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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Racism of the London cops: two brothers, who are black, are suing because they have been searched on the street 25 times.
China had an outbreak of Covid-19 in a factory which uses Uighurs in forced labor.
I would not consider 180 people a "large" outbreak, though. Not by US standards. But there is every likelihood that more people are infected in the region now.
*Nearly 1,000 instances of police brutality [and other injustices by thugs] recorded in US anti-racism protests.*
Belarusian dictator Lukachenko had several important political prisoners brought to one room, then went there and talked to them for hours. He also occasionally listened.
*The greatest tragedy of England's second wave is that it wasn't inevitable.*
Bogus Johnson made the decisions, and he made them badly.
A very large bank that operates in Australia and New Zealand has announced a policy of coal mining and burning coal for heat or power. Existing debtors with heavy involvement in coal will have to make plans to change.
The extreme planet roaster party is calling for a boycott of that bank.
*Despite Court Ruling and Drift Concerns, EPA Approves Use of Dicamba Products on Soybeans and Cotton for Five Years.*
The London thug department was investigated in regard to stopping people to search them with no specific evidence of a crime, and told to change its practices to do that less.
Ralph Nader proposes an informal 14-day waiting period after election day, during which candidates should neither claim victory nor concede defeat.
I am not sure it is a good idea.
To fully defeat fascist trumpery, we need to punish of the crimes of today's fascists. "Going easy" on the leaders of criminal movements doesn't help defeat them.
The Principles for Student Data Privacy and Equity are good, as far as they go.
However, they are not strict in standing up to a pressure to let companies get their paws on students' classroom or medical data when the pressure is because "This is the modern way, and all the other schools are doing this."
If the principles say you can't use Zoom or Microsoft Teams or anything comparable, they will be adequately strong.
(satire) *… new parents Lindsey Conway and Michael Rhodes reportedly freaked out Tuesday upon learning that babies can often live up to 100 years. …Why don’t they tell you all this before you bring them home?*
*Polling Shows 82% of [US] Voters Believe 100% Clean Power Should Be Primary US Energy Goal.*
Over 70% support switching to 100% renewable electric generation by 2035. That's starting to approach the kind of intensity that may avoid global disaster.
The wrecker's maskless virus-spreading rallies are substantially effective: half of them have been followed by local increases in Covid-19 infection.
Poor people in the US often don't vote. They may be demoralized and cynical about the political system, or think that not voting is a protest.
There is a lot to be cynical about in the US political system, but the only way to make it better is through the system itself.
(satire) *Lines Come To Standstill Outside Wisconsin Polls After State’s Official Voting Pen Rolls Under Vending Machine.*
*From simple location-tracking apps to buttons that measure biometrics, college campuses have amped up surveillance in response to Covid-19.*
The article lacks a sharp conception for judging whether these systems are just or unjust and necessary or unnecessary, and for separating those characteristics from painfulness.
The conditions Vassar students had to sign up to must be very painful, and I might have taken a year off rather than accept them. But they are not unjust and may well be necessary to open the campus safely.
The PathCheck app's actions, assuming that the article describes them fully and accurately, seem to be legitimate provided the college makes proper commitments not to let any company or other organization handle any of the data nor to save it nor use it for anything else. But the fact that it is a nonfree app running in a mobile phone makes it unacceptable.
I'd apply the same criteria to reporting one's symptoms daily. That is ok, provided one doesn't have to do it via a portable phone or a nonfree program, and the school won't let any other organization handle the data, or save it for long.
(satire) *Following over two decades of incarceration, Louisiana Penitentiary inmate Reggie Clark, a man falsely imprisoned for 24 years, was finally granted permission Wednesday to serve out the remainder of his sentence in the prison’s new Wrongly Accused Wing.*
*Doing Nothing About Climate Emergency Could Cost More Than All the Wealth in the World.*
That indicates the calculation is meaningless. Because if we're talking about the total destruction of humanity and a lot more, it is impossible and unnecessary to measure that in economic terms.
Which supports the point that the article is making: it is idiotic to say that avoiding total disaster is "too expensive". And foolish to ask, "If we save the world, will I still have a job?"
The bully's hatchet man in charge of Voice of America has officially eliminated its editorial independence, making it the Voice of the US President.
Studying the challenge of a global Green New Deal: how to structure it, how to fund it, and what won't help (nationalization and GDP-reduction).
One flaw of the study is that it adopts the targets of the Paris Treaty, which are too little and too late. But I expect that the overall conclusions will be the same with stronger targets.
*South Korea vows to go carbon neutral by 2050 to fight climate emergency.*
This has the two usual flaws: a pledge about 2050 makes it easy to postpone action until 2030, and "carbon-neutral" invites reliance on offsets that amount to self-deception.
*The world's banks [which are heavily funding extinction] must start to value nature and stop paying for its destruction.*
Two Philadelphia cops shot and killed a black man, Walter Wallace Jr. But it does not seem that they rushed to kill.
He walked towards two cops while carrying a knife. They did not shoot immediately; they shouted at him to drop the knife. This is not a fabricated excuse; the article says it was visible on video.
The article does not say how far he was from them when they shot. Perhaps they didn't need to shoot. Perhaps they could have used a taser instead of a gun. Perhaps they could have tackled him and grabbed the knife, or talked him down. Perhaps medical personnel could have talked him down.
I think the death was probably avoidable, but that doesn't mean those cops had no grounds to shoot.
St Augustine, Florida, floods frequently and can expect almost a meter of sea-level rise by 2060.
I think it would be wiser to move the city's landmarks to high ground, even though that may be in Georgia.
Right-wing cult leaders deal with weakness by scapegoating someone in the name of some religious cult. In Poland, the targets are women that are carrying dead fetuses.
*100 out of [the total of] 229 [UK local government] councils have used or are using automated decision-making programmes, many without consulting at all with the public on their use.*
*Eight people have been charged with conspiring to work on behalf of China’s government in a plot to coerce a Chinese family in the US to return to their home country to face charges.*
If the charges were real corruption, supported by real evidence, and if China gave accused people fair trials, I hope the US government would extradite the suspects when asked. But it seems that the case is political.
Repressive Islamic rulers are revealing their agenda of world-wide censorship.
The sad thing is that they have inflamed the fanaticism of their followers to the point that these ravings win them more support at home. (The wrecker in the US is similar to them.) But it is totally wrong to appease them with any significant concession.
Rather, we need to teach people to recognize that Islamic rule tramples the human rights of everyone, Muslim or not.
The Supreme Court ordered Wisconsin to stop counting postal votes at the end of Tuesday, so Democrats are wisely calling on voters to drop them off rather than mail them.
Amazon has a special store for selling "eco-friendly products".
This is sadly ironic, because buying them via Amazon is not eco-friendly. And that's in addition to all the way Amazon harms society.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to avoid endangering the southern resident orcas.
Counting recent burials shows Yemen has a massive outbreak of Covid-19.
If the US had stopped intervening, and let the Houthis win the civil war, Yemen would have no trouble now getting ventilators, medicines and medical-quality masks for doctors.
Qatar thugs took all the women off a plane waiting to fly to Sydney and strip-searched them, trying to determine if any of them was the mother of a newborn found dead in the airport.
More women were taken off other flights, to other countries.
Why was Qatar trying so hard to find the mother? I speculate that the purpose was to punish her; right-wing religious extremists often like to punish women.
An experiment captured juvenile ambon damselfish and fed microplastics to some of them and not to others. Then it released them in various areas of the Great Barrier Reef.
The ones that ate microplastics took more risks, and those released in degraded parts of the reef were all eaten within 72 hours.
One of the scientists says that this is because after the fish eat what feels like enough, part of what they ate was microplastics, and the part that was food was not sufficient. This kind of problem results from having large quantities of microplastics.
A few years from now, we can expect the whole reef to be degraded, and fish species that microplastics make careless could go extinct. Their extinction will be due to a combination of human actions: those that cause global heating, together with the making of plastic that we can't recycle.
US citizens: call on the Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse any order by the wrecker to interfere with the election.
*A Well-Armed and Unpatriotic Far Right.*
Studying the factors that will aid or hamper the US in resisting a Republican effort to steal the election.
I implore Protect the Results to set up and advertise a way for people to receive instructions after November e without having to run any nonfree software (including nonfree JavaScript code on web sites). One way is to use Telegram. The organization most likely does not read this site, so if you have any way to communicate with it, please pass along and support this request. You might also offer to do the work of setting it up, if you know how.
The US should require everyone to wear as mask while in public places.
There are people who, for medical reasons, cannot wear masks. The law must permit them to do what their health requires. However, it should require people with a non-obvious disability that precludes their wearing masks to carry and show a doctor's note to demonstrate that, in order not to be fined.
Poll watchers in the US must follow strict rules. You can't just show up and say, "I want to watch, so let me in."
*College students make a last-ditch effort to make Election Day an academic holiday.*
I am in favor of this.
*UK mobile phone firms to be banned from selling locked handsets.*
This doesn't alter the basic injustices of mobile phones — that the phone network tracks them and they can be converted into listening devices — so it would not convince me to carry one. But it does eliminate one common secondary nastiness.
*Despite CDC Moratorium—and With Help From White House—Corporate Landlords Have Gone on Eviction Spree.*
I think we should have a law putting a real-estate tax on corporations owning more than a few rental houses, or more than a few apartment buildings, and likewise on the corporations that own them, etc.
Iran's UN ambassador: *"The eight violent wars that the United States initiated or joined since 2001, under the rubric of war on terror, have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, countless broken societies and families… and unprecedented extremism."*
I would guess that these include Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran has also intervened to some extent in those countries during this period. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran intervened much less violently than the US. In Syria, Iran intervened more strongly and violently than the US. In Yemen, Iran intervened by proxy, which the US ls also doing, but the US carried out direct bombings before that.
If Democrats win the election, and if the Republicans that have seized the Supreme Court don't impose a Republican victory, the Democrats must legislate to undo the dirty court tricks.
Increasing the size of the court would do the job, but decreasing it might be even better. Imagine reducing the court to six judges, based on seniority: all three of the wrecker's appointees would be pushed off.
The constitution says that they remain federal judges for life. But they can be judges in lower courts.
The same method could be used to remove many of the wrecker-appointed judges from federal appeals courts.
Most jails in the US use one of five companies to provide medical "care" to prisoners, and those companies do a measurably bad job.
These companies are successful because they charge less, and they reduce costs by cutting corners — for instance, by being slow to approve permitting a prisoner to be seen by a professional. This is the standard problem with privatizing all or part of a public activity.
Therefore, I suggest that contracting a public function to a private activity should be forbidden by law if the activity involves doing things specifically for, or to, individual members of the public.
The fraction of people in the UK displaying antibodies to Covid-19 has declined by 25% in three months.
This could mean that those people have lost their immunity, but that is not certain. The article explains the details.
*I was Corbyn's chief of staff. We acted decisively to remove Labour antisemites.*
I believe her, because Corbyn is the one person in UK politics that I know is honest and committed to justice. We know that plutocratists in the Labour Party fought tooth and nail to prevent him from winning an election with a progressive program. We know that Jewish supporters of Corbyn rejected the claim that he tolerated antisemitism, while many of those that claimed he did had opposed him before, for other reasons.
History suggests that we Americans can thwart a coup, if we are prepared to declare it a coup and oppose it before it can dig in.
The wrecker's chief of staff said, "We're not going to control the pandemic."
You might interpret this as a frank statement of a hands-off policy of letting the virus spread however it may. But that would be a mistake. The wrecker's actual policy is to spread Covid-19 as much as possible, and the statement was therefore a lie.
*More than 70 science journalists [31]have signed an open letter warning that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's [32]close ties to the fossil fuel industry and [33]refusal to publicly acknowledge the established science behind human-caused [global heating] make her an enabler of "the ecological crisis of our times."*
The Republicans, bent on sabotaging the election, rushed her onto the Supreme Court on Monday. Their haste to do this before election day demonstrates that their intention is for the Supreme Court to throw the election.
A progressive woman writes to a neighbor that voted for the conman in 2016, but with whom she has some values in common, looking for a meeting of the minds.
Carbon capture and storage at significant scale may actually be practical now.
It is not guaranteed that scaling it up to this extent will work without a hitch. If it does, it will help avoid global disaster. However, if these two projects succeed in burying 27 million tons of CO2 per year, that will be a small fraction of the total annual UK emissions, which amount to around 450 million tons per year.
Consolidation in the meat industry enabled giant, Chinese-owned Smithfield to use its market power to whipsaw its smaller giant competitor, Maxwell Foods, into bankruptcy.
Each bankruptcy is likely to lead to an acquisition which will increase the consolidation and make the situation worse.
We need to make the big companies spit up into many smaller companies, in this field and all fields.
Sea-level rise is eliminating beaches that used to be economic hubs for tourism.
It will get worse and worse unless we stop our greenhouse emissions quickly. But don't attach substantive importance to the Paris treaty, which the wrecker is symbolically withdrawing the US from; it was never more than symbolic itself, since it was undermined in advance by planet roasters.
The Tory Party is fighting desperately against public demand to give lunch gratis to children whose families are poor.
One minister said that this refusal is a matter of principle. Which principle, I wonder? [Irony] Perhaps the principle of stinginess? Or maybe it is, "Each family must sink or swim on its own — no helping others!" Or maybe, "Never help the poor! If the government helps a poor person once. people will expect the government to give the poor help every time they need it."[/irony]
*'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find.*
This could be a disastrous tipping point.
(satire) *Armenia, Azerbaijan Announce They Will Only Agree To Ceasefire That Allows Them To Still Shoot Missiles At Each Other.*
An NYU research project asks useds of Facebook to volunteer to run a special browser extension so they can report data about the ads Facebook shows them. Facebook has demanded NYU stop this research on the grounds that it constitutes forbidden "bulk data collection".
*The researchers discovered that numerous political advertisers were violating Facebook's disclosure rules, yet the company has been letting it happen.* People speculate that that's why Facebook wants to shut down this research.
Scientists at GM and Ford knew in the 1970s that their cars and trucks were contributing to dangerous global heating. Despite this knowledge, they campaigned against efforts to shift the Earth off that path.
(satire) *Veterans Affairs Secretary Struggling To Profit Off Of Underfunded Department.*
Utah will run out of intensive care capacity in a week or two. At that point, hospitals will have to choose which patients to treat and which to give up on.
People who glibly talk about herd immunity as a "solution" are opting for this. When the wrecker decided to spread Covid-19, he decided to make this happen.
(satire) *This is obviously a bittersweet moment since we've had such a wonderful longstanding relationship with the moon, but we’re all just really excited to see what it gets up to with a powerhouse planet like Jupiter in its corner.*
Verkada makes face-recognition camera surveillance systems. The employees at work are subject to this surveillance themselves. A few male employees used the system to watch attractive women and chat to each other about them.
Verkada reacted firmly to make sure nothing like that will happen again in that company, at least not for a few years. But the company will continue its efforts to convert society into a place where you are always being watched, and you don't even know by whom.
*The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.*
Chileans have voted to replace Pinochet's constitution. The process of drafting a new constitution will be contentious.
Throwing rechargeable batteries into ordinary trash can start fires.
*How Covid-19 laws are being used to silence garment workers in Burma.*
Australia is also gratuitously repressing protests with Covid-19 as the excuse, and so is the UK.
Population declines for insectivorous birds in the Amazon hint at a big drop in the insect population, even far from civilization.
This could be very dangerous.
Islamist bullying's veiled threat to France: refusing to yield to censorship demands is "unwise".
People have a right to practice their religions, or other cultural practices, but that does not convey the right to gag criticism, satire or mockery of those practices.
It can be painful to stand up against bullies, but what is truly unwise is to yield to them. Vive la France ! A bas la répression Islamiste !
A British librarian swells with pride at the increased provision of freedom-corroding ebooks to readers.
Isn't it a pity that they are not aware that they are helping to subjugate people. That is true for most librarians in the US, too.
You can help educate them by bringing up this issue when offered an ebook "loan" — and then say, "Rather than accept the injustice of a commercial ebook, I'll wait till I can borrow a physical copy."
Bravo to France for standing firm against bullying from some Muslim governments that demand France censor using criteria they would impose.
The murdered teacher was not, as it happens, endorsing the controversial cartoons' mocking of Mohammed; he said explicitly that they were examples for a discussion of freedom of speech. To murder people for mockery would be an outrage, but he was murdered for disobedience to would-be tyranny. He deserves the medal he was posthumously given.
France is not entirely consistent in its defense of freedom of speech. It prohibits stating certain opinions on some historical questions, such as whether Turkey carried out a genocide of the Armenians. Since I am not in France, I can freely say that I believe it did. But people in France, whatever their views on the question, cannot speak freely about it.
Even though the view permitted by France agrees with the view I freely hold, I follow the late Hrant Dink in rebuking France for prohibiting views that disagree with his view (which is also mine). France ought to repeal that law.
France's censorship also includes criminalizing insults against officials (even mild ones). That too is wrong.
These flaws do not detract from the exemplary importance of France's resistance to the decades-long global Islamist censorship bullying campaign. You don't need to be perfect to be a hero for a good cause.
You also don't have to try to threaten or bully others to be a good Muslim, or at least so say millions of Muslims.
If you dislike statements that criticize or mock certain views, you don't have to make them, or look at them. But anyone that tries to impose censorship on people, or countries, is fighting against everyone's freedom.
In the end, the tyranny of "you may not offend us" is hardly different from any other tyranny.
Amartya Sen reports on India's practice of arbitrarily labeling people as "terrorists" and putting them in prison without trial. Ironically, people who are committed to Gandhian nonviolent resistance are especially likely to be called "terrorists".
Sen eplains that authoritarian governments tend to equate "anti-government" with "anti-national".
Pope Francis is setting a bad example on one issue, by holding maskless meetings.
I agree that he should set a good example by insisting that everyone wear masks.
*European support for [right-wing "populist"] beliefs falls, YouGov survey suggests.*
Let's not forget that the original populists campaigned to increase people's democratic control over government, which had important achievements.
Let's reclaim that word for its original meaning.
*Colorado Voters Could Be First to Pass Paid Family Leave by Ballot Measure.*
The state will pay the worker on leave, so people who have been compelled to be "independent contractors" won't be left out.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor AOC's bill to ban use of tear gas in peacetime.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Nestle to give some US water sources back to the public.
US citizens: join a "protect the results" rally on Nov 4, the day after election day. The aim is to demonstrate that the American people will not tolerate discarding the results of the election.
The official protest organizing site doesn't let visitors find the places and times of rallies without running nonfree Javascript code. But this page presents all the necessary information without any Javascript. It is in alphabetical order by two-letter state code; within each state, events are listed in numeric order by zip code.
The page initially contained some "virtual events." There is no way to participate in those in the Free World, so I hope they will be deleted.
To understand why this issue is important, watch this 14-minute video about the injustice of nonfree software, then read this article about how that issue applies to Javascript code sent by web sites.
I would like to ask the protest organizers to fix their site so as not to require Javascript, which can be done simply by making a link to the page that I have linked to, but I know of no way to contact them. If you can contact them, please ask them to take a look at this and to make their site freedom-accessible — next time, at least.
The Drug Policy Alliance presents its framework for decriminalization of possession of drugs.
*[The US] Postal Service Quietly Awards $5 Million Contract to DeJoy's Former Company.*
*The corporate criminal element has infused NPR with millions of dollars of donations.* And it shows.
I got fed up with NPR in the 1990s when I repeatedly heard one of All Things Considered's main commentators attack Bill Clinton from the right.
(satire) *local undecided voter Jeff McNealy reportedly crouched inside a concrete drain pipe Thursday and remained completely silent as he waited for a convoy of political analysts and reporters to pass by on the road above.*
Proposing a salary cap for executives.
This is more complicated than it seems, because executives get paid through bonuses and stock options, and through jacking up the stock price on the shares they own. A serious scheme needs to deal with all of those.
Is a salary cap better than a 90% tax bracket?
There is still a tendency in major US newspapers to hide from recognizing the ouster of President Morales, a year ago, as a coup.
That may relate to support for the coup from powerful elements in the US — whoever got the OAS to make a hasty and flawed claim of election fraud. This was done so well that at first I didn't realize it was false.
Then I saw an article which explained the election system and results and showed there was no fraud.
*Big tech accused of avoiding $2.8bn in tax to poorest countries.*
That is in addition to the far larger amount of tax cheating that they do to countries full of billionaire wealth, such as the US. All of these countries suffer from a lack of funds for governments to use for important purposes.
The laws that stop Americans from escaping unpayable student debts don't cover the 9% or so which are uninsured predatory high-interest private loans, and these are especially likely to wreck Americans' lives.
The conman's deal with Foxconn to "create jobs" in Wisconsin was a con from the beginning.
Nigerians are protesting to demand justice against a special thug squad that has "turned into banditry."
*Sanctions punished the Sudanese people, not their rulers. The US extracting compensation is one more hypocritical act.*
It reminds me of the indemnity that Haiti had to pay to France for its independence. Placing sanctions on a country is not the same thing as a claim to rule a country as a colony, but the resemblance is there nonetheless.
Protesters in Belarus are not giving up, and say that their next step is a national strike.
Amnesty International criticizes governments for blocking a proposal in the World Trade Organization to waive patents on treatment for Covid-19. The governments which opposed it are evidently under the power of plutocracy.
Approving that proposal would have been a step forward, but the WTO's patent rules are unjust all the time — for poor countries especially, but ultimately for all countries.
The parts of the TRIPES agreement (Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science) concerning copyrights and patents ought to be abolished.
The wrecker's latest slogan:
Make America a Grave Again.
The Tories want to take away people's right to challenge bureaucrats' decisions by going to court.
That way, a bureaucrat could shaft you illegally and you'd be screwed.
If Democrats win, they should quickly rebalance the Senate by splitting the populous states.
Dare I suggest merging some of the states of low population?
50 countries have signed the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons, making the treaty officially valid.
Portland antiracist/antifascist protesters have asked a court to declare the city in contempt for disregarding a court order not to use various sometimes-maiming weapons against the protesters.
*Documents: Powerful Pro-Pesticide Groups Shaped U.S. Push to Weaken International Oversight of Medically Important Antibiotics.*
Use of antibiotics in agriculture breeds resistance to antibiotics, which has the potential to kill millions of people. Resistant bacteria may kill you or me.
But what do pesticide companies care? There will still be plenty of people who want food to eat.
*Universal Mask-Wearing [in the US] Would Save Nearly 130,000 Lives by Spring 2021, Study Finds.*
It appears that trans women do not ever harass anyone in women's bathrooms, but there are several cases where trans women (and cis women erroneously taken for trans) have been harassed or even attacked by people who object to their presence in women's bathrooms.
Thugs equipped with dogs are especially dangerous to people they encounter, especially people who are black and male. Once a dog attacks, it can easily maim.
*Armed men outside St. Petersburg polling place said [the wrecker's] campaign hired them.*
The official campaign organization claims not to have hired them. It might be lying, as usual. Or perhaps that is true in a narrow sense, if they were hired by one of his unofficial campaign organizations.
US schools and companies setting up totalitarian tracking systems already.
Students are already organizing to fight them. Fight hard — this will make the difference between freedoms and tyranny.
Faux News and the New York Post are owned by the same plutocratist supporters of extremists, and they work together.
*New York Post Insiders Slag ‘Very Flimsy’ Hunter Biden Stories.*
Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU, warns that the ACLU today has retreated from its defense of free speech for all views. This leaves a gap in the defense of freedom, just as plutocratists are even more powerful and ready to exploit that gap.
The US should provide good medical care to everyone, including the poor. I advocate a universal national medical system, recently often called "Medicare for all." I don't praise Obama's weak system much, but it is better than nothing, so I am glad that lawyers work to defend it. But it should not be the ACLU that does that legal work; some other organization that focuses on the rights of poor people to government aid should do that.
The ACLU's defense of Obama's medical insurance program is an instance of what I call "unionality" — where an organization that was set up to focus on one particular cause starts to support various other causes because the same people tend to support them. If you judge by the short term, it may seem great to have additional organizations supporting all the causes you favor. In the long term, it risks alienating the supporters of one cause who disagree with the other causes.
The article contains a powerful presentation of why anyone who wishes to change an unjust system needs freedom of speech, and would be a fool not to defend it to the utmost.
(satire) *Trump Threatens To Leak Debate Video Online If Moderator Keeps Asking Unfair Questions.*
(satire) *Miffed Biden Warns Trump’s Undignified Behavior Could Cost Him Cabinet Post.*
*Constitutional Law Experts Endorse Democrats' Bill to Create 18-Year Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices.*
In the long term, this might be an improvement, but I like better the ideas for making appointments non-partisan.
*Only a Reckoning With the Disastrous Legacy of the So-called 'War on Terror' Can Heal the United States.*
The domestic political dysfunction mentioned in the article is, I contend, plutocracy and its consequences — and the imperialist militarism of the past 20 years is one of those consequences.
An international meeting intended to reduce greenhouse emissions from ships is considering rules so weak that they would do harm (by pretending that the issue was being addressed).
On the factors that cause blacks in Chicago to be more likely to catch Covid-19 than whites, and more likely to die from it once they get it.
Sri Lanka's president is changing the constitution to give the president power over all activities of the government.
*Half a million Americans could die of Covid by end of February, study forecasts.*
If Biden wins the presidency, I suppose he will try to curb the spread of Covid-19, but it would take till the end of February for this to have much effect.
*Trump to Seniors: Drop Dead.*
Young Thais demand freedom of speech, even the freedom to criticize the monarch. In their protests, they defy extreme repressive threats such as life in prison for some kinds of nonviolent protests.
*10 Years After Iraq War Logs, It's Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers.*
*Trump Sets Up Pharma Billionaires for Coronavirus Payday.*
Fikile Ntshangase, an activist campaigning against extension of a coal mine in South Africa, was assassinated by a team of four killers.
The company Dataminr tries to scan all posted tweets to find anything suggestive of possible violent intent, and report it to the thugs.
Contrary to its name, the company doesn't seem to do this by data mining. Instead it hires a lot of people to make off-the-cuff judgments, which naturally reflect racist presuppositions and generate biased results. (I call this phenomenon BIBO, for "Bias In, Bias Out.")
Identifying "gang members" by questionable criteria has a long and horrible history in California prisons.
Poland has almost completely banned abortions.
Right-wing extremists have basically taken over the country.
*Thousands join Poland protests against strict abortion laws.*
Better antitrust enforcement creates an economic stimulus.
Big banks siphon billions out of US states and cities by underwriting their bonds. The Federal Reserve could eliminate this drain by lending to the states and cities directly.
Proctorio is using a lawsuit to silence someone who criticized its software. The company claims that its training videos are "confidential information".
This dispute doesn't even the deepest issue here: that the software is nonfree, which is itself an injustice, and that it snoops on the student who runs it. It is sad to see people treat that as normal and surrender to it.
*How Workers Can Help Defeat a Trump Coup.*
The RIAA, which represents the unjust power of the three big record companies, has made Github delete the source of youtube-dl.
They won't be able to wipe it out, though.
I think this takedown notice was invalid, because youtube-dl is not mainly used to do forbidden copying. It downloads things that are publicly available on youtube, and the benefit it provides is to do that without running the unjust nonfree software that youtube tries to send to the user's browser.
Thousands of conspiracy cultists marched in London, trying to make each other sick and endangering passersby as well by not wearing masks.
I would sympathize to some extent with their objections to rigid lockdown rules, but they made it clear that we cannot trust them to exercise good judgment to avoid spreading disease.
Here's an example of the absurd rigidity with which the UK handles the matter of avoiding transmission.
*‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority ‐ UK study.*
*Why the Republican Party Wants to Destroy Labor Unions.*
*We spent $2 trillion to keep Americans afloat in the pandemic. Putting a similar amount toward the climate crisis could be even more pragmatic.*
*Biden is Finally Talking About Fossil Fuels — That's a Good Thing.*
The bully's latest act of sabotage: claiming the power to arbitrarily fire many federal employees — in effect forcing them to participate in any sort of injustice or else quit.
*New York's Strand bookstore appeals for help.*
I visit the Strand every time I go to New York City. But it may be a long time before I got here again. Wherever you live, please do not buy from Amazon. If you want to order a book, go to a local physical bookstore to do it.
A local physical bookstore may even allow you to pay cash in advance anonymously and take away a receipt to claim it later. I did this in August in the Boston area.
*Small increases in air pollution linked to rise in depression, finds study.*
Half a million Sunnis in Iraq are still forced to live in refugee camps.
*Countries who kept their response to the pandemic in-house have fared much better.*
*What Bolivia Can Teach the United States About Democracy.*
I wonder if Bolivia can prosecute Elon Musk and other people in the US for backing the coup. Even if we expect that Bolivia will never be able to bring him to justice, this could teach the world a useful lesson.
*Media Outlets Owned by Billionaires Very Quick to Tell Readers Taxing the Rich Is Bad Idea.*
Taxing the rich better must include changes in how transfer of ownership, trusts, etc., affects the taxes to be paid.
Oregon voters: support Measure 110, which will decriminalize all drugs.
Biden said he would "transition from the oil industry", then later said he didn't mean it.
Since Massachusetts is not a swing state, I voted for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
2/3 of the terrorist attacks and plots this year were by right-wing extremists.
A right-wing extremist has just been charged with travelling to Minneapolis to carry out a false-flag attack, burning a thug department building.
He is not the first right-wing provocateur to be charged over violence at Black Lives Matter protests this summer. I wonder if we will find that provocateurs were chiefly responsible for the violence. They fooled a lot of people, including me.
(satire) *Trump Campaign Reminds Supporters To Make Voting Intimidation Plan.*
*'Stop Financing Climate-Wrecking Companies': Campaigners Light Earth on Fire Outside European Central Bank HQ.*
RSF: Thugs have arrested TV reporters and fired rubber-coated steel bullets at them, showing not the slightest bit of shame over these crimes.
Suing the bully and other officials for illegal voter intimidation.
The bully is considering budget cuts for medical programs in cities, because people there don't support him.
A bill to protect US ocean areas from many causes of damage, and rebuild damaged ecosystems.
Boston thugs felt annoyed by the antifascist woman who squeezed a little rubber piggy towards them. They tried to get her fired, by suggesting people boycott her employer because of her.
They pusillanimously asserted that they were not calling for a boycott, merely suggesting the possibility of not buying from there because of her. The difference is too subtle for me.
Then the thugs found out she had not worked there for years. Oops.
*Here's How Meatpacking Corporations Could Protect Workers From COVID-19—and What They're Doing Instead.*
We should not allow so much concentration in that industry, or any other industry.
(satire) *… local psychic Rosemary Shanley confirmed Thursday she was already sick of James Randi’s specter haunting her place of business and ragging on her from the afterlife.*
(satire) *… local farmer’s child Owen Morrison, 10, was reportedly forced Thursday to slaughter a pumpkin he had spent all season caring for.*
The Supreme Court decided for voter suppression when it blocked polling places in Alabama from collecting ballots from people waiting near the door in their cars.
This voter-suppression measure originated from state officials who ordered that no county in Alabama could do this. A lower court blocked the order; the Supreme Court reinstated it.
This will affect white voters as well as black voters. However, the Republican Party is now a mad cult, so Republican voters may refuse to believe that there is any danger.
Taiwan's civic platform, g0v, is effective at helping the people make important policy decisions. It helps people come to agreement.
The software it runs on is free/libre.
(satire) *Dr. Ron Craig informed patient Tom Stossel Wednesday that the weird lump that appeared on his neck in July was in fact nothing he can afford to worry about.*
The DEA proposes to eliminate the crime caused by prohibition of drugs by more vigorous enforcement of the prohibition of drugs. Some drugs degrade and damage whoever uses them, and should not exist, but trying to wipe them out by repression causes more harm than the drugs themselves.
This, by the way, is the reason I do not advocate simple blanket prohibition of nonfree software. It is corrupting, harmful and subjugating, and should not exist — but trying to enforce prohibition of attractive things which are harmful tends to amount to repression.
The Australian state of Victoria will investigate employers with a view to punishing those that if they fail to help employees avoid catching Covid-19.
If the state really does this, it will be an admirable contrast with all the governments that allow employers to pressure their workers to spread disease.
*California must cut San Quentin prison population amid pandemic, court rules.*
The first organized anti-fascists fought in Spain.
Indigenous workers in Western Australia worked for wages, but Western Australia kept their wages, so it was effectively slavery.
Americans could save up to $321bn in energy costs by switching to renewable energy, including for cars and heating buildings. Plus trillions from all the unnatural disasters that this will avoid.
However, it is not the case that we can do with a smaller electrical grid just by installing rooftop solar on all buildings. Houses will still need the grid for times when the region is dark or cloudy.
The numskull is considering labeling Amnesty, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch as "antisemitic" because they have criticized Israel's occupation of Palestine. If the numskull does this, it will be so absurd that only his hard-core supporters will believe it.
Please, numskull, do it! These bogus accusations, which have typically been made against individuals and weak, obscure organizations, will cease to be plausible and will become risible instead.
Please, everyone, don't campaign to stop this. Let him fall into his own trap first, and then criticize.
And let's limit accusations of antisemitism to people and organizations that spread hatred of Jews.
US deportation thugs *'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'.*
*Glitter is an environmental abomination. It's time to stop using it.*
We should do this with a comprehensive law designed to cut down the production of plastic objects that cannot be feasibly recycled or broken down.
It's almost November and the Arctic Ocean has not started to freeze!
* Campaigners are seeking to use the UK’s Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions against Turkish prosecutors and officials responsible for arresting and imprisoning thousands of lawyers.*
A House bill proposes a step in defunding the police: federal funding for "mental health first responder units."
They would handle some 9-1-1 calls so that people who are upset, but not dangerous, don't have to face armed thugs who might get triggered and pull the trigger.
*Press Worries About a Fracking Ban’s 'Risk' to Democrats—Not Fracking's Threat to Planet.*
*The US Spends More Than $80 Billion a Year Incarcerating 2.3 Million People.* Most of them could simply be released.
Many of them are in jail awaiting trial, and they entitled to vote, but the system won't give them a way to vote.
Congress can, and should, pass a law cancelling all federal government acts and appointments made under the conman, with a specific list of exceptions of course.
This would get rid of all the extremist judges that the conman appointed, without the need to impeach each one on specific grounds.
*[The conman] had us thinking mainstream Republicans were moderate. How naive.*
*Pope Francis Signals 'Historic' Shift for Catholic Church, Publicly Supporting Civil Unions for Same-Sex Couples.*
If only he would endorse abortion and birth control, I would have little quarrel with the Catholic Church. (Though that would not constitute evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity.)
Google will provide AI to the US border thugs for total surveillance, tracking and identification around the US border with Mexico.
I have a hunch that this total tracking won't remain limited to areas close to the border. The US government, together with companies such as Anduril, must be itching to apply it to the whole US territory.
*Pakistani Shias live in terror* — they may be lynched or executed by the majority Sunnis.
*Even if Biden wins US election, time is running out to save Iran nuclear deal.*
*Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier source.*
He claims that the bully's falsehoods wiped out his career and put his life in danger.
*Croatian police accused of 'sickening' assaults on migrants on Balkans trail.*
George Monbiot: *Bypassing the NHS and handing crucial services to corporate executives has led to the catastrophic failure of test and trace [in the UK].*
A Republican official in Florida sent voters a confusing letter designed to discourage them from voting.
Analyzing the reasons for the Bolivian Socialist Party's victory, and the challenges it must face now.
*Anglo American sued over alleged mass lead poisoning of children in Zambia.*
Three years ago, obeying the orders of the bully, the US rushed to deport parents of 1030 children, without bothering to ask how to find them again. The children remained in the US. Since then, the ACLU has been trying to find their parents, but it has found parents of only 465 of the children. That's the Department of Hatred and Sadism for you.
Some of those parents may have been killed — after all, they were fleeing from the danger of violence. Perhaps, as they died, they were glad that they had sent their children to a place of safety.
But is it really a place of safety? Will the US let them stay and become citizens? Or will it deport them when they get older to a country they don't remember?
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has sued the acting king of Salafi Arabia and 28 henchmen in US court.
The goal is to "compel US agencies and officials to disclose new information about what happened to Khashoggi."
The European Parliament continued its system of payments to farm owners with only weak requirements to make farms clean up their treatment of the environment.
The fatal fire in a large London public housing building was caused by bad design choices, secretly and illegally made by the Tory-run local council, which was aiming to save money at all costs.
The council was trying so hard to save money because of squash-the-poor Tory policies.
Austerity kills in many ways, but usually it kills people one by one and there is no inquiry into the specific causes.
The owners of a Venezuelan oil tanker have kept it near the coast since Feb 2019 waiting for the US to let them pump the oil out. If it leaks, it could kill a large part of the Caribbean Sea.
Facebook bent over backwards for right-wing sites, relaxing its rules against misinformation and thus implementing right-wing bias.
Right-wing extremists have learned to lie without a qualm. That includes telling the lie that media are biased against them, as a cynical means of pressuring media to shift to bias for them.
The EU will operate drones in the Mediterranean searching for refugees in boats.
When the drone spots a boat full of people, it won't have guns to shoot them with, but what will European countries do to them?
(satire) *New Stimulus Bill Would Require All Americans To Mail Government $1,200 Check.*
252 million years ago, *the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set off a chain of events that successively extinguished almost all life in the seas.*
That rise of CO2, caused by a supervolcano in Siberia, was not terribly fast. We are now increasing the CO2 level 14 times as fast.
The article does not state an estimate for the peak atmospheric CO2 level in the end-Permian. Can anyone find an estimate for that? It would be interesting to compare that with where we are heading.
(satire) *Jason Momoa, star of the forthcoming Aquaman 2, told reporters Monday he and the film’s producers had brought in a scene double to help execute a particularly challenging facial expression required of his character.*
The wrecker simultaneously acted to spread Covid-19 and cover up how it was spreading.
During the Assange hearing, Craig Murray and Wikileaks found that Twitter and Facebook blocked their posts from reaching most of their followers.
Those sites did not inform Murray or Wikileaks, nor the people who posted about them, nor their followers, that their messages were reaching hardly any of those followers.
As regards Hunter Biden and Ukraine, there may be something fishy there, but if so it is minor compared with the plutocratist acts Biden is likely to commit overtly (and lawfully) if he wins, which in turn are less dangerous than the wrecker's practice of seizing every opportunity to corrupt and ruin.
Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) says that Facebook searches for "Move to Amend" gets a warning that the search is associated with QAnonsense. Move to Amend advocates a constitutional amendment to reverse the "Citizens United" decision.
A QAnonsense spreader smeared some museums in Berlin, and then someone smeared oil on antiquities and art in the museums.
I encourage you to visit the Pergamon Museum if you ever have the chance.
Environmentalists are suing the Department of Hatred and Sadism for harming human health and polluting the environment with tear gas.
One of the Breonna Taylor grand jurors has accused the attorney general of lying about what he said to the grand jury. He did not offer them the chance to indict for her killing.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
Vietnam appears to have prevented a second wave of Covid-19 while protecting the economy too.
*How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules.*
How Google used its quasi-monopoly power against Yelp.
It is ironic that Yelp itself is using its market power to help GrubHub cheat restaurants.
We should not try to understand this in terms of "good companies" and "bad companies". Rather, we need to prevent any companies from using their market power to get bigger. More generally, we need to make large companies split up so as to greatly increase the number of competitors in every field.
Prisoners in the UK are suffering greatly from not seeing their families or their counselors.
Bad though it is, having Covid-19 spread through the prison and into the surrounding community would be worse.
The US indictment of crackers working for the Russian spy agency GRU shows that the US is deeply monitoring their activities.
It also shows that the group's attacks have caused people to suffer and perhaps even die, in Ukraine and maybe Pennsylvania.
A wildly foolish overreaction: the New Yorker has "suspended" writer Jeffrey Toobin and is "investigating" him for masturbating while thinking his camera was turned off.
Hey, New Yorker, instead of "investigating" this mistake as if it were a crime, you should have your meetings with Mumble (freedom-respecting software which does only audio) rather than with proprietary Zoom.
A new initiative in the UK demands legalization of cocaine and ecstasy with controlled sale in pharmacies.
This would eliminate the dangers that result from black market sale: unexpected overdoses, and mixture with unknown other drugs. It would reduce drug-fueled gangsterism by taking away its most regular customers.
I am surprised and cheered to see that the former president of Colombia, Santos, is campaigning for legalization of cocaine. Prohibition of cocaine has been devastating for Colombia.
Russia has built a literal cathedral of militaristic nationalism.
A special thug unit in the UK is being formally investigated for engaging in gross collective racism and sexism in its office.
To make such talk a crime would be repressive, but we cannot let such attitudes fester among cops; they will certainly translate it into their exercise of their power.
How the US turned in 1940 to a foreign policy of trying to dominate the world, how Biden will probably ramp it up, and why the US continues it despite ever worse results.
Finally, insight about what romantic-sexual desire is like for many men.
*One of the therapists she quotes in her book, Daring Greatly, asserts, “I guess the secret is that sex is terrifying for most men.”*
(satire) *Man Hasn’t Heard Or Read Single True Thing In 6 Years.*
*At 47, I discovered I am autistic — suddenly so many things made sense.*
The EPA has adopted the airline industry's proposal for how to make air travel emit less CO2. Which means, hardly any pressure. Instead it should make requirements for reduced emissions, and convert the whole airline fleet to electric power by 2045.
*Ending Corporate Impunity Is at the Heart of a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Global Recovery.*
The largest dairy company in France is accused of dumping waste into rivers, thus killing fish and harming other species.
*US removes Sudan from terrorism blacklist in return for $335m.*
If Sudan was involved in the terrorist attack in 1998, it ought to be penalized. However, Sudan is desperately poor and needs aid. For that country to pay so much money to the US will be a great burden.
So I think a different penalty would be morally superior. For instance, leaving some of its oil in the ground.
If the conman does not hold on to the presidency, he faces lots of legal trouble.
This article does not include possible criminal charges for crimes while in office, including obstruction of justice (which Mueller found the evidence for).
I expect he will have Air Force One drop him off on Jan 18 or so in a country he expects to will him from US justice.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to push to repeal the authorization for use of military force.
It won't hurt to say this by phone, too.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
*David Hume was a complex man. Erasing his name is too simplistic a gesture.*
Australia is moving to give its spy agency the power to interrogate journalists and activists under very loose conditions. Journalists could be ordered to disclose confidential sources. Activists could be interrogated if they cooperate with any foreign allies.
Experience shows that such repression will be used mainly against those who report on or oppose the actions of the powerful.
The UK announced that Russia carried out digital sabotage of the 2018 Olympic Games and its sponsors, and was planning sabotage of the 2020 games (which did not take place, since they were postponed).
Please do not use the word "hackers" to mean "people who attack computer security." That gives people an erroneous negative impression of us hackers.
*How the oil industry made us doubt climate change.*
Ironically, the term "climate change" was encouraged so the public would not recognize that it refers to something dangerous.
Chinese diplomats in Fiji attacked a Taiwanese official, causing a head injury.
I theorize that this is a probe to see how much aggression the world will let China get away with. Fiji will probably let China get away with this, as China has bought its submission.
I think it is important for powerful countries to recognize Taiwan as an independent country — but not as the legitimate government of China — and tell China that it can either have diplomatic relations noneless, or do without.
*Revealed: chaining, beatings and torture inside Sudan's Islamic schools.*
There is a history of policies of such cruelty in Christian schools in Europe and North America.
*Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services.*
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Attorney General Barr.
The idea is that even though we know the Senate will not remove Barr from office, the impeachment will hamper the Senate from confirming Judge Barrett for the Supreme Court.
After signing, you can follow up by phoning your congresscritter.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Socialist Party won a landslide in Bolivia's election.
*Bottle-fed babies swallow millions of microplastics a day, study finds.*
We don't know whether microplastics hurt humans, and it may take years to gather the data to determine this. But it is unlikely they do any good, and it would be wise to avoid them.
*Lung cancer cases could be mistaken for Covid.* Some have been, and people can die from the delay in diagnosing the cancer.
France is investigating 50 Islamist organizations on the suspicion that they promote hatred and violence.
People who were prisoners in North Korea describe violent torture including rape, used to force confessions.
One of the reasons the US must eradicate its own torture is so that it can speak with moral authority when condemning torture by North Korea and other countries.
The US has not taken steps adequate to ensure that the CIA doesn't torture prisoners in the future. On the contrary, appointing Gina Haspel to head it was an indirect but clear endorsement of torture.
*With Zuck's Blessing, Facebook Quietly Stymied Traffic to Left-Leaning News Outlets.*
The sites that suffered were not very leftist. One example cited was Mother Jones.
*Wichita man arrested for threatening to kidnap, kill mayor over mask mandate.*
Some of the kooks who would murder because of hatred for masks are also nuts enough to say so. But we cannot expect that to protect us from all of them. We need to stop officials from inciting violence.
The company that makes James Bond films gets millions in subsidies from the UK and pays no tax in the UK, since the profit from the films is all assigned to other companies in other countries.
If the UK wants to pay, in normal times, for people to do work, why not pay them to do work that the public needs, such as medical care for the NHS and home assistance for people who are sick or handicapped?
Under my global progressive tax scheme, those companies would be treated as one entity for computing its tax rate, and the UK part would pay that rate on its gross income.
When people return products to Amazon, in many cases Amazon doesn't bother to unpack them and put them on the shelf. It puts them in the trash.
Wikimedia calls on museums to digitize their collections and to allow the digital works, when not restricted by private copyrights, to be freely shared.
Those that are restricted by private copyrights should be shared too, because forbidden sharing is better than no sharing.
*To Stop an Electoral Coup, Study What Went Wrong in the 2000 Florida Recount.*
Keep in mind that the only reason this recount was necessary is because the Republicans had cheated massively through voter suppression, as revealed by Greg Palast.
Covid-19 has provided an opportunity and excuse for many countries to attack traditional human rights on the Internet.
This is in addition to the subjugating effect of pushing people to use nonfree software.
Various crimes the conman could be prosecuted for, if he can't retain his grip on the presidency.
People are working hard to protect coral reefs from the danger of the current level of global heating.
Will this help the long-term survival of coral? It can, if we curb global heating before it goes much further. However, breeding heat-tolerance into corals would have to be done to every species and variety if it is to protect them all.
If we keep increasing the CO2 level, that will eventually kill all corals due to ocean acidification.
The failure of the UK's handling of Covid-19 is due to its disregard for poor people, who live many to a house and cannot self-isolate nor stay home from work.
*Alarming new data shows the UK was the 'sick man' of Europe even before Covid.* This is caused by greater economic inequality.
India has accused an old man of terrorism for helping poor people organize nonviolent resistance against mining companies.
It happens that the man is a Catholic priest, so Catholics are protesting his arrest.
Jailing opposition leaders has become standard practice for India's repressive right-wing government.
John Pilger: *The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange. Whose Side Are You On?*
I note that he published this on his own site. Apparently there is no newspaper which would touch it.
*In the age of Covid, sanctions against ‘rogue states’ just spread the misery.*
*Hong Kong protester 'Grandma Wong’: I was held in mainland China for 14 months.*
*The freedom to offend is a priceless commodity.*
No group should have the right to silence those who disagree with it, criticize it. or oppose it.
*[In Alaska], mountains are collapsing as the permafrost that holds them together melts, threatening tsunamis if they fall into the sea.*
There would be no time to evacuate the town of Whittier if a nearby slope slides into the ocean.
* Tax authorities find it easier to audit earned income tax credit, which disproportionately affects poor communities of color, than to target billionaires.*
The question is, what's the purpose of income tax audits? Is it to treat poor people almost like criminals, or is it to recover millions from rich cheaters?
*How the idea of overthrowing the [US] government became mainstream [among the right-wing].*
They see guns as giving them power over everyone else, and it led them into a power trip.
EFF: *Orders from the Top: The EU’s Timetable for Dismantling End-to-End Encryption.*
The plan could include prohibiting the use of free software to encrypt, or prohibiting computers that can run solely free software.
A fanatical French Muslim murdered a teacher who had presented in class a cartoon mocking Muhammad, as an example in a discussion of freedom of speech.
In response, teachers vow to teach "difficult subjects" and encourage students' "critical spirit".
Imagine if that were in the US: the student would claim that showing him the cartoon was "violence" and demand firing the teacher.
A strict lock-down has nearly finished eliminating Covid-19 in Victoria (a state of Australia), and Melbourne is starting to relax its isolation rules.
Australia is in a position to eradicate Covid-19 and keep it out, if it proceeds carefully and continues a high rate of testing.
Arguing that Victoria could have eliminated Covid-19 in 6 weeks with a more strict lockdown.
That conclusion is from modeling, and we don't have enough real experience with Covid-19 to be sure of the conclusions. But if they are valid, I think that strict restrictions for 6 weeks would be better than 4 weeks of dithering followed by 10 weeks of increasing strictness.
However, we shouldn't criticize Victoria's officials too much. Perhaps they could have done better, but they did get the job done while so many countries are messing it up.
*With the president’s re-election in doubt, cabinet departments are scrambling to finish dozens of new rules.*
Wisconsin has a high level of Covid-19, but the wrecker plans to increase it with an anti-mask campaign rally.
Salafi Arabia is escalating its war in Yemen at the same time that food aid for that country is decreasing.
*Dianne Feinstein Was Harder on Preteen Climate Activists Than She Was on Amy Coney Barrett.*
This shows the convergence between Democratic plutocratists and Republican plutocratists. I hope we get Feinstein out of the Senate soon.
Many major US store chains lobby to imprison shoplifters and keep them in prison for longer.
The UK is investigating charges that banks are committing "industrial-scale forgery" for fraudulent foreclosures.
Why wouldn't they? Billionaire banks got away with it in the US 10 years ago because Obama protected them from charges. Why wouldn't British banks try it too?
I hope that the UK shows more courage than Obama did. I hope it convicts individual banksters and puts them in prison for this.
In the US, blacks were more likely to have their homes stolen in this way than whites. That was due to the injustice of racism, one effect of which is to make blacks poorer in general than whites.
I condemn racism, for that aspect as well as others. But this matter is not about racism. The criminal banksters didn't know the victims, or what race they were. The victims were just names on a list to them. Their employers had nothing to do with making the loans to those homeowners, years before — they had bought the loans en masse.
I do not condemn the banks' giant fraud because many victims were black. I condemn it because it was an enormous crime against millions of innocent poor people. Many of them, whether black or white or other, couldn't replace what was taken from them.
The banks got away with the crime through corruption at the highest level, and that is why I keep referring to it, even 10 years later.
A UN report accuses President Maduro of Venezuela of knowingly presiding over murder and torture.
I would not put it past him.
The new prosecutor of Portland, Oregon, said he will ignore the minor charges such as "interference with a police officer" that thugs like to make to harass protesters.
In revenge, the thugs are making even more such accusations.
Releasing species from another region into the wild is ecological sabotage.
*Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests bring Lagos to standstill.*
Since the white supremacist attack in Charleston, around 100 public symbols of the Confederacy have been taken down. Over 1700 remain in place.
Calling on Senate Democrats to replace Feinstein as the leader of their contingent in the Judiciary. She pals around with the Republicans and acts to support them.
The commander of an Indonesian military unit whose mission was repression and atrocities is now the minister of the military. He has been banned from the US for 20 years, but the sadist has invited him to visit.
Biden's choice for Secretary of the Treasury is a plutocratist. We cannot expect him to do the most important things we need, such as helping to reduce fossil fuel use.
The USPS, responding to a lawsuit, agreed to reverse DeJoy's sabotage of mail delivery.
I wonder whether they will get it all fixed in the 18 days before the election. This job includes installing sorting machines where sorting machines were removed — but they destroyed the old sorting machines. The USPS could easily fail to acquire replacements, especially if DeJoy gives orders designed to cause failure.
The US has sentenced protesters against nuclear weapons to years in prison for the symbolic "damage" that they did on a missile base.
I wonder what could possibly justify keeping them jailed for years awaiting trial. There was no chance they would fail to show up for the trial, if physically capable of doing so. It would have been right and proper to release them in their own recognizance.
Plutcratist economists call unemployment "creative destruction."
In the 80s and 90s, plutcratist politicians said the solution for unemployment in the US was to teach Americans to be "more entrepreneurial". Kudlow is saying the same thing in different words. What they disregard is that starting a business typically requires an investment of capital, that investment is a gamble, and you shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Most people in the US can't even scrape together 400 dollars for an emergency; they can't afford to invest in the risk of starting a business.
Starting a business with a good chance of success also requires knowing all aspects of that business. Most people don't have suitable knowledge. And success for the business requires superiority or unmet demand.
The same Kudlow told the public in February that the novel coronavirus was no problem, while telling rich Republicans that no one knew how dangerous it was.
*As Big Oil Ups Donations to Dems, Biden Says Banning Fossil Fuels Within Next Decade 'Not Possible'.*
The FCC proposes to regulate what social (or antisocial) communication platforms can publish.
The FCC is obeying the orders of the wrecker. Some of those platforms do great harm, but the wrecker benefits from that harm, so I expect the FCC under his domination to try to aggravate the problems. However, I would not trust Biden on this issue either — nor any politician, except one with a very strong commitment to freedom of speech.
Twitter has retreated from a rule blocking people from pointing at published material that was obtained by cracking computer systems.
Please do not refer to that practice as "hacking." That insults us hackers. Please call it "cracking."
The policy Twitter has dropped was very dangerous. Even though the material about Hunter Biden in that NY Post article was neither new nor significant, in other cases the information may be very important.
*China ambassador makes veiled threat to Hong Kong-based Canadians.*
This confirms that China is intentionally using visitors as hostages.
The CDC ordered a ban on evictions until Dec 31, but the wrecker is reinterpreting it so as to help landlords chase people out sooner.
This is not necessarily motivated by a desire to kick people when they are down. Its motive might instead be to increase the spread of Covid-19; we know he wants to do that.
Russia, increasing its level of sexual repression, is trying to arrest single men who used surrogate mothers to have children, based on presuming that they are homosexual.
The government claims it is illegal for homosexual men to use surrogate mothers, although there is no such law.
*Thirty-year failure to tackle preventable disease fueling global Covid pandemic.* Said disease includes *high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and obesity, all risk factors for Covid-19.*
How to fix the problem of homelessness; how to have a universal basic income without wasting a large part on people who are well-off.
Trying to teach homeless people to use their money more wisely does not usually enable them to find and keep housing, but giving them homes often enables them to use their money more wisely.
With a well-designed progressive income tax, rich people will return as taxes a large part of their universal basic income.
The Democratic Party in many cities and neighborhoods is led by local bosses that are "crass, thin-skinned, and nepotistic," but promise to take care of their supporters' needs.
With this standard of comparison, their supporters did not find the bullshitter outrageous.
Governments are not doing enough to avoid a rebound in greenhouse gas emissions if and when we eliminate Covid-19.
(satire) *Liberal Man Worried Biden Victory Would Immediately Reignite Discussions About Having Kids.*
He doesn't need to worry. Even if we did our utmost to reduce the coming climate disaster, it would not be a kindness to give birth to someone these days.
Ideally the human population should be considerably smaller, so that we can protect nature without having to live in poverty. So if you are thinking of having no children, please go ahead!
*Sen. Warren Slams Disney for 28,000 Fired Workers Amid Stock Buyback Spree.*
The IMF urges wealthy countries to borrow to support people hurt or unemployed by Covid-19, but it imposes crushing conditions on other countries that also need to support people.
The Taliban are besieging some Afghan government forces in Lashkar Gah, and they have mined the road out of the city. Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped there.
Several suggestions for how to make appointments to the US supreme court less partisan and less contentious.
Mexico's top military official during 2012-2018 has been arrested in the US and charged with corruption with a drug syndicate during that time.
Prohibition of drugs tend to have this result.
A meeting of Republican heavyweights to discuss voter suppression was recorded. Someone said, "Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor."
US journalists are doing little to cover the idea of the Green New Deal. Most Americans only see that Republicans say it is bad, and Biden seems to agree, so Republicans attack him for not rejecting it hard enough.
*Biden has recently stated that under his leadership he would end U.S. support for Saudi military intervention in Yemen, a move supported by Congress, and reassess the current close U.S.-Saudi relationship.*
That would be a real change for the better.
US citizens: call on secretaries of state of all states not to allow private "security" heavies at polling places.
California voters: reject Proposition 22, the bow-down-to-Guber exception.
If we win on this, and eventually Uber accepts the requirement to pay its workers better, that will not make Uber (or Lyft) acceptable — it won't change their injustice to their customers. Nor the food delivery gig companies.
*Pro-democracy advocates are organizing more than 170 events [on Nov 4] in anticipation of President Donald Trump illegitimately declaring victory in the Nov. 3 election.* That's a good idea, but they have messed up the web site where they publish the details: it depends on nonfree Javascript code, and it is totally inaccessible in the Free World. I can't see even one word of the contents of their site, only a message saying "Enable Javascript." No way!
It is a shame that I can't (without sacrificing my freedom and principles) find an event near me, and neither can you, nor can I in good conscience post an urgent note asking everyone to look at the site and find an event to join.
This time, we have considerable notice — 18 days to go before Nov 4. Maybe this is enough time to correct the deficiency, rather than merely bemoan it.
If you are a skilled web developer, and you have a web site where you can make a page without Javascript, and run an hourly cron job on the net, please try it. See if you can scrape the data from their site and make a simple HTML file listing all the events, sorted in some natural way. Put that that page on your site, with a brief introduction saying what these events are for.
Then please email me about it, and I will post a reference to your curved mirror.
Senator Lindsey Graham asked for campaign donations in an interview while in the judiciary committee's meeting room. It is illegal to do that.
An experiment found that "eco" glitter, after ending up in a river, harms plants just like ordinary glitter.
We need to regulate plastic in a way that will eliminate most microplastics. Probably anything like glitter should be prohibited entirely.
Comparing the two simultaneous interviews of Biden and the wrecker.
NBC did wrong to hold the wrecker's interview at the same time that Biden's town hall had already been announced for. We can see that the wrecker's goal was to prevent his supporters from hearing Biden.
The article puts this backward, suggesting (though not actually asserting) that the wrecker's program was scheduled first and Biden's was then run alongside it.
However, it appears that the wrecker's interviewer pressed him hard for answers, and and didn't accept his usual wandering evasions.
So he came off looking very bad.
I did not watch either of them, because I did not need to. I know enough about the two candidates and I've made up my mind about how to vote, so reading these articles was enough information for me.
My recommendation is: in a swing state, vote for Biden; otherwise, vote for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
*Eyewitnesses have said that [thugs] did not identify themselves before opening fire on Michael Reinoehl while he was in his car.* It appears that they shot as soon as they had identified him.
In other words, they were supposed to arrest him, but it looks like they murdered him instead.
Reinoehl acknowledged he had shot and killed a right-wing protester, but claimed that he did so in self-defense. He was entitled have trial to present his case.
More info about the killing.
The wrecker boasted about this killing.
*'Look for Power in the Shadows': Watch Sheldon Whitehouse Shine Light on 'Dark Money Operation' Behind GOP Supreme Court Takeover.*
Various lasting debilities affect around 2% of the people who get Covid-19.
It follows that if we let the virus run rampant through the US and infect around 70% of the population, so that herd immunity stops it, we will have about 5 million newly disabled Americans. That's in addition to the 2 million or so who would die.
That's what the wrecker is now in favor of.
It could be more than 5 million.
Given the possibility of being infected twice, once with each of the two principal strains of the virus, it's conceivable that each one would spread until 70% of Americans have had it. So we might end up with a 10 million newly disabled Americans.
In the identified cases of reinfection, the second infection was more grave. Perhaps that is a real phenomenon. Or perhaps it is an artifact of the way this is studied: I suspect the analysis to detect reinfection is done only on patients that need to be hospitalized.
The push to let the virus run rampant is a fake scientific controversy bankrolled by rich people.
Thus it is comparable to the planet roaster's campaign to generate fake controversy about human-caused global heating, and fake doubt about whether tobacco kills.
Demand for efficiency has "crushed the humanity" out of the activity and profession of taking care of someone else.
I have a feeling that the use of "to care" to mean an action rather than an attitude is part of that change.
The district attorney of Los Angeles faces a challenge from a candidate who has learned to push for less imprisonment of minor criminals, and more prosecution of thugs.
The incumbent seems like another Kamala Harris, pushing for being harsher on criminals rather than on rebuilding peace in society.
Governor Cuomo is trying hard to wipe out New York State's Working Families Party.
The EU has placed personal sanctions on some of Putin's cronies for poisoning Alexei Navalny.
Australia's electoral and political system could use some changes.
Ohio is doing voter suppression by having too few polling places in cities. Cities are where people are likely to vote Democratic.
When buildings have been shut for a long time, deadly legionella bacteria can multiply in the water pipes.
YouTube will ban contradicting WHO's recommendations about vaccination.
Anti-vax fantasies, when presented as fact, threaten people's lives. It is useful to do something to weaken the conspiracies that make and spread them. However, censorship is dangerous too.
It would be better to avoid promoting such material when people don't explicitly ask for it. For instance, to label each one with "anti-vax", and not recommend anything with that label, nor find it in searches unless "anti-vax" is one of the search terms.
Sicilian Giuseppe Piraino responded to a mafia demand for money by showing the mafioso photos of murdered judges — then showing the recording to the state, and getting 20 mafiosi arrested and charged.
*Ugandan security forces raid campaign office of opposition leader Bobi Wine.*
Massive rewilding and land restoration would absorb a lot of the CO2 that we are adding to the atmosphere, in a natural way.
Perhaps this could be done a more effective method of offsetting emissions.
*Greener play areas boost children’s immune systems, research finds.*
The effect is visible after just a month.
The thugs that searched the apartment where Breonna Taylor lay dying did not try to save her.
The article does not say whether they were the same ones that killed her. Either way, it shows the callous disregard of thugs for human life.
European countries are trying to deal with an increase in Covid-19 by putting off increasing their distancing measures.
The idea of "apply firm measures if the fraction of people newly infected rises above a certain amount" is a mistake. The time to apply firm measures is whenever the fraction of people newly infected is rising. That is the time to apply measures that are sure to drive R down below 1, and drive the number of people infected down to a low level. Delaying the firm measures will require firmer measures, for a longer period.
After that, it is possible to return to the status quo ante provided contact tracing and isolation are stronger than before.
New Zealand is having a referendum to approve a very limited right to help in dying. I urge people to vote yes.
