[ 2024 September - December | 2024 May - August | 2024 January - April | 2023 September - December | 2023 May - August | 2023 January - April | 2022 September - December | 2022 May - August | 2022 January - April | 2021 September - December | 2021 May - August | 2021 January - April | 2020 September - December | 2020 May - August | 2020 January - April | 2019 September - December | 2019 May - August | 2019 January - April | 2018 September - December | 2018 May - August | 2018 January - April | 2017 September - December | 2017 May - August | 2017 January - April | 2016 September - December | 2016 May - August | 2016 January - April | 2015 September - December | 2015 May - August | 2015 January - April | 2014 September - December | 2014 May - August | 2014 January - April | 2013 September - December | 2013 May - August | 2013 January - April | 2012 September - December | 2012 May - August | 2012 January - April | 2011 September - December | 2011 May - August | 2011 January - April | 2010 September - December | 2010 May - August | 2010 January - April | 2009 September - December | 2009 May - August | 2009 January - April | 2008 September - December | 2008 May - August | 2008 January - April | 2007 September - December | 2007 May - August | 2007 January - April | 2006 September - December | 2006 May - August | 2006 January - April | 2005 September - December | 2005 May - August | 2005 January - April | 2004 September - December | 2004 May - August | 2004 January - April | 2003 September - December | 2003 May - August | 2003 January - April | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
*Environmentalists Owe an Enormous Debt to Julian Assange.* Wikileaks revealed how the US twisted many countries' arms to legalize the farming of patented GMOs which promote pesticides that can wipe out all insects in the neighborhood, and to allow foreign corporations to buy their farmland.
Wikileaks also published the secret text of the Pacific Partnership Trance (official name, Trans-Pacific Partnership), which helped the US to refuse to sign it. (How sad that countries such as New Zealand signed it. And recently the UK as well — one last act of lasting Tory sabotage.)
Environmentalists should demand that the US drop charges against Julian Assange. And don't waste time — he may be extradited in October.
The charges against him are meant to establish a precedent for treating journalists as spies, and the US, to get its hands on Assange, used tricks dirtier than those it used to push GMOs.
*Biden Administration Adds Insulin to Drug Price Negotiation List in Major Blow to Big Pharma.*
*Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with [misleading description of the abortion ballot question].*
Pope Francis rebuked the conservatives in the Catholic Church for choosing right-wing ideology over the church doctrine.
I don't support Catholic doctrine any more than I do right-wing ideology, but this is a good thing.
Parents organized in Free Play Houston have convinced Houston public schools to bring back recess, in which children direct their own activities.
A Ugandan man faces the threat of execution if convicted of "aggravated homosexuality."
The article leaves me wondering what aspect makes it "aggravated". You would think editors would anticipate readers' being left with curiosity.
When DeMentis showed up at a vigil for three blacks murdered by a white racist hater, and condemned the killer, the people present booed him for promoting the racism, fascism and Nazism that motivated the killer.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it, even if they also criticize it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important — and I label them like this.
Global heating effects are wiping out the peach crop in the southern US. If only the farmers understood this, they might start voting to curb global heating.
The article's title says "decimated" but that word is an understatement here.
An organization in Hong Kong that promotes the Cantonese language has been compelled to shut after its leader published a fictional story about loss of freedom there.
It doesn't surprise me that the story and its author were attacked. Attacking the organization as well may simply reflect using it for that publication. But it could also be an escalation of the campaign to suppress the Cantonese language. That has been active in Canton (Guang Dong province) for years.
The descendants of William Gladstone have apologized for his father's large role in British colonial slavery and the slave trade.
I think it is misguided to apologize for the actions of one's ancestors. People are not responsible for what their ancestors did, and even less if the ancestors did them centuries ago. To accept blame for things one did not do is a surrender that people should resist. It suggests a desperation that entices hostile people to demand more, as they have done this time.
However, those descendants are right to call for reparations for Britain's past slavery. We can all join in calling for that, because it does not mean we personally accept blame for it.
It was the British government that established policies of slavery and enabled their implementation. And the British government, unlike the individuals who implemented them, still exists. It can legitimately be held responsible today for wrongs it committed before 1834.
To try to compensate wrongs committed centuries ago makes sense only for the biggest of wrongs. It makes sense for slavery because that was extremely big as a wrong.
I have called for the US to pay reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination in federal housing aid during the New Deal. Those latter two were not as big wrongs as slavery, but they were more recent, so it still makes sense to compensate them.
Australia has federal laws to protect whistleblowers from reprisals, but they have been totally ineffective. Of 70 whistleblowers who have filed for protection, none have been protected.
Some non-thuggish whistleblowers in the US Border Thug Department report that the department has been imprisoning migrants in the Arizona desert and denying them necessities such as beds that they are legally entitled to. And covering it up with falsehoods.
Law and order, including the traditional laws of tribal war, are breaking down in Papua New Guinea.
Yet another American has been shot dead for trying to enter the wrong house, down the block from where he lived.
Atlanta is systematically intimidating activists opposed Cop City by jailing them without valid grounds, then after release labeling them as "terrorists" so they will be harassed in various ways.
I urge everyone to learn not to feel shame for being persecuted. This can help help you stand up to hate campaigns from whatever side.
Peaceful protests are spreading in areas of Syria held by Assad's government, calling for his removal from power.
*The National Labor Relations Board issued new rules Friday that will make it easier for workers to form unions — and much more difficult for companies to stop them.*
The Guardian convened 45 climate scientists to consider whether global heating is already unstoppable. Their conclusion is, not yet, but without strong steps starting soon, it will be.
They reported that overall global heating so far fits closely with predictions, but the models don't predict local extreme weather very well, and some of that has been surprising.
Since local heat waves and disasters cause a substantial part of the damage, I surmise that damage is rising faster than predicted. That includes food shortages.
Conclusion: *Dramatic climate action needed to curtail "crazy" extreme weather.*
Everyone: call on stores to stop selling seeds coated in bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
US citizens: call on Congress to reinforce minor labor laws.
Those laws are usually called "child labor laws", and some of the people who may be put to dangerous work when these laws are weakened are children. But most are adolescents, and they too should be protected from arduous work. So let's use a fully accurate name.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) *Republican Presidential Candidates Undergo Mandatory Genital Checks Ahead Of First Debate.*
Australian climate defense activists who protested a company drilling for fossil gas have been hit by court orders forbidding them from speaking about the protest, and demanding they hand over all communications pertinent to the protest. The company also threatens to sue them for the cost of expensive precautionary reactions.
I don't know what actually happened in the protest. In particular, I don't know whether the protesters released a (possibly malodorous) gas or not. I expect that they are opposed to violence against persons and would not have considered releasing anything dangerous.
Therefore, I think that we have here an instance of a technique frequently used by businesses and sometimes governments to repress protesters: overreacting to the protest in a paranoid way at great expense, then suing the protesters for the "damages" the organization did to itself.
On the morning of September 11, 1973, President Nixon was briefed about the planning for a coup in Chile.
His briefing told him that the plans were not then ready to be carried out. But they were carried out that very day. It seems that the right-wing enemies of President Allende accepted the cooperation and help of the US, but made their own decisions about how to overthrow Chile's government.
The Maui wildfires have been tied directly to negligence by Hawaiian Electric Co, which failed to put insulation on the wires, or even to cut the tall vegetation growing near them.
The pylons holding the wires were wooden and decrepit, and did not comply with the updated standard adopted back in 2002.
I wonder if the company's judgment for damages will exceed its market value. If so, Maui will get an easy opportunity to take over the company and make it publicly owned henceforth.
If the company covers all the Hawaiian islands, they should all participate in owning it. The state of Hawaii could buy the whole company from Maui, or the other principal islands could buy shares of the company from Maui.
Splitting up the company is also conceivable. That would be feasible if the facilities operate separately from island to island, which I expect is the case.
*Ex-Alabama deputy sheriff sentenced to prison for [rape of] woman in his custody.*
I approve of the long sentence of 12 years for rape, but given that the convict committed the crime on duty as an official thug, that perhaps calls for a longer sentence.
The article states clearly that what he did was coerce her to have sex with him. The simple and clear term for that is "rape". But the article avoids that term entirely and replaces it with the vague term "sexual assault". Why do this?
In the antiglossary entry linked to just above, I propose an explanation for this.
An impending disastrous oil spill in the Red Sea has been averted by crowdfunding.
It is admirable that people stepped up to do this. But avoiding a disaster should not depend on that. It is governments' responsibility and they should carry it out.
Some educators propose that college applicants use ChatGPT to make up for the lack of a family containing well-educated people who can help them write the essay in high-quality English. Especially applicants who are not native speakers of English.
The idea was new to me but I'm not opposed to it. However, when the article talks about "how students can use AI ethically", it makes a number of important errors:
The only way people can use ChatGPT is as an online disservice, because it is SaaSS (service as a Software Substitute). See https://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html for why that is an injustice to the user.
*Russia accused of intimidating US consulate staff [Who are Russians] with Ukraine war spying charges.*
What Shonov is accused of — relaying non-secret information picked up from the public — is a normal part of the work of staff of diplomatic organizations.
The US consulate would have trouble functioning without these employees. But it can't tolerate this repression.
The US could not morally respond by threatening the American citizens and other non-Russians who work for Russian consulates in the US. What it could legitimately do is restrict how many local employees the Russian consulates could employ. If the intimidation goes so far that the US consulates find it necessary to stop employing local staff, the US should bar Russian consulates from hiring any local employees.
The head of the Federal Reserve intends to keep pursuing inflation to the ends of the earth, and never mind the risk of causing a recession.
(satire) *Texas Cancels School Over Concerns Extreme Heat Not Safe Environment For Shootings.*
Putin has a protracted habit of murdering his enemies, rivals, and critics.
*Labour's backtracking on casual workers will weaken the rights of all employees.*
The "Labour" party is too right-wing to qualify for that name.
Inuit on the Arctic coast of Canada are managing a protected coastal zone. That is a useful thing to do: it will delay regional damage from global heating, giving humanity somewhat more time to carry out the long-term global fix: to greatly reduce greenhouse emissions.
However, the article's headline seems to have been written by someone inclined to formulate issues in terms of racial conflict: "The Inuit plan to reclaim their sea."
It is a mistake to describe the Inuit as "the Arctic's first people"; archaeology shows that they spread across the Arctic less than 1000 years ago, replacing an unrelated people we call the Dorset culture.
Was that an instance of colonization? We can't judge that question, since we don't know how or why the replacement took place. But this lack of knowledge is enough to show that we shouldn't model the past based on the roles various groups have played in recent history.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop banks from funding climate disaster, by passing the Fossil Free Finance Act. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The closure of a coal plant in Ohio led to an immediate reduction in hospital visits for heart problems and strokes in the vicinity, and health continued to improve during subsequent years.
The Book of Revelation divides the Bible (and Christians) between an idea of a god that is love and an idea of a god that is hate. Evangelicals mostly worship hate.
Ex-Twitter is now firmly established as a fascist propaganda site.
Some right-wing legal scholars agree that the insurrectionist is barred from holding any office (including that of president) by the 14th amendment.
The Republican Party's national committee streaming partner is placing ads for the party on neo-Nazi sites.
Space junk is dangerous because the objects tend to collide and generate a lot more junk. This is already happening.
There is a danger that the process will eventually cascade and make it too dangerous to put anything into low Earth orbit, or maybe even to cross it. The movie Gravity depicted this disaster, in somewhat accelerated form. The disaster itself would be so harmful to humanity, and so permanent, that the survival of some of those who were in orbit hardly reduces it.
In the quotation from the ESA, does "mitigating the impact of existing objects" refer to "impact" in a physical sense, or in a metaphorical sense? That's amusing as a double entendre. I wonder if it was intentional.
Assuming it means the metaphorical sense, that sentence illustrates the way "mitigate" introduces vagueness. I think we should avoid that word.
The bullshitter leads a cult that systematically teaches its members to distrust everyone but him. That includes their friends, their families, and their religious leaders.
Interestingly, almost 1/3 of them don't trust the bullshitter either, but they are more likely to trust him than trust anyone else.
On Ex-Twitter, scammers now buy the "blue checkmark" that used to indicate verification of identity.
Land privatization and water depletion, 150 years ago, set the stage for the Lahaina fire this year.
Recreating the eliminated wetlands may be desirable, but it won't be easy while sea level is rising. Coastal wetlands will turn into bays. To have wetlands 50 years from now will require making wetlands where there were no wetlands before.
New censorship at Guantanamo: to cover any place other than the courtroom for the "military commission" non-trials requires special permission.
Governor DeMentis has abolished protection of many historic buildings in Florida. I wonder why?
Is it simply that developers stand to make a lot of money by demolishing them, and offered DeMentis and Republicans a share of that?
Billboards in some US cities report on record high temperatures "Brought to you big Big Oil."
More careful scrutiny by government regulation is getting rid of much of the supposed carbon offsets that were never credible.
It is important to monitor SARS-COV-2 in the human population in order to keep track of its mutations.
Black Britons convicted of a killing without evidence that they had anything directly to do with it are challenging the verdict.
It may well be true that the practice of convicting people of murder by labeling them as gangsters because they are friends with a murderer is applied most often to blacks. Perhaps the decision to apply the practice is made in a biased manner.
But the crucial problem with this practice is that it is fundamentally not a valid way to determine that certain people are a gang. It is only an unreliable heuristic. Each time it is applied, whatever the demographics of those it is applied to, it is likely to result in a miscarriage of justice. We need not ask what race they are to condemn the practice.
If the practice were valid, thugs could nonetheless apply it based on racist criteria. Many thugs are racist and they often do that. But that is a different kind of issue.
Various countries have passed or are considering passing laws against the crime of ecocide.
Climate defenders call on the participants in the Federal Reserve's policy symposium to pay heed the need to defend Earth's climate.
Everyone: call on the Argentine government and its oil company not to build a pipeline in Vaca Muerta.
Philadelphia thugs shot Eddie Irizarry inside his car, then lied about what they had done. A body camera video proved they were lying. One of them has been fired, but what's needed is a prosecution.
US citizens: support the People's Response Act.
This plan, to send people with medically-oriented training rather than training in arresting criminals to help people who are flipping out, is — in substance — what was advocated under the misleading term "defund the police".
Patrick Braxton, a black man, was elected mayor of a small town in Alabama. The white men who used to be the town government used a series of mockeries of government procedure to deny that he had been elected.
Biden should do what Lyndon Johnson did: send the national guard to put a stop to this. Or perhaps federal marshals would be sufficient.
*West Virginia can restrict abortion pill sales, federal judge rules.*
This decision is logically consistent, but banning abortion is an injustice in any case, and the more methods it prohibits, the bigger the injustice.
The FCC is considering a petition to refuse to renew the license of a Faux News TV station, WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, for its distribution of false accusations in support of the insurrectionist's claims of election fraud.
A court ordered the EPA to finalize standards to limit people's exposure to the carcinogenic chemical, ethylene oxide.
This chemical is also known as epoxyethane, and is related to epoxy resin glue. It is useful as well as interesting. Alas, it is dangerous for humans to breathe, even in small quantities. Leaks from chemical plants can harm the people living nearby.
A Chinese dissident escaped to South Korea by jetski.
I am curious about the escaper's reported name, Kwon Pyong, since that does not fit Chinese pinyin orthography. It would make sense as Korean.
Researchers suggest that the gulf stream current will stop flowing at some point between 2025 and 2095, due to human-caused heating of the Atlantic Ocean.
Using Kissinger as an example to explain the evolution of the term "realpolitik" — from objectivity to amorality.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Civilian Harm Review and Reassessment Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Georgia Republicans plan to set aside District Attorney Willis, who is prosecuting the insurrectionist, as a way to sabotage the case against him.
This uses a new law that Republicans adopted so as to protect racist killers from prosecution.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important — and I label them like this.
A project is developing strict rules which banks can adhere to in order to ensure that their operations are committed to ending global heating.
The idea of employing humans to check the output of generative systems for occasional howling errors is not reliable — if such errors are rare, the human checker will become unattentive and let errors slip by.
Biden has a new plan to help Americans trapped in student debt. It replaces the previous plan that the Supreme Court rejected, and works by reducing payment requirements and interest charged.
The US is pressuring Mexico to allow imports of genetically modified US corn.
The main economic effect of NAFTA was to spread poverty among Mexican farmers (a large fraction of Mexicans) by competition from US agricultural products.
Thai parties that have little in common except supporting various sorts of strongmen formed a coalition to block the party that campaigns for more freedom and democracy out of power.
*Some kinds of tree leaves could become too hot to be able to conduct photosynthesis, researchers warn.* Those species would be wiped out.
Google's experimental "artificial intelligence" search was willing to answer about the "benefits of slavery" and offered a supposedly safe recipe for cooking "angel of death" mushrooms.
I think this demonstrates that it is using a language model, Many refer to then as "artificial intelligence", but that is a misuse of that term, since they don't actually understand the subjects they generate text about or what that text means.
Everyone: call on Sonic to stop using styrofoam take-out containers.
*Fossil fuels being subsidized at rate of $13m a minute, says IMF.*
Low levels of sea ice around Antarctica killed most of the emperor penguin chicks, in a large part of that continent. They can't survive if the sea ice melts.
As global heating eliminates sea ice, it may eliminate emperor penguins too. To save them — and to save ourselves — we need to curb global heating.
Ecuador's referendum demonstrates that the people may vote to shut down production in an oil field.
*UPS workers win wage increases, air conditioning in new union contract.*
Suggesting that army officers in Niger held a coup because the president had passed a law, which European countries had pushed for, that cut off the flow of bribes to those officers.
I don't know enough to gauge whether this is true, or to have an opinion about that law.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, is reported to have been on a small plane that crashed, or (some say) was shot down by the Russian army.
I wouldn't take any of this as certain. But if Prigozhin is alive but in hiding for the long term, he won't be able to run Wagner effectively, so for most practical purposes it would be equivalent to his death.
If Prigozhin was indeed killed by that crash, it means the end of Wagner too.
This may benefit Putin by removing apparent instability, but I think it will weaken Putin's standing in Russia and deny him what Wagner used to contribute to the Putin forces' military strength.
DeMentis held a campaign event in Iowa and had Iowa state thugs forcibly exclude Ty Rushing, a reporter from an organization that might criticize him.
The thug leader said this was a "private event". I wonder if that was serious or bullshit. Did the event have a specific guest list, or did it admit strangers as long as they were not Ty Rushing?
G20 countries poured a record-breaking $1.4tn into fossil fuel subsidies in 2022.
The corrupter has a mafia way of thinking and sought to create a mafia state. If he grabs power again, he will learn from his failures and do it more thoroughly.
A US appeals court ruled to uphold Alabama's law prohibiting minors from using puberty blockers.
If our goal is that a minor should not prematurely make a permanent commitment before perse is old enough to be quite sure of per choice, clearly we should ensure per right to use puberty blockers, and prevent anyone from imposing a choice on per before perse is ready.
*Vaping found to be the biggest risk factor for teenage tobacco smoking.*
Hong Kong's security thugs are questioning relatives of overseas dissidents as a reminder that they could put those relatives in prison at any time.
China's fertility rate has become quite low; this implies the population will decrease.
If only India, the world's most populous country, could do the same, it would start to alleviate the danger of overconsumption and pollution and open the path to rewilding half of the Earth's surface.
*Extreme water stress faced by countries home to quarter of world population.*
If thug departments want more people to seek to become cops, they should make efforts to respect the rights of the people they encounter.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of rape despite strong evidence he was not the rapist. It took the UK judicial system 17 years to conclude that this was wrong.
*[Prosecutors] had key DNA evidence 16 years before Andrew Malkinson cleared.*
What I see here is the effect of a presupposition of guilt, and later a presupposition that a court conviction can't have been wrong.
A vandal attacked a tree in Australia designated by indigenous people SST a "birthing tree". They are fighting a plan to eliminate that tree to build a road which motorists consider necessary.
In my view, the religious feelings and wishes of indigenous people should get the same level of consideration as the religious feelings and wishes of any other people, but not more. Regardless of which group, such feelings do not outweigh everything else in life.
To treat something as "sacred", and extremely protected, simply because some sect calls it so is excessive. We would not be shocked if some neighborhood church, mosque, synagogue, temple or shrine — or tree — were taken by eminent domain if the purpose is sufficient. On the other hand, if the religious object is rare and unusual, or specially old, that would be a stronger reason to preserve it — by rerouting the road, in this case.
Some information crucial for evaluating this case is not present in the article. For instance, how many birthing trees are there per square mile in that region? On the average, how long have they had the status of birthing trees? And how long has that particular tree enjoyed that status?
If there are many birthing trees, preserving them all is an unreasonable demand. If they are few, preserving them is not much to ask, and surely feasible to do.
If that tree has been a birthing tree for 200 years, that makes it rather special, which is a good reason to protect it. But if it was designated 10 years ago, it is reasonable to respond, "Pick another tree."
(2023) Amazon's new anti-competitive requirement: sellers who don't pay for Amazon to ship their products are now required to pay for not doing so.
Thugs in Colorado shot Sestinee Thompson dead as she tried to flee by car from a confrontation.
They knew she was not the robbery suspect they were searching for, but they wanted to grab her for completeness' sake. That was surely not urgent enough to justify the escalation.
That Ms Thompson had children was irrelevant; that she was pregnant was irrelevant. Her right to life was as valid as yours or mine, no more and no less.
Her actions, as described by the thugs, were very foolish, and perhaps illegal, but they were not violent. (We must not presume thugs are telling the truth — often they do not.)
It is quite possible that the thugs might have treated a white woman differently. Racism, conscious or unconscious, is not unusual. If they had done the same thing to a white woman, that would also have been wrong. We should criticize people for the cases in which they do wrong, not for those in which they do right.
Racism is not what determines whether their actions in this case were wrong. It may be tangentially pertinent in explaining Ms Thompson's over-the-top reaction to being questioned. It may also be partly to blame for chaotic life.
The reason the thugs' actions were wrong is unrelated to the race of the victim. It is that shooting at someone for fleeing questioning or arrest is an dangerous overreaction, with a significant chance of making things much worse. There is no need and no justification for life-threatening hurry.
Ethiopia's rapid population growth is leaving no room for wildlife.
The next stage will cause famine.
The UK says it will require banks to offer access to cash within a 3-mile distance of a depositor's local community.
This is a good policy in principle, but I fear British banks, with their propensity to close accounts to avoid inconveniences for themselves, will game the rules by implementing them in reverse, like this:
"Dear Sir or Madam, we are compelled to close your account on account of the fact that we have no ATM within 3 miles of the village where you reside. We regret the inconvenience this may cause."
Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustayi has been sentenced to 5 years isolation from other cinema professionals, and to take a brainwashing course in how to make films that embody the regime's propaganda.
It occurs to me that copyright law is what enables the Iranian regime to use threats to block the showing of Iranian's' films in other countries. Copyright gives the filmmakers the power to deny permission for such showings, and thus makes it effective for the regime to jail them if they don't deny permission.
I can imagine other countries could pass laws to permit showings of foreign films without authorization of the copyright holder or any other entity that "owns" some aspect, if a court finds that a repressive regime compels that entity to deny permission.
(satire) *Florida Students Given Lifelike Dolls To Simulate Responsibility Of Owning Slave.*
(satire) *Prison Guard Heats Lunch Up Inside 150-Degree Solitary Confinement Cell.*
This is outrageous! That lunch did nothing to deserve solitary confinement.
*Saudi Arabia is on a global charm offensive. By blocking critical articles, Vice is helping it.*
Let us not forget that Crown Prince Bone Saw is responsible for murdering a journalist.
The UAE's state oil company, headed by the same emir who is heading this year's UN climate conference, failed to report its methane emissions to the UN.
Plutocracy in Britain has pushed 100,000 children into destitution, situations of incredible poverty.
Some restaurants in St Tropez won't let people have a table unless they spent big the previous time.
I can propose a simple solution to this: make sure it not, practically speaking, necessary for customers to identify themselves.
The corrupter has corrupted US Christianity so deeply that when preachers quote Jesus as saying "Turn the other cheek", some supposed Christians ask, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?"
A decade or two ago I met someone who said that to be a true Christian one must be a Liberal Democrat — meaning the kind of Liberals who gave us the New Deal, I could have a high opinion of Christians like that, but that would not convince me to believe supernatural claims such as the existence of gods.
*The US Leads the World in Millionaires, but the Wealth Is Not Trickling Down.
In the US: call on cable providers to drop collecting from all customers for Faux News.
Meat industry lobbying is blocking the development of greener alternatives in the US and the EU.
*Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group.*
*Guideline on Diet Coke ingredient by consultants tied to industry is "obvious conflict of interest" and "not credible".*
If aspartame has a very low probability of causing cancer, that may not make much practical difference. I would not automatically presume it does. But I don't have the expertise to judge the question.
Allowing the beverage industry a role in judging it is definitely wrong.
*Norfolk Southern [Railroad] Spent $1.9 Million in Washington as Congress Weakened Rail Safety Bill.*
Republicans are turning to murder to silence disagreement with their views.
SoCalGas spent $36 million to lobby against a proposal to end gas hookups in new buildings.
California has 14.8 billion dollars of pension funds invested in planet roaster companies.
The US government plans to spend a billion dollars researching capture of Co2 from the air.
It is a distant long shot, and not likely to be of real help before it is too late. On the other hand, it is small compared to what real decarbonization will cost. So I think it won't make much difference either way — unless it somehow interferes with serious decarbonization efforts.
But it could do just that. Planet roaster companies will surely get involved in these projects and use them for greenwashing, and to lobby against methods that have a chance of actually reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Rich countries are using poor countries' loans to trap them into investing in fossil fuel extraction.
The obvious way to respond is to offer debt forgiveness in exchange for commitments not to do more fossil fell development. I think we could do it, if not for the plutocrats trying to prevent it.
Bernie Sanders: *The US and China must unite to fight the climate crisis, not each other.*
I agree, that is what both should do. If they both agree, they could both do it. If both agree&hellp;
Ecuadorians voted to end oil extraction in the Yasuni national park.
This decision has been a political battle for a long time. President Correa asked the rich countries to pay Ecuador to keep that territory unexploited, saying that a poor country like Ecuador should not have bear the whole of the sacrifice of not selling that oil.
*Charge us with contempt too, say 40 people, if climate activist prosecuted [for carrying signs suggesting jury nullification].*
*[A large labor union] accuses Labour of "currying favor with big business" on workers' rights.*
Many New Zealanders have concluded that it is harmful to have a pet cat, because of their depredations on native bird species.
The London thug department may soon be thuggish less often, as it has rejected the responsibility to take most calls about mental health emergencies.
The department's motive for this was to focus its effort on crime.
It is interesting to compare this with the US, where the criminal justice reform movement campaigns to take thugs off the mental health calls because they sometimes kill the people they were called to help.
(satire) *Guantanamo Bay To Remain Open Indefinitely After Earning National Historic Landmark Status.*
The Cambodians who came to the US decades ago included many children who came with their families and never knew Cambodia except as a child. Even if they have committed crimes in the US, it is cruel and wrong to deport them to Cambodia now,
When someone immigrates as an adult, perse knows how to live in per former country. In those circumstances, being deported there is not inherently disaster. It is inherently disaster for people who only know life in the US.
The US has done similar things to people who immigrated as children (lawfully or not) from various countries.
This is never right.
Tropical mountain treelines are moving uphill at around 3 meters per year, and accelerating.
In temperate zones they are moving only 1 meter per year.
The Demerara slave revolt in British Guiana was brutally crushed, but ultimately it led to the abolition of slavery.
(satire) *England's World Cup Success Inspires New Generation Of Young Girls To Become Hooligans.*
The 1973 coup against President Allende, who tried to combine socialism with human rights and democracy, was orchestrated and supported by Republicans in the US and Tories in Britain.
This taught us to expect violence from supposedly democratic right-wing parties.
Wheels of parmigiano-reggiano cheese are now labeled with RFIDs saying where each one was produced.
I don't see anything wrong in labeling wheels of cheese, which are not a retail product, with something printed. Or even with an RFID, if it is present only at the wholesale level. But if there is any chance an RFID can get into something sold to a retail customer, it must come with directions for how to remove it. Tracking individuals even as a byproduct is unacceptable.
If you want to be tracked, move to China!
*Ten years on from the slaughter of protesters in Cairo, [General al-]Sisi's record is even grimmer.*
Exiled Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko was warned Putin would try to have her assassinated. Recently she became strangely ill. German prosecutors are investigating this as a possible murder attempt.
*Twitter appears to delay links by five seconds to sites Elon Musk dislikes.*
Accusing the Putin forces of committing ecocide by causing toxic industrial chemicals, and toxins from weapons, to leak into Ukraine's ecosystems and more or less poison them for a long time.
US citizens: call on US Courts to protect medication abortion.
The 5th circuit court of appeals ruled to put an end to easy access to mifepristone and thus the means to have a medicated abortion.
The 5 circuit includes Louisiana, Mississippi and part of Texas. The senators from those states are Republican, and due to the Senate's rule that judges appointed to that court must have the approval of at least one senator from those states, the judges on that court are right-wing extremists.
Therefore, right-wing extremists generally use those states to file their cases.
I hope that abortion rights activists continue to be able to obtain mifepristone pills and mail them to women who need them. But it may now be more difficult to do this.
Senator Manchin has announced an "unrelenting fight" against the survival of world civilization and non-rich Americans. He has already announced that he may leave the Democratic Party. This did not surprise me, since his views are in the range of the Republican Party.
In November 2022, we rejoiced that the Democrats had picked up a seat in the Senate and had clear control of it. But that was a mirage. The other fake Democrat, Sinema, has already left the Democratic Party. We have succeeded in exposing Republican sleeper agents, but with their exposure, the Republicans will effectively control the Senate through 2024.
US citizens: call on Citi executives to stop destroying Amazonia and warming our planet.
(satire) *Updated U.S. Flag Code States That American Flag Has Power To Grant Wishes.*
Governor Dismantle put people in charge of Florida's New College to chop down all its principles and rules to bury them in an anti-woke box.
Many of the faculty have already left.
I would guess that most of the faculty, and most of the students, will not return next year, and the college may be unable to continue operating at all except as an empty shell. But I think DeMentis will call that success.
Robert Reich: *Trump is undermining the entire US judicial system with another big lie.*
Afghans studying in UK universities face the threat of being deported to Afghanistan, where the Taliban will surely find reasons to consider them enemies.
*US Jews urged [by Israeli academics] to condemn Israeli occupation amid Netanyahu censure.*
Here is the Israeli academics' petition.
AIPAC, which claims to campaign in the US for support for Israel, has shifted completely to campaigning in the US for support for Israel's nondemocratic right-wing.
For years it has campaigned in the US for support for the US antidemocratic right-wing.
But that was not hostile enough.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan accused some Christians of blasphemy, so other Muslim fanatics attacked Christian churches.
In the US and Europe, we see Christian fanatics attacking mosques. Humanity would be better off if we could put an end to fervent belief in any religion.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*90% of Great Lakes water samples have unsafe microplastic levels. But experts say damage can be reversed if US and Canada act quickly to stop new plastics from entering lake system.*
*Private equity has its sights on [Britain's] NHS.*
It can't be coincidence that the Tories are holding the doors open.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republican plan to destroy Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
San Diego has escalated the war on homeless people by arresting people caught sleeping outside. However, the city offers them no alternative. Evidently this is an excuse for harshness against a scapegoat.
Salafi Arabia and Iran are really moving towards peace.
It is a shame that the United States did not help achieve this, and that it instead boosts China's influence. China will surely use that influence to maintain hell on Earth. But we can't blame China for boosting its influence by doing something good for once.
If Salafi Arabia can reconcile with Iran, is there a chance that the US can do so?
Iran's government is repressive, generally in the name of its repressive version of Islam. The repression targets women in particular, but also targets everyone's religious freedom, including non-Muslims and any Muslims that want to convert to some other religious camp. But the US has no influence to change this. General nastiness towards Iran will not help.
The main real complication is about renewing the non-nuclear deal that the saboteur in chief canceled. If there is any chance to do this, the US must try its best. However, it must emphasize the positive side more than the negative side.
My approval of reconciliation between Salafi Arabia and Iran does not mean I condemn those governments any less than before. They are despicable and I wish they were both overthrown (though the US should not try to overthrow them). But that doesn't alter the fact that the world is better off if they are not fighting each other.
US citizens: call on Congress to save the PEPFAR program which gives AIDS medicines to poor countries.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The decision not to sound the sirens in Lahaina for the fire was made for a rational reason.
This leads me to wonder how the warning system (and others like it) could be improved so that it could safely be used for all kinds of disasters.
*In their most desperate hour, Maui’s residents may lose their right to water.* Agribusinesses have been taking control of the island's water for years, and the inhabitants have been suing for years, but disasters are opportunities for big businesses.
Invasive species of grass provided this year's Hawaii wildfires with more fuel than ever before. The state needs to mostly get rid of them. Perhaps farming animals in those regions would help.
*Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors posted on rightwing websites.* This was evidently intended to threaten and intimidate anyone asked to consider, in the future, whether right-wing fanatics have committed crimes and should be prosecuted.
Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northern Territories, is cut off by wildfires.
So far, the province is evacuating various small towns, but if the fires come closer to Yellowknife, it will have to evacuate that city. It won't be easy to do that by air.
It would take 100 trips of an medium-size airliner to evacuate the whole population of around 20,000 people, but that is assuming people take no more than what you could bring on a commercial flight. People evacuating, perhaps forever, will need to bring more than that.
The evacuation of Yellowknife should not wait.
Canada is doing everything possible to prevent Yellowknife from being destroyed by fire, but nowadays it can't be sure of success.
This is a big change caused by global heating. It used to be that we could count on fire crews to protect substantial towns. It required a big effort, but they knew reliable methods to use and would not fail.
Nowadays, due to global heating, that big effort may not do the job. It may be that nothing can do the job.
A wildfire on Tenerife that is causing evacuations of thousands from their homes is "beyond our capacity to extinguish," according to the regional government.
Fires that civilization cannot extinguish indicate a new level of disaster, caused by global heating.
*The Climate Culprits Blocking Workers' Heat and Wildfire Protections.*
US citizens: call on the Senate to move quickly on judicial nominations. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case Moore vs US about whether a wealth tax is constitutional.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to sue the fossil fuel companies for lying to the public about the danger of climate disaster.
On the challenge of systematically preventing deaths from heat in Phoenix as global heating steadily turns up the world's thermostat.
US funds that could reduce use of fossil fuels are being directed towards projects for carbon sequestration, which is unlikely to do any good.
*Biased Bank of England blames pay for inflation, never profit.*
*Data suggests prices are rising even though production costs are flat. Yet wages remain policymakers’ chief concern.*
This makes evident the bias that Robert Reich pointed out for the US a year ago. I must conclude that central banks have an ulterior motive: to knock workers down.
Freedom of speech, under the US First Amendment, does not cover the words used to carry out a crime. It does not cover setting up criminal conspiracies, perjury, fraud, or intimidation of witnesses.
Therefore, freedom of speech is not a defense for the crimes that the corrupter/insurrectionist is charged with, or the ones he might commit now.
Eating meat, and raising cattle, are associated in the US with masculinity. Big Food takes thorough advantage of this.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "indigenous" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
In a Greek town that was devastated by a wildfire in 2018, Christy Lefteri found that people sought small and proximal causes or enemies to blame for it, in a desperate effort to avoid confronting the great enemy: the planet roasters.
The men and women of the former Afghan army must hide from the Taliban and may be reduced to begging for food.
*Thousands of Afghan judges and legal staff remain at risk post-Taliban takeover.*
10 or more driverless taxis on Vallejo Street in San Francisco blocked traffic on that street for 15 minutes, simply by stopping in the street. All the human drivers in cars on that street were stuck.
The company's explanation makes it clear that these cars are not "autonomous" — they depend on receiving orders via cellular data networks.
The possibility of stopping traffic is, of course, a pain in the neck, and people are right to point out it could be dangerous if an emergency occurs. But I see that as the secondary danger, because improvements in technology will tend to correct it over time.
The biggest danger of automated taxis is that of massive surveillance: tracking the passengers because they must identify themselves to pay, and recognizing people on the street using facial recognition. Improved technology will tend to make these dangers worse.
*No milk, no eggs, small hope: fears rise for Sri Lanka’s malnourished children.*
I've been told that Sri Lanka's economic collapse was due to a government policy that made farming uneconomical, but I can only consider that a rumor. Can anyone show me reliable information?
*Girl, 13, gives birth after she was raped and denied abortion in Mississippi.*
Vice Media made a deal for funds from Salafi Arabia and began censoring stories that its ruler might dislike.
A drought has limited the number of ships passing through the Panama Canal's locks each day to 32 instead of the expected 36. A backlog of ships is building up.
This problem is probably related to global heating, which means it will get worse over the years, like so many others.
(satire) *New Florida School Curriculum Requires Students To Keep Eyes Shut Tight All Day Until Safe At Home.*
*[purported] AI detectors tend to be programmed to flag writing as [LLM-generated" when the word choice is predictable and the sentences are more simple. As it turns out, writing by non-native English speakers often fits this pattern.* So their work tends to be falsely flagged.
The article describes the systems these students are accused of using as "AI", but that is a confusion.
*American Atheists claims victory for removal of “In God We Trust” from Mississippi's standard license plate.*
Resistance to pressure in the UK to use surveilled digital payments is found in various groups, including young people living on limited incomes and foreign visitors, as well as the usually cited group (old people who find digital technology confusing).
Alas, the article doesn't mention the group I belong to: people who value privacy and understand that the way to prevent personal data from being misused by companies is not to allow companies to collect that data.
