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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
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The UK is developing a data base of the citizenship or immigration status of everyone in the UK. This is presumably meant to extend the "hostile environment" to more areas of life, in combination with identifying people more often.
The EU just voted to do the same thing. This will surely be used for repression.
Australians: vote Green, then Labor.
The Greens are pretty good on human rights, too.
Marie Newman has found replacement campaign service companies so she can continue running in the Democratic primary despite the DCCC's boycott/pressure campaign.
Asking a piecework sweatshop company such as Lyft to drive your child to school can be very dangerous for you and your child. One mother tried that and was charged with a crime.
Both she and her child are now suffering the effects of that injustice. If the thugs don't drop the charges fast, the damage is likely to last for years.
The WATER Act would rebuild inadequate US water infrastructure and aim to give all Americans water that is safe to drink.
Citizens and legislators of New York State are pushing back against a state official who resists divestment from fossil fuels.
The Tories have not shafted poor people enough yet. They plan to deny pensions to a small segment of the population — retired people whose spouses are not old enough to retire (and mostly still working).
The cutback will hit a mere 60,000 poor people.
Progressive activists are bombarded with false accusations of "antisemitism", fabricated via wild extrapolation and based on anything or nothing. Almost anything they say is distorted into "antisemitism".
Meanwhile, real antisemites such as neo-Nazis, the people that really hate Jews, are not getting much criticism.
Florida's new governor, though a Republican, seems to be a sincere about protecting the environment, including the Everglades.
I don't see how that can possibly be done if global heating (and thus sea-level rise) continue unabated. The Everglades will become ordinary ocean.
Dr. Sondra Crosby says the Ecuadorian embassy sneakily seized and copied her medical notes about Julian Assange, which she had left there temporarily, not expecting such mischief.
She reports that Assange is suffering serious and lasting medical problems as a result of his seven years in the embassy.
America's New Voting Machines Bring New Fears of Election Tampering.
Anti-vaxxers are forming internet troll mobs to intimidate and silence doctors that defend the effectiveness of vaccination.
The anti-vaxxers risk their own illness, and I believe people have a right to do that if they wish. However, by organizing to mislead people about vaccines, they lure potentially millions of others to their deaths. They also endanger the people that, due to various other medical conditions, cannot be vaccinated. The only protection for them is to be surrounded by a society in which nearly everyone else is vaccinated.
In the DR Congo, distrust for medicine leads to hostility towards the treatment for Ebola. The outbreak there has continued for months, since the methods that have ended other outbreaks cannot be applied.
This could lead to the death of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, who if treatment had been allowed would not even have caught the infection.
Two sisters from Salafi Arabia face imminent deportation back there, if they don't get a visa today. That would be followed by execution or life in solitary confinement.
I would urge them to commit a spectacular suicide before Hong Kong agents capture them and condemn them to a far worse fate. This rational martyrdom would deal a heavy blow to the misogynist theocracy of Salafi Arabia. It's not what they deserve — life in freedom is what they deserve — but it may be the best end they can get.
It is easy to imagine doing what is heroic, harder to do it. It is easier to analyze a bad situation when one is not suffering the stress of being in it. I don't know whether I would be able to follow my own advice, but I hope I could.
I urge Australians to reprove their government for cutting off the sisters' escape.
Depending on the "philanthropy" of the rich means we can't get to the root of our economic problems. "We have outsourced the betterment of our world to people with a vested interest in making sure we don’t make it too, too much better."
Toledo, Ohio, has voted to grant human rights to Lake Erie.
I hope the article misrepresents what has actually been decided. I am in favor of strengthening laws to protect Lake Erie (and all lakes) from pollution, including helping more entities sue polluters. But not by descending into nonsense.
This law, as described in the article, is nonsense. Treating a lake as human is even more absurd than treating a corporation as human. A corporation does have preferences, and can make decisions — all actually decided by its directors and stockholders — yet still does not deserve human rights. A lake is unable to desire or decide anything, or consent to anything, and it has no chance of ever being able to do so. A human in such a condition would have its life support switched off.
To defend the idea of rights for humans (and other comparable intelligent beings), and to defeat the idea that a corporation is as good as a human, we must not go around according the status of human to mere things.
A UN investigation reported that Israeli army faces plausible accusations of war crimes in the killing of protesters that did not pose any immediate threat to the soldiers.
As usual, Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation. Hand in hand with US Republicans, Israel has redefined "right" to mean "whatever we do" and "wrong" to mean "opposing or criticizing us."
The Prime Minister of Luxembourg reproached leaders of Arab countries in an international meeting because they would sentence him to death for his same-sex marriage.
An 11-year-old Argentine was forced to carry fetus made by rape. After 23 weeks she was able to get it removed.
The English Collective of Prostitutes calls for permitting sex workers to work together, forming brothels, not only alone.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop giving corporations tax breaks for outsourcing jobs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Coca Cola to support a returnable deposit on plastic bottles.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Speaker Pelosi to break up Big Pharma companies rather than endorsing the weak reform of drug price arbitration panels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Former Canadian Minister of Justice Wilson-Raybould testified that Trudeau's aids made threats to stop her from prosecuting a large Canadian construction company for bribery.
The sad thing is that the other major party, the Conservative Party, is even more right-wing, and climate-denialist too. The New Democratic Party is better than the other two on many issues, but has supported tar sands oil in Alberta.
Short-term thinking values oil jobs and profits today over survival of civilization in a few decades.
Cardinal Pell, who held a very high post in the Vatican's government, was convicted of raping two young adolescents in the church choir, and is now in jail. The Vatican is now going to consider whether to eject him from the priesthood.
The rape seems to have driven one of them into drugs, which eventually killed him.
When the bully prosecutes people for leaks, they are typically leaks about crimes committed by him and his henchmen. This contrasts with Obama, who prosecuted people who reported on US war crimes or on how the US government spies on everyone.
A Republican campaign official in North Carolina has been charged with election fraud. The fraud itself has been demonstrated, and the election will be repeated.
"Who will pull India and Pakistan back from the edge this time?" The US is no longer fit to help much.
I share the suspicion that Pakistan secretly supports Islamist extremists and terrorists, including groups that operate in Kashmir. Meanwhile, the Indian government is increasingly bigoted and repressive, and Modi wants to appear belligerent so as to win votes.
Michael Cohen: "I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am ashamed because I know what Mr Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat."
Other interesting information from his testimony.
"Loyalty to Trump cost Michael Cohen everything. Republicans pay heed." As Republican congresscritters attacked Cohen, each blow fell on the conman.
Cohen told them, "I'm responsible for your silliness because I did the same thing that you're doing now for 10 years. I protected Mr Trump for 10 years."
Regarding the Democratic National Committee emails leaked by Wikileaks, I disapprove greatly of Wikileaks's support for conman, but the revelation of how the DNC rigged the selection of its candidate in favor of Clinton was a great service to the United States.
Extinction Rebellion protesters face prosecution for gluing themselves to the windows of a hotel.
"Aggravated trespass" is a name invented by the UK government when it decided to repress nonviolent protest more strongly. When you see that term, think "repression".
A crowd of supporting protesters could have prevented the thugs from hiding the glued protesters from the public. There was no need for that, except as a way to make the protest less effective — evidently to serve the planet roasters meeting in the hotel.
Protesters have blocked construction of a new runway at Heathrow Airport since 2010. Now government agents are trying to forcibly remove them.
I would not sympathize much with these protests if it were just a matter of NIMBY. However, the whole world is threatened by increases in flying and the consequent greenhouse gas emission. Although new planes are maybe 15% more fuel-efficient than those made 20 years ago, that would only compensate for a 15% increase in flying across 20 years, and only if all the old planes were replaced.
MIT has named its new "College of Computing" after the CEO of the private equity company Blackstone.
Blackstone has invested many billions in fossil fuels in the past few years.
Just in 2015 it was investing ten billion.
Blackstone is also buying up oil wells in various countries.
Blackstone has bought up a lot of US housing. It spent millions to defeat a ballot initiative for rent control in California.
Blackstone also invests in the company NSO that makes the Pegasus attack software. There is some sign that this product was used to spy on Jamal Khashoggi's conversations with a dissident from Salafi Arabia.
Many public transport systems are setting up gamification traps to lure passengers into being monitored more.
I think we should adopt laws to prevent this from being done in a way that collects personal data on people's travel.
India and Pakistan are involved in air battles which could lead to a bigger war.
Russian disinformation misrepresented The Intercept, which reported last year that either Syrian or Russian planes had dropped chlorine on Douma and killed people. The disinformation cited The Intercept as saying the opposite.
Can someone please try traveling on Amtrak with a seat reservation and not giving a name? Or at least, not giving your real name? I would like to know if it is feasible to do this; specifically, whether the reservation requires a name and whether it requires ID.
US citizens: call on Congress to expand Social Security Benefits and tax rich people to pay for it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity to use their investments to fight global heating.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for making voting practically possible for members of indigenous people.
I dislike the term "native American" as used in this petition, and I do not use it myself, but I signed the petition anyway because the substance is important.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Untreated strong pain is reported to lead, in some cases, to various kinds of physical damage to the body.
This doesn't seem to be a rigorous study, but even if we don't know how frequently this occurs, we can still draw conclusions: don't deny people enough painkiller to treat their pain.
Nigerian Opposition Leader Rejects Buhari's Election Victory.
Foreign ministers of 11 countries remind us that Russia's seizure of the Crimea was an act of war, followed by repression.
It is possible that an honest referendum in the Crimea would have voted to unite with Russia — but that doesn't legitimize Putin's bogus referendum.
The US efforts to extend NATO to Ukraine and Georgia were stupid and provocative, but not belligerent, so they don't justify Russia's act of conquest.
Accusations against right-wingers can be false. We must not be quick to suppose they did every bad thing they are accused of doing.
Poor people in Venezuela expect that a plutocratist new regime would seize the land that they took away from plutocrats 20 years ago.
As the international powers increasingly disregard human rights violations, various countries in the Middle East and North Africa are learning they can get away with more and more of them.
Sanders has the potential to swing the US in a progressive direction.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez cannot run for vice president in 2020 because that requires being at least 35 years of age. Aside from that, I think it would be wise for her to get more experience in lower office before aiming for higher office.
It takes time to become a steady pillar of justice. We know that no defeat will make Sanders give up, because he has had many defeats. In Congress, Ocasio-Cortez will encounter defeats. Over time, she will become another steady pillar.
I hope I will live long enough to help elect Ocasio-Cortez president some day, perhaps in 2036.
Israel has planted 600,000 colonists in occupied Palestine in violation of international law. Several government ministers just signed a pledge to situate 2 million more colonists.
This would involve taking large stretches of land from the Palestinian inhabitants.
Meanwhile, Israeli ethnic cleansers are using biased laws to seize houses in Jerusalem one by one.
(satire) Trump Solemnly Lays Wreath At Site Where He Would Have Died During Vietnam War If He Weren't Rich.
I don't think it is right to criticize any American for avoiding fighting in the Vietnam War. The thing to criticize is that some Americans were not allowed to avoid it.
The head of Salafi Arabia's state oil company warns that the expectation that the fossil fuel industry is likely to shrink endangers its certitude of rushing us off the climate cliff without any slowdown.
If oil prices go down, that encourages users to use oil rather than switch to renewables or reduce energy use.
If oil prices go up, that encourages planet-roaster companies to build more oil wells.
But if we put a heavy tax on use of oil, we get the best of both possibilities: a high selling price that encourages users to use less oil, and low income for oil companies that discourages planet-roasters from drilling for more.
To achieve this goal, it needs to be a heavy tax — a small tax would have a small effect. Weak measures of any kind won't achieve the goal.
Almost any Democrat could defeat the bullshitter, but it won't do much good unless that Democrat is a credible change agent.
Trump can't legitimately win in the electoral college, but the Republicans might steal that election, as they stole the 2016 election.
The Swiss bank UBS will be fined over 4 billion dollars for helping rich French clients hide their wealth from taxation.
Note how the article suggests that making rich people pay taxes could be disadvantageous to a country in competing to attract the favors of powerful international capital.
Participating in that competition is surrender to the arrogant power that lost this case, and makes that power stronger and more oppressive. This case is a small step towards taking away its strength.
China is taking over the business of building underwater communications cables. That means China can spy on the data.
I expect that the US also spies on that data. During the cold war the US used submarines to attack snooping devices to the Soviet Union's cables. Perhaps both countries are attaching such devices now to the cables made by the other country.
One should not make an excessive fuss about state espionage against hostile states, but these countries could well be listening to you and me.
If transmission on the cable is encrypted across the cable's whole communication system, such spying would be futile, but I'd be surprised if such encryption is in use.
US citizens: Tell the border thugs to stop searching personal electronics at the border.
I object to presenting the Apple example, because it presumes that looking at commercial secrets is worse than violating the privacy of a human being. No way!
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to require thug departments to report death of prisoners.
I reject the gentle-sounding word "custody" for putting someone in jail.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the USDA not to put meat processing companies in charge of inspecting their own production.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Iran's foreign minister, a supporter of the nonnuclear deal, has resigned after saying that European countries have not continued enough trade with Iran to make it worth continuing the deal.
This is likely to strengthen the Iranian politicians that want more confrontation with the US — effectively, their equivalent of US neocons.
It might be rational for Iran to make nuclear concessions in exchange to keep the deal. But Iranians have national pride, as well as a valid grudge against the US.
In a case where the plaintiff claims Roundup caused his cancer, the jury will consider scientific studies, some of which found that Roundup can cause cancer, while others found that it could not. The judge ruled that the jury is not allowed to know that Monsanto influenced and manipulated some of the latter studies.
This means, in effect, that Monsanto cheated and now can get away with it.
Drug companies often manipulate studies of the effects of drugs. To have honest medical science we must cut off their channels of manipulation. We should fund these studies with government funds, and get the funds by taxing business more.
(Now) Labor Secretary Acosta's plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein was not only extremely lenient, it was so lenient that it was illegal.
I wonder whether this makes it possible to resentence him to a longer prison term.
I disagree with some of what the article says about Epstein. Epstein is not, apparently, a pedophile, since the people he raped seem to have all been postpuberal.
By contrast, calling him a "sex offender" tends to minimize his crimes, since it groups him with people who committed a spectrum of acts of varying levels of gravity. Some of them were not crimes. Some of these people didn't actually do anything to anyone.
I think the right term for a person such as Epstein is "serial rapist".
Journalist Jorge Ramos interviewed Maduro and was arrested (then released). Indirect reports say he showed Maduro a video of Venezuelans looking for food in the trash.
Some Americans look for food in the trash, and nowadays millions of Americans can't afford food every day. I expect that conditions are currently much worse in Venezuela under Maduro. But don't forget that Guaidó is allied with the right-wing neoliberals that brought hunger back to the US.
Sex workers write about how the censorship law FOSTA has made their lives harder.
The TSA has a secret "watchlist" for passengers it considers troublemakers. The criteria for putting people on the list, and what it does to those on the list, are secret.
Extinction Rebellion planned world-wide civil disobedience on April 15.
Chris Hedges recommends totally rejecting violence, and communicating with the cops about this. Nonviolent protests should never tolerate a violent "black bloc", but when he says that "The state … has been hollowed out by neoliberalism," he's generalizing from the UK. In the US, austerity spares the instruments of repression.
Hilel Garmi is resisting the Israeli draft so that he will not have to oppress Palestinians.
In Israel, draft resisters are jailed for a few weeks, then jailed for a few weeks again, and so on.
Human activities cause the observed global heating: a study has validated this to the five-sigma level, meaning the chance it might be a coincidence is one in a million.
Senator Feinstein proposed an inadequate substitute for the Green New Deal.
A carbon tax could be a step forward, but in order to make a real difference it would have to be programmed to increase every year and become quite heavy in just a few years. This would pressure companies and government agencies to invest heavily in reducing their emissions.
If the tax is gentle enough that they don't kick and scream, that shows it won't make them change.
(satire) … Benjamin Netanyahu defended … his new alliance with the country’s far-right Aryan Supremacy Party.
Here are the facts being satirized: Netanyahu is making alliances with Jew-supremacist parties.
Jews have a long tradition of opposing bigotry, which is why some US Jewish groups condemned his move.
If the atmospheric CO2 level reaches 1200 parts per million, which could happen with a century if unabated, it would trigger a positive-feedback cycle by eliminating stratocumulus clouds. That could cause an additional 8C of heating.
Thugs often make Facebook accounts under aliases to spy on other useds of Facebook, such as unauthorized immigrants.
I cannot join the EFF in pressing Facebook to enforce its real-name rule more strictly, because that rule does harm to others. Facebook should relax that rule for non-thugs rather than enforce it more strictly on thugs.
One effect of global heating: the hay fever season lasts longer.
Chelsea Manning's appeal against imprisonment was rejected, but she continues to refuse to testify.
Suggestions for how US news media should cover global heating so that the urgency will come across.
I will add one other suggestion: call it "global heating", not "climate change".
Tories made Stephen Smith fight for his legal right to welfare payments in the UK even as he was so sick he was not supposed to leave the hospital. This is standard practice for Tories. And yet their supporters shrug it off.
Brunei asks for "tolerance and understanding" for killing gays and cutting hands off thieves.
What monumental irony.
Pelosi gets her advice on reducing drug prices mainly from lobbyists.
The terrorist bombing in Sri Lanka is said to have been carried out by a local Islamist group.
Greta Thunberg addressed the Extinction Rebellion protesters in London today and called for a general strike for climate defense.
Extinction Rebellion viewed as an instance of a generational change in politics.
Advocates of US domination of Latin America warn that China is selling governments digital technology to surveil and control people.
I find that alarming — however, the US is doing its level best to catch up with China in digital repression, and I find that even more alarming.
Americans, will we rush to be more surveilled than Chinese, or will we fight to keep our country free? Will we help Latin American countries stay free from repressive digital technology, or will we compete with China to sell them some?
The UK is planning yet another repressive law: arbitrarily labeling places in the world as "forbidden", and imprisoning Britons for having been there.
The law would also make it easy to demand journalists hand over their notebooks identify their sources.
The United Arab Emirates permits shipowners to discard ships with their crew aboard. The owners leave them stranded and unpaid, sometimes for years.
Protesters in Sudan continue their protests, now against military rule.
Mapuche are asking the International Criminal Court to investigate the genocide carried out by Chile and Argentina in the 19th century.
Coyotes now live in many US cities, and they eat pet cats that go outside the house. Cat owners are learning to keep their cats indoors.
Another reason to keep cats indoors is so that they won't eat birds. Cats are responsible for killing large numbers of small birds.
The Labour Party is converging with the environmentalist demand for a Green New Deal for Britain.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the US government from attacking Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: tell Bank of America to stop financing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on George Mason University not to hire sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Privatized immigration prisons frequently violate prisoners' rights. The companies know they can get away with it and won't be punished, because ICE hardly ever insists.
This is an example of a general principle: privatizing a government activity makes it unaccountable, and the businesses cheat.
Private prisons should be abolished. In general, no government activity should be privatized, unless there is no reason for the government to be involved at all.
Amazon and Google want "smart" gadgets to report all activity to them.
In other words, if you have a "smart" (read "spy") light bulb with that proposed feature, and tell an Amazon or Google listening device about it, thenceforth any time you switched it on or off no matter how, it would send a report to Amazon or Google.
Even today, the only way to make "smart" products safe is to ensure they cannot connect to anyone else's systems.
Texts Show Collusion between Police and Far-Right Extremists, Oregon Official Claims.
Huawei is developing an automotive system that would lock the controls and perhaps call the thugs, if the driver appears to be sleepy, drunk, or on a list of enemies of the state.
Huawei does not mention the third condition, but it would be easier to implement than the other two.
The UK's censorship has reached the predictable vicious extreme: a law proposes to imprison people for even looking at any publications possibly relating to terrorism.
Let's not get distracted with the minor details, such as how many times you'd have to look at such publications, or how many different publications, before it would count as grounds to imprison you. This is tyranny. The existing law against having copies is tyranny too.
Any law prohibiting possession of any published material is an injustice. And it provides an easy tool to make any chosen target into a criminal.
Ocasio-Cortez: Living Wage for Staff Is 'Common-Sense' Policy Not 'Communism'.
Costa Rica Unveils Plan to Achieve Zero Emissions by 2050.
Although North Korea may never agree to get rid of its nuclear weapons, at least there is no longer active belligerence between it and the US and South Korea.
Now if only the bully were not pushing for war with Iran instead, we might even have a basis to praise him.
Measles increases where right-wing hate parties grow.
8% of humanity's CO2 emissions come from concrete, and production of concrete is forecast to increase. A heavy tax on concrete could slow this down. Forms of concrete that emit less CO2 could be taxed less.
The article refers to the Paris agreement for emissions targets, but we know they don't go far enough.
For the task of curbing global heating, the "adults in the room" are unwilling to recognize the urgency of action.
"In today's America, the real emergency is that a quarter of a million people die from poverty each year."
Song: The Man Who Metamorphosed.
A right-wing militia has been capturing migrants that cross the US-Mexico border, mostly with the intention of contacting officials and asking for asylum. One member has been arrested for illegal guns.
Planet-roasters's distraction campaign: focus on who started Extinction Rebellion instead of on the danger of global heating.
The cogent response is, "Why so concerned about who it is that reminds you that your house is on fire? Have some sense and put it out!"
Gilets jaunes in Paris ask, why a million euros for repairing a cathedral while the poor cannot get by?
I think that preserving the great works of the past is important. But there is enough money for both, if only governments tax the rich enough.
A comedian is set to win Ukraine's presidential election, based on a campaign as vague as Obama's "hope" and "change". He might be pledged to obey a billionaire.
Washington's farewell address warned of the danger of foreign meddling in US politics, and of the consequent danger of politicians that accept foreign meddling if it helps them win.
The article errs in saying that the cheater won the 2016 election. It was stolen by Republican voter-suppression.
What it was like in the Extinction Rebellion protests in London.
The article's title is misleading: the protest was nothing like a battle, and that's a very good thing. If they had tried to battle the cops, who at other times are thugs, they would have lost. Thoughtfully and admirably, they did not do this.
The repressive former pope, with support from right-wing extremists, is campaigning to undermined Pope Francis.
Teacher Lauren Miranda was fired because school officials think that having a private sex life makes one a bad "role model".
I think asexuality is the bad role model — like "abstinence-only" non-sex non-education.
Sex therapists say that the taboo on discussion related to sex is as strong as it was in the 1980s. People are held back in their relationships by ignorance of their own bodies and feelings, as well as their lovers'.
Nearly 100,000 Pentagon Whistleblower Complaints Have Been Silenced (concealed from the public).
Algerians Take to the Streets over President's Plan to Seek Fifth Term.
Algeria is rather repressive; protesting like that is not an easy choice.
A Green New Deal Is Fiscally Responsible. Climate Inaction Is Not.
"Who are the true realists? Those backing the Green New Deal, or those backing ineffective half measures?"
In Japan, the anti-vaxx cult includes an actual religious cult which seems to resemble Christian "science".
NAFTA contains a system that quietly eliminates safety regulations including for food safety.
Australia's greenhouse gas reduction fund will be used to pay for a fossil fuel plant, which was going to be built privately anyway.
The Australian government does not really want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is run by planet-roasters.
Some Britons are rejecting fast fashion and buying clothes to keep, trade, and occasionally modify.
The story idiotically says that this is a "new way to consume clothing", when the whole point is to treat clothes as durable goods instead of consuming them.
"Collapse of Venezuela’s healthcare system could fuel spread of malaria and other diseases across region."
The article does not mention that Venezuela before Chávez did not offer medical care for the non-wealthy. The doctors served the middle and upper classes, those who could pay, and did not try to serve the poor. Chávez set up a medical system for all, which still exists but is not working very well.
I see no reason to think that Guaidó would care about the poor enough to make that system function. He might just as likely abolish it.
Many apps send "sensitive" data to Facebook, including data women enter in tracking their periods.
For privacy's sake, store your sensitive data on your own computer. Don't accept vague, cloudy stories about where your data is.
Google is secretly buying land and building buildings around the US, and getting special tax breaks for them.
An economist presents estimates arguing that the Green New Deal is feasible.
"Antisemites use the language of anti-Zionism. The two are distinct."
The article distinguishes between various forms of opposition to Zionism, saying that some of them include antisemitism, while others are not.
Based on this, one can see how the IHRA definition of antisemitism draws the line at the wrong place in that area.
I am not an anti-Zionist myself. I continue to wish for the outcome Uri Avnery wished for: two states, in a peaceful relationship. However, the time for Israelis to permit that is running out.
Some report that antisemitism in France now has two sources: neo-Nazis and Islamist extremists.
The human brain changes, even in shape, as the human learns and adapts. Therefore, when society treats people differently based on gender, that will bring about brain differences that correlate with gender.
As a result, we cannot tell from the examination we know how to do whether there is any innate gender effect on human brains. If there is any, it could be dwarfed by the differences due to differing life experiences.
Israeli colonists in part of Palestine's West Bank have threatened to deny work to Palestinians that cooperate with some Israeli human rights organizations.
These organizations act as witnesses for when some of those colonists commit crimes against Palestinians.
The rate of such crimes has been increasing for years.
Natural history museums hold specimens with DNA of species we are driving to extinction, but the museums are endangered too.
I don't expect hungry mobs to break in to museums to eat the specimens — nobody would think they are edible — but in 50 years they may be considered a luxury that society cannot afford.
China is deploying robot cops with face recognition systems. The article does not mention "social credit", but it is clear that these robots are tied into the system and that their decision to label you as a "suspect" can depend on whatever the Chinese state wants it to depend on.
The most dangerous aspect of them is that they can (and surely will) report on everyone they see. I predict that any "equilibrium" between security and privacy that thugs may choose will give privacy short shrift.
Australia's automated system to claw money back from welfare recipients has brought in only a little more than it cost.
Right-wingers won't mind, though, because they are determined to serve the principle that poor people should get as little help as possible, and never, ever allowed one dollar more than they can rigorously justify. Any excess money they keep would deprive deserving tycoons.
A North Carolina Republican candidate for Congress has yielded to the demand for a new election, since he can no longer hope that a court will overlook the ballot-tampering that has been tied to his campaign.
Extinction Rebellion organizers proclaim success in making global heating a focus of social discussion.
Fish farm interests in Iceland are pushing for an ecologically dangerous expansion, and intimidating scientists into silence.
Many millennials are having pets instead of babies.
If that helps you avoid children, it is a good idea, but what's the sense of paying someone else to keep company with your dog instead of you? It's like paying someone else to spend time with your friends for you: it defeats the purpose of friendship, whether that be with a human or with a dog.
It is absurd to pamper your dog expensively; that obsession makes for stress and spoils the fun. A dog will not live as long as a human, and a dog's death is not the same loss as a human's death.
Right-wing liars eagerly spread falsehoods about the Notre Dame fire.
Tunisia Holds UN Libya Arms Trafficking Expert in Jail.
The fear is that the government has been caught sending arms to Libya and will not let him talk.
The bully's henchman gave an order to keep asylum-seekers in prison while their cases are heard, perhaps for years.
"Zero tolerance" gives UK schools lots of excuses to put children in isolation. That causes them psychological harm.
Gwenn Seemel's art was censored from an exhibit because it cursed at the bully.
She managed to get the art reinstalled. May we have a similar victory over the bully, and put him in prison where he belongs.
The US and EU are starting again to negotiate a business-supremacy treaty. One of the specific goals is to require each to trust implicitly the other's safety inspections.
With the US pressing constantly to undermine its own inspection of meat, the EU should not trust the US to do that job right.
Trump Claimed He Knew about Damaging Clinton Emails in Advance.
Uber and Lyft Drivers Say Apps Are Short-Changing Wages While Raising Fares.
Greta Thunberg exhorts MEPs to carry out their mission and protect Europe from global heating disaster.
How Sanders intends to tackle the problem.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to override the killer's veto of the resolution to end US support to Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The London thug department has been surprisingly restrained in responding to Extinction Rebellion's firmly nonviolent stance.
New York City will require most buildings to upgrade their energy efficiency by 40% unless they use renewable energy.
The Mueller report did not find proof that the bully conspired with Russia, but did find plenty of collusion between them.
It presents many instances on which the bully did things that might be criminal. Congress can investigate them.
It seems that the bully tried to commit various crimes and was thwarted by staff who refused to carry them out.
The bully's henchmen acquiesced in Russia’s interference, while he himself sought the Kremlin’s approval for multimillion-dollar property deal in Moscow.
This shows how much the cheater has damaged America's moral standards.
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are protesting in Khartoum, demanding an end to military rule.
70% of Zimbabwe's population was starving due to drought. Then Cyclone Idai destroyed most of the remaining crops.
Long droughts and big rains are both typical effects of global heating. If millions of people flee Zimbabwe for the wealthier countries that have some food, it will be partly our fault that they can't survive at home.
School shootings affect a tiny fraction of the students in US schools, but the preparations for dealing with the possibility subject every student to psychological trauma.
This article doesn't even count the school-to-prison pipeline in the harm.
US citizens: call on Speaker Pelosi to lead the change Democratic voters want to see.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Sale of dinosaur fossils to non-scientists is causing science to lose out. Paleontologists have asked for a ban on selling them to collectors.
President Xi's indoctrination app for Chinese people borrows the techniques of commercial social networks to pressure them to immerse themselves for long periods in his propaganda. The aim is to produce a nation of Xip.
The Democrat-Reporter, an Alabama newspaper, published an editorial calling for reviving the KKK, and was rebuked. Now it has a new editor: a black woman, Elecia Dexter.
The article says it is not clear whether the old owner sold the newspaper (To Ms Dexter? To someone else?), or hired her. I think it is an interesting question.
The danger of Facebook is becoming one of its useds. The principal danger of Instagram, by contrast, is becoming an influenced.
Aside from that, it accumulates personal data about everyone that posts there. Does it get personal data about people that only look at postings? I don't know, but I suspect so.
Paid Family Leave Is an Investment in Public Health, Not a Handout.
Republicans are interested in children only when it comes to forcing women to have them. Once the children lose utility for attacking women's rights, Republicans no longer support protecting them.
I take the opposite stand. I want to discourage the making of children, so that the population stops rising and starts decreasing. However, I think that those who do get born should get public help to have a good life.
A decade after the financial crisis, many countries continue the "emergency" crash-recovery policies for expanding the money supply. What will they do now if there is a recession?
Vox lawyers got Youtube to take down criticisms of a video published by Vox, and threaten the critics with punishment, too.
The videos were almost surely fair use, but Youtube decided against the critics anyway. This shows how Youtube's general submission to the copyright industry constricts people's rights.
Florida prisons swindled prisoners by selling them MP3 players and copies of songs, then confiscating them all because it found a more profitable deal. The prisoners may sue.
It is wise to save a backup copy.
The genetic modification made to two human fetuses in China could provide more benefit than just resistance to HIV. That genetic change is believed to raise intelligence, and improve recovery from strokes.
Although the development of this treatment is risky, someday giving everyone these benefits would be a big step forward for humanity. If we allow parents to cause their children a small risk by denying them brain-protecting injections of Vitamin K, a denial which gives the children no possible benefit, why stop parents from giving them a possibly risky treatment that offers the potential of significant benefits?
China is forcibly collecting DNA samples from large numbers of Uighurs. China likes to say that this repression constitutes "fighting crime".
China describes its prison camps for a million Uighurs as part of the "war on terror".
Think of it as the Chinese Guantanamo, 10,000 times as big.
US thugs have shown a tendency to spontaneously repress progressives and support neo-Nazis. We need to limit their power to collect DNA samples (and do other things).
The millions of fraudulent comments opposing network neutrality regulation, that the FCC received, have been traced to the company CQ Roll Call based on detailed data about the filing of those comments.
The bully has invented a new excuse to stop funding Planned Parenthood for providing medical services other than abortion.
US citizens: call on the Social Security Administration to stop pushing policies that undermine Social Security.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Become a Grassroots Co-Sponsor of Medicare for All.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your state to join the National Popular Vote Compact.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Sanders opposes US intervention to overthrow Maduro.
(satire) … members of the Chicago Police Department on Friday credited their own extensive experience falsifying evidence with helping them solve the case of actor Jussie Smollett’s staged attack.
Alexandria Villaseñor, age 13, has become a leader by example in the US climate defense movement.
There are plausible accusations that the Italian League party, which preaches hatred, got secret funding from Russia.
'We Refuse to Create Technology for Warfare and Oppression': Microsoft Workers Demand Company End Army Contract (for augmented-reality systems for firing weapons).
Their position does not seem coherent to me. I am not a pacifist — I don't believe that fighting is inherently wrong. I don't see that it is worse to fire a weapon this way than to fire it with older technology.
One might worry that this would encourage soldiers to dehumanise those they fire at. However, as we know from the Collateral Murder video, US soldiers can dehumanise "enemy" civilians even with existing technology. Would these headsets exacerbate that? There is no way to know.
Convincing one company — or one country — not to make a certain kind of weapon will not for long prevent it from being adopted and eventually considered normal. It could perhaps lead to an arms control treaty which would prevent the use of that kind of weapon. That is what they need to aim for.
Meanwhile, Microsoft does wrong to all its users, every day, with proprietary software, surveillance, DRM and back doors. This is not limited to battlefields; it happens every day all around the world.
These wrongs are nowhere near as bad as killing people. But they are bad enough that we should think of Microsoft's existence as basically a bad thing.
Finland proposes an Arctic railroad whose construction would scar Lapland. If it is built, the trains would make the Sami's reindeer herding too dangerous to continue.
Even worse, the railroad is supposed to be used to extract undersea oil and gas. New fossil fuel facilities must not be allowed.
Two sisters from Salafi Arabia planned to flee to Australia, but officials stopped them from travelling on from Hong Kong. They are now trapped there and fear being forcibly sent back.
Punishing former Muslims who have converted is one of the standard vicious aspects of Islamic law.
(satire) The Russian agent in the White House makes political appointees play Russian roulette.
Schultz is trying to buy the presidency while Starbucks dodges US taxes.
Institutional racism is ingrained in British society and government in many different ways, but they all end up hurting the same disprivileged groups.
The bully's wall would destroy a farm family's cemetery that was started 200 years ago and is still being used.
The US refuses to acknowledge all the civilian casualties of its air bombardments in the war against PISSI.
Whether it was feasible to avoid these casualties, I don't know. But there is no justification for trying to cover them up.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warns that the rapid loss of biodiversity is a "severe threat" to the human food supply.
This is what you'd expect to happen in the last stages of overpopulation.
The US justice department shows surprisingly little interest in boasting about preventing a planned right-wing terrorist attack.
One must suspect that this is because the would-be terrorist has clearly part of the bullshitter's base.
High Risk (to babies): Anti-Vaxxers in the Delivery Ward.
It is easy for mothers to disbelieve in the danger of preventable rare diseases that they have never heard of, nor heard of anyone who suffered from them. But their denial of these treatments for their children, which puts them in grave though unlikely danger, is because fake news (starting with the fraudulent claim that a vaccine caused autism) has taught them to judge all preventive treatments irrationally.
Please do not spread the anti-vaxx irrationality.
Use of license-plate cameras to track everyone is dangerous to all motorists. When the list of "stolen cars" has an error, it has the potential to be fatal.
At least when the car is recorded as "stolen" there is a legitimate reason to want to track it. For most cars, there is no justification even for that.
Varoufakis: Journalists who fail to oppose Assange’s extradition to the US could be next on the hit list of a president who considers them the 'enemy of the people.'
It looks like North Korea is starting to make nuclear bomb fuel again.
As expected, the aggressor criminal vetoed the congressional resolution to stop US participation in the war in Yemen.
A resolution under the War Powers Act should not be subject to veto, because it is the means for Congress to decline to approve something that requires congressional authorization: namely, war.
It was useful to get Republicans to join in opposing that policy. If they are willing to put it in a law that the aggressor won't want to veto — for instance, funding for the military -- he might have to eat it.
Public schools in New York State are so underfunded that they have to beg parents to donate supplies. But only wealthy parents can afford to do this.
We must make the rich pay a lot more taxes.
The saboteur-in-chief will try to use executive orders to force construction of various fossil fuel pipelines and facilities.
Whatever You Think of Julian Assange, His Extradition to the US Must Be Opposed.
Assange did "make himself available" to be questioned about the Swedish charges — questioned inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
Assange and Ecuador also agreed to his extradition to Sweden provided Sweden agreed not to send him to the US.
This was all Sweden needed to pursue those charges.
However, once the prosecutors were in a position to do what they had demanded to do, they stalled and then lost interest.
I concluded that the prosecutors had only feigned interest in those charges, as an excuse for serving the US.
I do not know whether the two women were honest in making the accusations, so I will not say anything about that question. However, I have read that the acts they accused Assange of would not constitute rape as defined in the US.
Some candidates that pledged to accept no money from corporate PACs, then interpreted that in a literal sense which lets them take money from PACs funded largely by corporations.
Salvini's targets for demonization include the pope (unacceptably benevolent to the poor and to immigrants) as well as poor immigrants.
Misleading with statistics: focusing on just federal income taxes, right-wingers paint a progressive picture of US taxation. They omit the regressive parts of the tax system.
Tired, Hungry And Shamed: Pupil Poverty "Stops Learning". UK teachers report that this is increasing. Some students report they have had no food for two days, because their parents can't buy any.
The teachers can't do anything directly about the poverty; that requires electing a Labour government. But they may be able to do something about the shame. Being victimized by powerful greedy bastards is no reason to feel shame -- only anger.
I am not a teacher, so I am not an expert on what would work. Perhaps it would be useful to have students work in teams, each of which includes some destitute students as well as some who are better off.
I expect that something similar happens in the US. Can anyone send me an article from 2017, 2018 or 2019 about the effects of student poverty in the US?
Omar Barghouti talks about being banned from the US for his political stance: defending human rights for Palestinians through peaceful means.
Facebook Allowed Violent Posts by Man Charged with Ilhan Omar Death Threat.
House Subpoenas Deutsche Bank for Trump-Related Financial Documents.
Bahrain has imprisoned 139 Shi'ites accused of trying to start a rebellion.
I have no reason to think the charges are true, but I can't be sure they care false either. What I can say is that if Bahrain had not wanted a rebellion, it should have respected the right to peaceful protest.
Even after 10 states have legalized possession of marijuana, 6% of the arrests in the US are still for possession of marijuana.
"British, West German and French intelligence agencies sought advice from South America’s bloody 1970s dictatorships on how to combat leftwing 'subversion'." Through assassination, that is.
Egyptians dare to protest against al-Sisi's efforts to be president for life.
Everyone: call on Florida legislators to respect amendment 4 and let ex-cons vote.
US citizens: call on businesses not to hire, or put on the board, anyone involved in the bully's family separation policy.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to hold a climate debate in the 2020 presidential campaign.
Under US pressure, Mexico has deported hundreds of thousands of refugees to Central America, sometimes without giving them the chance to apply for asylum.
The article reports on one who was murdered in 2017, a few months after being sent back to face death threats.
37 former European foreign ministers call for Europe to reject the bully's policy and continue supporting a real state for Palestine.
Immigration and the Shock Doctrine.
The crime lord told an official to break the law, saying he'd pardon the official if necessary.
Who Will Pay to Clean Up Duke Energy's Coal Ash Pits?
The Politics Behind Donald Trump’s Empty Threats on Mexico Border.
Both his words and his actions are meant to stir up his base, not to achieve anything else.
The UK is suspiciously persecuting married couples that include a citizen and an immigrant.
Some sanitation workers are tracked all the time while on the job. The agency wanted to harass them if they ever stopped moving for 20 minutes.
EPIC is trying to restrain the TSA from using facial recognition on air travellers without getting public comment and following other legal requirements.
The plan to make firefighters act as thugs as well is extremely misguided.
Customers are avoiding Stop and Shop stores now that the workers are on strike.
I often shop there, but not now; I am respecting the picket line.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the harassment and surveillance of journalists at the US southern border.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Some Swedish feminists want to ban sex robots lest they influence men to want subservient females. That would be a tyrannical thought-control regime.
I don't have a high opinion of hypothetical sex robots designed for subservience. I do not want my lovers/sweethearts to be subservient; if a robot is less than a person, it would hardly be a substitute for a lover that is a person.
However, I can see one good use for a sex robot: to teach men how to be good lovers and companions. This would mean programming the robot for teaching, rather than for subservience. It could help inexperienced men overcome their fear of making a horrible mistake and being rejected for it, and learn to be considerate and pleasing to a lover; also learn how to pick up on what a lover does or doesn't feel and want.
After this education, they could have good relationships with human women.
Feinstein, a plutocratist Democrat from California, told teenage climate protesters, "You didn't vote for me (because you're under voting age)."
If this were fencing, Feinstein would have scored a point. A point of no real importance compared to the vital issue at stake.
Unfortunately, it is not fencing. It is campaigning for the survival of civilization.
The US says the details of Ammar al-Baluchi's torture are too secret to give to his defense lawyers, but did provide them for the film Zero Dark Thirty.
The US owes an apology and compensation to everyone that was tortured. It is required for our national honor.
India's overpopulation has reached the point where there is a conflict between indigenous peoples (generally called "tribals" there) and wildlife refuges.
The human species is in no danger of extinction; some species living in those forests surely are. In principle, therefore, preventing extinction of species should take precedence.
Whether the humans and the wildlife can coexist in these forests, I don't know. That seems to be possible in some places. However, when human populations grow, they tend to wipe out some other forms of life and start changing the overall ecology — just as our ancestors did.
A mob of Israeli colonists, with soldiers, rampaged in the center of Hebron, shouting "death to Arabs!" and throwing rocks (but they did no damage).
Real anti-semitism has spread widely in France.
This is not, however, an excuse for conflating support for Palestinian's rights or opposition to the state racism of Israeli law with anti-semitism.
Belgium erected a statue of a Congolese black slave looking up at his enslaver, King Leopold. 15 years ago, hackers cut off the slave's hand — not as puerile vandalism, but to illustrate the punishment that Leopold inflicted on many of the Congolese that he didn't kill.
The corruptor in chief asked Acting Attorney General Whitaker to hamstring the investigation into his hush money payments by putting someone in charge of it who would undermine it. Whitaker declined to do as requested, but I think that merely asking for it was a crime on the corruptor's part.
But I don't think that will daunt him — he will simply dare Congress to impeach him.
I think this is just a step in a plan to eliminate rule of law in the US. It's not just that he would like to be an autocrat (though I suppose he does). I think he wants the US to eliminate the idea that people (other than him) have rights or political power.
Will Senate Republicans defend him no matter what the crime, no matter how solid the proof? Could he blatantly shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it, as he claimed in 2016?
In 2016, US unions made the mistake of supporting the plutocratist, Clinton, instead of the candidate who defends non-wealthy Americans, Sanders.
They should not make this mistake again.
Artists are campaigning against Cuba's censorship of the arts.
US offers of "humanitarian aid" for Venezuela, even if they are not a mask for military intervention, are duplicitous. The aid offered would hardly come near making up for the increased shortage of food and medicine that new US economic sanctions will cause.
They also won't be enough to fill the shortages caused by Maduro's bad policies.
To treat the offer just like an armed attack is neither right nor good tactics. Venezuela could use the aid, and I expect the government can arrange to make sure it does not contain weapons.
The US government made a fake university to lure unauthorized immigrants into applying.
Then US persecutors pretended that the students knew it was fake and signed up only as a fraud — but that is clearly false in many cases, perhaps all.
The UK plans to ban "harmful" material on the internet, including disinformation.
UK sites would be forced to delete the material; other sites would be blocked by the Great Firewall of Britain if they did not.
It isn't surprising to see Singapore set up a "ministry of truth" for the internet. Singapore is repressive in many ways. But it may shock people to see the UK proposing something similar.
When the UK censors, it goes to extremes.
Wisconsin gave Foxconn billions of dollars to build a factory and it has not even built the factory.
Wisconsin's deal to subsidize a Foxconn factory was fundamentally wrong, regardless of specifics. To subsidize the rich so they will move jobs to your locality from some other localities adds up to dooH niboR.
I suppose many "moderate" politicians really believe that this policy serves the public interest. That way, they can go along with dooH niboR and not feel ashamed. But today's Republicans are so dishonest and corrupt that they don't need to believe that. For them, enriching the rich is the goal. They don't mind if the state gets cheated of the supposed public interest, as long as the rich get richer.
Many US jails are putting an end to prisoners' visits from relatives.
They replace this with a video call service that gouges the relatives and which gives the jail a kickback.
Anything that reduces prisoners' contact with relatives tends to result in increased recidivism. Surely this will, too. For the city or state that runs the jail, it's a false economy.
Refuting the position that college should be expensive because graduates have bigger incomes.
There is another counterargument that this article misses: if our tax system were progressive, those who gain income from a college degree would pay more to support government services. Taxing the rich more would achieve the same goal as charging heavily for college.
To help working people escape poverty, the US needs to adopt a higher minimum wage, and facilitate unionization.
But it needs to work on the other side of inequality — to stop wealthy people's incomes from growing so fast and so much.
Reportedly China randomly searches people's phones in Xinjiang and imprisons people for having the Twitter or Facebook app.
After the baby boom generation, the developed world has been pushing people out of the middle class and into low income.
"Any woman professional is familiar with a nagging doubt: Am I being taken seriously?" Socially instilled bias encourages people to doubt that women really know their fields.
There are indeed some people who pretend to more expertise than they really have. I would hazard a guess that the fraction of men that do this is bigger than the fraction of women, because bluffing is considered "manly". But that is independent of the social bias phenomenon that the article describes.
Chicago adopted the goal of migrating completely to renewable energy by 2035.