However, the limitations don't make sense. People undergoing unbearable suffering which is sure to end within 6 months will be allowed this right, but those whose suffering might continue for decades will be required to keep suffering.
The Thai government has prohibited protests, arrested leaders, and increased censorship.
Barrett's testimony implies that she thinks all people can simply choose their sexual orientation.
I don't investigate all the associations and attitudes of an organization before I give a talk for it. I don't have time. (Indeed, I expect, when I give a talk for a university, that it is doing some harmful things that I publicly condemn, such as developing nonfree software, obtaining software patents, and teaching that it is wrong to share copies of published works.)
So I think it is possible that Barrett did not know about those specific positions of the ADF when she gave talks for its fellowship program.
But it is also possible that she knew them and agreed with them, and is now covering it up.
*Barrett's Confirmation to the Supreme Court "Would Be a Catastrophe for the Climate."*
Los Angeles County thugs attacked then arrested reporter Josie Huang as she was reporting outside a hospital. Then they gave a reason which was an obvious lie and brought charges against her.
I've heard that the charges against Ms Huang have been dropped, but there is no sign of an investigation of the attack on her.
Individual rewilders release locally lost species to try to preserve them, and occasionally it works. But usually it does not.
It seems that the conclusion is that what we really need is government support for restoring damaged nature.
*Human rights defenders sue German parliament over anti-BDS resolution.*
The resolution equates boycotting Israeli companies with boycotting Jews — in effect equating criticism of Israel's occupation practices with antisemitism.
The Israeli government pushes to establish that those two are the same,
as a weapon against those who criticize the crimes of the occupation.
Meanwhile, its leaders are friends with people who really are antisemitic.
I support the existence of Israel, and I condemn antisemitism.
However, Palestinians have rights too, like everyone else, and Israel
must respect their rights.
The first head of the Black Police Association of London said that
governments made the London thug department less racist, but this
stopped in 2016 and racism is coming back.
(satire) *NASA officials announced Tuesday
that the Hubble Space Telescope had recently given scientists the rare opportunity to observe a pair of galaxies mating.*
A giant international monopoly of privatized water is being formed.
Privatization of water for residential use should not be allowed.
*Calls grow for radical reform of Chile's national police force.
The Carabineros face 8,500 allegations of human rights abuses in the
past year.*
Canada's last ice shelf broke up and disappeared.
*Great Barrier Reef corals have more than halved in past 25 years,
study shows.*
*University of Sydney law professor arrested while watching student protest.*
He sent his students to watch, because they were studying law and
protest. It appears that the thugs went semi-berserk, thinking
"Wheee, lots of people we can beat up!"
"Smart" meters in Australia will enable the company to report when users turn certain appliances on or off by noticing momentary increases
or decreases in total current used.
For "smart", read "snoop".
The worst thing is that people will have no choice about having their homes
connected to these meters.
Snooping meters should be restricted by law about how fine grained
their reports can be. I contend that informing the customer of per
moment-by-moment current use, plus telling the electric utility the
moment-by-moment current use of a block or neighborhood, is enough
data.
The Supreme Court, now with right-wing bias, has allowed the wrecker to undermine the census count by stopping it early.
Galveston thugs tied a leash to a homeless man and pulled him from horseback.
This is not only humiliating, it is dangerous. It can be hard to keep
up with horses, so the person being pulled can easily fall and be
dragged. That can cause all sorts of injuries.
The Rio Tinto mining company signed contracts with Australian
indigenous groups, paying them money but demanding they remain silent
about possible destruction of their ancient sites by mining. When
some found out that a site was likely to be destroyed, they dared not
complain to the government for fear of losing that income.
This confirms my view that these sites should have absolute protected status.
No one should have the power to allow their destruction.
Twitter suspended apparently fake accounts which claimed to belong
to people that were black and planned to vote for the wrecker.
Israeli combat drones that were battle-tested by bombing Gaza may be
bought by the UK and used to track (and kill?) asylum seekers in the
channel.
A French museum had to defer plans for an exhibit about Mongol emperor
Genghis Khan because China demanded that the exhibit not use the words
"Mongol", "Empire" or "Genghis Khan".
Now that China has started a long-term plan to assimilate Mongols that
live in China, it apparently would like to make the rest of the world
forget that Mongols are ethnically different from Han Chinese. That
will be difficult to entirely accomplish, since the rest of the world
is well aware of the Mongol empire. Russia and the Middle East were
conquered by it and they remember.
Right-wing sites pressure Facebook into bending its rules against hate
and disinformation for them. An employee who collected a list of instances
was fired for this.
Five things Facebook should do to avoid encouraging election violence.
Queensland (part of Australia) could convert completely to renewable generation
in 15 years, generating around 10,000 permanent jobs.
Gideon Spiro writes of the looking of Arabs' houses
and the looting of Jews' houses.
Israel has imprisoned Maher al-Akhras without charges, and his response
is a hunger strike.
Imprisoning people without charges is a fundamental injustice, so
Israel should free him immediately, or else state the charges against
him so he can have a trial.
Naomi Klein: *I fear Trump will exploit his COVID infection to further
destabilize the election.*
Prominent academics warn that the IHRA "definition" of antisemitism
lends itself to repression and censorship of defense of Palestinians'
rights.
Even the author of that criterion warns it should not be used this way.
Proposing to confront Covid-19 with a form of partial shutdown of
society, with firm enforcement of the rules.
The cameras proposed here threaten oppression, but if the purpose of the system
is simply and only to measure how many people are in a place and in general
what they are doing, it could be designed not to identify people. Then it
would be safe.
Virginia's voter registration site crashed shortly before the deadline
because a cable was cut.
The same thing happened in 2016. Do you think this was an accident?
Once may have been; twice is not likely. It looks like sabotage to me.
(satire) *"For just $3 per shipment, Amazon users who are
outwardly critical of our company can have their packages delivered in
a blank cardboard box without any logos or branding so they’ll never
get called out for being hypocritical."*
After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas
voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per
county.
I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on
taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent
fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really
have.
That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a
motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd.
*Social Security's Cost of Living Adjustment Is Inadequate. Democrats Have a
Plan to Fix That.*
*New Analysis Finds Barrett Sides Against Consumers, Immigrants, Workers, and
More.*
Barrett is willing to consider letting the wrecker unilaterally delay
the election.
That would be quite a stretch to the US Constitution, and shows that
she is prepared to go to great lengths to help the wrecker seize
unconstitutional power.
*IMF warns emissions policies 'grossly insufficient' and urges green recovery.*
It is noteworthy that an organization which in general serves
plutocracy says this. It seems that the planet roasters have lost out
to other interests in one important contest.
*USDA and Meatpacking Industry Collaborated to Undermine Covid-19 Response,
Documents Show.*
I don't know whether that was illegal, but it is corruption.
US border thugs deport large numbers of people to the small
Mexican border town of Sasabe, perhaps because they know it cannot
process so many immigrants that fast and has no place for them to stay.
This sadism is typical of the US border thugs.
*Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $330bn, study finds.*
That is much less than one would expect. Just $33 billion a year would
be peanuts for the US government.
*Cyprus scraps 'golden passport' scheme after politicians caught in undercover
sting.*
A Thai student leads a protest movement demanding reduction of the power
of the king.
Fracking releases radioactive polonium into the air.
A proposed law in Germany is causing consternation because it uses
feminine word endings throughout instead of the usual masculine endings.
Any doubts about the meaning and legitimacy of this draft text could
be resolved easily by adding a note saying that "In this law, words
with feminine endings that refer to human beings include all humans,
whether female or not."
Has the Labour Party still got a conscience? Will it vote against a
bill to permit infiltrating undercover thugs to commit crimes without
limit, even murder?
*Facebook greatest source of Covid-19 disinformation, journalists say.*
*Koch-Funded Legal Group Pushes to Allow Mass Evictions During Pandemic.*
The greatest danger of putting Barrett on the Supreme Court is that it
could adopt that philosophy — that "civil liberties" means there
cannot be any limit on the power to evict tenants.
*Extinction Rebellion is showing Britain what real democracy could look like.*
Big business gets to demand change in government policies at any
moment, whereas the people get to do so only at intervals of years.
One of the reasons for Extinction Rebellion effectiveness is that it
is absolutely, totally nonviolent (though its protests are sometimes
disruptive).
*China still allowing use of pangolin scales in traditional medicine.*
China is not egregious in failing to adequately protect endangered
species. Many countries, perhaps most, fall short on that dimension.
State infiltrators are bad when they infiltrate peaceful dissident
groups. However, infiltrating real terrorist groups is legitimate
and can be very effective for stopping terrorism. Here is an example.
JCB, which sells construction equipment, is under legal pressure
for selling tractors to an Israeli company and not taking steps
to prevent their use in forcible demolition of Palestinian homes.
The US increased the size of the Supreme Court before, and for good
reasons.
* Biden must call on federal workers to ignore illegal orders and faithfully serve the Constitution.*
Announcing a new political article, "The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police"
The bully still has a few weeks to provoke Iran into war.
The provocations are already killing Iranian civilians.
Academics call for universities to join to protect their students from
persecution by China over criticism of China in their classes and
academic work.
Students are afraid of being imprisoned if and when they go to China,
even over what is said by others in the same class.
To get the US to imprison you for what you publish, you have to do something
heroic, such as exposing secret crimes.
China, by contrast, will imprison people merely for criticizing China,
or even for nothing at all if they are useful as hostages.
(satire) *several reports indicated
Monday that the idea of the total collapse of democracy was so
horrifying that America decided it hadn’t happened yet.*
(satire) *Judge Amy Coney Barrett
promised Monday that her Catholic faith’s tenets of generosity and
humanity would not interfere with her duty on the court to crush the
nation’s poorest and most downtrodden citizens.*
*Trump desperately needs to avoid another withering exposure that
another debate would cement. That is why, true to the coward that he
is, he’s hiding from it.*
An additional advantage of public banks is that governments could directly
make them stop investing in fossil fuels.
For the other reasons public entities should put their money in public
banks, see here.
General Atomics has developed spy drones that can track everyone in a
substantial area — such as a big city — at once. The initial
application for them was for war, but now it is making thinly veiled attempts
to fly them over American cities.
Jesse Jackson: *Myths and Lies About Poverty.*
I take issue with Jackson on one point: most Americans do support the
laws that would eliminate most poverty. But plutocats have used (and
created)
flaws in our democracy to keep control of our government and
defeat candidates such as Sanders that stand for the policies most
Americans support.
CEPR: The US Census Bureau underestimates poverty in the US because it uses
too low a value for the poverty line, one that doesn't relate to today's life.
Here's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced a Republican
congresscritter that first insulted her on the capital steps, then
tried to claim that we shouldn't blame him for that because he has
daughters.
I was so moved by her strength and dignity that I found a recording to
listen to via invidious. Her speech is even more impressive as spoken
word.
* To make experimental antibodies [for Covid-19] affordable will cost billions. If they
are shown to work, it will be money well spent.*
Rafał Gaweł, who was prosecuted in Poland for journalism, has won
asylum in Norway.
*WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'.*
The reasons he cites are the simple, evident reasons that we can all
see if we look.
*California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans.*
Setting up an unauthorized ballot drop-off box is electoral fraud
and I hope those Republicans get punished.
Scientific advisers warned the UK government three weeks ago that
it was time to take strong measures to avoid a "large epidemic".
Either the ministers are timid and weak, or they are playing a game of
trumpery.
China has cut off its importation of Australian coal.
It will presumably burn Chinese coal instead.
This could teach Australia to invest in something less damaging than
coal mining. But I fear that the Australian government will be so
desperate for China to resume buying coal that it will break and bow
down to China. That would be very bad for freedom in the world.
The Australian government has a few oppressive policies — towards
immigrants,
towards software developers.
Towards whistleblowers that
reveal its dishonesty and crimes.
However, in general it is much
better than China.
In regard to global heating, to the first order this makes no
difference. Australian coal and Chinese coal are both very damaging.
*People in Gaza sifting through rubbish for food, UN head says.*
Senate Democrats have failed us by not going to the mat to block
confirmation of Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice.
The hearings are useless. Democrats could show she shot someone on
Fifth Avenue and the Republicans would still confirm her, just as they
confirmed Kavanaugh.
With her, the court will find it easy to use some excuse to set aside
the election and make the wrecker president again.
*Judges' politics absolutely sway how they decide cases. I crunched the
numbers.*
President Xi is showing the people who served as his puppet government
in Hong Kong just how unimportant they are to him.
China is luring Chinese people to adopt the official state payment
app, which is even more Big Brotherish than the private payment apps
they mostly use now.
Protect your country from going down that path — insist on paying
for products and transportation with cash, anonymously.
*This is my message to the western world — your civilisation is killing life
on Earth.*
It is a justified rebuke to civilization, but limiting it to "western"
is not fair. Civilization is global; civilization in Asia is involved
too.
*[One] fifth of nations at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds.*
The UAE punishes foreign workers that get pregnant, and their children,
with homelessness and starvation, and the children with denial of education.
This punishment lasts for an indefinite term; it could be years.
Many religions support injustice to women.
*Covid coughing link 'may be stopping people with lung cancer coming forward'.*
The delay in detecting and treating lung cancer can be fatal.
The UK's National Health Service has also caused delays in testing for
and treating cancer, by being slow. People are dying from that.
Covid-19 made this a lot worse, but it was starting before.
The NHS did a pretty good job, given the inadequate funding that
governments gave it. However, plutocratist governments have cut its
funds step by step over many years.
Under those conditions, it will become less and less effective — but
don't blame the NHS for that.
A right-wing protester in Denver attacked a journalist's bodyguard,
first with a punch, then with pepper spray. The bodyguard shot him
dead.
I am concerned by the fact that the bodyguard was arrested for
defending himself.
The anti-distancing activist who attacked a journalist in Brooklyn
faces criminal charges for doing that.
* Rainforests face unprecedented fires, yet BlackRock, State Street and
Vanguard have consistently voted in favor of deforestation.*
*New Zealand Becomes First Country in the World To Require Financial Sector To
Report on Climate Risks.*
*Anthony Fauci criticises Donald Trump for using his words out of context.*
The bullshitter's campaign made it appear that Fauci was endorsing
some bullshit.
The wrecker may try to seize power after the US election. How can
Americans stop him? Here are methods that succeeded for blocking
coups in several other countries.
(satire) *… members of a local white nationalist militia stated
Friday they were stretched to the limit trying to attack everyone the
president wants them to.*
Georgia kicked over 310,000 voters off the registration list on the
grounds that they had moved. Supposedly it did this based on data
from the USPS. Greg Palast's team checked properly with the USPS and
found out that 197,000 of them should not have been deleted.
This is an example of voter suppression. The current governor of
Georgia stole the election in 2018 by voter suppression like this.
*Amazon bullies partners and vendors, says antitrust subcommittee.*
*Facebook is a social network monopoly that buys, copies or kills competitors, antitrust committee finds.*
*Costa Rica Holds Anti-IMF Protests for Tenth Day in a Row.*
There is a campaign for the UK to block China from having a seat in the
UN Human Rights Council.
The very idea of China's presence in that group illustrates the fact
that it has been taken over by the enemies of human rights.
*New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and
Punishes Critics.*
*Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites.*
I suppose this will go through two appeals and reach the Supreme Court.
I wonder what it will say.
*Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland.*
Some protesters were sick for a long time after being attacked in this way.
Farming salmon on a large scale, as today, causes a number of ecological dangers, and can also incubate diseases as well as
parasites.
*How Charles Koch Is Buying Credibility With Academic Investments.*
Pasco, Florida, tries to prevent crime by persistently harassing people thought to be possible future criminals until they move out of
town.
The US response to Covid-19 has been driven by various wrong intuitions so that it has been purely planned.
The article does not mention that the wrecker and Republicans
intentionally undermined the effort so he could use the disease for
his reelection. (I think we did not yet have proof of that when it
was written.) However, I don't think that invalidates the article.
The Republicans took advantage of these erroneous tendencies, and they
are still doing so.
1/5 of the high-ranking officers of the New York Thug Department have
substantiated patterns of injustice to the public. Substantiated to the department's satisfaction, that is.
The department works hard to cover them up.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The CDC wanted to order people to use masks in public transportation, but the wrecker's political officials blocked it.
If our state and local officials were on our side and getting good
advice, all trying to do the best thing to protect people from
Covid-19 and bring it to an end, it might be better for these
decisions to be made locally. Alas, led by the wrecker, many of them
are on the virus's side, and this decision helped them spread it.
UK thugs display a pattern of violence and bodily harm against
anti-fracking and anti-HS2 protesters.
The head of the Somerville, Massachusetts, thug union now faces
criminal charges for pepper-spraying a person who was handcuffed.
It appears that the most thuggish of thugs feel drawn to becoming
officials of the unions that protect thuggishness.
The saboteur is sabotaging science by forbidding research using fetal
cells culture.
Dubya did the same thing. In the 2000s, a friend of mine hoped that
research would find a way to prevent his developing blindness. Due to
Dubya's policy, that research was not done. Now he is completely
blind.
A fetus is not a baby, and a culture of human cells is not a human
being. There is absolutely nothing wrong (barring unusual
circumstances) with an abortion, and absolutely nothing wrong with
using fetal cells (or their cultures) for research (medical or
otherwise). When anyone acts less than proud of using the results of
such research, we should speak up and say, "Be proud!"
*Despite Trump's 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs' Bluster, the Rust Belt Is Still Reeling from Plant Closures.*
Covid-19 transmission has been rising in the Czech Republic since August,
and has reached the point where it will overload the medical system.
This demonstrates yet again that trying to trim the settings in the rules
is a mistake. Once transmission starts accelerating, you must take
firm action without delay. You're only safe if the number of new
cases is decreasing.
Even a weak target for greenhouse emissions reduction can create
many jobs and a booming economy.
It could slow down disaster, and pave the way for stronger steps.
See which candidates have pledged to amend the Constitution to reject
the idea that corporations are entitled to human rights.
I was disappointed to see that not one candidate in my state
has endorsed it.
A sunken British slave ship, of great archaeological interest, is being
destroyed by unrestricted trawling.
A few dissident scientists purport to be arguing for letting Covid-19
spread to produce herd immunity. Superficial news coverage makes it
look like a serious scientific dispute, but their position is not
clear enough to make sense. And its supposedly scientific supporters
are not all real scientists.
In other fields, such "skepticism" has been funded by businesses with
something to gain by creating a false impression of uncertainty.
There is no shortage of businesses that might want to create the
appearance of doubt about whether we should try to wipe out Covid-19.
And there are rich supporters of the conman who might do this.
I wonder if someone who knows how to investigate could check for such
connections.
The British practice of raising large numbers of birds to release them
for wealthy people to shoot is causing ecological damage; stricter laws are needed.
Political officials alter the CDC's weekly reports for political
purposes. They are pushing the head of the CDC to modify old reports too.
Dr. Rick Bright resigned from the National Institute of Health after
he was sidelined for insisting on doing what was scientifically and
medically called for.
*'Catastrophic Failure to Tackle Inequality' Left World Unprepared for
Pandemic.*
New political article: An Extinction Rebellion activist comments about the London police
by Clark Killick
US citizens: call on the Department of Agriculture to keep the Roadless Rule
for the Tongass National forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to have no vote on any nomination to
fill Justice Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat until the winner of this
election is inaugurated.
Everyone: Donate now to save Europe from Software Patents, says FFII.
If you are German, contact your representative in the Bundestag
to oppose the "unitary patent".
*Facebook Profited From Climate [Dis]information Even After Vowing to
Fight It, Report Shows.*
These ads were not mere errors, they were intentional deception.
Thus I call them "disinformation".
(satire) *… millions of Americans worried that they weren’t appealing enough to
land any potential commander in chief who didn’t constantly lie, steal,
and cheat on them by having secret relations with numerous other
countries."
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: the US should not allow any one person
to have the power to launch a nuclear attack unilaterally.
Interesting article: *Binary Oppositions and the Hard Hard Problem of
Solidarity.*
Republicans are sending armed white supremacists to "monitor" polling
places and try to intimidate blacks other marginalized people from
voting.
Their supposed excuse for the intimidation is to discourage fraud in
voting, but even if there were fraud, they would be unable to stop it.
(satire) Wisconsin Reports Zero Evidence Of Voter Fraud In Ballots
They’ve Thrown Out So Far.
Bianca Williams rebukes the investigation of the incident where she
was stopped by thugs, because it will consider only whether they treated
her courteously, not whether they fabricated a disguise of a reason.
How people in New York City stopped a pipeline for fracked gas.
*Warning Fundamental Rights and American Lives at Stake, 5,000+ Lawyers Urge
Senate to Reject Barrett.*
They wrote, "Rushing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett will cause
irreparable damage to the public's faith in the Supreme Court, the
rule of law, and our democracy."
(satire) *… the South Carolina Election Commission announced
Friday that urban polling places would feature large plexiglass
barriers around the entire building.*
(satire) *Frisky Housewife Lets Revealing Robe Slip After Opening Door
To Amazon Delivery Drone.*
Guidelines and examples for resisting coups carried out
by heads of government that refused to leave after losing an election.
It is clear that the would-be tyrant intentionally incited violence
including the planned plot to kidnap or assassinate Governor Whitmer
of Michigan.
What I don't know is whether there is any way to hold him legally
responsible — with criminal charges. I don't know where the line
is for incitement of violence or other crimes this might possibly be.
The cult leader is almost certainly still infected with coronavirus,
but he is holding rallies at which he will surely not wear a mask.
From a rational perspective, this may seem crazy, but I think it makes
sense psychologically, He inviting cult members to demonstrate their
loyalty and faith in him by letting him expose them to coronavirus.
Next year there will be interviews with adults in the prime of their
lives who suffer persistent medical problems stemming from this
display of faith.
Senator Lee, a Republican, declared his opposition to democracy.
He refuses to clarify who he thinks should rule, but I think the
answer would be "billionaires and Republicans."
Pence, in the debate, repeated the wrecker's veiled threat to seize
power if they cannot pretend to have won.
I say "pretend" because their voter-suppression efforts will be
included in the count.
*India's tea workers strike as government fails to deliver wage increase.*
The plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Governor Whitmer has been planned
since June.
Barrett, as a judge, has been happy to seize on technicalities to send
asylum seekers back to danger.
A plan to require houses to be built with electric sockets to aid in
replacing gas stoves with electric stoves in the future, and for
recharging cars in the garage, is facing a big fight from gas companies.
Some people who have "recovered" from Covid-19 experience crippling
"brain fog".
Amnesty International reports that over 220 activists for human,
environmental, and land rights have been murdered in Colombia this
year.
The government is right-wing, thus allied to the paramilitaries, who
are surely responsible for most of the murdering.
*Portland: [thugs] targeted medics [at Black Lives Matter protests]
with teargas and projectiles, report finds.*
Thugs also kept ambulances away from the injured people at the
protest. This is what Israeli soldiers do to injured Palestinians,
and on a number of occasions has resulted in their death.
The city thugs were bad, and the federal thugs were even worse.
They should all be prosecuted.
Julian Assange's extradition hearing demonstrated that the US and UK
governments will break any rule and tell any lie to get Assange.
The article recounts how his supporters' computers were stolen,
as well as how his basic rights as a person accused were violated.
This follows a legal campaign in which procedures and laws were
trashed again and again, and which demonstrated that the Swedish state was only using the
original charges against Assange as an excuse, and had no interest
in seriously investigating them.
If Assange is thinking of suicide, I do not think that represents any
sort of mental derangement on his part. Under Assange's
circumstances, suicide would be a rational act, an act of courage,
avoiding a fate worse than death.
A few days ago I said that no one ever really deserves to die. If you
are facing a fate worse than death, what you really deserve is to
avoid it and live. But if that is impossible, I still hope that you
avoid it.
Covid-19 has unmasked what the Republican Party stands for.
This statement in the article includes an erroneous presupposition.
The latter is what the Republican Party has really stood for since
decades ago, but it tried to disguise that stand until recently.
A letter supposedly signed by scientists that urged the UK to let
Covid-19 spread and aim for herd immunity seems to be at least
partly a hoax.
That "solution" would mean lots of people die or develop lasting organ
damage.
The UK is (reluctantly) using government spending to preserve most
jobs and the workers who have them, even if there is currently no work
for them to do.
*Covid drug given to Trump developed using cells derived from aborted fetus.*
There is nothing wrong with that — fetuses are not human beings. But
the bullshitter will need to excuse himself to the Christian extremists
that support him.
I suppose he will plead hypocrisy again: "Never mind that I
never live by your principles; you know I have no conscience."
Describing some of the crimes the conman could be prosecuted for,
if he can't hold on to the presidency.
The US proposes a deal to support the subjection of Palestinians in exchange
for the subjection of Western Sahara.
Two injustices at once — no wonder the bully loves it.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price
as the latter was trying to break up a fight between other people.
Even the head of the Federal Reserve acknowledges that the US economy
needs stimulus.
Only Republicans deny it.
Hasidic Jews in New York City held a violent anti-mask protest
and attacked a journalist who was doing nothing but making a video.
One of them recognized him and knew he might criticize them later in
his writing.
To those who shouted "Jewish Lives Matter," I agree — they do.
So protect other Jewish lives (and non-Jewish lives) by wearing masks!
The bully plans to impose sanctions on the rest of Iran's banks and
money transfer systems with the aim of preventing Iran from buying
medicine and other products for humanitarian needs.
*The bulk of the chaos [of the wrecker's antigovernance] is simply
America the Terrible emerging from the shadows: our real history
suddenly visible.*
(satire) *… local terrorist group benefactor Ahmad al-Yasin was
reportedly disappointed to learn Thursday that most of his
donations go to covering administrative costs. "… these
funds should go toward suicide vests and stocking up on AK-47s …."*
A House subcommittee calls for new laws to reduce the market power
of the big tech companies.
Feral pigs are overrunning the US and causing a lot of damage.
The problem is difficult because letting individuals hunt them makes them
more wary.
*[The bully's] Directives Restricting Discussion of Race,
Discrimination Are Censorship.*
They are very broad, and could
restrict teaching in public schools, even universities that receive
federal funds.
(satire) *Vice President Mike Pence appeared to
instinctively address his responses to Sen. Kamala Harris’ husband
during Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate.*
Meanwhile, Harris demonstrated yet again her weakness on confronting the
danger of global heating.
A lawyer warns that parents who accept distance learning from a public
school may be construed by courts as giving the school officials
permission to look through the computer's camera at any time during
school hours, and report whatever they see.
Unlike many other injustices of distance learning, this possible
injustice does not depend on having malware in the computer.
But malware can potentiate it.
* Human Rights Watch report accuses [Bolivia's] administration … of overseeing legal offensive against people linked to
Morales*, the president expelled by the coup in 2019.
To construe launching a nonviolent protest as "terrorism" is tyranny,
and reveals the nature of the coup-installed government.
Evo Morales Tells Jacobin: We’re Still Fighting the Multinationals Who
Drove the Coup.
Last month was the hottest September ever recorded,
as California found out, to its peril.
I've read that 2020 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded.
But this record will not last many years.
*‘Successful’ People Are Misery Super-Spreaders.*
*'On the Level of Guantánamo': Oklahoma Jail Guards Accused of Torturing
Inmates With 'Baby Shark' Song.*
The idea of torture by repeatedly playing a childish song seems like a
joke. Indeed, it was a joke, in the movie One, Two, Three (1961).
But that headline is misleading. Shackling prisoners to a wall for
hours is real torture, music or no music.
*[UK] Data watchdog finds [education] ministry broke GDPR by
mishandling national database for [all pupils in] England.*
It is interesting to see that in some cases the GDPR can prohibit
construction of a database. Now we will see whether it can in practice
get rid of the prohibited database.
Perhaps in January the GDPR will cease to have any force in the UK,
as its commitment to follow EU directives will cease then.
*Activists Sue San Francisco for Wide-Ranging Surveillance of Black-Led
Protests Against Police Violence.*
Michael Mann reports that the last ten years of climate research
give us a basis for hope: it takes only five years for a reduction
in CO2 emissions to result in a reduction in global heating.
So we still have a chance to avoid global heating disaster, if we
start promptly and work hard.
*EU parliament votes for 60% greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2030.*
This is starting to be in the range of what is really necessary.
*Chase Climate Pledge 'Shows the Power of Relentless Environmental Activism'
But 'Not Aggressive Enough'.*
*As climate catastrophes worsen the insecurity of the white
so-called middle class will only intensify as well, and for good
reason. As it does an even greater number of white folks will choose
from a fascist movement that speaks to their loss of power and invites
them to reclaim it (from the wrong people) by force, or a Black Lives
Matter movement that literally ignores their existence. Which will they
choose?*
I'm going to oppose fascism (a form of illiberal plutocracy) no matter
what, just as I am going to oppose racism no matter what. The violence
of thugs against blacks is vicious, so I will oppose that no matter
what. This is because of my adherence in a universal standard of
justice, one that has nothing to do with identity.
I hope that those who campaign against those forms of evil will
recognize the need for a universal standard of justice. Without that,
their campaigns will undermine their own moral foundation as well as
their chances to win general support.
The inspector general of the Department of Justice reports that
Attorney General Sessions and his deputy were directly behind the
decisions to prosecute every unauthorized immigrant and separate
families. They pressured subordinate officials to do this.
(satire) *White House Staff Heartbroken By Sight Of Weak Trump Struggling To Yell
Racial Slurs At TV.*
*Thousands of people given emergency shelter [in the UK] at start of
pandemic are now being evicted.*
Ironically, this is happening just as Covid-19 is spreading again
and it is cold outside — like the situation that motivated giving them
housing earlier this year.
(satire) *…a
division of confused U.S. Army Corps of Engineers members were
reportedly trying Wednesday to figure out what the big blue cable
connected to the country does.*
*Climate denial ads on Facebook seen by millions, report finds.*
Golden Dawn organized a quasimilitary militia and carried out
crimes of violence for 20 years before it was prosecuted.
Why did the Greek state take so long to prosecute it?
*Fed Lending Saved Corporate America. It Could Do the Same for Cities and
States.*
The Dutch Rijksmuseum is thinking about returning objects that were
collected over a century ago from territory that is now Indonesia.
What does it mean to "return" those objects?
Consider the diamond mentioned in the article, which the Dutch took
from the Sultan of Banjarmasin. If the Netherlands ought to return
that, to whom should it be returned? Today's Republic of Indonesia
has nothing to do with that diamond's history; it succeeded the
Netherlands as the sovereign power for most of Borneo but not directly
from the Sultan's government. It makes no sense to "return" the
diamond to the republic. The sultan of Banjarmasin would hardly have
demanded the return of his diamond to a polity based on Java unless
it was ruled by his descendants.
The diamond could be returned to the sultan's last heir (who might
that be?), but is there really a moral obligation to do that?
The diamond may be worth a lot of money, but I'd expect it has less
non-monitary value than other objects in the museum. Each one raises
the questions, "Was this stolen?" and "If so, from whom?" and "Who is
the heir today of that person or entity?"
The FBI shut down a real right-wing terrorist plot to kidnap the
governor of Michigan.
I hope that after January we can prosecute the extremist that encouraged
this plot.
Everyone: call on Attorney General Becerra to hold Amazon
accountable for its abuses of its workers in California.
Relatives of people who died from Covid-19 feel intensley offended
by the bully's contempt for the deceased.
The New England Journal of Medicine called for voting out the bully,
for the "recklessly squandered lives" of people who died from Covid-19
due to his crazy policies.
US citizens: call on the US Forest Service to reject proposed new regulations
to facilitate extracting fossil fuels from public lands.
General Milley and other top US generals are in quarantine in case the
spreader in chief transmitted coronavirus to them.
Facebook is banning most sorts of presentations of QAnonsense.
The Boston thug department protects its thugs, even from the district
attorney. It drags its feet on handing over information about thugs
that have been accused of violence.
She is threatening (though not with an aggressive tone) to use a
subpoena to get the information.
*[The corrupter]’s Barrett Nomination Another Step Toward Christian Fascism.*
The "prosperity gospel" is a perversion of Christianity. (Don't the
gospels quote Jesus as saying, "Sell all thou hast and give to the
poor"?) Just as the middle ages twisted Christianity into the divine
right of kings, plutocracy has twisted it into the divine right of
billionaires.
Israel's thug chief: Protesting is now illegal so we will continue
breaking up protests, even violently.
Morally, the situation is clear. People have a right to protest, so
they should be allowed to protest as long as they wear masks and keep
well apart. But Israel does not have a written constitution that
could be used to argue legally that the law must not violate people's
constitutional rights.
Deputy Chief Tingirides has set up very successful community policing
in Watts, in Los Angeles.
All thug departments should do what Tingirides is doing in Watts, but
that does not conflict with the goal of defunding. What that means is
to transfer funds to an agency set up to respond to many kinds of
9-1-1 calls by sending people trained for counseling rather than
confronting criminals.
Don't make the mistake of choosing politicians for their physical strength
or the mistake of imagining that recovering from an infection is a test
of physical strength.
The leaders of the Greek right-wing hatred party Golden Dawn have been
convicted of participating in a criminal gang.
Bogus Johnson is trying to take the effective legislative power away
from Parliament and give it to people under the Prime Minister's
command.
The US deportation thugs admit that they acted illegally by deporting
Cesar Marroquín while he was waiting for an immigration hearing.
But that may not enable him to get back.
Intensification of agriculture is pushing global heating.
Thinning some forests in Australia led to worse fires.
It is possible that this was due to other effects of the machines used
to do the thinning.
* The Chinese-backed gold, silver and copper mine [in Papua New
Guinea] risks catastrophic environmental destruction, [UN] special
rapporteurs argue.*
Exxon plans to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 17%, as of 2025.
That is a plan for mass murder.
Two British PISSI recruits tortured captives using techniques borrowed
from US torture, including waterboarding and "stress positions".
We warned that US torture would inspire revenge torture.
*William Hanage, professor of epidemiology at Harvard, likens the [herd
immunity] strategy to protecting antiques in a house fire by putting
them all in one room, standing guard with a fire extinguisher, but
simultaneously fanning the flames [in the rest of the house].*
The Save Our Seas Act proposes funds to encourage research on removing
plastic waste from the sea, and on ways to recycle it.
It can be seen as an effort to avoid doing anything to reduce the production
of plastic objects that are difficult to recycle.
Two Republican disinformation operatives face criminal charges of trying
to intimidate voters with frightening lies.
The Los Angeles thug department makes massive use of face recognition.
It tries to weasel out of this by saying it does not have a face
recognition system. Which is true, strictly speaking, but does not
change anything.
It is a strategic mistake to argue based on the absence of some photos
from the database. Their most obvious reply would be, "So let us put
everyone in it; then it will be unbiased." That is the opposite of
what we want; we want limitations on who they can include in that
database, and which captured faces they can search it for.
(satire) *Trump Supporters Fighting Over Used Tissues President Tossed From SUV.*
*[The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in
the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues
rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in
lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic.*
Calling on US hotels to stop serving as deportation prisons.
Keeping people in hotels as prisons has facilitated deporting them
quickly and denying them their right to a hearing.
*Peace Groups Blockade Creech Air Force Base to Protest 'Illegal and Inhumane
Remote Killing' by US Drones.*
The district attorney who asked for prosecution of the thug that killed
Breonna Taylor lied about what happened in the grand jury.
Recordings show he never asked the grand jury to consider murder
charges.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany recklessly endangered reporters' lives
by refusing to wear a mask while talking to them.
When she got infected, she did not know right away. In general, you
don't know you are infected until some days after you start spreading
virus — or perhaps you never find out. This is why you should always
protect others by wearing a mask. Her failure to do so was reckless.
Surely the superspreader had told her to follow his example, but that
is no excuse.
(satire) *John Bolton
was reportedly seething with jealousy Tuesday that President Trump got
to become a real-life living, breathing biological weapon.*
90 people work doing housekeeping jobs in the White House. At least
two of them have contracted coronavirus, and were told to hush it up.
It is not a safe place to work.
The use of low-paid throw-away migrant labor in agriculture has spread
around the world. Covid-19 has made many of them suffer more, but it will do nothing to improve
the way agricultural workers are treated.
Giving them better treatment, including better pay, will make food
more expensive. But that will be a good thing, if the wealthy
countries support poor people better. It will make agricultural jobs
good enough that citizens will work in them, and make farming more
profitable in poor countries so that not so many people will be
desperate to migrate for work.
Columbia University students voted for divesting from companies that
are involved in Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Israel is planning to build an additional 4,400 housing units on
Palestinian territory.
*Israeli prison ban on phone calls risks ‘breaking spirits’ of Palestinian
minors.*
*Hamas, Fatah agree to hold elections in the coming months.*
Palestinians have been weakened by this disunity, but given the
different conditions in parts of Palestine (in the West Bank, military
occupation; in Gaza, siege) it is difficult for one government to
govern both properly.
*Poll Shows Small Business Owners Support Multinational Tax Transparency.*
I don't think that small business owners should be more important than
the rest of us, but they have plenty of opportunities to get screwed
by big businesses they are compelled to deal with.
The California Resources Corporation owns almost 18,000 oil wells in
California. Most of them are exhausted and must be plugged, for
safety's sake. The corporation is broke, so it will cost the state
almost a billion dollars to plug these wells.
I have a hunch that this corporation did not own the wells when they
were profitable. I have a hunch it did not exist then. My hunch is
that profitable oil companies sold off subsidiaries programmed for
bankruptcy making them the owners of these wells, and those
subsidiaries became the California Resources Corporation.
We know that a big coal company did this to escape its pension obligation
to workers.
The owners kept their wealth, and the workers were thrown back on
Social Security. Which Republicans are now planning to destroy.
If a coal company could do it, oil companies could do it.
Whether or not this is an instance of that form of cheating, it
illustrates the tendency of businesses to run off with "profits" made
by dumping debt on the public.
Remember this next time a rich person says, "I made this (all by
myself)."
*Americans showed [the contemptuous leader] compassion. He repaid us
with contempt.*
Even I showed some compassion to him personally, though without letting this
override my greater duties as an American and as a human being.
A pediatrician asks why thugs should get qualified immunity when they
injure people, and not doctors.
*More and more people are being excluded from British democracy in a creeping
apartheid.*
A German court is considering the case against Assad and his government
for use of sarin.
I have doubts about whether Assad used Sarin. I would not put it past
him; he did plenty of killing, and plenty of torture of prisoners.
I suppose he would not have had scruples about using nerve gas.
But I can't see why he would have used it only twice. Using poison
gas even once, one assumes the full odium of having used poison gas,
but gain little military advantage. Since he does not seem to be
insane, why would he pay so much for so little?
In addition, Seymour Hirsh said that there was no sarin attack
in Khan Sheikhun.
This is a doubt, not a certainty. I am not in a position to reach any
conclusion about this. Meanwhile, it makes no difference to what I
think of Assad. He is guilty of plenty of other crimes.
Pope Francis has spoken against neoliberal trickle-down politics.
Will this lead Biden to reconsider his rejection of Medicare for All?
Protesters won the annulment of the evidently rigged Kyrgyzstan election.
*Labour is staying neutral as the [Tory] government sanctions state
violence against its citizens.* This includes violence up to and
including rape or murder.
People who work in the White House are angry with the wrecker
for not warning them he was transmitting virus and doing nothing
to protect them or reduce the spread.
Got Covid-19? [The conman] wants bleach for others and the best
treatment for himself.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price.
When Jonathan was tased, he started twitching and the thug interpreted this
as a threat.
The Department of Harshness and Sadism wants its documents of abuses
to be classified as "temporary", which means they will be destroyed
in a few years.
The wrecker has done broad harm to science in the US, and to public
respect for scientists. Some kinds of damage could take a long time
to repair.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sponsor H.R. 2529, a bill
to continue the New START arms limitation treaty with Russia.
The UK is considering a massive investment to generate all residential
electricity by wind power.
Examples like these can get the rest of the world moving. The return
on this investment, in terms of towns and farms not flooded, could be
enormous.
*Tesla Can Detect Aftermarket Hacks
Designed
to Defeat EV Performance Paywalls.*
In general, it is the car owner's right to make changes in
the car, and manufacturers should not be allowed to implement measures
to interfere. Devices, including cars, should not require
subscriptions and should not record where the car goes.
But there is an exception: measures to reduce pollution. These are
vital for public health —
air
pollution causes a lot of sickness and death — and "defeat
devices" installed by car owners are just as dangerous as defeat
devices installed by manufacturers.
My solution would be to put those systems into separate computers
whose software cannot be changed by any digital activity. If the
manufacturer can't change it, it is ok that the owner can't.
The Supreme Court accepted a lower court decision that a clerk who
refused to register a same-sex marriage can be sued.
I think the concern showed by Thomas and Alito exaggerates the
situation. Few jobs require taking actions specifically related to a
same-sex marriage. If you don't want to do that part of the job, you
can let someone else have the job.
AT&T has replaced tens of thousands of experienced union workers with
subcontracted temps, chosen for cheapness. They obviously can't have
the same level of skill, and the results cause damage, even danger.
A company called "Arise" outsources customer service for other
companies to gig workers, and treats them as badly as one would expect.
A study estimates that there are 14 million tons of small pieces of plastic
on the ocean floor.
*[The bullshitter's] Appointee to VOA Reporters: Criticizing [the
bullshitter] Is a Conflict of Interest.*
*Clean Electricity Plan Would Free US Economy of Carbon Dependence in 15
Years.* It would also create millions of good jobs in the US.
Indonesia has found in Covid-19 the opportunity to sell out big to
business, undermining many environmental protections and workers'
rights. Workers are organizing a strike and a protest.
Our problems are the result of letting business have too much clout already.
We cannot correct them by giving business more clout.
*As Covid-Positive GOP Politicians Enjoy Healthcare They 'Would Deny Others,'
Coronavirus Pandemic Again Makes Case for Medicare for All.*
Faux News teaches its cultists to speak and think in a different
language with a different way of thinking. Its words are drawn from
English, but speakers of ordinary English can't communicate with them.
The bullshitter has been the biggest single source of misinformation
about Covid-19.
I think the term "disinformation" fits better than "misinformation."
The US Senate is blocking the IMF from giving (for once, not lending)
aid to many poor countries to deal with Covid-19.
Syria is suffering from food shortages, and has rationed give-aways of
bread.
Many opioid treatment centers in the US are turning away patients
for reasons related to Covid-19.
European countries keep slowly increasing their anti-transmission
measures, but too slowly to get in front of Covid-19, so it keeps
on increasing.
Australia and New Zealand got it right: they took strong steps and
drove the case numbers way down. I expect that the timid governments
will end up with a much longer period of lockdown.
Cops (not extremely thuggish, it seems) broke up an 18-person vigil
for Julian Assange, then apparently knocked on Craig Murray's hotel
room door at night to ask when he was leaving.
The fires in California this year have burned over 4% of California's
territory, and the fire season is far from over.
In a decade or two, most years will be like this year, and a few will
be worse. I have a feeling that life in California will be difficult,
and farming even more so.
Twitter has all of a sudden decided not to allow tweets to wish for
someone's death.
Will that apply to everyone?
The nihilist's behavior does more than ruin debates. It makes
the idea of a debate an absurdity.
However, US presidential debates have not been sincere confrontations
of ideas for a long time. Since only the two major parties are included,
we always got soft right wing vs hard right wing.
Video game simulated airplanes emit real CO2, due to data centers
and network transmission.
The programmed obsolescence of game platforms also damages the
environment.
It is never difficult for me to decide not to play a video game. I
simply remember that the game is nonfree software, and the idea of
running it makes me shudder.
*Tens of Millions in PPP Loans Went to Corporate Polluters After Companies
Were Fined $52 Million, Analysis Shows.*
The Tories plan to find new ways to turn off the right of asylum.
One of the causes of the repeated legal claims from asylum seekers in
the UK is that agents keep disregarding the law and the government's
policies, and deporting people in despite of their rights.
Surely this is not an accident. If the minister in charge taught her department
not to take shortcuts, not to deport people illegally, they would not
have the need or the valid grounds to make these claims.
The nonviolent "Medicaid army" is rallying around the US to demand medical care for everyone.
Can anyone tell me of a site where people can find the locations of these
rallies, without having to run nonfree Javascript code?
I would like to post it, and maybe I can go to one.
To call violent right-wing extremists "vigilantes" understates their
actions and their danger.
Proposing reforms to the administration of US elections.
Pointing out that a meritocracy is not a good society for most people.
"Meritocracy" encourages people to compete to climb the ladder, but
ascending one rung pushes another down one. If you have to be above
average to win a decent life, half the people won't get one. What we
really should aim to do is to bring the runs closer together and pull
the whole ladder up. We need to reverse the concentration of wealth.
There is a role in a well-organized society for judging people by
comparing how well they would do a certain job. We want to put the
best people in charge of important decisions. But what does it mean
to be "best"? It's not just a matter of ability — making good
decisions requires good values, too.
We have seen the bad results of choosing managers solely for ability
to succeed. When Boeing ceased to be run by people with a career
commitment to making safe planes, and was instead run by people with a
career commitment to success, it started covering up possible problems rather than fixing them.
When medical insurance companies and hospital
companies started to be run by people who didn't have decades of
commitment to doing medicine, they made it their goal to get more
profit for less medicine.
The word "merit" is not the way to express what we should seek. We
should call this something else. "Menschness"?
Antisocial media, and especially Facebook, host intense misogyny.
The article's explicit point is valid and important, but (I expect)
not really news to readers of stallman.org. You know how nasty
antisocial media get, and that generally females receive more
hostility there than males.
My main reason for citing this article is to highlight a campaign to
change our use of language: the article describes verbal abuse as
"violence".
The insults and threats described are nasty, and they can hurt. But
they are not "violence" (though threatening violence is but one step
away from doing it). To stretch "violence" to include verbal abuse is
an abuse of language, and a dangerous one.
The frontier between words and violence is an important barrier to
escalation of fights. Respect for this line helps people restrain
themselves from moving from verbal attacks to punches or shots. It is
not always effective, but if we weaken it by redefining "violence" to
include mere words, we will learn the hard way how important that
restraint was. Erasing the border will lead to more censorship on the
one hand, and more physical attacks on the other.
Hatred can be expressed through words, and through physical acts. We
can condemn both without erasing the distinction.
There is a lot of hatred on Facebook, and a lot of disinformation, and
a lot of manipulation. Why so much? As I gather, it is because
Facebook's business model gives Facebook an incentive to promote these
things. It designs its algorithm to maximize "engagement" and the
algorithm promotes various kinds of harmful postings because they
achieve that goal.
Facebook is under pressure to curb the hatred, but if its profits depend on pushing hatred (along with
disinformation and manipulation), its efforts to reduce them are
likely to change little.
Rather than trying to fix these problems by imposing various kinds of
censorship, I think we should forcibly change Facebook's algorithm,
and its business model. Businesses are not entitled to human rights,
and regulating business models is not unjust like censorship.
The Interior Department stopped buying drones a year ago, for concern that China will spy through them. Now the US does
not have enough drones for fighting wildfires.
There is danger that China will spy through Chinese-made drones,
just as there is danger that companies and other government will
spy through drones made elsewhere. But I don't think China will
learn many important secrets from looking at wildfires.
The first step to making sure that a drone can't be used to spy (by
some party other than its owner) is to make sure that the software in
it is free, and is being checked by people for quality and honesty.
If you know Jolie O'Dell, would you please tell her that when I phone
her number I get "This number is no longer in service"? Please ask
her to send me email to get back in touch.
Android in the EU offers users a limited selection of default search
engines, which got onto the list by bidding in an auction. As a result,
DuckDuckGo did not make it into the list.
I have no way of seeing what search engines do appear.
Is there any that we think does not track users?
*Amnesty specializes in hard truths. No wonder Modi froze it out of India.*
What worries me is that the advance of tyranny in so many countries
will dilute the strength of efforts to hold tyrants accountable,
which are being weakened by disunity and by conversions to tyranny.
US citizens: phone your senators again at 1-844-335-4855 and implore
them to do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new
Supreme Court justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
The cheater pressured his closest associates and big financial
sponsors to risk infection by meeting with him when he had reason to know
Hope Hicks might have infected him.
Will any of them learn a lesson about him from this?
People that work in the White House are worried, too.
Will the cheater's hospitalization hinder the malfunctioning of
government? Let's hope so. Nothing causes more malfunction than
having the cheater actively intervening ;-!.
A book reports that the defeat of Hitler is owed partially to
homosexual members of the British parliament, who frequented Berlin
because of its loose sexual life. They saw Hitler's repression in 1934,
and began teaching others how bad he was.
The bullshitter's ghostwriter says that the bullshitter must be devastated
now that people know he isn't as rich as he pretended to be.
The idea that he sought to embody the poor person's idea of what it
means to be rich makes sense to me. I have a feeling that he was trying
to prove that he was a success, to himself above all.
"Cancel culture" can be found in various political camps. One target
is anyone that advocates the human rights of Palestinians or the end
of Israel's occupation/siege of Palestine.
To be clear, Israel occupies the West Bank and besieges Gaza.
Prisoners are being held longer in the UK because to obtain release
they have to participate in rehabilitation activities, and those
activities are not available due to Covid-19.
Ironically, keeping them in prison tends to increase the spread
of Covid-19.
The US government has worked out an agreement for the bankruptcy of
Purdue Pharma that lets the individuals that own it off the hook.
*With Focus on Assange, Belmarsh Tribunal Puts 'US War Crimes on Trial'.*
This is a private activity, modeled after the Russell Tribunal in 1966.
There were protests on Oct 2 against various banks that fund fossil
fuels.
The US government sent surveillance planes and snipers to George
Floyd's funeral.
Sony has got a patent on the obvious idea that a computer system
(specifically, a game console) might use a camera to recognize all
users, so no one needs to explicitly log in.
This patent would give Sony a basis to sue any other company that
implements this idea. It does not necessarily mean that Sony itself
will implement this idea, or even that it knows how to implement it
reliably, but perhaps it will.
Would you want every Sony-made game console to be able to recognize
you using biometrics? I would not.
On the other hand, given a game console powered by free software, I
might be willing to give my friend's console some biometrics to
recognize me by. But I'd want to be sure that they wouldn't be usable
for recognizing me when I pass by a camera in the street, and that
might be difficult to implement.
"Tips" to Doordash and Amazon food delivery workers go to the company
rather than to the worker, they cancel out the whole of the worker's
base pay.
The article seems to err in equating this to tipping of waiters. They
are not the same system. Yes, the waiter's base pay is below minimum
wage — but the restaurant does not claw back that base pay when the
waiter gets a tip, as Doordash and Amazon do.
Joseph Stiglitz: *How the Republican party threatens the US republic.*
The violence of Chilean thugs against protesters reached the point of
throwing a teenager protester off a bridge.
The protester survived, but that was only luck.
Polish expat Wojciech Sadurski is facing criminal prosecution for
accusing the Polish ruling party and national broadcaster for supporting
right-wing extremists.
To prosecute people for saying things like that (whether true or not)
is tyranny. The fact that this prosecution is occurring proves the
injustice of the Polish government.
The sad thing is that it is not alone. President
Sarkozy of France prosecuted several people for insulting him.
*Indigenous Activists Target Liberty Mutual's Boston Headquarters Demanding
They Stop Insuring Tar Sands Projects.*
Getting oil by mining tar sands is an especially bad form of fossil fuel;
its emissions are higher than most others.
The world should not only stop investing that, it should shut that down
immediately.
Torres Strait Islanders have complained to the UN that Australia is
endangering their way of life by failing to curb global heating.
Their islands are in danger of flooding, and eventually permanent
inundation.
That damage lies in the the future, but Australia's current actions
are causing it, and they must be changed now. Of course, Australia is
not solely responsible for global heating, but its part can be
identified and measured.
*Investors Extracted $400 Million From a Hospital Chain That Sometimes
Couldn’t Pay for Medical Supplies or Gas for Ambulances.*
This is an example of how the US economic system's encouragement of
predatory businesses. I think there should not be any for-profit
hospitals.
Should we wish Trump, the bullshitter, a speedy recovery?
All else being equal, I do. But I think it is more important to wish
my country a speedy recovery from the influence of the bullshitter.
I do not wish him to die. No person deserves to die, and the death of
any person is always something to regret. I would not rejoice that he
is dead.
However, I would rejoice that he can do no more damage.
Industrialization is destroying the mangroves of Kutch, in India, and
with them the unique breed of camels that swim around them.
China has made the production of molecular hydrogen using electrolysis
so cheap that the oil companies' dream of production hydrogen by burning
fossil fuels is already obsolete.
*A judge has granted the request of an anonymous juror in the [Breonna
Taylor] case that their Grand Jury proceedings be made public.*
After studying the transcript, lawyers will be able to tell us whether
the prosecutor tried properly to secure other indictments.
A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns.
*'Strong Start' But 'Not the End of the Road,' Says Greenpeace as Biden Vows
to Bar Fossil Fuel Leaders From Transition Team.*
*First-Ever Analysis Reveals How America's Top 100 Law Firms Are 'Accelerating
the Climate Crisis'.* The study gives a grade to each of those law firms based on the work
it has done.
A Texas sheriff has been charged with destroying video evidence
showing how thugs tased Javier Ambler to death.
From now on, New York City will fine people up to a thousand dollars
if they refuse to accept a gratis mask and wear it.
The article says "aggressively", but I think that starting with the
offer makes it a rather kind and gentle manner of enforcement:
"Please let us help you do what is needed to stamp out disease."
The 1880s counterpart to today's Amazon was the railroads: a monopoly
of intermediation which could exploit producers and end-users. One of
the anti-monopoly parties had this song.
Cory Doctorow: we should break up monopolies in lots of fields.
And not only those involved in digital activities. Many fields are
too concentrated now in the US: some that come to my mind instantly
include pesticides, seeds, meat, pharmacies, book publishing, and
airlines.
Every area needs to have many competitors, or become a regulated
monopoly and perhaps not for profit.
My tax scheme
could be part of the solution.
*Australia's offshore asylum centres have been a cruel disaster. They must not
be replicated by the UK.*
Some Maori activists
Maori have common interests, and in a democratic state such as New
Zealand there are well-established ways to pursue those interests.
One is to have a political party, and indeed the author is part of
one. New Zealand's governmental system enables smaller parties to
have some influence, rather than next to zero influence as in the US.
However, a separate parliament — which implies separate laws — for a
subset of people that live dispersed around New Zealand would be
conflict with the principle that everyone is equal under the law.
The article cites the UK as an example to follow. I contend it is
exactly the opposite.
I gather that people considered the UK too centralized. Setting up
regional administrations and devolving some powers to them was perhaps
a wise idea. However, doing this based on the historical "nations"
that were merged three centuries years ago to form the United Kingdom
was utterly foolish: each of those "nations" now has an influential
secessionist party.
Meanwhile, people in England (meaning most of the UK's population) got
none of the benefit of decentralization, because the UK did not set up
a national administration for England. In effect, the UK acted to
boost separatism while remaining, for the most part, too centralized.
I suggest that the right way for the UK to decentralize would be to
divide its whole territory into a workable number of smaller regions,
perhaps roughly one million people in each, avoid aligning them with
old historical grudges, then devolve the same powers to each of them.
The next target of Chinese imperialism is Taiwan.
*Covid-19 has legitimized once-radical ideas in UK, say Green leaders.*
Ivanka Trump is now caught in a financial scandal that may be criminal.
Please don't use the term "first daughter."
The bullshitter was close enough to Biden during the debate to
possibly infect him. His family members were present, without masks,
trying hard to infect other people in the audience.
More about this danger.
Such events should invite people in the audience to ask the staff for
help in dealing with others near them not wearing masks, to tell them
to put on masks or move away.
The governor of Wisconsin begged the disease-spreader to please not
come there for a disease-spreading event.
Now perhaps he won't.
What are the implications of this event for the campaign? Whatever
happens, the bullshitter will lie about it and try to turn it to his
advantage.
Exiles from Salafi Arabia have started a party calling for democracy
there.
Russian critical journalist Irina Slavina burnt herself to death
after state agents seized her computers.
I wonder why she could not face life after that. Was it simply that
one more act of harassment was more than she could bear? Were there
things on the computers that were going to enable the state to ruin
other people's lives?
It seems that coronavirus was not intimidated by the bullshitter.
He got infected despite all his boasts that he would not. He has probably infected many of his cronies. He could have
avoided that by wearing a mask.
Will his supporters feel honored to have received a virus from
their leader?
More about the Syrian mercenaries sent by Turkey to fight against Armenia. It seems they were told they would be guards, and were surprised to find that their job was fighting a war.
*[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll
QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.*
The governor of Texas ordered counties to reduce the number of places
to drop off ballots.
This is a new method, but it continues the Republican pattern of voter
suppression. If you can't win honestly, cheat, is their motto.
If Republicans were loyal to the idea of democracy, they would not
seek to stop people who disagree with them from voting. Their use of
voter suppression demonstrates that they are opposed to the basic ideas
of the United States.
*Huge Victory for Ocean Defenders as Seismic Blasting Halted in Atlantic.*
It seems there is no quick way to authorize the activity,
and by the time such a thing could be tried, we may have a
better chance of rejecting them.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor the CIVIL Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
(satire) *[the bullshitter] stoked fears surrounding crime Tuesday by having … Mike Pompeo disguise himself as a cat burglar and rob him on
the debate stage. "Oh no, look, it’s
a violent Antifa thug sent here by
Joe Biden to rob me!"*
*As a Result of ACLU Litigation, Trump Administration Ends Policy Prohibiting
Immigrant Minors From Accessing Abortion.*
New Jersey has increased taxes on people and businesses with incomes over
a million dollars a year.
It is a small step, but it's a start!
Amy Barrett's legal philosophy, to apply her religion to every decision,
disqualifies her from being on the Supreme Court.
Cambridge University has agreed to divest fully from fossil fuels.
The easiest part of the divestment will be done this year,
another part by 2025. The divestment will be completed by 2030.
Divestment is an important step, but there are limits to what it can
achieve. We need laws to turn off the fossil fuel industry.
The Federal Reserve has bought $355 million in bonds of fossil fuel
companies since March.
The DHS handed out PR instructions telling its representatives to take
a sympathetic line towards the right-wing Kenosha killer, and towards
the right-wing extremist group "Patriot Prayer".
Has the Department of Harshness and Sadism morphed into the Department
of Hatred Support?
* So long as U.S. leaders continue to coddle the Saudis, it’s difficult
not to ask who is more evil—the maniacal Saudi crown prince or the
mendacious Western governments and business people who support him?*
The UK is considering a new standard for "biodegradable plastic" which requires
that they don't result in microplastic grains.
A brief life of Paul Stephenson, a hero of desegregation in the UK and
the US.
The redirection of UK medicine to treating Covid-19 instead of other diseases
will end up having caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths from cancer
due to failure to treat it early.
I expect there were many more deaths due to failure to treat other
diseases.
The way to avoid this is to stay ahead of Covid-19 with measures strong enough
to keep the infection rate going down. R approximately 1 is like a pencil
balanced on its point — it won't stay at 1.
Nathan Law, in exile from Hong Kong, cannot contact his relatives at all,
since China would seize the opportunity to pressure him by punishing them.
I don't see any hope for Hong Kong; I think China will turn it into a
hell that terrifies people into suppressing their thoughts until they
forget how to think them.
Similarly, Trumpism adapts the traditional Republican attachment to
individual freedom and mutates it into a darker, Darwinian belief that
the strong individual can and should do whatever they like, and to hell
with the "suckers and losers" who might suffer as a result.
The "bread" in Subways' sandwiches cannot qualify for a tax exemption in Ireland, because it has too much added sugar.
That added sugar is not good for people. I wonder if Subway will reduce the sugar to qualify for the tax exemption. I wonder if other countries should adopt a similar legal policy.
*By kicking Amnesty out, India is betraying its founding ideals.*
*Signalling to his base, as he did referring to the Proud Boys on Tuesday, the [wrecker] is following a playbook from 1930s Germany.*
An FBI memo warns about violent right-wing extremist violence, perhaps after the election.
US companies evade regulations on toxic PFAs by switching to newer chemicals that are probably just as bad, but have not been studied yet.
It was obvious that faster processing and less inspection would make meat plants more dangerous. And it has.
Human rights lawyers that make reports to help the International Criminal Court are threatened by sanctions that the US placed on anyone "providing support".
Since that threat is unconstitutional, they have gone to court asking for a ruling that the sanctions don't apply to them.
It will take months to vaccinate everyone against Covid-19, once a good vaccine is available. Only after massively vaccinating people will we find out how effective the vaccine is, for various groups.
The UK has imposed lockdowns in 16 cities, but in most of them Covid-19 has continued to increase, because people are not carrying out the rules.
A cloud of new issues that surround the new instance of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
I think it is quite plausible that Erdoğan will have Turkish planes attack Armenia.
If Assange is convicted, he would be sent to the ADX Florence prison for solitary confinement for the rest of his life. A former warden of that prison describes it as "a fate worse than death."
Perhaps El Chapo requires special security measures, so that his henchmen cannot bust him loose. Perhaps also some of the al-Qa'ida prisoners. But most of the prisoners listed in the article do not belong to a gang and there is no special danger they would escape, no need and no justification to destroy them this way.
Global heating affects
Tepco has been found liable for failing to take steps to keep the Fukushima
nuclear plants safe from tsunamis.
California is considering paying reparations to descendants of past slaves.
I think the US government should do this; and the states that had
segregation laws ("Jim Crow") should pay reparations to the descendants
of blacks who lived in those states.
On the inhibiting effects of knowing someone is always watching.
The USPS stopped updating its list of people's known addresses in
August. This will interfere with states' voting records.
The UK government is drawing inspiration from Australia's horrible
treatment of refugees.
(satire) *Stunned Pundits Criticize Trump For
Refusing To Denounce His Base.*
The US government is going to great lengths to prevent an independent medical
examination of torture victim Mohammed al-Qahtani.
*40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction.*
The way to save some of those is to curb global heating and protect more
areas of land and sea.
US technology companies may already be helping China repress Hong
Kongers, or anyone talking about Hong Kong.
You cannot trust technology companies that operate in Hong Kong, or in China.
How Ghana licked Covid-19: its president did a proper job
of leading the country, focusing on the crucial goals.
In other words, a country does not need to be rich or advanced to do
this; it is enough to have a competent leader that focuses seriously on
the task at hand, and that people trust. Alas, many countries don't
have one.
