[ 2024 July - October | 2024 March - June | 2023 November - February | 2023 July - October | 2023 March - June | 2022 November - February | 2022 July - October | 2022 March - June | 2021 November - February | 2021 July - October | 2021 March - June | 2020 November - February | 2020 July - October | 2020 March - June | 2024 July - October | 2024 March - June | 2023 November - February | 2023 July - October | 2023 March - June | 2022 November - February | 2022 July - October | 2022 March - June | 2021 November - February | 2021 July - October | 2021 March - June | 2020 November - February | 2020 July - October | 2020 March - June | 2019 November - February | 2019 July - October | 2019 March - June | 2018 November - February | 2018 July - October | 2018 March - June | 2017 November - February | 2017 July - October | 2017 March - June | 2016 November - February | 2016 July - October | 2016 March - June | 2015 November - February | 2015 July - October | 2015 March - June | 2014 November - February | 2014 July - October | 2014 March - June | 2013 November - February | 2013 July - October | 2013 March - June | 2012 November - February | 2012 July - October | 2012 March - June | 2011 November - February | 2011 July - October | 2011 March - June | 2010 November - February | 2010 July - October | 2010 March - June | 2009 November - February | 2009 July - October | 2009 March - June | 2008 November - February | 2008 July - October | 2008 March - June | 2007 November - February | 2007 July - October | 2007 March - June | 2006 November - February | 2006 July - October | 2006 March - June | 2005 November - February | 2005 July - October | 2005 March - June | 2004 November - February | 2004 July - October | 2004 March - June | 2003 November - February | 2003 July - October | 2003 March - June | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Everyone: call for reexamining the criminal convictions won by prejudiced prosecutor Linda Fairstein.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of Harshness and Suffering to stop violating the human rights of immigrant children (and immigrant teenagers).
If you sign, please spread the word!
The EU buried a study about the climate impact of its farm policy.
There were protests all across China 30 years ago, not just at Tien An Men square in Beijing. Students were killed all across China, too.
Republican-controlled states are passing abortion bans that most people in those states oppose. They are able to do this because their gerrymandering has overridden democracy in those states.
Berliners are protesting to stop a new highway, not only because of the buildings that would be torn down, but also because of pollution.
Global heating hit Scotland's economy last year, as the heat wave interrupted whiskey production.
Making climate mayhem concrete for Scotland.
Robots are being developed to plant and pick crops, and to remove weeds.
To avoid the use of herbicide will be a great step forward. Eliminating human jobs could wipe out millions of people if society does not create other sustenance for them.
Meanwhile, I fear these robots are full of nonfree software and they they subjugate farmers just as John Deere tractors do. It is surely possible to develop farm robots that do not impose this injustice. That will happen, if farmers organize to reject nonfree software.
Tory budget cuts have caused 130,000 avoidable deaths in the UK since 2012.
Senator Warren proposed a law to allow federal indictment of the president.
Packing refugees into prisons: they were so crowded that some had to stand on toilets to get some air.
"Americans should be very concerned about Bernie Sanders' record of opposing mass murder."
Warning: almost every statement in the article is meant ironically.
US citizens: call on the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the Pebble mine.
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire) Historians Reveal Aqueducts Were Only Small Portion Of Ancient Rome’s Intricate Water Park System.
Ecuador has released Ola Bini from jail, but it seems that he still faces charges and can't leave Ecuador.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Assange and says he is suffering the effects of "prolonged exposure to psychological torture" as well as physical illness.
Helicopter parenting is forced on US children even before they learn to walk. It supposes children can't learn basic motor and sensory skills except through explicit teaching.
As for old-fashioned free play, that is not allowed any more.
Senator Warren points out that mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg of shootings in general.
Google commits to the usual ineffective principles of "data privacy" for its "Smart City" project in Toronto.
They are ineffective because (1) it is easy to manufacture consent with carrots and sticks, and (2) the database will be abused even if Google doesn't directly sell it. In particular, it will be available to the state.
Here's the site for fighting against this plan.
The Republican-appointed judges in the US Supreme Court gave state governments free rein for partisan gerrymandering.
They do not always vote as a bloc, but they did so when it was necessary to support election rigging by the Republicans that put them there.
"People are dying crossing borders. It shouldn’t take shocking photos to change that."
Congress should put money into Head Start rather than into concentration camps for immigrant minors.
Medical doctors in the UK have joined the school strike movement.
The US Hospitals Suing the Poor Over Bills They Can't Afford.
Monsanto doesn't stop with smearing individual journalists and other organizations that don't say what Monsanto wants them to say. It also pays organizations that pretend to be neutral, to condemn them.
Monsanto went so far as to send a phony reporter to converse with the real reporters covering a trial. Her job was to suggest points of view that favored Monsanto.
Similar tactics have been used in other fields (tobacco, oil) to prevent the public from recognizing the danger of various products. The punishment for the participation of a corporation in such a campaign should be to seize the corporation's assets and dissolve it.
When the US government criticizes Assange, it carefully controls the "context" — excluding all mention of the US atrocities that Wikileaks revealed.
To punish those atrocities, and prevent more like them, was a powerful justification for what Assange and Wikileaks did, powerful enough to justify minor illegalities. However, if Assange is tried under the espionage act, the court will exclude this justification a priori.
American voters are fed up with the "free trade" policies. Democrats must reject the candidates that support it.
You can see the United States' priorities in how it allocates its money. This is also reflected in how the amplifiers of public attention focus.
The PRO act would block or punish some of the ways companies try to punish US workers for forming a union, and make it harder for companies to refuse to negotiate.
The US border thugs are capable of making reasonable compromises with people they don't yearn to cause suffering to.
US citizens: call on Congress to enact a small financial transactions tax.
This would discourage high-frequency trading that causes market instability. It would also bring in a lot of money from the big casino.
If you sign, please spread the word!
When Texas thugs' prisoners die, the thugs use a legal loophole to cover up what happened. (People want to know whether the thugs killed them.) The thug unions just used their influence to block a bill to close that loophole.
A study of real car crashes finds no significant relationship between THC blood level and responsibility for crashes.
This is partly because the test can't reliably distinguish between current usage and usage weeks before.
Joseph Stiglitz: only one political camp in the US proposes to end the injustice of neoliberalism (plutocracy), and that is the progressive camp.
Stiglitz calls it "progressive capitalism". Sanders calls it "socialism". I consider it a mixture of socialism and capitalism.
Indigenous people in Ecuador won a court case to block oil drilling in their lands.
"You can't teach schoolchildren 'resilience' when they're micromanaged every day."
Turkey is accusing fiction writers of crimes if their fiction presents instances of sexual violence.
I wonder whether they will charge the authors of murder mysteries of advocating murder.
New Hampshire has abolished the death penalty.
Israel stole prefabricated classrooms that the European Union donated to Palestinians, and now plans to sell them at auction.
Student loans trapped some Americans in ballooning, unpayable debts which barred them from other life activities, so they have gone into permanent exile in countries where debt collectors can't reach them.
Craig Murray reports on some occasions where the UK has bent over backwards to twist its laws so as to imprison Julian Assange.
At present, he is being denied contact with his Swedish lawyer.
The House of Representatives should launch an impeachment inquiry and call on Mueller to testify, so as to fill in gaps in his report.
Documents prove that Republican plans to add a citizenship question to the US census were meant to bias elections.
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow patenting human genes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow a war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the PROTECT Immigration Act, which would end agreements for local thug departments to cooperate with the US deportation thugs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The UN Secretary General calls on people to systematically confront the dissemination of bigotry.
I try to do so here; please do this in your life.
I know that some people reading this site have fallen into believing right-wing conspiracy theories. Please make an effort to break free of them.
Shell has set up a fund for a multi-year "transition to a low-carbon world" with funds equal to 1% of the company's annual income. Various environmental groups are dazzled by this paltry sum.
Shell's lobbying alone does enough damage to cancel any benefit that fund can offer.
Decades of attempts to "engage with" fossil fuel companies proved to have been a planet roaster distraction campaign.
Forget about working with Shell, going one step forward and 100 steps back, and focus on building the movement that will stop those companies from drilling.
China is funding East Timor to help destroy civilization.
You'd never guess that from the article, which says not one word about global heating or the disaster this project will make more likely. It focuses exclusively on short-term economic side issues.
East Timor and Australia had a long-running dispute about which one would be allowed to extract the fossil fuel deposits in the Timor Sea. I said that the right answer was "Neither one".
I suggest you write a letter to the Guardian (guardian.letters@theguardian.com) to insist that it cease disregarding global heating in articles about the local politics of oil extraction.
Tiffany Cabán won the election for DA of Queens, defeating the establishment candidate.
Her efforts to jail fewer poor people may face a lot of opposition from her own employees as well as from thugs. I hope she overcomes it.
This Friday's climate strike in New York City will target Faux News. Faux News explicitly denies the danger of global heating, while most US news outlets deny it by hardly talking about it.
A commission with 14 former national presidents say that the classification of illegal drugs are irrational and need to be redone based on medicine and science.
This has been obvious for a long time, but that commission's backing may help change it.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
"Caught in the middle of a drug trafficking route, [Pacific] island countries are in danger of falling under the control of drug cartels."
Some countries there have already fallen under the grip of malign government, including Fiji and Nauru.
Congress approved funds for emergency food aid for Puerto Rico, but the bully is blocking the use of the funds.
Emulating the CIA, New Rule Would Let [the] EPA Disregard FOIA Requests With Near Impunity.
I emended the title because the EPA does not legitimately belong to the bully for him to do whatever he wishes with. Even if he had really won the election, that would still be the case.
Everyone: call on major hotel chains not to let their space be used as deportation jails.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Even when US mainstream media try to understand the situation from Iran's point of view, moral bias that supports US officials' push for war seeps in. Supposedly, Iran's actions can compel the US to retaliate; strangely, US actions can't compel Iran to retaliate.
The US (specifically, the bully and his officials) is entirely morally responsible for the current situation of hostility between the US and Iran. If it leads to war, the US will be entirely morally responsible for the war. It behooves patriotic Americans to stop our country from doing a great wrong; that means campaigning not to start a war, campaigning to cease and desist from war if it does start, and rejecting the reasoning that pretends to excuse said war.
One example of a high tech security that doesn't track people: it only detects concealed weapons.
A weapon is not entitled to human rights, so I think this is ok.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel US student debt.
Perhaps the best approach is to allow a light form of personal bankruptcy to cancel student debt. That will avoid paying billions to the lenders.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Israel gave an order that snipers can shoot some Gazans labeled as protest leaders at any time.
Shooting protesters is murder unless they are a threat to the soldiers. That order demonstrates contempt for that principle.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for investigating the accusations of rape and attempted rape made by women against the bully.
I saw a petition for this, but it uses the term "sexual assault" in such an essential way that I won't sign or promote it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Refugees dumped by Australia in Manus Island and Nauru are starting to injure and kill themselves, now that the Australian election took away their last shred of hope of refuge.
Natural gas is not a better replacement for coal.
Asylum Seekers Are Being “Disappeared” in Private Louisiana Jails.
Senators proposed a bill to require border thugs to have probable cause before they can search travelers' phones. (And, I hope, their other computers.)
A homeless man in the UK was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail for sitting on sidewalks. The court gave the justification that people might think he was begging. How else are homeless people supposed to pay for food?
The court also fined him, which I suppose means he will have to beg later to pay the fine.
The inhabitants of Reserve, Louisiana, are marching to demand fixing or closing the chemical plants whose toxic pollution causes them cancer.
The UK is creating a large sweep of new marine "protected areas". The question is whether they will be "protected" enough to be of real help to wildlife.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz proposed to prohibit former members of Congress from working as lobbyists to Congress.
I am totally in favor of this. However, I worry that it might be unconstitutional to limit a person's choice of employment for a long period of time, other than as a punishment.
(satire) Louisiana lawmakers passed a resolution this week that requires aborted fetuses to be given a full jazz funeral procession through the French Quarter.
Wealthy towns in Connecticut use zoning laws to exclude housing for poor people, forcing them into effective segregation.
Sanders and other legislators have introduced bills to help employees get part ownership of businesses.
Missouri plans to force the only abortion clinic in the state to close by examining the doctors on suspicion of something or other.
Matt Taibbi: the US mass media now manufacture consent … about hating each other.
Each time Chicago sets up a new organization to hold violent uniformed thugs responsible, it gets captured by them and helps to protect them. Can the latest instance be set on the right path?
A 16-year-old female in Maryland made a sex video of herself and sent it to some friends. When the school repression officer found out about this, he shoved her into the school-to-prison pipeline. Now she is being prosecuted to "protect her".
I think it is ill-advised to give out nude photos, let alone sex videos. But that's no reason for this repression.
Tenants in an apartment building in New York City are trying to block the landlord from imposing a face recognition door lock on them.
We need laws to prohibit this — not only for the privacy of the tenants, but also for their guests, and everyone that comes to visit them.
The RFID keys they use are also unacceptable tracking devices. I would not live in a place where I need to use those to get in.
Scientists have explained the cause of a small amount of global heating in the early 20th century, which was previously unexplained.
Denialists used to seize on this small unexplained point and exaggerate its significance as an excuse to reject all of climate physics.
Republican Oregon state senators have left the state to prevent a quorum to pass greenhouse gas emissions trading.
In 2003, Democratic Texas state senators used a similar method to block a Republican gerrymandering bill.
I don't this method is inherently wrong. The question is, to what end is it being used? Democrats in Texas used it to block a system of unfair elections. Republicans are using it to achieve the destruction of civilization and a mass extinction.
Notwithstanding the hygiene hypothesis for allergies, it is still important to wash before cooking and eating.
The world's major economies have tripled the subsidies for overseas coal plants since 2014.
Schoolkids' Phones Are Targets for Fake News.
How Facebook and Google got exceptions from the rules requiring disclosure of who paid for political advertisements.
Medicalising Everyday Life Doesn't Help Anyone's Mental Health.
Ma Jien remembers the 1989 protest, by students and people of Beijing, which was crushed by mass murder.
New Zealand 'Wellbeing' Budget Promises Billions to Care for Most Vulnerable.
The Femm "fertility" app is secretly a tool for propaganda by natalist Christians. It spreads distrust for contraception. It snoops on users, too, as you must expect from nonfree programs.
Endless Procedural Abuses Show Julian Assange Case Was Never About Law. Any one of these events would smell fishy.
The sexual misconduct alleged in Sweden against Julian Assange is not rape, as the term is defined in the US. Sweden's laws about conduct in sex are more strict.
I have to interpret the use of the word "rape" to describe them as a demonization campaign, meant to convince the public to tolerate the denial of his rights as a publisher. Given this precedent, the US government will be able to deny the rights of other publishers without making other allegations against them.
Activism against unjust or destructive business can make large companies back down by threatening them with large costs.
The UN Secretary General joined Pope Francis in calling for an end to investment in fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the US government authorized an export terminal for "freedom gas".
Are they talking about laughing gas, or nerve gas?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Restoring Overtime Pay Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritters and ask them to block war with Iran.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to fund research about gun violence.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Rakhine ethnic minority in Burma now has an underground rebel group. Both it and the Burmese army are committing atrocities.
Burma has never really been unified. Various ethnic groups have had their own effectively independent regions for decades.
Northern Ireland journalists are suing to overturn a search warrant under which thugs seized their source materials, which include secret documents showing thugs colluded with murderers.
Storms and floods in some regions of the US have prevented planting of grain. A substantial part of the usual harvest may be lost.
Such problems will become bigger and more frequent as global heating proceeds.
The practice of using apps to avoid contact with people may be related to the increasing loneliness that people generally feel, and their increasing ignorance of how other kinds of people think and feel.
"I had an abortion. It's none of your business why."
It's useful for some women to explain the circumstances that made abortion the right choice for them. That will help other people understand why prohibiting abortion does so much harm, to pregnant women and other people in their lives. But I agree with the article that these reasons shouldn't be presented as apologies or as pleading for permission — and we should not expect women in general to state reasons for their abortions.
If [the bullshitter] Really Only Wants 'No Iranian Nukes,' Then He Should Just Rejoin the Nuclear Deal.
In other words, what he says about this issue is bullshit like nearly everything else he says.
The San Francisco thug chief and the San Francisco thug union are in a dispute about which thugs are to blame for the illegal raid on a journalist, which was intended to identify who leaked some internal thug department reports.
"Mentrification": judging whether something is valid, worthy or important based on whether males (in particular) do or like it.
Four of the UK's autonomous territories are among the world's top ten sites for tax dodging.
The thousands of proposed SpaceX communications are likely to cause lots of light pollution.
Worse, they could contribute to the gradually increasing buildup of space junk which threatens to make space travel impossible. The movie Gravity presented an unrealistically speeded-up version of this real, slowly-advancing danger.
In 2003, right-winger Bill Kristol said the Bush forces would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and said he would deserve criticism if that prediction were wrong. It turned out to be wrong.
Recently Sanders asked him to apologize, and Kristol refused to take responsibility for his error.
The Taliban are targeting schools, even with suicide bombs. Half the school-age children in Afghanistan are not in school.
This and many other reasons would justify fighting the Taliban, if it were feasible to defeat them. But it isn't.
The horrible saga of Abdelhaleem Ashqar: us deportation thugs tried to deport him by surprise to Israel, where he would be tortured, without allowing him to say goodbye to his family — so he could not file an appeal against what they were doing.
I am not sure whether Ashqar aided Hamas in a way that would justify a criminal conviction. But even if he did, that can't justify what US thugs have done to him. When officials set out to deny people a chance to exercise their legal rights, they become enemies of legal rights, which makes them enemies of the state and enemies of the people.
An article accuses the bullshitter of planning to cause another fiscal crisis to explode just after his successor takes office.
I can't judge the validity of this prediction, or the claim that Dubya had a similar plan and it backfired.
The UK's system of identifying internet users and tracking their browsing has been delayed indefinitely.
This is good news, but we cannot count on this delay to be forever.
ACLU: Video analysis software threatens to turn every surveillance camera into an eye of repression.
Surveillance Camera Day was set up to make people aware of how much camera systems can now track them.
The US system for checking the safety of food ingredients is defective by design.
The US must not glorify the wars that it should never have fought, such as the Vietnam War.
Italy is allowing its old buildings and archaeological sites to decay.
The ACLU urges Congress not to give more money to the US deportation thug department. It uses its money to torture people with prolonged solitary confinement.
American food is often contaminated by pesticide, but that is just one of the way that replacing nature with an artificial system is causing ecological and medical problems.
The right-wing nationalist parties of Europe pretend to fight the rich elite, but actually support them.
Green parties gained many more seats in the European Parliament.
People are spending more time indoors than ever before, and it could be related to several health problems that are increasingly common.
Everyone: call on Japan to stop funding coal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the National Sheriffs' Association to stop supporting the bully's deportation campaigns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Chinese demand for fish maw is wiping out the Nile perch in Lake Victoria.
Ironically, this might benefit the native fish, but to get the real benefit requires getting rid of water hyacinth plants.
The bully said he has accepted Japanese Prime Minister Abe's offer to mediate between the US and Iran.
It could be that he is following with Iran his usual bluster-and-slaps approach to negotiation, combined with unpredictable changes between amity and hostility. I think this is wrong-footed for leaders who were accustomed to the traditional diplomatic dance of understated signals. But that won't continue; other countries' leaders are not stupid, and they are catching on.
The Green New Deal, if done right, can create stronger and more supportive local communities as well as curb global disaster.
Assad's air force and ground troops persistently attacked a British video journalism team.
The Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses a Clear and Present Danger to Journalism, the Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Speech.
What about Assange himself?