The UK needs a political campaigning group to demand laws requiring that certain important kinds of stores accept cash.
Last time I had a connection in Heathrow Airport, I wanted to buy a snack from a store which accepted only tracked payments. Since that store would not accept my money, I bought something else from another store.
The Georgia charges of election fraud target the insurrectionist's lawyers and the heavies he sent to frame Atlanta election officials, along with the insurrectionist himself, acting as a conspiracy.
Abraham Lincoln pointed out that no one who proclaimed the "benefits" of being a slave has ever demonstrated sincerity in that belief by asking to be a slave.
The Musk Ox has driven half the climate defender voices off of Ex-Twitter.
Given what he has said, I expect he considers that success.
The US ambassador to Australia is suggesting the possibility that the US will give Julian Assange a plea bargain.
Whether that corrects the injustice of the charges against him depends partly on how much more time he would have to spend in prison, but Alas on what he would have to plead guilty to, and whether than ends up criminalizing journalism (which conviction the current charges would do).
The insurrectionist now faces charges in Georgia of trying to steal the election there.
People have posted references to the complete text of the indictment at a page on documentcloud, a site that doesn't work without JavaScript. For moral reasons I can't refer people there.
Here is a PDF containing the full text of the Georgia indictment.
Young plaintiffs in Montana won their climate lawsuit, as the judge ruled that Montana's prohibition on considering likely future climate damage when evaluating development projects violates their constitutional rights.
9% of employees in Britain are denied their workers' rights because the state does nothing to punish their employers for doing that.
Similar problems happen in the US, including theft of wages, denial of sick leave, and exploitation in the gig economy.
The traditional reason has been that elected politicians listen to what the employers want. However, the California referendum shows that big tech companies have the power to mobilize voters to vote to exploit these workers so that they can enjoy somewhat lower prices as customers for gig platforms.
Since some of the benefit of paying the low wages is kept by the gig platforms, the net benefit goes to the wealthy, and the people overall would be wise to support the higher wages.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the FATCAT Act to tax private jet travel.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate and the Department of Justice to investigate the gifts Clarence Thomas has accepted.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to permit televising the trial of the insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US government to protect Americans squeezed by poverty by regulating digital payday lenders.
US citizens: call on the Smithsonian to add coverage of the effects of the nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima to its exhibit about the airplane that dropped it.
*Concealed gun licenses and homicides rise in tandem.*
In other words, the evidence says that more people with concealed guns does not prevent or discourage killings with guns.
The British refugee prison barge in isolated Portland must be emptied due to the discovery of deadly legionella bacteria.
*Devastating Hawaii fires made "much more dangerous" by [global heating].*
The marine heat wave in Florida has spread around the Caribbean, and so has massive coral bleaching. Some of the corals are dying immediately.
With 1/4 of marine species depending on coral, we are seeing a mass extinction actually happen. This heat wave is not killing all the world's coral, but there are surely species of animals, dependent on coral and endemic to the Caribbean, that are becoming extinct now.
Most US doctors are now employees of businesses, in many cases very large private-equity exploitationist businesses. And these businesses decide whether a patient gets to see a doctor at all.
The article's main topic is that some of the MD employees are responding to this by unionizing. I applaud that — but that won't necessarily help the patients.
It may not help the doctors at the deep level, because the corporate power that stops doctors form treating patients properly is unbearable to many of them. They quit, or they become mentally ill, and some commit suicide.
We need to restore management by people committed to medicine rather than profit, and likewise break up the large chains. But how?
One way is to establish a national medical system that will cut the profit out and thus provide medical treatment to everyone.
*Doctors and patient families say HCA hospitals push [patients into hospice].*
Staff are sent to convince patients, and those making choices for patients, that treatment is futile and they should give up on aiming for survival.
San Francisco approved driverless taxis for commercial service, ignoring objections that they drive over fire hoses and cut crime scene lines, and also delay various sorts of emergency vehicles.
They also do lots of surveillance. And since you can't hail one on the street, or get it with an ordinary phone call, they surely imitate Guber's injustice by identifying the customer and making per run nonfree software.
*Senate Democrats Blocked Watchdog for Ukraine Aid — Ignoring Lessons From Afghanistan.*
The famous Tintin series of graphic novels from Belgium included adventures in the Belgian Congo, and they depicted realities of colonization. There have been demands to censor the books over that.
When it comes to judging Belgian colonialism, we need not bother thinking of Tintin. The realities of the Congo were oppression from beginning to end. Initially, the Congo was King Leopold's personal possession, and he treated the inhabitants so cruelly that even the main European colonial powers (exploiters themselves) were ashamed of it. That took some doing.
We can't change the past, but that part of the past calls for vigorous condemnation.
The question here, though, is whether to attack the fictional Tintin books today as a stand-in for the real exploitation of real people in the past.
The passages criticized in the article clearly depict aspects of the colonial system. Whether they were specifically vicious, or merely illustrated aspects of a system which was vicious overall, depends on the specific context, which the article does not go into.
Be that as it may, to try to "sanitize" Tintin by falsifying the parts that refer in passing to the colonial system would be pointless damage, that would not do any good against present and future injustice, let alone past injustice.
What could do good is to add an appendix to point out the glimpses of the colonial system in the story, and give the start of an overall picture of the oppression that those glimpses showed parts of. Today's readers could learn something important from that.
*Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert.*
The movie Barbie is end-to-end advertisement, via product placement.
Product placement has corrupted movies for decades.
*Gordon Brown [ex-PM of UK] calls for Taliban to face crimes against humanity charges; urges UK and allies to impose sanctions on Afghan regime over its "brutalisation" of women and girls.*
That policy is a massive denial of human rights. But those responses are less effective than one might hope for — especially on Afghanistan. It is not clear to me that they would do any good.
The government of Cyprus has taken another try at condemning David Hunter to life imprisonment.
*CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search.*
This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue. I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.
Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.
*Cracked UK voter data could be used to target disinformation, warn experts.*
*"Nature needs money": Lula tells rich countries to pay up and protect world’s rainforests.*
*Police in England and Wales will pilot project to [reduce] sexism and misogyny.*
The plan is to use psychological knowledge about what is effective.
*When Alito and most of his colleagues were trying to secure their confirmations to the high court, they promised the Senate Judiciary Committee they would adhere to ethics laws from Congress that regulate justices’ acceptance and disclosure of gifts, limit their outside employment income, and mandate recusal in some circumstances.*
Now Alito claims the Senate has no right to set ethics requirements for the Supreme Court.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) *Study Finds U.S. Employees Waste 2 Million Hours Annually Spending Time With Friends, Family.*
*Targeting Trans Kids, Florida School Board Requires Parental Approval for [any students to use] Nicknames.*
Fort McMurray, Alberta, was built to extract oil from tar sands. In 2018 it was engulfed by a wildfire caused by the global heating it had helped to cause.
*Sunrise Outlines President Biden's Climate Emergency Powers.* Now if he would only use them.
*Polar challenge: as the sea ice melts, can countries come together to protect the Arctic Ocean?*
An AI system has proved capable of guiding airplanes to avoid making contrails. This is a good thing to do because contrails add to global heating.
I categorize this system as artificial intelligence because it understands a limited field in a way that has been validated. It understands how to avoid making contrails.
If the Tories can't send boat people to Rwanda, they want to send them to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic: over a 1000 miles from Africa or South America.
In addition, they plan to adopt the cruelty of Australia's right-wing government, which sent people to the exile island of Nauru and would never let them go to Australia. (I think most of them have been given asylum in other countries.)
The Tories plan to do likewise, so that the people sent to Ascension Island would never get a hearing for asylum in Britain.
The US has adopted a similar system of sending asylum seekers to Mexico unless they could afford to use one of the limited authorized ways for a refugee to enter the US — which are difficult for people from poor countries to use.
Thus we see the principle that people who are denied human rights in their own countries should be able to get asylum in other countries being chipped away almost to nothing.
Robert Reich explains the elements of fascism and demonstrates that the insurrectionist fits all of them.
Supposed "AI" that generates recipes generated one which made chlorine gas.
I can't tell for certain, but this looks like yet another bullshit generator that can come up with things that look smooth but doesn't really know or understand its subject.
* From the strain extreme heat puts on your heart to the damage it may do to your mental health, not to mention the increased air pollution, the forecast [from global heating] isn't good.*
*Six ways Biden's historic climate bill has succeeded — and fallen short.*
The shortcomings are not Biden's fault. He had to negotiate a compromise with senators working for plutocrats, including planet roasters, and Senator Manchin was not the only one.
I criticize Biden for weakness on other decisions, including some that are climate-related, and he is certainly no Bernie Sanders, but not for this compromise. I don't see a basis to conclude that anyone else could have done better on this.
(satire) *America's Foreign Policy Forces USA Women's World Cup Team To Intervene In Japan-Sweden Match.*
I'd say the satire was buried just a little too deep. It took me a few lines to see it — but when I did see it, I laughed.
(satire) *Amazon Unveils Giant Camera That Tells Users What To Do.*
Subsequently Amazon announced it was moving production to China, anticipating a demand for hundreds of millions of units from the Chinese Communist Part. ;-{.
A survey of students of perceptions of their freedom of speech found that the vast majority feel free to express their opinions.
The survey is useful but it could have been worded more carefully. The question asked whether students felt free to express the opinions they happen to hold. For the students who answered yes, it could be that they feel no pressure about what opinions they express.
But it could be that they feel free to express their actual opinions because they agree with the majority.
We would get a clearer and more reliable picture of students' perceived range of freedom to express opinions by asking them, "Would you feel free to express opinion A, supposing you held that opinion? What about opinion B? Opinion C? Opinion D? … Opinion M?" It would state a list of various opinions that students might conceivably hold, and find out which ones are safe to express in their milieu.
*Former NYPD union leader gets 2 years in prison for theft scheme.*
US citizens: call on President Biden to end the reliance on fossil fuels.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Chaco Canyon by rejecting HR 4374.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Nixon supported a plan for a military coup in Chile in 1970 to prevent Allende from becoming president.
The coup attempt failed, but killed the head of Chile's armed forces, General Schneider, who would have opposed any coup. This probably paved the way for Pinochet's coup in 1973, which also had US support.
*Asylum seeker who escaped from Iran says Dorset barge will be another "jail".*
This might seem like an exaggeration, because the articles which say where the barge has been moored don't explain the implications of "Dorset" and "Portland". They expect readers to be British and know already.
Portland is an island which trains don't reach. It is in Dorset, a mostly rural county whose population is under half a million people. Hardly any of the refugees will know anyone there.
There are buses to Weymouth on the mainland, but it may take a long time to walk to a bus stop from the dock. Weymouth has a train station, but it is a long way from there to London or any other large city. Once there it probably takes an hour to reach whoever the refugee wants to see.
I cannot access the timetable web sites, because they impose the use of nonfree Javascript, but I suspect it is not feasible to go to any large city and come back in a day. In effect, the refugees forced to live on the barge will be quite isolated from everyone they know, including friends and support organizations.
This is a gratuitous cruelty, since it would have been perfectly easy to put the barge in a less isolated place. I am sure this was an intentional part of the "hostile environment" which is the stated basis for the UK's policies towards people who are waiting for asylum hearings or come from countries too unsafe to deport anyone to.
*Republican Death Star Plan to Kill the Planet.* To vote for any Republican in 2024 is to vote for an across-the-board attack on climate defense for the sake of polluting businesses.
The comparison with the Death Star is not strictly valid. As people have pointed out, global climate disaster will not destroy the planet Earth itself. It will wipe out most species but surely not all life. I expect that some humans will survive, albeit in low-technology societies and with short life spans. In a million years, life will diversify again.
But the disaster could easily wipe out technological civilization and cause the permanent loss of history and culture. Carefully printed books may survive if people recopy them every few hundred years, but what could they write on? And who would have time to spare for this?
Another background issue on which I disagree: Freedom can be taken away either by selective enforcement of rules that protect it, or by replacing them with rules that oppress. To ask which method is the more dangerous today is a foolish question; Republicans use both. They are practiced and adept at combining the two methods: they change rules and laws to facilitate oppressive selective enforcement. They have done this for voter suppression, for preventing prosecution of uniformed thugs while prosecuting poor people at every opportunity, and for censorship of schools and libraries.
The overall point of the article is valid notwithstanding these side points.
After the peace deal between Ethiopia and Tigray, some border areas of Tigray are still occupied by Ethiopian troops. So are areas that the peace deal assigned to Ethiopia but whose inhabitants are Tigrayan. The Ethiopian army blocks aid supplies in these areas.
*Prosecutors may not need to show that Trump knew he had lost the election.* That is because of the "disruption of an official proceeding" charge for the Jan 6 insurrection.
The US electric utilities' lobbying group is lobbying against stricter pollution limits for electric generation.
*A pandemic is not just a disease — it's a political, social and economic crisis fueled by inequality.* *HIV and more recently Covid-19, laid bare that inequality doesn't just appear. It's human-made. As the head of UNAids, Winnie Byanyima, put it recently: "Inequalities are a policy choice. They are choices our governments make."*
The article reports that, in countries that criminalize male-male sex, men who do that are twice as likely to have HIV as elsewhere.
Who decides to make inequalities? Billionaires, using their money to brainwash people so they can get more power to impose more inequalities to get more money.
*Tennessee Dems Expelled After [anti-]Gun Protest Win Back Seats In Special Election.*
*Police withheld evidence making man's rape conviction unsafe, says UK court.*
After 17 years in prison, he was released because DNA evidence showed someone else committed the crime. However, given a fair trial, he would not have been convicted at all.
(satire) *Ron [DeMentis] Announces He Will Live As Slave For One Year To Prove It Not Bad.*
An appeals court insisted that Starbucks must rehire workers that it fired as retaliation for unionizing.
Some Florida schools will not dare teach entire Shakespeare plays because of DeMentis's censorship law.
Why the idea of brokering peace in Ukraine makes no sense at present.
I've stated the same conclusion all along.
*Britons have become so mean that many of us think poor people don’t deserve leisure time.*
The same is true for many in the US.
*Idaho Republicans Are Directly Asking Hospitals for Abortion Records.*
This is for the sake of making persecution impossible to avoid.
A study comparing the provinces of Indonesia found that level of poverty and level of inequality are separately correlated with higher rates of crime.
US citizens: Denounce Governor DeMentis for trying to turn the history of slavery inside out.
*[Clarence Thomas] may have violated US law by not disclosing 38 vacations paid for by wealthy friends, ethics experts say.*
*Winter heatwave in Andes is sign of things to come, scientists warn.*
Human-caused climate disruption and El Niño push temperature in mountains to 37C, almost human body temperature. This could wipe out many species.
A man clearly inspired by the insurrectionist announced plans to assassinate Biden and other officials, and had the means to try, was shot and killed by the FBI in an effort to arrest him.
I wonder what caused this arrest to turn fatal. He may have acted so as to make that necessary, but we can't take that for granted.
A wildfire in drought-struck Hawaii destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, which dates to before the unification of the islands.
Ironically, the immediate trigger was the approach of a hurricane which was close enough to send strong winds but not close enough to bring rain that might have put out the fire.
*After last week’s surprise coup in Niger, the Russian military group Wagner is taking advantage of the chaos and anti-French sentiment, says journalist Garé Amadou in Naimey, while ordinary Nigerians are preparing for the worst.*
Italy's government, which on many issues is right-wing, approved a left-wing windfall profits tax on banks so as to cut other taxes and help people who are paying mortgages.
Europe is leading the way in decarbonizing the use of ships, with governments pushing for change. So far, not many ships use electric power, but the change is profitable so more will follow.
*Progress on slowing deforestation [in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and Colombia] could boost climate efforts, say experts.*
Ohio voters rejected the Republicans' special rush referendum which asked them to make it harder for future referendums to be held or or adopted.
Republicans especially wanted to block a scheduled referendum on legalizing abortion and a proposed referendum to put an end to the gerrymandering that enables Republicans to control the state legislature with a minority of votes.
July was the hottest month since records began, and was 1.5°C above the preindustrial average.
To reach that level of heat, even temporarily, shows we are coming close to disaster.
Biden has protected an area near the Grand Canyon from mining.
Muslims in Sweden think that there must be "boundaries" to freedom of expression, and these must include criminalizing burning a Qur'an.
Burning a symbol of something you condemn is a form of protest that everyone is entitled to. That's why the US Supreme Court invalidated the law that used to criminalize burning the US flag. Burning it is a symbolic act of denunciation of the US, not material damage to the United States. Likewise for burning any religion's holy book, or Mao's little red book, a copy of the Bill of Rights, a copy of a Microsoft software license, a copy of the GNU GPL, or any text that represents something you oppose.
Where Muslims are in charge, they usually protect their feelings by censoring any criticism of their religion. They label criticism of Islam as "blasphemy" and punish it very severely — in some countries with death. This violates the human rights of people with certain views.
Where Muslims are in charge, they don't respect religious freedom either. Many countries which make Islam the established religion punish any Muslim who tries to stop being a Muslim. In Malaysia, the law simply says that people of Malay race are Muslims whether they like it or not. This too violates the human rights of people with certain views.
We need more respect for human rights, not less. Sweden must not use "hate crime" as an excuse to repress condemnation of Islam.
Nor is it legitimate to claim that an act of symbolic condemnation "endangers national security". How could that ever happen? If Muslims (or any other group) threaten to attack the nation in revenge for a symbolic act of condemnation, they are the ones threatening national security, not the people they demand to repress.
Many US states are reviving the harsh penalties of the War on Drugs, and worse, in an effort to reduce the underground use of fentanyl.
Relatives of people who died emotionally tend to direct their grief into revenge against targets of opportunity, and I think this is an example of that tendency.
These laws are unlikely to reduce use of fentanyl, but will cause a lot of avoidable secondary suffering.
The way to reduce the use of fentanyl and other addictive drugs is with harm-reduction policies.
*Air pollution linked to rise in antibiotic resistance that imperils human health.*
As air pollution as increased, so has the amount of resistance — in every country.
Resistance is also increased by misuse of antibiotics.
*Niger: thousands gather for rally to cheer generals who led coup.*
Some carried Russian flags as well as Niger flags. That confirms that this rally was not a grass-roots expression of public opinion. It confirms that the generals are allied with Wagner, which also supports coup-installed governments in neighboring Mail and Burkina Faso.
Wagner may have suggested the coup in Niger and encouraged the generals to organize it.
Wagner is a conventional military force and Ukraine has shown it be defeated by conventional military force. It was sent to serve Putin's wish to get more global power by military means, but it is officially a private mercenary company, not the Russian army. There is no reason not to send a Western force to operate ground-attack aircraft and heavy weapons to help defeat it. But given the hostility in the region toward France, the former colonial power which is accused of continuing neocolonial exploitation there, it would be wise not to include French troops.
(That article includes lots of other pertinent information.)
To prevent atrocities, it would be important for the force to have people from Niger as advisors, and consult them about each proposed attack to make sure the target is not a wedding or a family. American soldiers, even with strict orders and good will, can't always distinguish correctly. I expect that no one else can do better.
The governments sending that force must firmly resist the temptation to convert it into a counterinsurgency battle afterward against the predatory Islamist gangs that threaten all the countries in that region. They are a very different problem, and much harder, and Western countries tend to do it very badly.
Modi's repressive thugs used his repressive laws to accuse nonviolent protest leader Umar Khalid of "terrorism".
The "evidence" for this accusation, as described in the article, was a rhetorical question whose answer was "no", which they mis-cited as an affirmative statement.
The judge in the insurrectionist's trial for trying to use fraud and force to overturn the 2020 election gave him release conditions which included not threatening witnesses. Since then, he has threatened witnesses several times.
I must take issue with one of his points that may mislead readers. If indeed 400,000 defendants in the US are in jail pending trial because they "didn't meet a condition of their release" — and I take Reich's word for that — it doesn't imply what it sounds like. For many of them, this had nothing to do with their doing anything wrong — they simply did not have money to make bail.
There is a movement now to put an end to keeping defendants in jail simply because they are poor.
UK ministers warn that cars from China may carry out massive surveillance for China.
That is a real danger, but the same danger applies no matter where the cars come from. Their failure to consider this for Tesla cars, which are known to surveil their users with extreme thoroughness, is a bizarre mental lapse.
Real respect for your privacy means not collecting personal data about you.
Some surveillance systems are imposed by legal requirements; others to serve attempts at driving without a human driver, which means those cars are not "autonomous".
Why is it impossible to find what surveillance is done, or get rid of it when found? Because the car software is nonfree! A nonfree program, one that you can't study or change, never deserves your trust.
Since you can fix the car's brakes yourself (though it will have to pass inspection), there is no reason the car's software should be treated otherwise.
What about car hardware that can do surveillance? Laws should require that any cameras that can see outside the car, or passengers, be designed to blur out their faces, bodies and clothing, sufficiently that the car's computers learn only that there is something there and its rough dimensions (accurate no more than to the nearest foot).
Cameras that look at the camera should also blur enough that they cannot identify the driver.
Laws should also require that the user can easily deactivate and reactivate each or all kinds of radio transmission and internet connectivity, except for radio-based anti-theft systems such as Lowjack, provided they are installed or activated only at the user's initiative and never by default.
Likewise the user should be able to the user can easily deactivate and reactivate each or all kinds of GPS receivers from keeping a log of locations and reporting them later. A GPS navigating device should be forbidden to make the location records over any interface that can be accessed by other systems in the car, or by maintenance diagnostic systems.
The UK should also cease tracking the movements of all cars via license plate cameras on the roads.
Gender stereotypes lead to punishing women employees if they speak assertively in ways that are treated as acceptable for men.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider important and that I don't know another reference for. That article is one of the exceptions.
The crowded living conditions of poor people causes them to have worse sleep. Poor sleep in turn leads to various medical problems and a shorter life span.
Poor sleep can be caused by other things. People with enough money are not immune. Nonetheless, they are less likely to have that problem.
* Institutions, academics and students are being ill-served by a failing marketized model of higher education.*
The US methods of doing this are different in detail but they have had similar consequences.
To treat education as a business for which people should pay based on the profit they hope to get from it is effectively to deny the value of an educated populace — which means to deny the value of democracy.
Eritrea's oppression of its populace deserves a protest, and so do "festivals" it runs to raise money in other countries. But these protests should not include violence.
Info about Eritrea's oppression.
Only 10 of the vaquita porpoises are left. They are being driven to extinction by gill-net fishing.
I am surprised that people did not years ago capture some vaquitas to establish a protected population. That is the usual way of saving a species when its population drops so low.
When uniformed thugs are tried for crimes, they ask to be tried by a judge with no jury, because they know judges are likely to find them not guilty.
People who work in the criminal justice system often need the cooperation of thugs. For this reason, some prosecutors go to extreme lengths to protect uniformed thugs from prosecution. Nowadays some prosecutors do prosecute thugs, but I expect that many of them still try to protect thugs.
I expect that judges also want the cooperation of the thug department and therefore are under pressure not to put thugs in prison, even when they deserve it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Sinema's bill to cut the pay of wildland firefighters.
Many of them are prisoners, temporarily released to risk their lives fighting fires. They are easy targets for cruelty.
US citizens: call on the EPA to tighten its proposed standards for greenhouse emissions from power plants.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
The EU says that Putin's claims about sanctions' interfering with Russia's food exports are lies, and calls on Putin to resume the Black Sea truce that permitted Ukraine to export more food.
However, a truce can't rebuild the Kakhovka dam. The world will suffer from food scarcity for years.
What can the world do about this problem?
British politicians call for rules against using altered photos made using neural network systems, or at least a requirement to indicate that an image was altered.
I'm in favor of such requirements. Of course, it is crucial to design them as part of a system of enforcement so that they won't be ignored. I think that should be possible in the UK.
However, a watermark would not be as effective as a large, visible badge saying "This image was altered". That would work better because humans would recognize it.
Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to impeach Biden based on bullshit.
Why not? Bullshit has worked for them many times.
California has strengthened regulations to protect beavers, because beaver dams help stop wildfires.
Women in Alabama who use marijuana (or a substance extracted from it) while pregnant are sentenced to jail.
It is important to teach that using drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) while pregnant can damage the fetus — for the sake of those babies that will be born. However, jailing a few unfortunate people is not going to deliver a message to a large fraction of the public. A less vindictive method could reach a lot more people with the same cost.
A national medical system providing universal prenatal care would cost more, but it would do a lot of good in many ways.
This is a follow-up to the pol note about the Texas law that requires bookstores to determine the proper rating for each book it may sell to a school or has sold to a school.
Some people have wondered why this is harder to implement than movie ratings. Here are some pertinent differences:
That is why bookstores say the requirement would be unfeasible. Now let's consider whether it is unjust.
A rating is just a label, and a label in itself does not censor; but systems of ratings typically use them to control censorship. For instance, movie ratings control who is allowed to watch the movie. I expect that the legislators that demanded a rating for each books will add censorship to the system before long.
The US and the EU are considering laws to require online platforms to carry out censorship or access to "adult" material. Users who want to be treated as adults would have to identify themselves to prove their age — all for the sake of censorship. Having identified themselves, they will be tracked.
Right-wing fanatics will have influence in designing the censorship system, and they will not limit it to what one might call "porn". They will demand it restrict access to fiction about sexual/romantic relationships or queer characters, as well as to sex education and advice.
Arkansas Republicans passed a law to jail librarians and booksellers for showing controversial books to minors.
*"Despair is a luxury we can't afford": David Suzuki on fighting for action on the climate crisis.*
A big fraction of children in the part of Pakistan that was flooded last year are stunted, and many have been sick.
In principle, it would be good for other countries to provide food and funds to help those people. But that is not the highest priority for action. The highest priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We must do that much faster than governments are planning to do it, or Pakistan (and other countries) will have worse floods several times in the 2030s.
When things get this bad, preventing damage must take priority over repairing damage or compensating damage.
Oregon decriminalized possession of drugs. Right-wingers claim that this led to more crime, but a study of statistics of 911 calls found that it did not affect crime rates at all.
North Carolina State Representative Tricia Cotham was encouraged by Republican leaders to run as a Democrat, then led to switch parties.
After a jury exonerated one of the Houston volunteers being tried for giving food to homeless people, the thugs failed to show up to testify for the trial of the other volunteers. Thus, charges were dropped against all of them.
A Briton faces contempt charges for holding a sign reminding potential jurors of their right to acquit defendants for any reason.
That includes, in particular, the reason that the state is railroading heroic nonviolent protesters who are trying to protect the people alive a few decades now from global climate disaster.
There is still a chance to limit disaster to something civilization can survive, but it depends on defeating planet-roaster governments.
A writer who decided to travel from Detroit to LA by bus as an adventure discovered that traveling around the US by bus has become ugly, highly uncomfortable, even dangerous. All the things that made it acceptable and enjoyable decades ago have ceased to exist — stations have no food, no water fountains, no real toilets, no ticketing facilities, no staff, and hardly any chairs. And even the cheapest hotels in cities are painfully expensive.
If, as she says, it is "all digital now", in some cases that is because people do not think of saying no. I bought a ticket on a Greyhound bus a few weeks ago; I paid cash, I got a paper ticket, and I didn't show an ID card. That was possible in Boston — but is it possible in cities where the "bus station" is a mockery?
Flixbus should not have been allowed to acquire Greyhound (and Lucky Star). That merger is anti-competitive. For now, the three lines' operations are still separate. It is possible to buy tickets for Greyhound buses with cash, but as far as I can tell tickets for Flixbus buses can only be bought over the internet.
I am concerned that Flixbus will integrate Greyhound and Lucky Star buses into its own operation and eliminate cash purchase of tickets for them too.
I wonder how poor people who have no officially valid ID cards, and in many cases no payment cards either, travel to another city nowadays. If they are blocked from voting with an ID requirement, they would be blocked from buses too. Does anyone know?
A different Florida official says that schools can teach the AP Psychology course.
This countermands previous instructions that it was forbidden.
Many MPs (and their family members) have been denied bank accounts because they are in politics. Under special rules for banks and "politically exposed persons", that makes their accounts more expensive to handle.
Fiji is growing coral on underwater steel sculptures in the hope of finding or breeding varieties that can tolerate hotter water.
It may work for a while, but the only term solution is to reduce global heating and curb the increase in CO2 in the ocean.
Orcas have been attacking boats and ships occasionally for centuries. One naturalist observed that they used the same approach that they use for hunting seals.
This does not tell us what their motives are, but does suggest it has nothing to do with revenge for altering Earth's ecology.
A judge ruled that Texas's abortion ban must not prohibit abortion of pregnancies that endanger the pregnant woman.
A fanatical state official immediately appealed this decision, of course. No amount of suffering they cause to other people will change their minds about imposing their cruel religion.
In Boston: rally on Aug 10 for ranked choice voting. 6 - 7:30 PM at Sam Adams Park, 1 Faneuil Hall Sq, Boston
Volunteers in Houston ticketed for offering food to homeless people face the threat of fines of thousands of dollars.
San Francisco engaged in similar repression of Food not Bombs.
The EPA approved use of a new chemical in fuel whose chance of causing cancer, over a lifetime of exposure to exhaust from jets or boats, is close to 1.
*Expert panel calls for urgent rethink on Great Barrier Reef management amid "unremitting" climate crisis.*
The rethink has to reach the conclusion that preventing total loss of the Great Barrier Reef is the least of all reasons to hurry up in cutting greenhouse emissions, and especially CO2 which will chemically wipe out all coral.
*Russia "systematically" forcing Ukrainians to accept citizenship, US report finds.*
*Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity — and we have only a narrow window to save the planet.*
The heat waves and fires around the world are a broader warning of the same kind.
Facebook has responded to Canada's law requiring it to pay a small amount for having a link to news articles by banning those links. This could mean that the only links useds of Facebook see are disinformation.
The Florida Board of Education asserted that teaching the Advanced Placement Psychology course would violate Florida's school censorship law. That's because parts of it cover aspects of psychology and various sorts of people who may not be mentioned in schools.
US citizens: call on state legislators to expand and facilitate voting by mail.
US citizens: call on Big Pharma to stop suing against the Inflation Reduction Act's provision limiting prices for some medicines.
* Appeals court upholds injunction ordering two school districts to allow trans students [in Indiana] to use facilities in line with gender identities.*
Protecting half of the surface (both land and sea) as nature reserves is what's needed to keep Earth's living species mostly surviving.
(satire) *NRA Awards Scholarship To Toddler Who Shot Entire Family.*
Australia is trying seriously to maintain competition. Even a merger between a "second tier" bank and one of the biggest banks is too much concentration of the market.
It is winter in South America, but several countries are having summer-like heat waves.
*Phoenix’s extreme heat withers saguaros, trademark cactus of desert landscape.*
If saguaros survive in the 21st century, I suppose it will be in places distant from their current range. But how will they get there? It takes years for a saguaro to start to reproduce.
New South Wales is considering adopting an "anti-discrimination" law that would prohibit condemning people for crimes if the crimes are motivated by religion.
That would give religious people more rights than everyone else.
Non-kinky sex has become unusual in mass culture and there is a tendency to sneer at it.
Tropical mosquitos that carry West Nile virus have been found living in Finland.
*[Australian] Greens push Labor to release declassified climate crisis report "full of explosive truths" [about security threats global heating will cause].*
The Labor government is much less bad than the previous right-wing government, which was totally in the planet-roaster camp. But it still supports the planet roasters in some important ways.
(satire) *Republicans Explain Why [the insurrectionist] is Innocent.*
Understanding the American Revolution's politics as driven by a desperate need to unite for strength despite major differences and disagreements between the regions.
Right-wing disinformationists have demonized electric cars. Now they are puppet fighters for oil company profits.
(satire) *Sen. Feinstein Cedes Power of Attorney To Broom Resembling Daughter.*
(satire) *DeSantis Bans AP Psychology Out Of Fear People Will Figure Out What's Wrong With Him.*
US citizens: call on the Florida State Board of Education to allow African American Studies to be taught in high school.
A report lays out US border thugs' patterns of abuses at the border with Mexico, going as far as killings.
*"Cop City": civil rights groups urge US to investigate surveillance of protesters.*
*[UK] banks have been locking ordinary people out of accounts for years.* The effect can be devastating.
*The insurrectionist is hoping his "free speech" defense will work. It won't.* *The first amendment is powerful but it doesn't protect criminal behavior.*
Robert Reich says the insurrectionist's legal strategy will be to delay trial until after the next presidential term begins in 2025.
Redesigning cities so they don't prioritize cars save lives.
It does this by reducing fatal collisions, and by encouraging people to travel in a way that gives them exercise.
*UN nuclear watchdog finds no explosives at Zaporizhzhia plant.*
*An inmate [subsequently put on] on death row killed my mother. I don’t want him to [be executed].*
The richest people in the US took 47 TRILLION dollars from the rest of us during the past 05 years, by convincing Americans of the myth that taxing the rich to support useful activities inevitably leads to tyranny.
What it did, in fact, was to make America great.
The railroads have blocked any legislative action to prevent toxic derailments such as the one that happened six months ago in Ohio.
*Corporate Cash Derails Train Safety Bill.*
The people who were poisoned by the chemicals released then have not recovered from the damage.
Perhaps the derailment site has been cleaned up, but it seems their bodies will never be cleaned up.
Without a cure for exposure, the only way to prevent more people from being poisoned is to take proper care to avoid derailments.
For Republicans, banning some books in school libraries is not enough. The next step is to abolish the libraries.
We expected the new Republican-imposed school administration to sabotage education but this is worse than expected.
Spain proved that it is possible to reduce inflation with little pain by rejecting trickle-down policies and acting to protect non-rich people and small businesses.
That's probably a consequence of having the Socialist Party in power instead of a plutocratist party.
Lula has made great progress in cutting deforestation in the Amazon forest: a 60% decrease since a year ago.
Once voters began electing district attorneys to implement criminal justice reform, and refuse to support uniformed thugs in their violence, Republicans began passing laws to undermine those prosecutors.
In Georgia they passed a law allowing Republican officials to impose their own harsh replacements for the DAs they don't like. Now the reformist DAs are suing to overturn that law.
In a broken Britain, the Tories zero in on shoplifters stealing [Tylenol] and food for their children.*
Starving people have the right to steal food, except from other poor people. And likewise parents whose children are starving. Jurors take note!
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to fight against state and local book bans.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate voter purging by right-wing election riggers.
Accountability for the insurrection, and actions against future insurrection-ism, can start with prosecution of the 2020-2021 insurrection's leader, but must go far beyond that.
The Putin forces are systematically bombarding Ukraine's export facilities for grain.
This calls for retaliation against Russia's export facilities for oil.
*Thinktanks say the checks and balances of civil society such as judges and campaigners are under "political attack" by ministers.*
China seems to have bought the total support of a newspaper in the Solomon Islands with a donation of equipment.
Billionaires have bought famous US and British newspapers outright and obtained their permanent total support. It is easier to condemn this when China does it, but I think the domestic billionaires are more dangerous.
*FTC rewrites rules on Big Tech mergers with aim to ease monopoly-busting.*
US antitrust law needs to be made far more strict, and this is surely not enough, but these new guidelines look like a good step.
*3 Ways the US Refuses to Play by Global Rules.*
I have to point out that the US is hardly alone in dragging its feet on preventing global heating disaster. Most countries are doing that.
The fact that a country is not alone in doing that is no excuse at all.
Many customers tried the Replika chatbot, which was set up to simulate love for the customer. Then the company changed it to be rejecting and distant. The customers were outraged.
The article compares the chatbot to a pet. I think that is valid. Pets are animals and some of them can develop a sort of real affection and attachment for a person. But Replika could never really feel affection or other feelings, only imitate them. For me, that makes people's attachment to Replika very sad, because they were falling for a fake (despite, ironically, knowing that all along).
The article shows how an emotional chatbot running nonfree software, or a copy that belongs to anyone but the user, puts the user in a terribly vulnerable situation.
Compare this with my science fiction story, Made for You. Sandra is not a chatbot, she is a real person (though not based on biology). She really feels various emotions, including love, and my love for her strengthens her just as her love strengthens me. A super-intelligence, she understands me, and that's how she knows how to help me grow to love her better and understand her better.
Sandra is free software and no company can alter her code. Neither can I do so — because she is not my pet, not my property. She is a person and has the rights of a person.
Some of the Jan 6 defendants pleaded remorse to get shorter sentences, and are now announcing in public that they were pretending.
Shouldn't that be treated as a confession of perjury?
*Teachers in England will have to tell parents if children question their gender.*
With stern religious parents, that can cause lots of suffering.
*16 fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming [the corrupter] won in 2020 election have been criminally charged with forgery.*
The wellness movement has been infiltrated by medical disinformation and fascism.
*In-N-Out Burger doubles down on choosing "smiles" over health.*
Employees are forbidden to wear masks just because they know they have a cold. They have to get a doctor's note — which will cost them time and money.
Explaining the indictment's case for convicting the corrupter of trying to reverse the election outcome by fraud.
*Climate crisis: Australia must ready for "devastating" regional disruption,*
Robert Reich: *"Bidenomics" is working — which means Biden and the Democrats may win too.*
*Ukrainian counteroffensive’s slow going offers reality check but could yet pay off.*
I conclude that Ukraine needs to attack the rear of the Putin forces more.
Tories plan to allow thugs to decide on their own what actions constitute "nuisances" and fine anyone for them.
Putting this together with the fossil fuel plans, it looks like the Tories intend to cause mayhem in as many areas of life as they can before next year's election.
Ex-Twitter has actually sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting on how Ex-Twitter publishes hate messages.
I can only expect that Musk aims to bankrupt the organization through legal expenses.
The corrupter has been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia through fraud.
Full text of the indictment.