*America's year of fire and tempests means climate crisis just got very real.*
George Monbiot: *[Bogus] Johnson's pledges on the environment are
[bogus]. Worse is how cynical they are.*
The Guardian is trying to excuse having leaked the password to decrypt
the file of encrypted unredacted US cables.
Wikileaks published unredacted US cables because various governments
and agencies were about to get the password to decrypt the encrypted
file. A Guardian reporter had published the decryption password in a
Guardian book.
Assange concluded it was better to publish the cables than for them
to be available only privately to those in the know.
Just recently the Guardian has started seriously covering the Assange
hearings.
Meanwhile, here are two more days of Craig Murray's thorough coverage.
With the wrecker determined to grab the coming election by hook or by
crook, we could end up on Jan 20 with no acknowledged decision.
Trans people in Panama faced big difficulties when the country
restricted which days each person could be on the street according
to the sex listed on per national ID card.
I wonder who was allowed to go outdoors on Sundays? Only intersex
people?
This is, by the way, one more reason that national ID cards are an
injustice.
The bullshitter's campaign in 2016 used Facebook ads to discourage
blacks from voting. Facebook should show the public precisely what
it did to achieve that.
Using advertisements to discourage some group from voting is, in
spirit, an attack on democracy. It is not as bad as outright voter
suppression, but it is bad.
Israel is neglecting Arab citizens in dealing with Covid-19,
so the disease is spreading in Arab areas.
Israel permits overt housing discrimination against Arabs.
Amazon's warehouse robots impose a high pace of work on the humans
that still work there. Apparently Amazon has cut their numbers too
far.
*Human Rights Watch Details NYPD Attack on Peaceful Protesters.*
It was a Black Lives Matter protest on June 4. The thugs encircled the
protesters to force them to remain till after the curfew, at which point
the thugs attacked them systematically.
EU unions call for investigation of Amazon's plans to increase surveillance
of its workers.
Turkey is signing up Syrian opposition fighters as mercenaries
to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia.
Why would they want to do that? Purely for the money? Because Armenians
are "infidels"?
(satire) *… top GOP leaders argued Monday that
giving President Donald Trump a second term would be a Christian act of
charity for a poor, elderly man.* And help him stay out of prison.
The US imports a large amount of products made from wild-caught bats
and rodents. Catching them and handling them creates a danger of new
diseases, and so does shipping them to the US.
*Analysis Shows Nearly 80% of US Household Wealth Owned by Millionaires and
Billionaires.*
Yanis Varoufakis proposes an alternative to a wealth tax that would
achieve the same purpose.
*Environmental Protections Could Be in Danger with Trump’s SCOTUS Pick.*
*Progressives Warn Barrett's Right-Wing Ideology and Past Rulings Signal She
Could Intentionally 'Make the Country a More Unjust Place'.*
Investigating the complexities of Yitzhak Rabin's politics
towards Palestinians.
(satire) *California Firefighters Massage 2.5 Million Gallons Of
Moisturizer Into Forests To Prevent Dryness.*
RSF calls on Oregon to drop criminal charges against reporter April
Ehrlich, for interviewing homeless fire refugees being kicked out of a
park.
The thugs wanted to keep her outside where she couldn't talk with
them.
The cheater poses in public to make Christians think he is one of them,
while privately regarding them as useful suckers.
I too think of them as fools, but unlike the cheater, I respect them
by honestly showing them my disapproval and opposition.
A court order tells the Census to continue for another month as
originally planned, but the Saboteur of Commerce said he will defy the
order.
This looks like another step in the wrecker's campaign to disarm all legal
restraint on what he does.
104 drivers have driven cars into Black Lives Matter protesters since
May 25. Some of them were terrorist attacks, and 39 drivers face
criminal charges.
Some right-wing fanatics escaped prosecution by claiming they were afraid
of the protesters they had driven into the middle of.
DeJoy said that he had the deactivated mail sorting machines
disassembled — apparently to make sure they could not be put back in
service in the event a court ordered it.
He also said that the parts were put into other machines,
but this seems to have been false.
However, some staff have disobeyed and kept machines working, and in general continued doing their jobs well.
It is a mistake to run the Post Office as a business.
We should define it as a national service and think about what more
it can do.
*The Economic Benefits of a Public US Postal Service.*
Giuliani owns a company that has no employees, but got a federal PPP loan
which it is allowed to use only for paying employees. Was this a crime?
If we have an honest Justice Department some day, it should investigate.
Putting that arrogant liar in prison for this and other crimes would
be a little justice.
Many banks cover up their bad debts, with the tacit approval of
government regulators. Some conceal so much in the way of bad debts
that their net worth is negative but they don't let on.
West Virginia's Republican governor is a billionaire but his companies
keep getting sued for nonpayment of debts.
The companies often lose or settle the debts — $140 million so far —
but sometimes they still refuse to pay.
Even worse, officials that he appointed as governor have reduced the
fines his companies owe for environmental violations. That is
corruption.
It demonstrates the plutocratic attitude: the country, the people, and
the Earth are here to be exploited.
In the UK, a few scientists claim that it is safe to let Covid-19
infect nearly everyone. They do this with interpretations and
arguments that are not necessarily wrong, but are strained. The
right-wing press exaggerates the importance of their dissent.
It seems that group disregards entirely the danger of long-term
injury, even to young people.
Because of this, allowing lots of people to be infected,
even people who are unlikely to die, would be a big mistake.
If transmission-limiting measures are taken soon, the hospitals
will not fill up with people sick with Covid-19, and normal treatment
of other diseases can continue.
The US government has contrived to keep most international election
observers away, just when we need them more than ever.
Australian rules for approving fossil fuel plants are designed to rush
the approval and provide excuses for disregarding harm that is likely
to result.
An interview with a woman who has been stalked for 11 years by a violent
ex-lover.
There are many situations where there are a few ways to respond, and
each one may succeed, do nothing, or backfire, and there is no way to
predict. You can choose to roll the dice, spin the wheel, or guess
which number is in the envelope. Good advice might tell you which
gamble gives you the best odds, but you can't avoid gambling, except
by giving up. Whether to threaten an abusive ex may be one of these
situations.
If you lose, you can always agonize about the fact that you might have
won if you had chosen a different source of randomness to bet on. But
the choice you made also might have won. It is useless to agonize
about or criticize the choice of gamble. The best you can do is
choose the best odds and go ahead.
To come up with a better plan could do a lot of good.
I wonder if it might make sense to sentence stalkers to carry digital
trackers to detect whether they approach places where their victims go.
It is unjust to do this to people in general, but it would be acceptable
as a punishment for stalking.
An EU requirement for countries to respect and implement rule of law
is blocking the release of EU funds to Hungary for coping with Covid-19.
A compromise is being considered to release the funds.
I am glad to see that the European Parliament is standing firm for
that requirement. However, perhaps it is right to make an exception
for the medical emergency. Surely other funds, used for things that are
not desperately urgent, would offer a good opportunity to pressure
Órban, perhaps even a bigger one.
Modi has forced Amnesty International out of India by freezing its
bank account.
It's not unusual for the UK and US to deport people to countries they
were too young to remember, and where they know no one. But it is
especially cruel to deport Osime Brown, who is autistic, and won't be
able to survive in Jamaica on his own,
A person who was brought to a country as a child has the right to live
there.
The UK may authorize minorities in China to use British courts to sue
China for repression.
In Thailand, you can be imprisoned for posting a negative review.
That is because defamation is a crime there, rather than a civil dispute.
That is fundamentally unjust.
I have read that some US states make defamation a crime, but those crimes
seem to rarely if ever be prosecuted.
*Many fossil fuel workers like me want to transition to renewables — but we
need support.*
An FBI report from 2006 warned that right wing extremists would try
to infiltrate US thug departments.
We know that a large fraction of thugs are right-wing extremists.
Whether this is the result of active infiltration, I don't know,
but I don't think it matters much.
Amazon is deploying a system for palm recognition.
As the article says, this is much better than other forms of biometric
authentication. Another advantage is that people don't constantly
leave palmprints wherever they go, as they leave fingerprints.
I have wondered whether the inside of the elbow might be a good choice.
A report on the status of inequality,
in the US and internationally.
With Javascript disabled, it looks a little weird, but I'm told
that the information is all accessible.
The "Proud Boys" in Portland were few but violent; they attacked three
journalists while thugs did nothing to stop them. However, thugs did
attack BLM and antifascist protesters, as well as journalists.
China's pledge to limit and reduce fossil fuel use will ruin Australia's
fossil fuel export business.
This is because China will use its own coal rather than buy
from Australia.
The sad thing is, China may do this by building new coal mines. The
decrease in Australia's extraction may not be a decrease in coal
burning for the world as a whole.
*What to Do When the World Is on Fire.* Government policies should
encourage localized and diversified agriculture, using methods that
improve the land and retain water, should replace the encouragement of
monocultures controlled by megacorporations.
I don't want to live on a farm; I would feel isolated and bored there.
But many people would really love to do this, if government policies
encouraged hiring intelligent workers rather than buying "intelligent"
tractors with proprietary software and DRM.
* Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Is an Enemy of Workers.*
Indeed, she supports businesses against individuals in general.
(satire) *… the Federal Bureau of Investigation
reportedly contacted Apple Monday to demand its assistance in opening
an iPhone 11’s packaging.*
National Nurses United reports on inadequate tracking of Covid-19
cases and deaths in the US.
These errors lead to bad response.
The wrecker has divided America, and his supporters think of us
as evil rebels.
What makes this so devastatingly dangerous is that he has taught
his supporters to reject the idea of following moral rules that
ought to limit their conduct. Because they imagine we are evil,
they believe that any violence, any lie, is justified.
People of such amorality are not fit to have any role in government.
The conman's tax affairs illustrate that the US has made it easy for
rich "businessmen" to divert money out of a business as an excuse
to say it made no profit and owes no tax.
*Until there's a Covid vaccine, we need to focus on treating
longer-term health consequences.* In particular, hyperinflammation,
which injures organs.
Palantir says it will not support governments that abuse human rights
abroad. The word "abroad" is necessary because Palantir supports the
US deportation thugs.
Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, was overheard condemning one of the
bullshitter's advisers, saying that "Everything he says is false".
The adviser in question was Scott Atlas.
He may be misleading the bullshitter as well as the public. However,
getting bullshit as advice from advisers he chose cannot excuse the
corrupter's campaign of bullshit.
I hope that the training of radiologists is not so narrow that they
escape learning basic medical facts about infectious diseases and
epidemics. However, no amount of education can overcome a determined
partisan intention to expose bullshit.
(satire) *Biden Removes ‘Defeating Trump’ From Platform To Avoid
Alienating Swing Voters.*
Adani, the company that wants to construct a giant coal mine in
Australia, is prosecuting an activist for doing what Julian Assange
did: asking for leaks about the plans. Now the company apparently
wants to go further and prosecute the people who did what Glenn
Greenwald did: prosecute the journalists who received the leaks from the
activist.
Oxford University's measures to protect students studying about China
from repression by China: they submit their homework anonymously, and
recording those classes is forbidden.
The precise extent and depth of this anonymity are not clear in the
article. If it means that their teachers don't know their real
identities, that is surprising but may be necessary — I won't argue
with it.
If it means simply that their identities are not associated with
their work in some corporation's cloudy data base that the school uses,
all students deserve that kind of anonymity, on general principles.
Don't dox anyone to a company.
The prohibition on recording classes seems to be necessary in this
case, but it has the unfortunate effect of blocking the one way you
can fully participate in a Zoom class without running Zoom:
find someone willing to make a recording of it, one way or another,
and watch that video (either in real time, or later). (You can participate
in audio by phoning in.)
This could still be done if your friend sets up a webcam on another
computer pointing at the screen, and transmits a stream to your
machine. But that is extra hard since webcams are expensive these
days.
Decades ago, some Chinese swam to freedom in Hong Kong. Now the tyranny they
escaped from has recaptured them.
I read that the UK agreed to try to stop refugees from arriving in
Hong Kong so that Chine would not invade. It would have been
impossible to defend Hong Kong militarily against a Chinese invasion.
On spreading hope for ultimately replacing the system of rule by the rich.
How broad is the repression of China's Hong Kong national security
law?
Argentines are pressuring the president to keep his pledge to legalize
abortion.
Greece is being crushed by debt, but it is spending a lot of money on
arms to beat Turkey for the chance to extract some undersea gas.
Whichever country wins will win the chance to help destroy
civilization. Meanwhile, even if this doesn't result in a war, the
arms will kill destitute Greeks.
It is legitimate to criticize judicial nominees for their religion, if
they seem likely to impose it on the rest of us.
If the cheater did not break the law in paying so little tax, does that
mean he did not do anything wrong?
The article explains why that conclusion does not follow.
But it seems to accept the widespread idea that people are
not to blame for mistreating others when the rules permit it.
That is where I disagree. If person P takes advantage of a flaw
in the system to do injustice, the system is at fault and
P is at fault as well.
Ai Weiwei carried out a solitary protest in front of the court house where
Assange's hearing ie being held.
He was doing what every journalist ought to be doing.
Daniel Ellsberg, famed leaker of the Pentagon Papers that showed the
dishonesty of the US about fighting the Vietnam War, testified that
Assange asked the US government to help redact the leaked documents so
there would be no risk anyone working for the US would be endangered,
but the US government refused to help, so as to be able to accuse
Assange of endangering them.
The pope has gone silent on criticizing China, apparently in exchange for a
say in appointment of Catholic bishops there.
Pompeo has no moral authority, but I think he is right on this one.
Of course, the injustices that the pope should criticize include many
committed by other countries, and they include the USA.
*No, Officials Can NOT Strip Search Kids Just Because Their Mom Let Them Wait
Briefly in the Car.*
*I was kidnapped by [thugs] for nine hours for being a Black Lives
Matter protester.*
*Trump sold voters on the folly that he's a successful businessman. That's a
con.*
I am not surprised. He would not have fought so long and hard to conceal
his tax returns if it were not going to embarrass him badly.
*"A bad businessman or a tax cheat – probably both", say
accountants.*
The heating of upper levels of the ocean is making hurricanes stronger
and interfering with vertical mixing of the water.
It also causes a positive feedback by confining further
heating to the surface level.
To what extent should businesses be able to order stars not to wear
clothing that supports political causes?
Political rights cannot discriminate between one political view and
another. Where and when BLM slogans are permitted, so are right-wing
slogans.
Craig Murray's coverage of three more sessions of the Assange extradition hearing.
Armed fascist demonstrators invade Portland every day and confront
antifascist and BLM protesters, occasionally committing violence
against them, against reporters, and against bystanders. The thugs
tend to let them do it.
Food delivery app companies are parasites; the commissions they charge
to restaurants are draining the restaurants dry.
They wantonly disregard laws to limit their commissions.
The authoritarian UK government has ordered schools not to use any
materials from organizations that advocate eliminating capitalism.
This means that schools can't teach about the history of labor
organizing and the Labour Party.
Already prohibited is anything produced by an organization that
"endorses illegal activity." I suppose that rules out showing people
anything written by Extinction Rebellion. Although that organization
is nonviolent, its protests do include violating laws in minor ways.
Also anything that says you should share copies of published works,
disregarding any unjust laws or anti-socializing contracts that say
you can't.
The Farm System Reform Act would break the dominion of Big Ag over
small farms.
When Colorado thugs arrested Vanessa Peoples, dislocating her shoulder and tying her up so that she had trouble breathing, they shone a light
on of a massive system of oppression, nominally called "child
protection".
There really are parents who mistreat their children grossly, and the
"child protection"service does sometimes protect children from real
dangers. But it tends to be too officious about small mistakes or
confusions, doing harm and spreading terror.
They demand a standard of attentiveness that a middle-class housewife
might aspire to, from parents who don't have either the money or the
time to try. The effective way to improve matters in those families
is to give them more money, but right-wing authoritarians are only
interested in punishing. More than half of black US families get
investigated by these services.
Bringing thugs (many of whom are racist) into the family situation
puts people in many kinds of danger, including the danger of getting a
criminal record, which can ruin your chance for a lawful career and
increase the poverty your children live in.
The same thing happens when thugs are stationed in schools — minor
incidents become opportunities to initiate someone's criminal record.
*There are increasing numbers of experiences putting collaborative
methods for hope and dialogue into practice.*
In small towns in Sweden there are stores with no staff. They are
very convenient for the people who live nearby, because they don't
recognize the danger of requiring them to log in using a national ID
number to buy anything.
Vending machines that accept cash in varying amounts are not unusual.
It would not be hard to make these stores accept cash, too.
There should be a legal requirement that people not have to identify
themselves to buy in a store.
The corrupter will have to pay $400 million in loans within the next
few years, and he may not have that much. No wonder his palm is
always open for gifts.
* France, Germany and UK among more than 60 countries promising to put
wildlife and climate at heart of post-Covid recovery plans.*
*Surge in illegal drift nets threatens endangered species.*
Ralph Nader: *To Democratic Voters — Up Your Demands; To Trump Voters
— See How He Didn’t Deliver for You.*
UK ministers have mostly replaced Parliament as the author of the law,
and are imposing absurd and useless punishments connected with Covid-19.
This has given right-wing antisocialists the opportunity to pose
as defenders of liberty.
Advice for how to help QAnon believers get out of the QAnonsense.
The thug that shot Jacob Blake offers an explanation.
Unconscious racism often manifests by leading someone to jump to the
worst possible conclusion, and take it as absolutely certain. If the
thug is telling the truth about what he thought at the time —
something we cannot be sure of — this could be the explanation for
it.
I don't think it justifies shooting Blake.
*The American public wants less war. Can Joe Biden deliver?*
Mueller failed to use all the means at his disposal to investigate
the possible crimes committed by the corrupter. And then Barr sabotaged
the awareness of what Mueller had found.
About the difficulty of enforcing the rather lax mask requirement of Key West,
and dealing with covidiots.
The people who don't wear a mask, and say "It's my business if I take a risk,"
evidently don't understand that their mask is needed to protect others.
Other people's masks protect you; your mask is to protect them.
Perhaps it would be useful to have a massive publicity campaign about that.
Many employers are using nonfree software, including videoconference
software, to surveil and monitor staff working at home.
The feature that lets someone check whether you are "active" is a
malicious feature. With free software, you could fix it to say
you are active.
We see also how connecting to one of those cloudy dis-service
can be a way for an employer to monitor you.
There is a controversy over whether and how a museum should display the art
of Philip Guston, which depicted people in KKK robes to relate their evil
to everyday life activities.
The danger is not only that people might miss the irony the artist
intended. It is also that right-wing conspiracy fabricators might
intentionally try to misrepresent it or build QAnonsense around it.
Islamic Relief will argue in the Israeli Supreme Court to refute false
accusations that it is a terrorist group.
*Activists protest ban on distributing food to migrants in Calais.*
It is unconscionable to try to eliminate inconvenient poor people
by denying them food.
The few giant meat-processing companies in the US want Congress to give them
immunity for working conditions that encourage the spread of Covid-19.
The corrupter has already told OSHA to support the businesses rather
than the workers.
To shut down the meat plants until they could run with safe procedures
would have caused a disaster. But the government could have made
them, could still make them, heavily liable for failure to protect the
workers in all feasible ways, while helping to increase what is feasible.
Food delivery companies have many ways of preying on the restaurants
they offer "services" to.
Cory Doctorow: many major gig economy companies are con games,
funded by Salafi Arabia.
They are designed to grow very large over a period many years, but
always losing money. *Then, Softbank exits with an IPO that offloads
the money-losing company on suckers who think its longevity means
there must be a 'path to profitability.'* The way the investors profit
is that the IPO brings in more than their investments.
Nuclear weapons are still a threat to the survival of civilization.
New England has been hit by drought and heat.
Wildfires (small compared with California's) have continued rather
that ceasing in June. Cranberry plants are failing to produce
cranberries. Streams are running empty.
The reforming district attorney for Boston and some neighboring cities has
published a list of cops in the zone who have been specifically accused of
being thugs.
It will be harder for them to succeed by testilying.
Advocates of regenerative agriculture claim that it could absorb all
of humanity's CO2 emissions.
I don't have the basis to judge claims about regenerative agriculture.
I can't tell whether they are valid, because I don't know any ground
truth from which I can deduce anything in that area. And I don't know
of any unbiased entities I could have confidence in. Are any farms
succeeding in business using these techniques?
Is it possible to set up a regenerative agriculture emissions
compensation scheme? How would it measure up, in terms of costs per
ton of CO2 absorbed, against investments in increased energy
efficiency? Can the benefit of improved or protected topsoil be
quantified?
It would be good to spell out the claim that is being made. What are
the claimed benefits, and what are the costs? For instance, the claim
could be, "This is a better method of agriculture and farms should
make the investment to switch now." Or it could be, "This system or
agriculture can't compete today because it would require more farm
labor, but we must adopt it for civilization to survive." The difference
is fundamental.
To follow Sweden in curbing Covid-19 requires imitating Sweden's very
strong and effective welfare system.
Australia's government has proposed a plan for reducing greenhouse emissions,
but it depends on making carbon capture and storage far more efficient than
it ever has been.
No matter what your age or condition, Covid-19 can cause you lasting damage that can be incapacitating. The damage can last at least six
months, we now know. Six months from now, we may know it can last a year.
There is no reason to assume it will ever get better.
*From [the wrecker] to Bolsonaro, reactionary leaders are invoking a communism
that no longer exists as a [dishonest] way of attacking the left.*
Today's left isn't Communist anyway, but liars don't care about the truth
of anything.
The mainstream press shows little interest in the prosecution of
Julian Assange even though success could pave the way for prosecuting
other publishers.
The up-to-1200-dollars stimulus checks enabled 7% more Americans to
handle a surprise medical expense. Even that small amount did real
help.
The USPS chief of logistics, in July, made a presentation to local chiefs
pressing them to implement the service cuts.
Although DeJoy was not in that meeting, various vice presidents were,
so it is clear he did this with DeJoy's own support.
Many rural hospitals in the US, which now face a lot of Covid-19
cases, are in danger of going broke.
Students are organizing petitions against the intrusive exam-monitoring systems imposed by many universities.
If you launch a petition at your university, please make sure to give people
a way to sign the petition without having to run any nonfree software,
and that includes JavaScript software sent by a web site. You can invite
people to send email to add their names.
I suggest it is unwise to focus on issues of effective discrimination
against subsets of students. Why so? It's not that these problems
don't matter — they do. What makes them weak focuses is that the
developers of the systems can probably fix them, resulting in a system
that mistreats students in those subsets only as much as it mistreats
everyone else.
Another mistake to avoid is to weaken your demands as a "compromise"
before you state them. Start the negotiations with what you really
want.
By demanding a real solution for the problem, you can build a stronger
movement. You can agree to a compromise later — but it will be,
explicitly, only a partial victory. So it won't make your movement
scatter.
(satire) *Reporter Presses Biden On Lack Of Own Plan To Trigger
Widespread Violence.*
Ro Khanna proposes a bill for term limits in the Supreme Court. After
a justice's term ends, perse would remain a judge and move to lower
courts.
(satire) *"Anyone questioning what President Trump will do on
election night or afterwards is participating in a very dangerous
effort to get Americans to mistrust the basic tenets of this country's
autocracy," said Sean Hannity on his broadcast.*
It's a shame Justice Ginsburg did not retire last time Democrats controlled
the Senate and the presidency.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts legislators to pass the ROE act.
This would get rid of old laws restricting abortion rights, which have
been unenforced due to Roe v Wade. It would also in general increase
abortion rights.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to shut down the Senate to stop
Republicans from picking Justice Ginsburg's successor.
(satire) *In an effort to restore the rule of law, Attorney General
Bill Barr declared Ipswich Middle School an anarchist jurisdiction
Friday after finding a circle-A symbol scrawled on a notebook cover.*
Rep. Jayapal is leading the fight against the PAT RIOT Act's massive
surveillance.
Howard Zinn said, who is on the Supreme Court is not as
important as what the American people demand.
But I don't think we should relax and stop trying to block the
wrecker's choice.
On September 25 there were over 3,200 climate strike events.
I wrote to the organizers to ask them to make it possible to find the
events without running nonfree software. That would be an easy change
to make. I hope that I will be able to participate in the future.
What is the use of a virtual protest, though? The idea of a protest
rally is to show the public and the news media where people stand. If
only the participants can see the rally, it doesn't seem to do
anything.
David Attenborough's Witness Statement shows us the destruction we
have done to Earth's ecosphere, then tells us what we need to do to
save what is left.
WHO: if we don't take effective collective action to curb the
spread of Covid-19, there could be 2 million deaths from Covid-19
before a vaccine starts to slow it.
Postal ballots in Pennsylvania require two different envelopes,
one inside the other. If the voter omits the inner envelope,
per vote won't be counted. This could reject tens of thousands
of ballots.
It is another reason to do early voting, not vote by mail.
A Republican senator proposed a bill to require all postal ballots to
be counted in just 48 hours.
This surely won't be enacted — and I doubt it is constitutional —
but it illustrates the "win by hook or by crook" attitude of
Republicans.
*As Trump Sows Chaos, Democrats Urged to Increase Push for In-Person
Voting—Early If Possible.*
What would the US military do if the wrecker orders it to
suppress "rebellion" based on "fake news"?
For generals to resign if ordered to overthrow constitutional
government would save their own individual honor, but it would not
save constitutional government. Rather, the first one in line who
hasn't got enough honor to resign would commit the crime. Their
duty would be to preserve constitutional government, not step aside.
*How the Protests Upended Portland's Mayoral Race* for the better.
Birdlife International gave the Taiwanese bird conservation group a
political ultimatum, following China's orders.
The US and other countries could conceivably pass laws requiring
organizations to accept cooperation with Taiwan if they do is with
China, on fair conditions. If China tries to bully these
organizations by refusing, the organizations will be required to say,
"That's your choice, China, but it's a shame you see it that way."
Lebanese are going hungry because imported food is now far more
expensive. Some are turning to farming.
China is systematically destroying mosques in Xinjiang, by the thousands,
including sites that are a thousand years old.
US thugs treat indigenous people with the same arrogance that they
show to blacks.
US lawyers do not contest that Rep. Rohrabacher offered Assange a
pardon if he would reveal information about sources of a leak. He
refused.
Assange did say that the leaked DNC emails were not obtained by cracking.
The UK's Covid-19 contact tracing app
asks
users to scan a QR code when they enter certain places.
I suspect that scanning the QR code immediately informs the state
where the phone is located at that moment. That is a violation of
people's privacy.
The Google/Apple contact detection protects privacy pretty well,
though I am not an expert on it. I'd be willing to use that,
if it did not require a mobile phone.
Italy has an approach I think is better, both for finding all cases
and for respecting privacy: simply
test
all the acquaintances of anyone that catches Covid-19, and don't
worry about whether they saw each other recently.
The grand jury
did
not indict any of the thugs involved in killing Breonna Taylor for
that killing. Naturally this triggered protests in many cities.
The decision not to charge the thugs may have been imposed by law.
I saw an article, a couple of months ago, which explained that the
thugs could legally claim self-defense, and it would have been
impossible to convict them.
I did not link to that article because it ended with antisocialist
views about right and wrong, which I did not want to link to, and
because I did not know if its claims about the legalities were valid.
But the outcome suggests that they were.
Since we condemn the outcome, we need to consider this question: at
what point did the thugs commit an act that they deserve to be
punished for?
I believe that point was when they broke into the house without
announcing who they were. When cops act like burglars, they invite
the residents to shoot; but if the residents do so, they are the ones
that are likely to get killed, as happened this time.
The outcome we want is that innocent people don't risk death. One way
to get that outcome is to make cops identify themselves as cops before
entering, with no exceptions. Criminals might fight with or without
the announcement, but the announcement will inform innocent residents
not to.
It is not enough to set a policy against no-knock breakins. It should
be a crime for thugs to do that, so we can indeed punish them when
they do.
We could allow the cops to send unarmed robots to enter the house,
given a warrant. If robots get shot, it is no great loss, and they
would not try to shoot back.
*Labour's target
should
be the Tory party, not Johnson's credibility.*
Chad is
planning
to build oil wells near Lake Chad.
The shore of Lake Chad belongs to four countries, all of which will be
harmed when the oil pollutes the lake. Meanwhile, the greenhouse
emissions from burning the oil will harm the whole world. We
cannot
afford to extract all the oil from existing wells, so any new well
is at best wasted expense, and at worst an assurance of doom.
*The federal government has still not set limits for PFAS compounds,
and some allege that
could
be because it is a polluter of them itself*.
Chicago has obdurately
refused
to reform its extremely cruel thug department.
Chen Qiushi, who reported on China's measures to deal with Covid-19,
disappeared on Feb 10. It appears he
has
been a prisoner ever since.
China continues building prisons for Uighurs —
380
have been discovered so far. Some are adjacent to factories.
Some ancient Uighur neighborhoods in Xinjiang are now
empty
of people. All the inhabitants have been moved, perhaps to those
prisons.
Covid-19 is surging in France, filling hospitals with people who are
badly sick and forcing the postponement of operations people need for
other reasons.
The only way to stop the surge is with distancing, but selfish people
are angry at the unpleasantness of this.
The British government may (if I understand this article correctly)
be thinking of repealing the GDPR in the UK.
The GDPR are greatly inadequate
but they do some good. This would be a change for the worse, and
indicates the intent to let companies such as Facebook and Google
snoop on Britons more and manipulate them more.
Medical effect studies need to keep track of outcomes for men and for women
separately. Some drugs work well for one and badly for the other.
Experiments will determine how long coronavirus can survive and be
infectious in small droplets that float in the air.
An Argentine member of Congress was forced to resign for a trifle: he
engaged in sexplay with his lover and did not realize his camera was
on.
Can't those people distinguish between causing embarrassment and really
doing wrong?
*Dozens of Asian [i.e., of Indian ancestry] lawyers [in the UK] say
they have been mistaken for defendants.*
Such a mistake can hurt feelings but does not do real damage.
However, it is a sign of racial stereotyping that must have other bad
effects.
*Facebook's former director of monetization (sic) says Facebook
intentionally made its product as addictive as cigarettes.*
The term "monetization"
encourages the attitude which leads people
to act this way. Let's shun it.
*Volkswagen to pay compensation for collaborating with Brazil’s
[1964-85] dictatorship.*
*Senator Bernie Sanders has called for an independent election commission to stop Donald Trump defying the will of the people and
plunging the US into a constitutional crisis.*
Doordash has a scheme where it discounts pizza for customers but pays
the restaurant full price. (This is a scheme to mislead and trap
restaurant owners for the long term.)
One restaurant owner started ordering pizzas from his own restaurant
via Doordash, and making money from Doordash on each one.
*Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine
parts and body armor.*
Arizona thugs told a dog to bite Alfredo Saldivar because he
"hesitated" before obeying a command to stand up.
To dispute whether he really hesitated is a distraction. The point
is, even if he did, that is no excuse for such dangerous escalation.
To avoid a future "climate lockdown" where drastic measures are imposed
to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we need to use non-drastic measures now
to achieve faster reductions.
Neve Gordon: Facebook is being pressured to tag criticism of Israel automatically as "anti-Semitism."
The change Facebook recently made, which recognizes the claiming that
Jews secretly rule the world as anti-Semitism, is correct. That
conspiracy theory is antisemitic, and it is not criticism of Israel's
occupation and colonization of Palestine.
Big oil companies are giving a public impression of starting to change
away from fossil fuels, but the change is pretty small so far.
Here's the detailed report.
*If Trump Fills RBG’s Seat, the Court’s Legitimacy Will Be in Crisis.*
What Biden would need to do to reverse the wrecker's sabotage of US environmental policies.
The article says it it would take two years to undo environmental
deregulation, handling each regulation separately, and this would face
opposition from extractivist companies. I have another idea.
Those channels are specified by laws. It should be possible to pass a
law reverting a specified set of regulations to their status as of
January 2017. The old regulations that would go back into effect were
approved through the official legal process, so it would be hard
to challenge them. The process could be finished in a few months.
This would require eliminating the filibuster.
The wrecker is still at it, now eliminating protection for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
*Facebook Ad Ban on Premature Election Victory Ads Is Yet Another Hollow
Gesture.* Because it won't cover premature election victory announcements.
*Trudeau pledges tax on 'extreme wealth inequality' to fund Covid spending
plan.*
If he really does this, it would be a great example.
Sanders and other US legislators called on the Organization of
American States to investigate how it came to publish false accusations
against Bolivia's President Morales.
Bad news for America: Senator Feinstein wants to allow Republicans to
block all progressive legislation, even if the Democrats win a
majority in the Senate.
It is logical that a plucratist legislator would want to help the right-wing extremist party to block progressive legislation.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-335-4855 and implore them to
do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new Supreme Court
justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
California will study whether the Joshua tree needs legal protection
from being wiped out by global heating.
* Dozens of women have been convicted for manslaughter, homicide and
aggravated homicide after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other
obstetric emergencies since El Salvador introduced a total ban on
abortion in 1998.*
*White House 'pressured official to say John Bolton book was security risk'.*
It's another example of how the wrecker corrupts every government activity.
The US Chamber of Commerce has found 23 Democrats in Congress
sufficiently plutocratist to endorse their election campaigns.
Some large US corporations have learned to talk about concern for
"stakeholders" other than their owners and executives, but it's only
talk.
In the UK, teenagers (not "children" as the article says) are being
recruited to violent right-wing extremism via internet communications.
In this year's presidential debates, the danger of global heating
disaster may hardly be discussed.
If there is a question about this issue, it is likely to use the
vague, neutral term "climate change" which invites candidates to miss
the point.
*The Federal Reserve bond
purchasing program meant to prevent workers from losing their jobs amid
the Covid-19 pandemic instead bolstered companies who laid off more
than one million workers while paying massive dividends to
shareholders.*
Climate activists call for defeat of the Congressional Democrats'
inadequate energy bill.
The article says that passing that bill would by a "Pyrrhic" victory,
which is incorrect use of the word. "Pyrrhic" describes a victory won
at such a great cost that you can't afford to win another. (King
Pyrrhos of Epirus said that about his victory over Rome.) This bill
would be, rather, a dummy victory.
The oil companies' conservation plans are also drastically inadequate.
Ecuador's treacherous president Moreno is trying to rig the 2021 election
by stopping Correa and his supporters from running.
(satire) *… the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
confirmed Monday that the Earth is dating the Moon.*
The bully continually incites violence against reporters
but pretends not to be doing so.
Remember how in 2016 a Republican candidate apologized for punching a
reporter, but the bully praised it anyway?
Governor Newsom ordered that all vehicles sold in California after 2035
make zero greenhouse gas emissions, but he failed to take real steps
to reduce oil and gas extraction in the state.
*Trump Keeps Telling Us How He and Republicans Plan to Steal This Election.
Can we stop him and save our republic before it's too late?*
Is "steal" the correct word? The final step would use a loophole in
the Constitution, and that a such would not be stealing it.
But the first step is a fraudulent accusation of fraud, and I think that
would justify the word "steal".
Why are Republicans in control of all the swing states' legislatures?
Some of those states now vote majority Democrat, but gerrymandering
has prevented the voters from electing legislators that reflect their
views.
*Perspectives on a riven nation from a worried military spouse.*
18 years in prison for criticizing Xi.
*Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies.*
*Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said
‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show.*
We all suspected this, but we could not be sure. Now we know
that the bully's supporters are a criminal gang.
I have not had time to keep up with Craig Murray's coverage of
Julian Assange's extradition hearings, so here are the links.
After 2C of global heating, Antarctic ice melt would raise sea level
2.7 meters.
That would be in addition to the effects of melting in Greenland and
the expansion of the ocean due to its own heating. I don't know
what the total would be.
French journalists unite to back Charlie Hebdo and the freedom
to blaspheme.
(satire) *Earth reportedly expressed hope Tuesday that a weird
burning sensation was nothing serious.*
(satire) *… Xi Jinping jailed Chinese real estate tycoon Ren
Zhiqiang Tuesday for failing to use the sandwich method of
constructive criticism when condemning him.*
Amnesty International rebukes the UK for denying it access to monitor
Assange's extradition hearing.
If it were not for Craig Murray's coverage, the hearing would be
effectively secret. This is what we expect from outright tyrannies
such as China, but apparently the UK is approaching the same level of
decay.
The developers of the Pebble Mine in Alaska pretend it will be 5
square miles, which is merely large, but what they say in private is
that it will be enormous.
*If Report Proven, ACLU Says Federal Agents Tapping Phones of Protesters Would
Be 'Outrageous' Constitutional Violation.*
Hong Kong's puppet government has derecognized most journalists,
as a preparatory step for repression.
Remember this if politicians in your country try to impose rules about
who is a journalist and who is not. For instance, if they claim that
Julian Assange is not a journalist.
*The QAnon orphans: people who have lost loved ones to conspiracy theories.*
Cults like these used to be run as businesses: Scientology, and the
Moonies. As far as I know, there is no one business profiting off
QAnon. But with so many credulous people, I'm sure there are people
with plans to profit off exploiting them in a tight, cult-like way.
(satire) *As the Democratic presidential nominee ramped up his in-person
efforts to get out the vote, members of the Joe Biden campaign
reportedly went door-to-door Tuesday in the JPMorgan Chase
headquarters.*
Medea Benjamin: reports say that Biden will choose, to run the
Pentagon, the architect of the US policy of military intimidation
around the world.
Biden is proving to be every bit as bad as we expected last spring.
I expect he will put money into the military rather than saving
poor Americans from total misery.
*Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with US.*
This is the road to victory! Make sure Facebook leaves Europe, and
the US, and then everywhere else.
* Coronavirus inflicts American deaths equivalent to a 9/11 every few
days, but [the wrecker] and his allies seem blithely unconcerned.*
Republicans don't care if other people die, but in 2001 they had a
chance to gain by making a fuss about some Americans who died.
Whereas today they have a chance to gain by pretending it isn't
happening.
*Greenpeace says [the EU] must get a grip on reducing greenhouse gases from
livestock or risk missing Paris agreement targets.*
Austin, Texas, voted to cut the thug department's budget. Texas
Governor Abbott threatens to cut Austin's taxes as a punishment for
this, and put the city's thug department under the control of the lawless and cruel state thug department.
The article starts by describing how the state thugs attacked Lauren
Mestas. Her car had slogans such as FUCK THESE RACIST POLICE, and
"all cops are bastards." A thug was so offended by this that he
believed he was entitled to bring many thugs to point guns at her,
then force her out of the car, which they ruined ‐ demonstrating that
at least Texas state cops are bastards.
China has made a glaringly insufficient pledge to be carbon-neutral by
2060.
The cheater hopes courts will stop states from counting valid postal ballots
that arrive after election day.
By itself, this is merely unfair. But when combined with DeJoy's
efforts to delay mail, it adds up to sabotage.
*Ocasio-Cortez Demands Democrats Use 'Every Procedural Tool Available' to Stop
Trump From Filling RBG Vacancy.*
I completely agree.
Covid-19 has made adjunct professors even more likely to be junct.
They also fear losing their medical insurance, although many of them
already have none. If they get sick, they can be fired rather than treated.
They would not have that danger if the US had a national medical
system. In general, a national medical system can encourage hiring
workers because the state can fund their medical treatment by taxing
profits rather than taxing employment.
Matthew Carney recounts more of the Chinese psychological game of cat
and mouse, threatening him and his family.
You may have a mission to do in China which is so important that you
take the risk of being thrown in prison for political reasons. But
don't bring your family with you!
*Calls for Major Reforms After Leaked Docs Detail How Big Banks Help Criminals
and Oligarchs Launder Their 'Dirty Cash'.*
The CDC posted notice that Covid-19 can be spread via aerosols. Then,
a few days later, it deleted that notice.
Can anyone find the evidence about spread via aerosols?
*The Climate Emergency Isn't Just a Crisis, It's a Crime.*
The fossil fuel companies are the mobsters that organized the crime.
Clean energy makes more jobs than dirty energy, but "creating jobs" is used
as an excuse for subsidizing the latter.
A heavily subsidized Shell plant is an example of this.
I have to point out, though, that employment is a secondary
consideration when the survival of civilization and the ecosphere is
at stake. What would be the sense in paying people to poison our
future, even if it did make lots of jobs?
It would be better to create jobs by paying them to move a big pile of
gravel from one lot to another, with shovels. At least that work
wouldn't do any harm.
*AT&T, Coca Cola, Disney, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Uber
all target female consumers and promote women-friendly work
environments, yet they bankroll candidates who actively work against
women’s rights.*
*We need to create a new framework for health
security.*
Republicans put a lot of effort, 10 years ago, into winning control of
state legislatures so they could gerrymander subsequent elections.
Democrats need to win them back.
Bogus Johnson has tuned the distancing rules for the UK, hoping this
will stop the rapid growth in Covid-19 cases.
Experience with him suggests that he has no solid basis to think that
it will do so. I don't have a solid basis to think it won't, but
since tuning has been insufficient in many other places, I predict it
will be insufficient this time too.
Bloomberg is paying the fines for 31,000 Florida ex-cons so that they
will be able to vote this year.
It should not be forgotten that the Florida election was not actually
close. It appeared to be so after Republicans disenfranchised around
50,000 voters, chosen systematically in a way that ensured most of
them would be black and therefore probably Democrats.
Australian thugs found a man drunk and asleep, so they pepper-sprayed
and tased him to wake him up. Then they made false charges against
him. So far, so usual. Except that he was a famous professional
rugby player and there is a video of what they did to him.
The thug commissioner seems to have a great capacity to sympathize
with thugs, but insufficient sympathy for everyone else. I was
surprised that his list of ways to deal with the situation did not
include having four people pick him up, each holding one limb. That
doesn't generally hurt, and he might have stayed asleep.
*A third of my country (Bangladesh) was just underwater. The world must act on climate.*
*Gig Economy Company Launches (a company like) Uber, but for Evicting People.*
Many upper-caste Indian engineers have moved to the US. Alas, they
have brought caste prejudice with them.
The Indian I admire most is Dr Ambedkar, who was the leader of the
Dalits. I urge people to read a biography of him. The one I read was
Ambedkar — Toward an Enlightened India, by Gail Omvedt.
Please do not buy this (or anything) from Amazon!
At the end of his life, Ambedkar developed a rationalist form of Buddhism
which he called Navayana.
Jai Bhim!
*'It smells bad, it tastes bad': how Americans stopped trusting their water.*
A woman in the UK was fired from her job at a school for posting,
elsewhere, a statement disapproving of same-sex marriage.
I disagree with her views, but we must respect her right to state
them. Her employer should have to respect that, too.
As it happens, she made the statement based on her religion, but that
should make no difference. An Atheist should also have the same right to
state those views, or other views, as a religious believer.
The State Policy Network aims at *crushing unions, promoting fossil
fuels and undermining climate science, eliminating regulations and
cutting taxes, privatizing education, stopping Medicaid expansion, and
hiding the identities of political donors.* Now we know 100 of its funders.
It would be useful to develop a consumer boycott list based on this
information.
Cyprus blocked the EU from putting sanctions on Belarus, using the issue
as a pawn.
Cyprus demands the EU take its side in the dispute about which country will
get to extract fossil fuel from the Mediterranean Sea and convert it
into planet-roasting greenhouse gas. It seems that the EU does not recognize
that it must never be done. Why not?
There are many low-lying coastal cities in Turkey, which will be
inundated by global heating. I don't think Turks want them to be
flooded. Don't they realize?
*'Landmark moment': 156 countries agree to Covid vaccine allocation
deal.* People who are particularly vulnerable, due to their conditions
or their work, will get priority.
In the US, rich people will be first.
Alexei Navalny demands Russia return the clothes he was wearing when
he was poisoned, as evidence.
BP has confirmed that half the world's known oil reserves will never be used
and are worthless. This article speculates about political
consequences.
The article also talks about reviving carbon capture, but that
technology was only hypothetical. If it is ever made to work, let's
do it, but don't pretend it is available technology.
The plan to make hydrogen from methane is misguided.
Methane wells leak lots of methane. Transporting methane
leaks too. To add to that, making hydrogen from natural gas releases CO2! That is a bad way to make hydrogen.
As for the idea that there is something wasteful about using green
electricity to make hydrogen, that would make sense if we were hitting
a limit on supply of solar and wind energy. The real limit is how much
of those facilities we build, and we can ramp that up.
Meanwhile, how come Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are still fighting about
possible oil reserves under the sea? Have they not grasped this news?
Or is there something not known to me, nor described in the article,
which makes those new undersea reserves worth something despite
all the other known reserves that won't be used?
*Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers.*
The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant, so
that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.
The global fight against monopolies and tax havens is picking up.
The article also reminds us that the fight against excessive market
concentration is not limited to blocking mergers and breaking up large
companies. Though we need to do a lot of that, and my tax proposal
can help.
*Affirming Jim Crow, Israeli Parliament Votes Down Bill Guaranteeing Equality
for Palestinian-Israelis.*
Right-wing scapegoating parties are doing very well against
plutocratist parties, since plutocratists around the world have
crushed and silenced the left.
*Republicans Aren't Hypocrites.* To be a hypocrite, you have to stand
for principles.
According to this article, Republicans are cynics that don't care
about any political positions, except as ways to give their supporters
enemies to win victories over.
Friday school climate strikes are starting again.
In 2018, China threatened to imprison Australian journalist Matthew
Carney, and his wife, and their teenage daughter — separately — for
a fabricated visa crime, for offending China with his reporting on
repression.
Carney kept silent about this until now for the safety of other
Australian journalists.
Both the US and China have imprisoned whole families, often separating
children and teenagers from their parents. I don't know which country
does this more often. There are not very many foreign journalists in
China but there are millions of Uighurs.
Another similarity is that both countries do this as part of a
campaign to attack truth.
But the US does not do this to foreign journalists. It is trying to
imprison Julian Assange, which is evil, but it is not trying to
imprison his mate and their children.
*I'm 18 and can already see my Alaska community changed forever by climate
change.*
*Meet the doomers: why some young US voters have given up hope on climate.*
I agree with their estimation of our future. But they are wrong to
give up the fight because of the situation.
They are right that avoiding disaster calls for big national efforts
which current governments refuse to do. (I call them "planet
roasters" because of that refusal.) And it is too late to fully avoid
the disaster.
But it is not too late to avoid part of the disaster. If 20% of
species go extinct, instead of 50%, that will be a great conservation
achievement. If heating kills 8 billion people in this century rather
that 11 billion, that will mean saving 3 billion human lives.
Whatever we achieve in preservation of democracy and human rights will
also make a lasting difference, if civilization survives.
Fortunately, some of the young people are not giving up.
Whatever universities do by 2030, or by 2050, will not make a big
difference directly. But pressuring universities into rapid action
can lead to broader actions that are bigger.
*Immigrant rights groups urge New York senators to block Iris Lan’s
nomination to serve as a federal judge in the southern district.*
I hope they can do so, but Republicans have already disregarded that
traditional Senate practice.
Australia's laws give mining companies great license to destroy
ancient sites with their mines. One might think they were designed to
do that.
I am not persuaded by the "sacred site" argument, because no religion
deserves special deference from people who are not its adherents.
Every church is someone's "sacred site", but that should not protect
all churches from eminent domain and demolition. (For the same
reason, I do not call priests "father".) What we owe to other
people's religions, in general, is to respect people's right to
practice their religions.
What is special about these sites is not that someone's religion calls
them "sacred," but that they are irreplaceable relics from humanity's
past. That applies to some churches and other religious buildings and
objects, too. Typically those are already protected, except that
sometimes fanatical religion attacks them.
The QAnon fantasy enables right-wing believers to feel they are protecting
innocent children. Alas, the protect those children from a fantasy danger
which distracts people from the real source of real sexual abuse.
The QAnon fantasy resembles a cancer in the body of knowledge. Just
as cancer cells have become disconnected from the rules and needs of
the body they are supposed to be part of, QAnonsense beliefs are
disconnected from the body of real knowledge and real society's real
needs. Whatever variant appeals more to the susceptible, will spread.
This jamming together of conspiracies reminds me of a great work of
fiction from the 1970s: the Illuminatus trilogy. It presents a
fictional world in which every well-known conspiracy theory of the day
is posited as true, and weaves them together by inventing connections
that are literally consistent but shockingly implausible.
For instance, three assassins had separately gone to Dallas to shoot
President Kennedy, and the agent who was there to save Kennedy — John
Dillinger — decided he couldn't possibly stop all three, except by
shooting Kennedy before they did. Completely preposterous, but it
wasn't meant to be believed.
What was delightful absurdity as fiction in Illuminatus becomes a
dangerous delusion when taken seriously by the credulous.
On the testimony of two expert witnesses in Assange's hearing.
Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who defends the rights of people faced
with torture and assassination by the US government and campaigns
against those activities, testified about cases that had been helped
Wikileaks releases, and about how US trials about publication of
secrets really work, and explained that the indictment included a
charge of "conspiracy" for which everything Wikileaks released, which
had come from Manning, would be pertinent.
One thing that amazed me was his assertion that Obama had decided not
to prosecute Assange. This amazed me because Obama certainly did not
call off the teams that were keeping him bottled up in the Ecuadorian
embassy. It has been thoroughly established that Sweden and the UK
were manipulating the Swedish charges rather than trying honestly to
pursue them.
Mark Feldstein, an expert on journalistic practices, testified about
how journalists ask source for leaks of secrets and how they protect
the leakers. He said that the things Assange is accused of doing were
standard practice.
The witnesses had prepared based on the old indictment and have been
denied a chance to study the new one carefully, as described in a
previous report.
UK cops report that they have learned how to shut down the
gangs that sell cocaine and heroin outside cities.
I congratulate them, because cocaine and heroin are dangerous, but
this focus on the punitive approach can't ever stop the sale of those
drugs. As the article recognizes, someone else will always show up to
sell them.
What will make those drugs nearly disappear is to adopt a more
intelligent approach — the one that works in the Netherlands
and in Portugal.
This approach is for the national medical system to let addicts
register, then give them drugs of reliable purity to use, and safe
places to use them. When the main buyers are not buying from private
sellers, most of the market will disappear, and so will the private
selling.
*World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam.*
However, I disagree with the recommendations. Instead of "using the
carbon budget for the best," we must use as little of it as possible.
When we speak of the carbon budget, we are making an estimate of how
much more emissions we can make before a certain level of disaster.
We don't know exactly how much, and more emissions means a worse
disaster. It is valid to say, "If we emit considerably more than the
carbon budget, we will make life horrible." It is not valid to say,
"If we emit a little less than the carbon budget, we will be ok."
If we could be certain, absolutely certain, that we had done enough
to avoid disaster, perhaps at that point we could switch to the goal
of helping the poor.
But since disaster is already starting, it is pretty clear we have
already failed to do enough. So we must do the most we can.
*The climate crisis will sweep away my country if the world doesn't keep its
promises.*
What we have to do for the people of many regions that are threatened
— many of whom are among the poorest 50% — is cut emissions ASAP.
Activists doxed 1,000 Belarusian thugs.
We don't know from the information in the article whether they
are hackers.
We also don't know whether they are crackers — we don't
know whether they had to break computer security to get the data.
But I can say with certainty that they struck a good blow against
Lukashenko's tyranny.
Doxing someone is like a kind of violence. Ordinarily, it is bad to
do violence to others, but there are situations where it is justified.
When the thugs are carrying out violent repression of dissidents,
it is justified for dissidents to respond with counter-violence.
It may or may not be a good tactic. In this case, because doxing is a
warning rather than actual physical harm, I think it is a good tactic.
Walmart and Amazon supported the campaign of a candidate who promotes
the QAnon fantasy.
(satire) *U.S. officials told reporters
Thursday they were hurt that Saudi Arabia would try to develop its own
nuclear weapon rather than just asking nicely for one from America.*
California hires lots of prisoners to help fight wildfires. But it is
hard for ex-prisoners to get a job to do this: fire departments
exclude them because of their prison record.
Advice to BP (Billionaire Polluters) if it is serious about
transitioning to green energy.
Many oil companies are going bankrupt, and the rest face a dim future.
We can count on them to try to extract every last dollar from their
operations, leaving nothing to pay for the sealing of their wells.
We need to pass laws to collect a substantial well-sealing tax
which will go into a fund to seal old wells.
Ralph Nader: *Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control to Corporations?*
I disagree with Nader on one point. The problem with giving personal
information to companies is not that they get it without paying. It
is that they get it at all. Simply having the data and using them
gives them power over people. So don't be distracted by the proposals
to make them pay for the data, one way or another; they don't go far
enough.
Most of the US is in the zones to be affected by climate disaster, one
way or another. If you don't get fires, or water shortage, you get
hurricanes or torrential raines. Here's a map.
Lori Loughlin will serve her prison sentence in a prison near her new
home. The prison has many educational programs, including creative skills
and job skills.
All prisons should offer such lessons. That is called
"rehabilitation" — a concept American prisons used to practice, but
forgot about under Reagan's spirit of cruelty.
Lori Loughlin does not need to learn a new trade, but many prisoners do,
and it can be the opportunity to change from a life of crime to a life
as a good citizen.
Is it silly to teach arts, including music? Some prisoners can make
an emotional contact with an art and see that there is something in life
other than what you can get for yourself.
What bothers me is not that Ms Loughlin's prison has these things.
It is that so many prisons don't.
It would be fair to make wealthy prisoners pay for participating in
these programs — but that is dangerous, because it might lead to
charging poor prisoners for participating in them. That we must not
do!
Democrats and progressives are pressuring Republicans not to try to
replace Justice Ginsburg this year.
It may be possible to succeed. Several Republican senators now running for
reelection are reported not to want to vote on this.
The issue of replacing Justice Ginsburg is boosting support
for Democrats in senate races.
I am concerned that what Schumer and other Democrats are now saying —
"Appoint another justice now and we will expand the Supreme Court" —
might be interpreted as promising the converse: "Don't appoint another
justice now, and we won't expand the Supreme Court." That worries me,
because we need to expand the Supreme Court. We should do this to
cancel Gorsuch and Kavanaugh; we should do this to reverse
plutocratist decisions made before them, including the Corporations
United decision
and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act
and the decision that applied "religious freedom"
co companies.
*Making a demon of JK Rowling is a wretched sport, born of misogyny and
resentment.*
I continue to rebuke Rowling for her unjust lawsuit against
people who bought one of her books,
and since them I have refused on principle to buy any of her books.
But I do not hate her. She does not deserve to be vilified based on
distortions of what she said.
Bogus Johnson is proposing to create three new obstacles against
prosecuting UK soldiers for war crimes including torture.
Fortunately the International Criminal Court will be able to prosecute them
if the British government does not try.
No army is immune to the temptation to vent anger through war crimes.
If a country protects its own soldiers from charges, it in effect
encourages war crimes. The world is full of bad examples; the UK has
been a good example until now.
*A Biden victory cannot bring normal back.*
Even if it could, that would hardly be desirable except in contrast to
the present. The old "normal" was pretty bad for most Americans, and
climate mayhem is making it rapidly worse.
The article uses the non-US definition of "liberalism", meaning
deregulation of business. In the US, "liberalism" is the term we have
used for many decades for the agenda now more often called "progressive".
Medical care for all has been a liberal program since the New Deal.
Likewise workers' rights, and support for the poor. By the 1960s it
included racial equality. By the 70s, it included women's equality,
gay rights, and eliminating pollution.
Why, I wonder, does anyone think to define the term "liberal" to refer
to self-styled "centrists" such as right-wing Democrats?
Lukashenko's thugs are now trying mass arrests of protesting women.
Everyone: call on Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul to investigate
attacks by thugs on BLM protesters.
Everyone: call on California Governor Newsom to end oil drilling
in that state.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the MORE Act.
US citizens: call on the Department of Housing and Urban Development
not to allow discrimination against trans people.
The UK government has replaced promotion of the most capable with
promotion of the most politically loyal.
Michael Young, in The Rise of the Meritocracy, was perceptive. He saw
that if society offered enough social mobility for capable people to
get out of the working class won their own, that would leave the
remaining workers with no one capable enough to organize them to stand
up for their rights.
We must educate and promote capable people anyway, because the
alternative is to let the incapable run things — but we must somehow
prevent this from resulting in telling the less "meritorious" to
suffer low pay and a life of hardship.
*Brazilian wetlands fires started by humans and worsened by drought.*
The people who set the fires are criminals who wanted to replace the
wetlands with cattle ranching. Due to the drought, the large Pantanal
wetland is not wet now.
*Covid is Widening Educational Inequalities for Children Around the World.*
California could protect its buildings from fire with requirements
for careful precautions.
More frequent fires outside the cities might result in less intense fires.
Japan's red pine forests are endangered, and with them the prized
matsutake mushroom.
*In 2016, the Alexandria, Kentucky, police chief talked the city into
hiring a social worker — and four years on, the current chief sees the
program as indispensable.*
Warning Latin America not to end lockdowns too soon.
The US, and then Europe, have shown that this is likely to mean
a new outbreak of Covid-19.
England has been trying to restrain the spread of Covid-19 with local
restrictions, and being rather rigid about them, but it is not
working.
I think the country needs nationwide measures. However, they don't
need to be absolutely rigid. The UK's approach strikes me like
measuring the distance between two people and fining them if is only
198 cm instead of 200 cm.
The US deportation thugs extend their medical neglect for prisoners
from the prisons to the deportation flights.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency (formerly Environmental Protection Agency)
races to demolish environmental protections.
Republicans are fighting on every level to keep the world moving
steadily to a deadly 7C if heating.
Rebecca Solnit: Climate change, Covid – our hearts ache. But a new era
is possible. We can do it.
*Thousands gather in Thailand for anti-government protest.*
Using AI recognition systems on body cameras could be a powerful system
for teaching thugs to be less brutal.
However, it could also be a powerful system for repression of everyone
that comes into range of the camera.
To make body cameras serve and protect the people, rather than repress
the people, we need to make sure that they capture video and audio when they
should, and not when they shouldn't. I've made a technical proposal
for part of that, but we also need proper laws about publishing the
videos.
As for the idea that live monitoring of the video could enable a
deescalation specialist to intervene and prevent a killing, that might
have saved George Floyd. But many killings by thugs occur when thugs
react without taking even a second to think.
There would be no time
to intervene, either. Meanwhile, the live transmission would imply
transmitting the video all the time, which is wrong because most of the
time the video should not be saved at all.
Congressional Democrats call for investigation of Barr for politicizing
his office as Attorney General.
I don't know if this can have much effect. The bully has already
placed his officials are above the law by showing that he will fire
any inspector general that tries to investigate their crimes.
The smoke from wildfires, when breathed by pregnant women, causes lasting
harm to their fetuses in later life.
In some US states, women could be prosecuted for breathing the smoke.
Perhaps millions of women would commit this "crime".
One could imagine prosecuting oil companies too, but the right-wing
officials in those states don't want to go after oil companies, only
women.
Alexei Navalny is making a good recovery.
However, one thing makes me worry that his brain has been injured: a
perverse inclination to use Instagram. ;-{.
We don't know where the climate system's tipping points are, but if one tips,
it could tip others. Or it could block others.
It's like playing a pinball game with Earth as the ball.
Biden seems to have no presencial campaign organization in Michigan.
I wonder if this is because rational people are scared to go there,
and especially scared to approach lots of strangers there.
Meanwhile, the wrecker has taught his followers a delusion of
invulnerability. They don't feel inhibitions about meeting people on
the street to reinforce their rejection of masks.
In effect, the wrecker has found a way to arrange that Republicans
can do real canvassing and campaigning, while his rational opponents
know it is not safe.
*Coronavirus Depression Spike Suggests Social Media Is No Substitute For Real Life.*
Thus, if you refuse to use Zoom, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook,
you can do without them.
A US court has ordered reversal of DeJoy's postal sabotage.
(satire) *White House Vows To Have Something To Stick Into Your Arm By
October.*
New York State agreed to a court settlement which protects the rights of voters
that sent in postal ballots against unjust rejection of their ballots.
Which states have not done this?
The bullshitter wants to turn US history teaching into one-sided
patriotic propaganda.
To a large extent, that's what US history teaching has tended to be:
justifying actions of the US in conflict with other countries, and the
winners in domestic disputes, with the exception of the Civil War: the
supporters of the Confederacy perversely gained the upper hand about
reconstruction.
However, it wasn't totally one-sided in the 60s. You could see that
the indigenous people were cheated. Slavery was condemned.
We see a similar practice of propaganda history in China.
(satire) *Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing ‘1946 Commission’
To Teach How America Started At President’s Birth.*
*50 reasons the bully's administration is bad for workers.*
(satire) *With 30% of the U.S. electorate currently stumbling
through the streets in pursuit of their ballots and shouting, ‘Wait,
come back!’ we fear this sudden, powerful gale has overwhelmed our
electoral system.*
US citizens: call on UPS, Humana, and Ford to stop supporting the
Louisville thug department.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject Chad Wolf as head of the
Department of Harshness and Sadism.
He is too apt for harshness and sadism to be entrusted with official
authority over it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call please spread the word!
Julian Assange's hearing has resumed, and Craig Murray is covering it
as before. I was unable to post these before because I was overloaded
writing a long article.
Murray reports that Keir Starmer, the tame new head of the Labour
Party, condemns Extinction Rebellion as a threat to the free press for
blocking right-wing newspaper trucks one morning, but says nothing
when the free press is truly threatened.
In the first day of the resumed hearing,
Assange saw for the first
time the totally new charges, which his lawyers saw only in the past
few weeks and had been unable to show him in prison. They had a
discussion about them and asked for an adjournment to gather evidence.
The judge refused this.
The defense will not be allowed to call witnesses except the ones it
chose for the old charges.
This continues what we have seen all along: the rules of justice
twisted over and over to assure a politically pre-decided outcome.
This is not as obvious a show trial as the ones Stalin held, but
it is substantively similar.
Organizations such as Amnesty and Reporters without Borders had to
fight for a chance to view the hearing, so strong were the efforts
to prevent public monitoring of the treacherous proceedings.
Salafi Arabia has possible large uranium deposits.
Now that fission power is effectively obsolete, the only reason the
country would be interested is to make nuclear weapons.
It would be natural to propose a nuclear disarmament treaty for Salafi
Arabia and Iran — and perhaps Israel too.
*Only an honest conversation about the Corbyn era will help us learn from it.*
When Hong Kong was a British colony, Britain did not respect freedom
of speech there. Now that it is a Chinese colony, it is China that
doesn't respect freedom of speech there, but it finds the old British
law against "sedition" handy for jailing dissidents.