Assange has done some great things, some exceedingly foolish things, and perhaps also some nasty things that no one should do. (The sexual acts alleged in Sweden would not count as rape in the US, but would be wrong anywhere in the world.)
Based on this, what should be our judgment of Assange?
The great things, from publishing Collateral Murder to exposing the bias of the Democratic National Committee against Sanders, were of tremendous benefit to the world. The effects of the others things were local and small by comparison. Despite some possible actions that deserve rebuke, Assange still qualifies as a hero.
Beware the "gifts" offered by billionaires. They can be bait.
India regularly tortures people in Kashmir, sometimes to the point of maiming or killing them. India refuses to cooperate with UN investigations, too.
Dozens of retired diplomats and generals warn the war-dreamer not to start a war with Iran.
Antisemitism in Germany has risen to the point where Jews are warned not to wear yarmulkas.
Religious hatred is polarizing India and making it violent.
Why Are So Many People Dying in US Prisons And Jails?
Threats and attacks against people associated with abortion are an integral part of the right-wing antiabortion movement. As the movement grows, threats and violence grow.
Christian fanatics are talking about a civil war in which they fight to take power and crush abortion.
US citizens: call on Senator Klobuchar to oppose the Line 3 oil pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Do No Harm Act, which would reject citing religion as an excuse for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Hong Kong's activists defend universal principles rather than fighting for one group and against another.
However, there are rumors they might plan violence in their next protest.
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. Perhaps the activists only recognize that the thugs may respond with violence to their next nonviolent protest.
Given that the puppet government is planning to send them to Chinese prisons, I could not blame morally them for fighting back with violence. But that would be foolish and self-defeating. Violent protests play into the hands of the authoritarians.
Reestablishing forests is easier said than done, where the economic system pressures people or businesses to cut down trees.
Spending money to help people around the world cope with the effects of global heating is futile as the heating continues to increase. Spending to help people locally counteract damage that contributes to heating is going in the right direction.
I wonder if the solar ovens used in parts of Africa can function in Madagascar.
US citizens: call on Congress to make big cuts in military spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Why students should not look away from uncomfortable art, and why we should not hide it.
To cover up paintings of Exploitation of Labor and Hoarding of Wealth is to protect those practices from criticism. To hide from paintings showing the suffering of slavery is to avoid understanding that suffering.
Women who want to have a baby and not go through pregnancy can now hire surrogates to do that for them.
As long as this process is expensive, thus limited to a few people, it is not a big burden for the world. The dangerous population growth is at present almost entirely due to non-surrogate pregnancies. But if surrogacy started making a significant contribution to population growth rates, I would suggest prohibiting it.
We need to defend, globally, the right to survive at home rather than migrating.
An important part of this is to decrease birth rates.
One effect of climate strike protests is to win public support and approval of climate defense protests.
When the US imprisoned people of Japanese descent, many of them US citizens, they did not all go along quietly. Many of them resisted the draft.
This paradoxically demonstrated how much they were part of American culture rather than Japanese.
Rojava's former expat volunteers call on the UK not to criminalize helping defend the Kurds.
There is a broader principle at stake, too: the state should not have the power to arbitrarily criminalize going to any particular place, no matter what the reason. If there is a justification for making it a crime to go to a place, the decision should be adjudicated, not simply announced.
Prison thugs in Oklahoma repeatedly refused to let Joshua England see a doctor. Not long after his last attempt to get examined, he died from appendicitis.
Forcing prisoners to sign a false statement is typical behavior for thugs, and for other authoritarians such as the conman.
The US Army asked people to report on how the army had affected their lives. Here's what some of them said.
Announcing a global climate strike on September 20.
The US needs to fully fund protection of endangered species or some will soon be extinct.
(satire) Saying the incident was so long ago that he had difficulty recalling the girl’s face, ICE agent Ed Thornton couldn’t believe he was being reprimanded Friday for a child who died months ago.
Organizers estimate that 1.8 million people participated in the recent climate strike.
Here are reports from the UK.
A court ruled that the bully can't declare a "national emergency" to take funds from other activities to build a border wall.
Human rights defenders are suing to overturn the state laws that impose draconian punishments on nonviolent pipeline protests.
Progressives call on presidential candidates to pledge substantial cuts in the US military budget.
Sanders supports this already, naturally.
UK thugs say the disruption caused by Extinction Rebellion protesters is intolerable and call for laws to stamp out those protests.
If they don't like these minor disruptions, I wonder how they will react to the far greater disruption that climate mayhem causes. They had better call now for laws to stamp out fossil fuels, to avoid that disruption.
Prisons in the UK have many prisoners who are not really criminals. "It is a different type of person in prison now. You can go because you are homeless, because you are a squatter, for not paying your TV license or sending your kids to school."
Women Outperform Men After Japan Medical School Stops Rigging Exam Scores.
If the fraction of women applying rises to 50%, this will raise the question of whether to let in some less-qualified men for the sake of diversity.
Three tax havens under the control of the British crown have agreed to make companies register their owners, but not until 4 years from now.
I have to wonder if they hope to cancel the promise before it comes time to carry it out.
Everyone: call on Ireland and the US to end US use of Irish airports for military purposes, and to remove US troops from Ireland.
Economic disadvantage in the UK denies the non-wealthy on average over 3 years of healthy life.
A somewhat more equal society would enable everyone to stay alive and healthy as long as the wealthy generally do now.
Chennai's reservoirs are empty; many businesses and schools have been forced to close.
Global heating is surely increasing the likelihood of such events.
Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti died recently, a couple of months after release from Chinese prison. It appears the prison denied him needed medical care, then released him when he was at death's door. This amounts to murder.
I have to point out that the US does similar things.
The UN has released recordings of the Salafi Arabian officials with Jamal Khashoggi before and while they killed him.
Should America Pay Reparations for Slavery?
The reason I support reparations is that, as described in Inequality by Design by Fischer et al, denying equal rights to a racial or ethnic group tends to set in motion a system that oppresses their descendants for generation after generation. The descendants of American slaves, and the descendants of Americans that were victims of Jim Crow laws, are still at a disadvantage due to past governmental denial of equal rights. They are entitled to reparations.
Precisely how to make reparations is not obvious. It would be good to so this in a way that would surmount the continuing effects of systemic racism. I am not sure how best to do that.
What Hughes says about "making people into victims" is meaningless wordplay, treated as if it meant something. I love wordplay, but do not confuse it with substance.
The district attorney of St Louis has made a list of visibly racist thugs, and refuses to prosecute charges based on their say-so.
This is valid. Prosecutors' duty is not convicting whoever they can; it is doing justice. Charges submitted by racist thugs are very likely to be false, so it is correct to disregard them. There is no need to wait for each of them to be caught individually in a firing offence before discounting their accusations.
I think that display of racist attitude ought to be a firing offense, for thugs — especially if the goal is to convert it into a police department whose cops are police officers — but making that so may be difficult.
US citizens: call on your district attorney not to prosecute abortion.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A girl imprisoned with her family in Australia was not allowed to receive her birthday cake for her second birthday.
Much worse, she has been kept indoors for 15 months, and developed a deficiency (of vitamin D?), which has damaged her jaw. Now she needs surgery.
"Fast fashion", clothing meant to be thrown away after hardly any use, produces greenhouse emissions and plastic pollution. Let's put an end to it.
A discussion about how to aim for a post-scarcity society.
I don't think it will be easy for technological advances to make an abundance of everything people commonly want. For instance, making meat abundant in a safe way will be difficult. However, since the alternative seems to be global disaster, we will have to live with less of it.
Hong Kong protesters trying to stop the puppet state from identifying them, but it is hard to block every system.
This demonstrates that we must demand all widely used systems be designed not to track people.
Maine has adopted a network privacy law. Plutocratists in Congress will surely try to stop states from having such laws.
This law stops ISPs from selling their records of individuals' internet contacts, but that is far from adequate. They should not be allowed to track anyone's internet contacts, except under a specific court order.
The law also applies to platforms such as Facebook, which sounds good, but I expect Facebook will negate the law by requiring its useds to explicitly opt-in for this as a condition of starting an account.
The saboteur-in-chief ordered the abolition of many scientific advisory bodies.
It's not clear which ones will be abolished, since the order is self-contradictory, but surely some will be abolished and that will lead to many bad decisions.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the various accusations of lying, misconduct and crimes against Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Extreme global inequality related to looming global climate disaster.
(satire) Boeing CEO Admits Company Made Mistake By Including Automatic Self-Destruct Function On All 737 Max Planes.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the FIRE Act, which will require campaigns report foreign attempts to interfere in elections to the FBI and FEC.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Reality TV programs could encourage children to use alcohol and tobacco.
Hong Kong Protests Show First Dent in Armour of Xi Jinping.
The people of Hong Kong really don't want to become Xi-ple.
German thugs want the power to use all "smart" listening devices as bugs.
When they say "smart", understand "spy".
Evicting indigenous people from a new nature reserve in the Congo.
I believe that the Baka understand to preserve nature in their lands, but I have to raise the issue of population growth. How many Baka people are there now, and how many were there 50 years ago?
The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange. The judge has shown more than mere bias — she is willing to utter total bullshit to get the intended result.
Wall Street banksters support Biden, Buttigieg, and Harris for president. That shows us they will surrender to the rich.
Environment Reporters Facing Harassment And Murder, Study Finds.
US citizens: call on Democratic candidates not to take money from the Koch brothers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
EFF: Rep. Thompson's election security bill would be a big improvement, but it would be even better if it required ballot audits.
The EU's GDPR regulations on using personal data have failed to curb Facebook and Google.
Google has made websites that show Google ads collect "consent" for Google to get their personal information. This demonstrates how "consent" as criterion is too weak to thwart surveillance.
James Risen: The "crime" Assange is now accused of is the very definition of a reporter's job.
The powerful elite in the US hates Julian Assange because he showed us government crimes, for instance by publishing the collateral murder video.
The link for the video used in that page requires nonfree software, but this URL should work without any.
US citizens: call on the Department of Health and Human Services to uphold the ACA's anti-discrimination protections.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the DNC to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Rep. Cuellar, a Democrat, to return the campaign funds that came from Koch money.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The conman's corruption continues: he borrowed millions at a low interest rate from a small Florida bank, and later its president was appointed to the Atlanta Federal Reserve board.
Naturally, all involved deny that this was a payoff.
Uber and Lyft have substantially increased pollution and congestion in San Francisco, and cut the ridership of buses and trains as well as the amount people walk.
Presidential Candidates Must Support Dramatic Pentagon Spending Cuts, Funding of Human Needs Instead, Coalition Says.
Bolsonaro's approval rating is under 30% — many right-wing Brasilians call him incompetent and authoritarian.
This gives some hope that Brasil will move up rather than down in the next election.
Firefighters blame flame retardants for causing cancer in many firefighters. States are trying to pass laws to ban the dangerous flame retardants, but chemical companies are lobbying hard to block the laws.
Some academics support the strike of support staff in the University of London.
The Muslims of Kashmir spent decades demanding independence from India, sometimes protesting and sometimes fighting, but they got nowhere. Now many are turning towards an Islamist campaign to demand to impose Islamic law on each other.
Salafi Arabia awarded Loujain al-Hathloul the Mohammed bin Salman human rights prize — the honor of being tortured with special cruelty — for advocating more rights for women.
That's Islamism at work.
Theresa May has been compelled by the Tories to resign as prime minister. This will make way for another Tory, probably even worse.
The UN General Assembly rejected the UK's claim to control of the Chagos Islands. Only five governments, all ruled by arrogant right-wing bullies, voted to support the UK's dominion over them.
Social Security is no longer sufficient for the expenses of many retired Americans. That includes many who were compelled to retire by failing health.
Most of the high officials in the Federal Trade Commission have conflicts of interest through working for the industries they regulate — either before or after their stint at the FTC.
Organized parents blocked Tory plans to forcibly privatize two local public schools.
What is needed now is a way for parents to convert privatized schools back into accountable public schools. This is needed in the US also.
US citizens: call on the State Department to stop demanding visa applicants give all their email addresses and social media accounts.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose certain proposed military spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An investigation concludes that China is harvesting organs from prisoners. Perhaps mainly from Falun Gong practitioners.
Tory politicians in the 1950s and 60s wanted to ; exclude blacks from the Caribbean from moving to Britain, while permitting whites. Eventually they designed a system to have a discriminatory effect without acknowledging its racist purpose.
Economists estimate that US sanctions on Venezuela have killed tens of thousands of people there.
An ID-reading system used by many bars records the name and address of everyone that enters. This should be illegal.
Making the system even nastier, a bar can blacklist anyone, who will then be denied entry to all of these bars, perhaps for decades. But that would never affect me — because the mere fact that the bar wants to run my ID through a system that will record who I am will convince me to refuse.
We should organize to regulate all such systems, both how they blacklist people and how they record information about customers who are not accused of anything. But until that happens, we must stand up for our rights.
The Pentagon is funding research on direct brain-computer interfaces that would connect to individual neurons.
If this technology is developed, imagine what Facebook could do with it. For instance, it could make people so addicted that they can't even imagine disconnecting. To fake news, it could add fake sight and fake hearing. It could go beyond manipulating elections and directly control how voters mark the ballot. Did you think the vote you just cast was for Sanders?
Chomsky warns that right-wing election manipulation through Facebook and that company's other disservices is continuing around the world.
Progressives' criticism pressured Rep. Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to cancel her plan to participate personally in fund-raising for anti-abortion Democrat Lipinski.
However, the DLCC still maintains its boycott which threatens the ability of Lipinski's opponent to hire campaign support.
Hundreds of people in Europe have faced charges for offering humanitarian aid to unauthorized migrants or immigrants. Right-wing extremist politicians dehumanise them and consider them unworthy of compassion.
This $3.2 Billion Industry (AI video analysis) Could Turn Millions of Surveillance Cameras Into an Army of Robot Security Guards.
This reinforces my previous conclusion that we should forbid the installation of surveillance cameras — cameras that send a video feed somewhere else — and allow only security cameras that keep the recording locally, erase it after a reasonable time (two weeks, a month) and require physical access to look at it.
Global heating will cut food production in Africa through floods and droughts.
Africa needs to reduce its birth rate.
US citizens: call for paying reparations for slavery.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Just and Reasonable Communications Act, so that prison phone companies cannot gouge prisoners and their families.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How can the US effectively support freedom for Chinese people? "Rhetoric about being 'tough' on China doesn’t always seem to equate with actually standing with the people of China."
The fabricated charges against Golunov were dropped, but there are many others in Russia that have been framed on putined-up charges for political reasons.
"In decades to come we must rethink our agriculture, our love of consumption and our short-termist priorities."
Oddly enough, that's the same problem I find in fighting against nonfree software and internet dis-services. Some people understand that in the long term they kill democracy and human rights. The challenge is inspiring them to put that long-term need over short-term pressure.
"When you take a commercial genetic test, you opt your whole family into warrantless state genetic surveillance."
Government agents should have to get a warrant before they can match DNA samples against your relatives' uploaded DNA in order to find you. And the warrants should be allowed only for serious crimes.
This may not be enough. Democracy depends on whistleblowers, and identifying people through their relatives' DNA means that whistleblowers need to avoid leaving a DNA sample.
I conclude that, for the sake of holding back tyranny, it is your duty not to upload your own DNA.
Tweaking NAFTA and other business-supremacy treaties is nibbling around the edges. The US needs to adopt an industrial policy and shun treaties that would conflict with one.
The author falls into a widespread confusion by using the term "intellectual property" it spreads confusion. That term does not fit the reality of the legal system, because it tries to generalize about a bunch of unrelated laws which have nothing important in common.
A few of those laws raise important moral and social issues. But each law raises different issues! If you treat them as a single topic and look for a single way to treat them, you are already headed for a bad decision.
Please joining me in rejecting the misguided overgeneralization of "intellectual property" and treating each of those laws as a separate issue.
Klobuchar has endorsed the Green New Deal in the abstract, but continues to support policies of increased fossil fuel extraction and use.
(satire) Leila and Tom Gerhart admitted Monday that they would not have continued their loveless marriage if they had known their son Harris, 21, would turn out the way he did.
ACLU: Harvard was wrong to dismiss a house dean for working as a defense lawyer for a widely hated accused criminal.
I basically agree, with one proviso: perhaps the students in a house should be entitled to reject the house dean at will. If we accept that, then it wasn't wrong for the students in that house to reject this dean.
But if we accept that, it should be an explicit policy, so it does not look like the dean has been found guilty of anything other than displeasing the students.
The conman has a scheme to reduce Social Security benefits over time, by changing the calculation of the poverty line so it will be lower in the future.
Several Georgia district attorneys said they will not prosecute under the recently-passed abortion ban.
Massachusetts Judge Shelley Joseph has been indicted for allowing an immigrant in her courtroom to evade Bush regime thugs who wanted to deport per.
Mainstream US journalism about Iran is so one-sided that it would tip over if it weren't constantly propped up by omissions and lies.
Two congresspeople accuse the World Health Organization of having been corrupted by Purdue Pharma lobbying.
American children now have nightmares about lockdown drills in school.
At most hundreds of children get shot in school in a year, but this is traumatizing tens of millions of children.
I fear it will also distort their politics when they grow up, making them more susceptible to politicians that invite them to surrender their freedom for "security" against the nightmares that no level of "security" could possibly prevent.
The Democrat presidential candidates, other than Sanders and Warren, are eagerly asking rich people to buy policies that will suit them.
The article gives specifics about Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, and Klobuchar, but they are not the only ones who do this. The effects of this can be seen in the not-very-progressive positions those candidates take.
That, in turn, is the reason I will never vote for them.
A whistleblower reports that the US deportation thugs put prisoners in solitary confinement for their sexual orientation, or for their gender identity, even for needing a cane to walk.
"Solitary confinement was being used as the first resort, not the last resort" — since 2014. I suppose the thugs have become even more cruel since the bully began encouraging cruelty towards refugees.
Plutocratist Democrats in Congress are working against network neutrality by amplifying the voice of ISP lobbyists.
1700 people in Gaza, protesters wounded at long distance by Israeli snipers, face amputation of their arms or legs because the siege of Gaza makes it impossible to operate to save their limbs.
Proposing to base US foreign policy on the principle, "Do no harm".
I have to disagree with one minor point. North Korea has made a big fuss about testing a new missile, but it seems to be fairly short range and not meant for nuclear weapons. I see that as a gesture rather than a significant action. Dictator Kim and would-be Dictator Trump seem to have a similar approach to diplomacy.
The US has charged Assange with the crime of inciting others to reveal government crimes.
This is a direct attack on freedom of the press.
Amnesty International visited Raqqa and reports that 80% of the city is ruined — buildings reduced to rubble. It identified 1000 of the estimated 1600 civilians killed by air attacks. The US, UK and France continue to deny the visible facts.
I doubt there was any option for defeating PISSI that would have perfectly avoided harming their human shields. So I would not demand perfection. But there is no excuse for cover-ups.
EU Ignoring Climate Crisis with Livestock Farm Subsidies.
Netanyahu said he will name a new colony in conquered territory after the conman.
It seems he has decided to bet that the right wing will hold its grip over the US, because he is telling most American Jews that he supports US Nazis.
Democrat congresscritters have made a deal with the cheater to enable companies to offer their workers unreliable annuities for their retirement funds.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to restrict use of corporations whose owners are anonymous, to stop tax-dodging and other crimes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the members of the DNC to insist on a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Mayor de Blasio to fire the thugs that killed Eric Garner and Delrawn Small.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Oil company Mobil "donated" to universities and civic groups to buy influence against regulation to protect society from toxic pollution.
This included supporting experts who would downplay the effects of toxic pollution.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass debt relief for Puerto Rico.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Rescue ship captain Pia Klemp will have to spend years fighting criminal charges in Italy for rescuing drowning refugees. If she loses, she would be sent to prison for 20 years.
