intended closure or privatization of their local high school.
British newsman Mick Deane was shot by an Egyptian sniper after his bulletproof vest was confiscated without explanation as he entered Egypt.
This gives rise to a suspicion that it was all a scheme to kill him.
The dishonest sting videos aimed at Planned Parenthood have inspired arson attacks.
Republican candidates are trying to find a few killings of thugs on Black Lives Matter.
While I deplore the murder of a thug, that is not more important than the murder of any other person.
As for a more general "anti-police culture", the thugs have brought that on themselves through their actions.
Under half of a list of business magnates polled say a deal from the Paris climate conference would lead them to change anything.
That's an indication that it is not likely to be a strong enough deal to solve the problem.
The world must help Sierra Leone strengthen its medical system now, not wait for the next epidemic.
The Indian government has banned foreign donations to Greenpeace — again.
The Supreme Court overruled the ban, the first time.
The US, Europe, Japan and China have been creating lots of money for years, without any inflation.
This thoroughly refuses the usual right-wing economic argument that "you can't increase the money supply without causing hyperinflation".
However, we do need some inflation, to reduce the value of the debts that have been imposed on people, cites and countries by dishonest banking practices.
Dependence on a GPS navigator leads some people's navigational skills to atrophy.
Guatemala's President Perez Molina, a graduate of the School of the Americas, has resigned.
The School of the Americas used to teach torture and repression to the officers of repressive governments.
Hundreds of thousands of US children now live on under 2 dollars a day.
For some, this continues for years.
A meta-analysis (of studies without real shooting or real people as targets) finds that white people are quicker to shoot someone if the someone is black.
How Charles Koch Prevents Clean Energy Businesses From Succeeding.
The Refugees Who Fled to Australia to Escape Torture only to End up Trapped Indefinitely on Manus.
Two US teenagers face felony charges for taking photos of their own lovemaking.
California prison thugs face charges, perhaps murder; it appears they beat a prisoner to death.
Australia is planning new limits on freedom of speech. The government wants to ban "advocating genocide", apparently to be understood in a very loose fashion.
According to the article, what Hizb ut-Tahrir advocates is political change, not genocide. It advocates a lousy and unjust political system that wouldn't respect human rights, but then, so do Republicans (though they don't go quite as far). Freedom of speech includes the right to advocate such political systems.
The group's leader appears to have made anti-semitic statements. Bigotry is expression of an opinion — a despicable opinion, in my view, but that should not make it a crime.
Banks are grooming children for credit card use starting at age 5.
If you use credit cards to pay, you are likely to spend more than if you pay cash. You can prevent that effect with self-discipline, but you can't stop them from tracking you.
Australia has (it seems) narrowed the plan to exile citizens with dual citizenship, by limiting it to those that actually fight for terrorist groups that Australia considers enemies.
It is legitimate to punish people for that, by imprisonment for instance, but taking away citizenship is the wrong way to punish any sort of crime. In addition, it can force people to go to a place where they will be tortured.
I also see a slippery slope here, in that if exile is tolerated in any kind of case, politicians will propose to extend it to other cases.
I don't think that exile would deter or prevent crimes more than imprisonment. Meanwhile, if some accused stay away from Australia to avoid being tried and imprisoned, that achieves the same effect as exiling them without the moral onus of imposing exile.
Toys for girls, and marketing messages for them, encourage passivity and steer girls away from science careers.
Warning over Pacific Bluefin Tuna Stocks as Japan Meeting Ends in Stalemate.
Hillary Clinton finally gave support to the law to ban private bonuses to employees moving to government service.
Her reluctance reflects the fact that her heart is not really in the cause of weakening plutocracy. (I don't expect her to try very hard to get such a law passed.) Her stance has been clear for a long time, and I still won't vote for her.
Manpower continues to cheat and underpay temps working indirectly for US government agencies.
US federal agencies will henceforth usually need to get warrants to use stingray devices that track all the cell phones in a region.
I fear that the exceptions will allow this to be done in the most dangerous possible cases: protest rallies.