*Dear America, we too have seen red skies in Australia and we can tell you
what happens next.*
It is not too late to bring about a small disaster instead of the big one
humanity is heading for.
(satire) *Apple announced Wednesday that its new smart watch would
feature a rabbit-ear antenna capable of picking up five or more
television channels in the area where a user lives.*
Scotland will use solar electricity to generate hydrogen as fuel for
vehicles.
One convenient thing is that it doesn't matter that there are times
when there is no light to make hydrogen with. If you make hydrogen at
a high rate when there is light, you have enough for the rest of the
time too.
*The shift to online schooling is running roughshod over children's
privacy rules and rights,*
which were inadequate to start with.
The article is concerned that wealthier schools will choose systems
that "protect" privacy "better" whereas impecunious schools will have
to use systems that protect privacy less. That would be a real
danger, if some of these systems did protect privacy.
In practice, none of these systems give much protection. Whatever
data a company collects is already on the road to being misused. The
only effective protection for privacy is not to put the data in
a database.
Greg Palast: Republicans may be planning to refuse to certify the
elections in some states, using uncounted postal ballots as an excuse.
Use early voting instead of postal voting.
That is what I did for the Massachusetts primary on Sept 1,
and that is what I plan to do for the general election too.
Some US cities have plans to use the recovery from the Covid-19
depression to reduce local greenhouse emissions.
Every little bit helps, but we need more than local improvements to avoid
most of the climate disaster.
China forced 2.6 million "surplus workers" in Xinjiang to move long
distances. The critical attention to what it does there is making
the government uncomfortable.
China is moving to giant multistory pig farms, isolated from the
outside, so as to stop transmission of diseases.
The CDC published the weak recommendations for who should get a
Covid-19 test over the objections of its scientists.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/18/cdc-guidelines-coronavirus-testing-published-despite-objection-scientists
*Wilderness the size of Mexico lost worldwide in just 13 years.*
*Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia.*
The minister in charge of Papua New Guinea's thugs says that they
are corrupt from the top down, and that they drive out any honest employees.
The House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting discrimination
against pregnant workers, and requiring employers to make reasonable
accommodations so a pregnant worker can keep working.
There is no chance that the Republicans who control the Senate will
agree to this, but passing the bill is useful as political pressure.
How the oil-and-plastic companies have organized world-wide to block efforts
to reduce plastic pollution.
This is yet another facet of the harm done by plutocratic rule.
Belarus protesters are pulling the masks off thugs to identify them.
This seems to dissuade them from violence.
It is an interesting reversal, to use face recognition against the servants
if a tyrant. I think it is justified in that situation,
This suggests to me that the thugs of Belarus are just barely clinging to
obedience to Lukashenko, and that at any moment they could snap.
*Taiwan calls for global coalition against China's aggression as US official
flies in.*
I think it would be interesting for several important countries to
open diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and let China break relations
or keep relations, however it wishes. After a few years, I believe,
China would decide that it needs the diplomatic relations more than it
needs to show aggression against Taiwan.
Parents: call for prohibition of facial recognition in schools.
Everyone: boycott Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorians and Steven Donziger.
US citizens: call on Congress to end weapons sales to Salafi Arabia.
Tree species in the US northeast are moving north under the pressure
of global heating.
Israel has discovered how to make occupation of Palestine profitable.
Indian thugs in Kashmir arrested a man, then tortured him and killed him.
(Of coure, they deny this.) This triggered protests, much as it does in the US.
It appears that the repression of Kashmir in general is not as severe as it
was some months ago: the internet is not shut off all the time any more,
only sometimes.
* Extension on Firefox browser will allow users to record information
about videos recommended by [youtube].* The aim is to figure out why
youtube's recommendation algorithm recommends noisome videos.
The US military-industrial complex proposes to build 60 additional
naval ships,
because a navy that China could catch up with in decades is
not considered sufficient. That does not seem logical to me.
China's approach to taking over the South China Sea is to build
airfields on small islands and reefs. Ships are much more vulnerable
than those airfields. It seems to me that the US would find it more
effective, as well as cheaper, to help its regional allies build more
such airfields.
Barr asked US attorneys to charge protesters with "sedition" — a charge
that would almost always be bullshit.
A whistleblower reports that a privatized immigration prison carried out
hysterectomies by force against prisoners.
One of the reasons we must abolish privatized prisons is that it is
harder to hold them accountable for any sort of cruel, degrading,
injurious or even fatal conduct. Even when people have been convicted
of a crime — which these prisoners mostly have not been — that does
not excuse such treatment of them.
A dissident journalist in Turkey is being prosecuted for mocking
medieval Ottoman sultans.
I doubt the statement that they were from the 13th century, since the
first Ottoman prince, Osman, did not become the ruler of a
principality until 1299. It is more likely that they were from the
14th or 15th centuries.
It should not be a crime to insult a deceased person, or a living
person — or anyone or anything. Such laws are repressive.
*US corporations file for bankruptcy and lay off workers. Why do execs still
get bonuses?*
The OECD calls for government spending without tax increases, to
reduce the Covid-19 depression and help unemployed people.
Deficit spending can be made possible by government borrowing, but also by
creating more currency in accord with Modern Monetary Theory,
except for countries trapped in the Euro-zone
I think it is safe to tax billionaires a lot more
since they got such a windfall this year.
Big US news media accept lots of money from corporations to sponsor
"news events" that present slanted news.
The US government is pretending that sanctions against Iran, ended by
virtue of US rejection of the non-nuclear deal, will come back into
force on Sep 20. This could be meant as an excuse for the wrecker to
launch a war to "enforce the sanctions", to manipulate the
election.
Will Iran's rulers have the self-discipline to refrain from retaliation
until after November 3 so as to refuse to help the wrecker?
*People want a fairer, greener Britain after Covid, inquiry reveals.*
I wish they had voted for the leader who really stood for this: Corbyn.
A UK thug called for making it a crime to go limp when arrested.
It makes me think of Israel fining Palestinians for not demolishing
their own houses.
*America has millions of people in poverty because Americans choose
not to demand the policies that would lift them out of poverty.*
For the US, global heating is a big threat to national security.
What does that make the planet-roasters? And the wrecker?
Of course, global heating is a threat to the national security of many
other countries. Some are sure to be destroyed entirely by it.
It is a mistake for a political party to adopt policies following the polls.
Of course, it is even worse to adopt policies following the rich people's
donations as "centrist" Democrats do.
A party must have values and come to conclusions.
Malaysia may force prisoners to harvest palm oil
which will be exported for use in our food.
The wrecker said that Covid-19 could be stopped by 'herd mentality'.
He sure tries to inculcate a herd mentality into his followers;
if that could stop Covid-19, we would see less infection, rather than more,
in places he holds rallies.
The wrecker's campaign to build a wall has covered only a fraction of
the border with Mexico, but that was enough to wreck Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument. It can never be restored.
Women state their feelings about being childfree
(or, in a few cases, about having children).
Ai Weiwei explains China's strategy, and how the US and the west are
too messed up to cope with it.
Netanyahu stated that Israeli thugs murdered a Palestinian, then
falsely called him a "terrorist" to justify the murder.
He went so far as to apologize to the victim's family.
Netanyahu is, as a general matter, an unprincipled corrupt greedy
bastard. The article suggests that he made these true admissions
about the murder as a way to deny his share of the responsibility.
The beginnings of climate disaster will make many parts of the US
worse places to live. Over time, half the population will be
affected. Millions will need to move, but to where?
The government should not pay so people can bullheadedly remain in
land that is becoming uninhabitable, but it should help the people who
become trapped in houses that are becoming unsalable, enabling them to
move elsewhere.
The exploding price of a planned nuclear power plant in the UK
has made the manufacturer cancel it.
However, the UK has promised unbounded subsidy to the builder
of its first new nuclear power plant, so that one won't be
cancelled by expense. But cancelled it must be, to free up funds
to build wind farms instead.
*Research shows "respectful, non-judgmental conversations are able to
move voters where many other tactics have failed."*
Lowering real US wages since 1975 has taken trillion dollars from
non-rich Americans since then, giving them to rich Americans.
Each year, dooH niboR takes 2.5 trillion more.
*UN Biodiversity Report Urges 8 Transitions Needed to Restore Essential
Ecosystems Impacted by Humanity.*
*Dalits bear brunt of India's 'endemic' sexual violence crisis.*
Upper caste men use brutal rape to maintain their domination of the
Dalits.
Oil companies (which are also plastic companies) have worked hard for
decades to make the public think that used plastic products would be
recycled if we handed them in, knowing this was not true, so that we
would buy and discard plastic without hesitation.
Most of what we hand in goes into landfill because recycling it is not
feasible.
Did they know, decades ago, that plastic products would damage wild
animals and ecosystems?
Perhaps not. (It would be interesting to investigate what they knew
about this and when.) In any case, we know it now. We must reduce
drastically the amount of plastic waste that does not in fact get
recycled, so we do not leave our planet full of toxin dispensers.
Physicians for Human Rights calls for banning the use of
rubber-coated hard bullets against protesters, citing 115 instances
of protesters that suffered grave head wounds from them.
It is against the rules to fire those bullets at people's heads, but
it is clear that they often do it anyway. Perhaps some of them were
firing wildly. Others, I suppose, hit protesters' heads
intentionally. Many thugs are right-wing extremists,
and if they see opportunities to maim protesters and not be punished,
they may go for it eagerly.
Orbán is moving to take control of the last radio station and last
theater in Hungary which are independent of state power.
*Millions in Britain have struggled for years. Only in a pandemic are
they seen.*
I have a hunch that, for Bogus Johnson, starving the poor is not an ideological
commitment, merely a consequence of enriching the rich.
*World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature —
UN report.*
Ideas for a circular economy of plastics.
Bogus Johnson pretends to be negotiating a larger deal with the EU
while cheating on last year's smaller deal.
12 Hong Kongers tried to separate themselves from China in a boat, but
Chinese forces caught them and China will prosecute them — perhaps
for "separatism" — in a bogus trial.
The very idea of stopping citizens from leaving a country is a form of
tyranny which Communist governments were well known for. In the
1980s, the Soviet Union charged a ransom giving a Jew permission to
emigrate. In earlier decades, it was very difficult for anyone to get
permission to leave the Soviet Empire. Since 2000, millions of Chinese
were allowed to travel for tourism. but I would guess that China never
completely dropped the practice of forbidding some people from
leaving.
Billionaire Polluters say that demand for fossil fuels will not increase.
What is not certain is when it will start to decrease.
That detail is tremendously important. Bigger fires are coming soon
to a forest near you, and if you'd prefer to have them only a little
bigger rather than much bigger, you'd be wise to help make sure the
demand declines fast.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences' commits to
working to undo the effects of its past participation
in racism.
The academy's present leaders are not guilty
for actions that happened before they were born,
but the responsibility to undo the continuing effects
of those actions falls to them nonetheless.
This is the same reasoning which led me to conclude, in 2014, that the
United States, acting for today's Americans, should pay compensation
to the descendants of those who were denied equal legal rights under
the systems of slavery and segregation.
(satire) *… NYPD police officer Tom
Sloane reportedly shut off his body camera early Monday morning out of
respect for his dying victim.*
*The NYPD added that it seemed exploitative to
publicize the man’s death because that would be what people remembered
about him, so the department was refraining from releasing any details
about the incident to respect his privacy.*
The ACLU and other organizations called on Congress not to extend
surveillance powers by slipping that into a rider in a continuing
resolution or other "must-pass" uncontroversial bill.
The wrecker is still actively spreading Covid-19 to his death cult,
and now we have proof that he is knowingly lying to them when he
denies the danger.
Don't be distracted into disputes about when Bob Woodward really ought
to have published this fact. It is a side issue, and it is being
raised as a distraction. I see no reason to assume his news would
have had more impact in May or July than it has now.
*A Thank You Letter From Coronavirus to My Enablers in the United States.*
This is not from The Onion.
The saboteur in chief has appointed a global heating denialist to the
management team at NOAA, in charge of climate research there.
One of the practices used to shelter denialists is calling them
"skeptics". CNN's article does this, but please don't repeat that
practice. To be a skeptic means that one is not convinced and wants
to do more investigation to determine what is happening. By contrast,
Legatos is denying what is well established. He is no "skeptic",
he is a denialist.
In general, skepticism is a wise and useful attitude towards claims
until they are demonstrated, but it can be carried too far. For
instance, there are times when skepticism about an approaching danger
must be set aside. When it is time to join the bucket brigade to put
out a fire, objecting that there is no proof this fire can spread is
not an acceptable excuse for refusing to help put it out.
A nurse working a privatized immigration prison describes how the
management disregard Covid-19, gratuitously allowing it to spread to
prisoners and staff.
The EU has decided to undermine its own 2030 emissions-cutting targets
by counting estimated carbon sinks against the emissions.
This is the same error as trying to plan in terms of "net" emissions
(emissions minus absorptions). Any future greenhouse gas absorption
is conjectural. Trees won't remove CO2 from the air if they burn up.
There were pogroms against Muslims in Delhi in February, led by
ruling party, which has now decided to scapegoat a Muslim activist who
spoke against violence,
along with other opposition figures.
See previous information about the pogroms.
*Fanatical Israeli "settler" who killed Palestinian family sentenced to life
[imprisonment].*
This is news because often Israelis who murder Palestinians get a slap
on the wrist.
*Northern hemisphere breaks record for hottest ever summer.*
*Sanders Blasts AstraZeneca for Raising Drug Prices Despite $1.2 Billion From Taxpayers for Covid-19 Vaccine.*
A giant consortium of investors has demanded companies get on course
to achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050.
The firmness is admirable, but they need to demand more.
2050 is too late a target,
and measuring by "net" emissions tends to underestimate emissions.
Ronnie Long was convicted of rape in 1976 because prosecutors
manipulated evidence and hid evidence.
Nonetheless, he is being held in prison to await a new trial, which
could take a months or years.
An invalid conviction is no grounds to imprison someone, so invalidation
of a conviction should invalidate the sentence too.
Right-wing bullshitters in Oregon are fabricating claims that "antifa"
arsonists started the fires, then in imitation of the bullshitter, denying
that that is what they said.
For them, self-contradiction is a tool.
Rwanda is not giving dissident Paul Rusesabagina a fair trial
on charges of terrorism.
Mardin Arvin: *Australians complain about weeks in quarantine. I've
been in [Australia's immigration prisons] for almost eight years.*
A car with cameras looking in all directions could in principle
avoid all collisions.
It could also give the state, or Clearview AI, a chance to identify all
other cars and people it passes near. We must make sure that only
highly processed data gets out of the video processor.
Proper preparedness for future pandemics could be achieved at the cost
of around 5 dollars per person per year, estimates Gro Harlem
Brundtland.
GitHub ironically offers a path for freedom of speech across the great
firewall of China. China can't control it and can't afford to block
it.
*Sanders Delivers Message to Lawmakers Who Claim US Can't Afford Green New
Deal: Climate Catastrophe Is 'Much More Expensive'.*
Biden now talks about "meeting and defeating the onrushing climate
crisis."
Acknowledging the magnitude of climate mayhem is a change for the
better, but not the same as proposing an adequate plan.
The Seattle thug department demanded various news organizations hand over
their videos of protests in a massive and indiscriminate way. As of
a month ago, they obtained a delay.
Can anyone find out what has happened since?
Whistleblower Christopher Pyle, starting with an article in 1970,
reported on how the US Army was systematically tracking Americans'
civic engagement — not limited to actual dissent — and won the political
support to shut it down completely.
He was able to do this because Americans at the time recognized the danger
of tracking and surveillance. Legislators recognized it because they
came from a people that recognized it.
It's up to us to lead the development of a people that detests
tracking and surveillance. Otherwise the people and legislators of
the future will fail to shut down the dangerous systems of the future.
Tesla persistently harasses and cheats workers.
A court ordered the USPS not to send out "helpful" mass mailings to Colorado
voters that contain misinformation about voting in Colorado.
Campaigning for a posthumous pardon for 2500 women executed for
witchcraft in Scotland.
This cruel form of scapegoating continues to this day in Africa.
Thugs in Melbourne arrested peaceful protesters (though some of them
threw fruit), saying that protest is forbidden.
The hell you say, Australia! A government which forbids protest is
tyranny.
Not that repression is unusual in Australia, the country which paid
Nauru to hold Australia's immigration prison and then to abolish
freedom of the press so that journalists could not reach the prison.
As long as the protesters wore masks and maintained distance, they
were entitled to protest.
Defending their right to protest does not mean I support their
protest. Some of them reportedly are QAnon fantasists. That fantasy,
which mutates as fast as HIV-1, is too incoherent to support a serious
inquiry of whether "it" is true, because "it" would be different next
week. I wish they were displaying their steadfastness for a good
cause.
The US railroad industry has its own fusion center, with an
information track leading straight to various government departments
that can repress potential protesters. It can target even people that
only criticize for investigation, and thugs might subsequently forget
that they are only writing.
Reporter Justin Mikulka was painted as a criminal by association
because what he wrote might inspire protests which could perhaps be
illegal.
The "fusion centers" facilitate repression, so if we don't get rid of them,
we must stop them from being used for repression.
*Morality has been stripped from public life. Here’s a four-step plan to
revive it.*
Peter Strzok insists that the wrecker is working for Russia.
The wrecker's henchman, Roger Stone, said that the wrecker should put
his opponents in prison if he can't make them pretend he has won the
election.
Stone is a loyal henchman and would not have said this without
encouragement from the wrecker himself.
I say "pretend to have won" because Republicans stole the 2016
presidential election,
as well as the 2000
and 2004
presidential elections.
An appearance of "victory" for the wrecker is probably going to be
fake. To be sure, millions of Americans will really vote for him, but
they won't be enough to make an honest victory without the cheating.
The US has colonized Haiti (unofficially) for 105 years.
In effect, it still does.
It is useful to recall that four years ago YouTube's recommendation algorithm
recommended pro-bullshitter videos far more often than pro-Clinton videos.
This does not prove that the algorithm was intentionally designed for
that result. Perhaps they were; but we know that right-wingers have
learned how to manipulate recommendation algorithms;
perhaps these results are a
reflection of that.
We know that they do not reflect a majority
preference for the bullshitter, since he lost the popular vote.
Google's response amounts to, "Do not try to judge our actions without
the full information that we won't let you have."
The Australian Green Party will support making Facebook and Google pay
to redistribute journalistic articles if the plan is extended to cover
more sources of journalism.
I am very much in favor of this, as I expect that it will pry loose
those companies' influence over what news people access.
There are some sorts of works that I believe should be free. But that
doesn't apply to news articles. I think individuals such as you and
me should be free to redistribute exact copies, but I don't think that
companies such as Google and Facebook are entitled to that right.
Thus, I see nothing immoral about such a tax. It is a pragmatic
question and nothing more.
*Rather than rebuild the social fabric of his country during the
coronavirus-driven economic slump, Narendra Modi has chosen to play
identity politics.*
Modi is a hater-divider-scapegoater, in the same mold as the bully in
the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil.
*Belarus: 100,000 join rally against Lukashenko on eve of Putin showdown.*
Portland's ban on business use of face recognition covers business premises
which offer goods or services to the public.
I don't think this has any effect on Clearview AI, which is unfortunate since
that is face recognition's most dangerous face.
A neighbor saw thugs shoot and kill Michael Forest Reinoehl without
calling on him to surrender or identifying themselves as thugs.
Those acts add up to murder. We need an investigation to determined
what happened, though we must distrust the testimony of thugs as
usual.
54% of Americans households with incomes under $100,000 have suffered
serious economic hardship since March.
Dr Fauci says life will not be back to normal until a year from now,
even if a vaccine is ready early next year.
Only after many people receive the vaccine can we start to determine
how long its effect lasts.
Indigenous Australians demand rules giving them the power to block
destruction of ancient indigenous people's sites.
If their demands are granted, they will probably preserve most of
these ancient sites, and that is good. But not necessarily all of
them. The "traditional owners" of a site would have the power to
permit destroying it, and sometimes they would do so.
These archaeological sites are important records of human history, all
the more important because few other sites are so old. The most
important thing to do with them is study them, and that should take
precedence over all other use. No one, capitalist or indigenous,
should be allowed to destroy them.
If they indigenous groups agree to protect the sites and cooperate
with carefully planned scientific investigation, I would support
giving them full authority over all other aspects of use of these
sites.
(satire) *… residents of a small town in western
Wisconsin expressed relief Friday that all of their beloved local
businesses had been forced to close down long before Covid-19 struck.*
Everyone: call on corporations to stop supporting "police foundations".
US citizens: call on Twitch to disallow US military recruiting.
Recruiting on Twitch is tantamount to aiming recruiting at children,
even if the military does not acknowledge that.
The Court of Appeals of the DC circuit continues doing its utmost
to deny all legal recourse to the prisoners in Guantanamo.
The US owes each prisoner either a fair trial or release from prison.
If the US cannot do so, because by torturing them it eliminated the
possibility of a fair trial, the US should release them and then think
about avoiding such a foolish actions in the future.
Arguments about expediency cannot override those rights — but I think
they lead to the opposite conclusion. Freeing the prisoners would end
a practice that motivates some people to hate the US.
(satire) *… Public Schools encouraged students
without internet access Friday to attend remotely by peering through
the home windows of wealthier classmates.*
There is an extra level of irony here that the authors are not aware
of. Zoom is proprietary malware, and it surveils the users. You can
protect yourself by not actually running Zoom or being seen by it in a
camera. I have suggested finding a classmate who will record the
video presentation, perhaps by pointing another camera at it, and send
you the recording as a file. Looking through per window would also
do the job, thought it would be less convenient.
*"One can draw a direct line between the [wrecker's] use of paramilitary
forces to suppress protest domestically, and the tendency of
security forces [sic] in foreign countries to violently suppress
their own citizenry — security forces that for years have been
backed, funded, trained, and armed by the United States
government."*
Meanwhile, the wrecker threatens to crush protesting Americans who
might disbelieve the claim, that he will surely make, to have won the
election.
If asked to send help because someone is having a mental crisis,
the last people you should send are cops. When they don't understand,
their solution is "shoot".
Stress, including being confronted by armed thugs, can make people
with mental disabilities lose their capacity to understand what others
are saying to them. In thug-think, that means "resisting arrest,
shoot!"
People who condemned anti-racist gestures by pro sports players cited
various details as objectionable, but now those excuses have been
stripped away. What those people object to is criticizing racism.
*Our national and state policies [about Edtech] are designed to subsidize
profit-seeking from education.*
*The Tragedy of the Singular ‘They’.*
The author is mistaken to despair. No one can force him to use
singular "they", and no one can force me, or you either.
For my own views, and the solution I have adopted, see "Better
Genderless Pronouns in English."
14 states have sued to make the USPS reverse DeJoy's mail-delaying
policy changes.
*Colorado … filed a federal
lawsuit against DeJoy for sending out mailers containing
information that could mislead and disenfranchise voters.*
Republicans have spread disinformation about voting for many years,
but in the past they usually were limited to doing so in private
capacity.
The wrecker's stooges have been editing their own spin into the CDC's
weekly report on the status of public health and diseases.
*Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters.*
And this is just the beginning of it. To imagine life in 20 years,
imagine that the worst we have seen happens in normal years,
and the worst years are far, far worse disasters.
Most Democrats are not advocating the sort of measures that could stop
the problem from getting even worse than that.
*We need to reclaim populism from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing
history.*
There are large fires in Oregon; people are evacuating from places
near Portland. 1/10 of the state's population has evacuated.
That region is famous for having lots of rain. That the climate has
dried up enough for it to have forest fires is shocking.
Thugs in Bogotá have run amok. First they killed Javier Ordóñez by
tasing him repeatedly while they were holding him down. This inspired
protests in many cities, and the thugs attacked the protesters.
Republican judges in the 11th circuit federal appeals court approved Florida
Republicans' scheme to block around 700,000 ex-cons from voting.
The Supreme Court might reverse this, but if it does not, I urge those
people to to move to a state where their votes can do some good.
*Most wildfire coverage on American TV news (85%) fails to mention
link to climate crisis.*
But that's not as bad as it was in August.
Maduro announced Venezuela's capture of a US marine with arms and
money, claimed to be spying on two oil refineries.
Portland, Oregon, has banned use of face recognition by businesses.
I think this is the first such law in the US, and perhaps in the world.
Since the article quotes people as relating this to racial discrimination,
I wish to comment on that.
Racial discrimination is wrong, and tracking people is wrong, but it
is a mistake to relate the two issues too much. If you think that
tracking people is wrong specifically because it enables
discrimination, that means you are missing the threat of tracking in
itself: that it is the base for repression.
To avert repression, we need to ban tracking regardless of whether it
is used for discrimination.
(satire) *… the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reportedly ordered
Thursday to incinerate hundreds of screaming, boil-riddled test
subjects before widely releasing the vaccine.*
I'm looking for a volunteer cartoonist to draw a few cartoons per year.
Please send me email if you want to do this for me.
The wrecker continues ordering policy changes to undermine Americans' safety:
legal, economic and physical.
Delaware has sued 31 fossil fuel companies plus the American Petroleum
Institute for the predicted damage that will result from the
greenhouse gas emissions they have already made.
All the oil companies' money can't compensate for the damage that
their products are doing, but massive lawsuits against them can help
defeat them and take away their power continue.
*Another Four Years of Trump Might Kill Off Remaining Hope Saving
Planet From Climate Destruction.*
Sad to say, four years of Biden might have the same result.
Connecticut's public campaign funding system (for state offices) has been
a big success. It has reduced the influence of big money.
Massachusetts adopted a similar system decades ago by initiative
petition, but the legislators repealed it. We voted for the public
funding system again by initiative petition, and the legislators
repealed it again. Why anyone voted to reelect any legislator who had
eliminated the system, I cannot comprehend, but people did.
*With World Closing in on Paris Warming Limit, UN Report Makes Case for
'Transformational Action' to Remake Global Economy.*
The predicted climate disaster is already starting. What should we do?
The article's title is a gross understatement. The California
megafires are not our "wakeup call". They are our "The meeting is
already starting and you're still in bed???" call. If this were a
job, humanity would be fired.
I wonder why the understated term "climate change"
is becoming fashionable again.
Florida's Republican government proposes to build 300 miles
of unneeded toll highways through vulnerable ecosystems so that
people can burn more fossil fuels.
The plan will succeed in providing income to construction companies,
filling the air with more CO2, and provide an excuse to leave poor
people without food, housing or medical care.
This is the epitome of Republican Party philosophy.
Uber and Lyft have put a referendum on the ballot in California to
define their drivers a new legal status combining the worst aspects of
being an employee with the worst aspects of independent contracting.
The article also describes other deceptive tricks that they are using.
This is in addition to making customers identify themselves and run
nonfree software,
A Salvadorean army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for
ordering the political murder of five Spanish priests.
*Trump can't exclude undocumented immigrants from census, judges rule.*
But if his efforts have scared them into not answering, nothing can
undo that.
Right-wing bullshitters spread the bullshit that Oregon's forest fires
were set by Antifascist activists, so others are calling 9-1-1 with
false reports about this.
A friend suggested to me that we should say "Antifascist" rather than
"Antifa", because the latter looks like a name that could refer to
anything and many people don't know it is short for "Antifascist".
A considerable number of children that catch Covid-19 develop heart problems
that may last life-long.
I cannot tell from the article what fraction of children that catch
Covid-19 go on to develop MIS-C. I don't think their sample was
random. But whatever the fraction is, this is a good reason to try to
keep children from catching it.
*A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a COVID-19 Antibody Test. It
Cost his insurance company $10,984.*
The materials for the test cost 8 dollars. The labor? Surely not
more than $100.
In 1905, an exposé convinced the US public to demand better safety
standards in meat processing plants. This plus unions give the workers
good pay and safe practices. Now, after a 50-year lobbying campaign,
the companies have eliminated both.
Transferring a few thousand troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan is easy
to do and would be easy to reverse; it is not a step on a path to ending
the US interventions there.
A Republican senator's staffer told a constituent with cancer that
buying medical coverage is just like buying a shirt — if you can't
afford it, tough on you.
That is the way the US medical system operates, and it shows why we
need a national medical system that won't charge people for medical
treatment.
*Numerous high-ranking Trump administration officials in
the U.S. Department of the Interior are connected to right-wing
anti-environmental think tanks and legal groups funded by corporate
interests and wealthy individuals seeking to privatize public lands.*
*Warning of More Pandemics to Come, Public Health Experts Urge Collective
Examination of What it Means to Live in 'Harmony with Nature'.*
Most terrorists would hesitate before releasing a disease that was
likely to kill their own side as well as the enemy. But bats,
unknowingly spreading a virus that can affect humans, won't be held
back by any sort of conscious consideration.
The head of Social Security Works says that the wrecker really could
single-handedly destroy Social Security if he is reelected.
Unless 2/3 of the House and the Senate pass a law to override or
compensate for his actions.
California voters: vote no on prop 22, the Uber exploitation exception.
Human Rights Watch: *Social media platforms are taking down online
content they consider terrorist, violently extremist, or hateful in a
way that prevents its potential use to investigate serious crimes,
including war crimes.*
The THRIVE resolution states support for something similar to the
Green New Deal.
Can anyone show me how it compares with previous forms of the Green New Deal?
In particular, it could be only a part of the Green New Deal proposal.
However, it could also be bigger.
Greedy US medical insurance companies are exploiting loopholes, even
maybe-loopholes, to charge for Covid-19 tests.
*'Falling through the cracks'
isn't the exception in the US — it's a fundamental feature of the
system.*
*The most dangerous phase of the US Covid-19 crisis may be yet to come.*
It should be pointed out that the "bipartisanship" of the "CARES" Act
gave some help to poor and unemployed Americans, but a lot more help
to big companies that ought to pay more tax. That was saving poor
people for the short term and screwing them for the long term.
The Chief Justice of Massachusetts ordered a study of patterns of
sentencing, and it found clear evidence of racial bias. Since the
study controlled for other pertinent variables, there is no doubt
about the conclusion: sentencing in Massachusetts is subject to
systemic racism.
That the study was ordered by the state's highest judge gives me hope
it will lead to considered action to reduce the injustice.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The USPS governing board is 100% satisfied with DeJoy, both his
sabotage of the USPS and the fund-raising crimes he committed before
in support of Republicans.
What they are saying is that they are loyal members of the bullshit
party.
South Australia will ban many kinds of single-use plastic items.
This is good, but it is crucial to take action on fishing nets discarded
at sea.
One idea would be to charge a large deposit for them when selling them.
Large enough that no fishing boat operator would dream of failing to turn
in a ruined net.
The Tories plan to lick Covid-19 by applying hypothetical testing technology
which they will try to develop.
Meanwhile, the Tory minister in charge tells asymptomatic people they
cannot have a test. Doesn't he know that asymptomatic people can
transmit Covid-19?
A few years ago the Tories said, as they eliminated incentives to
install home solar power, that they would lick global heating with
hypothetical carbon capture technology.
That technology still has not been developed, and people rarely talk
about it any more.
I think carbon capture and storage was a distraction technique — and
it seems to have been successful, since we still are not taking
adequate measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
*Australia's untapped gas reserves could unleash three year's worth of global
emissions.*
There is no room in the carbon budget for any additional fossil fuel facilities.
Globally, populations of vertebrates have dropped 2/3 since 1970.
Populations of insects have also dropped drastically, but they are not covered by this study.
What it adds up to is that we are ruining nature.
The FBI strains to entrap lonely men into planning to meet imaginary
women who have given contradictory ideas about their age.
A few years ago it was targeting "terrorists" who had to be persuaded
to agree to participate in a fictitious plan of violence they could
never have arranged on their own.
What these two schemes have in common is that they are opportunities
to pretend to protect people from dangers that are entirely imaginary.
*Boris Johnson's 'oven-ready' Brexit had a secret footnote: we'll rehash it
later.*
It is clear now that Bogus Johnson was lying to everyone all along about
his plans for taking the UK out of the EU.
Now that the Irish Republic has thrown off the legal dominion of
Catholic sexual repression, there is no reason for Northern Ireland
not to join the Irish Republic. That would eliminate the insoluble
problems that Northern Ireland causes for UK-EU trade relations.
*Maria Kolesnikova (Belarus opposition leader) says she was told she
would be leaving country ‘alive or in bits’.*
However, they were not in fact ready to go so far; she defied them and
they did not kill her.
Global heating disaster has turned life in California into fear and sickness.
No one can escape the harm.
Bogus Johnson has made it clear he wants the UK to exit the EU with no
agreement.
This explains why there has been very little progress towards a deal:
he was only pretending to seek a deal. This was an enormous lie to
Britons, from a man with a history of lying.
Greenhouse gas emissions have returned to the level before Covid-19.
*'Catastrophe' warning as thousands left homeless by Lesbos refugee camp fire.*
Saint Louis, former capital of Senegal, is being lost rapidly to
rising sea levels.
Tories wanted to pass town laws to fine people for sleeping in doorways.
It is bad to have people sleeping in doorways that people will need to
go through. But why would anyone do that? Lack of any better
shelter, I'd expect. The town should provide poor people with decent
places to sleep, places that will not be bad for others, or for them.
How about if they can also spend the day in their homes?
However, Tories are in favor of government handouts to make sure
somewhat wealthy people lose no luxuries due to the economic crisis.
*The wrecker knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in
February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to "play it
down", according to interviews recorded by Bob Woodward.*
*British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand
Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites
glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across
the world.*
I think as-yet-undiscovered mechanisms will tend to encourage the
movement towards thermal equilibrium rather than retard it.
If you live in a low-lying city, and you are young, don't expect it
to remain.
*Trumpet preventing Fauci from discussing Covid children risk.*
Brian Murphy accuses the trumpets running the DHS of ordering him to
fabricate intelligence, and suppress other intelligence, so as to
mislead the public. Eventually they demoted him for refusing, and he
has filed a whistleblower complaint denouncing them.
I believe he is sincere, because filing a complaint is a serious
matter.
I am curious what his job title was — the article does not say.
In general, I agree that China is a bigger threat to world freedom
than Russia. Whether that means Xi threatens the US election more
than Putin, I have no idea. But it is clear that rich Americans
threaten the US election more than any foreign country. However,
those are all side issues for this. What we see is that the corrupter
is corrupting US government agencies, and the trumpets who run them
are lying to congress. They should go to prison for that.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate officials' violation of
the Hatch Act.
*New Zealand [and other countries too] must cast off its worries about
government debt in its Covid recovery.*
Modern monetary theory teaches that a country can increase its money
supply and spend the newly created money without causing harm,
provided the economy can absorb the additional currency. I think that
means, in effect, provided it won't overload the productive capacity
in the long term. New Zealand and other countries with their own
currencies have this solution available too,
Poor Euro zone! Those countries will be crushed by the disaster of
the vicious cycle of budget cuts that cause more budget cuts, required
by Euro-zone rules.
The president of the UK Police Superintendents’ Association described the
injustice of policing towards nonwhites as a national emergency.
The US has a long way to go before something comparable could occur.
(satire) *Equifax assured her that a recent drop in her credit score
was unrelated to anything. “While your credit score is
significantly lower now, we just want to you to keep in mind that
you had absolutely no control over it.”*
B'tselem: Israeli soldiers planted explosive booby traps at places
where the children of the Palestinian town of Kufr Qaddum often play,
and where people gather for their weekly nonviolent protests.
This is perhaps the most shocking form of Israeli violence against
protesters, but soldiers have attacked protesters many times
occasionally kill them.
An Israeli soldier shot two Palestinians, a few minutes apart, for no
reason. The second one died, and — amazingly — the soldier was
actually prosecuted and sentenced to three months in jail.
Plus three months of community service.
Israel's failure to prosecute most Israelis that kill Palestinians
means that the International Criminal Court has an opportunity to do so.
It would be awfully ironic if the wrecker won the election for real
by saying he would implement a national medical system.
It would be even more ironic when, after election day, he turned
against the idea again. That is just like him.
(satire) *hellip;aliens pointedly avoiding METI
transmissions confirmed Wednesday that they really thought Earth’s
scientists would’ve taken the hint by now.*
(satire) *…the Lord God Almighty confirmed Wednesday that He had
selected a new class of interns for the fall.*
The Federal Reserve is the wrong tool to help America out of a recession.
China accuses Australia of interrogating Chinese journalists and
telling them to hush it up.
China is hardly hesitant to lie or distort, but this could be true.
Australia does things like that, such as the secret prosecution
of a whistleblower
and the law that threatens every free software developer in the world.
Queensland, Australia, has passed a law requiring Catholic priests to
testify about what they learn in confessions about sexual abuse of
minors by priests.
The aim is laudable, but I doubt this law will actually produce much
evidence.
This reminds me of the US court ruling that seized the recordings made
by an American project that had interviewed former IRA terrorists and
promised to keep the recordings secret for a long time. Until after
their death, I think.
Without that promise, they would not have made recordings.
The effect of this ruling was to set aside the premise and obtain the
evidence from that one set of terrorists, but also to bar any similar
future projects about other violent disputes. Instead of learning
what happened, at some future time, we won't learn it ever. In the
long term, I think we are worse off.
It appears Chairman Xi has decided to cease allowing foreign reporters
in China.
Concealing dirty secrets that the reporters might get wind of is
more important than the benefit of cooperating with foreign press.
It might be interesting to set up a treaty imposing tariffs on the exports
the countries that repress the foreign press.
*Covid risks making [UK] society more unequal than since early
Victorian times.*
Tory cuts to the NHS and other programs that give poor people
a decent life began the process.
Bolivia's pseudo-coup-installed government found an excuse to stop Evo
Morales from running for the senate: they have driven him into exile.
Lukashenko is arresting all the opposition leaders he can get his hands on.
Berlusconi has a severe case of Covid-19.
I hope the right-wingers in Italy that despise wearing masks
learn something from this.
Companies are selling car owners devices to modify their cars
to be more powerful and emit more pollution.
*Thousands displaced by the [big 2018 California] fire have not returned to the
communities devastated by it. It’s a scenario that will repeat as fire
risk intensifies.*
If I lived in California with a forest nearby, I'd be looking to move away.
I wouldn't wait for a fire to burn my house.
*Climate crisis could displace 1.2bn people by 2050, report warns.*
A UK government inquiry recommended measures to protect against future
fires in high-rise apartment buildings. The Tories have refused to
adopt them.
Australia's opposition leader has made a commitment to exporting green
electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Two soldiers from the Burmese army recorded confessions of carrying
out mass killings of Rohingya, under orders.
The wrecker has told the "Justice Department" to make the US take up
the liability for damages, as well as defense costs in E Jean
Carroll's lawsuit accusing him of raping her.
*Why Does [the wrecker] Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized
Testing [of students]?*
I think it is a rational decision. He desires the election chaos that
spreading Covid-19 could bring. Cancelling standardized tests won't
create chaos at all, let alone chaos that he can profit from.
Some pharma companies have pledged not to ask for approval of a vaccine
without success in a phase 3 blind trial, even though the wrecker
wants them to.
The US has sunk from the First World to become the first Fourth World
country.
(satire) *… inhabitants of a rural Kenyan village
confirmed Tuesday that they were waiting for a group of eager but
unskilled American volunteers to leave so they could rebuild their
school correctly.*
*Citing 'Criminal Exposure' in Straw-Donor Scheme and Possible Perjury, House
Announces Investigation Into DeJoy.*
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally indirectly led to 260,000 cases of Covid-19,
which is likely to include at least hundreds of deaths.
Gratuitous foolish disease spreading on subsequent occasions must
have contributed.
The World Bank rates every country on the "ease of doing business",
which turns out to mean the "ease of big foreign companies' muscling in."
13% of deaths in the EU are caused by environmental pollution.
It could be worse in the US, where the environmental standards are
weaker and enforcement is not very good either.
Covid-19 is intensifying famines in many parts of the world. The UN
predicts that around 265 million people will be on the brink of
statement by the end of this year.
Everyone: call on Samsung to stop participating in coal power construction.
Everyone: call on Rochester officials to (1) prosecute the thugs that
killed Daniel Prude, and (2) stop sending thugs to "help" people
having mental breakdowns.
Hundreds of Australian scientists say that the government and
businesses are gagging them when they try to warn about coming damage
to the environment, and altering their writing, effectively putting
lies in their mouths.
The Rochester thug department chief and his deputy have resigned.
That's progress, but their replacements must act, with the city's firm
support, to curb the violence and lies of thugs. This would be a good
time to shift jobs other than confronting real criminals to other
departments.
Air pollution has a high cost to society.
It would make sense, in a democratic society, to take big steps
to reduce pollution.
California's megafires have burned over 3100 square miles, which
is more than 2% of California's land area. And the fire season still has months to run.
20 years from now, the average year will be like this year. A bad
year will be far worse.
In 2006, the US government had evidence to prosecute Purdue Pharma,
but it did not. We don't know why not.
Two Australian journalists in China were barred from leaving until
they answered questions about a third Australian journalist who is in
some sort of jail and being investigated for charges of journalism.
Governments that are highly repressive and secretive tend to be quick to
equate asking nosy questions with spying. Of course, asking nosy questions
is the job of a good journalist,
The US government has been becoming more repressive and secretive in
recent decades, and we see the effects of that in the prosecution
of Julian Assange.
Remote school does not protect children from the school-to-prison
pipeline. Colorado school officials suspended a child for playing
with a nerf gun (a harmless toy which does not look like a real gun)
while visible on camera, then sent a thug to his house.
It's not that the officials are unable to tell the difference between
a real gun and a nerf gun. It's not that they can't tell the
difference between having a gun near you and seeing one on TV. It is
much worse than that: they have been convinced that it is their job to
ignore the difference.
This is much worse, because it can become far more widespread. We can
expect that not more than a handful of school officials would lose
track of the difference between reality and a picture; but if someone
teaches them to ignore the difference, they could all do it!
The article presents this as a matter of racism. The child is black,
and the parents assume the officials acted insanely because of that.
Perhaps they did, but the article does not present evidence for that.
Maybe they would have been insanely cruel to any child, regardless of
race.
Let's hope these parents sue the pants off them, so they and other
school officials will learn not to do this to any child, ever.
The UK's thug minister vows to protect Britons from Extinction Rebellion.
Who will protect Britons from extinction?
Thugs in Salt Lake City answered a 9-1-1 call from a woman who said
her unarmed 13-year-old son was uncontrollably upset. They treated him
as if he were an armed and dangerous gangster.
The shots did not kill him, but after those injuries he may wish they
had.
This is a precise example of the reason behind "Defund the police".
The city should have sent an unarmed team of calmers and deescalaters,
not thugs.
*'Horrifically Catastrophic': Report Finds So-Called US War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People.*
On the other hand, it might be as few as 37 million people — which is still
a global calamity.
*Rise in carbon capture as global warming speeds growth of forests would
be negated by earlier deaths, say scientists.*
I wonder if we could counteract that by cutting down those trees while
they are large, then somehow preserving the wood from decay. But that
is a far-fetched idea, and if it doesn't work, we must stop letting
companies distract us with "carbon offsets" and "net carbon emissions" and
accept no substitute for less emission.
Is publishing a book denouncing the conman enough repentance to forgive
Michael Cohen for decades of serving him?
*The pandemic is an opportunity to reconsider what makes a good life.*
The Tibetan Policy and Support Act would have the US officially reject
and punish China's intended attempt to appoint the next Dalai Lama.
*The Real 'Hoax' in America Is Record Wall Street Profits as Nation's Jobless
Millions Cannot Afford Rent.*
Rage is building. But Republicans fool the enraged public into
directing their rage against masks and disease-prevention precautions,
instead of the proper targets: the plutocrats and the politicians that
serve them.
The fossil fuel industry, deadly in the long term, is unprofitable overall
even in the short term.
However, the big fossil fuel companies are not hurting enough to shut down.
If they are not making profits in the way we were taught to think of
business as making profits, I suspect they are running something we would
consider a scam if we knew about it.
The UK barred Amnesty International and other human rights groups from
monitoring Julian Assange's extradition hearing.
The UK government now believes it can get away with all sorts of repression
and anti democratic behavior. I hope it is mistaken.
Jacob Blake describes his life as constant pain. Every movement
hurts.
I hope it gets less painful as his wounds heal.
Americans, pay attention to the PRO Act, which would help workers
unionize.
The remake of Mulan was filmed partly in Xinjiang with the help
of a Chinese government agency that also runs brainwashing camps.
It may seem advantageous that US commercial culture production sells
well in China, but it gives the Chinese government influence over what
American companies say or show to the rest of the world about China.
Postmaster Dejoy faces investigation in North Carolina for the crime
of passing campaign contributions through intermediaries.
The wrecker cannot pardon him from state charges and his flunky in
charge of the "Justice Department" cannot call off the investigation.
However, I don't see how this investigation could make Dejoy undo the
harm he has done to mail delivery. I doubt he could even be charged
before election day.
Firing him would not help either, because he is not an individual
criminal loner. He is part of a shameless political machine. If he
were gone, the wrecker would put in another hatchet man to finish the
job.
A former Salvadorean minister is now on trial in Spain for ordering
the murder of six Spanish priests during the country's war of repression.
Landlords will install Alexa listening devices and claim that entitles
them to a higher rent.
I think the crucial question is whether the tenants can physically
disconnect it.
Alexa for Residential will help people (including landlords) snoop on
each other.
How about passing laws that forbid landlords from requiring tenants to
tolerate microphones or cameras inside the property they rent?
Requiring tenants to use an "online portal" (which is
likely to require running nonfree Javascript software and could make
tenants sign away their rights) should be forbidden as well.
Assange's lawyers charge that the US replaced the indictment trying to
disguise the invalidity of the extradition request. They also
complain about being denied the opportunity to meet with their client.
*Hong Kong shocked by violent police arrest of 12-year-old girl.*
That's what thugs do when they perceive the people as enemies.
We see it in the US too.
Australia's extractivist government plans to reduce environmental
protections to permit more mining. Conservationists ask UNESCO to object
since the change would imperil world heritage sites.
China has been working for 80 years to do away with Tibetan culture.
The methods developed in repression of the Uighurs may now be used
to sinicize Tibetans.
It's making me sinical about China's intentions ;-}.
It is true that Tibet was a feudal society in 1950. But ending
feudalism did not have to be followed by assimilation, and forced
inclusion in an even worse system of government. China could have
ended the feudalism and left Tibetans mostly alone, and come out
admired.
A Tennessee thug faces criminal charges for attacking Andrew Golden, who
was making a video of a traffic stop from a safe distance.
The thug should be charged with reckless endangerment for breathing,
maskless, in Golden's face with no justification.
The bully backed off on his plan to close the newspaper Stars and
Stripes.
Matt Taibbi: To understand the bullshitter, think if him as a salesman
who sells the experience of being sold to. Just what he says he is
selling makes no difference to him.
The Democratic Party can't make a serious response because it has no
serious response to America's problems, and its attempts to respond
play into the bullshitter's hands.
I am no expert, but I think we should ignore his outrageous verbal
provocations, and focus on the real harm he does, and the good we can do.
Everyone: support the decentralized month of solidarity with Assange,
Whistleblowers and Press Freedom.
Car companies are spreading FUD to try to defeat the Massachusetts
right to repair initiative.
The truly dangerous data predators are the car companies themselves.
But you can block them, and anyone else that wants to track your car,
by converting it into a disconnected car. Disconnect (or cover with
metal foil) its cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If warranty
considerations would preclude turning off the antennas, get a car
that's out of warranty.
And do vote for the right-to-repair initiative if you live in
Massachusetts. Next step: require cars to let the owner control what
data to collect and/or make available to anyone.
Ultimately, the computers in the car that can communicate sensitive
data, or allow installation of different versions of software, should
run exclusively free software and the owner should be able to install
modified versions.
The reason the US can't set up enough Covid-19 testing is bad
organization of its medical system. Other countries have done an
excellent job of this, using techniques that the US could employ if
were willing to make the necessary organizational changes,
Hedge fund and private equity "investments" turn out to be rip-offs
for the investors.
What private equity "invests" in is trashing companies and jobs. If
our government were not under the thumb of the billionaires that run these
"investments", we would prohibit them.
Erdoğan is trying to bring back Turkish imperialism as well as
Islamism.
It is a danger, but mainly in the long term. One exception: the
discovery of large natural gas reserves is always terrifying, because
someone might extract them and burn them. We can hope that
international tensions will keep the gas in the ground, but it would
more reliable to sign an agreement to that effect.
Thugs in Los Angeles county kill around 45 people a year, and they're on track
to do it again this year.
Often they shoot people for running away, which means implies that the
victims were not threatening them and there was no need to shoot them.
I'm in favor of defunding the sheriff's department. There is little
chance of reforming the brutal culture of such an organization while
keeping the same personnel. LA county needs some sort of law
enforcement, but it should be restructured. Perhaps one department to
enforce traffic codes and that's all, and another to respond when
people need practical or medical help. A smaller police department
could be called only to deal with dangerous crime.
It seems more efficient to have the same personnel do all sorts of jobs,
but it is asking for trouble.
About Michael Reinoehl, armed Black Lives Matter protester who killed
one of a violent right-wing group that attacked a protest.
We can't take for granted that the statements by cops are accurate.
Did he really pull a gun when cops tried to arrest him? It is the
sort of thing thugs frequently fabricate, but it might be true. He
may have committed "suicide by cop".
I believe Reinoehl's statement that his intention on various
circumstances was to protect people, but I won't take for granted that
the specifics he states are accurate. Was Danielson trying to stab a
BLM protester? IANAL, but I suppose that would have made killing him
justifiable.
I hope that we find out the truth.
Clearview AI argues, stretching the idea of freedom of expression,
that it includes the right to make a database of photos of millions of people
and systematically recognize people against it. This article argues the
contrary.
The US is being crushed by the decision to prioritize creditors
(particularly large, powerful creditors) over the rest of society.
We need a debt jubilee.
A prosecutor in Louisville offered Breonna Taylor's ex, accused of
drug trafficking, a plea deal in which he would say that she was
involved in the transaction.
Now the prosecutor argues that since the offer was made during
negotiations, and was not the final plea deal offer, we should imagine
that it never happened.
The icebreaker Polarstern had a very quick and easy trip to the North
Pole, Terrifyingly easy. The Arctic ice has lost 75% of its volume in
the past 30 years.
Arguing that Facebook deliberately promotes right wing extremism
because it would benefit from a Republican victory.
The US bombing of Libya in 2011 caused a disaster that has harmed many
countries in North Africa.
Putting the residents in each community in charge of building new,
dense housing can defuse the conflicts about it.
Most prisoners' families say that US prisoners do not have access to
soap, disinfectant, and other things they need to stop the spread of
coronavirus.
One other thing they don't have enough of is space to stay away from
each other.
Stiglitz urges states to raises taxes on the rich ASAP so as to avoid
terrible budget cuts.
When the wrecker called on his supporters to try to vote twice, which
is a felony, he committed the felony of incitement.
Michael Cohen's book says that the conman is guilty of the same crimes
as he.
Your employer's "spiritual consultant" will try to teach you to find
deep meaning in your meaningless job.
The Tories want to impose a digital biometric ID system on everyone in
the UK. This would be a gratuitous increment in tyranny.
*15 Years After Hurricane Katrina, It’s Time to Demilitarize Disaster Relief.*
Ralph Nader challenges the Democratic Party to take steps to go beyond
being "not the Republicans".
A study predicts that strict wearing of masks could save 120,000 lives
in the US in the rest of this year.
I'm doing my part. I hope you are too.
The Democratic Party calls for more protection of nature, but does not
talk about giving nature "rights".
I am in favor of more legal protections of nature — more, I expect,
than the Democratic Party advocates,
However, it does not make sense to attribute "rights" to anything
that doesn't have a will with which to decide how to exercise them.
Rather than describe legal protections of nature using a blatant
absurdity, we should describe them as what they are: protections for
something we consider important.
"Centrist" Democrats made a big fuss when the Republican former governor of
Michigan endorsed Biden.
For me, it shows how close Biden is to being a pre-conman Republican.
One way to convince the wrecker to accept defeat could be to convince Putin
to offer him asylum in Russia. But once he is gone, we will still need to
restore democratic elections.
The article describes three changes: eliminating the electoral
college, ending voter suppression and gerrymandering, and breaking
through the two-party system that gives us the choice of moderate right
wing vs extreme right wing.
The author proposes that the peoples of other countries dominated by
the US should have some say in the US government. I agree there is a
problem to be fixed, but I don't think the US government can play,
simultaneously, the two roles of most-of-the-world government and
government of one country.
Sanders states what the US needs to do to prepare in advance to
confront the wrecker if he tries to deny or disregard the election
result.
The problem is, these preparation steps are a wish, not a plan. In
states controlled by Republicans, they have a history of voter
suppression. They won't do what needs to be done. The mainstream
media may not want to help. Facebook may have made a deal with the
wrecker. That leaves only step 4 which can be carried out by
people (Congressional Democrats) that probably want to do it.
FAIR: The Washington Post paired frequent right-wing violence against
BLM with barely any violence by BLM supporters to construct a false
equivalence.
Extinction Rebellion rejects the charge that its one-day blockade of
several right-wing British newspapers, all owned by one company, was
"an attack on the free press." Basically, a press dominated by one
company which covers up the most important information is effectively
not a free press to begin with.
Facebook has banned political ads for the week before election day.
That has a good side, but it includes the ads by state election officials
which tell people where and how to vote.
Facebook could run those announcements gratis; then they would not be ads.
Once again, a ship that picked up migrants in the Mediterranean is
being barred from all ports and is getting low on food and water.
Having cops in a school harms students in the UK,
just as it does in the US.
The bully has repeatedly expressed his contempt for US soldiers that
died in wars. Now he wants to punish a journalist who reported this.
About the US soldiers that died or were injured in Iraq, the bully is
half right. They were duped — by Dubya. He started the war >based
on lies. All the US military personnel that Dubya hijacked to make the Bush
forces were duped, and Dubya is guilty of an enormous crime, against
them and against Iraqis.
They deserve condolences for that, not contempt. They wanted to
serve their country — it is not their fault that Dubya lied to them
about what they would be doing.
The bully has contempt for them because he is heartless. He lives by
duping people; to excuse this, he believes that anyone who is duped
deserves to be duped.
Now he has mad veterans, many of who supported him, very angry.
*Navalny poisoning forces Merkel's party to ask: how do we hit back at Putin?*
Here's a suggestion: switch to renewable energy as fast as possible.
It's vitally necessary anyway, and it will eliminate demand for
Russia's key exports (fossil fuels).
UK thugs arrested over 500 Extinction Rebellion protesters in London.
The excuse in many cases was Covid-19. Of course, protesters must
take care not to spread Covid-19, but did they really fail to do that?
I expect Extinction Rebellion to be very careful about health.
One of their protests was blocking delivery of Murdoch's right-wing
denialist almost-monopoly newspapers.
This has been labeled an "attack on the free press". If they kept
it up for a long time, I would agree, but they did it for just one
day.
Australia has been rapidly building renewable electric generation and
large batteries for storage. However, it is not encouraging any new
investment.
I wonder if this is due to the current planet-roaster government
which came in a few years ago.
China arrests foreigners as hostages.
The bully is trying to put an end to any antiracism training that
presents the idea that the United States or any race or ethnicity is
"inherently racist or evil."
I would object to training people in those ideas, but does that ever
happen? A priori, it seems unlikely.
It is undeniably true that racism systematically gives whites a
certain advantage over blacks in our society. It is the converse of
the disadvantage that racism systematically imposes on blacks. To
recognize this does not assert that whites are evil.
Republicans are sending disinformation about Democratic candidates
including fake images, along with applications for postal ballots.
The bully's henchman has found a strained excuse to shut down Stars
and Stripes, an editorially-independent newspaper for military personnel
and others.
This is going to anger veterans, just when they are angry at being
called "losers" and "suckers."
(satire) *Pope Maintains Divine Buzz By Microdosing Eucharist Throughout Day.*
*Greta Thunberg: don't dump climate crisis on children to fix.*
(satire) *"Tell everyone who will listen
that it wasn’t coronavirus that killed me—it was asthma, and high
cholesterol, and blood pressure!" the dying Trump supporter reportedly
told the hospital staff between gasps for breath*
Conspiracy-theorists held a protest in Melbourne, and did not wear masks.
They are entitled to the right to protest, even in an idiotic cause.
They are not entitled to the right to spread disease. For
intentionally doing that, they deserved to be arrested.
*93% of [Black Lives Matter] demonstrations have
involved no serious harm to people or property.*
The 7% exceptions play into right-wing hands. Nearly all the protesters
know what to do. Can they organize to lead the rest?
Justice is coming slowly for Cherry Groce, paralyzed by a shot by a
London thug, but at least it may teach someone how to avoid doing this
to someone else.
*Britain's obsession with school uniform reinforces social divisions.*
Perhaps it is something more sinister than an innocent obsession.
The US is still failing to manage Coronavirus properly and therefore the
disease is likely to remain at high levels into the winter.
You can help retail workers remain employed by rejecting on-line
orders and delivery. A job in a store is a better job than a
gig-economy job delivering packages.
Rochester thugs suffocated Daniel Prude by putting a hood over his face
and pushing it into the ground. Then they lied about it.
I can understand the need for the spit hood, but there was no need to
shove his face down. And no possible excuse for lying.
I think the chief of the thug department deserves to be fired if he
asserted those lies were valid.
People protested peacefully about the killing, and the thugs attacked
them violently for no apparent reason.
Palantir, the great repression-planning company, plans to go public.
Republicans are suing many states to try to stop them from
sending out large numbers of postal ballots.
Even if they lose the lawsuits, they will delay sending out the
ballots. With that on one side and post office sabotage on the other,
they can cause ballots not to be counted.
In Illinois, vote for the graduated income tax.
*For Years, Journalists Cheered Assange’s Abuse. Now They’ve Paved His Path To
a US Gulag.*
(satire) *… streaming service Spotify
reportedly celebrated Thursday the platform’s 100th dollar given to
artists.*
Oil companies are hoping that increased production of plastics will
make up for decreased combustion of fossil fuels. Alas, it seems that
life can't tolerate plastics.
Thugs went to arrest the man accused of killing a right-wing extremist
protester in Portland, but they shot him dead instead.
I have to suspect they killed him by choice.
Varoufakis has proposed a system to replace today's capitalism. It
still uses markets for goods and services, but workers are always
co-owners as every enterprise is a cooperative.
I don't understand how the levies on countries for having an imbalance
of trade or payments would function. If this is meant to pressure
countries not to have imbalances, what could they do to avoid them?
I am also worried by the idea that people would make all their
payments using central bank accounts — because that implies tracking,
which is dangerous. And I am not convinced that the 5% flat tax on
business income would bring in enough funds for the state to do its
many jobs.
Perhaps I would see these are not real problems if I understood
better. Perhaps some details could be changed. In any case, it is an
interesting area to explore.
One of the planet-roasting policies that the US has maintained for
decades is allowing oil and gas extractors to pay only a small amount
for what they extract. That was always bad. But the wrecker has cut
down the payments to nearly zero for hundreds of wells.
Seven UN special rapporteurs say, *Hong Kong security law 'may break
international laws'.* It conflicts with treaties that China has signed.
This can have an effect on China but only if other countries condition
some decisions on this.
I would expect that the lawless behavior of uniformed US thugs
violates some treaties. And what about Guantanamo. and wars of
aggression? Not that one country's wrongs excuse another country's
wrongs — but would be easier to enforce the treaties if breaking them
were unusual and unaccepted.
*I'm a freelance writer. A Russian media operation targeted and used me.*
The site PeaceData offered to pay him for a weekly column.
*Greystone Nursing Homes, Whose Executives Gave $800,000 to Trump,
Are Epicenters of Covid-19 Deaths.*
Businesses that pay off officials expect something specific in return.
Perhaps in this case it is permission to cut corners on safety.
Tories have pushed reopening so hard that Covid-19 is increasing. Now
some parts of England are running out of coronavirus tests.
An Australian warns Britain about engaging Australian buffoon Tony Abbott
as trade negotiator.
I think Abbott could do worse than fail, though. He would be
excellent at giving the conman whatever he wants, and lauding it.
Johnson makes mistakes, but I think he knows what Abbott will do,
and that is what he wants.
I wish I had confidence that Biden would protect the US (and the UK)
from that bad business-supremacy treaty
but Obama would not.
Iran is holding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe hostage to collect a valid
debt from the UK.
It is wrong to hold people as hostages, but the UK should have paid
this debt willingly.
In 2009, a Buffalo police officer jumped on a thug's back to stop
him from choking someone. She was fired, and lost her pension
while one year from retirement.
Now she is suing to demand her pension.
A Republican congresscritter who fanatically defends the right to
carry guns says he would shoot any blacks that carry guns at a protest.
Does this mean he advocates the right to carry guns only for whites?
Does he now believe that guns should be prohibited at demonstrations?
I'm in favor of that, as long as it applies to everyone.
*Joe Biden, Don’t Let Donald Trump Run as the Antiwar Candidate!*
Inducing people to try to vote twice is a felony in North Carolina,
but the basic principle of trumpery is that supporters of the wrecker
can disregard any law.
Foreign workers in Dubai who have lost their jobs are being left to
starve.
The recently announced policy change would allow foreign workers to quit their jobs, and get new work or depart.
That is a good thing, but it does not help those who can't find new work,
and can't afford to depart.
The UK does something similar to unauthorized foreign workers: they have to beg
for food and shelter.
An appeals court has ruled that the collection of phone records about
all Americans was illegal.
This is but one of many systems of surveillance that Snowden revealed to us.
That is why we need to repeal that part of PAT RIOT act.
Prosecutors increasingly pursue the surviving perpetrators of the
international terrorist plot known as Operation Condor, a conspiracy
of dictators in South America that operated with the support of the
US.
*Undercover journalist Valentin Gendrot describes culture where
[French thugs] act with impunity.* He joined a thug department
and reported on the violence and lies he witnessed.
What an interesting reversal it is for thugs to be the target of an
undercover investigation. We need more of these.
The wrecker urged voters in North Carolina to submit a postal ballot
and then vote in person.
The voting system ought to detect such attempts and block the double
voting. That does not mean it is good for thousands of people to test
it in this way. Especially if Republican officials might be tempted
to let whites get two votes.
The repressive regime in the UK has not officially banned peaceful
protest, but is hemming it in with laws that make it very difficult.