This is surely a step forward, but how big a step? I wonder about these questions:
In any case, setting a target for changes is often a substitute for policies that bring about those changes. Few of today's politicians will be in office in 2030, when the target is just 5 years away. It will be easy to neglect to take steps that could actually reach the target, and keep neglecting them until it is unfeasible to reach the target at all.
Chicago is Tracking Kids With GPS Monitors That Can Call and Record Them Without Consent.
If the suspect could refuse to accept a call, and if the device could not listen unless perse has accepted a call, that might make the device acceptable in this situation (as a bail condition).
Some of users' commands to the Alexa service are recorded for Amazon staff to listen to.
Saying that some computing activity is "in the cloud" is a soothing way of saying "We won't tell you which computers it's done in, or even in which country." The only cloud involved is in the minds of people who accept the vague answer. Please join me in absolutely refusing to use that term.
Google and Apple do similar things.
Glenn Greenwald: The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedoms.
The Assange Prosecution Threatens Modern Journalism.
Here is an interview with Glenn Greenwald which NPR unexplainedly lost.
President Clinton's welfare "reform" law has done what progressives predicted at the time: it has greatly increased extreme poverty.
You can't reduce dependence for people who can barely survive by yanking away their support. That's like trying to reduce dependence on wheelchairs by confiscating wheelchairs.
A white man is accused of burning down three churches in Louisiana that were used by mostly black congregations.
The owners of a corporation through which they enslaved workers from Lithuania have been ordered to compensate those workers personally.
That's good, but I hope that anyone doing such things nowadays would be convicted of a crime.
See the enslaved workers page.
Texas Woman Jailed for Alleged Theft of $1 — And Being Unable to Post $12,000 Bail.
The US denied entry to Palestinian leader Omar Barghouti, cofounder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
"It's an immigration matter" conveys zero information — denying someone entry is always an "immigration matter". So that response was a non-answer pretending to be something more.
I do not advocate the BDS movement — rather, I support a boycott of Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory, which was founded by Gush Shalom.
However, it is despicable for the US to exclude advocates of a nonviolent political cause. Pretending that's not what's happening makes it a little more despicable.
The bully's prohibition on transgender persons in the military has brought back the damaging "don't ask, don't tell" policy that was formerly applied to homosexuals.
The French government ordered the Internet Archive to take down the Project Gutenberg archive, Grateful Dead recordings and Prelinger Archive, calling them "terrorism".
It is vitally important to reject such demands, not seek ways to satisfy them. Compromising, trying to satisfy them, strengthens the movement for global censorship. The proper response is, "Censor and be damned!" If the French government blocks access to the Internet Archive, it will show the citizens of France how repressive its policies are — which is exactly what they need to know.
Republicans in Florida are pushing the teaching of Christianity in public schools, and state funding of unaccountable private schools.
(satire) Pity the poor CEO who doesn't get to share in the benefits of an open-plan office.
(satire) Explaining that he would present the investigation’s findings in a format that offered the most richly detailed portrayal of its full meaning, Attorney General William Barr reportedly agreed Friday to release a nonverbal, abstract visual representation of the Mueller report.
The US has approved experiments using MDMA for psychotherapy.
Extinction Rebellion protesters in the US are willing to be beaten up by uniformed thugs.
The lies used to demonize Ilhan Omar are partly intended to cover up what she really says.
Yemenis run thousands of small grocery stores in New York City.
They have decided to stop selling the New York Post because of its nasty lies about Ilhan Omar.
Amnesty International calls on Canada not to deny asylum to refugees who tried asking for asylum in the US.
60 of the Fortune 500 companies paid no US income tax in 2018.
Some large investment funds now call on Congress to adopt a Green New Deal.
The predatory medical insurance companies of the US are lobbying extremely hard to prevent Medicare for All, which would replace them with something less greedy.
Ralph Nader: the instability of the Boeing 737 Max 8 is due to a design process that cut costs at the expense of safety, then tried to patch that with unexplained software features. The FAA let Boeing get away with a fundamentally dangerous approach.
Any airplane can stall. When it stalls, the pilot recovers by pushing the nose down. In the US, you can't get a pilot's license without learning to do this. As a pilot, you practice causing stalls and recovering from them.
US state legislators introduced over 10,000 bills (over two years, I think) whose text was copied from model legislation, most of which was written by business lobbyists.
Moroccan women working picking strawberries in Spain are forced to live in unsafe conditions, and suffer rape as well.
When they complain to the thugs, the thugs ignore them, and their employer/abusers kick them out, leaving them destitute. But the worst thing is the cruelty of their parents and husbands.
With all the money that the strawberries bring in, Spain can afford to deploy inspectors to make sure these workers have safe working conditions.
An odd couple that campaign to end the death penalty:
one that was exonerated from death row, and one that realized it was wrong to execute her mother's murderer.
Anti-vax idiocy is becoming deadly, in the US, Europe, and Africa.
But the biggest danger is in Africa.
You can use anti-vax as a diagnostic for people that are inclined to believe bullshit. That won't save their lives, but at least it will save you from the influence of other conspiracy theories.
Why convicts should be allowed to vote.
For reasons stated in the article, I think they should vote in their home districts, not in the town where the prison is located.
(satire ) "We denounce Julian Assange in the strongest possible terms for his negligence in publicly demonstrating the kinds of work journalists could actually be doing to investigate government malfeasance…"
A backlash against cashless stores is spreading across the US.
We should support this. However, the article doesn't state the most important reason to do so. It focuses on people who find it difficult to pay other than with cash, and doesn't mention the reason why you should refuse to do it even if you can do it.
Tesla pressured a clinic to cover up work injuries, cheating the injured workers.
For Australia to stop breeding hate, it must stop treating refugees as monsters.
Flanders Stream So Polluted "Water Could Be Used as Pesticide."
Student climate strikers shut down one of London's main streets.
The bully's Immigration Moves Are Straight from the Dictator's Playbook.
Extinction Rebellion Calls on Protesters to Block London Streets.
The bully demonstrated his contempt for immigrants by proposing to release them all in sanctuary cities, presuming the inhabitants would view them with contempt and resentment like his.
Unfortunately, some of the inhabitants would — perhaps the same ones that want to repress the homeless.
A proposed Massachusetts law would limit the collection and use of personal information.
The bill is weak because businesses could effectively punch holes in it by saying, "If you don't agree to all if this, we will simply close your account."
I don't think the bill covers deduced information, such as the conclusion that you are pregnant, or gay, or disabled, based on tracking your interests. But I can't be sure about that.
In addition, it covers only disclosure to other businesses, not disclosure to the forces of potential repression. It would not make me feel safe with collection of data about me. I want to be free to do things anonymously.
One detail: it says the company must give you a chance to refuse distribution of data about you to other companies. But if it distributes data to 3 other companies, does it have to let you say yes or no to each other company?
Suppose one company is Facebook, one is Google, and one is your insurance company. You need to permit giving the data to your insurance company. If the options offered to you are yes-yes-yes and no-no-no, you can't approve that without also approving distribution to Facebook and Google too.
Sudan's army replaced the first head of the military government with another general, who is not linked with Bashir's crimes.
That article says the Sudanese seem to think the new general is better. However, this article says that protesters demand a more credible change.
Protests against military government in Sudan have brought together the Christian minority with the Muslim protesters.
"Undermining judges, scientists and journalists is designed to create societies where the powerful can do what they like."
Bahrain is trying to punish exiled human rights defender Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei by hurting his relatives that still live in Bahrain.
Switzerland held a referendum on a change in tax law. A court ruled the referendum was invalid because the voters were not properly informed about the law.
Switzerland's system gives direct democracy a major role. It holds referendum votes several times a year. I think this is admirable. That courts ensure the honesty of the referendum system makes it even better.
US citizens: call on airlines to stop installing cameras and microphones that can observe passengers in their seats.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support Medicare for All.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject nominees that support family separation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to reduce the military budget.
The labor history of West Virginia suggests that progressive candidates can win there, if we can defeat cheating plutocratists.
The US government gave over 1400 private organizations access to a list of names of people labeled as "terrorist suspects" — and lied about this for years.
The US government places names on such lists arbitrarily, and people can only guess (based on experiences of harassment) that they might be on such a list.
"Real" school lockdowns are far more common than shootings in schools. They are done as a "precaution" when it appears there is some reason why a shooting might (but almost certainly won't) occur soon.
This does psychological harm to lots of children. Surely hundreds of times as many, or thousands of times, as the number who witness a shooting. The harm is less than being hit by a bullet, but it is not trivial.
Do these lockdowns cause more harm than they prevent? I don't know enough to suggest an answer, but the question is important.
Fighting racism with the hacker spirit: a coloring book entitled "Some of my best friends are colored."
Current plutocratist propaganda equates the real emergency of global heating with the bullshitter's fake emergency, as a form of false equivalence.
Plutocratists are attacking Rep. Ocasio-Cortez with a big sign in Times Square that starts by pretending NYC lost something when Amazon walked away, and then blames her for achieving this.
To pay any company to set up shop in your city is a sucker's deal, but if the company is Amazon you're aiding all sorts of nasty practices.
Resisting Trump Is Not Enough: 20,000 Activists Ask Democratic Candidates Where They Stand on Bold Agenda.
The agenda is long, but it looks like I agree pretty much with all 10 points.
The Environment Pillaging Agency fabricated an "emergency" to excuse use of a banned bee-killing pesticide in violation of its rules.
Various Louisiana agencies informally cooperate to keep prisoners in prison illegally "by mistake" after their sentences end.
US media present the economic deterioration of Venezuela but never mention the great advances Chávez made previously in reducing poverty and improving medical care.
Both of these changes have really happened, and neither one makes the other insignificant. Maduro has damaged Venezuela's economy even more than he has damaged Venezuela's democracy and constitution. The achievements of Chávez do not excuse Maduro.
But we should hesitate to see a solution in Guaidó, who we must suspect wishes to erase Chávez's advances along with Maduro's damage.
China is disappearing prominent Uighur cultural figures. Comedian Adil Mijit has not been heard of for months, and his relatives suppose he is in prison.
Several well-known musicians have been disappeared as well.
China's publication of a photo of one musician demonstrates the extent of the injustice. Evidently the musician's family are not allowed to visit him in prison. And they were not allowed to see his trial, if he even had one.
This article claims that only middle-aged people in Israel and Palestine still think about the possibility of a Palestinian state.
It argues that the only avenue for justice is to make one state which offers freedom and equality to all its inhabitants.
(satire) [PISSI] leaders … have added a few violent white supremacists to the group …
Research suggests Europe could grow enough food using little fertilizer and pesticides, if people ate less meat (a change which would be healthier for the people).
George Monbiot: strategy advice for the climate strikers, so they can win the battle that they cannot afford to lose.
For the most part, I think the advice is wise. I am not convinced however, that advice about farming is valid. It might be, but as far as I know it has not yet been scientifically established.
I wish Monbiot would not refer to teenagers as "children". Some of the youngest climate strikers are children on the verge of adolescence, but most of them are adolescents. Greta Thunberg is no child! She is 16 years old.
"My grandfather was a Nazi. I've seen why we need the EU."
I agree that we need a European Union — but we cannot tolerate one that is plutocratist and subjects Europe to the power of the rich.
Denver threatened immigrant teachers with deportation if they join strikes. So do other parts of the US.
The 11-year-old student in Florida was, according to the school, not arrested for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; rather, for getting upset when attacked and punished for refusing.
That detail is of no importance. It is wrong, it is crazy, to arrest children for getting upset in school. We must take the thugs out of the schools!
Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the US has more hate groups now than ever since it began counting them. I believe that was in 2001.
The North Korean ambassador to Italy defected. His daughter, who was studying in a school in Italy, was reportedly forcibly sent back to North Korea, though it is not clear from where.
US citizens: call on the EPA to preserve clean water standards.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: drop charges against the protesters that symbolically "damaged" nuclear missiles.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the DCCC to drop its blacklist policy, that aims to make progressive primary challenges unfeasible.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The site speakout.tech invites employees to blow the whistle on unethical technical systems.
This could be great if it covered all the major kinds of unethical activity, including distributing nonfree software to users and collecting sensitive personal information including where people go, what they do, and who they talk with, and other forms of malicious functionalities.
However, I expect they limit themselves to much narrower categories of unethical technology.
Macron wants to prosecute opposition to Zionism, and condemnation of Israel because of its discriminatory laws, as "anti-semitism". That is a falsehood.
Anti-semitism is a form of bigotry and hatred. I condemn it because I condemn bigotry and hatred, and perhaps a little more strongly seeing as I am part of the group that its hate is directed at.
However, questioning the legitimacy of Israel's laws and policies is not anti-semitism. Confusing the two is the lie that the supporters of Israel's discrimination and its occupation policies have been pushing for years.
Governor Cuomo plans to make groups of activist volunteers register as professional lobbying organizations.
This would greatly hamper their activities, which I suppose is what Cuomo wants, he being a plutocratist Democrat.
One of the thugs that shot sleeping Willie McCoy had killed another unarmed black man a year before — and seems to have invented an excuse to justify it.
The bully's contempt for international rules has surely encouraged Russia and China to treat them with contempt in several recent examples.
Greta Thunberg told the EU that its greenhouse gas target for 2030 needs to be 80% reduction, not merely 45%.
If that is only meant to be enough to keep heating within 2C, it is still not sufficient. Local disasters are already happening world-wide and we have not even reached 1.5C yet.
China has trained Chinese people to be so sheeplike that even when they visit other countries and have the opportunity to learn the things that China censors, they don't bother.
This indicates how powerful internet censorship and surveillance can be. Nothing guarantees it will be limited to China.
Switzerland was going to test online voting, but leaks of code show glaring flaws in the design.
That is in addition to the inherent, unavoidable grave flaws of online voting.
Global heating is causing food shortages around the world, but this is not being reported much.
The president of Physicians for a National Health Program explains why we need true Medicare for All, a complete medical coverage that pays for all medical expenses, not tweaks to the existing system.
Facebook leads its useds into joining "private" medical patient support groups, but "private" is misleading since they aren't safe from being profiled based on this.
Forced "conversion therapy" seems to result often in mental illness.
This was not a scientific study, so it would be a mistake to attach significance to the frequency reported, but does suggest it is a significant effect.
Ilhan Omar is receiving death threats from people whose hatred has been stirred up by the bigot-in-chief.
The bullshitter has exposed the falsehood of some American myths that have been false for a long time.
Criticizing Rep. Barbara Lee's vote for a military budget that includes increases over the current bloated military budget.
The truly rich don't have to cheat to buy their children's way into an elite university. They treat it as a birthright.
I think that the deepening poverty that the US imposes on the non-rich is a more important problem than the decrease of their always-tiny chance of becoming rich. However, it seems plausible that the two are results of the same cause: plutocracy.
It was democracy, and the policies it established, that made a good college education available to non-rich young adults. Now it's plutocracy that fuels all the decisions that make it unavailable.
I don't think people need to earn merit to deserve a bearable life. Everyone deserves that.
Don't mistake caution for practicality. Medicare for All is the only practical path to controlling costs and covering everyone.
The UN Human Rights Committee added the right to clean, affordable water, and safety from climate damage, to its list of human rights.
I basically agree with this change, but we need to recognize that it is easier in principle to give people freedoms than to fill their material rights.
For instance, a government can respect freedom of speech by abolishing laws that infringe it. Giving people feasible access to clean water takes a lot of work, and that work may take years. It is shameful that the US has regressed in that department; I put it down to plutocracy.
As to climate damage, counteracting the effects of global heating will be totally hopeless in the long term. The only way civilization can protect itself from those effects is to prevent them.
US citizens: call on Congress to start the process of eliminating the electoral college.
The page gives the cheater a concession he does not deserve. He did not really win the election in the electoral college. Rather, Republicans stole the election in a few states.
Sanders will answer questions on Fox News to show Republicans how the bullshitter lied to them.
As President Do-dirty imposes repression on the Philippines, including imprisonment of officials and journalists, US aid to the military and thugs fuels the repression.
I think there are good reasons to support the Philippines in confronting Chinese maritime expansionism. China is more repressive than Do-dirty, and more likely to export repression. The kind of military support that helps resist China is mostly different from what is useful for repression. Perhaps it is possible to do the former and cut off the latter.
All the parties that may govern Israel want to annex parts of the West Bank and treat Palestinians as second-class citizens forever.
Uproar in Algeria as Ally of Former President Named New Leader.
The cheater has corrupted the Department of Justice so that it has adopted a very narrow definition of corruption, which allows many routes for other countries' government to effectively bribe the cheater and other US officials.
Who needs proof of past collusion between the cheater and Russia? We can see he wants to legalize future collusion.
Thoughtful advice for parents of teenagers that are in love, to help them be helpful instead of dogmatic or jealous.
Alas, the foolish fashion of using "them" to refer to a single person makes one sentence so ambiguous that I don't feel confident I know what meaning is intended.
Racist fascists have taken over soccer in Italy to the point where they intimidate even the most admired teams.
Alcoholic beverage companies are secretly recruiting Instagram influencers to show themselves drinking alcohol.
This is similar to the "product placement" in movies and TV that many kinds of companies pay for. In general I find it sleazy.
If you didn't let those shallow people influence you via Instagram. could Instagram continue to exist? Let's try it and see!
The bully has forced out Kirstjen Nielsen as head of the Department of Hatred and Suffering. It seems that she was unwilling to totally disregard federal law.
The many-decade project to eradicate polio is being thwarted by anarchy at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I suspect that the other zone where polio remains endemic, Nigeria, is related to Boko Haram.
Many young people are addicted to buying new cheap clothing that will fall apart quickly. It reminds me of addiction to various other harmful or wasteful things, such as sugar, Facebook, and Instagram.
Here's my idea: Add a substantial, dissuasive tax to each article of new clothing, perhaps between 10 and 50 pounds depending on the kind of item. However, the tax rate should start to decrease once a product is on the market longer than two months. By the time it is on the market for four months, this tax could decrease to zero.
We could also require clothing to be sold with a guarantee against falling apart inside of six months after sale.
If that doesn't do it, I'm sure there are ways to push harder. It is a question of political will.
The FSF is looking to hire a campaigns manager.
UK residents: write to your MP and to the Business Secretary to condemn the push for repression on sharing copies of e-books.
What you say is up to you, but if I were in the UK, I would say that I would choose to buy authorized copies if I could do so anonymously, without DRM, and without signing a contract. I buy printed books that way, and I'd buy e-books the same way, if they let me. However, today's commercially published ebooks generally carry all those oppressive characteristics, and even one of them is unacceptable. I'd suggest they read https://gnu.org/philosophy/ebooks.html.
I would say that sharing is good, and they should stop insulting sharers with the smear of "pirate".
I would also say that all else being equal I would like to support authors with money; but I suspect that most of the money goes to other parties, and I have no wish to donate to those others. Would they please set up a system for anonymous donations, of which at least 90% goes to whichever author we select?
Finally I would say that Pullman's prediction of the disappearance of all art is an exaggeration, obviously intended to encourage unjust laws, and they should put a sock in it.
Because of Pullman's antagonism towards sharing, I have never read any of his books. There are lots of other authors whose books are worth reading — why choose his? But if you feel you need to read some, borrow them from a friend.
US citizens: support the Menstrual Equity For All Act.
I support this bill, but at the same time I believe that most of the problems it tries to correct are symptoms of a much bigger problem: excessive income inequality.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tagging cactus plants with RFIDs demonstrates what is requiring for such technology to be acceptable.
Plants are not entitled to privacy regarding their movements. We humans are.
Arizona is considering a bill to collect DNA samples from people in many circumstances, including many kinds of jobs.
They already demand fingerprints from people in those jobs, which as far as I'm concerned is enough reason to refuse to take them. But the DNA requirement makes things worse — so if you are in Arizona, please phone the offices of your state legislators to oppose the bill.
Legal experts say we cannot count on courts to overrule the would-be dictator's phony "national emergency".
House Investigates 'White House Plan' to Share Nuclear Technology with [Salafi Arabia].
Who would claim to be so opposed to possible Iranian nuclear weapons as to propose to launch a war, while facilitating possible Salafi Arabian nuclear weapons? Only someone willing to endorse the most absurd lies could do that.
Oops.
Why Bernie Sanders' Radicalism Can Take Out Trump.
Media bias against female candidates takes the form of harping on them for minor flaws which may have no importance.
It turns out to be easy to spy on an army by talking to individual soldiers through Facebook, and even sabotage operations.
Adani is still trying to start a new coal mine in Australia, even though not the previously intended megamine, and still faces opposition. It is following a plan to silence opposition with threats.
(satire) "If America’s interests are threatened anywhere in the world, the U.S. retains the right to use every brutal means it has at its disposal, whether that’s using drone strikes or chemical weapons, or just carpet bombing hospitals."
The plutocratist Democrat that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez defeated has demonstrated why it was important to defeat him — by joining a lobbying company.
Before plutocratist congresscritters become lobbyists, they constitute the targets of lobbyists. If we convert them all into lobbyists, the lobbyists will become ineffective.
Virginia teachers went on strike to protest at the state capitol and defeated a bill to privatize public schools.
More info (written before the strike occurred).
The UK government intends to cancel the citizenship of PISSI-wife Shamima Begum, born in the UK, on the grounds that supposedly she could get Bangladeshi citizenship if she applied for it.
No matter what crimes a citizen has committed, exile is an unjust punishment. Moreover, the reckless approach intended here by the UK (and likewise by Australia in a similar case) is sure to result in making people stateless, some of the time. It is, in effect, a way of pretending to avoid that outcome while being systematically careless and thus assuring it will happen.
The saboteur has shut off the funds appropriated by Congress for the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, and shut them down.
Several decades ago, presidents used to decline to spend funds appropriated by Congress. This was normal. Then a law was passed (accepted by both Congress and the president of the day) saying that the president cannot do this.
What I wonder is, why did it take months for this to become news?
Suggestion: give asylum-seekers temporary work permits that last until the next hearing.
Hazem Hamouda was imprisoned without charges in Egypt for 400 days.
When he was ordered released from prison, thugs grabbed him and put him in a cell again. Then the authorities took his papers, and told them he couldn't leave without those papers.
Don't go to Egypt!
Revealed: Amazon Employees Are Left to Suffer After Workplace Injuries.
Google's alarm system, "Nest Secure", turns out to have contained a microphone all along — but only recently started listening.
The article also mentions two-factor authentication, which in and of itself could be a useful technique (though I've read that crackers can now defeat it), but has the flaw of requiring a mobile phone. My rule #2 for digital security is not to have a mobile phone.
Sanders is running for president again. I will vote for him again.
The US mainstream media are boosters for intervention in Venezuela.
Rojava has asked for an international border force to deter Turkey from attacking.
Chinese attack drones are almost as good as US drones, and much cheaper, so many countries are buying them.
A drone, used as a weapon of war, is not inherently morally worse than an artillery piece or a ground-attack plane that could do the same job. I would not criticize Nigeria for using drones in battle against Boko Haram or Iraq for using them against PISSI. (Turkey's tyrant started the fighting with the Kurds in order to get more votes, so he has no justification in that fighting no matter what weapons are used.)
What makes drones specially bad is their use for assassinations, away from battlefields.
An 11-year-old student was arrested in school for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
It is his constitutional right to refuse to recite that text. I would refuse to say the words "under god". But the biggest wrong here is the presence of a thug in the school, ready at any moment to arrest students for breaking rules and try to feed them into the school-to-prison pipeline.
As this example shows, even articulate, gifted students are in danger from that.
US citizens: call on movie companies to boycott Georgia for its law banning abortion.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: protect waiters from restaurants that steal their tips.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How a Failing Capitalist System Is Allowing Amazon to Cripple America.
I think the phrase "undermine and sicken" fits the situation better than "cripple".
I have never done business with Amazon, because it requires customers to identify themselves — and I would guess, nowadays, to run nonfree JavaScript code. But I won't use its online competitors, either, for the same reasons.
The demands for museums to "return" their exhibits are reaching the absurd. Gibraltar demands two Neanderthal skulls, age 50,000 years or more, on the grounds they were found in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar was part of the British empire, so placing the skulls in the British Museum was legitimate — and surely more useful to paleontology than keeping them in out-of-the-way Gibraltar.
I urge museums to stop arguing that laws forbid them from "returning" exhibits, and start building the case that there is no reason to do so.
New York City will prohibit discrimination against hair styles typically worn by particular racial groups.
"Britain could deradicalise Shamima Begum — with compassion."
Repression of marijuana use fails to discourage teenagers from using it.
Regardless of what harm marijuana might do, or not do, repression does not reduce it. So end the repression!
Refugees in Uganda are cutting down forests to make houses and to burn the wood.
This is a small foretaste of what hundreds of millions of climate refugees will do in a few decades. It will be difficult for any forest to survive if we don't limit the overrunning human population.
US farmers are still pushing the idea that adding ethanol made from corn would reduce vehicles' consumption of fossil fuel.
The flaw in that approach is that growing corn the US way uses up fossil fuel — too much of it.
Uber and Lyft have tracked their passengers' movements for many years. Now New York City tracks those passengers' movements too.
Please do not call what these companies do "sharing". That is an absurd misnomer.
Epson is trying to block compatible printer cartridges by ordering Amazon and eBay to delete offers to sell them.
The complete fix for this is to change patent law.
A survey of 500 important web sites found that most of them have terms and conditions that only a minority of Americans have the competence to read and understand.
We should not allow web sites to set their own terms and conditions however they wish. That gives them too much power over the public. I don't agree to the terms of a web site without checking it; and most of the terms I check, I find intolerable so I don't accept them.
The article uses the bogus concept "intellectual property", which spreads confusion because people think it refers to some coherent thing. No such thing exists.
AI systems to choose prices for sellers tend to evolve strategies equivalent to price-fixing, even without any artificial encouragement.
India is proposing laws to require automatic censorship filters based on various kinds of prohibitions.
The article does not mention copyright as one of the bases that would require automatic censorship, but I doubt it would be omitted. Some of the other grounds for censorship could be even more dangerous.
Texas plans to legalize discrimination against queer people by state employees when it is carried out in the name of religion.
This way, queer people will be denied their rights by officials.
For most prisoners, imprisonment is a foolish punishment, doing gratuitous harm to many people and not benefiting society. Some countries have nearly eliminated prison.
The military government of Thailand has charged an opposition political leader with the crime of opposition, officially known as "sedition."
The junta wants to be seen as permitting democracy as long as the democracy is without effect.
Chicago's newly elected mayor is black and lesbian, but that doesn't make her progressive.
"Diversity™ focuses on the achievements of individuals versus meaningful systemic change. It celebrates difference as long as it’s not actually trying to do anything too different."
Global heating is destroying agriculture in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. This is forcing many people to emigrate or die.
General Haftar is at the point of conquering most of Libya.
The UN has settled its mandate on another government. It might be better, or might only be more politically convenient for the great powers.
From what I've read in news articles, I can't begin to guess whether Haftar is better or worse than that, and than the warlords and militias that control the other parts of Libya now. It might be good for Libya to have peace instead of militias fighting. However, their opposition to Haftar him might make it just as hard for him to control their cities as it is for them to control the cities Haftar holds.
US citizens: support the No Ban Act, which would deny the president authority to impose arbitrary selective bans on immigration based on origin or religion.
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
US citizens: oppose Stephen Moore's nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
More information about Moore.
Chelsea Manning has been released from solitary imprisonment.
Georgia Republicans are tired of being reported on by journalists, so they propose to create an "ethics board" that they can appoint to fine journalists and demand their raw interviews.
US citizens: Call on Democratic officials and candidates to repeal the cheater's tax cuts for the rich.
Scientists undercounted the medical harm caused by Chernobyl's radiation because a lot of it came down in places that nobody was studying. It turns out to have caused a lot of sickness; in one place, only 10% of the children born were healthy.
The Washington Post sold an advertisement to fossil fuel interests, and presented it in a way that was hard to distinguish from a news article.
The morning-after pill will be available with same-day delivery in the UK.
Great Barrier Reef Suffers 89% Collapse in New Coral after Bleaching Events.
A bill being considered in Vermont would require thugs to get approval for using surveillance technology or data that others obtain from surveillance technology.
The ACLU presents the basic human rights agenda that it asks candidates to pledge to support.
US citizens: call on the Pentagon to stop blocking FOIA requests about Google's Project Maven.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Berta Caceres Act, which would cut off US support to Honduras's thugs and army until the Honduran government investigates their human rights abuses.
To sign this without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
UK banks are accused of faking signatures on legal papers to repossess homes.
The big US banks did this massively, so why would any other banks hold back?
Google's "Sidewalk Labs" snoop city division wants to get a percentage of Toronto's income in exchange for spying on people.
Rep. Cicilline has introduced a bill to ban military-style "assault" rifles.
This bill is clearly good. Just how good it is depends on whether it would prohibit only sales of military-style rifles, or possession of them as well. The latter is what we really need; the former would do only part of the job.
The reason we need it is that the shots from these rifles cause more damage in the body, and are more likely to kill. If would-be killers had only the ordinary civilian firearms, we would all be substantially safer.
(satire) “We’ve become so polarized between people who believe we’re the best country in the world and people who believe we’re the best in the galaxy,” said Chen, calling for a more nuanced dialogue when discussing how President Xi Jinping will restore the nation to past glory.
Bavarian voters' initiative petition will require Bavaria to hold a referendum on measures to protect bees.
A Senator in the Cruel Heart Party wants to collect student loan debt via automatic payroll deductions. That party says, "Go without food and medicine first."
We should instead make it possible to eliminate student loan debt via bankruptcy.
However, it could be better to make student loan payments a function of the graduate's income. That is how the UK does it.
In many countries, studying in a public university is gratis.
The UAE hires Americans to work as crackers, using US technology, to spy on human rights defenders (and others).
One of them quit when she found US citizens on her list of targets.
Humans preserve plant species that are extinct in the wild.
The Democratic National Committee rejected a proposal to reject campaign funds from corporate PACs. It decided to postpone the question until next year.
The extra funds can help a candidate win, but tend to render the candidate incapable of standing up firmly to take away the power of business.
Kamala Harris is trying to present civil rights as a "security" issue. This will do harm even if it "works"; and it may backfire and not "work".
Samsung is desperately trying to make people want to give it personal data about what foods they have in their Spy fridges, so it is trying the "social" ploy.
This is the age of environmental breakdown — already!
The UK Parliament's investigation of Facebook concluded that Facebook's operations violate various laws and that it intentionally tried to mislead the investigation.
The suggestion of requiring users to think more than once before they post anything seems good to me.
The contending sides in Yemen have agreed to pull forces out of Hodeida.
Venezuelan academics propose a referendum to resolve the dispute between Maduro and Guaidó.
The loss of its territory has denied PISSI most of its ability to attract and train recruits.
However, some of its offshoots and affiliates do have some territory — in Africa, and in Afghanistan.
The methane level in the atmosphere has been rising faster in the past few years. Scientists do not yet know where it is coming from.
Increased methane will mean increased global heating over the next few decades. After that, today's methane will probably have been converted into other chemicals; but if it provokes positive feedback cycles in the meanwhile, its heating effect will propagate.
Proposing to teach statistics in a way that helps people see through misleading use of statistics.
Pelosi's medical policy advisor Wendell Primus met with insurance company executives and repeated the usual bogus criticisms of Medicare for All.
Why Congress Must Lift the Spending Caps to Help Low-Income Families.
Car companies are coming up with a clever list of reasons why they "have to" put cameras and microphones in the car.
BMW says its software does not store any driver-monitoring information. If that means that none of the data that come out of the cameras and microphones can be seen by anyone else, the cameras and microphones are not dangerous. But should we trust BMW on this claim? The only way it can deserve rational trust is if the software is free.
A specific plan for marine sanctuaries to protect 1/3 of the ocean by 2030.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means committee has formally demanded the cheater's income tax returns.
Indonesia's President Widodo was hailed as "Indonesia's Obama". Like Obama, he is more right-wing than people expected.
Facebook imposes bias on showing housing and employment ads even if the advertiser does not ask for any.
A UK teacher says that what schools need is not more repression of students that carry knives "for their own protection", but rather funds for activities to help them find safe ways to stop.
There is no real evidence that current cell phone communications cause harm to the human body, but there are reasons why 5G might be a problem.
The Philippine supreme court ordered the thugs to release their files on thousands of people (allegedly drug dealers) that they have killed. This could make it possible to investigate whether the thugs planned to kill them.
The tech giants are pushing working people out of their homes in cities around the world, by setting up new campuses.
Part of the blame for this problem is that the larger economic and legal system discourages construction of enough housing.
To avoid climate disaster, we need to defend forests and other natural ecosystems as well as reduce greenhouse emissions from human systems.
The University of Arizona has charged protesters with a crime for chanting outside a presentation by border thugs.
Countries that became democratic since 1970 experienced a faster increase in life expectancy than countries which were nondemocratic and have remained so.
What makes this most interesting is that it is not due to economic growth if any since that time.
Ralph Nader: NPR and PBS tilt towards the right wing; even famous progressives such as he are hardly ever invited, only right-leaning pundits.
I used to listen to NPR often in the early 1990s, and donated, till I became aware that they had gone beyond thanking donors (I considered that acceptable) to reading advertisements praising their products.
(satire) Donald Trump’s political base cheered on the president Friday for standing up to the U.S. Constitution. "He stayed strong and really showed the Constitution who’s boss…"
Refugees in Indonesia wait in prison years or decades for resettlement, living on very little money. Two recently set themselves on fire after a hunger strike was ignored.
US citizens: call on Seema Varma to resign as head of Medicare.
US citizens: tell the DCCC to cancel its blacklist rule.
Throwing acid on women's faces is becoming frequent in India (as well as elsewhere); the attackers are usually part of their extended family.
The women attacked used to despair, but now they are helping each other get on with their lives.
Slovakia has elected a progressive environmental campaigner as president.
A company that runs prisons for immigrants also runs charter schools, and they are not much better than prisons.
The food was so crappy that students held a hunger strike.
We should make it easy for the parents of students to convert a charter school into a public school.
A flood hit North Dakota, augmented by global heating effects, and destroyed 2000 houses. Republican planet-roasters are working even harder to keep the blindfold on.
These fossil fools should go back to their own planet and leave ours alone.
Protester Terry Maher stood on the roof of St Pancras Station waving a flag, and is said to have "caused" the cancellation of various trains.
Given the facts, is that claim valid? It may be true that officials cancelled the trains as a reaction to the protest, but was that necessary, or was it an overreaction? He could hardly harm anyone or anything in the station from up on the roof, not even with a flag or a knife. And he never showed an inclination to try.
If the officials overreacted, they are the ones to blame for the resulting gratuitous inconvenience. The court must not hold a protester responsible for excessive response. A policy of punishing people for the worst case fantasies they inspire is unjust and threatens all protesters.
(satire) … Purdue Pharma officials reported Monday that deaths from opioids had fallen well short of their quarterly goals.
New York State has adopted a ban on most single-use plastic bags.
This tackles only a small fraction of plastic consumption, but I think it could do a great deal to educate the public about the harm that plastic does.
The UK wants to make doctors and teachers report teenagers that show signs of having been attacked with knives. Teachers who don't notice will be punished.
The government does not intend to help those teenagers; that costs money, and the government has already cut such help. It must intend to repress or harass them somehow; but since they are already under great pressure, I think that will make them snap. In other words, it will make the problem worse.
Google Urged to Boot 'Anti-LGBTQ and Anti-Immigrant' Right-Winger From AI Ethics Council.
Six Vallejo thugs found a black man asleep at the wheel of his parked car. They woke him and shot him dead.
Vallejo's thugs are reported to victimize black men frequently.
Lyft would like us to think that a donation to Oakland, California — a donation consisting partly of discounts on Lyft's own surveilled ride service — compensates for its lobbying campaign to kill a tax that would have brought Oakland more money.
Amazon ought to be investigated and punished for using its size to kill off competitors.
Unfortunately, the worst things Amazon does are not illegal. They include DRM, spying, back doors, antisocializing contracts, proprietary software, and requiring people to identify themselves.
The mainstream media are giving Billionaire Schultz's presidential campaign lots of gratis publicity now as a loss leader: they assume later he will spend a lot on advertising.
Locked Inside a Freezing Federal Jail, They United to Protest Their Conditions — Only to Face Reprisals.
Deepfake Videos Could Destroy Trust in Society. That would be continuing a process started by fake news.
Bruce Schneier explained why blockchain is not a magic fix for this.
Most Americans don't understand how much information companies can get about them through unjust digital technology, or how much harm can be done to them that way.
A high-ranking Portland thug is an infiltrator for a right-wing extremist group.
It's not only the fires, floods and droughts: creeping everyday effects of global heating are causing economic damage around US coasts every week.
Big water pumps will help for a couple of decades. For beyond that, we need the Green New Deal, to reduce future sea-level rise.
"Children [and teenagers] skipping classes to take the moral lead is an indictment of adult complacency."
Facebook facilitates targeting ads at people susceptible to anti-vaxxer myths. This is surely used to promote those sometimes-deadly myths.
A Salvadorean woman was convicted of "killing" a baby by not getting prenatal medical care.
I oppose laws criminalizing maltreatment of a fetus because they lead to results like her conviction.
The design of the US electoral college makes no sense in terms of present-day politics.
Is stopping people that suffer from chronic pain from getting painkillers any more legitimate than stopping them from getting abortions?
I agree with the author about this. Indeed, I have a friend who suffers from pain that incapacitates per, and perse can't get enough painkiller for every day of the month, which results in a few days each month when perse can't get out of bed.
Some countries are banning their citizens for travelling to China for organ transplants. This is because of suspicion that China kills people to get their organs.
The US government permits patenting new uses of a drug — which is nuts. The US government gave itself a patent on using the drug truveda to prevent transmission of HIV, which is unjust. Now the US government permits a company to gouge on the price of truveda — which is vicious and probably deadly.
There should be no patents on pharmaceuticals. Governments should pay the cost of testing them for safety and efficacy.
"Protecting" students from the extremely rare danger of a shooting in school is cited as the excuse for surveilling and tracking them all the time in school.
This surveillance would be used to shove some of them into the school-to-prison pipeline. If extended to all US schools, it could wreck tens of thousands of lives each year.
Clever hacks are permitting users of iMonsters to break Apple's censorship and install patched versions of malicious apps, turning off some of the malicious functionalities.
This is a step forward, ethically, but it does not make them ethically equivalent to free software.
A new AI program can generate coherent-sounding bogus text following the style of a sample text.
It is much more coherent than what the bullshitter says.
Some lawyers call for impeaching the bullshitter for his bogus national emergency.
There are plenty of grounds to impeach him. That won't result in removing him from office, because the Republicans in the Senate will protect him. So impeaching him now would be a political gesture — which could be useful or not, depending on what it would politically achieve. I can't judge that question.
Egyptian journalist Osama Gaweesh, who would surely be a political prisoner if he were still in Turkey, has been waiting a year for the UK to decide whether to give him asylum. In the meantime, he cannot work and has to live on around 7 dollars a day.
A protester talks about the campaign to make Barclays Bank stop financing fossil fuels.
It is no coincidence Boeing, Facebook, Wells Fargo and Bayer-Monsanto have treated human beings with contempt. These are examples of the the systematic corruption of our political system by Plutocratists. The agencies that were set up to keep them in check now work for them. The elected officials that are supposed to represent us represent them instead.
Sad to say, it isn't just the Republicans. "Centrist" or "moderate" Democrats are their second line of defense.
The Republican Party may cancel primaries so that there can be no challenge to the bully.
Will they cancel the general election next?
The migrants who took over a ship and made it go to Malta had been rescued at sea from a boat. When they saw they were being taken back to Libya, they started to fight using whatever weapons they could improvise, until the ship's crew turned the ship north.
I understand the fears of the crew, but also the desperation of the migrants. Ultimately the crew was never in real danger.
Amazon made 11 billion dollars in profit and paid no federal income tax.
George Monbiot: "My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back."
His point about moving from denial to despair is generally applicable to increasing problems backed by a political lobby in favor of the bad practice. For instance, massive surveillance.
All the Democrats achieved by resisting the bully's border demands was some virtue signaling. They gave in on the substance.
Lawsuits may stop the bully from using a "state of emergency" to get more money for the wall, but even if that happens, the bully has already won a victory. If he does the same thing twice a year, he will get most of what he wants by the 2020 election.
This demonstrates the error of negotiating by making sticking to the status quo your demand. Your adversary can easily suggest making a "compromise" where you give up a part of what it wants. Each time this happens, you lose.
If you have made a deal, and your adversary demands to change it, you should respond by demanding a change in the opposite direction. Say something like this:
The previous spending levels do not represent what we stand for. They are a compromise: we made concessions to get that agreement.
If now you tear up that compromise and demand more, we do the same. In response to your demand for A, B and C, we now demand X, Y and Z.
After that, the natural way to meet each other "half way" is to stick with the status quo.
The almost unstoppable victory of the Taliban could eliminate what elements of freedom Afghanistan has gained, unless a compromise protects them.
The Taliban are confident they can defeat the Afghan government army. They can't fully defeat the US army in battle, but they can chip away at the territory until soldiers control only the ground they stand on. The one thing they could not defeat is a force of Afghans fighting for their freedom.
If young urban Afghan women would like to retain freedom in the future, I recommend form militias with in some Kurdish and Yazidi women soldiers as officers. A force like that would have a chance of maintaining control of some part of the country, so if it asks for assistance, that assistance would not be wasted.
US citizens: call on the senate to reject the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to head the deportation agency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on your senators and congresscritter to bar the CIA from doing drone attacks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
China tells New Zealand that Chinese tourists are canceling visits to New Zealand, presenting this as their spontaneous decision.
I don't know whether there is really a decrease in Chinese visits to New Zealand, but China could easily cause that to happen by deducting "social credit" from anyone who goes there.
The totalitarian system of "social credit" is meant to convert everyone in China into a part of a social organism resembling an ant colony. It hasn't entirely reached that point, as of yet, but no aspect of Chinese people's behavior can be presumed to be decided by the people themselves.
I wonder how many points of "social credit" you lose in China currently if you go to New Zealand.
The UK government has apologized for telling a 90-year-old man that he had to go to the US to apply for a visa to live there with his wife. It says that it discovered he had had permission to live in the UK since long ago, and that it had somehow lost track of this fact.
That is good for him, but you can see they are preserving their option to be equally nasty to someone else.
Haitians are protesting to kick out corrupt president Jovenel Moise, who was imposed by the US using a fake election.
The thugs are becoming reluctant to shoot the protesters.
Distributing condoms in secondary schools reduces the spread of disease but does not seem to reduce pregnancy (or increase it).
"I am taking part in the school climate strike. It’s the only power I have."
I am impressed with how cogently the student strikers argue. They dare to face the facts and what the facts imply, dare to recognize what must be done. Adults tend to lack the courage.
A way to resolve the issue of who should get the Parthenon marbles — give half to Greece and half to the British Museum.
Ali Issa Ahmad says that he was stabbed by thugs and imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates, and the thugs beat him and knocked out one of his teeth. His wounds substantiate the claim.
The UAE repression officials claim he is not being prosecuted for wearing a Qatar shirt, but I wouldn't believe a word they say.
I hope he will not be forcibly sent back to the UAE.
Implausible voter numbers show that the Nigerian election is being rigged.
New Hampshire Is Trying to Stop College Students From Registering to Vote.
Coal mining in the Kuzbass region of Siberia turns the region's snow black. Not surprising that people there die a few years earlier than elsewhere in Russia.
That coal is likely to make human civilization die earlier, too.
A border thug harassed two US citizens for speaking to each other in Spanish, in a town on the Canadian border. Since this became known, they have been receiving hate mail from bigots, especially in their formerly friendly town.
I wish them success in their lawsuit against the border thugs, but I have a question for Ms Suda: ¿Cómo se pronuncia "latinx" en español? Es absurda esa palabra.
The sort of crime prediction that the proprietary PredPol software claims to do is absurd — it presupposes that cops are unbiased and that all crimes are reported.
Intense hunting has made lions inbred and less capable of adapting.
I wonder if we could restore some of the lost genetic diversity by inserting some of the lost genes into existing lions.
Brazil: Tortured Dissidents Appalled by Bolsonaro's Praise for Dictatorship.
Australia's system for preserving native forests is not trying very hard. 48 threatened species are being harmed by logging.
350.org rates the presidential candidates on climate defense.
Senators Gillibrand, Sanders and Warren got the highest rating.
China's production of milk is unsustainable, and damaging the climate.
Other countries have their own intolerable impacts. We need to agree to get rid of all of them.
Supermarket Special Offers Contribute To Obesity, Says Report.
Specifically, it refers to special offers for food that is fattening.
A federal judge cancelled the saboteur-in-chief's order to allow oil extraction in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.
Three will surely be an appeal, and I fear that the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court will invent some silly excuse to reverse this decision.
The numskull's gave the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline a permit _again_ because the first one was blocked by a court.
This looks silly. Perhaps it really is silly, and meant only for distraction, but I wonder — could it be that the second permit is somehow different from the first, and might force a different ruling? Is it meant to provide an opportunity to go to a different court and perhaps get a different ruling?
With plutocracy dominating even the "wealthy" countries, the poor countries have no hope of being rescued from their crushing debts.
An Australian studying in North Korea says that the North Koreans don't resemble "stereotypical 'brainwashed' people."
That's because the stereotype is not representative of people who have been brainwashed since childhood.
The British government system is unable to cope with the ripping caused by inability to agree on whether and how to leave the European Union.
As far as I'm concerned, the EU is a government that is half trade treaty and that makes it impossible to reverse a terrible mistake. It should be replaced completely.