IRS lawyers say that Mnuchin has no legal grounds for refusing to give Congress the conman's tax returns.
Haftar's supporters captured a water system control room and shut off the water supply for Tripoli.
Nazis have got into the government of Estonia, and they are already trying to intimidate journalists with threats.
"If the Indian prime minister [Modi] is returned to office, his sectarian politics will make bigotry the defining ideal of the republic."
Children that don't play physical games outdoors lose a lot in motor skills and social skills.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, to limit corruption opportunities for Congresscritters.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to end separation of immigrant families.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Thousands of people are fascinated by fictitious characters that exist specifically to manipulate them to buy particular products.
The fictitious characters in movies are also used to manipulate audiences to buy particular products. Companies pay for their products to be shown in the movies — this is called "product placement".
At least movies are not made solely to show products. They typically try to present something else of interest. Perhaps the fictitious "influencers" represent an evolution in the direction of pure and simple manipulation — in how to lead people to crave the anxiety of being commercially manipulated.
The Council of Europe rebuked Orbán's repressive regime for violating human rights.
Orbán makes elections just unfair enough that there is no practical possibility of removing him from power — much like US Republicans.
The European Union is quite capable of trampling freedom for the sake of rich companies but is almost powerless against member country governments that disrespect human rights or democracy.
Megacorporations AT&T, Walmart, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Coca-Cola, and Aetna funded the campaigns of state legislators that recently voted to ban abortion.
Greenpeace activists have shut down BP's headquarters in London, calling for the company to stop looking for new fossil fuel deposits and drilling new wells.
This policy must be applied world-wide.
Another piece of Google's surveillance capitalism: when stores mail receipts to a gmail.com account, Google figures out and records who bought what.
I think that the store itself should not get this information, which is why I always pay cash and never give my name.
Poor countries remain poor because multinational companies export their wealth.
I think we need to exclude predatory "investments" from the requirement to fully compensate owners when some activity is nationalized. The motive for respecting that requirement is to avoid discouraging future investment — but there are some kinds of "investment" that we need to discourage: those that are predatory. Investment in privatization is one example; that is predatory in general.
Turkey continually tries to extradite people from the UK for political crimes, and the UK government keeps approving these demands.
The requests ultimately fail in the UK courts, but the UK government should not help foreign repression get that far.
Reducing toxic air pollution will increase deadly heat waves, unless we curb greenhouse gas emissions too.
Sanders refused to be intimidated when a New York Times reporter tried to shame him for opposing Reagan's campaign to overthrow the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Many readers may not know what Sanders was opposing, so I will summarize it.
The US Congress prohibited Reagan from spending money on overthrowing the government of Nicaragua, so he sold arms as ransom to Iran-supported kidnapers who had taken hostages in Lebanon. Then he used the proceeds to fund mercenaries to run a campaign of violence and sabotage in Niaragua.
The Times reporter contended that if the US commits a grave crime and the victims respond by hating the US, Americans are morally obligated to consider that as excusing or justifying the crime. Nonsense! Our duty as patriotic Americans is to make our country do what is right. That is what Sanders tried to do.
As for the people who criticize him for not remaining perfectly calm in the face of that dishonest attack, they should stop demanding a superhuman.
The US media take a one-sided stance in order to call Guaidó the leader of a "democracy movement" in Venezuela.
Set against these valid points, I have to point out a couple of things that tarnish Maduro's own democratic credentials.
He arranged to strip the national legislature of its powers once the opposition won control of it. He did this by creating another body and giving it power to override the legislature at will. One could argue that Venezuela's constitution is no longer being observed.
Maduro has also had opposition candidates barred arbitrarily from running, and arrested some of them.
This doesn't make Guaidó worthy of support, but it shows that Maduro isn't either.
Murals in George Washington High School in San Francisco depict Washington's participation in war with indigenous Americans and in holding slaves. Some students demand these murals be taken down because they feel oppressed by them.
Those murals were intended to depict wrongs, to show the aspects of Washington's life we nowadays disapprove of. Showing them helps teach people to judge the moral issues depicted. Covering them up would encourage people to forget those acts, and that would weaken society's resolve not to repeat them.
The conman's official White House lawyers appear to be helping him subvert the US legal system, in counter to their responsibility as lawyers.
Crackers stole the data base of the people crossing the US border, straight from the US border thugs.
Several authoritarian European countries are following Orban's example and taking effective control of the major media.
Singapore's law "against fake news" also requires web sites to identify their visitors, and communication services to break encryption.
Questcor raised the price of an old drug from $40 to almost $40,000, and is accused of bribing doctors to prescribe it at that price. Mallinckrodt, which bought Questcor, now brings in a billion dollars a year from that drug.
Mallinckrodt expects to pay $15 million — 5 days' sales — to get off the hook for that accusation.
It is too easy for the individuals involved to avoid prosecution and punishment. But the root of this problem is that there is too much concentration, and insufficient competition, in making generic drugs for the US.
I suspect this has to do with the offshoring of most of that production.
Mining metal nodules from the ocean floor can cause ecological damage, and it can take a long time to recover. Scientists don't yet know enough to determine how to do it safely, but companies are rushing to start.
Turkey and Cyprus are disputing which country will have the right to help destroy civilization by drilling for oil in the sea near both countries.
The only answer that is acceptable for civilization's future is, "Nobody!"
The UK will imprison people that go to help the Syrian Kurds.
This prohibition applies also to the rebels in Idlib. They are Islamists, but not a threat to anyone now.
Exxon's scientists, in 1982, predicted the Earth's current CO2 level with fair accuracy, and anticipated some (but not all) of the disastrous effects that are already starting. The author compares the executives of ExxonMobil to fictional characters that destroyed planets.
The US Constitution prohibits ex-post-facto laws, correctly so. There is no way to retroactively criminalize what those executives did.
However, it may be possible for a wealth tax to impose a higher tax rate on wealth derived from fossil fuels.
French journalists face prosecution for publishing secret information about sales of arms to Salafi Arabia for its attack on Yemen.
Macron is as much the enemy of democracy in France as Obama and the conman have been in the US.
Bizarre laws stop teenagers in the US from getting themselves vaccinated for measles or anything else.
Thugs in Rio de Janeiro are choosing to kill people rather than arrest them. Snipers shoot and kill residents who seem to have been chosen arbitrarily.
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée notes that the world has not held Salafi Arabia responsible for murdering him.
To a large extent that is the conman's fault.
The bankruptcy of a coal company, Cloud Peak Energy, revealed that it was funding global heating denialist organizations and plutocratist lobbying campaigns.
The company also falsely claimed it did not do this.
Big companies are buying state laws to classify certain kinds of workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
I think it is a confusion to associate this issue with racism, because those are two separate issues, and the easiest way to understand them is separately. Laws to squash the poor are unjust no matter what demographic groups they belong to.
Chinese totalitarianism includes rewriting history, even that of thousands of years ago, as well as of the last few decades.
One point I disagree with: I don't think the Xia dynasty was mythical. When I studied Chinese history in 1970, I was told that the Shang dynasty was mythical; my teachers did not know about the discovery at Anyang of the last Shang capital, and writings that documented the reigns of late Shang kings.
Earlier Shang capitals have not been identified, but surely they existed. I expect the Xia dynasty existed too, even though we have no archaeological material yet that we can connect with it. Trying to find some is a rational and useful project.
But is it any use to look for them under President Xi's history-distorting rule? If people report finding traces of the Xia dynasty, should we believe them?
The forecast for global heating disaster is at least 2 billion climate refugees by the end of this century.
I think it will be more, because scientists keep discovering more positive-feedback loops that will make things worse than was previously predicted. The refugees may well end up dead.
The disaster that happens in this century will be just the start. After 2100, things will keep getting worse for thousands of years.
Supporting a baby will get harder and harder as global heating and resource exhaustion bite. We must emphasize the importance of reducing human reproduction.
If you want to take risks with your own life, or about how you will live, you are entitled to. But don't make a baby if it will have to share such risks with you. More children growing up stunted by precarity do not give the world hope — they pull it down.
If you are not in a situation where you can be reasonably confident you can support a baby, you should not make one. Use birth control, and if it does not work, have an abortion.
Hungary's right-wing repressive government posts lies on Facebook, then complains when it deletes any of them.
"When the far right crack rape jokes, it's part of a systemic bid to demean."
When they say, "I wouldn't bother to rape you", they are confessing that they would rape someone else. You can denounce them as would-be rapists.
Many demographic categories report having sex less now than in the past. It might be due to the general stress and anxiety of life in the advanced countries.
I suspect it is also due to the lack of any generally accepted way for men to express romantic or sexual interest in women. By "generally accepted", I mean that he can count on a woman who declines his interest not to revile him for expressing it that way.
One Republican congresscritter says that the conman qualifies for impeachment.
If other Republicans were loyal to their country, and to democracy, they would reach similar conclusions.
The FBI tends to label similar acts as "terrorism" if committed by Muslims and as "hate crimes" when committed by white supremacists.
US institutions don't try to assure children the support they need to grow up into capable adults.
Bigots attacked actors on their way to a performance of a play about a queer couple, and the theater canceled the performance.
Canceling the performance gave the attackers a victory. If I had been one of those actors, I would have said, "The show must go on!"
Notice to FAA’s Boeing-Biased Officials: Recuse Yourselves or Resign.
US citizens: call on Congress to amend the National Emergencies Act — to limit the emergency powers of the presidency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Actual measurement shows the US ammonia fertilizer plants are leaking 100 times as much methane as the owners claimed.
This is 3 times what the EPA estimates for all US manufacturing. The real total could be many times that.
This is contributing heavily to global heating. It shows we must reject "natural gas".
A million protesters marched in Hong Kong to oppose China's extradition bill.
China has been proceeding for several years to eliminate human rights in Hong Kong, step by step.
The members of Hong Kong's legislature are mostly appointed rather than elected by the public. In addition, people that defend human rights have been barred from running for the elected seats. I don't think mere marching will deter them from carrying out their evil mission. A general strike might have a chance.
A whistleblower has given The Intercept internal emails from Brazil's "operation car wash", whose official goal was to prosecute corruption, proving that its participants corruptly set out to attack the Workers Party.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop local thugs from working for the deportation thugs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
With obedient and unprincipled Barr in charge of the Justice Department, the gangster can use it as his personal repression agency.
Creating an equivalence between investigating crime and committing crime is part of the standard Republican strategy. It enables Republicans to deny that there is any standard of right and wrong, other than obedience to them.
The scoundrel plans to pardon US soldiers convicted of war crimes, and others that could be tried for war crimes.
I think such pardons would violate of the Geneva conventions that define war crimes. Countries at war with the US could cite this as an excuse to commit war crimes against Americans.
When the UK's general in Iraq said he saw no particular Iranian threats in Iraq and Syria, the UK government hastened to contradict him, claiming it did see some.
I understand this as catering to the bully. For shame!
Women are inviting men to talk about how abortions have affected their lives.
The hatred that fuels banning abortion does not stop there. It spills over to affect women whose fetuses die, even women whose babies die after birth. It treats women as property of men.
It also kills women, especially poor women.
The US is already killing women in other countries by shifting aid funds from real medical clinics to theocratic organizations that oppose abortion and birth control.
Romance novelists are talking about rehabilitating abortion. Their books generally regard it as unthinkable, which has the effect of promoting a sort of natalist ideology.
Gregory Jaczko was head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011 when the Fukushima meltdowns occurred. His agency called for safety modifications in US nuclear reactors, but the owners and manufacturers blocked them with lobbying. Now he calls for replacing nuclear reactors with the much cheaper, and safe, renewable generation.
Should we accept stretching the terms "sexual abuse" and "molestation" to include looking without touching?
I do not accept it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Ken Cuccinelli as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He hates immigrants and would convert them into dis-services.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass H.R. 6, to give a path to citizenship for some of the immigrants that were brought to the US many years ago as minors.
Here's more information.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Amnesty International is suing the company that sells attack software which appears to have been used to crack some of Amnesty International's phones.
A village in Wales of 850 people will be abandoned to the sea, its residents left with nowhere to go. It will be the first of many.
This will bring home to Britons the harm that global heating is going to cause.
Contrasting the US and European cold shoulder to refugee children today with the attitude towards starving children from central Europe in the 1920s.
The US warns that civilian aircraft flying over the Persian Gulf might be shot down by mistake.
There is a real danger that the US Navy will do this. It is one of the secondary dangers resulting from the bully's push for war.
It's typical of right-wingers that they accuse their opponents of committing (or planning to commit) the sorts of wrongs that right-wingers actually have done.
(satire) … Alabama woman Alison Kyles, 29, reportedly hurried towards home Thursday after spotting a pickup truck full of Alabama lawmakers slowly following her.
Supreme Court decisions in recent years have narrowed the kinds of corruption that can be prosecuted.
The same lobbyist companies work for Salafi Arabia and for the big US arms manufacturers that provide bombs to drop on Yemen.
A profile of Greta Thunberg.
The new underground railroad will help women who need to go to other states for an abortion.
Journalists in Northern Cyprus won a partial victory. They were being prosecuted for "insulting" Erdoğan, with a cartoon.
The judge ruled that their cartoon was not an insult. The victory was only partial, because the law criminalizing insulting Erdoğan remains in force, although the scope of what is prohibited is not as wide as what Erdoğan wanted.
US thugs invaded Venezuela's embassy in Washington and arrested some of the group house-sitting there for Venezuela's government. One of them, Professor Adrienne Pine, explains the background for her participation in the house-sit.
The US Green Party explains the legal situation.
US major media are credulously repeating the war messages of the bully's officials, without a hint of trying to do real journalism. Here's advice on how they could start to do that.
A bill under consideration in the Senate would block the US from attacking Iran. At least, if the military obeys the law.
Michael Jackson as a test case for how to relate an artist's life to per work.
I was never particularly a fan of Michael Jackson, so I have no emotional baggage about what to think about him. But the author's approach seems wise.
Parents are threatened with punishment for leaving children in a car regardless of the weather, even for a few minutes, but deportation thugs left children in a van for more than a day in Texas in July.
Russian thugs planted bags of drugs on an investigative journalist.
4 million Venezuelans have fled to other countries.
Google is donating ads to a phony abortion advice organization. It opposes all real birth control, too.
The true nature of the Hindu-extremist movement in India showed when candidates praised the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1946. He belonged to an organization with the same general spirit.
State laws banning abortion, and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will cease to block them, have roused US supporters of abortion rights to political activity as never before.
Given democracy, the strength of local supporters of abortion rights could be the best defense of abortion rights, more reliable than a Supreme Court decision. But Republicans no longer respect democracy, and once in power in a state, they seek to rig its future elections.
Patriarchal murder goes unpunished in Pakistan as murderers have control.
The killers do not even hide. I think that under the circumstances Pakistani women would be justified in organizing a campaign to shoot them.
A New York City thug lieutenant texted "not a big deal" after being told of how thugs had killed Eric Garner.
In the UK, thugs can fine people merely for cursing at them in response to mistreatment.
AT&T Promised 7,000 New Jobs to Get Tax Break — It Cut 23,000 Jobs Instead.
When a business says it will give something useful afterward in exchange for a permanent change of policy, don't believe it. Insist on a binding written commitment with a penalty clause that it can't wriggle out of or defy.
How the US should change labor law to enable unions and union workers to resist intimidation and harassment by employers.
The Massachusetts State Thug Department destroyed records that were essential to an investigation into its practices.
Some US high schools are censoring valedictorians that want to talk about global heating.
Valedictorians, do it anyway! If you get dragged off the stage, publish video and your message will reach even more people.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject plans to let pensions cheat old people out of their pension money.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tobacco company Philip Morris was exposed as paying "influencers" to promote tobacco to young people.
Militant Muslims are imposing repression of queer people in Indonesia, and they don't hesitate to express their intolerance with violence.
Fervent religion often expresses itself as repression.
(satire) … employees sent by Deutsche Bank began removing possessions from the White House after Donald Trump defaulted on his loans …
The Tories are sabotaging the UK's unwritten constitution.
African Union Suspends Sudan over Violence against Protesters.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban members of Congress from trading in stocks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on state governments to ban styrofoam containers. They remain in the environment forever.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Why a US attack on Iran would lead to an even worse outcome than the attack on Iraq.
A resident of Taiji plans to testify in a court case to ban the annual dolphin hunt.
The UK privatized the handling of probation for convicts, with very bad results.
As a general rule, privatizing government services is bad. It leads to unaccountability, low pay for the workers, and cheating the public.
When the service that is privatized depends on understanding the specific needs of individuals, it is even worse.
Salafi Arabia and its servant, the US, seem to be fabricating excuses to stop the peace process in Yemen. The UN says that the Houthis are carrying out the cease fire and withdrawal agreement, but they claim no.
Would you believe anything Salafi Arabia says about the war in
Yemen?
Would you believe anything the US says about the war in Yemen?
Banning abortion in the US is a means for keeping poor women down.
Northern Ireland still suffers under an abortion law nastier than the one Alabama just passed.
Everyone: call on American Airlines to give its customer service workers stools, so they don't have to stand for the whole shift.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US to stop jailing refugee minors.
The article says "children" but I expect that most of them are teenagers. Either way, jailing them is wrong.
Reports Reveal "Egregious" Conditions in US Migrant [prison] Facilities.
US citizens: call on the OMB not to reduce the definition of poverty, which would cut benefits for millions over the years.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Scientists cleaned rubbish from the shores of the small, remote Cocos Islands and found 400 million pieces of plastic — and a million shoes.
Most of the plastic was from consumer products.
Only around 4% of the rubbish was visible on the surface. The rest was buried up to 10cm under the beach.
"Tories should bear the shame that child poverty in Britain is the new normal."
"Don't talk about 'food poverty' — it's just poverty."
If your income is not enough for the essentials of life, you may be able to choose which essential you lack. Some do without food to buy medicine or pay the rent — or to buy food for their children. Some do without medicine so they can eat. Some have to live on the street and beg for money to buy food.
US concentration of wealth: in the 1970s, the wealthiest 10% owned 35% of all US wealth. Now the wealthiest 10% own 75% of it. This translates into political power (plutocracy). Taxing wealth will work against the concentration.
Bolton is going all-out to launch a war with Iran, and has a plan to send 120,000 US troops for an attack on Iran.
Iran has threatened to ditch the non-nuclear deal entirely in 60 days unless European countries break free of US-imposed sanctions blocking their trade with Iran.
British students in UK universities take out large loans, but unless they make large incomes, they never have to repay the whole loan. Those who get low incomes don't have to repay any of it.
The US system appears superficially similar, but in fact it is much worse because students are saddled with these loans for life regardless of their incomes.
Amazon's predatory behavior towards sellers of goods adds up to an unusual use of monopolistic power.
Protesters blocked buses of guests coming to the christening of a new US warship, to call for cuts in US military spending and military greenhouse gas emissions.
The ship in question is not a battleship; it is a missile-firing destroyer.
(satire) … Trump sought to reassure struggling American farmers Tuesday by stating that he has never seen one of them and cannot be sure they actually exist.
UK construction companies have agreed to pay damages to workers that they blacklisted (with the help of thugs that spied on them). The motive for blacklisting those workers is that they supported forming a union.
Biden says Republicans will return to non-fanatical plutocratism so that he and they can serve the rich elite together.
I think the Republicans of 20 years ago would have done this, but most of today's Republicans are too imbued with right-wing extremist hatred to give it up.
It's Time for [the US] to Have an Unapologetic Atheist in the Oval Office.
Don't forget how a US government fueled anti-vaxxing in Pakistan, when the CIA mounted a fake vaccination campaign.