Meanwhile, the phone company also tracks the movements of each phone, making them available retroactively. Thus, I still consider it unacceptable to carry around a portable phone.
California's assembly is about to vote on a very strong target for greenhouse emissions reduction.
A Virginia thug has been indicted for first degree murder.
The "Democratic Republic" of the Congo has banned a documentary about a doctor that treats women who have been raped by soldiers and militia as part of the long-running civil war there.
What if you record, as text, everything you say? Would that be convenient, or dangerous?
With free software, if you choose to record your vocal utterances in your computer, you will be able to keep your transcript encrypted so that you control when and how it is used.
But if you use someone else's server to convert the text to speech, which is an example of SaaSS (service as a software substitute), that someone else will have your transcript from the get-go.
The inadequate pledges countries have made for the Paris climate action meeting would make heating of more than 2C inevitable.
A 14-year-old boy in Britain has been put on a "dangerous to children" list for sending a nude photo of himself to a girl the same age.
"Inappropriate" is a keyword for "We want to punish you for this even though we can't point at anything in it that did wrong to someone."
It is true that sending someone a nude photo of yourself can have bad consequences. There are inherent bad consequences: for instance, the person you sent it to might resent receiving it. I wouldn't risk sending a nude photo of me to a woman unless I knew positively that she would take it favorably — and I'd have to look somewhat more attractive than I actually do.
But there are also artificial consequences, like being put on the list.
Remembering how US unions worked together with the civil rights movement.
China's economic advance has been based on uncontrollable corruption and irreparable pollution, often producing things that go to waste.
Some of the article's claims may be too strong. I've seen plenty of passengers in the Chinese high speed trains that I have been in. Nonetheless, it provides an explanation of why even the draconian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, which can crush dissidents, can't stop the corruption or the pollution.
Global heating caused the extreme cold in the US Northeast last winter, and that cold is going to get worse for quite some time, until the general heating overcomes it.
Rich people's government has made Grand Rapids, Michigan, a laboratory for dooH niboR. Even bus rides are more expensive for poor residents, who are now always on the edge of being broke.
In the US, state agencies sometimes impersonate real people in the net.
Typical thugcams today apparently have an additional fault: they transmit everything immediately to a server.
That means there is no way for the camera to be on but ultimately not keep certain periods of the recording.
The system I have proposed does not require "cloud infrastructure". It will save the recordings locally.
With 34 senators supporting the nuclear compromise with Iran, this could be a breakthrough against the power of the Israeli militarists' lobby.
I support Israel, as such; that doesn't mean I must support the way it treats Palestinians in occupied territories.
General Petraeus' bright idea is to arm al Qa'ida to fight PISSI.
They seem to be determined not to arm the revolutionary Kurds, though they don't talk about the possibility.
The Pope's Abortion 'Forgiveness' Is Good Politics, but Changes Nothing for Women.
I see it as a step in the right direction. Perhaps it will be followed by other steps.
20 Years after Chechen War, Families Still Searching for Missing Bodies.
I am sorry about people's deaths, but when your friends or relatives die, don't be obsessed with their corpses. The ancient Egyptians were foolish about this, but you don't have to be like them.
To protect Australian penguins from foxes is not easy.
I suggest another solution: invite the rich people from England that want to resume fox hunting to go to Australia to do it.
The "global race to the bottom", predicted by opponents of business-dominated globalization, is hitting Europe hard, eliminating its social protection for workers' rights.
I must point out that making too many humans is a part of the cause of this problem. The current population survives by overusing the Earth's natural systems.
Australia's limits for greenhouse gas emissions have been set so high that they won't cause any reductions.
Unthoughtful supporters of animals have condemned the plan to protect endangered Australian animals by getting rid of many European-introduced feral cats.
Erdogan has accused journalists from a major media group of "terrorist propaganda", as well as the CEO who is probably safe in Britain.
In some ways this is a good sign. It suggests that Erdogan is getting desperate, and doing things that may make Turkish voters turn against him even more.
Climate mayhem will affect crucial "nitrogen fixing" ocean bacteria.