Medical reports indicate that Saudi Arabia tortures political prisoners.
Boycott the hotels owned by the sultan of Brunei, who has decided to impose Islamic law in a murderous way.
Minister Salivini (*) is salivating to put anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano in prison for criticizing him. The target is more than just Saviano. Dissent in Italy is also a target.
Italians, if you support the Cinque Stelle party, I urge you to campaign within the party to refuse to join in government with Salivini.
* I know his official name is Salvini.
Enough Collusion Talk. It's Time to Focus on [the conman's] Corruption.
It is still possible that his campaign colluded with Russia, but we don't know that for certain. We can achieve more by focusing on the overt collusion with plutocracy.
Notorious Portuguese Political Prison Becomes Museum of Resistance.
A legitimate way for homeowners (and stores) to make video footage available for catching criminals: instead of letting the state watch through the camera all the time, invite state agents to request a copy of footage for the time when a crime has occurred.
This fights crime without furthering massive surveillance.
Google is working on a project pertaining to killer drones, but we can't find out anything about it, because even the general ideas are secret.
Queensland, a part of Australia, will eliminate private prisons because of their cruelty. It is bad for public safety as well as gratuitously harmful to convicts.
A right-wing political campaigning organization in Massachusetts is tunneling its donations from businesses through another organization so that it can hide where those donations come from.
This ought to be illegal, but getting rid of it might require overriding the Corporations United decision.
US citizens: call on senators to support HR 1, the bill to make elections honest.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to fund the bully's border racism.
If you sign, please spread the word!
WeChat's Chinese censorship now affects 100 million people (or more) outside China.
It also requires nonfree client software running on a nonfree phone operating system. That alone is a reason to reject it totally.
A Tesla spontaneously pulled off the highway and collided with some signs. The non-driver says he tried to drive the car back onto the road but the steering wheel was locked.
Piling on more injury, the state blames him (rather than Tesla) for the damage.
The Tesla's auto-drive is clearly not ready for public roads, but this is not the biggest threat they pose. There is also surveillance and the potential for disappearing people.
(satire) Meals on Wheels volunteers reportedly delivered hundreds of packages containing body chocolate, edible underwear, and other erotic treats to elderly shut-ins [on Valentine's Day].
If Northam remains governor of Virginia, he had better push harder for rejection of racism, including changing the law that forbids removing the monuments that celebrate the Confederacy.
Not just that, of course. There is a lot to do to remedy the disadvantages placed on blacks, even more in Virginia than in most of the US, and he had better press hard for this for the rest of his term.
A "wall" of increased hi-tech surveillance, at the US border and extending a hundred miles into the US, is likely to be far worse than a physical wall.
Increased surveillance threatens everyone's freedom, and if associated with the "border", it would impact everyone that lives in the US within a hundred miles of the border — which is more than half the population.
More info about the plan for increased surveillance.
Arguing that parents should be free to choose (by embryo selection, for instance) to have the more intelligent of their possible offspring.
I agree with the argument. However, it would be unfair to make this option available only to the elites. Elites already employ many methods to ensure that their children dominate the future.
I don't think that assisted fertility technology should be used at all until humanity has a stable and sustainable population.
Winners Take All presents the ideas of the billionaires who think the world is meant for them to own, and pretend that they are serving humanity by grabbing for all of it.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel the war-lover's low-yield nuclear weapons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to block DeVos' budget cuts for education.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The House of Representatives voted to invoke the War Powers Act and order US forces to stop participating in the war in Yemen.
The Senate voted for this last year. If it does so again now, the bully might stop the participation, or defy the law.
An oncologist's heartbreak at seeing patients choose quackery that will drain their bank accounts while they die, rather than scientific medicine.
Scientific medicine's treatments have been tested experimentally, providing evidence that they have a certain probability of success in certain kinds of cases. The quacks can claim anything at all with no fear that empirical fact could contradict them.
New Yorkers made Amazon back down and thus cancelled the planned multibillion-dollar subsidy that politicians had offered to Amazon.
About Maria Ressa, the great Philippine editor that Do-dirty arrested.
“This is the sixth time that I have posted bail and I will pay more bail than convicted criminals. I will pay more bail than Imelda Marcos.”
What do we do today, with people who were radicalized by PISSI and ran off to join it?
The Environmental Pollution Agency will go slowly in deciding whether to keep toxic pesticides out of drinking water.
The Battle Lines Have Been Drawn on the Green New Deal. It is the battle to save civilization and at least part of nature as we have known it.
Ireland is considering a law to ban imports from Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory, on the grounds that such colonization violates international law. Naturally, Israel is calling this "antisemitism," which is its usual practice towards anyone that opposes crimes and injustices of the occupation and siege.
10% of Bavarian voters have signed a petition requiring agricultural changes to protect bees.
Laith Kanaan Barghouti was blinded in one eye by an Israeli soldier's tear gas grenade. If that wasn't enough, he was about to get an operation to fix consequences that put his life in danger, so Israeli troops arrested him and stopped the operation from happening.
Being hit in the head with a tear gas grenade is not a freak accident. It happens when soldiers shoot the grenade at a person's head, rather than between people as official orders say.
New digital surveillance pills monitor whether (and when) the patient takes them.
The pill monitor has no other sensors, so all it can detect is when pills were taken. That might be acceptable. However, sending that data to your doctor (or, someday, your insurance company) requires a portable phone, and you know what that implies.
YouTube's Copyright Strikes Have Become a Tool for Extortion.
Google is not committing the extortion, but it is responsible for operating a system that makes false accusations of copyright infringement both powerful and risk-free.
The EU has banned the fungicide chlorothalonil because of its danger to animals, including perhaps humans.
Senator Warren advocates right-to-repair, for farm equipment only.
It would be a step forward, but how small! We need more than a tiny exception, we need freedom. Farmers deserve the right to modify their tractors, not just repair them. And the rest of us likewise.
We must not leave development of new antibiotics to companies whose priority is profit.
I have the impression that 60 years ago drug companies still carried on some of the idealism of their founders, but that is long gone.
Outsourcing government services in the UK is now recognized as a disaster.
Why did it take people so long to recognize the obvious? I suspect that most people did not dare say outsourcing had no clothes.
Los Angeles tried "predictive policing" based on suspecting the usual suspects. Analysis says this achieved nothing except to turn people randomly chosen into frequent targets.
Utah is considering a law that would limit NSA spying on everyone.
In Venezuela, the classes are equivalent to the racial groups. Guaidó's base is made up of the non-poor, the whites.
This doesn't excuse Maduro's repression and violation of the constitution, or even his incompetence. However, putting the more powerful race/class in charge of the government is not the solution.
Germany will prosecute two of Assad's torturers.
Using marijuana as a teenager seems to cause later depression for some people.
The madman's development of smaller "more usable" nuclear weapons could make nuclear war "thinkable", and thus make it happen.
There is no reason to suppose that it would not extend gradually to "large" nuclear weapons.
US citizens: call on the media to stop assuming that Barr's summary of the Mueller report is accurate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The saboteur-in-chief wants to continue to permit inefficient lightbulbs.
That will lead most Americans to keep burning fossil fuels wastefully.
Congressional hearings are exposing the lasting trauma caused when border thugs take children away from their parents.
Sanders's Social Security Expansion Act, if passed, would give retired Americans an adequate income.
The UK plans to require security cameras in taxis, and says they will be designed to stop them from being used for surveillance when there is no crime.
It will be necessary to verify that their design achieves this purpose, but I call this good news.
Anonymous wealthy funders are manipulating UK politics about leaving the EU.
My guess is that the money is being spent by someone who has invested a lot of money in short sales of British businesses' stock.
After decades of the War on Drugs, we have repeated proof that imprisoning any number of traffickers, at any and all levels of the drug gangs, does nothing to reduce the drug trade. But it creates lots of bloodshed and corruption in Mexico.
The only thing that has made an improvement, where it has been tried, is to stop prosecuting people for possessing and using drugs.
7% of eligible UK voters do not have a photo ID card. Denying them the vote would do big harm to democracy there, as it does in the US.
When it comes to "sex offenders", some officials believe that no repression is beyond the limit.
Under a new proposal, a woman who, decades before (as a teenager) sexted her boyfriend more than once could be banned from travelling on the subway forever.
A dishonest thug who fabricated accusations (and evidence for them) put people in prison and ruined people's lives. When the state determined he was a liar, it did not inform the people he had done this to.
GM spent billions on stock buybacks, now says it can't afford to keep paying US workers.
Many programs and systems can deduce information about a person's personality traits from various sorts of data.
This will tend to put people at a disadvantage in dealing with whoever uses the techniques. Systematically, those with less power will suffer losses from this. We need to cancel that out or prevent it, but how?
I think that using software which monitors indications of whether you are about to enter a depressive phase is perfectly sensible, provided the software is free and runs on your own computer, and the data stays in that computer. But if any nonfree software is involved, you must expect it to spy on you.
Rockland County in New York has banned minors not vaccinated against measles from "public spaces."
I think that something along these lines is justified, but this law may go too far. I am not sure what "public spaces" includes. Streets? Hospitals?
Many species of insect pollinators in Britain have declined greatly since 2007.
Global heating may be directly responsible for some of these species.
Tunisian President Accused Of Complicity in Torture (while an official in Bourguiba's dictatorship).
The current president is also accused of arranging to block the prosecution of many officials for corruption.
People in a dictatorship generally obey many nasty orders because they see no safe way to avoid it. It is wrong to prosecute someone for failing to do something heroic and dangerous when there was a chance.
But even under a dictatorship it is easy to avoid taking a job which includes torturing others, so I think we should hold those who did those jobs responsible for what they did.
The EU has adopted the disastrous copyright directive which requires automated copyright censorship filters.
This is a grave setback for internet freedom.
Cheollima uses direct action, but perhaps not violence, to try to bring down the North Korean dictatorship.
Its spokesperson claims credit for the forced entry to the North Korean embassy in Spain, saying it didn't use violence.
Bolsonaro is holding a ceremony to celebrate the military coup of 1964 that brought in murder and torture.
Congressional leaders have reached a "compromise" with the bully that gives him 1/5 of the funds he demanded to build the pointless border wall.
If he does this a few more times, he will get all he wanted.
Two lessons from this:
Israeli right-wing lawfare groups try persistently to smear Breaking the Silence as criminal and treasonous.
Breaking the Silence gives former Israeli soldiers an opportunity to talk about the crimes they have seen soldiers commit as part of occupying Palestine. Israel goes to great lengths to connive at such crimes.
New Amnesty Report Examines How Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, And TripAdvisor Benefit from the Israeli Occupation.
Airbnb announced it would stop this, then decided not to stop.
Israel plans to evict 36,000 bedouin from their homes in the Negev.
Having already legally confiscated their home villages, Israel plans to build other things over them so that the Palestinians have no way of rebuilding their homes.
The union of school principals in the UK has endorsed the students' climate strike.
That's good on them, but the best news is that the students will strike regardless of "permission".
If you want to save civilization, you must not let piddling administrative rules stop you.
(satire) impoverished 53-year-old Luke Reilly has never earned passive income from stock dividends a day in his life. “It’s an absolute disgrace that there are people in this country who can’t even be bothered…
A bill proposes to cancel the permission to explore the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil deposits.
The known oil deposits are far too much; using them up would mean even worse global heating disaster. Therefore, we should absolutely prohibit all exploration for oil and other fossil fuels.
This is one of the points that is missing from the Green New Deal resolution.
Most blacks in Virginia want Governor Northam not to resign, even though he wore blackface 30 years ago.
Apparently they think that his likely replacement as governor, an official who belongs to the Republican Party today and does not apologize for it, would be a change for the worse.
Pittsburgh has adopted several measures to stop thugs from checking for unauthorized immigrants.
"Climate and economic risks 'threaten 2008-style systemic collapse'."
An Arizona bill proposes to give each local government control over thug departments in obtaining or using both surveillance technology and military equipment.
This is very important; I hope they avoid loopholes.
"Politicians are complicit in the killing of our insects — we will be next."
US citizens: call on Congress to insist on publication of the Mueller report.
US citizens: call on Amazon to cancel its contract with the deportation thugs.
I must not mention Amazon without pointing out that it does many other injustices. We really ought to shut it down entirely.
US citizens: call on Speaker Pelosi to co-sponsor the Green New Deal.
US citizens: call on Barr to release the Mueller report.
Measles has killed 70 children in the Philippines since the start of the year.
The US government is still taking refugee children away from their parents. In El Paso, it happens at least once or twice a week.
Sanders's campaign rally in Los Angeles drew an enormous crowd. I think people can't wait for the chance to elect him president.
The British Army planned its recruiting ads for the time when many young people would be feeling somewhat discouraged, which made them vulnerable.
It is reassuring that Mueller was able to complete his investigation.
US state taxes are (for the most part) regressive: poor people pay a bigger fraction of their income than rich people.
A law has been proposed in Tennessee to require judges to inform juries about jury nullification.
George Soros: the EU could be broken up if its citizens don't prevent that.
Soros points out that the EU lacks the strength to protect democracy and human rights in its member countries. I add that it lacks the strength of democracy to change the euro-zone rules that force poverty on many countries.
The Chicago commuter train agency, Metra, wants to install face recognition cameras capable of seeing everyone inside the train.
The article does not say whether these cameras can be viewed remotely. If they record locally, and physical access to the car is required to see each recording, the system is not a surveillance threat.
If they want to count passengers in the car, they should do that with a different camera, one that can transmit the data but is not adequate for recognizing individuals.
Citizens of Chicago, you can win this if you organize to demand it. And demand it for the CTA trains as well.
Making body cameras serve the purpose of restraining thugs' violence requires laws to make the recordings available when the public needs them. Ohio has passed such a law.
It is also necessary to stop thugs from turning them off as preparation for committing crimes.
One other thing they need is a law to prevent the state from scanning all the videos to find minor crimes. Has any state or city made an attempt at this?
What Democratic Socialism Is… And What It Is Not.
Democratic Socialism includes public ownership of a large fraction of the "means of production", though the word "production" is too narrow to fit modern society, but definitely not all of it.
The non-rich depend on solidarity. Unions promote it, as plutocrats work to set people against each other.
A 7th grade student was suspended from school for drawing a stick figure of a hunter holding a rifle.
This sort of fussiness about things that are only suggestive of danger is often called "zero tolerance".
The National Butterfly Center, based on a special microclimate and ecosystem that extends from the edge of the Rio Grande, is threatened with imminent destruction by bulldozers.
It would be trivial to build a wall but skip the wide zone behind it. Such a small area would be easy to patrol. But Republicans think their strength is measured by their refusal to turn their bulldozers to spare whatever turns up in their path.
A prominent astronomer claims that ‘oumuaua is accelerating under its own power, which would imply it is a spaceship.
However, it is hard to clearly rule out natural explanations for its acceleration.
Given a health system riddled with inequity, using algorithms to decide who gets treatment could disguise and legitimize biases.
California will follow New Mexico in moving its National Guard troops away from the border with Mexico, refusing to play along with the bullshitter's claim that there is a crisis there that requires military action.
The bullshitter decided to speak in El Paso, so the city council voted to denounce his bullshit about the city. I hope the city finds a way to present a statement to the attendees and reporters at the bullshitter's talk.
Peru is making a strong effort to clamp down on illegal gold mining that pollutes the rainforest with toxic wastes.
An anonymous professor says that rich family brats who can't do the schoolwork pressure universities to give them good grades despite this, and their family money gives them the power to bully professors into doing so. They also pressure professors into spending 10 hours a week on remedial education for them.
One would suppose that the school could afford to hire some special remedial professors to do that job.
US use of coal is declining because renewables and natural gas are cheaper. But this decline is not fast enough to avoid disaster.
Some coal is being replaced by natural gas, which is not really an improvement.
Too Poor to Play: Children in [public] Housing Blocked from Communal Playground.
An analysis of what we know about Mueller's investigation's conclusions.
He could not reach a conclusion about whether the known actions of the conman and his men constituted obstruction of justice. He found no evidence for collusion with Russia, but that could be because the man who could testify to it has refused to testify.
India: Congress Party Leader Promises Universal Basic Income.
The two sisters from Salafi Arabia who had fled to Hong Kong, and were blocked from reaching Australia, have been given asylum in another country.
I think it is a wise precaution not to say which country. Their relatives might try to kidnap them.
Plutocratist Democrats are trying all sorts of dirty tricks to stay in power.
Mexico Demands Spain Apologize for Colonial Abuse of Indigenous People.
I agree that Spain's actions call for an apology, but Spaniards were not the first conquerors to oppress people in what is now Mexico. That was standard practice in the region before they arrived. At least the kings of Spain tried to restrain the cruelest practices (though with little effect).
I call on Mexico to apologize also, for the Mexicas' practice of conquering many other indigenous peoples, and using large numbers of them for human sacrifices and then as food.
Nowadays, things are different: the elite Mexicans recruit enforcers from among the poor Mexicans to oppress the rest of the Mexicans. Giving Mexico real democracy includes putting an end to this.
Coal use for electricity has increased by 1/3 in the past decade. (And burning of gas has increased in recent years.)
We cannot allow these new coal power plants to remain in use for 10 more years.
US citizens: call on congresscritters that support the Green New Deal to take the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge.
Leaked Audio Exposes Oil & Gas Execs Laughing With Joy Over Cozy Access to [the saboteur's] Officials.
If you sign, please spread the word!
"Polar bears in the playground, Insectageddon … and it’s all our fault."
If we don't want unauthorized polar bear immigrants fleeing to our cities to escape certain death, we should stop making their icy realm too hot for them to survive in. Bears can't live on molten ice.
It will be some decades before things get this desperate for humans, so this is a timely warning about our possible future in 2050 or 2060.
Refugee families are suing the US for traumatizing their children.
Denver teachers are starting strike actions.
US border thugs are threatening journalists crossing the Mexico-US border, and near the border, demanding information about refugees. The journalists threatened include US citizens.
The modern US: socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else.
Dozens of polar bears have come to Novaya Zemlya and are searching for food in human garbage.
We have seen predictions that global heating, and the consequent reduction in sea ice in the summer, would make it hard for polar bears to eat enough to last through the winter. I have a feeling this is what we are seeing, and that it represents the last gasp for the species in that region.
Thailand has decided not to hand Bahraini expat dissident Hakeem Al-Araibi to Bahrain.
Parkland shooting survivors are ready for the long haul.
A poll found that 40% of US adults have skipped medical procedures because of their cost. 36% have used up all their savings because of the expense of medical care.
30% had to make a choice between food, heating, or housing and medical care, because of the expense.
Another survey found that medical costs contributed to 65% of bankruptcies from 2013 to 2016.
UK schools are trying to prevent students from striking by threatening to fine their parents.
Students: to win, you must show that such chickenshit threats mean nothing when your survival and that of civilization are at stake.
The campaign to oust Senator Collins for voting to confirm Kavanaugh is reminding everyone in Maine about her claim that Kavanaugh had promised to respect the Roe v Wade decision.
There are grounds for impeaching Kavanaugh, but that won't be effective unless the Senate subsequently convicts him. We need to prepare for that now.
An Australian judge has blocked a proposed coal mine because of how it would exacerbate global heating.
Lobbyists and PR people are writing letters to the editor to oppose Medicare for All, without saying this is their job.
Refusing vaccination (even your own) endangers other people's lives and health; it is comparable to driving while drunk.
Whether Impeached or Voted Out or Stays Put, Ocasio-Cortez Says [the bully] 'Symptom of Much Deeper Problems'.
This is true, but it is also true that his efforts have spread right-wing radicalization.
NASA demonstrates how a system can have the effect of placing handicaps on a certain group of people.
The harm done by systemic prejudice adds to what results from individual prejudice.
Japanese women are rebelling against a commercially-implanted holiday gift-giving "custom": that female employees must give chocolate gifts to male coworkers.
I hope the male employees likewise rebel against the reverse holiday in March. It's nice to give chocolate, if it's because of your own feelings.
Indonesian thugs terrified a criminal suspect by letting a snake wind around him and pushing it to bite him.
This wasn't the first time.
The Philippines is prosecuting award-winning journalists for "defamation".
The unjust law being used (making "defamation" a crime is inherently unjust) was adopted after the article that is being prosecuted.
Virginia's lieutenant governor faces two accusations of rape.
I believe these accusations, because most accusations of rape are true.
The term "sexual assault" which lumps together less grave acts together with rape, in effect downplaying the difference. That can lead to underestimating the gravity of rape. I've decided not to use that term.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the extended pharma monopolies in the new NAFTA.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the EPA not to censor science, especially climate science, on epa.gov.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Pearson and Google have a scheme to replace human teachers with a cloudy (i.e., shady) online disservice that will collect lots of data about children in the name of providing a low-grade education.
Daniel Ellsberg: Chelsea Manning has gone to jail to defend freedom of the press.
Over the years, many reporters have done the like.
The Pentagon's accounts are so full of errors that it is almost impossible to detect new errors, or new frauds.
New Zealand's "security" forces were paying little attention to the danger of white-supremacist terrorists, because they were focused on environmentalists.
The environmentalists are not terrorists, not even close, but planet-roasters with lots of money propagandize that they are dangerous, and governments ted to listen to their money.
UK thugs have grabbed the power to order singers to avoid certain topics and will jail them if they do not.
The former ASBOs were used to punish people for actions that are not crimes. Under such a situation, in effect no one has any legal rights.
Some Australian defense lawyers made a systematic practice of betraying their clients by passing information to the prosecutors.
Turkey denounced China's repression of Uighurs.
This may be because Uighurs are a Turkic people.
Tencent, and its messaging system WeChat, are trying many avenues to corrupt and manipulate people and elections outside China. Its investment in non-Chinese tech companies threatens to lead them into new forms of corruption.
US tech companies are not exactly known for a reluctance to profit from trashing people's human rights and well being.
Ignorance of the holocaust is spreading; many people don't know that Hitler tried to murder all the Jews in the world.
Although I am an Atheist, I am fully aware that Nazis would have murdered me, if I had been alive at that time and they had got their hands on me.
There are the people who construct a fictional world in which this didn't happen — or vaccines don't protect people from diseases — or global heating is not caused by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. Denialism is willful mistake.
Rachael Rollins, newly elected DA of Suffolk County, Mass, is continuing to push to end prosecution of petty, poverty-related crimes, but other officials are trying to slow this down.
Pangolins are endangered, partly due to Asian medical superstition.
It's like the danger to tigers and rhinoceroses.
Labour ‘Will Ban’ Outsourcing of Public Services to Private Firms.
Hooray!
Arguing that censoring criticism of Islam to oppose right-wing terrorism would be comparable to censoring Muslim writings to oppose Islamist terrorism.
I am very happy to see this reasoned criticism of the term "Islamophobia", which I make a point of never using. Ironic that the editors stuck that word into the article's title.
Chelsea Manning is being held in solitary confinement.
It seems that Mueller will not issue any more indictments, but that doesn't imply that the conman and his henchmen will not later be indicted for crimes based on Mueller's evidence.
The NHS in Britain sends private debt collectors to harass people in penury to pay for medical care. In addition to being cruel, it hardly gets any money — only 7% of the debts.
I have a hunch that the debt collectors make off with more than that. The article doesn't give facts to tell whether that is true.
US universities are competing for big endowments, which they pay no taxes on. This distorts the system in many ways.
Antibiotics are now failing for many patients. There is active research on new ways to fight bacteria, but don't take for granted that we will succeed.
French thugs attacking gilets jaunes fractured Geneviève Legay's skull by bashing her with sticks and shields.
She was protesting against the ban on protesting.
After the massacre in New Zealand, thousands of people went to the trouble of reposting the terrorist's murder video in ways that YouTube would not automatically recognize.
I agree with the author that the level of support for bigotry and hate is alarming.
It also shows that not even Google can satisfy Article 13 of Europe's proposed copyright directive.
Some UK elected officials want to see the government's report on left-wing "extremism" to see if they, and other protesters and opposition leaders, are on it.
Kamala Harris's positions are not very progressive, even setting aside her campaign for internet censorship.
Criminal Case Dismissed After Sheriff Uses Camera to Zoom in on Lawyer's Notes.
Dismissing one case is not, I think, enough of a discouragement for thugs to try this sort of thing again and again.
Maybe the cameras in the courtroom should be placed somewhere else.
The final argument for the electoral college was that the electors would detect foreign agents running for president. Clearly they can't do that today.
However, it is a mistake to say that the electoral college was responsible for the "victory" of Dubya and the "victory" of the numbskull, since both were stolen by voter-suppression.
Prosecutors support thugs by practicing character assassination against those that the thugs have killed.
The imposed president of Haiti brought in American mercenaries to move 80 million dollars in cash for him, but people caught them and they were arrested.
Now they have been sent back to the US after demonstrating that the president is even more crooked than the conman.
The National Security Council is setting up a "scientific" panel of crackpot scientists who deny global heating.
Juul has been quietly ramping up the nicotine level in its e-cigarette vapor.
The location data US phone companies sold to bounty hunters (and lots of others) included GPS locations.
They have stopped selling this to bounty hunters, but they are surely still collecting it. A portable phone is Stalin's Dream.
Germany has blocked Facebook from combining data from various sources.
This article explains how far-reaching that is.
The money taken out by Russian oligarchs after the fall of the Soviet Union — in which they had had central political roles — has corrupted US banks and in many cases US laws.
In countries that allowed ISPs to charge zero for access to certain web sites that pay for this special privilege, the consumer price of broadband went up.
US citizens: Call on senators to pass a a Red Flag law.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Pittsburgh City Officials to Fire the Corrupt [thug] Who Heads Pittsburgh's Police Union.
Can they prosecute him, too?
If you sign, please spread the word!
The House of Representatives was considering a resolution to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar, but modified it to condemn antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry. Ilhan Omar voted for it. I would have voted for it too.
The only point I critique is the use of the absurd expression "people of color", because color is not something one can be "of". How about "disprivileged racial groups"?
A transcript of Ilhan Omar's remarks on replacing the Israeli
occupation of Palestine with peace, and dignity for all, shows
there is
no
antisemitism in it
The Democrats' varied responses to Ilhan Omar
correlate
with funding from the lobby that supports Israel's occupation
policies.
Republicans are trying to use Congressional Democrats' false
accusations of "antisemitism" against Ilhan Omar
as
a base to pressure them to take away Ilhan Omar's committee
assignments.
US right-wing extremists, up to the bullshitter himself, have
poured
out antisemitism for years, but the only person Congress plans to
censure for "antisemitism" is Ilhan Omar — for her criticism of
Israel's occupation of Palestine, which is not antisemitism.
The resolution to condemn her
misrepresents
what she said, also.
Ilhan Omar is making a
strenuous
and careful effort to criticize the power of Israel's lobby while
rejecting antisemitism.
The lobby's supporters try, as usual, to muddy the line so as to
paint her as "antisemitic".
"The fierce backlash against [Congresswoman Ilhan Omar] for stating
the obvious can be seen as a sign that the Israel lobby, though still
powerful, is
losing
some of its oomph."
Real anti-semites in Congress
falsely
accused Ilhan Omar of anti-semitism because she talked about the
heavily-funded lobby that pressures US politicians to support Israel's
policies.
That's not anti-semitic; also, it happens to be
the
fact.
It is a mistake to assert that this money comes only from Jews,
because rich fanatical US Christians contribute a lot of it. They
want Israel to build a new temple so that their prophecies about the
end of the world could be realized.
Why a supposedly omnipotent god would need this sort of help from
humans, I can't grasp.
Ilhan Omar
held Elliott Abrams responsible for his support of previous
massacres in Latin America, and his convictions for false testimony.
We must reject
AIPAC's
attempt to conflate criticism of Israel's occupation policy with
anti-semitism.
There are real anti-semites with political power stirring up violence
in the US, but they are allies of the bully, not defenders of
Palestinians' rights.
US
citizens: call
on the FBI to stop pretending that Black Lives Matter activists
are extremists.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to repeal the 2017 Republican tax cuts.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Hazem Hamouda, an Egyptian emigrant and Australian citizen visiting
Egypt as a tourist, has been jailed in Egypt for a year. His family
can
only try to guess why.
New
Yorkers to Amazon, "Don't Let Door Hit You on the Way Out."
The rest of us can help pressure Amazon by refusing to buy from it.
Ignore Amazon's claims it will create jobs (in only a few places),
because Amazon has eliminated a much larger number of jobs.
Google is
now censoring
search results for Russia.
Mainstream US media are still badmouthing Medicare for All
(single-payer medical care), but at
least some
of them cover it.
The Supreme
Court blocked
temporarily a Louisiana law designed to add pointless harassment
to the process of getting an abortion.
Working
to change
the New York State law that makes it impossible in practice to
investigate crimes by thugs.
The US Department of Labor's new "transparency" rule makes it easier
for employers
to get
away with discrimination.
The movement to remove monuments that praise the Confederacy is
getting
stronger and making progress.
Antisocialist Senator Rand Paul condemns government programs that
actively help people, but he makes
exceptions when
they help him.
A Thai princess will run for prime minister, in an election that will
be even less fair than with the other candidates, since saying
anything critical about
her will
be a crime.
However, it could
also knock
our military rule.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey have proposed a Green New Deal
resolution which states a set of goals. The precise plan to achieve
them will be drawn up over the next two years. This is intended to
create pressure on Pelosi
to drop
her opposition to the idea.
The proposed resolution does not talk directly about cutting down use
of fossil
fuels; it
needs to do that.
Failing to directly limit fossil fuel development projects leaves a
loophole that thousands of businesses will conspire to exploit.
Some US journalists tell of
being ordered
to avoid the words "racist" and "bigot" in their stories.
Everyone:
call on
Miami to fire the thug that attacked Dyma Loving, who had called
the emergency phone number because a neighbor threatened her.
Uber and Lyft drivers in the US are
trying
to form a union.
The union could win them improved pay, but it will do nothing to
end the injustices of these companies towards customers:
making them run nonfree software, demanding to know their names,
and tracking where they go.
Due to laws that make it easy for thugs to get away with killing
blacks, a Pittsburgh thug was
acquitted
of killing Antwon Rose, who was running away.
Rose was not carrying a gun. Two guns were reportedly found in the
car he had been in. Were they present in the car when Rose was there,
or were they planted?
(satire) a fringe Catholic sect
doesn't
tolerate child abuse.
Medical schools must start teaching doctors to cope with the
medical
problems that global heating will cause.
US universities are competing for big endowments, which they pay no
taxes on. This distorts the system in many ways.
George Monbiot: "If you are caught lying, cheating, boasting or
behaving like an idiot, you’ll be flooded with invitations to
appear on current affairs programmes."
Maduro's men arrested Guaidó's chief aide, and accused him of
organizing "terrorism" and possessing unauthorized weapons.The aide says it is a frame-up.
I don't know any way to determine what the truth is.
As far as I know, either side could be lying.
Displays of hatred in the UK, aimed at Muslims, surged in the past week,
evidently inspired by the massacre in Christchurch.
The government of Italy is sucking up to President Xi.
This is as sickening as when rulers suck up to the bully.
Gilets jaunes are threatening violence in Nice, and soldiers are being
brought in to prevent that.
I am very disappointed with the gilets jaunes protesters for not maintaining
nonviolence. Violent protests only help repression.
The UK deportation thugs imprison immigrants in a "careless and
cavalier" fashion, disregarding laws meant to protect their rights
and their safety.
The conman wants to give Netanyahu a boost for getting reelected despite
corruption charges against him, by calling the Golan Heights an Israeli
possession rather than occupied territory.
The DHS (Department of Harassment and Suffering) is holding some
refugee minors (including some children) in secret prisons, and their
lawyers can't find them.
The conman called for a big increase in already excessive US military spending.
Plutocratist Democrats responded by proposing a smaller increase.
This illustrates the general problem with plutocratist Democrats, the
ones that call themselves "centrist" or "moderate": they want to continue
feeding the whole US to businesses and rich people, just not quite as
fast as Republicans want to do it.
Volvo plans to install cameras inside cars to
monitor
the driver for signs of impairment that could cause an accident.
This feature, in and of itself, is admirable. It could prevent a
considerable number of deaths due to driving while intoxicated, as
well as others due to driving while sleepy or sick.
What worries me is that there is nothing to prevent these cameras from
doing other things, such as biometrically identifying the driver,
other than proprietary software which Volvo — or various
governments and criminals — could change at any time.
To make computer-based safety features secure, we need laws requiring
them to be designed for security — which means that no outsider
can convert them into surveillance systems by installing software
changes.
Of course, a "connected" car is a surveillance device because the
"connection", a cellular data modem, is tracked. To make the car
secure, you need to block its connection physically.
(satire) Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) announced Wednesday he was
considering
filing
a defamation lawsuit against his official Twitter account for
ruining his reputation.
Stoking
Fear: We Must Remember How the Iraq War Was Sold.
Militarist politicians said there might be a disaster if the US did
not attack Iraq, which was probably false since they based the claim
on lies. They didn't mention that there might be a disaster if the US
did attack.
The world's largest banks have put
almost
2 trillion dollars into fossil fuels since December 2015.
In the UK, Barclays faces a
protest
campaign with at least 40 actions planned, for putting around 30
billion dollars into fossil fuels, including coal and fracking.
Individuals, companies and governments can move their money out of
these banks.
The World Food Program is
making
a surveillance deal with Palantir.
Tencent, a Chinese megacorporation that is heavily involved in
censorship, is
buying
substantial shares of many Western internet corporations. This
could be dangerous.
Australia's prisoners on Nauru have been
kept
waiting for years after doctors said they needed to be sent to
Australia for specialist medical care.
Guaidó's mentor is
unabashedly
opposed to "socialism", meaning government programs designed to
help the poor.
An Australian MP was served with an official complaint
for
hugging someone.
Encouraging hypersensitivity to the slightest act of affection —
on the grounds that affection hints at sex — is cruel and
threatens to ruin lives for no reason.
I understand how some hugs can be uncomfortable. We all need to learn
to b sensitive to whether someone else wants to be hugged. But that's
not as easy as falling off a log, since people may cover up their
preference not to be hugged. Nobody can be expected to read minds.
So we have to forgive people for small errors like that.
Jet Blue's management is
trying
very hard to badmouth the idea of a union for for its workers.
George Monbiot questions the moral basis of turning land, once and
forever, into perpetually inheritable property.
The EU is finally starting to investigate Luxembourg's secret tax deals
that were set up by its prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who
is now president of the EU.
The investigation could be important if it leads to reforms that prevent
any EU country from doing this from now on.
ALEC has led various oil-state legislatures to propose bills
to put heavy punishments for protests that coe near oil facilities
and power plants.
We need to treat the fanatical Christianist jihadis like the fanatical
Islamist jihadis.
It will not be easy to do that when they have control of the US government
and several others.
The Christianist jihadis use similar tactics and methods of radicalization,
and they are a lot more numerous in the west.
Iran tries to intimidate BBC journalists by punishing their relatives.
The UK's new porn censorship system doubles as a surveillance system
that will study each person's tastes.
Today's typical porn gives teenagers misleading and/or unhelpful ideas
about sex. Rather than making them work harder to get access to porn,
it would be better to do some social engineering that would lead them
to porn that would show sex that is more realistic, pleases women as
well as men, and includes relationships.
(Defining "porn" to exclude such videos is counterproductive, unless
censorship and repression are your goals.)
Chechnya plans to get rid of human rights activists.
One leader is on trial for possession of marijuana.
It is wrong in general to punish people for having, smoking
or growing marijuana. But it is even worse when the charges
are used for more important kinds of repression.
Replacement of fossil fuels is becoming economically inevitable, but that
may not happen fast enough to avoid disaster without government impetus.
Sanders' presidential campaign workers have unionized.
This is the first presidential campaign to have done so.
The theater and cinema are fighting against demands for ethnic
censorship.
There is no inherent limit to how far this kind of censorship can be
pressed. My position is that it is unjustified at the root.
Women are increasingly given roles that were written for men. Perhaps
in a few years most roles could be played by any actor regardless of
demographics. The only exceptions might be for historic figures:
it would be confusing to have George Washington played by a black,
especially if his involvement in slave-owning is part of the story.
However, perhaps future makeup could solve that.
Iowa Republicans are trying a new voter-suppression measure, aimed at
college students.
Teenagers these days get warnings about online predators,
but these warnings seem to focus on predatory individuals
and disregard the biggest online predators: corporations
such as
Facebook,
Google, Uber, Amazon, and so on.
How naive it is to think that
Facebook's data is no threat to you if
you mark your account "private" — or that when you're 18 you
might learn a safe way to be a used of Facebook.
An old asbestos-mining town in Australia
can
never be cleaned up enough to be safe for human habitation, but
tourists visit it to demonstrate how bullheadedly self-destructive
they can be. They even bring children, who don't get the chance to
protect their health by staying away.
The plan to efface the town's buildings and the roads to get there
seems wise to me. There will still be a few idiots ready to hike in
and risk cancer just to prove how stubborn they are, but not so many,
and they probably won't bring children.
I wonder if stupidity cults tend to promote each other. Do
anti-vaxxers tend to become asbestos denialists? Do asbestos
denialists tend to become anti-vaxxers? It seems plausible.
Organic family farms in the US are
being
driven out of business by big companies that twist or break the rules.
Geoffrey Whaley, suffering from incurable motor neuron disease,
had arranged suicide in Switzerland. UK thugs found out, and
threatened
to prosecute his wife for buying his tickets to go there.
There is a controversy about using a particular drug for executions,
because
autopsies
suggest that it feels like drowning.
I consider this a side issue, because
the
death penalty is wrong in itself, regardless of what methods are
used.
Key West has banned
certain
sunscreens which tend to kill coral.
It's a small step in the right direction, Global heating will kill
all
the world's coral and inundate Key West, if we don't curb it fast.
The governor of Virginia and the attorney general face demands to
resign because they were photographed in blackface in the 1980s
—
more
than 30 years ago.
Blackface mocks blacks, and that makes a racist statement. (I did not
know this until a few months ago; before that, I had come across the
concept of blackface only in regard to minstrel plays a century ago.)
I would not put on blackface because I don't want to appear to endorse
racism. I urge others also not to do so, for the same reason.
What should we make of someone who did that 40 years ago as a gag?
Maybe Herring's intention was racist, or maybe he was following a
foolish fashion, as young people so often do.
It is absurd to demand that officials resign over racist gags 30-40
years ago, in their youth. Our legal system forgets even crimes that
people commit before age 18. Mere mockery is far less grave than a
crime.
Are these officials racist now? That is the question that matters.
The bully
had
soldiers put barbed wire on the border of Nogales, Texas; the town
council is considering ordering it taken down.
Another valve-turners protest: shutting off
two
planet-roasting pipelines.
Israeli army seizes land from Palestinians "for military purposes",
then
hands
it over for more illegal Israeli colonization of the occupied
territory.
New Zealand has
banned
the sale of military-style semiautomatic rifles, as well as the
parts and devices to make them fire automatically. Also large
magazines.
This will make it difficult to obtain a near-automatic rifle for a
massacre. It will also impede plans to shoot people with
semiautomatic military-style rifles. That is a benefit because their
bullets travel with a high velocity that
makes
them more likely to kill or cause severe wounds.
Hamas violently
crushed
protests in Gaza against Hamas over economic policies.
Plutocratist Democrats support a move to eliminate
part
of the US's inadequate protections against irresponsible
speculation by big banks.
Why are big banks inclined towards irresponsible speculation? Because
of "moral hazard": they figure they will get
bailed
out if they lose a bet, as long as the bet is big enough.
Suggestions
for convincing denialists that global heating is a real danger.
13 Ways It
Costs
More To Be Poor.
Houston thugs burst into a couple's home, not wearing uniforms, and
shot their dog. Since they had guns, they shot back, and
the
thugs killed them.
Demanding Lawmakers Forge 'Path Away From Climate Suicide,' Groups
Kick Off
Green
New Deal Push.
Brazil's known-to-be-corrupt former president Temer has been
arrested
for corruption.
It was impossible to touch him while he was president.
Global heating effects could make home insurance
so
expensive that only rich people could afford it.
"Centrist" Democrats
worked
against the negotiations between the bullshitter and dictator Kim.
I can understand why they would not want him to have any successes,
but I don't think that is the right way to decide about an issue of
any inherent significance.
The Department of Hurt and Suffering gives prison contractors
"waivers"
to let them engage in illegal cruelty.
"Cyber" charter schools are run by private contractors and don't have
physical premises. In Pennsylvania,
their
charters have expired. This means the state could shut them down.
They surely require students to run nonfree software and agree to
unjust contracts for copies of what they use instead of textbooks.
That is bad moral education. They should all be shut down.
Violent Israeli "settlers"
threatened
to boycott a Palestinian town if the people of the town worked
with lawyers or foreign monitors to protect their farm land from the
settlers' plans to drive them off.
Murderous Israeli soldiers surrounded Saleh Barghouti's taxi, with
cars in front and behind so he could not move it, then
shot
him in cold blood.
Then, as usual, they lied about what happened.
The OECD did polling in 21 countries and found that, in each country,
most
people wanted to increase taxes on the rich and provide more help to
the poor.
Overall,
68%
were in favor of this.
The countries surveyed are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Ireland, Italy,
Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia
and the United States.
The FBI
warned
about the supposed terrorist threat from imaginary organized
"pro-choice extremists." The FBI invented this to create a false
image of balance against the real danger of violent anti-abortion
extremists.
This fits a general pattern of
downplaying
the real violent extremists of the right wing and persecuting
nonviolent activists on the left.
In China, every electric car is
required
to report its location continuously to a monitoring center.
Does anyone know how this works? I would guess it uses
a cellular modem, but I would like to be sure.
The US and Europe do not have a law requiring this, but "connected"
cars do something more or less equivalent, and the government can get
that data. We should see the totalitarian surveillance of China as a
warning for what will happen everywhere — unless we fight and
stop it.
A former president of Facebook
regrets
what he did to make it lure in so many people for Facebook to use.
The last statement quoted in the article is not correct: not "all" of
us are ensnared by Facebook. It is not hard to refuse to have a
Facebook account. To block its other ways of surveilling people, you
need a browser that blocks tracking tokens and you need to reject the
nonfree apps. (With few or no exceptions, the apps in the commercial
app stores, whether gratis or paid, are nonfree.)
Putin followed the bullshitter in
suspending
the INF nuclear treaty.
This does not make it impossible to resolve the dispute, but I've seen
it suggested that they want an arms race.
Amnesty International explains
why
it is illegal to make refugees wait in Mexico while their asylum
claims are processed.
Puerto Rico's debt is being "restructured" in a way that will allow the debt
to continue squeezing people there into poverty.
Global heating could go beyond 1.5C within five years.
Salafi Arabia bought lots of weapons from the US; some of them are now
in the hands of Islamist fanatics.
The EU proposes to require automatic censorship of postings accused of
advocating terrorism. EFF and EDRi are concerned the effect won't be
limited to real advocacy of terrorism.
A visitor from Britain in the UAE went to a football match in which
Qatar was playing Iraq. He put on a shirt that supported Qatar, and
was arrested for it.
(satire) local father Bruce Tenety, 54, expressed the
heartbreaking belief Monday that his connections could help his son
Justin, a recent college graduate, find a job.
ACLU: Congress, Don't Give DHS Unrestricted Authority to Build a 'Smart Wall'.
Instead, we should put limits on the border thugs' power to search anyone
without a warrant. Most of the population of the US lives within 100 miles
of a border or a coastline.
Iraq and Iraqis are unwilling to host US troops so they can "watch"
(spy on and menace) Iran.
There is no valid reason to keep US troops in Iraq any longer.
PISSI no longer holds territory; what remains of it is underground
and calls for policing rather than war. It is time to pull them out.
Hakeem al-Araibi condemned Bahrain's repression 2011, and was tortured
for it. He fled to Australia. Now Thailand has grabbed him and is
determined to send him to Bahrain for more torture.
The US is using Interpol to trick Mexico into stopping some US
citizens when they enter Mexico. It is doing this as retaliation for
their legal efforts to defend the right of Central American refugees
to apply for asylum in the US.
This is similar to what Bahrain is doing to Hakeem al-Araibi.
Google invites people to let Google monitor their phone use, and all
internet use in their homes, for an extravagant payment of $20.
This is not a malicious functionality of a program with some other
purpose; this is the software's sole purpose, and Google says so. But
Google says it in a way that encourages most people to ignore the
details and remain unaware of the extent of the spying. Anyway, mere
consent does not legitimize massive surveillance,
Whether or not you let Google spy in this way, your ISP is taking note
of many of the same things, and that is equally wrong.
Attacking Iran
would bog
the US down in a long war, but that doesn't mean the bullshitter
and his idiots won't do it.
"A
third of Himalayan ice cap doomed," even if we curb emissions now.
That means 2 billion people's water supply is endangered.
Guaidó says he will sell Venezuela's oil reserves to foreigners.
That's why the bully
is applying
economic sanctions.
Maduro denounces
foreign support for Guaidó as a "gringo plot" to steal Venezuela's
wealth.
He's right, of course. The bully cares no more about freedom for
Venezuelans than he does about freedom for Americans. It is all about
hegemony for the masters he serves.
This means that Venezuela has a choice between a dictator that is
making people hungry, and a bunch of foreign thieves.
I hope they find a way to create another choice.
Global heating is making Tasmania dry up and
burn. 3%
of its land area has burned in the past few weeks.
Over this century, its unique forests will disappear, and many of their
species driven extinct. Sooner or later fires will spread so fast
that many of the inhabitants will be killed.
How amoral politicians such as Trump, and now
Schultz, manipulate
the press.
The bullshitter wants us to mock his errors in writing English.
That wins
more support from his supporters.