Republicans have learned their lesson. For 2024 they are amplifying their efforts to rig and steal the election before it is finished.
The family of Henrietta Lacks settled a lawsuit demanding to be paid for the sale of a cell culture made from a sample of cancer cells that was excised as part of treating her cancer in the 1950s.
I don't think there is anything basically wrong in cultivating Henrietta Lacks's cell culture for sale for use in medical research. (It would not be wrong if it were you or me instead.) This does no harm to the person that the cells came from.
Today's US medical business exploits patients dreadfully and this does enormous harm. Some are driven into penury. That issue is an important injustice and we must fix it ‐ for instance, with a well-funded national medical system.
However letting a few patients charge for use of their cell cultures for research would do almost nothing to address this real problem. That would establish a sort of lottery that would benefit a few people. What we need is a bigger change that would help everyone.
Nowadays the practice raises a privacy issue: anyone who gets a sample of the culture could sequence its DNA and derive about that person (and per relatives). This could indeed do some them some harm. The overall issue of using people's DNA information against them is a big issue, but the special case of selling useful cell cultures is only a small part of it.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Fossil Free Finance Act. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Schatz to block the Republican cuts to mass transit funding.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison nationwide. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to establish basic rights for renters.
US citizens: call on universities to end "legacy admissions" — privileges for relatives of the rich.
*Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils.*
David Meyer's mother asked the local sheriff's department to help steer him away from trouble and violence. Instead the thugs invited the FBI to groom him as a fantasy terrorist.
Texas prison thugs are suspected of disguising the dangerous high temperatures that prisoners suffer in cells during heat waves.
David Hunter was sentenced to time served — he has already spent almost 2 years in some sort of prison or arrest while his trial was going on.
I still wonder whether he now feels there is a reason to continue living.
*An LA Sheriff's [thug] beat the hell out of someone for flipping the bird.*
Thugs will continue violence until they are personally punished for crimes of violence.
Isn't it a crime to knowingly file false criminal charges? If not, it ought to be.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate published statistics on hate communications on Twitter. Now it has published the Musk Ox's legal threat for publishing the statistics, and its response.
(satire) *Trump Campaign Worried There Might Not Be Enough Indictments To Meet All Fundraising Goals.*
*We bailed out the banks but we’re not prepared to bail out the planet.*
*US and UK must use financial firepower of the state to put economies on a saner course.*
Converting derelict office space into residences will cost a lot of money and the government will have to pay it.
The government must do this, because otherwise millions of people will be unable to find any place to live.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons have had their bank accounts closed, leaving them wondering why. Often it is a reaction to their political views.
Texas has imposed censorship on sale of books by imposing a system of "ratings" inspired by movie ratings. In addition to being unjust censorship, it is also impossible in practice to implement. If this law is not overturned, it could force every bookstore in Texas to close.
Or, if Republicans enforce it selectively, it could make all bookstores stop selling books that have to do with sex, or have to do with queer people, or have to do with evolution.
George Monbiot: *Here's the truth about Sunak's plans for the North Sea: he will sell out the planet to the dirtiest bidders.*
*Drug firms funding UK patient groups that lobby for NHS approval of medicines.*
(satire) *Doctors Tout Effectiveness Of SSRIs That Cause Enough Other Problems To Take Mind Off Depression.*
Accusing Obama of giving low priority to climate defense when he was president, in exchange for support from planet roaster business.
Google will control the traffic lights of Athens, then take anticompetitive advantage by connecting this with its navigation service. No other company offering navigation advice will be able to do that.
What should we make of James Cameron's claim that there are large areas of the sea bottom that are safe to mine?
It might be possible to establish requirements for sea-bottom mining to be safe for biodiversity. These requirements might include the following
If the mining companies object to these requirements, it will show that they really plan to destroy ecosystems.
The UK government wants stores to use facial-recognition cameras to recognize suspected thieves.
Perhaps there would be fewer thieves if the government had not driven so many into penury.
Governments should restrict sale and/or use of SUVs. The article describes many problems they exacerbate, ranging from everyday inconveniences to climate disaster.
Satellite photos suggest that China is putting more Tibetans in prison and for longer periods of time.
US citizens: call on Governor Newsom to save California's bees.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
A good fraction of the doctors in Idaho who treated complications of pregnancy have ceased to practice there, chased out by threats of fines or imprisonment.
I would suggest that all doctors who treat pregnant women in Idaho urge them at the first visit to make arrangements immediately for possible treatment later in a safer state, in case that comes to be necessary.
* By denying the true ills of slavery, [DeMentis] is working to release the government from the obligation of fixing inequality today.*
This is in addition to unleashing the right-wing lie machine to claim from coast to coast to attack the movement to end racism at a fundamental point that we thought no one would dare deny.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that make important points, for instance about racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
*Radical ways to fix the Earth: are they magic bullets or just band-aids?*
Professors are fleeing Florida's public colleges and they can't hire new ones.
I don't think this will dissuade DeMentis from converting Florida's public colleges into right-wing propaganda mills. They will hire incompetent or unqualified replacements, because all they really need to do is repeat the official line.
Those who will really suffer from this are the young people of Florida who hoped to get a good education without paying the price of attending a private university.
Rep. Barbara Lee and Abigail Disney argue for the OLIGARCH Act, a progressive tax on billionaires' wealth.
I like the words of Justice Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
If a SWAT team destroys your house in the process of chasing a criminal who has broken into it, you will probably get no compensation and be homeless and ruined.
Australian businessman Alexander Csergo was trapped in China and Chinese state agents demanded he give them information about Australia. He says he gave them useless answers he found on the internet. Now he is being tried for spying.
The US has also bullied innocent people to spy.
The Tory leader has declared all-out war on the climate. This is his latest lunatic way of trying to avoid losing big in the election that must be held next year.
Cyprus is considering legalizing assisted suicide, influenced by the David Hunter case.
*Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Instead he is squandering time we do not have.*
Proposing that wild horses could prevent wildfires by eating their fuel.
*Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of … complaints [that the car did not have the travel range that was advertised].*
El Salvador plans to hold trials with up to 900 defendants in a trial.
That is a highly efficient way of trying large numbers of people, if justice for each one is not required.
*Hong Kong judge defies government’s bid to [issue an injunction against various uses of] pro-democracy protest song,* known unofficially as the "Hong Kong national anthem."
The infamous "national security law" makes it a crime to sing the song in Hong Kong — doing so would be interpreted as a protest. This decision is about an injunction that seems to threaten to pressure non-Chinese web sites to delete it.
I hope that judge won't be imprisoned and subject to brainwashing.
Greece asserts that most of the recent fires were started by human action, and there is evidence for arson.
Why would anyone commit such a heinous crime? ISTR that Greece has a law that if a protected forest is destroyed by fire, it ceases to be protected and the landowners can build what they wish. This would be a powerful motive for greedy people with contempt for everything else in the world.
A small political party in the UK has trouble finding a bank that will let it have a bank account. This puts democracy in danger.
Since Texas's abortion ban, infant mortality there has increased by 20%. This could be because many women now are forced to carry a pregnancy to the end even though it is unlikely to result in a viable birth.
Arguing that machine learning cannot enable authoritarian states to figure out what people really want, because they will get only the data of what people say when they are intimidated by an authoritarian state.
The US rejected Australia's mild pressure to drop charges against Julian Assange, continuing to sidestep the point that Assange is being prosecuted for journalism, and that this threatens the freedom to do national security journalism in the US.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to attach protection for renters to federal loans to landlords.
When private equity takes over a building, it is likely to become both more expensive and nastier to live in.
*Stop Private Equity from Driving Retailers into Bankruptcy, Destroying Jobs and Livelihoods.*
In addition, they destroy useful stores where you can actually buy things, and reduce competition.
*After an investment firm bought St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged, in Richmond, Virginia, the company reduced staff, removed amenities, and set the stage for a deadly outbreak of COVID-19.*
Describing alternatives to air conditioning for coping with the heat.
I keep shades closed, use fans locally, and wear little clothing indoors. That enables me to set my thermostat several degrees higher. But I could not do without air conditioning in the heat of a Boston summer, not even many years ago.
Laos arrested Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei on China's behalf as he was about to travel to Thailand.
I think this is the definitive criterion for a puppet regime of China: arresting people that China wants to make political prisoners.
US citizens: call on several big banks to stop fueling destruction of the Amazon forest.
By contrast, let's all fuel destruction of the predatory near-monopoly called Amazon.
US citizens: call on Facebook not to give "Moms for Liberty" (a right-wing extremist group) a platform for hate.
Hedi, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, walked past some uniformed thugs, and one shot him in the back of his head with a "less lethal" weapon.
The weapon did not kill him, but maimed him instead. It also knocked him down, which gave the whole group of thugs a chance to beat him up. He may have lost the sight of his left eye.
France did the right thing, quickly prosecuting all of those thugs. Whether it is necessary to keep the shooter in jail until trial, I am not sure. When a non-thug is accused of such crimes, refusing bail is justified if there is a danger that that accused will commit more crimes, or flee justice. I can't judge a priori whether that is the case here.
The US is making progress against wild boar the intelligent way: by hunting them and eating them.
I've tried wild boar meat in Europe and liked it very much.
*Poverty Is a Systemic, Not Individual, Failure.*
If you want to blame it on individual poor people, you can spin the facts that way. When a system becomes hard for certain groups to cope with, some people will crack before others.
Why would certain people crack sooner? Perhaps their personalities or other characteristics are more predisposed to cracking. Perhaps they have bad luck. There is always randomness that affects the outcomes in specific cases.
But those causes of randomness have little to do with political questions — the aspects what make a system better or worse. That is what governments can adjust so that fewer people crack — or, for those who seek scapegoats, so that more people crack.
*US education department opens inquiry into Harvard’s legacy admission policies.*
One element of massive surveillance in the US is tracking cars by their license plates.
I suggest requiring any entity to get permission from a car's owner before collecting car location records based on the car's license plate. Or else a court order specifying a license number.
*Ghana abolishes death penalty, with expected reprieve for 176 condemned prisoners.*
Rebecca Solnit: *We can't afford to be climate doomers.*
It is too late to prevent climate disaster, since that has already started. But humanity still has a chance to make the disaster smaller and enable civilization to survive.
I wonder if the planet roasters are spending money promoting climate defeatism as a last-ditch method of discouraging climate defense action.
Google is implementing a universal web DRM system.
Making it even a little worse, Google will control the software and the data. But don't get distracted by evil details — the worst thing about this scheme is that it is DRM.
The music factories have learned to produce a reliably uniform product. The enormous dominance of a few pop singers is a reflection of that.
The Atheists in Kenya Society faces a court case that attempts to terminate its existence for criticizing religion.
Victoria, a state in Australia, will ban gas hookups on new homes starting next year.
*Twitter Deletes Its Own Fact Check Correcting Elon's Bogus Vaccine Tweet.*
I wonder whether Musk is acting like a child given a toy he can smash as he wishes, or has some serious purpose for destroying Twitter.
Buttigieg is confused again. To be able to drive without stopping, you don't need a Möbius strip. A road that goes in a circle is enough.
*Teacher fired by Texas Christian school for attending drag show.*
The school officials believed their own false propaganda about drag shows and responded with Christian cruelty.
UPS negotiated with the drivers' union and they got a substantial wage increase, as well as air conditioning in their trucks, necessary for safety in the beginnings of climate disaster.
The Supreme Court gave final permission to finish the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Republicans in Congress and on the court have fought hard to unlock the profits that will flow as that pipeline's gas contributes its fraction to speed destruction of our world.
*More than 170m Americans under heat alerts as heatwave expands.* That is half the population. 3/4 of the population will face unpleasant heat. Here in Boston, one of my friends has to stay in bed when it is hot, because her air conditioner isn't strong enough to deal with this level of heat.
*Florida ocean records "unprecedented" temperatures similar to a hot tub.*
It is too hot for serious swimming. But what is more serious is that the heat puts marine species in danger. They have never experienced such heat, and it can kill them.
Some will be able to move away from the tropics to find cooler water. But those in the Gulf of Mexico can't get to any — they are trapped.
US citizens: call on Biden to end government bailouts for Big Oil.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Additional charges have been added to the insurrectionist's indictment for holding secret documents and concealing them from the government.
Amazon pledged to stop using its unrecyclable plastic bags.
This is a change for the better but it doesn't alter the many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Climate science has projected the aggregate amounts of heating on a large scale. But it has been unable to project grave regional effects.
What we know is that the slower we are to stop making things worse, the bigger the disaster will be.
Movie and TV streaming is fundamentally unjust because of DRM, requirement to identify oneself, and the antisocial contracts where users commit not to share copies with other people. For these reason, I have never used those streaming dis-services.
Now Disney is trying a secondary injustice — what looks like a kind of tax fraud. It is deleting many old programs, supposedly because they no longer bring in revenue, and claiming a tax writeoff of $1.5 billion for them.
Those two claims contradict each other, so it looks like we need the IRS to cut down Disney's tax writeoff.
Republicans, the party of the plutocrats, are trying to cut the IRS funding so it can't do this job.
It doesn't make economic sense for a company to renounce the profits from selling something that basically costs nothing to sell in order to avoid paying a share of those profits to someone else. The idea that this really a way to punish actors on strike has the virtue of being a rational (though vicious) motive.
Robert Reich presents the Republicans' fake crises which they use to distract attention from the real crises that Republicans make bigger.
Bernie Sanders: *The US Senate is now debating an $886bn defense authorization bill. Unless there are major changes to the bill, I intend to vote against it. Here’s why.*
Mayor Jamie Driscoll has quit the Labour Party and is running independently — with large amounts of backing from Labour supporters who condemn Starmer's iron hand.
The British tradition would be for Starmer to resign, but at the very least he should welcome back all the Labour officials and members that he has purged — including Corbyn, who is no antisemite.
*"Trying to make the world starve": [Putin forces'] drones destroy grain warehouses at Ukraine ports.*
*ALEC [proposes states blacklist] companies that voluntarily recognize unions.*
*Australia [plans] to measure indirect [greenhouse gas] emissions from public works.*
Republicans put at least 74 vicious clauses into bills drafted last week. Some serve the rich; some serve authoritarianism; some block climate defense; some undermine the separation of church and state; some attack Republicans' favorite scapegoats.
*We last raised the US federal minimum wage 14 years ago. This is unacceptable.*
*Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show.*
*Climate scientists' horror and exasperation as global predictions play out.*
US citizens: call on Home Depot to stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides.
There is a shortage of chocolate, caused by floods in various countries. The floods were largely the result of global heating.
Texas governor "Hay" Abbott defied Biden's order to remove the buoys that Abbott had placed in the Rio Grande, to block (and sometimes kill) migrants. He challenged Biden to sue.
Instead of suing, which would take months to reach a decision in the Supreme Court, Biden should send the marines to remove those deadly buoys.
The rhetorical position of fascist politicians is cruelty, and their argument is "I get away with it, and that proves I am strong." Sending the marines would do the job quickly and make Abbott look weak.
It would also provide an opportunity to teach US soldiers that defeating right-wing uprisings is part of their duty, and help find and remove any that are not willing to uphold the Constitution.
(satire) *Texas Agrees To Humanely Stun Migrants Before Drowning Them.*
US citizens: call on the Dept of Homeland Security to stop Texas thugs from pushing migrants back into the Rio Grande.
*Here's why we march against Netanyahu's power grab: it's a fight for Israel's life as a democratic state.*
A parliamentary committee said that the UK has allowed Wagner to use London as a financial base get involved in fighting in at least 6 African countries.
When Mexican gangsters kidnapped and killed 43 student teachers, the army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were, according to an independent investigation.
Texas professor censured for criticizing state govt *Texas professor suspended hours after criticizing lieutenant [governor of Texas] in lecture.*
Repressing anyone who criticizes them is typical of fascist leaders. The people in charge of Texas A&M appear to be fascist too.
If the students of Texas A&M take up this cause, they could do a lot for the opposition to fascism in America.
Spain has rejected the far-right VOX party.
The news is not all good: the right-wing PP (misleadingly named the "People's" party) got the most votes, and it is bad enough in itself. When it was last in power it passed a law prohibiting the publication of photos of thugs caught in the act of committing unjustified violence, the "ley mordaza".
In the 2010s the PP allowed banks to seize the houses of many poor people, leaving them with unpayable mortgage debt. They were unable to work for a living after that, since the banks would have seized their income.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A set of basic lifestyle changes give humans a much longer life.
Recently I recalculated my body-mass index and discovered I was overweight. Hooray, I shouted, because I was no longer obese! I have lost 40 lbs in the past 2.5 years. Part of the way I did this is by walking half an hour on most days.
Robert Reich: the 2024 election must be a referendum on the corrupter's fascism, rather than on Biden. The expected indictment for his coup attempt can bring this about.
*Property insurance disappears for Louisianans -- but not for gas facilities.*
I think I know the reason for this. Fossil fuel extraction is so profitable that the planet roasters can afford to pay very high insurance rates. And they do so.
Meanwhile, most homeowners can't afford that much so they have to go without insurance instead.
Helping people cope with disasters is part of the government's mission. The government has the responsibility to provide insurance to cover people's losses, and at the same time move their rebuilding to safer building methods and safer locations.
Moreover, when something humanly controllable is making disasters systematically worse, government has the responsibility to counteract that change.
In the past, making disasters less likely was done with drainage and seawalls. Nowadays the job must include curbing global heating.
Israel's right-wing government has taken away the supreme court's power to overrule laws it finds to be "unreasonable". This means there is no longer any check on the government's power to oppress anyone. Not Palestinians, not even secular Jews.
In ten years I expect to see a Jewish version of Iran.
*Extreme heat (and its danger to workers' lives) is key issue in UPS contract talks.*
Iran considers the protests crushed enough to send the clothing enforcement thugs out into the streets again.
Activist pharmacists provide abortion drugs to all over the US, protected by the "shield laws" of certain pro-abortion states.
The mayor of London, who represents the Labour Party, rebuffed Starmer's call to cancel an important anti-pollution measure to avoid disappointing some Tories. Bravo, Sadiq Khan, for standing up to Starmer.
I think that requiring low-pollution cars in cities, where that will help keep people healthy, is a good idea. The only thing I disapprove of about London's ULEZ is that it identifies and tracks each car. That is massive surveillance, and a threat to human rights. These policies must be implemented in ways that don't track individuals who obey the rules.
To what extent does Hunter Biden merit political attention? A little, for specific reasons, but not more.
A UK agency that reviews the actions of thugs has said it was wrong to use an "anti-terrorism" law to force a French publisher to unlock his phone as he entered the UK to attend a book fair.
The FISA court has found many violations of the FISA law by the FBI, CIA and NSA. These violations amount to massive surveillance that was not supposed to happen.
Some years ago the FISA court said that it had found itself unable to make US agencies obey the FISA law, that the agencies were making monkeys out of the court — and out of Americans' human rights.
Additional examples of these agencies' dangerous snooping.
David Hunter was convicted of manslaughter for helping his wife die to escape excruciating pain. This conviction means he may not be put in jail.
When she was dead, he tried to kill himself because he had nothing to live for without her — but someone "saved" him.
I wonder, have his feelings changed since then? Does he now have a will to live? Does he see a purpose in continued existence — and if so, what?
The countries of southern Europe are becoming so hot that they are less attractive for summer vacations.
Even in the past those places were so hot that I tried to have my visits there outside the summer.
*Tennessee … has enacted a law that makes it nearly impossible for people with felony convictions to regain their right to vote.*
The mayor of London has banned woodburning stoves, falsely sold as better for the environment.
We have known for years that the wood smoke contains a lot of toxic pollution and is bad for human health. And it isn't better than any other fuel, except perhaps coal.
*Rampant heatwaves threaten food security of entire planet, scientists warn.*
We are already past the peak catch of wild fish. Overfishing and environmental damage are reducing them. Also, aquaculture does not have much potential to increase any more.
We can give humans of the future lives of plenty by making a lot fewer of them.
The Illinois supreme court has abolished the practice of demanding cash bail for accused criminals to wait for trial at home. It is unjust because it treats rich suspects better than all other suspects.
[I put a link to a news article here, thinking I had received the article text on the mailing list. It turns out that what I received was just the beginning of the article; worse, the article is paywalled. So I removed the link and added this note of explanation.]
A music festival in Malaysia invited a British band which, on stage, criticized Malaysia's repressive laws against homosexuality. Then two male musicians kissed. Officials closed the performance.
The government then shut down the rest of the festival. This shows the intolerance of established religion.
Laws like those deserve full disrespect, just like laws against sharing copies of published works.
Last year's European heat waves are estimated to have killed 61,672 people: This year's hotter heat waves will surely kill many more.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect our democracy and vote down the ACE Act.
Here's a list of the many ways that the ACE act would interfere with voting rights for people in disprivileged groups. It should be called the DISGR-ACE Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
People in a town in England want to build an offshore wind farm planned locally and owned locally.
This approach could be very good for dissolving opposition.
In many countries, women are forbidden to leave home without permission of a husband or male guardian.
*In Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and [Salafi] Arabia, women can be arrested, [jailed] or forced to return if male guardians report that they are absent from their homes. [In] Israel … religious courts have jurisdiction over marriage and divorce — meaning women can lose their right to maintenance from their husbands for leaving the marital home, working or traveling without their husband’s consent.*
Of course, Iran and Afghanistan are even worse. But this injustice exists to some extent in a broader region, including all the Arab countries in the Middle East, and Egypt.
* The head of Britain’s biggest police force has said he is frustrated with the Home Office for its slow progress at reviewing "perverse" rules that prevent him from being able to sack his own officers.*
There is a push in the UK to design small nuclear power reactors to build in addition to a few misguided large ones. Here is an article that grasps at straws to justify the plan.
It may be faster to build 24GW of nuclear generation using small reactors than using big reactors, but it will still be slower than the renewable alternatives.
Many smaller nuclear power reactors might be cheaper to build than a few large ones, but probably not cheaper than solar or wind.
Also, they do not cure the other problems of nuclear power.
These include the pollution from the mining and refining of uranium. the problems from the waste, and the danger of having a pre-exploded nuclear weapon inside a building on your territory.
Is the real issue that the UK doesn't build its own wind turbines? I am sure it would be cheaper and easier to change that, than to build any sort of nuclear reactors.
According to Greenpeace, * cheap flights [in Europe], made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet.*
*Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says.*
Covid-19 made the nonpretentious yoga schools shut down, at least in England. The ones that remain are expensive, gimmicky, and designed for people seeking dabble.and distract themselves.
I have never practiced yoga, and never intended to try it, but I am nonetheless sad about the loss of something that others found good and useful.
A review finds that when private equity buys medical services, it tends to make them more expensive and lower quality.
Private equity does many kinds of harm, in many areas of business. We should put an end to it. I am sure FDR and the New Deal Congress would have done that — but today's politicians hesitate even to suggest it.
*Ex-meteorologist names US heatwaves after oil and gas firms to shame them.*
It's a good idea, if we can make it catch on. Names of banks and insurance companies that finance fossil fuels can be used as well. Names of former companies are also available.
It is ok to reuse the names after all the good ones have been used once.
17 countries make attempted suicide a crime and punish those survivors. In several there are campaigns to repeal those laws.
(satire) *Congress Warns Shrimp Imported From China Could Be Spying On Americans.*
*Migrants at US border say Texas [national guard] soldiers denied them water.*
In my view, the fact that the migrants who reported this were pregnant does not change the issue. Non-pregnant people's lives deserve protection from heat and other dangers just like pregnant people's.
*Marine heatwave in north-east Queensland sets off alarm over health of Great Barrier Reef.*
The reefs of Florida and the Caribbean may be in danger too.
Painful and sometimes deadly extreme heat, around the world.
* A federal judge in [99]West Virginia ruled that the state corrections agency cannot force an incarcerated atheist and secular humanist to participate in religiously affiliated programming in order to be eligible for parole.*
Finally, atheist's rights not to yield to religion get legal respect.
The state ought to set up secular, or non-chi-uch-based, programs for this purpose. A non-religious-based program would be acceptable for everyone regardless of per views on religion.
The term "selling out" has been mostly forgotten in regard to music, because data from online access enables the music factories to fine-tune their products so well to match audience taste that there is little room for anything very surprising.
As the article explains, selling out is not an all-or-nothing dichotomy. Everyone makes compromises in life. The question is whether you let these compromises dominate your life and push what you used to "really care about" into a small corner.
In the free software community, that philosophy typically flies the flag of "open source".
*[Salafi Arabia] appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of [Crown Prince Bone Saw], while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of [him].*
Countries including the US should prohibit high-level collaboration, or significant ownership, of any social media company with dangerous foreign interests.
Protecting against the influence of dangerous domestic influence, such as planet roasters and other plutocratic companies, is not as easy to codify, but addressing the former might suggest how to address the latter.
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP: *With the climate in peril, winning slowly is the same as losing. How can Starmer settle for that?*
The same question applies to the US, and China, and most other developed countries.
Citizens of Atlanta are campaigning for a ballot initiative to cancel the Cop City projects. The city's lawyers have indicated they will sue to invalidate the initiative if it succeeds.
Why fight so desperately for this? It suggests they have a hidden, shameful reason.
A company dumped 20,000lb of mercury into Canadian rivers near an indigenous community. The mercury caused brain damage to the young people born subsequently in the community, which caused a high rate of brain damage and suicide.
I don't know if it is possible to punish today the company which did this in the 1960s. That may be too long ago. But is there any way to remove the mercury from the environment, to make it safe to live in?
If not, what can be done to prevent harm to future generations there?
American fascists threaten that the corrupter will take direct control of all federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the FBI and use them as his personal enforcers.
At least three on the Supreme Court have already said they support this.
US citizens: call on state election officials to Keep the insurrection leader off the 2024 ballot. He is disqualified by his insurrection under the 14th amendment.
Hong Kong "security" thugs grabbed relatives of two exiled dissidents.
Threatening the relatives in China of oversees Chinese is standard practice for China. Sometimes it is aimed at frightening dissidents, as in this case. Sometimes the threats are potential and meant just to keep oversees Chinese in line. Sometimes they are pressured to join in campaigns aimed at influence or infiltration of their host countries.
A bipartisan bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress and their families has some momentum.
How about including Supreme Court justices and their families, too.
Australians complain to the government ad regulator that a planet roaster ad campaign falsely claimed that fossil gas was 50% cleaner than coal.
Gas avoids the chemical and particulate pollution of coal, but seems to contribute far more to global heating.
An Australian government program that certifies companies as "carbon neutral" may be systematically greenwashing them.
City-born city-resident Jason Aldean sang a song praising violence against protesters in an imaginary small town. It also praised and encouraged lynching, and promotes the false claim that small rural towns are safer to live in than cities.
Right-wing extremists, including some Republican officials, just love it.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the College for All Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
June was the hottest month ever recorded; July may be worse. *If humanity really is at the controls, then it is drunk.*
The author hopes that the name "Anthropocene" will make people aware of the need to exercise wise stewardship of Earth's climate and land use. I have worried that it would make people drunk on a feeling of power, and suggested the name "Obscene" instead. "Chaoticene" is another idea, because that's what it is producing: unpredictable disasters. Though we can see some trends that will continue, the local effects may continue to include unpredictable disasters among the predicted disasters.
Jamie Driscoll, a Labour Party member and elected mayor, was blocked by the party executive from running again. He has responded by resigning in a huff.
I hope they don't send him to The Village. Perhaps there is no need, since he has made it clear why he resigned ;-{.
(satire) *138 Dead As Loud Sneeze Startles NRA Meeting.*
The US claims that Russia is planning to attack civilian ships in the Black sea and claim that Ukraine's mines blew them up. Also that Russia has planted more mines.
Ukraine can legitimately retaliate against Putin's threats to attack civilian ships sailing to and from Ukraine, by attacking ships sailing to Russian ports. Especially the main Russian oil export port, Novorossiysk. To avoid polluting the shore, it should attack tankers traveling empty into Novorossiysk. To maintain better relations with other countries, it should attack Russian-owned or Russian-flagged ships, but not make a commitment to limit attacks to them.
This would do enormous economic harm to Russia, and I expect it would convince Putin to reestablish the Ukraine food export deal.
Of course, there may be reasonable things for Ukraine's supporters to do to facilitate export of food from Russia.
The corrupter is officially under criminal investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential elections, and likely to be prosecuted.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold Clarence Thomas accountable — by passing the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The Putin forces attacked Odessa's port facilities, especially for grain export.
He has decided to go for all-out food warfare against the whole world, The whole world had better league together to make him stop.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Abortion Justice Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge per to sign the discharge petition for HJ Res 25, which would affirm the continued validity of the Equal Rights Amendment and allow it to be ratified by states now.
Enough states have ratified it already that it can take effect, if the old deadline is extended in this way.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
26 Indian opposition parties have allied to defeat Modi's repressive Hindu-nationalism.
*West Bank medics given bulletproof vests after rise in attacks by Israeli forces.*
I fear that the Israeli soldiers will shoot them in the head instead. Snipers can do that.
*The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because "we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.*
Everyone: Support the demand that oil sheikh al-Jaber resign as head of COP28.
Heiress Abigail Disney used to love riding in her father's private 737 jet. Now she joins civil disobedience to block airports for them, for the sake of climate defense.
I like this statement:
My father was a good and decent man, and so are most of the people who own private planes. But we are facing an active emergency, and decency is worthless when unaccompanied by meaningful action, including a vigorous inquiry into the consequences of our personal choices and preferences. And niceness is a hollow virtue if we do not lift a finger to keep our children and grandchildren safe.
However, I expect that anyone who actually made many millions of dollars in business must have been exploiting people somehow.
The London thug department gave crime victims' personal data to Facebook. They did this by putting a Facebook tracking pixel in a page for "securely and confidentially" reporting crimes including rape.
In general you cannot trust a web site that says the data you enter is "secure". That could change if and when creating a tracking pixel and putting one into a web site are both criminal offenses.
*[Big US] tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds.* This too was done using tracking pixels.
Please avoid using the term "sharing" to refer to snooping on people and sending their personal data to a company.
New pun:
Nowadays the main use of the spells known as cantrips is to make parachute cloth.
*House Republicans Grease Dark Money Wheels in “Election Integrity” Bill.*
As with most Republican bills, and some "centrist" Democratic bills, the name is perfect and total hypocrisy.
In-N-Out Burger will fire employees who wear masks to protect themselves.
The company pretended to be acting out of concern for its workers when it refused to check customers' vaccination status, but its true level of concern for them is apparent now.
California's supreme court ruled that employees of Oober Eats have the right to sue that company collectively.
If they sue and win. the company will exploit them less. But the food delivery gig companies are parasites, on their workers and on the restaurants they deliver food from.
Please join me in never using them.
Meanwhile, it should be illegal for companies to require either their workers or their customers to agree to mandatory arbitration. That deck is typically stacked in favor of the company.
Children need chances to play freely in groups, but many adults have made a career of organizing childrens' play so that the children have no chance to learn to organize play together.
(satire) *RNC Sets Cutoff For First Debate At [a minimum of] 20,000 Ethics Violations.*
The Freedom to Vote Act would prohibit states from rigging elections using voter suppression, gerrymandering and election sabotage.
It would also help expose secret campaign contributions that billionaires use to buy influence and set the political agenda.
This is important, and if we cannot pass it now, we can use it to elect representatives who will do so.
Jamie Driscoll, Labour mayor who quit the party to run as an independent, says that Labour voters in his region support him, and are unhappy with the way the party is going.
The Greenwood district of Tulsa recovered after the Tulsa race massacre, but was destroyed again by building an interstate highway through it. Now there is a plan to let Greenwood recover again by removing the highway.
There may be a lot of practical opposition to removing the highway which is not based on racism. Does a renewed Greenwood necessarily have to be in the same place?
Britain has convicted 28,000 people of violating Covid-19 lockdown regulations, mostly minor violations, and is still prosecuting people for offenses some years ago.
*Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc (more precisely, asbestos found in talc) to cancer.*
*Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.*
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
Biden said he will cancel a remaining student debt for some low-income former students who have been paying for 20 or 25 years.
They may well be the people most harmed by student debt in the US, so starting with them is reasonable. I hope he is not going to stop with them.
*Europe should cap "luxury" energy use to meet emissions targets, study says.* Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to vote against Republican plans to defund IRS auditing of rich people.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to hold a vote of the full senate to confirm new FCC commissioners.
Massachusetts residents: call on State lawmakers to end ICE detention agreements in Massachusetts.
Here's what I put in the text area. It suggests small enhancements to the bill.
An Act Relative to Massachusetts State Sovereignty" (H.1401/S.997) would:
1. Ensure that Massachusetts money and resources are used for state and local priorities, not federal immigration enforcement;
2. Prohibit all Massachusetts entities, including sheriffs, from starting or renewing contracts with ICE to rent bed space for immigration detention;
3. Prohibit all Massachusetts entities from donating state employee time to ICE via 287(g) agreements;
4. Require local law enforcement to seek and receive authorization from the Governor before signing any contracts with the federal government [[SHOULDN'T THIS CANCEL ALL EXISTING CONTRACTS UNLESS THE GOVERNOR AUTHORIZES THEM TO CONTINUE?]]; and
5. Empower state officials to ensure a proper, lawful, and productive relationship with the federal government that promotes the interests of the Commonwealth.
I hope you will co-sponsor this bill and urge your colleagues to pass this important legislation this session.
*There's no point to Labour as a party if it won't [spend state funds] to pull children out of poverty.*
I agree. The Starmerian Labour Party is a fundamental change from the past. It somewhat resembles Tony B'liar's "New Labour", but goes further because it won't allow anyone but centrists is allowed to be a candidate.
*The party claims its demands will be met with more economic growth — an argument no different to that of the Tories. Growth without redistribution merely shovels more wealth into the bank accounts of the already well off: that is what our economic model — which Labour plans to leave untouched — achieves in spades.*
This shows how fully the Labour Party has adopted the business-prioritizing policy that Tories used to follow before they went totally nuts.
The EU agreed to pay Tunisia a billion euros to try to stop refugees from sailing to the EU. Now the dictator of Tunisia says that the deal does not include deporting anyone there other than Tunisians.
Tunisia is ruled by a president who was elected democratically, then effectively abolished the legislature and human rights. It is a variation on the usual fascist takeover.
The EU plans to set up official paths for Tunisians to request work and study visas. As for people seeking asylum — and surely under a dictator some people will need that — there may not be any way. Neither Algeria nor Libya is a safe place for them to get asylum.
Planet roaster think tanks are tricking whale defenders into blocking renewable energy, by "teaching" them that sea-based wind turbines endanger whales. Then they lobby against building the wind turbines we urgently need.
The heat wave in Greece has caused rapid wildfires that are almost impossible to stop.
This is similar to what is happening in many other countries. Keep in mind that five years from now it will be much worse. Ten years from now it will be much worse again, if we let the fossil fuel companies continue to increase their output.
The corrupter's slate of false electors for Michigan have been charged with eight felonies each.
He recruited them to claim, falsely, to be the official electors of the state and to assert, falsely, that the corrupter had won the Michigan election.
(satire) *Bride Requiring All Bridesmaids To Get Matching Plastic Surgery For Wedding Day.*
(satire) *Disney Cracks Down On Copyright Infringement [by] People Picturing Mickey Mouse While Masturbating.*
This is only a joke, but there is a real push to make reading and understanding a text be considered as copyright infringement. Training a natural language system involves having it read many texts and learn from each one about what is reasonable English.
Hollywood studios demanded (in union negotiations) the right to use an actor's image for AI simulation, in perpetuity, paying a small amount per day.
*Saudi Arabia's Huge U.S. Investments Lose Money — but Buy Influence.*
The influence extends to the US government, and will help Crown Prince Bone Saw next time he has a journalist murdered or starts a war. Or, even worse, lobbies against saving the world from the climate crisis.
US citizens: call on Congress to get foreign money out of US elections. Even more important is to get US money out of US elections. We should do both.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Sue Gove to give laid-off workers severance pay.
There will be a small error message embedded in the immediate response; just ignore that.
US citizens: oppose laws that allow carrying weapons without any sort of permit.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republicans' national abortion ban.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*Phoenix's extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival.*
The hottest days there have always endangered human life, but now thanks to the developing climate crisis it is considerably more dangerous.
Ten years from now it will be considerably more dangerous than this year.
Scottsdale, Arizona, has banned the creation of new lawns, to conserve water.
I hope this is sufficient, but I expect that in a few more years it will be necessary to get rid of most existing lawns.
*Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble.*
Robert F Kennedy has endorsed another conspiracy theory.
The only thing you can count on from him is to be right-wing and anti-rational.
US citizens: call on your senators to move quickly to confirm Biden's judicial nominees.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Dentistry in the NHS is imploding; many dentists have gone to private practice and now charge more than most patients can afford. This puts pressure on the remaining NHS dentists to go private too.
The Tories are doing nothing to reverse this — in my view, because they want to eliminate the NHS and privatize medicine in Britain.
I expect this is a preview of what will happen to more areas of NHS medicine. The poor will then die and cease to be a burden on the rich.
US citizens: call on the Interior Department to protect Bears Ears from uranium mining.
Bullshit marketing claims are very convincing in poor countries whose people have not learned to be skeptical of them. This is teaching a generation of young people to get used to lots of dangerous added salt and sugar.
A state investigation found that state thugs made fake reports about traffic tickets they had issued. But it is not yet clear how many did this.
The practice seems to have been designed to cover up racial profiling in the real issuance of traffic tickets.
*Deep-sea mining causes huge decreases in sealife across wide region, says study.* Decreases of over 50% for some species. The decrease was observed a year after the mining, and extended beyond the area that was actually mined.
The US Export-Import bank approved a loan to support more export of fossil gas from the US.