This is not necessarily going to mean disaster — the other nutrients these bacteria consume will remain available to everything that eats these bacteria. Also, bacteria adapt fast. Still messing with such things is one more risk we take by heating up the Earth.
The UN reports that the bombardment and blockade of Gaza have effectively eliminated its ability to produce what people need to live, and reduced everyone to destitution.
PISSI (*), Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia have all used cluster bombs in recent years.
PISSI"> *The Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Tony Abbott and Nancy Klein both say it's impossible to preserve capitalism and avoid global heating disaster. They disagree in whether capitalism is worth the disaster.
I disagree with them, because today's rapacious "damn the environment (and the workers), full speed ahead" capitalism is not the only possible kind. It is not the only kind we have tried. I have seen rapacious capitalism replace more benign forms of capitalism, as it crushed the countervailing forces such as democracy and civil society that used to hold it in check.
It is a mistake to equate "capitalism" with the modern rapacious kind of capitalism, because that writes off the possibility of pushing capitalism back into a form we can control and live with, the way we control and live with fire.
The reason today's rapacious capitalism blocks action to avoid climate disaster is that it amounts to plutocracy. Where the fossil fools control the media and their money buys the polluticians, they can veto political will for the necessary changes. We must, one way or another, bring back democracy, and that requires ending plutocracy.
To be sure, clipping capitalism's claws won't be easy. But neither would getting rid of it — and that would raise the question of what to replace it with.
"Fast food" was based on making workers more efficient and paying them less. It has advanced through legal changes that permit worse treatment of workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
In the UK, there is such a housing shortage that landlords often harass tenants and some even commit violence against them.
Strict policing of landlords would help, but what the UK really needs is enough available housing.
Israel has a special unit to "monitor" organizations that advocate boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Israel says that this campaign is somehow linked to violent resistance, Palestinians in the West Bank that support that cause are called in for interrogation, apparently to intimidate them.
I don't support a boycott of Israel in general, but I do support a boycott of products made in the Israeli colonies in the West Bank (which violate the treaties that govern military occupation).
Robert Reich proposes to share all income from patented or trademarked businesses with the public, as a form of redistribution that couldn't be evaded by accounting tricks or offshoring.
It might work, but I think my proposed solution, a progressive tax on business income, would also resist such tricks while applying to more businesses. It would also pressure big businesses to split up.
Now that we have proof that the US has corrupted "voluntary" cybersecurity programs to spy on people, it is even clearer that the "voluntary" program of CISA is an excuse for more spying on people.
Netanyahu plans to loosen the rules for shooting Palestinian boys that throw stones.
Israeli soldiers have been ignoring the rules already, to kill Palestinians who were simply running away.
Carmakers Sued Over 'Deadly' Keyless Ignitions.
Plaintiffs say the engine could be running without the user's knowing, filling up a space with carbon monoxide.
Male surveillance camera monitors use the cameras to follow pretty women. The Chilean solution: hire only women to run them.
If we want to have cameras pointed at our streets for security, they must be security cameras, not surveillance cameras.
The record floods in Texas and Oklahoma were bigger due to global heating.
On the dishonest splicing used to create a false picture of Planned Parenthood, and how it can fool people.
Around half of e-cigarettes produce dangerous levels of formaldehyde and/or acetaldehyde, which are carcinogens.
Some of them produced 100 times the maximum level allowed in California.
The Iran deal now has enough support in the US Senate to assure it will be adopted.
San Antonio thugs shot a black man who was standing still with his hands in the air.
Someone shot a thug in Texas; as a non-sequitur, the thugs took this as an excuse to smear Black Lives Matter.
Humans have eliminated roughly half the trees that the Earth had a few thousand years ago.
Ukraine needs to get rid of Soviet government practices more than Soviet statues.
Canada has pressed charges against the Syrian officer that tortured Maher Arar, but not yet against the Americans that kidnaped him and handed him over to Syria for torture.
Most US supermarket chains have agreed not to sell genetically engineered salmon. Costco is one of the holdouts.
I think it is unlikely that the genetically engineered salmon would harm humans that eat them. But harm to wild salmon is a real possibility. There are many other things that could go wrong, which we would not know how to fix.