Please keep your focus on the important points: the bad things that he does.
Plutocratist Democrats are discovering that
they won't
get very far in the Iowa caucuses.
"Capitalism" is viewed negatively, and "Socialism" positively.
Indonesia's
congress proposes
censorship of "negative foreign influences" in art.
There is no objective way to define "negative", so I suppose it will
mean imposing some people's tastes.
Indonesia already censors "pornography" (which includes a lot more
than what we would describe as "pornography") and blasphemy.
Both of those prohibitions are unjust, too.
Nathan
Phillips's story — his confrontation with an anti-abortion
protester and the hard life that led up to it.
I get the impression that neither of them did wrong to the other on
that occasion. I disagree with the views of the anti-abortion protester,
but that's a different matter.
Salafi
Arabia is
torturing imprisoned womens' rights activists.
A French politician whose career was ruined by accusations of sexual
harassment
has sued
his accusers for defamation.
Both he and the accusers seem to believe they can prevail in court.
From the shreds of information in the article, I can't begin to judge
what the truth is. I am glad there will be a trial to judge the
question.
While meddlesome billionaires have strewn ruin in American public
schools, grass-roots reformers
have made
their schools better.
B'Tselem: don't believe Israel's promise it will "investigate"
instances
where
soldiers killed people in Gaza. The "investigations" will be
whitewashes.
In the US since 1999, there have been
twice
as many new daily heat records as new daily cold records.
Manufacturers are
trying
to co-opt the Right to Repair movement with plans that give just a
tiny part of that right.
The real Right to Repair movement demands some information about
software in the product, which falls short of what we deserve: that
the software in products be
free software.
Attributing people's success to their superiority
tends
to lead people to care less about others and to be more
prejudiced.
Rashna Farrukh quit a job at Sky News because
its
broadcasts encourage hostility within society.
Chelsea Manning refused to answer some of the grand jury's questions,
claiming that the questioning violated her constitutional rights, and
in response was
jailed.
She hopes that an appeals court will rule that the grand jury had no
valid reason to ask her those questions.
Australian hero David McBride is being prosecuted, like Chelsea
Manning, for
revealing
atrocities committed by the Australian army.
Job loss due to automation is not usually a matter of replacing one
worker with one robot. It's part of the way that the plutocratic
elite decides how work is done, and
pushes
down wages.
Occasionally, though, we see an example which is pretty much like "one
robot, one less worker" — automatic checkout counters in stores.
I refuse to use them — no exceptions! If I can't but from a
human sales agent, I leave without buying. But I do more than that: I
tell the other customers what I am doing, and urge them to join me.
The Pentagon's inspector general quietly reported that soldiers that
report crimes and abuses through official legal channels
almost
always face harsh retaliation while their reports are disregarded.
If Chelsea Manning had reported the
"collateral
murder" atrocities through channels, she would have been punished
less, but it would have achieved nothing at all.
Chelsea Manning has been
ordered
to testify to a grand jury which hopes to use her testimony to
prosecute Julian Assange and/or Wikileaks.
Nine years after the events, she will not remember the details
clearly. If they make her answer many questions about them, surely a
few of the answers will contradict her testimony from 2013. That
would provide an excuse to imprison her.
Glyphosate has been linked to a
substantial
increase in cancer for the people that spray it.
This demonstrates that the EPA
disregarded
proper scientific procedure when it judged that glyphosate was
safe.
Whether this implies a substantial increase in danger for people who
eat food on which glyphosate has been applied, is another question.
In principle, the answer might be yes, or it might be no. The
increase will surely not be a large percentage, but it might amount to
a substantial number of people.
I am interested in seeing the answer, when it is known.
Guaidó's supporters are
shipping
food aid from Colombia as a political gesture. (The US donated
the aid as a political gesture.) Maduro's sent troops to block the
frontier bridge to Colombia as a political gesture.
They are equally gestures. Nonetheless, there is a moral difference
between giving aid as a political gesture and blocking aid as a
political gesture.
It seems this is not, as I believed, the bridge I had used to cross to
get to Cúcuta — rather, a new bridge constructed in 2015, which
has
never actually been used.
The article points out there are grounds to suspect the US is
including weapons guns in the humanitarian aid.
Indeed, the US could do that. But it should be possible to check the
aid to make sure there are no weapons in it.
Hakeem al-Araibi condemned Bahrain's repression 2011, and was tortured
for it. He fled to Australia. Thailand grabbed him and was
determined
to send him to Bahrain for more torture.
Australia's
record
heat waves in January, together with drought, led to very bad
fires. But it's only going to get worse.
There were
massive
protests in Caracas demanding that Maduro step down.
I would support them, if not for the fact that Guaidó is in league
with neo-nazis such as Bolsonaro and Trump. It's theoretically
possible he is not as bad as they are, but how can we trust that?
Scathing UN Report
Condemns
Trump and GOP for 'Deliberately' Driving Up Already Devastating
Inequality.
German activists for Palestinians' rights are being prosecuted for
disrupting an Israeli official's speech, and are being
falsely
called "violent" and "antisemitic".
Attacks by Israeli colonists on Palestinians in the West Bank
doubled
in 2018, occurring almost twice a day.
The attacks, which reach the point of terrorism, come from a political
tendency that labels them as reprisals for occasional Palestinian
terrorism. The reprisals are launched against victims chosen simply
for being Palestinian and conveniently available.
This is on top of
official
Israeli government retaliation against the families of Palestinian
terrorists.
Two Israeli soldiers that attacked and injured Palestinians as
retaliation have been
sentenced
to prison by the army.
High employment rates disguise the problem of
low
wages and few new good jobs.
Sanders and Warren are
proposing
bills to curb the cost of prescription drugs in the US.
The
euro
zone rules are pushing already-battered Italy into recession.
The way to get out of a recession is well known: deficit spending.
Since the euro zone does not allow that, it functions as a trap
that imposes neoliberalism on every country in it.
The economists that designed it
knew
this in advance.
Israeli soldiers
killed
a Palestinian man who was trying to distribute court documents to a
house in the Palestinian city of Hebron.
The fanatical Israelis who forcibly set up a colony in the center of
Hebron, and
kicked
all Palestinians out of the neighborhood, are trying to take one
Palestinian house by fraud. This fraud was blocked by an Israeli
court. The courier was distributing court documents to that house,
perhaps from the same Israeli court.
I can't see the video — I cannot play videos from dailmotion.com
due to its Javascript code — but it would not surprise me if his
killing had to do with the documents he was carrying.
This isn't the first time Israeli soldiers have
blocked medical aid
workers from treating Palestinians they have shot.
Novelist Zadie Smith
rejects
the prison of identity. "If I didn’t take a chance I’d only ever
be able to write novels about mixed-race girls growing up in
Willesden.”
By the same token she also rejects the idea that "cultural
appropriation" is wrong.
"Surveillance capitalism, run as the code for everyday
life,
erases
both free will and free markets."
People underestimate the disaster that global heating can cause and
how soon it threatens. At worst, it
could
render large parts of Earth uninhabitable or dangerous for human
beings.
How will the US deal with 140 million climate refugees in 2050,
desperate because their home has become unlivable? No wall could keep
them out.
Will the US make a vigorous effort now to stop things from getting
that bad?
The San Francisco sheriff department protected some of its thugs from
a criminal investigation by
destroying
the evidence.
If they can't be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, the law needs
to be changed to allow that.
A Wealth Tax
Could
Raise Trillions — and Save Our Democracy.
Plutocratist Democrats are
working
hard to mislead people about Medicare for All.
An organization suspected of fabricating hundreds of thousands of
fraudulent comments opposing Network Neutrality was
headed
by one of the bullshitter's campaign officials and has ties to
Roger Stone.
Should hoaxes require approval as "experiments with human subjects"?
I think the idea is absurd.
Contrast US Republicans, defending the right to own all kinds of guns no matter
how dangerous, with New Zealand's politicians.
The US is joining Salafi Arabia to block international regulation of
geoengineering.
I think it is a good idea to require international consensus before
carrying out geoengineering efforts that would have worldwide effects.
However, there is no reason to rule out localized experiments
on a smaller scale. We may need geoengineering to avoid global disaster
even after working hard to curb emissions.
Geoengineering methods that only reduce temperature, not CO2, will not
protect coral and molluscs from death from ocean acidification. They
are inadequate.
Seeding oceans with iron might perhaps sequester a lot of CO2 —
if it works. That is not guaranteed. I think it would be a good idea
to do more regional experiments of this type, to find out to what
extent it could really work, and what side effects there might be.
The US is pushing to undo parts of the 1995 Beijing declaration
on gender equality.
The politicians and other extremists that whip up hatred — against
Muslims, for instance — know what they are doing. Let's stop accepting
their pretense of innocence.
Dead Whale Washed Up in Philippines Had 40kg of Plastic Bags in its Stomach.
It is funny to think that one whale might be "curvier" than another,
but I have a hunch the whale in question belonged to the species known
as "Cuvier's beaked whale".
FAA employees say that the FAA skipped independent review of the
Boeing 737 MAX computerized flight control system, trusting Boeing
engineers instead, and that this disregarded a fatal flaw.
The pressure to "get it working now" by disregarding safety concerns
reminds me of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In the
Challenger case, the pressure was for the sake of NASA's success. In
this case, the pressure was for Boeing's success in competition.
We can see it as a form of regulatory capture.
Shamima Begum's lawyer needs her signature on the papers to appeal
her punishment (imposed arbitrarily — without trial) of exile from the UK,
but the guards of the prison where she is being held will not let him in.
Over 100 billion UKP worth of real estate in England and Wales is owned
by anonymous corporations set up in tax havens.
It would be easy to make this problem disappear: just put a heavy tax
on ownership of property through chains that cannot be tracked backed to
real people. An even stronger measure would be to make that a crime,
so that on demonstration that a given property is owned that way, the
government could seize it.
"Broken windows" backfires because it assumes that violence is
characteristic of entire neighborhoods, so thugs repress everyone
there. In fact, it is generally a tiny subset of the people in the
neighborhood who commit violence.
There is a proposal to design "smart" listening devices to check
whether their "owners" are breaking laws, and report this.
"The campaign for a 'drug-free world' is
costing
lives."
US border thugs use a
blacklist
of activists and journalists as a guide for systematic harassment
at the US border, then make it worse by refusing to acknowledge that
this is a system for harassment.
It's like the way city thugs use
"stop
and frisk" policies to systematically harass black males, then
deny this because there is no written policy saying "search each black
male".
Bayer/Monsanto has been
held
responsible for causing (via Roundup) a man's cancer.
(satire) Foxconn’s first fully automated [iPhone-making] assembly-line
robot immediately
attempted
suicide after being powered up Thursday.
A poll found that 80% of Venezuelans oppose the US economic sanctions
and
even
more are against any US military intervention.
Some US political party caucuses have been run based on
proprietary
apps, and digital services such as Eventbrite that collect
personal information about participants.
If you are in Iowa and reading this, please write to me.
The billionaire presidential candidates, Schultz and Bloomberg, stand
clearly and firmly
for
keeping non-rich Americans down.
Arguing that Dubya invaded Iraq
to
intimidate other countries, by showing that the US was a tough
bully, one that would not be held back from war by moral scruples,
expenses, humanity, or anything.
The US would be in a much better position today if it had had a
conscience then.
In the UK, using a pronoun of the wrong gender to refer to someone
can
be a crime.
The UK has a penchant for punishing people for what they say.
I believe in referring to people by the genders they profess, but it
is wrong to criminalize the failure to do so.
Sending "thoughts and prayers" to people won't help them, and it can
be an
excuse
for politicians in failing to carry out their responsibilities.
Greg Palast warns that Mueller seems to be
targeting
Wikileaks for publishing real and important news — bona fide
Democratic National Committee emails that show it was corrupt.
Winston Churchill was crucial to defeating Hitler. At the same time,
he
was
a white supremacist, and defended some vicious practices, such as
using poison gas in battle, and imprisoning masses of civilians.
What are we to make of this?
Now that we understand that bigotry is flat-out wrong, rejecting it is
nothing to be specially proud of, simply what we expect of everyone.
Those who endorse bigotry deserve special condemnation.
It was different in Churchill's day. At that time, only a vanguard
rejected racism. They deserve special admiration, while the rest were
merely people of their time.
Churchill defended use of poison gas, but I do not know whether he
ever actually gave an order to use it. (Neither side used poison gas
in World War II.) As Prime Minister when Britain put Kikuyu civilians
in prison camps (which the British called "villages") in the 1950s, he
was responsible for it.
I disapprove of those views and actions of Churchill's. Also of his
being a Tory and thus opposing efforts to help poor people in Britain.
But in my mind these things do not negate his heroism in standing
against Hitler.
To demand that people never do or think wrong, before we can admire
them for doing something right, is setting the bar too high, and
hardly anyone will pass.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager, then
pretended
she had tried to stab them with a kitchen knife and said they had
"neutralized a terrorist".
It's not clear she really had the kitchen knife at all.
Israeli thugs plant weapons just like US thugs.
US citizens:
call
on your Senators to pass a Red Flag law. This would allow courts
to order guns taken away from someone for cause; for instance, for
domestic violence.
The US
appears
to have tried to sabotage UN accords about women's rights by
refusing visas to women that sought to attend the UN conference on
women's rights.
Lives Are Ruined by Shame And Stigma.
LGBT
Lessons in Schools Are Vital.
This is so that all children learn not to be prejudiced.
The US attempt to stop Europe from trading with Iran is
provoking
efforts to take that power away from the US for good.
China is no less imperialist than the US, and even more oppressive.
For China to replace US financial hegemony with its own
would not be a step forward.
Netanyahu's main rival in the coming election is a former general who
boasts of bombing Gaza and
refers
to all the casualties as "terrorists", although
only
a fraction of them were fighters.
I don't think Palestine is likely to have a partner for peace any time
soon.
One sign that we're falling short in climate defense is that Big Oil
gets its hopes up
when
a new deposit of underground methane is discovered.
We
should
have made it totally clear by now that new fossil fuel discoveries
will not be extracted.
A few years ago, we needed to leave 80% of the known reserves in the
ground. By now, what we need to leave must be more than 80%.
A study found that people get
measurably
happier (on the average) if they stop being used by Facebook.
The undiplomat has
"suspended
US compliance" with the INF nuclear missile treaty, but not
actually canceled it yet.
This seems to be an attempt at diplomacy, but carried out in a
heavy-handed way that would be unlikely to result an agreement.
Guaidó, as leader of Venezuela's National Assembly, had the
constitutional authority to
declare
himself interim president and to call new elections. This
explains why Maduro has not charged him with a crime such as
rebellion. If Guaidó wins the confrontation and it is not due to US
intervention, it will not be a coup d'etat.
I still have misgivings about Guaidó because of his association
with right-wing governments that support plutocrats in their
own countries and internationally.
Freedom of expression in Burma is
rapidly
deteriorating. Promises to allow a free press have not been kept.
Refusing to call the New Zealand terrorist by name is a good way of
reducing the appeal of terrorism to others.
I do the same thing, including to the terrorism-promoter in the White House.
A right-wing extremist Israeli politician is cozying up to the word
"fascism".
The organizers say that 1.4 million people participated in Friday's
climate strike rallies.
The education ministers who criticized the student strikers are
part of right-wing planet-roaster governments.
To make the planet-roaster politicians give ground, we need even
bigger protests. You can help, by participating in nonviolent climate
defense rallies in the future.
Clinton's campaigns in 2008 and 2016 were held back by persistent sexism
in the mainstream media.
She deserved criticism for her "centrist" plutocratist positions, but not for her gender.
The SEC allowed two big planet-roaster banks to suppress shareholder
resolutions requiring them to disclose climate protection plans.
The Green New Deal can't be funded by printing more money.
It will require taxes.
That's no a real obstacle. We can get the money by taxing the rich,
and businesses, and fossil fuels.
Elecia Dexter had to resign as editor of a local newspaper in Alabama.
The owner, who was castigated for a racist editorial, told her she
was in charge, then continued to interfere.
Right-wing hate-spreaders have formed an international movement. The
New Zealand terrorist cited British right-wing extremists, as well as the bullshitter.
The New Zealand terrorist's attack comes out of this movement, which
calls everyone other than white Christians "invaders".
This attitude is especially ironic in a country such as New Zealand or
the USA, since they were conquered by white Christian invaders just a
few hundred years ago.
France will shut down gilets jaunes protests —the whole protest— if
a black bloc is present.
Nonviolent protesters should not tolerate the participation those bent
on violence. If the protest degenerates into violence, its moral
force is lost. If only part degenerates into violence, the rest does
not deserve to lose its moral force, but plutocratists will try to
blame them all.
That's exactly what the plutocratist French state is trying to do now.
Beto O'Rourke raised a lot of money for his campaign, but he
won't
say whether they are many small donations or fewer large ones.
Adobe
calls
for condemnation, along with other companies that dominate users
and push them around.
The author sees the harm of monopoly power, but does not recognize the
role of proprietary software in generating that power. At least he is
starting to realize that there is a problem.
US banks got a trillion-dollar bailout, ten years ago. Plutocratists
say it wasn't one; here's
why
it was one.
Indian garment workers, working at home, get
even
less pay than Bangladeshi garment workers. And that's if they get paid at all.
This is the
World Trade
Organization in action, making all countries compete to attract
business away from other countries. It's the same as when Amazon
makes US cities bid to pay to host its new headquarters.
The main terrorist threat in the US comes from US citizens with
right-wing
views.
This threat is exacerbated by the right-wing bias of thugs in general.
"The FBI is … a political police force that primarily targets
the left."
After right-wing extremists stabbed antifascist protesters including
supporters of BAMN, the FBI
investigated
the antifascists as a possible threat to the rights of the right-wing
extremists (which the FBI identified as "KKK").
I can understand, given the right-wing bias of federal and state
thugs, why antifascists would be tempted to reject the idea of
respecting freedom of speech for right-wing extremists.
But that is a fundamental wrong. Freedom of speech covers all views,
and we must not advocate denying it to views we abhor. Antifascists
had better support freedom of speech for all views, or (as these
events demonstrate) the antifascists will be the ones persecuted.
The frequent shootings in the US
traumatize
many people for each one that is killed by a shooting.
European diseases killed roughly 90% of the population of the Americas
during the 1500s, and large amounts of farmland became wild. This is
suspected as the cause of the
"little
ice age" of the 1600s - 1700s.
Extinction Rebellion began its campaign in the US with a
die-in
in Rockefeller Center.
Everyone: call
on advertisers to drop Faux News.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on your senators to support S.J.Res 11 to block US intervention in
Venezuela.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on the Brazilian government to respect indigenous people's lands.
The way to sign without running nonfree Javascript code is with Lynx.
Everyone: call
on the European Investment Bank not to invest in fossil fuels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The UK
has told
a man of age 90, developing dementia, that he has to go to the US
before he can apply for a visa to live with his British wife. If he
went to the US, he might not be competent to apply for the visa;
supposing he did so, he might not live long enough as a homeless
person to see the answer to the application.
The many cruel immigration decisions coming from the UK vary in their
details, but they all embody a basic attitude of rigidity even to the
point of cruelty. That attitude is no accident; it has been instilled
somehow.
EFF: a border wall of surveillance would
be as
bad as a physical wall.
The surveillance would affect everyone, including US citizens, and could
be applied to a zone extending quite far from the actual border.
Several
leading Indian dissidents face trumped-up, absurd criminal
charges.
Teltumbde is under bail conditions that make it nearly impossible for
him to travel even within India. He can only be away from home for
up to 18 hours.
He was supposed to speak at the Kerala Literature Festival, which had
arranged a way he could come to Calicut (Kozhikode) and speak without
being away from home more than 18 hours, but the trip was sabotaged
and he could not go there.
UN Expert to Int'l Community: Don't Say You Want a Two-State Solution While
Turning
Blind Eye to "Engine" of Israeli Occupation.
A
giant cavity has appeared at the bottom of a glacier in
Antarctica. It appears that the cavity has developed in a few years,
so fast has the ice melted.
Sanders
has introduced
a bill to increase the estate tax, with a progressive tax rate.
The article mentions closing loopholes as well. I would like to read
more about the details of that, because that point is crucial to
success of the measure.
Elliott Abrams, associated with brutal and violent US interventions in
banana republics, has been
named US
special envoy to Venezuela.
In effect, this threatens Venezuela with something tantamount to war.
Remember Saddam Hussein, the murderous dictator that ruled Iraq?
Dubya said he invaded Iraq to give that country democracy.
I opposed
that invasion,
saying that invading a country to overthrow a
dictator is only morally justified if (1) the people of that country
want such assistance and (2) we can expect the replacement government
to be better. Neither of these was true in Iraq, and that was clear
in advance.
Not coincidentally, the actual result of that invasion was bloodshed
that continues to this day, as well as Al Qa'ida in the Arabian
Peninsula, and PISSI.
Maduro is likewise a dictator, though not as murderous as Saddam, but
Venezuelans do not want an invasion, and we can hardly expect the
would-be dictator of the US to give democracy to any conquered
country.
Thus, I oppose his plans for Venezuela.
Venezuela: No
to Intervention, No to Maduro.
US thugs arrest
people 10
million times a year, and 80% of them are for minor matters,
racial harassment, squeezing fines out of the poor, etc.
Illinois supreme court: capturing your biometrics is, in itself,
damage to you,
and enough
basis for you to sue.
Even after New Mexico passed a law that totally eliminated "civil
forfeiture" (a form of punishment without trial) in the state, sleazy
Albuquerque officials kept doing it, claiming the law
mysteriously did
not apply to them.
It turns out their salaries were paid from the funds obtained by seizing
people's money, cars and houses without charging them with a crime.
Many US cities use license plate
tracking, even
on parked cars. Even if they normally delete the data after a few
days, there is no telling which other agencies might have got copies
in the meantime.
A
bill being considered in New York State would put limits on the
use of data from license plate cameras.
This would be a big step forward, but I fear it would be insufficient
because the FBI
could seize
the whole database every day under the PAT RIOT act.
To make license plate cameras safe, we need a law to require that the
system fail to recognize any license plates other than those specified
individually by court order.
Cameras are not the only way to track
cars. "Digital
license plates" could track a car's movements all the time.
Of course, a "connected car" does the same thing. The "connection"
works via a cellular modem, and the phone system always knows
approximately where it is. Perhaps the car also has a GPS system to
give it more precise tracking data.
If you own a "connected car", I suggest you disconnect it.
The car's computers might record all the GPS locations for the next
time it is serviced. So I suggest disconnecting the GPS too.
Can anyone determine whether putting aluminum foil around the antennas
is feasible, and whether it is effective at cutting off connectivity
and GPS?
The main US tech platforms
are integrating
with the US "security" apparatus to form a system of total
surveillance that would make the state totally "secure" against us.
Most criticism of these companies fails to recognize that aspect of
what they do. Here is a criticism of Facebook from a former insider
that addresses many of its dangers, but omits the danger of its
collaboration with the state. Its suggestion that users "own" the
data and metadata about them, and
be asked
to approve each use,
would be inadequate unless it included use by the state.
In the US, the U SAP AT RIOT act prevents Facebook from carrying out
such a policy even if it wanted to. However, even if that law were
changed, I would not trust a data platform's word about this, unless
it were headed
by Ladar
Levison.
And even then, the state might find a way to take all the data
without his knowing.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of Heartless Sadism to stop making asylum seekers wait
in Mexico for months or years.
If you sign, please spread the word!
As More Universities ‘Ditch’ Elsevier,
Sci-Hub
Blossoms.
For the sake of science as well as freedom, we must legalize what
Sci-Hub does.
Zuckerberg is now talking about making Facebook respect privacy. The
stockholders think he
does
not plan to change much.
A "former Labour voter" has filed a
complaint
for bigotry against the Labour Party, claiming that it fails to
pursue alleged antisemitism.
The crucial question is, to what extent are these alleged antisemitic
incidents real antisemitism — that is, bigotry toward or
mistreatment of Jews qua Jews — and to what extent are they
criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine. The former should be
stamped out. The latter are legitimate political views (one can agree
or disagree with them).
In principle, either or both may be present.
England has a long history of antisemitism; for centuries, Jews were
forbidden to live there. Before World War II, antisemitism was overt
and widespread in Britain — as it was in the US.
At the same time, the UK is a hotspot in the global debate about
Israel's occupation of Palestine. Accusations of "antisemitism" are
being
weaponized.
In the US, defenders of the occupation fabricated false accusations of
antisemitism — not just misconstrued, but
factually
false. We cannot assume that people will not do this, either to
support the occupation or protect plutocracy from Corbyn.
Perhaps in the Labour Party there are some incidents of each kind. If
so, what's crucial is to distinguish them clearly. Perhaps there are
complex cases which combine some of both. In those cases, the factors
need to be separated.
Releasing the
NSA’s
Previously Classified Tool ‘Ghidra’ For Free Is a ‘Game Changer’.
It was designed for reverse-engineering "malware" — but
most
nonfree software nowadays is malware
Various Chinese workplaces and organizations demand that all staff spend hours a day studying to be Xi-ple.
That is the natural endpoint of the surveillance society.
We must take advantage of the fact that our countries have not reached such intensity, to fight to move towards less surveillance.
Ilhan Omar And the Weaponisation of Antisemitism.
Conflating Anti-Zionism with Jew-Hatred Is a Tragic Mistake.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Ilhan Omar.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act. This would patch the hole, made by the Supreme Court, which has allowed so much Republican voter-suppression in recent elections.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A gravely injured Syrian was denied a visa to visit the US for medical care. The US cited a reason which was pure trumpery.
Google is facing global protests against its plans to censor for China.
The US could save a lot of money on future local disasters by investing in advance preparation.
The Chicago thug that shot Laquan McDonald has been sentenced to almost 7 years in prison.
Convictions may start to teach thugs that they shouldn't fly off the handle and kill people. But I think that change will require changes in training and practices, as well.
Mueller says that the recent reports about Michael Cohen's testimony, claiming he said that the bully told him to lie to Congress, were false — Cohen's testimony did not say that.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep giveaways to Big Pharma out of the new NAFTA.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of Harassment and Surveillance to stop snooping on activists, journalists and legal aid lawyers at US border.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Citizens of Massachusetts: call your state legislators to oppose a bill that would imprison some people if they drive and used marijuana in the past month or two.
Whether any particular person gets imprisoned will depends on how liked or disliked person is. I suspect that blacks will be imprisoned especially often.
A law like this would be acceptable if and when there is a reliable test for being impaired by marijuana at the moment.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reform the laws governing national emergencies.
This is needed because the bully vetoed the bill to override his bogus national emergency.
The exercise was useful — it got some Republicans to go on record against the bogus emergency. But not enough to eliminate it.
A congressional override of an emergency should not be a a bill. It should be exercise of a provision of a law, not needing the president's signature.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The repressor wants to require people applying for unemployment benefits to take drug tests.
There is no particular need for this, nor any justification. It's simply an opportunity for kicking people when they are down.
The US government imposes on many organizations the requirement to fire people for using marijuana even in states that have legalized it.
Even supposing that people should be fired for being high on marijuana while at work, it would be an injustice to fire them based on a test that shows they used it some time in the past month. Perhaps there is a way to legislate that such tests are not valid tests for use of marijuana.
Israel asks foreign visitors attending conferences to list everyone they know in Israel, and all the things they intend to do in Israel.
The OECD has recognized that Australia is not trying to meet the Paris agreement emissions target.
Of course, those targets are insufficient anyway.
Israel has dismissed the international team of monitors that attempt to discourage violence in Hebron, where Israel committed the provocation of installing a group of fanatics in a neighborhood of that city and forcing all the residents out.
Planet roasters have discovered a new gas field under the sea near Britain. Insanely, they are delighted by the prospect of burning all that.
How do these people not know that we risk making disaster unavoidable if we do this?
The US is considering military intervention in Venezuela, or at least trying to give the impression that it is.
A few members of Congress call on the US to reject military intervention in Venezuela.
The Union of Concerned Scientists reports on the bullshit administration's systematic elimination of science from the US government.
Around 40% of gratis Androids apps report on the user's actions to Facebook.
Often they send the machine's "advertising ID", so that Facebook can correlate the data it obtains from the same machine via various apps. Some of them send Facebook detailed information about the user's activities in the app; others only say that the user is using that app, but that alone is often quite informative.
This spying occurs regardless of whether the user has a Facebook account.
The Republican tax giveaway to corporations had very little positive effect — few corporations did more hiring or investment. They simply passed on the giveaway to executives and stockholders.
Enbridge is preparing in advance to crush protests against the Line 3 oil pipeline — using surveillance to identify possible organizers, and lining up thugs to attack them.
Can anyone estimate the death toll from the added greenhouse gases that will be emitted due to use of this pipeline?
The UN envoy says that the cease-fire in Hodeida is holding.
Billionaire "centrist" Howard Schultz plans to run for president as an independent, apparently intending to help the cheater defeat a progressive opponent.
Tales of Torture from Israel's Prisons.
How accused Palestinian children are treated when arrested.
The 13-year-old was on the border of adolescence. The younger ones were children.
A "negotiating conference" involving Israelis and Palestinians follows the "national assembly" approach, including people chosen to be demographically and politically diverse.
Did DHS agents rescue slaves, or arrest customers?
The four victims might have been people who were enslaved and forced into sex work. If so, bravo to the agents for freeing them. But we can't be sure what happened, or who did what to whom, because laws redefine voluntary sex work by a minor as "trafficking" and pretend that their customers have "trafficked" them.
So were the 33 arrested people brutal enslavers, or customers? Were the four sex workers enslaved, or only minors? From this article, we have no idea.
When the state tries to distort language, to decide which distinctions we can make and which we are not supposed to know, it stops people from thinking about what is right or wrong, and what justice means.
In addition to avoiding global disaster, the Green New Deal provides
a way to cope with another financial crisis.
There is a proposal to require Facebook to hand over personal data about
young useds to researchers who will study whether being used by Facebook
does them harm.
This research project seems valid and useful to me, but it would legitimize
Facebook's collection of data about them — which is the basis of what is
wrong with Facebook.
Australia was reckless in cancelling Neil Prakash's Australian
citizenship. No attempt was made to verify that Prakash was a Fijian
citizen before exiling him based on that assumption.
Since exile is a punishment, it should require a trial. However, I
don't think exile is a legitimate punishment. Countries have a
responsibility to and for their citizens, even when punishing them for
crimes.
Imagine what happens if a real dual citizen is accused of a crime
and each of the two countries tries to revoke per citizenship
on the ground that perse has another citizenship. They would have
to race for which one can finish this first and leave the other
holding the hot potato.
Proposed new supersonic passenger planes would emit more CO2.
Barring some sort of miracle, we must not allow them to fly.
Microplastics, in sufficient doses, make mussels unable to cling to a surface.
That could kill them and wipe out mussels.
The Democrats in the House of Representatives could block this year
the annual amendments that deny US government funding for abortions.
US citizens: call on Congress to maintain protection on grizzy bears.
Right-wing terrorists shot and killed 49 people in mosques in New Zealand.
The hate targets of the right wing won't be protected by "thoughts and
prayers".
The author suggests condemning right-wing extremist politicians.
We condemn them already, but that has not proved effective.
Another measure that might help is to ban military-style high-velocity
weapons and high-capacity magazines. New Zealand has not done this.
Pollutionwatch: China Shows how Political Will Can Take on Air Pollution.
There is a paradox here: although the Chinese state is autocratic,
and displays contempt for dissent and democracy, it does pay attention
to the big problems that hurt lots of people.
By contrast, the US government is a plutocracy and disregards problems
that the rich can buy an exemption from.
There is a plan to protecting downtown Manhattan from coming floods by making
land around the edges.
The only problem I see is that it seems to be aimed at a low estimate of
how much sea level will rise.
"If children [and teenagers] don’t join the climate strike, their
schools are underachieving."
A saboteur-official said he finds it "thrilling" how the
saboteur-in-chief keeps public attention "focused somewhere else"
so he can sabotage the country for extractivists.
In his case, the sabotage consists of approving sonic blasts to search
for oil in the Atlantic Ocean — a prelude for the further sabotage
of drilling.
Let's not play into the troll's hands! We should focus on the
sabotage, not the distraction.
After thugs have been charged with killing Marielle Franco,
the next question is who ordered it — and how closely were they
tied to the fascist president, Bolsonaro.
The right-wing majority in Israel today has the same contempt for the
few that still advocate peace, as it has for Palestinians.
China kills some political prisoners by denying them medical care in
jail. China killed Cao Shunli this way for giving the UN information
about torture of other prisoners in China.
The US must close the Guantanamo prison, and apologize for it, so that
it can denounce China's crimes from a position of moral superiority.
A number of activists and researchers say that regenerative agriculture
can restore soils while absorbing lots of CO2 from the air.
The claims may be valid or they may be pseudoscience. I don't know
enough to judge, and I don't know of a scientific consensus I can
trust.
But seems established that we are losing topsoil fast with our current
system. We need to stop that loss. If regenerative agriculture is
the way to do that, then we need to use it — and we will see what
effect it has on greenhouse gases in the air.
Taking religion too seriously can be fatal. A mother on trial for
murdering her child offers the defense that this was a way to keep the
child safe in heaven.
After she killed the child, she then tried to kill herself, convinced
that she too would go to heaven.
What she did was entirely rational, taking belief in the afterlife
a premise.
It sounds like she and her daughter were suffering greatly, enough to
drive a person mad. So my condemnation is directed not at her
personally, but at the religion that led her astray.
… leading figures among the religious right gathered Wednesday
to issue a statement arguing that Adam and Eve would never have been
banished from the Garden of Eden if they had owned guns.
Spanish investigators accuse the CIA for a recent armed attack on the
North Korean embassy in Madrid.
Federal Consumer Protection Enforcement Drops 37 Percent Under [the conman].
The bully wants to be tough on crime only when the perpetrators are
not rich.
Senate Votes to End U.S. Support for Yemen War
Senator Warren has proposed a bill to fund lots of housing
construction in the US.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: phone
Pelosi's office to push for blocking military intervention in
Venezuela.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to pass HR1.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google
is lobbying to ban using employees' work emails for union
organizing.
There
is a
measles outbreak in Vancouver because too many people have not
been vaccinated.
Google, Facebook, and
Microsoft Sponsored
a Conference That Promoted [global heating] Denial.
Reportedly
Pence phoned Guaidó shortly before the latter claimed to be
"acting president" of Venezuela.
This means that the crisis in Venezuela is US intervention.
The story refers to Article 233 of Venezuela's Constitution.
Can anyone tell me what that article authorizes?
Does this give constitutional legitimacy to Guaidó's move?
(satire) Jared Kushner held a press conference Friday to assure
reporters he had never revealed government secrets to foreign
powers without
turning an enormous profit.
ALEC’s New Union-Busting Toolkit Illustrates the [right-wing's] Goal
Is
to Bankrupt
Unions Not Protect Workers.
England makes it a crime to sleep anywhere but in a recognized
building, so homeless people are frequently arrested and even jailed.
People
are fined
for begging, then must beg for money to pay the fine.
Many US cities have
a similar
policy of cruelty, but
others try
to help homeless people instead.
US Off Track to Reach Climate Goals
as Oil
and Gas Production Expand.
The article is incorrect in claiming that natural gas emits less
greenhouse gas than coal. That conclusion was based
on underestimating
the methane leakage from natural gas wells and handling
facilities.
Italy's right-wing minister
Salvini faces
charges of kidnapping for keeping refugees rescued at sea
effectively imprisoned in the ship that brought them into port.
Facebook plans
to integrate
its three mouths — the services Facebook, Instagram and
WhatsApp — so all the data they swallow goes to the same
stomach.
Unconscious racism amounts
to frequent
harassment across many areas of life.
London thugs target
blacks twice
as often as whites, for searching them on the street without
cause.
Egypt
is still
blocking investigation of the murder of Italian student Giulio
Regeni, in which members of the state repression agencies have been
named as subjects to investigate.
It would be wrong to convict a person based on limited evidence such
as that, but it is sufficient reason to conclude that the Egyptian
state is responsible.
Evidence implicates Zimbabwe's army in murder and rape during
repression of protests.
There is no cause that so easily stirs up big protests like increasing
the price of fossil fuels. Yet this is one of the special issues on
which yielding to the protesters implies (even worse) disaster in a
few decades.
Perhaps if the price increase is entirely distributed to poor people
in other ways, they might accept it.
When Ravi Ragbir, anti-deportation activist, was summoned to meet with the US deportation department, Rep. Yvette Clarke and members of the
New York City government tried to accompany him. Thugs told them they
were not allowed, and neither was his wife. The result was a
standoff.
Clarke promised Congress would investigate those practices.
Asia Bibi, her conviction for blasphemy finally overturned, is now
free to leave Pakistan, if she can evade the Muslim fanatics that want
to kill her.
There is no progress, however, on repealing the law against blasphemy.
I recommend that people avoid visiting Pakistan unless it is for a
vital necessity.
Right-wing extremists have adopted tactics of harassment and threats
against progressives in Portland, including the mayor.
They have also forcibly shut down public talks — a tactic that is
wrong no matter who does it.
Demasking nonviolent protesters, especially protesting the deportation
thugs, must be seen as an act of violence, since it could result in
their deportation.
The charges against Huawei include reselling US goods to Iran,
obstruction of justice, and theft of trade secrets.
Keeping technical trade secrets is antisocial, and if Huawei had
released them to the public, I for one would not criticize. However,
it appears that Huawei proceeded to keep the same techniques secret.
I applaud the fact that this article avoided describing trade secrets
as "intellectual property", which would have confused trade secrets with
other things that are totally different.
Facebook is interfering with political ad transparency investigators,
blocking users from cooperating with their investigations.
We should stop letting Facebook play games about this, by passing laws
that require political advertising platforms to give the public all
information about advertising campaigns, and allow each user to get
full information about the campaigns that targeted per and how.
French thugs fired a non-lethal weapon and hit protester Jérôme
Rodrigues in the eye. He will be disabled for life.
Comparison with other countries shows how insanely overprotective the
US is toward children.
"The goal is to automate us": Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance
Capitalism, the business model of using surveillance to manipulate
every aspect of life.
Zuboff recognizes that the solutions usually proposed are inadequate:
I think she is heading towards advocating the solution I advocate:
stop systems from collecting data about people.
Secret Filming Shows Sick Cows Slaughtered for Meat in Poland.
The US military is burning its firefighting foam that contains
persistent toxic PFAS chemicals, but burning it may be producing
other toxins. And the replacement may not be much safer.
Toxins are not all alike. Hydrofluoric acid is very dangerous in
macroscopic quantities. Does ingesting a microscopic amount each day
do any harm? I don't know. Some toxic substances biodegrade and
others can remain for many years.
As a Chinese company, Huawei is required to spy for China.
Urbanization in Africa is leading many women to have fewer children.
Some argue that this might enable the human population to peak at a
only 8 or 9 billion.
That is a theory, not a certainty, so let's not take that for granted!
We must not count our non-chickens before they don't hatch.
If that theory is basically valid, campaigns for birth control will be
very important since they could lower that peak.
Whatever happens to the global population, _you_ can make your life
easier, and contribute a lot more to the world, if you avoid
reproducing.
A Polish right-wing extremist is on trial for an arson attack in Ukraine against a Hungarian community center. It was made to appear
that Ukrainian nationalist extremists had done it.
The Polish arsonist says he was paid by a German right-wing extremist
who serves Russian interests in several other ways.
Those who want us to believe that government inherently can't do
anything right (and do their damndest to make sure it doesn't) want to
privatize some government functions, such as the TSA and air traffic
control.
Privatization would lead to paying low wages and getting lower-quality
staff with less training. It would also lead to situations where your
local air traffic control company suddenly goes bankrupt due to
internal mismanagement, so your airport is shut for weeks till new
contracts are negotiated.
Zimbabwean oppositionists are hiding, fearing violent attacks and even
murder by uniformed thugs and soldiers.
Accusing a mercenary of doing black ops for apartheid-era South Africa
and of intentionally inoculating blacks with HIV with genocidal intent.
Some of Maduro's main supporters are meeting with Guaidó and his
supporters.
Urging Venezuela to negotiate return to democracy.
"Venezuelans cry out for change — but they dread foreign intervention."
The Venezuelans quoted in the article do not say they want "change",
pure and simple, regardless of details. They have specific ideas of
what direction the change should go, and they don't agree about it.
The one who opposed Chávez 20 years ago is evidently right-wing, and
wants a government that would run the country efficiently for the
well-off. The former chavista wants a democratic government that
would help the poor as Chávez did.
Now that we know Guaidó prearranged his claim with Pence,
we have to expect he will do the former. I can't believe that Pence
would want any other outcome.
10,000 students in Berlin participated in last Friday's strike for
climate defense.
An Indian elected official has been sentenced to life in prison for
promoting the massacre of Sikhs in 1984.
This one exception illustrates how difficult it is to hold
murderous Hindu extremists in India responsible for their acts.
Instagram is promoting a bubble of "clothing" designed only for getting
photographed in. It is not durable enough to last for a few hours
of wearing it.
In society's terms, this is pure waste. What we need is free software
to edit a photo to create an image in which you appear to be wearing
the clothing. That would eliminate the need to really make and ship
the clothing.
New York City's Hudson Yards is designed purely for the wealthy,
subsidized with lots of public money, and used to break unions.
A march for Women's rights in Pakistan got the response of massive
intimidation.
The UK Student Climate Network manifesto.
Rebecca Solnit: Thank you, climate strikers. Your action matters and
your power will be felt.
One unfairness that keeps women down is that they are taught to apologize
when someone mistreats them.
It is unfortunate that the article uses "ingrained into our DNA" as a
metaphor for this, since the crucial point is that apologism is not
innate in women, rather taught to women.
Big Pharma's latest smokescreen: claiming that they give big drugstore
chains so much discounts that price rises don't reach the pharma
companies.
Even to the extent there is truth in this, it doesn't mean the system
is ok. It permits horrible and sometimes deadly gouging.
We should replace the private negotiations that benefit a few giant
chains of drugstores with a negotiation by the government that
benefits all people that need medicines.
The government should make drug effect studies honest, by stopping Big
Pharma from paying for those studies and taxing those companies instead
to pay for them,
The internet war on sex: ever more big platforms are censoring,
including Facebook and Starbucks.
Facebook said that political advertisers were required to identify
themselves, but many business front groups .give fake identities.
Beto O'Rourke is running for president, but there is no sign that hestands for anything good.
He has given the fossil fuel industry plenty of cooperation.
He is a political example of a celebrity — someone famous for being
famous.
Daniel Boorstin, in The Image, pointed out how Americans were coming
to adulate celebrities instead of heroes (people who were famous for
what they had done). In US politics, we still have real heroes to
admire, alongside plenty of real evildoers. Let's not waste our
attention on celebrities.
One thing about Beto O'Rourke that is not an objection to him as a candidate
is that he belonged to the Cult of the Dead Cow.
However, that is not a reason to vote for him.
Tobacco companies RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris worked on designing
strategies to market sugary drinks to children, starting in the 1960s.
Unconscious racism amounts to frequent harassment across many areas of life.
London thugs target blacks twice as often as whites, for searching them on
the street without cause.
Florida's new Republican secretary of state had to resign after the
publication of photos of him made up and dressed as a black woman.
I hope cross-dressing is not in danger of being banned.
Can a medicine prevent the harmful physical effects of loneliness?
Is it a good idea to do that?
Germany plans to stop burning coal for electricity in 2038.
This is too little, too late. We cut greenhouse emissions in half by
2030, in order to avoid disaster.
An Israeli soldier who murdered a helpless Palestinian prisoner is now
seeking office in the governing Likud Party.
Senator Warren has proposed a tax on wealth.
I am in favor, but to make it effective requires finding out all the
wealth that rich people own. Tax havens and offshore disguises make
that difficult to do.
After neo-Nazis at a rally stabbed antifascists, a California thug
intentionally protected the Nazis and created excuses to prosecute the
antifascists.
Angela Davis has received a human rights award for her work for civil rights.
Her receipt of the award had been opposed because of her support for
the Palestinians BDS campaign.
Giving immigrants US citizenship is good for them, and for society,
and the younger the better.
The US is drifting closer to starting a war with Iran. The bully's
current advisors and backers favor it, and he might hope to use it to
manipulate Americans through their misguided patriotism.
The US appeared to win the unjust war
[pol note about the injustice]
Dubya started with Iraq, and the resulting harm
includes the existence of PISSI.
[pol note about that relationship]
The US would probably have such a "victory" in Iran, which is far more
populous and whose people would resist hard.
Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act would eliminate the EPA's
authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and institute an increasing
carbon tax.
carbon tax would have a good effect, if the tax rate is high enough
to bring about rapid decarbonization. I don't know how much would be
required, but this one would take some years to reach that level,
giving the planet roasters a delay that we can't afford.
I have a hunch that the "dividend" would not be aimed at the poor
people that need it most, and that the net result for poor Americans
would be harmful.
If those things were corrected, I would support the carbon tax in
addition to the regulatory authority. Not instead of it.
Germany's advance in renewable energy is fueled by state-owned banks.
(satire) marine biologists at the University of Hawaii reported Friday that they had trained a highly intelligent octopus to profitably manage a mid-sized aluminum goods supplier.
Permanent officials rejected Jared Kushner's application for top
secret security clearance. The cheater's political appointee
overruled them.
Ajit Pai's trickle-down excuses for cancelling the US network neutrality
regulation have proved false, as we knew they would.
That regulation did not go far enough. It permitted too much
surveillance.
Soros at Davos: China is leading the world in adapting AI to total
regimentation.
I fear that the billionaires in his audience were thinking, "How can
we do that?"