*Portuguese children sue 33 countries over [causing global heating].*
France plans a substantial effort to reduce greenhouse emissions
by investing in bicycle riding.
This, however, can't possibly do enough.
Wild elephants in Africa are dying by the hundreds. Scientists
are trying to figure out the cause.
*Arizona university prevents potential Covid outbreak by testing feces.*
Various US government agencies are scurrying to complete acts of
environmental sabotage by Jan 20, in case the saboteur in chief loses
reelection.
Oportun lends to poor people, initially on fairly reasonable terms;
but if something goes wrong (such as unemployment), it demands high
interest. They can get caught and never get out.
Companies like this are bottom feeders. If people are lucky, these companies can help them squeak by. If they are unlucky, they get caught. But the real
cause of the problem is the low income many Americans get, and the high cost
of everything medical.
The US trade treaty with Jordan led to a big increase in clothing
production there, but didn't do much to reduce the cruelty to workers
there.
As a general solution, I suggest that importing countries pass laws
requiring the label on an article of clothing carry the name of the
company that actually made the article. This could help hold that
company accountable, and it will make buyers more aware of how
the production system operates.
California is being hit by giant fires and coronavirus quarantines at the
same time. Even in cities, thousands of people are evacuating.
If global heating proceeds unabated, I envision that in 2050 there
will be 20 or 30 regional disasters like this each year in the US, and
no place will be safe. We must take drastic measures now.
The dishonest sex smear defeated Alex Morse; plutocratist Rep. Neal
will probably his megacorporations for one more term.
Consumer Reports found that the College Board web site gives data to
many surveillance capitalism companies when students sign up on its
web site.
Some 12,000 additional people died in the UK in March and April
from causes unrelated to Covid-19.
This seems to be because they couldn't go to a hospital for treatment.
This reinforces the importance of taking measures to keep the infection
rate low.
ACLU of Georgia and Greg Palast: *…the State had likely removed
in 2019 the voter registrations of nearly 200,000 Georgia citizens on
the grounds that they had moved from the address on their voter
registration application. However, none of these citizens had
moved,…*
Markey's victory speech: "There is no time for compromise on the
existential threat to our time. We must pass a Green New Deal... The
time to be timid is past. The age of incremental-ism is over. Now is our
moment to think big, to build big, to be big. This is what this
election is all about."
He is right — so how are we going overcome the opposition of Biden,
Pelosi, and so on.
Official thugs and white vigilantes (unofficial thugs) tend to support
each other because they mostly share the same ideology: maintaining a
social order which incorporates racism and plutocracy.
Congress has subpoenaed various documents from DeJoy including his
calendar of meetings, which he has concealed so far.
Around a million primary election ballots were mailed to voters within
a week of the election, meaning they very likely arrived too late to
be sent back and counted.
This is not a matter of artificial mail delays in the USPS, but
if it happens again in November, the consequences will add to the
consequences of those delays.
Amazon advertised for staff to interfere with union organizing. Amazon later said that ad was posted "in error", which probably means
the hiring was supposed to be done quietly. Amazon has long made a practice
of monitoring staff's discussions about unionization.
The US is still carrying out bombing in Somalia, to fight
al-Shaabab, but now it blames all civilian casualties on the enemy.
It is worth reminding people that al-Shaabab was created when Ethiopia
intervened, on behalf of the US, to destroy the "Islamic courts"
government that had established peace in Somalia.
Somalia has not known peace since then.
The city of Hoboken has sued Exxon for the damages of the predicted
consequences of global heating. In the case of Hoboken, the damages
will be due to inundation of much of the city.
Amnesty International condemns US sanctions against the staff of the
International Criminal Court.
The corrupter is fairly consistent about one thing: protecting the
crooks that are working for him.
Extinction Rebellion has launched a series of protests in London and
Manchester, to remind the UK that the part of the disaster we can still
avoid gets smaller with each year of insufficient action.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
If you call, please spread the word!
Black Lives Matter protesters are being charged with felonies for minor
property damage, under laws intended for shutting down street gangs.
One way to help the poor is to compel charitable foundations to spend
more than the current legal minimum on serving their purposes.
As for dodge-assisting funds (my term for them), these function as a
scheme for rich people to buy what they want and dodge taxes
on the money. We should abolish them outright. However, while they
do exist, this change would not make them any worse.
If Biden wants to lead a moral renewal of the US, he should start by apologizing for its wars.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
The wrecker blocked circulation of an intelligence warning that Russia was going to spread rumors that Biden was mentally ill.
Facebook threatens to ban real news rather than pay a tax to Australia
for carrying it.
One response for Australia would be to ban Facebook entirely. That would
get rid of a lot of problems.
*Asphalt roads make city air pollution worse in summer, study finds.*
The Tories' campaign to undermine the NHS has gone so far that private
medicine could push it into a death spiral.
The deaths would be those of Britons who can't afford private treatment.
* In more and more races, the GOP doesn’t have broad enough appeal to
fairly produce an election majority, so it has resorted to rigging the
system so a minority prevails.*
People beg for help on the internet because the government fails
to carry out its responsibilities.
Shame on the government.
California’s Circular Economy & Plastic Pollution Reduction Act was
narrowly defeated in the state assembly.
* Pointing the finger in the wrong direction (at foolish individuals)
excuses those in power for failing to support people to stay at
home.*
*Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus.*
*Iranians tortured and jailed after mass protests, Amnesty report says.*
*Alexei Navalny poisoned with Novichok, says German government.*
The Kremlin will say us that anyone in Russia can get novichoks
from the nearest pest control company. But it must have wanted us to know
that this poisoning was carried out by the Russian state.
Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health,
calls on Americans to disregard the CDC's new perverse non-testing
guidelines.
Influential progressive groups call on Biden to exclude fossil fuel
representatives, in his campaign now and from his government later.
The absence of such people would not guarantee good policies, but their
presence would enable them to impose bad ones.
400 edtech companies have signed a "student privacy pledge", but they suffer
no penalty when they violate it.
Aside from the lack of enforcement, the pledge itself is too weak.
It excludes only a limited subset of the possible
misuses of student data. The right way to handle most student data is
never to let any organization other than the school get its hands on
the data.
There are a few special circumstances in which student data needs to
be held by an organization outside the school itself. Standardized
tests are one of these. In those circumstances, the proper pledge is,
"We pledge not to keep any copy of the student's data other than name,
address, identification number and overall test results. We pledge
not to allow any use of these data, except that specific schools
by the student can verify the test results."
Another special case is for plagiarism checking. The school should
never reveal to such a site anything about the student who wrote the
paper being checked — not even that the same student wrote some other
previous paper. The school should invent a new "student name" for
each paper and only the school should know which student that
corresponds to.
(satire) *[invented name]
expressed worry Tuesday that Donald Trump retweeting him would
undermine his credibility as a conspiracy theorist.*
Progressives have launched the New People's Party.
If it is to succeed, they will need to change the name.
But I wonder, what is the advantage of this party over the Green Party?
*Republicans are flooding the internet with deceptive videos and Big Tech
isn't keeping up.*
(satire) *the FDA reportedly
promised Tuesday to fast-track a cure for the side effects of the
fast-tracked Covid-19 vaccine.*
Jacob Blake's father organized a counter-meeting, voting drive, and
block party to counter the wrecker's meeting elsewhere in Kenosha.
Pope Francis has denounced the practice of consuming resources faster
than the natural world can replace them, and called for urgent climate
defense action.
If mainly Democratic voters vote by mail,
the wrecker could get a misleading apparent lead if the mail-in ballots
are counted later.
Everyone: tell Gilead: Your publicly-funded COVID-19
treatment must be gratis.
This argument is not the best one to use, because it only works some
of the time. Should a company be allowed to gouge on medical treatments
merely because it did not use public funds? I don't think so.
US citizens: call on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to Stop
the sale of Ancestry to Blackstone
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
The wrecker has cut off the US from international cooperation
in developing vaccines for Covid-19.
This might have no real effect, but it could also cut off Americans
from use of foreign-developed vaccines.
That could be very unfortunate for Americans if the best vaccine is
one of those. We may not be able to get honest information about how
much a US vaccine has been tested or what the results of the testing
are, now that the wrecker has corrupted the CDC and FDA.
Or, if the best vaccine is American, it could deny people in other
countries the protection of that vaccine.
The one thing it cannot do is good.
Arguing that gold mining is of zero benefit to society.
Since it does poison the environment, there is no reason not to
prohibit it entirely.
Prohibition would be fairly easy to enforce against large mines.
There is also small-scale mining, which would be hard to prevent. But
it might do much less environmental harm.
In one study, painting some wind turbine blades black avoid
most of the bird deaths.
The corrupter makes the Secret Service pay his companies in order to
protect him.
California might in theory be able to prevent disastrous megafires if
it did enough controlled burns.
But is that even remotely possible? 20 million acres is 31,000 square
miles, around 1/5 of the area of California. It is more than half of
the forested area. I don't think so much controlled burn could ever
be done.
Zuckerberg said that Apple's app store is monopolistic and harmful to
people who talk with iPhones.
He's absolutely right about Apple. By contrast, Facebook is
monopolistic and harmful to talk with Facebook.
Having classes outdoors could be a benefit for lower grades,
as well as tending to prevent anyone from catching Covid-19.
China is starting a gradual plan to force Mongols to shift from
speaking Mongolian to speaking Mandarin.
Cows spread diarrhea-causing E coli to salad farms, and the US is not doing
much to keep the salad leaves safe.
The wrecker's triumph: thugs and right-wing extremist militias are
now allied and supported by the right-wing media.
Cities whose thug departments are permeated with right-wing extremists
may need to abolish those departments and start new ones, so as to have no
right-wing extremists among their police.
Qatar will end the practice of tying each foreign worker to a single
employer.
This has the potential to reduce the horrible exploitation of
foreign workers there.
Correction: The article I linked to about dictionary.com appears to
have been erroneous, or else I misunderstood it. It treats the words
"Black" and "White" in a parallel way, so I have no criticism.
Thugs in Phoenix pressed Roniah Trotter face down on the sidewalk,
which was so hot that it gave her second-degree burns.
Naturally the thugs said it was she who attacked them. But the
biggest villains in this story are fossil fuel companies. I suspect
it will not be feasible to keep living in the Phoenix region for many
more decades. It will be too dangerous, and when the aquifer is
exhausted there will be no water.
It is too late to avoid global heating disaster, but we can still make
it more or make it less — and civilization's future depends on which
one we do.
LA thugs shot and killed Dijon Kizzee for running away after riding a
bicycle while black.
The details of their story might be true, but we cannot assume they
are true unless we find some independent confirmation. The
unsupported word of any number of thugs — if they have had a chance
to coordinate their stories — is not credible testimony.
The proposed US-Kenya business-supremacy treaty would make Kenya eliminate
its policies that are designed to reduce plastic pollution.
We must expect it will do other bad things too, as they generally do.
I wish I could expect Biden to be better than the corrupter on these issues,
but I expect him to be worse than Obama.
* Researchers in China saw big reductions in organisms [in soil] that play a
crucial role in recycling carbon and nitrogen*, due to
microplastics in the soil.
Right-wing UK pressure groups are trying to remove decision-making from
elected officials in Parliament and move it to assistants appointed by
the Prime Minister.
President Kagame of Rwanda, who does not allow opposition, has
arrested Rusesabagina, a heroic genocide-resister who subsequently
became a heroic opposition leader.
His family says Rusesabagina was arrested in Dubai; he would never
have gone willingly to Rwanda.
After the defeat of Sanders, and the plutocratist Democrats' rejection of
his progressive policies, where is hope to end US government cruelty?
We face an election which either a lousy right-wing candidate or a
perverse crook will win. We must continue the fight to overcome the
plutocratist Democrats. There are a few, such as Pelosi, that will still run against
progressive Democrats in November. Campaign for those progressives now.
As for all the rest, let's start now to support replacing them the next
time they run for reelection.
* Only one in 10 of the world’s electric utility companies are
prioritizing investment in clean renewable energy over growing their
capacity of fossil fuel power plants.*
People are criticizing Whole Foods for not allowing staff to wear
"Black Lives Matter" slogans while at work.
I think it is legitimate for a store to restrict political messaging
by its staff while at work. Would you insist that a store permit
employees to wear white-supremacist messages? So I think it is
legitimate for a store to say that its staff can't present any
political messages while on duty.
However, it seems valid to argue that if Whole Foods really supports
anti-racist campaigns, it should show that support by offering staff
masks they can wear, saying "Whole Foods supports Black Lives Matter."
*Research Reveals Ancient Peat Bogs Burning and Unprecedented Emissions From 2020 Arctic Fires.*
This is a positive feedback that I expect was not taken into account
in climate models. It means things will get worse, and faster, than
they predict.
Private documents from the saboteur in chief's Covid-19 task force
show that when he said it would disappear, he knew the opposite was true.
Hurricane Laura in Louisiana knocked out water supplies and electricity, so people are without air conditioning in the middle of a dangerous heat wave.
It also set a chemical plant on fire, and the chlorine gas can cause a lung problem that makes Covid-19 more deadly.
Global heating contributed to the hurricane and the heat wave.
James Brown voted 568 times — according to Kris Kobach.
Actually it was hundreds of different James Browns, each voting once.
*Our richest corporations are much to blame for the free-market "winner
take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to
survive without adequate health care and life savings.*
We don't need to base our argument for taxing big business more on its
benefit from government-funded research. Everyone in society has the
duty to contribute to society, so the rich must not be able to exempt
their income from taxation by passing it through corporations.
The disease-spreader has chosen an advisor that wants to let Covid-18
burn through the US population, killing whoever it happens to kill.
That's the real meaning of "aiming for herd immunity".
We should keep in mind, if he orders the FDA to approve an
incompletely tested vaccine, that he is eager for Covid-19 to kill us
and always ready to lie.
Hamas (Gaza) and Israel have agreed on a truce, and perhaps more — Israel
is supposed to alleviate the blockade of Gaza.
*Researchers found "nice, generous" people advanced at work just as much
as bullies.*
Maybe this is yet another example where each person who succeeds
jumps to the conclusion that success depends on per own characteristics,
while in fact it is just chance at work.
Experts object to the term "climate refugee", but I think their
arguments are valid only for short term — before climate disaster
gets bad enough to make regions uninhabitable.
Imagine if it became impossible to live in California, due to fire,
smoke, and the failure of agriculture. That's the sort of massive
disaster that "climate refugee" goes with.
*Thomas Piketty refuses to censor latest book for sale in China.*
Theists sometimes challenge me to prove there are no gods. I can't do
that, but I can show that god-based theories of the universe can't
explain anything, so they aren't even wrong.
Amazon and IBM are buying from Chinese companies that make systems
used for repression of Uighurs.
*Ban US cotton imports from Xinjiang, say human rights campaigners.*
The bully urged right-wing extremists to protest in Portland, where
they got into fights with local anti-racist protesters. One
right-wing protester was shot dead. We don't know who shot him.
*Sudan government agrees to peace deal with five rebel groups.*
*Australia’s big polluters [have been] required to offset just 1.2% of
greenhouse gas emissions.*
However, even if they were required to offset 100% of the greenhouse
gas emissions, that might do little good, since many schemes for
"offsetting" emissions are of questionable effectiveness.
In effect, schemes for industries to "offset" emissions are a way to
avoid being made to actually reduce emissions.
*N.Y.C. Tenants Say They Were Tricked Into Appearing in R.N.C. Video.*
How a large high school is getting ready to receive students and
reduce Covid-19 transmission.
President Moreno is planning to allow the IMF to put dooH niboR
in charge of Ecuador.
This is to please foreign creditors.
The idea that the IMF would ever help a country it lends to is,
alas, folly. That's what it was initially intended for, but its
mission, since the 1980s if not earlier, was to impoverish the poor.
*Covid vaccine rush could make pandemic worse, say scientists.*
If people use a vaccine that is not very effective, they could start
taking foolish risks, imagining that the vaccine protected them. This
would play into the hands of the Republicans who wish to spread the
disease. The wrecker could pretend to be protecting us while achieving
the opposite.
The long-term effect might be to encourage distrust for all vaccines,
including those that have been thoroughly tested.
People in Belarus felt they could ignore politics and live under the regime.
Now they no longer consider that safe.
*Michael Moore warns that Donald Trump is on course to repeat 2016 win.*
Germany has been very successful in integrating a large number of
refugees.
The British Museum is starting to acknowledge the slave-owning past of
its founder.
*Public transit faces 'death spiral' without $32bn injection from Congress.*
Extinction Rebellion proposes a citizens’ assembly designed to feed
proposals to Parliament. Any proposal that gets 80% support in the
assembly, Parliament would be required to vote on.
Protesters marched again in Minsk despite Lukashenko's threats.
The wrecker has stopped intelligence official from testifying to
Congress about threats to election security.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass the Delivering for America
Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
Pope Pius XII stayed silent while Mussolini let Nazis round up
Italian Jews in order to murder them.
Recently opened Vatican archives show he was persuaded by an advisor
who argued that it would appear inconsistent for the Catholic Church
to object to oppression of Jews, after having itself oppressed them
for centuries.
The archives also show that later, after the war ended, the pope
ordered followers to keep Jewish orphans away from their relatives so
as to raise them as Catholics.
A company that makes airships presents them as a way to reduce
the emissions of air travel.
However, that company's airships apparently won't reduce emissions the
tiniest bit, since it plans to use them as a sort of aerial cruise
ship.
I am puzzled by the claim that they will travel faster than trains.
Fast trains today sometimes take passengers station to station
averaging 175 miles per hour, while these airships seem to be tested
only up to 50 knots.
The bullshitter has invited employers to collect the payroll
tax for Social Security and Medicare for the rest of 2020 next year
instead of this year. When they do so, it will increase workers' pay this year, and
decrease it by the same amount next year, for no net benefit.
I wonder what will happen if a worker is fired at the end of the year.
Will they get an actual one-time benefit? Or will they be forced to
repay this advance anyway?
When the wrecker's officials violate the Hatch Act by campaigning while
acting in their official capacity, the mainstream press doesn't
mention that this is illegal.
Barr won't prosecute it, and I suspect that regional Justice
Department officers won't dare. In effect, the wrecker has
put himself and his supporters above the law.
*Relationships, advice, careers… so much of life is lost when you work from home.*
*Indigenous tribe in Ecuador appeals for help to deal with coronavirus.*
*Achuar people blame illegal logging for spread and are asking
international community for aid.*
Covid-19 was not engineered by humans, but it will get easier and easier for
humans to engineer something worse. How can we avert this?
Covid-19 is spreading fast in France, almost as fast as its peak in
the spring.
Obviously the current measures are not enough to stop it. Why does
the government delay taking adequate measures?
Victoria is setting a wise example.
The Republican Convention did an effective job of presenting empathy
and concern for ordinary people. Even though it is total bullshit,
it can win them votes.
The physical and moral challenges of rebuilding the destroyed ancient
cities of Syria.
Lukashenko is expelling foreign journalists, and prosecuting some
Belarussian journalists.
That can only mean he is preparing for an
atrocity.
Sometimes the Theater of Security Agency presents a tragedy,
the frequently repeated "civil asset forfeiture".
When mail-in ballots make it through the USPS, the gauntlet is not
finished. Many localities and states are not prepared to handle large
quantities of postal ballots.
In addition, as Greg Palast has informed us, local officials have opportunities
to discriminate in rejecting postal ballots, and they use them.
I decided to use early voting rather than postal voting.
The rich use charity (along with buying politicians) to avoid paying
their fair share of taxes. This charity will not correct the huge
injustices of our time — that requires government programs.
The article makes many criticisms against the US nonprofit sector, and
some of them are mistaken. For instance, I think museums are an
important contribution to society. But the article's main points are
valid.
Near the end the article presents a grab-bag of criticisms, some of
which are logically invalid. For instance, when ACLU offices
discriminated against queer people, that was wrong, but that does not
invalidate the ACLU's work. It should not reduce in the slightest our
appreciation of the ACLU's campaign to make it illegal to discriminate
against queer people, or for many other legal rights. We must reject
the fallacy that failure to totally live its principles makes an
organization (or a person) worthless.
*USPS is telling people their mail is being held 'at the request of the
customer.' It isn’t true.*
NBA players went on strike, and quickly won agreement to use NBA
stadiums as special safe voting facilities in elections starting this
year. Also for efforts to promote voting and promote criminal justice
reform.
The BREATHE Act would stop the Pentagon from filling US thug
departments with military weapons and systems.
Biden would probably revert to Obama's foreign policy, more or less.
This might include more and worse business-supremacy treaties.
One of the few good things that the bully has done was reject the TPP
and eliminate the ISDS clause from NAFTA.
Thugs in Kenosha organized in advance to arrest Riot Kitchen activists
who came equipped to prepare and hand out food.
I suspect that someone gave the thugs a false tip about these
food-serving activists. However, that doesn't explain or excuse
their breaking the window of the minivan.
*The Thin Blue Line Between Violent [wrecker] Militias and [the
uniformed thugs].*
*House Democrats launch contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo.*
He is likely to disregard the contempt vote just as he disregards
subpoenas. Can the House manage to arrest him?
The local news media in Western Massachusetts presented the smear
against Alex Morse as true, then said nothing about how it was a
scheme.
*Protesters in Multiple States Are Facing Felony Charges, Including Terrorism.*
This article projects a tremendous danger of surveillance and
manipulation in cameras to scrape and understand everything a person
looks at.
Unfortunately, the author doesn't recognize that free software offers at least
part of a way to avoid the danger.
Calling for Canada to offer addicts a legal supply of opioids.
This approach has reduced the harm that they do
in the Netherlands,
and in Portugal.
I think it even reduces the number of people that become addicted.
We might wish that opioids had never been invented — but the real
effect of prohibiting them is nothing like that.
Everyone: call on Verizon to drop sponsorship of an arms and
surveillance expo for thug departments.
Human Rights Watch says Venezuela is using coronavirus as cover to
crack down on dissent.
*Giancarlo Granda, the man at the center of a sex scandal involving
Jerry Falwell Jr, detailed on Friday how the evangelical leader and
outspoken ally of Donald Trump “enjoyed watching” his wife and Granda
having sex.*
Good for him! And good for the other two! I am glad for all of them.
But it was very wrong of the Falwells to go on hypocritically saying
that it is wrong to do things like that.
A recent survey found that 1/4 of young adults in the US had
considered suicide in the past 30 days.
More than half have mental disorders.
This may be partially due to isolation from denial of physical
contact. I suspect it is also partly due to awareness that global
heating disaster is going to turn their lives upside down, and perhaps
kill them, before they are old.
It is very easy for mining companies in Australia to get permission to
destroy old aboriginal sites. They have obtained such permission for
hundreds of siteswhich they have not destroyed yet.
The sites which are of archaeological significance, or might be so —
which means, all or nearly all of them — should be protected
unconditionally for the sake of science.
(satire) *Fox News announced Wednesday that they had limited their
pandemic coverage to avoid giving the Covid-19 the notoriety it craved.*
https://www.theonion.com/fox-news-limits-pandemic-coverage-to-avoid-giving-coron-1844855729
The UK has preemptively arrested some Extinction Rebellion activists for
some sort of protest plan.
*Despite DNC Focus on Winning 'Biden Republicans,' New Poll Suggests Beating
Trump 'All About Democratic Turnout'.*
I think the reason that the "centrist" corporatist Democrats choose to
aim for support from Republicans is that pre-wrecker Republicans are
closer to their corporatist positions than progressives are.
The US fossil fuel companies stay afloat (those that aren't already
bankrupt) only because of government subsidies. The wrecker has
effectively increased the subsidies by cutting what these companies
have to pay for extracting publicly owned resources.
*Outrage Grows Over Police Treatment of Alleged Kenosha Killer Kyle
Rittenhouse Compared to Shooting Victim Jacob Blake.*
Thugs showed respect and support to the armed vigilante, not even
arresting him for the shooting. Shouldn't they be fired for that, at least?
(satire) *Blue Lives Matter
supporters told reporters Thursday that Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions did
not reflect the nonviolent tactics favored by most police-state
apologists.*
The EU is being criticized for a deal that shields a vaccine company
from liability.
Vaccinating everyone for a certain disease might save 1% of the
population from death or grave injury due to that disease, and
might cause grave harm to .001%. If each of the people thus harmed
sued the company, it could go broke. It makes sense for the
government to shield the vaccine makers from liability provided it
covers the .001%'s treatment and losses in some other way.
In a country with a national medical system, that arrangement is easy
to implement, and is good for everyone concerned. The people suffer
far fewer sicknesses and deaths. The nation has fewer sick people to
treat, fewer disabled people to support, and fewer deaths to
compensate. Then the vaccine manufacturer can charge a reasonable
amount for the vaccine and make a reasonable, steady profit. National
medical systems negotiate the price of every medicine, so the company
cannot gouge.
The US is a weird case because it does not have a national medical
system. The few who get sick from the vaccine, and need treatment or
care, can only afford it by suing the vaccine company (or someone
with deep pockets). If they can't sue the vaccine company, they go
without treatment. Under these circumstances, it would be cruel
to excuse the company from liability.
But what the US really needs is not medical liability, but a national
medical system — Medicare for All. Then we could limit liability
suits to cases where the company did something wrong.
The US Gulf coast is full of unsafe chemical plants, some of which
leak toxins all the time. Putting that together with a hurricane is
acutely risky, and in Louisiana one of these
accidents-waiting-to-happen just stopped waiting.
Coal companies think they can get a state in Australia to approve 21
new coal mines.
The demand for coal has been declining.
QueasyJet is being sued for asking a woman to change seats because her
neighbor objected to the presence of a woman in the next seat.
If your neighbor is doing nothing wrong to you, but for some reason
you don't want to sit next to per, that's your problem. You can live
with it, or ask to move, or get off the plane. This is obvious to
most of us, but religion sometimes encourages people to think they
should dominate others.
(satire) *[DNC] Chair Tom Perez asked a conference room
full of truck drivers, home healthcare workers, and retail associates,
offering them candy when they provided desired responses to 2020
candidates and shocking them with a small electric baton when they did
not. "Me Tom. Me say, 'Joe Biden good, Donald Trump bad.' Say it with
Tom, now: 'Biden good, Trump bad.'"*
One of the tentative ideas for keeping migrants away from the Mexican border
was to fire a microwave heat ray at them. Kirstjen Nielsen vetoed it because she wasn't that cruel.
The wrecker's henchmen forced the CDC to sabotage its testing
guidelines. They made the decision when Dr Fauci was getting
operated on, to keep him in the dark.
The Tories offered to pay low-wage workers to self-isolate,
but their plan won't do the job because the pay offered is less than
they earn if they go to work while sick.
People who get better pay, and have savings, could appreciate a
program to pay only part of what they are temporarily not earning.
But the low-wage workers live from paycheck to inadequate paycheck.
The new prosecutor for Ferguson sought to prosecute the thug that killed
Michael Brown, but he found it was impossible. They did not have
the basis to convict him for the killing.
If your state is a swing state, vote for Biden.
Otherwise, vote Green — vote for Howie Hawkins
and Angela Walker for president/VP.
I delayed my decision hoping that Biden would support the progressive
programs that the US and the world desperately need, but by choosing
Harris he reaffirmed his rejection of them. If we keep voting for the
plutocratist lesser evil, each time the plutocrats give us something
worse than the previous lesser evil.
Colombia is plagued by a wave of massacres related to various armed
groups.
To really understand this we would need to know which groups carried
out the massacres. They often stem from unresolved disputes about
which group will dominate some local area.
Google wants to install its microphones in thousands of hotel rooms.
It says that there will be a switch to turn off the microphone.
We will have to see whether that physically disconnects the microphone,
or only tells the computer not to accept commands from the microphone.
Tories in part of England plan repression of the homeless, San Francisco style.
Russia offered Lukashenko support in the form of troops or thugs.
*A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and
racist militant activities in more than a dozen states.*
The difference between people who become rich and people who don't is
largely luck. One you have a certain level of talent, it is just
chance how successful you are.
The article doesn't look at the moral implications of this, but I think
they are the most important aspect. There is no need to let people who succeed
get rich from it. What they deserve is a decent life, which is what
everyone deserves.
Does it make sense to "invest" in "natural capital" for a financial
profit?
Our society needs to put great efforts into protecting the aspects of
nature that we depend on — for instance, to shift to consuming
resources sustainably, and clean up those that are poisoned, and to
protect those that face the threat of being poisoned. The payoff for
society from that will not be financial gain — it will be survival.
However, the idea of making this a private investment for profit
presumes a way to capture the benefits as profit for the investment.
The articles says nothing about how that might work, but I fear it
will cause great trouble.
*[Some people's] smartphone addiction is costing the Earth.*
The article says "our", to which I respond, "Speak for yourself!"
A group of hostile armed white vigilantes came to a Black Lives Matter protest
in Kenosha. One hostile armed white man killed two protesters.
The group did not have a list of members, but the killer considered himself
part of it.
A summary of the situation there.
Greg Palast inquires why the US indicted Steve Bannon but not his
co-conspirator Kris Kobach.
*Why the DNC's Platform Will Guarantee a Loss If Democrats Don't Do More.*
Billionaires that talk about sharing some of the wealth don't necessarily
translate that into actions.
*Senate Dems Climate Report: Underwhelming and Inadequate.*
Australia's planet-roaster government is reaching for natural gas as a
way to keep burning something. But it has underestimated the
greenhouse impact by ignoring the methane leaks before the gas arrives to
be burned.
US citizens: call on Tampa to drop charges against Sadie Dean and fire
the thug department chief.
Here's more information.
US citizens: call on Kenosha to fire and prosecute the thug that shot
Jacob Blake.
He shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back at close range. Blake was not killed, but he is paralyzed from the waste down.
He seems to have had a knife, but was not doing anything with it when he was shot.
*Chile police using Covid-19 quarantine as pretext to crush protest, activists
say.*
The US Southwest, which has always been rather dry, is getting ever drier,
and the result is fire.
*Unless we change course, the US agricultural system could collapse.
Our food supply comes from an environmentally unsustainable system that
is going to unravel.*
There are different problems in different regions, but what they add up to
is, it's unsustainable, so it will stop whether we are ready or not.
*Norway plans to drill for oil in untouched Arctic areas.*
*Antarctica: 60% of ice shelves at risk of fracture, research
suggests. Collapse of shelves would accelerate loss of Antarctic ice
sheet and increase sea-level rise.*
A US company bought a gold mine in Guatemala. Later, under public
pressure, Guatemala shut the mine down. Now the company is using the
ISDS clause in a business-supremacy treaty with the US to make Guatemala
400 million dollars in hypothetical future profits.
Mines tend to be toxic; I expect the reason for shutting the mine was
to put an end to the poisoning of people, ecosystems and/or water
supplies. But the business-supremacy treaties
don't value people,
ecosystems or water supplies.
Biden's transition team leader says that, if elected, Biden will
cancel promises to help Americans in the name of deficit reduction.
Another way to reduce the deficit would be to tax the rich to grab
back this year's enormous handouts. Or transferring spending from the
military. But those wouldn't please the plutocrats,
Modern monetary theory explains that the whole idea that "there is no
money available to spend" is misguided. Creating more money is fine
if it activates idle capacity. If it exceeds the idle capacity, it
can cause inflation.
The mainstream media are congratulating Biden for leading attention
away from real issues and replacing them with vacuous feel-good patriotism.
It reminds me of Obama's vacuous slogans of "hope" and "change".
A Palestinian family is defying an Israeli order to demolish its own house.
Israel is concealing a million old documents that should have been
opened to the public, because they give embarrassing information
about the past lives and treatment of Palestinians.
An Israeli court exonerated the soldier and thug that murdered Haftom
Zarhum, a refugee from Eritrea, who was passing by a place where a
Palestinian had shot people earlier that day. They guessed, based on
no information, that Haftom Zarhum was the killer.
It is crazy to legitimize such random acts of revenge. If they thought he
was the killer, they should have held him, not killed him.
The wrecker's plan to cut off the payments to Social Security would
destroy the system by 2023.
I've doubted for years that Social Security would still be functioning
when it was my time to receive it.
DeJoy testified to Congress about his sabotage of the US Postal Service,
but he didn't take it seriously.
Of course he should be replaced, but the board is controlled by
Republicans and they know their mission just as he knows his. He
agreed to restore the deactivated sorting machines if the USPS gets a
billion dollars in extra funding, but since he's a Republican he would
not hesitate to change his mind if that funding is approved. Not that
the Republicans in the Senate would permit it.
Yanis Varoufakis says that the world has entered "post-capitalism":
financial markets are decoupled from the economy of actual production.
At least one US college requires all students to install a nonfree app
which records their location at all times.
The bugs discovered in the app's associated dis-service are just icing
on the cake. Unintentional malfunctionalities may well be fixed when
reported; intentional ones won't be.
Every portable phone — even if not "smart" — has its location
tracked by the phone system whenever it is communicating. A college
can't get that data from the phone, but the government sure can. I
consider this tracking creepy, so I refuse to carry one of those
devices.
Israel has been bombing Gaza most every day since Aug 6, and has
intensified the blockade, cutting off fuel for electric generation.
Israel is also blocking most other imports into Gaza.
Hamas has been sending balloon bombs to Israel, which (like the
occasional missiles) rarely actually hurt anyone.
This resembles what Israel has done to Gaza many times since it withdrew
colonies and troops from there.
A poll found that 1/5 of US small businesses expect to go out of
business close in the next 6 months, if conditions do not improve.
*Africa to be declared free of wild polio after decades of work.*
Only Afghanistan and Pakistan still have polio.
Global heating has enabled earthworms to spread to the Arctic, and they
threaten to upset the ecosystems there.
Republicans are promoting another quack "treatment" for Covid-19:
an extract from the oleander plant.
Venezuela is giving false low figures for deaths from Covid-19.
*Industrial runoff and lax standards have tainted water across the US.
Senators and doctors are calling me, asking what to do.*
The three main threats to US water supply are (1) poisoning it, (2)
decreasing rain, and (3) emptying the aquifers. The article deals
with (1). To prevent (2), we need to curb global heating.
To prevent (3),
we need to eat less meat.
Can less powerful countries stop big fishing fleets from sucking all the fish out of their waters?
One step that may help is to seize and sell boats that are breaking
rules rather than just chasing them away.
What about the bulk of the ocean, which is not under any country's
jurisdiction? We used to depend on the limited fishing capacity of
human fishing fleets to avoid wiping oceans clean of fish, but that
solution is not adequate any more.
*It may seem Putin controls the Russian state personally. The reality is more
dangerous.*
I won't take those claims as established certainty, but all of it could
be true.
Ken Hinds is being prosecuted for calling for a Black Lives Matter
protest in London. Supposedly mere individuals have no right to do
such a thing.
A planned federal execution illustrates many flaws that tend to
appear in death penalty convictions.
Urging General Milley to ensure that the US military supports the
Constitution and an orderly transition to a new president, if the
wrecker loses the election.
*We must lay the groundwork now for the kind of mass action that defends
democracy and evicts this despicable, racist, wannabe authoritarian
from the White House.*
(satire) *Applauding the soon-to-be bereaved widows and orphans for
their profound sacrifices, the Republican National Convention kicked
off Monday evening with a tribute from family members of Americans who
will die if Donald Trump wins a second term.*
Republican-packed courts are granting Republican lawsuits to block
vote-by-mail initiatives in various states.
(satire) *Officer Points To Unarmed White Man He Once Killed To Prove He's Not Racist.
"Look at all the people I’ve
brutally beaten and killed before judging me, alright?"*
Maybe the others were in the vicinity of a protest.
The Army Corps of Engineers blocked the proposed Pebble Mine, demanding a
plan to mitigate the damage that the mine would do.
An adequate plan may be impossible, or may cost so much that the
mine becomes unprofitable to start. Let's hope that the corps does
not settle for an inadequate plan.
Proposing a one-time special tax on the billionaires' 2020 windfall.
In general, I don't think we should limit their tax increases to one
time, but I am in favor of this proposal.
A US government "development" organization is investing billions in
fossil fuel projects.
Reading on a screen is not conducive to reading carefully — it encourages
people to skim. Students may never learn to do the former.
One case of a person infected twice by different varieties of Covid-19
has now been demonstrated with certainty.
Per second infection was asymptomatic; such cases can easily go undetected
until the world sets up massive testing.
The virus has mutated into distinct strains while spreading massively.
If all governments had jumped on it early, as a few Asian countries
did, it would not have had a chance to mutate much. Thus, if the
existence of different strains has some important consequences — for
instance, if one vaccine doesn't do for all of them — that is also
the fault of the bad choices many governments made starting in March
and even February.
It is not conclusively ruled out that a person could be infected twice
by the same strain.
German doctors say that Alexei Navalny was probably poisoned, and it looks
like nerve agent —
perhaps the same one used to poison the Skripals.
Even moderate levels of air pollution (below EU limits) damage
babies' future respiratory capacity.
China is giving several candidate Covid-19 vaccines to workers who face
exposure in their work.
There is a good side to this and a bad side, but if these candidates
have passed the test for safety, I suppose those people have little to
lose by trying them.
Guber and Lyft are taking advantage of workers' desperation to get work
even for low wages, but they don't plan to make a profit this way.
They are losing money hoping for the driverless cars that would enable
them to fire all those workers.
It would be a good thing to abolish these giant parasites, but that alone
won't give workers a decent life.
The article gives further interesting economic analysis of the situation.
Research found that children have higher IQs and fewer behavior
problems if they grew up in neighborhoods with more green spaces.
The study controlled for family income.
No one knows what causes groups of beaked whales to beach together,
which is almost always fatal, but it could be that military sonar is
damaging their hearing.
I wonder if it would be possible to make a hose whose tip resembles a
fish, so that whales would grab it in their mouths and then be able to
suck fish paste through it. That might save some of them in the short
term. Perhaps they would then be ok, or perhaps we could learn
what lasting injury they have.
Lukashenko jailed two more opposition leaders, and is threatening to
shoot people.
The fact that he hasn't already arrested and/or shot masses of protesters
shows that he feels vulnerable.
*Iran says 'sabotage' caused blast at Natanz nuclear site.*
I expect that the US and/or Israel carried out the sabotage
in the hope of triggering a war.
Mnuchin worked for years, step by step, to overcome the political firewall
of the USPS and put a Republican operative in charge.
The records of meetings are proof that they made some sort of plans
together. Their denials that they were plotting to sabotage the
election are merely a Republican's word — no proof of anything. I am
sure Mnuchin denied that the bank he headed had a plan to defraud
thousands of people (maybe hundreds of thousands) of their homes, and
he would have been prosecuted for that if Kamala Harris had not let
him go.
Companies that make Covid-19 antibody tests are pressuring the FDA to
relax its standards for approving them. Here's a snapshot of that pressure.
It is unfortunate that we don't have plentiful, cheap, accurate tests
— but that does not imply that the FDA's standards of accuracy are
too strict. It might, or might not, be better to relax them
temporarily for his. Whether this is so depends on more information
than the article presents, and on modeling of the consequences of
using them in large numbers. I cannot judge the answer.
A commission is the wrong way to investigate the wrecker's crimes.
The right way is with prosecutors and a court.
The Tories said they wouldn't choose a no-deal exit from the EU,
but they have made it happen by refusing to really negotiate.
US citizens: call on Kroger to give frontline workers hero pay and
paid leave.
The HEROES Act passed by the House of Representatives was written by
the plutocratist Democrats, mostly disregarding progressive representatives
as well as outside progressive organizations.
"Private equity" parasites are demanding the UK government subsidize their
losses or else they will fire tens of thousands of workers.
This is what greedy bastards do once they get an arm around a
country's throat.
*Despite Huge Number of Misconduct Complaints,
Cops at NYPD's 75th Precinct Keep Getting Promotions.*
Australian government employee Josh Krook resigned rather than delete and
alter two uncontroversial blog posts he had made, at the demand of his boss.
I can imagine blog posts it would be legitimate to ask an employee to
delete, or fire per for making. But in this case, the reasons were
quibbling and dishonorable.
Thirty years ago, the IPCC warned humanity we were headed for disaster.
Humanity has done little to change course.
The reason, as we know, is that oil company money controls our politics.
Oil company money gave us Biden instead of Sanders, and keeps him toeing the
line against the necessary measures.
The fires now burning in California have burned .7% of the state's
area already. Perhaps 1% of the state's forest area (I have no
figures for that). These fires are not natural — they were started,
indirectly but knowingly, by the oil companies.
*From Washington to Minsk, democracy is under siege…and losing the battle.*
China trains some Uighurs to perform dances and act happy for visiting
journalists, but they are under tight surveillance and very
frightened.
One reported who denounced this said, "China is doing what the British
and Americans do. They’re producing fake stories in the service of
their imperialism." The US does indeed misrepresent its actions, and
sometimes those actions are violent and cruel. But they are not
totalitarian.
Louisiana thugs shot Trayford Pellerin dead as he was walking away
from them.
Since he was armed with a knife, he may have been a danger to the
public (though not to those thugs). But I am confident that if he had
been white they would have seen how to disarm him without killing him.
Educators oppose the harmful effects of doing school through a
computer system.
The Nazis studied the Jim Crow laws of the US as a model for how
to formulate repression of Jews in Germany.
The article also places US racism in a broader spectrum of caste
systems.
One thing I dislike about the article is that it endorses bigotry by
capitalizing "black" and not "white". I think they should be treated
the same. For the most part, I decline to link to articles which do
that. I made an exception for this article because I think its point
is important.
*Addressing [the] Population Challenge Is Not Impossible.*
Newsweek was once a real, albeit not very deep, news magazine.
Now its web site serves as a place to plant right-wing disinformation.
Various phone apps sneakily send location data to companies. Some of
those companies sell locations to law effacement agencies which,
legally, are supposed to obtain search warrants to get that data.
The clever technique of decreasing a mosquito population by releasing
large numbers of male mosquitos with a fatal gene has flaws in practice.
One flaw is that some viable offspring do develop, containing just
part of the added gene. This has the effect of transferring other genetic
differences coming from the strain from which the fatal males were made.
Another is that eventually the population evolves resistance, in the
form of genes that make females mate preferentially with the
nonmodified males, even though they are fewer.
*Facebook is quietly pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change
their rulings.*
Ten ways the Environmental Poisoning Agency has .encouraged poisoning
of Americans.
The EPA used to be the Environmental Protection Agency, and it really
did protect the environment, though often it was strangely slow to
act. I suppose that polluting businesses had partly corrupted it.
Now, however, polluting businesses have captured it entirely.
Remote education has restimulated the dispute between professors and
universities over who gets the copyright on recorded lectures.
I don't care much which side wins that dispute, because it is a side
issue. What is important is that educational resources should be
free.
Mainstream Democrats are opposed to primary challenges against
incumbent Democrats officials — but only if the challenger is
progressive.
I voted for Markey today.
A Gates-funded agriculture initiative in Rwanda is pushing farmers
to grow more corn and less of other things. The result is to increase
production, if it is measured in calories. However, it leads to a vulnerable monoculture society, and to more
dependence on fertilizer.
Don't catch the Obama Inspiration Syndrome.
*If Joe Biden Rejects His Progressive Base, Trump Will Win.*
Covid-19 offers an opportunity for climate action.
Most protests in Portland are peaceful, but the violent ones get the
media attention and make the movement look bad.
H P Lovecraft was an unabashed racist. He hated Jews, blacks, and
non-white immigrates, and did not hesitate to say so. What shall we make of this today?
Nnedi Okorafor, a fantasy writer who received an award which came with
a bust of Lovecraft, is a member of a group he hated. Hatred of
blacks still exists today, and is an important moral-political issue.
She objected to the choice of trophy, and got it changed.
I too am a member of a group he hated, and that hatred still exists
today. Antisemitism is also an important moral-political issue. But
I don't think it matters much today what Lovecraft's opinions were a
century ago, about these points or any other. He has no political
influence now.
So our choice is whether to dwell on his politics, or let it be
forgotten and think about him only for his fiction.
I think the latter is wiser, overall. The change Ms Okorafor achieved
was, marginally, a step forward, but there is no point pushing it
further. There are so many bigots alive today, and so many practices
that are part of systemic racism, that de-Lovecraftizing literary
activities on account of his bigotry is a distraction from effective
activism.
I would not be reluctant to read his work knowing that he would have
hated me if he had met me, just as I wouldn't hesitate to listen to
Wagner for the like reason. As it happens, I don't especially like
their work, but that is a different matter.
Sex-selective abortion continues increasing in some parts of India.
Parents want sons, not daughters.
Aborting a fetus doesn't do wrong to anyone, but the preference for
boys is part of a structure of systemic sexism that pervades Indian
society, and the other parts of the system do do wrong to females.
I support trying to eliminate that structure, but that can't be
achieved by banning sex-selective abortion. Part of that system is a
requirement for parents to pay a dowry when a daughter marries. That
can be such a hardship that it is difficult to convince parents not to
try to avoid it. It may be easier to reduce that requirement, for
instance by making it easier for women to learn good jobs.
Anything that reduces poverty in India, or reduces the birth rate,
can help too, as well as being good in its own right.
However, there is no excuse for trying to stop women from having
abortions for whatever reasons.
*Belarus's struggle is a powerful reminder of the value of freedom.*
Freedom is important even if it doesn't go all the way: "The oligarch
who runs the factory next won’t be any worse than the state is now."
And if you get some democracy, you can try to get rid of the oligarchs
as the next step.
The wrecker said he will station thugs at voting booths, which is a
well-known way of trying to discourage people from voting.
To see the harm this can do, put it together with the practice, in
many parts of the US, of burdening poor people with fines, then late
fees, then fines for not paying fines, more than they can ever pay
off. They are entitled to vote — but they might be rationally scared
to pass by a thug to reach the voting booth.
Monaco seeks to prosecute a whistleblower who revealed bribes
paid by a supposedly-Dutch company based in Monaco.
* Covid-19 led to 9.3% reduction in humanity’s ecological footprint
compared with same period last year.*
That is far from sufficient to reach sustainability.
World production of syringes is adjusted to meet the typical annual demand.
If we do get a vaccine for coronavirus, we will need a lot more.
Countries' competing to buy up the production, and leave other
countries without, is not a solution. That is the failure we will get
if we fail to cooperate.
*Want to dismantle structural racism in the US? Help fight gerrymandering.*
*If Joe Biden Rejects His Progressive Base, Trump Will Win.*
Biden shows his disdain for progressives at almost every opportunity,
and when he doesn't, the Democratic Party does.
The smoke from wildfires in California has forced evacuation of
thousands of people, but the state refuses to evacuate the prisoners
who are now getting sick from breathing the smoke.
The same prisons are also full of coronavirus, and smoke inhalation
causes irritation of the respiratory tract, which can make people
suffer worse from Covid-19 — which is also spreading in those prisons.
This shows that climate disaster is already starting. California's
fires are outside what was "normal", because they are the future.
The forests that California has had will not be able to survive in the new
California that human folly has made.
The charge against Bannon and others is that they raised funds to
"build a wall", then used the funds for their own personal benefit.
Guber and Lyft hope that by shutting operations in California they can
rouse their selfish customers to demand California resume allowing
the companies to take advantage of their drivers.
Since I say they are both of those companies are based on injustice
to the customer, I think that getting them to shut down is a fine way to get rid of them.
However, they may win the battle this way, thanks to the selfish
customers.
What will happen while they are shut? Most of those drivers will be
available in taxicabs, where they will make more money, and you will
be able to get their services anonymously without having to run any
nonfree software.
Repression was palpable around hospitalized Alexei Navalny.
It will be easy to kill him in the hospital, and I expect that to
happen.
Lukashenko's last strike against the opposition is to put
the opposition leaders on trial and sentence them to many years
in prison.
Mexico is prosecuting the former head of its oil company, Pemex.
He has accused three former presidents, Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón,
and Carlos Salinas, of involvement in the corruption.
Facebook has banned the pages of many violence-promoting right-wing
groups. Insisting on a false equivalence, it has also banned some
long-standing antifa groups which have never been violent.
*With Lockdowns Cutting Off Access, Global Charity Estimates 1.5 Million Women
Will Have Unsafe Abortions Amid Pandemic.*
Post Office saboteur DeJoy firmly opposes reconnection of the sorting machines
that he has already pulled out of service.
*White-collar crime is barely prosecuted in the United States. It’s time
for that to change.* This is not something that was started by the wrecker. It has
been happening for decades.
One thing we need to do is change laws so that corporate executives
are responsible for criminal conduct by the corporation.
If that puts them under more responsibility than they can carry out,
perhaps the corporation should split into multiple corporations,
each small enough for the executives to keep track of what is going on.
*The Left Needs to Stop Falling for Absurd Sex Panics.*
Such as the one fabricated against Alex Morse.
This means dismissing the idea that people with some sort of "status"
should not have sex (except with someone with equal "status").
As people call for the USPS to bring back postal banking, it is
considering instead allowing a big commercial bank to set up ATM
terminals in post offices.
Postal banking in the US operated until around 1970, as I recall.
Proposing reforms to reinvigorate production of medicines, end
gouging, and make them available to all Americans.
Amazon is so close to being a monopoly for internet sales
by most companies that it can gouge them. It drives many
of them into bankruptcy.
If you do internet purchases, making a point of not buying
through Amazon is a way you can personally push back.
Demonstrating that the harm done by budget cuts for the poor during
the Great Depression fueled the rise of the Nazis.
The worst-off people switched to the Communist Party,
those who were hit badly but were not totally destitute chose
the Nazi Party.
Spreading poverty in the US, since 2009, could have had a similar
effect in the US today.
*'Walls of death': surge in illegal drift nets threatens endangered species.*
Sending naval ships to seize their forbidden nets could put a stop to
this practice. One ship could watch several fishing boats at a time,
by visiting each one daily or sending drones to look. The cost to the
fishing boat owner of losing net after net, or going a long time
without actually fishing, would be prohibitive.
Housing stock is often unsuitable for working at home. Many people that
can't simply work over the net could work at home if their homes
were suitable.
That doesn't mean people are better off if they never go to a shared
workplace. And we probably will lick Covid-19.
US citizens: call on the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine
Fisheries Service to define "habitat" in a way that supports conservation.
Everyone: call on Fairfax Financial Holdings to divest
from US bail bond companies.
*Austin’s Vote to “Reimagine” Policing Prompts Threats From [Texas]
State Officials.*
*Fashion's dirty secret: how sexual assault took hold in jeans factories.*
The US financial and business system knows only how to export jobs.
In many fields, all expertise has been lost, so it is nearly impossible
to start a plant to make anything.
Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader, is mysteriously sick.
His associates say he was poisoned.
Contending that privatization of public services (including medical care),
which was done in the name of saving money, has made Australia's encounter
with Covid-19 far more painful and far more expensive.
Owners of old ships frequently abandon them, with their cargos and crews.
The crews may be trapped, unable to leave the ship. Once in a rare while,
the ship's cargo eventually explodes.
I will make a radical proposal: require ship owners to post a
sufficient bond with an international organization, in case the ship
can't pay its fees or becomes abandoned. Without that bond, the ship
should not be allowed to leave port, and any country can seize it and
sell or scrap it.
The prestigious dum sum chain, Din Tai Fung, systematically cheated
its workers in Australia.
The local gas utility organized a campaign to defeat Seattle's plan to
prohibit gas pipelines in new buildings. This seems to be a
nationwide practice.
How global heating in various US reasons: damage so far, and damage
expected within 30 years.
The Democratic Convention is showcasing Republicans who support Biden.
The goal is to convince other Republicans to vote for Biden.
For me it is a reminder the Biden's positions aren't that different
from some Republicans, as they used to be before the "tea party".
Michigan will pay Flint residents $600 million as compensation for the
lead poisoning Michigan's Republican government caused when it meddled
with Flint's water supply.
Lead exposure causes lasting brain damage. I don't think there is any
way to reverse it — the lead-poisoned children and teenagers of Flint
cannot be made well. They may not be able to earn a living. I think
each one may need lifetime support, and if there are more than 600 of
them, I don't think a million each will pay for that.
*The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent
to a million tonnes per minute across the year.*
*NYT Urges Biden to Shun His Party’s ‘Left-Leaning Brand'.*
*Being concerned with working-class Americans, to the New York
Times and corporate Democrats, means portraying yourself as "an
average guy," not offering policies that will actually help the
working class.*
It is noteworthy that a party controlled by the right-wing
plutocratists, which just rejected the Green New Deal and Medicare for
All, is called "left-leaning." That has been the right-wing strategy
for decades: to call Democrats "liberal" if they are not on the
extreme right-wing.
Steve Bannon has been charged with planning to defraud donors with a
charity that was supposed to build the bully's border wall.
*New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create
custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour.*
Before you buy a "connected" car, make sure you can disconnect its
cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If you want GPS navigation, get
a separate navigator which runs free software and works with Open
Street Map.
The Department of the Interior collected some 250 pages of information
when vetting David Bernhardt as secretary of that department. Public
Citizen calls for checking them for past ethics rule violations.
*House Democrats Unveil Bill to Restore Mail Service to 'Pre-DeJoy Levels' and
Require USPS to Treat All Ballots as First Class.*
(satire) The economic impacts of Covid-19.
Cops in London ordered people to take down a banner on their house
which said, "White Silence Is Violence."
It was wrong to make them take it down. If people wish to say that,
freedom of expression gives them the right to do so. Sad to say, most
countries do not fully respect freedom of expression. The UK
practices considerable censorship of opinions.
Now for a related question: whether that statement is valid. I
criticize it as a moral distortion. To explain why, I will compare it
with two somewhat similar statements that have been made in past.
One such statement was, "If you're not part of the solution, you're
part of the problem." This does not assert that those people are
evil, or even that they oppose solving the problem, only that their
inaction is problematical. That can well be true. For instance,
people who don't reject Facebook are part of society's Facebook
problem. People who don't reject Zoom are part of society's Zoom
problem. How much of the blame for those problems should fall on the
people who have been lead into the trap is a subtle question; my
answer is to call them "victim co-perpetrators." They do not deserve
the same criticism as the developers of those proprietary traps.
Now consider the statement, "If you're not with us, you're against
us." This one goes further than the previous one; it equates
neutrality with opposition — which is a false equation. In some
situations it is valid to say, "Joining us is your moral duty," but
that is different from "Not joining us is the moral equivalent of
opposing us."
Equating silence with "violence" adds an exaggeration, untrue because
because not all opposition is violent, and unfair because violence
against a good cause is worse than nonviolent opposition to it. That
slogan combines two levels of wrong, first equating silence to
opposition, then equating opposition to violence.
Jordan is trying to crush the teacher's union by arresting 1000 teachers.
Greta Thunberg: *After two years of school strikes, the world is still
in a state of climate crisis denial.*
Each year wasted reduces the part of the disaster that we can still
avoid if we start now.
*Greenpeace Gives Democratic Platform C+ on Climate, Calling for 'Action at
the Scale That Science and Justice Demand'.*
George Monbiot: *English landowners have stolen our rights. It is time to reclaim them.*
The latest manifestation of modern prudery attacks relationships with
age gaps.
*Democrats spurn AOC and uplift Bill Clinton at the party's own risk.*
*MPs 'advising' big business undermines democracy. Second jobs should be
banned.*
It is a conflict of interest. The equivalent for members of the US Congress
is already banned. Some subtle, indirect ways for businesses to corrupt
them are banned too, but not enough.
Some NYC thugs bully people frequently, and they sue, so the city has
to keep on paying damages. There are 190 thugs that were cited in at
least 5 lawsuits in the last 5 years.
The cost to the city is almost 70 million dollars a year.
If the thugs had to pay some of this, they would clean up their act.
Protesters in Portland, Oregon, seem to have sunk to habitual
violence, and without taking care to choose targets.
If there is another side to this story, I'd like to see it.
Bogus Johnson is trying to reduce the powers of Parliament, and thus
reduce democracy in the UK.
The spending needed to deal with the economic crisis would be a great
opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but governments are not
even trying.
*Greta Thunberg and Fellow Activists Decry 'Political Inaction' on Climate
Crisis After Two Years of School Strikes.*
Explaining the tools that the rich use exclude fortunes from estate taxes,
and how a tax on inheriting could tax those fortunes.
*Heat-resistant corals offer hope as climate crisis warms up oceans*,
against the threat of global heating.
However, ocean acidification is another matter. The same CO2 that
heats the atmosphere also dissolves in the seas as carbonic acid.
Once the water gets too acid, coral (and many other organisms) won't
be able to make their shells.
If we discover corals that can stand acidic water as well as heat,
that would be an occasion for relief. Otherwise, we had better cut
our CO2 emissions on the double.
Co-housing of several families together makes isolation much easier to
get through.
Trudeau decided to shut down Canada's parliament for a month, despite
the crucial decisions that need to be made soon.
There is a suspicion his purpose is to delay a corruption inquiry.
Due to global heating, California already has many dangerous wildfires,
as well as power cuts as a precaution against starting more fires.
It is unpleasant when the air conditioning cuts out and it is hotter
than body temperature outside. Installing solar power systems can help avoid
this problem from both sides.
Greg Palast's suggestions for how to stop Republicans from taking away
your vote this year.
The US is allowing public lands to be used in ways that contribute massively
to greenhouse gas emissions.
*First-Ever Survey of Sanders Delegates Shows Views of Ticket: Half
"Disapprove," a Quarter "Approve," a Quarter "Ambivalent".*
This refers to the delegates chosen by people who voted for Sanders in
Democratic primaries and caucuses.
AOC rebuked the Democratic Party for cooperation with Republicans that
are trying to define the Democratic Party as "centrist" (which means, plutocratist).
DeJoy said that "all changes being made to the Postal Service would be
suspended until after the November 3 election."
Does this mean that the wrecker had given up on sabotaging voting by
mail? That seems too good to be true. Is there a catch?
Does "changes being made" include the changes that were made recently,
which have slowed mail delivery, sometimes by a week or more. If not,
those could be enough by themselves to mess up the election.
A thug in England is being investigated for just threatening to choke
a suspect.
It seems that the UK is determined to put an end to chokeholds, and I think
its methods have a chance of success.
Chestnut blight wiped out the American chestnut tree. A genetic
engineering project is ready to introduce resistant trees. Should we
allow this?
I think the worries that the blight resistance might fail are foolish.
Likewise the concern about Phytophthora cinnamomi. If the GE chestnut
trees can't survive, we know what will happen — they will die, just
as all American chestnut trees died before. That would be a failure
but not a disaster.
Could some other worse thing happen? It is not impossible. Perhaps
we should do a further experiment of growing a substantial number GE
chestnut trees for 20 years in a number of test plots whose other
contents are wild, and not allowing the chestnuts' seeds to get loose.
However, the only way to know for certain is to try them. The loss of
chestnut trees was damage to the forest, so bringing them back means
repairing the damage. We should not be too frightened to try.
More than 600 attacks against members of the press covering the
ongoing protests have been reported to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Many of the victims face bogus criminal charges.
Justice requires more than dropping the charges. The thugs who lied must
be fired or punished.
Israel's annexation wall — which annexed part of the West Bank by
cutting it off from the rest — is not well maintained. There are
many gaps where people cross without being checked, with tacit Israel
approval. Which shows that the wall is not very important in
preventing terrorism, but also raises the question of why Israel
allows this.
The fundamental Republican scam, since the 1930s: run up the national debt
with tax cuts for the rich, and spending that doesn't help most people.
Then use the debt to demand cuts in spending that does help most people.
The article speaks of the "two Santas". There is a crucial difference
between them: giving in the form of welfare programs helps the people
who need it most, whereas giving tax cuts mainly helps the people whose
high incomes ought to require them to pay a lot of taxes.
Countries lead by women really did a better job of acting effectively
to stop Covid-19.
Drawing lessons for Covid-10 from HIV.
Christian fanatics in South Korea have caused another outbreak of Covid-19.
The first outbreak was largely boosted by fanatics in another church.
The supporters of the wrecker are mostly Christian fanatics, too, and
they readily accepted the idea of exposing each other to Covid-19
by not wearing masks.
A Senate investigation found that Paul Manafort was in regular communication
with an agent of the Russian spy agency, GRU.
*Toronto [thug department will] pay $16.5m to protesters wrongfully
held at 2010 G20 summit.*
I wonder, will this payment cause a loss to those who wrongly arrested
them?
*Atlantic ocean plastic more than 10 times previous estimates.*
Louisiana official proposes to require a positive Covid-19 test
to vote by mail. People who might catch it would not be allowed
to vote more safely.
Massachusetts is investigating many impoverished parents because their
children are not participating in remote education.
The ironic part is that someone who rejects the injustice of Zoom or
Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams might also be threatened with
this. However, I don't think these parents reject that software on
political grounds. I suspect rather that they are desperately trying
to make enough money to feed and house those children, leaving them no
time to make sure that the children are being surveilled by the
school's software.
The UK's "hostile environment" applies even to its military veterans.
The fundamental wrong here is the intent to look for every possible
bureaucratic excuse to kick someone out.
Some state attorneys general are planning to sue to make the USPS
reverse its changes and offer adequate mail delivery service, as it did
until recently.
Given that Chief Justice Roberts is no trumpet, the Supreme Court
might indeed order the USPS to deliver ballots expeditiously. But it
would not surprise me if the wrecker and DeJoy defy the order long
enough to ruin the election anyway.
Thus I urge people to rely rather on ballot-returning organizations,
or vote in person.
FAIR: Mainstream media rarely give actual protesters a chance to speak
when covering Black Lives Matter protests.
The wrecker wants to sell oil leases for the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve this year, to make it difficult to prevent future oil drilling
there.
To stay within the carbon budget,
We need strong measures to discourage all new fossil fuel
facilities, and a heavy carbon tax. I think that they would make
actual drilling in the remote arctic nonviable.
The UK needs to recognize and break up the racism that pervades its thug
departments.
It is difficult to correct racism in thug departments by hiring from
minority groups, because the same racism targets them and forces them out.
12% of US adults recently reported they couldn't always get food to
eat. 11%-20% of adults with children reported they couldn't always get food for their children. Larger numbers are unable to pay rent.
(satire) School reopening survey for parents.
The company that makes Fortnight has sued Apple, claiming that its app store
is an illegal monopoly.
Ironically, the reason is that Apple enforced its rules against
in-app payments, rules which protect the public, against a game, which
is surely exploitative.
The app store gives Apple power over users of iMonsters, and it would
be great to make Apple allow users to install games freely. However,
if the only result is to make Apple permit exploitative apps, without
giving users more freedom, that would be no victory for users.