This gave fuel to the anti-vaxxing campaign but does not justify it. It is natural for Pakistanis to feel suspicion of vaccination campaigns after having been lied to once, but that doesn't mean most vaccination campaigns are lies. If they are rational, they will recognize that honest vaccination campaigns are a good thing — then take organized steps to assure the bona fides of each campaign.
Finding Osama bin Laden was of no particular importance for stopping Islamist terrorism. It was not a real victory, only a symbolic one. Large underground movements do not depend crucially on one leader. It is possible that the news of the CIA's fake vaccination campaign boosted al-Qa'ida more than the killing of bin Laden hampered it.
Having found bin Laden, the US should have put him on trial rather than killing him summarily.
Youtube finds it is not easy to distinguish Nazi propaganda from history of Nazism.
I think that centralized platforms make society vulnerable.
"UK public more worried about climate crisis than economy, crime and immigration."
That is wise on their part. Global heating disaster will make the issues of today's economy, today's crime (even including tax dodging) and immigration look tiny.
Biden opposes government funding for abortions.
When vice president, he worked hard to undermine insurance coverage for contraception.
He is almost a Republican.
If you are taking a flight in the US that uses face recognition for boarding, explicitly opt out. That is a way to show your opposition to face recognition systems.
Doctors plan to protest the American Medical Association, which supports private medical insurance companies by opposing Medicare for All.
Using a mobile phone while in a store makes people much more susceptible to impulse buying. On average they spend 40% more.
Ocasio-Cortez: No prisoner should be in solitary confinement, not even Manafort.
A pressure campaign convinced BBC Books to drop a story by from an anthology because the author has criticized the idea of transexuality.
I don't agree with his claims, or his opinions — for instance, if you want to become a woman, why shouldn't you try to become a glamorous one? — but pressuring publishers to silence an author's work over unrelated statements and opinion is a dangerous practice. When right-wing extremists or Christian theocrats get organized, which unrelated opinions will they cite to demand authors be dropped?
How to fight the Alabama abortion bill that bans abortions nearly as much as in Nicaragua.
After the Houthis withdrew from Hodeidah and handed it (as agreed) to Yemen's coast guard, fighting started again. I get the impression it was the US-supported side which started it.
I too wonder who Yemen's coast guard are, and who backs them.
Global heating effects are forcing many towns in the US midwest to consider whether flooding has made their existence untenable.
"Not only would a wealth tax raise revenue and help bring the economy back into balance, but it would also protect our democracy by reducing the influence of the super-rich on our political system."
US citizens: call on the FBI to show how much funds it puts into preventing white supremacist terrorism, vs. how much it puts into preventing the fictitious "black identity extremism."
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on all presidential candidates to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Germany's right-wing nonsense party is putting a lot of energy into denying global heating. It is connected with other denialists and bullshitters including the Heatland Institute.
UN Urges Worldwide Withdrawal of Support for Myanmar Military.
Australia's election gives Australians a chance to insist on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Don't be ashamed of wanting a better world — and what we have already achieved shows it can be done.
Peru is destroying part of the region around Machu Picchu to help more tourists overrun it.
Single-use plastic is a significant contributor to global heating, as well as polluting rivers and oceans and endangering the wildlife there.
No Iran Threat in Syria or Iraq, Top British Officer Says, Contradicting US.
Bayer/Monsanto lost another cancer lawsuit, this time with punitive damages of 2 billion dollars for covering up the danger of glyphosate. The company continues to try to cover it up, citing the bogus science that it constructed.
The real corruption of science by big business (tobacco, pesticides, oil) causes indirect dangers as well as its direct harm: it inclines people to suspect any and all science of being corrupt.
Science is a system for finding and correcting errors. It includes lots of wrong results, and subsequent research corrects them sooner or later. Take for example the fraudulent research that reported that a vaccine caused autism: because the issue was important, large studies were funded and they conclusively showed this wasn't true.
To keep science repeating a bogus conclusion takes a continuing campaign employing corruption in many ways that support each other, and that costs a lot of money.
Faux News and Faux Opinion spread the same disinformation together.
Recent research on cloud modeling suggests that global heating will go 5 to 6 degrees C, rather than 4 to 5 degrees, if we don't reduce emissions. Each additional degree will lead to far bigger practical effects.
Modeling like this is the only activity that ought to be called "cloud computing." In the internet, there is no cloud, only computers belonging to various entities. But in the sky there are still clouds, for the time being.
The So-Called "Middle Ground" and the Tyranny of Capitalism.
The Australian government corrupted the pollution review of the new Adani coal mine. The responsible agencies were ordered from above to ignore their concerns.
Pollution of local water supplies is a serious problem, but if one even needs to discuss the issue it is because the planet roasters are in charge. No new coal mines should be permitted anywhere.
Doctors and teachers in Honduras are protesting against US-imposed privatization. The US-imposed "president" is deploying troops to shoot them.
A new system has been set up to help patients check for fake medicines.
I hope it is possible to use this system without running a nonfree app on a nonfree phone operating system — otherwise it gives people the choice, "Your freedom or your life."
This sort of system can catch the bogus medicines that come from unapproved factories. It won't catch the bogus medicines made by approved factories that are cheating.
When the US FDA checked, it found that cheating was rife. Nowadays it doesn't see the cheating because it has chosen not to look.
Mexico has caved to the bully's tariff threat and is repressing refugees from Central America that want to go through to the US.
Mexicans have also grown tired of welcoming and helping them.
Greenpeace activists dangled from the Sydney Harbor Bridge and displayed banners calling for Australia to declare a climate emergency.
I am amazed that anyone can claim, with a straight face, that there is something not to "condone" about this harmless method of protesting. Hooray for Greenpeace!
Do-dirty's supporters won the legislative elections in the Philippines.
I've spoken with a couple of Filipinas about him, over the past couple of years, and was shocked to find that they supported him. They seem to believe that anyone his death squads kill must be guilty.
Indian women who accused powerful men of rape are now on trial for criminal defamation.
Making defamation a crime is a recipe for tyranny, because people are generally prosecuted for defaming the powerful.
The International Maritime Organization has set a very weak target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, and has been negotiating about it for a decade with no progress.
Extinction Rebellion protesters are at work outside its headquarters.
Everyone: call on Volkswagen to stop its union busting in Tennessee.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Speculating about the effect of future AI weapons: if they are introduced at all, competition will drive them into totally autonomous systems that are always active and try to trick the adversary's AI into a "normal accident".
France to Ban the Destruction of Unsold Consumer Products.
This could be a great step forward, if companies don't circumvent it sending products to other countries to be destroyed there.
Romania is using the GDPR to punish journalists.
A landlord in Brooklyn has set up face recognition that tracks all the residents.
The Women Defying Menace and Mistrust to Rid Pakistan of Polio.
"Gender mainstreaming" in Vienna means that each city department makes sure to serve the needs of women as well as those of men.
Many of the policies chosen to serve women better should also help handicapped people and old people, as well as people that don't own cars.
When the left tries to compete with right-wing bigot parties by making immigration an issue, it loses, and maybe even ends up helping them.
The left must focus on its central cause, opposing plutocracy.
Kamala Harris is proud of the California law that jails parents whose children misses school, but claims it is not her responsibility that parents have been jailed as a result.
Australia is repressing journalists and a publisher over publication of leaked information about Australia's government activities.
This comes after searching the records of a journalist who reported on plans to extend Australia's spying on Australians.
I have a feeling that this reflects the example of US repression of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Freedom of speech in Europe is subject to narrow limits, and an EU court is considering ordering Facebook to impose these limits world-wide.
A multinational communications platform is inherently dangerous because many governments will try to censor it.
Sex workers in Washington, DC, rallied to support a bill to legalize sex work there.
The UK is the world leader in facilitating the global tax-dodging of corporations.
(satire) Last-Ditch Climate Change Report Provides Locations Of Weapons, Current Whereabouts Of Oil Executives.
Biden has given in to pressure and agreed to a climate defense plan.
I don't feel confident he would carry out this plan if elected. The amount of pressure it took to get him to agree demonstrates that Biden's first loyalty is to the plutocrats and planet-roasters.
Allowing citizens to issue traffic tickets could lead to problems.
Chelsea Manning warns that the bully is attacking journalists and journalism.
In some cultures, adults gently teach children and teenagers not to get angry, without ever getting angry at them.
(satire) … Craftsman announced Monday that its newest line of hammers would indeed be backwards-compatible with previous generations of nails.
Dundee University is accused of cheating blind foreign students by giving them inadequate equipment, then failing them and getting them deported, while keeping their money.
I criticize one point of Agbakuribe's conduct: having children when he was not yet in a position to support them. He should have been smart enough to put off reproducing until he had his PhD and a job. Meanwhile, four children is too many; nobody should have four children.
But that is a separate issue, and it has nothing to do with how we judge the university's conduct.
Whatever governments, businesses, and thug departments may say about limiting the use of license-plate reader data, don't believe it is true.
Thugs systematically practice racial profiling to stop black drivers more often — during the day, when they can see the driver's skin color.
At night, the bias disappears, which demonstrates that it is bias, implemented by looking at drivers' skin color.
The US is developing, in effect, a national DNA database, which works by searching for commercial DNA data bases for people who are relatives of the person sought.
New speed cameras work by recording the license number of each car that passes two different cameras, and calculating the average speed between them.
I think it is wrong in principle to have robots enforce laws against humans. But unless the system forgets about each license number that doesn't get fined, it is doing something even worse: massive surveillance.
Having the camera check for details of the driver's behavior is nastier still. Eating or drinking while driving is safe enough, except for special situations.
I fear it can also recognize faces.
People report demonstrating empirically that their phone apps are listening to their conversations.
The only truly trustworthy way to stop this is to make sure that only free software can get data from the microphone.
Barr's summary of Mueller's report is misleading on several important points.
Don't say Trump is exonerated. It's too soon for that.
The bully's Just-Us department is supporting a lawsuit to eliminate Obama's medical care plan. I suppose they have reason to believe the Supreme Court would vote for this.
Yet another problem for US projects to "rebuild Afghanistan": the Afghan thugs and soldiers used force, imprisonment and threats to squeeze money out of workers and companies.
This is aside from the projects that were pure corruption or totally useless.
Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson face 2000 lawsuits alleging deceptive marketing of OxyContin. Purdue just settled one to avoid an embarrassing trial.
Thai Election Process 'Deeply Flawed', Say Independent Observers.
Let's not grant this the legitimacy of a "return to democracy".
The EPA's plan for handling an oil spill, last updated in 1994, says to apply dispersants. This proved harmful in 2010, but the EPA has been dragging its feet since 2015 on revising the plan.
The women who ran Women Church World, a Vatican magazine for women, all quit after condemning a plan to put some men in charge of them. They had published about sexual abuse of nuns by priests.
Florida Republicans want to make school districts fund charter schools which have no accountability to them.
Accusing Do-dirty of stealing the Philippine election and killing dissidents.
I should point out, in fairness, that there are real armed Islamist rebel groups in Mindanao, and the army had to fight very hard, a few years ago, to retake the city they had captured. That is no excuse for stealing the election or killing nonviolent dissidents, but it means that there is a legitimate need for a strong army.
I fear that Do-dirty is making the US and China compete for the Philippines' support.
Stiglitz: we can't afford not to fight and defeat global heating.
China has silenced an exiled dissident by threatening his family.
US citizens: call on New York Governor Cuomo to ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure in New York State,
Using face recognition to identify airline passengers is dangerous in various ways. Regulations about how long to store the photos address only part of the problem — and I suspect they will have loopholes to allow some agency to keep any or every photo for as long as it wishes just by saying there was some nonspecific reason.
The US deportation thug department has a scheme to deputize local thugs in sanctuary cities, to give them an excuse to disregard the city's policy of refusing to hold immigrants for the deportation thugs.
Maybe sanctuary cities can protect themselves by making it a firing offense to accept such deputization.
Most of the generic drugs sold in the US are imported. Surprise inspections of the factories in India found that 4/5 of them were cheating and concealing practices that could be dangerous.
So what did the FDA learn from this? It decided to warn Indian factories about all inspections. That was under Obama, who didn't generally appoint the sort of agency director who would crusade against the power of business.
When the TSA (Theater of Security Authority) says that people will need TSA-approved ID cards in order to fly, this is simply false.
I've verified this page with an expert.
AT&T aims to set up an integrated advertising and surveillance system even more controlling than Facebook and Google.
If the UK makes a new trade deal with the US, the bully will demand an extreme business-supremacy treaty that would allow US companies to privatize the National Health Service.
These treaties are generally unjust, and plutocratist rulers want to make them even more unjust.
Injured Gilets Jaunes Protest in Paris against Police Violence.
I agree with their demand, but the gilets jaunes must also join to reject violence from people who join them.
With so many species threatened, we might want to evaluate each species's contribution to biodiversity. If a species is the last of its genus, that would add more importance to its loss; if it is the last in its family, that would add even more.
There are other ways to evaluate the significance of a species. But if we stop provoking a mass extinction, we might not need to choose which species to save.
US citizens: call on state governors to reject new infrastructure for natural gas.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to have Mueller testify.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FERC to block the Jordan Cove gas terminal and its pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Assad's planes bombed a school and a hospital in Idlib.
Facebook Charged with Housing Discrimination in Targeted Ads.
US right-wing Christians gave 50 million dollars to promote right-wing repression in Europe.
Mosquitoes that spread diseases are moving to new habitats further from the equator. The diseases may join them.
George Monbiot: The destruction of the Earth is a crime. It should be prosecuted.
US citizens: call on the bully to make peace with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Massachusetts citizens: call on your Massachusetts legislators to support same-day registration.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to ban arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
If you sign, please spread the word!
UN Accuses Blackstone Group of Contributing to Global Housing Crisis.
The main owner of Blackstone is Schwarzman, who just bought the favor of MIT by donating a lot of the money he has gouged from tenants.
As Iraq tortures and kills Sunni prisoners, a Sunni guerrilla including ex-PISSI fighters is already starting.
This is basically a fight between Iraqis. Can we get out of it in such a way that we won't be the enemy of either side any more?
"The EU needs to become a realm of shared prosperity, peace, and solidarity for all Europeans."
I agree, but "democracy, freedom and anonymity" must be added to that list to make it sufficient.
A Hamas rocket destroyed an Israeli civilian house. How many civilian houses will the Israeli retaliation destroy?
Netanyahu doesn't really care, and he hopes to gain votes by showing he does not care.
What America Can Learn from the World's Happiest Countries.
A court ruling permits PACs to use candidates' names — even falsely and misleadingly.
The stated reason for adding nitrites to ham is to prevent botulism, but ham companies studied this and discovered that nitrites in ham don't actually protect.
The black bloc of the gilets jaunes burned news kiosks. Now people are donating to help the individual businesspeople that operate the burned kiosks.
It is a sad fact that nearly all crowdfunding sites require running nonfree software in order to donate. No matter how much I support a cause, I would not donate that way.
Countries that make everyone's well-being a goal, and strive to aid the non-rich, make people happier than the US does.
Here is the list:
Egyptian singer Sherine Abdel-Wahab complained that Egypt has no freedom of speech. The military tyrants demonstrated the truth of this accusation by charging her with "insulting Egypt".
It is hardly necessary to insult a country that insults itself so effectively. The point is, don't go there.
The man that inspired Bernie Sanders was Eugene Debs.
Violent Far-Right Extremists Are Rarely Prosecuted as Terrorists. Most politicians don't even want to call them "terrorists".
This reflects a bias in the structure of the legal system and government agencies.
Face recognition is a real danger to the usual targets of repression.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s Office Is Working With Volkswagen to Crush a Union Drive.
Rebecca Solnit: 'Every protest shifts the world's balance'.
The US cancelled its Iran disinformation program after it criticized everyone that disagreed with the push for war.
Uber has set up a social credit system: passengers that get bad ratings from drivers will be blacklisted (refused disservice).
One must suspect that customers' racial and ethnic appearance influences the ratings, so one effect will be discrimination. However, the chinification will do wrong to every customer, including those who are blacklisted, and those who only face the possibility of being blacklisted.
This reinforces my conclusion that transportation services should not be allowed to identify their customers.
The mainstream media and mainstream politicians promote far-right radicalisation.
Brunei will execute homosexuals. This is part of implementing Islamic law, which is often vicious and cruel.
One of the bully's ministers rebuked China for imprisoning perhaps a million Uighurs.
Meanwhile, his boss is striving mightily to beat China's total.
An investment of 500 billion dollars in making US buildings more energy-efficient would be very profitable, as well as reducing greenhouse emissions.
(satire) A shocked Vladimir Putin reportedly came to the realization Tuesday that he didn’t conspire with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign after all. "What the hell? I worked so hard on this…"
A committee added three amendments to HR 1, which weakened it.
Explaining the term "toxic masculinity".
US citizens: call on Pelosi not to accept a NAFTA replacement that imposes high drug prices.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FTC to shut down Ever's face recognition.
If the fact they trained it using photos obtained by users who didn't consent is a lever for doing that, that is good. However, the real moral issue of that company is not how it got faces to train the neural network, but using that network to identify people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The
increasing
conservative extremism of Justice Thomas.
Two Palestinians drove their car into some Israeli soldiers. Other
soldiers
waited
over 4 minutes before shooting them dead, then tried to cover up
the fact they had waited.
It is pretty clear that the shooting was not defense of soldiers but
rather murder of prisoners.
AIPAC
pretends
that it is being silenced when people disagree with its views.
Israel has recently arrested
24
Palestinian journalists and media workers.
UK local governments are discovering that outsourcing is
ripping
them off, and bringing various services into public activity.
This raises the question of how to kill off the remaining long-term
outsourcing contracts that hold the state hostage. I recommend
defining the concept of parasitic outsourcing -- outsourcing that
should never have been allowed -- and giving the state the power to
cancel such contracts with a year's notice even if the contract said
it was to run for longer.
This would give Chicago a way to cancel Rahm Emanuel's contract for
parking
revenue farming.
The US Geological Survey
will
cut off its climate modeling at 2040. This way, climate disaster
will not appear in the results. It also creates an excuse to build
facilities that will be flooded starting in 2050.
It's a great way to distract people from the coming disaster —
for a while. But by then it will be too late.
Chinese "fishing boats"
fired
lasers at pilots of Australian planes flying from a carrier in
international waters.
This sort of poking at each other seems to be typical of interactions
between unfriendly navies when they are not at war. Usually they poke
back. The question is, how do you poke at a "fishing boat" that fires
a laser that could blind a pilot, but was set at a lower setting so
that it didn't cause actual damage?
Buddhist monk Wirathu has called for hatred towards Muslims for years.
Now that he
targeted
Aung San Suu Kyi as well, he is wanted for arrest.
He must be a very bad Buddhist. In the same way, the supporters of
the bully are very bad Christians.
(satire) … China's Ministry of Public Security
asked
the entire nation to pose Tuesday while millions of government
security cameras took photographs.
The
Truth Is
Out About Israel's Lethal Actions in Gaza. Will the World Listen?
Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Lift Up Family Farmers Includes
Barring
Big Ag Mega-Mergers Like Monsanto-Bayer.
Her plan goes beyond blocking future mergers; she aims to reverse the
Monsanto-Bayer merger.
I've proposed a tax system that could
pressure
many large companies to split up.
Decrying 'War Being Waged Against Working People,'
Sanders Joins
Striking Union Members at UCLA.
Rep. Nunes's lawsuit against Twitter, demanding to know the names of
people that criticize him there, will be thrown out, because of court
decisions that strongly protect freedom of speech. However,
right-wing repressive
judges put
this protection in danger.