Politicians that approach global heating like politics as usual don't understand that physics won't meet them half way for the sake of a deal.
Governments set on extracting fossil fuels are changing laws so they can ram this down people's throats.
Australia and the UK have also changed laws to stop people from preventing extraction of fossil fuel.
A New Jersey mother was convicted of endangering a child that she left in the car for 10 minutes. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled her case was judged wrong.
The article explains the biased thinking that considers bizarre unlikely dangers as crucial in some cases and insignificant in others.
Global heating is turning Mongolia into a desert, which is a big problem for Mongolians.
Israel demolished the Palestinian village of al-Khdeirat, leaving 100 people homeless.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, fanatical "settlers" seized a Palestinian building.
These demolitions are often carried out with hardly any notice so as to destroy the Palestinians' movable possessions too.
British pacifist and activist Gary Spedding is suing in Israel to reverse his exclusion from that country, which was done citing absurd reasons.
Israeli courts carefully protect the rights of the accused when Jews
are accused of pogroms against Palestinians. The rest of the time,
not so much.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, it seems almost impossible for those guilty of such pogroms to face any punishment.
Everyone: call on the US press corps to stand up for real journalists rather than anti-rational billionaire candidates.
US citizens: call for protecting Bryce Canyon from coal mining.
US citizens: call on Obama to have the Attorney General reconsider
the conclusion that discrimination on the basis of religion is legitimate.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Vietnam to free political prisoners in the coming amnesty.
California has agreed to stop keeping supposed "gang leaders" in long-term solitary confinement.
The article errs in supposing that these prisoners are really associated with gangs. That is what they are accused of, but all sorts of silly criteria are used to determine who is a "gang member".
Repression against services that enable sex workers to advertise hits them hard.
The massive wildfires in the US have burnt over 2000 square miles.
As we keep turning the heat up, it will get bigger. Do people want to bet on which year 20,000 square miles will burn?
The Fate of the Temple of Bel Is a Symbol of the Tragedy Engulfing Syria.
Five Islamists have been charged with murdering secularist blogger Niloy Chakrabarti.
Fewer toys can be good for children's imagination.
A few years ago I visited a friend who had a typical large American house, with several rooms littered with piles of toys. I was shocked, but I suspect most Americans would find it normal.
The number of real women on Ashley Madison was probably more than previous analysis concluded. Data to determine their number is not available in the leak.
However, it is clear there were at least 70,000 "female" chatbots.
Tony B'liar's wife lobbied Hillary Clinton on behalf of the Emir of Qatar.
The article does not show whether Clinton did anything wrong in regard to this, but it seems sleazy on Ms B'liar's part.
US thugs have shot 30 drivers dead this year, ignoring guidance that it's a bad idea to shoot at a moving car.
Glaciers shrank in the 20th century, but now they are shrinking twice as fast.
"Debt relief for Greece", in IMF terms, means only stretching out the payments.
"Free trade" means clothing companies anywhere in the world get the benefit of the horrible working conditions in Burma.
James Hansen and other scientists warn that sea-level rise is likely to accelerate fast in the future, and could amount to 10 feet (3 meters) within 50 years. Or maybe somewhat more or less time.
I write this in the Chilean port city of La Serena, substantial parts of which seem to be less than 3 meters above sea level. Oops.
If you're feeling really lucky, you could decide to bet that their prediction won't happen ever.
Naomi Klein "I'm a lot more shocked by the fact that migrants made refugees by wars that your government and my government have participated in are sent to islands so far away, locked away with no hope so they take their own lives."
I don't think we need to ask which of these outrages is worse.
Azerbaijan Journalist Khadija Ismayilova, faced with imprisonment for exposing corruption, says she will continue even in prison.
The court mercifully sentenced her to "only" 7.5 years in prison.
Economic growth alone will not fix the UK's housing shortage.
Proper taxation of houses, including higher taxes for any home that isn't a principal residence, would get the job started.
Turkey is the latest country to use "anti-terrorism" laws for repression.