The saboteurs running the EPA have reduced the fines collected from
businesses by 85%.
(satire) a masked vigilante confirmed Thursday that he would
be taking the work of terrorizing the black community into his own
hands as long as law enforcement officers failed to do so.
Permanent officials ruled that Jared Kushner was not entitled to
top-level security clearance, but an official appointed by the cheater
himself overruled them.
The Central African Republic was torn apart several years ago by a
civil war on religious lines. Civilians are targets.
Egypt is still blocking investigation of the murder of Italian
student Giulio Regeni, in which members of the state repression agencies
have been named as subjects to investigate.
It would be wrong to convict a person based on limited evidence such
as that, but it is sufficient reason to conclude that the Egyptian
state is responsible.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass HR 6 to give a path to citizens
to immigrants brought as children to the US without authorization.
Please don't use the soppy term "dreamers" for those people.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Wells Fargo Bank thinks of fossil fuels as
a That
loss would serve as a great investment
opportunity. The owners of Wells Fargo right. Unfortunately,
the loss would not be limited to them. So we can't afford to wait
quietly and tell them, "We told you so." We must stop them from doing
what they intend to do.
That is short-term thinking. That investment might pay off for 20 or
30 years, but beyond that the disasters will start damaging the value
of investments. 20 more years and technological civilization could
collapse, and many of those investments will simply disappear.
That loss would serve the owners of Wells Fargo right. Unfortunately,
the loss would not be limited to them. So we can't afford to wait
quietly and tell them, "We told you so." We must stop them from doing
what they intend to do.
Brazilian congressman Jean Wyllys has gone into exile due to death
threats, which were made against him because he is homosexual.
Everyone: call
for Chelsea Manning to be released.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on the big restaurant company Darden to give waiters two weeks
notice of their schedules.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the
US: call
on the FCC to block the proposed merger of Sprint and T-mobile.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to pass SJ Res 10, to cancel the cheater's bogus
national emergency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Wesley Bell, the new head prosecutor of St Louis
County, has
changed policies that were systemic injustice to people charged
with crimes.
He is doing the best that he personally can do, but what people really need
is to put these changes into the law.
Meanwhile, the cities that get their money by squeezing it out of poor
people do need money. They need to be able to get that money through
methods that are just. For instance, taxing the rich more.
Analysis
Warns of Lack of Progress on 2020 Global Emissions Target.
Anne Brady, a New Zealander who has reported on how China intimidates
dissidents,
is targeted
with the same tactics at home in New Zealand.
China is making repression in Hong Kong much
broader with
a law to jail anyone that "insults" China's national anthem.
Previously only concrete political positions were prohibited.
It is only a matter of time before people in Hong Kong are required to
affirm their adoration of China.
A project to talk with many supporters of "populists" in France and
Germany reports
that their main concerns are "precarious working conditions,
worries about money and declining social infrastructure."
Modern-day crackpot
theories don't
need any basis in reality. People make them up on the spur of the
moment, and fools take them on faith.
The crackpot belief that vaccines are
dangerous is
killing people.
Iran's
thugs arrested
7000 protesters in 2018, killing 35 of them.
Jazz student Nai
Barghouti describes
the harassment she received trying to fly out of Tel Aviv airport.
An Israeli
politician's campaign
ads boast of killing thousands of Palestinians.
B’tselem:
Israel Killed
290 Palestinians in 2018, Most of Them Innocents.
The Palestinians undermine their own cause by using weapons such as
slingshots and firebombs to a protest that is supposed to be nonviolent.
The same is true for gilets jaunes protests in France.
(satire) Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) reportedly began
staffing
her campaign Tuesday with unpaid inmates from California
correctional facilities.
Migrants to Europe are generally in good health when they arrive.
Once there, unhealthful food and exclusion from medical care tend to
make
many of them sick.
China seems to
have grabbed
and disappeared writer Yang Hengjun, who emigrated and is now an
Australian citizen, and his wife.
Some quotations from Martin Luther King Jr., said to be
"anti-capitalist", strike me not as entirely opposed to capitalism,
but rather
as rejecting
it as a dogma or as a justification for perpetuating poverty.
Likewise
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez today.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to protect the whole Grand Canyon and its surroundings
from mining.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Families Belong Together Act to forbid the
bully from using prison to separate families of border-crossers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Corporate Political Disclosure Act to hold
corporations responsible for their campaign spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: if you listen to NPR, keep your ears peeled for ads for
Elsevier. I heard one on a station in Boston yesterday.
If you hear one, phone your station and state your anger at hearing an
ad for a company that locks up science. If this makes you feel
negatively towards the station itself, say so.
As More Universities ‘Ditch’ Elsevier, Sci-Hub Blossoms.
References (which you can cite, or quote from):
A big loan from Microsoft to
Seattle is
no substitute for taxing business more.
Why
You Shouldn't Post Photos of Friends without Permission.
Over
70% of Americans now acknowledge that global heating is a
present-day problem and are concerned about it.
Now we need to convert this awareness into adequate action.
UK cities have their own method of squeezing money out of poor people
through fines. The enforcement has been privatized, which naturally
leads to
abuses, including
false accusations against old people on the expectation they would
pay rather than insist on their innocence.
Zimbabwe's president says that repression while he was away
was done
against his will.
It is hard to tell what really happened.
Some billionaires say they want to save the world, as long as it gets done
Ireland's
Citizens' Assembly enabled Irish with different views to think
together about contentious issues including whether to legalize
abortion.
An anti-immigration Italian
minister criticized
France for colonialism in Africa.
It is true that France conquered a colonial empire in Africa. It ran
its colonies for the profit of French business. Other European
countries did likewise, including Belgium, Spain, Portugal, the UK,
Germany, and Italy (in Libya, Eritrea and for a while Ethiopia).
However, this criticism of France is simplistic and exaggerated.
The situation in Africa today is, as a whole, the outgrowth of
colonialism; it could not be otherwise. However, the causes of
African poverty today also include religious wars, overpopulation,
extraction of minerals, disease (including HIV and Malaria), tax
evasion via tax havens, and making the people repay the loans received
by past dictators.
I suppose France plays a role in that, but so do the US and China,
which did not have colonies in Africa.
A dying unauthorized immigrant in the UK has received a bill for
around $40,000 dollars for medical care. If he does not pay this
— and he has no money — he will be made
to die
without pain treatment.
The UK government has denied his family permission to visit him in the
UK before he dies.
Presenting the history of spaces designed for children, in homes,
schools, and cities. The design of cities
today impedes
children from playing in autonomy.
How Can We Take Power Away from Criminal
Gangs? Legalize
Drugs.
There are some problems of organized crime which we can't fix with
that approach. For instance, sale of wild animals or their body
parts. But we should use that approach where it is applicable.
Abuse of garment factory workers in Bangladesh reaches the level of
threats
to murder them when they complain.
Peace initiatives in Israel today work
to encourage
empathy for the Palestinians.
Black markets are developing a sort of cell system by which the
participants can't identify each other and can't betray each other.
The customers never see any of them, and
they can't identify the
customers either.
As sale of prohibited goods becomes anonymous and safe, lawful sales
of lawful goods are becoming a dangerous system of massive
surveillance. When will we be able to buy those through a darknet,
for our privacy?
If Tor sold its DRM-free contract-free e-books through a darknet, I
would in principle (some details are crucial) be glad to buy them
straight from the publisher that way.
through
markets they can dominate.
North
Korea has
missile bases that it has refused to acknowledge.
If North Korea started to negotiate a nuclear disarmament treaty,
these bases would make the matter more difficult.
However, I think that relaxing the hostility that could lead to
renewed war in Korea is a good thing even if North Korea retains
nuclear weapons.
Imagine if your medical provider could collect data from absolutely everything you did and everywhere you went. They could force you to do the healthy thing, all the time.
Note: The original article was removed from the guardian and the original guardian link is now pointing to the archived article at archive.org.
Turkey warned that people who participate in rallies in Germany in support of Kurds could be imprisoned if they visit Turkey.
Don't take the risk: don't go to Turkey!
Recycling isn't a solution for the disposal of plastic. We need to produce much less waste.
Could UK local governments protect homeless people from people that hate them?
In principle they could, but it isn't likely to happen as long as governments would rather persecute them.
Several US states have passed laws to prohibit abortion and punish doctors that perform abortions.
Supposedly there are a few exceptions, such as in case of rape or medical necessity, but they are not clear; doctors that tried to rely on them might be prosecuted anyway. Women might be imprisoned for using abortion medicines.
Bouteflika, the authoritarian president of Algeria, said he will not run for another term.
Netanyahu played the racist card, saying that Arab citizens are second-class citizens.
Comparing PISSI with nonwarlike cults —
they
have a lot in common.
US thugs and Mexican thugs joined together to investigate and repress immigrants' rights activists, including journalists and lawyers.
Even though North Korea is not disarming, the reduction of hostility is a real step forward.
Everyone: sign
a note of appreciation and support to Ilhan Omar.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: support
the Save the Internet Act (resurrect the FCC's former network
neutrality regulations).
Here
is what the EFF has to say about the bill.
These regulations
are not
all we really need
but they are a lot better than the nothing we have now.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to repeal the blanket Authorization for Use of
Military Force.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Treating professions as mere
businesses comes
at a cost to society.
Supposedly, calling patients, clients and students "customers" was
going to make them "king", empowered. But that's not what really
resulted.
With modern surveillance-based business methods, the customer is the
puppet king who reigns symbolically, whose every act is managed and
controlled by the "servants". The extreme case is the medical
business today in the US, where hospitals and doctors look
for every
opportunity
to trick
and cheat the customer.
A gene replacement therapy for an inherited form of blindness has
received
approval.
The Women's
March focuses
on visibility, not the political work to advance women's rights.
Kamala Harris, as attorney general of California, went hard on sex
workers and internet freedoms,
and easy
on thugs and prisons.
I would find it hard to vote for her for president, but I plan to avoid
the need to decide by supporting Bernie Sanders for president.
Watch out for Democratic "centrists" encouraging Democrats to support
some other candidate because perse is nonwhite, female, or a billionaire.
French thugs fired rubber-coated steel bullets at protesters. 77
protesters have suffered grave head
wounds. 15
of them have lost an eye.
Sometimes thugs aim directly at the heads of protesters, which indicates
the attempt to try to cause a grave wound.
The violent protesters are also doing wrong. Wanton destruction is
not only wrong, it also bring the protest movement into disrepute.
In the US, protest groups used to appoint marshals to keep order
and prevent violence. Europe needs to do this, too.
A heatwave
in Queensland killed 1/3 of its population of flying foxes.
Avoiding global disaster, and avoiding obesity,
both require
big decreases in eating meat, and even in eating dairy products.
Here
are details of the diet suggested, to make it more concrete.
I don't eat land animal meat most days, when I am at home, but I would
find this diet very painful because of the limits on dairy and sugar.
I hope I could trade my avocado for more cheese.
The limits on production of meat and cheese are absolute:
population growth would reduce the amount each person could have,
and population decrease would increase it.
Republicans have become so hostile to government that they are happy
to keep government departments shut down ad
infinitem, perhaps
to destroy them.
Last year, a member of the Rio de Janeiro city council was
assassinated. She had often criticized the thugs' violence. Now
witnesses identify the
killer: a
former thug.
Should people who want to
die be
kept alive to please their relatives?
I don't think so. I think it is selfish and cruel to prolong the
suffering of your relative who finds living horrible. The
compassionate thing to do is accept per decision to end per own life.
I think it makes sense to tell those people who are still physically
and mentally capable, "Here's a suicide pill, but it's up to you to
take it (or not)." If person doesn't take the pill, that shows person
is ambivalent about dying.
However, it's a different matter for people lost to dementia, their
bodies alive but their minds dead. Their previous orders should be
carried out.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive
Licensing Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to pass Medicare for All.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Google to withdraw legal filings that aim to undermine workers'
rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Part of the copyright industry, which pushed for the EU's automated
censorship, has declared the resulting article 13 so bad that they
would
rather eliminate
it entirely.
Europeans, don't count on this to get rid of it! Phone your MEPs and
your national legislators and help kill it.
Liam Neeson's confession about his murderous intention after the rape
of a
friend highlights
the central wrong of racism: the unjust jump from judging one
person, to judging a large group of people that have one irrelevant
aspect in common.
The EU is a ball of business-supremacy treaties, but if the UK wants
to replace them with its own, the new
ones will
be even worse.
Pakistan
is holding
Asia Bibi prisoner and stopping her from going to exile.
Pearson dominates testing and test training in US education, and even
owns schools. A number of
states are
breaking loose.
Pompeo is spreading Iraq-style lies
as excuses
to invade Venezuela.
The idea that Hezbollah has "cells" in Venezuela, where nearly
everyone is Christian, is absurd. Lebanese did emigrate to many Latin
American countries, but they were mostly Christians.
The idea of a Cuban "invasion" is absurd too.
Blackface entertainers played an important role, starting before the
civil war,
in teaching
white Americans to belittle blacks, tolerate slavery, and demand
segregation.
The author argues that blackface was so widespread, so accepted among
whites, that it makes no sense to punish individuals heavily for having
done this 30 years ago. However, we should be very strict with today's
young people, if they do this. That way they will learn the lesson.
I recall when politicians' careers could be ruined for having done
various things that lots of people did. At one point, it was using
marijuana. At another point, it was hiring household help and not
paying social security tax for them.
A woman in Kosovo went to the thugs to report that her teacher had
raped her, and the investigating thug handled the case
by raping
her again, and again.
To crown it all, the Kosovan state is prosecuting the people who tried
to help her with an abortion. Kosovo must legalize abortion, for
everyone, as well as punish the rapists.
I speculate that the thug chose her to rape partly because of the
patriarchal idea that an unmarried woman who is not a virgin has
become worthless. Changing ways of looking at the world is not easy,
but that is the long-term change that is needed.
One detail that is morally irrelevant is the age of the woman. In
fact, she was 16, but if she had been 6, 26, or 60, it would have made
no difference. Rape, forcing or compelling someone to have sex, is
wrong no matter who it is done to.
African refugees in Italy are authorized to work, but they have to
work 10 hours a day on farms for below the minimum wage, and are
compelled
to live
in unlivable habitations.
A second Massachusetts forensic chemist was found to be messing up
systematically. The state did not quickly investigate the
consequences of this misconduct, and eventually was compelled to
dismiss
thousands of drug cases.
Legalizing drugs, and replacing repression with harm-reduction,
would lead to never bringing most of these cases.
The theft of the DR Congo's presidential election has given crooks
control of the government, but non
necessarily recognition
as legitimate.
If they had given US plutocrats a share, the bullshitter would prop them up.
The Thai
king forbade
the Thai princess from running for office.
The government of New South Wales (one of the states of Australia) is
making music festivals close down by
imposing new
"safety" requirements.
Nominee attorney general Whitaker testified to the House of
Representatives, but he somehow negotiated a time limit; then he
refused
to answer questions that he did not like, running out the clock.
So the exercise was a waste of time.
Why cannot the House compel him to answer?
(satire) Jeff Bezos
reportedly set
loose hundreds of Prime Air drones Friday to hunt down and
retrieve the nude photos of him obtained by the National Enquirer.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to demand the conman's income tax returns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to immediately
remove Elliott Abrams as a member of its Committee on Conscience.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to investigate Rep. Gaetz for trying to intimidate
witness Michael Cohen.
Here
is what lawyers say about it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on members of Congress to cosponsor the WATER Act.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
FamilyTreeDNA has
been giving
users' DNA sequence info to the FBI.
Russia
is systematically
persecuting Jehova's Witnesses, calling them an "extremist group"
and implying that they are terrorists.
They hold absurd beliefs, but they do not attack or hurt anyone.
It is wrong to repress them for those beliefs.
2018 was
the fourth
hottest year on record.
The 5 years starting in 2014 were the hottest five-year period on record.
Humans are wiping out large
animals, pushing
their species towards extinction.
To avoid destroying the wild, we need to
leave half
the Earth's land for wildlife, and that will get harder and harder
if we keep increasing the human population. For this reason, and so
many others, it is
important not
to have children.
The American Federation of Teachers warns that imprisoning so many
people in the US
is bad
for the education of many children.
Modern day racism still leads white men to think of murdering black
men to "protect" white women. The victims need not have personally
done anything wrong; just being black is enough to
qualify, in
the racist mind.
Neeson didn't actually kill anyone, and he seems to have started to
recognize that his reaction was wrong. He has learned part of the
lesson, but not all of it.
What is the best way to react to this? We could revile him and punish
him for thinking that way. Perhaps some of that is necessary. But it
might be more effective to offer him future forgiveness if he sets
himself to learn the rest of the lesson.
The UK
is repressing
music as well as preteens in the name of fighting gangs.
Residents of Paradise, California, are being banned from living on
their own land (in RVs, for instance) until it gets cleared of debris
from the
fire, which
could take a year.
The saboteur in chief
has nominated
a fossil fuel lobbyist to run the interior department.
He will be excellently placed to help them pollute the whole world.
Texas Republicans
are constructing
a system to disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters who
became citizens in recent years.
Gangs in the UK recruit minors via social media, then tell them they are
under
surveillance through their phones so that they don't dare try to
get out of the gang.
This seems like the underground equivalent of China's "social credit" system,
the difference being mainly that the enslaver is a gang rather than a state.
Italian prosecutors are dead set on imprisoning Medhanie Tesfamariam
Berhe, claiming he is Medhanie Yehdego Mered,
despite various
evidence that he is not.
Fish Stocks Continuing to Fall
as
Oceans Warm, Study Finds.
The latest fashion in excuse for hurrying the world off the climate
cliff is
"energy
security". A large deposit of natural gas has been found in the
Mediterranean sea near Cyprus, and we are told it could give Europe
"energy security", if only the dispute between Cyprus and Turkey does
not prevent it.
The term "global heating" does not occur in the article, nor does any
of the usual terms to refer to that phenomenon. The author displays
total ignorance about it — ignorance in a way that is often
obtained by purchase.
We who are not ignorant are aware that the world has
no
room for any new fossil fuel infrastructure, nor is there any room
in the carbon budget for burning any new discoveries of fossil fuel.
The intelligent way to resolve the dispute between Cyprus and Turkey
about these fuel deposits is for the rest of the world to impose a
decision that none of that gas will be touched!
Nine babies are being
held
in a US immigration prison in Texas (with their mothers). Most of
the babies are sick, perhaps because the water supply there is bad.
Right-wingers are now offering Democrats "helpful" advice to
support
plutocratists instead of progressives.
I used to get "helpful" advice from open-source supporters to drop my
"radical" free software ideas and support
their
ideas instead.
Meanwhile,
the
advice to conservatives is to oppose HR 1 because helping poor
people and blacks vote would undermine Republican voter suppression.
A UK shooting range is using a picture of Shamima Begum, the UK
teenager that went to Syria and joined PISSI,
as
a target for shooting at.
I don't think anyone, not even the conman himself, should be used as a
target in a shooting range. That practice encourages hatred. If she
did lack empathy, the shooting range is not setting a example of more
empathy.
Free Press calls for a
tax
on targeted ads, to support grants for journalism.
I think the first part of the plan is basically good. I would rather
prevent the data collection that makes targeted ads possible, and tax
some other profitable digital activity.
I think the second part is problematical. I fear that plutocratist
politicians would find a way to direct the support at plutocratist
"journalism".
Netanyahu Just
Invited
Israel’s Equivalent Of The KKK To Join The Government.
The whole spectrum of US Jewish organizations has
condemned
Netanyahu for this.
I'd expect the right-wing US supporters of Netanyahu are calling all
those organizations "antisemitic" by now.
Two leaders of a group that demands better wages and working
conditions for Dalit sanitation workers were arrested, and told they
would be
jailed
without trial for "endangering national security."
This law
permits
the Indian state to jail people arbitrarily.
(satire) … presumptuous congressional freshman Debbie
Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL) thought Thursday that she could just come in
and start
representing
her constituents.
The few remaining survivors of the Nagasaki nuclear bomb
work
to keep the world aware of the suffering caused by using a nuclear
weapon.
The Japanese responsible for torturing American prisoners were
convicted (and executed, which is a bad thing to do). That torture
included
waterboarding.
When will the US demonstrate that it has higher moral standards than
the militarist Japan of the 1940s?
Could
a Green New Deal Save Civilization?
With so much time lost, it may not be enough — we may need to
make an even stronger effort. But we may as well adopt the Green New
Deal, for starters.
The Tornillo prison for refugee minors has closed, but that doesn't
mean they were freed. A thousand refugee minors have
appeared
in a prison in Florida, also on federal land so it is easy to get
away with mistreating them.
The Instagram "influencers" are fundamentally
parasites
used for commercial manipulation of other people. No wonder they
are so often scammed or scammers.
Instagram and WhatsApp are tentacles of Facebook. Best to stay away
from them.
Zimbabwe's thugs are
arresting
protesters for going on strike and staying home.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to block the bully's fake emergency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on New Jersey Governor Murphy to fund the Civic Info Consortium.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Call on
Japan to stop financing coal plants in Vietnam.
The
world cannot tolerate new fossil fuel infrastructure, and
especially not for coal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Mass citizens: Phone your state legislators and call for increasing
spending on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is to oppose the
governor's plan
to do the opposite.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Governor Baker proposes to shift funds earmarked for prevention and
spend them on treating symptoms. That is an instance of foolish,
short-term thinking &mash; like skimping on chemotherapy to get more
painkillers.
Is Governor Baker a Republican, by any chance? Sad to say, he is.
Advocating what is "politically possible" instead of what really fixes
the problem is
a recipe
for long-term defeat.
Campaigning for a bigger change, even if it fails at first, provides
a basis to build a movement that can someday succeed.
1/4
of the black voters in Kentucky are disenfranchised because they
are ex-cons.
The rich people of the day designed the US Constitution to maintain
their power. Converting this into democracy has proceeded slowly and we
have
not finished the job.
I am glad to see recognition that the way to change low voter turnout
is via candidates that are worth supporting.
Why
it is important to reject discrimination in the US military (in
this case, discrimination against transsexuals) despite the reasons to
criticize the US military itself.
As the state of Nevada sues to stop shipments of plutonium to a waste
repository of questionable safety, the US government snuck in a
shipment before the suit was actually filed,
then pretended
in court it had not done so.
A study published by The Lancet holds the global food system
responsible for the obesity of many people and the malnutrition of
many others, as well as for
a substantial
part of global heating.
After the bullshitter talked of removing some of the US troops from
Afghanistan, the Senate started voting to condemn that withdrawal.
The one and only issue on which the Senate dares reprove the bullshitter
is when he doubts militarism.
Bernie
Sanders voted
against the resolution, saying he opposes endless war.
It is not sufficient that some billionaires give large sums to
charity, seeking thus to influence society in accord with their own
wishes. We
must tax them so the state has money to carry out the people's
decisions rather than the billionaires' wishes.
The state
has a
big job to do,
and that costs a lot of money. Everyone but the poor must contribute
what they can, and wealthy people can contribute more.
The billionaires in Davos did not seem to worry that we might make
them pay their fair share of taxes. Or even make them pay a 70%
marginal rate on the income after the first 10 million.
But we will get there.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
then you win. Thanks to Ms Ocasio-Cortez, we have reached the
stage where they laugh.
US prisons are forcing prisoners to enter themselves in a voice print
data base, to recognize when they are calling. When these prisoners
are
released, their
data won't be deleted.
This practice will not remain limited to prisoners and former prisoners.
Thugs in some parts of the US are collecting DNA samples from people
merely because
of vague suspicions.
Arguing that the reason housing is so expensive is that there are ways
to use
it for money laundering.
The ACLU has made a city near St Louis
stop evicting
people for calling 911, but many others have the same lousy rule.
A
Massachusetts bill would establish very strict privacy rules for
the data collected by digital toll collection systems.
This is good, but to really respect drivers' privacy calls for an
anonymous way to pay tolls.
The bullshitter
is planning
a deal to give Salafi Arabia nuclear fuel to play with; meanwhile,
the butcher (acting king) has said he wants to develop nuclear
weapons.
The US claims to be going all-out to stop Iran from doing exactly this;
if Salafi Arabia did it, that would be even worse.
The Happy Planet Index measures how efficiently a country gives its
citizens a long and happy life. The champion
country is
Costa Rica.
Bolsonaro talks about efforts to reestablish democracy in Venezuela,
even though he has
just
started eliminating democracy in Brazil.
President Bush I was likely to be indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal,
so he
Making college students pay for college with a share of their future
income can be more fair than what the US does now. However, depending
on the details, it
could
be another form of debt trap.
(satire) Faux News has a new live channel that offers
24-hour-a-day
coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
US
citizens: state
your support for single-payer universal medical care (Medicare for
All).
The mainstream media are misrepresenting the issue already, pretending
that it would cost more than our current wasteful and dishonest
system. In fact, it
would cost
much less.
If you sign, please spread the word!
California citizens: California
is considering
a bill that would require stores to first offer an email receipt
for purchases.
Please call your state representative and senator to urge them to
limit this change to non-cash purchases, unless/until there is
an anonymous libre system for delivering e-receipts. Pressuring people
to give identifying information leads them into harm.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In 200 years, the world has not eliminated extreme poverty. It's just
that most
people did
not need money then.
To Kill a Mockingbird presents a picture in which poor people could
get by with hardly any money.
Bolton
publicly implied he wants to capture Maduro and put him in
Guantanamo.
That would make Venezuelans hate the US, so Bolton must intend to
subjugate that country so thoroughly that their feelings will not
matter.
(satire) Cory
Booker Apologizes To Wall Street Bankers For The Mean Things He's
Going To Have To Say About Them.
Bell
Canada tried
to insert a ban on VPNs into the new NAFTA.
I appreciate the article, but it does wrong to refer to the practice
of sharing copies as "piracy". Piracy means attacking ships, which is
very bad. Sharing copies is good; what's bad is using legal or
technical methods to prevent sharing.
See this.
IBM is working hard to make face recognition as accurate, and as
Orwellian, for
blacks and women as it is for white men.
Progressives should stop fussing about the danger that inaccurate face
recognition poses for minorities, a danger that will not last many
years, and focus on the danger that accurate face recognition
will increasingly pose for everyone.
San Francisco's law requiring health warnings on ads for soda
has
been overturned in the name of companies' freedom of speech.
This is another example of why corporations must not be entitled to
human rights. Human rights are for persons, and corporations are
not persons.
If a law or a court says that corporations are persons, that doesn't
make them persons, it only makes the law an ass.
Congressional Democrats
have introduced
a bill to increase Social Security benefits, to keep retired
Americans out of poverty.
I suppose Republicans in the Senate will block this, since their maxim is,
"If you're not rich, you have too much money."
E-cigarettes
are almost
twice as effective as nicotine gum for helping smokers quit
smoking tobacco.
The US
government approved
the merger of Monsanto and Bayer, despite (or should I say,
because of) the increased monopoly power they will have.
I would not blame this on the bullshitter — Obama hardly
bothered to resist monopolies either, and neither would Clinton have.
The Paycheck
Fairness Act would take several steps to end gender pay
discrimination.
Planned supersonic passenger aircraft would expose major cities to
many sonic booms
that damage
people's health.
Even worse, these planes would emit several times more CO2 per
passenger — a big step in the wrong direction, which we must not
allow.
When we have a stable population of one billion, and greenhouse gas
levels are decreasing, we can consider allowing supersonic airliners.
Google's automated copyright filter makes false copyright claims easy
to make, and hard to challenge. Criminals
are taking
advantage of this for extortion.
Mothers in the US who leave their children at home in the care of a
boyfriend in order to work
are vulnerable
to being imprisoned if the boyfriend is accused of any sort of
abuse.
But what ought they to do instead? Starve their children and/or
themselves? Find a better boyfriend (that may be impossible)? Pay
for child care that costs almost all their pay? Our stingy
governments have left them no better choice than the one they make.
Parents of babies with Marfan's syndrome should get extra support.
They could have avoided the problem by using birth control, or
abortion. If you are too poor to count on supporting a child, your
responsibility is not to make one. States ought to help and encourage
this — but Republican states like Oklahoma do just the opposite.
"Abstinence only" sex miseducation is common there, and it is
a recipe
for pregnancy.
The
Pentagon pays
professional sports to militarize the American public and build up
MAGA-style shallow patriotism.
If nobody protests when they play the US national anthem, that means
militaristic politics goes unchallenged.
Democrats introduced
a bill that would require the US president to get authorization
from Congress before launching a nuclear first strike.
Women who went to Syria and joined PISSI were
not
necessarily innocent "brides". They often worked for PISSI
— just not as soldiers. Some of them changed their minds and
could not get away.
The
proposed
federal regulation intended to take funds from Planned Parenthood
would mainly harm women who are poor or living precariously.
By denying them effective birth control, it would lead to more
abortions (somewhat undesirable) and lots of unwanted babies
(terrible).
Sex workers in New York State
campaign
for decriminalization of their work.
"Am I the only one who’s
terrified
about the warm weather?"
No, I am too. I often remark on unseasonably warm weather as a sign
of disaster on the way. It's an opportunity to contribute to a good
cause.
If
February
is like spring, feel very afraid, then join in the fight.
Science has established that record hot winter days are
largely
due to global heating.
A gang
beat
up a rabbi in Argentina, showing that antisemitism is now
dangerous there.
Challenges
in recycling concrete instead of burying it.
Various US states are using the power of eminent domain to
seize
land for businesses, using an argument that amounts to
trickle-down. Wisconsin is using it in order to be able to give
Foxconn a corrupt subsidy.
Arizona thugs say the reason they
shot
a 14-year-old was that he had a replica gun and made a
"threatening" movement.
We should not assume those thugs have told the truth about any of
this. Other thugs made a practice of
carrying
replica guns to plant.
Ebola keeps bubbling along in the DR Congo; medical teams have been
unable
to shut it down.
Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, now seeking the
Democratic nomination, have been
only
partly progressive.
Especially Gillibrand, who has offered her support to plutocrats.
The Disability Integration Act would require US states to
offer
disabled people benefits while they stay in ordinary housing,
rather than requiring them to move to a nursing home.
The UK has two different measures of inflation, and
switches
between them so as to raise prices and keep wages down.
Several newly elected progressive activist congresscritters have been
appointed to the Financial Services Committee, where they
may
be able to interfere with the banksters.
Republicans in the Senate will block them from actually passing laws,
but they may be able to help replace those Republicans by championing
good bills.
US
citizens: call
on the FCC to reject the merger of Sprint and T-mobile.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the
US: call
on district attorneys to commit to expunging convictions for
possession of marijuana (in states where that has been legalized).
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to stop the narcissist's military parade.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Senator Schumer to be a real climate leader and support the
Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US deportation thugs
are force-feeding
refugees that are on hunger strike.
The Paycheck
Fairness Act aims to end the gender pay disparity by giving all
employees a basic part of freedom of speech: to say what they are paid
and talk with each other to compare their pay.
The stolen election in Georgia, based on stopping blacks from voting,
is
compared with the Constitution's rule to count a slave as 3/5 of a
person.
With so many methods of voter suppression used, they can't be a
coincidence. They must have been part of a broad effort, coordinated
by the
man who was in charge of running the state's election,
the same man that is now the governor of Georgia.
Kamala Harris wanted to make students show up at school
by threatening
to jail their parents.
Schools alone won't eliminate robbery and other street crimes; we do
need prisons, too. But the US could do with a lot fewer prisons
if it made life easier for the nonrich.
The US government plans to hand over military computing
over to
a private company. That is a threat to national security.
France is attacking the right to protest, even
the right
to nonviolent protest.
A church in the Netherlands
held nonstop
services for 96 days to provide sanctuary to a refugee family.
The bullshitter and his assistants claim they are going to restore
freedom and democracy to
Venezuela, by
threatening invasion.
The previous Republican president said the same thing about Iraq, and
made things much much worse. Intervention in Venezuela could make
things much much worse, too.
If the two sides come to some agreement, Venezuela might take a turn
for the better.
Italian football officials have decided to suspend and maybe halt
games when the spectators cry out racist insults. The minister of
hate, Salvini, calls on all Italian
racists not
to be deterred by this.
Rat-infested
[UK] Prison Cells Are One Difference Between Punishment And
Cruelty.
The mass death of many species of starfish on the Pacific coast seems
to
be triggered
by warmer water.
The loss of the sunflower sea star means that sea urchins are overrunning
the US coast. They survive further north, but as global heating proceeds
they could be wiped out there too, and the species will be extinct.
Industrial fishing
boats refuse
to take steps to avoid killing albatrosses.
Unfortunately, killing the albatrosses has not yet brought them
any bad luck. Perhaps they are due for some strict laws.
EU
Proposes Ban on 90% of Microplastic Pollutants.
If this is effective, we will need to extend it world-wide.
A
new technique for cultivating rice produces a lot more grains,
uses half the water and much less seed, and cuts methane emissions
too.
This is a very good thing, but the benefit is not infinite.
Population growth can wipe out the gains.
Poland's grass-roots democracy movement
is growing
through local victories.
US citizens: if your congresscritter was newly elected last November,
phone
per office to explain the problems with the distractive,
inadequate network neutrality bills.
I have seen this advice for an effective call.
For example, the idea of "data ownership" is often championed as a
solution. But what is the point of owning data that should not exist in
the first place? All that does is further institutionalise and
legitimate data capture.
https://torrentfreak.com/as-more-universities-ditch-elsevier-sci-hub-blossoms/
https://gnu.org/philosophy/push-copyright-aside.html
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to make Amazon and other large companies pay their fair share of taxes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to defend abortion rights from obstructive arbitrary requirements.
While this bill has no chance of becoming law under this administration, it's important that we build momentum and support for it now.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support common-sense gun control measures.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Analyzing the history of Venezuela, before and during the presidency of Chávez. Oil money enabled him to implement socialist measures without curbing the power of the oligarchs, so the oligarchs were never weakened, and now they appear to plan to use Guaidó to take power again.
Thus, Venezuela faces the choice between an acutely repressive government and a permanently unjust government.
"Zumigo, which sold the location data of American cell phone users, wanted the FCC to remove requirements around user consent."
Requiring consent is not sufficient to make this acceptable. We need to require that any software that can send a user's location offer the option of spoofing the location.
Experts call for influence of ‘big food’ to be curbed to also tackle issue of climate change.
Some of the gilets jaunes protesters are starting political parties.
The US and the Taliban seem to have made substantial progress in negotiating some sort of agreement.
A judge in a UN court quit and denounced the US and Turkey for acting against international courts.
Bolton threatened to prosecute any judge in the International Criminal Court that investigated a US citizen.
People have said for decades that the US is the biggest rogue state.
The US deportation thugs used to arrest around 10 people a year from courts in New York City. Since 2017 it has been around 180 a year.
Good domestic policies such as the Green New Deal are not enough. We need to dismantle the global economic system that lets global capital and business move around and batter countries into economic submission.
80,000 protesters marched in Brussels for action to curb global heating, and thousands more couldn't fit in the trains to get to the protest.
Amazon's domination of online sales in the US has led it to set up a private legal system to govern sellers, complete with lawyers, but the "laws" are all secret and unaccountable.
Helping possibly unauthorized workers avoid driving down wages by hooking them up with a union to work for good wages.
China sentenced human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang to four years in prison.
US evangelical Christian schools are preparing children to take over the US and impose their cult on everyone.
The rich people at Davos nowadays acknowledge that our current economic system is leading to global disaster. But they never try to change it.
The hateful one is deporting people to Cambodia who have been in the US since childhood and do not speak Cambodian.
A would-be Nazi terrorist, a complete supporter of the would-be tyrant, was caught planning to assassinate progressive politicians.
He is an officer in the Coast Guard. I expect there are many would-be terrorists in the US military.
Israeli disinformation tries to frame Palestinian-rights activists for acts of anti-semitism.
Recycling paper, glass and plastic in the US is a sham, since most of what people give to be "recycled" is not feasible to recycle. It ends up as landfill or in an incinerator.
We need laws to require plastic made in large quantities to be made easy to recycle.
The Raise the Wage Act would raise the US minimum wage so it would reach $15 per hour by 2024. It would also eliminate the practice of paying waiters less.
A US judge ruled that Saboteur of Commerce Wilbur Ross disregarded the law when adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, and the ruling effectively asserts that Ross committed a crime by lying to Congress.
The official leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives talks like a Republican, defending trickle-down by opposing plans to tax the rich more.
The Iranian ambassador to the UK said that the campaign to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not helping her release from prison.
That statement seems plausible to me. Too much pressure against a government can motivate its officials to dig in their heels and refuse to make a concession, lest they appear "weak".
However, this doesn't excuse the unjust treatment that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has received, which failed to respect the rights of criminal defendants.
Most wild coffee species face extinction. Their loss would interfere with future efforts to breed cultivated coffee to resist or endure other threats.
Many areas that now grow coffee will be unable to grow it by 2100. But what of the areas that can still grow it? Global disaster could put an end to the international trade by which coffee is shipped to other places where people drink coffee, and many of them won't be able to afford such luxuries anyway.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote against the anti-abortion bill S.311.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to build lots of affordable housing.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to pass the Special Counsel Transparency Act, which would direct Mueller to publish the report of his investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Greece might be starting to recover economically.
I guess that is good, but it feels too good to be true. What is the bad news?
"The river is dying": the vast ecological cost of Brazil's mining disasters.
(satire) Big US government data breech: public advocacy agencies revealed Monday that 340 million Social Security numbers had fallen into the hands of the federal government.
(satire) Taliban officials announced Monday that they had agreed to a peace deal despite their concerns about America’s human-rights record.
Joshua Tree national park 'may take 300 years to recover' from damage done while the government shutdown left it unguarded.
However, due to global heating all the joshua trees there might die during this century.
The UK's dooH niboR government has cut the budget for cities so hard that Labour-controlled local government can only make decisions about which poor people to crush first.
In such a situation, it is a mistake to try to minimize the harm. "Working within the cruel system to make it less cruel" has the main effect of propping the system up.
The UK has cut the budget for protecting wildlife and ecosystems to the point where the job cannot be done.
Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?
I agree that "Every billionaire is a policy failure", but I disagree with Ms Ocasio-Cortez about Bill Gates: he got his money by doing wrong to people (proprietary software).
Many problems that are intractable in today's conditions could be solved by spending money, but the government doesn't have money to spend on them. Why not? Too much money has gone to (1) reduced taxes for businesses and rich people and (2) spending more on the military than the next six countries together.
If we claw back the money from that, we could truly make America great again — great in its ability to do great things and make a better life. The US could also do its share of reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast.
Proposing that Maduro and Guaidó share power for a couple of years and then hold new elections.
The two 2020 presidential candidates that plutocrats really hate are Sanders and Warren.
I have confidence that both of them will thwart the plutocrats, but Sanders is better on a range of other progressive issues.
Warren says that the CEO of Wells Fargo should be fired; he has been in charge of the bank's operations for many years and has the responsibility for the various frauds the bank has committed.
When witnesses speak in black American dialects, Court reporters and juries frequently misunderstand what they said.
Sea Shepherd is acting as Liberia's coast guard and putting a stop to illegal fishing.
Illegal fishing is not just a matter of who gets to fish where. It is also a matter of preventing overfishing, and the use of fishing methods that destroy the marine environment.
Bolsonaro just gave an order to allow Brazilians to own guns and keep them at home. Women are afraid their husbands will shoot them.
Right-wing supporters of Bolsonaro make the usual right-wing argument that guns will enable people to protect themselves. Experience shows that this doesn't work: rather, having a gun in your home puts you in more danger.
For protection against someone who lives in your house, who might have per own gun, your gun is almost useless. To use it for this, you'd need the experience and honed sharp thinking of Travis McGee or James Bond, both of whom are fictional characters. I don't know whether any real people really have that.
Virginia can't afford school buildings — its funds are offered to Amazon. Teachers plan to strike, and will make Amazon one of the demands.
Tulsi Gabbard is associated with the organized Hindu extremists of India, a group that includes the governing party, which has been involved in various kinds of repression, sometimes fatal.
Instagram is Facebook's second tentacle for tracking and manipulating people and closely connected with the first tentacle, but somehow people tend not to recognize how nasty it is.
A hypothesis for why greenhouse gas emissions have started increasing again.
Failing to curb global heating is likely to cause an economic collapse by and by.
A uterus transplanted from a dead woman's body has been used successfully to carry a pregnancy to term.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with this procedure. I suppose that after a few decades of further advance, artificial organs of all kinds will be suitable for transplants, eliminating the need for organ donors.
However, using the procedure in today's conditions is something society cannot afford. I think all methods of assisting fertility should be shelved until the world has achieved a stable human population that coexists sustainably with the natural world.
A new program for discouraging gang violence operates by offering gang members a little help if they avoid violence, as well as punishment if they don't.
It appears that violence killed Roxsana Hernández in a US immigration prison, and the thugs are covering it up.
A company selling parents surveillance devices so they can treat their children like prisoners.
Salafi Arabia wants the US to sell it a nuclear reactor and let it manage the nuclear fuel. Meanwhile, the acting king, guilty of massive killing, already said he would develop nuclear weapons if Iran does.
He has already started working on making sure that Iran develops nuclear weapons by convincing the bullshitter to cancel the deal which convinced Iran not to develop them.
It all stinks. The US, remembering Yemen and Khashoggi, should not sell the reactor.
Amnesty International says that Venezuela's special thug force has killed more than 12 protesters recently.
Several US states are working on a target to end fossil fuel use for electricity.
It is well-meant, but a target for 2045 is too remote to avoid disaster. We have only around 10 years to do that. Therefore, what we need is an ambitious target for 2025, and a more ambitious target for 2030.
We need more than targets, though, because targets do not magically implement themselves. To reach a target which is ambitious enough to do the job, we need large programs starting now.
It needs to tackle more than just electricity, too.
US states need to pass laws granting abortion rights, given the danger that the Supreme Court will reverse the decision that made them available.
The bully backed down and agreed to let the US government reopen… for about two weeks.
Zimbabwe is ruled by its army, which can replace the president and other high officials, and represses at will.
Mexican Dafne McPherson was convicted after a miscarriage of murdering the fetus.
Such repression is not limited to Mexico.
If this converges with the current US tendency to punish parents for not being overprotective, it could make life hell for all US parents and all US children. And each of the two has the potential to potentiate the other.
Industrial democracy — putting workers on corporations' boards — is a way to reduce mistreatment of workers.
The AFL-CIO needs to focus on organizing, not on money for Democratic candidates.
As regards funding campaigns, I suspect its choice of candidates to support is not selective enough.
Marzieh Hashemi says that US agents holding her as a material witness harassed her by offering her only food that she as a Muslim was not supposed to eat.
She was required to testify against the Iranian broadcaster that she works for. Why did that require keeping her hungry?
Her example points out the unfairness of the secret process for deciding whether to jail someone as a material witness.
Flights at major US airports were delayed because of a shortage of air controllers.
Cod Stocks on Course to Crash if Ocean Warming Continues.
The US government is seriously planning to impose regime change on Venezuela, working together with Guaidó.
An open letter calls on the US government to stop pushing for a coup in Venezuela and support reconciliation efforts to move the country towards fair elections.
The letter points out that US sanctions along with Maduro's bad economic policies are jointly responsible for the economic crisis in Venezuela.
Medea Benjamin: "A Coup Is Not a Democratic Transition!"
One Venezuelan journalist supports Guaidó as president but warns the US not to turn this into a bloody coup.
Maduro's treatment of both Guaidó and the US embassy are astonishingly gentle. Can you imagine what the repressor would do if Clinton declared herself president, on the grounds that Republicans stole the election two years ago?
Socialism for the rich now includes oil companies in the UK, which are shirking the responsibility to clean up and shut down oil drilling platforms in the North Sea.
Big companies have a history of using bankruptcy to evade responsibilities, even pension obligations. Rather than trust a company to come up with money later to carry out its responsibilities, we should make it put the money in escrow in advance when it incurs the obligation, on a schedule that collects the money while the project is profitable.
Many Australians now mark the date of the landing of the first British fleet (of convict transportees) as "Invasion Day", looking at it from the point of view of the Australians of that time.
The US has started making asylum-seekers from Central America to Mexico to wait, perhaps for months or years, while their cases are considered.
This is not inherently unjust, but it could become so if (for instance) they have to live in penury there, or if the gangs that threatened to kill them at home come after them there.
Canada's ambassador to China regrets saying what he said, about Meng Wanzhou's arguments for avoiding extradition, but didn't say that it was not accurate.
US citizens: call on Congress to block military intervention in Venezuela.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the Violence Against Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to revoke the would-be tyrant's national emergency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Ordinarily I would consider it a waste of time for the House to try this, since the Republicans controlling the Senate would simply ignore it. But it seems that in this kind of case, if the House passes such a resolution, the Senate has to hold a vote on it. That would put pressure on senators to vote to cancel the emergency — it might even pass.
Conscience Versus Blind Deep-State Allegiance.
I do not advocate "limited government" if that means laissez-faire, laissez-mourir. I do believe in limiting the government's power to kill, torture, and imprison people.
Is it right to block criticism of US foreign policy simply for being funded by Russia?
Imagine where US politics would be today if Sanders had not run in 2016. Then vote for him in 2020!
An effective method of deradicalizing Islamist extremists is to teach them that modern-day Ialamic law recognizes countries that have various religions.
Islamic law tramples human rights in many other ways, so we should not treat it as an acceptable position. But since it doesn't imply a holy war, we can live at peace with its adherents, while opposing them politically.
China censors postings on Twitter even though Twitter is not generally accessible in China.
Twitter sometimes gets led by China into censoring people, but not always. Slimy LinkedIn obeys China reliably.