It is a fundamental conceptual matter to try to define freedom in
terms of how many options a person has. Freedom means having control
of your own life.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that strippers (at least at
one strip club) are employees and can unionize.
TikTok exploited an Android vulnerability to obtain user MAC
addresses.
Different US courts have reached varying conclusions about whether the state can compel a person to enter a password to give access to data.
Clearview AI argues in court that the First Amendment gives it an
inalienable right to collect our photos and identify the people in
them by their faces.
This involves distorting the first amendment on top of the
error of giving corporations human rights.
Democrats joined Republicans in tremendous handouts to the biggest
businesses, disguising this as helping struggling Americans.
Once again, homeless people in New York City have nowhere to use the
toilet.
They also have trouble getting water to drink.
Many protesters suffer from lasting injuries caused by "nonlethal"
weapons that thugs used against them. In many cases they used these
weapons indiscriminately.
We need to change laws so that thugs can't do such things with impunity.
Mexico will reconsider the constitutionality of its new copyright law.
To make a good society, and cope with life's challenges, we need to throw off
the values and principles that the right wing has taught us.
These include, "Rich people are wealth creators," "It is shameful to
be poor," and "You shouldn't ever have to make any sacrifices for others."
*On the ten year anniversary of the United Nations historic vote to
recognize water as a basic human right,* … what next?
*Hundreds of workers fell ill after cleaning up America’s largest
industrial disaster (coal ash spill) without proper gear. At least 50
have died.*
It would help to make some kinds of failures crimes for which the
individuals responsible can be punished.*
*In Poland we've become spectators at the dismantling of democracy.*
*Sweden's Covid-19 strategist, Anders Tegnell, appears to have asked
if higher death rate for older people might be acceptable.*
Why Republicans (and plutocratist Democrats) want to undermine the post office.
The FBI and DHS are using Northern California's "fusion center" to track
planned protests, leaked documents show.
The conman has withdrawn the nomination of climate denialist William
Pendley to officially head the Bureau of Land Management. This is so
Republican senators won't be criticized for voting for him.
However, it makes no practical difference since Pendley is already,
and will continue to be, the acting head of that agency.
Most European countries are entering a second wave of Covid-19. It looks like they reopened some activities which they should not have.
*‘Silly product’: Thankyou stops producing bottled water, citing environmental
damage.*
I carry a refillable water bottle with me when I travel, and I almost
never buy bottled water except in countries where the tap water is not
safe.
Calling for elimination of rent payments and mortgage payments during
the Covid-19 pandemic.
Oxford University gave a Chinese businessman a certificate with the
title of "Academician" in exchange for a donation, reasoning that the
word means nothing in Oxford's terms.
The title "academician" may have little significance for Oxford, but
in Russia and China it is used for members of a prestigious and
important national academy. Thus, this award may be effective for
impressing people in those countries. Maybe that is why Chan King Wai
arranged to receive the award with a big ceremony. I wonder whose idea
it was to use that particular title — Mr Chan's?
Despite the worst the wrecker could do, the inspector general of the
State Department is continuing to investigate an "emergency" arms sale
to Salafi Arabia. The office found that the "emergency" was fake.
Coming soon to hot places near you: Death Valley reached a record
temperature of 130F, which is 54.4C.
People in England now feel they need air conditioning — a measure of
global heating over recent years.
*Belarus opposition calls for general strike after biggest protests yet.*
The UK agent who with US support organized the 1953 coup in Iran, that
overthrew Mossadegh's democratic government, described everything in
an interview. The transcript is totally incriminating.
Iran has never had a democratic government with human rights in all
the time since then.
*Extreme weather just devastated 10m acres (15k square miles) in the
midwest. Expect more of this.*
Various kinds of problems caused by our intensive agriculture are acting
to bring it to a halt.
As US corn production drops, the US will have to produce less beef.
That will curb global heating and may help reduce obesity.
A study examined 47 tissue samples from people with neurodegenerative
diseases and found microplastics and Bisphenol A in all of them.
Perhaps those substances are associated with those diseases. Or
perhaps those tissue samples microplastic and Bisphenol A because
everyone has them.
Edward Snowden has reportedly earned $1.2 million from 5 years of
speaking engagements. The US government is trying to seize that.
His income works out to 240k per year — an amount that is comfortable
but won't make him rich. He probably has a lot of expenses for
security and bodyguards.
I wonder how the US expects to seize the money. Surely Snowden is not
leaving it in a place where the US could take it.
An important annual college entrance exam was cancelled this year,
and the company that runs it issued "predicted" scores determined
by an algorithm from whatever personal academic data was available.
Some students feel they got unfairly low scores.
I have no way of judging how close the "predicted" scores are to what
those students would have got — and neither do they, nor
universities, nor anyone else. Some teachers say that all their
students got surprisingly low grades this year, which is reason to
think the predictions were off. I don't see a proof that the
prediction algorithm was broken (though it might be), but this way of
handling the exam was bad, because students cannot tell they were not
cheated.
I presume that applicants send universities all the other data that
the algorithm used. If this exam provides something useful to
universities, that is because it gives some independent information
about each applicant, information not redundant with the other data.
A substitute that is in fact redundant with the other data provides no
independent information, it only gives the impression of doing so. It
is phony.
The wrecker made noises about possibly pardoning Edward Snowden.
Although his main job is destroying democracy, he does other things on
the side, and occasionally one of them is good. Snowden is a great
hero, and I hope the wrecker does pardon him. However, when weighed
against the horrible things the wrecker continues to do, this would
not go far in earning my overall good opinion.
I urge all Americans, including elected officials, to support
Snowden's cause. I would hesitate to urge them to push hard for it,
because doing that might move the wrecker to drop the idea.
(satire) *"We get that unmarked federal vehicles taking people off the
street seems disturbing to people right now, but within a few
months, this will just seem like an everyday occurrence that isn’t
worth a second thought."*
Sad to say, that could really happen. The way they make that happen
is by doing something else even worse.
*Trump's Attack on the Postal Service Now Endangers Democracy.*
The post office is not supposed to be a business. It is ok to subsidize it.
Afghan women are pressing to preserve some rights under peace with the Taliban.
As economic growth becomes increasingly unsustainable, it also
provides ever less benefit to most of the people in the developed world.
*Experts and volunteers scramble to save Mauritius's wildlife after oil spill.*
10,000 students and others protested in Bangkok for a change in the
country's government.
The Thai generals overthrew democracy several times, and eventually imposed
a new constitution.
Australian officials illegally bugged East Timor's negotiating team
for a treaty that covered dividing oil resources. A whistleblower
revealed this. The culpable officials are not on trial; the
whistleblower and per lawyer are.
Meanwhile, the state is suppressing the whistleblower's name. Is it
really secret? Has perse been disappeared? Are per relatives friends
threatened with prosecution if they tell anyone what happened to
so-and-so? Do they have to pretend that so-and-so became a hermit?
Has anyone published who Witness K is?
Is this secrecy supposedly for the benefit of Witness K? If so, does
it really provide any benefit to per? Does perse want to keep per
name secret, or is it being done to hurt per. Or is perse being bullied into
cooperating with the secrecy?
Tens of thousands rallied in Belarus (perhaps 100,000) demanding that
Lukashenko leave office. Lukashenko's thugs did not intervene.
Calling for a full investigation of Apple's use of Siri for
snooping.
That investigation will be useful, but we already know the root cause:
nonfree software. Apple controls the client-side Siri software.
Apple controls iOS. That gives Apple power over the user, and that power
corrupts.
Disastrous poverty is spreading around the United States.
Tennessee Republicans have made it a felony to set up a protest camp
on state property.
Tracking apps imposed by employers on their employees violate users' privacy
for their locations and for their medical data.
Some may violate the HIPAA medical privacy law.
Search on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit promotes holocaust
denial.
This may not be the result of a specific decision by those companies.
I've read that Nazis have figured out how to manipulate the data that
search algorithms operate on. Even if those companies, or some of
them, do not intentionally support right-wing extremism, being its
helpless tool is bad too.
I've seen arguments that the tendency of algorithms to promote
extremist material — at least on Facebook and Twitter — is because
they have been designed to show people things that make them want to
stay on the site longer. That relates to the business models that
make these sites so harmful in other ways.
Workers that make sandwiches in England get sick pay, but it is less
than their normal pay, and since that is barely enough, the result
is that they work even while sick.
The Tory ministers who sidelined England's public health agency,
and directed the response to Covid-19 inconsistently themselves,
now plan to abolish it.
*Debt in developing countries has doubled in less than a decade.*
Little by little it converts the population of those countries into
debt slaves.
In the UK, nonwhite nohispanic teenagers are three times as likely to be
tased than other teenagers.
Please do not refer to teenagers as "children". We must stop
infantilizing them.
Fairphone aims to eliminate the injustice in the supply chain for
portable phones.
I am all in favor of this. Alas, the project does not address the
injustice that these products do to their users.
So I will continue to do without one.
NYT: *Trump Ads Attack Biden Through Deceptive Editing and Hyperbole.*
They found this in two thirds of the ads they studied.
Focusing politics on fighting racism will not eliminate poverty. The
main cause of poverty in the US is dooH niboR, and the best way to
reduce the poverty of blacks is to change the systems that reduce most
Americans to poverty.
The article's point is valid as regards the economic consequences of
racism, but racism does other kinds of wrong as well. Blacks are not
only more likely to be poor, they are also more likely to be stopped
on the street by thugs, beaten by thugs, shot by thugs. Poor blacks
are more likely to be denied good education, good jobs, and good
medical care, than poor whites. They are more likely to be convicted
of crimes than whites whose conduct is similar.
Redistribution of wealth would eliminate much of the suffering of
blacks today (along with that of other groups), but racism would still
be an injustice.
Thus, we should campaign against racism. But don't get distracted
from dooH niboR!
Ralph Nader: many blatant forms of decay show that the US is badly broken.
The US military wants to develop "optionally manned" vehicles and ships
so their crews won't be vulnerable to fast-spreading diseases.
Requiring fewer human operators does not raise any particular issue,
except that such systems will be very expensive to develop and probably
won't work reliably. However, designing them to operate without humans
means they must either be remote-controlled — dependent on communications
that will be slow and can be jammed — or autonomous killers.
The concept of "optionally manned" seems designed to smooth over that
morally and practically important frontier and thus evade attention to
crossing it.
AOC introduced a bill to require federal thugs to wear visible
identification.
Plastic is accumulating in the fish that Pacific islanders eat;
their main source of protein.
Once all the coral are gone,
much of the fish will be gone, and this problem
will be replaced with a worse problem.
US citizens: call on Waycross to fire the thugs that stalked then
shot at a bunch of Black teenagers and children for being in a car.
*A "commitment to sustaining peace is more urgent than ever," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday.*
*[The wrecker] Doesn't Want Law or Order. He Wants Chaos and Division.*
I think he is training those federal thugs to forget all vestiges of
loyalty towards democracy and the Constitution, and obey whatever
orders he gives them. I fear the purpose is a coup.
Here is a series of fantasy recommendations for Biden supposing he overcomes Republican election-theft and subsequent resistance to his
inauguration.
I agree with most of them, but there are a few I disagree with.
The Mauritius oil spill happened in a special protected wildlife area, and may have damaged it permanently.
We need a law to stop employers (or schools!) from imposing
"contact-tracing" apps on their employees or students which have the
side effect of allowing someone to monitor where they go.
For the same reason, employers and schools should not be allowed to
require that employees or students carry portable tracking and
surveillance devices (portable phones).
The UK imposed a quarantine requirement on people coming from France,
with such a short deadline that they could not all return in time. Flights and trains filled up.
A quarantine rule may be the right thing to do, but starting it this
way was pointlessly harsh.
The US government found that the only way to save salmon runs was
to kill many of the sea lions that were eating all the salmon.
Sometimes one has to choose. I won't criticize.
Greg Palast: if your state permits it, bring your postal ballot to an authorized election office, and bypass the post.
I have been supporting calls to Congress to give the USPS enough funds
to deliver ballots with the usual speed. But Democrats in Congress
have no way to do that if Republicans are determined to block it, and
they are.
But even if it were possible to provide extra funds, that might not
help.
The supposed shortage of funds was the excuse, not the cause, for the
mail slowdown. We now know that Republican saboteurs have planned
other ways of slowing down mail delivery ever since May. Giving the
USPS more funds would not stop them from sabotaging it. Indeed, I
don't see how anything could stop them from intentionally mismanaging
mail delivery except to replace them with honest people. The wrecker
will not allow that, and Democrats cannot force it.
I think the only solution is to bypass the post office.
I have decided to do early voting, not postal voting.
A friend of mine plans to go to Florida and join organized efforts
to pick up voters' ballots and bring them to the election authority.
Can anyone point me at a list of which states permit non-postal
delivery of ballots?
Rep. Ro Khanna, a delegate to the Democratic Convention, will vote against
the proposed platform because it fails to support Medicare for All.
Here is his statement.
Helicopter parenting makes children tend to grow up with "less
creativity, spontaneity, enjoyment, and initiative", self-absorbed,
and "more prone to anxiety, depression, and stress."
They say that they hate being monitored. As adults, they may no
longer be monitored by their parents. But they are being monitored by
tech companies, large and small. Can we make contact with them and
help them fight to put an end to this?
Michael Cohen: "I personally ran that deal" (with Putin), as well as
other dishonest deals he arranged for the wrecker, and says his book
will describe them.
I expect to see articles soon summarizing the most important specific
wrongs that he describes. In the mean time, I like this passage:
Campaigners criticize "vaccine nationalism", meaning the practice of certain
countries to buy up large numbers of doses in advance.
The campaigners' hearts are in the right place, but they are focusing
on a secondary part of the issue. Given a working vaccine, or a
working useful treatment, what is needed is not that everyone have
the same chance of getting it. Rather, it is that everyone get it.
Anything that limits production is a problem, and that includes both
patents and secrecy.
*Viruses know no borders. Until every country is protected, we
are all at risk.*
The bullshitter told cronies he would defund Social Security. The
White House says we should ignore that.
We cannot determine what the bullshitter will really do from anything
he said, but we can deduce one thing from that statement: defunding
Social Security is not unthinkable for him. Thus, if his aides are
saying he certainly won't, they are mistaken. He might like to do it,
and he might do it.
Apple whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec reports that Apple made a
practice of surreptitiously activating the Siri software to record
users' conversations when they had not activated Siri. This was not
just occasional, it was systematic practice.
His job was to listen to these recordings, in a group that made
transcripts of them. He does not believe that Apple has ceased this practice.
The only reliable way to prevent this is for the program that controls
access to the microphone to decide when the user has "activated" any service,
to be free software, and the operating system under it free as well.
This way, users could make sure Apple can't listen to them.
Kamala Harris's foreign policy views are similar to Biden's. She gets along well with Netanyahu.
*American Bar Association Backs Full Voting Rights for Incarcerated
People.*
This idea seemed strange to me, only because I was accustomed to the
idea that prisoners could not vote. But the same reasons that apply
to citizens who are free applies to them when they are in prison.
They deserve a say over how society should operate once they get out.
(satire) *Trump Online Store Begins Selling Decommissioned USPS Mailboxes So Fans Can
Own Piece Of History.*
Mail-sorting machines are also on offer.
The US seized cargoes of gasoline from ships in international waters
which were bringing it to Venezuela.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
The USPS is carrying out a written plan to remove hundreds of its
sorting machines from service.
The officials supposedly heading the Department of Harshness and Sadism
were appointed in violation of laws about who succeeds to that office.
Does anyone have standing to sue?
The defunding of thug departments has started moving.
The extent of change so is tiny compared with the size of thug
departments in the US, but the first step is often the hardest one
to take.
There are fake reporters in White House "press briefings", placed there
by the White House to promote fake news.
*Each week Bejing's message to Hong Kong gets clearer: we can do what
we like.*
In other words, China is an absolute tyranny in which the concept
of rights exists only as a pretense.
Contrast this with the United States, in which there are widespread
unjust practices that systematically trample some important rights for
some people and/or in some kinds of situations — but rights overall
are respected enough that it is possible to use them to fight to
change those practices.
The wrecker is trying to change that.
A review of scientific studies of unsustainable economic excess
("affluence").
*Party Leaders Investigating Origin of Anti-Morse [Smear] Campaign Helped
Orchestrate It, Documents Reveal.*
The wrecker is converting US government broadcasting channels into shallow
propaganda venues that only a Republican would take seriously.
At least this will eliminate the possibility that false broadcasts on
those channels will seriously mislead anyone.
Spain's coronavirus transmission rate is going up, and foolish officials
think they can stop it by small changes in policy.
I forecast it will keep getting worse.
*Millions in US face losing water supply as coronavirus moratoriums end.*
Why not bring your family to the local water board whenever you need
to wash your hands?
Workers at Epic, which makes nonfree medical records software,
are trying to unionize while the company fights unionization.
That company is responsible for my clinic's anti-freedom "patient
portal" which requires running nonfree Javascript code. I expect its
terms of service are unjust also, but without running the nonfree
Javascript, I can't even see what they say.
Unionization of Epic's workers won't fix this.
Epic really ought to shut down.
Belarusians report seeing Lukashenko's agents went to polling stations
and added phony votes.
The thugs are militarized and are using armored
vehicles against protesters.
The US medical system, before Covid-19, was fundamentally inadequate
but it appeared to be hanging on. Now its inadequacy is glaring.
We know the solution: Medicare for All, aka a universal national
medical system.
When I read that a candidate's admirable qualities are "ambition,
charisma and leadership," this makes me concerned about where that
candidate would lead us.
I wondered the same thing about Obama, another candidate with the same
strengths, and concluded he was no progressive, so I did not vote for
him. He validated my doubts when he let the banksters off the hook
for fraud that stole millions of non-rich Americans' homes.
Harris did the same thing.
I voted for a black woman (Rep. Ayanna Pressley) with great relish two
years ago, for the good things she stands for. Soon I will vote for
her again. If Harris stood for these things, I would have voted for
her too.
Three thugs from Jackson, Mississippi, have been charged with murdering
George Robinson in 2019.
In April, Hawaii announced a policy of arresting arriving passengers
who did not have "smart" phones.
Does anyone know if someone was really arrested in this way?
The wrecker admitted that he is undermining the USPS to sabotage
voting by mail.
* Temperature and CO2 changes reduce the numbers of some species
(usually the ones humans eat) and promote the growth of algae.*
Portlanders have held nightly violent protests near a thug union
headquarters and in other places.
To protest a thug union is a great idea, but violence plays into the
thugs' hands.
In my dreams, I see a thousand blacks come to these protests with
banners and clothing saying, "NO VIOLENCE". They can tell the
protesting Portlanders (who are nearly all white), "Don't use violence
in our name!"
Israel and the UAE have made peace, and an alliance against Iran.
Peace between them is a good thing, in and of itself. However,
cementing permanent occupation of Palestine is not good. If it helps
Netanyahu draw the US into war with Iran, which he wishes to do, that
will be very very bad.
*Belarusians accuse Lukashenko regime of beatings and torture.*
Protesters have filled the streets of Minsk and are keeping
ostentatiously peaceful.
Every year, grouse-shooting businesses in the UK kill threatened and
protected birds of prey so they can have more grouse for their
customers to shoot. This year they took advantage of Covid-19 to do
it even more.
*Global brands employ Uighur Muslims as ‘forced labour’.*
The TSA allows passengers to fly without officially valid ID, and has
a procedure to verify who they are. It is planning to replace that
procedure with a nonfree phone app.
Antibody tests suggest that 6% of the UK population has had Covid-19.
That is 3.4 million people, 10 times the official count.
It is puzzling that only 32% of those 3.4 million reportedly had no
Covid-19 symptoms. That implies 2.4 million did have symptoms; how
did the system overlook them?
Has it been demonstrated that antibodies to other diseases don't test
positive on this test? It would be useful to do that experiment in
New Zealand, where hardly anyone has had Covid-19 — but there do seem
to be asymptomatic cases spreading the disease occasionally.
Most people in the US have glyphosate in their blood. But the level
drops 70% in one week of eating pesticide-free food.
To develop practical advice from this, we need to know which foods
contain people substantial amounts of glyphosate.
*Scientists warned Trump's wall would threaten endangered species.*
They were right.
*US hospitals pressure healthcare staff to work even if they have Covid
symptoms.*
That practice should be a crime, but the first step is to make sure everyone
has paid sick leave.
US citizens: call on Faux News Advertisers to stop supporting racism and
disinformation — that is, to stop advertising in Faux News.
US citizens: call on Congress to defend the US Postal Service.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to make abortion access for all a top priority.
The mining company BHP already has permission to destroy 40
"Aboriginal cultural heritage sites".
Some of these sites have ancient art or material for archaeological
investigation; those should be protected, and no one should be
authorized to permit their destruction.
Since I don't know the definition of "cultural heritage site",
I don't know whether all of these sites have any tangible relics
of past. If some do not, I don't have an opinion about them.
Greece and Turkey are close to war over which one will extract oil from the
sea bottom near both countries.
The right answer is clear: neither one. The existing fossil fuel facilities,
if fully utilized, will destroy civilization.
There is no room in the
carbon budget for any new facilities. In a sane world, the great
powers would already have agreed to put a ceiling on the ultimate
total extraction, and would clamp down firmly on any attempt to
increase it.
Germans have killed too many foxes; now field mice are destroying
farms.
Even thoroughly assimilated Uighurs face repression in China for any
action that raises suspicion.
*Emboldened by promises of annexation, Israeli settler attacks
(against Palestinians and their property) soared in July.*
The wrecker has tried hard to provoke Iran into war, but Iran's
leaders are too clever to take the bait. The only big result so far
is a permanent alliance between Iran and China.
The wrecker dearly wants an October surprise, so if he can't convince
Iran to provide a war, maybe he will start the war himself.
Edtech provides a bad education, but it is drooling at the thought of
swallowing public education and spitting out the teachers.
It is not a coincidence that they make students run proprietary software.
That helps them make sure students offer up their personal information
and control what students do.
Bolivians have set up road blocks to protest the repeated postponement
of the coming election. The government is sending right-wing militias to
attack the protesters.
*Saudi Crown Prince's Hit Squads Reflect His Foreign Policy — And Ours.*
(satire) *Biden Campaign Gets Kamala Harris Quickly Up To Speed On
Candidate’s Plans For Presidential Funeral Service.*
(satire) *Conservatives Warn Radical Kamala
Harris Will Impose Her Christian Beliefs On American Populace.*
Coronavirus can spread in aerosols (small droplets that don't sink).
16% of adults in the UK (outside of Scotland) have suffered food insecurity
since the start of Covid-19.
I expect the fraction of children is larger.
Can anyone show me an article with comparable figures for the USA?
*Amid Pandemic and Economic Pain, UNICEF Unveils First-Ever Project to Combat
Child Suffering in US.*
*With Warren Sidestepped, Wall Street Execs Cheer Biden's Pick of
Harris for VP.*
She endorsed Medicare for All, then changed to a supposedly "centrist" position
that Wall Street likes.
On the other hand, she does endorse the Green New Deal.
Now Comes the Difficult Work of Pushing the Biden-Harris Ticket Left.
However, I think the message Biden sent by appointing Harris is that he will
pay little attention.
Indian thugs shot at Muslims protesting an insult to Mohammed.
Those protesters had a right to protest; but if their demand is to
censor negative statements about Mohammed, their cause is unjust. You
have a right to criticize, condemn, or make fun of any religion, and
any prophet, even the prophet that tells people that they are using
evil, oppressive software which is an abomination.
Indian law includes many forms of censorship. The book Lajja, by
Taslima Nasrin, which is about the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh
(where she was from) was banned in the adjoining state of India.
Thai students are protesting, criticizing the government (which is
military in essence) and the monarchy.
The UK gave housing to every homeless person, to avoid transmission of
Covid-19. Now it plans to push them out on the street again, along
with thousands or millions of destitute people that will soon be
evicted.
Indigenous people in the distant Amazon region call on European banks
to stop lending to oil extraction there.
The UK suffers from a particular form of capitalism — rentier
capitalism — where the main income is to those who have something
others need to pay rent for.
This creates growing inequality.
A pumped hydro energy storage system proposed for a tributary that flows
into the Grand Canyon is meeting lots of opposition.
I wonder how long a pumped hydro system could continue to function in
a land which global heating is making ever more arid as time goes on.
Of all the possible places, why there?
Ilhan Omar defeated a well-funded plutocratist challenger in the
Democratic primary.
Cops are taught unscientific methods of trying to determine
who is lying, and a dangerous technique for extracting confessions.
When they believe that these methods are valid, they become overconfident
and more likely to believe bad conclusions. Both of them are unjust to people
who feel little confidence, even if they are telling the truth and not guilty.
*Facebook and Instagram ban antisemitic conspiracy theories and blackface.*
Global heating is accelerating, and the past decade (2010-2019)
was the hottest ever recorded.
Some people in nursing homes feel life is not worth living under the
isolation restrictions nursing homes must follow.
The IMF is threatening to rescue Lebonon with "structural reforms."
"Structural reforms", in IMF jargon, means cutting taxes on the rich,
telling the poor to sink or swim, charging money for public school,
basically the plutocratist agenda. At least, that is what it meant
in the past.
Israel's supreme court ruled against demolishing the home of a
Palestinian family, recognizing that it is an injustice to
punish innocent relatives of someone accused of crime.
If this policy holds, it would be a step forward for Israel,
which has made a practice of punishing the innocent in this way.
An Israeli soldier shot Dalia Sammoudi through her window as she was
trying to close it to keep tear gas out. An ambulance came, but
soldiers fired shots to block it from reaching her house. Eventually
the soldiers let the paramedics go and get her, but she died on reaching the hospital.
Biden chose a running mate who is female and black, and probably
does not support Defund the Police.
Thousands of Poles protested for queer rights in Warsaw, and
were attacked by thugs.
50 years ago, British companies' money corrupted a UK university. Now, China
has the money to suck them into a system of corruption.
Something similar has happened in Australia, and I expect it is happening in the US as well.
Meanwhile, China exercises its tyranny over Chinese students studying
abroad.
I would not want universities outside China to exclude Chinese from
studying or cut off Chinese labs from research collaboration. But we
must make sure they can't get sucked in to the point where they don't
dare say no when they must.
Facebook has suspended one of the cheater's PACs for false advertising.
How capitalists make use of plutocratist politicians and parties to
claim most of society's wealth for themselves.
The Satanic Temple has published a "sanctified" ritual which includes
carrying out an abortion. Based on this, it asserts that the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act makes state laws to restrict
abortion invalid against an abortion thus sanctified.
I am not an expert on that law, and I would love to see a lawyer's
report on whether this argument is likely to prevail in federal court.
I hope it does.
Ralph Nader calls on Pelosi to resurrect the Office of Technology
Assessment, which was eliminated by plutocratist Republicans in the 1990s.
Plutocratists find the rational evaluation of technology a nuisance.
When it agrees with what plutocrats demand, they find it superfluous;
when it disagrees, they call it an obstacle.
Novartis agreed to a penalty of almost 700 million dollars for
a program of (in effect) bribing doctors.
The Dutch equivalent of the BBC found it made more money by
eliminating cookies and "behavioral advertising", and selling ads based
on the specific articles they would accompany.
This seems like a step forward towards privacy, but I can't tell how
close it actually gets. Cookies are one way of tracking users, but
there are others. Does the broadcaster use IP addresses to determine
the user's location?
Does the advertiser send ads directly to the user? If so, it might
use various nefarious means to get information about the user without
the direct help of the broadcaster — including IP address location
and browser profiling.
Fight for the Future reports on several kinds of harm that face
recognition in schools can do.
To the extent that "exacerbating racial biases" refers to the reported
lesser accuracy of today's recognition algorithms for black faces, I
consider that an advantage for blacks. (If the algorithms were
greatly inaccurate for everyone, we would all be safe from them.)
However, this disparity is likely to be temporary. I am sure that
companies are working hard on making recognition accurate for all
human faces. Unless we assume that this is impossible, we should not
base our campaign against face recognition on the current disparity in
accuracy.
On the other hand, to the extent that correct recognition of all
students would potentiate the effect of the racial bias in other
aspects of the school, that harm will get worse if recognition becomes
uniformly accurate. If we can demonstrate this, it will be a good
argument to use, one that will tend to get stronger.
The ACLU calls for breaking up the Department of Harshness and Sadism
and cutting its overall funds.
Evaluating the significant steps that Billionaire Polluters has
announced, and how they fall short of its share of what must be done
to avoid global heating disaster.
(satire) *Promising that those responsible for the widespread damage
would soon be held accountable, Chicago Police Department officials
condemned Black Lives Matter protesters Tuesday for creating a
violent vortex of wind that destroyed property.*
The Environmental Poisoning Agency plans to completely eliminate regulations on
methane emissions from oil and methane wells.
The wrecker has been chipping steadily away at the US regulations that
limit toxic pollution and global heating. It looks like he has decided to
try eliminating them entirely while he still has a chance.
British soldiers who had been prisoners of war in Burma were very unhappy
with the film, Bridge on the River Kwai.
A California court ordered Uber and Lyft to treat drivers as employees
following the California law which says they are. This is not
a final decision, however, and I expect those companies
will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.
Treating their drivers as employees — where they do so — can greatly
reduce the way those companies mistreat their drivers. It does
nothing to correct the injustices they do to all customers: making
them run nonfree software, making them identify themselves, and making
a dossier about the movements of each one. These injustices are the
essential reasons to reject those dis-services.
As long as they continue, I refuse to get into an Uber car even if
someone else booked the ride.
The cheater issued executive orders that pretend to help unemployed
and poor Americans cope with the consequences of Covid-19. But they
don't really do the jobs they pretend to do, they leave out lots of
people, and they have intolerable side effects. They are also
unconstitutional, since the president does not have the power to order
such things.
More about the absurdity of his supposed "remedy".
I must disagree, however, with calling them a "failure". I think that his goals are such that they constitute a "success" according to them.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the MORE Act,
which decriminalizes marijuana and does other related good things.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
*'As the tundra burns, we cannot afford climate silence': a letter from the Arctic.*
The article treats withdrawing from the Paris treaty as if it were a real and enormous act of climate sabotage. To be sure, the wrecker is committing large real acts of sabotage also, but this is only symbolic sabotage. The Paris climate treaty specified an insufficient goal, its signatories did not pledge enough to reach that goal,and most of them are doing much less than what they pledged.
Pulling out of the Paris treaty is only a demonstration of bad faith.
*[Covid-19 is expected] to displace more than a million across the Sahel, new tool predicts.*
Global heating is extending the range of Lyme disease and other diseases spread by ticks.
Sanders: *The pandemic is helping the rich get even richer. It's time to tax their obscene wealth.*
Up to 30 million Americans may be evicted by the end of September.
Since there won't be many would-be tenants with money to rent those
apartments, some of the landlords may decide they have little to gain
my evicting their current tenants. At least, I hope so. But what we
need is for a decent government to protect them. And pay their rent,
if the landlord is a real person who isn't rich. (Rich landlords
should bear the loss of that rent.)
The riches of US billionaires are protected by millions of "useful idiots", worshipers of the Cult of the Invisible Hand.
Florida's unemployment benefits system was designed by sadistic Republicans to make it difficult to get benefits.
Releasing a vaccine that hasn't been carefully tested can backfire in many ways — depending on how well it actually works.
The tyrant of Belarus has shut off mobile phone internet connection and app communication, to hamper protests.
Alex Morse, the progressive challenging Rep. Neal, has been attacked with a vague story about sex which is supposed to be somehow wrong.
London thugs stop and search blacks at 10 times the frequency per capita of whites. They stopped Dawn Butler, MP, for the third time, this time as a passenger with another black driving, then gave excuses that appealed to bigotry.
She presents arguments that the only possible reason for stopping them was racial profiling.
*America's PPE shortage could last years without strategic plan, experts warn.*
*Street fridges of [gratis] food help Americans survive [Covid-19] pandemic.*
Dutch meat-processing companies hire workers through contractors and then mistreat and intimidate them.
There is an obvious solution: change the laws about subcontracted workers so that the ultimate beneficial employer has full employer's responsibility for them. The main reason companies subcontract is to evade responsibility
England had the highest Covid-19 excess mortality rate in Europe. The reason is the unceasing Tory campaign for dooH niboR. The Tories made the poor poorer so they were more vulnerable, and it cut the NHS so it could not do enough.
Cutting down the Amazon forest to clear land to grow corn is reducing the rainfall and increasing the temperature, thus reducing yields of corn.
I don't see any objective validity in thinking of the Amazon as "the vagina of the world". It is a personal mental association; you can think that if it pleases you. However, if it motivates people to campaign effectively against deforestation, I'm all for that.
Kentucky laws and Supreme Court decisions make it difficult to convict the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor of murder. But reckless manslaughter may be possible.
In the US, when thugs rape people they say are suspects, it is rare to bring them to justice.
I object to describing any one crime as "sexual assault" because that is vague about the severity of the crime. This article often uses that term to refer to many crimes that differ in severity but raise the same issue. That may be a valid practice.
The Lebanese are demanding the resignation of the government for allowing
the deadly and destructive explosion in Beirut.
I have to wonder what people wish the ministers had done.
2700 tons of ammonium nitrate take up around 1.4 million cubic meters.
It is not trivial to get rid of so much material.
After receiving on July 20 the report, "This dangerous chemical could
explode at any time, but it has been stored here for six years with no
trouble yet," I can understand why the ministers did not rush
desperately to move it within two weeks. They would have had no plan
ready, and figuring out what to do with it would take time.
I wonder why the danger of the chemical was noted only just now, and
not earlier.
Lebanon was in economic distress already, and surely can't afford to
rebuild its port facilities. But I can think of one country that
will offer to pay for it: China.
To make a policy of test, trace and isolate function, the state must supply
the lost wages of those who are require to isolate.
Every worker needs to have paid sick leave to be able to afford to
stay home to avoid infecting others at work.
An oil tanker ran aground on a reef near Mauritius and is breaking up.
So far it has spilled 1000 tons of oil, which has polluted coral reefs
and mangroves.
The practice of shipping large quantity of oil is a recipe for
occasional disaster. An island like Mauritius, which is not rich,
cannot afford to be ready to deal with a problem like this in case it
happens.
Neonicotinoids used on crop seeds damage birds' reproduction.
The poison accumulates in a bird, over the years, and interferes
with its ability to reproduce successfully.
A kind of genetically engineering can make a plant grow much faster
and use less water. It has been tested on tobacco, but the idea is to
use it on food plants.
Each genetically engineered product ought to be judged on its
individual characteristics, but that does not mean they should be
accepted without scrutiny.
Can anyone find out what kind of "algae" the added protein comes from?
In particular, which phylum is it in? In any case, it can't be
"closely related" to a flowering plant.
*Leaked Documents Reveal What TikTok Shares with Authorities — in the
U.S.*
*Why is India obsessed with English-medium education — when it goes against scientific consensus?*
The article also describes Hindi as an artificially constructed
compromise version of regional languages. Since I don't speak Hindi
or any of those, I wonder how different they are.
New Zealand PM Ardern promised progressive changes before winning election,
but she did not implement them.
Instead, she signed the TPP, which is a business-supremacy treaty.
Perhaps she is New Zealand's Obama.
I encourage New Zealanders to vote Green.
Kiribati plans to raise its islands to protect them against sea-level rise.
This might work for 50 years, but not indefinitely. If we do not curb
global heating, sea-level rise will accelerate. Eventually it will go
too fast for raising the islands to compensate for.
It will also be expensive. If global heating causes the US and China
to collapse, which could happen in 50 years, no one will be able to
offer that sort of support.
Dredging the lagoon to get the materials could perhaps harm the
wildlife in the lagoon, but that is just speculation. Perhaps the
conditions in the lagoon make it safe.
*Within the Boston Police Department, complaints against officers are rarely
confirmed or result in punishment.*
The tyrant of Belarus is preparing to claim he has "won" reelection
with an amazing 80% of the vote.
Protests have broken out all around the country.
There are reports that some riot thugs are switching sides and joining
the protests.
*Bolivia protesters bring country to standstill over election delays.*
Economic analysis shows that rapidly reopening business, as red states
have done, failed to give them an economic boost.
The resulting wave
of Covid-19 prevented the hoped-for benefits, even as it put people
at some risk of death, and a likelihood of long-term medical damage.
*Progressives are pointing to Susan Rice's past fossil fuel
investments — including stock in the company behind the Keystone XL
Pipeline — and her hawkish foreign policy as reasons to disqualify her from the running.*
It is unlikely anyone would be chosen as a national security adviser
without being hawkish. If you seek someone who will end wars rather
than start them, that is not a fruitful place to look.
Arkansas's artificial abortion impediments will take effect at the end
of this month unless another court decision blocks them again.
*Young people have blockaded a police station in north-west London,
accusing [thugs] of assaulting and arresting youth workers who had gone
to investigate the arrest of a 14-year-old.*
*"It is worth fighting for a system that puts public health ahead of
profits: Medicare for All," said a doctor touting Canadian system.*
(satire) *Dow Skyrockets After Coronavirus Begins Trading On New York Stock Exchange.*
Arguing that requiring a voter to buy a stamp to mail in a ballot
is a kind of poll tax, and thus unconstitutional.
Ironically, ballots that don't have stamps (because they are in states
which prepay for mailing back ballots) run a risk of being rejected
for not carrying a postmark.
This shows that the US hodgepodge of voting systems was not designed
with the proper goal of helping every authorized voter to cast a ballot.
London thugs decided to search Ryan Colaço and his car for no obvious
reason. They strip-searched him, found nothing, but still jailed him.
They searched his car, too, and must have decided to search the inside
of the glass of one window, because when he got it back that window had
been smashed.
Oh, he faces charges of "resisting". Perhaps the thugs were getting
fed up after searching him 20 times and never finding anything to make
it worth while.
A progressive candidate won the Democratic primary for senator in Tennessee.
For any Democrat to win there will be difficult, but I think a
progressive has a better chance of inspiring support than a right-wing
"centrist".
Hypersensitivity is spreading everywhere.
Ancient Americans (aka 1491), by Charles Mann, discusses the terms
"Eskimo" and "Inuit" on page 341. It seems that neither term is
welcomed by the entire group in question, which spans from Alaska to
Greenland.
As for "Siamese twins", it is true that the phenomenon of conjoined
twins is a general human trait and not specific to people from Siam.
But why in the world would people from Siam feel offended by it?
While we are on the subject, the kingdom which used to call itself
"Siam" (the name of the region) changed its name to "Thailand" in the
1930s as a declaration of ethnic prejudice. "Thaï" is the name of the
majority ethnic group, so the name "Thailand" asserts that other
ethnic groups there are subordinate. In other words, it stands for
Thai supremacism.
Peter Beinart: Israelis dehumanize Palestinians by seeing them through
the "Holocaust lens" and perceiving them as antisemites when they campaign
for their rights.
Beinert advocates a combined state with equal rights for Israelis and
Palestinians. Roger Cohen argues that two separate states are still necessary
and still possible.
*Calls for Woodside to pay $200m to clean up moribund Timor Sea oil site it ran until 2016.*
This is fair — but fossil fuel companies usually go to great lengths
not to pay to clean up their own messes.
*Jeremy Corbyn accuses Labour officials of sabotaging election campaign.*
I can't follow the description of the events in this article, as it
depends on too much else. But it is not inherently implausible. The
"moderate" (plutocratist) wing of Labour certainly went to great
lengths to defeat Corbyn.
Modi has a last-ditch plan to build 40 new unneeded coal mines just
before the coal ceases to be worth much.
*Behind the Beirut explosion lies the lawless world of international shipping.*
It seems that the authorities in Beirut did not know about, or didn't
check for, the danger of that particular cargo.
Many farms and food plants in California did little or nothing to
protect workers from Covid-19, and kept them in the dark when
Covid-19 started spreading among them.
Amazon heavily promotes medical quackery.
Amazon's book store, like Facebook, heavily promotes medical quackery.
New York State's recent primary election seems to be discarding 20% of postal ballots in certain areas. It depends on post offices to take special steps with ballots, and often they forget to do so.
That makes the system vulnerable.
Leaked documents from US thug departments show that they were applying a double standard, grasping at straws to accuse and prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters, while turning a blind eye to right-wing extremists, despite knowing that the latter were the real threat of violence.
Mitre is developing for the US government *a prototype tool that can [crack] smartwatches, fitness trackers and home thermometers for the purposes of homeland security; software to collect human fingerprints from social media websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the FBI; support in building what the FBI calls the biggest database of human anatomy and criminal history in the world; and a study to determine whether someone’s body odor can show they’re lying.*
Anyone who can crack a device with a microphone can make it listen to you all the time.
The new FSF video about nonfree software in education is great.
Google Nest is taking over the security company ADT. That means ADT alarm systems will start >feeding Google information about what happens in the customers' homes. For "smart", read "snooping."
The only home security device you should trust is one that runs all free software, and communicates encrypted with a service, sending it no data except what you want it to receive.
*The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them?* San Francisco DA Boudin: "Police are allowed to lie and get away with it over and over and over again in matters big and small… When you have a system of that kind of impunity, it snowballs. It teaches, encourages, and enforces bad behavior."
The problem of violence by thugs is a consequence of their ability to lie to excuse it, so cracking down on testifying is vital to ending their violence.
*[The hypocrite] wants to see 'untrusted' Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat removed from U.S. app stores, Pompeo says.*
*There are calls to ban TikTok in Australia — but you [and Australia] should worry about Facebook too*
Let's ban those Chinese surveillance apps, then proceed to ban the other apps that users can't trust — meaning, all the ones that are >not free/libre software.
US thugs are so lawless that we should not be terribly surprised to learn that they have their own secret criminal gangs.
Also their own right-wing social media hate groups.
Some US veterans say their prescriptions from the VA pharmacies have arrived as much as 20 days late.
This suggests that the cheater's efforts to sabotage voting by mail are very effective. And the saboteur plans to go even further.
Ralph Nader: Economists should develop [an index] to rank the "greed-with-power" status of the 500 largest U.S. corporations.
I think his proposed term, "hedonistic index", does not do justice to the proposal: that word does not imply greed or power. There is nothing evil about hedonism as such — imperfect, yes, but not evil.
UK police are considering criminal charges against one thug who put his knee on a person's neck.
I have to acknowledge that the UK treats discipline for its cops very seriously. When the government decides that a practice is unjust or endangers the public, it can take firm action to teach cops not to do it. I wish the US could do likewise.
Senate Republicans seem to be feeling pressure to compromise on a new relief bill, but they are yielding only a little.
This article does not mention the damaging provisions that Senate Republicans previously insisted on including in any relief bill. Those include giving businesses immunity for dangerous working conditions that let workers transmit Covid-19, and cutting Social Security in the future. They would do lasting harm, and we should not agree to them in exchange for temporary aid. In the long term, that would be a change for the worse.
Have the Republicans dropped those demands? Can anyone tell me?
The article mentions the need to provide funds to the CDC, the postal service, election protection, and Covid-19 testing, but it does mention them in regard to the negotiations. Have Senate Republicans agreed to funds for those? Can anyone tell me?
The eLearning-industrial complex: online courses teach subject material without the rest of what people get from college.
It may succeed in training people for professions but it is not designed to create an educated people.
This is in addition to the injustice of nonfree software, which today's remote education forces onto students from grade 1.
US citizens: call on the Senate to extend the census deadline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
Protests have galvanized black voters' determination to register to vote.
Black Lives Matter protesters in Nutley New Jersey posted a photo of a thug who was friendly with menacing right-wing counterprotesters and had hid has badge number. Instead of firing that thug, the thug department placed felony charges against the people who posted that photo.
Now the thug chief should be fired.
*The Department of Homeland Security is a rogue agency. Democrats must take action.*
We know that rogue agencies with the power to jail or shoot people will only pretend to reform. It will always be the Department of Harshness and Sadism. Defund the DHS along with the thug department.
* The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days.*
*Utah BLM protesters could get life in prison for splashing paint.*
Biden's choice of climate advisers suggest he will not push to reduce greenhouse emissions.
*ICE Resisted Coronavirus Testing to Avoid Releasing [prisoners].*
It's the same coverup philosophy that the wrecker followed: if they don't test the prisoners they can pretend that none are sick.
If the UK shuts the NHS for normal medical care during a second wave of Covid-19, it risks letting thousands of patients die from other treatable causes.
Around 4/5 of people who test positive for Covid-19 have heart problems afterward, as found by one study of 100 patients.
*Acting State Dept. Inspector General Resigns Just Months After Predecessor Fired.*
US citizens: call on US state governors to release prisoners that there is no need to keep in prison.
US citizens: call for the firing, arrest, and charging of the thugs who killed Breonna Taylor.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit police state practices that the
conman is using.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
*The Censorship of 'Cancel Culture' May Ultimately Be Most Dangerous for Social Justice Champions.*
Presenting evidence that the US had no military need to use nuclear weapons against Japan, because it already knew that Japan was looking for a way to surrender while saving face.
President Truman later said that he did believe, when he made the decision, that the only choices were bomb or invade.
I wonder whether he was aware that most high-ranking US generals said that Japan would surrender soon anyway. Were those views transmitted to him? Perhaps his advisors kept him away from that idea.
One argument in the first article is that the use of nuclear weapons made little difference to Japan's willingness to surrender, because non-nuclear bombing had done far more damage. If we accept that as valid, what are its full consequences? There were US generals at the time who said conventional (non-nuclear) bombing of cities was an atrocity.
(satire) *Eagles vocalist Don Henley filed suit Wednesday against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s campaigns for not playing "The Boys Of Summer" at their events.*
*'Thoughts and Prayers': Gun Control Groups Send Ironic Condolences [to the NRA, in case it loses the case and gets dissolved].*
Proposing to decriminalize all drugs, and let medical agencies decide how the government should deal with each one.
(satire) *The mayor outlined a plan that dramatically restructured the municipality’s approach to public safety, replacing its nearly 850 police officers with a similar number of social workers, who would be dispatched to city streets and have at their disposal firearms, bulletproof vests, tear gas, …*
Twitter blocked the DNC from condemning one of the bullshitter's lies because it mistook those tweats for support.
It's not only Twitter that finds that condemnation of a statement can be quite similar to supporting it. People can also fail to distinguish. Repeating bullshit, even to attack it, can backfire and spread it instead.
When you want to condemn something that someone else said, don't repeat that statement in a prominently visible way.
*In Pompeo's New Hierarchy of Rights, Religion and Property, Not Humans, Are at the Top.*
USPS work rule changes are delaying mail for as much as a week. This poses a real threat to postal voting. Democrats plan to insist on including support for USPS and elections in the next relief bill.
Can there be a next relief bill? Senate Republicans say they will not agree to one unless it cuts Social Security. They could easily reject anything that will help fair elections, for their own reelection's sake. They need only old out for three more months.
Amazon offers several new surveillance microphone products, meant to be carried around by people during daily life. That will enable them to listen to whoever the device's "owner" comes near.
But don't worry — Amazon is learning how to talk the talk about privacy in a way that more people would find comforting.
A voice command system that is safe for its owner would be one that runs only free software, and does the whole job locally, communicating with other sites only when asked to. With the software inside free, the owner of this device would truly own it.
But even that would not respect the privacy of other people nearby. How to deal with that issue is not obvious.
Everyone: Demand an end to the harassment of Palestinian scientists and academics and an immediate release of Prof. Imad Barghouthi.
*A garment factory supplying Gap, American Eagle and Amazon was at the
centre of one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in Guatemala.*
Over 200 people there contracted the disease.
*How fiberglass boats have become a global pollution problem.*
I wonder, do we know of any safe way to dispose of fiberglass boats?
Sanders proposes a 60% tax on the wealth gains of billionaires.
In principle, income tax ought to be able to do the same job.
But they have ways of putting their gains outside income tax.
If this method gets the job done, and is simpler to enact,
I see no reason not to do it.
New York State has accused the National Rifle Association of fraud
and seeks to dissolve it.
Los Angeles will shut off the water and electricity to mansions
that hold large parties, since they threaten public health.
With Covid-19 running rampant in that region, this is justified and necessary.
During the great depression of the 1930s, some US states distributed
tiny houses where a family member sick with tuberculosis could live
and avoid transmitting it to the rest of the family. This was part of
FDR's New Deal.
Why not do the same now for Covid-19?
The job would be easier now, since Covid-19 will usually stop being
contagious after a few weeks. The state could then retrieve the
no-longer-needed tiny house and autoclave it, and provide it to
someone else.
The article calls this "learned helplessness", but I think it is
intentional sabotage on the part of the Republicans. Then have done
plenty to demonstrate their ill will in dealing with Covid-19.
*Iowa ends lifetime voting ban on people with felony convictions.*
No US state now formally has such a ban, but Florida's Republicans
have constructed an excuse to partially continue it by
disenfranchising them until they pay all fees or fines.
Will Floridians run another ballot petition to insist that the previous one
means what it says?
Facebook deleted one of the bullshitter's postings for spreading false
information about Covid-19.
US antitrust law used to prohibit "vertical integration". If we bring
that back, it would prohibit a product from depending unavoidably on
an online service set up by the same company.
At least, for large companies.
I think we should prohibit it separately, so that the prohibition
applies to small companies too.
Billionaire Polluters says it will reduce oil and gas extraction 40%
in the coming decade.
Not enough, of course, but it is an important step.
*Manchester university divests from firms complicit in Israeli occupation.*
(satire) *White House
officials reportedly breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday after Tropical
Storm Isaias gave them a simple, run-of-the-mill hurricane relief
effort to fuck up.*
Sri Lanka seems to be trying hard to let people vote despite Covid-19,
but its president has been increasingly autocratic.
When his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was president, he had his critics
murdered, including the famous journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga,
who forecast he would be murdered.
A bill would require businesses to get your explicit consent for doing face recognition with your photo.
This is a good first step, but not enough to prevent the danger. We need to prohibit the deployment of systems that can systematically watch or identify people. And not only by business.
*SEC Launches Probe Into Kodak After Warren Raised Questions Over Lucrative Covid-19 Deal With Trump.*
(satire) *New Republican slogan: a vote for Biden is a vote for seeing the dentist twice a year.*
India jails Kashmiris that criticize the occupation of Kashmir. To get out of jail, they have to promise not to criticize the government. As far as I can tell, this is forever, but it would be tyrannical even if it lasted for one day.
They were jailed without legitimate charges or trial, which is tyrannical too.
Senator Schiff tried to enable blanket surveillance of US internet communication, by proposing an amendment specifically permitting such surveillance of unauthorized immigrants.
The article argues that the FBI could have used this as an excuse to collect everyone's data and look through it to see who was an unauthorized immigrant.
(satire) *… critics slammed the National Weather Service Wednesday after new evidence showed they failed to stop a recent hurricane despite having advanced warning.*
The Cambridge thug department said it had no military weapons. City councilors demanded a full inventory, and discovered it had 64 military assault weapons.
The M4 assault rifle is not merely "military-style." It is a smaller, newer variant of the M16, and the US Army is moving to it.
As for the armored vehicle, indeed it is not a "tank". A tank, by definition, has a cannon. Nonetheless, it may mount other weapons. I doubt that Cambridge has ever had an event for which it needed an armed and armored vehicle, and if it ever did, surely Cambridge could ask for help from Boston. The bridges to Boston are just a few hundred meters long.
Every city should force its thug department to furnish an inventory. Don't be distracted by the question of "What weapons do you get?" The main question is, "What weapons do you have?"
Missouri voters passed an initiative to take advantage of Obama's medical insurance law to extend Medicaid to more people.
Why is the state legislature is controlled by Republicans when most of the people in the state want things like Medicaid extension? Why do a majority of the state's voters vote for those Republican state legislators?
Perhaps they don't. Perhaps Republicans maintain control be gerrymandering. They do that in many states.
Moderna is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, with the US government paying the full cost. If it works, it will charge record prices for doses of the vaccine.
Because China is an important market for cinema, China is imposing censorship on global cinema (and first of all US cinema) by censoring release of movies in China.
The report suggests that if a company works on an obscure film that China objects to, it will punish big hit films that the company is involved with.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to sponsor the We The People amendment. Or thank per if perse has already done so. Here is a list of sponsors in the House of Representatives.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
*How decades of racism and poverty help fuel the pandemic in America's deep
south.*
We could eliminate large parts of these problems with Medicare for All
and other progressive programs.
Greenpeace is pressuring UK supermarket chains to stop buying beef
from Brazilian companies that accept cattle from deforested land.
The UK is considering regulating internet gambling so that it can't
ruin people.
Some people never really recover from Covid-19 — they continue to have
a variety of incapacitating symptoms.
Merdan Ghappar, prisoner in Xinjiang, had a chance to send out messages
about torture practices there.
Then he disappeared.
His uncle, an expat who condemns China, thinks China imprisoned Merdan
because he had an activist expat uncle. He believes the messages were
genuine.
Many European countries don't have birthright citizenship.
Here's an example of someone born in France, who has lived
in Belgium since infancy, who is struggling not to be deported
to a country where he would be persecuted.
* A New York bill would make it easier to sue big tech companies for
alleged abuses of their monopoly powers.*
Another "moderate" (right-wing) Democrat in Congress has been
replaced, this time by progressive Cori Bush.
*Rats and bats that host pandemic pathogens like Covid-19 increase in
damaged ecosystems, analysis shows.
It found that the damage
benefits smaller, more adaptable creatures that also carry the most
pathogens that can pass to humans.*
Farms in the middle of wilderness also bring these animals in closer
contact with humans, from which they could pick up diseases
that can also infect humans, and later transmit them back to humans
with some sort of mutations.
*A year on from a devastating siege, Kashmir is being turned into a colony.*
It is subject to what is in effect a permanent military occupation,
with the repression that would normally imply.
Further census sabotage: the anti-voter plans to cut the census off a
month early.
*Landmark obesity guidelines in Canada treat problem as chronic illness.*
The spouse of the L.A. district attorney pointed a gun at protesters
at their home, and faces criminal charges for doing so.
I don't know the facts, but I agree with the ideas underlying the
protesters' criticism of DA Lacey's conduct in office. I think the
couple has the right to insist that the protesters get off their
porch, but Mr Lacey had no right to threaten their lives with a gun,
so I think the charges against him are morally valid.
The protesters have a right to protest nearby, on the sidewalk, as
long as they don't harass people going in and out. (Think of the
right-wing protesters outside the doors of abortion clinics, who
harass patients and staff.)
Colombia's ex-president Álvaro Horrible is under house arrest during
an investigation into charges he tried to frame an opposition
politician.
I hope he will someday face charges for supporting the right-wing
paramilitares, who were and perhaps still are the most dangerous
terrorists in Colombia.
Many of the Portland protesters arrested by federal thugs were charged
with the most minor of crimes, such as "failure to obey". The thugs
were evidently seeking any excuse to arrest someone. And when the
protesters were released from jail, their release conditions included
"may not participate in protests."
That condition may be unconstitutional in the US, but it has been
used often against protesters arrested in the UK.
(satire) *Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly cut the phone line outside a local nursing home Monday so no one inside could report any coronavirus data.*
*Amnesty Report Details Human Rights Violations by US [thugs] During Racial Justice Protests.*
New evidence suggests that asymptomatic children contribute significantly to transmission of Covid-19.
Covid-19 spreads easily among US military personnel because many of them are right-wing anti-maskers. When the military sends personnel from base to base, some of them bring Covid-19 and spread it to the people that live near the base, and the rest of that region or country.
The UK has stopped using an AI system to judge immigration applications after determining that it suffers from PIPO.
PIPO, a term I just coined, stands for "prejudice in, prejudice out." This failure is common in AI systems trained on the actual behavior of people in a system where there is systematic prejudice.
In an ironic way, though, converting the prejudiced habits of officials into a program made the existence of the prejudice easy to demonstrate. Will that pave the way to eliminating the prejudice, or will the ministry only drive it underground?
Researchers have released a free(libre) recipe for a possible Covid-19 vaccine that people can make at home. However, there is no study to verify its safety or efficacy.
The article includes a statement that is confusingly vague because it uses the term "intellectual property". I would expect it is trying to talk about patents, but doing a bad job of saying so.
A school teacher talks about home-schooling her own children.
*Humanity Is an Endangered Species. Can We Do What it Takes to Save Ourselves?*
(satire) *…ornithologists at Bowdoin College released a groundbreaking new study Monday that attributed owls’ nocturnal lifestyle to their hard cocaine habit.*
*Mumbai installs female figures on traffic lights. Campaigners in India say the move helps dispel the notion that only men should be out in public.*
*[Musicians] taking on political roles from Algeria to Zambia have been beaten, [jailed] and killed.*
India imposed a curfew on Kashmir again, lest Kashmiris protest on the first anniversary of the special repression there.
On Truman's decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan.
Bombing of Germany killed more people and was ineffective against the factories that were usually the military targets. Some Allied generals considered this bombing a war crime.
Many European countries reopened business and transport too completely and are now facing a second wavelet of Covid-19.
21 prisoners have died of Covid-19 in San Quentin prison. Ironically, 9 prisoners on death row have died from Covid-19. One must wonder if this has been chosen as an official alternate method of execution.
Violence and trauma cause children to mature faster and get old faster.
The Manhattan district attorney said that his investigation of the Trump family businesses covers various kinds of corruption.
North Korea probably now has nuclear missiles. This is unfortunate, but dictator Kim decided to do this, there was no way to stop him.
The issue for the US, and for South Korea and Japan, is what significance to assign to this. I think that it does not need to lead to war. Kim thinks of North Korea as his property, and he does not want to get it nuked, so why would he launch nukes?
He may feel so much safer, with his nukes, that he would look for peaceful relations with other countries.
North Korea is a totalitarian hell. But we cannot change that by threatening war. Meanwhile, China is developing into a totalitarian hell; Xinjiang is worse than North Korea, if what I have read is anything to go by. And we cannot change that either. Since North Korea does not threaten to take over the world, we may as well make peace with it.
It would be very advantageous to have a vaccine for Covid-19 by the end of this year, but rushing things is dangerous.
The reason vaccines are generally very safe is that researchers take the time to make sure they are very safe before introducing them. The risk of a carefully tested vaccine may not be zero, but it is negligible compared with the risk of the disease it prevents. But that won't apply to a vaccine which has not been carefully tested.
(satire) *… officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security praised Bolivian leaders Monday for eliminating voter fraud through their refusal to hold general elections.*
Since Dubya, or perhaps before, the concept of holding official
responsible for their criminal conduct has almost been forgotten.
We are fighting to punish thugs for their crimes. We need to extend that
to all officials, from presidents to prison guards.
(satire) *"Starting this week, every American making under $75,000
will be sent a 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to make
certain they are taken care of when it comes to their naval
arsenal," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.*
A 15-year-old Michigan teenager was jailed for months for not finishing
her online homework. She was on probation and doing her homework was a probation requirement.
Aside from highlighting the cruel basic attitude of the US criminal
justice system, which also shows in other ways,
the case has another aspect the article does not mention.
The class probably required her to use nonfree software,
perhaps Zoom, or from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple.
Refusing to run it was the right thing for her to do,
just as it is the right thing for everyone to do.
The Focals eyeglass display, with snooping microphone, has been
eliminated. Google eliminated it by buying the manufacturer and
shutting it down. It also shut down the server these devices depend
on, which caused the ones already sold to cease to function.
It may be a good thing to wipe out this product — for "smart", read
"snoop" — but Google didn't do that for the sake of privacy. Rather,
it was eliminating competition for its own snooping product.
Solar panels have made the desert bloom in Helmand, bloom with opium
poppies. The result is that heroin is much cheaper. However, the aquifer
they pump water from will run out in a decade or so, and that could
cause millions of people to try to migrate from Afghanistan to wherever they can reach.
Unless someone invents a high-tech device to extract humidity from the
air.
The EFF proposes laws to require large communications back-end companies to allow interoperability.
This would work by requiring them to offer data portability, back-end
interoperability, and "delegability" (letting users communicate
through independently developed front ends).
The EFF's definition of "delegability" is inadequate, because
companies often permit access through independent client programs, but
only if they are nonfree and satisfy various other demands. They do
this by requiring the client program to contain a secret "client key"
furnished by the company, which the company can revoke if it becomes
known to the public, or if the client program allows users to protect
themselves from certain crucial forms of manipulation.
Effective delegability requires that companies permit access by users
running exclusively free software.
Edward Snowden: *The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever.*
But he reminds us that it continues nearly unhampered today, in the
supposedly free countries.
How thug unions campaign to protect brutal thugs.
And sometimes corrupt thugs too.
New York City's thug union got the city to keep from the public
the records of investigations into violent thugs. It turns out that
over 10% of them were found to have violated the department's limits
on use of force.
*We asked [thug] departments about viral videos showing cops escalating
violence against protesters. Most refused to name the officers or
provide updates on their investigations.
(satire) *Ornithologists Attribute Owls’ Nocturnal Lifestyle To Hard Cocaine Habit.*
"Challenge questions" generally give very bad security and users forget the answers.
I treat them like passwords.
*Comparing Poverty in India and America May Surprise You.*
Debt causes conceptual problems in making statistics about people's wealth.
If one household has a $300,000 house and debts of $320,000, while another
household lives in a tent and has debts of $20,000, is it meaningful
to put both of them in the -$20,000 bucket?
So far this year, the world has shut down more coal power electric capacity than it has built.
We can't just count on the Invisible Hand to cancel new coal power
plant construction, or the practice of burning coal. Paying for new
coal plants is a waste of money, but those who build them will lobby
governments to pay for their construction anyway. And they could even
make a profit operating those plants, if they get a subsidy.
British troops in Afghanistan are suspected of having murdered 15
civilians, and a court is demanding explanations.
University College London quietly renamed references to its former professors
that supported the idea of eugenics.
What should we say about someone in the past who did important good
things and important bad things? I think it depends on the relative
importance of the good and the bad in the impact of that person's life.
Rutherford says that science refuted eugenics. Saini says that's
false because science created eugenics — but that, if true, would not
make Rutherford's claim false. It could be that science created
eugenics and subsequently refuted eugenics.
But I think it is more valid to say that eugenics, as regards race,
was pseudoscience created by racism.
To correct one error: sex-specific abortion is not a form of eugenics,
because it does not alter (or aim to alter) the future gene pool.
This is because sex is not a characteristic that can be altered by
selection. Among humans, having a female parent does not make you
more likely to be female, just as having a male parent does not make
you more likely to be male.