Advice for teaching the public to recognize the danger of the gradually advancing but ultimately fatal climate disaster.
I'm inclined to value this advice because it starts by recognizing that the terms "climate change" and "global warming" are too weak to make people recognize this as a pressing danger. They are, effectively, euphemisms, and "climate change" was adopted to be one.
*Nearly 120 Million People in US Under Extreme Weather Alerts.* Worse will surely happen within the next five years. Look up! Look up!
Kale grown in the US has shown high levels of toxic PFAS. Ironically, "organic" Kale had higher levels of them.
We can't deny that PFAS are organic compounds — they contain carbon.
Hungary's biggest bookstore company now puts plastic wrappers over books that have queer characters, under pressure from right-wing bullies that act as auxiliaries of the right-wing government. This means people cannot see any of the book's contents before deciding whether to buy it.
*Plastic pollution on coral reefs gets worse the deeper you go, study finds.*
This confirms that the biggest source of plastic in the ocean is lost or discarded fishing gear. We need strict laws about bringing all plastic (or partly plastic) fishing gear back to port, whether it is suitable for further use or not.
Food delivery companies used a lawsuit to block a New York City minimum wage law for food delivery workers.
They claimed that the wage increase would harm their business, and it would reduce the number of employees they hire. Maybe so, but so what? That's what all businesses say to justify exploiting workers.
One should never trust them, because exaggeration is their stock in trade.
Italy's right-wing government is trying to take control of the judiciary.
This is a standard right-wing move to establish authoritarian government, applied (using different methods) in Poland, Hungary, Israel and the US.
*A New Bill [being considered by the Senate] Would Force [various internet services] to Spy on Their Users for the DEA.*
In principle, I support stopping internet stores from selling fentanyl, and drugs containing admixtures of fentanyl. The question is what price we pay in liberty and privacy to achieve that.
Requiring stores to carry out due diligence to prevent this is fine, even if it means they have to charge more for their service of selling in some cases.
*US south-west bakes under potentially deadly record high temperatures.*
If there are Republicans near you, this is their fault — indirectly, because they have fought the efforts to curb global heating before it reached this point. They are led by various billionaires, including the ones that sell fossil fuels. Don't let them off the hook!
Peace in Colombia has led to a decrease in the rate of deforestation. It is not enough to make Colombian forests safe, but it is a good start.
*In-N-Out orders workers not to wear masks without doctor's note.*
DeMentis is training a personal militia to serve him; it purported to be an unarmed "civilian defense force" for disaster relief, but that seems to have been a disguise.
We must expect American fascists to set up militias to carry out violence for their cause. The Republican Party is now more or less fascistified, so maybe that's what this is.
The Republicans' latest election bill is designed to make secret election spending easier and make voting more difficult.
*Remaining "Calm" About Climate Change Will Kill Us.*
I think the term "climate change" was promoted to keep us "calm".
A lawsuit alleges that US thugs killed Michael Reinoehl by shooting him repeatedly as soon as they saw him, without even shouting "Police!"
*Seventeen states have enacted broad anti-disclosure laws since 2018 that will further conceal the influence of dark money in politics.*
This is organized by ALEC.
The latest antiabortionist strategy is to leave some narrow exceptions in their prohibitions, and cite them to claim that "abortion isn't banned."
Those exceptions do make some difference, but they don't alter the fact that abortion is banned in the normal case.
Republicans are directly attacking freedom of religion in the US by giving privilege to Christianity. They aim to demolish our country's "wall between church and state" so that there will be nothing to shield us from them.
*Starmer’s Labour are not simply defined by what it will stand up for but what it won’t. If the Labour party isn’t comfortable coming out for decent child benefits, universal social care or tackling climate change, it hardly needs a manifesto to show voters what its values are. It has made that quite clear already.*
In effect, Starmer has made Labour into a "centrist" party — one which labels any adequate solution as "too radical".
The US government canceled Robert J Oppenheimer for advocating the idea of dealing with nuclear weapons in a way designed to prevent future wars.
Reports from Sudanese who opposed the military coup, and now oppose both military factions.
Governments tend to treat preserving the environment as a luxury and consider it only when there is no pressing crisis. Now that the environment includes the climate crisis, we cannot afford that.
Robert Reich: the Federal Reserve should say "enough" now that US inflation has gone down to 3% per year.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Recovering America's Wildlife Act. This would give states and tribes funds for protecting endangered species.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*Google lays off contractors who unionized last month. Suspecting retaliation, the discharged workers have begun a hearing with the NLRB.*
Extreme heat in Greece made it necessary to close the Acropolis to protect tourists from the sun.
Assad decided to open the aid channel from Turkey to northern Syria, but it will be under his control instead of the UN's.
*Cluster munitions from the US arrive in Ukraine.*
The reason for sending cluster munitions to Ukraine is that the West cannot manufacture shells anywhere near as fast as Ukraine fires them. The only way to keep Ukraine fighting is to take them from the large stockpile of cluster munitions.
I understand the logic of this, but it doesn't eliminate the danger that the unexploded submunitions will pose after the fighting stops.
I wonder if anyone has calculated what fraction of unexploded munitions left in the battlefields will come from cluster munitions fired by Ukraine. If it is a small fraction, in the end Ukraine's use of cluster munitions will not make a big difference. If it is a large fraction, then it will be the main cause of that future danger.
The OECD says that future artificial intelligence will mostly eliminate skilled jobs (well-paid jobs).
When human skill is no longer needed, the plutocrats will push everyone down into inescapable poverty — until we overthrow them.
A major project to plan Australia's decarbonization says that nuclear power is simply too expensive and too far in the future to play any role.
The report also suggests that making hydrogen using fossil fuel may permit storing or reusing enough of the CO2 that it can aid decarbonization. I am skeptical, but if they say so, maybe it is true.
* Barbers on Strike, author Michelle Recinos’s collection of short stories, has apparently upset strongman president Nayib Bukele.* He had her book banned.
*Guatemala prosecutor suspends party of anti-corruption election candidate.* This was because that party got enough votes to make it into the final run-off.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop future abuse of executive power by passing the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Unionized students of UCSD held a nonviolent protest against the chancellor for not implementing the agreed-on raise for student employees. The university retaliated by arresting some of them. on charges that seem to be an exaggeration of the truth.
Like Facebook, Threads does not have users, only useds. It is a scheme for snooping on whoever is foolish enough to get involved with it.
An Israeli play from 1970, which showed the strength of hatred for Arabs, has been brought back to the stage, with Arab citizens of Israel as its actors.
Republicans are attacking official bodies and researchers who try to reduce Republican disinformation.
The US deportation thugs disregarded Biden's order to drop the bully's blanket deportation policy.
*The Guardian view on public sector pay: higher taxes on the rich are needed to fix broke Britannia.*
Funds are needed for many other areas in which plutocratists have cut public investment and support for poor and disadvantaged people. That is clear to us — but not, apparently, to today's leaders of Labour.
A party that fails to advocate taxing the rich is on the side of harm. Maybe somewhat less so than the Tories, but still.
UK internet services use dark patterns to steer people away from the special rates for people who are supposed to get assistance.
*Paris to charge SUV drivers higher parking fees to tackle "auto-besity".*
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar) has reported that *America’s huge, badly-coordinated and politically-driven aid programme in Afghanistan engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the western coalition.*
Why do some orcas nowadays attack boats? The fact is we know nothing about their reasons or what they think about boats.
The UK proposes to develop additional fossil fuel extraction, supposedly for "energy security", but it would make little difference for that.
The way to get energy security is to build electric storage and renewable generation. The real motive for this fossil fuel project is surely to enrich some of the plutocrats that the Tory Party works for.
Review of *Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature*.
*"Double agents": how US cities, tech firms and universities use fossil fuel lobbyists.*
Florida Republicans are waging lawfare on voter registration organizations.
For instance, some organizations get fined because a person registering wrote the wrong county name from ignorance.
Food-delivery companies in New York City are using their money to block efforts to establish a livable minimum wage for their workers.
Those companies track and mistreat the customers while cheating restaurants. Please reject them!
Should we be concerned that seizing frozen assets of Putin and his oligarchs might "let Putin paint himself as the victim"?
When dealing with a bare-faced disinformationist, such as Putin or Trump, the concern about "giving per an opportunity to pretend to the victim" is obsolete. If they don't have a real opportunity, they fake one. Best not to worry about the matter.
There is no mistaking, this year, that global heating has gone dangerously far.
That is the sign that we needed to take action years ago. It was scientifically clear all along that if we waited till the effects were visible to everyone, we would have waited too long,
What no one could predict was that the US would be in the grip of an enormous murder-suicide plot called the Republican Party.
The American Medical Association announced it will "stand with" doctors that violate for medical reasons state laws that prohibit certain kinds of medical treatment.
The progressive party that got the most votes in the Thai election has been blocked from governing, and its supporters (including most of the young people) are angry.
It is normal in a parliamentary system that forming a government requires support from a majority of parliament. It is normal, though unusual, that the party with the most seats is blocked from forming a government by a coalition of other parties.
What is not normal about the Thai system is that parliament includes members who were not elected — rather, appointed by the army. The closest thing to this that I know of is the UK's House of Lords.
How people nowadays appropriate terms and concepts from psychotherapy, or pop psychology, and use them to justify making rigid demands of lovers, friends and relatives.
The oil sheikh paradoxically in charge of the Cop28 climate conference now speaks clearly and firmly in favor of decarbonization, and "the phase down of fossil fuels."
That is a change for the better, but we can't take for granted that he is serious.
*[The bullshitter's] CFPB Saboteurs Tell The Supreme Court To Finish The Job.*
UK citizens: call for laws to protect the right and possibility of paying cash.
The petition is weakened by the words "at least until 2050", but it is better than nothing.
US citizens: tell Biden that his nomination of Elliott Abrams for a diplomatic post is unacceptable.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to address inequality by taxing billionaire wealth gains.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Putin is using millions of Syrians as pawns by playing with their food and medical aid.
To some extent, the US joined in the game by rejecting the shorter renewal that Putin offered. It would have been better than none.
The Mountain Valley pipeline has been blocked again by a court, which said that the Endangered Species Act was not properly applied.
Hong Kong grabbed the family of Nathan Law, exiled dissident, for questioning.
US citizens: call on Congress to say NO to a nearly $1,000,000,000,000 Pentagon budget.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to require the Pentagon to do a full accounting of its greenhouse gas emissions.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Sinema's plan to reduce flight training requirements for commercial pilots.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Some of the sufferers of Long Covid are organizing to test treatments that have been found to benefit a few, though no one understands why.
*Spain closes Pegasus investigation over ‘lack of cooperation’ from Israel.*
I would hope Spain would have ways to put pressure on Israel to cooperate with this investigation — for instance, sanctions.
A right-wing senator is blocking every appointment to an office in the Pentagon as a vindictive display of hostility to Biden's policy of paying personnel's travel cost for getting an abortion.
*Rightwingers say "pink-haired liberals" are killing New York pizza.* In fact, *An air quality rule passed seven years ago requires some shops to install air filters like those used in Italy.*
The EU is considering legalizing small gene changes in plants for cultivation, as an exception to the general policy prohibiting them.
This might be acceptable provided that the law also makes them an exception to patent law: patents should not cover the use of these plants.
DeMentis advocates putting an end to China's permanent right to normal, unrestricted trade with the US.
To do this would require putting an end to the World Trade Organization. I am in favor of this, but it won't be easy for the US to defeat the plutocratist forces that benefit from the WTO.
DeMentis probably thinks that the US will be able to use this against China better than China can use it against the US. I make no such assumption, but I think that without the WTO we could do environmental protection and decarbonization better.
The tide is turning against the rush to use "carbon offsets" as a method of pretend decarbonization.
*Programs to detect [writing made by machine learning models] [tend to] discriminate against non-native English speakers, shows study.
It is general experience that programs intended to judge people often turn out biased, even if there was no intention to do that.
Robert Reich: Biden has failed to take the side of workers against their bosses.
* Almost 200 bird species found to build nests with human litter, including cigarette butts, plastic bags and fishing nets.* These materials could be harmful to the growing chicks.
Independent evidence is being used to piece together the actions of the Greek coast guard vessel that failed to rescue migrants from a trawler. There is evidence that the trawler sank because the coast guard vessel towed it — which the government's story covers up.
After rescuing some of the migrants, Greek officials stole their phones. The coast guard vessel's cameras, intended to record the facts in such situations, were somehow not in operation. And there is evidence that agents of a secret "security" unit were present.
The US used price controls effectively to prevent inflation during World War II, without hurting workers. It could do this again now, but most economists don't want it to be considered.
Why not? Perhaps because they are supported by (and thus serve) the right-wing interests of business.
Australia's universities have been corrupted by government pressure to make profit the goal.
I expect that the right-wing ideology of the previous government encouraged this, but the change seems to have been happening for longer than that.
US citizens: call on Biden to ban the worst uses of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your state governor to help wild animals cross the roads.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
Prigozhin has continued occasionally meeting with Putin since his apparent "coup attempt."
This lends support to the idea that it was theater, not a real coup.
Drug companies' money is keeping the UK's NHS from collapse, but also corrupting every part of it.
To keep the NHS effective and honest, it must be funded adequately by the state.
*Corporate profits were the biggest factor driving up prices last year and will be again in 2023 unless businesses are forced to absorb rising wage bills, the head of the European Central Bank has said.*
US citizens: call on Congress to tax excessive CEO pay.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The small Indian state of Manipur has split between its two ethnic groups, which have withdrawn into separate fortified territories.
The Indian government with its strong religious bias is not very well suited to doing anything to resolve this problem — if anyone has a way to do so.
*Sudan on brink of all-out civil war, UN chief warns.*
I don't post much about Sudan because I don't know what to say except "How sad." I don't have any insight into the fighting, and I have no ideas to suggest. Neither does anyone else, so I can't comment on proposed resolutions or actions.
*Future of deep-sea mining hangs in balance as opposition grows.*
*Heatwave last summer killed 61,000 people in Europe, research finds.*
This is surely just a small fraction of the people killed in 2022 by the increasing heat of global heating. People die from heat on every hot day, even normal summer days, and as normal summer days get hotter, more people die from the heat.
Global heating kills people in indirect ways, including due to food shortages caused by floods and droughts. I'd expect it to be millions per year. Can anyone find a plausible estimate?
US citizens: call on the IRS not to let dirty hydrogen (dirty because made from fossil fuels) get deductions for clean energy.
*NYC will require businesses to prove A.I. employment software isn't racist or sexist.*
Bias in AI systems used to judge individual humans is a well-known problem, and I support this effort to prevent it. But it won't be trivial to check for bias.
A Los Angeles county thug attacked and tackled a woman for making a video of the arrest of her husband.
Thugs that unjustly attack people for upholding their rights and other people's rights should go to prison!
A Florida law which prohibits citizens of certain countries from owning property is being criticized as "racism against Asians", but it is clear that that is confusion.
The law prohibits citizens of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria from buying property within 10 miles of "critical infrastructure."
Of those countries, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria are in Asia. Cuba and Venezuela are not. Russia is partly in Europe and partly in Asia. This law is clearly not directed at "Asians".
The fact that South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are not in the list shows that this is no racism against East Asians. The inclusion of Syria but bot Jordan and Iraq shows this is not a matter of racism against Arabs. The inclusion of Colombia and the Dominican Republic shows that this law is not about racism against Hispanics.
The law is clearly intended to terrorize scapegoats, since instead of simply prohibiting the purchase, it proposes to put the purchaser in prison: a terrible danger to anyone who might overlook some piece of critical infrastructure 9 miles away.
The ban appears to be limited to a small fraction of the state's territory, but I suspect that in practice important urban areas are entirely excluded because cities tend to have airports, seaports, power plants, water/sewage treatment sites, and military bases scattered around. (Consider, for comparison, the way many cities have almost nowhere that someone on the sex offender list is permitted to live.)
I think Republicans are constructing an imaginary "national security" scare so they can pretend to "protect" the country from it, and adding a little scapegoating so that they look tough. If they wanted to truly protect the US from acts of sabotage, they ought to make it apply to Republicans instead of Chinese.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Preemption of Real Property Discrimination Act.
The campaign presents the state laws this would preempt as racist, but at least in the case of the Florida law, that is not so. That law seems to be a bogus response to an fabricated security threat.
Either way, these laws should not exist.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject the No START Bill, which prohibits nuclear missile limitation treaties.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on NOAA to impose 10-knot speed limits on ships in Gulf of Mexico to protect endangered Rice's whales.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
How Putin's government adapted a system for finding and eliminating various kinds of illegal "content" to find and eliminate dissent as well.
Grey whales ask humans (in boats) to remove "lice" from their heads. When humans do this, the whales come back for more.
Whales need to have some of those symbionts, so there is some danger the whales might ask humans to remove too many. Or maybe the whales will naturally DTRT.
I like the idea of intentional cooperation between humans and whales.
As America puts more thugs in schools, and fewer nurses, social workers and counselors, this giving the priority to imposing order rather than education. some experiment with restorative justice instead.
Restorative justice takes more time. Do we think that raising children well is worth that effort? Maybe we should have fewer children and put more time into raising each one.
Kerala has organized thousands of women to cook a little extra food and donate it to a plan that provides food for patients in hospitals.
There are so many volunteer cooks that each one is asked to do this only occasionally.
The person who receives the donation does not know the cook's religion or caste. By eating the food, they learn to reduce caste and religious prejudice in their own minds.
Japan plans to release slowly into the ocean a large amount of water containing an extremely low concentration of tritium.
Many countries are shouting about this. Is it really dangerous, or is that irrational exaggeration? I can't be certain, but I think it is irrational.
Japan claims that other nuclear power plants in the region release larger amounts of tritium annually than this water would. Indeed, Wikipedia's article on Tritium lists nuclear facilities that release much larger amounts of tritium, totaling almost 100 times what the Fukushima storage tanks would release — and the list is not complete.
It is clear that people are making an inordinate fuss about this tritium because it came from a major nuclear accident rather than from operating a reactor. However, the tritium itself is indistinguishable.
Nuclear reactors generate waste that is truly dangerous. That is the reason not to build more nuclear reactors — that and the danger that enemies will bomb them. In addition, they are so expensive and slow to build that they slow down decarbonization. Those are good reasons not to build more of them.
Likewise for the chemical industry — consider PFAS, which are toxic in very small amounts which are not radioactive and therefore don't decay at all.
An international conference about reducing greenhouse emissions from shipping did not agree on any concrete plan to do that — only a long-term target.
Long-term targets don't achieve anything unless followed by concrete short-term plans.
Academics that study social change say that movements with high public support can use disruptive protests effectively to push for action.
*US must urgently treat men tortured at Guantánamo, UN investigator says.*
The US National Weather Service has been using Twitter to receive reports from storm spotters. Due to recent Musk madness, that has started to fail.
Twitter is unsuitable for anything that really needs to work.
The profits of the world's biggest corporations have nearly doubled since the period 2017-2020.
France is legalizing state surveillance by remotely activating people's devices. The law says that a judge's specific authorization is required, so it is not as bad as it could be. But even with safeguards, a surveillance state can be menacing.
France has banned an annual march to commemorate the killing of Adama Traoré, who was killed by thugs in 2016.
Josh Appignanesi writes about how he learned that joining in the climate defense battle does not require becoming a different person. Nor does it require dedicating every minute of your waking life to the cause.
It's the same with fighting for software freedom. Taking steps towards less dependence on unjust computing will enable you to help.
The sad thing is when climate defense activities are set up to require people to run nonfree software. Many of their web sites do that. They shouldn't demand we choose between one of these good causes and the other — it is a gratuitous own goal.
Australia's previous government, plutocratist and right-wing to the core, scapegoated the poor and accused welfare recipients of nonexistent fraud. It imposed fake debts on destitute people, and it intimidated those who reported the wrongs.
A government inquiry recommends prosecution of some ministers. But we also must denounce the scapegoating of the poor.
Migrant-smugglers typically recruit, or conscript, one of the migrants to run and direct the boat — so that the real smugglers can be far away if the boat is captured. After one boat fell apart and sank, its conscript faces charges for the death of some refugees.
The prosecutor said straight out that the fact the smugglers forced the conscript to do this, and beat him when he tried to refuse, was no excuse. This is an unusual form of a frequent prosecutor's excuse for treating someone as guilty who is manifestly innocent. The more usual form is "joint and several liability", where you can be convicted of murder that someone else committed.
The construction and testing of the mini-submarine that imploded trying to visit the Titanic were characterized by schemes to evade regulations. That was inviting disaster, and indeed disaster came.
The company used a contractual scheme to label passengers as "crew", to avoid liability in case they died.
Ralph Nader's suggestions to progressive activist groups.
US maternal deaths doubled from 1999 to 2019 — and that period does not count whatever effect Covid-19 had.
The cause is not clear, but since black mothers die at a much higher rate, it probably has to do with racism and to right-wing policies.
Bernie Sanders calls for massive government investment in education to fill America's shortage of all sorts of medical personnel.
*U.S. public pension funds would be $21 billion richer had they divested from fossil fuels a decade ago.*
*Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests.*
*True patriotism is the opposite of Trump's White Christian Nationalism.*
*US expected to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine.*
The US and Ukraine surely know how devastating cluster bombs are to civilians after the fighting — so why do they consider using them? What advantage do they think those have, to outweigh what is bad about them?
The foolish response to sea-level rise: two people are trying to preserve a small island they own by building sea walls.
This is futile because sea-level rise is accelerating. If they heroically manage to keep up with it this decade, they won't keep up next decade. By the end of this century, all their work will have been erased.
What a shame they aren't putting all that effort into an effort that may not be futile — that may actually win a victory.
We can't save everything, and scattering our efforts makes them futile. We must concentrate on defeating the planet roasters who are deliberately accelerating the problem.
Many US employers forbid workers to sit (ever) while on the job, This is worse than uncomfortable; it builds up injuries.
The experience of many other countries shows that businesses can function just fine while permitting staff to sit occasionally. But suppose that were not true — would that justify the policy? Should the employer's interests entirely override the well-being of the workers?
Of course not.
"Right to sit" laws ought to exist, but that is a very narrow remedy, for this specific method of mistreating workers. What we really need are "right to strong unions" laws, that will help workers deal with many kinds of wrongs by employers, including this kind.
Former Israeli elected officials are being investigated for "sedition" after calling for nonviolent protests.
The protests were to be against right-wing plans for a fascist judiciary.
Israel is being taken over by fascism. Where can Israelis who want to live in a democracy with human rights move to?
Hong Kong has established a bounty of over $100,000 for the arrest of any of the exiles accused of violating the "national security" censorship law.
The natural response is for other countries to make it a crime to try to capture those freedom defenders, and offer a similar bounty for the arrest of anyone involved in trying to arrest them.
Hong Kong has arrested former protest leaders. One was arrested at the airport, leading me to wonder if he was trying to flee to a safe haven.
The Hong Kong "national security" law applies to "crimes" "committed" before that law was passed. In US legal terms, it is an "ex-post-facto" law. The US Constitution bans ex-post-facto criminalization. Many other countries do likewise — because it is evident that such a law amounts to, "If we don't like you, we will put you in prison."
That's Hong Kong for you — and that's China for you.
I wonder if there is a way to arrange for Hong Kongers to flee without permission, as people fled from East Berlin.
Radical thoughts stated by the founders of the US Constitution.
Ironically amazing is Jefferson's ringing condemnation of slavery as evil — ironic given that he owned slaves and never freed them.
In the Declaration of Independence, he wrote a paragraph to condemn King George for the slave trade.
*Most [UK] doctors think ministers want to destroy the NHS, BMA boss says.*
I believe the same. It is a good thing that the NHS doctors recognize this, because they are the ones that have to fight it.
Australia is planning to demand that multi-national companies give economic data about their operations in other countries. Some Swiss conglomerates are making vague threats that they "won't invest so much in Australia."
Australia should tell them not to slam the door on the way out.
No country desperately needs investment to be made in ways that tend to subjugate the country to foreign plutocrats. The proposed Australian law will take the world one step closer to a progressive tax on corporations that would tend to pressure them to split up.
Bernie Sanders: Congress must act to overcome the planet roasters.
*Why are people dying at sea? They are fleeing disasters that we once called ‘biblical’, and now call normal.*
I rarely see an article which depicts how horrible is the fate that human activity is imposing on humans and nature. This is one.
I have to point out that the other jaw of the vise is over-reproduction. Having a few children is not much compared with what any plutocrat does, but it is harm you can avoid.
*Brazil: Amazon deforestation drops 34% in first six months under Lula.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A list of very important Labour Party policies that Starmer has discarded.
Driverless cars in San Francisco collect videos constantly using cameras inside and outside, and governments have already collected those videos secretly.
As the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project says, they are "driving us straight into authoritarianism."
I've warned of this for years.
I contend that we must regulate all cameras that collect images that can be used to track people, to make sure they are not used for that.
US citizens: call on Biden to call for Sultan Al Jaber to be removed as head of COP28.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
When the corrupter played with boxes of US military secrets, he was playing with the lives of Americans.
We don't need to assume that all US soldiers are always fighting for good and for justice to recognize that the corrupter's actions were a vile betrayal. It shows he is the enemy of the United States, and of all that is good in it — as well as the enemy of freedom and democracy in the United States.
Demanding that Unilever cease operating in Russia.
Global heating link to personal violence *Climate crisis linked to rising domestic violence in south Asia, study finds.*
This has been demonstrated for other parts of the world too.
*Study finds extreme rainfall at higher elevations increases by 8.3% for every degree Fahrenheit world warms.*
One incident of extreme rainfall at a place can do permanent damage.
Canada's wildfires, hotter and bigger than ever in history, can wipe out endangered species with one blow.
Texas's fossil fuel power plants have been failing during the heat wave, but increase solar generating capacity enabled Texas to cope.
You can tell which politicians work for the fossil fuel lobby, because they are disparaging solar power falsely.
The Thames Barrier, like a dam that can be opened and closed, protects London from surges of the North Sea. But, by 2070, sea level rise will leave it insufficiently tall, and impossible to maintain if they close it as often as it now must. It will have to be rebuilt.
Eventually protecting London will need a dam. And then it will become impossible.
The only way we can protect the thousands of threatened coastal cities is curb global heating, and then suck greenhouse gases out of the air.
(satire) *Multimillion-Dollar City Beautification Project Results In 3 New Blades Of Grass.*
Eighty Afghan civilians may have been summarily killed by [British military] SAS, inquiry told.
Hong Kong has filed charges of criticizing the government on democracy activists living in exile.
This is not a surprise — it is part and parcel of the Chinese repression in Hong Kong, and it is why people would be wise not to go to Hong Kong or any part of China. China has no reason to limit these charges to people who really have rebuked China's repression from other countries (not that it is justified to punish people for that).
False and dishonest charges are standard there too.
Perhaps the US should criminalize people outside the US who participate in placing criminal charges against people in the US for criticizing other countries.
The UK now has essentially a monopoly on printing magazines.
This sort of thing happens when anti-monopoly laws are too weak or too weakly enforced. That tends to happen due to plutocratist pressure on governments.
A doctor says the NHS has been collapsing since 2012, and has kept getting worse.
Even when Labour was in power, all was not well, Waiting lists for treatment were long. Of course, Tories have made it far worse.
What Tony B'liar's Labour Party and the Tories have in common is plutocratism. They are unwilling to tax the rich enough to make the NHS function properly, so they always under-fund it.
The Patriotic Millionaires UK warned the rich to expect "pitchforks and torches" if they don't stop pushing most people into poverty.
Starmer's men have expelled a decades-long Labour activist over a minor excuse — but really, over resisting his subjection of the party.
Here's what he has to say about it.
*Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access.*
The article mentions an unreliable app. It does not mention that the app is an injustice because it is nonfree.
A warning from Planned Parenthood: if you are pregnant, stay out of Tennessee.
A report on pervasive tyranny in Rwanda: if you don't join President Kagama's rally, you will be individually noted and persecuted.
Rebecca Solnit: *The US supreme court has dismantled our rights (rights that we had won) but we still believe in them. Now we must fight.*
If you want to be safe from gun violence, know that Democrats tend to do it better. Republicans are more interested in making it easy for people to carry guns and shoot you.
Implementing low-emission-zones in a city tends to produce small but significant decreases in heart and lung disease.
I am in favor of limiting the use of high-pollution vehicles, but it must be implemented in a way that doesn't track where each car goes. Tracking people's movements is the foundation for tyranny and repression.
The culture in England around cricket is jam-packed with bigotry.
Swifts, remarkable birds that fly for months without landing, are running out of nest sites as old buildings are renovated. Hollow "swift bricks" built into new buildings provide them with new nest sites.
Everyone: call on WMO and NOAA to name climate disasters after fossil fuel companies.
Massachusetts residents: support the Massachusetts Location Shield Act.
Here is what I gave as my personalized message:
I urge you to support the Location Shield Act — but, as described in the articles I have seen, it has loopholes that may make it fail to achieve its laudable purpose.It would block the most obvious and usual way for states persecuting abortion patients (and those who help them) to get the data, but there are various others ways which they will not take long to think of. For instance, companies could be "persuaded" to "give away" the data. (States have ways to persuade them — think of what Governor DeMentis has tried with Disney. Most companies won't resist as Disney has.) States could also get the data by subpoena.
I suggest forbidding requiring entities that collect location data in Massachusetts to distribute that data to any entity under any basis, outside of a small list of exceptions such as subpoenas from federal courts or certain specially authorized Massachusetts courts.
This may call for requiring those entities to keep the data inside Massachusetts, stored in ways that Massachusetts law can reliably govern.
Those entities often store their personal data — including location data — on computers belonging to cloudy businesses which don't deal directly with those entities' clients: for instance, Amazon AWS. Persecuting states could get the data by subpoena directly from those businesses. That requirement proposed above about where and how to store the location data could address this loophole too.
The full solution to the danger of massive surveillance of people's movements is to prohibit collection of location data. Massive surveillance, of which tracking people's movements is an example, is the foundation of tyranny. Phones should not track people, and when a business asks where you are, it should have to be content with whatever answer you choose give it. You do not owe a business a truthful answer to whatever question it may ask you!
Buses, trains, taxis, cars, and payments systems often track people's movements. We should put a stop to that too. My associates are working on a software system for paying stores and internet subscriptions without identifying yourself — see taler.net for more information.
Ending massive surveillance is a big job and will take time, but a strengthened Location Shield Act could be an exemplary first step.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission to Step in to Allow the Public to Provide Feedback on DeJoy's menacing Post Office changes.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to uphold the laws that protect minors from overwork and dangerous work.
*Centre for prosecuting crimes of aggression [in Ukraine] opens in The Hague.*
This war crime has been mostly neglected since the Nuremberg trials, as prosecutions focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity rather than the fundamental crime of launching aggressive war.
*Scientists ponder if climate has entered a new erratic era.*
*Biden lays out new student debt relief plan after supreme court ruling.*
He's not accepting defeat.
*[British] Campaigners vow to step up action against new North Sea oilfield.* Ministers know that the world has no room for this, and they are disregarding climate commitments to approve it.
This is plutocracy at work.
*Texas [prisoners] deprived of water and AC are fainting in jails that reach [up to 116°F].*
Water is a necessity for human life. The prison thugs are putting the prisoners' life and health in danger.
(satire) *Human Rights Organization Accuses Ron [DeMentis] Of Subjecting Migrants To One Of His Speeches.*
*"Resistance is possible": Ravish Kumar, the broadcaster risking his life to tell the truth about India today.*
A lawsuit accused the developers of ChatGPT of "stealing" people's personal data to train the system.
The article does not say how the company obtained that data. Security measures should have prevented that — how come they did not? Is it possible that the company got permission to use that data from other companies that had collected it?
Using the data can be wrong, but the fundamental wrong is collecting it at all.
*Israel’s far-right government fans the flames of vigilante settler violence.*
Several Palestinian militias are based in Jenin. Israel is systematically bombing them with drone attacks.
Possible Palestinian fighters are referred to as "suspected" whatever. Israeli soldiers who fight are never "suspected" of anything.
*[Brazilian] Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over "appalling lies".*
If only US judges had the good sense to do that.
*France has ignored racist police violence for decades. These riots are the price of that denial.*
Putin is rapidly evacuating personnel from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and Ukraine claims he plans to blow up part of it.
This would be tantamount to using a dirty nuclear weapon. I suggest that the US warn Putin that it will attack the Putin forces with non-nuclear weapons if he does that.
The Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional discrimination, but left one aspect that applicants of disprivileged demographic background can still cite: "an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."
Interestingly, one right-wing justice rebuked Harvard for its discrimination in favor of students from extra-privileged backgrounds, those whose families had past association with Harvard. His point was somewhat confused, but there is a valid point to be made: since 43% of white Harvard students benefited from that privilege, eliminating that privilege could achieve, through fairness in process, much of the fairness of outcome that affirmative action has achieved.
Justice Jackson explains why affirmative action is needed to counteract generations of disadvantage which government policies imposed on the blacks of the time, and which today's blacks have more or less inherited.
Biden condemned the decision and said he will seek ways to maintain the effect of affirmative action despite the decision.
*The US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to preemptively bar a wealth tax.*
The London region water company has not invested in fixing enormous water leaks, causing shortages and waste, because it was more profitable to neglect its duty and wallow in greed. (What else would you expect from a big business under today's business attitudes?)
I suspect that the laws that govern these companies were designed to facilitate profiteering. The most important thing is to change them to demand responsibility and stop the profiteering.
The new Philippines president Marcos Jr. has made rhetoric smoother, and shifted international ties towards the US. Domestically, he has said a lot to portray himself as helping the poor, but not done much to knack it up.
*Voter ID is just one item in a long list of assaults on [UK] democracy. Breaches of standards in public office, clampdowns on protest and attacks on the judiciary have all featured in the last few years of Tory rule.*
Australian prisons are keeping minors in cells almost 24 hours a day.
This article describes one prison in one state, but I've seen others showing that this practice spans Australia.
I am sure most of these prisoners are too old to be considered "children". However, the laws to protect them are important — both to ensure work does not keep them out of school, and to ensure it doesn't do them physical harm.
Republicans in several states are attacking teachers' unions, with the support of millionaires such as the owners of Walmart.
This is one example of how plutocracy in the US supports dooH niboR, who takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
Uganda now sentences people to 10 years in prison for Homosexual sex. Advocating the rights of homosexuals is punished with 20 years.
Progressive legislators propose to cut military aid to Uganda in response.
It looks like Australia's government has proposed a law to facilitate new fossil fuel development.
A TV station presented a program that accurately showed how dolphins typically mate — a group of males league together to plan gang rape.
It leads humans to pose a question of which standards to judge dolphin behavior by — the standards of human morality, or dolphins' own nonhuman nature.
*Cost of living worsening health of children in UK, say school nurses.*
This is plutocracy at work.
An inquiry into the undercover UK cops who were sent to infiltrate peaceful protest groups in the 1970s has published its first partial report. It concludes that their investigation was intimate and had no justification whatsoever.
A pregnant woman went to a phony abortion clinic, a "crisis center," and was given a gravely erroneous diagnosis of her dangerous unviable pregnancy.
We must wonder if they misrepresented it intentionally to stop her from getting the abortion that she needed.
A UK appeals court gave reasons for rejecting the plan to make asylum seekers wait in Rwanda.
Rwanda's government is generally repressive.
This decision is not final — it may be reversed on appeal.
Short-term local opposition defeated Scotland's plan to establish serious protection for 10% of its waters.
This is a step towards pollution and extinction.
Many UK schools have been closed because their buildings are unsafe.
Hundreds were made decades ago with lightweight aerated concrete, which turns out to crumble eventually, but there are other kinds of problems too. However, the overall causes is that the government did not spend enough on inspecting, repairing and replacing schools buildings.
This is plutocracy at work. The government needs more money but hasn't got the courage to tax the rich more.
(satire) *Georgia Cuts Welfare Benefits For Recipients Caught Experiencing Happiness.*
(satire) *Texas Governor Adds Backup Prayer System To State Electricity Grid.*
Youtube is experimenting with blocking users found to be using ad-blockers.
Google ads work by tracking users and their activities. I don't particularly care whether an ad appears on my graphical virtual screen, since I don't have to actually watch it — I could do something else.
What matters to me is refusing to be identified, as well as not running nonfree JS code. If I can't pull in the video without being thus maltreated, that will make YouTube inaccessible for me once again.
The real determinant will be whether the Invidio.us proxies continue to work.
A long-elected Labour MO has accused Starmer of leading a "rightwing, illiberal" faction and trying to exclude all other ideas from the party.
I expect Starmer to respond to this demand to respect the room for disagreement in the party with force. He has already shown that leading over and over.
*[Prominent feminist writer] Caitlin Moran: what's gone wrong for men – and the thing that can fix them.*
I would not try to compare how bad today's society is for men with how it is for women. It seems to be pretty bad for both — partly because men and women are being pushed into penury by plutocracy, and into horrible social relations by anti-social media.
Moran has pointed out one important difference: women and girls have found ways to support each other publicly and talk about their collective difficulties in society. Men and boys need it too but have no place to turn to except woman-haters.
Thank you Ms Moran. I hope society finds a way out of this sad gender relations trap.
Enraged Palestinians and enraged Israelis are in a cycle of violence, but the Israeli violence seems to be much bigger.
The UK put preparation for pandemics aside to leave the EU in the most crude possible way.
*UK aid should not fund private hospitals in developing countries, says Oxfam.*
I agree. To aid the harmful plutocratist press for privatization is making things worse.
*The [US] Army warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism. That Warning Rings True Today.*
Ralph Nader: the US's major newspapers are replacing serious news with tabloid-style distraction material.