(satire) … Coachella organizers on Thursday reportedly unveiled
premium VIP areas where fans will be able
to see
and hear the bands.
Gillum's Drive Aims
to Register
One Million New Florida Voters to Help Serve Trump 'Eviction
Notice' in 2020.
PISSI has crumbled as an organized force, but the factors that enabled
it to take off are still there
and threaten
to provoke a new uprising.
Big Oil publicly pretends to support climate defense action, but
quietly
pays millions for lobbying and targeted ads to promote more fossil
fuel use and block real climate defense action.
33 California journalistic organizations
have agreed
to work together to expose the criminality of thugs.
Some presidential candidates for 2020 have said they
will not
attend the annual AIPAC event.
This is the strongest pushback that Israel has got in the US, in regard
to the occupation of Palestine, in many decades.
Biden aims to be another Obama —
another servant
of big business.
Sanders for President!
Dirty modern war typically includes attacking civilian infrastructure such
as water supplies. So people have to drink dirty water, and this kills many.
A
study found that it kills a lot more under-15s than the shooting
does.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is trying to use its
market power
to hamper
progressive campaigns aiming to replace plutocratist Democrats.
We can push back on this by supporting progressive Democrats in
primaries. And don't give to the DNCC; that only helps maintain
Plutocracy Lite.
The Supreme Court considered only administrative issues
in rejecting
a death penalty appeal from black man whose sentence was decided
by a jury with a biased member.
I can't understand why the racism of a juror is an issue regarding the
sentence. Isn't it grounds to question the conviction itself?
Meanwhile, it is unconscionable to penalize anyone in any way for
delays caused by the government.
US citizens: call Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim at
202-514-2401 to oppose the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile.
Free Press recommends saying this
Killing of elephants has declined by 2/3 since 2011, but the rate of
killing is
still
high enough to wipe them out if it continues.
The Homeless 8-Year-Old Chess Champion and Other
Horrific
"Uplifting" Stories.
A good outcome for some of the homeless and poor is an entertaining
distraction from changing the unjust system that dumps millions into
poverty in the middle of riches.
The EU has
adopted
a ban on many single-use plastics.
Italy's Minister Salivini must be salivating after
making
the EU stop operating ships to rescue drowning refugees.
Israeli soldiers
shot
and killed Palestinian paramedic Sajid Muzher as he was treating a
protester that soldiers had shot.
He was wearing an orange medic vest and other clothing to indicate his
role as a medic. The soldier who shot him was either incompetent or
murderous.
Beto O’Rourke’s
Free
Ride on Charter Schools Won’t Last for Long.
The experience of Labour with antisemitism demonstrates a general
principle:
defending
people from bigotry should be separated completely from support or
criticism for their political views.
One activity that is still immune from current personal surveillance
devices is sleep. A new Pokemon game will
lure
people to yield up their sleep to surveillance.
Some US states have made abortion almost impossible by attaching
pointless hurdles
designed
only to make it impossible.
Each of these regulations demonstrates the dishonesty of the
antiabortionists.
Latin American Rape Survivors Who Were Denied Abortions
Turn
to UN (human rights committee).
Some kinds of racism awareness training, meant to help whites
empathize more with the handicap racism places on blacks,
backfire
in practice — their effect is simply to reduce empathy for
whites that suffer misfortune despite their "privilege".
US citizens: call for
prohibiting
insurance companies from looking at people's credit ratings when
setting prices for automobile insurance.
My reason for supporting this is not based on supposing this will
generally reduce the cost of car insurance. I don't know whether this
law would have that effect. I support the bill because it reduces the
use of intrusive surveillance.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Rockland County in New York has made an emergency order barring
unvaccinated minors from indoor public places, such as
schools,
shopping centers, restaurants, and churches. It does not apply
outdoors.
I think that's a
good
place to draw the line.
San Diego Has Been Turned Into a
Massive
Chinese-Style Public Surveillance Network.
The system is designed to track anyone the city wants to track.
ACLU: watch out for a scam that pretends to increase privacy for
medical data but seems
designed
to backfire.
It appears that body cameras
reduce
thugs' use of force in the places where they don't have the option of
turning the cameras off
I’m calling to ask you to block the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Our
antitrust laws should protect us from mergers like this that would
raise prices and crush competition.
but it can't hurt to use your own words.
Officials of the deportation thugs often illegally sign their bosses' names to arrest warrants.
Canadians: help the campaign against Google's snoop city project in Toronto.
Of course, Google calls it a "smart city", but "smart" means "snoop".
US citizens: call on the Senate to allow expiration of the PAT RIOT Act's massive phone metadata collection.
Against massive surveillance, every small victory contributes to winning further victories.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress and states to allow convicts to vote.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the EACH Woman Act, which would insist that medical insurance cover abortion.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Cyclone Idai created a large lake, 78 miles by 16 miles, in what used to be land. Rescuing the people trapped on what are now islands is going slowly.
Cleaning plastic out of sea water can make a significant difference in harbors and bays, but cleaning the whole ocean that way is far out of reach.
Joe Biden Is Hillary Clinton 2.0 — Democrats Would Be Mad to Nominate Him.
Privacy Advocates Call on U.S. Congress to Release Information Crucial for Surveillance Reform Debate.
Employees report that Wells Fargo Bank is still following practices that harm its customers.
I saw a petition demanding that Virginia pressure Amazon to stop providing support for the US deportation thugs. Why Virginia? Because Virginia agreed to give Amazon a handout of 3/4 billion dollars.
I could not sign it, because I think it legitimizes the handout itself. The handout would still be unacceptable even if Amazon terminated all its services to nasty government activities.
Governor Northam's kidding around with racism may have ended 30 years ago, but his support for plutocracy evidently has not stopped. I hope Virginia replaces him in the next election with someone more progressive.
Eyeglass sales in the US have become nearly a monopoly. The unsurprising result is high prices ten times what they ought to be.
My progressive sales tax proposal can be adapted to increase the tax rate for a given market depending on what fraction of that market a company has.
Every transportation system that tracks people's movements is a massive surveillance system, since a company can follow who goes where. At any moment, the state can convert it into state surveillance.
In Los Angeles, that moment is now. The city plans to require hire-scooters to transmit their GPS locations all the time when in use.
We need to develop anonymizing systems to pay for renting these devices — systems that collect the rental fee but don't record anything about who goes where. Even recording the start and end points of each trip would track some users, since it will often be possible to guess with high probability who used the scooter based on the endpoints.
The shiny new Swiss online voting system has a devastating security hole: those running the election could replace the entire collection of votes.
Online voting normally offers another security flaw: if the voter's computer has been cracked, that will quite likely make it possible to falsify per vote.
Then there is the general danger of all remote voting, whether digital or not: your boss or your spouse can control how you vote. Until society no longer makes people vulnerable to such pressure, we should limit remote voting to people who present a specific valid justification.
An American visitor in Iran was sentenced to prison for insulting one of Iran's rulers.
Regardless of the details, this is an injustice. France and other "free" countries do similar injustices.
Of Course College Admissions Rigged for the Rich. The Whole Economic System Is.
The rural, agricultural US needs a New Deal, especially a Green New Deal.
How global heating is indirectly responsible for the death of North Atlantic right whales.
The Secret Money Behind the Push to Ban Abortion.
An interview with Lenore Skenazy about the causes of obsessive overprotectiveness and its effects.
Relating zero-rating, in which ISPs allow gratis access only to certain platforms, and the election of Brazil's murderous Bolsonaro.
Bezos hid while the stockholders of Amazon voted on a resolution to act to curb global heating.
I expect that many of the stockholders voting considered themselves bound by a commitment to put the profits of some other group above everything else in the world, and as a result they felt obligated to keep hurrying towards disaster. We need to legal abolish the idea that a corporation must place its profits over all else, which was established only in the 1980s.
US citizens: phone your representative to ask per to support the Democracy For All amendment.
This would explicitly give Congress the power to regulate political campaign fund-raising and spending for elections.
This is a narrow plan to override the Corporations United decision. Another proposed amendment would reject the idea that corporations are in general entitled to all human rights. I support either or both.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Much of what people take for "wilderness" was made intentionally by humans in the past. What does this imply for our choices today?
The author of that article seems to reject any objective meaning for "preserving nature". If we can't aim to keep nature "untouched", he argues, we may as well reshape it however we like. His subjective judgment is that the sparse trees favored by the aboriginals was more "beautiful" than today's farms and woods. Surely some Australians think farms and woods are more beautiful.
"Untouched" is not the only sensible objective interpretation of "preserving nature". We can interpret it as preserving species from extinction. That gives an objective criterion.
Thailand's First Election in Eight Years Not Free Or Fair, Say Democracy Activists.
The system is designed to keep the military in power, and then the military banned all the parties that truly opposed doing so.
A Wisconsin court ruled that the Republicans' lame-duck power grab violated Wisconsin's constitution, which includes text specifically to prevent that kind of trick.
New Zealand has gone beyond banning the sale of military-style semiautomatic rifles and large-magazine pistols. Their possession will be banned as well, after a transition period, except for those with a special license.
These measures should be enough to slow down the shooting by future terrorists, and reduce the damage done by each bullet that hits someone.
I worried that the planned web interface mentioned in the article might require the current owners of these guns to run nonfree software to register them.
Fortunately, New Zealand has avoided that problem: people will be allowed to do this by phone call instead.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act to provide some transparency of funding for campaign advertising.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on congress to co-sponsor the Women's Health Protection Act, which would establish abortion rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democrats to cut military funding.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to support Puerto Rico's recovery from hurricane damage, with more funds.
If you sign, please spread the word!
I Quit My Job to Protest My Company’s Work on Building Killer Robots.
The article uses the word "hacking" to refer to breaking security. That's unkind and unfair to us hackers. But it presents good arguments against killer robots.
However, if we want to avoid the development of killer robots, we need more than for some people, or many people, to refuse to develop them.
China excuses its violations of human rights by pointing at US violations.
Right-wing extremists have adopted a disguised way of stating their hatred and calls for violence, for deniability.
Over a million of us joined the climate strike rally on March 15.
It won't be enough to overcome resistance. If you weren't there, please join in next time and help make it 2 million.
Thugs in Washington DC arrested an activist for projecting light on a government building.
It appears the thugs claim that shining light is illegal only if it carries a message — a mere spotlight, making only a patch of light on the building, would according to them not be a crime.
The latest fashion in "victim's rights" laws in US states endangers the rights of the accused.
How unhealthful eating practices have changed food itself as well as the way we consume it. China presents an indicative example of the transition to junk food.
Grading non-Republican senators for resisting right-wing judicial appointments.
Slowing these appointments down is useful even when it is impossible to block them, since at slow speed the Republicans may not be able to fill all the slots by the end of 2020.
Increasing the size of the Supreme Court may be necessary to overcome the power of five Republican-appointed justices that generally support plutocracy and oppose women's rights.
Enough gains in Congress would also bring the possibility of impeaching Kavanaugh for his attempted rape, and other personal actions (as distinguished from his ideology) that render him unfit for any political office.
US nuclear reactor operators want to reduce inspections and conceal small problems.
Even if these small problems cause no harm to the public, the rate at which they happen is an indication of the state of maintenance and quality of the reactor.
The bully plans to deny or cancel visas to prevent officials of the International Criminal Court from investigating accusations of US war crimes in Afghanistan.
6-year-old Ariel, imprisoned by the US government for 10 months, was reunited with his dear deported father.
The bullshitter is going to fabricate another bogus "emergency" and use it as an excuse to bypass Senate approval of arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
I suggest that the law permitting emergency international arms sales should exclude sales that were proposed more than a month previously as well as sales that would take more than a month to physically implement.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Equality Act.
Everyone: Call on AT&T, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Aetna and Eli Lilly to stop donating to the campaigns of anti-abortion candidates.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on the governor of Minnesota to block construction of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
International cooperation between unions can resist international power plays of capital.
Sanders proposed in 1976 to penalize companies for closing factories, and to convert big businesses into worker-controlled businesses.
Sounds good to me.
(satire) Beto O’Rourke announced Thursday that he was starting a Barack Obama cover campaign. “I’ve always loved Barack’s early stuff from back in ’08, even ’04, …
US Accused of Blocking Ambitious Global Action against Plastic Pollution.
The US is ruled by environmental saboteurs; naturally they would sabotage this.
Michael Jackson Fan Groups [in France] to Sue Accusers for 'Sullying His Memory'.
If this lawsuits succeeds, anyone who states an accusation of any kind against anyone famous enough to have a fan club will face even more pressure and retaliation.
Increased impunity for everyone rich and famous is hardly an improvement. Therefore, we need to quash all such lawsuits, one way or another.
The fact that this one is about Michael Jackson is a mere detail. If it were about someone else, the issue would be the same.
Preet Bharara, who was US attorney for New York City and vicinity until the conman kicked him out for being honest, says he worries that his life is in danger while people like the conman are in power.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to cut the military budget.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US government to allow Abdikadir Mohamed to stay with his family, pursuant to the visa he had already obtained, so he can get treatment for the illnesses he developed due to mistreatment in immigration prison.
It seems he was imprisoned because thugs questioned him without an interpreter and caused a miscommunication that could be fatal to him.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Calling on the AFL-CIO to recognize that avoiding global heating disaster is more important than a few more union jobs today.
The Green New Deal would create a lot of jobs as a byproduct of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
US border thugs continue separating minors from their parents, but the government lies about it, claiming that those minors arrived alone.
Researchers Find Critical Backdoor in Swiss Online Voting System.
It's not unusual for those in charge of the election to dismiss the idea that they themselves might rig it, but that very danger is the worst one.
Any online voting system has fundamental flaws.
The Testicular Bill of Rights presents the natural conclusion of the antiabortion bill that Georgia passed.
33 wealthy parents have been charged with using fraud to get their offspring admitted to prestigious colleges.
One of the beneficiaries demonstrated her lack of interest in the college education she had access to thanks to this fraud, by saying she was only there for the parties and games.
What else would you expect from the sort of person who has chosen the parasitic career of influencer? That is, a person whose whole life is an advertising campaign.
I suppose she could be equally happy at a school that doesn't offer as much in the way of education. Many of those gladly admit anyone for 30,000 dollars a year, no fraud required.
This fraud is unfair, but compared with other systemic unfairnesses to the non-wealthy, this one is rather small in importance. For most non-wealthy Americans have more pressing worries than whether Harvard or UCLA would consider their applications fairly, such as "Will we be evicted this month" and "Food for me, or medicine for my mother?"
Many cities' thug departments are using license plate readers to track all cars, and sending records to the US deportation thugs to catch immigrants.
They cooperate indirectly via a private company which holds all the data. That evades legal accountability. Local thug departments do this even in places such as California where it is specifically illegal.
The solution I've proposed would make the system refuse to do this.
The governor of California ordered a moratorium on executions. There is hope he could go further.
The US has no reason to involve itself in the civil war in Somalia.
The thugs' union of Queensland is pushing to repeal the system that was set up to prosecute crooked thugs.
Manafort faces New York State felony charges. His master can't pardon him for those.
Senator Harris signed on to the very bad deal Obama's men arranged with the banks over their fraudulent foreclosures. She touts that as a big victory.
A Tory wants to use leaving the EU as an excuse to impose national ID cards on Britain.
Workers have blocked a ship from onloading war material for Salafi Arabia, first in France, then in Italy.
Will face recognition be "everywhere"?
I think we can stop it if we fight — but we must not pull our punches. We must demand a ban on camera recognition carried out on people or their vehicles in places where the public is admitted, regardless of who or what entity carries it out, with only narrow and specific exceptions.
The UK government is now subjecting visitors to prisons to face recognition and fingerprinting.
I'd decline to visit under those circumstances.
Fracking threatens to increase US oil extraction tremendously, and thus increase world oil extraction.
To avoid disaster we will need to shut off that increase. Perhaps with a very heavy emissions tax.
Senator Biden is the plutocrats' last, best hope for a 2020 race in which no major party candidate will deserve our votes. He has fought persistently for banks against debtors, for racial inequality, for military spending, and for war.
Republican state legislators are trying to attack science education. Ignorance is their best ally.
Teenagers that become habituated to porn often develop erectile dysfunction. This was almost unheard of, among teenagers.
Criticism of porn often carries a whiff of Christian prudery. I reject that attitude wherever I see it. However, if porn leads people to unhappy results, we should make it easier to watch less porn.
The taboo still placed on actual sex, especially for adolescents, may leave many of them with porn as the only choice. Impediments in getting birth control, and lack of acceptance of condoms, can cause rational anxiety about sex, and that too would drive some to porn.
The Frobbed-DNA Administration will allow import of genetically modified salmon.
It is unlikely that this salmon would cause any problems for human eaters, other than those with a bad reaction to natural salmon. Their danger is to wild salmon in oceans and rivers.
Amazon's warehouses have a high rate of 911 calls, as they stress the staff so much that they often tend to get sick.
Brazil has arrested former thugs for murdering legislator Marielle Franco.
What Actually Happens When a Country Bans Abortion: Romania under Ceausescu created a dystopian horror of overcrowded, filthy orphanages, and thousands died from back-alley abortions.
Famous cryptographers have been denied entry into the US for conferences.
The EFF's comments on New Zealand's call for a global effort to suppress internet publications that encourage violent extremism and terrorism.
The outsourced cleaners and food servers working in UK ministries have gone on strike, demanding to be paid on time, and to be paid the official living wage.
As usual, outsourcing work harms the workers.
The conman's acts of deregulation systematically work for businesses against most Americans.
The Israeli Supreme Court only rarely impedes government excuses to destroy Palestinians' houses. For those rare occasions, the ruling right-wing demonizes it and calls for eliminating its power.
US officials report that the Iranian "threat" that they imagined in recent days has vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.
CBP (the US border thugs) Admits to Targeting Journalists, Activists, After Civil Society Groups, Including Defending Rights & Dissent, Demanded Answers.
American teenagers are taking better precautions against sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. The pregnancy rate among teenagers continues steadily falling.
Argentina and Algeria have eradicated malaria.
It can be done in other countries too, if we put up the required funds. Will we have the courage to take the funds away from the plutocrats?
Humans are wiping out all the larger animals. This will turn ecosystems upside down, resulting in more extinctions.
Republicans Aren't Just Climate Deniers. They Deny the Extinction Crisis, Too.
Some chemicals in the PFAS class cause medical problems even in small quantities. Many different products expose people to various chemicals in the class. It is not clear what level of exposure is safe.
Some Chinese factories are (or were recently) emitting chlorofluorocarbon gas, in disregard of the treaty to close the ozone hole.
China may be cracking down on them.
Rampant overfishing is driving almost all the world's fish stocks to a level below viability. The highly concentrated fishing industry refuses to be regulated effectively until it is brought to a halt by its own success.
Hinduist extremist Modi won the election in India.
I fear he will ramp up the repression of Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, as well as Dalits and perhaps Sikhs.
US citizens: call on Biden to sign the no-fossil-fuel-money pledge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Salafi Arabia is putting women's driving rights activists on trial, with reporters and diplomats excluded from the courtroom. This may be a way to prevent verification of their charges of torture. If they have cracked and confess, no one will be able to say that they seem to have been brainwashed.
Science writer Ginny Smith accuses Netflix of promoting "alternative" treatments based on discredited, or imaginary, evidence.
Combatants for Peace is a joint Arab-Jewish organization that campaigns nonviolently for reconciliation between the two peoples. The word "combatants" refers to the fact that its founders were former fighters on both sides.
The US just blocked one of its Arab activists from visiting the US for a speaking tour.
The border thugs gave no explanation for the decision, but he says that the questions they asked him were about the organization.
Israel has arrested a Palestinian who opposes the occupation with political theater.