It's otherwise for aphids: having a male parent increases an aphid's
chance of being male. Indeed, aphids with solely a female parent are
always female.
My views on sex-specific abortion.
*Secrecy has harmed UK government's response to Covid-19 crisis, says top
scientist.*
Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea have used Covid-19 as an excuse to impose tyranny.
With a new nuclear arms race, possibly including space-based weapons, we need to bring back the movement for nuclear disarmament.
*Qadhafi’s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya’s oil.*
Bogus Johnson desperately tried to get people going to the office and visiting restaurants, pubs and nightclubs, but that was more than Covid-19 would allow. It is backfiring.
The right wing blames the consequences on the poor, following the strategy of right-wing government to “persuade [people] to blame themselves” for problems, rather that make things better as a progressive government would do.
Sometimes people do behave irresponsibly. In Raves and "Covid parties", people say "To hell with being responsible," and that can make a lot of people sick. Right-wing fools that spit at precautions make a lot of people sick. Nobody has to do these things, and nobody should. We should distinguish these gratuitous risks from the risks society compels poor people to run.
Government's power to eliminate practical obstacles is not infinite. Even a progressive government could not legislate away all the practical problems caused by living with Covid-19. It may indeed be necessary for people without back yards to stay home this summer, rather than going to the beach with a crowd. But a progressive government could certainly legislate away quite a few of the problems, just by deciding to try.
An interview with Grigory Rodchenkov, formerly head of Russia's sports doping program, who turned whistleblower when he was about to be caught.
He believes Putin would have him assassinated if Putin could find him.
Melbourne, Australia, has adopted a very strict lockdown to stop transmission of Covid-19 there.
The article raises some questions in my mind. Why is it that many workers are living paycheck to paycheck and do not have paid sick leave, and can the state give them that? Why is it that employers can get away with demanding workers come to work when sick, and can the state catch them and prosecute them?
*Sen. Martin Heinrich Calls On Facebook To End Its Exemption Of Climate Denial From Fact-Checking Program.*
10,000 Israelis protested against Netanyahu, for his career of corruption and for reopening Israel to Covid-19.
As some of his supporters occasionally launch violence the protesters, he accused the opposition of inciting violence, Standard right-wing lie tactic.
When the wrecker threatens to use his secret powers to destroy American democracy, he may not be bluffing. Congress should investigate what those powers might include.
Children can catch Covid-19 and can spread it to others.
(satire) *Federal Troops Tear-Gas Yankees Off Field So Trump Can Throw Out First Pitch.*
Sanders-supporting Democratic Convention delegates proposed a list
of suggested running mates for Biden — three black females.
I've been impressed by Rep. Lee's courage in voting against military
action and spending, for years, when hardly anyone else dared to.
Aside from that, I am unfamiliar with them, but I expect they are all
long-standing progressives. Maybe they are good choices. I am
disappointed by Karen Bass's willingness to participate in a
Scientology event in 2010, but mainly because she should have checked
more carefully which platforms to speak on. Surely they are all much
better than the plutocratist women we hear Biden's camp suggest.
However, I rebuke the delegates' foolishness in choosing these people
based on their race and their gender. Didn't we learn, from Obama, not
to let candidates' identity distract us from things that really matter?
Biden's statement that he will choose a woman was an attempt to
distract us with identity. The plan was that he would choose a
not-very-progressive woman and we'd be so thrilled by her identity
that we would fool ourselves into cheering.
When I was asked to say which VP candidate I preferred, and offered a
list of several women, I wrote in "Bernie Sanders" and said that he's
a tried and true progressive. If a woman were equally so, I'd support
her too, but I don't know of any.
The EU may investigate whether Google is using the medical data
that Fitbit collects for the sake of its advertising business.
As usual, this fails to get to the heart of the matter. Devices such
as a Fitbit should not send data anywhere. They should release it to
the owner, in a fully documented format, and that's all.
*Improve your relationships — with advice from counter-terrorism experts.*
Torturing people you love is as destructive and stupid as torturing prisoners.
Rep. Gohmert is not a buffoon. He is a dangerous enemy of our
democracy and our safety. His followers beat up the people rallying
for his election opponent, and he pressured his staff to risk
transmitting Covid-19 by not wearing masks.
His getting sick could teach a lesson that will save others.
Rep. Grijalva tested positive, and rebukes the anti-mask Republicans
in Congress who may have transmitted it to him.
A Palestinian witness describes the murder of Abdul Fattah al-Sharif
by an Israeli soldier, as al-Sharif was lying on the ground alive but
not moving.
It may well be the case that al-Sharif had stabbed the wounded Israeli
soldier who was on the ground nearby. But that does not justify
giving him no first aid, nor killing him.
Ralph Nader: Nancy Pelosi's fund-raising letters accurately reflect
the timid policies that she works for.
No attempt to make things better, only to oppose making them even worse.
The United States on the path to being a failed state.
An ex-thug reports that he killed a man on duty, in self defense, and after
some time passed he was so ashamed of this that had to quit.
Now he tries to keep track of all the times anyone dies in interaction
with a cop, regardless of fault.
"Honest government ad". Lots of fun.
China has placed criminal charges against Samuel Chu, a US citizen,
for allegedly advocating supporting Hong Kong's independence at home in the US.
China is also firing teachers, so that other teachers will be frightened
into enforcing total submission from their students.
*Israel’s Jewish National Fund is Uprooting Palestinians — Not Planting
Trees.*
When it does plant trees, sometimes those cover former Palestinian land.
Israelis are protesting against Netanyahu's corruption, and his
supporters have violently attacked protesters.
I think that they have learned the habit of violence from years of
attacking Palestinians.
Some of them are also being arrested.
*5 Key Demands for the New Coronavirus Bill.*
Demand 5 does not mention "Social Security" but it includes "Don't cut
Social Security."
Alas, the Republicans in the Senate are adamant that they will do nothing
to relieve the short-term problems poor Americans are facing unless they
can impose even bigger long-term harm.
Bolivians protested against delay of their presidential election,
which the president installed by the pseudo-coup seems likely to lose.
*Groups call on [Biden] to appoint
transition and cabinet officials determined to "serve no interest but
the public's."*
US citizens: call on Detroit officials to fire and investigate the thugs that murdered Hakim Littleton.
Reportedly Littleton shot at a thug. If that is true, at that time he was a threat to them.
But once he was disarmed and lying helpless on the ground, he was no longer a threat, and there was no justification at that time for shooting him dead.
*As I first encountered the flow of sick patients coming into the emergency room, I hoped that either all these patients’ care would be covered or that insurers and hospitals wouldn’t be so ruthless as to bankrupt these patients. But these naïve sentiments have no place in this broken, profit driven system.*
(satire) *Federal Agents Drive 3 Hours Away From Portland Before Realizing Abducted Protester Still In Backseat.*
The US "vaccine chief" was allowed to award a vaccine contract to his own former employer.
That ought to be a crime. Can the official be prosecuted for it next year?
I also question the wisdom of buying 100 million doses of a vaccine before we know whether it is effective.
USPS employees warn that the new no-rush handling of first class mail could make postal ballots arrive too late to be counted.
This is especially likely where Republican election officials can choose to send out the ballots at the last possible moment. That can happen in some swing states.
Oil companies and even OPEC are now recognizing that oil demand will fall ever more as renewable electricity become too cheap to compete with.
Does that mean we are safe? No. To reduce global heating disaster we need to hurry the transition, but oil company owners will try to slow it down.
In addition, they will try to avoid spending any of their money on safely sealing off the wells. They will try to drop that burden on the public. That means we must hurry to take control and compel them to pay the price of properly shutting down the wells they built.
Republican Herman Cain supported the wrecker by rejecting the use of masks, and went to the wrecker's campaign rally. He came down with Covid-19 shortly thereafter, and since has died from it.
I won't say I am glad he died, but he brought it on himself by following the mad Republican cult.
Colonized people fighting against Western armies often followed leaders who promised to make them magically immune to bullets. Needless to say, the magic never worked, but the people could win some battles because, imbued with that confidence, they could charge the colonizing army and overrun it despite its guns. In the end, though, they lost. Can we compare the Republicans to that?
If the wrecker manages to prevent (or "delay") the November election, including the senate, Senator Schumer (a plutocratist Democrat) will most likely become president.
If Republicans disrupt the election in states they control, it is possible that some Senators will be elected, mainly Democrats.
*Special prosecutor to investigate alleged beating of man inside Lynn [Massachusetts] police station.*
Hooray! Investigation of thugs' crimes should not be limited to the small fraction that have fatal results.
*[US] Teachers fearing in-person schooling make wills, retire or plan strikes.*
It is a mistake to reopen schools physically while Covid-19 runs rampant. However, holding classes with nonfree software, and feeding students (and/or teachers') personal data to online dis-services is a vicious injustice that will be permanent unless we fight to eliminate it.
I urge students and parents to refuse to run nonfree software and demand that schools never give their names to any company.
Progressive Democratic candidate J. D. Scholten was offered support by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with conditions so odious that he declined the offer.
He thinks he can win anyway.
Relief payments that the US gave on account of Covid-19 actually helped the poor generally. We can continue to do this — Covid-19 or no Covid-19.
Proposing that local social movements can build a low-emissions sustainable society from the bottom up.
I find a few of the concepts in the article misleading. For instance, it is silly to think that we have "colonized" the atmosphere, because that implies we took it away from someone else. What is true is that we have modified it in ways that hurt and endanger us all.
But other concepts are valid, and the overall idea might be have value anyway.
Modi is trying to quash journalism that criticizes his handling of Covid-19 by arresting journalists.
Britain imprisons far too many people, imitating the US perhaps. Other countries show there is no reason for this.
Various opinions on the possibility of future population decrease.
*Revealed: super-rich donate to Cuomo as he rejects tax hikes for billionaires.*
Basically. being more progressive than the wrecker doesn't mean you're any good.
*Landmark ruling sees Ugandan poacher jailed for killing Rafiki the gorilla.*
Bravo!
*Portland sees peaceful night of protests following withdrawal of federal troops.*
*Trump badly miscalculated in Portland — and even he knows it.
The Committee of Public Safety, or should I say Department of Homeland Security, is making "intelligence reports" about the journalists who investigate the bully's repression in Portland.
Biden would have a better chance of winning if he supported the progressive policies that Sanders supporters (like most Americans) support.
1/3 of the children in the world have dangerous levels of lead.
Spain implores people to keep up their vigilance against foolish acts that can spread Covid-19.
I think, however, that it behooves governments to jump vigorously on disease transmission, because once it gets away from you, it is hard to get in front of it again.
Here is what a vigorous attempt to flatten an outbreak of Covid-19 looks like.
If what's happening near you does not resemble this, your government is doing a bad job.
In theory it could be advantageous to tune the response and shut down only the minimum necessary in a given situation. But we don't have enough experience with Covid-19 to know what that minimum is.
*Italy's senate votes to lift Matteo Salvini's immunity from prosecution. Ex-minister faces kidnapping charges for preventing docking of migrant rescue ships.*
*Australia's 'black summer' bushfires showed the impact of [previous] human-wrought change.*
Sanders calls on the Senate to reform its rules to end the filibuster. That quirk in the rules allows any 41 senators to block any law.
The Democrats are likely to have a majority starting January, but unlikely to have 60 seats. If Republicans can block laws with the filibuster, they can stop Congress from undoing the damage Republicans have done over the past few years.
The filibuster used to apply to judicial appointments, too, but the Republicans eliminated the filibuster for those decisions. That's how they were able to put so many extremists into judgeships. So why hesitate to finish eliminating it.
Hong Kong has eliminated the pro-democracy candidates for its legislative election.
It also postponed the elections for a year, perhaps hoping that by then everyone will be demoralized.
US citizens: call on Pelosi to reject the Republican plan to spend
billions for more weapons as "Covid-19 relief".
How do you spell relief? "W E A P O N S".
Australia now has a plan for switching to renewable electric generation.
It's not as fast as it needs to be, but it can be accelerated.
The next question is whether the planet-roaster ministers in power
will allow it to happen.
Children who catch Covid-19 can have very high levels of virus.
Don't assume you won't catch it from a child!
The government set up in April an alternate reporting system for
hospital data, and did so in a big hurry, bypassing normal contracting rules.
This leads me to suspect that the scheme of cutting the CDC out of the
loop for Covid-19 statistics, to keep the public in the dark, was planned
back in April.
The US GDP decreased by 10% in April-June, which is a lot.
Notice how the article uses an indirect way to state this — with an
"annualized" figure, which I think means "How much would the total
decrease be if it continued at this rate for a year." Since it is
clear that what happened in April will not happen every month, that is
even more misleading than it would be in other situations.
Nonetheless, it is a big decrease and shows we are in for hard times.
The Washington Post has adopted a non-biased approach to capitalizing
the racial color adjectives, "black" and "white".
Some organizations capitalize "black" and not "white". That
expresses racial bias, and I disapprove of it.
Imagine if prejudice were centered on hair color, rather than skin
color. People would argue that the adjective "blond" is an identity
and demand to capitalize it.
I prefer not to capitalize either of them, because I would rather not
promote the implicit assumption that skin color is a difference in
kind rather than a detail. However, if it becomes common to
capitalize them both, I will go along with it. It isn't
worth fighting about this sort of adjective capitalism.
After months of wild handouts to the rich, plutocratist politicians
have remembered the national debt as an excuse to cut Social Security.
Deficit spending is exactly what is needed at the start of a
depression (or even a recession). Remember how Obama launched deficit
spending to reduce the 2009 recession? However, in 2010 Republicans
took control of Congress and did not allow this to continue.
Curiously, they also propose to spend additional billions on more
weapons. That increase in the national debt does not bother them.
This double standard has existed for years, but it is especially
blatant when it applies to two parts of the same bill.
The point that Social Security does not affect the national debt
is pertinent too, but it is not as deep.
Montana has approved a new copper mine which will risk poisoning one
of the few unpoisoned rivers in the state.
Mine operators will promise to do almost anything to avoid pollution,
as long as they will not have to do it until later, by which time
the company will be bankrupt. If the mine makes millions of dollars,
the mine will nonetheless go bankrupt eventually once operating it
is no longer profitable.
Nowadays we must also be concerned with the danger that global heating
disaster will put an end to industrial use of copper, as well as mining.
At that point, anything which can leak, will leak.
*'Utter Disgrace': GOP Proposes Legal Immunity for Corporations, $0 in Funding
for States, and Deep Cuts to Unemployment Benefits.*
In effect, Republicans want to give Americans permanent damage in
exchange for some short-term aid.
Oregon's governor says that the wrecker made a deal to remove the
federal thugs that have been grabbing people in Portland.
I hope he really carries out this deal. One cannot count on that.
Americans are starting to call for dismantling the Department of Harassment and Sadism (DHS).
An interview with Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of B'Tselem.
That is the Israeli organization that campaigns to respect the human
rights of Palestinians.
Tiny amphipod crustaceans break up microplastics into minute
nanoplastics smaller than typical cells.
Nanoplastics could be more harmful or less, to various species of
life; only investigation will tell. The reason to suspect they are
more harmful is that they have more surface area per given volume,
which could mean that toxic chemicals would escape from them at a
higher rate.
A congressional hearing got testimony from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and
Google, and concluded with the committee chair's saying that these
companies need to be broken up and regulated.
Splitting them up could be pretty simple, supposing one overcomes
their lobbying power. But a simple way would not really fix the
problems. That requires restructuring their operations, and
how to do that is not so obvious.
The giant Paraná river delta wetlands are on fire.
They seem to be abnormally dry.
Various causes may be at work, going back in various ways to human
activity.
Many oil businesses in the US continue collapsing.
This seems like a good sign. However, I suspect that some of the bigger oil
companies are using their bailout money to buy these bankrupt businesses
at rock-bottom prices.
The early abandonment of oil wells is a good thing, because it means
that the oil still left to extract will remain in the ground. However,
a closed well is a source of pollution.
Naturally the Republicans want to give the oil executives more billions
to take home before those companies finally disappear, rather that fund
cleaning up the wells that will continue to spread toxins.
To keep the well pumping for some more years would not reduce the
problem of dealing with it. If it were shut down in 2025 instead of
now, that would only postpone the burden which the drilling of the well
imposed on society.
A bill would end federal funding for stationing thugs in schools.
Hurrah, let's close the school-to-prison pipeline!
The UK wants to make all NHS doctor visits "remote by default".
In principle, that is not unjust. But what software do they want
patients to run? Will they accept use of free software? If not, this
seems like "surrender your freedom or die."
Would someone in the UK like to see what software they normally use?
If it is nonfree software, how about explaining that you'd be happy
to do a remote visit if they will do it using free software?
I wonder also whether patients can use the NHS web sites without
running nonfree Javascript code. The clinics I have used in the past
few years want patients to communicate via online dis-services called
"patient portals". They all demand running of nonfree software, so I
don't use them. Nowadays they won't allow me to communicate with
doctors by email, which means that all I can do is ask the doctor to
phone me. That will be inconvenient if I am travelling in another
country. Would the doctor even be able to try?
France will have to stop allowing use of glue traps to catch birds.
The trappers have been catching endangered species.
China threatens to hold Hong Kongers prisoner by stopping them from
leaving Hong Kong if they seek to move to Britain.
In the 1980s and before, Communist countries typically made citizens
get permission to leave the country. Perhaps that is officially still
the case in China, but in practice Chinese have been allowed to travel
as tourists if they could afford to do so.
By making this threat, China is hoping to use its own citizens as
hostages to demand acquiescence in its campaign to spread tyranny. It
is betting that it is so powerful now, and the US so weak and dizzy,
that it can make all opposition cave and start a march to world
hegemony.
I don't think China will win this bet. Instead, I think it will
backfire, as the world perceives ever more clearly how evil China now
is. The power that the conman wishes to have, Xi already has.
*No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy
that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to
wield it in the public interest.*
I agree, but I don't think that goes far enough. I think that no
company should be allowed to get as big as BlackRock. With my
tax plan, we could put them under irresistible pressure to split up.
By the way, the "vampire squid" is simply an unusual-looking squid
which reminded some zoologist of Bela Lugosi in Dracula. It has no
other vampire-like characteristics.
When Barr testified to Congress, Rep. Jayapal attacked him for using
force against Black Lives Matter protesters in Oregon while not
troubling the armed right-wing protesters in Minnesota.
The Republican Senate proposal for additional aid for struggling
non-rich Americans is far insufficient.
And that's aside from the harm it would do: cutting Social Security in the future,
and even giving additional money to the Pentagon.
This article clearly explains the effect of patents on fruit.
Its only error, that I can see, is to use the term "intellectual property"
to refer to patents and trademarks. Since the article clearly explains
trademarks as well, you can see what an error it is to use any term to lump them together.
I have not used the term "intellectual property" even once since 2004.
In explaining the various disparate laws that term supposedly "refers"
to, that term is never helpful, and the idea of generalizing
about those laws is the biggest obstacle.
The Masks for All Act would increase production of masks and give
masks to everyone in the US. It would also provide respirator masks to
all health workers that need them.
As the article shows, the Republicans in the Senate will block this
from passing. But it will add to the list of evils that Americans can
see Republicans are doing.
In a move to cut overtime work, the USPS plans changes that would delay
some fraction of mail by an extra day.
I don't see that as a big deal. However, in a few special cases, the
extra day's delay could have grave results.
A bigger danger is that the delayed mail might accumulate and lead to
longer and longer delays. Will the public find out if this is happening?
One lasting damage done by Covid-19 could be a disastrous drop in trust
in anyone or anything.
Many of the institutions people used to trust did not deserve it
anyway. (In the US: the justice system, thugs, the military, the
economy, the medical finance system.) However, others did deserve
trust. (US: science, medicare, CDC, actual medicine, social security.)
By "deserve trust" I do not mean infallibility. Any institution can
make a mistake, just as any person can. However, well-functioning
institutions do a pretty good job, most of the time.
Republican Rep. Gohmert participated in a Congressional committee
hearing, and kept taking his mask off. The next day he tested
positive for Covid-19, meaning he was probably spreading the disease
at the hearing.
I wonder whether he will learn any lesson from this.
(satire) * Georgia governor Brian Kemp reportedly pushed against calls for more
coronavirus restrictions Wednesday by moving all government business to
a packed indoor pool.*
*As many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign
families have been left stranded in the country.* The parents-to-be
cannot come get them.
This is bad for the babies, as well as for the parents-to-be and the
surrogate mothers. It must be possible to organize transport for most
of them.
Increased economic inequality is stopping the non-rich from giving to
charity. This means charities become dependent on a few rich, and
don't dare disagree with them.
This happens even more and faster when some rich person, such as Bill
Gates, makes a special effort to gain influence over a field, such as
education reform.
One charity which this is not happening to is the Free Software
Foundation. In most years it gets only a small part of its income
from corporations or big donations. That's not to say it would reject
a large donation if you give one ;-}.
NYC thugs said that the woman grabbed off the street by thugs out of uniform
was specifically wanted for arrest. Supposedly she had committed some sort of
crime at protests.
They also said that the other protesters threw rocks and bottles at
the thugs who were doing this, but the protesters say that didn't
happen. (I wonder what the video shows.) Should we believe what the
thugs say about the woman they grabbed?
Wild bees are dying out in some places; this is hitting production of apples and cherries.
We need laws to keep agriculture sustainable.
*Measles vaccination disruptions due to Covid-19 put 80 million children at
risk.*
Progressives in Congress have proposed to forbid spending federal
funds on sending federal agents to arrest protesters for Operation
Relentless Repression.
However, this wrong is not exclusive to federal thugs.
Local thugs in many US cities make a practice of grabbing people off the street
based on no specific grounds.
A few are even in prison for it.
A few did it in NYC this week.
Congressional Democrats are pushing to repeal the Helms amendment,
which prohibits giving US funds to support abortion services in
other countries.
It is cruel to cause children to be born into poverty that is likely to stunt their lives.
Tahir Ahmed Naseem, charged in Pakistan with practising a forbidden
offshoot of Islam, was assassinated in his trial.
*Belarus says Russian mercenaries arrested ahead of presidential election.*
They were alleged to be planning some sort of destabilization action.
Given other things Putin has done, this could be true. Given other
things that Lukashenko (the tyrant of Belarus) has done, this could be
bullshit.
A right-wing provocateur (white) broke store windows in Minneapolis,
and started the violence of protests there.
His act was followed by arson at the same store.
I am not at all surprised by this act. Right-wing extremists have
become comfortable with dishonesty and violence, so they have no
restraints against committing false-flag attacks.
I hope they catch him and prosecute him.
The protesters who confronted him and told him to stop understood what
was needed. However, the protest movement did not have the discipline
to stop violence once it had started.
57% of the people in the slums of Mumbai Delhi have had Covid-19,
according to antibody tests of a sample.
We may soon know what the results are when the virus fully burns
through a population. If, that is, Mumbai is capable of keeping track
of deaths and those who have continuing symptoms. India's public
health systems are underfunded. Poor people who have continuing
symptoms may never report them.
Portlanders resist the federal thugs even after they have been
attacked with usually-not-lethal weapons.
The Supreme Court decisions that extend human rights to corporations,
which are considered "persons" only as a fiction, enables companies to
cover up toxic and dangerous products
such as Roundup.
I support the We the People Amendment mentioned in the article. I am
very sad to report that the organization referenced in the article
carries out its activities in ways that require nonfree software.
Rather than ask anyone to run that software, I ask people to phone
their senators and representative to support the amendment.
Since March, various US cities have reduced how many people they hold
in jail. Some reduced this more than others. A study found that the
size of a city's reduction is not correlated with crime trends there.
In other words, fear of crime is no reason not to save lives by letting
many prisoners out of jail.
(satire) *Defensive Chicago [thug] Dylan Wilson told reporters Monday that he was perfectly
capable of disappearing protesters without help from the Department of
Homeland Security.*
The Democratic Party platform committee rejected an amendment to
endorse Medicare for All.
It also rejected smaller extensions to Medicare.
The Democratic Party formerly supported something like this. But
President Clinton dropped it in favor of catering to medical insurance
companies.
It was Clinton who shifted the Democratic Party to plutocratism.
Progressives are reversing this by replacing plutocratist Democrats
with progressives, but it is slow going, as the Democratic Party
itself opposes it.
The UK wants to make a new business-supremacy treaty with the US. It also wants new food labeling rules to reduce obesity. The US will push to prohibit that.
Under plutocratist governments, the only way a trade treaty can be an improvement is if it replaces an old one (like the old NAFTA) that was worse.
Development banks invest in growing big cattle operations even as small farms go under.
(satire) *U.S. Requires Hurricanes To Quarantine For 2 Weeks Before Traveling To Other States Along Coastline.*
UK universities are cancelling the contracts of thousands of researchers who are hired for only a few years.
The populations of migratory rivers, such as salmon, trout and giant catfish, have fallen 76% in 50 years.
This is bad in itself, but also harms other species.
Covid-19 is wiping out local journalism in the US, leaving no news coverage for large regions.
Everyone: call on school administrators around the world to stop requiring students to run nonfree software.
Covid-19 is spreading in Xinjiang, and if it gets into the crowded
re-education camps used to brainwash Uighurs, it could spread to many
of them.
We have seen examples, in many countries, showing that places where
people are compelled to live or work in close proximity are especially
dangerous for spreading Covid-19.
EFF: *Knowing the [monetary] "Value" of Our Data Won't Fix Our Privacy
Problems.*
This scheme is an excuse to disregard all the serious harm that being
surveilled can do. Imagine if Facebook caused you to be outed as
whatever, amd said it made $2.35 from doing that. Would that datum
make any difference?
The strong way to prevent collection and misuse of your personal data
is to forbid deploying systems that could collect it.
*How the global climate fight could be lost if Trump is re-elected.*
Alas, there is no guarantee that Biden will try to win it either.
*Koch Group Pushing for Employer Immunity Takes $3.5M From Company with
COVID-19 Outbreaks.*
This is additional proof, if we needed any, that we need to restrict what
businesses and rich people can spend on elections.
*The U.S.-Supported Coup in Bolivia Continues to Produce Repression and
Tyranny, While Revealing How U.S. Media Propaganda Works.*
New Zealand has adopted new principles for government use of
algorithms to make decisions about how to treat individuals.
I think this is a big step forward. The article says that citizens
might have the right to demand to see the source code of software that
makes decisions about them. However for that to be fully effective,
the government should insist that these programs be free/libre.
Otherwise, agencies might deny those requests, saying "We signed a
contract not to redistribute that source code", "it's a trade secret",
or "We don't even have a copy."
US citizens: call your senators and tell them to pass a Covid-19 relief bill
that generously helps non-rich Americans.
Republicans want to cut the extra unemployment insurance from $600 per
week to $200 per week.
They say the current level is "too generous". Republicans believe
that generous is only for rich people.
The National Trust in England is going to educate visitors to its old
buildings about how they are linked to slavery or conquest.
The country houses and castles of the National Trust are interesting
to visit, and worth preserving, because they were built lavishly &mash; by
rich people. They surely got their riches by exploiting someone. If
it wasn't slaves from Africa, or the natives of conquered territory,
it must have been British people.
When we appreciate those buildings we should keep in mind
why they exist.
Greg Palast's recommendations for ensuring your ballot does get
counted.
The first step is now: make sure you have not been "purged" from
the voter's list, while there is still time for you to register again
if necessary.
*No Masks, No Gloves, a Single Room for Sleeping — Detainees Describe Life In
[deportation prison] During the Pandemic,*
Paul Graham: society gets its new ideas from people of aggressively
independent-minded personality. The aggressively conventional-minded
tend to bully those who differ, and social media give them a great
tool to do so. Censorship is one form of that bullying, and it
stultifies society in a broad way.
One of his speculations is that "Perhaps the universities are
declining because so many [independent-minded people] have already
left." If it is true that they now "become quants or start startups"
— activities which tend to be selfish and subjugatory — rather than
professors, that is a double loss to society.
1/4 of young people get their "news" from Instagram, making giant echo
chambers.
I can't argue, though, with their distrust for the mainstream media.
Mainstream sites tend to have either a right-wing bias or a
plutocratist bias. It is not easy to figure out what claims are true.
I try my best, but I am sure I am sometimes mistaken.
Nigerian Atheist Mubarak Bala faces charges of "blasphemy" for
criticizing Islam.
Fanatical officials from Kano, which makes blasphemy a crime, kidnapped
him from his home state, Kaduna, where their law does not apply.
Even if it were legitimate to punish people for their opinions,
this would make it unjust in this particular case.
Atheists are persecuted in many countries worldwide.
On the average, Americans are more prejudiced against Atheists
than against any religion.
The UK electricity grid predicts negative CO2 emissions from electric
generation, but that is based on hypothetical carbon capture systems
which are not known to work.
Running trucks on electricity from overhead wires is expected to be
profitable. That idea does not seem to presume any dubious technological advances.
Accusing China of suppressing information about the spread of Covid-19
for about three weeks in January, and covering this up later.
One specific item — taking 2 or 3 days to respond to questions from
WHO — does not strike me as culpable. It can take anyone a little
time to determine what to say. However, the other points do seem
culpable.
But nowhere near as big a crime as what right-wing officials have
done in countries such as Australia, Brazil, and the United States.
*Millions of animals trafficked from the Amazon annually — report.*
* European countries are spending big to revive their economies, but they
will have no legitimacy with young people if they ignore the climate.*
Sydney is trying to ban a Black Lives Matter protest in the name of public health.
People have a right to protest even if it is dangerous. However, this
protest will not be very dangerous if the organizers carry out their
plans to prevent transmission of Covid-19.
A powerful right-wing militia goes to Black Lives Matter protests
carrying guns. They say that they respect the right to protest, they
say that they will defend protesters from violence, but their
definitions seem skewed and the effect of their presence is to
stop protests via intimidation.
In the US, since 2010, people killed by right-wing terror attacks
number 117, while those killed by left-wing terror attacks number 21.
Yet "law and order" politicians downplay the former and emphasize the
latter.
*Revealed: new evidence links Brazil meat giant JBS to Amazon deforestation.*
Prisoners of the US deportation thugs write about how the thugs
crush their spirits while endangering their health and their lives.
Giant companies that mistreat the public — for instance, Chevron,
Shell and Wells Fargo — are big donators to the foundations that buy
military equipment for thug departments.
*One million Cambodians under threat from development of vital
wetlands [near Phnom Penh].*
Team sports in US schools have become so intense and pressurized that
they are no fun, even for children. Perhaps that is why most children
quit sports before becoming teenagers.
I was not much inclined to sports anyway, so I don't see
the importance of them personally, but if they were fun they
might be good.
Ralph Nader: *Now it is time for various House Committees to publicly question
Chairman Powell about the costs of the Fed's callous indifference to
the real economy and struggling Americans.*
For the UK, the most dangerous meddling foreign power is the US.
Carole Cadwalladr: the corrupter is again trying to use Facebook to
manipulate American voters with lies and conspiracy theories.
Since it worked in 2016, we can't be confident it won't work.
Other brutal governments also use Facebook to manipulate the public.
It makes a difference, practically at least, whether people in group G
tend to suffer a certain kind of harm as a direct result of prejudice,
or because they tend to be poor — even if their poverty is itself a
result of prejudice.
Even though in both scenarios cases prejudice is an underlying cause,
the mechanism of the problem makes a difference to what we should do
about it. If all poor people are being harmed, let's help all of them.
Half the world's existing beaches are likely to be lost by 2100.
If some positive feedbacks kick in, it could be more than half.
If sea level rise were to stop there, eventually new beaches would
develop. But the ocean will keep rising for centuries.
Followup on all the Covid-19 patients admitted to one Sydney hospital
in March found that most of them still have symptoms.
Patients whose cases were not serious enough for hospitalization
also still have symptoms.
* Research in Bangladesh reveals the tipping point under which the poor
can’t break into higher-income opportunities.*
As Texas's hospitals are full, they need to choose, among the patients
that need intensive care, which ones will get that.
Various countries foresaw the need for this in April, and made
guidelines for how to choose. One country's guidelines looked wise to
me.
I don't recall whether those guidelines were ever needed, back then.
They would not be needed now if not for the Republicans' decision
to spread disease.
Because the US does not have a national health service, it has been
unable to make its attempts to treat Covid-19 serve as valid tests
of the efficacy of the treatments tried.
Protesters near the federal courthouse in Portland are carrying out
violence against thugs and the building. The federal thugs and local thugs
are working together to arrest them and/or drive them away.
The presence of the federal thugs was egregious because the city had
not asked for them. Their actions were egregious too, arresting
people without cause in areas away from the courthouse. If protesters
keep on starting violence near the courthouse, they risk legitimizing
the presence of those federal thugs
What possible good is that?
*[The corrupter] has helped the US to see its dark side. It will still
be there when he goes.
As stated, racism and torture will not disappear if Biden defeats the
corrupter. Nor will global heating, that can destroy civilization,
nor the plutocracy that is its foundation.
The Democratic National Committee has rejected the unity climate panel's
recommendations.
15,000 people protested in Khabarovsk, Siberia, after Putin replaced
the region's governor, who is accused of murder.
I have no basis to guess whether the governor ordered murders 15 years
ago or not.
Sanders and others have introduced a bill to end subsidies to fossil fuels.
(satire) *Victoria’s Secret introduced Friday a
new sexy push-up jack for maximum lift.*
*The Tories' new trade bill means the NHS is now unquestionably up for sale.*
The result will be a US-style horrible medical system.
I warned that leaving the EU under Tory control would lead to horrible
business-supremacy treaties.
Ordinary Cuban cops are not cruel to ordinary Cubans.
They seriously work to serve and protect the public.
That Cuba protects people from becoming desperately poor
helps prevent the sort of crime that people want cops to help stop.
I post a link to that article reluctantly, because it symbolically
endorses racial bias by contrasting "white" and "Black". I disapprove
of this just as I would disapprove of as contrasting "White" and
"black". Ultimately I decided to post a link to this article despite
that because it makes an important point that I didn't have another
article to use for. (Don't suggest searching; that takes me a lot of
time.)
Cuba also has secret police that repress, even kill dissidents;
for instance, they killed Oswaldo Payá.
Cuba disrespects some vital human rights. But that is a separate issue
from its policing of nonpolitical crime.
*UN Calls for Temporary Basic Income for World's Poorest 2.7 Billion People as 'Lifeline' Amid Pandemic.*
Watch out: employers will soon pay you less and mistreat you more while expecting you to gush with gratitude that you have a job at all.
*'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour, say rights groups.*
Refugee Behrouz Boochani, formerly imprisoned by Papua New Guinea on Australia's behalf, is now free and a resident of New Zealand.
*Why [a considerable fraction of] a generation is choosing to be child-free.*
If technological society survives global heating disaster, our descendants 150 years from now (perhaps one or two billion of them) will decide how many children to make each year, then recruit parents to raise them. They will attract plenty of volunteers for that role by making other aspects of life easy and safe for them. This way they can maintain a stable population and assure everyone grows up loved.
*US push for global alliance against China hampered by years of 'America first'.*
Pompeo is correct when he says that ‘The free world must triumph over this new [Chinese] tyranny.’ Unfortunately, it is correct to say almost the same thing about the US. The world must triumph over Xi and Trump, but how? No national leader today stands for this cause.
Is it possible to design an enforceable treaty against space weapons?
I think it is possible, if the countries involved agree to certain kinds of design features to prohibit, then allow superficial inspection of each others' satellites before launch to verify they do not have the prohibited design features.
McGraw Hill, a textbook publisher, is being asked to capitalize the word "black".
I have no opinion about whether to capitalize "black" and "white" as long as we treat the two words alike.
The UN concept of "responsibility to protect" arguably applies when a government gratuitously leaves the population open to a sometimes-fatal epidemic, as the US government is doing now.
Copyright absurdity: In Japan, retweeting a photo is copyright infringement — because of technical details of how Twitter presents the photo. Twitter has been forced to identify the people who did the retweeting.
In the US, this would typically be fair use, but that defense does not exist in other countries.
A Philadelphia thug faces charges for pepper-spraying protesters.
Erosion by waves, surely boosted by sea level rise, is eating away at rich people's homes in Australia.
To force people to leave home with two hours' notice seems heartbreakingly cruel. Even rich people, who could afford to buy a replacement for everything, will lose things that are impossible to replace.
If people want to take action to prevent seas from claiming the homes of tens of millions of people, mostly not rich, they should demand a rapid reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.
Most states, and the US overall, are weak in resisting Covid-19 because they don't have enough testing capacity.
In California the shortage is disastrous.
It is easy to have enough testing capacity if you keep the number of cases down. But once it gets away from you, you have to run fast to catch up.
I've read that the US overall needs three times as much testing capacity as it has now. But try getting a Republican to understand that.
*'Victory for the Rule of Law': Federal Judge Curbs Powers of Trump's Secret Police in Portland.*
Senator Romney, one of the few Republicans that has refused to support the conman personally, is little better than other Republicans in regard to principles. He is pushing to establish a secret system to cut Social Security. Naturally, other Republicans agree,
The UK intelligence services were so focused on terrorism that they ignored Russian manipulation of UK elections.
I still think that election manipulation by the billionaires and businesses was a bigger harm. But they are both wrong.
The US, China and many other countries are using digital technology (including phones) to monitor some people's lives totally. They have no ways to communicate which are not monitored.
The article's term, "terror capitalism", is a bit remote for the enslaved Uighurs, and doesn't fit the imprisoned asylum seekers since they don't do any particular kind of work.
Russian thugs set up an "anarchist" group to recruit people for some sort of insurrection. Apparently the members didn't want to break laws as much as the thugs wished, so they had to torture them into confessing.
A UN monitor in Colombia was apparently murdered to silence him about something he had seen.
Activists have pressured a large insurance company to stop insuring the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs in Canada to the Pacific coast.
This will increase the pressure to stop mining tar sands, which is a very powerful planet-roasting practice.
As a general question, I wonder why the government of a major country like Canada buys insurance for pipelines, or for anything. Isn't it cheaper, overall, to pay the cost of repairs, if you have a big enough budget to do so?
The Justice Department's inspector general will investigate whether the wrecker's use of federal thugs to arrest people at random is illegal.
I worry that the wrecker will fire this inspector general, as he has fired several others.
*Factory farming interests, facing potential legal risks for allegedly failing to protect workers from coronavirus-related risks, are among the many business interests now backing efforts to obtain special immunity from legal liability.*
*Israeli [thugs] use water cannon at anti-Netanyahu protest.* The protest was about his handling of Covid-19.
*[The wrecker] is using federal agents as his 'goon squad', says ICE's ex-acting head.*
Each time the wrecker takes another step down the long path to fascism, he is testing whether we will make him stop.
Turkey will probably impose strict punitive censorship on social media.
That will probably lead to blocking access to the major platforms from Turkey.
Covid-19 is resurging in several European countries.
It seems to me that reopening bars cannot be allowed as long as Covid-19 is present in the territory.
Varoufakis: despite the advance in principle of the EU's decision to do joint borrowing, the same old vicious circle of austerity (imposed by a balanced budget) will punish all the Euro Zone countries, but Greece and Italy worst of all.
*Hungarian journalists resign en masse after claims of political interference.*
Zimbabwean reporter Hopewell Chin’ono faces unbelievable charges after publishing about corrupt officials.
(satire) *a new extended-release, maximum-strength chewable peach Wednesday which they claim possesses up to four times the power of normal stone fruit.*
(satire) *Encouraging Report Finds Polar Bears Evolving Aerospace Engineering Skills Necessary To Escape Overheating Planet.*
Oregon's senators propose legally prohibiting federal thugs from doing what they have been doing in Portland.
(satire) *Clumsy Stealth Drone Surveilling Taliban Base Flees After Accidentally Knocking Over Potted Plant.* After that, things only got worse.
In most American states, the millions of destitute people face the danger of shutting off their water, electricity and gas.
Organizing Americans to mobilize if the wrecker tries to seize power by denying the November election.
Policy recommendations to curb the spread of Covid-19 have to be smuggled out of the US government quietly.
*Nazi concentration camp guard convicted over 5,232 murders.*
*Cost of preventing next pandemic 'equal to just 2% of Covid-19 economic damage'.*
*Plastic waste entering oceans expected to triple in 20 years.*
It is far too much already. We need laws to restrict the manufacture of
plastic objects that cannot practically be recycled.
(satire) *Department of Homeland Security
issued a statement Tuesday stressing that they had merely snatched
protesters off the streets as part of a new surprise makeover series
created in tandem with Netflix.*
(satire) *Congress unveiled a new stimulus plan Tuesday that would
provide a national tip jar for all Americans making under $40,000 a
year.*
93 Democrats in Congress voted to transfer 10% of the proposed Pentagon budget
to real needs of Americans.
It was not enough to win, but it shows the advance of progressive politics.
*Israeli Soldiers Demolish Under-Construction Covid-19 Testing Center.*
US public opinion is shifting to condemn Israel's occupation of Palestine,
and the effect is that more elected officials are ready to criticize occupation
policies.
The US government jailed Adham Hassoun, rather than deporting him,
citing rumors that called him a terrorist and invoking the PAT RIOT
Act. The ACLU convinced a court to order him released to another
country, but that took 17 months to achieve.
The PAT RIOT Act was an injustice when first proposed
and it still is.
How to use kind communication when posting to urge people to wear masks.
Fiana Tulip wrote her mother's obituary to rebuke Republican officials
for the policies that caused her to catch Covid-19 and die.
The head of the DHS (Department of Harsh Suppression) says his
anonymous US thugs are arresting people "proactively"; that is,
without grounds to arrest them.
It's not just the bullshitter and his supporters that treat truth with
contempt. His reelection campaign does it, too.
Advances in climate modeling suggest that we are on track for between
2.5C and 4C of global heating.
I am skeptical that our models can be so accurate as to merit being
stated with a precision of .1 degree C.
*Shantytown residents [in Kenya] awarded compensation over deaths
and health effects from lead plant.*
A true victory would be if this compels the plant to invest in technology
to stop leaking lead into the environment.
3/4 of the new Covid-19 cases in the US are in states that were taken by
the conman in 2016.
Previously it spread mostly in Democratic states.
Maybe this accounts for his recent decision to encourage wearing
masks.
*NYPD Disappeared Black Lives Matter Protesters Into Detention For Days at a
Time. Lawmakers Want to End the Practice.*
In addition to attacking or arresting people violently and/or for no
valid reason, thugs can also violate people's rights after arresting them.
Whatsapp invites anyone you talk with through that program to save the
conversation on Apple servers — and that is not encrypted.
Facebook plans to make WhatsApp analyze patterns of communication to learn
about what people are doing and identify activities.
This could apply to any sort of activities, including those which are
crimes (but those which are truly bad, and those which should be
lawful, such as sharing copies of copyrighted works), and those which
are lawful and Facebook has no right to know about.
A Canadian court ruled that Canada must accept asylum applications
at the border with the US.
In other words, the Canada may not take for granted that the US
respects human rights.
I applaud Canada for recognizing this and acting accordingly,
but my heart cries that my country has sunk to the point of deserving it.
Patriotic Americans, let's push to make America exemplary.
More about the US government conduct which was the basis of the court's decision.
*Bolivia elections [in September] in doubt as police find bodies of
hundreds of Covid-19 victims.*
The Democratic Party has proposed a platform calling for ending the
US's forever wars.
*[The conman] orders undocumented immigrants excluded from key census count.*
This is a way to reduce federal funds and reduce legislative representation
for the cities where most Democrats (and most unauthorized immigrants) live.
This order is simply and directly unconstitutional.
*'We were beaten': 20 LGBTQ+ Ugandans file lawsuit over alleged torture
[when they were arrested].*
* Hundreds of mothers have attended demonstrations and stood as a human
barricade between protesters and federal officers.*
*Federal agents retreat to Portland base as protesters control streets.*
The protesters would be wise to stop attempts to set fire to or near
the courthouse. With a just government, we will still need that
courthouse. To burn it now would not be an act of uncontrollable
immediate passion, but rather an act of excess. And it is the one thing
that works against the protesters case for public support.
What if we had videos of the civilians killed by US drone attacks in
forever wars?
The cruelty and stubbornness of the US deportation thugs is
illustrated by their many-year quest to deport Rebecca Trimble to
Mexico because her parents didn't handle the paperwork right when
adopting as a newborn, 30 years ago.
Not only does she speak no Spanish and know no one in Mexico — the US
is famous for deporting people there under such circumstances —
but Mexico says her records are contradictory. She may not be
allowed to work in Mexico, except for a gang.
The case to accept her as American is so strong that the officials'
refusal to see it shows the cruelty in their hearts. They are not fit
to exercise the power they hold.
I wonder whether she could get asylum in Canada, now that Canada will
allow people to apply from the US.
2/3 of sharks living at the sea bottom, near the UK, have consumed plastic.
The danger of being bitten by a shark is tiny, but the danger of biting
shark meat could someday be significant. Of course, it will be the same
for biting any kind fish — if there are fish left to catch, after
the effects of global heating and ocean acidification.
Americans are getting evicted because they could not attend a court hearing carried out via Zoom.
Zoom is an injustice — it is a nonfree program, and using a nonfree
program is always an injustice (fsf.org/tedx). Furthermore, it
collects personal data, which means it is malware. Requiring people
to use Zoom, for any purpose, is an injustice.
Denying them their legal rights because they couldn't, or wouldn't, use Zoom is an injustice too.
I will fight for the right not to use Zoom.
*Playing video games doesn't lead to violent behavior, study shows.*
Methane is leaking from the ocean bottom near Antarctica.
Just after condemning the wrecker's sending thugs to grab people at
random off the streets of Portland, Congressional Democrats passed a
bill to continue funding for those thugs, with no restrictions against
doing what the wrecker is having them do.
Covid-19 is spreading so fast now in the US that testing capacity cannot
be increased fast enough. It is taking people a week to get test results.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/20/nation/backlog-covid-19-tests-imperils-push-contain-infections/?et_rid=1841749494&s_campaign=metroheadlines:newsletter
*Republicans are forcing Americans to return to dangerous workplaces.*
Some work is truly essential, and we need people to do it even though
it can't be entirely safe. However, we have a duty to make their work
as safe as we possibly can. If that has costs, the employers must pay
those costs. If they pass those costs on to us, it is our
responsibility to pay them.
(satire) *the United Arab Emirates successfully launched its first migrant workers into space Monday, part of a mission to build luxury resort colonies on the surface of Mars.*
*ACLU says [the bully] sent Michael Cohen back to prison 'for writing a book'.*
*World is legally obliged to pressure China on Uighurs, leading lawyers say.*
I think that pressure about Hong Kong is even more crucial than about
the Uighurs. The crushing of Hong Kong is still new, China can easily
relax its grip there, and the world has more leverage about it.
Ideally the world would put on so much pressure that China would
yield on both oppressions, but is such great success plausible?
*'White Collar Crime Pays': Decade After Dodd-Frank, Executives Still Lining Their Pockets.*
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the wrecker's secret police.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
Plutocratist politicians such as Bogus Johnson will try to return the
world to "normal", meaning on track to the same disaster and injustice
it was developing before.
Just as the energy in Portland's protests was fading, attacks by the
wrecker's federal thugs have brought them new vigor.
Renommé pour ses réponses autocontradictoires.
Australian "elite" troops committed atrocities in Afghanistan. Now
that the public knows this, the government is investigating and
considering punishing those responsible.
What a contrast with the way the US covers up such atrocities.
In the Vietnam War, the US did prosecute an atrocity, the My Lai
massacre.
The lack of systematic tracking of cases of Covid-19 and their outcomes is hampering US efforts to treat and stop the disease.
Sudan has put former dictator al-Bashir on trial for seizing power.
This is exciting because it is so rare that coup perps get prosecuted.
The violent anarchist federal agents that the wrecker has sent to
Portland (and soon to Chicago) could be part of a scheme to intimidate
voters in November.
Juan Cole thinks the wrecker wants to pretend that the federal thugs are trying
to stop violent protesters and frighten suburban white voters, but I think that videos of the lawless violence of the thugs
themselves, against people doing nothing to justify arrest, even
against reporters, will turn that effect around. Americans detested
the violence of local and state thugs on actually seeing it, and I
expect they will react the same way now.
Using WhatsApp requires you to run non-free software either in the form of
JavaScript code downloaded and run in the browser or through their app.
*Progressives can't leave criticism of China to the new cold warriors.*
Those whose mental priorities is US vs China will see every issue
as a matter of boosting one country and trashing the other. We that
stand for human rights will criticize either country when it deserves
criticism.
California is running out of medical personnel due to the high number
of cases of Covid-19.
Last February, the world had insufficient production of Covid-19
protection equipment. The British NHS could not get equipment because
the French manufacturer it had a contract with for emergency supplies
gave priority to another client.
Rather than fume over which client the manufacturer chose, and which
client couldn't get urgently needed masks, the crucial point is that
the world could not produce enough to meet the needs of a pandemic.
Each country needs to maintain a sufficient production capacity to
supply its own needs in a pandemic.
*Polar bears in much of Alaska and Russia will be in serious trouble by
2080.*
Global heating keeps surprising us by going faster than predicted.
I'd take that as an underestimate.
*Australia's environment in unsustainable state of decline, major
review finds.* The country's environmental laws need big changes.
This is no coincidence. The governments have been extractivist for
many years.
Two British Uber drivers have sued to see the algorithm Uber uses to assign
rides to drivers. They suspect Uber is manipulating them.
Ireland has released a contact-tracing app that people there have adopted.
The basic approach seems to be ethical. My tentative judgment is that
I would be willing to participate in a contact-tracing system which
worked that way, if I could do so without running a nonfree app or a
portable phone.
For instance, if it were a stand-alone device with no network
connection except bluetooth and doing nothing except this job, and I
could examine and understand all the data it gives me to send in, and
no software would ever be installed into it, I could treat it like my
microwave oven — meaning that I don't care how it works inside. I
could envision that the user gets the data out via USB, in a
well-documented trasparent format, then sends it to the health
department through a web site that does not send Javascript code to
the browser.
The design principle here should be to infringe people's privacy in
the minimal possible way that can succeed in stopping transmission of
Covid-19.
It is our duty to cooperate with that vital goal — just as it is our
duty to protect others by wearing masks — and society's duty to avoid
asking us to make any additional, avoidable sacrifices of privacy.
Systems that extract CO2 from the air should be used, but to avoid disaster we must also cut the real emissions.
Criticizing the "fetishisation of disagreement culture."
People with Covid-19 symptoms months after the initial infection describe them. Various symptoms come and go; scientists still don't know why, or whether the people will recover some day.
Instead of sending armed thugs who would face a handicap winning gang members' trust, Oakland sends an unarmed violence prevention worker.
Drifting fishing nets catch whales, which suffer terribly and then die.
The UK has approved an institutional reform to deal with the causes of the dangerous construction practice that led to a deadly fire in a tall apartment building.
The report that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill Americans is suspect; it may be bogus. The Taliban were fighting the forces in Afghanistan and did not require a special inducement to do that.
If the claim happens to be accurate, we should not exaggerate its significance. In the 1980s, the US did far more than pay Afghans bounties to kill Russians. It recruited them, trained them, and armed them, all under the rubric of "al-Qa'ida". In comparison to that, merely paying bounties would be a tiny matter.
Anyway, bounties are not a reason to keep the war going on and on. The US should pull out its forces and let the Taliban win. Their religious tyranny would deny important human rights, but that's not as bad as war forever.
In London, a thug put his knee on a person's neck for a moment and that was enough to get him suspended.
For all their faults in some areas, it seems that UK thug departments are serious about keeping the random violence of thugs in check with strict rules. Perhaps the UK does not enable thugs' unions to interfere with protecting the public, as they do in the US.
*China's first climate striker warned: give it up or you can't go to back to school.*
It is a rather mild punishment by Chinese standards, but insane nonetheless.
*Some on the left have lost sight of the fact that censorship only ever aids the powerful.*
The cancellationists think they are now so powerful that they can demonize and censor disagreement with them.
When the wrecker's federal agents grab people off the street, sometimes they do not carry out the constitutional requirements for an arrest. They do not tell their victims under what authority they have grabbed them. This is kidnapping.
The state of Oregon should open criminal cases against them. The president does not have the power to dismiss state charges.
Other federal agents have followed at least a sketch of the rules. This article gives additional info about protests in Portland and the conduct of the local thugs.
I think the protesters that tried to burn the thugs' building are making a strategic mistake, even though the thugs' own conduct may be worse than that.
The UK has fast and highly accurate antibody test to determine whether someone ever had Covid-19.
Interviews with insiders suggest that the wrecker convinced himself in April that Covid-19 would continue dying away despite reopening businesses, then clung to that false certainty in the teeth of the facts.
This article does not report a hint that he expected this to result in increasing spread of the disease. It says only that he was unwilling to recognize that when it did happen.
However, we have seen indications since then that he and his lieutenants are determined to do that. Just now he has told Republicans not to provide any more money for practical steps that can drive down the Covid-19 infection rate: testing and contact tracing. Nor for the CDC.
Another is his campaign to force states to reopen public schools. Now the wrecker has forbidden CDC officials from testifying to Congress about whether it would be wise to reopen public schools.
A note to Betsy S.
Betsy S met me at a lunch around 40 years ago. I am sure her recounting of her recollections is sincere, but she must have misunderstood the last thing I said to her. She said she didn't want an acquaintance with me. That no, on top of so many noes from others, impelled me to express despair; she seems to have misconstrued that as a demand.
Betsy S, I regret that this misunderstanding caused you distress. I never intended to demand anything of you. I only ever wished you well.
Body cam videos, shown to reporters and others, give a lot more information
about what happened to George Floyd.
Floyd's words and actions sound somewhat suspicious, but he never did
anything that justified any violence to him.
Samsung yielded to public pressure and said it would give no more financial
support to Adani coal mining.
Rejecting coal is a start, but other fossil fuel projects are deadly too.
Pompeo is pulling back official US support for all human rights except property rights and religion.
I guess he won't call it wrong if you break his neck with your knee, as long as his property is distributed as specified in his will.
Right-wing censorship pressure is extremely powerful in the US. More powerful
than left-wing pressure, in its own way.
One important difference is that right-wing censorship does not affect
many areas of life. Its greatest power is in the mainstream media, and
it has some power over candidates for office (but now many candidates
defy some aspects of it). For someone like me, who had only a
tangential presence in the mainstream media and didn't intend to run
for office, it had little effect.
Thus, we should not think of left-wing censorship pressure as "more of
the same" merely because right-wing censorship pressure is so strong
and harmful.
Antibiotic resistance is spreading into the bacteria found on a wide range of animal species.
*Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft are being sued over images used to train their facial recognition technologies.*
UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned the myths that deny global
injustices.
The bully has sent federal thugs to Portland, Oregon, to grab
protesters off the street with no specific grounds.
The right to protest peacefully is the foundation of the United States.
Perhaps the House of Representatives should re-establish the House Unamerican Activities
Committee to investigate these and other unamerican acts of trumpery.
Insisting on more efficient air conditioners, and soon, is a major part of curbing global heating.
Why do cops come to protests early?
If that is true, it means something is very wrong: this research
should not be secret. Scientific research calls for cooperation.
Florida's citizens voted to allow ex-cons to vote. The Supreme Court
sustained Florida's Republican legislature in imposing a payment
requirement that will cancel that for most of them.
Samsung bought part of the debt of the proposed Adani coal mine;
Australian activists call for boycott of the whole company.
You certainly should not accept Samsung's phones and TV's, since they
are tracking devices; that is because they contain nonfree software that talks over a network. However, their competitors are no better. They are all unacceptable.
The biased judge helping Chevron destroy attorney Steve Donziger
put a Chevron-linked law firm in charge of prosecuting him on bogus charges.
Shamima Begum, a British citizen who went to Syria and joined PISSI,
has won in court the right to return to the UK and challenge the decision
to cancel her citizenship and exile her.
Her participation in a terrorist organization may well justify
criminal charges and punishment — if convicted in a fair trial. But
it is wrong to use exile as a punishment, and wrong to punish people
in any fashion without a fair trial.
More about the issue.
She is being held prisoner by the Kurds of Rojava, but they may have
to transfer her (and other British PISSI supporters) to Assad or Iraq
if they can't return to the UK soon.
AOC calls for New York State to pass a new tax on billionaires' income to bail out poor people.
Senator Schumer, a plutocratist Democrat, wants to eliminate a
progressive feature of the US income tax code.
The IMF is lending poor countries money "to deal with Covid-19" but actually
they are using it to pay interest on private loans.
Those countries' debts will swallow their whole economies, turning their rising
populations into debt slaves, unless we wipe out that debt.
(satire) *Melania Trump Figures It’s Time To Sit Barron Down And Tell
Him He Was Bred For His Organs.*
By analyzing skeletons from ancient Egypt, archaeologists have discovered that
the Hyksos, a group that ruled Egypt for a century, consisted of people
who had arrived from various places in the Near East, over a period of time.
We could do similar studies on the territory of the United States if
it were not for the NAGPRA law, which required reburying the
collections of skeletons.
A corpse can serve two good purposes: organ transplantation and
science. It is a shame to waste it. At least I have made sure — or
as sure as is possible — that my corpse won't be wasted after I die.
200 Democratic Convention delegates called for cutting aid to Israel if it
goes ahead with Netanyahu's intention to annex part of Palestine.
People have pointed out that Israel's occupation policies are in many
ways similar to annexation. Nonetheless, formal annexation would be a
challenge to the world: either break with Israel now or permanently
legitimize those policies. It would be a more serious violation of
the laws of war than the ones Israel already commits.
I don't think those 200 are a majority, but they are enough to be
significant.
A tanker full of oil has been sitting near Hodeida since 2015, and has decayed
to the point where it can't be repaired and will surely spill its cargo.
That will poison life in the Red Sea, perhaps the whole of it.
The sensible thing to do would be to pump the oil into other ships and
take it away. But the Houthis will not let the UN try.
What, I wonder, is their motive; what do they demand? Surely they
don't want to poison the Red Sea — they live near it and must depend
on fishing in it.
US citizens: Join Reporters Without Borders in calling on the
UK not to extradite Julian Assange.
I could sign this, and I can post this, because I discovered recently
that Reporters Without Borders changed its web site and it now works
to sign that organization's petitions without running nonfree
JavaScript code. I thank Reporters Without Borders for making this
work.
There are several other organizations whose causes I support (at least
usually), but whose petitions I cannot sign because they require
nonfree JavaScript code: afsc.org, amazonwatch.org, change.org, coworker.org, defenders.org, democracyforamerica.com, earthjustice.org, freepress.net, moveon.org, pen.org, populationconnectionaction.org, publiccitizen.org, ran.org, splcenter.org, sumofus.org.
In addition, freedomunited.org appears to succeed but sends no
confirmation, so I think it ignores signatures.
If you can convince any of those organizations to fix their sites so
people can sign without running Javascript code, I would appreciate it,
and it would help the free software cause too.
Or, alternatively, if you can publish a free Firefox extension that
substitutes for the nonfree Javascript code which LibreJS blocks, that
too would make signing possible.
The Republicans pivoted towards a policy of "reopen business fast" in the same week when it became news that Covid-19 was dis proportionally killing minority racial groups. Was this just a coincidence? Is it a coincidence also that Georgia's governor, Kemp, is stopping Atlanta from requiring face masks?
Reportedly Republicans want to punish school systems that don't physically reopen.
*A fifth of Brazilian soy in Europe is result of deforestation.*
Tory cuts to the NHS have reduced it to the point where people die who
in the past it could have saved.
The firm initial response to Covid-19 in many countries (not the US or
Brazil) shows what it means to recognize a grave danger. No country
has treated global heating as a grave danger.
An EU court decision requires reconsideration of each activity that
sends people's personal data to the US.
*Russian state-sponsored [crackers] target Covid-19 vaccine researchers
Please do not call them "hackers" — that insults us hackers.
*Governments’ dietary guidelines are harming the planet, study finds.*
Berkeley, California, will replace armed thugs with civilians for
certain jobs, including enforcing traffic laws.
This can do good in three ways: (1) less tendency to escalate, (2) no chance
of killing the motorist, and (3) the new agency could start off without
the heritage of racism that thug departments in the US generally have.
*The White House is launching a smear campaign against Dr. Fauci for
contradicting [the saboteur in chief].*
He is trying to discredit Dr Fauci through every possible channel,
for the offense of telling us the truth.
US thugs are flying cameras over protests, and could use this for facial
recognition to identify and repress protesters.
15 US states agreed to ban sale of new fossil fuel trucks by 2045.
It's a step in the right direction, but even if the whole world
adopted that, it would be inadequate. The deadline ought to be 2030.
*Evictions Aren’t Inevitable When Tenants Fight Back.*
FAIR: mainstream media often exaggerate what authority the conman really has. Many of his announcements pretend to make sweeping changes in laws that he cannot actually make.
The pertinent inspector general approved a gross conflict of interest by the conman's head of coronavirus task force.
I concur in suspecting that the conman's persistent bulling of inspectors general has intimidated him to back down from his responsibilities. That was surely the intention.
The conman and his family have sunk to promoting companies in exchange for political support.
Who now would dream of making him comply with official ethics rules?
Those rules depended for their force on a system in which corruption was condemned by voters and would terminate a political career. The conman has ripped that up, and that could be the most fundamental damage he has done.
The wrecker has ordered hospitals to stop sending Covid-19 statistics to the CDC and send them instead to a new agency which will keep them secret.
Suggesting that hospitals defy this order.
It would be good if all hospitals did that, but would the CDC accept those data? Even if it did, that doesn't fix this artificial problem. If only some hospitals send data there so, that won't add up to valid statistics about the whole US, or even entire states and cities.
State governments dominated by wreckers are already trying to cover up the extent of spread of Covid-19, and this policy will help them cover up more.
Biden's new climate plan shows that public activism can push him towards doing more for climate defense. We need to push him a lot farther.
We should support the Chomsky et al letter for justice and open debate regardless of disagreeing with some of the people who signed it.
In other words, if you won't sign a letter whose points you agree with, simply because among the 150 other signatories are a few people that you disagree with passionately on some other specific political questions, you're practicing and fueling the harmful divisive approach of cancellation.
I excoriated J. K. Rowling's unjust lawsuit against readers in 2005,
and called for a boycott of Harry Potter in response. She has not apologized so I continue the boycott. Please do not use Harry Potter books or movies (or fan goods) in a way that will give her income.