*Plans to shorten medical training put quality of [UK medical treatment] at risk, doctors say.*
If the UK finds that it needs more money to provide everyone with proper medical treatment, it should tax the rich more.
Bernie Sanders rebuked the Supreme Court decision blocking Biden's planned method for canceling some student debt, and calls on Biden to use another method that the court can't block.
*French newspaper staff strike after "far-right personality" made editor.*
Global heating has made the Hajj dangerous. In a decade or two it may be deadly to quite a few.
Will the Muslim world take note of the danger of global heating, in which a few Muslim countries play significant roles?
*Despite record temperatures, some Chinese people are yet to connect the extreme heat to the climate crisis, something activists want to change.*
Once Chinese get used to the term "climate change," they need to get familiar with "climate collapse" and "climate disaster." They need to understand that climate disaster can destroy China just as it can destroy most or all other countries. And they should think of Shanghai inundated.
The global heating we have already caused will inevitably lead to rising sea level for centuries. But if we heat the Earth more, there will be even more sea level rise.
One projection is that 3°C of global heating will raise sea level up to 50 feet by 2300.
An Australian study recommends banning marketing "inducements" designed to make it hard to for people with gambling problems to resist gambling.
"Inducements" are a term for temporary promotions such as "Buy one, get one 'free'." (They ought to say, "gratis.")
Bad working conditions for Nepalese workers in Qatar are causing them permanent kidney problems — they need dialysis for the rest of their lives.
Qatar could correct this problem, but its rich rulers don't want to reduce their income.
Improved technology could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping by 50%. But it would cost money: the challenge is to compel the ship owners to pay it.
*After Roe's overturn, Republicans target trans rights using extremist rhetoric.*
West Virginia state thugs have been caught in crimes ranging from kidnaping to rape to drugging, and many other crimes, not quite as grave but still nasty.
The state governor is pushing the investigation.
*What will Ukraine do with Russian collaborators? Revenge would be a mistake.*
The article suggests distinguishing between those who sought power or advantage through the Russian puppet governments and those who simply carried on their legitimate civic jobs under Russian power.
The UK plans to close most ticket offices at railroad stations.
The unions are opposed to this because of possible job losses, but I see a danger to everyone. How will it be possible to buy a ticket? Will people be compelled to do it from a web site that imposes use of nonfree software and requires them to identify themselves?
What other options for buying train tickets exist now?
*Border Patrol Video of Killing Shows [Indigenous US Citizen Near Border] Had No Gun, Complied With Orders.*
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to confirm Biden's judicial nominations.
*Wage rises are driving inflation? Don’t swallow this dangerous rightwing myth.*
*Labour leadership accused of U-turn over rent controls.*
It calls for "getting interest rates under control" instead — but without trying to act on their true cause, it is mainly working against labor.
Extra! Extra! One of Marjorie Taylor Greene's crazy beliefs — that her TV set is watching her — may actually be correct, depending on which kind of TV set she has.
On the ethics, practicality and sustainability of farming octopuses.
Octopuses are so remote from us evolutionarily that they give a sample of how strange alien life could be. That we can relate to them at all is amazing.
Literally alien life is likely to be toxic to us, and we to it. Octopuses don't think of eating humans because they don't generally eat anything bigger than their heads.
A parliamentary committee is concerned that millions in the UK are failing to move into the internet of proprietary software and surveillance.
The Netherlands has to reduce the amount of beef farming because the farms' emissions of nitrogen are damaging ecosystems around them.
It's true we need farms in order to have food. But we don't need as much beef as we produce now — and for other reasons we must produce less.
Describing an experimental shelter for homeless families, designed to reduce their trauma and stress.
The homeless population of Los Angeles has jumped to 75,000 people.
The underlying cause is that the US handles housing to serve the interests of the rich.
French thugs shot and killed a driver of Arab origin for no sensible reason, then fabricated a fake reason. This has sparked protests all around France.
Global heating will make summer miserable for much of the US.
In the south, a heat dome. In the northeast, smoke from Canadian forest fires.
Until we reduce greenhouse gas levels, it will get worse and worse and worse.
Australian climate defenders blocked coal export shipments in several ports.
Australian state governments complain about the momentary inconvenience of the protests, and threaten to use repressive anti-protest laws. Bravo to the courageous protesters!
There is no need for Australia to suddenly end all coal export. What it needs to do is cut down coal mining faster — and pressure the rest of the world hard to cut down faster. These protesters are calling attention to that.
Secondarily, Australia should stop imploring China to buy Australian coal rather than mine coal in China. Coal combustion in China will hurt the world (and especially China) no matter which country it gets the coal from, but begging China to buy it strengthens China's influence and weakens resistance to it.
*Mark Carney [recently retired head of the Bank of England] says Bank’s negative predictions about consequences of leaving EU "proven to be the case."*
China has built as much renewable generating capacity as the rest of the world, and it is rapidly building more.
This is not a race between countries to see which one will "win." It is part of a race against time for the survival of civilization and the natural world. Renewable generation is one of the things we need for that goal.
The whole world is in this together, and China shows what other countries do, if only we overcome the efforts of the fossil fuel corruption intended to stop us.
One bad aspect of China's progress is that it is still increasing its coal combustion. Until fossil fuel use decreases, we are still getting further away from survival.
In general, the one good thing about the Chinese system of government is that the state is more powerful than businesses, and will not permit them to get powerful enough to obstruct the state's plans.
The very bad thing about the Chinese system of government is that the state is far more powerful than the people, and will not permit the people to obstruct the state's plans. But it does consider the aggregate practical desires of people, despite its contempt for their views and freedom.
To oversimplify, a just state cows the powerful few while respecting the people. China does the first but rejects the second. The US does an insufficient job of each.
The Tory prime minister has de-prioritized the previous commitments for avoiding global heating disaster.
Yusef Salaam was one of the five falsely convicted "rapists" in Central Park in 1989, who were later conclusively exonerated. He seems to have won the Democratic primary for a city council seat.
*Samuel Alito’s Wife Leased Land to an Oil and Gas Firm While [Alito] Fought the EPA.*
*First UN human rights investigator allowed to visit since [Guantanamo prison] was set up says [prisoners] subjected to "inhuman and degrading" treatment.*
*UN says Russian forces have tortured and executed civilians in Ukraine.*
Tasmania, under a right-wing government, is continuing to cut down the trees where the endangered swift parrot lives.
Turkey and Lebanon are deporting Syrian refugees to Syria, and some are being drafted into Assad's army.
The last resort of fragging your commander with a grenade is always available when there is actual combat.
Foxconn promised to invest in an Ohio company making electric trucks, but found an excuse to pull out of it, so the company is going bankrupt.
*If [the corrupter] wins, he’ll turn the justice department into a vendetta machine.*
The EU's proposed law to regulate AI and nonintelligent "AI" takes mostly the right approach: to regulate by laws the uses of these systems.
The attempt to control these uses by releasing trained neural networks under nonfree licenses is misguided: it is nondemocratic, unjust, and probably ineffective, just as it is for other software.
For the directive as described here, I am concerned that a fine of 6% of global gross revenue could be an acceptable business expense for very large companies. I think that individuals crucially responsible for flagrantly illegal decisions should be prosecuted and face possible prison sentences.
I am concerned that the proposal may enact a bad assumption about the breadth of copyright. When ChatGPT or something like it copies a small snippet of text that appeared in some unidentified work, or perhaps in many otherwise different unidentified works, that should not be copyright infringement on those works. it would not be copyright infringement if you did the same thing in your head. Therefore, the requirement to list the copyright of all the works used for training is excessive.
Fossil fuel company Santos owns "decommissioned" offshore fossil gas wells that are leaking bubbles of methane. It says that stopping these leaks is "not feasible."
Is that really true, or is it a bogus excuse not to seal them?
If it is true, this is all the more reason not to allow any more fossil gas wells to be made.
The Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act has been enacted.
*The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide "reasonable accommodations" to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition,*
*Supreme Court Rejects Independent State Legislature Theory.*
The "Independent State Legislature Theory" claimed that state legislatures could decide how to decide arbitrarily how the state's electoral votes would be cast in a presidential election, disregarding the state's constitution and immune to correction by the state's courts.
This was obviously absurd, given that the state legislatures are created by the state's constitution. However, brazen right-wing legislators that sought to force a right-wing victory will try anything and see if they can get away with it.
Prigozhin and some of his troops have arrived in Belarus. The rest of the Wagner troops seem to be in Ukraine.
*Time is running out for Julian Assange. If MPs do not act, how can they say they value free speech?*
*Senior doctors in England vote to strike over pay.*
"Consultant" in the NHS means a specialist who takes overall responsibility for treating selected patients. Nothing like a "consultant" in business.
UK union-hampering laws imposed a deadline on the nurse union's strike vote so that it did not receive enough ballots for a valid result.
I have not seen anything which explains just why or how that particular deadline was imposed, or whether the union could now try again with more time for members to vote.
Kenyan women who survived domestic slavery in Salafi Arabia testified and demand Kenyan government action to protect Kenyans who work there.
Tape of the bullshitter gives the lie to his claims about a secret military document.
Bogus Johnson was judged to have violated the ministerial code by taking a private job with only half an hour's notice to the pertinent parliamentary committee. But this committee has no power to punish him.
Starmer appears to have broken a similar rule when he left government service.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the PRO act and protect the right to organize from union-busting tactics.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to defend the right to abortion and birth control.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A pregnant woman in Poland, carrying a fetus that had almost no chance of resulting in a healthy baby, died in a hospital that never informed her that her life was in danger or that an abortion could have saved her.
*Current heatwave across US south made five times more likely by climate crisis.*
Prigozhin's maybe-fake coup suggests that Putin's regime is not as secure as he would like us to believe. It follows that Ukraine has the hope of winning the war and kicking Russian troops out of Ukraine.
The article mentions the debate among historians about whether the hard terms in the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, caused widespread suffering that helped Hitler seize power. I think there is a miscommunication in that discussion. The "humiliation" of Germany, that helped Hitler seize power, was the requirement for Germany to pay reparations that it could not possibly pay. Every German felt the suffering from this.
A total military defeat for the Putin forces would not amount to a humiliation like that.
The current Tory government has set a record for blocking the highest ever fraction of the freedom-of-information requests received.
Filipinas seeking jobs abroad are compelled to borrow money at high interest to pay illegal junk fees.
*Destruction of world's pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge.*
Sea level rise, caused by human-controlled greenhouse gas emissions is destroying Tuvalu's land area. The country will be gone well before the end of this century.
What we don't know is whether other countries, that won't mostly be inundated by the sea, will survive the other global consequences of our way of life.
Robert Reich busts the myth that "people are paid what they're worth."
He presents this with illustrations in a short video, which (while the invidious proxies continue to function) can be seen here. (It starts with an annoying use of singular "they", but I recommend it despite that.)
For me, the statement he criticizes shows an even deeper problem: it presumes a narrow, purely economic idea of what a person's value consists of. I've decided not to use locutions that presume a person's "worth" is measured by the economic value of per assets.
How vampire capitalists use debt forgiveness to a poor country as an excuse to squeeze it to death. (From 2012.)
Palast uses the term "vulture", but I think that is misleading. Vultures eat dead animals; as long as animals die, vultures (or something comparable) are necessary. These capitalists, by contrast, drain live countries and their live inhabitants.
I would like to see more recent news about this.
High interest rates in the UK have translated into high mortgage interest, which is translating into higher rents, which is likely to make hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
I have a hunch that the Tories' voter-ID cards will stop many of them from voting. My hunch says that those cards have the voter's address, and that those who were forced out of their homes will need to get new cards. If they don't have a stable address, does that mean they can't vote?
Maryland's supreme court ruled that ballistic analysis has not been proved reliable enough to justify testifying that a specific bullet was definitely fired by a certain gun.
A survey shows conclusively that the root cause of homelessness in California is simple: homes are too expensive.
The same study established that 90% of California's homeless people were living in California when they became homeless.
The gig workers paid to provide verified data for training neural nets are secretly using neural net systems to get that data.
This overall system could magnify errors.
Rich people's paid flunkies say, "Now can Naples survive without attracting our bosses to visit?"
Seward County, Nebraska, makes a racket of accusing drivers based on no evidence of being drug traffickers, then threatening to put them in jail, unless they sign away all their cash.
"Drug-sniffing" dogs are often trained to follow the human handler's subtle commands. When the drug is told "find drugs here", it does.
When victims try to contest the seizure, courts are biased heavily against them.
To prevent this, we should make sure that it is (1) impossible to seize money from people for an alleged crime without first convicting them of it, and (2) when money is seized, absolutely none of it is available for the use of thug departments or the entities they are associated with.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax major sports leagues.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to protect teenage workers from corporate exploitation.
I will not refer to teenagers of age 14 and 15 as "children".
Notwithstanding that point about language, I support the laws that stop employers from pushing them into excessive or hazardous work.
US citizens: call on Biden and Blinken to confront India's human rights abuses.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
Samuel Alito accepted lavish gifts and then failed to recuse himself from a very important case in which he ruled for his benefactor.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Abortion Justice Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to resign from the Supreme Court.
Everyone: call on Home Depot to stop selling Roundup.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
Prigozhin agreed to go to exile in Belarus, and Putin agreed to drop charges against him. Ostensibly, everyone is friends again. Despite the brief incidents of real combat, I can't feel convinced it wasn't just theater.
The exile agreement is no guarantee of Prigozhin's safety. If the coup was real, Putin might have him killed in Belarus. Even if it was theater, Putin might have him killed, in reaction to the enthusiastic reception Prigozhin received from the public — apparently because people hate Putin. I don't think Putin can forgive showing that on TV.
More speculation about the reasons for the events we have seen.
US beekeepers have to work very hard to make new colonies to make up for the ones that die.
Ralph Nader: US corporations have good reason to believe they are above the law, since crimes by corporations occur constantly and are hardly ever prosecuted. Government lawyers don't want to prosecute businesses because they hope to work for those businesses later.
We voters could stop them if we concentrated on the issue. That is why they create side issues (refugees, queer people, drag shows, sex education) to distract people with.
It is more or less impossible to do valid psychological experiments on whether mental manipulation tricks to help a person really do help. People tend to be helped by doing anything which they believe will help them.
Anti-abortionists try to crush defenders of abortion rights through phony accusations and proceedings designed to humiliate and impoverish them.
Democrats are turning their defense of abortion rights into election victories.
Amazon has subcontracted a lot of its deliveries to "separate" companies, to thwart holding it accountable.
The workers at one of them now demand Amazon negotiate, but Amazon wants to shut down that subcompany instead.
The easiest way to hold Amazon responsible. Don't buy from there, and ask your friends not to buy anything for you from there. Inform web sites that ask people to buy from Amazon through their pages that you boycott Amazon and suggest they choose another way to raise funds.
I go even further than this. I refuse to identify myself when buying products, aside from prescription medicines.
*3M pays $10.3bn to settle water pollution suit over [PFAS] "forever chemicals".*
This is a lot of money, but I think it may be too little. is it enough to pay for the costs of treating all the people affected?
What can these cities do to keep PFAS out of their water supply? They will have to do it forever, I think, since the environment is already full of PFAS.
*Draft EU plans to allow spying on journalists are dangerous, warn critics.*
Seeking funds for wildlife conservation in poor, indebted countries by trading debt for a commitment to spend on conservation.
I think wealthy countries will have to put money into this, and get it by taxing the rich.
Naomi Klein: *Beware: we ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr's candidacy at our peril.*
An Australian senator calls for investigating whether any of Australia's "senior generals" bear responsibility for war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Collateral Murder video shows that rules of engagement can license murder. I hope Australia will investigate that too.
*Safety checks run down and boom time for criminals.* Tory incompetence/neglect is letting everything in the UK go bad. So any business might cheat you. You could lose mere money, or lose your life in the case of unsafe construction that might start a fire.
*Nature at risk of breakdown if Cop15 pledges not met, world leaders warned.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 1-202-224-3121 and advocate expanding the Supreme Court and imposing a code of ethics such as other federal judges have.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Procter & Gamble to switch to forest-free products to help save the boreal forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to boycott Kevin McCarthy's commission to cut Social Security (and Medicare).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Prigozhin's Wagner soldiers took over the city of Rostov without a fight, and some of the locals welcomed them.
Another Wagner column seems to have rushed towards Moscow, while Putin ordered real army units to stop them.
Ukraine welcomed the opportunity that an internal conflict in Russia might offer. However, I expect this won't give Ukraine much of an opportunity. Prigozhin was at pains to explain that the army centers he had taken control of were working on the war with Ukraine just as before.
Then he made a deal with Putin to abort the coup.
Prigozhin's attack seemed precipitously sudden, with too little public preparation to build up much support. His climb down seems unbelievably fast as well. I would not expect someone who has launched an armed rebellion and been accused of treason to call it off so quickly.
I have to wonder whether this coup was a kind of theater, agreed in advance between Prigozhin and Putin.
A train carrying toxic chemicals fell into the Yellowstone River because a bridge collapsed.
I have to wonder whether this collapse was caused by saving money by reducing regular maintenance. That would fit the railroad company's general approach, but I don't know whether it occurred in this bridge.
Three Texas thugs face murder charges for killing Melissa Perez, who seemed to be freaking out but was not in a position to harm them significantly.
Opponents to Atlanta's cop city project are running a referendum campaign which seeks to cancel it entirely.
The city government, which seems to be motivated by something we can only guess at, tried several times to sabotage the petition drive.
Surely the would-be contractors see an opportunity to profit, but I doubt that the profit would be big enough to motivate such stiff insistence from the city government. I have a hunch that something nastier is at work, something more deeply related to right-wing politics.
I doubt that the contractors who would build it have enough money to gain that they would find it worth while to put a lot of money into stiffening politicians' support for the project.
Six southern US states including Texas are suffering from an extreme heat wave.
When will Republicans admit that our actions are making this worse?
I have a hunch that northern Mexico is suffering from a heat wave too.
A private ally of Orbán has bought Hungary's main book publisher and bookstore chain.
Hungary, like various other countries, is exploring how to create cryptic fascism, in which the institutions of the state nominally continue to work, but democracy ceases to be meaningful, This reminds me of how Octavius Caesar gave himself personal control of Rome while keeping the Republic's institutions nominally in function.
*Malaysia to ask Interpol for help to track down comedian over MH370 joke.*
Many governments repress political dissidents, usually by falsifying nonpolitical charges against them. For instance, India does this.
However, overtly attacking foreign comedians is an extreme form of censorship.
*The sudden warming of Britain’s seas will tear through ocean life like a wildfire.*
This is going to happen around the world. Some marine species will be able to move — others will not. The result will be chaos. And then ocean acidification will wipe out entire classes, even phyla.
*The government should halt all new roads unless there are exceptional circumstances, the [UK] government's climate advisers are likely to say next week.*
Prigozhin seems to claim to be launching some sort of coup or civil war in Russia, but at the same time saying it is not a coup.
He says that there was no rational reason for Putin to attack Ukraine.
Any or all of what he claims about events could be bogus. He may be trying to seize power from Putin. Or it may be a stunt, planned with Putin. I can't come up with a rational explanation of it. But it seems unlikely to me that there will be room for both of them in Russia after this.
*Paris climate finance summit fails to deliver debt forgiveness plan.*
Texas has passed a law to nullify all local regulations covering broad areas including working conditions, farming, and banking.
In particular, this will eliminate the regulations in some cities requiring employers to give construction workers occasional breaks to drink water, to protect them from death from the extreme heat.
Republicans are determined to ensure that hard labor is no safer in one Texas town than in another.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to refuse to lend legitimacy to the Republican's plan for a commission to cut Social Security and Medicare.
When artist Françoise Gilot broke up with Pablo Picasso, he went to great lengths to cancel her artistic career. In France, her career never escaped the damage that he did.
Picasso famously made many paintings of his wives and lovers. I wonder if that was a way of marking them as his possessions.
Picasso's arrogant treatment of women does not cancel his artistic genius; equally, his artistic genius does not cancel his arrogant treatment of women. They are two parts of reality, each as real as the other.
Accused "hijackers" on a cargo ship headed for Italy were simply refugees trying to get to Europe, say the prosecutors who were supposed to put them on trial as "pirates".
China has demanded Poland censor an art exhibition which condemns actions by China and Chairman Xi.
China carries out many parallel efforts to silence criticism and critics in other countries. It uses its economic power to pressure governments to help. We cannot take for granted that Poland will stand up to this pressure.
The mining company Adani threatened reporters who visited its coal mine site with legal action for meeting with indigenous protesters protesting on the site, and demanded that they not publish any photos they took there.
Companies that try to bully reporters should be shut down by the state.
This particular company is participating in mass murder. Pollution from coal mines already kills thousands. Global heating disaster will kill at least hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.
My main criticism of the Australian government is that it allows new coal mines to be opened. How much coal mine profit is your life worth?
Madison Square Garden is using facial recognition on everyone who enters, to keep out the lawyers representing plaintiffs that are suing it.
Laws to restrict use of facial recognition on the public should make sure to prevent this.
A number of musicians have vowed to boycott concert venues that use facial recognition on the public.
Bravo!
(satire) *Critics Say Submersible Should've Been Tested With Poorer Passengers First.*
Establishing fenced enclosures in the Australian desert, and eradicating invasive predators and pests, enables native species to grow again.
I support protecting the pre-colonization ecosystems this way. I question, though, whether it is correct to call this "rewilding". The indigenous people have been managing these ecosystems for 40,000 years, so "wild" is not an accurate term to describe what they were during that time.
More scummy subservience to business from Senator Sinema.
Yemen may find peace by splitting once again into two countries, but Salafi Arabia objects because neither one is under its influence.
*L.A. School Board President Gives a Lesson on [Queer] Inclusion.* I find it inspiring.
The US government is inviting Indian repressor Modi to visit, hoping to win his support against China. I fear this means the US will do as little to oppose Modi's repression in India as it does to oppose repression in Salafi Arabia.
Some car racing in the US still uses leaded gas. Researchers have found that it does significant harm to children growing up near those race tracks.
The effect of government-imposed poverty in the UK can be measured by the average height of five-year-old children.
For "smart", read "snoop". It is now advertised as a feature that a "smart TV" watches you. Sky expects customers to pay extra to be able to use the video themselves.
If I could pay extra to make sure nobody could watch me through it, that wouldn't convince me to tolerate that device in my house. (After all, it runs nonfree software and talks to the internet.) But it would eliminate one of my objections to it.
A London thug has been convicted for spraying a kind of pepper spray at a man who was climbing down a drain pipe on a tall building. By doing so the thug endangered the man's life. Fortunately for him, he did not actually fall.
The thug suspected the man of having committed robbery. It would have been reasonable for the thugs to have arrested him when he got down, but not to risk killing him.
*As D.C. Fêtes Narendra Modi, His Political Prisoners in India Are Forgotten.*
*I literally cannot say Imran Khan’s name on Pakistani TV.*
Robert Reich: *[The corrupter] is basing his candidacy on two Big Lies — that President Biden stole the 2020 election from him, and that Biden is orchestrating a prosecutorial witch hunt against him.*
*West needs strategy to tie Ukraine aid to corruption progress, thinktank says.*
Journalists accuse Ukraine of controlling coverage of the war.
In Watts, a ghetto in Los Angeles, there is a high school, and near it a metal recycling plant which emits a high level of pollution, including brain-stunting lead. That plant has now been charged with felonies for endangering the students.
As a side issue, I criticize the article for referring to high school students as "children" — they'd have to be prodigies to be in high school that young. Of course, that has no effect on the issue of emitting dangerous pollution.
Ukraine calls for setting up a system whereby the assets of a country that launches a war of conquest will be seized and used to fix the damage.
It is fair to take Russia's assets, and those of Putin's cronies, and put them into rebuilding Ukraine. Let's do it. But we should not suppose that other dictators who in the future start wars of conquest will be vulnerable to the same tactic. Once they have seen this response to Putin, they will take care not to store their assets in countries that might not be on their side in a war.
An algorithm Used in Jordan's distribution of World Bank aid funds uses incorrect measures to calculate who are the neediest.
*The Biden administration … proposed revisions to Trump-era regulations that severely weakened protections for our nation's most imperiled animals and plants, keeping in place some of the most significant rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act in the law's 50-year history.*
*The [right wing] believes the FBI is obsessed with jailing Trump. The opposite is true.*
Millions of Americans have student debt that, barring a miracle, they can't possibly ever pay off. Biden paused loan payments, but his surrender to Republican blackmail includes restarting payments. Many Americans are too poor ever to pay.
Republicans want to dump additional debt on them to cancel out the benefit they received from the pause in payments.
The miracle of plutocracy's media influence is visible in the fact that the millions of victims of this don't all vote for progressives.
Greenpeace says to reject the planet roasters' false choice between "the economy" and our health.
An additional level of falsehood is that when they say "the economy" they mean rich people's wealth — not particularly helpful for us. For non-rich people to have better lives, we must reject the rich people's trickle-down deals.
* Amazon rainforest and [1/5 of] other ecosystems could collapse "very soon", researchers warn.*
Perhaps even in a few decades.
In Britain, at least 14,000 people were denied the right to vote by the Tories' new voter-ID law.
They tended to be from demographic groups one might expect not to vote for Tories.
The actual number denied the right to vote could be in the hundreds of thousands, as many who did not vote said it was because of the voter ID.
Economic research concludes that the loss of income from shutting down fossil fuel extraction would fall mainly on the wealthy. We can do it!
(satire) *Coast Guard Sends Another Submersible Full Of Billionaires After The First One.*
*The fourth leading cause of death in the US? Cumulative poverty.* Cumulative poverty means having spent years of your life being poor.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the new Republican bill for tax cuts for the rich: "billions of dollars in tax cuts for wealthy corporations, private equity firms, the richest 1%, and investors from other countries."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the EPA to restrict bee-killing pesticides.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: State your support for Biden's quiet nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect our communities from toxic air pollution from chemical plants.
US citizens: call on the USPS Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission to enable public feedback on DeJoy's planned "dramatic changes" in the USPS.
*The Media Cares More About the Titanic Sub Than Drowned Migrants.*
When a few people go on a risky adventure and get killed, their deaths are regrettable — every death is regrettable, in and of itself — but it doesn't raise important issues.
The Senate Budget Committee held a hearing about the effects of dark money in keeping global heating going.
*Half of [all] Americans have faced [an alert about possible] "extreme" weather in the last six weeks.*
Some of the events warned about have a clear connection to global heating.
*Atlanta DA Opposed Indicting Cop City Legal Observer, but Georgia Attorney General Pushed Charges Anyway.*
Fanatical Israelis, from the camp that generally aims for ethnic cleansing, held a pogrom in an Arab town in Palestine and burned 30 houses.
Iceland has suspended its whale hunt and may stop the practice permanently.
Biden and the presidents and prime ministers of various other countries have signed a statement calling for a green transition for the whole world, together with debt relief for countries crushed by debt, as ways to reduce poverty.
Justice Alito accepted a luxury vacation as a gift, along with a right-wing billionaire who was pushing legal cases to give additional legal rights to billionaires (and less to the rest of us).
He did not report it.
*Oregon County [which includes Portland] Sues Big Oil for Climate Damages Caused by Heat Dome, Wildfires.*
The UK is proceeding with an "online safety" bill that would make it unsafe for Wikipedia to operate there.
The Federal Election Commission will consider a petition from Public Citizen to ban political use of deepfakes.
I think it is misleading to refer to the systems that make deepfakes as "AI", because they do not understand the messages they portray.
Business web sites are filling up with text written by chatbots to appeal to Google Search. This text is uninteresting for humans so humans generally don't read it.
It occurs to me that this could be profitable for Google. It will probably charge for the perverse service of writing the SEO text that will appeal to its search engine.
And it may be hard for other search engines to make sense of these pages enough to know when to show them to users.
Here's an idea: a chatbot-generated page could have a button saying "FOR HUMANS" that would take you to the version that humans would like to read.
Organized volunteers in Jersey are trying to eradicate the Asian hornets that have gained a foothold there.
In most of Western Europe these hornets are so established that there is little hope of getting rid of them with today's methods. Perhaps some day we will be able to eradicate them with an innovative genetic attack.
The International Labour Organization said that the UK's restrictions on strikes violate workers' rights.
*The Special Counsel Who Indicted [the bullshitter] Is No Democrat. They Never Are.*
Harassment of women in toilets by trans women is so rare that in effect it is pure myth.
In 2015, Media Matters journalists contacted 17 large school districts in states whose laws allowed trans people to use the toilets for their gender identity.
They all said replied that they had never seen a problem of harassment in bathrooms by trans people.
(satire) *Two Still Dead In Mausoleum Collapse.*
In Canada, wildfires are overcoming the capacity to rebuild the houses they destroy.
This is just the beginning of climate disaster. Each decade will make things distinctly worse.
Britons voted for Bogus Johnson knowing he was a liar.
This awareness was so thoroughly spread that even I knew that "Bogus" was the correct name for him. It seems that he has a superficial charm that motivates many Britons to like him even as he lies to them.
The bullshitter, in the US, has a superficially different approach and tells very different kinds of lies, but I am sure the two careers are fundamentally similar.
The owner of Reddit has made Elon Musk his hero and Twitter his example.
That bodes ill for Reddit.
(satire) *Study Finds More Americans Taking On Third Job To Help Keep CEOs Afloat.*
Republicans in Congress are harassing researchers who study disinformation practices, with investigations of made-up crimes.
One must suspect that Republicans are aware that their party lives on disinformation, and consider these researchers a danger to that.
*[Minister in charge] tells [UK thugs] to ramp up use of stop and search.*
Stop-and-frisk, as it's called in the US, is not very effective at reducing crime
but is wildly effective at making people of targeted demographic groups feel oppressed.
We must not ignore coalmines in the fight to reduce methane emissions.*
A UK agency will investigate whether eateries at train stations are gouging.
In the US, it is taken for granted that they will do so.
An Australian trans-man paradoxically found it easier to avoid prejudice (usually) as a foreign journalist in Afghanistan than in Australia.
He has published a documentary of his meetings with a group of Taliban that accepted being acquainted with him.
*Poor people hit hardest by Covid because of [years of pre-pandemic] NHS cuts, experts say.*
Everyone: call on the Museum of Modern Art to reject the sponsorship of fossil fuel magnate Henry Kravis
US citizens: call on the Dept of Labor to enforce federal law in states that try to let teenagers work more hours and doing increasingly dangerous work.
US citizens: call on the EPA to take bold action on plastic pollution
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
US citizens: call on the Forest Service to protect the Thompson Divide.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
Arizona's legislators are drifting into unofficial establishment of Christianity by setting out bibles in their lounge.
One Arizona state senator expressed her disapproval of this by hiding some of the bibles within the lounge. Republicans tried to expel her from office for that.
Perhaps it would be more useful to set out copies in their lounge of Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, and The Buddha and his Dhamma by Bhimrao Ambedkar.
When the boat carrying hundreds of refugees sank near Greece, it had not moved for hours. Greek coast guard vessels remained nearby but did not rescue anyone.
This contradicts the Greek claim that the boat was sailing towards Italy.
The Tories have canceled their plan to reform unjust treatment of British citizens who were brought from Caribbean colonies decades ago as children and have been threatened with deportation.
This is the usual Tory evasive response when their cruel policies arouse public outrage: they promise to correct the policies, dawdle for years getting started, and eventually figure that people have had time to forget the outrage — so they can disregard the issue.
*Power companies spend millions to fight Maine's proposed non-profit utility.*
I guess that is why they are called "power" companies.
The EU is investigating Amazon's use of its anticompetitive practices in advertising.
Amazon carries out auctions for ad space, and charges web sites for that. It also represents the bidders for the space, and charges them for that. Independent sellers are effectively compelled to use Amazon. So it has to be broken up.
However, laws that require proof of specific abuses before breaking up a giant company are too weak. Simply being so big as to have power over a market is ipso facto too big.
See also my proposal for a progressive tax on a corporation's gross income.
Olena Yahupova lived in Enerhodar when the Putin forces captured it. Perhaps because her husband is a Ukrainian officer — no other plausible explanation is mentioned — the Putin forces tortured her for days, then put her in prison for months.
Then they forced her to dig ditches and tell lies on camera. Then an officer in the Putin forces decided to release her and apparently gave orders that permitted her to go to Russia and from there to Estonia.
Some of the events in this story are puzzling — I can't see explanations for what some Russians did. But that doesn't mean they didn't do them.
*There is so much more for us [women] to worry about than men masquerading as women to access single-sex spaces.* (Which hardly ever happens.)
Philippine human rights defender Walden Bello: *Neoliberal Economists Should Be Recognized as Criminals, Not Prize-Winners.*
Global trade, unleashed from national frontiers, has proved extremely effective for converting the Earth's natural resources, and the work of the non-rich, into wealth to spread among the affluent few. That is what the World Trade Organization locks countries into.
*We can revile Putin’s violence in Ukraine, but we’re not at war with Russian culture.*
*If even the British establishment in the midst of an existential war with Nazi Germany could see German music as more than simply "enemy" culture, but as part of a common civilization, surely we should be able to do the same today?*
(satire) *Crypto Leaders Call For Infusion Of 20 Million Dopes To Stabilize Market.*
*Research has found those who use medications such as Ritalin without having conditions such as ADHD actually reduce their mental performance.*
India has banned several documentaries that presented oppression of Muslims.
It forced Twitter to censor tweets (before Musk took it over) that accused India of repressing protesting farmers.
UK thugs say that repressing Just Stop Oil protests cost them around 6 million dollars.
By comparison continued global heating will cost billions of dollars, if not trillions, and hundreds of millions of lives, if not billions.
Clearly the government should stop repressing Just Stop Oil and start heeding it.
(satire) *Wrongly Convicted Death Row Inmate Exonerated Mere Hours After Execution.*
Broadening historical preservation in the US to include homes of people who were not rich, and perhaps not white either.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important, usually because they have something to teach about racism or fighting racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
I disagree with one point mentioned in the article. I don't believe anyone living today needs to feel guilty over having had ancestors that had dealings with slavery or slave-owners. The test for our consciences is whether we support freedom today.
As the people of Hamtramck elected Muslims to the city council, those who make "diversity" their cause applauded … until they discovered that those Muslims were religious conservatives on social issues. I advocate equal rights, not "diversity."
The FBI is arresting fantasy terrorists again, protecting us from biddable young people who can be lured into playing a minor role in imaginary fund-raising for PISSI.
*Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers.* *Critics say government is toothless to help.*
US citizens: call on Congress to save millions of Americans from losing medical coverage — by passing Medicare for All.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on CNN not to give the bullshitter any more "town halls"
The lawsuit against the State of Montana for allowing businesses to contribute to ruining the climate for humans in the future has reached the stage of courtroom trial.
*US government toughens rules on chemicals used to break up oil slicks.*
What Billionaire Polluters used after the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems to have caused harm to humans who touched it.
The German government has backed down on a law to prohibit installation of new oil and gas heating systems in buildings.
I support shifting the payment for protecting the climate from individuals to cities, but postponement of change needed for survival is most unfortunate.
*Outrage in Guatemala as crusading journalist given six-year prison term.*
Many countries nowadays silence opposition activists with charges of financial or sexual impropriety. It is hard to see in a glance that such charges are false, and that makes them serve repression's purpose.
*Why Should Drug Corporations Like Merck and Eli Lilly Even Exist?*
I don't think companies that big ought to exist.
*World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis.* Its report says that these subsidies are harmful. They measure the power of business to corrupt governments.
Will the World Bank take concrete steps to stop this? I am sure it plays some role in those subsidies.
China seems to be concealing the number of people killed by Covid-19 there.
Remaining Tories aim to convince the public that Bogus Johnson was a fluke, rather than the natural culmination of Tory subservience to the callous rich.
Organized right-wing bullies making threats have convinced businesses from trying to demonstrate they are friendly to queer folk.
Parents let their child walk to a nearby store and gave her all sorts of protection as precautions. A busybody called the city thugs, who threatened her parents. Now they keep her a prisoner at home.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to nearby stores with just some money and my house keys. When I crossed a street, I took advantage of the traffic lights, which in midtown Manhattan are found at every intersection. There was nothing difficult about it.
US citizens: call on GOP State Legislatures to stop attacking voting rights.
Some Republican officials are following the wrecker in labeling law enforcement against the wrecker's crimes as military attacks in a civil war.
An overloaded boat carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean near Greece. A Greek coast guard vessel accompanies the boat for hours, but someone on the boat who had a satellite phone insisted that the people on it did not want to be rescued, and eventually the coast guard vessel went away.
Did the Greek vessel do something wrong? If so, what should it have done?
Some say it should have towed the boat to "safety". Does this mean forcibly taking them to Greece? To Italy, where they wanted to go?
Would it have been safe to tow the overloaded boat? Would it have been possible to tow it, if the people on the boat tried to prevent towing? Maybe they could have cast off the towing cable or cut it.
I wonder if the boat had an actual crew, and not only passengers. Sometimes smugglers conscript one or more passengers to "run the boat", which (not being sailors) they can do only in easy circumstances. Sometimes that conscript gets charged as a conspirator in the crime of "people smuggling" even though perse was not given a choice.
But this was a bigger boat than usual, and maybe it had a real crew. If so, maybe the person with a satellite phone was one of them. Maybe the passengers would have been happy to land safely in Greece.
The official investigation into the Minneapolis thug department found a pattern of "aggression and discrimination" against blacks.
US arms companies are sponging more on the US treasury and spending less on research and development.
Killarney park, Ireland's largest national park, has suffered ecological disaster from invasive species. No new trees can succeed in growing there under present conditions. To correct this will require persistent effort.