Doug Ford premier of Ontario, has unchecked power over that Canadian province. He abolishes human rights laws while arbitrarily changing the structure of city governments.
Oregon high school students protested the presence of thugs in their schools. They said that the thugs made them feel less safe in school.
Bravo!
Burmese journalists will be in prison for 7 years for publishing news about the violence against the Rohingya.
Everyone: Urge Malaysia to end debt bondage for migrant workers — instead of enslaving them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose intervention in Venezuela.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase to stop funding private prisons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for requiring big companies' stores to pay their staff anyway when they close due to extreme weather.
We should not forget the subcontracted workers and the ones whose schedules are precarious!
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google Search profiles people and applies its filter bubble even when they are not logged in.
Google is modifying Chrome (and Chromium) so that extensions won't be able to alter or block whatever the page contains.
This implies, in particular, that nothing like LibreJS will be possible in Chrome.
We can understand this as a further step towards making browsers serve the businesses that use web sites to snoop and manipulate, rather than serving the users that run them.
Paper maps are better than digital map systems for learning to understand the geography of an area.
Continuing education (with more student debt) for workers whose jobs are automated away will never give most of the non-rich a good life.
The US and other right-wing governments recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. Maduro responded by ordering US diplomatic personnel to leave.
I know very little about Guaidó, but in general the opposition in Venezuela represents the oligarchs and advocates right-wing dooH niboR policies. Maduro's government is a dictatorship, but the right-wing opposition would offshore the country's income and repress the poor.
The bully has a scheme to kick more people off federal food assistance.
The US drops bombs in Somalia, intended to attack al-Shabaab, but does not try seriously to determine which of the casualties were al-Shabaab fighters and which were bystanders.
Since 7 years of this bombing have not crushed al-Shabaab, there is no reason to suppose 7 more years will achieve that. Guerrilla movements that can recruit more members easily are not defeated by attrition.
Now that there is strong public pressure for a universal medical system in the US, the medical profiteers are proposing half-measures to preserve their role.
Four years of Republican attacks on Obama's medical insurance law have driven 7 million Americans out of insurance coverage.
But that's not the worst harm — millions have insurance that fails to cover a lot of the costs, and patients can be randomly screwed with enormous prices.
Meat inspection in the US is inadequate — there are not enough inspectors to do the job. Most plants admit this, while others lie about it.
Denying the grandstander the use of Congress for a State of the Union address is very clever way of pressuring him. It denies him something he craves, while not harming anyone else because it has no intrinsic importance.
Michael Cohen says he has postponed his testimony to Congress because the bully is making legal threats against his family.
Los Angeles teachers won a partial victory, including a raise that is not enough to keep up with inflation.
But they also won other benefits for the community, including a plan to limit charter schools.
There needs to be a way for the public to convert charter schools to public schools.
The US has agreed to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but doesn't give people any recourse when the US government fails to follow its requirements.
China is rebuilding some cities, vulnerable to flooding from rain, to absorb and store more water underground.
Women in the UK that make accusations of rape or domestic violence are threatened with lawsuits for libel.
San Francisco’s Accidental Surveillance State and the Future of Privacy.
"What's more offensive: a racist yearbook photo or structural racism?"
The way for Northam to atone for racist jokes is to commit to eliminating structural racism.
Reportedly PISSI is reorganizing as an underground movement in Iraq and might get strong enough to cause real trouble.
Allowing students and workers to wake up at a later hour enables them to sleep better and concentrate better at school or work.
Sanders and Ro Khanna have introduced bills to reduce prescription drug prices in the US.
The measures are not radical.
The surprise "winner" of DR Congo's presidential election may have been chosen because of a deal with the old president, Kabila.
Amtrak has reportedly dropped the requirement for passengers to show ID to buy a ticket. I think this means there is no longer a reason to refuse to ride Amtrak.
A Christian extremist who publicly insulted the homosexuals that had been murdered in the Pulse club has now resigned because he hired sex workers.
This is backwards. It was the insult that he should have resigned for.
17 years after it was set up, Guantanamo prison remains a threat to human rights.
US citizens: call on congressional Democratic leaders to stand by Ilhan Omar against right-wing attacks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on Target to give its employees 12 weeks of paid family leave.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call Democrats in Congress to make rich people pay their fair share of taxes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for the Green New Deal to include ending fossil fuel development.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tobacco companies, fighting public health measures (such as increased taxes) designed to reduce deaths from smoking, hire "free market" think tanks as lobbying and PR fronts.
To the extent that cigarettes are smuggled, the effects of the tax would be less. One way to reduce that is to make agreements with neighboring countries to increase the tax on tobacco.
How Elon Musk's Secretive Foundation Benefits His Own Family.
Julian Assange is suing the US in the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, demanding to know whether he faces US charges.
Italy is closing a refugee center and evicting the 500 refugees that live there.
Supposedly some of them will be housed elsewhere. The rest, who knows?
William Barr Has a Long History of Abusing Civil Rights and Liberties in the Name of "National Security".
A survey of many countries found that people strongly oppose development of autonomous killer robots.
Greenland ice is melting faster than before, suggesting 3 meters (10 feet) of sea level rise by 2100.
I have visited many cities which are likely to become sea as a result: most recently, Kozhikode and Kochi in India.
The actual rise is likely to be more. We don't know of all the positive-feedback cycles that will make global heating speed up.
Some workers that clean sewers in India don't get safety equipment, and fairly often have accidents that turn fatal.
10% of the TSA's workers took sick days on Jan 20. After a while, many would have to quit, and air travel in the US would grind to a halt.
A former FBI deputy assistant director said that the FBI defined its mission to include preventing the election of progressive and socialist candidates.
Relatives and colleagues call for a new investigation of the assassination in the 1960s of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert Kennedy.
Democrats in Congress are weakening the single payer medical bill to make it more palatable to insurance companies.
George Washington lost his teeth, so he bought teeth from his slaves.
Florida's Republican governor has "suspended" two officials in charge of counting votes in Miami and replaced them with Republicans.
Republicans in Florida have a history of unfair election practices.
People on Moscow streets will be tracked using face recognition.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call your state representative and senator to oppose subsidies for movies. States should not compete to attract businesses away from other states.
If we don't stop this, next thing you know they will want to offer twice as much money as New York City offered as a handout to Amazon.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Indonesia is accused of heavy repression in response to a guerrilla attack in West Papua.
I believe the accusation, both because Indonesia has done such things before, and because another article said Indonesia was not allowing journalists into the area.
A verbal confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial between protesting right-wing white students and a group of protesting blacks became verbally nasty. It sheds light on the level of hostility in the US.
The students probably were bigots and racists, since they were wearing right-wing extremist symbols such as "MAGA". That is no ground to infer anything about their parentage, or to insult homosexuals by calling someone "faggot". Nor to insult them for their race. The right way to oppose them is to focus on criticizing the views they choose to advocate.
A mother faces prosecution in Minnesota because her child's car seat fell out of the car on the road.
Punishing parents for mistakes is stupid as well as unjust. The accusation itself causes stress to the family, which harms the children as well as the parents.
This is part of the overall US pattern of pressuring parents, even by threats, if they fail to be stiflingly overprotective. Antiabortionists even extend this to miscarriages.
It constitutes one additional secondary reason why it is better not to have children.
2019 Is the Year to Embrace Energy Democracy — Or Face Social and Climate Breakdown.
Thailand's supreme court upheld a legal victory for workers enslaved in a chicken farm.
Martin Luther King held views that were labeled as radical.
Nowadays, they are not so radical — many of them are supported by most Americans.
Nicaraguan thugs raided an opposition news publisher; the editor has fled to exile in Costa Rica.
The Philippines government approved an "autonomous region" for the part of Mindanao inhabited mostly by Muslims.
The article does not say whether the agreement reduces freedom of religion and other human rights in that region. Islamic law tramples various human rights, so there is reason to be concerned about that danger.
The British Commonwealth disregards its charter about democracy and human rights by hosting a summit in Rwanda.
Globalization's irony: Spice Girls t-shirts, sold to raise money to campaign for equality, were made in a factory in Bangladesh by women getting paid around 30 cents per hour.
The book No Logo explained how business-supremacy treaties knocked down the unions that were starting to raise the wages of factory workers in some low-wage countries.
The article also shows, tangentially, how the practice of despising sex workers is tied into broader misogyny.
In an age when the US imprisons far too many people, a prosecutor as president (or other elected official) is in general a bad idea.
Facebook staff discussed in a tone of cupidity how they were leading minors to spend their parents' money playing games. Facebook kept the parents confused about the situation, too.
Charter schools are like tree roots growing into cracks in the building of public education. If not stopped, they will bring it crashing down.
Teacher's strikes are weakening the political support that charter schools have obtained in the plutocratist system.
Black markets are developing a sort of cell system by which the participants can't identify each other and can't betray each other. The customers never see any of them, and they can't identify the customers either.
As sale of prohibited goods becomes anonymous and safe, lawful sales of lawful goods are becoming a dangerous system of massive surveillance. When will we be able to buy those through a darknet, for our privacy?
If Tor sold its DRM-free contract-free e-books through a darknet, I would in principle (some details are crucial) be glad to buy them straight from the publisher that way.
Google's employees have launched a campaign to end forced arbitration in the US. Not solely for cases of sexual harassment — the campaign includes all forms of mistreating workers.
Don't forget customers and clients!
US citizens: call on the Senate not to allow Mueller's report to be buried.
Witnesses say that thugs in Rio de Janeiro murdered gangsters who had surrendered, and a few others too.
Young people, including teenagers, are trying various creative approaches to make the world curb global heating.
The younger you are, the more likely global heating will cut your life short.
Everyone: call on the Philippines to drop charges against Senator de Lima, which seem to be trumped up to repress opposition to President Do-Dirty's murderous War on Drugs.
Today at an airport I sat down at a table which had a tablet facing me. I am not sure what it's supposed to do for people, but I realized that one thing it might be doing to me was watching me with a camera. It is full of nonfree software and there is no basis to suppose it isn't malicious.
So I put my coat down over it before sitting down.
Sure, there are other cameras in the airport, making recordings. We are under total surveillance by the state, there. But the tablet might be spying for various companies that have no access to the surveillance camera recordings. If there are two snoopers, and I can block one of them, that is an improvement.
Coca Cola Company is involved in planning China's approach to avoiding obesity, which focuses on exercise rather than eating less sweets.
The EPA recently proposed to weaken mercury regulations estimated to save 11,000 lives per year.
The planet-roaster-in-chief has nominated coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to head the EPA.
He will continue to be on the side of the polluters.
The US government fabricated statistic to claim most terrorists are foreigners or immigrants, by not counting the domestic terrorists.
Queensland shifted suddenly from years of drought to a flood that destroyed farms and killed hundreds of thousands of cattle.
The author does not tie this to the global heating that is likely responsible. Extreme weather in both directions is one of the typical results.
A BBC cameraman covering one of the bully's rallies was attacked by his supporters.
What the bully says in his events is meant to inflame his supporters and distract the public from what the bully is doing. It would be better for reporters to stay away and cover events of some real significance.
Plutocratist Democrats are already working hard to defeat Sanders. Their left hand says that the dozens of others are all progressive so we no longer need Sanders, while their right hand says that few of us will insist on Sanders.
Either way, their real message is "Vote for someone who is less reliably progressive than Sanders."
"Fusion" centers are not just about terrorism any more. They combine surveillance data from many sources, and in effect bring local and state thug departments more or less under federal control. They investigate and redistribute the videos the cameras that any level of government puts on your streetcorner, and even cameras in businesses.
In "Operation Choke Point", the US government, under Obama, tried to shut down certain businesses extrajudicially by making banks drop them.
Let's not take either side in the "battle between Trump’s abhorrent America First nationalism and the political establishment’s neoliberal imperialism."
Neither side is our side.
The "ghost user" is a back door by another name.
A couple found that a therapy office would allow their child to walk a block to the office. They only needed to sign a waiver that the therapists would not be liable for anything that might befall the child during that brief walk.
If only it were so easy all the time.
Oxford students call for prohibiting advocacy of the traditional Catholic position on homosexuality, calling it "harassment".
I disagree totally with the idea that sex should be limited to attempts to procreate. It is just the opposite: procreation makes more burden for the Earth, whereas sex, when it makes the participants happy and assuming precautions against conception and spreading disease, is good.
But even though I disagree thoroughly with those views, I defend the right to advocate them.
The US military is resisting supervision to the extent that the official public list of US military bases says nothing about Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Niger, Tunisia, Cameroon or Somalia.
The US is bombing more in Syria, and telling us less about it.
Guatemala's Supreme Court says that the president cannot expel UN corruption investigators.
Treating prisoners with utmost possible harshness and suspicion creates more crime.
Writer Yann Moix said that he cannot be attracted to women in their 50s, and people are condemning him, claiming he has an obligation to be attracted to them.
You might as well demand that a homosexual be attracted to people not of the same sex. Or that a heterosexual be attracted to people that are of the same sex. There is no arguing about tastes. If we respect people's right to say no, we should not rebuke them when they do.
Of course, many people (especially men, but not only) despise those they find unattractive. That is a mean way to treat people who haven't done anything wrong.
But being unattracted by someone is not the same as despising per. Yann Moix understands this.
US citizens: call on House Climate Committee members to take the no-fossil-fuel-money pledge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on House committees to make the deportation thugs stop force-feeding prisoners.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US government shutdown made air traffic control less safe. Controllers were not getting paid, so they may have been moonlighting rather than sleeping.
A new system proposes to track each individual fish from when it is caught to when it is served in a restaurant, using blockchain, to stop illegal fishing of Patagonian toothfish.
It is easier to preserve a database record across time than to make sure it always corresponds to the same actual fish.
In this particular case, that problem may not matter. It may be sufficient to make sure that the number of toothfish that are sold is no more than the number that were caught lawfully. If customers keep restaurants honest by checking the record of an individual fish, they might find it impossible to make use of the fish caught by poachers.
If the poachers of this fish, a luxury product, can't sell to expensive restaurants, they won't find it profitable.
However, if a restaurant could sell the "same" fish multiple times, the system would not achieve its goal.
Apple is crusading to regulate data brokers in a rather weak way that would let them more or less continue what they are doing.
If on-line retailers let you pay using GNU Taler, and likewise respect your anonymity in other ways, they won't have any data about you worth selling.
The US has preferred to end the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty rather than work on restoring compliance with it.
Thugs arrested Detroit DJ Moodymann for "breaking and entering" into his own car, using the keys. Apparently they are on a power trip and arrest him frequently for no good reason.
A thug that shows such ill-will towards the citizens person is supposed to serve is not fit for the job at all.
Ten Years After the First War on Gaza, Israel Still Plans Endless Brute Force.
Since 2006, Israel has demolished 1,400 Palestinian homes.
The Israeli army damages farms in Gaza by spraying herbicides. These chemicals also endanger farmers, because they are carcinogenic.
An unused no-mans-land as a buffer zone at the border is a good idea, but if Israel wants to make one unilaterally, it should do so on the Israeli side of the border.
A number of companies associated with making plastic have a plan to put a fair pile of money into reducing the unrecycled plastic — but not by making less plastic.
In Arizona on the border with Mexico, what is the right way to leave food and water so border-crossers won't die in the desert?
It might indeed be better to protect wildlife by filling large drums of water, rather than leaving small bottles. The same sort of method could be used for food.
However, if this system were practiced adequately there to do the job, I suppose activists would not feel they had work to do there.
One US court ruled that thugs can't arbitrarily require everyone in a home unlock per phone biometrically merely because perse was present there at the time of a raid.
This is a small and tentative step; we need to move much further than that to make the protections of the fourth amendment effective again. And we need to put an end to assembling many digital dossiers about each person.
A strange proposal: England and Wales could leave the European Union while Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of it.
The US immigration prison where sick children are systematically denied medicine. Children there generally get sick, or sicker.
The Tory government continues to exacerbate the poverty and hunger that it has inflicted on millions, pretending compassion while announcing occasional small steps forward, in between the giant steps back.
We should not forget, however, that it was Tony B'liar and New Labour that began the process of making wealth trickle upward. They did not target the poor particularly, but they gave the rich more power which they used to take from working people. This weakened traditions of compassion and solidarity, which then made it easy for the Tories to win popularity by promising to do more and better trickle-up, and hold it by squeezing the poor (but not acknowledging they were doing so).
Bolsonaro's war on the environment has launched with an arbitrary (and illegal) suspension of funding for environmental protection NGOs.
US citizens: phone your congresscritters to oppose giving funds for the bully's border wall.
North Dakota is amending its constitution to conceal how state and private thugs repress pipeline protesters.
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology.
Illinois will enforce its law regulating companies from collecting biometric identifiers.
Guatemala's president has kicked out UN corruption investigators. I suppose he has an idea of what they would have found.
With the US setting a bad example, it is hard to pressure other countries not to follow it.
Accusing the former British Empire of being responsible for present-day "racism, police brutality, privatisation, militarism, ongoing economic dispossession and the retention of the spoils of empire."
I am not sure it is fair to blame the British Empire for militarism (which is millennia old) and police brutality (thugs torture people all around the world). I suspect that privatization would have been imposed anyway, though the empire may have helped to pave the way.
The empire played a big role in the other three.
Turkish journalist Pelin Ünker has been sentenced to prison for "defamation" because she published facts about how one of Erdoğan's henchmen used companies in Malta as tax havens.
They don't even bother to deny the facts that she published.
US greenhouse gas emissions jumped 3% in 2018.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in favor of ending US support for Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The ruiner must love oil spills, since he wants to cancel the safety rules that were put in place after the Big Spill, to prevent another pollution event.
Overcoming internet trolls by posting positive comments.
Pacific Gas and Electric has gone bankrupt because of its liabilities for starting giant fires.
The bullshitter Fails to Answer Yes Or No When Asked If He Ever Worked for Russia.
Beto O'Rourke sought to break the power of the thugs' union in El Paso, not to prevent them from getting away with crimes, but just so as to pay them less.
The bullshitter threatened Turkey with economic warfare if it attacks the Syrian Kurds.
A threat like that might be an effective defense measure if issued by someone who keeps his word.
The troops constitute a kind of commitment: if attacked, they will by default fight back. That constitutes a deterrent, notwithstanding the bullshitter's unreliability. A mere threat doesn't do that, so Erdoğan may ignore it.
The Thai military have postponed elections, which has stimulated protests.
Iran is accused of assassinating two Iranian exiles that were living in the Netherlands.
Iran accuses them of violent rebellion. I have no basis to judge the truth of those claims, but if the claim against Notamed is true, we would have to weigh it against the scattershot execution policies of the Islamic Republic in 1981.
Writers are under pressure not to participate in Dubai's book festival, because of Dubai's repression.
Women in Nigeria who escaped from Boko Haram have freedom, to the extent a woman can have freedom in that patriarchal culture, but they can't get work and go hungry. Some of them go back to Boko Haram.
Oakland, California, is moving people from sidewalks to sheds, whether they like it or not.
A shed could be physically better and some people could be glad to move to one. But the sheds require people to have roommates even if they can't get along. Those who feel unsafe in them are forbidden to go back to the sidewalk.
I don't see any reason Oakland can't offer sheds to those who prefer them while also allowing encampments.
The UK has a tradition of consulting organizations of patients and disabled people to improve the services for them, but this is falling by the wayside.
Nepal is pressuring families quite firmly to stop confining women to special huts when they are menstruating, and to let girls go to school when menstruating.
The thugs in Bangladesh are repressing a strike by garment workers. They are paid very little and are forced to work in dangerous conditions.
The American Psychological Association warns against raising boys with the traditional idea of masculinity that calls for suppressing feelings that are regarded as weaknesses.
I was fortunate — I never learned that lesson.
The UK is considering making social networks legally responsible for the specifics of users' postings. That requirement would shut them down.
Some requirements about certain algorithms might be feasible to implement, and then one could discuss whether they are good or bad.
UK thugs did an announced test of facial recognition, and mistreated people who tried to cover their faces.
Bravo to those who resist! Britons, next time, aim for a high participation rate.
Big companies are selling camera doorbells that allow home owners, the companies, and in many cases the state as well, to watch everyone who passes by.
With face recognition, these systems will identify everyone who passes by.
We must do whatever it takes to eliminate these systems.
Human Rights Watch says that Iraqi Kurdistan tortures teenagers to get them to confess to working for PISSI.
Right-wing fallacious attacks on taxing the rich for a Green New Deal show Americans how wise that would be.
UK spy agencies plan to secretly order companies to provide a tap on encrypted communications services.
It's not precisely a back door, but it requires making the client software malicious, indeed dishonest.
Note how the criticism presumes that GCHQ itself is not a "bad actor". How can we assume that? The UK government not long ago sent undercover thugs to infiltrate dissident groups by pretending to love activists.
EU citizens: phone your MEPs to condemn the proposed automated copyright censorship scheme.
German and French citizens, phone your members of parliament and/or other political parties to oppose this policy.
US citizens: support the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The reason why you can only buy "smart" (read "spy") TVs nowadays is that the TV itself is sold at a break-even price. The profit on them comes from selling products to the users and from spying on them. If they sold non-"smart" TVs, they would have to charge more.
If I wanted a TV set, I would definitely pay extra to get one that could not spy on me. Indeed, I would refuse to have a "smart" TV at all, unless I knew I could block it from communicating anything about my activities. (That would convert it into a mere appliance, and I would not need to care what is inside it.)
The same applies for a cable box; but I can imagine that a cable box requires a contract I would consider immoral and thus refuse to sing.
I don't in fact want those things, because they would lead me to waste time. As a child, I was a TV addict. I cut it off cold-turkey when I went to college.
The militarist asked the US military for plans to attack Iran.
Ocasio-Cortez's Climate Genius Stroke: Her #GreenNewDeal Is the Most Serious Response to the Crisis Yet.
African Nations Call for Recount in DRC Election.
The US border thugs have had for decades an unofficial policy jailing children, taking them away from their parents, and physical torture.
Whatever we do in the future, it should not include this agency.
The US government has the power to learn almost everything about anyone's life by breaking into per phone, but it is not clear what rules it follows to get permission to do so.
Please don't call this operation "hacking". The officials that do it are surely not doing it with the playful cleverness that constitutes hacking. So please don't insult us hackers by using that word to mean "breaking security". Please call it "cracking".
The city of Penang has installed over 750 face recognition cameras so that the thug department can track people on the street at will.
The article says this will be used to track "criminals", but the cameras can be used to track anyone, even to track everyone.
The Houthis now imitate the US in launching drone attacks in Yemen.
We can't expect them to stop fighting outside the agreed-on cease-fire zone. So how about extending the cease fire to the whole of Yemen?
The US deported Nelson Espinal back to Honduras. One week later, he was murdered, just as he said he feared.
China's repression of Christianity includes censorship of the Bible.
I condemn repression of Christianity, but we must keep in mind that when Christianity gets too powerful, it can itself become a repressive force. In the US it has almost reached that point as Christian fanatics are the supporters of the bullshitter.
The cheater seems to have proposed Barr as attorney general as a way to put himself above the law.
It is irrational to accept a disastrously bad appointment on the grounds that someone else worse could be found. The rational response is to oppose the disastrously bad one, and if a worse one follows, oppose that one too.
The UK thugs have a system that designates teenagers and adults as suspected gang members, often based on nothing but surmise about their associations, which ends up targeting them for various forms of repression based on their race.
On efforts to reduce smoking in Jordan.
Macron got special EU permission to run a deficit more than 3% in France, so he could placate the French people for a while.
Why not do this for Italy, which really needs it? Why not Greece?
Macron seems to be aiming to do this mainly with temporary relief of pressure, so that the long-term process of dooH niboR will proceed steadily as planned.
Sea Shepherd is operating a boat in the Gulf of California to protect Vaquita porpoises. Mexican fishing boats attacked it, trying to burn it or sink it.
The protesters that blocked a UK deportation flight were not sentenced to prison.
UN Tells UK: Stop Using Terror Charges against Peaceful Protesters.
Salafia Arabia "seriously undermined" Turkey's investigation of Khashoggi's murder.
This is not surprising, since Salafia Arabia murdered him.
France and Germany made a "compromise" that will leave no way for companies in Europe to post anything submitted by users without using automated copyright censorship filters.
Global heating is spreading dangerous and deadly jellyfish further along the Australian coast.
By comparison, sharks are hardly a significant danger.
A high school in Arizona requires students that are missing credits needed to graduate wear a red badge so as to shame them. This is very effective in inspiring bullying against them. Probably less so in helping them do better.
It turns out to be an illegal violation of those students' privacy.
Canadian thugs have arrested indigenous protesters that were blocking pipeline construction teams from entering their land.
Under the principle of necessity, they would be justified in destroying the construction equipment, since it is being used to bring about mass murder.
Murder, per se, is not their immediate goal, but that changes nothing — building fossil fuel infrastructure will kill hundreds of millions, and any reasonable person should know that. How many of those millions would be due to this pipeline, if it is completed, is a question we don't need to answer.
Climate defense: "the fight for what's left and the people who get left with it."
I think things are a little better than the article presents it. It is not quite true to say that the enemy "is us" — rather, it is a system, which we are part of, but which is effectively controlled by the plutocracy. So we have to fight them for the decision about whether governments should mobilize the world to save itself, or tread the non-rich down.
Seattle warns NYC: Amazon will do the city harm.
This is over and above the harm of the payment to Amazon to come and do that.
The US Department of Labor's new "transparency" rule makes it easier for employers to get away with discrimination.
The movement to remove monuments that praise the Confederacy is getting stronger and making progress.
A Thai princess will run for prime minister, in an election that will be even less fair than with the other candidates, since saying anything critical about her will be a crime.
However, it could also knock our military rule.
Antisocialist Senator Rand Paul condemns government programs that actively help people, but he makes exceptions when they help him.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Social Security 2100 Act.
New Yorkers' opposition to Amazon has
convinced
some executives to cancel their plan to put a large subsidized office
there.
Bravo, New Yorkers! Keep up the fight!
The bank deregulation law of 2018, which was supposedly not going to
lead to mergers of big banks, is
already
doing so.
Ocasio-Cortez has the right idea about
compromise.
Here's
how I explain
it.
The high-pitched sound heard by US diplomats in Cuba appears to be
made by a
cricket
found in the Caribbean.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, from Salafi Arabia, was going to Australia
via Thailand. Officials from Salafi Arabia
stole
her passport in Bangkok airport, so the airport stopped her from
travelling on, and she was faced with possible deportation.
Thailand says she
will
not be deported. That is good because, if sent back, she could be
walled up in a room for the rest of her life, as she was for months
already. Or simply murdered.
This shows one way that Islamic law violates the human rights of
Muslims: they are denied the right to change their religion.
US
citizens: rebuke
the bogus environmental impact statement intended to pave the way for
oil drilling in ANWR.
To sign without JS code, use lynx.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The United States is characterized as a "flawed
democracy", in
25th position, in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy
Index.
Separating fact-checking from moral reasoning is
sometimes a
subtle question.
Democrats in
Congress propose
increased surveillance as a substitute for the bully's wall.
Without knowing just what sort of "scanning technology" cited in the
article, I can't judge whether it that would be a specific injustice.
But I can point out that continuing the "war on
drugs" does
a lot of harm, and it is a foolish approach to the problem of
addiction.
Warning: the bully may try
to rule
the US by decree.
To stop him would depend on Republicans in Congress. So far it seems
they will back the bullshitter no matter how far he goes.
The DNA sampling company 23andMe
just sold
a lot of shares to a Big Pharma company which can now use all the
DNA samples that people sent in.
There are two bad things about this:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has formed its
leadership team out
of plutocratist
Democrats.
That's no different from the past, but now the number of progressives
they have excluded is greater and their right-wing bias is more stark.
The Democrats in Congress have given the Green New Deal only lip
service, setting up a committee
that won't
make the slightest effort to do what is needed.
Joseph Stiglitz: that was stupid of
them, and
self-defeating.
However, it is what the plutocrats that pay them want.
You can watch the number of homeless
people increase
in British cities. Nowadays many of them are derelicts, but
people who work for Amazon and Uber and do not get paid enough to have
a place to live.
The US
Senate rejected
the bill that would have tried to allow states to punish companies
that support the Palestinians' boycott of Israel.
I
don't support that boycott myself, but the right to do so should
be respected.
Australian
thugs arrested
a man for a sign insulting former prime minister Tony Abbott.
Tony
Abbott, planet
roaster
and plutocratist,
deserves more than insult — he deserves to be loathed. But I
wouldn't use the word "cunt" to insult him, or anyone, or anything.
Indeed, since any use of the word conveys insult, it has no use that I
will accept, so I have never used the word. I reject associating part
of a woman's body with insult — count me out.
In Xinjiang, reporters get
to experience
some of the repression that China visits on Uighur citizens.
The UN
has condemned
Bahrain for imprisoning the family of exile Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei
to punish him for protesting in Britain.
The UK government
keeps postponing
the requirement for its remaining colonies to require corporations
to report their real owners.
One suspects that its true mission is to defend tax-dodging for the
rich.
A member of Nicaragua's supreme
court resigned,
accusing Ortega of establishing a dictatorship and saying that it will
provoke an armed uprising.
As expected,
Pelosi kept
progressive leaders out of the most powerful committees in the
House of Representatives, the ones that must approve spending.
The plutocratist Democrats will be able to block progress on the most
important issues, such as universal medical care and the Green New Deal.
Iowa's "ag-gag" law, designed to criminalize undercover reporting
about farming
practices, has
been ruled unconstitutional.
The threat of automated copyright censorship in Europe appeared to have
subsided, but it
has
awakened again.
Washington Bills Would
Ban
the Warrantless Use of Facial Recognition Technology.
It is a grave mistake to think that the danger of face recognition is
that it might be inaccurate. The real danger is that it might be
accurate. Face recognition can be used to identify criminals. But it
can also be used to identify dissidents and whistleblowers, and that
is
dangerous
for democracy.
Just a few minutes after putting people in a holding pen, US border
thugs pull out the
brainwashing
techniques, including denying visitors use of a toilet.
Five years after
living
in an airport terminal, refugee Hassan al-Kontar has received
asylum in Canada.
US landlords consult unreliable and simplistic databases that
veto
allowing people to rent an apartment.
It is the general shortage of housing that makes this so harmful. In
the absence of the shortage, some landlord would have to rent to you.
Brazil is considering laws that could
classify
advocating protests as "terrorism". Also for more surveillance
and forcing decryption.
Religious nuts with academic positions in India
disgraced
a scientific conference with science denial.
Before giving moral accolades to ancient Hindu texts, we should think
about the fact that
caste
prejudice and sexism are a tightly integrated part of their world
view.
It is not known whether the mythical Lanka from the Ramayana
corresponds to a real place, let alone what place that was.
Controlled fusion power research continues to advance, and it may yet
function some day. But it
won't
function soon enough to enable us to replace fossil fuels in time
to avoid global disaster.
Fortunately, we already have the technology needed to avoid global
disaster. All we need is the determination to defeat the plutocrats
that are fighting against correcting the problem.
The UK is once again
using
loopholes to deport people to Jamaica.
Sanders Investigates a
$375,000
Price Spike on Old Drug.
The same stupid law affected the drug colchicine which has been used
to treat gout for a long time — so long that it was
grandfathered in when drug licensing was established. Some scoundrels
discovered it had never gone through licensing, so they obtained a
monopoly on it and made it fairly expensive.
Under Tory policies, you can be
almost
unable to walk and still be labeled "fit for work".
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Prevention of Arms Race Act.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to repeal the bully's discrimination against Muslims in
immigration.
Patrick Ball uses statistics to figure out roughly how many people
were massacred,
based
on incomplete and spotty records of deaths.
When I first learned about Patrick Ball, he had determined from data
analysis that the Serbs had forced the Albanians out of their homes in
Kosovo, rather than (as the Serbs claimed) the Albanians' fleeing and
pretending to be attacked.
Capitalism
increases
production by creating artificial scarcity, which forces most
everyone to work desperately hard to compete for what has been made
scarce.
Thus, eliminating the artificial scarcities can enable people to live
comfortably while producing less — and thus reduce the strain on
Earth's natural systems that we are now overloading.
Artificial scarcity of material things reduces the supply, but even
without artificial scarcity those things are not totally abundant.
Forbidding the sharing of copyable works is the ultimate instance of
artificial scarcity, since it makes something scarce which would
otherwise be available without practical limit.
In Salafi Arabia, not only your boyfriend can drop you by text message.
Your
husband can do it, too.
And that's a step forward from last year, when he didn't have to tell
you that you were divorced.
Islamic law
trashes
human rights for men, too.
DRC Election Results
Postponed as Officials Say "Remain Patient".
Developing consistent and plausible phony results takes time!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to ban discrimination against queer people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: The bully is using his official power
to bully
the rest of the government, trying to seize the power of a
dictator.
It is vital to make this fail, because if he succeeds with it once,
he will threaten it whenever Congress defies him. And that will make
him indeed a dictator.
Why Sustainable Agriculture
Should Support
a Green New Deal.
I don't know whether these ideas about agriculture are valid,
biologically and economically. I don't know enough about that
field to try to judge, and I don't know of anyone I can regard
as an authority on the matter.
New York City
has proposed
a system of universal medical coverage for all residents of the
city.
Los Angeles public school teachers are going on strike
to block
systematic privatization of the schools.
A study found that users aged 65 and over are far more likely to
redistribute
fake news. They may not understand the need to judge the validity
of an article.
Turkey
demanded that the US withdraw its troops from Syrian Kurdish
territory or else Turkey will attack there.
In effect, Erdoğan is figuring Trump will back down when threatened.
A study suggests that overprotecting children
may encourage
mental illness in teenagers.
Defining
populism: a populist movement is one that consistently promises to
channel the unified will of the people, and by doing so defeat the
schemes of the powerful elite.
I don't think Bernie Sanders denies that a substantial fraction of
Americans are right-wing and disagree with him. Thus, I think he is
not really a populist by this definition.
Cyntoia Brown
has received
clemency and will be released from prison.
Many people feel disgust for sex workers, and are inclined to treat
them unfairly. The same happens to blacks, because of racism, but I
think sex workers get it even worse. I think Brown's conviction was
an example of this disgust at work.
I agree with the article that her age did not matter to the issue.
She had the right to self-defense at age 16, and she would have had
the same right if she were 26, 36, 46, or 86. We don't need to label
all teenage sex workers as ipso facto "trafficking victims" in order
to respect their rights.
San Francisco General Hospital, a public
hospital systematically
gouges patients that come to the emergency room. It refuses to
cooperate with private insurance companies, so whatever charges they
don't cover bankrupt the patient.
The hospital was recently named after Zuckerberg, but he is not in
charge of it, so I don't expect that he is personally responsible for
this practice. However, the grasping spirit demonstrated by renaming
a public hospital after a billionaire donor could be related to it.
With Medicare for All, hospitals would not have any way to do this.
They would get paid by Medicare, and they would get the amount
Medicare pays.
The Israeli army says it investigates killings of Palestinians, but
the investigations
are not
intended to find anything wrong.
After Juneau stopped putting fluoride in the water supply, there
was a
substantial increase in the rate of cavities in children's teeth.
Tracking data for mobile phones in the US is easily available to lots
of businesses and individuals, because the phone
networks readily
sell it.
The fact that the state can get data about your past actions, perhaps for
years, is dangerous even if the state gets a search warrant. That means
that in effect the phone networks are spying on all mobile phone users
in advance for Big Brother. Any person's location data should only start
if a warrant authorizes it.
The US used to dissolve corporations that trampled the public. It
should
do so again.
I would rather avoid the term "death penalty" to describe this, however,
because corporations are not alive. They are not, morally, persons
and not morally entitled to human rights.
Killer thugs are using vague "victims' rights" laws
to shield
their identity.
Given how rare it is for thugs' crimes to be properly investigated,
this practice makes a bad situation even worse.
US citizens: call on the World Bank
not to
let the bullshitter choose its next president.
US citizens:
support
taxing the rich more.
NBC TV reporter William Arkin apologized for being
manipulated
into supporting the security state in the name of defeating the
bully.
Egypt is now trying to encourage people to have fewer children, but
its
efforts are weak.
Each woman that starts using reliable contraception will avoid some
births. But the patriarchal requirement for her to get a man's
permission to use it undermines the goal.
Here is an idea: the government could encourage and support farm
families to adopt children from struggling poor families, when both
families start using contraception. "If you want another child on
your farm, adopt an existing one!"
How
to pressure your congresscritter to side with the public instead
of with the plutocrats.
The
Money,
Job, Marriage Myth: Are You Happy Yet?
The limitations on bankruptcy in the Czech Republic are driving
almost 8% of the population into penury and despair due to
debts
they have no hope of paying.
This sort of has happened to many in the US with student debt, ever
since the US made it impossible to get out of that debt through
bankruptcy.
In Spain, an unknown number of people are "fiscally dead", which means
they cannot work other than underground because their income would be
seized for debt. If you have a mortgage on a house and can't pay it,
you will lose the house but be stuck with the debt for the rest of
your life.
The
brilliance
of British industrial policy is often hard for us to appreciate.
A woman that has been in a coma in a hospital for a decade had a baby.
The search for who raped her
might
involve taking DNA samples from all the male employees.
15 years ago, if I were not the father of the baby, I would have seen
no reason to object to the testing of my DNA. It would have shown I
was not the guilty party, and that's all it would have done.
Nowadays, I would be concerned about possible harm that might come to
me as a result of having my DNA on file, regardless of why they had
taken it.
The First Step Act
needs
to be followed by more steps. The US imprisons far too many
people, and puts many in solitary for years, even subjecting many to
physical torture.
The bill HR.1 would
fix
dozens of cracks and loopholes in US democracy.
I support all of them, except one:
It will be hard to pass this bill; Republicans will oppose it.
But they may lose the next election due to opposing it.
Brazil's new president dooH niboR plans to
reduce
the minimum wage for the poor, and reduce taxes for the rich.
He gets his support, like the numbskull in the US, mainly from people
who practice a reversed sect of Christianity: hate thy poor neighbors
and obey the powerful.
The bully could sabotage the US in many ways
by
declaring a state of emergency. He would have many powers that he
could use against any target of his choice.
60,000 students around the world went on strike recently
demanding
action to defend Earth's climate.
Local gathering places can build social cohesion by offering a place
for people to
mix
with neighbors that are not similar to them, people that they
would not meet in interest-based activities.
White House "press briefings" are
becoming
once-a-month events. Perhaps they will disappear entirely.
Since they are used only to present lies, that would be no loss.
President Sanders could bring them back.
Proposal: trade funding for the border wall for
reestablishment
of DACA.
The article errs on one point: an incomplete border wall can
do harm — to local ecosystems such such as that in the ;
National
Butterfly Sanctuary.
The deal proposed here might be a good idea if it can prevent the next
year's wall construction from affecting those parts of the border.
American parents have bought into the idea that they have a
responsibility to over their children
all
the time.
Part of the issue concerns providing students with enrichments to
their education. Only wealthy parents can do this thoroughly, so this
tends to perpetuate and increase inequality.
We could instead do as parts of the US used to do, and include
enrichments in public schools so that all children could have them
available. But this costs money. We used to get it by taxing the
rich. We need to do so again.
Part of the issue is obsessive overprotection. This is a useless
burden for American parents regardless of their level of wealth.
If Japanese children can take the subway (which implies crossing
streets walking to and from the station) on their own at age 6,
American children can do it too. We have to learn to direct them
towards such independence.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to reject more repression of immigrants and more
surveillance of everyone in the name of repression of immigrants.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to investigate and impeach Kavanaugh for perjury.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Senate Republicans to pass the Special Counsel Transparency
Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US states
are starting
to prohibit companies from imposing mandatory arbitration, and
nondisclosure, in sexual harassment cases.
But that is not enough. Companies should not be allowed to impose
arbitration or nondisclosure on their workers or customers for any sort
of dispute.
The US government definition of poverty is far too low; the real
number of poor
people is
much larger than what the government says.
The Sunrise Movement
is planning
political campaigning to pressure Democrats in Congress to support
the Green New Deal.
This is vitally important — we need it to win by the 2020
election.
The Climate
Risk Disclosure Act would require publicly traded corporations to
disclose how their business is threatened by global heating.
An
American reports on the harmful effects of his overprotective
upbringing.
He may have a chance to to make people a few years younger than him
aware of these problems, and they can spread the word.
Due to bus cuts in the UK, many areas of the country have no bus
services. Poor people living there cannot get to work or to medical
appointments. Most ironically, unemployed people will
be unable
to get to the jobcenter unless they can walk long distances.
Heating of the atmosphere and the surface is just the tip of the
heatberg; 90% of
heating goes
into the ocean.
A UK undercover thug, infiltrating animal rights groups, lied to the
women he had long-term relationships with — and
then lied
to an official inquiry about it.
The first wrong was infiltrating opposition groups at all.
India has abolished the idea of privacy, and protection against
arbitrary searches, by authorizing many government agencies
to seize
data and decryption keys from any computer. Individuals as well
as businesses are required to obey on pain of imprisonment. No court
order is required.
This means that India has effectively abolished the principle of not
being forced to incriminate oneself.
The tendency to digitize and remember all communication tends to
eliminate physical privacy. It is natural that grasping governments,
which put their authority above human rights, will use this as an
excuse to eliminate legal privacy.
It
is ten
years since Israel launched a war against Gaza and killed 1400
people.
Israeli generals call bombarding Gaza "mowing the lawn", in effect asserting
that the human beings there are no more than leaves of grass.
Progressive Ideas Matter to Voters. So Why Do Democrats Fixate on the
Identity
of the Messenger?
The US border thugs have a long list of excuses for searching any car
within miles of the US border. For every car, there is an excuse if
they want it. This is only part of
a system
of repression.
Research
suggests that a sense of social isolation might be an important
factor in radicalizing Islamists.
The
article exaggerates how much the study shows.
The first counterargument is valid but not pertinent. If everyone
tends to feel hurt when subject to social exclusion, that doesn't
refute the idea that it can contribute to Islamist radicalization. It
could help radicalize people in different groups for different causes.
The study discussed (without a reference) is not proof of the
conjecture, but the conjecture could be true. If it is, that suggests
action that could help reduce violence, not limited to the extreme
which is terrorism. Namely, to help reduce society's tendency to
cause feelings of social exclusion.
The cheater has decided to bypass getting the heads of departments
approved by the Senate
by leaving
them as "acting" heads.
Los Angeles set up an earthquakes warning
system, for
snoopphone users only.
An Israeli teenager has been
charged
with killing a Palestinian by throwing a rock at the car she was
in.
Persistent protester John Catt was surveilled for decades by UK thugs
because of his politics. He has now
won
a court order telling them to delete their records about him from
a secret surveillance database.
Since the database is secret, how will we know if they really delete
it?
The FDA seems
unwilling
to restrain drug companies from introducing powerful new opioids.
As sea level rises,
coastal
wetlands will have to move inland or the ecosystems and their
species will be lost. To preserve them requires making human
activities move out of the way.
The US has
secretly
tested face-recognizing everyone on the street.
At a border crossing is perhaps the one place where the use of face
recognition is not oppressive. To enter the US, each person will be
required to show an identity document anyway.
Using face recognition to systematically identify people on the street
anywhere else should be illegal outside of special cases.
US
citizens: call
on Democrats to boycott the State of the Union speech.
Blocking the bully from speaking to Congress was a good lever against him,
but since Pelosi conceded on this in exchange for only temporarily reopening
the government, come Feb 15 she will have the same problem again and won't
have this lever to use.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Amazon, Microsoft, Google, not to sell facial recognition
technology to governments.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: oppose
strip-searching students for appearing "giddy".
If you sign, please spread the word!
Famous glaciers in the Alps, depicted in famous
paintings, have
disappeared.
By 2100 the Alps are likely to be bare peaks.
Doctors
are on
strike in Zimbabwe because the new dictator is squeezing the
people to attract Chinese and other international "investment".
Lending to the dictators of poor countries is, in effect, buying an
opportunity to squeeze that money out of the people later.
David Sirota, who reported on Beto O'Rourke's fossil fuel funding and
his more-right-wing-than-most-Democrats voting record in Congress, is
the target
of systematic attacks by the supporters of plutocratist Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez advocates
high tax rates for the highest income bracket.
This is a step in the right direction, but to succeed at taxing the
rich more than a few percent we need to change laws for tax shelters.
Getting Congressional Democrats to support things like this will
require pressuring
them continually.
Some progressive House Democrats negotiated to make the paygo rule
weaker, then
voted for it.
Maybe they achieved something significant with that negotiation.
Perhaps they did help the progressive cause. To judge that depends
on what they could have achieved by voting no, and I don't know that.
I don't think this should reduce our criticism of the plutocratist
Democrats.
The bully talks of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for years for
their cases to be considered, but the
US needs
Mexico's approval for this, and Mexico could not cope with it.
Right-wing governments in the
Americas made
a joint statement calling on Maduro to step down.
The article does not say that the countries named are all
right-wing, but that is the case. Brazil, in particular, is now led
by a man that seems to aim to outdo Maduro in repression.
Nonetheless, I too am suspicious of Maduro's latest election.
The US is importing increasing amounts of asbestos. The
EPA rejected
a call for more reporting about the imports.
Removing some US ground troops from other countries could be a first
step towards peace, but to really reach peace
requires ending
the aerial bombardment.
Salafi Arabia
should free
the women who campaigned for the right to drive a car.
Now that Ireland has abortion services, religious fanatics are
blocking
patients and spreading disinformation with phony web sites.
The French regard equality as a positive value. Most Americans have
accepted
the story that they deserve suffering if they lose the game, even
though plutocrats have stacked the deck against them.