Nonetheless I am glad that she signed this letter, because her signature will support freedom of speech. I would gladly have signed my name right after hers, despite my disagreement with her on the other issue.
The US gave Russia information about Chechen and Russian Muslim dissidents living in Europe. Russia used this to kill some of them.
The supposed reason for the cooperation was for Russia to kill Islamist exiles fighting in Syria.
An undercover UK thug infiltrating the animal rights movement entrapped an activist by pressuring him into buying a shotgun. The activist spent years in prison after other thugs "found" it.
The thug denies this, but he is not only an admitted thug, he is also an admitted liar. He is not a credible witness.
Microsoft got a lot of attention by temporarily ceasing to offer certain face recognition services to government agencies, but it still provides lots of support to US thug departments.
*US Corporations a Driving Force Behind 'Unprecedented Wave' of Global Land Privatization.*
Some scientists predict that nearly all countries will have decreasing
populations by the end of this century, due to falling birth rates.
This is very good news, as it will reduce the climate disaster
(thought it will nonetheless be very bad).
However, they predict a population explosion for sub-Saharan Africa
which will be caught in a trap of poverty and population growth.
While I am not a demographer, I doubt that Nigeria could accommodate
800 million people without disaster, and the climate disaster will
exacerbate that. We need to help sub-Saharan Africa stabilize its
population long before that point.
Iran has sentenced three protesters to death after reportedly torturing them
into false confessions to various crimes.
They fled to Turkey, which sent them back to Iran.
Iran's government is violently unjust to people in Iran,
but it does not lean to aggression internationally.
The US should be able to make peace with Iran.
*Google faces lawsuit over tracking in apps even when users opted out.*
*Egypt asks Spain to extradite dissident [who is also a whistleblower]
who sparked protests.*
Egypt accuses him of tax fraud, but it is hard to trust that evidence
from the Egyptian state is honest.
Some doctors in Egypt have been jailed for complaining that they don't
have PPE.
Finally, a concrete case of voter fraud occurs. The accused is a
Republican congresscritter.
It is standard Republican practice to accuse others of the wrongs that
they are familiar with by personal experience.
The recent fiery Siberian heat wave was next to impossible without
global heating. We have reached the point where all uncertainty
disappears.
The saboteur regime has ordered reinterpretation of the National
Environmental Policy Act, gutting the protection of cities and
wildernesses against absurdly damaging projects.
Enslavement of migrants in the UK is due to the Tories intentional harshness
to unauthorized immigrants.
*Car tires are major source of ocean microplastics.*
* Habitat degradation inflicts far greater harm on caribou populations
than wolves [do], say researchers.*
Glen Greenwald: *How "Cancel Culture" Repeatedly Emerged in My Attempt
to Make a Film About Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova.*
In the area of sports, the dispute about trans women is a consequence
of the artificial division of athletes into categories based on sex.
If instead each athlete gets a personal handicap, they could all be in
the same category, with the handicap of each athlete adjusted to null
out per inherent bodily advantage.
A series of absurdities in Assange's extradition hearing.
The indictment against Assange was replaced, but the hearing is
looking at the old indictment and ignoring the new one.
As fracking companies go bankrupt, they leave wells leaking methane
and other dangerous substances, and there are no plans to clean them
up.
If this were the only bad thing about fracking, one possible solution
in principle would be to require the company to post a bond to clean
up the well, before starting it. However, as reported in Collapse, by
Jared Diamond, this system has problems in practice when dealing with
abandoned coal mines in Montana.
Anyway, fracking has other big problems (globally, CO2 from burning
the gas, and locally,
pollution of water sources) and it is taking us to frack and fruin.
Fracking should be entirely forbidden.
*Livestock farming and fossil fuels could drive 4C global heat rise.*
Plutocratists funded pressure campaigns to reopen US businesses quickly.
*Sudan is to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), cancel prohibitions against religious conversion from [102]Islam and permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol in a decisive break with almost four decades of hardline Islamist policies, its justice minister has said.*
Hooray for this rejection of imposed religion.
*Increase in invasive species poses dramatic threat to biodiversity.*
The bully did something right, for a change: he cancelled Hong Kong's special economic privileges; it will get the same treatment as China.
Impeding people with Hong Kong passports from visiting the US may be a bad step, since some of them would come in order to apply for asylum. It might not be safe for them to do so while in Hong Kong.
Questioning the long-standing practice of operating to "normalize" intersex babies.
Which sorts of situations are likely to cause irreversible psychological harm is socially constructed, so it can change. It's possible that 70 years ago growing up intersex was a disaster, because it was taboo and its discovery was likely to trigger a horrible response. Nowadays, with the relaxation of imposed gender roles, maybe nowadays it is not a big deal — in some parts of the world.
Maskless drunken foreign tourists in Spain threaten to reboost Covid-19.
These reckless jerks should not get a second chance. I encourage Spain to hold them in quarantine until the opportunity to deport them.
The new censorship regime in Hong Kong is intentionally vague to terrify journalists.
US citizens: call on American Airlines to stop booking full flights during the pandemic.
*Melbourne lockdown key to getting Covid-19 contact tracing to manageable
level, expert says.*
The US is far beyond the level at which contact tracing is feasible.
The only way to reach that level is with firm and strong measures to
keep people apart.
One state in Australia is ordering immediate collection of identity data
for everyone that stays in a hotel.
The stated purpose, contact tracing for Covid-19, is a legitimate one.
But this surveillance goes far beyond what the purpose requires, and that
makes it an injustice.
Sad to say, this unjust level of surveillance has existed for decades
in many countries. In those countries that gives me one additional reason
to try to avoid hotels.
European countries want a global tax system on digital services,
but the conman's men are dead set against it.
The personal data that WhatsApp collects is also available to Facebook.
It is easy for fast talkers to get rich now. They get a government
contract to sell masks at a high price, then buy them on the open
market.
Hospitals can't fix broken ventilators (and other medical equipment)
because it has proprietary software to implement internal DRM.
US thugs don't have to pay for military equipment and arms, but the
manufacturers make a lot of money from selling them.
Thug departments are buying personal data that crackers steal from web
sites. This is data that they would normally have to get a warrant to collect.
The result is to undermine everyone's protection against unjustified
government snooping.
WHO: give up on the idea of a "return to the old normal"; the world needs strong anti-transmission measures or Covid-19 will keep spreading.
(satire) *… officials from the Trump administration reportedly
planted 137,000 corpses in Anthony Fauci’s bed Monday to frame him for
the country’s coronavirus deaths.*
(satire) before boiling a lobster, use this handy sedation kit.
I once came across a suggestion: before boiling a lobster, put it on trial
for cannibalism (lobsters eagerly eat baby lobsters) and sentence it to death.
When it comes to human criminals, I oppose the death penalty
unconditionally, but cannibal lobsters are a different issue.
AIPAC's power is diminishing; it can no longer force members of Congress
to endorse Israel's occupation policies.
Analyzing the insufficiencies in the Sanders-Biden climate plan.
I disagree with that analysis in regard to carbon taxes.
If the tax rate increases fast, and if the tax is on actual emissions
and not some weasely "net emissions", it could impose powerful pressure
to cut down use.
Boeing fired an executive for an essay he published in 1987. Some
employee complained that the essay made per feel "unsafe" even though
he had retracted it long before. Insanely, the company validated that
complaint.
Golightly's 1987 essay represented patriarchal thinking which never
made sense to me. For some reason, I never picked up the usual sexist
habits of judging people's behavior; I took for granted that right and
wrong were the same for females as for males.
I have also never understood the "male bonding" that the essay refers
to. No such thing happens with me. (Perhaps this is why I don't care
about team sports.) If cohesion of a military unit depends on that,
men like me should be rejected from the military.
These days I admire Kurdish and Yazidi women fighters, as well their
male comrades, because they are fighting against gruesome, hellish
tyranny: PISSI. And sometimes against dictators that attack them
(Assad, Erdoğan).
However, when it comes to the US, I think American women, and American
men, should be in combat a lot less than they are now. We need to end
America's forever wars, most of which had no justification even at the
outset.
Glenn Greenwald leads a discussion about the moral and practical issue
of violence in protests.
Here is what I think. It may be inevitable that people who are
long-oppressed and then suddenly angered by violence break out in
violence. But it is crucial for their movement to organize itself to
reject that violence, so that repressive forces can't use that
violence to smear the cause and repress the protests.
In case the black bloc shows up, protesters should train in advance to
insist it is not welcome and not part of their protest. Besides,
surely some of the black bloc are provocateurs, perhaps thugs
without uniform, and their aim is to harm the cause.
Australia may consider modifying its law that authorizes it to
secretly menace any software developer in the world with punishment
for refusing to insert a backdoor on Australia's command.
The decision not to menace employees individually would remove one of the
many menacing aspects of this law.
Nonetheless every free software contributor would still be a target.
For this reason, I urge all free software developers to stay away from
Australia.
A country willing to prosecute a whistleblower secretly and conceal his name
cannot be trusted to follow any norms of decency.
Plutocratist Democrat Duckworth joined with a Republican to propose to pressure cities to sell off their water systems. The people would pay various kinds of price for that year after year.
Facebook's plan for a global digital currency and payment system would certainly expose people to surveillance of their purchases, just like other non-cash payment systems. However, if it achieves the size that Facebook hopes for, it could be dangerous in other ways.
"Buyer, beware" is not an adequate response to systems backed by giant
corporations that pressure people to use them.
Our system for anonymous payments, GNU Taler, is being integrated into
the Euro banking system and aims for official approval for general use. Recently developers made the first transfer from one real bank account to another real bank account, as part of a test.
A Catalan elected official accuses the Spanish state of inserting the spyware that was found in his phone.
*Outcry from environmentalists as Brazil fires official monitoring deforestation.*
*Experts say at worst 120,000 coronavirus patients could die in NHS hospitals during winter*, if the UK does not take action to avoid a second wave.
Requiring plain packaging for cigarette packs in the UK had a positive effect:
smoking was already declining, but it has declined faster after that law.
*Israeli [thugs] tear down anti-Netanyahu protest camp*.
Last week the bullshitter reached a total of 20,000 false or
misleading statements while in office.
A Texan, age 30, went to a "Covid party" thinking that the virus was a joke. Perse repented that decision on per deathbed.
Internal CDC documents warn that reopening US schools would dangerously spread coronavirus.
Why hasn't the CDC published this? I would guess that the saboteur in chief blocked it somehow.
Massachusetts's strong measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 enabled its hospitals to cope with all the seriously ill patients.
A new law would empower Do-dirty's thugs to call dissidents "terrorists" and jail them for a long time.
*Hunger could kill millions more than Covid-19, warns Oxfam.*
When prisoners in US immigration prisons catch Covid-19, the US does
not give them medical care. It deports them to their countries of
origin, which can't give them any medical care, where they can either
spread the disease or die or both.
*Humanity on Track to Soon Hit 1.5ºC Paris Accord Limit as Atmospheric CO2 Nears Level Not Seen in 15 Million Years.*
Sanders wants the US to do more to stop the rich from evading their taxes.
*Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests.*
More precisely, the study finds that antibodies to Covid-19 tend to
disappear after some months. Other kinds of immune response may last
longer. We do not know whether people will become vulnerable to
reinfection 3, 6 or 12 months after recovering from Covid-19.
This is additional reason why we should try hard to cut off
transmission and quickly — the approach used by East Asian countries
rather than the approach of the numskull.
US citizens: call on Congress to block price gouging for Covid-19 treatment.
China believes it is so powerful now that all other countries must submit to
its economic colonization. They must choose between kowtowing and trade war.
Given that choice, other countries must choose trade war, and they must hit
hard enough to make China back down. This does not have to be done in a
hostile fashion; there is no harm letting China save face.
A study from Sweden shows that people's wealth is correlated strongly
with the wealth of the families they are brought up in — more so than
with their biological parents.
*Making a beeline: wildflower paths across UK could save [rare bee] species.*
More reports that Israel sabotaged Iranian nuclear and missile
development facilities.
This, together with US hostility, is helping right-wing extremists take power in Iran.
Washington DC will allow prisoners to vote.
Prisoners will be able to vote for officials that will release them —
and if the prisoners are so numerous that this has a big effect on the outcome,
I think it will be fair.
Iran reported that the firing of a missile which destroyed Ukraine
Airlines 752 on errors by the missile launching crew, including violating
the rule not to fire without specific approval.
Don't confuse the "wet markets" of China, which sell live wild animals,
with the stores in the US that sell live farmed chickens.
The bullshitter has NOAA downplaying the decreasing numbers of North
Atlantic right whales.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear the case
of people kidnapped and tortured by the US.
Please don't use the whitewashing term "rendition" to refer to the practice
of handing prisoners over to be tortured.
Ilhan Omar Demands Pentagon Acknowledge, Compensate US Drone Strike Victims
'Illegally Killed' in Somalia.
The first step, for the US, is to stop denying and hiding the killing
of civilians.
*Facebook agreed to censor posts after Vietnam slowed traffic.*
Voting for a candidate that opposes Medicare for All is voting for
avoidable suffering and death.
The bullshitter has put Dr Fauci in the doghouse and no longer meets
with him.
*Fauci Admits Penchant for Facts About Covid-19 Threat Explains Why He's Not
on TV So Much Anymore.*
Asadullah Haroon, prisoner in Guantanamo, explains his hunger strike — it is the last thing left to him.
Australia plans a secret trial against Witness K for exposing Australia's commercial spying on East Timor. Witness K's lawyer is being prosecuted too.
This makes Australia the moral equivalent of a gangster that tries to assassinate the witnesses to his crimes.
Ironically, this all concerns the question which country will get to extract oil from which parts of the sea between the two countries. The right answer is obvious: "Neither country can touch that oil — keep it in the ground!"
UN special rapporteur: the reported achievement of reducing extreme poverty masks a misleading failure to lift people out of poverty in most of the world.
What we lose when we lose an office we work in.
I lost this in two stages, When the mob vilified me in September, I lost my own office. Then in March I found myself with nowhere to go, ever, at all.
California is suffering from even faster spread of Covid-19 than in the spring, and its testing capacity is overwhelmed.
The state's response is small, and I doubt it will stop the disease from spreading further.
It is a positive step to release 8,000 prisoners, but taking 7 weeks to do that will spoil the intended effect. Thousands of them could catch Covid-19 in prison before they are released.
Victoria, a state in Australia, will set up a truth and justice commission to examine and recognize wrongs against Aboriginal people.
A thug killed Andres Guardado in Los Angeles by shooting him five times in the back. Then the sheriff's department tried to keep this secret.
With no video to substantiate the thugs' story, we cannot assume it is true.
Melbourne's support for the people quarantined in high-rise housing project was chaotic, as different agencies with their own rules, and sometimes hypercaution, got in each others' way. It took three days to work out how to give people the various things that they needed, including food, medicine and diapers.
The government had not thought of trying to plan how to deal with such a situation.
The corrupter has released his crony Roger Stone from prison.
A description of his case.
We need a constitutional amendment to limit the president's power to pardon convicts whose crimes were related to the president. The authors of the constitution may have supposed no president would sink so low.
*Holding US Government to Its Treaty Promises 'For Once,' Supreme Court Rules Nearly Half of Oklahoma Still Native American Territory.*
A new assessment of endangered species studied 132,000 species and found 1/4 of them to be in danger.
If Israel claims to annex parts of Palestine, it will probably effectively confiscate large tracts of land from Palestinians, as it has done in the areas near Jerusalem that Israel claimed to annex decades ago.
Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, says that Netanyahu's corruption is turning Israel into a fascist state, with repression of protest and mass surveillance thrown in.
A string of fires and explosions in Iran could indicate that Israel is trying to push Iran into a war while the bully is still president.
(satire) *sources confirmed Thursday that 17-year-old Kevin Albright, a local teenager who died of coronavirus, probably had undiagnosed old age.*
Most US states are not testing enough people for Covid-19 to have a chance of holding back the increase of cases. Overall, the US is doing less than half of the rate of tests that would require.
The figure "39%" represents a degree of precision that makes no sense here. We can only estimate the rate of testing required; we don't know enough to state it within a precision of 1 in 100. I think that "40%" would still be excess precision. What we really know is probably only "less than half the necessary rate but more than a quarter."
(satire) *&hellp; consumer trends researchers confirmed … that teens are flocking to a new app where they just enter their own personal data into a form.*
US citizens: call on the Philippines to drop charges against
journalists including Maria Ressa, and stop attacking independent media.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Weiser of Colorado to prosecute
the thugs that killed Elijah McClain.
The US government has stopped printing green cards. Authorized US
residents receive no way to prove that they are such, which means they
will suffer various sorts of harsh treatment that was designed for
unauthorized immigrants.
*From Fossil Fuel Companies to Schools, 350+ Facilities Stopped Tracking Water Pollution Under EPA's Temporary Pandemic Policy.*
*'No Militarists' or 'Corporate Goons': Progressives Urge Biden to Appoint
Foreign Policy Team That Rejects Status Quo of Endless War.*
The criteria for personnel are good, and the goals are good to first
order. However, in regard to promoting treaties for international
cooperation, we must not forget one kind of harmful treaty that Obama
promoted, and I think Biden would too: business-supremacy treaties such as the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
and NAFTA. The new, replacement NAFTA is less bad than the original
one, but bad nonetheless.
Rejecting neoclassical economics, which has many flaws, leads to an idea
for how to construct an economy that avoids coming collapses.
I disagree, though, with the idea of treating the economy as an "ecosystem"
because that implies it evolves rather than being constructed and planned.
You could say that our problem is that neoclassical economics taught
us to make the mistake of allowing that.
The actions that (according to the conman) would make America "great"
have in fact made it weak and isolated.
This includes ever-increasing military spending.
A statue of Frederick Douglass was torn down secretly, presumably by
white supremacists.
In my view, Frederick Douglass deserves a statue and Robert E Lee does
not. But there are advantages to making these decisions through a
democratic process, rather than letting might make right.
Malaysia is threatening to prosecute Al Jazeera journalists for publishing something that makes the government look bad.
Spain closed half its remaining coal-powered generators on June 30
and plans to close the rest.
California is considering setting up a public bank, which would
enable state entities and others to store their savings while
supporting the public rather than a private company.
Italy is pushing to finish the system of movable barriers intended to
protect Venice from especially high tides.
Such a system can be effective for a time, but it always has an inherent limit
for the height of water it can block. As sea level keeps rising, it will start
to exceed that limit. Eventually it will wash over the barriers.
How high is that, and when is it likely to occur?
Bahrain is on the verge of executing two democracy advocates after
reportedly false confessions.
As I recall, the kings of Bahrain are Sunnis but the majority of Bahrainis are
Shi'ites. In 2011 they protested for democracy, but Bahrain brought in
troops from a nearby Arab country (UAE?) to crush the protests.
The Biden-Sanders unity panels won Biden's assent to a number of
progressive proposals, but not Medicare for All.
The climate defense proposals go beyond what Congress has considered,
but the use of the term "net zero" suggest they are based on a weak
foundation.
The bullshitter started a commission to investigate supposed voter
fraud in the US. (Answer: there isn't any.)
Matthew Dunlap, a member of the commission, discovered he was there
only to make it look honest — the commission refused to show him the
supposed evidence it was looking at, and the staff were working on a
report which the supposed members were not told about.
He sued, got a copy, and found the staff had no evidence to go on.
As has been reported many times before, there is no evidence of any
significant level of fraudulent voting in the US. The only fraud that
really happens is when Republicans disenfranchise citizens that are
legally entitled to vote.
The EU talks about protecting pollinating insect species from pesticides, but its policies are inadequate because of loopholes and exceptions.
Erdoğan plans to convert Justinian's Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.
*[The bullshitter] is a hypocrite on China [as he generally is] — but China deserves to be condemned.*
The fall in CO2 emissions caused by Covid-19 is far less than what is needed to avoid global heating disaster. Even if the observed decrease were repeated annually, it would be far from sufficient.
Delaying a massive switch to renewable energy by one year would more than cancel it out.
Several US states are closing some sorts of businesses to reduce transmission of Covid-19.
It is foolish to apply anti-transmission measures by baby steps. That will take a long time to make transmission taper off. States should instead take a big step which is surely enough to drive R well under 1.
*Wildlife traffickers target lion, jaguar and leopard body parts as tiger substitutes.*
They should try using cow parts or domestic cat parts. Those animals are not endangered, and their parts can be obtained easily and lawfully.
Starr County officials were licking Covid-19 until the governor of Texas imposed reopening everywhere in the state.
The Philippines have closed the biggest radio and TV broadcaster in the country as punishment for not running Do-dirty's campaign ads.
The Center for Body Donations in Paris neglected many donated corpses and allowed them to be eaten by rats.
Why do people make such a fuss about what will happen to their dead bodies? If those corpses would have been useful to science, it was a sad loss to science that they were instead wasted on feeding rats. A wasteful failure, but not a heinous crime. It can't have any effect on the people whose bodies they formerly were. Those people are dead.
Someday one of those bodies might be mine, since I have offered my future dead body to research. (That is the most useful thing I can think of to do with it.) My opinion about wasting those donations is the same regardless of whether the body in question is mine or another's.
Republicans in Wisconsin have seized legislative power permanently despite being opposed by a majority of the state's voters.
(satire) *Corrupt Policeman Worried About Working With Partner Who Has Never Once Taken Bribe.*
The conman's rally in Tulsa on June 20 only half filled the arena, but it achieved a substantial success in spreading Covid-19.
Fossil fuel companies are borrowing money to pretend they are financially stable. Lending to them only helps them continue the pretense longer.
*Police across England and Wales face an inquiry to establish whether they racially discriminate against ethnic minorities in their use of force and stop and search.*
The antiwar movement is booming among US military veterans and current soldiers.
A strange confrontation between three groups of armed protesters: blacks, white supremacists, and white anti-supremacists.
What is clear is that guns are a significant cause of death in the US, and more guns will mean more deaths per week, even fighting does not break out.
*Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests With Help From Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr.*
*Banks and pension funds among investors bankrolling meat and dairy.*
*If I don’t think the world will be livable in the future, how can I bring a child into it?*
I found singular use of "they" especially confusing in that article.
Several individual right-wing terrorists have attacked Black Lives Matter protests with cars and trucks.
The Supreme Court ruled that New York State is allowed to subpoena the conman's tax returns.
They might eventually provide evidence of some sort of fraud which could be used to prosecute him, but I don't expect them to have great political impact, because it has taken too long (almost four years).
In 2016, he chose his tax returns as an example to show contempt for our political system. When that didn't cause Republicans to reject him, he moved on to spit on other things far more important. This year he has fired inspectors general, turned environmental regulations and financial regulations into nonsense, packed the US courts with right-wing extremists, and ordered soldiers to attack peaceful protesters. Will showing we got his tax returns disappoint his supporters? I doubt it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to support Essential Workers Bill of Rights.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Congressional Inherent Contempt Power Act.
Here is an explanation of that bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
Spending military funds through contractors makes the work they pay
for both more expensive and less accountable.
The history of US "robber barons" from the 19th century to the 21st,
and how they increasingly rob the non-rich.
*Teachers Say Rush to Reopen Schools Without Covid-19 Safety Plan Shows Trump
and DeVos 'Do Not Care About Students'.*
*Law Firms Are Recruiting Corporations to Attack COVID-19 Policies in ISDS
"Corporate Courts."
The political prisoners murdered at Stalin's orders were buried in
mass graves. Yuri Dmitriev, who discovered one of them, has been jailed based on extremely strained accusations of "child pornography".
On the freedom that comes from being childfree.
Western universities must limit their involvement with China and
dependence on funds from China, so that they don't fear a cutoff of
those funds.
China will surely try to make universities compete for most subservient.
*Biden Defends Undying Allegiance to For-Profit Healthcare During Interview
With Dying Medicare for All Advocate Ady Barkan.*
The Supreme Court extended the damage done by giving human rights to
inhuman corporations, by saying they have the right, on account of
their religion, to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees.
One more reason to enact Medicare for All
and disconnect the medical system from employment.
We also need to amend the constitution to reject the idea that corporations
are entitled to the rights of humans.
Please phone your congresscritter and say so.
A corporation once begged me to allow it get down on its knees and pray.
Except it wasn't "pray", it was "prey".
*New Report Finds Economic Benefits of Protecting 30% of Planet's Land and
Ocean Outweigh the Costs 5-to-1.*
(satire) *Adreese Fowler admitted
Wednesday that he just couldn’t seem to shake the creeping sensation
that someone other than the government, his employer, and advertisers
was watching him.*
US citizens: call on Congress to ban use of tear gases in the US.
A violent right-wing anarchist extremist movement uses the term
"boogaloo" to refer to a proposed civil war in the US.
The lying right-wing extremists in power in the US government say that
"boogaloo" is not right-wing, but that is their usual big lie tactic.
The difference between those violent right-wing anarchists and the
right-wing anarchist Antisocialist Party
(which calls itself
"Libertarian") is a matter of degree. Since there is a spectrum of
views among the supporters of "boogaloo" also, it should not surprise
us that the Antisocialist presidential candidate looked for support
among them.
Nonetheless, the two do disagree. "Boogaloo" right-wing anarchist
extremists would like to destroy the state, which would allow anyone
to plunder anyone else, whereas the right-wing extremists in power
want to use the state to plunder everyone else.
Lost in all this is the purpose of a democratic state: to restrain the
rich from plundering everyone else and give everyone a decent life
with human rights.
The US made a pretty good effort at this, and in the 1960s tried
specially to include minorities.
Only half-hearted vestiges of that effort remain today after 40 years
of increasing plutocratist dooH niboR, but Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and support for housing
and education still do considerable good for non-wealthy Americans.
They are insufficient to overcome all the harm the US government
encourages big business to do, but without them things would be much
worse. That's why the right-wing extremists now in power are rushing
to sabotage them as much as they can.
The Federal Reserve has refused to tell the public the facts about
giving "bailout" money to fossil fuel companies.
*A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.*
I endorse this letter wholeheartedly.
Belgium is confronting its colonial past in the Congo.
*'Our spirit will never be crushed': Hong Kong activists vow to keep fighting
despite new laws.*
The tyrant of Chechnya is assassinating exiled Chechen dissidents in Europe.
Conservationists say the UK must cut insecticide use by 50% as the EU
is planning to do.
In the US, we used far less insecticide a few decades ago when farmers used
a system called integrated pest management.
Protesters in Darfur report that armed gangs attack people and the
governor does nothing to stop it. They want the governor replaced.
*Mexico border towns try to stop Americans crossing amid Covid-19 fears.*
It seems rational to me. If the US has a higher infection rate than
Mexico, Mexico should limit entry. However, ISTR that Covid-19
is ballooning in Mexico.
A hospital in London has closed because of an outbreak of Covid-19
among the staff.
The UK made good progress in curbing Covid-19 after Bogus Johnson stopped
obstructing measures to achieve that. But since relaxing its measures,
Covid-19 seems to be getting out of hand again.
Spreading rock dust on farms could absorb large amounts of CO2 out of
the air, while improving the soil.
We still need to eliminate most of our CO2 emissions, but using this
technique as well could enough to go beyond that and start
decarbonizing the atmosphere.
Ultimately, the conman gave millions of dollars in PPP loans to big
businesses that didn't need help, while many small businesses got
small amounts — even as small as one dollar.
The saboteur has given millions in bailout loans to companies with
unpaid fines.
The fines are for environmental and workplace safety violations.
We know that saboteur seeks to encourage those violations.
*Kanye West's company granted millions in coronavirus stimulus.*
Kanye really still show your face in public?
President Grant set up the US Justice Department in 1870; its mission was
to protect equal rights for blacks and defeat the KKK.
Two Oklahoma thugs face murder charges after killing Jared Lakey by tasing
him 50 times.
They lied afterward about what they had done. Can't they be
prosecuted for that too? The murder charges may or may not stick,
but conviction for a false report should be easy, and that would make
sure they can't get hired again as thugs.
BMW will remotely enable and disable functionality in cars
through a universal back door.
Researchers discovered 1000 phrases that made "smart" listening devices
wake up and start transmitting to the company's servers.
The CEO of Procto-rio showed what an asshole he is, using that
company's exam software to crack a students' computer and posting per
chat logs.
*The War on Logic: Contradictions and Absurdities in the House’s Military Spending Bill.*
The House refused even to limit the power of the president to aim the US military at peaceful protesters.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been thoroughly perverted and has just deregulated interest on payday loans.
If our system were not set up to impoverish people, there would be no issue about payday loans because people would not need them. But until we can fix the system at a deeper level, these band-aids are important.
*'Dangerous Complacency': UN Expert Issues Scathing Report Denouncing Global Failures to Tackle Poverty Even Before Covid Pandemic.*
He says that global efforts to reduce poverty let themselves be deluded by the World Bank, and achieved almost nothing, but presented an image of success because China reduced poverty in China.
Deforesters are burning up the Amazon forest again this year, even faster than last year.
Bolsonaro considers the forest an obstacle to farming.
China is trying to bully tech companies to act as censorship proxies over Hong Kong, threatening to arrest their employees.
China has no need to threaten Apple; Apple surrendered years ago.
The UK plans to deport two twins to different countries. Both have lived since birth in the UK.
The US has done similar deportations for decades.
Each twin is in prison for gross bodily harm — which suggests getting into a fight. Since they are were brought up in foster care after their mother died, it doesn't surprise me. A good society would have helped them better. But even if someone can't live in society, sending per to a country which isn't and never was per home only makes things worse.
(satire) *In a lengthy report laying out recommendations it described as absolutely essential to its client’s future success, consulting firm Hewitt Lord Advisors suggested Tuesday that a business keep the consulting firm on for six more months.*
The changes in the new NAFTA have made little difference to the domination of Mexico by lawless US businesses.
In other words, it is still a business-supremacy treaty.
Nonetheless, the new NAFTA eliminates one of the outrageous parts of the old one: the ISDS clause that authorizes foreign companies to sue governments over laws that get in the way of their profits. We must eliminate all ISDS clauses.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to ask per to sponsor the Migratory Bird Protection Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Eric Garner Act, prohibiting thugs from using chokeholds.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to give the USPS more funds ASAP.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
When prisoners are homeless when released or paroled, it is much harder for them to find their way to a life without crime. Society should make sure that each released or paroled prisoner has a home to live in. However, poor people shouldn't have to get themselves jailed in order to find a home. We must do this for everyone.
The National Environmental Policy Act requires environmental reviews for actions carried out, or specifically authorized, by the federal government. The saboteur is trying to undermine that by a series of steps to reduce its coverage.
*UK has no clear PPE strategy for second wave of coronavirus, MPs warn.*
Bogus Johnson screwed this up once, and he's heading for doing it again.
Several medical treatments and products for women have caused problems,
which the medical community did not attend to because it had a tendency
to disregard complaints from women.
*After Barr Ordered FBI to "Identify Criminal Organizers,
" Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work.*
Professor Simukai Chigudu, a Zimbabwean, talks about his wish to
remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, who colonized Zimbabwe and some
neighboring countries and ran the whole as his plantation.
Bolsonaro, after doing everything possible to expose himself to
coronavirus, caught it last week.
On Saturday he carried it to a meeting with a number of right-wing
cronies, not wearing as mask.
Bolsonaro claimed that the majority who don't get seriously ill in
the short term escaped unscathed. We just recently learned that most
of them have significant medical problems afterward. There has not
been time to find out whether they are permanent or resolve after
a few months.
Seattle has once again enacted a tax on business income,
but better this time: the tax rate is progressive.
Only big businesses have to pay the tax: just 800 of them in the city
of Seattle.
*Purdue Pharma Made Political Contributions After Going Bankrupt.*
The FBI says that China is trying to coerce Chinese dissidents in the US to
go back to China, using threats against them and their families.
Those that do could face a horrible fate.
The article uses the term "intellectual property espionage"; as
always, "intellectual property" is intended to confuse.
I presume this is meant to refer to spying to obtain trade secrets,
"Trade secrets" is a coherent term, unlike "intellectual property".
That does not mean we should reflexively condemn attempts to "steal"
those secrets, because keeping a generally useful technical
information secret is an attack against humanity. Since 1984 or so I
have refused on principle to accept a nondisclosure agreement for
generally useful technical information, such as software. I carefully
refuse such agreements, because it is wrong to carry them out.
So if China is trying to obtain the trade secrets of US companies, the
morally valid response is to obtain the trade secrets of Chinese
companies — and publish them.
Many trans rights activists and many feminists want to
reach agreement and support each other.
*‘Yazidi women are strong’: Kurdistan's female landmine clearance teams.*
Scihub is loved by the scientists that write the articles it
redistributes. Only those parasites, the journal publishers, hate it.
If we can simply eliminate the publishers of paywalled journals, there
will be no more opposition to Scihub
Bogus Johnson wants to be thought of as an FDR by launching a minuscule
imitation of FDR's New Deal.
Australia has warned its citizens of the danger inherent in going to China.
All countries should do that. But it is ironic that Australia also
has made a law that claims global jurisdiction and requires
free software developers to stay away from Australia.
Movies are escaping from the decades-old pattern of presenting
abortion as inexplicably unthinkable.
That strange tendency became known decades ago,
and I wonder whether the antiabortionist right-wing played some part
in establishing it. In any case, I'm glad to see it go.
Movies that treat abortion as a normal part of life will help
spread that idea, especially in countries which repress abortion
in the name of religion.
To see abortions mentioned as asides in movies which are mainly
about something else would do even more.
Under the current rules and situation in England, reopening pubs is a step too far.
People in total quarantine in Melbourne pointed out the danger of their apartment buildings three months ago, and asked for help in controlling the spread of coronavirus, but they did not get help.
All of Melbourne is now under stay-at-home orders due to the beginning of a second wave of Covid-19.
It seems that reopening business went too fast.
Hong Kong is now officially a police state.
*Over 5,600 fossil fuel companies have taken at least $3bn in US Covid-19 aid.*
*Goal to eradicate poverty by 2030 ‘completely off track’, says outgoing special rapporteur, with Covid-19 likely to impoverish millions more.*
A woman who wants to live childfree practices explaining this to us. I hope that, with practice she will feel able to tell her friends this. As with any other group that hides, coming out and showing people that "each of you knows some of us" will help win acceptance and reduce the pressure.
The companies that wanted to develop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have given up on the project. Years of resistance helped to bring this about.
*UK's big accountancy firms told to split off audit arms by 2024.*
This will eliminate an important kind of moral hazard. All countries should do this.
Efforts to shift global "development" loans away from fossil fuels need to move quickly, if they are to substantially reduce global heating disaster.
There is a glut of natural gas, due to faster than expected construction of renewable electric generation. Many proposed natural gas terminals are being canceled.
Indeed, a major US fracking company recently went bankrupt.
So what is California Governor Newsom thinking when he authorizes continued fracking and even new wells?
The bully has a new plan to make foreign students' lives difficult: bar them from the US if their schools are classes online.
Distance learning, as such, is not wrong. (Whether it is as good for learning as being in a university and going to classes physically is an open question, outside my expertise.) However, they are almost surely doing it with nonfree software, and that is an injustice.
I expect the bully is doing this simply as another way to express hostility to foreigners, and is not interested in what the universities do. But if this does convince some universities to stop making students use nonfree software, that will be a positive side effect.
Proposing to combine the Tobin tax on stock transactions with guaranteeing a job to every American.
(satire) *[the bully] reportedly slaughtered dozens of U.S. service members Monday in hopes of cashing in on the bounties [being paid by Russia].*
A black man watching birds in Central Park asked a woman to put her dog on a leash. She responded by calling 911 and making a false accusation against him. She now faces criminal charges.
One aspect of racism is that whites think they can get away with bullying blacks with false charges. To Kill a Mockingbird presents a fictional example.
Noctilucent clouds are caused by methane in the air. They are spreading, as harbinger of disaster.
A gang of white supremacists attacked Vauhxx Booker when he went to a lake for the fourth of July. Then injured his head, and threatened to get a noose.
He called 911, and the thugs came, but they didn't arrest any of the attackers.
Phoenix thugs shot James Garcia while he was in his parked car.
The thugs said Garcia had a gun. It's possible he did — not everything they say is a lie. If he did, their violent response was nonetheless recklessly abrupt.
The Antisocialist Party presidential candidate gave an interview to a
podcast closely associated with the ‘boogaloo’ movement that proposes
a right-wing uprising against the US government.
That party calls itself "libertarian", but I dispute their entitlement
to that term. It is a way of pushing their perverse definition of
"liberty" which says that the government should not help people and businesses should be able to gouge without hindrance.
They call all positive government activities "socialism",
so I think the right term for them is "antisocialists".
A court shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline because its environmental
review did not satisfy legal requirements.
I am glad, but keep in mind that it is not a final outcome.
A one-time wealth tax of 10% would give the UK the funds it needs to undo the
damage of Covid-19.
However, it first needs to finish getting rid of the disease.
US citizens: call on BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to stop donating towards
military weapons for the New York Thug Department.
A revised study estimates that climate mayhem was responsible for 67
billion dollars of the 90 billion caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Many "mild" cases of Covid-19, patients not hospitalized, lead to
persistent medical problems, occasionally even strokes.
Some of them are fatal.
In other words, the "let it spread until herd immunity" approach
would saddle millions of people with medical difficulties.
Despite years of effort, sharks are still threatened by catching them
and keeping only the fins.
I had a small chance to oppose this directly at a restaurant in Taiwan.
Some officials are pulling back support for Black Lives Matter now
that it is a matter of policy and spending changes.
I disagree with the article on one point: wearing a Black Lives Matter
badge is political. It is a campaign for political policy changes.
Thus, people who are required to take a neutrality position on TV
can't show support or opposition.
*If small businesses fail after Covid-19, the big boys will become even
more powerful. A radical 1930s policy could be the answer.*
*[The conman] wants to put a rightwing zealot in charge of public land. Here's why it
matters.*
US courts are starting to use internet communications, and this has a
potential to improve the judicial system.
It sounds good, but, it won't be just if people have to use Zoom to
participate. When meetings with colleagues and teachers (including
classes) impose Zoom — or any nonfree program — that is unjust too.
When lawyers are required to use a nonfree program, that too is
unjust.
The conman has blocked Dr Fauci from speaking to the public for three
months.
Canada is allowing BlackRock to convert its infrastructure bank into a
giant giveaway to Wall Street.
The UK has imposed a necessary lock down in the city of Leicester,
where there was an outbreak of Covid-19. However, this would not have
been necessary if government had done its job properly earlier.
Melbourne, Australia, recently ordered the residents of certain large
apartment buildings not to leave their apartments except in an
emergency. Coronavirus was spreading quickly in these buildings.
The start of this was managed thoughtlessly, but since then the city
has arranged to bring them food, waive their rent, and give them some
money to make up for missed work. Since this quarantine is only for 5
days — enough time to test everyone — I think it is legitimate. It
should keep coronavirus from spreading to everyone in the building,
and thence to many other people.
I suppose the residents that are actually infected will be quarantined
for two more weeks.
Some demand to remove s statue of Lincoln which presented him as
having just broken the chains of a black slave. A letter published by
Frederic Douglass and the history of abolitionism show that the criticism
is only half right.
The issue about statues of President Grant reflects hypercritical
attitude which has become common. His temporary co-ownership of a
farm with slaves on it was a small aspect of his life, and a small
effect on the world. His defeat of the Confederacy, and his work, as
president, for equality were enormous. Doesn't a great good outweigh
a small wrong?
If we take a perfectionist attitude towards judging our heroes, we
will soon have none.
There was an explosion in Iran's research facility for uranium enrichment,
perhaps due to an attack by Israel or the US or a proxy group.
Coronavirus is spreading exponentially in Arizona, Florida and Texas.
*Hongkongers face a Kafkaesque reality as censors outlaw the words of protest.*
Some are protesting with blank signs. Some tried the word "Conscience"
and were arrested for that. Hong Kongers are deleting their files,
wiping out parts of their lives, fearing they will be prosecuted for that.
The one possible good side of this is that the world will see how evil
China is. It will be hard for people, in any country, to convince
themselves that getting close to China is safe.
China will seek to use overseas Hong Kongers as hostages, hoping that
we will tone down our condemnation lest it give China the idea of
punishing them. To do that would mean becoming agents of China. We
must tell Hong Kongers that they should stay away from our discussions
rather than ask us to censor them for China.
People discussing Hong Kong will have to watch out for Chinese agents
of disinformation, provocation, or pleading, some of whom may be
Hong Kongers who have cracked.
Academics have the duty to refuse to censor their judgment of Chinese
tyranny in order to be able to visit Hong Kong or China again.
With all the injustices that the US has done, it is far less evil than
China. We have to steer between two facile errors: (1) equating the
US with China, and (2) excusing the wrongs of the US because it is not
as bad as China.
*Facebook is out of control. If it were a country it would be North Korea.*
One man decides whether to allow it to wreak havoc on any particular
target.
People say they need to try to use Facebook to persuade people of
something-or-other. But even if something-or-other is a good thing,
Facebook is a much bigger bad thing. Because if you think you are
using Facebook, really Facebook is using you.
So don't be a zucker! And don't encourage anyone else to be a zucker.
For Facebook to cease to mistreat its useds would require big changes.
But ceasing to promote hate, lies and violence (above love, truth and
peace) requires only changing the propagation system to reduce the R
value that polarizing statements tend to get on Facebook.
Censorship, as such, is not necessary.
*Srebrenica 25 years on: how the world lost its appetite to fight war crimes.*
Since Dubya, the US has become responsible for atrocities around the
world — and has constantly fought the ICC's efforts to prosecute them.
Dubya start this, Obama continued it, and the bully has pushed even
harder on it.
*Knife-edge Polish presidential race could slow the march of
(right-wing) populism.*
I added "(right-wing)" so we will not forget that populism around 1900
was a movement for reducing inequality.
*Weak, divided, incompetent... the west is unfit to challenge Xi’s bid for global hegemony.*
*Mississippi's racist state flag has finally come down. Now the real work
begins.*
How should we remember Woodrow Wilson, "a great American president
and, on the other hand, … a racist son of a bitch."
Perhaps with a statue in which one side depicts a great president
and the other side depicts a supporter of the KKK.
*This pandemic has exposed the uselessness of orthodox economics.*
*Costs outweighing benefits is the oldest excuse for not taking
precautions — and is a recipe for disaster when the benefits, or
the costs of inaction, are vastly undervalued.*
A campaign to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline by pressuring insurance
companies not to insure it.
(satire) *In an effort to ease tensions with the public and restore
their tarnished public image, the New York Police Department reportedly
commemorated Independence Day this week by using fireworks for crowd
control.*
London cops, apparently not thuggish this time, shut down a dangerous
rave, but the participants threw bricks at them and broke bones of two.
That the rave was illegal is what authorize the cops to act, but
morally it is a minor detail. What does matter morally is that the
rave would tend to spread Covid-19. It therefore threatened harm to
people in general. For public safety, raves can't be allowed until
the Covid-19 problem is licked.
Venezuelans who fled to Colombia now can't find any work, so some are
returning home.
Leaders of Amnesty Turkey were convicted of "terrorism" charges based
on the assertion that one of them had a certain encryption app on his
phone. Although investigation reported he did not even have it.
They were arrested while holding an event with a visiting foreign encryption
expert to teach people how to use encryption.
We need to cover immigrants' medical bills and unemployment, or they won't get tested for Covid-19 and they won't be able to stay home if sick.
The rational, scientific approach to reopening the economy carefully and slowly.
A global Green New Deal would provide a way to let flattened, indebted poor countries out of the IMF trap.
Britons were prosecuted for "aiding terrorism" for helping their relative go to Syria to fight for Rojava. The judge just ended the trial by declaring them innocent.
Shame on Britain for trying to criminalize this.
The conman really did send troops to Washington armed with bayonets, as well as (of course) rifles to mount them on, with protesting Americans as the enemy.
Tim Bray recommends how to split up Google, taking account solely business questions and competition.
He doesn't address the issues of making users run nonfree software, and making them get accounts and identify themselves, which are the main reason I don't use Google services. But even in regard to competition, we need to go further. Gmail is too big; it should be split into several companies that compete.
Somerville, Mass, has given limited legal recognition to groups of any number of people that declare themselves to constitute a family.
Congress is considering a bill to accelerate installation of internet fiber everywhere.
This practical boost would be very useful, but watch out for three points the article doesn't mention:
*Mining on Indigenous Territories [in Amazonia] Brings Ecological Devastation, Land Invasions, and Renewed Cycles of Violence.*
Venezuelans who fled to Colombia now can't find any work, so some are returning home.
Muslim countries don't trouble to criticize China's imprisonment and brainwashing of a million Uighurs. They get too much financial support from China.
Iran has been struck with a suspicious series of fires and explosions.
US citizens: call on officials to demand Bob Kroll resign as head of the Minneapolis thug union.
The UK will require people eating in restaurants to identify themselves.
New Zealand's previous system, recording info about customers on paper, respected anonymity. It made the information available to collect when contact tracing needed it, but avoided creating a tracking database that the state could use for unjust purposes.
I am alarmed to read that New Zealand now requires customers to scan a QR code — with a Stalin's Dream device, evidently. That is not safe. And what about the people who don't have a portable phone?
Australia's extractivist government is not interested in endangered species, so it has stopped bothering to update records of where they live.
Progressives are trying to reclaim the term "populist", which around 1900 referred to a campaign to strengthen democracy and reduce economic inequality.
One supporter is persistently deleting everything from Kamala Harris's Wikipedia page showing her hash approach towards small-time street crime as well as her lax approach towards the theft of billions.
*Heatwaves have become longer in most of the world since 1950s.*
The change in the next 20 years could exceed the past 60 years.
A judge in the UK fined Greenpeace heavily for occupying a North Sea oil platform last year.
The judge's reasons are all valid, in a narrow sense, disregarding the fact that oil extraction is leading to the death of billions of people.
Once a government goes to those lengths to snuff out climate defense protests, I fear it will succeed, removing the last obstacle to mass murder.
The UK wants to send a girl back to Sudan where she would suffer female genital mutilation.
To evade legal obligations, the government will pretend to send her to Bahrain, never mind that Bahrain would not let her stay there and would send her to Sudan.
US citizens: call on elected officials to reject support from thug unions.
*'Greed Is a Danger to Public Health': Progressive Caucus Urges Ban on Big Pharma Coronavirus Price-Gouging.*
If Gilead Sciences' executives are shamelessly greedy, they could drive the price up by reducing production and making rich customers bid for the doses. This would be no less bad than setting a high fixed price.
The effective way to prevent gouging on remdesivir, and make sure it is available when needed, is to allow other companies to compete to produce it. That is what we ought to do.
*Cancellation might feel good, but it's not activism.*
*While denouncing someone can get you high, it ignores human complexity, and is no substitute for the hard work of persuasion.*
Hong Kong democracy campaigner Nathan Law has left to try to persuade other countries to impose sanctions.
Since China has made that activity a crime, he may never be able to return home.
Hugo's Tacos in Los Angeles closed its stores because of repeated harassment by customers who demanded service but refused to wear a mask.
The bully has already trained his supporters to throw off all scruples against lying; they eagerly invent and spread disinformation to attack his enemies.
Following his lead, they have now translated that contempt from the internet to the physical domain. The attitude of mask-rejectors is, "If I cause you to get sick, or even to die, fuck you. If you're not on my side, your life means nothing to me."
Now there has been another plot twist: the bully changed his stance on masks 180 degrees this week.
The governor of Texas, a fervent anti-masker, turned too, making masks mandatory in public places, with two exceptions: religious activities and voting.
That latter exception would be consistent with the theory that Republicans are intentionally spreading coronavirus so that Democrats won't dare vote.
I think that the bully's supporters will be reluctant to change their attitude towards masks 180 degrees overnight. I suspect they will keep on defying the use of masks.
Amazon has deals with 1400 thug departments in the US to facilitate their access to Ring street surveillance cameras.
Amazon does not do face recognition on the video from these cameras, but individuals and thug departments that get copies of the videos could do this using some other system.
I think that it should be illegal to install cameras that transmit video over the internet and watch public areas, without a special warrant for a specified place and a specified period of time.
German climate defense activists have occupied a coal mine which is used to feed electric generation. They demand ending coal combustion now, rather than tarrying lackadaisically until 2038.
Germany's industrial strength is great. It can replace the coal capacity with renewables and batteries in two years if it makes this a national priority equivalent to repelling an invasion of CO2.
It appears Connecticut proposed to raise the radiation threshold for evacuation after a nuclear power plant accident, because evacuation would be more dangerous during Covid-19 than it was before.
I won't criticize this attempt to find the safest path between two dangers. The basic idea seems valid to me. However, this should remind us that we should replace nuclear power plants with renewable energy plus storage batteries.
While renewable electric generation was expensive, the US government bought large quantities of solar cells to stimulate research to make them cheaper. That was a success. We need investment now to make large energy storage facilities cheaper.
Oregon will vote on a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of all forbidden drugs.
Many other legalization initiatives are being pursued in other states.
Senators have proposed a bill to end qualified immunity for officials that violate people's constitutional rights.
It should be noted that qualified immunity applies to civil suits by victims, but not in criminal prosecution.
California requires thug departments to show their training materials, but some try to use copyright as an excuse to keep them secret.
*What if we treated Confederate symbols the way we treated the defeated Nazis?*
*Ireland voted for radical change, but it may end up with greenwashed austerity.*
*Cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of water consumption in the US.*
*Revealed: legislators’ pro-pipeline letters ghostwritten by fossil fuel company.*
*How we can truly repay our frontline health workers: clear their debts.*
US citizens: call on state legislators & election officials to implement online voter registration nationwide.
They should take care not to exclude freedom-lovers: make it work for people who won't run Javascript.
I was thinking of joining a Juneteenth rally, but when I found a site that was said to list the events, I found that the site depended totally on running nonfree Javascript software. Without that, the site would not show me anything whatsoever.
There will be another Juneteenth next year. If you can contact the people who run the site, please ask them to provide a way to download the whole list of scheduled events, so that people who won't run Javascript can see the list and show up at one.
Australia aims to prosecute an Australian journalist for investigating war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
In the House of Representatives, militarist Democrats and militarist
Republicans are working together to keep the war in Afghanistan going.
16 Democrats in the senate helped defeat an amendment to repeal the
authorization for use of military force.
The amendment would also have withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan,
but I think repealing the authorization is even bigger.
Compared with past attempts, having 40 senators vote for this
is a lot of progress. In a few more years maybe we can win.
US citizens, if your senator is one of those listed, complain!
E-waste contains a fortune in tiny amounts of gold and platinum. Because
we do not recover it, it poisons people and animals.
Arizona's rainy season fails to be rainy, and three large fires are
sending smoke around that could augment the damage done by the
many cases of Covid-19 in the state.
Nothing could have avoided the failure of rain,
except perhaps curbing global heating since 10 years ago,
but the US could have curbed Covid-19 if it tried.
*60% of fish species could be unable to survive in [their current
habitats] by 2100 – study.*
California has shut down bars, restaurants and cinemas in counties
where Covid-19 is growing.
The right-wing laws to facilitate cutting down forests in New South Wales
(Australia) have been effective.
*Plurality of Americans Oppose Israel's Annexation Plans.*
Organizing in a US Jewish community to oppose annexation.
*1080 European Lawmakers Sign Petition to Reject Israeli Annexation of
West Bank.*
OSHA systematically disregarded workers' complaints that employers did not
give them protective gear.
The Hong Kong and Singapore Banking Corporation is centered in Hong Kong
and has publicly supported China's repression law.
How about moving your money out?
The main trade organization of US drug companies is suing to overturn
a Minnesota law to provide affordable insulin, to save the diabetics
whose lives are endangered by the high price of insulin in the US.
Most major drug companies are members of PHRMA. Each one should
either explain what it is doing to end gouging on insulin and other
drugs, or quit PHRMA.
How the government of China chooses the people who run new Hong Kong
repression apparatus, and directs what it does.
They have the power to jail people arbitrarily within wide, vague
limits.
Medea Benjamin: *A New Anti-War Mobilization Must Topple Trump—and
Challenge Biden.*
Oklahoma voters rebuked their Republican politicians by approving an initiative
to extend Medicaid to cover many more people.
US journalism has punctured the rule never to hint that uniformed
thugs are the ones responsible for violence at protests.
The US government is signing contracts about possible treatments for Covid-19
and choosing to put no limits on gouging.
Europe is harvesting its vast tree plantations faster than they grow.
Thousands protested in Hong Kong, and 400 were arrested.
The thugs attacked protesters and journalists violently.
Every aspect of this law, and the way it was imposed, has been
designed to show that China's repression will be totally arbitrary.
*“If you’ve ever said anything that might offend the PRC [People’s
Republic of China] or Hong Kong authorities, stay out of Hong Kong,”
said Donald Clarke, a law professor at George Washington University.*
*German [army] commando company is disbanded due to far-right culture.*
1/5 of tropical plant species could be wiped out by 2070;
it will be too hot for their seeds to germinate.
I would expect this was based on estimates of heating that have already
been found too low. Not long ago it was reported that the numbers have
to be adjusted upward.
Mississippi has modified its state flag to remove a copy of the
Confederate flag.
Several southern states put that into their state flags as a symbol of
racism.
The conman's officials sought to keep Adham Hassoun in prison
permanently without any sort of hearing. A US court ordered him released,
though the decision is likely to be appealed.
(satire) *God, Our Heavenly Father, reportedly sent a
sympathy card Tuesday to 56-year-old Arizona resident Greg Harris after
killing his wife.*
*Progressive Lawmakers Call on US to 'Take a Clear Stand' by Suspending
Military Aid If Israel Carries Out 'Illegal' Annexation.*
Annexation would violate the international laws of war, just like the
colonization and theft of land and water resources which Israel has
already done.
The improved labor rights clauses in the new NAFTA may not do much good
when lawyers who try to exercise them are jailed on absurd charges.
The Democrats' "bold" climate plan fails even to include ending the
construction of fossil fuel facilities.
The companies that own oil or gas facilities will fight like the devil
to keep on using them till the last possible moment. To allow
continued "investment" in destroying civilization means creating
additional enemies for later stages of the fight to save civilization.
*The Case for Medicare for All Has Grown Stronger Than Ever* based on current economic and expense figures.
The Supreme Court ruled that the president can fire the head of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arbitrarily.
This gives the president even more power over it, but the conman
already replaced the head of the CFPB, which shows it already
had insufficient independence.
A California ballot initiative aims to limit targeting of advertising based on "sensitive" personal information.
I think it will do some good — but there are ways to game the new
requirement about personal data. Users could tell companies not to
use the sensitive data, if they find which companies to give this
instruction to. But companies can use observed behavior as
approximate proxies for the personal data. Facebook and others can
tell with high probability whether someone is gay, or what per
religion is, by what perse visits and searches for. However, those
proxy data are not, in fact, part of the sensitive personal data.
In addition, this requirement is vulnerable to the manufacture of
consent(*): "to use our service, which everyone believes one cannot live
without, you must consent to our using your sensitive personal data
for advertising."
What we really need is anonymity in searching and paying on the internet.
Senator Sherrod Brown has proposed a strong internet privacy law
that would make some real difference. His proposed law would limit the collection of data.
He has grasped the issue of the manufacturing of consent.
Whether it would fully address the problem depends on details that I
have not seen. It would prohibit selling personal data; would it
prohibit selling the service of selecting people based on their
personal data, which is what Facebook actually does? The California
ballot initiative does that.
He talks of allowing collection of data that is "necessary" for the
service that is offered, but that rule has strong interpretations and weak interpretations.
Nonetheless, Senator Brown has advanced the discussion considerably.
He rejects the supposed imperative to keep nasty businesses going.
* It amuses me no end to repurpose this term, which Chomsky coined for one
nasty practice, to describe another nasty practice.
India has banned 50 apps made by Chinese companies based on concern that they
are being used for snooping on Indian users.
One must ask if the Indian government thinks it is acceptable for US
companies, or Indian companies, to snoop on Indian users.
If these apps were free software and were running on a free operating
system, then India would not be able to ban them, and people would be
able to assure that they don't snoop, or fix them not to snoop.
Republican senators plan to prohibit services from offering end-to-end encryption, by a set of practices to be decided later by various agencies that want to snoop on everyone.
This will restrict the nonfree communications applications that are supplied by specific services. If you are wise, you will not trust them; you will use free programs, independent of whatever communications servers you use, to do the encryption. However, lots of other people will use those nonfree applications, and that will allow the US government to snoop on almost everyone in the US.
All across the US, corporations are suing local governments — for instance, for trying to protect people from Covid-19.
These corporations are responsible for the specific wrongs they do, but the system that facilitates it is broken and we need to fix it.
Ceding to pressure from advertisers, Facebook announced plans to block some hate messages and misinformation about voting. This will hamper the bully and his supporters from using the platform to stir up hatred and interfere with voting.
Facebook mistreats users in fundamental ways; let us not think that this change makes Facebook ok.
*Hundreds of Occupy City Hall protesters demand NYPD cut budget by $1bn.*
*If more Americans wore masks the pandemic would slow, experts say.*
US citizens: call on Biden to dismiss Larry Summers as an advisor.
All sides in Yemen's civil war are torturing prisoners.
Americans are losing their homes due to exorbitant water bills that they
cannot pay.
With Covid-19 building up in most countries, will the wealthier parts
of the world cooperate with treatment in the rest of the world?
*The Toxic Rise of Toxic Positivity.*
As much of my life has been unhappy — for reasons that were pretty
obvious to me — I have been visited many times with demands that I be
helped by the help they offer, and become cheerful. Or at least
pretend to be.
China's draconian law has crushed the organized protests of Hong Kong.
We must not forget Hong Kong's years of resistance, just as we must
not forget China's massacre of students supporting democracy
in Tian An Men Square.
Stone Mountain Park romanticizes the Confederacy, but when the giant
statue was built, in the 1960s, it embodied the spirit of
segregationism. This article proposes ways to make it ineffective.
Iran has sentenced journalist Ruhollah Zam to death.
Sanders explains the need for his amendment to reduce
the US military budget by 10%.
Some US states are banning certain group activities to try to slow the
accelerating spread of Covid-19.
(satire) The Onion's suggestions for reforming US thug departments.
(satire) *economist John Stephens confirmed to
sources Monday that he has a great idea for a sitcom where a Keynesian
and a Friedmanite have to live together.*
Chess: patriarchal
or feminist?
Some economists forecast that 10% of US workers will not get their
jobs back even if we eliminate Covid-19. That will amount to a big
recession.
Gilead Sciences plans to charge $500 per dose for remdesivir.
The company would make a profit selling it for $50 per dose,
and if we had a national medical system, it would push the price
down to such a level.
The role of government funds in developing remdesivir is not an
exception, it is the normal case. Medicine is one of the areas
where it is important not to allow patents.
The US government has bought nearly the entire production of
remdesivir for July through September, making the drug unavailable
to other countries that are subservient to the patent system.
I hope that they will go through with the plan to make compulsory
licenses, which are permitted by the WTO treaty. The US has lobbied
for decades to convince countries to forego that right.
Maybe they are prepared to defy the conman to help their
hospitals cope.
The article claims that the US government has tried to keep supplies
for treating Covid-19 available in the US, but that's not its usual policy.
There are examples
where it did the exact opposite, in particular with masks and ventilators.
Even now, Fauci says that US medical personnel face shortages.
And the numskull has no wish to ensure there is sufficient testing
capacity in the US.
Thus, the purchase of remdesivir is contrary to the usual practice, and
makes me wonder what his motive was.
House Democrats have proposed a "bold" plan to do a substantial
part of the Green New Deal — but nowhere near all of it.
2050 is far too late a target. The target we need, to avoid disaster,
is 2020, or perhaps 2010. But since that's impossible, at least make
it 2030.
The plan seems to be formulated in terms of "net" emissions, meaning
that it will rely on planned "offsets" that are intended to cancel out
emissions. However, these plans can fail. You can plant trees, but
over thirty years of global heating, the changes in climate can kill
them, and whatever carbon they absorbed will be released again.
The New York thug department invited the FBI to join in interrogating arrested protesters (and non-protesters) about their political views.
Thugs in Arizona used pepper spray to disperse protesting violinists.
This might have been justifiable if they were playing Schönberg's atonal music. Didn't the Atonal Brigade in Guatemala torture dissidents during the civil war? ;-}
Is being the first American woman to bomb Yemen, or operate a CIA torture operation, an advance for Women's equal opportunity?
Reducing gender bias is an important cause, but it is not the only issue of right and wrong in life.
The Green Party won many local elections in France. This convinced Macron to adopt most of the recommendations of the Citizens' Commission for the Climate, though Greenpeace says he weakened them in the process.
A book reports on how the CIA and the KGB have manipulated elections in various countries.
It might be true that the CIA no longer tries to manipulate elections as such, but the US helped overthrow governments in Honduras and probably Brazil and Bolivia. And it is trying to do so in Venezuela.
US medics have a shortage of protective gear again, thanks to Republican efforts to boost Covid-19 infection rates and pack the hospitals.
*No more going viral: why not apply social distancing to social media?*
Mayors of 11 US cities call for an automatic monthly cash payment to every American.
Here is their web site.
I'm in favor of this, but it is not sufficient by itself. For instance, it will not be enough to give everyone medical care; we need Medicare for All.
Instead of working to keep Libya's oil wells shut, there is a scheme to reopen them by letting the two warring governments cooperate and split the income.
This might lead to peace, which would be a great thing for Libya, but the increased oil extraction could speed the world towards global disaster.
The US Supreme Court rejected Louisiana's latest indirect scheme to effectively ban abortion.
China is singling out Uighurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang for special limits on having children, and imposing them with forced sterilization.
When it comes to the economy, only 6% of Britons want to return to the Tory-style economy of recent years.
Too bad they will have Tory government for 4 more years. They should have voted for Corbyn and Labour.
*Australian government powerless against lobbyists with hidden interests, audit finds.*
A shortage of state funds for what cities need has pushed UK cities into corruptible deals to get funds from developers in exchange for permission for bad projects.
US citizens: phone your senators to ask them to vote NO on the 2021 military spending authorization act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
[Reference updated on 2022-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
I knew him better than even his family did because I
bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings,
and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a
cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.
To beat the crowds.
The UK says that Russian crackers are trying to "steal" Covid-19
vaccine research.
These concerns are not mere speculation. The reason I do not have fiber internet is that I could not find a way to get that connected without connecting to a web site and running its nonfree software.
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