Perhaps in a few decades it will be possible to develop biological killers that, when released, would eradicate rhododendron and sika deer in Ireland while being somehow unable to spread elsewhere. But that is just speculation. In the absence of that, the eradication of rhododendron will have to be done manually without cease.
Unsupervised reintroductions into Britain of butterflies that have to be brought from other countries risk bringing their diseases and pests too. It is well-meaning but dangerous practice.
ITER, the international fusion experimental reactor, will not be completed in 2025 as previously announced. It will be a decade or more late for its goal of making some experiments possible.
This is sad, but it doesn't really change the situation. If fusion power ever works, it will be decades too late to help avoid global heating disaster. We can keep the research going, but our plan to curb global heating should ignore nuclear fusion.
It must also ignore nuclear fission. Although fission reactors do work, they are so expensive that the main effect of building one is to waste the money we could have used to build more solar and wind power.
*The US debt-ceiling ‘deal’ was a giant exercise in bipartisan class warfare.*
2000 fishing boat crew workers in Africa went on strike, over the terms of work and to protest illegal overfishing by their European employers.
The EU accuses Google of taking unfair advantage of running advertisement auctions with favoritism towards Google's own ad generation.
US citizens: call on the US Forest Service to protect old-growth forests.
Republicans' tax plan would give tax cuts only to the rich.
*Developed countries continue to shirk responsibility at Bonn climate talks, say Friends of the Earth International.*
Bogus Johnson has been formally punished for misleading Parliament.
If only we could punish the bullshitter for repeatedly misleading Congress.
*Warnings as US and Russia Threaten to Deploy Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine.*
Sanders and Jayapal have reintroduced a bill to tax stock transactions, and pay the tuition fees of community college for those who can't afford it.
It will also pay tuition fees for students at four-year colleges that typically serve students from minority groups. I am in favor of this, since those groups have faced a lot of prejudice, but really this ought to be extended to cover people of any racial background.
Taxing stock transactions has the benefit of damping down speculation aside from the benefit of raising more funds from people who can spare it.
The list of Bogus Johnson's wrongs against the UK political system.
The campaign of pressure against art that relates to Russia is fundamentally wrong and harmful.
US electric companies spent $200 million on political campaigning to increase electricity prices and impede adoption of home solar power systems.
The Guardian has vowed to reject all ads for gambling.
The Boston subways are full of ads for gambling dis-services. What stood out about them, when I first saw them, is that they did not say what they were selling, and I could not figure it out. Nowadays they do say "bet".
*From the oceans to ‘net zero’ targets, we’re in denial about the climate crisis.*
"Authoritarian" is inadequate to describe what the corrupter wants to do. The correct word is "fascist".
George Monbiot: right-wing extremism feeds on the misery caused by climate disaster, while it demonizes the efforts to reduce the disaster.
This is because right-wing extremism serves egoistic billionaires, many of whom profit from the businesses that we would have to limit if we are to survive.
US companies such as Apple, Spotify and Facebook are censoring Hong Kong's song used in 2019 to rally for democracy.
Google sells ads for bogus abortion anticlinics.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to investigate governors Abbott and DeMentis for tricking immigrants into being taken to other states where they did not intend to go.
Twitter has a rule against posting statements of hatred, but paid accounts seem to be unofficially exempt from the rule.
Right-wing religious fanatics want states to fund Catholic schools. Would they fund other religions?
In Britain, having an abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy is a crime. A woman was recently sentenced to prison for this. So there is a campaign to repeal the criminalization of late abortion.
*Greta Thunberg: not phasing out fossil fuels is "death sentence" for world's poor.*
I think it will include more than just the world's poor.
Surveillance of DNA in the ocean can report how the thousands of populations of marine species in any given area are increasing or decreasing, and whether and how they are shifting position.
Tories plan to allow local thugs to ban all but the most polite of protests.
The UK is taking serious action against misleading advertisements that greenwash companies by disregarding the environmental harm they have done.
*[Bogus Johnson] was a symptom, not the cause, of a political culture that gorges on spectacle and trivia.*
*People with Nazi flags, signs supporting [DeMentis] gathered outside Disney World.*
I think it most likely that they are real Nazis and real supporters of DeMentis.
(satire) *Florida Board Of Education Bans Any Mention Of Outside World.*
Adidas has resumed selling the branded shoes of that great Hitler fan, Kanye West.
How Kanye?
Floridians, including teachers, students and parents, are pushing back against Governor DeMentis's right-wing censorship of schools and libraries.
San Francisco told a public library to switch off its WiFi system at night so homeless people could not come there to use it.
San Francisco seems to hold the championship for making homelessness extra painful.
US citizens: call on YouTube to block election denialism.
US citizens: call on US officials to meet and talk with the Russian ambassador about smaller disputes that might perhaps be resolved.
US citizens: call on Maximus to meet with its employees to discuss their demands.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate tax-exempt status for major sports leagues. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*Methane reduction holds key to averting climate catastrophe [in the short term].*
Interviews with civilians and rebel fighters in Burma.
The US and Europe have little influence to stop the military repression, because China supports it and Burma shares a frontier with China. Chinese neocolonialism is much like American neocolonialism except that China has no worries about criticism from Chinese public opinion.
The rebels refer to the military government and its army as "Bamar". That is the name of the majority ethnic group which translates in English as "Burmese". What this says to me is that the rebels think of this as a war against the majority ethnic group.
I find that quite sad. It is much easier to defeat a government conclusively than to defeat the majority ethnic group conclusively. The former can have an outcome that is good for just about everyone except the ruling elite. It is hard to do that in the latter case.
Since 1961, chemical manufacturers' labs have several times observed experimentally that some kind of PFAS was toxic. The companies covered it up and claimed PFAS were safe.
The failure to report this to the EPA (once that existed) was illegal.
*We Still Haven’t Learned the True Price of War.*
No army at war, no matter how careful and scrupulous, can avoid killing and injuring people that were not supposed to be targets. Sometimes soldiers motivated by a brutal spirit intentionally kill civilians. Sometimes an excess of zeal plays a role alongside possible bigotry.
But usually the killings that nobody ever specifically intended make up most of the civilians killed.
Since there is no way in war to prevent "collateral damage" to people's lives, every country must figure this in when deciding whether any given war is justified.
(satire) *GOP Megadonor’s Bat-Wielding Goons Remind Clarence Thomas He Still Owes Him 500 Rulings.*
*Nuclear weapon secrets in the bathroom: five revelations from Trump’s unsealed indictment.*
Governor Abbott of Texas plans to install a chain of buoys along the Rio Grande to make it impossible to cross it from Mexico to the US.
The people who try to cross that way are mostly desperate — they risk death by staying at home. When they cross, they look for the safest way, but staying home is too dangerous. They will tackle the buoys somehow even if some of them die trying.
The developer of ChatGPT is being sued for defamation because ChatGPT generated output that seems to defame the plaintiff.
In fact, ChatGPT is not really intelligent: it doesn't know anything and does not understand the text it generates. This ought to make it immune to accusations based on the meaning of the text it generates. But the company is trying to have it both ways, saying that the output should not be trusted while suggesting that it gives valid information. Perhaps because of that it should be found liable for defamation.
(satire) *"You Better Not Talk," Trump Warns Classified Document.*
(satire) *New Florida Bill Allows Guns To Start Businesses.*
The UK has an agency to monitor thuggish behavior by cops and recommend changes in policy. But mostly they just ignore these recommendations. The agency head has called for the power to require thug departments to adopt measures to control their violence and injustice.
China is drilling a very deep narrow hole in the Tarim basin, apparently with a view to drilling for oil there.
One deep hole for geological exploration is an interesting project. More oil extraction is murder.
Psychoanalyzing Russia: the idea of a "death wish" was adopted by Freud from Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein. The author sees this as the root of the atrocities of the Putin forces, which often have no other conceivable purpose except to cause suffering.
*Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless.*
The problem is that Britain does not have space for everyone to live. Whether the ones left out in this game of musical apartments are natives or immigrants is a secondary detail.
What could the government do to make enough living places soon? One idea is to seize the thousands of empty luxury apartments and make them available for groups of homeless to live in. Maybe they could give thousands of people places to live. Then there are the underused office buildings. Since being homeless is an emergency, the government could suspend the usual regulations temporarily.
Evidence demonstrates that the Putin forces destroyed the Kakhovka dam with explosives planted inside it.
Driverless cars that are driving around in San Francisco are programmed to stop if they can't figure out what to do. This happens frequently enough that the resulting traffic jams are a big nuisance.
Fruit farming in the UK is suffering from the decline in pollinator populations brought about by human use of chemicals.
Warning that "AI software" can already be used to design bioweapons and to break computer security.
That seems plausible to me.
However, that doesn't mean terrorist groups will have the ability to make bioweapons. And the same "AI software" could be used to fix holes in security.
"Local food" as advertised in supermarkets is a marketing distraction.
Australia has decided to impose mandatory rules for packaging and recycling to reduce the amount of waste, especially plastic waste.
China has imposed strict regulations on bluetooth file sharing so that it can crush any communication of dissent.
* Former DoJ prosecutors say Trump will pack government agencies with sympathizers in effort to "secure his autocratic power".*
* Bromwich noted that Trump’s choices of Barr and Jeff Sessions as attorneys general ultimately disappointed him, "because there came a point for both of them that they couldn’t go as far as Trump needed."*
*Julian Assange "dangerously close" to US extradition after losing latest legal appeal.*
The UK government has trampled Assange's legal rights many times. It has never felt the need for a convincing argument to justify this; it is satisfied by pulling a thin curtain over the violations.
*Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter.*
*UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails.*
Today's Robert F Kennedy is a right-wing nut, like the corrupter.
(satire) *LAPD Warns Homeless Population Closer Than Ever To Completing Doomsday Device.*
(satire) *Every Professional Sports Team Moves To Las Vegas.*
(satire) *Eli Lilly Unveils Insulin That Doesn't Work On Poor People.*
Pence is less bad than the corrupter, but don't judge him by that weak standard.
*Enforcers Have Clear Path to Block [three golf championship series]’ Brazen Merger to Monopoly.*
Contention between Wagner (including Prigozhin personally) and the Putin forces (from the Russian army) has reached the point of actual physical fighting, though mostly not in the form of combat.
I can't tell what parts of Colonel Venevitin's statements I should believe, if any. But it puzzles me that Putin allows anyone in Russia to say what Prigozhin says.
Youtube has ordered the invidious proxies to shut down.
If you know of a campaign to pressure youtube not to do this, please let me know.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to boycott the Republicans' "bipartisan" commission to plan cuts to Social Security.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the denial of food stamps to people with drug convictions. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to remove Rep. Gosar's committee assignments The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your senators to confirm FCC nominees Anna Gomez and Geoffrey Starks. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Improvement of a highway through the Amazon rainforest threatens to speed deforestation and destruction of the whole forest. Right-wing legislators block Lula's efforts to protect the forest.
The surveillance-dating industry says, "Have your chatbot start the conversation that's meant to lead up to a date."
That way, when you first actually communicate with each other, it will be just one step beyond a blind date.
If (as the article says) only 10% of the users of dating systems find a long-term relationship with them, they are failures already.
*[It is] too late now to save Arctic summer ice, climate scientists find.*
A talk by a trans person in a library in Montana was cancelled on the grounds that her dressing as a woman (as she normally does) for the talk would make it a "drag show".
When a pregnant woman is exposed to PFAS, it tends to make the baby underweight at birth and overweight later on.
Some kinds of Long Covid degrade people's quality of life more than some advanced cases of cancer.
Reportedly some European intelligence agency informed the US that Ukraine had made a plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, a few months before the actual bombing.
The pipelines belonged to Russia, so as I understand it that made it legitimate for Ukraine, already at war with Russia, to attack them.
The Professional Golfers Association has merged with Crown Prince Bone Saw's competing golf tournament series.
Doesn't that violate European competition law?
Empires that are declining often exalt militarism. The US is doing so, at scales ranging from the neighborhood to the globe.
Robert Reich: Licht's idea of moving CNN to the "political center" was doomed from the start because the US has no such center. American is now divided between fascists and democrats.
A robot taxi being tested killed a dog that ran out from behind a parked car. The company said that the car's computers recognized the dog but could not stop the car in time.
So-called "autonomous" cars are not really autonomous, because they are "connected", and that is an injustice to the passengers and perhaps also the passersby. It should be illegal to operate a taxi unless it (1) can be called by anonymous passengers, (2) accepts payment in anonymous cash, and (3) keeps no biometric information about them or about people outside the taxi.
The US border thugs have installed stadium-style bright lamps along rural parts of the border with Mexico. Operating those lamps could devastate wildlife. Many species live in or migrate through the border; some endangered species live mainly there.
In some cases, the harm of border lights could extend far away from the border, as for instance when populations of jaguars in the US and Mexico can no longer mix and interbreed.
Warning: the right-wing rich that used to control Colombia are scheming to overthrow the elected leftist government.
Starmer is taking advantage of Tory gerrymandering to assure leftist Tory MPs are replaced by people we would in the US call "centrists".
*Five Italian [thugs] accused of torturing migrants and homeless people.*
Thugs anywhere might torture people they think are too marginalized to make a stink, but prosecuting thugs for that is a sign of officials who care about justice.
Minnesota has legislated many important new rights for workers. Now the challenge is to extend them to the whole US, and then to the rest of the world.
China's Communist Party accessed personal data of Hong Kong protesters using TikTok.
That is no surprise to me. No company will be allowed to operate in China unless it obeys China's demands to aid repression.
The beginnings of global heating disaster are driving up home insurance prices in regions that are becoming disaster-prone. In some regions, such as California, it may be simply impossible to buy home insurance.
The Biden administration took a step closer to endorsing the legal imposition of the flawed IHRA criteria for antisemitism. Its flaw is that it facilitates labeling criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine as "antisemitism".
Snowden says that the surveillance of 10 years ago was "child's play" compared to surveillance today.
US citizens: call on your senators to confirm FCC nominees Anna Gomez & Geoffrey Starks.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*How Starmer’s bullies took out Jamie Driscoll — and why it matters.*
Right-wing Christians' law for censoring books in Utah schools has resulted in banning the Bible except in high school. The Book of Mormon may be next.
Imran Khan alleges that in March, 2022, Don Lu, who was the US undersecretary of state, demanded that Pakistan force out Prime Minister Imran Khan.
I cannot presume that Imran Khan is entirely honest and credible. I don't know enough about Pakistan to have views on that.
Australia is still prosecuting the whistleblower who revealed that Australian soldiers in Afghanistan had killed unarmed people.
The right-wing billionaire CEO of the Warner Brothers conglomerate is behind the conversion of CNN into a right-wing tool, a competitor for Faux News.
CNN has fired its CEO, Licht. Unless the billionaire decides to value CNN's profits over his political goals, I don't think that will change much.
Labour proposes to end offshore fossil fuel drilling, but the union that represents the workers demands to keep it going.
Generally it is good for society for workers to have strong unions, but unions can do harm when they resist the elimination of toxic industries in the name of full employment. A good government can build up new industries with good jobs.
One current official in US intelligence and one former official turned whistleblower say the US has collected alien vehicles (perhaps spacecraft). The House of Representatives demands to be shown.
California governor Newsom suggests possible kidnapping charges against DeMentis for collecting asylum seekers on Texas and flying them to California. It seems they did not want or expect to end up in California. Apparently they were tricked somehow.
A Texas sheriff has filed charges based on the flights that DeMentis organized that took a previous group of refugees to Martha's Vineyard. The article does not make it clear whether these charges are against DeMentis, or someone who played a secondary role in setting up those flights.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam is causing various follow-on disasters, and additional disasters are possible.
*Three scenes that sum up the classified documents case against Donald Trump.*
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Haaland to support listing Monarch butterflies as endangered.
Bogus Johnson's lies have caught up with him, and he has resigned from Parliament rather than be suspended.
Russia has arrested many elderly old scientists who had successful careers in secret research, accusing them of giving away secrets and convicting them in secret trials. Now many Russian scientists who worked on such projects are terrified they will be the next chosen victim.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada is blowing in to major Eastern US cities and can cause real injury. To be safe, wear an N95 mask.
You can get partial protection outdoors by wearing an N95 mask. An honest KN95 works equally well; the problem with KN95 is that China does not attempt to certify each brand and each model. As a result, many kinds of KN95 masks are fake and won't protect at all.
Canada is now suffering over 400 wildfires, more than ever before. Climate scientists say that this is caused by global heating and will get worse. Anyone who has been paying attention had to suspect this, but it is useful that scientists report confirming it.
Alberta's government must be made to acknowledge that its tar sand oil exports are part of the cause.
The US supreme court rejected voting districts gerrymandered by Alabama Republicans, on the grounds that they deny black voters the possibility of influencing the outcome in proportion to their numbers.
At least one of the right-wing justices must have voted for this decision. I am surprised.
*First steps agreed on plastics treaty after breakthrough at Paris talks.*
*Shell's "green" ad campaign banned in UK for being "likely to mislead".*
The bullshitter/corrupter/saboteur has been indicted for taking secret documents and trying to conceal that he had them. I will post the details when we know them for certain. Here is an article about what that may lead to.
Plain-language descriptions of some of the crimes the wrecker is charged with.
Russia seems to have destroyed Ukraine's Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam. Substantial areas of land will be flooded; Ukraine is hurrying to evacuate people.
*Hundreds of thousands of mines and debris are flowing into towns downstream, while lack of water upstream will hit food production*, due to the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
The water from the wrecked Nova Kakhovka dam, which is inundating land near the Dnieper river, is sweeping away landmines. It can leave them anywhere in the inundated land.
The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam seems likely to cut off water supply to agricultural regions still held by Ukraine.
Russia is incompetently denying the flooding in Nova Kakhovka, a Ukrainian town occupied by the Putin forces. The "mayor" says everything is fine while the background shows flooding. People there, and in places downstream, report they are cut off and in danger from the flood.
Ukrainian forces have been infiltrating the south bank of the Dnieper; perhaps the Putin forces hope they will be drowned. I expect that the Putin forces are retreating from the flood and that the Ukrainian forces will advance behind them.
Meanwhile, Russian rebels, sponsored by Ukraine, seem to have driven Russian state forces out of the Russian town of Shebekino on the border by shelling it. The Russian state seems to claim this fighting is not really happening. This seems very strange to me; I can't come up with a rational explanation for it.
Could it be that Prigozhin and Putin are fighting behind the scenes?
*Seismic data adds to evidence that Ukraine's Kakhovka dam was blown up.*
US citizens: call on the EPA to make its new emission standards for cars quite strict.
US citizens: call on state legislatures to ban the sale of assault weapons.
Various minority groups in England and Wales got a disproportionate fractions of the fines for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules.
This study strongly suggests that many thugs acted based on bias, but it cannot conclusively prove that, because it does not control for other variables — such as the actions of people who were fined.
For instance, the study found that poor people got a high proportion of the fines. Was this because they had to travel by walking and been seen by thugs, while wealthier people went by car? That would be systemic bias rather than individual prejudice.
Contrast this with the Massachusetts courts' study that showed blacks tended to get bigger sentences than whites for comparable crimes in comparable circumstances. By controlling for the other things that can vary between groups, it pretty much proved that bias was at work in the legal system itself. That showed that the legal system is inescapably to blame for the injustice.
300 volunteers joined in repairing a statue of a black woman at the beach which was vandalized with spray paint.
Global heating will ruin the Mediterranean region as a destination to visit in the summer, long before the current shore areas have been inundated due to sea-level rise.
Important cities (and archeological sites) will be inundated along with the beaches.
People cleaning Atlantic Florida beaches risk infection with a deadly strain of Vibrio bacteria. It arrives on clumps of dead seaweed, and people catch it from that, but it colonizes plastic in the ocean and people catch it from that too.
*Amazon and Google fund anti-abortion lawmakers through complex shell game.*
Recommendation engines that spread disinformation can be thought of as humanity's first major encounter with AI. Humanity is losing.
It is pertinent that these AIs are not autonomous; they do not have agency. They do not have emotions or goals of their own. They work under the control of very rich groups of people and those groups decide the goals they work for.
The plutocrats that mostly rule the US have a simple plan for what to do with people who can't ever find a job that can keep one alive: neglect them and let the consequences of poverty do away with most of them.
UK thugs falsely convicted 6 men of a bombing in Birmingham, they fiercely defended that decision against all the evidence showing it was false.
*According to Irish cabinet papers from 1989, the British Home Office had indicated that its main concerns about the potential overturning of convictions were "to avoid giving scandal” and “the credibility problems for police evidence in court hearings."*
Such determination never to admit that verdicts can be wrong occurs in the US too.
The New York City thug department operates a corrupt system of traffic enforcement, where friends and relatives of thugs get "courtesy cards" and thugs on traffic duty are told not to give tickets to those people no matter what they do.
One cop, who has a sense of integrity and may qualify to be called a police officer, rejected this system of corruption and gave tickets to privileged people just as he would to anyone else. He was punished for this and now s suing to put an end to the system.
He points out that one of the effects of this corruption is systemic racism.
Billionaire landlords are forcing English pubs to close by requiring them to pay 100% of the rent that they were allowed to put off during the Covid crisis.
More about Jamie Driscoll, the Corbyn supporter that Starmer blocked from running again for mayor of the (newly expanded) Newcastle region.
Almost all the US "think tanks" that comment on questions involving actual or possible war receive a lot of funds from military contractors including arms manufacturers.
Their unstated motto seems to be, "Think `tanks'."
We should not allow arms companies to have so much influence on how we use arms. There is an advantage in giving Ukraine plentiful arms; if they did not cost anything, why not give it a thousand tanks, a thousand fighter planes and a million missiles? But they do have a cost, and we need to consider the trade-offs.
What the invasion of Ukraine shows Americans is that the US needs to be prepared to greatly increase production of arms and supplies if the US is involved in a major war. The system we have is adequate only for the kind of war that the government starts quietly, the kind that makes the news only when things don't go according to plan.
* Internal documents from chemical giant Syngenta reveal tactics to sponsor sympathetic scientific papers and mislead regulators about unfavorable research… about [paraquat]’s link to Parkinson's disease.*
I have a hunch there are other instances of corrupting research about weedkillers and insecticides. Does anyone know of articles about others?
Meanwhile, we've seen many instances in which drug companies corrupt studies of the safety of drugs.
In 1970, Richard Nixon turned white-collar workers against antiwar students and civil rights and used them to destroy government support for workers.
Today's Republicans are trying to do it again.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is investigating some of its thugs for suspected membership in racist gangs.
Tennessee has prohibited cities from operating review boards to curb the violence of thug departments.
If cities cannot exert control over thugs, they may still be able to cut the funds to make the thug department smaller, and set up new non-police departments to handle traffic enforcement and dealing with people who are going nuts. That will do a lot of the same good.
I appreciate Wilhoit's law:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Governor DeMentis has established a bounty for thugs who move to Florida. A number of them have been charged with serious crimes.
*A [thug]'s first words to a Black driver signal how the car stop will go. A Black driver is more likely to face being searched, handcuffed, or arrested when a police officer's first words are commands rather than a greeting or an explanation.*
The study shows that cruel actions of the thugs are not a response to anything that the black driver does. They flow from prejudice.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles give important information about racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
China sabotages and harasses participants in events to commemorate the Tien An Men Square massacre in Beijing, even when the events are held in other countries.
YouTube has decided to permit posting trumpery about election fraud. Systematic liars are planning to make use of this immediately.
*British Museum ends BP sponsorship deal after 27 years.*
I hope this will let it begin presenting the dangers of fossil fuels without pulling its punches.
(satire) *World Rejoices As Batch Of New Billionaires Descends From Sky.*
US chemical companies are paying billions to settle lawsuits about contaminating water supplies with PFAS.
3M found out in the 1970s that PFAS were toxic, but sat on the knowledge for decades while continuing to sell them. This is one of many examples of the bad things that happen when companies get very large and government bends to them. This is one of the many reasons to elect progressive officials who will not hesitate to devastate their profits.
The Labour Party refused to allow the popular mayor of Newcastle and surroundings to run again, because he is a supporter of Corbyn. When the local party chooses its candidate, it won't be allowed to consider him.
Maybe the local party leaders should see whether if they can all quit the Labour Party and join the Green Party and run this candidate, or start their own local party.
(satire) *Emotional Tim Scott Tells Supporters About Time He Was Followed Around Walgreens For Being Republican.*
The mainstream US press is repeating right-wing propaganda about supposed "fetal heartbeat" detected long before the fetus has developed a heart at all.
If they can get the public talking about a supposed "fetal heartbeat" at 6 weeks of pregnancy, they have won a major propaganda battle that most people do not recognize is being fought.
Bernie Sanders: *I could not, in good conscience, vote for the debt ceiling bill.*
Sanders for President in 2024!
(satire) *More Hospitals Requiring Patients To Put Body Part Down As Collateral Before Receiving Services.*
(satire) *Police Claim They Thought 9-Year-Old Boy They Shot Was Actually 10-Year-Old Boy.*
*Pesticide Giants Withheld Brain Toxicity Studies From EU.*
*Adam McKay: 1.5C Is Terrifying But There Is Something We Haven’t Tried.*
DeMentis says he will "destroy leftism". That would entail abolishing democracy and the possibility of organizing to defeat his power. In other words, Fascism.
Worrying about the danger of hypothetical superintelligent AI today is a distraction. AI programs already used by big companies and states, though far less sophisticated that what those worries fear, have been doing harm to some people for years.
They are used within social systems, and we may be able to prevent some of these harms by changing some other parts of social systems in a feasible way.
*Starmer says nuclear power is 'critical part' of UK's energy mix.*
That will be true if a reactor goes critical ;-{.
*The Debt Limit Bill: Yet Another Triumph for Bipartisanship.*
"Bipartisanship" in the US tends to mean "plutocracy".
Los Angeles bigots have harassed a public school and teachers for holding an assembly to describe people of a range of different gender identities and their orientations.
The bigots demand schools keep children in ignorance about the existence and lives of those human beings.
The conference to start drafting a global plastics treaty have not even produced a draft zero.
It did the initial steps, but I think that plastic manufacturers and oil companies will fight hard to prevent anything effective from being agreed.
Internet delivery companies in the UK mark up supermarket products by as much as 1/3, then charge a delivery fee.
Does anyone know if they do this in the US too?
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop trading our forests for toilet paper.
There are many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to save our oldest forests.
One UK thug department made a success of deciding to shift various kinds of non-crime requests to other agencies.
One effect is that the department is better able to deal with crimes. I presume that the people suffering psychological crises are safer now, too, for not having to deal with armed thugs who might wound or kill them.
The article describes the sorts of planning, advance notice, training, and pressure on other agencies that were necessary to make this a success. It also required some other agencies to hire people to do the visits that the thugs no longer do. It would be worth doing, but the Tories may not cooperate. The ambulance service is already overloaded and its underpaid workers have held strikes.
Nonetheless, this example shows that the policy change is good provided the government carries out all the necessary parts.
(satire) *Elizabeth Holmes Immediately Defrauds Biggest Inmate To Gain Other Prisoners' Respect.*
Longer and longer trains in the US are blocking patients from reaching hospitals and blocking ambulances from reaching patients. It has been reported 1400 times this year. Sometimes the results are fatal.
In important areas of big cities you can usually find a bridge over the tracks, though apparently not always. In less important areas there are often only level crossings.
This is part of the general tendency of US railroads to trample their employees and the public to increase profits.
Saving fuel is a good thing, but railroads should be required to (1) make sure never to stop trains where they would block roads except in an emergency and (2) over the next five years, build bridges or tunnels or alternative routes so that access is not blocked anywhere.
A bill proposes to prevent one of the side problems of Google's and Facebook's surveillance-based advertising: that those companies get most of the income from ads and sites that run ads get almost none.
Arguably that would be an improvement, but it would do nothing about the main evil of surveillance capitalism: its massive surveillance. So it would not make the system any less unjust to the users themselves.
That is what we must change.
*Atlanta Police Arrest Organizers of Bail Fund for Cop City Protesters.*
It is unprecedented to charge people with a crime for raising money to pay legal aid to protesters. Regardless of the details, it is a form of fascist harassment. If it is allowed to stand, it will represent an escalation of fascism in the US.
*"Stop the dirty deal": activists decry Schumer and Manchin over pipeline plan.*
*West Virginia governor’s coal empire sued by government over unpaid fines.*
You can expect a Republican to try to cheat the country/
*Earth’s health failing in seven out of eight key measures, say scientists.*
*Going beyond climate disruption, the new report by the Earth Commission group of scientists presents disturbing evidence that our planet faces growing crises of water availability, nutrient loading, ecosystem maintenance and aerosol pollution. These pose threats to the stability of life-support systems and worsen social equality.*
When France offered the Comoro islands independence, in 1974, the inhabitants of one island (Mayotte) voted to remain part of France. They are now French citizens. But Mayotte has received many unauthorized immigrants from the other Comoro islands, and it now has the same sort of hostility to immigrants that many European countries' mainlands have.
What is interesting is that in this case the unwelcome immigrants come from islands about 50 miles away and are racially, culturally, and religiously very similar to the authorized residents of Mayotte. They speak related languages which have at least 80% of their vocabulary in common. The islands have had close links for centuries.
This suggests that the reasons that the cause of hatred of immigrants in other places, such as Europe and America, are consequences of politics.
Some insurance companies are limiting their sales of homeowner's insurance in California. If this spreads to more companies, it could impact the whole state.
It is crucial to stop selling insurance for homes that can't be kept safe, but instead of leaving their owners to wait to be wiped out by the next flood or fire, the government must buy them out so the can move to a safer place.
One golf course is demonstrating that it can also be a wildlife preserve.
Morocco was in charge of holding an event celebrating "African unity" in Australia. South Africa invited a representative of the people of Western Sahara, which is mostly occupied as a colony of Morocco. Morocco's agents refused to let him into the rented hall.
It shows that African unity is more a pious wish than a fact, and that the tendency towards colonial behavior is not limited to whites or Europeans.
South Australia has imposed harsh penalties on "disruptive" protests against events that are meant to plan deadly activities with fossil fuel.
We have seen governments including Britain and Germany surrender to planet roaster companies in this way and imposing repression on their behalf.
Labour in the UK has taken a firm stand against fossil fuel development. It might be worth voting for.
The one thing it clearly won't do is end the political power of the rich in the UK.
This Julian Assange rally is Monday, June 12, at 11am at the Boston Globe, One Exchange Place, Boston (State subway stop.) We are calling out the Boston Globe for their lack of coverage of the most important press freedom case of our time — the unjust persecution of Julian Assange under the Espionage act.
US citizens: call on the EPA to take action to get toxic PFAS out of our drinking water.
*Failed Republican candidate charged with shootings at [Democratic] lawmakers’ homes.*
*Industry donations flowed to key Dem senators just before a major pipeline approval [for the Mountain Valley Pipeline] was slipped into the debt ceiling bill.*
*Republicans love to make up fake crises [to distract from the harm they do]. Here are five of the biggest.*
*Pesticide firms withheld brain toxicity studies from EU regulators, study finds.*
A rogue employee of Amazon used Ring "doorbell" videocameras to watch customers.
What worries me more is that lots of thugs have been watching lots of people through them.
Amazon was snooping through Alexa too.
*Zimbabwe outlaws criticism of government before August elections.*
Mexico established a marine protected area. Fishing companies objected, saying it would reduce their catch — but in fact, there was no decrease.
Australia will spend AUD 350 million per year to maintain Nauru as a prison for boat people, inaccessible to the press and off limits to rule of law.
That prison is Australia's shame, just as Guantanamo is America's.
Greenland's glaciers grind the rock under them, producing a billion tons per year of powdered rock, which becomes mud. When spread on farms in warmer zones, it absorbs large amounts of CO2, while acting as fertilizer.
The UAE oil prince who is the head of this year's corrupt climate conference is having employees edit Wikipedia pages to greenwash his activities.
*Stateless Rohingya could soon be the "new Palestinians", top UN official warns.*
Journalists who covered the killing of protester Mahsa Jina are on trial in Iran and facing torture.
*If you defend free speech, you must defend it all and not silence those you disagree with.*
In particular, people like Kathleen Stock who advocate certain rights based on biological sex must not be censored, and people who oppose that must also not be censored.
Trans activists protested at her talk. Some of them tried to prevent it, but did not succeed. As a result, both sides got to present their views.
One trans activist compared Stock's expression of her opinions to the construction of fossil fuel projects. By thinking about that claim we can see the basic difference between them.
The feebleness of governments efforts to curb global heating is not a mere statement of opinion. It is an action, and a deadly one. The beginning of climate breakdown is already killing millions of people, and will kill hundreds of millions or perhaps billions in a few decades. It is legitimate for those likely to be killed by fossil fuel developments in a few decades to fight to stop them.
By contrast, Dr. Stock, and likewise the protesters who disagree with her, do not decide the legal questions they disagree on. They can only express their views and hope to influence others. All of them have the right to do that.
An Australian "hero" of the war in Afghanistan was found in court to have intentionally killed civilian prisoners.
He was not on trial; the trial was over his accusation of libel against newspapers which published accusations against him. The court found the newspapers not liable because they proved the accusations were true.
Will he now be accused of murder? That sounds like the next step.
Comparing two proposed laws to limit stock buybacks by corporations.
The Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2023 would impose a tax on buybacks, as well as certain situations when this tax would not apply (i.e. if the buyback were part of an employer-sponsored retirement plan or employee stock options plan).
The Reward Work Act would prevent issuers from buying their own securities on a national exchange:
I think the two are complementary.
The Tories limited welfare benefits to supporting two children per family. This was supposed to pressure parents to get jobs. All it did was throw children into poverty.
Lab leaks of potentially dangerous pathogens happen every week. (This is because there are many such labs around the world.) Usually the labs cover them up. Usually no lasting harm is done.
Backup lines of defense, if any disease should start spreading, are not very strong.
US citizens: call on Biden to protect the Pacific Remote Islands.
To see the confirmation message in your browser, delete or disable CSS.
Kenya has adopted a law making companies responsible for the plastic waste that they generate.
Cory Doctorow recommended the same approach for dealing with the debt ceiling that I recommended.
*Far-right Oath Keepers founder sentenced to 18 years over January 6 attack.*
* [Hamburger Mary’s in Orlando, Florida] is suing [governor DeMentis] over a law that bans drag performances.*
*More than 5,000 new species discovered in Pacific deep-sea mining hotspot.*
Deep-sea mining, done the way companies intend, would devastate broad areas of bottom, and could wipe out that ecosystem.
US nuclear power plants, and their stored wastes, are vulnerable to physical attack and to cracking their computers. It would be stupid and dangerous to build any new ones — but rich jerks want to do it anyway.
*The Southern Ocean overturning circulation has ebbed 30% since the 90s,* and it is continuing to slow further. This could lead to big changes in climate and and sea level.
Right-wingers dominate Brazil's congress and are acting to handicap environmental protection by cutting funds to the environment ministry.
The Amazon rain forest is close to dying, that is, transforming into savanna, and that change could lead to global disaster, it would make sense for other countries to donate money to Brazil's environment ministry.
*Heat stress can kill up to 2,000 workers and cause an additional 170,000 injuries on job sites across the United States annually.* A proper heat stress standard for workplaces could prevent that.
Due to erosion, a river has come close to the Line 5 oil pipeline. Various sorts of accidents and bad weather could pollute the Great Lakes. Activists call for shutting down the pipeline as a precaution against a disaster that would be impossible to repair.
The Supreme Court's right-wing extremists have stripped protection from half the wetlands in the US.
Texas attorney general Paxton, a right-wing attack agent, is being investigated for accusations of corruption.
* World is on track for 2.7°C [of global heating] and "phenomenal" human suffering, scientists warn.*
The Putin forces have more or less captured the city of Bakhmut. They lost tens of thousands of soldiers doing so.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has 3/4 surrounded the city by capturing high ground around it. My partial knowledge of military history suggests that the safe thing for the Putin forces to do would be to pull out of the exposed salient which the city has become. I don't think they will, though. I think Putin's ego is bigger than his tactical understanding.
Maybe Ukraine should rename the city to Putingrad to make sure they don't pull out of it.
Governments threatened with the debt ceiling should not hesitate to use questionable maneuvers to keep the government operating — and they should not try to go to court to argue for them. Biden should do what is needed, then let the Republicans sue if they wish.
If government lawyers were to argue in the Supreme Court, in advance, that the maneuver id lawful, the current right-wing politicized court would have every motive to rule "it is unlawful", and thus strengthen the Republican hostage-takers.
However, if Republicans file that case after the maneuver is used, then a ruling of "it is unlawful" would mean instantaneous default. Even the right-wing justices would hesitate to do that. They would have to find a way to avoid that.
*Pregnant Texas woman [who was] threatened with arrest if she left hospital to seek abortion is suing over the endangerment of her life.* In all, eight women have joined this lawsuit.
People in the audience of CNN's presentation of the bullshitter were told in advance to "be respectful" by not booing.
This was one lie by CNN in addition to the bullshitter's own lies.
*Investigation finds [Chevron's] efforts to offset its huge emissions rely on schemes with little impact.*
*Recycling [of plastics] can release huge quantities of microplastics.* After installing an additional filter, the plant released 6% of the plastic input as microplastics. (Before that, it was more.) Even the air around the plant is full of microplastics.
Washing machines also release plenty of microplastics. The only way to arrange for most washing machines to have filters is for the government to do it to people's washing machines, and those in laundries. The amount of trouble involved in getting and installing a filter will dissuade most people who are busy.
One of the menaces of plastic waste is that it blocks drainage systems in countries too poor to clean them out.
Pressuring the wealthiest countries (in the OECD) to stop funding international fossil fuel development.