He has been held for two weeks, with no charges yet. I suppose they are aiming for a false confession of something or other.
(satire) Butterfly Fears Damaging Our Timeline with an Ill-Judged Wing Flap.
Guaidó has suggested he will invite US military intervention in Venezuela. The US is removing its diplomats, suggesting an intention to attack.
BirthStrikers — an organization of people who refuse to have children until we avoid global heating disaster.
The article's discussion of how laws and individual decisions can affect the future population is flawed. It may be true that a global one-child policy would not make the population smaller by 2100, but simply reducing the increase is a step away from disaster.
I agree that individual decisions are not enough to avoid disaster, but the conclusion from that is a reason to push for more.
I think that convincing many people not to have children is a goal we should work for. The fact that so many people report being unable to resist natalist pressure on their own shows how much room there is to make progress.
There are many other reasons not to have children.
A UN investigation compiled in 2013 a list of companies involved in production in Israel's colonies in Palestine's West Bank. The UN has kept the list secret, under pressure from the US.
Walden Bello, cofounder of Focus on the Global South, summarizes how the WTO arranges "the corporate capture of international trade" based on an ideology disconnected from economic facts.
He does not mention the harmful political effects of business-supremacy treaties.
A subcommittee of the Knesset voted to ban an Arab-Jewish leftist party from running for election, based on its political position.
Mainstream (right-wing extremist) politicians are calling it "terrorist".
One candidate was banned for advocating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Facebook blocked Senator Warren's ads that called for breaking up Facebook.
It reminds me of when Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984: so ironic that it is hard to believe they wouldn't know better.
The US is using international flights as an opportunity to impose more face recognition.
3500 American women per month ask for gifts of abortion medicines from overseas.
These gifts cannot be sent by from the US because the US requires a prescription for these medicines. That decision was originally made from caution, but even though the evidence since became clear that these medicines are safe, antiabortionists have lobbied against the removal of that requirement.
"A leading United Nations poverty expert has compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'."
Internal Emails Reveal How the Chemical Lobby Fights Regulation. Even for chemicals that are clearly toxic, these companies will try to delay regulation as long as possible.
"Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that?"
Capitalism generally provides a better future to those who have political power. Historically, that included most workers only when and where governments helped the workers demand that. In the US before the New Deal, bosses often crushed unions with violence using thugs such as the Pinkertons.
Bill Moyers's speech to a conference on climate journalism: "Soon, some of you will be traveling to the ends of the earth to report on this Great Disruption" — the effects of climate mayhem.
Explained: the Toxic Threat in Everyday Products, from Toys to Plastic.
The UK will ban more single-use plastic items.
I am in favor of this, but what we really need is a general system to make sure non-durable plastic items are practical to recycle.
UN Rapporteurs Urge India Again to Release Ailing Activist-Academic G.N. Saibaba.
China and the US are starting a world-wide competition for which will control digital technology and networks.
What is the role of human beings in this competition? We are supposed to be prey — the little bits of "land" that they will compete to dominate, monitor, and control.
Therefore, the battle that matters for us is between the tech companies of the two superpowers, and people.
We, the people, need to defeat both of those competing "sides" that aim to control us.
The US deportation thugs put their immigration prisoners into solitary confinement (which drives people mad) as the default method for dealing with anyone who is inconvenient. Including those who are mad. Including those who are mad as a result of solitary confinement. Including those who tried to kill themselves to get out of solitary confinement
I suspect the staff do this because they hate immigrants and are eager to hurt them. Here's a report about a thug that vented such hatred many times, and came close to murdering one border-crosser.
It does not follow that all the border thugs are as bad as he is. But they didn't treat his salivating, murderous hatred as a problem, which implies that this hatred is more or less accepted among them.
Texas has made it a crime to protest a pipeline and "impair operations".
The word "impair" is easy to stretch. I can imagine that anything which the pipeline company finds inconvenient could be called "impairing" by means of an exaggeration.
WHO guidelines for prescribing oxycontin show unmistakable influence of Purdue Pharma.
US citizens: call for an infrastructure plan paid for by the rich and corporations.
US citizens: phone the offices of Pelosi and Schumer to urge them to do all they can to prevent war with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Overcontrolling US parents can now buy tracking devices to attach to their offspring, which are impossible to remove. These adolescents are then treated as prisoners.
Some landlords invade tenants' privacy by converting the apartment into a spy home.
They call it "smart". For "smart", read "spy". The cure I suggest is to disconnect all the landlord's devices from sensors and everything they control, and install your own non-snoop devices to control things. Maybe you can install deadbolt locks with keys — then leave the "smart" lock unlocked all the time.
The bully plans to keep all the prisoners in Guantanamo until they die. Some of them are starting to need wheel chairs.
"It's for your own good that we prohibit sleeping in a car -- we think you'd be better off in a hotel room. But if you can't afford one, you can sleep at the bottom of the lake."
US citizens: call on Pelosi and Schumer to prevent war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on the FTC to bar the merger of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgene.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FAA not to let Boeing certify its own planes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Thugs in Sacramento surrounded and besieged a group of protesters, then ordered them to disperse (which the thugs stopped them from doing), then arrested the protesters and journalists covering them.
To force people to do A, and blame them for not doing B instead, displays contempt for the very idea of justice. However, if the thugs had permitted them to disperse, that doesn't excuse doing so to sabotage a protest against the thugs' killing.
Some major UK train stations are eliminating pay toilets, making the toilets gratis.
Everybody needs to be able to use a toilet. Pay toilets make this aspect of life nasty occasionally, and disrespectful the rest of the time. A good society does not allow them.
The UN says Israel's violence in Gaza extends into the range of war crimes. Will the world make Israel face its responsibility for that?
When Bouteflika said he would not run again for president, was that a swindle?
An analysis of the arrest in Indonesia of Robertus Robet of Amnesty for singing a protest parody from 20 years ago.
Centrism is not a philosophy, it is a pusillanimous attitude towards life's great challenges.
Ocasio-Cortez is right on target in describing cynicism as a way of disguising defeatism as wisdom. "Don't ask me to help — I know better than to believe any of us might survive this."
Researchers say dirty air is killing 800,000 people a year in Europe, and urge the phasing out of fossil fuel burning.
World-wide, air pollution kills almost 9 million people per year.
Even though North Korea is not disarming, the reduction of hostility is a real step forward.
US thugs and Mexican thugs joined together to investigate and repress immigrants' rights activists, including journalists and lawyers.
Comparing PISSI with nonwarlike cults — they have a lot in common.
Netanyahu played the racist card, saying that Arab citizens are second-class citizens.
Bouteflika, the authoritarian president of Algeria, said he will not run for another term.
Britons are using the European Parliament election as a proxy to express their opinion about whether the UK should leave the EU.
What a foolish way to vote! That is the one major political decision affecting the UK over which the people elected to the European Parliament will have absolutely no say.
If the UK does remain in the EU, those elected as MEPs will participate in many important decisions. Don't Britons care how their representatives will approach the issues they can really affect?
If I were a citizen of the EU, I expect I would vote Green or Pirate for the European Parliament.
An interview with Daniel Ellsberg about his career as a whistleblower, starting from the crucial night when he heard President Johnson lie on TV about the fabricated "Gulf of Tonkin incident". Ellsberg knew, from his job, that Johnson the incident was fictitious.
" With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry."People sometimes ask me how I separate truth from lies. An important part is that I believe people like Ellsberg, and disbelieve whoever contradicts or disparages them. Likewise, I believe Edward Snowden and disbelieve whoever contradicts or disparages him.
In these areas, the pressure to lie is very strong. Ellsberg and Snowden have demonstrated they can resist it, while most people can't.
US citizens: call on your state officials to adopt automatic voter registration.
Note that this will not in and of itself put an end to gerrymandering and Republican voter suppression. But it will work against them.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for firing the two thugs that beat up Delucca Rolle and put him in the hospital, and then lied trying to put him in prison.
They ought to be prosecuted, not merely fired.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US, or if you visit the US: Tell JetBlue to stop using facial recognition to identify passengers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
New York State has passed a law barring cities from punishing people that often call 911.
They don't do this frivolously; they do it because they are threatened.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass S.1039 / H.R. 2354, the Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
About the nature of a republic and its constitution — including the unwritten constitution as well as the written one, loyalty to the common good, and avoidance of excesses of wealth.
An unlicensed prison — oops, "shelter" — holds 1600 teenagers that entered the US without their families. They are forbidden to talk to the press, they are punished if they touch each other in any way, and they are used as bait to catch and deport their relatives.
Republicans in the Senate are considering rules changes so that they can fill all vacancies in federal judgeships before the end of 2020.
For years they rejected all Obama's judicial nominees, without even considering their qualifications, so they would get a chance to appoint right-wing extremists now.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to block the merger of Bristol-Myers Squibb with Celgene.
The name of the first of those companies shows that too many mergers have already been permitted.
US citizens: call on Salafi Arabia to drop charges against heroes of freedom of the press.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on District Attorney Elton Mathis to re-open Sandra Bland's case.
If you sign, please spread the word!
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.
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.
Recycling isn't a solution for the disposal of plastic. We need to produce much less waste.
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.
Imagine if your medical provider could collect data from absolutely everything you did and everywhere you went. Then it could force you to do the healthy thing, all the time.
Yazidi women, former slaves of PISSI, have started a female-only commune in Kurdish Syria.
Australia passed a law that it can bring its prisoners on Nauru to Australian territory for medical care. However, to make sure this almost never happens, Nauru has prohibited all telemedicine for those prisoners.
I can't believe that Nauru would pass any laws to impede Australia from removing its prisoners from Nauru except at Australia's command. But Australia's government can claim that it did not order this, and no one can literally prove that claim is false.
This dishonest cruelty is typical of Australia's perpetual punishment for those who had the temerity to try to flee there.
The Chinese government seems to be convinced that China's diminishing population is a bad thing.
The only putative reason cited in this article is that taking care of old people will be a lot of work. Yes, it will, but younger adults could take care of more old people if they are taking care of fewer children. Anyway, In 30 years, robots will do a lot of that work. In addition, a larger fraction of people over 60 will be able to work. The natalists do not respond to these points.
I suspect that an additional unstated reason is that a bigger population could make China more powerful internationally. That is not a moral justification to increase any country's population.
Some claim that the one-child policy had no significant effect after 1981. Others claim that continuing it reduced the birth rate even more. Those claims cannot both be true.
Now that Chinese are becoming somewhat prosperous — which they deserve, as everyone does — China is starting to drive worldwide production of some goods, much as the US and Europe do. That is part of why we are exhausting our planet. We need to reduce the Earth's human population to achieve sustainability.
So we need to reject the idea that the population must not fall.
Shoshana Zuboff gets the point that the question of "who owns data about you" is a distraction — such "ownership of data" is inadequate to restrain surveillance capitalism.
She also gets the point that "consent" is merely a formality for the people who don't have the moral strength to say no. (You and I do not need to be so weak!)
She does not seem to be aware that a nonfree program is almost surely a surveillance device.
The UK revoked Tauqir Sharif's citizenship for going to Syria and setting up a noted humanitarian aid organization.
As usual, the government refuses to show him justification, let alone give him a trial so he can confront them in court. That adds up to two separate injustices: exiling a citizen, and punishment without trial.
His daughter, born a UK citizen too, has been effectively denied citizenship too because he is not permitted to apply for a passport for her.
The point where Senator Warren's plan to "break up" surveillance platforms falls short is when she proposes a "level playing field" for the competition to surveil us.
To say "may the best corporation win" in surveilling us is to get distracted from the real issue. What we need is to stop anyone from playing that game.
Mélenchon, the leader of what remains of France's left, calls for replacing the EU treaties that impose neoliberalism.
I support this.
US citizens: call on the US government to drop its latest subpoena against Chelsea Manning.
If she holds out for the maximum 18 months, she will be hit with half a million dollars in fines. I don't suppose she has the money to pay that, or that she would agree to work to get the money to pay that.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Bank of America and SunTrust to stop financing private prisons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How factory farms and corporations swallowed the America's family farms.
They have done more than take over farms; they have reshaped the economy to leave hardly any space for smaller farms.
New Orleans Prosecutors Routinely Violate Defendants’ Right to Counsel to Keep Them in Jail.
The European Union is following the US's path towards low wages for millions of workers who can't quite pay for the expenses of life.
The EU swallowed the neoliberal business-controlled globalization agenda, and since then it serves the plutocrats more than the people. For instance, businesses are lobbying to weaken rules against water pollution.
They must believe they have a chance to prevail now on an issue where previously they lost.
Europeans have not found a path for making the EU democratic, and instead most now expect it to crumble.
1/4 of the West Antarctic ice sheet has started thinning, because the ice is flowing into the ocean faster than before. This means that sea level rise will proceed faster than was previously expected.
A film about a homosexual dancer has been chosen by bigots in Indonesia as a target for demonization. The director is getting death threats.
Indonesia has a tradition of gender flexibility, but now it is becoming repressive, due to severe forms of Islam spread with funds from Salafi Arabia.
Tulsi Gabbard said would pardon Snowden and Assange if elected president.
That is one point in her favor, but it is not enough to win my support.
Trucks meant to carry food aid to Venezuela were set on fire by an anti-Maduro protester's Molotov cocktail. The US news media reported that they were intentionally burned by Maduro's forces.
China continues slowly suffocating Tibet and Tibetan culture.
This does not mention the annexation of large portions of Tibet.
Perhaps the cruelest single thing that China has done to Tibet was disappearing the newly-designated Panchen Lama along with his whole family. They might be dead; they might be sentenced in effect to life in a special prison.
How about avoiding oppressive countries for your vacation?
I have a list of countries that oppress people so eagerly that you should stay away even if you are not an activist in criticizing that country. However, the set of countries that persecute critics is larger than that.
How Bouteflika clings to power in Algeria despite being almost totally an invalid.
I feel obliged to point out that having half the population under 30 indicates unsustainable population growth. Whatever happens politically this year, that growth rate will cause problems for the next decade, and different problems later this century. We need to learn to stop seeing fast population growth as a mere background fact, to stop reacting solely with concern for young people's interests in a way that ignores the need to make fewer of them from now on.
The oil-puppet wants to eliminate 70% of the funding for research into renewable energy methods.
San Francisco voted to ban the thug department from using face recognition.
In order for that to be fully effective, the city has to have a rule against providing camera videos to any organization that might do face recognition on them. In particular, to other thug agencies that are not covered by San Francisco's rule.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Uber's workers are not employees. They will have to depend on electing progressives to achieve that. In the mean time, the more we reject Uber, the more the drivers will be able to get better wages driving taxis and respecting our anonymity and privacy.
People in North Kivu say they distrust the medical workers trying to quash the Ebola outbreak of personal corruption.
Gaza will soon face hunger as US cuts in food aid hit home.
Reportedly the US government has dropped a specific surveillance program that got info on all long-distance phone calls in the US.
Does this mean the US government no longer tracks all those phone calls? It could be so -- but it could also be the case that some other surveillance agency gets more-or-less the same data, described differently, from a different place in a different way. Or perhaps surveillance agencies now have a list of 50 million Americans, including all known or suspected journalists, and track all their calls rather than all of everybody's calls.
Given these agencies' history of hoodwinking the FISA court, we could hardly trust their good will.
Defining "populism" as organizing to fight a minority accused of having taken power, a study found that populists often motivate marginalized and exploited people to get involved in politics.
Some populists attack political freedoms, but this is not unique to them. In the UK, the Tories and New Labour were hardly populists, but they have attacked political freedoms. In France, Macron has done it.
Leftist populists often do achieve something against the problem: they reduce economic inequality.
Right-wing populists will not oppose the real powerful minority, the plutocrats, so they need to falsely accuse and scapegoat other minorities. This makes them dishonest and unjust. Despite that, they may achieve some changes for the better -- but it would have been possible to do the same thing without the dishonesty and unjustice.
Senior Amnesty Figure Arrested in Indonesia for Singing Famous Protest Song.
The protest song is a parody of the Indonesian army's official song, written and widely sung in the 90s to oppose Suharto's military dictatorship. That gave way to a democracy of sorts. Prohibiting this song is almost an endorsement of military rule. I've been told that the military has been slowly taking more power at the expense of civil society.
This illustrates the danger of criminalizing "hate speech". That practice often starts out well-meant, intended to put an end to intimidation and bigotry. But it is such a handy tool for repression that it always tempts the powerful to use it for that.
A Florida thug has been convicted for killing a man who was sitting by his disabled truck, waiting for assistance.
The driver had a gun, and was waiting right next to the truck to make sure his drum kit was not stolen. But it was the thug who started the violence — without identifying himself as a thug.
The US State Department gave Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro an award for revealing corruption in Russia, and enduring threats to do so. Then it canceled the award on discovering she had published criticism of the bully.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Not Invisible Act to help get justice for indigenous women who have been enslaved or killed.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support legalizing marijuana.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
The House of Representatives has passed HR 1, which includes public funding for campaigns.
The Green Party criticized this bill, saying that the requirements for parties other than the principal ones to get any public funding are hard to meet. I think the bill should be amended about that.
A court overturned one brick in the UK's wall of political censorship, specifically in the system that intimidates students who show any interest in issues such as Islamism.
I condemn Islamism and all forms of theocratic rule because those systems violate human rights. The UK's violation of human rights is not less bad merely because it isn't theocratic.
Big Pharma, Insurers, Hospitals Team Up to Kill Medicare for All.
Scientists have found microscopic particles of nuclear fuel scattered around the land in Fukushima.
Whether these pose a significant hazard to human health is a separate question. I don't know enough to deduce the answer. It would depend, among other things, on how numerous these particles are, and how often they get into human bodies. Perhaps also on precisely how they do so.
Whatever level of danger they pose, it will continue for a long time. Uranium 235's half life is 700 million years. Unless we find a way to sweep them up, people living on Earth will occasionally ingest or inhale them.
Japanese macaques living in the Fukushima region exhibit blood abnormalities. The amount of abnormality in each monkey correlates with its level of radioactive cesium.
In addition, fetuses conceived after the nuclear accident have smaller brains than normal.
The US Census Bureau is looking to get data about each person's citizenship status from other government agencies.
If the Department of Heartlessness and Suffering already has a person's address, that the Census Bureau gets a copy would not make the person more vulnerable. On the other hand, if perse has moved, perse would be scared to give that new address to the census, thus scared to respond.
Regardless of details, the bully will spread fear of the census among immigrants both authorized and not, to achieve their goal of undercounting immigrants and biasing the census.
Billionaires and their tools are organizing to fight against whatever measures newly elected Democratic governors propose.
New EPA administrator Wheeler has put a global heating denialist on the EPA's Science Absurdity Board (SAB).
Elon Musk may lose his security clearance because he used marijuana.
In effect, the US government is proving how stupid and bullheaded it can be.
UK local governments plan to use a program with a 20% error rate to make accusations of fraud against welfare recipients.
Why not roll dice? With dice, they could easily arrange a 50% error rate.
Chicago is paying reparations to criminal suspects that thugs tortured into confessions, and teaching about the issue in public schools.
Pakistan is making a serious effort to shut down charities that support rebellion in Kashmir.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife service to protect prairie dogs effectively.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the CARE Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Massachusetts citizens: call on the state to pass the ROE act. This would eliminate abortion restrictions, most of which have been overturned due to Supreme Court decisions that are now in danger of being reversed.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to end its blacklist against campaign services that work for primary challengers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose military intervention in Venezuela.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Caitlin Johnstone: Debunking All The Assange Smears.
Salivini ordered rescue ships to pay a large fine for rescuing migrants from the sea: over $6,000 per person saved.
A cardinal reconnected the electric power for a building occupied by poor squatters, and said he would pay their electric bill. Salivini did not like this. He wants to make the poor and helpless suffer.