Half of Americans that believe they are allergic to some kind of food
are not
really allergic to it.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo held an election, but the
government
is not
saying who won.
If you use a cell phone in the US, you can be tracked and listened to
by the US government, the Russian government, and the Chinese
government, using
cell tower simulators.
I am surprised that the US government cannot find them. They are
radio transmitters; it should be possible to see which direction
the signal is coming from.
The Indian women who visited a temple, from which women of a fertile
age were banned, have been
forced
to hide from violence by Hindu fanatics, and by their own
relatives.
The bully's
statement
of political motives for charging Huawei executive Mang Wanzhou
provide legal arguments for Canada to refuse to extradite her to the
US.
I distrust Huawei products; I suspect them of spying for China. (US
companies are known to spy for the US; under the PAT RIOT Act, they
are compelled to.)
However, the case against Ms Mang has nothing to do with privacy or
spying. It is about allegedly violating US sanctions on trade with
Iran, sanctions which the bully applied in order to destroy the
nonnuclear deal with Iran. It is arrogant for the US to try to make
foreign countries follow US sanctions.
Australia has
canceled
the citizenship of Neil Prakash, on the pretext that supposedly he
should be entitled to citizenship in Fiji.
The article does not say whether Prakash has ever been in Fiji. I get
the impression that he has only a theoretical relationship with that
country. Is there any reason to believe that Fiji will recognize him
as a citizen? Since he appears to be a violent Islamist, it might
not. Then he would be stateless.
Even if that doesn't happen this time, it will happen to someone else.
If Prakash is guilty of the crimes that are alleged, they are grounds
for putting him in prison. But countries should never forcibly exile
their citizens.
Microrobots to inspect oil pipelines
could
be very useful, but experience shows that oil companies
would
rather cut corners than spend money to inspect.
Devices and platforms, using AI, are making medical diagnoses
but the companies that get the information claim not to be covered
by medical regulations for protecting patients.
Canada has deregistered a "charity" which contributed funds to
military training in Israel and to Israeli use of Palestinian land,
Israel Plans to Expel 36,000 Negev Bedouins (from the villages
which Israel says are unauthorized).
Big Agriculture is giving a lot of money to universities, and
exercising
a veto over research.
This is one of the many ways in which big companies endanger everyone.
A vision
for how the World Bank could be converted into a beneficent
engine for equality.
However, what is more likely is that the bully will use it as another
weapon for plutocrats.
Europe Sets Up Scheme to Get Round US Sanctions on Iran.
Sanctions can be justified or not, but I can't see why other countries
should or would allow the US to unilaterally compel them to impose
sanctions on some other country.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to cancel the Oak Flat land swap, which would turn
over land to a multinational mining company that is likely to spread
pollution.
It is also considered sacred by an indigenous group. For me, that
carries less weight; they didn't live in the area until after 1600.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: oppose
the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.
I put this into the comment field.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Recycling plastic is technically
difficult. Only
a tiny fraction of the plastic that is collected for "recycling"
is actually recycled.
President Maduro of Venezuela
is arresting
human rights advocates even if they have not engaged in partisan
politics, for criticizing his policies.
The US government has
started ignoring
UN complaints about US violations of human rights.
This is, in effect, dismisses the defense of human rights. It
will encourage human rights violation all around the world.
It will encourage China to brazenly imprison both Chinese citizens and
foreign visitors
under torture
and brainwashing conditions almost as bad as in Guantanamo.
Short-sighted insurance and zoning regulations are pushing California
housing away from the cities where there are jobs,
and into
fire-prone areas where fire insurance will not be available in the
future at any price.
Canada says
that around
200 Canadians are under arrest or in prison in China, but that's
the usual amount and doesn't seem to represent arbitrary retaliation.
Whether it is retaliation or not, the crucial point is that people
arrested in China, whatever the motive, don't get a fair trial, and
sometimes no trial at all. And they may be tortured.
I wish
I could say that my country never did such things.
The "green
death" movement encourages letting human corpses decay and push up
daisies, and trees, rather than embalming them so that they will
remain unchanged for thousands of years.
The US empire treats nominally independent countries as puppets. One
of the worst
examples is
from Bosnia. The US pressured it to exile naturalized citizens,
often hand them over for torture — in Egypt, in Guantanamo,
elsewhere.
The US labeled them enemies because they had fought for the Bosnian
Muslims motivated by their religion. This doesn't imply they
supported al-Qa'ida. But even if they did, they should not have been
punished like this, disregarding laws, whether or not they committed
any crime.
I think the article's very short aside about the civil war in Syria is
one-sided.
Meng Wanzhou faces an extradition hearing in which Canada is obligated
to demand evidence of specific crimes — exactly what the
Bosnians deserved but did not get.
A supposed UK "charity", the "Institute for
Statecraft", disguises
the location of its headquarters, as well as the fact that its
funding comes from the state and its director is a colonel in military
intelligence. Its mission is to correct "fake news" by spreading
other news, which we must suspect is a mixture of truth and falsehood.
Chinese "reeducation" camps in Xinjing are making clothing that is
exported
to US schools and sports teams.
Thugs permanently stationed in high schools offer the US government a
pipeline to information about students, to collect trivia which might
or might not label them as "gang associates". People are often
arrested
because of this labeling.
Some of the students thus labeled do participate in gangs' crimes.
Some do not. The supposed signs are a basis only for suspicion,
but they are treated as more.
It is an injustice to punish people for unidentified possible crimes,
without proof of any one. It is an injustice to punish people for
what they draw when they doodle, or for "association" at all.
Single mothers
are especially
likely to get caught in US debtors' prisons. Sooner or later, the
day comes when they can't pay a fine and take care of their children.
Collecting the many ways Google is involved with US government
surveillance, abroad and in the US, amounts
to quite
a package.
A giant
British arms company sold sophisticated whole-country surveillance
systems to repressive regimes.
The opponents of Medicare for All want
to undermine
the plan with changes that would make it more expensive by letting
companies sell coverage to young, healthy people.
Toyota wants to design robots that "know what people are thinking".
Not by telepathy, of course, but
by watching
and listening to them all the time.
It is not just the robot that will know. So will Toyota's data
center, and any entity or government that Toyota gives access to, or
that contrives to take the data.
Unless the robot's software is under your control, don't think of it
as your "pal".
The fight to restore network neutrality is not over. Democrats will
make
Ajit Pai testify about lying about the fraudulent comments that
supported his actions.
If you want to look in battleforthenet.com/scoreboard for how each
member of Congress voted, you can do that without running nonfree
Javascript by clicking
on VIEW FULL
SCOREBOARD.
Racist Hyde-Smith won the election for senator from Mississippi.
Preventing states from imposing restrictions on voting by mail;
I am concerned that your boss or your spouse might force you to vote
by mail, and use that to compel you to vote as perse wants. Many US
companies and managers
try
to tell their staff how to vote, and lying about what you did in
the voting booth is your defense, which you would lose if you can vote
by mail instead. I don't understand this item:
Affirming Congress’s right to restore the Voting Rights Act of
1965, which granted the Justice Department veto power over
jurisdictions with histories of voting discrimination;
It is important to restore the Voting Rights Act, but does this bill
do so, or does it only insist that Congress could do so?
Grave as the local dangers of the Line 3 pipeline are, its global
danger is even worse. Just when we need to drastically reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, this pipeline would lead to increasing them.
Right-wing government in Australia plays the same games as right-wing government in the US and the UK: demanding that poor people be perfect and never make a mistake, and punish them if it looks like they have made a mistake.
The US government wants to judge applications for residency based on credit scores — as if credit scores were a direct measure of personal merit.
Rapist Fathers Should Not Have Rights over Their Victims’ Children.
Even most Republicans now agree that global heating is occurring. However, we have a long way to go to show most Americans that human activity is the cause.
Without much help from the US, Europe or Brazil, we are left hoping that China will prevent the impending mass extinction of species.
Varoufakis, working with Sanders, proposes to redirect various international institutions to serve the goals they were created for.
The people directly involved in murdering Berta Cáceres have been convicted, and others just above them face trial. But there is evidence that ministers and other powerful people were involved somehow.
Calling on the Republics of the House of Representatives to censure Rep. Steve King for his racism.
Republican efforts to take away medical coverage for some children seems to have had some success — the number of children without medical coverage rose in 2017.
Washington, DC, may rename the street outside the Salafi Arabian embassy to Jamal Khashoggi Streetb.
An experiment suggests that even a 1% level of fake news can sabotage society's ability to reach consensus.
He would be a lousy choice even if he were not blatantly corrupt.
The cheater's staff is looking for ways to hand over Fethullah Gulen to Erdoğan for punishment, as a bribe so Erdoğan will stop trying to hold the acting monarch of Salafi Arabia responsible for murdering Jamal Khashoggi.
British activists that blocked a deportation flight with nonviolent interference are threatened with life inprisonment.
The activists are accused of blocking the runway, but they are not the ones who did that. It was the state. The state followed a policy of maximum overreaction, based on the worst imaginable case, which it had every reason to know was not occurring. It can't justly blame its overreaction on the activists.
The article explains that the UK denies some deportees the right to appeal decisions, and cheats others out of that right by deporting them illegally fast.
US citizens: call on Congress to close and investigate the bully's prison camps for refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pay the wages of federal contract workers that had no income during the shutdown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to resist both building a physical border wall and any other new deportation efforts that the bully wants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Does it make a difference that "the CEOs of four of the [US's] five biggest defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defense arm of Boeing — are now women"?
I do not believe the claim that female political leaders will in general be less violent or less brutal than male leaders. They seem to vary much as male leaders do.
But we are talking here about business leaders of the US military-industrial complex. They do not decide directly whether to fight any war or repress anyone. But they constantly sponsor persuasion that encourages war in a general way, and encourages repression at least indirectly. More concretely, they impoverish Americans by diverting ever more of the country's resources to buying arms from their companies.
Let's not get distracted from this by their gender.
Google assigns profits from various EU countries to Bermuda, through tax loopholes in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The obvious response is for other EU countries to legislate that Google (and other multinationals) may not dodge their national taxes in this way. I think the reason they do not is that the EU does not allow this. Would leaving the EU enable the UK to tax these companies as they should be taxed?
I would be very interested in talking with an expert.
The UK is buying drone-radio jammers to stop drones from operating near major airports.
This would stop people from operating ordinary commercial drones near airports, but people determined to cause trouble could easily reprogram a drone to make a nuisance of itself without radio control.
A US appeals court upheld a ruling that makes companies responsible for mistreatment of subcontracted workers.
I would celebrate this, but I fear it will be overturned by the right-wing Supreme Court.
A right-wing distraction campaign attacks Senator Warren as a presidential candidate for being "unlikeable".
Warren has fought the financial industry for many years, which puts her miles above Clinton and Obama, who are the banksters' pets. If Warren becomes the Democrats' nominee, I will vote for her. But in the overall range of progressive issues, Sanders is the one who excels. I think Warren should endorse him.
The US is bombing internet cafes in the Syrian towns still held by the remnants of PISSI. Meanwhile, the Kurds are negotiating a truce with PISSI so they can use all their forces to defend against Turkey.
Indian women made a 400-mile human chain upholding their right to enter a temple which formerly had been restricted only to men.
The head of Italian medical research has resigned because of the government's anti-vaccine policies.
Australia is developing systematic disrespect for freedom-of-information requests.
Chinese Schools Track Students by Requiring Chip-Enhanced Uniforms.
If you can force someone to wear certain clothing, it's almost equivalent to forcibly implanting a RFID. Naturally, the school's scheme of total surveillance also includes face recognition.
The staff of a prison for refugee minors were observed shoving and hitting them. Maybe they will be prosecuted for this.
I hope to see a campaign to encourage that prosecution.
Bernie Sanders says what he stands for.
Americans, accept nothing less in 2020 than Sanders.
Facebook says its useds "own their own data", but "their own data" doesn't mean what you would think. It includes only some of the data Facebook keeps about its useds.
This is one reason why the demand that users "own their data" is fundamentally inadequate.
Israel is trying to stop the terrorist attacks against Palestinians, and has arrested two people accused of this.
Israel has the duty to stop that terrorism and should have started many years ago. Meanwhile, these suspects deserve respect for their rights, just as Palestinian suspects do.
Israel stopped 800 people in Gaza last year from traveling to get medical treatment which is impossible there.
US citizens: call on Congress to get the US out of the war in Yemen.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the appointment of Neomi Rao as a federal judge.
Ms Rao's views on intoxication and rape fit the usual patriarchal pattern of searching for any excuse to blame the victim of rape. They never take that approach for other crimes such as robbery. Right-wingers never tell men, "Taking your wallet was not theft, because you consented by carrying it in your back pocket."
I wish the writers would avoid lumping rape together with a wide range of other actions under the term "sexual assault".
If you sign, please spread the word!
A study of how an Israeli soldier shot medic Rouzan al-Najjar suggests that the shooter did not aim directly at her, but firing near a group of medics is a war crime anyway.
So is firing at a group of people who are not participating in violence.
During 2018, Israeli forces killed 265 Palestinians and wounded 29,000. Around 1,500 of the wounded can't recover easily.
Bangladesh is using its new press censorship law to punish reports of problems in the election.
The Houthis have been manipulating food aid to bring a bigger fraction of food aid to areas they control.
The article is not clear about exactly what is going on. Unless the Houthis have been misrepresenting the amount of hunger in areas they do not control — and how could they do that? — the root of the problem seems to be that the total amount of food aid is not enough.
Bolsonaro has launched a plan to wipe out the indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest.
Plutocratist Democrats in Congress have tied their hands with a rule against passing any measures that increase the deficit.
This puts the US on course to have a balanced budget in 50 years: zero dollars revenue, and zero dollars expenditure.
If the non-rich can't afford a court case, rule of law degenerates into rule of the rich. That's what the UK is pushing things toward.
The US situation is different in detail, but worse overall. Criminal defendants get a public defender who tries to only get them a plea bargain. In any other situation, including an asylum hearing, you have no help unless some charity wants to assist you.
The European Union doesn't adequately respect freedom of speech. One example: an anti-abortion activist was forbidden by Europe's highest court from calling abortion "murder" and from comparing abortions with the Holocaust.
I disagree totally with what he said, but freedom of speech includes the right to say it. We who oppose plutocracy must defend all unpopular opinions against censorship, or we will be the next ones censored.
Vietnam has adopted a Chinese-style requirement for ISPs to block criticism of the government.
The avowed ideology of the Vietnamese government is "serve and obey global investors."
When foreign workers in Dubai get pregnant, they are imprisoned unless they conceal it. Some of them abandon their children to get out. Others hide their children for years because their families won't accept them back.
Dubai's cruelty to women who get pregnant, indeed its cruelty to foreign workers in general, is inexcusable.
However, the root cause of this problem — the reason why women from countries like the Philippines take the risky course of going to work in Dubai — is overpopulation in their home countries. That is why they take the risk of travelling to a country where they will certainly be exploited and from which they can't return home. Desperate conditions at home push millions into competitions in which many competitors must surely lose.
When Japan brings in foreign workers, they are sometimes exploited in the same way.
Japan should admit immigrants — not temporary workers to exploit. And in case someone does want to go home, Japan should guarantee the air fare. Japan can afford it.
Proposed development in Florida could drive the Florida panther to extinction.
Meanwhile, sea-level rise will push from the other side.
Fiji says that Neil Prakash does not have Fijian citizenship and cannot apply for it. Thus, Australia seems to have rendered him stateless.
Once Australia adopted the policy of making bets like this, it was certain that it would lose a bet sooner or later.
What if he did have Fijian citizenship even though he has never been there? I question the legitimacy of telling a person, "You are now required to live in that country over there, which you don't know, where you don't know anyone, and you don't speak the local language."
I criticized the US for doing that — for instance, deporting to Mexico a man who was indeed a Mexican citizen but had been brought to the US as a small child.
Countries sometimes need to punish their own citizens, after a fair trial, but should never exile them. Not even after a trial — which Prakash did not have. Australia exiled him without a trial.
Persistent pressure from climate activists have made the mainstream media cover the climate danger — a little.
The Democratic Party is going to require presidential candidates to demonstrate grass-roots funding in order to be included in debates.
An object lesson in spinelessness: someone who passionately hates Apple's decision to eliminate the headphone jack, and hasn't got the guts to do anything but moan.
A fool and his freedom are soon parted.
How can you develop the strength not to be herded? Practice saying no! Practice when it is very easy, and in a year you will learn to at least consider saying no every time some company wants you to submit to mistreatment.
The US has privatized housing for soldiers, with the unsurprising result that some people are getting rich and soldiers live in intolerable conditions.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as head of the EPA.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Chinese students in the Marxist Student Society met with fierce repression after they tried to support a strike in the name of Mao Zidong. They have been jailed (some of them incommunicado, as is common in China).
Mao Zidong is an ironic choice of icon for a movement to help workers against the power of the state, since he was as repressive as any ruler in history. Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng, describes her experience in the Great Cultural Revolution; around ten years previously, Mao's policies causes a nationwide famine. But China's censorship has left these students little opportunity to learn about what Mao did.
Despite this irony, their hearts are in the right place. That is what China has jailed them for.
Immigrants from Mexico don't seem to cause much crime — US cities near the border have low crime rates.
The 1978 US copyright law dealt a horrible blow to the public domain. Here is a list of just a few of the highly appreciated books that would be in the public domain now if not for that law.
Copyright should last for ten years from the date of publication of a work.
People in Arizona are harassing Waymo's not-yet-quite-driverless vans in an attempt to drive them away.
Bravo! We do not have to allow companies to automate millions of jobs; we do not have to allow them to drive camera platforms through the neighborhoods where we live, work, or travel. How about passing laws to stop them?
Please join me in refusing to use the automated cash registers that stores have set up. I reject them absolutely — once I left a store without buying what I had come for, because the automated cash register was the only way to pay. But even if you don't feel the moral determination to reject them every time, rejecting them most of the time still helps.
I also shout to the other customers, as I pass those machines: "If we use those machines, that puts other Americans out of work. When I realized that, I decided I would always go to the human sales agents, to help them stay employed. We don't have to let companies replace people with robots."
On three occasions, someone immediately responded that that was a good point. Interestingly, each one was a black woman. Maybe they are accustomed to the idea of solidarity.
Relating the murder of women to the prohibition of abortion as two aspects of male domination.
Hasan Minhaj made a comic video, published via Netflix, that mocked the official Salafi Arabian story about how Jamal Khashoggi disappeared. The acting king declared the story illegal, so Netflix banned access to the video from there.
Because Netflix is the only distribution site, the only way anyone in Salafi Arabia can see the program now is via unofficial redistribution, which is hampered by Netflix's use of DRM.
Netflix has the power to entirely terminate distribution of any video it made, and the video would essentially disappear because there is no other place to get it.
Join me and flick off Netflix!
It does other injustices too.
Israel's blockade of Gaza has crippled medical care, which has led (among other things) to increase of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The uncontacted tribes of Brazil could soon be wiped out by disease.
Children that grow up in poverty are mentally and physically stunted. This is a big drag in the economy — estimated at around a trillion dollars a year for the US.
The wealthy people who don't care about poor people's suffering might care about that.
Amazon warehouse workers in the US are pushing to unionize. The company treats them as throwaways.
The US economy is so concentrated that in many areas there is little competition. This drives consumer prices up, and drives small farms out of business.
It also means less competition to hire any given worker, which drives wages down.
Companies and managers in the US really try to tell employees who to vote for. And not just a handful of them.
In the absence of legal protection against this, we need to make it very easy for employees to lie to their bosses about how they voted.
The environment-hater's cancellation of environmental protection regulations is causing damage all around the US.
When people see videos of blacks attacked by thugs, they often bend over backwards to find an excuse. This often takes the form of wondering what might have happened before someone started making a video of the attack.
"I used to defend smacking children. Now I see it as an abuse of power."
When my father, and sometimes other adults, punished me physically, that taught me fear and anger which lasted for years. Even decades later, though I no longer felt in physical danger from him, I did not trust him.
However, as I grew up, and saw other children behaving in intolerable ways, I saw the situation from the other side. What could I do to stop a child from doing things that were either dangerous or harmful to others, without losing my temper? It is easy to say, "Find some gentle way to solve the problem" — but I did not think I could find them. Maybe some other people, less easily upset than I, could do that, but I could see I would be stressed to my wits' end, and explode.
At that point I made a very smart decision: to avoid getting into that situation, by not having children.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bully's proposed deal about the shutdown and immigration.
The "deal" is not a compromise — it demands to eliminate any way for people from Central America to ask for asylum.
Hundreds, potentially thousands of Australian plant species are being wiped out by an introduced fungus.
Many villages in India do not have toilets. Women there have to set out before dawn to find a place in the fields they can use without being harassed by men. Now there is a campaign to build toilets all across India.
Telephone companies and ISPs are pushing for weak federal "privacy" laws in the hope of stopping states from doing anything stronger.
But even "stronger" laws to protect "privacy" only regarding commercial use of tracking people is inadequate to protect against repression.
Companies impose nondisclosure agreements on people that they fire for reasons they would be ashamed to admit.
George Monbiot: University research is teaching advertisers how to manipulate people more compellingly.
In the 1980s there was a push to make universities do research that would be more directly useful to business. I suspect this is the result of that.
If you refuse — firmly refuse — to run nonfree software, that will cut a lot of the commercial manipulation out of your life. If in addition you stay off the online disservices, that will get rid of most of the rest. You will still see some ads, but they won't be enough to achieve the intended "cognitive depletion" effect.
Throwaway clothing (an idea that seems absurd to me) is so widely used that it is a major source of greenhouse gases and plastic waste.
When cotton is used, the growing of the cotton releases fertilizer runoff and competes with food production.
We can hope that people will turn towards rejecting throwaway clothing (and any non-durable clothing), but that involves going against social pressure. Turning the pressure around would have more effect. Perhaps a 300% tax on clothing that appears designed to last less than six months, decreasing to zero for clothing that would last three years. Alternatively, require the store or the "brand" to buy the clothing back within three years, and put up a deposit for doing this.
Another alternative: if you want a design on your body just once, paint it on.
The sixth mass extinction is no longer threatening — it is happening all around us. For instance, many species of trees in the western US are already dead, and the animals that depended on them are dying or dead.
Research of internal documents demonstrates that the massacre of Communists in Indonesia in 1965-66 was planned by the army and ordered explicitly by General Suharto.
The infantile US president is inspiring high school students to be infantile.
The mayor of Gdansk in Poland was assassinated by a crazed fanatic who was apparently motivated by that party's propaganda. The mayor had defended human rights against the ruling right-wing party.
Verizon pressures workers hard with propaganda against unionization.
14-year-old Antonio Arce was shot by a thug while running away. It is possible he really was carrying a fake gun.
The wrecker-in-chief is making exceptions to the legally-required government shutdown so as to speed permits for new fossil fuel drilling.
Rep. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, wants to set up a trip for members of Congress to visit Palestine and see how the occupation treats Palestinians.
The US deportation thugs are so eager to deport people that periodically they jail US citizens and prepare to deport them.
It's not clear how they would choose a country to send someone to, who was born in the US, but being so careless they might pick anywhere.
A leaked document shows that the bully and his henchmen intentionally planned to deport refugee minors quickly, denying them their right to a hearing, after taking them away from their parents.
They lied about this, naturally, since they belong to the Republiar Party. Senator Merkley called for the FBI to investigate the Secretary of Homeland Savagery, Kirstjen Nielsen, who patently lied to Congress about this.
Lots of plastic that Americans hand over for recycling does not really get recycled. The system is not able to cope with the needs of the real waste stream.
Perhaps we need to tax the use of plastic packaging that doesn't match up with real recycling capabilities.
The adoption of e-cigarettes has greatly increased the fraction of teenagers that use nicotine.
How bad is that? The change since 20 years ago is that today many of them are using e-cigarettes, whereas their counterparts 20 years ago were smoking.
The UK Department of Health finds that vaping nicotine does only 5% as much harm as smoking tobacco.
So it seems to me that the change reported in Mother Jones is a big change for the not-so-bad.
There is bipartisan support for relaxing zoning regulations, but not at the local level where it can actually be done.
Syrian Kurds have handed the town of Manbij to Assad's forces, hoping that will thwart Erdoğan's plan to attack Manbij.
If Assad is willing to make peace with Rojava, that could give Rojava a way to survive. However, there is no way for Rojava to respect human rights under Assad's dominion, as long as he will not do so.
Americans that live near costs are campaigning vigorously to block oil drilling off their coasts. Florida has just prohibited offshore drilling.
US citizens: support the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over a few years.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US military to stop spraying toxic PFAS fire extinguishers; use other extinguishing substances instead.
To sign this without running nonfree JavaScript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Sudan is full of nonviolent protests against al-Bashir's power.
The most common kind of childhood leukaemia may be caused by keeping babies away from germs.
Assad has clearly won the Syrian civil war.
I think this is not a bad thing, overall, given that there was no one else less bad that we could support to replace him. The Syrian rebels were no better, and PISSI wasn't either.
The EU accuses Romania of undermining rule of law — like Poland and Hungary. Italy may soon follow.
Meanwhile, censorship in EU countries is increasing, with Article 13 and the police censorship directive.
It seems that the EU has insufficient power to use for defending human rights and democracy in its member states, while it has too much power to collect debts for the banksters.
Outgoing Michigan governor Snyder, normally no hero of democracy, blocked most Republican attempts to reduce the power of the incoming Democratic state officials.
It seems that he has some scruples about how far partisanship should go.
Israeli terrorism against Palestinians is increasing. Often the terrorists destroy orchards and buildings, but sometimes they kill.
The elite in the UK no longer claim to be better than the masses because of their aristocratic pedigrees. Instead they claim to be better than the masses because their parents were wealthy enough to send them to better schools (and give them the best connections).
US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students.
The Department of the Interior, suspected of much corruption, has decided to make it harder to find out what it is doing and has done.
George Monbiot discusses evidence that the increase of obesity is the result of eating more sugar.
Laws whose stated purpose is to restrict advocacy of right-wing extremists end up being used to restrict leftist resistance to plutocracy.
Facebook and Google provide support on contract to specific political campaigns. Given the role they play in communication between citizens, this is a conflict of interest, and should be prohibited.
French cities are collaborating with companies to combine data about people from every possible source.
If the GDPR do not prohibit this, they are a joke.
They aim to detect and use "weak signals", which means collecting lots of personal data, looking for barely detectable patterns, and acting on unreliable conclusions.
Facebook has a history of deleting accurate statements that criticize Israel's occupation policies.
The plutocratist Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has created a climate committee that lacks the power to investigate wrongdoing by the administration, and with a leader who won't push hard.
We will have to put Democrats on the spot over this.
Right-wingers are once again spreading claims that using marijuana makes people violent. Now we have scientific studies showing that is false.
It seems that the presidential election in the DR Congo was rigged, and that two losing candidates made a deal to cheat the main opposition leader of victory.
Who is more dangerous: El Chapo or Carlos Slim?
In other words, which is more dangerous: illegal drug trafficking, or Plutocrats and dooH niboR.
With the the 1989 Montreal Protocol, all the countries on Earth agreed to ban production of the substances that were destroying the atmosphere's ozone layer.
This example ought to have led to similar action to curb global heating, but lobbyists for disaster have blocked it.
France proposes repression of protests, including establishing identity checkpoints and banning anonymous protest.
The three million Europeans living in the UK will in principle be allowed to continue living there, but they will have to pay a fee and jump through hoops to get papers.
This means surely thousands will fail for one reason or another — missing records, poverty, or bureaucratic screwups.
Large oil companies such as Shell and Exxon are planning a big expansion in plastics production.
Making plastic with the oil is not as bad as burning it, but it is harmful in its own way.
Contraceptive pills ought to be nonprescription medicine.
The article is inaccurate in claiming that they are available without prescription in 100 countries. But that is the case in some countries, including Portugal and China. The arguments are valid anyway.
When copyright enforcement becomes too easy, human rights suffer.
"Man arrested at Sydney airport over baby formula crime syndicate allegations."
Why unlimited economic growth is not possible in our finite world.
Even if they make organic milk, small dairy farms in the US cannot compete. They are closing by the thousands, and often being converted to soy beans.
16% of the US soldiers that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan developed PTSD afterward.
Labour promises the UK a Green New Deal.
Horseshoe crabs produce an enzyme that is used in medicine as a very sensitive test for presence of bacteria. But we are catching too many of them, and their numbers are declining.
Stop Biodiversity Loss Or We Could Face Our Own Extinction, Warns UN.
Three years of letting the copyright industry restrict Australian ISPs have not crushed forbidden sharing, so the copyright industry demands even more power.
The article is weak in that it gets distracted by questions of price. The usual authorized methods of distributing music, books and video over the internet are unjust — they typically identify people and what works they obtain, they impose DRM, and/or make people accept a contract to be a jerk. I never accept anything through such channels, and I would not do so even if they paid me a high price to do it.
US Postal Service workers deliver lots of packages for Amazon, especially on Sundays. You can imagine how they are mistreated: some "part time" workers have to go weeks without a day off. The speedup is so intense that following the official safety procedures is not feasible.
A theory tries to explain how prejudice against various groups takes various forms, and how the ups and downs of the economy affect them.
Digital monitoring enables employers to gamify the job and make workers work harder. This way, they can control each worker's movements as if perse were a robot.
The workers don't get more pay for working harder, but they do get more injuries.
Microfinance loan plans are so rigid that in certain contexts they assure failure.
I remember reading that the original microfinance loans were effective because they gave borrowers a way to get out of a specific kind of debt slavery. There is no reason they should be equally effective in places where the system that imposes poverty is similar.
India is shutting down the operations of Greenpeace and Amnesty International by freezing their bank accounts. Almost 20,000 other NGOs have been blocked from receiving donations.
The repressor wants to restrict protests near the White House and in other parts of Washington DC.
Second warning: we are running Earth's systems into destruction, and the degradation is now visible in many global statistics continuing since decades ago.
"Racial equality once meant tearing down barriers, not doing a DNA test."
I am not convinced by the idea that the question "who I am" is defined by a set of comparisons of my DNA with various other groups. My idea of my identity is not based on how closely biologically related to various groups of people. The aspects I identify with are more about what shaped my thoughts than about what shaped my body.
As for "cultural appropriation", that's what culture is for. That is how culture develops. No community has the right to monopolize a style element.
As the US and states make it ever harder to get prescription opioids, addicts switch to illegal opioids which they obtain through the black market. That increases the rate of overdoses. Governments frantic to "do something", whether effective or not, react by making it even harder to get prescription opioids.
After repealing the laws that make it a crime to be homeless, here are ways to give them the help they need.
Tasmanian old-growth forests are drying up due to global heating; they could all burn up in one large fire.
Seymour Hersh cannot publish his investigations in US periodicals. They are too subservient to expose crimes of the powerful, let alone those of the rich.
Presenting the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
The Pentagon seems to have equated protest in the US with rebellion, so it is trying to use AI to predict protests so as to crack down on them quickly.
The pressure to "reform" the system may lead to positive changes, but what is needed is to completely prevent the ISDS from interfering with laws to end plutocracy.
Africa could become the continent of a billion “angry, underfed, under-educated and under-employed” young people by 2050. How should we avoid this? One way is too invest trillions of dollars in educating them and employing them — but it won't be easy to obtain that much money for this.
Another way is to invest a few billion in reliable birth control, and sterilization. This will avoid not only the billion hungry unemployed, but also the damage that would be done by the population increase.
If the human population keeps increasing, we will wipe out nature and then wipe out humanity.
"Deep fake" videos are rapidly advancing. They could be used to provide apparent substantiation for fake news, and would teach people to distrust everything.
Without a way to determine the truth, we are helpless prey for the powerful.
UN Special Rapporteur Analyses AI's Impact on Human Rights: systems are opaque and biased, they foment massive surveillance, and they encourage self-censorship.
US citizens: call on Congress not to rubber-stamp the numbskull's laser drone anti-missile plan.
In principle, defense against ballistic missiles could be a very good thing. But the US military has a bad record of spending hundreds of billions on such systems with no reason to think they would be effective, or what countermeasures might thwart them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How Congress can stop the bully from redirecting other funds to building a border wall.
US rules for labeling GMO foods are designed not to inform the public effectively.
The law that stopped states from establishing labeling requirements was designed to lead to this.
US border policies are calculated to discourage refugees by putting them at risk of death and rape.
We can see that this is intentional when the US refuses to allow refugees to apply for asylum safely at a point or entry, so that they will risk their lives to cross the border.
Pioneers are exploring life without disposable plastics.
Producers of ham and bacon should stop adding nitrates, which cause cancer and other medical problems. They were needed in the past to prevent botulism, but modern sanitary methods prevent it anyway.
DeVos has opened wide the entrance of the school-to-prison pipeline.
I think schools should not be allowed to have a thug on premises except in response to a specific possible crime.
Having elections in which 40% of the population is not allowed to vote is not enough to make Israel qualify as a democracy.
Palestinians are supposed to be able to vote for the legislature of the Palestinian Authority. But that agency has little power — Israeli military rule overrides it in many areas of life — and Israel has blocked those elections for years.
An old, highly polluting oil-burning power plant in New York City exploded. It should have been shut down years ago.
Summing up the damage that two years of the bullshitter have done to the US.
The US spend over 800 million dollars on privatized immigration prisons.
We should not permit privatized prisons of any kind.
Palm oil is still driving massive deforestation of rain forests. That releases lots of greenhouse gas, and will cause extinction of many species. The producers have succeeded in defying public pressure to stop deforestation.
The EU does wrong in permitting use of palm oil in fuel for vehicles. Burning oils produced by agriculture, with agricultural inputs, is no better than burning fossil oil. What would be better is oil made by microbes that don't need much input, or made from agricultural waste.
Mary Robinson met with Sheikha Latifa, who was grabbed off a boat in which she was fleeing to India, and is now kept at home by her family. Latifa said that she regretted trying to escape. Robinson said she appears "vulnerable".
There are two possibilities. (1) She really does regret her attempt to escape, and is glad to be home. (2) She is a prisoner subject to brainwashing and/or intimidation.
Neither one is impossible, but the fact that her family isolates her and blocks her from communication except for a short time with one chosen visitor suggests they don't believe she is glad to be home. So I believe (2).
Facebook has many complicated rules for judging what to censor, and employs thousands of censors who are supposed to apply them. Sometimes they get confused — but the rules themselves are confusing.
The bullshitter's sabotage is causing increasing harm, and is starting to drive hostile resistance since just working around him is not effective.
The bully's punishment of all medical aid organizations if they do abortions stimulated a world-wide campaign for abortion rights and women's rights in general.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Tell the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and Office of the Bar Counsel to dismiss the complaint against District Attorney Rollins.
US citizens: call on Congress to subpoena the notes from the translator at the meeting between the bully and Putin.
Australian Students Launch National Campaign to Pressure MPs to Allow Pill-Testing.
Progressives are making plutocratist Democrats worry about being replaced.
Making them worry is not enough — we should follow through and really replace them.
My old representative, Capuano, usually voted mildly progressive, but only within the limits of respect for the power of the plutocrats. Many years ago I went with a group of constituents to call on him to support a stronger measure, and he said, "If you want a representative more progressive than me, vote for one."
Last summer, I voted for Ayanna Pressley.
In the Netherlands, the state can watch through thousands of private surveillance cameras.
It is a mistake to refer to these as "security" cameras, because they facilitate massive surveillance.
A security camera is one that records locally only. These cameras help security but do not threaten human rights.
If the camera can transmit images remotely, it becomes a surveillance camera, a useful tool for repression.
The Netherlands should take steps to replace surveillance cameras with security cameras.
For massive surveillance, controlled balloons pose almost the same danger as drones.
Rhode Island is considering a bill to strictly limit car license plate surveillance by the state.
The bill seems very solid, but I think it needs to restrict private systems too. Individuals must have the right to use their eyes and cameras here and there, but systematic tracking of people in general should not be allowed.
Barr worked for the federal government in 1992, and set up massive surveillance of American's phone calls, which continues to this day.
You should have the right to sue when systems spy on you.
A lawsuit is general over alleged damages. The law should say that being surveilled is in itself damage, and make sure there is no need to demonstrate the loss in financial terms.
US insurance companies and clinics are pooling data to help Pharma companies market expensive drugs.
When foreign workers visit the UK to work as domestic servants, their employers rob and abuse them, knowing that they are desperate.
The 6-month visa period is a protection for domestic workers: it means that at least every 6 months they have a chance to speak to an official about abusive employers. That makes it harder for employers to keep them locked up for years, effectively as slaves. But this doesn't eliminate the problem.
The government could prevent wage theft too, by making employers send workers' pay to the government, which would then remit it directly to the worker's family.
Nonetheless, their situation would be dire if they don't dare lose their job.
In ordinary circumstances, it would be a foolish risk to take a job as a domestic servant in a country that would deport you if you quit. These women do it because they are desperate.
So the deeper question is, why are these women desperate? The article says it is because they have children that they cannot afford to raise.
We can try to stop specific injustices against them, and we should; but when overreproduction pressures people into making a desperate bet, inevitably some of them will lose. The long-term solution to these abuses is to reduce the birth rate.
(satire) … advisors to Donald Trump’s attorney general pick William Barr reportedly instructed him Monday to avoid referring to the president as “my liege” during his confirmation hearing.
US companies are imposing repressive conditions on millions of American workers, restricting and censoring them even while not at work.
The mainstream media cover the split in the Democratic Party from the plutocratist side, using commentators that are disconnected from most Americans' difficult lives and needs.
Rich countries should give adequate support to refugees that have fled to poor countries.
Congress is working on pulling the US out of the war in Yemen.
Indonesia has established a certified sustainable tuna fishery with an increasing tuna population.
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to block other business until the Senate votes on ending the shutdown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
UK courts don't trust privatized probation monitoring, so they sentence people to prison instead.
Just when it seemed that phones could not snoop any worse: they will put fingerprint scanners in the touch screen!
Don't touch a phone's screen without some sort of plastic over your fingers.
The "classic" conservative Republican Party was the party of crackpot ideas. That was before the bullshitter took it over, and before the corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement.
FBI agent Terry Albury has been sentenced to four years in prison for revealing how the FBI intimidated people selected based on their race or religion.
The prime minister of Bangladesh seems to be procuring reelection by repressing the opposition.
A poll found that 80% of Americans want to spend 5 billion dollars on medical care, education, or infrastructure, not the border wall.
San Francisco has a terrible shortage of housing, but trying to build some is a terrible struggle. Or should I say "because" instead of "but"?
Zoning laws are one of the causes of the shortage of housing in the US cities where jobs are. They force urban sprawl, which leads to long commutes. People object to denser housing in their neighborhood because it would increase the amount of traffic, but spreading that housing over a wider area would result in even more total increase in traffic.
In the long run, the only lasting way to prevent gentrification without exiling people a long distance from their work and their lives is to make housing dense.
Four Kansas state legislators have switched from Republican to Democrat. They feel the Republican party has become too right-wing.
This might be good to some extent, but they will surely not be progressive Democrats.
Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Melting Even in the Middle of Winter.
Canada's medical system is far superior to Obama's reformed medical insurance system. Before Obama's reforms, the US system was even worse.
IBM has worked with the New York Thug Department to develop software to search for people by skin color.
Now a thug that wants to beat up, arrest, or shoot a black male doesn't have to wait to happen upon one by chance. ;-{
Seriously, we should prohibit all systems to do any sort of recognition of faces in places where the public can normally go: outdoors, in theaters, stadiums, stores and other retail businesses when they are open, and in government buildings when the public is allowed to enter. Exceptions would require specific authorization by a court, specifying the place and the period of time.
The UK regularly gives its secret agents immunity from prosecution for torturing people in other countries.
Baltimore [thugs] Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, to fabricate excuses for shooting them.
How the Online Tracking Industry "Informs" Policy Makers about privacy.
Japan is giving in to its low birth rate and allowing immigrants.
This is a very good thing. The whole world needs to recognize low birth rates as a necessary step towards a sustainable population.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect workers from harm due to the shutdown.
US citizens: call on Congress to require the president and all presidential candidates to release their tax returns.
Just after T-Mobile and Sprint announced plans to merge, their executives checked in to the cheater's hotel — in effect, offering him a bribe.
Global heating is speeding up the melting of ice in Antarctica.
US fossil fuel companies are planning a big expansion in extraction, which would eliminate all chance of avoiding climate disaster.
We have to stop them before they can do it, since it would amount to murder of hundreds of millions, if not more.
The power-grabber systematically uses his power to erode the democratic checks and balances that stand between him and total power.
Three nuclear power plants planned for the UK won't be built, because the foreign companies that were going to build them have decided they were money-losers, even despite the billions in subsidy.
The supposed reason for building them is to have power reliably available even if there is no wind at night. But we already know another way to do that: batteries. Batteries are still somewhat expensive, but are nuclear power plants cheaper? And batteries can't have a massive meltdown that converts a multi-billion-dollar investment into a tens-of-billions cleanup expense.
An inspector general's report says that the US government took thousands of refugee children away from their parents, before the time in 2018 when the bully announced an explicit policy of doing so. How many thousands is unknown.
Censorship of blasphemous art has struck in Israel.
"Legislation to raise the federal minimum wage is a direct response to activists raising their voices in unison."
To get that legislation adopted, they will need to organize for progressive Senate candidates in Democratic primaries in 2020.
The Democratic senators with plutocratist leanings are trying to present themselves as progressive: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
The authors of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C kept some of the most alarming predictions out of the executive summary hoping to reduce the resistance from planet-roaster governments such as the US and Australia.
Appeasing the planet roasters is as mistaken as appeasing Hitler was. They don't respond with "What a relief, we got enough" but with "They seem to feel weak; let's attack them now."
Right-wing US judges are promoting systematic miscarriages of justice by allowing prosecutors to offer plea bargains while concealing information a that proves the accused innocent.
They are trying to trick the defendant into accepting imprisonment because they know they could not convict per.
'Trumpwashing': the Danger of Turning the Republican Resistance into Liberal Heroes.
A French activist blocked an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian house. Israeli thugs tried to deport him before he could have a court hearing.
The thugs attacked not just one nonviolent humanitarian activist, but also rule of law in Israel.
The neoliberal order kept politics stable by suppressing discussion questioning its basic ideas were valid. That it is losing the ability to do that shows it is losing control.
Falling Total Fertility Rate Should Be Welcomed, Population Expert Says.
Waiting to welcome it if it comes is too passive. We should buy a ticket for it to come.
Japan will quit the International Whaling Commission and start killing whales again.
With a decreasing population (something every country ought to have), why turn to such a morally questionable food source? It's not as if Japan needed whale meat.
There have been hundreds of sexual harassment claims against UK thugs, and that counts only certain parts of the UK — probably less than half of them.
Australian human rights defenders are starting to recognize the danger of face recognition.
They should recognize that license plate recognition has almost the same danger.
Could robot bees replace living bees, if we wipe out the latter?
Perhaps they could, for pollinating crops. But I don't think they could do the job for all the wild plants.
California has loosened regulations that made many small-scale businesses impossible.
In the UK, if you order food delivered "from" some restaurant, in most cases the food is prepared not at the restaurant, but in a cooking sweatshop.
So it's not just the delivery couriers that are low-paid and worked to the bone, but the cooks too.
Is this system used in the US as well?
US thugs have a policy of preferentially stopping black drivers and inventing pretexts to search their cars. Each occasion might offer an opportunity to jail a black person, or perhaps cause per to be fired just for being arrested. Each time, it can push someone permanently into poverty.
Why allow employers to find out whether a person has been arrested? We have no obligation to give businesses that power. How about making it illegal for employers to ask for, record, or act on that information?
Rich and powerful white males have long claimed that they are so rich and powerful because they are better than everyone else — in effect denying the existence of racism and sexism.
They used to do this smoothly to make the claim appear plausible. Now they do it Republican style — with blatant contempt for reality.
Now that the Gulf of Maine (a few miles from where I sit) has become substantially hotter, endangered sea turtles find it attractive in autumn. In winter it gets too cold for them, and they try to go south — but they get caught by Cape Cod. They don't know how to escape from the trap, and they die of hypothermia without months of medical care from humans.
Is there a way of catching them a somewhat earlier, when it would be sufficient to transport them to the south of Cape Cod and release them immediately?
Everyone: call for closing the Guantanamo prison and releasing the prisoners, in particular Toffiq al-Bihani. Here is what I said.
I urge you to immediately transfer Toffiq al-Bihani, who has been imprisoned without charges by the US since 2003, and apologize to him for our country's shameful act of imprisoning him without trial. He also deserves compensation in the form of providing his needs for life as a free man for the rest of his life.
I urge you also to close the Guantanamo prison and put an end to the various unjust Guantanamo-linked practices including imprisonment without trial, unfair kangaroo courts, and torture. And anything else that is unworthy of our country and has to pain the heart of Americans that love their country.
Some of the prisoners in Guantanamo may have committed great crimes. They have also suffered great crimes, including 17 years in prison without a fair trial, and torture. That is surely punishment enough; we have to right to commit crimes against them in the name of punishing them even more. They can't inspire terrorism more outside than they do now in Guantanamo. Most of them won't even try. If any of them gets involved in future terrorism, he will be one more among thousands — making little difference — and we could catch him and prosecute him honestly next time.
Those responsible for torture and enforced disappearance must be brought to justice in fair trial without recourse to the death penalty.
The US government has imposed something almost equivalent to a national ID card. Without it, people cannot use airplanes or enter a federal office building.
I suspect that exclusion from federal office buildings denies people a number of rights.
US citizens: call on the FCC to investigate phone network companies for selling location data.