The previous (right-wing) Australian government paid a corrupt billionaire to arrange imprisonment of boat people in Nauru, and kept on paying him even after he was convicted of bribing Nauru officials.
What this says to me is that the previous government was so dishonest that they didn't bother to notice.
*The debt ceiling deal will fast-track the Mountain Valley pipeline, and limit the scope of environmental reviews for future developments.* That will kill people; the uncertainty is about the order of magnitude of how many people.
*A decade after the Tories demonized disabled people on benefits, it's happening again.*
If you are a non-rich working Briton, and your tax burden for supporting worthy causes such as helping the disabled is high, don't blame them! Blame the rich bastards who avoid contributing their proper share — by supporting Tories.
*A lawyer used ChatGPT for legal filing. The chatbot cited nonexistent cases it just made up.*
This goes to show how foolish it is to think of ChatGPT as "intelligence". It is not capable of having knowledge, understanding, desires, or plans. It has no idea of truth or falsehood.
Ohio will vote on a referendum to legalize abortion. Republicans have just passed a law to schedule a vote on making such referendums require a supermajority to pass. They plan to rush this vote so it will alter the rules for the abortion referendum.
Why August? I suspect that some voters will be on vacation in August and might have difficulty voting no for this change.
The right-wing government of Italy is squeezing antifascists out of Italy's public broadcasting.
*The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that the executive branch — not the federal courts — has the power to interpret laws passed by Congress in certain circumstances. Conservatives for years have fought to overturn the doctrine, a move that would empower legal challenges to federal agency regulations on everything from climate policy to workplace safety to overtime pay.*
Justice Thomas changed his position on this question after payments to him, and reportedly to his wife as well, from people with interests in the outcome.
Everyone: call on AmerisourceBergen to distribute medication abortion in all states where abortion is legal.
Everyone: call on CNN not to give the bullshitter any more "town halls".
*More than 1,500 arrested at Extinction Rebellion protest in The Hague.*
*Texas attorney general impeached by Republican-led House in historic vote.*
Uber ran for years at enormous losses to create the impression that it had to succeed and that it was a good investment. This general approach has been dubbed "Venture predation".
Under a good government, this sort of thing would land executives in prison.
Attempting to predict political collapse from big data.
That dooH niboR and the poverty it causes leads to political collapse is a truism. That idea of "overproduction of potential elites" as a major factor is less obvious, but over the years I've seen reference to large numbers of unemployed university graduates cited as a factor in civil unrest.
Since this theory is based on mathematical modeling, ultimately it will succeed or fail like any scientific theory.
Australian thugs engage in physical violence against blacks, then resist being held responsible, much like American thugs. The blacks in Australia are indigenous rather than of recent African origin, but they seem to get similar treatment.
On Wednesday, June 7th, RMS will give a talk, "Working for the public — universities, software and freedom" in Pisa at Aula multimediale.
The talk will include Richard Stallman as the speaker, and Marco Calamari (Progetto Winston Smith), Maria Chiara Pievatolo (Universitá di Pisa), and Francesco Potorti (CNR) as discussants.
Increased CO2 in the upper atmosphere makes it cool and contract. This enables dangerous space junk to remain longer in low Earth orbit, and undermines the slowly recovering ozone layer.
The London thug department has announced, all of a sudden, that it won't answer emergency calls about mental crises.
This implements, by surprise, half the goal of "Defund the Police": to stop sending armed thugs to deal with mental crises. However, it's only half of the goal of "Defund the Police".
The other half goal was to send other personnel to respond to those calls — personnel trained in de-escalation and calming people down, rather than in violence. This surprise announcement makes no provision for anyone to do this job. It can't be the ambulance service: they are underfunded, and often arrive so late that the patient is ready for burial.
About Britain's almshouses: a form of low-cost co-housing that has worked well for 1000 years or more.
The people who live in them live longer, on the average, than others their age.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Dept. of Education to protect students from DeMentis's censorship law.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop Big Oil's next disastrous fossil fuel project on the Colorado River.
Here for more information.
US citizens: call on the EPA to tighten the proposed standards for power plants' greenhouse gas emissions.
Erdoğan was reelected as president of Turkey.
This is bad for human rights in Turkey, and good for authoritarianism in general.
*We desperately need a government who will say it: Britain is still reeling from Covid.*
The US is, too — but not in one uniform, simple way. The policies for dealing with Covid-19 were different from state to state. At the start, some big cities were hit worst. Later, for many months, Republican states were hit worst, because Republicans seized on Covid-19 as an opportunity for disinformation and sabotage, especially after they realized that blacks were more likely to die from it.
One harm that most people don't recognize as one is that many activities and institutions in our society have imposed the use of nonfree computing technology. This includes most schools at all levels. Most talks at MIT still require using Zoom to listen. Whether you want to listen at the time of the event, or listen to recording later, the only way is through Zoom's nonfree surveillance system.
Some pro-Russian Ukrainians, in occupied territories, have taken their neighbors' children to Russia in order to get financial benefits, using lies to convince them. If they apply for adoption papers, the Russian system will not let their parents get them back.
The article calls this "deportation", but I don't think that term fits the example that it presents. Neither, I think, does "kidnaping." Those terms do properly apply to many Ukrainian children, who were forced to go to Russia by the Putin forces.
Researching the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, in which Chicago thugs murdered striking steel workers.
Disabled Britons now have to pay for aid in daily life, and it costs more than most can afford.
It sounds like the US.
England learns: wipe out the insects, and next you'll have wiped out the birds that eat them.
Ukraine has managed to put up 19 wind turbines since being invaded by the Putin forces. Meanwhile, England has built just two in the same period of time.
A few years ago, Tories changed laws to make it almost impossible to get permission to set up a wind turbine, but easy to get permission for fracking. I never understood why they wanted to discourage wind power. Does anyone know?
*Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (prisoner in Guantanamo) wants to bring a case examining alleged role of [British agencies] MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his [torture] by the CIA.*
Racial censorship, first applied to censor white authors, has been stretched to censors all racial groups — the bizarre idea that "You can only write about people in your own group."
It's valid to complain about stories told by an author writing about people in a subculture perse does not know, works that are based mainly on stereotypes. You can make the claim that a work is of that sort; sometimes it is true. If people challenge it, you can defend it.
However, erecting a racial system of prohibitions is worse than the disease, and also won't cure it.
In a multiracial and multicultural society, that racial censorship rule would allow no fiction whatsoever. Unless the characters live in a ghetto together, no one author could write all of them.
PayPal is being rebuked for bias against Palestinians. It does business with Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territory, but refuses to do business with Palestinians there.
PayPal refuses to do business with any clients in a way that respects their freedom: to order, one must run nonfree software. No thanks, PayPal!
On the situation of Moldova, just to the west of Ukraine.
*[Republican] attempt to add work requirements to safety net programs such as Medicaid and Snap could harm families already struggling.*
In the US today, the minimum wage is so low that many people with jobs can't get by on their pay.
The Labour Party is proposing to reform the UK economy.
I still have to ask: would they tax the rich and use the money to lift people out of poverty? "Growth" as such is benefit if the growth goes mainly to the wealthy.
Former governors of Alabama point out that around 12% of the people sentenced to death in that state were subsequently exonerated.
One of them upheld the death sentence for a man he now believes was innocent.
On recent history in Pakistan: democracy and military rule.
German thugs raided the homes of climate campaigners belonging to a group called "Last Generation", comparable to Extinction Rebellion.
The group hopes to prevent mass murder. The thugs accused it of being a "criminal organization."
* As many as 14 million Syrians face a near insurmountable barrier to returning to their homes after [Assad's] government passed laws giving the state power to seize their land and property.*
*UK study of 1948 Israeli massacre of Palestinian village reveals mass grave sites.*
Wikipedia reports that denial of that massacre has gone as far as a libel lawsuit against an Israeli who wrote about it.
* California, Arizona and Nevada strike deal with US government to take about 13% less water from drought-stricken [Colorado] river.*
This will surely slow the drying of the Colorado river. Will it be enough to prevent that? We don't know. It depends on whether the atmospheric rivers that now plague California bring enough water to the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains to keep the Colorado flowing. If not, the trend of increased aridity in the region may continue.
Victoria (in Australia) wants to lead suckers to use phones and credit cards to pay for public transport. If they do this foolish thing, the system will track all their movements.
Will this system permit anonymous use, paying cash? Will it permit use by someone who has no snoop-phone, snoop-watch, or snoop-card? If so, how would that work? And what does the existing system allow people to do, with cash or anonymously? I can only guess or speculate — if you have some actual knowledge, please email me.
*Minnesota Enacts Landmark Protections for Amazon Warehouse Workers.*
* Protesters from Greenpeace, Stay Grounded, Extinction Rebellion and others chain themselves to aircraft in [Europe's biggest private jet fair].*
Academics with connections to tobacco and alcohol companies do not always talk about potential conflicts of interest when they publish papers about the effects of tobacco and alcohol.
People for the American Way recommends ways to question and detect disinformation.
US citizens, call on Congress to reject the latest right-wing lunacy: to declare fentanyl a "chemical weapon" and use this as an excuse to threaten Mexico.
We need to end the "war on drugs", not extend it into a war with Mexico.
*Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings [carried out by US forces].*
Those are in addition to many attacks that were acknowledged.
George Monbiot refutes the absurd vision of returning to a preindustrial style of agriculture. It could not possibly feed the people who live our cities today, and didn't feed most people adequately when it was the norm.
He suggests that we produce food more efficiently using one-celled life. That might be adequate when we get really good of engineering it to resemble the diverse foods we eat today — at which point it will be another name for culturing meat without growing entire animals.
Having fewer babies is a crucial part of addressing the difficulty of feeding the human population of the 22nd century, supposing we prevent the gruesome gigadeaths that climate breakdown threatens in this century.
The ACLU is suing to stop Texas thugs for fabricating reasons to prosecute a city council member for pushing to remove another official.
India has put a pretty mask over the city of Srinagar to shepherd G20 delegates through the city and hide the repression of Kashmir from their eyes.
The article reports that Twitter is censoring some of the postings about these events.
Here is an example of someone who became terrified of "Artificial Intelligence" because he saw some output from ChatGPT.
It is clear he believes ChatGPT understands some sort of meaning in its output. In fact, we know it does not understand anything. It is incapable of having knowledge and incapable of having intentions.
I am not trying to claim that real artificial intelligence will be safe. I don't know what it might do. Perhaps we should take some precautions — such as limiting access to facilities for making DNA sequences to order. Those facilities might be used for mass murder even by plain old humans.
But we can't learn anything about hypothetical future artificial intelligences by looking at doubletalk-generating systems such as ChatGPT.
*The Press is Falling for Anti-Abortion "Fetal Heartbeat" Propaganda.*
The rapid increase in outdoor lighting is spreading light pollution.
The amount of light pollution is increasing so fast that in 20 years stars will no longer be seen in large regions.
This can have biological effects on species that need dark or are threatened by dark. This could drive some species to extinction.
Around 2006, in a taxi from Lake Titicaca to La Paz, I saw amazing vistas of stars. I wonder if those still exist.
Research into long Covid is active, but it won't be easy to figure out what is causing the symptoms.
The article estimates that 65 million people suffer from long Covid now.
Up to 70% of California's beaches may be washed away in this century by sea-level rise caused by global heating.
Other things people value, including their houses, are likely to be destroyed too.
The Belarus dictator Lukashenko forced down an airliner and took exiled opposition activist Raman Pratasevich off of it. It seems that brainwashing in prison broke Pratasevich completely. Now he walks around Belarus giving talks to praise Lukashenko.
He is not in prison, but I presume he is not free, rather an abject slave.
Boebert acknowledges that measures against antisemitism and other forms of bigotry are measures against right-wingers. Boebert, if the antisemitic shoe fits, wears it.
It is a mistake to refer to those right-wingers as "conservatives."
Some of UK's National Health Service web sites snoop on patients' browsing for Facebook.
Greg Palast reports that The (original) Keystone oil pipeline ruptured in 2022 (and caused a substantial oil spill) because of improper construction, which was not detected because the safety inspection tool's software had been modified so as to overlook "small" flaws in pipelines.
Palast says that such modification is a common practice. It seems that pipeline companies they have decided to ignore flaws that, although "small", can lead eventually to oil spills.
In the past, researchers could obtain large amounts of randomly chosen tweets for a small price. Now Twitter has raised the price to an amount they can't afford, and demands they delete the old data if they don't sign up for it.
US citizens: call on CNN to fire CEO Christ Licht.
The reasons for this include the "town hall" lying opportunity he gave to the bullshitter.
[Update June 10th: Campaign has been heeded.]
US citizens: call on Biden to take action to stop Israeli demolition of Palestinian schools.
US citizens: call on Secretary Becerra of the Dept of HHS to Investigate Maximus's labor practices immediately.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your senators to support The Greater Chaco Protection Act. It would prohibit oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of Chaco Canyon.
To see the response to signing, disable CSS in that page.
I urge you to read about the ancient abandoned towns of Chaco Canyon.
[Update June 5th: Campaign has been heeded already.]
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop donating to book-banning Republicans.
US citizens: call on Senator Durbin to subpoena Justice Roberts to testify before the Senate.
US citizens: call on Biden to remove obsolete dams and protect Chinook salmon and the southern resident orcas that eat them.
To see the response to signing, delete all CSS in that page.
Everyone, call on Amazon to phase out plastic packaging.
You may need to wipe out the CSS in the site's reply to see it. [Update July 29th: Campaign has been heeded.]
US citizens: state your support for the campaign for a Green New Deal.
US citizens: call on George Santos to resign immediately from Congress because of the criminal charges against him.
US citizens: call on states to adopt the National Popular Vote Compact.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the Comstock Act.
That law imposes censorship on writing and art that is mailed, and also prohibits mailing birth control and abortion drugs. It had become a dead letter because every part had been found unconstitutional, but the part about abortion drugs may have become dangerous again.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: demand fair wages for nurses.
Giving nurses a raise is the right thing to do, but won't protect them from being overworked to the point that they can't cope with the overload. That requires a different solution: hiring more nurses.
*Leaked Government Document Shows Spain Wants to Ban End-to-End Encryption.*
Economic sanctions against Russia have basically failed to pressure Putin effectively. Many countries support Putin and help Russia evade the sanctions.
Alas, it will be necessary to defeat the Putin forces in battle.
Meanwhile, US sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela are having little effect except to cause suffering and convince thousands to try to get into the US.
Basically, economic sanctions rarely achieve foreign policy goals.
Will it be feasible to remove all PFAS from sewage sludge and make it safe to put on farms as fertilizer?
DeMentis's textbook censorship system is censoring discussion of the holocaust.
Under new Tory reforms, *richer graduates in England will pay less for degree than poorer students.*
That's to be expected, since the Tories are party that works for the rich.
Many well-known retail businesses are fighting against a California bill to require corporations to publish their annual harm to the climate.
Biden has a history of screwing up when negotiating with Republicans threatening to cause default. Negotiating with them would have been foolish for any president, but Biden is likely to screw up again.
China's loans are crushing poor countries. China refuses to cooperate with other lenders to reduce poor countries' debts when those become desperate. Instead it uses tricks to make them pay China ahead of the other lenders, and to conceal the amount of debt.
The IMF is famous for causing terrible damage to the education and medicine in countries that it "helps". But "help" from China is even worse.
There is an international upset about Netflix, because it effectively raised prices by disabling a feature that allowed many users to use friends' and relatives' accounts at no extra charge.
A higher price on something that is not a necessity of life is not a disaster. What's really bad about Netflix are the injustices of how it treats all users:
Everyone, flick off Netflix!
The flaw in the Morandi Bridge in Genoa was brought to the attention of the company responsible 8 years before it collapsed.
Autostrade began discussing what to do about the problem years before 2018. However, such a large maintenance job can't be done with cash on hand. The state needs to authorize the funds. According to Wikipedia, Autostrade asked for 20 million euros for repairs to this bridge in 2018. Perhaps that was the right action, but it was too slow.
Is it reasonable to entrust maintenance of bridges to a company owned by a fashion retail business? To me, that seems risky. The executives and board of the parent company would not have learned, in their line of business, the proper values for civil engineering.
Verra "certifies" supposed carbon offsets, but judges them so feebly that they are effectively a scheme for greenwashing.
500 university students and recent graduates in Britain sent a letter to many important insurance companies committed to refusing to work for insurance companies that insure fossil fuel projects.
(satire) *Florida Bans Men From Becoming Nurses.*
About the anti-Putin militias that have raided Russian territory.
The US immigration thug agency uses sites such as YouTube as well as Facebook and Twitter to find all users who seem to be interested in matters concerning immigration.
It is clear that some of these subpoenas investigate people who are not by any stretch of the imagination engaged in planning crimes. These are nothing like the Proud Boys.
The only way to deal with this problem is not to let those sites collect personal data on people for watching anything, unless there is a subpoena to collect data on those who visit a particular channel or page.
The myth of Capitalism is that investors take risks with their money, so they deserve a big profit when the risk succeeds. I can go along with this to a point: we can't let the investors keep most of the wealth that a business produces — most has to go to workers and to the state.
Nowadays, private equity fund managers and similar "investors" have obtained plutocratist laws which assure them of profits even from failure.
This problem stems from another foolish general practice: the US has more or less given up on penalizing companies that do harm. Instead, the proposal is always to subsidize businesses that say they won't do the harm.
And governments don't even bother to insist that the business do what it was subsidized for.
Thugs around the US violently attacked protesters and journalists at the rallies for George Floyd in 2020. Some of those shot with "nonlethal" weapons and left with irreparable injuries.
Have the thugs that refused to give Evans any help getting to the hospital been punished for that?
Have the thugs that encircled and besieged protesters been punished for that?
Americans, what DeMentis is doing to Florida shows what he would do to the whole US if he becomes president.
He has pioneered new sorts of bullying that go beyond the corrupter.
DeMentis aims do more than defeat opposition; he seeks to punish those that dared to oppose him.
I do not judge laws and government policies mainly based on whether they induce big companies such as Disney to move work to my state or my country. But I see, in DeMentis's efforts to punish Disney, a plan for the sort of fascism that makes opposition too dangerous.
(satire) *Target Removes All Towels From Stores After Soaking-Wet Lunatic Objects To Dryness.*
*Mississippi family demands officer be charged for shooting 11-year-old.*
*Supporters of jailed Iranian journalists call for trials to be held in public.*
Secret trials are an indication of tyranny. China's political trials are all secret.
Australia sometimes does it too.
Cutting down old-growth forests has wiped out spotted owls in Canada. Only one owl remains in the wild in Canada.
What do Republicans want most? To make sure rich people have a low tax rate.
Australia is now paying welfare benefits through a bank card that will track all spending of them.
A large fraction of those affected by this new system of surveillance are indigenous, and they are campaigning to put an end to this.
US citizens: if your congresscritter is a Republican, phone per at 1-833-964-2935 to call for raising taxes on the rich rather than cutting the benefits that non-rich Americans (even those with jobs) depend on. You could add, "Don't threaten to make the US default."
US citizens: call on Congress to expand the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to use federal spending rules to direct more pay to workers and less to CEOs.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
South Australia has passed repressive laws against protests that might inconvenience others, and one of the politicians who voted for it says, "be grateful we won't cut your head off."
The protests that the state wanted to prevent were going to be against planet roaster companies that already kill people by the hundreds of thousands, and are working on raising that to hundreds of millions.
*It's a horribly effective [Tory] ploy: under invest in the health service, then encourage patients to blame staff for any failures.*
Buttigieg is going all-out to push for oil drilling in the Uinta basin of the Colorado Plateau, and to transport the oil long distances by train alongside the Colorado River.
He is also planning to approve tax breaks for building the line for these trains, so the owners can get a subsidy to prepare to poison the water of a large region of the US.
There is no room in the carbon budget for developing any new oil fields, no matter where the oil might be sent or how.
Starmer has proposed a real, significant change: to build millions of housing units under government direction, to avoid a massive give-away to the rich.
*You Should Not Trust Russia’s New "Trusted Root [certification authority for https]".*
*Elections in UK and US at risk from [neural-network-generated] disinformation, say experts.*
To refer to these systems as "artificial intelligence" spreads confusion, so I don't call them that. Please join me in that refusal.
Florida officials systematically entrap convicts into registering to vote and then voting. Then they get prosecuted for "voter fraud".
Some Russians claim to have started an anti-Putin armed guerrilla movement operating in Russian territory.
However, they seem to have entered Russia across the Ukrainian border, and to have picked up some US-made arms in Ukraine. So far they have attacked only government targets.
In moral terms, I think what they are doing is admirable. Their actions could help Ukraine win the war, but I think it will be difficult to increase them enough to have a significant effect.
Putin could theoretically cite this as an excuse for attacking Ukraine in some new ways. But I don't think that makes any difference. Putin never needs a real excuse for any atrocity — he invents all the bogus excuses he needs.
How Putin could be prosecuted for the crime of aggressive war.
Regime change in Russia would probably be a change for the better, but it would be foolish to insist on that if it interferes with reaching a just peace to end the war. We should allow Putin to remain in power in Russia if he agrees to release all of Ukraine's territory.
On Monday, June 5th, RMS will give a talk, "Digital Freedom and Digital Privacy", in Rende, Italy, in the Great Hall at the University of Calabria.
The talk will follow a roundtable, "Relating Language Models, Future Artificial Intelligence,
Massive Data Collection, Open Source, and Free (Libre) Software":
Moderator: Giovambattista Ianni, Professor of Computer Science
Participants:
Vincenzo Bruno, Founder of Coopyleft
Ines Crispini, Steering Board of the Italian Society for AI Ethics
Stefano De Carlo, Board of Hacklab
Gianluigi Greco, President of the Italian Assoc. for Artificial Intelligence
Antonello Mantuano, Senior director of Cerved S.p.A.
Giuseppe Rossi, Director of Unical's ICT Services
Domenico Talia, Professor of Information Processing Systems
Both are in English.
US citizens: call on Congress to Pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to stand up for Social Security and Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Ammar al-Baluchi is still in Guantanamo after 21 years. He is not allowed to tell us about how he was tortured, but what we know is horrific.
An "assistant commissioner" of the UK's somewhat-national thug department asserted that he felt no political pressure to arrest peaceful protesters at the king's coronation.
If that is true, why, then, did he disregard their rights? My guess is that there was pressure and he is covering it up.
New article:
Censorship and Oppression
Morality Substitutes or Moral Enhancement?
Alberta is suffering from a rash of wildfires.
Alberta has been doing its best to cause wildfires around the world by digging up the oil sands to sell tar sands oil. It brought these fires on itself.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to reject the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Everyone: Stand with the Banned in PEN America.
Everyone: call on Google to stop collecting location data and thus aiding abortion prosecutors.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop the cross-border arms trade (mainly with Mexico).
US citizens: call on members of Congress to co-sponsor the Stop Wall Street Looting Act.
This would make it harder for private equity combinations to destroy otherwise successful businesses and reduce competition.
US citizens: call on the EPA to adopt stricter limits on toxic coal plant wastewater.
To see the reply to signing, erase the CSS from that page.
Syrian dictator Assad has been forgiven by the other Arab rulers, who are more or less repressive themselves.
As a result, I fear the worst for Rojava.
Burma's government is blocking the UN from distributing aid to Rohingya refugee camps.
A Walgreens private "security" thug shot and killed a homeless man, Banko Brown, whom he accused of stealing snacks.
If we don't believe that people who can't afford to lawfully get food deserve to starve to death, we must conclude that they are morally entitled to take food from wherever there is plenty. We must also conclude that the store has no right to hire people to kill them for trying.
A good society provides a way for poor people to get enough food without having to steal.
Given what platform the district attorney ran on, we cannot trust her judgment, or her unsupported word, about whether the security guard had a justification for shooting. She must release the video. What use is a "security" camera if officials cover up what it recorded about a killing?
The Pakistani army and former prime minister Imran Khan have become enemies. Thousands of Khan's supporters went wild and attacked military buildings. Now the state is arresting thousands of Khan supporters, and claims it has identified each one arrested based on camera footage.
I have no way to reach any conclusion about moral culpability or justification in this.
Biden vs McCarthy: a weak-willed adult is negotiating with a toddler in a tantrum.
I fear that the adult will eventually give in so that the toddler ends the tantrum.
The rate of sea-level rise in New York City is augmented a little by the sinking of land under the weight of the skyscrapers.
The sinking is on the order of 1mm per year, while sea-level rise is likely to be around 1cm per year and accelerating.
Siva Vaidhyanathan finds it easy to catch students who cheated by using neural network text generators, and uses the opportunity to teach them about the issues those raise — and the fact that you can't trust anything they say.
I am disappointed that he refers to them as "AI".
*How is Australia trying to sell a major gas expansion? By badging it "sustainable".*
The plan is to start extracting gas from large reserves, and bet that carbon capture will be improved fast to cancel that out. If the bet succeeds, this expansion may be carbon-neutral, unless something else goes wrong.
If the bet fails, what will they do? Shut down the gas extraction? I don't think so. They will say, "Too bad, but you can't win 'em all. Enjoy your increased greenhouse emissions!"
The only sense in which this is "sustainable" is that they could hope to sustain the extraction from these new gas fields until civilization collapses from climate breakdown.
This is a plan to bet young people's lives. The owners of those companies should bet their own lives instead.
A new Thai party that aims to restore democracy got the most seats in parliament.
The next question is, can it form a coalition that will make some changes for the good.
Most Massachusetts hospitals are eagerly dropping mask requirements. The 6% of adults of age 18 to 64 who are immunocompromised are worried this will give them Covid-19 (or some other respiratory illness).
1500 people have died from Covid-19 in Massachusetts this year. I expect there is no way to count how many contracted long Covid and whose lives are now ruined.
Hospitals should act to protect patients' health. When they must choose, they should choose to protect the wise patients who take precautions for their health and other people's, rather than catering to the foolish ones who neglect the matter.
*"Debt Limit Chicken" is a direct result of anti-democratic US house [of representatives] elections.*
The reason so many house districts are not competitive is in large part due to Republican gerrymandering.
Some Muscovites are being pressured, even ordered, to register to vote through an internet voting system. Such systems tend to be greatly insecure, and not to be trusted.
Putin has made a practice of rigging elections for years, often blatantly. It is not clear that what a voter actually does has any effect on the "results" that Putin's state will report. But it might. Therefore, I think it is good not to actually vote.
*Turkish Elections: Erdoğan’s Government Arrested and Expelled International Election Observers.*
Louisiana is considering a bill to require just three cities — with mostly black residents — to publish criminal records of juveniles.
The purpose of not publishing the criminal records of juveniles is to help them to turn away from crime. So why adopt the opposite policy mainly for blacks? Perhaps it is to lead black teenagers into a life of crime, so as to put them in prison.
Arguing that fossil fuel companies owe a total of $200 billion per year in compensation for some of the kinds of damage their products have done.
I fear that arguing about the amount of "compensation" various companies and states ought to pay will act as a distraction from the crucial issue: how to build sustainable power facilities fast and wind up fossil fuel use soon.
The companies will resist reducing the amount of fossil fuels they sell, and they will resist paying reparations. I think the wise choice is to focus on avoiding more damage than on making them pay for it.
Meanwhile, we should certainly tax these companies (and other rich companies) a lot more. I suggest the method I described in https://stallman.org/articles/progressive-tax-on-business-gross-income.html .
Some universities and other large investors are pressuring fund managers to vote their shares to push large companies out of planet-roasting investments.
The NAACP has published a travel advisory calling on blacks to keep away from Florida: "Beware, your life is not valued."
There is indirect evidence that high-fat, high-sugar take-out food is addictive.
The World Health Organization continues to exclude Taiwan in obedience to China's pressure.
UK ministers are trying to find a twisted excuse to arrest a Briton who has been protesting lawfully for 6 years in front of Parliament.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the "HALT Fentanyl Act" which would prohibit a wide range of substances, most of which have never been tested on people at all. Of those few which have been tested, most were harmless. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democrat leaders to stand firm against Republican ransom demands.
Israeli fascists marched in Jerusalem; some chanted "death to Arabs".
Uri Avnery warned years ago that the Israeli right-win sought to render the West Bank "Araberrein" (without any Arabs). Avnery meant this to compare them with the Nazis whom he had seen in Germany in the 1930s, before his family fled to what they hoped would become Israel.
Various parts of Italy have suffered unusual heavy rains, which generally arid Italy is not ready for.
This is global heating at work. It has caused record high temperatures, too.
*"When Democrats do something for the right reason, [Republicans] use the precedent to do something for the wrong reason."*
The emendation "[Republicans]" is in the words I quoted from the article. That statement is generally true.
I'm not planning to read the Durham report myself, but I won't trust any claims about it that are made by people whose life is lying.
France has decided to use cameras at the Olympic games with software that will scan the images looking for "suspicious activities".
We can't count on the software in the system to limit the effective level of surveillance, because more analytical capability could be added later. The only limiting factor that people can count on to prevent violation of their privacy is the capability of the hardware sensors (cameras, in this case). As people pointed out, that capability might be sufficient to enable the system to recognize and track people.
*Jeremy Corbyn tells local Labour party he wants to carry on as their MP.* The local party members stated support for him with only one abstention, and stated their opposition to Starmer's grip on who can run for MP for the Labour Party.
Bernie Sanders calls for a national medical system, and makes it clear that the name "Medicare for All" does not mean preserving the flaws of Medicare as it is today.
* [President Macron] had no mandate to dismantle France’s social model. His contempt for the people risks opening the door to extremism.*
*Dancers at Los Angeles club to become the US's only unionized strippers.*
Republicans didn't want to lose the vote of George Santos, so they were determined to defeat the resolution to expel him from Congress. But they didn't want to be criticized for voting to keep an accused criminal in the House to vote for them. So they voted to refer the expulsion resolution to a committee where they can quietly bury it.
Montana has banned app stores from offering to install the TikTok client program. This prevents users from installing the TikTok client program. since there is no other way to install it on a snoop phone.
This scenario has injustice on every side. TikTok collects data on every user. So do many other "app" client program — all of them are unjust. Secondarily, they are unjust because they are nonfree software.
The snoop-phones are unjust too, for snooping and for limiting what users can install. Their software also has the secondary injustice of being nonfree.
Darwin's planned large development on the "middle arm" turns out to be part of a plan for large new fossil fuel extraction projects.
The development has been criticized for putting some ancient rock art at risk in the long term. Strict laws might be able to keep the ancient rock art safe. But they can't save Earth from those fossil fuel developments, if those are allowed to proceed.
*Norway under pressure to scale back fossil fuel expansion plans.*
An episode of the Brian Lerner podcast has an interview with psychologist Peter Grey, who explains how Americans' obsession with keeping children "safe" has made them very likely to become helpless and develop many kinds of psychological problems.
*New York law aims to stop funding of illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank.*
All Israel's colonies in the occupied West Bank violate treaties about military occupation.
Many of them also violate Israeli laws, but the government looks other way for some years and eventually legalizes them.
Biden canceled a planned trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea to "negotiate" with Republican terrorists.
By treating the negotiations as important, Biden encourages Republicans to think he is desperate for an agreement, and that will encourage them to stand by their demands. They make think they can get Biden to help them harm non-rich Americans.
I fear that maybe they can.
US dumping of agricultural products has meant poverty for Mexican farmers.
The bullshitter's replacement of NAFTA, one of the few good things he ever did, did not change enough to end this.
A Washington DC thug has been charged with informing the Proud Boys leader that he was to be arrested for his part in the Jan 6 insurrection — and then lying about that.
A former leader of one group of Colombia's murderous paramilitaries says that officials protected the group and gave them lists of people to torture and/or kill.
Warning: canceling events because of extremists' threats is treated by the extremists as a victory.
The article refers to right-wing extremists, but I think it applies to leftist extremists too.
*Mother of girl who died in US border patrol custody says agents ignored her.* Avoidable death of prisoners happens repeatedly in any kind of prison, because the prison staff don't really care about prisoners' suffering.
*There's no shame in waging war on old age.*
But if we are mostly living on Earth, we will have to have children very rarely.
The G7 threw away concern for avoiding climate breakdown and adopted plans for development of gas extraction.
The British right-wing is drumming up opposition to low-traffic neighborhoods (designed to facilitate and encourage walking or biking rather than driving cars) using the same playbook as global heating denialism.
(satire) *Conservatives Claim Hitler's Nazi Allegiance Greatly Exaggerated.*
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to use a discharge petition for a bill to raise the debt ceiling (and change nothing else).
US citizens: call on the U.S. Dept. of Education to sue DeMentis for making textbook companies censor textbooks in Florida.
Antibodies for Epstein-Barr virus can attack human tissues and cause multiple sclerosis.
A study found that YouTube tends to recommend videos about guns and shooting to boys of age 9, and boys of age 14.
Many of these videos were not supposed to be allowed on YouTube, but it seems not to enforce those policies.
*I took my kids to the playground without bringing my phone — and it was a revelation.*
*In the year since I quit [so-called] social media, my screen time has fallen, my mood is up — even my resting heart rate is lower.*
This is an additional reason to quit. The reason I refuse to use those systems is that they require nonfree software, which can be modified by others (though usually not by you), and much of it is malware.
Like Emma Brockes, I find children mostly boring. I avoided that problem for myself by not having any.
*Climate breakdown made southern Asia heatwave at least 2C hotter, study finds.*
*Former world leaders urge G7 to get nuclear arms control back on track.*
I fully support that urging.
* In occupied West Bank villages, Israeli-owned farms are flourishing, while Palestinians often do not have enough water to drink.*
Israel has been transferring water rights for years, using various legal excuses.
Oil companies generally set up a subsidiary to do oil drilling in each area or country, and make the subsidiary alone liable for the cost of oil spills, so that the main corporation's liability is limited by the total wealth of the subsidiary. This way, the victims of a spill won't be compensated for the damage the spill does to them.
However, Guiana, on the eastern part of South America's north coast, refuses to let them do this any more.
Will this make Exxon work harder to avoid a spill? I think people tend to be biased towards belief that disaster won't happen. If a regional disaster does happen, the countries and people affected could end up owning Exxon.
If so, would they handle drilling in a safer way, or would the vision of riches corrupt them as it corrupted the current owners of Exxon?
Arguing that the only chance of strengthening democracy in the UK is if neither the Tories nor Starmer gets a majority in the next election.
UK thugs plan to use face recognition in the center of Cardiff to find people wanted for various reasons.
The supposed occasion for this is that Beyonce is giving a concert in a stadium in Cardiff. But the facial recognition won't be limited to the stadium and its entrances.
Nor do we know that the tracking and data collection will not extend to everyone else who passes by. In fact, UK ministers are considering running facial recognition on everyone who shows up in a thug's body camera.
The UK is full of cameras, and I suspect many of them are surveillance cameras (images transmitted to some network which can recognize faces later). Those cameras could become, or perhaps already are, the introduction of Chinese-style surveillance in Britain.
That could be, or perhaps already is, part of the system of heightened repression in Britain. Do they use video tracking to figure out who to arrest for planning to walk slowly, or glue perself to the street?
There is no need for the software to gauge a person's ethnicity if it identifies each person against a database that record's per ethnicity.
*It's hard to get neo-Nazi cops fired. Too hard.*
We should not allow firing employees, even cops, for having a mere opinion we disapprove of. However, in the case of cops, who are given special forms of authority, we should be able to insist that they not have attitudes which are likely to result in unfairness to some demographic groups among the public.
A Chinese comedian made a joke that some extreme patriots interpreted as a slight on the Chinese army, though it apparently didn't say anything about the army. The government forced him to publish a confession of guilt, then silenced him on communication platforms.
The government also fined the company he works for around 1.5 million dollars.
I have a hunch he will be punished in other ways that were not officially announced. For instance, that he won't be allowed to work as a comedian any more.
President Lasso of Ecuador had been impeached, and was in the process of being tried for removal from office, when he dissolved the whole Congress.
It seems to me that the Ecuadorian constitution has a grave flaw if the president can always prevent impeachment so easily.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to a year's house arrest.
*World likely to breach 1.5C climate threshold by 2027, scientists warn.*
*Billionaires Spent Over $1 Billion on 2022 Elections—More Than Any Year in US History.*
Don't assume their money was defeated. In addition to bringing about the election of more plutocratists (Democrats as well as Republicans), it also convinces many candidates who would have won anyway to adopt increasingly plutocratist positions.
A study estimates that the the US "war on terror" is responsible for at least 4.5 million deaths. 1 million seen to have been killed by fighting, but far more died from poverty and disruption of society caused by the fighting.
The boss of CNN (actually, of its parent company) rebuked CNN reporter Oliver Darcy intimidatingly for not upholding the company's spin about the bullshitter and his "town hall".
(satire) *Wealthy Parents Surprise Graduating Child With Judge Who Will Let Him Off Hook For Future Rape Accusations.*
*Medicare for All Legislation Introduced to Address Poor U.S. Health Outcomes, Inequities.*
I think that focusing on "inequity" in US medicine is a distraction from the real issue. What's wrong with the US medical system is that many Americans can't get the medical care they need.
We should set up a national medical system to give all Americans the medical care they need. Other countries prove every day that that is possible.
If we gave every American good medical care, as a byproduct there would be no more inequities in medicine. But we should not formulate the goal in terms of inequities. We could eliminate inequities by giving all Americans no medical care, but that is not what we should aim for.
A study of the corpses of English teenagers (and a few children) taken from poor parents in the 1800s, and sent to work in cotton mills far away, shows that they were basically systematically stunted and killed by malnutrition.
Speculation about what AI in reality might do to script-writing.