US citizens: support the FAMILY Act which would give American workers paid family leave.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Senator Warren's plan to break up large internet platforms into parts would address substantial parts of the problem of surveillance capitalism.
The part that it does not handle is the practice of collecting lots of personal data about lots of people. Companies can find ways to use that data together even if it is stored in different places. And the US government, under the PAT RIOT Act, can collect all the data and put it together even if the companies don't.
Ideas for resisting the loss of trust that deepfake videos may cause.
Venezuela has been hit by a nationwide electrical failure due to a problem in a large hydroelectric dam.
Opponents of Maduro say it is his fault, but give no proof. Maduro says it is sabotage, but gives no proof.
I suspect both are partly at fault: that it was caused by US sanctions combined with Maduro's bad management.
US right-wingers are using fake news to push for intervention in Venezuela.
Note, though, that Venezuela's constitution does, however, authorize the head of the national assembly to declare perself interim president and hold elections. That aspect of what Guaidó has done is not the outrage they present it as.
Sanders sought support from farming states by proposing to stop corporations from taking over family farms.
Merely enforcing the existing antitrust laws will not be enough.
Alabama has allowed a lawsuit against a woman in the name of the six-week-old embryo she aborted.
Norway's state investment fund will divest from some fossil fuel activities.
It is insufficient, but momentous nonetheless.
Teaching boys sports can be a way to teach them to respect women's rights and dignity.
It's unions that win rights for women. That calls for more than just equal pay for women. It means that no one is trapped in a specific job.
It is hard for women to maintain women's rights if they are economically dependent on men.
As Russians paid tribute to the murderous tyrant, Stalin, thugs arrested two protesters who cried out denunciation of his crimes.
Russians have plenty of reason to hate Stalin. According to the figures cited in Wikipedia, Stalin killed almost 3 million people in the Soviet Union by execution, imprisonment or internal exile, plus 5 to 10 million by avoidable famine. The 1941 German invasion killed around 10 million civilians, and Stalin is responsible for some of those deaths through his elimination of 30,000 Red Army generals and high officers in 1937. The resulting lack of competent leadership allowed German forces to advance much farther.
You don't need to be a Communist to despise Stalin for the personal treachery of killing all the other Communist leaders that he started out among. The Communist Party was repressive already under Lenin, but Stalin distilled the essence cruelty, much as the bullshitter is doing with the Republican Party today.
(satire) Scientists Genetically Engineer Lab Rat Predisposed To Think Anything Wrong With It Might Be Cancer.
ACLU: "The government cannot use the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs." But that's what the bully tells border thugs to do.
Two Boston public transit thugs have been charged with beating up a helpless homeless man.
Beatings by thugs are a lot more frequent than killings by thugs. If we want to change their culture to stop being thuggish, punishing the beatings is what we need to do.
The central problem of US politics is not "polarization" within the public; rather, that a small but wealthy plutocratic minority imposes its will against a substantial majority, of 60% to 90%, of the public.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to publicly hold thug departments accountable for the deaths of people they are holding prisoner.
(I reject there emotionless term "custody" for being held prisoner.)
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the rebuilding and healing of Puerto Rico.
Picking up trash at home while black: Boulder thugs found a black college student sitting in front of his house, armed with a trash picker and a bucket, and called for backup to harass and menace him.
This incident did not go as far as some: they did not shoot him or arrest him. But he must have feared that they would. It was a clear example of racism, since they had no non-racist grounds to bother him at all.
Boulder deserves a thug chief who will recognize that racist thugs are a far bigger danger to the peace of the city than picking up trash around your home.
These smaller incidents are far more frequent than killings. That makes them a good opportunity to teach thugs to be less thuggish. Frequent small punishments for small wrongs have much more teaching effect than big punishments for the occasional big wrongs.
The ACLU reports that students are over 3 times more likely to be arrested in school if a uniformed thug is stationed in the school.
This is not a controlled study; we cannot be sure that the assignment of a thug to the school is responsible for all of that disparity. We can be sure, though, that having a thug handy means more arrests, more students pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline.
It is also clear that having a thug to punish students even for little outbursts or indiscipline is no substitute for having nurses, social workers and psychologists to help them.
The US needs to pass a law against using nuclear weapons except in retaliation for nuclear weapons.
This could indirectly discourage other countries from first use of nuclear weapons against the US.
The bully has ordered that the US will no longer say how many civilians it kills with drone bombings.
That will facilitate concealing the truth.
The UK, by contrast, has claims that the over 4,000 casualties of its air attacks against PISSI included just one civilian.
More precisely, it says that it has identified just one civilian. Any other civilian casualties are unidentified, so we are invited to pretend they did not exist.
Evgeny Morozov: "Breaking up the tech giants, having them pay a fair share of taxes, making better use of their data are all necessary but, alas, insufficient conditions for effective social — not just individual or institutional — transformation."
Morozov calls for "Rebel Tech" which would overturn the current dominion of technology, which locks the current plutocratic system in place. Free Software is the original Rebel Tech, and any effective solution has to start there.
The European Union is developing robot drone border guards.
They are meant for borders, but once those robots exist, it will be hard to prevent them from being used in every city.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Uber and Lyft pay their share of social security and medicare.
Australia proposes to build a large new coal power plant. This would be a global disaster.
One endangered bird, one of whose crucial nesting areas is near the proposed site of the power plant, may protect the whole world from this power plant.
Italy is making thousands of refugees homeless by destroying their shanty towns.
A lot more Central Americans are crossing the US border unofficially to ask for asylum, now that official border crossings arbitrarily refuse to let them apply.
There are some kinds of respect we should give to everyone, but refraining from insulting them is not one of those.
Sad to say, many European countries are not much better — for instance, France.
Republican saboteurs are working to block, and undo, protection of endangered species.
Here are some species that are in particular danger now.
The logic seems to be that if you can wipe out a species it will never get in your way again.
For some teenagers in the US, Nazi clowning is a silly fad. They don't know anything about what Nazis really did. This ignorance makes them vulnerable to learning antisemitism and racism.
"Going contactless is gloriously convenient — for all the wrong people."
Finally, someone outside our community gets the point! The conclusion, "Let's use cash more," is not as firm as my response, "Don't be tracked — pay cash!", but it is the first step in that direction. To keep our freedom, we must choose freedom over convenience.
Nearly everyone in the UK still carries cash to use it for certain purposes, but the systems for people to get cash are rapidly being eliminated in many places.
"Incredible Moment": Impoverished Mali to Give [Gratis] Healthcare To Under-Fives.
The movement for women's rights in China is spreading despite the state's repression.
The US deportation thugs specifically surveilled activists that opposed the bully, hoping to deport them.
The US held a nuclear war game in 1983, but its use of encrypted messages and readying actual nuclear forces led the USSR's leadership to think it was a real attack.
The war game included firing a single nuclear missile at Kiev, as a "signal". The outcome of the game was a general nuclear war that, we now know, would have caused a nuclear winter and destroyed civilization.
The multinational mining company Glencore funded since 2017 an international anti-environmentalist campaign to protect coal mining. It included trying to get dirt on organizations such as Greenpeace and 350.org to try to weaken them, as well as false accusations.
They seem to work with a group of planet-roaster Australian politicians who set up the "Mon-ash forum". Is Mon ash as toxic as coal ash?
There is no room in a democracy for companies powerful enough to do things like this.
Democratic Rep. Bustos, head of Democratic Party fundraising for congressional candidates is attacking Medicare for All on the usual false grounds of its cost.
Her position, in effect: "We can't afford 32 trillion — we must insist on paying the 50 trillion that the current system will cost."
Most other Democrats in the House of Representatives are still taking the plutocratist side. We need to try to replace them in 2020 with progressives.
Plutocracy in the US is crushing essentially all rural communities.
"Financial uncertainty, disappearance of their social systems, lack of access to basic services, isolation, and emigration."
The right-wing politicians that have done this distract the people of those communities by demonizing scapegoats, and via religion. Meanwhile, as they drive more people out of those places, ever tinier fractions of the US get to elect a senator.
In the 1980s, when Democrats were not yet plutocratists, it was the Republicans elected by rural America that helped banksters take away most family farms.
The UK government is hardly trying to repair its errors of kicking out people with valid right to live and work in Britain, even though its own deletion of records was at fault.
Such a pattern of behavior does not happen by accident. It results from a basic attitude of prejudice. I conjecture that setting up the official policy, officially named the "hostile environment", taught the relevant departments an attitude of hostility towards anyone whose situation was in the slightest way irregular.
It seems that everyone involved with welfare benefits was taught the same kind of attitude towards people who received benefits. It's not just that the system's rules demanded that people who couldn't walk go up stairs for required meetings or face fines. It's that the people employed as chips and cogs in the system were taught to see them as would-be cheaters and treat them like enemies.
The only truly pragmatic approach to avoiding climate disaster is one that has a chance to do the job.
Ocasio-Cortez may be right that Pelosi could not achieve more by pushing the Green New Deal now. But she should not denigrate it.
Thugs violently attacked protesters in Sacramento, and journalists covering them. The protest was against the thugs' rush to kill Stephon Clark.
If America Can Find $716bn for the Military, It Can Fund the Green New Deal.
Adders in the UK no longer need to hibernate — it no longer gets so cold. But when there is a cold snap, this can kill them.
I thought the adder population was decreasing because deforestation was eliminating the log tables they need in order to multiply. ;-}.
We should be open to the idea that a person's gender identity is significant for certain purposes, while per genetic and developmental background could be significant for certain purposes. One area where this may be useful is dividing sports competitors into classes.
Dividing sporting competitions into classes is a way of compensating for systematic differences in bodily strength or size. In many sports competitors are classed based on sex, but not always only that: boxing has classes based on weight, because otherwise the heavier boxers would have an inherent advantage.
Perhaps we could handicap each sport based on certain pertinent body measurements -- for instance, for running, leg length and/or lung capacity. This could potentially do a better job than sex-based classes, or gender-based classes, or prior-sex-based classes, and do it without reference to sex or gender.
There would be no reason to fuss if you took drugs that gave you longer legs, or bigger muscles, if your handicap took account of the effect.
Global heating has cut off Isle Royale National Park from the Michigan mainland, blocking local wolves from interpreding with mainland wolves and resulting in an excess of moose.
The so-called "balance of nature" is often very fragile. It often readjusts to a change with a plethora of other changes, sometimes bigger than the first change.
Bernie Sanders talked about his personal history. He knows all about the poverty, and the plutocratic system that magnifies it.
US citizens: support the bill to pay low-wage contractors the pay that they lost during the federal government shutdown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Scientific Integrity Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bully's "emergency" request for more money to make refugees suffer.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Copenhagen's planned new "floating silicon valley" will, alas, not really float. It will be made of low-lying islands.
If it really floated, it might last out the coming century.
Plutocratist governments in the UK have sold 10% of the territory of Britain out of public hands, mostly to businesses.
When looting the state, privatizers are not limited to property than can be carried away. They loot what's nailed down, too.
The Theranos medical device fraud was founded on a US patent issued for an application that consisted of "aspirational science fiction".
This was not an aberration. The US patent office takes the assertions in the application for granted. It gets paid per patent application, so it keeps its customers (patent applicants) happy by not scrutinizing them much.
We would be better off without any patent system.
Plutocratists in the European Parliament tried to rush the vote on the automatic copyright filters directive, so as to hold it before the March 23 public protest against it.
They were thwarted.
An Indian record company got a copyright law blog removed from Google's search engine by filing a false DMCA takedown notice.
In theory, there is a punishment for intentionally false takedown notices. This provides little protection, perhaps because it is very hard to prove that any particular false takedown notice was intentional.
I have not read that copyright law blog, but I can tell from its name that it promotes confusion between copyright law and other unrelated laws by lumping them together under the bogus concept of "IP".
The article does a disservice to moral thought by referring to copyright infringement as "pirated material". Piracy means attacking ships; it is very bad. Sharing is good. Let's not refer to the two by the same word.
Most Democrats in Congress have cosponsored a bill to eliminate the forced arbitration requirements that companies impose on customers and employees.
An interview with Tiina Jauhiainen, who helped organize Princess Latifa's escape from Dubai and was with her when they were captured, at sea near India.
Were their captors real Indian coast guard troops? Did Modi cooperate with this?
Fracking in Pennsylvania correlates with an increase in kidney and urinary tract infections that caused hospitalization.
The infections can't be causing the fracking, so the fracking must be causing the infections.
To protect planetary health, we must eliminate fracking. There is no room for it in our carbon budget. Damage to the health of many individual humans' health is an additional reason.
Racism in the UK comes mainly from the lower middle class, not from the poor people who supposedly have been harmed by immigrants.
The poor people have indeed been harmed, by Tories.
Big European banks are in a scandal for moving lots of money belonging to Russian oligarchs into secret tax havens.
The Tapanuli orangutan, identified last year as a distinct species, would probably go extinct if a new dam is built. A court just approved the project in a narrow-minded decision which ignored this issue.
The IRS has adopted a rule which would deny tax-exemption to organizations that campaign to legalize drugs, or to reduce the onerous conditions on state-legalized marijuana sales.
These decisions should not discriminate based on what cause an organization campaigns for.
Iran will cancel some secondary aspects of the non-nuclear deal, because Europe has failed to protect it from the damage of US sanctions.
However, it will not cancel the core of the deal.
Some Uber drivers have to sleep in their cars to work in San Francisco. They can't afford to live near that city, on Guber's measly pay.
Russia and Turkey are bombarding Idlib, and have destroyed 12 medical clinics.
The US is almost the global champion in the fraction of people that deny the fact of global heating caused by humans.
The party of Nelson Mandela has become known as the party of corruption.
All South Africa's presidents since Mandela came from that party, and each of them (perhaps aside from Ramaphosa) was a disaster.
It is standard practice in Argentina to deny abortion to girls who have been raped, by delaying for months until an ordinary abortion is no longer possible.
To avoid global heating disaster we need to reduce the amount of stuff people buy. With today's wasteful, ad-driven system, there is plenty of room to do this without causing any actual hardship.
Countries must not banish citizens for becoming inconvenient, and human rights such as the right to a fair trial must not be limited to citizens.
The US is looking at ending its intervention in Afghanistan. Will it learn anything about whether to intervene elsewhere in the future?
I was in favor of the intervention in Afghanistan, at first. I thought victory would be easy and would bring Afghans peace, under a less oppressive rule than the Taliban's.
Things in Afghanistan went bad after the US invaded Iraq (for no valid reason at all). Perhaps Afghanistan would have turned out better if the US had focused on Afghanistan and not started an unnecessary and unjust war elsewhere. I thought so, but there is no way to be sure.
Whatever the US does now, it will not attain all the goals in Afghanistan we would wish for in our dreams. Or perhaps any of them. We should not criticize a plan to end the war merely for that.
I recommend Novel Without a Name, by Duong Thu Huong. It portrays a North Vietnamese officer who fights grimly for victory despite great suffering, the loss of his connection to life, and the aristocratic arrogance of Communist officials. At the end, as he participates in the capture of Saigon, he has lost everything. The book is informed by her experience serving as a singer and nurse for North Vietnamese troops fighting in South Vietnam. Vietnam does not publish her books nowadays.
The US exit from Vietnam was indeed abandonment without honor. However, honor alone is not enough justification for subjecting a country to unending bloody war. All in all, it was good that Nixon ended that war, even the way he did, even considering how corrupt and repressive the Vietnamese government is.
Afghans will, I think, be better off if we don't force continued war on them.
If other Afghans hate the Taliban's rule enough to keep fighting of their own initiative, I think we should support them. But it has to be their decision, not our imposition.
(satire) FAIR issued a statement Monday condemning the American press
for only referring to … jihadist Hoda Muthana as "bride of
[PISSI] soldier." [FAIR said that] "Ms. Muthana is an accomplished
[PISSI] member in her own right, having
I use the name "PISSI" to avoid defaming the Egyptian goddess or the
English river by using their name to refer to a group of violent
fanatics. And to reject the group's claim that its newly constructed
ideology truly represents Islam.
Armenia is looking at letting Huawei convert
Yerevan into
a "smart city". For "smart", read "snoop".
Amnesty
International accuses
Maduro's forces of murdering protesters they had arrested and
beaten up, and faking signs of a "gunfight".
Expanding
and increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit could lift most poor
Americans out of poverty.
'Only
the Beginning': Oakland Teachers Return to Classroom After
Week-Long Strike, But Vow to Build on Victory.
A
satirical suggestion to the fencer: invite China to build a wall
on the US-Mexico border. China has plenty of experience with building
walls.
The proposal fails to mention another argument in favor — that
China has plenty of experience with surveillance and repression.
The article is amusing as mockery, but not as a serious suggestion.
Contracting to China would not protect the ecosystems and
border-dwellers that the wall would destroy. The surveillance systems
would be turned against US security afterward.
What we need is not a cheaper and well-built wall. We should not have
a wall there.
Sanders says he expects the DNC to run the nomination process
evenhandedly in 2020, but the corporate right-wing media will attack
him with various
would-be self-fulfilling
prophesies of defeat.
When the plutocratist media say we can't win, I recognize that as a
sign that the plutocrats really wish we would give up. Which means it
is time to fight!
Meanwhile, please join me in appreciating the important gift that
Wikileaks gave to democracy in the US by reporting the bias of the DNC
in 2016. That is what led to the reform about superdelegates.
Plutocratist Democrat Governor Cuomo of New York
is trying
to prohibit minor parties from running the same candidate as a
major party — a practice that has been traditional there for a
long time.
The Green Party campaigns for other states to allow "fusion voting".
A
study shows the importance for children of being read to by their
parents, even as old as age 10.
If plutocracy didn't compel parents to work two jobs, they would find
it easier to do this. And it would reduce the family stress that can
hurt a child in many ways.
A large
study found
no relation between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Alas, I think that the anti-vaxxers will pay little heed to scientific
results that disagree with the views of their cult. The corrupt,
fraudulent
study from the 1990s
is the study they believe, and a thousand studies correcting the
falsehood will just bounce off of it.
Some Democrats in Congress
have pledged
to wind down US involvement in the unending local wars around the
world.
California Keeps a Secret List Of Criminal Cops. The attorney general
claims that it
is illegal
for reporters to keep a copy if they have one.
That
is UK-style
repression,
and fighting the repression is even more important than kicking out
the criminals.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interviewed
about her
political strategies.
It is interesting that she supports Pelosi, saying that Pelosi could not
feasibly do better given the existing forces in Congress than what she
is doing. Whatever Ocasio-Cortez says is worth thinking about.
US citizens:
call
on corporate "charities" to stop supporting hate groups.
US citizens:
tell the
FBI to stop its investigation of fictitious "Black Identity
Extremist" and release the documents about that investigation.
Humanity
Must
Save Insects To Save Ourselves, Leading Scientist Warns.
In 2017, Burma
jailed journalists two for reporting about government
involvement in crimes against the Rohingya. Now they have been
released.
It's good they were released, but we must still condemn the government
of Burma for its repression of journalism.
Burma is not alone in this. The US government did something similar
when it jailed Chelsea Manning. And now it is trying to attack
journalism even more deeply by prosecuting Julian Assange. That is as
if Burma were trying to jail the executives of Reuters.
US citizens:
Tell
Facebook to fire its Koch-funded "fact checkers".
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Harassment and Subjugation to stop spying on
those protesting against its immigration policies.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to support the Equality Act.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter and senators to block US war with
Venezuela.
To sign without running any nonfree software, use the
Salsalabs workaround.