Over 20% of writers surveyed by PEN reported that they avoided writing about certain topics because they knew about surveillance.
That survey was in Scotland. Here are some reports:
One participant who had covered the conflict in Northern Ireland in 70s and 80s stated that they would not cover the conflict in the same manner if it took place now; another stopped writing about child abuse when they thought about what their search history may look to someone else; when they heard of a conviction based on the ownership of the Anarchist Cookbook, a participant who bought a copy for research shredded it. Further to this a participant stated: "I think I would avoid direct research on issues to do with Islamic fundamentalism. I might work on aspects of the theory, but not on interviewing people…in the past, I have interviewed people who would be called…'subversives'."
An earlier survey of US writers found that 1/6 reported self-censoring because of surveillance.
Citizens of Washington DC are fighting an attempt to privatize the city's transit system.
Mass transit systems should never be privatized.
Some Indian hotels plan to send a photo of every customer immediately to the local government in addition to the ID card information.
In Sri Lanka, prime minister pretender Rajapaksa has dropped his claim to be prime minister.
Since the president appointed him unconstitutionally, he was never really the prime minister.
Modeling suggests that phasing out fossil fuel facilities could still curb global heating before 1.5C.
That means not building anything new that burns fossil fuels, so that old facilities and vehicles at the end of their lives are replaced with renewable energy facilities and vehicles.
Arguing that the cheater's collaboration with Russia is less important as a basis for impeachment than his other crimes.
To talk about what did or did not enable the cheater to "win" the election promotes the false claim that he "won" it. In fact, Republican voter suppression — cheating — is what enabled him to capture the presidency.
Whether it is good strategy to impeach the cheater, given that the Senate would not convict him, I do not know.
In Canada, the election issue about climate defense is whether to do far too little or far far too little. If closing coal-burning power plants is most of the emissions reduction that Canada makes in 10 years, that means they will stop with the easy stuff.
If Canada doesn't want to receive 20, 30, 50 million climate refugees a few decades from now from the collapse of agriculture in the US, it had better push for global climate defense action now.
The NIH has banned research using fetal tissue using its funds. This decision, incoherent even in its own terms, will hamper research into numerous maladies, including Alzheimer's disease and Zika.
The ban is incoherent because it fails to achieve the goal, preventing or discouraging abortions, that is supposedly the motive for it.
Paradoxically, impeding research on Zika will enable the disease to continue making it necessary for women to have abortions so as to avoid giving birth to babies with microcephaly. That research has a chance of someday preventing Zika from having those effects on fetuses, so that they could be born healthy.
Ironically, the same anti-abortion campaign has another tactic: making it a crime to endanger a fetus. But they only intend to apply this to endangering one fetus at a time. Endangering millions of fetuses, by keeping them in harm's way, seems to be ok in their opinion.
Everyone: call on Gannett newspapers not to sell to Digital First Media.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US should revive the Office of Technology Assessment.
It was abolished in 1995 by Republicans under Gingrich, because they didn't want serious investigation of technology issues.
Adorable wild parakeets in Greece may threaten native bird populations.
The bully is releasing hundreds of refugees from immigration, all at once — in the middle of nowhere.
It's good that they are being released, but why do it that way?
A series of criteria estimate how likely a genocide is in any given country.
"ContentID is exactly the thing YouTube claims it doesn't do: privately mediating ownership of [publications] without involving the law."
Please don't refer to publications or artistic works as "content"; that term disparages all publications and artistic works.
Juan Cole: 2018 was the year Israel finally went completely rogue and ensured that it can no longer be considered to be in the club of liberal capitalist democracies. It is now formally an Apartheid state even inside the Green Line. It is also the year when the Israeli elite consciously decided to shoot down with live ammunition unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in the thousands.
US nurses rebuke the border thugs for keeping border-crossers prisoner in conditions that endanger the prisoners' health.
Keeping children in prison at all endangers their health, and causes them stress that can harm them for life.
The Pentagon finally did an audit — a positive step. Next we need to make it pass an audit.
The article suggests that Congress could reject any increase in the military budget unless the Pentagon passes an audit.
Even better, decrease the Pentagon budget by 5% each year until it passes an audit.
1/5 of young workers in the UK are paid less than the minimum wage.
It seems that this practice is illegal in name only. Does the government have a plan to fine employers and jail managers that participate in this?
The way to reduce the waste from plastic things is to reduce the quantity of such things that are made.
"Recycling" plastic by burning it is even more ironic than the article says. The process consists basically of extracting petroleum from the ground and then burning it, but differs from the usual way of doing so in that the petroleum (more precisely, some fraction of it) passes through an intermediate stage as plastic. This does not reduce the greenhouse gas output.
Imagine if every item made of plastic — even fairly durable items — carried a deposit. If the item is recycled in less than 5 years, the consumer gets the deposit back. If it is recycled after 5 years, the consumer refund is a decreasing fraction of the original deposit; after 10 years, the refund goes to zero.
This law would encourage making plastic items that would remain usable for a longer period of time. It could even help put an end to planned obsolescence.
Afghan women who are raped are frequently imprisoned for not being virgin. When they get out of prison, they may be murdered for that.
This patriarchal cruelty perpetuates the Taliban. The US has tried to do "nation building", usually taking the form of investing in physical plant which often turns out to be useless. Perhaps it should have funded women's shelters instead.
Facebook made a secret deal with Amazon to give Amazon access to Facebook's data about users. A plague on both of those companies!
Airbnb increases the price of houses — and the rent for a place to live.
The bully has given the CIA much looser rules for drone assassinations, building on what Obama permitted.
A clown asks that we not use the word "clown" to refer to the incompetent.
The grifter and his siblings cheated thousands of rental tenants in the 1990s, and got millions of dollars this way.
Only socialism can make capitalism stable and keep it democratic.
The fight to capture PISSI's remaining islands of territory in Syria is still continuing; an important advance was just made.
The article speaks of the Syrian Democratic Forces. It seems clear that Rojava was involved. It is not clear precisely how.
Ireland's NHS has developed a way to treat homeless people's illnesses in a way that helps them get back on their feet.
Drones, DNA and Data: Please Don't Give the Gift of Privacy Invasion.
It looks like Republiars are making a play to deny the scientific evidence that links air pollution to medical problems.
The US now holds 15,000 refugee minors in prison, and there is almost no chance they will ever be released from prison because their relatives don't dare sponsor them.
The Senate voted to stop supporting Salafi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen.
Unfortunately, the House has already barred even voting on the question. However, this same resolution could pass the Senate next year, and the Democrats in the House could bring up the same resolution next year.
Does exercise of the War Powers Act require the president's signature? I would find that very surprising, since the whole point is to put a check on the president's power to fight a war without approval of Congress. But I would like to know.
It seems to me that the US has done plenty of buying of such support. Can people send me a couple of references about examples?
Varoufakis offers a plan to raise funds for a Green New Deal for Europe that would also rescue Italy and Greece.
Amazon has envisioned making doorbell cameras to let the thugs do face recognition on people who pass by.
Australia has finessed the issue of where its Israeli embassy will be located: it says it will move the embassy to Jerusalem if and when there is a peace settlement about it.
I am not sure what everyone will say about that plan, but it should put a little pressure on Israel to make peace.
Erdoğan's regime has convicted Dr. Gençay Gürsoy, founder of the Turkish Medical Association, of "propaganda for an armed terrorist organization". What he actually did was sign a petition for human rights.
The saboteur wants to eliminate a lot of post office service — including for everyone outside major cities.
For our own safety, Americans must not let US thugs get training from Israeli thugs.
Senators are putting a law forbidding boycotting of Israel into a spending bill that "must pass".
Massive die-offs are affecting trees and animals in a wide variety of groups, around the world.
School Boots Professor Off Campus After He Exposes Its Complicity In Predatory Publishing Schemes.
Professors in that business school found they were rewarded for paying to get papers published.
An investigation aims to pin responsibility for global heating disaster on the companies that are making it happen.
Giving India's sex workers a calm place to rest made it possible to teach them how to avoid catching and spreading HIV.
Patricia Okoumou faces imprisonment in the US for a nonviolent protest: she climbed the statue of liberty. This does not inhibit her from keeping up the protests.
Charlottesville has commemorated murder and violence by right-wing extremists by educating the public about the history of racism there.
Some of Facebook's fact checkers, supposedly charged with eliminating fake news, are quitting, saying Facebook does not really want to get rid of fake news — only make a show of trying.
The ruiner plans to destroy the National Butterfly Sanctuary for his obsession, the border wall.
The sanctuary is located next to the Rio Grande because that's where conditions make it possible. There is no easy way to move it. It will be possible to tear down the wall, but there will be no easy way to bring back what was destroyed.
I don't think the ruiner would mind if these species went extinct (which some of them are sure to do, over coming decades, though not solely because of this).
Climate research leader Richard Betts has endorsed the term "global heating".
I have no way of knowing whether my advocacy of that term reached him at all. But it might have done so.
Secret face recognition at a Taylor Swift concert was nominally intended to recognize a list of known stalkers.
If someone was not on that list, what did they do with per photo? Did they save it? Put it in a database? Systems like this should be illegal except under extremely stringent conditions of not saving any data about people.
Jewish and Arab women in Israel are working together against gender violence.
When I visited Israel for the first time, I was told that Israeli men tended to be grabby.
Israel is arresting Palestinian children off the street as they return home after school.
These are really children — as young as nine years old. Some of them are sentenced to imprisonment after bogus "trials".
Israel is evicting hundreds of Palestinians from Jerusalem in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The head of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission has been the lawyer for many large companies. He would not be allowed to be involved in investigating them even if he wanted to.
With that history, he surely won't want to. He was surely chosen because he's on their side against us.
250 climate activists held a sit-in protest at Rep. Pelosi's office, calling on her to support the massive action needed to protect the Earth's climate.
Senator Schumer let us down by putting coal industry Senator Manchin an important position over energy legislation.
US unions should let the members vote on which candidates to endorse.
SCROTUS stuck a rider in the farm bill to prevent the House from even considering a resolution to pull the US out of the war in Yemen.
The US and Australia showed their contempt for Earth with an event at the Poland climate conference in favor of coal.
We will not see a stable climate in our lifetimes. The increasing danger of fire will force Americans to reshape their way of life.
Journalists are the last check on the repression and violence of Nicaragua. So the state is now directing its repression and violence at them.
I hope Nicaraguans can find a way to overthrow their government.
Macron has agreed to raise the minimum wage in France, in a concession to the gilets jaunes protests.
Bringing back the wealth tax would be very important, since each country that does this will help other countries to do it. We must tax the rich more — a lot more.
New York City thugs attacked and arrested a woman, taking away her one-year-old baby. The excuse? She was sitting on the floor, rather than waiting standing up.
It seems that they told lies to try to justify this, per standard thug procedure, but even if they had been true it would be no excuse for such harshness.
Extinction Rebellion Goes Global in Run-Up to Week of International Civil Disobedience.
The microorganisms that live in the rock in the Earth's crust have a mass comparable to life in the oceans, but they live very slowly.
The protesters that blocked a deportation flight, and face imprisonment, gave one of the deportees the chance to win an appeal. In other words, his intended deportation would have been a miscarriage of justice.
That narrowly averted miscarriage of justice would not have been an accident, but rather the intended stochastic result of a policy of haste designed to excuse violating people's rights. The charges against these protesters are meant to reinforce that "hostile environment".
US college fraternities teach a Kavanaugh-style idea of masculinity based on the core values of brotherhood, privilege and machismo. The ideals they claim to stand for have been forgotten.
We would be better off if fraternities were abolished.
Repeated heat-induced coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has already caused evolutionary effect: the more vulnerable species and varieties are disappearing.
This does not make the remaining species and varieties any more robust than they already were. That part of evolution takes more time than we are going to let the corals have.
Russia spread fake news for a year to prepare public support for its attack on Ukrainian ships.
Appreciation of human rights is decreasing across the world, as people who experienced World War II are no longer here to lead the defense of them.
Living in San Francisco is now so expensive that restaurants have to close because they can't afford staff.
Big social network platforms are worse than feudal lords, If a social network offers you a chance at viral success, it also offers extremists a certainty of amplification. We are better off without such things.
Australia is challenging the legality of a deal in which New South Wales privatized two ports and committed not to build another port.
Any deal that commits the state not to build alternate competing facilities is a direct surrender of public power to a business. These deals ought to be canceled by a constitutional amendment if necessary.
If the government's hands are tied, so it cannot make a deal to privatize certain state assets, great! That is the goal.
US college students graduating in 2017 had about twice as much debt on the average as in 2004.
Since inflation has been low, almost all of this increase is real.
Egyptian officials are frothing at the mouth with fanatical prudery. Since they can't jail the people who made a nude video on top of the Great Pyramid, they want to jail everyone who helped them make the climb.
Whenever prudery takes itself seriously, it threatens repression.
Researchers point out the fallacies in the EPA's arguments for weak fuel economy standards.
Increased fuel economy standards are nowhere near enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as we need to.
The EU defeated Italy's attempt to use deficit spending to boost its stalled economy.
The ones who lose will be Italy's poor.
The Euro keeps countries permanently trapped in poverty by putting the banksters above every country.
Saifullah Paracha was a successful businessman in Pakistan, who was sent to Guantanamo and tortured, then arbitrarily sentenced to life imprisonment without trial.
It is not clear that he is innocent of intentionally helping a terrorist, but there is plenty of room for reasonable doubt about the accusation. The US should release him and apologize.
Every prisoner in Guantanamo should get a fair trial or be released. So what if some of them were real Islamist terrorists? There are thousands of real Islamist terrorists on the loose, and Salafi Arabia's extreme worldwide Islamist education system pre-radicalizes thousands, perhaps millions, every year. Keeping prisoners in Guantanamo changes only one thing: it gives people a reason to refuse to respect or admire the US.
Uber does not allow drivers to sue — it requires them to use arbitration for disputes with the company. But they can't actually use arbitration because Uber won't let them start cases.
We should not allow companies to impose a requirement for arbitration rather than a lawsuit, not on customers and not on workers.
US hospitals hold patients to ransom by refusing to tell them what their medical treatment will cost. The most trivial treatments can cost thousands of dollars, and bigger ones can cost hundreds of thousands.
I think we should not allow for-profit hospitals. However, even not-for-profit hospitals are driven by the same systemic imperatives.
The wife of executive Carlos Ghosn, accused of tax evasion, says he is being interrogated for long hours without his lawyers to pressure him to confess.
He may be guilty, but no one accused of crime should be treated this way. Unfortunately, in Japan, every suspect is.
The shutdown of "inessential" US government work means that prisoners can't see their families, and those that are terminally ill will die in prison rather than with their families.
Analyzing the bully's behavior in terms of infantile attachment insecurity.
I have read that "Stockholm syndrome" is not a recognized psychological pattern and has occurred only rarely.
Beginning Walkout, Los Angeles Teachers Find Support From Sanders—But Not Corporate Democrats.
The strike is not just about wages — it is an attempt to block privatization of the public schools.
Many college students in the US are going hungry.
(The protests at) Standing Rock Inspired Ocasio-Cortez to Run. That's the Power of Protest.
Fanatical US Christians aim to impose religion on state governments, and authorize religiously-motivated discrimination.
US citizens: call on Congress to require background checks for all gun sales.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Argentina's President Macri says that everyone in the country will soon adore the IMF, but they are already launching strikes against the IMF's dooH niboR.
The Department of Harassment and Suspicion is developing AI software which is supposed to figure out who is a terrorist, the way companies figure out who is pregnant or who is gay. They plan to put these people automatically on blacklists, which could result in harassing them or ruining their lives.
The correlations fit millions of people, and at most hundreds of them are real terrorists. Whatever the software does, almost all the matches will be false matches.
The DHS is doing this as proprietary software through a private company, which could enable it to avoid accountability for the wrongs it will do.
Some people are boycotting Amazon because of how it treats workers, and other wrongs to people other than its customers.
The article points out, correctly, that more people would need to join for the boycott to influence Amazon's practices. The article is written in a way that I think is intended to subtly discourage others from doing so. It repeatedly harps on how "convenient" Amazon is and presumes that the only thing customers could want for themselves is convenience.
I might boycott Amazon for those reasons, but the issue does not arise for me, because I reject Amazon due to the ways it mistreats its customers. It collects data about them and it requires running nonfree software. I value my freedom and privacy and I won't surrender them for convenience.
Right-wing extremists make a practice of manipulating people through the glories of each country's imperial past, amplified with exaggerations and distortions.
I expect we will find that the right-wing extremists of various countries will support each other even though the imperial glory of one country involved colonizing or murdering the people of the other country. Once people are sufficiently distracted from the present and from real issues, logic and sense cease to be relevant.
Digital ankle shackles are not an alternative to imprisonment. They are a form of imprisonment.
They can be better or worse than being in a physical prison. They do offer advantages: you can live with your family — if you have a family. You can go to work, if you have a job and they don't fire you for this.
But if you have to pay through the nose to be imprisoned this way, that is an injustice.
If they monitor your movements, and listen to your conversations, prison might be better. Even worse, it might be the first step towards doing the same thing to all of us.
A summary of the harm that NAFTA has done to the US and Mexico.
Now that the First Step Act has reduced future sentences, we need to reduce past sentences the same way so we can let a lot of people out of prison.
Think Twice Before You [Publish] Our Faces Online, Say Children.
They are right. Meanwhile, schools are distributing ever more data about their students to companies that we shouldn't trust either.
Plutocrats want Americans to imagine that we are united with them, but that is not how they treat us.
People around the world are dissatisfied with democracy, with good reasons: the power of plutocrats, exercised through various instruments, has made democracy increasingly ineffective.
If we don't want the right-wing authoritarians to rule, we need to reestablish democracy. However, to do this sufficiently requires eliminating the business-supremacy treaties, including the European Union as it exists today.
"Beto O'Rourke is the new Obama. And that's the last thing we need."
Nurses went on strike for one day against a hospital that was cutting their medical benefits, so the hospital locked them out.
This is part of increased militancy among nurses.
Rabbits in England have become much fewer due to diseases.
I read that rabbits were introduced to England by the Norman conquerors, who wanted to raise them as they did in Normandy.
An Israeli dirty tricks group has got the Palestinian Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign blocked from receiving donations via Donorbox.
I do not advocate the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign. (I advocate the boycott of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory, which was launched by Gush Shalom.) I would not donate to the BDS campaign. Nonetheless, it is a legitimate campaign and I condemn the dirty trick.
Is it possible to donate on Donorbox without running nonfree software (such as Javascript)? Based on what I've seen in other such sites, such as Patreon, I expect it is not. I would not donate to anyone or anything on Donorbox at the cost of my freedom. When I donate to organizations and campaigns, I do it by mailing a check.
The first step in learning the habit of standing up for your freedom is to give freedom priority.
The bully's latest scheme for cruelty to people requesting asylum is to require them to live in Mexico while their cases are heard. That could mean months of starving or begging.
US citizens: call for setting the highest tax bracket at 70% or more.
To make this truly effective requires closing loopholes for dodging taxes, but it is nonetheless a good thing to do.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich and back the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Democratic Party leaders in Congress have agreed to set up a Green New Deal committee. Now they are giving control of it to plutocratists who won't let it achieve anything.
The numbskull has had two soldiers discharged because they have suppressed HIV infections.
This is a method of spreading propaganda to his supporters: inculcating in them disgust and fear towards people that have suppressed HIV?
Facebook secretly let other companies access personal data of Facebook's useds. Why?
Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that the aim was (1) to give the other companies an interest in defending Facebook against regulation, and (2) because they would encourage their customers to give more of their personal data to Facebook.
I think Facebook should be eliminated entirely and replaced with an index of people. People would create records in the index under their names. Your record — if you make one — would give other people a way to contact you through various methods of messaging.
You could include a small amount of information about yourself to help people tell if you are the person they are seeking to contact, rather than another person with a similar name. Their messages to you would carry various contact coordinates in case you decide to respond.
It would do nothing more than that. It would not be allowed to do anything more, or have a special relationship with any other communication system.
This would provide a chance to decentralize the web again — but taking advantage of that chance would require other changes.
Australia is desperate to make life bad for the prisoners it holds on Nauru. A woman who was seriously ill was brought to Australia for treatment, then was held in immigration prison for 6 weeks without being allowed to see a doctor.
After Israeli drone-launched "warning strikes" killed two Palestinian boys on a roof, it looks like Israel edited the video which it posted, to disguise the fact that the drone pilots could see the boys.
Google's plan to turn part of Toronto into a Snoop City quietly swallowed important downtown areas while no one was looking.
The Russian disinformation campaign smeared Mueller's investigation.
The bully's decision to remove US troops from Syria is intended to satisfy Erdoğan's desire to attack Rojava.
Confirmation that China has arrested Michael Kovrig as a bargaining chip is that he has not been allowed to meet with his lawyers.
He is also subject to harsh prison and interrogation conditions, though the US does equally nasty things to prisoners.
The bully is causing a government shutdown to jolt SCROTUS to eliminate the filibuster.
Due to the spread of anti-vaccine hysteria, deaths due to measles are increasing in Europe.
Kenya will allow the European-funded Marie Stopes clinics to resume treating the thousands of women that are injured by underground abortions.
As population growth pushes Africa towards ecocide, legal limits on abortion are the worst possible policy for society, as well as an injustice to each woman.
The bullshitter is talking about greatly reducing US troop levels in Afghanistan.
I think that is the right thing to do. There is no way to win that war. The US can continue the near-stalemate at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths each year, while the Taliban slowly advance, or let the Taliban win.
If we do the latter, the Taliban will be able to defeat PISSI's branch there, which we are unable to do.
We will have the obligation to give the anti-Islamist Afghans, a safe refuge.
Toronto's large wild parks are being taken over by invasive species which will destroy them.
US citizens: call on the major TV networks not to give the bullshitter a platform.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Congress to respect the human right to migrate and end militarization at the border.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Global heating is enabling rats to increase in New York City.
New plants recently discovered are close to extinction due to human activities. Some seem to have become extinct before the finds were categorized and published.
Working to end the practice of giving pets as gifts to people who may not be prepared to take care of them.
Collections of genetic data enable the state to identify you if it has records for even a few of your third cousins. This creates various dangers for everyone.
The concept of property does not fit this problem, as the article recognizes. So why propose to think along those lines? It is the ideology of capitalism. If the only tool you have is "ownership", everything looks like a "property".
Facebook pays its subcontracted workers very little, and treats them in a way that is cruel if not fraudulent. When they demanded better treatment, the subcontractor told them to shut up or quit.
Subcontracting enables Facebook to disclaim legal responsibility for all of this, but morally Facebook is entirely responsible.
If company A buys goods or services from company B, and none of the workers of B are particularly associated with company A's purchase, there is usually no reason to hold A responsible for how B treats workers. But when B is hired to provide people to work for A, morally speaking they are working for A. We should change the law to match the morality.
Rep. Steny Hoyer plans to make the new Green New Deal committee specially powerless. He is a plutocratistic Democrat, so it is clear why he wants to do this.
Peter Stuyvesant participated in slavery and antisemitism in New Amsterdam, without moral hesitation.
Michal Netyks committed suicide in UK immigration prison after he found out he was going to be deported. The prison authority deleted some of the records about this, in an apparent coverup.
The UK funds immigration prisons in Libya in which refugees are treated with cruelty.
UK landlords boast of the power to evict tenants at Christmas as revenge if they complain about dangerous conditions in their homes.
Asking Rep. Pelosi to keep the most right-wing of congressional Democrats from being the heads of the committees where they could do the most good for the companies that they serve.
The US employs coast guard ships as floating Guantanamos; prisoners are shackled on deck, exposed to wind and rain; their legal rights are disregarded; they are presumed guilty.
The proposed Office of Drug Manufacturing would make sure generic drugs are available, and from a sufficient number of suppliers, to keep prices down.
This would address one part of the problem of outrageous drug prices in the US. Medicare for All would do the whole job, as it does in civilized countries.
A study of London thugs found that thugs that carry tasers are twice as likely to become violent. And more likely to be attacked with violence.
Thugs without tasers were more likely to commit violence when they were in the company of thugs that did have tasers.
Washington, DC, has committed to move the city to 100% renewable electricity by 2032.
That is quick enough to really push things.
Should We Be Worried About Computerized Facial Recognition?
Yes! It should be a crime to set up or operate a system that tries to recognize faces seen in public places, unless they are designed with limits that prevent them from tracking people other than suspects designated by specific court orders.
Increase Exposure to Negative And Inflammatory [messages] in Online Social Systems.
The UK digital spy agency can get authorization to break into any and all computers in some very large class. And it expects to do this more and more often.
This effectively eliminates the vital safeguard for human rights — the requirement for a specific search warrant.
The EU sits on Italy, keeping it from escaping poverty; this is driving Italy towards right-wing radicalism.
As long as the EU keeps blocking elected governments from doing anything to help the people that elected them, the people will reject them for their failure and vote for a more radical party.
I see two ways this slide could end: with the election of a party that will confront the EU with an economic hand grenade in its hands and win some concessions, or with the election of a party that will be so repressive that it won't allow people to replace it.
The latter is the only way a party can lastingly impose the ever-increasing suffering that the banksters demand. I fear the Lega will soon get the chance to do that.
The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House.
Actual US systems for recognizing "terrorists" are so incompetent that they can't distinguish 90-year-old David Mayer from a one-armed dead man.
These systems that supposedly "protect" us from terrorists do more harm to Americans than the terrorists themselves do.
Ever-advancing surveillance technologies and algorithms for controlling people threaten to create tyranny beyond the fictional 1984.
Ugandan opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi (stage name Bobi Wine) has been facing repression for some time for his politics. Now thugs raided the hotel where he was staying before giving a concert, but he got away.
Israel wants the US to pay Palestinians to "voluntarily" move out of Palestine.
A plan like this might be ethical if the carrot were not accompanied by lots of sticks with blades on their sides.
Journalist Serafín Morán Santiago has been exiled from Cuba for his writings, so he cannot be deported there. So US border thugs have kept him in jail for 7 months while pondering whether to give him asylum.
Johnson & Johnson discovered that some lots of Baby Powder contained trace amounts of asbestos. Even these trace amounts are enough to cause cancer in some of the users, The company covered this up.
I wonder if the same is true of all talcum powder.
The issue does apply to many other talcum powder products, but it is not clear that the danger is significant.
Investors whose portfolios add up to 8 trillion dollars have endorsed divestment from fossil fuels, and it is starting to hamper the fossil fuel companies.
A few years ago I read that US fossil fuel companies are having trouble hiring staff.
Cruel and unjust as Venezuelan president Maduro is, the opposition is likely to be worse. They are allied with Bolsonaro, who openly proposes to commit similar injustices, which means he is likely to go even further.
Costa Rica's cloud forest is on the way to being wiped out. Thousands of species that are endemic to the cloud forest could face extinction.
A former insurance company executive says the US needs Medicare for All; the so-called "compromise" would enable private insurance companies to "skim the cream" of patients that don't need much medical care, while dumping only the expensive patients onto public funds.
Iranian students in UK universities face expulsion because US sanctions against Iran are stopping them from transferring the tuition fees to the UK.
Maria Butina has plead guilty to hooking up officials and donors of the NRA with the Kremlin, whence they hoped to receive support for their activities.
Flaws in computer security on ships puts them in danger of collision or shipwreck.
I suggest that over-reliance on digital systems for the operation of a ship is a fundamental design flaw, which ought to be illegal. One ship was saved from disaster by having paper charts for backup. Every ship should be required to carry paper charts.
Redundancy of systems requires redefinition, too. Having another computer as backup is worthless if it is easy to take over both of them digitally.
Protesters Are Slowly Winning Electronics Right-to-Repair Battles in Europe.
Hungary's nominally democratic government has passed a law allowing companies to demand 400 hours of overtime annually from a worker, and not even pay for it until years later. (Which perhaps means never, if the company is shut down.)
The town of Whistler, in Canada, has asked fossil fuel companies to pay the expenses that global heating is causing it.
The planet-roaster representative who said that it seems strange to single out specific planet roasters for this request has a valid point. The right way to handle this would be with a world-wide carbon tax, which would increase every year until it is clear that net emissions will go sufficiently negative.
However, their other hand just blocked all real progress at the Poland climate conference, which was unable to agree on targets that would do the job, or specific measures to take.
Given their intentional wrongdoing, they have no valid argument against any plan to hold them responsible.
The fossil fuel companies' power over the Poland climate conference was so strong that they got the UN officials in charge to censor the terms "dirty energy" and "fossil fuel companies".
Wisconsin's Republicans have taken away the principal power of the state governor, except for those in the state's constitution which is harder to change.
Nicaraguan thugs have occupied the headquarters of the opposition news site Confidencial.
The repressive Nicaraguan regime has also shut down a human rights organization, CENIDH.
The saboteur governor of Florida is trying to disobey the recently adopted voter initiative to restore voting rights to ex-cons. He hopes to get away with this because he will have the chance to pack the Florida supreme court.
Border crossers have often suffered great medical stress walking through the desert. If they are ill, they are likely to need medical attention quickly. Due to the procedures, they tend to get delay instead. Last week a child died as a result of this delay.
The Supreme Court validated the bully's partial visa ban for Muslims, but there has to be a system for individuals to apply for exceptions. The bully has not set up such a system, so people are suing.
Neo-nazis push hard for Israel's broad definition of "antisemitism".
The occasionally-connected waterways that EPA proposes to deregulate regularly feed pollution into the ones that will still nominally be regulated — but the change will allow no way to clean up that pollution.
Legal Plastic Content in Animal Feed Could Harm Human Health, Experts Warn.
The Amish still stand up to pressure to conform to technology.
I think the Amish attitude towards technology is very wise: judge products based on how each one affects people's lives, rather than jumping for convenience into a trap.
I could not believe in their religion, however, and I don't think that there is any virtue in staying out of democratic engagement.
As for large families, that practice endangers the human and wild worlds. We can tolerate the practice of having many children only so long as few people actually do it. When there is a movement that grows by having large families in each generation, something is going to stop it. If we stand aside, that something will be starvation, which is the worst possible choice.
Let's join with the Amish in insisting on using cash. We can defeat the pressure to be tracked in everything if we start fighting it.
In the "frankenstate", components of a democratic state are connected up to make a nondemocratic whole.
Ralph Nader: what progressives in the House of Representatives need to do if they are to be progressive in deed as well as in words.
Tens of millions of Americans will lose their medical coverage if the Supreme Court approves this, and millions will be killed by it if it continues.
I hope this strengthens the campaign for Medicare for All in the 2020 election.
"No Labels" and the ‘Problem Solvers’ are Wolves of Wall Street in Sheep’s Clothing.
DeVos's attempt to cheat the students that were swindled by for-profit colleges was defeated by a court order. The Department of Education is now canceling their debts.
Five rules for when to refuse to privatize public activity.
In the cases where we have already privatized something that should not have been privatized, we should not cling to the mistaken decision. We should make the activity a public function again. This goes especially for charter schools.
The Poland climate conference has been unable to reach agreement on the one decision that actually matters: cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
This is not surprising given that several powerful countries, including the US, are opposed to that goal.
Many of the gilets jaunes now protesting in Paris are taking a specifically progressive stance, calling for redistributing the wealth.
"Centrist" plutocratists keep trying to distort Sanders' words to make it appear that he isn't committed to fighting racism. This article explains the depth of his commitment.
I am very impressed with it. Especially because he doesn't let "diversity" among the well-off replace the goal of justice for everyone.
Only socialism can make capitalism stable and keep it democratic.
Poland as an example of a country that clings to coal, and is even planning to invest in new coal facilities.
Salafi Arabia and the Houthis agreed to a cease fire in Hodeida. The question is whether it will really take hold.
Republicans are trying to allow churches to support political candidates. They have put it into a large bill so that it will be difficult to stop,
They know that the main support from churches will be for them, from the churches attended by their fanatical, bigoted, extremist supporters.
TV ads in the UK will be regulated so that they don't sharply promote gender stereotypes.
I think this is a legitimate policy. To apply it to the publications of a person would be a denial of freedom of speech, but that does not morally apply to commercial advertising.
Everyone: call on the new St Louis county prosecutor to carry out his promised reforms quickly.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to demand a clean funding bill that doesn't boost hostility to immigrants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: find a bank that lends to the local green economy.
The US Department of Agriculture has stopped publishing data about the number of vacant positions for meat inspectors.
Whitaker says he will exercise control over Mueller's investigation. He might shut it down, or he might limit what issues Mueller can investigate.
Urban Planning Is Failing Children And Breaching Their Human Rights — Here's What Needs to be Done.
We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites.
If you run your web site on free software, you can make it do what you want, and it won't force you into doing anything else.
However, in order for these sites not to snoop like Facebook, they need to be run on many different servers, and organizations need to once again run their own servers.
Canadians are protesting in the street, demanding accelerated global heating. Some of them are right-wing extremists too.
The WWF has pushed to create a wildlife refuge in a place where indigenous people don't want it.
Which should get priority? Preserving other species, or preserving other tribes of humans? I tend to think it is the former, because species are more different, than tribes and in most cases more separate as well.
Brazil's new environment minister has already been fined for pro-business corruption.
Different natural systems turn out to have many unexpected interactions, and many of them create unexpected positive feedbacks for global heating. It follows that the climate cliff, which we can't see, is closer than we knew.
Europe's "protected" marine areas are not protected effectively. They are subject to heavy fishing, and vulnerable species are more rare there than elsewhere.
The US and Salafi Arabia are playing politics with the proposed UN resolution for a cease-fire in Hodeida.
Barr, nominated for attorney general, criticized the Mueller investigation.
Suing to block another planet-roaster pipeline for tar sands oil.
Charging far too much for replacement batteries is part of Apple's pressure for people to buy a new model even if the old one was good enough.
The bully now wants to impose a national work requirement for food stamps.
Beto O'Rourke Frequently Voted for Republican Legislation.
Tell Huntington Bank that an apology in words is not enough to be forgiven for refusing to cash a black man's paycheck and calling the thugs to arrest him.
I am most worried by the idea of demanding people's fingerprints to cash their checks. This advance in biometric tracking threatens everyone. How much does this happen in the US?
Senator Warren proposes to ban former members of Congress from working as lobbyists.
I am in favor of the idea. I am concerned that it might perhaps be unconstitutional, just as long-term noncompete agreements are, but I am no expert on that question.
The bully has made many Americans, in of the groups he targets with hostility, want to leave the US.
I can understand that wish, but there is no other place that millions of Americans can move to. Anyway, Americans should not give up and flee, not now. We have a chance to defeat the bully and the plutocratists in 2020. We should not throw in the towel.
If we don't fight and win, nowhere on Earth will be reliably safe from global disaster, or even from repression in the next decade.
Workers at Wells Fargo Bank say they
Hungarians continue protesting against the forced overtime law.
US
citizens: call
on Senator McConnell to hold a vote on restoring funds for the US
government.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call
on Congress to bring back the Violence Against Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google and other surveillance-based companies
are closely
integrated with the US government, feeding it all the data they
get about people.
Neither Google nor the US government deserves this ingenuous trust.
We must put an end to the data collection; regardless of the fool's
convenience it offers, we must squash it.
The Family
History DNA
Can't Reveal.
Human rights activist Huang Qi is dying in Chinese prison, denied
medical care. His grandmother campaigned to free him, and she has now
been jailed after arriving in Beijing to appeal to officials to
release him,
and has
been held incommunicado.
The EU is moving to ban single-use plastic
goods for
a list of purposes.
Apparently the problem of plastic films for packaging has not been
addressed.
A
court struck
down the bully's order to refuse to grant asylum on grounds of
persecution by a spouse or a gang.
Rep. Al Green, regarding the border thug station that didn't give
Jakelin Caal Maquin any water: "the only reason why this facility is
still open as it is now is
because [TV news]
cameras can’t get in."
The new EU copyright directive, in particular Article 13's required
copyright censorship system, has the power
to kill
investigative journalism.
The ISP bahnhof.se is threatened
with punishment
for violating network neutrality, because it sends visitors to
elsevier.com to a page that condemns Elsevier, first, rather than
sending them directly to Elsevier's site.
It is true that this violates network neutrality, but this violation is mild
compared with the one that Swedish government has imposed for Elsevier.
The predecessor of NAFTA already put business in the driver's seat so
much that
it blocked
Ontario from adopting no-fault car insurance.
NAFTA, which followed, did this even more. The TPP
does it even more.
Beto O'Rourke promised not to accept fossil fuel money via PACs, but
he accepted
several donations from fossil fuel executives.
He is a "centrist" (center-right
plutocratist), not
a progressive.
No wonder the Democratic Party establishment is trying to push him
as a candidate for president.
US labor unions have become so absorbed in fighting for medical
insurance as a work benefit that
they have
trouble making the leap to Medicare for All.
The Israeli army
now fights
for personal revenge, which armies are not supposed to do.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas near and into various Palestinian
schools. There was no unrest before the soldiers started it.
They fired
into a schoolyard across a wall without even seeing who was there.
Other
soldiers blocked
all traffic in and out of Ramallah.
Extremist fanatics terrorized two Palestinian schools near Nablus as
Israeli soldiers stood by
to protect
the extremists.
The now-standard US business idea that a corporation exists to make
money for its stockholders has been
a failure
in business as well as a failure for America and Americans.
In Thailand, saying that a dress is
ugly is
a crime, if it was designed by someone in the royal family.
There are many official points of entry from Mexico into the US, but
most of
them block
migrants from claiming asylum, which they have a legal right to
do.
Facebook allowed big companies (including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and
Sony) special access to its useds' personal
data, setting
aside its supposed rules for use of that data.
Facebook imposes
location tracking on its useds, and location-based advertising
too.
In my view, the mere fact that a used of Facebook cannot prevent Facebook
from finding out per location and putting it in a data base is an injustice,
a threat to the used's human rights, and in some cases even per safety.
An Indian
politician has
been convicted of leading a massacre of Sikhs in 1984.
After some Sikhs assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, violent
Hindus organized massacres of whatever Sikhs they could get their
hands on. Prosecuting the leaders has been difficult and slow.
Genetically
modified houseplants can clean up harmful chemicals in the air.
Each genetic modification is a different issue as regards effects on
humans and the environment. A houseplant doesn't have as much opportunity
to cause problems as a food crop, for instance.
Why Bernie Sanders Is (Still)
the Most
Progressive Choice for President.
I disagree with Robinson on one point: we should not judge candidates by
their demographics. I admire Ocasio-Cortez, and I'd gladly vote for her
for just about any office, but that's because of what she fights for, not
because of her "identity".
"I occupied
Hungary’s state TV studios with other MPs. This is only the
start."
An underdose of
opioid can
kill you, if the pain is more than you can stand.
The bully has decided
to pull
the US troops from Syria even though PISSI
has not
been entirely defeated.
This would leave Turkey a clear path to destroy Rojava.
I guess the bully can't resist trying to destroy a secularist and
socialist polity
that respects
human rights and treats women as equal.
Drivers for Guber in the UK are
now entitled
to minimum wage and other rights of workers.
However, that is limited to on country. Meanwhile, Guber continues to
do Orwellian tracking of
its customers.
12,000 to 20,000 people have been murdered in the Philippines
in the name of the "War on Drugs." The official count recognizes
only
5,000 of them.
How many of them were really drug dealers, we have no way of knowing,
since killing them was a substitute for a trial.
Poland extracted
a concession from the EU to extend coal subsidies, so that coal
plants could still be subsidized until 2035 — far past the time
when they must be closed.
Unless we try harder, we are doomed.
I propose declaring that operating a coal-burning power plant after
the start of 2022 constitutes an act of war against all other
countries.
A music festival in Sweden, which told males that they were not
welcome, has
been judged
to violate laws against gender discrimination.
We cannot condone "women-only" and condemn "men-only".
A study found that people buy less sweets and eat less sweets, if
sweets
are not
displayed in the line for the cash register.
Proposing
an upper limit on what companies pay their top executives: 100
times the pay of the lowest-paid workers.
I support this idea, but in order for it to be effective, we would
have to close the loopholes. These include hiring via subcontractors,
and making workers into "independent contractors".
We can also limit the stock options that executives can get
in a similar fashion.
I also support raising the maximum income tax rate for high incomes.
US
citizens: Please
tell Alex Azar and Kirstjen Nielsen to stop sharing data about
people who offer to give a home to refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Kirstjen Nielsen to resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Blind Creature That Buries Head in
Sand Named
After Donald Trump.
Even worse than killer
robots: nuclear
armed AIs.
Christina Engelhardt's love affair with Woody Allen lasted 8 years,
then they parted as friends. They
both remembered
it fondly.
This is the sort of relationship that everyone's life should be filled
with. I pity those who see something wrong in it.
Washington State has set up
a mandatory
paid family leave system.
To make this fulfill its mission, we need to extend it to the people
who are now compelled to be "independent contractors".
The Senate
has passed
the First Step Act, which will reduce mandatory minimum sentences
and make them less mandatory. Thousands of prisoners will be
released.
It will also begin to bring back the concept of rehabilitation into federal
prisons, which was discarded a few decades ago in a fit of vindictiveness.
The 83 ethics complaints made about Kavanaugh
can no
longer be acted on due to his undeserved elevation to the Supreme
Court.
The cheater
will shut
down the Trump Foundation because it has been caught in a "pattern
of illegality".
Challenging
the US border thugs' right to search a departing passenger's phone,
and deny the passenger an attorney.
Orbán's forced-overtime-paid-late-if-at-all law
has roused
Hungarians to campaign forcefully against his anti-freedom regime.
Chromium's domination of the world wide
web puts
the web in danger.
Nick Kristof led the fight for the FOSTA censorship law. Now his own
article has
been censored in the name of that law.
US border thugs
regularly disregard
all their rules when searching people's computers, rules that were
supposed to prevent abuses of their search power.
These violations were discovered in 2007, but the agency has not even
started to correct the unjust habits. What this implies is that rules
are an ineffective method for establishing any rights for people
entering the US.
In many US states, people can be prosecuted and
jailed for
criticizing someone.
The laws say that only intentional false statements can be prosecuted,
but it is easy to falsely claim that a criticism is false. The
bullshitter does this constantly.
These laws should all be eliminated.
In Texas,
the "dead
suspect loophole" assures secrecy for thugs that kill someone.
Anyone they kill is a "suspect" because they always find some
accusation to make.
Nigeria's government calls Amnesty International's reports of human
rights
violations fake
news.
US
citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to vote on Medicare for All.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to investigate Saboteur Zinke.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Bolsonaro wants
to take away part of the Yanomami reservation.
The Yanomami reserve also functions more or less as a wildlife reserve
and a carbon sink. Converting even part of it to plantations therefore
would hurry and increase global heating and extinction disaster.
China is trying to intimidate visitors to Hong Kong
by tailing
one researcher and publishing details of his movements.
He was followed by human agents, but it is expensive to follow many
people that way. However, many governments can get now follow
everyone with the same thoroughness using using cameras and their cell
phones. That is the real threat to
our privacy
and political freedom,
and that is what we must fight to eliminate.
The mainstream media pretend that Bernie Sanders' supporters are
mainly
white males.
Australia operates
an automated system that supposes welfare recipients owe the state
money, unless they can prove to the robot that they don't.
At the moral level, whether this system is illegal under Australian
law is a side issue. That many of the "debts" it collects are bogus
is evil, but not the system's principal evil. The principal evil is
that it squeezes poor people harder, when they are already squeezed
to the crushing point.
Australia should tax the rich and businesses more, so as to give the poor
a life that is not quite so hard.
Arresting Huawei's executive may spare Canada
a new
business-supremacy treaty.
The article is based on, and takes for granted, the "free trade"
ideology, which is used as an excuse for governments to compete to
give business more power
(and
the people less).
An existing
business-supremacy treaty between Canada and China may be the
reason it is desperate to export more tar sands oil.
Millions of children in the US and UK are growing up in poverty. This
is a political
choice, imposed
by plutocratist government.
The stress caused by poverty provokes violence, mainly against women
and children. The stress itself
can scar
children for life.
(satire) … the Trump administration launched
a human
rights investigation Monday into the Senate’s harsh treatment of
Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman.
Public banks
could fund
the Green New Deal.
12
Reasons Labor Should Demand a Green New Deal.
The Russian troll army was very clever in using US racism
to convince
blacks not to vote.
That was the Republicans' first line of defense against black voters.
The second line
was voter
suppression, and the
third, gerrymandering.
The Russian ad campaign exploited a problem that the US really has:
plutocratist politicians tend to be mostly interested in the voters
only at election time. That is mostly true but not 100% true, and
racism is one of the injustices that plutocratists Democrats do make
some efforts to reduce — but only in the ways that the banksters
don't veto.
(satire) Ryan Zinke apologized Monday for misusing government funds by
sending the members of the ethics
committee a
$160,000 vase.
The "New World Order" really exists. It is global heating, and it
is run
by oligarchs and plutocratists.
Republicans have covered for right-wing extremism and neo-Nazis ever
since 2007, recruiting political support by presenting efforts to
limit hate
as attacks on
Republicanism.
In the past, that was false. Now that the bully
has converted the Republican Party into the Right-Wing Extremist Party,
the claim has become true.
Employees in the US
increasingly quit
a job without notice. This is a reflection of how little some
employers value them.
Russian
disinformation sent
out black propaganda claiming that Clinton was funded by the KKK,
and similar lies.
She was not funded by the KKK, and those lies are not excusable.
Alas, she was supported by the banksters — that was no lie.
Decisions
Made from
Now to 2020 Will Determine to What Extent Earth Remains Habitable.
I'm afraid they will have to delay until 2021 to have a chance of a
good outcome.
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