The US does it too, and it is wrong in any country.
In this case, Turkey's (i.e., Erdogan's) aim is to hide his violent attacks against Kurds.
The violence started with an attack in the city of Suruc, which was attributed to PISSI but may have been a false flag attack by the Turkish government.
Self-proclaimed psychics are a total failure in helping criminal investigations, but thug departments are very slow to learn this lesson.
Israel was unable to stop Daniel Barenboim from conducting in Iran, but Iran's government won't let him in.
Google faces accusations in India and Europe of rigging search results to favor its own sites.
It would be easy to achieve this result intentionally without explicitly writing lines of code that say "prefer this Google site". Some minor details of the Google site could raise the site's priority.
How the apartheid government of South Africa spent millions to manipulate public opinion in the US and Europe.
Obama, visiting in Alaska, called for urgent action to curb global heating.
Obama is saying the right things; he should make his actions match his words.
Journalists in Thailand were acquitted of the crime of "defaming the Navy" in reporting on suspicions of its involvement in human trafficking.
This is a good outcome, but the root of the problem is in making defamation a crime. Freedom of speech includes the right to offend, criticize, insult, even mock any institution, any practice, any belief, and any person.
In some parts of the ocean, 90% of seabirds have plastic objects inside them.
Some pharma companies are fighting hard to keep disappointing results of patient studies secret.
Since it is established that the involvement of pharma companies corrupts the outcomes of these studies, we should cut them off from it completely. Instead of letting them fund the studies, the government should tax them and use the tax funds to do the studies.
The long heat wave in Europe, and the associated drought, has
spoiled
harvests and forced power plants to close.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
If police departments in the US had the same standards for employees as fire departments, we'd have police officers instead of thugs.
The US needs to reevaluate what their job consists of, and especially how many of them are needed. To hire as many as we have now requires scraping the bottom of the barrel. We no longer have a high overall crime rate, and if we ended the war on drugs, we'd have a lot less crime of all kinds.
Several US states have passed inadequate laws to protect the privacy of personal data of students in school.
These laws are inadequate because companies should not get any personal information about any students. Schools should keep these data, and delete anything that does not need to be kept.
The EU promised "transparency" for the TTIP negotiations, but arranged to interpret that in a way that adds up to nothing. Even MEPs can't see anything meaningful.
The first level of dishonesty about this treaty is the idea that it is about "free trade". It's really about giving companies more power and democracy less power. That's why I call them "corporate supremacy treaties".
The practice of publishing anything salacious that we hear other people saying does significant harm to effective privacy.
We should distinguish between proof of something really bad, like violence carried out by a thug, from mere clickbait such as a couple's breaking up.
The conviction of three Al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt is a sample of a thoroughly rotten judicial system.
Egypt is one of the countries that I would love to visit, if it were safe. But I don't feel I would be safe from imprisonment there now.
Chomsky refutes the perverse postmodern leftist condemnation of science and even rationality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-27 because the old link was broken.]
H&R Block Lobbied to Make Tax Forms Harder for Low-Income People to Fill Out.
Donald Trump is the New Face of White Supremacy.
Never in US history have most people earned enough to escape from poverty based on their wages alone.
I think the article confuses the point by saying that they "were" poor. What happened, and the article makes it clear when read carefully, is that when they weren't poor it was because debt was supporting them.
The city of Newcastle, Australia, which is the world's biggest coal exporting city, has decided to divest from fossil fuels, recognizing that the coal business has no future.
Citibank says curbing global heating would save tens of trillions of dollars, not even counting the avoided costs of global heating.
Alaska natives say that global heating has caused drastic changes that are destroying their way of life, and we need to stop it now.
Australia's prison in Nauru treats children so horribly that even a government inquiry says no children should be there.
What will Abbott do next? Remove the children and leave their parents on Nauru? That might be cruel enough to be his next step.
The plan to send refugees to Cambodia has failed and Cambodia has cancelled it.
The US-backed war in Yemen has blocked delivery of food and medicine, endangering millions.
Families of disappeared Chinese human rights defenders call on the state to tell them where their relatives are.
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