US
citizens: Tell
the FDIC to stop the mega-bank merger of SunTrust and BB&T.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the
US: call
on the governors of New York and Pennsylvania to protect trans
people in those states' national guard.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US and Salafi Arabia allied with the forces of corruption
to kill
a proposed European blacklist for countries that disguise money
from taxation.
This might be one good reason for the UK to leave the EU: to be able
to set up such a blacklist on its own.
The Vatican
will examine
the records of Pope Pius XII to judge his dealings with Hitler,
and particularly with Hitler's murder of 6 million Jews and a million
other civilians.
If the conman loses the election and tries to hold power by force or
lies, how will
we defend
the Constitution?
Facebook requested, even occasionally demanded, mobile phone numbers
from its useds in the name of "security",
then treated
them as personal identifiers for lookups and advertising.
Since two-factor authentication requires a Stalin's Dream device, I am
excluded from all digital services which demand two-factor
authentication. MIT administrative services do this, so I cannot talk
with them on line.
In September MIT demanded that I take an online course about sexual
harassment; although I don't teach classes or even meet
undergraduates, they treated me like a professor on the "be
overcautious at every opportunity" principle. But I was unable to do
so until MIT arranged to let me log in on an MIT kiosk terminal and
bypassed the two-factor requirement for me.
After only 1C of
heating, devastating
heatwaves are sweeping the oceans in many parts of the world.
These kill off species such as coral and kelp that many other species
need in order to continue. Humanity's supply of seafood, already
reduced due to overfishing and heat of the water, will tumble.
Europe's
Forests Threatened
by Biodiversity Collapse, Warn Campaigners.
The EU has adopted well-meaning policies meant to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions by
encouraging burning
ethanol from corn
and burning
wood.
These practices are harmful, but the EU has been unable to
amend them.
Award-winning Egyptian journalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid has been a
political prisoner for over 5 years. He was given a typical Egyptian
trial for political prisoners. Starting now, he is being allowed to
leave
jail during the daytime.
I cancelled a planned speaking trip to Egypt just after the coup. I
urge people not to visit Egypt until the country becomes less
repressive.
Albert Woodfox writes
about 40
years in solitary confinement in Angola State Prison.
License-plate readers have
been proliferating
across the US, making it nearly impossible to drive around cities
(and even some small towns) without your movements' being recorded.
They are now used by companies to hound poor people, as well as by
cities
to fine
poor people.
It could also come in handy against heroic whistleblowers.
I am sure things are much worse today than what was describes in that
article from 2016.
This tracking is a building block for a Chinese-style "social credit"
system. If we want to avoid that bad end, it is not sufficient to
regulate how the data collected are used. We need to
make most
of those cameras disappear.
Regulating use of the data might achieve that end, if the regulation
entirely precludes the usage that was funding the cameras. Otherwise,
it's inadequate.
29 parents that US immigration prisons deported away from their
offspring have
been able
to apply for asylum.
Interviews
with young US climate activists.
Some US conservatives are now calling the death
penalty "big
government screwing up."
It is true that government activities meant to do good sometimes
backfire and hurt people.
With businesses, by contrast, no backfire is required. They hurt
people because they can get away with it. Our most effective tool to
stop
this is
the government.
Citizens of Denver: vote yes on initiative 300 that
will legalize
sleeping while homeless.
A UK Green MP points out how legislators, even while recognizing the
coming climate disaster, cling to attractive policies that would keep
emissions high. To avoid disaster we must
go beyond
what is "politically possible", so we need a "climate emergency".
Many coal-fired electric
plants pollute
groundwater with toxins from coal ash.
This is in addition to the carbon dioxide
and radioactive
fallout they emit into the air.
The reason Mohamedou Slahi asked for a passport is so he
can travel
for medical treatment for the lingering effects of the torture
that the US imposed on him.
Some say that the US armed
forces harbor
thousands of white supremacist terrorists planning assassinations,
or mass murder.
I think some right-wingers hoped for this result all along.
Perhaps including the conman. They do not want to permit
democracy to take power away from them.
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence gives former soldiers an
opportunity to talk about cruel and criminal acts that they witnessed
or committed in the occupation of Palestine. The Israeli government
is making
every effort short of direct violence to shut it down, because it
falsifies the official myth. Israelis, Americans, Europeans, are not
supposed to have any concrete idea of what the occupation is like.
An
interview with Martin Guerri, a CIA analyst who predicted that
internet organizing would destabilize power structures by denying
elites their spheres of control over information.
I think Guerri underestimates the influence of demagogues. It is true
that the bullshitter appealed to a few preexisting hates and desires
of right-wing Americans in order to come within voter-suppression
distance of victory. But those people were not totally unscrupulous
at the outset. Many of them would not have openly countenanced and
protected baldface lying and casual violence — not then. The
bullshitter transformed them from indignant citizens into a mafia-like
hate gang.
Meanwhile, the scientific elites that we need to trust —
including climate scientists and vaccine developers — are
getting dragged down, too.
New Orleans
has reduced
homelessness by 90% by working assiduously to give homeless people
homes.
It costs money, but not as much as you would expect, because it saves
money on dealing with medical problems and harassment by thugs. The
main obstacle to lasting success is that the failure to build
affordable housing in the US generates more homelessness.
The
EFF explains how US antitrust law is ineffective for internet
platforms because it is blind to the harmful consequences of
concentration there.
This critique is not deep enough — it accepts the idea that
massive surveillance is a mere "cost", rather than
a threat
to human rights and democracy.
More generally, the basic approach of US antitrust law is ineffective
in general.
I've proposed
a system to replace it.
The Ring (now Amazon) doorbell camera is designed so that the
manufacturer (now Amazon) can watch all the time. Now it turns out
that anyone
else can also watch, and fake videos too.
The third party vulnerability is presumably unintentional
and I suppose Amazon will fix it. I do not expect Amazon
to change the design that allows Amazon to watch.
Amazon bullied Seattle into retracting a tax increase by threatening
to abandon expansion plans there. Seattle caved in, but Amazon has
cancelled
the plans anyway.
Amazon is not merely an snooping abusive monopolist. It is a cheating
snooping abusive monopolist. You shouldn't trust Amazon to keep a
deal unless you get your benefit in advance.
This joins a host of other
reasons for refusing to buy from Amazon.
I urge Seattle to reinstate that tax. In the long term, we need to
teach these companies that we are the boss.
The University of California system
has refused
to resubscribe to Elsevier journals.
The cause of this decision was something shallow — disagreement
about price. The UC system lacks the courage to reject paywalled
scholarly journals in order to put an end to them. Nonetheless, this
could pull a big brick out of the paywall system, as
I've called
for since 2001, and moving
to free/libre
scientific publishing.
The Dakota Access pipeline company lost its SLAPP lawsuit in federal
court, so now it
is suing
in a North Dakota court.
North Dakota has given plenty of indication of being in the oil
industry's pocket.
Pelosi Says Barr Committed a Crime by
Lying
[to Congress] about Mueller Report.
It looks like the House of Representatives Congress getting ready to
declare Barr in contempt of Congress, and try to lock him up.
I wonder whether the conman will send some other armed force
to prevent that. That would amount to an attempted coup.
Cruise Ship
Quarantined
Off St Lucia Coast over Measles Case.
The ship's owner is disreputable, but it does not seem to be
responsible for the measles outbreak.
Gaslighting is typically associated with domestic relationships, but
it is
part
of the bullshitter's technique too.
British journalists who published based on leaked documents about how
killer thugs were protected were
charged
with stealing the documents, then given bail on conditions of
secrecy. This amounts to repression of the press.
Record high temperatures in February
would
not have happened if not for the global heating that provided the base
for them.
Only a fraction of the UK public recognizes it is a harbinger of
disaster, plus a few members of Parliament.
Tax options for US states to
reduce
inequality and fund important activities.
If you don't have a lover, how can you prove you are really
homosexual? How can you prove that to a country that is
seeking
any excuse to deport you?
A Missouri abortion-sabotage law has been
upheld
in the first court; one Planned Parenthood center has been blocked
from performing abortions. This leaves one operating abortion clinic
in the state of Missouri.
An
interview
with a Lebanese member of Hezbollah.
56% of students polled in the UK reported that they had experienced
"unwanted
sexual behaviour". That is a very broad class. At the upper
limit it includes rape and violence, which are grave.
However, there is no obvious lower limit to what that could include.
Winking too often? Staring for a few minutes from a distance?
A request for a date from someone you don't want to go out with?
The high fraction could mean only that the line is drawn too low.
If we want to deal with the severe problems, mixing up violence with
minor annoyance and everything in between is not a useful approach.
Morozov: "The left
needs
to get radical on big tech — moderate solutions won't cut
it."
I've been proposing a
radical
and adequate solution for years now.
James Hart Stern, a black American, infiltrated a US Nazi organization
and convinced them to hand over control of it. He now intends to
move
it away from radicalism.
A few decades ago, that might have made a tremendous difference. My
understanding is that things have changed: in the extreme right wing
today, specific organizations are of diminished importance because
they often make new ones. His success will still be an improvement,
just not a tremendous one.
Proving that the organization planned violence at Charlottesville have
the useful effect of disproving some lies.
Revealed: Facebook's Global
Lobbying
Against Data Privacy Laws.
Trafficked Chinese women were treated as slaves in Florida brothels.
They have been rescued, but they don't feel rescued: they are
afraid
of being deported.
Could we encourage customers to report when prostitutes might be
enslaved by not punishing them?
Pakistan's peace gesture
did
not end the fighting between Pakistan and India.
The occasionally racist Alabama editor who recently advocated the KKK
and lynchings followed up by simply
asking
his black employee to take complete charge of the newspaper.
It seems that she forgave him for these racist outbursts because they
resulted from brain injuries. I suppose he was aghast on seeing his
own words in a period of lucidity, so he sought immediately to make
sure it would never happen again.
It is sad when this happens to people, but he did what the situation
required.
Undertaxation of the rich and powerful promotes economic inequality,
naturally. Turns out it
promotes other
kinds of inequality, too.
Arundhati Roy comments on Kashmir: local people's support for those
fighting for independence from India is
a more
important fact than Pakistan's outside aid to them.
Pakistan has at times supported terrorism in India, but attacking a
column of
soldiers is
not terrorism,
it is simply war. To note this does not
mean taking a side in the war; it only rejects inflation of the word
"terrorism" to include all fighting.
The Climate
Strike's open
letter.
Netanyahu to
Be Indicted on Bribery, Fraud, Press Tampering: Israeli AG.
Uri
Avnery reported
on these accusations for years.
Over 100 [Bangladeshi] Workers Claim to Have Been Sacked After
Protesting About Low Wages at Factory
That Makes
"Girl Power" T-Shirts.
Stephen
Unger's list
of political priorities.
I agree with them more or less, though not exactly the order of them.
Iran's foreign minister's
resignation was
not accepted; perhaps it was a ploy to get visible confirmation
that he still has backing from the top for trying to continue the
nonnuclear deal.
The succession of world orders, since the 1300s, has arrived at a
world order set up by the US after World War II. It has good and bad
aspects. Now it is tottering, and a Chinese world
order could
replace it.
I question some of the points — for instance, Wikipedia's list
of empires seems to include any state that called its ruler "emperor",
even Oman, Korea, and Vietnam. Most of them are not what we would
call "empires". The 1600s were full of wars, just like the 1700s,
including the 30 years' war which devastated central Europe worse than
anything since the Black Death.
But the overall argument may be valid nonetheless.
Michael Cohen's testimony provides
some evidence
for five felonies on the part of the conman.
The person most likely to crack the security on a
car is
its mechanic.
The most likely entity to use the car systems against the owner or
driver is
the manufacturer
or an insurance company.
A dam project in Guinea would swamp the wildlife refuge with the
largest population of western Chimpanzees
— 1500
of them. This would be a substantial reduction in the population
of that subspecies — perhaps as much as 9% — and large
populations preserve more genetic diversity much more.
The fact that a Chinese company has been hired to build the dam seems
like an incidental detail to me. The government and its funding
sources made the decision to build there; they alone could cancel it.
However, the choice of that Chinese company means that China is likely to
pressure not to cancel the project.
The French Academy has made a big mistake, allowing job-title words to
have masculine
and feminine forms. This introduces a problem of
gender-neutrality into a grammatical area where there wasn't one.
Although each of these names for jobs and professions has a gender,
it is merely grammatical, and does not make an assertion about the
gender (if any) if the person referred to. For instance, "un
professeur" can refer to a male, a female, someone who is neither or
both, or someone unknown — just like the English expression "a
professor".
The use of "une professeuse" for female professors imposes a
gender-based choice. Which form do you use when you don't know
someone's gender? How can you refer to a professor of non-binary
gender?
The word "personne" in French has feminine gender, regardless of who
it refers to. I, a man, am therefore "une personne" in French. You
are "une personne", too. That says nothing about my gender, or yours.
It is just like "a person" or "un professeur".
I hope the academy does not recommend the use of "un person"
for males.
The gender-neutrality
problems of English are fortunately much smaller.
Chemical Weapons Inspectors Confirm Gas Cylinders Were Fired at a
Housing Block in the Deadly Assault [in Douma] in April 2018.
The dealmaker proved inept at diplomacy with Dictator Kim.
Prosecution of Assad for his crimes against humanity is still
possible.
Congressional Republicans are now the soldiers of the conman's mafia.
When one of them attacked Cohen for lying, his retort was clever. I
suggest an alternate one that I like better: "So you should nominate
me
for president."
Global War on Drugs Could Harm Efforts to Abolish Death Sentences.
[Republican congresscritter] Gave Pro-War Speech on Yemen — by
Reading
Saudi Lobbyist's Talking Points Verbatim.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to permit the IRS to run its own online service for
filing your tax returns.
My view of this issue is fundamentally different from that of the
petition. When it says "free", it means "gratis". I don't care
whether I pay a small fee for using some computing system to report
my tax information. What matters to me is whether I have to
run any nonfree software, and whether I have to show any personal
data to a company.
This is not the typical kind of anonymity issue, because my tax return
data must, of course, go to the IRS. That's the point of it. But
there is no reason any company should get to see it.
However, if the petition convinces Congress, and if the IRS runs its
own server for filing tax returns, the task of making it
freedom-respecting will become much smaller.
US citizens:
Tell
the New York Commission of Judicial Conduct to remove Judge
McClusky from his judgeship, for giving such a light sentence for
rape.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to vote on Medicare for All bill.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts to collect demographic statistics about drivers
stopped by thugs on the street.
This will document the racial bias of that activity.
US citizens:
call on
Rep. Lowey to cut the funds for ICE (the deportation thugs) and
CBP (the border thugs).
Everyone:
call
on AMC Theatres to offer overtime pay, holiday pay, and paid sick
leave to all its employees.
In addition to global heating, humans are changing many aspects of
Earth's
chemistry and systems. Many of the changes are dangerous.
Coping with the new Obscene epoch requires figuring out how to
navigate them all together.
A court ordered the UK to drop the law that imposes great penalties
against landlords unless they enforce immigration law very strictly.
Lichen are destroying the famous stone statues of Easter Island.
New York Governor Cuomo is going all out to plead for Amazon to come
take New York's money.
The thugs of Vallejo, California, made a practice of approaching black
men who were asleep in cars, with their guns drawn. It was only a
matter of time before something would startle them in the act, and
they would shoot immediately, effectively murdering their chosen
victim. The murdered man was musician Willie McCoy.
US
citizens: Urge
Senators to co-sponsor the reauthorization of the Violence Against
Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
for allowing prisoners to vote.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Tell
the Houston Independent School District to end discriminatory
dress codes.
Some aspects of this dress code discriminates against Muslims and Jews,
but all aspects are unjustified bullying.
I don't, however, understand what they refer to when they say
"shaming". Why would pushing people around provoke shame? What I'd
expect is indignation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Activists pressured Senator Feinstein
into dropping
an inadequate substitute for the Green New Deal.
The effort to annul Hoda Muthana's US citizenship was started by Obama
and continued
by the bully. Regardless of who does it, or from which party, it
is dangerous and wrong to try to make US citizenship (or citizenship
in any country) precarious.
Mauritania denied
Mohamedou Ould Slahi a passport arbitrarily at the request of the
US.
The US does not want people who travel who are guilty of being victims
of US torture.
Making luxurious toilet paper for the US is unsustainable: it involves
cutting
down 48000
square miles of Canadian forest every year.
Canada really should put a stop to this, but Canadian politicians are
pressed down by the hand of the US government, which amplifies and
leverages the thumb of business.
At a rally of the Christian right-wing group Patriot Prayer, some of
them got
into a fight with counterprotesters. Portland (Oregon) thugs
arrested some counterprotesters, but let members of the Christian
right-wing group Patriot Prayer go.
If the thugs had gone easy on both sides, after breaking up the fight,
that would have been fair and might have been wise, assuming there was
no serious damage. But there is no excuse for preferring right-wingers
for whom intimidation is a political stance.
The supporters of the conman won't be shocked by proof he is a conman.
That is what they support him for — though they have engineered
their minds
to refuse
to recognize it.
The age of the image is not the conman's creation. Its earlier form
is described in The Image, by Daniel Boorstin: media pseudo-events
which have nothing interesting except the extent of their publicity,
celebrities that are famous for being famous. These now continue in a
more blatantly foolish form in the person of Instagram influencers,
commercial social networks that people want to be used by because so
many others are, and Republicans, maneuvered step by step into supporting
any lie as long as it serves their cult leader.
US labor unions are skeptical of the Green New Deal. They fear it will
lead
to fewer union jobs.
The plan already includes measures to stimulate employment, so they
are being overcautious. However, the crucial point is that they are
judging against a fictitious alternative, continuation of the current
situation. That will be impossible for more than a decade, as the
increasing effects of global heating will harm all aspects of life,
including the jobs of their members.
Global heating is now coming on fast, will affect everyone, and will
be worse than what we thought. It could be much worse than the Great
Depression. The unpredicted effects
may dwarf
the ones we now anticipate.
Ocasio-Cortez:
"Climate
delayers aren’t much better than climate deniers."
Under an ultimatum from nature, delaying action is effectively denial.
We
Can't Afford to Keep Our Failing Healthcare System. But We
Absolutely Can Afford Medicare for All.
Dalit immigrants to the
US face
caste prejudice here. It does not get left behind in India.
Most Indian immigrants are from upper castes,
and treat
Dalits with contempt.
Brandeis University
is adopting
a rule against caste discrimination even though that is not
included in antidiscrimination laws.
The WOMAD UK music and dance festival says that the UK's "hostile
environment" is making it difficult to bring performers from other
countries. They don't want to bother with a visa application to be
sent to functionaries who have been told to
seek any
possible excuse to say no.
(satire) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly panicked Thursday
as he walked through
the abandoned
streets of Pyongyang…
Guaidó tried to launch a coup in Venezuela, but it got no substantial
military support so it led only to protests by his supporters.
The US supports the coup attempt.
Guaidó and his supporters want to be the local overseers of foreign
companies. Maduro wants to graft off the government. Neither one
offers Venezuela a good future.
Facebook asked its new useds to give it their email passwords, and 1.5
million did so.
It then used the password to read each zucker's list of email
contacts without telling per.
Scribd was compelled to delete the Mueller report, by a false DMCA
takedown notice.
As for Scribd itself, that is a site you shouldn't use, because
viewing anything there requires running Javascript code which is
non-free, and thus not to be trusted.
That is a tangent to the point of this article, but we should
not legitimize Scribd or its practices.
Ecuador has shown no grounds to arrest or prosecute free software
developer Ola Bini.
Apparently the state wanted a good scapegoat and found him.
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.
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.
So the Democrats should have responded by demanding more funds
for Planned Parenthood, in exchange for funds for the wall,
and offered to meet the bully half way.
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
Return to Main page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2019 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