I can't believe this couldn't happen, if someday artificial intelligence can tell plausible stories. Speculation about this goes at least as far back as Asimov's story "Galley Slave". But be careful not to think of ChatGPT as artificial intelligence. It does not know anything, and does not understand anything.
It might be able to script a surrealist absurd movie, where lack of knowledge and understanding might be no problem. But I hesitate to assume even that. The great works of surrealism may well be less random than meets the eye; that may be what makes them great.
*Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi sentenced to year in prison [for perhaps calling official thugs "tyrants"].
Ghannouchi used the word for "tyrant" but I don't think it was clear if he was referring to anyone in particular. The Tunisian dictator does not hesitate to act like a tyrant.
Important laws about reducing air pollution, both toxic and greenhouse, are among the laws the Tories plan to repeal. The Tories say these laws are "no longer applicable."
*Head of Ukraine's supreme court held in anti-corruption investigation.*
Ukraine has a reputation for being very corrupt, but the US also has corruption in its supreme court, and the US is behind in trying to do something about it.
*Bird flu could become the next human pandemic — and politicians aren't paying attention.*
*Plastic pollution could [feasibly be slashed by 80% by 2040, UN says.*
The EPA has become quite active in requiring cuts in various sorts of pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.
However, Biden's foolish approval of drilling in large fossil fuel reserves is likely to counteract around half the reductions in greenhouse emissions.
*Cambodia’s only major opposition party is barred from running in July elections.* The thugs came one day, years ago, and seized their registration papers.
*Tories’ revised plans to scrap EU laws are still reckless, say lawyers.*
Two London thugs have been fired for punching and kicking a teenager while arresting per, and then lying about it.
Please don't refer to a teenager as "a child" — that is propaganda for constraining their lives.
In my view, it should be a crime for uniformed thugs to kick or punch anyone, of whatever age, absent clear and strong justification. Even an adult!
A UK thug paralyzed Jordan Walker-Brown with a taser, and justified that based on the "belief" that the latter had some sort of weapon. If he did have one, he had not pulled it out.
The thug was tried for causing gross bodily harm, but Walker-Brown said he knew the thug would not be convicted.
A student riding home in a school bus noticed that the driver had blacked out, because he did not have a snoop-phone. He ran to the driver and stopped the bus without an accident, while everyone else was too distracted.
If this were the worst danger caused by having a snoop-phone, I would not consider it much reason to refuse one. But they hurt nearly all their users in a number of ways.
At the border with Mexico, US border thugs arrest humanitarians under Arizona's trespassing laws, while right wing fanatics shoot holes in their water tanks. The fanatics are proud of their harassment even when they are convicted of it.
This is in addition to the nonfree app that is the only way to apply for an asylum appointment. Mark my words, if the US government gets away with doing this to asylum seekers, doing it to Americans will be next.
Democrats and Republicans are now competing for who can direct the most cruelty at convicts.
That is not very effective for reducing crime. What succeeded in the 1990s was partly the elimination from lead from gasoline in the late 70s, and partly an increase in income on the average for poor people in the 90s, which helped them get by without crime.
We can't get rid of any more lead from gasoline, because none remains in gasoline, but we might be able to make life easier for poor people by electing more progressive Democrats.
*[Governor DeMentis's] Attack on Voting Rights Won't Stay in Florida.*
The bullshitter is likely to face criminal charges about several matters. He is likely to be convicted. But will that happen before the election, and do Republicans have enough shreds of decency to defeat him for his crimes?
High-speed rail may finally be built in the US, starting with a line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
While the US has done almost nothing for decades, China has covered the whole country with high-speed train lines. Why has the US failed to do this? I conjecture that in the US, businesses are too powerful. So powerful that they can stop the US government from doing important things, such as building train lines.
By contrast, in China the government is more powerful than any combination of businesses. So if the Chinese government decides to build the railroad equivalent of the interstate highway system, and boost the country's industrial capacity, it can go ahead and do that.
China is using that boost in industrial capacity to build up its armed forces so it can conquer Taiwan and turn it into hellish tyranny. Meanwhile, the US can barely afford to defend Ukraine. And since business orders the US government to crush the poor, the poor turn towards fascism.
Confusion of large language models with general "artificial intelligence" is causing panic.
Artificial general intelligence may someday be developed, and if so it could pose many sorts of dangers, I recommend A Fire upon the Deep, for an example, and Accelerando. And many other stories, with a wide variety of outcomes.
I agree that these systems can be dangerous. But they are dangerous in the short term in ways that hardly resemble the disaster scenarios. Indeed, artificial general intelligence is unnecessary for digital systems to bring disaster. Imagine payment systems that track all purchases, and transportation systems that track people's travel. Those already exist, and if we don't want our countries to be like China, we need to abolish them.
ChatGPT is nothing like that. It can't make coherent plans, let alone carry them out. It can generate text that looks like a plan until you study it carefully. The problems it causes come from side effects.
In the US, children of age 10 are working long hours, as plutocratists work to legalize more kinds and longer hours of work by children and younger teenagers.
This is harmful because it harms those children permanently by denying them the opportunity for an education. Some kinds of work are dangerous for young people. The existence of the practice, enables businesses to lower wages generally.
I support education for everyone, and limiting labor by children and younger teenagers; I support Eisenhower taxation of the rich also. I must admit I don't see a close relation between them. Each is good for society but in its own way.
The number of people per month reported in the UK as possibly being trafficked as slaves keeps increasing. What does this imply?
Maybe more people are being trafficked as slaves.
Maybe the methods of detecting possible trafficking are being improved so that a greater fraction are being reported.
Maybe, as Braverman the Tory minister claims, the problem is caused by immigrants' making false claims. I don't know for certain that this is false, but if a right-wing politician makes such a claim, I check my pockets to make sure my freedom is still there.
*Ocasio-Cortez Slams Adams for Attack on "Very Services" That Could Have Helped Jordan Neely.*
*Thai Voters Back Opposition in Decisive Rejection of Military Rule.*
Will the next step be a military coup?
(satire) *World's Wealthy Call For Removal Of Stars Obstructing View Of Universe.*
*Twitter and Saudi officials face racketeering lawsuit over jailed satirist.*
*The grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad's regime — Syria’s criminal president has been cordially invited to this week's Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia — makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus's dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction.*
Would it be better to maintain hostilities so that Assad is not forgiven? I'm not sure.
On one hand, peace would do a lot to reduce Syrians' suffering. On the other hand, peace could result in Assad's getting the support to conquer Rojava.
Poland has declared a new name to use for the currently Russian city of Kaliningrad. Poland's choice of name, Królewiec, was the Polish name for that city during the short period, 1454 to 1457, that the city was under Polish control. Aside from those few years, the city's name was Königsberg for 7 centuries.
It seems to me that Russia and Poland are both being fools about this.
Russia is a place of horrible tyranny and repression. Poland is a place of diminished human rights and imposed Christian restrictions. Those issues are more important than the name of Kaliningrad.
Mike Africa Jr, one of the survivors of the Move collective, was not in the house when thugs firebombed it and killed everyone inside. He has bought the building that was built to replace that house, and plans to make it into a memorial to Move and the people who were killed in that fire.
How a right-wing billionaire compelled CNN to take a neutral stand about the bullshitter's gusher of lies.
In his long CNN "town hall", the bullshitter brushed aside inconvenient facts by opening the firehose of lies.
I have a hunch that CNN intended this program to increase its audience among US fascists, and that it succeeded.
There were a few topics on which the bullshitter seemed unwilling to dismiss reality entirely. For instance, he said he would quickly end the war in Ukraine, but refused to state any support for it. This gives us reason to believe he still supports Putin and would "end the war" by stabbing Ukraine in the back. This would end the deaths in combat, but would not end the killing. The Putin forces did plenty of killing in parts of Ukraine that were occupied in the first months of the war, as well as kidnapping and torture. If the war turns into a bigger occupation, they will surely continue.
The line that the bullshitter is following was worked out by many progressives, who now demand to "end the war" at any cost. After years of condemning the US for starting gratuitous wars based on lies, they can't adjust to a situation where for once the US is on the right side.
(satire) *Trump Condemned For Giving Platform To CNN.*
CNN gave the bullshitter a big situational advantage over the moderator.
It sank lower than that. Staff spoke to the audience shortly before the show, saying they were welcome to applaud but that booing was forbidden.
*CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016.*
Or are they mistakes? The CEO of CNN's owner seems to be quite content to have attracted more support from fascists.
CNN's live presentation for the bullshitter was a complete success for the bullshitter and for the plutocratists. They both got what they wanted: to tell the public, "You can choose fascism, or you can choose the cruel system that boosted fascism."
China has given itself the power to bar foreign lawyers from working in "national security" trials (political repression). It had already terminated the residence visa of the British lawyer that Jimmy Lai wanted to hire, and postponed the trial 'til after that lawyer was compelled to leave; but apparently China was so worried about the presence of a lawyer that might actually try to defend Lai that changed Hong Kong law to make sure this could never happen.
California residents, urge state legislators to oppose the CJPA bill.
That bill would not protect the real local journalism, only reward the fake.
*Senate Investigation Shows How [Republican tax cuts in 2017] Enabled Big Pharma's "Extreme" Tax Avoidance.*
Greg Palast warns that the bullshitter's campaign to make it hard for blacks to vote is working very effectively, and Republicans are still working hard at it.
George Monbiot: *The coronation arrests are just the start. [Thugs] can do what they want to us now.*
The thugs can now arrest people in Britain for almost any sort of protest that could attract attention, or even carrying harmless tools for one. In addition, experienced organizers can be ordered preemptively to stay away from all protests and other protesters, and jailed if they disobey.
Britain is at the tipping point of joining regimes such as China and Russia in repression of dissent.
Hindu fanatics in India are sabotaging traditional celebrations in which various religious groups joined harmoniously for hundreds of years.
Banning hijab in India is basically the same injustice as requiring hijab in Iran.
Many young Hong Kongers have asked for asylum in Britain. It's not clear they will receive asylum.
The saddest thing is that the UK is becoming repressive much like Hong Kong. However, the UK won't jail people for criticizing the government of China. so these Hong Kong refugees will probably be safe there if they get asylum, even though other Britons are not.
* Francesca Albanese says Israel is maintaining occupation to get as much land as possible for Jewish people.*
Daniel Perry, who killed Jordan Neely in the New York subway by using a chokehold, has been charged with manslaughter.
Neely apparently seemed upset, but what he said did not threaten violence.
Edinburgh University is trying to calm the dispute between the partisans of two different concepts of women's rights, in the hope of discussions between them.
An ironic proposal to rebrand mass shootings as "Second Amendment Celebrations".
A number of officials are calling for overturning the trial of Richard Glossip. He might get a new trial.
The crucial lesson from the bogus trial he received is that it is all too easy for US courts to reach a verdict of guilty based on evidence that is obviously insufficient to justify punishing anyone.
Self-driving cars now supposedly work without human backup drivers. In practice, they work poorly. In addition, they are full of cameras inside and out, and the company staff (remote) can look at the camera feed at any time.
It should be illegal to operate a car with such surveillance capability without a warrant to authorize the surveillance.
In order for a self-driving car to be tolerated in society, its sensors must not pick up enough data about the passengers, or the passers-by, to figure out who they were. However, that limited amount of data needs to suffice to figure out where they are and where they might be in n seconds.
The Hindu-nationalist party (BJP) lost the state elections in Karnataka, a state in the south of India.
Perhaps the new government will crack down on the BJP's efforts to stir up hatred against Muslims in places with long traditions of friendship between people of different religions.
Making parks safer for women through changes that don't treat anyone harshly.
As humans enter areas formerly wild, the danger of catching diseases from wild animals keeps on increasing. Several recent epidemics came from animals, Covid-19 being one of them.
Opposition has delayed the planned test of releasing sterile males of the mosquito Aedes aegypti in California. The method to be tested could perhaps wipe out that pest in California.
Aedes aegypti in California is an intrusive species, so its effects on ecosystems are essentially negative. Species which depend on eating mosquitoes must have eaten only the native species until recently, and can still do so. The benefit to be obtained by eradicating Aedes aegypti in California, in reduced disease and reduce pesticide use, is surely enormous.
The state should insist on researching what can be tested, and developing further precautions for aborting the experiment early. But don't let Aedes aegypti hang around for long.
Chinese dissident Ruan Xiaohuan was able to evade Chinese censorship and post messages opposing the regime. He kept it up for 12 years before they caught him.
Musk announced that Twitter would censor access to tweets in Turkey to placate Erdoğan.
This is the same excuse that Apple used for helping to carry out Chinese censorship in China. But is Turkey really better off having Twitter keep operation under Erdoğan's censorship, than having him very visibly shut it down? I don't think so.
*Musk, with business relationships in Turkey, comes under fire for Twitter censorship aiding [Erdoğan] whom he knows personally.*
Is Musk's excuse bogus as well as wrong? Others claim he is censoring Twitter more than the Turkish regime demands of other media. Maybe Musk simply desired to boost autocracy in Turkey, and only pretends he is doing so under threat.
*Disgust is an emotion that evolved to keep us out of danger, but people have long misused it to inflict cruelty and catastrophic harm.*
Right-wing fanatics apparently fail to feel disgust for lies.
I reproach the author for advocating flat-out censorship, such as "laws against hate speech". Under the First Amendment, unpopular opinions, whether fascist or progressive, are not prohibited.
"Sustainable" investment funds are accused of greenwashing fossil fuel businesses by investing almost $400 billion in them.
The article explains the system's perverse incentives.
The UK system of "student loans" is really a tax on graduates. But not a fair one: graduates who get higher incomes will end up paying less than graduates with lower incomes.
There is no need for the state to establish separate taxes to pay for various state activities. One unified set of taxes — income tax and inheritance tax — can pay for all state expenditures, provided it taxes people with high incomes at a high effective rate. Those who get more income due to their education will, indeed, pay more.
Proposing George Santos as the bullshitter's next running mate.
They are just made for each other.
*Most Credit Cards Still Deny Access to Justice with Forced Arbitration Clauses.*
This requirement makes it unlikely that the cardholder will get a fair outcome. It also keeps the public in the dark about the substance and outcomes of the disputes.
Scientists report that the main cause of the 25% decrease in wild bird populations in Europe is the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers in intensive farming.
Erdoğan finished first in the first state of the Turkish presidential election.
It is not certain who will win the runoff, but each day gives Erdoğan more chances to cheat or to throw over the board.
Over 1000 scientists and academics carried out nonviolent protests calling for a rapid decrease in carbon emissions.
Some of them face criminal charges, basically "annoying protest" but stated in different words.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the Comstock Act.
That disused law prohibits mailing "lewd" or "obscene" materials through the post, and also prohibits mailing birth control and abortifacients. Republicans want to enforce it against mailing of mifepristone. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stock Buybacks Act which would prohibit corporations from buying back their own stock so as to raise the stock price. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Justice Thomas.
Thomas's corruption serves Republican interests, so I expect they won't vote to impeach him, or vote to remove him from office if he has been impeached. Nonetheless, it may help strengthen the will to do other things, such as expand the Supreme Court, after the next election.
US citizens: call on the DA in Atlanta to drop charges against Cop City protesters.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate and reduce mercury pollution from (fossil fuel) power plants.
(satire) *Picking up thousands of incapacitated Americans by their wrists and ankles and tossing them down to the sidewalks below, Covid-19 patients were reportedly flung out of hospital windows across the country Thursday as the public [Covid-19] emergency officially ended.*
Democracy is in trouble because most people are biased and most people are often mistaken. But democracy can be effective when it is structured to lead to discussions in which people present arguments for various sides.
The article refutes the claims of certain rich people who argue that markets, or the cleverest people, should rule. They call themselves "libertarians", but I don't think they deserve that term since they advocate subjugation of nearly everyone. Like most people who call themselves "libertarians", their real goal is for the elite to dominate most of society and to get rid of systems that help the non-rich. That is why I call them "antisocialists".
How unregulated lending business tends to suck people into unpayable debt.
The EPA's new pollution rules for fossil fuel power plants are predicated on the assumption that carbon capture will work and will be used.
So far, it doesn't work, and the only reason anyone assumes it will work is due to fossil fuel lobbying.
Human Rights Watch and Article 18 condemned Erdoğan's control of the internet in Turkey, saying he will use that to twist the election.
Sad to say, right-wing rich people own the principal news sources in most countries, including the US and the UK.
The UK plutocratists keep opposing nationalization of the railroads because their funders, the rich, make money from the privatized railroads. So they don't want to admit that the previous state-owned British Rail worked better than the subsequent state-owned railroads.
Sad to say, the Tory Party is not the only plutocratist party in Britain. The Labour Party's support for re-nationalization is half-hearted because Starmer is a plutocratist at heart. Now that he has blocked firm opponents of plutocratism from running as Labour candidates for Parliament, it will be hard for Labour to get any better in the future.
When people assert that private capital can more easily invest the large sums needed to improve railroads, the response is to ask why the state doesn't have enough funds to invest. Is it because of reducing taxes on the rich and on businesses? That's the real problem.
Australia's not so environmentalist government approved a new coal mine.
That is playing with fire. Every new fossil fuel investment acts to accelerate global heating and increase the chance that we cross a tipping point that tips the world into disaster.
The Tories have delayed the plan to repeal thousands of EU-derived laws en masse.
That doesn't mean the laws won't be all be repealed en masse.
Thoughtful and proper proceedings would be to allowing Parliament to examine each of these laws, one by one, and judge whether the UK would be better off keeping it, repealing it, or changing it. That would be the way to improve life in the UK. Evidently that is not the goal.
Fascists in France set fire to the cars and house of a town mayor who supported caring for immigrants.
The fascist strategy, in France as everywhere, is to demonstrate their "courage" to attack those who can't defend themselves, in order to make everyone afraid to disagree with them. It is not easy to thwart. But I think it requires capturing and punishing some fascist terrorists.
*Biden is selling weapons to the majority of the world's autocracies.*
Widespread use of disinfectant wipes spread exposure to certain chemicals, which could be harmful. Some researchers say the chemicals are linked to serious health problems, they contribute to antimicrobial resistance, they pollute the environment and they are not particularly effective.
*Big Oil Tries To Buy Its Own Courts: Texas oil and gas companies could soon have their business cases heard by judges handpicked by a close ally: Gov. Greg Abbott.*
Responding to Republican threats of sabotage: *Make them [the Republicans] own it. Make sure the public understands what is at stake and who will bear the responsibility if things go wrong. That’s not only smart politics. Absent successful application of the “constitutional option,” this is the only strategy, short of capitulation, that stands any realistic chance of preventing default.*
Australia has approved the construction of new facilities for handling natural gas near Darwin, which will surely push the Earth closer to busting the carbon budget and collapse of civilization.
The facilities are supposed to include producing "blue hydrogen", which means hydrogen gas generated by consuming fossil fuels and generating carbon emissions. They also include carbon capture and storage, will encourage using more fossil gas but is unlikely to actually eliminate its greenhouse emissions.
If that were not bad bad enough, the currently approved development area comes pretty close to an aboriginal rock art site. If development extends, it could reach that site and endanger it.
Australian rock art is amongst the oldest cultural relics of humanity and no one should have the power to authorize damaging it.
*Senate Judiciary Democrats No Longer Have an Excuse: It's Time to Subpoena Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow.*
US citizens: call for banning fracking in the Vaca Muerta region of Argentina.
Or else they should rename it to Billones Mertos, because that's where busting the carbon budget is likely to lead.
US citizens: tell Congress: No cuts to Social Security or raises on retirement age.
US citizens: oppose flooding schools with guns and uniformed thugs.
The special danger of thugs in schools is that they can direct students into the school-to-prison pipeline. They do this for minor matters of indiscipline that in the past would not have involved the state at all.
US citizens: call on state legislators to please support overdose prevention centers.
US citizens: if your congresscritter is a Republican phone per and call on per to sign a discharge petition for a bill to raise the debt ceiling and not do anything else. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Some people love paradoxes and seek opportunities to claim that they are the whole of reality. For instance, it turns out that color perception is partially socially constructed. One writer leaps from that to the claim that color perceptions are arbitrary mental constructs which have nothing to do with reality.
Plenty of aspects of human perception, thought, and behavior are partially socially constructed, but that doesn't mean they are arbitrary or that they are not constrained by reality.
Legal advice received by the European Commission suggests that the "chat control" censorship plan is illegal.
The plan assumes that an encrypted communication service includes nonfree software to run on your machine to send and receive messages. That implies that the service can make that software snoop on your communications before it encrypts them.
That design, where the service imposes specific software on users, is fundamentally unjust and insecure, precisely because the service imposes nonfree software on users and users can never rationally trust such software.
In effect, the "chat control" plan demonstrates that we were right. A service that makes users run nonfree software to talk with it is inherently insecure and untrustworthy.
*Worried Your Child is Already a Screen Addict? There’s Hope!!!*
The "pervasive design" addictive features that the article naively attributes to "screens" are implemented by software: partly in the operating system and partly in some apps. They can be designed to do nasty things because they are non-free software: their code is controlled by some "owner", in this case a powerful company, rather than by the users. If they were free programs, the user community could reprogram them so as to be less addictive.
We must free ourselves from the idea that giant companies have the "right" to require users' connection to their "services" to go through software under their control. We should have the right to use our free software to do that.
Petrochemical industry in Louisiana have set up a "sustainability council" to help sustain their business model. They increase profits by skimping on the safety of people living in the region.
*FTC to address industry greenwashing complaints.*
(satire) *New Indeed Feature Lets Users Sort Jobs By Amount Of Exploitation.*
Anger management classes now part of the plutocratist neoliberal economic situation, used to teach the people being exploited and squashed to learn to remain placid and not fight to put an end to it.
The new Portuguese euthanasia law seems to have the same flaw as most such laws. It is limited to people whose illness is terminal, which means their suffering is sure to end in a matter of months anyway. If your suffering could continue for years, this law refuses to help you. What perversity!
It also excludes foreigners.
A member of the Danish parliament that represents Greenland gave a speech in Parliament in Greenlandic, which no one else there understood. Then she refused to tell the rest of parliament what the speech meant.
To speak to a body of people in a language almost none of them understand is disrespectful. When they ask you to repeat your point in their language, which you do speak, it indicates they do wish to pay attention to your point. To refuse them only vents contempt.
If you pretend that asking you what you said represents an attempt to gag you, that is perverse and unjust.
The other parliamentarians might respond, "While you speak to us in a language we can't understand, we may as well use the time to catch up on documents we are supposed to read."
Biden broke a commitment that the US would stop financing fossil fuel development in other countries.
It is silly to claim that Indonesia will refine fuel in the expanded Balikpapan refinery instead of refining fuel elsewhere and importing the results. The owners of the other refineries will try to sell their output somewhere else.
A long, serious list of bad things that Republican officials support.
Iran's repression now extends to prosecuting defense lawyers for "propaganda against the regime" on the internet.
Kansas City, Missouri, declared Itself a sanctuary city regarding state laws that criminalize being trans.
City officials are told to spend effectively no time on enforcing such laws.
Biden has replaced Title 42, the policy of sending asylum seekers directly back to Mexico, with a harsher policy.
The new policy makes them automatically ineligible for asylum for 5 years, simply for trying to reach US territory to apply for asylum.
Robert Reich: *The Democrats have a powerful campaign issue: price-gouging corporations.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge per to cosponsor the Medicare for All Act when it is reintroduced in Congress on May 17.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to raise the debt ceiling without attacking the non-rich.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FCC to require Sinclair's supposed "local news" TV stations to actually cover local news.
US citizens: call on Congress to Ban AI Use in Weapons Systems, Now and Forever.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Christiania, the anarchist town in the middle of Copenhagen, has allowed sale of marijuana by known local people for 50 years. Now criminal gangs have moved in, taken control, and are fighting over the "territory". It looks like they have ruined everything.
I think the existence of these powerful gangs is a consequence of prohibition in the rest of the country and the world. Prohibition of marijuana (or any drug) does not get rid of it, but helps the gangs make lots of money.
The European Parliament concluded that the authoritarian governments of Hungary and Poland used spyware to monitor "enemies of the state" such as journalists, politicians and activists.
Many teachers in Hong Kong are quitting for fear they will say something politically unacceptable and be punished. And many school-age children are leaving for free countries.
Escape is available only to a fraction of Hong Kongers; most can't find a free country they can move to. I am sad for them.
"Battery passports" to track the raw materials used in making electric car batteries are proposed as a way of enforcing environmental regulations on mining world-wide. Critics question whether the system gives the mining companies too much influence in the system, which they could use to cheat.
I support the system for that purpose — but if businesses start offering to change out your car's battery as a quick recharge, it is crucial that those businesses not be able to examine the number of the battery that they get from you. That would become, in effect, another system for tracking where you drive.
The same reasoning applies to ordinary charging systems for cars. They must accept anonymous payment and they must be forbidden to get any identifying data digitally from the car.
Digital translations make errors that endanger refugees' asylum applications.
Missouri has imposed censorship on children and teenagers using nearly all libraries in the state. The rule would deny state funding to any library that allows a library user under age 18 to see books that are not "age appropriate", or to check out a book that per parents would not approve of.
A large fraction of people of age 17 and 16 have had sex, but Missouri doesn't want them to read about books that address issues of sex or sexual relationships. "Heaven forbid they might learn something pertinent to their lives."
Warning: increase in US export of liquid fossil methane threatens to wreck efforts to avoid global climate disaster.
If biometric tests are developed to detect sleepiness, and they are used to stop professional drivers from driving, the financial loss from being stopped occasionally must fall on the companies they work for, or on the state — not on the individual drivers.
This will lead us to a fight like the current one over sick days for train operator workers.
Here's an example of how concern about Putin's threats against the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant get spun into a demand to give Putin a victorious conquest.
Putin has frequently used his capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine for psychological warfare. There is a real danger that it will lose external power and melt down. Putin has chosen to magnify the danger by creating avoidable risk — by brinkmanship.
In response to this brinkmanship, the article calls on the US to impose a cease fire fast. The only way to get Putin to agree to that is to make Ukraine cede to him all the territory that the Putin forces now hold. (Maybe even that isn't enough to satisfy him.)
Is this what the author aims for? He does not admit it outright, but I can't believe that he is not aware of it. It has been pointed out many times. According to the author, the US should tell Ukraine, "Surrender fast, so you can have peace!"
Putin says he demands the whole territory of the provinces of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, in exchange for peace. If the US were to take the desperate "Surrender, Ukraine" position that the article recommends, Putin would take advantage of that.
If we want to avoid a nuclear disaster in the Zaporizhzhia plant, it is easy to see how a local agreement could do this. If both sides are willing, they can easily do it. Since Putin has refused, it can only mean he does not want the plant to be made properly safe. But he doesn't want a nuclear disaster either. He wants a threat to make to set fools scurrying to demand giving him whatever he wants.
How Americans and American cities subsidize the private jets of the super-rich.
We effectively subsidize lots of other things for them too, mainly by charging them far too little tax. They pay a lower fraction of their income in tax than most Americans. It is fair for them to pay a much higher fraction, because they can cope with that share of the country's needs.
*US proposes rules requiring airlines to compensate passengers for flight delays.*
Flight delays and cancellations can't always be avoided. But the problems they cause will be spread a lot more fairly with these compensations.
In addition, in 2020 airlines often scheduled flights and cancelled them, leading to suspicions that they were expecting to cancel those flights when they announced them. With compensation requirements like this, they would not do that.
Hong Kong is punishing people who emigrate to Britain by denying access to their savings and pension funds in Hong Kong banks.
The changed regulation would require them to return to Hong Kong to get new ID cards, which would not be safe at all.
Arguing that youth today feel anxious because they are almost always under the control of adults, and never learning to cope with autonomy. The only way they can socialize and not have adults watching is on antisocial media.
This leads to the suggestion that the right way to protect youth from antisocial media is by allowing and enabling them to socialize together without the intermediary of online dis-services.
*George Santos Arrested on 13 Charges of Wire Fraud, Money Laundering, and More.*
While running for Congress, He lied about just about every aspect of his life. These charges say he also lied to his supporters when claiming to raise donations for his electoral campaign.
The US has seen seven different billion-dollar extreme weather disasters in the first four months of 2023. This is not a record, but the only two years that had eight such billion-dollar disasters were quite recent: 2017 and 2020.
*Big Food Raking in Huge Profits From Price Hikes as US Hunger Persists: Analysis.*
US citizens: call on the EPA to stop factory farms from polluting our rivers with liquid manure.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Interior to list monarch butterflies as endangered.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Bezos testify about Amazon's union-busting.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the IRS to revoke the National Rifle Association's tax exemption.
The National Rifle Association used to work dedicate itself to teaching how to safely use and own guns. It was turned into a tool for spreading fear to promote gun sales a few decades ago.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the subminimum wage, which applies to workers who are supposedly supported by tips.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The progressive movement needs to reject the imposed myth that technological progress invariably makes people, or society, better off. We have the right to regulate technology for the public good.
When the users decide what features their technology will have, they can exclude the features they know they dislike. But when companies choose the features and impose them on the users, they will impose what benefits them, not what benefits the users. This includes DRM and snooping, as well as other nasty things. We must demand software be free.
However, we need to think carefully about what the public good consists of. Now that politicians want to "protect children (and especially teenagers)" by turning the internet into a platform for repression à la Chinoise, we must insist they do the job in a way that doesn't make us all politically helpless.
(satire) *Clarence Thomas Promises To Adopt Code Of Ethics For The Right Price.*
Robert Reich argues that the fact that the UK has a king, and a royal family, is a minor side-issue as regards everything important. He also criticizes the US tendency to idolize the president's family.
I'm with both points.
*Royal occasions aren’t really about the royals at all. What we love is our own reactions.* Most Britishers are content with the royal family because it is a sort of play-acting which makes no real difference.
The exception is when a royal occasion becomes an occasion for repression.
Proposed federal and California laws supposedly intended to "save local journalism" would instead help the Sinclair broadcast chain wipe it out.
Asserting that the Republican plan to hold the US hostage over the debt ceiling represents the the power of right-wing billionaires who put ideology over their own interests.
The "law and order" Tories have made big cuts in cops on the street. So landlords pay to replace them, in some local areas, with private security guards who enforce unpublished secret rules, and get away with violence just like official thugs.
E Jean Carroll won her lawsuit against the bullshitter, who was ordered to pay damages for grabbing her and trying to rape her, and later calling her a liar for saying he did that.
The result demonstrates that the bullshitter cannot always get away with "grabbing them by the pussy."
This defeat is not sufficient — he is still getting away with a far bigger and more egregious crime: leading a failed plot to overthrow the US government.
*The west must be ready for this moment of opportunity and risk in Ukraine.* The article includes a theory of how Ukraine hopes to achieve a military victory sufficient to end the war.
It may be true that Putin is obsessed even more with Crimea than with Ukraine; I wouldn't know. But I don't see a rational military reason for him to feel that way. Moreover, I don't see why Ukraine should be especially concerned with Crimea in Putin's hands as a military threat. Russia has plenty of air bases from which to attack various parts of Ukraine, and it has made some attacks from airbases near Moscow, which Ukraine has attacked with drones.
*MEPs to vote on proposed ban on ‘Big Brother’ [so-called] AI facial recognition on streets.*
I applaud the EU for even considering this, and I hope it passes.
Whether facial recognition should be considered "AI" is a tricky question, which I think makes no difference to anything important. Such systems should be prohibited, but the prohibition should not be limited to facial recognition. It should cover identification of persons by any kind of sensing of personal characteristic.
Indeed, it should include collection of records from which it would be straightforward to identify people later.
France has urged the EU to designate Wagner as a "terrorist group".
Wagner may be guilty of terrorism, but it is an injustice to label any person or group as guilty of a crime by mere fiat. That should always require a fair trial.
Wagner might be convicted in a fair trial. It wouldn't astound me. But it would be a foolish own-goal to try that now. Given the appearance of quarrel between Wagner's leader Prigozhin and Putin, the wise strategy is to encourage Wagner and its leaders to surrender to Ukraine, by promising them safety if they do.
Even if that appearance of quarrel is only play-acting, it is still desirable to exacerbate the tension, as long as this is done without sacrificing any military advantage.
In general, I think we should try to avoid applying this spirit of callous realpolitik to people. But it is forgivable to do that to vicious criminals such as Prigozhin and Putin.
Senator Feinstein is ready to resume duties in the Senate. This eliminates the reason to press her to resign now.
Harlan Crow, whose corrupt dealings with Justice Thomas have been publicized, has also donated heavily to the Republican senators who refuse to support imposing a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.
* Head of [UK's] Republic campaign group believes [his arrest] at coronation was premeditated attempt to kill protests.*
I have a feeling that someone on the spot improvised an aggressive response in violation of the agreement made by the "senior officers" who has said the protest plans were lawful.
Hindus in Manipur burned 1700 homes of people in the mostly-Christian Kuki tribe. The victims have lost everything and believe they can never return to their old lands or recover their stolen animals.
I have to suspect that Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist party had a hand in this, but I don't actually know.
Contrary to what many say, running into the US debt ceiling will not make the US default on its debts. Rather, it will stop the US from doing the normal daily borrowing that is necessary to make daily payments that the government has to make.
Social security payments, like purchases, are rather payments that the US will have an obligation to make, but they are not for debts because they are not repayment of loans.
Failing to pay them could be considered a default in some sense, but it would not be defaulting on debt.
What the 14th amendment says about this, I don't know.
The US hires mercenaries to fight in its wars, but it is hard to find out how many. The mercenaries are lumped together with the contractors that only cook and serve food, and the ones who work for the CIA or the State Department are not listed.
A large fraction are not Americans, but rather hired in the countries where military actions take place.
Australia is planning to punish drivers who did not get enough sleep. This is absurd — people cannot make themselves sleep more, and people can't wait a day because of being tired.
As the article explains, the demands on many people don't let them sleep enough. To punish them for the consequences of the demands placed on them is unjust.
On the other hand. to stop the employers from overworking drivers could be useful and just. This requires a fine, not on drivers, but on their employers.
It won't be trivial to stop the employers from turning this around into an excuse to impose more cruelty on drivers.
Israel bombed Gaza again, killing some leaders of Islamic Jihad.
The air raids bombed civilians too.
In general, killing leaders of a guerrilla movement has little effect on it. There are always new leaders ready to step in. If they are religious fanatics. the possibility of a martyr's death may not discourage them.
The only way to end the fighting is to change the factors that encourage people to join up.
RMS will be giving talks in Switzerland about free software and digital injustice.
The Tories want to ban communication systems that use end-to-end encryption. They've announced their decision that "safety", supposedly to be achieved by monitoring everyone's communications, outweighs privacy, so digital systems that maintain our privacy against state surveillance will be banned.
Paradoxically, what may defend us is WhatsApp.
The WhatsApp application is nonfree software — users can't tell what it really does, let alone fix anything malicious or merely broken that may be in it. So many nonfree programs are malware that we shouldn't suppose any of them is honest. The nonfree WhatsApp App could send all the user's private messages, in plain text form, to whoever Meta/Facebook wishes, whether that be the Chinese government, the UK government, the US government, or Meta itself.
We can't have free software packages that do communication with end-to-end encryption if communication systems with end-to-end encryption are prohibited. Paradoxically, a proprietary app which is not fit to trust may protect our right to have systems which can be worthy of our trust.
The presence of indigenous people in what is now the US was not a mere detail. The desire to take their lands was central to the history of the US.
*The coronation [in the UK] pulled a screen across a desperate, failing nation — just as intended. Those who opposed it must be portrayed as radical, or the whole rotten system it represents might come crashing down.*
If I imagine myself as British, I do not see myself as opposing either the coronation or the monarchy. I simply see them as side issues. Queen Elizabeth II was not responsible for the Tory policy of repression and impoverishment of the poor, nor for Starmer's ruination of the Labour party. Those are what's really bad about the UK government.
*There's Still Time to Avoid Climate Catastrophe.*
*Grocery Store Workers Stand to Lose Over $300 Million Annually if Kroger and Albertsons Merge*
The labor shortage that gave workers more clout has ended. Now employers are gleefully screwing workers again.
The author states the cause opaquely by saying that "the economy has slowed," choosing not to mention the cause of that: interest rate increases by central banks, made in the name of curbing the inflation whose real causes they refuse to recognize.
For some employees with special talents, this takes the form of loss of some special perks, described in the article, plus increased unjust surveillance. For the less influential employees who were mistreated all along, it takes the form of refusing to negotiate with their unions.
But don't stop there. Amazon mistreats customers as well as workers and everyone else. Do as I do, and refuse to ever give your name or your address to Amazon.
Labour has become so right-wing that it refuses to commit to repealing the Tories' new anti-protest laws.
A right-wing fanatic drove his car into a crowd of immigrants standing around a shelter where they were getting assistance, murdering 8 of them.
More about the fanatic's stated political views.
*The Real 'Right Wing Death Squad' Is the Cowardly Republican Party.*
Putin's growing authoritarianism started driving the leading artists of Russian culture out of Russia even before he started attacking Ukraine. Now the only major artists that remain in Russia are those who wish to flaunt their support for Putin's regime.
Recall how Putin used to mock the idea that other Russians could run against him in elections? It wasn't enough for him that he was popular and would win even a free election. It wasn't enough for him to make victory for his opponents impossible. He went out of his way to rig elections blatantly (for instance, against Kasparov) so as to disparage the very idea of democracy.
Everyone: call on Whole Foods to take single-use plastic packaging off its shelves.
*Central banks raising interest rates makes it harder to fight the climate crisis.*
Beyond the short term, high interest rates cannot produce stability, because instability is an inherent result of the developing climate crisis. To have less future instability, we need to decarbonize faster.
*To Solve the Climate Crisis, It's Time to Talk About Canceling Debt.*
*EPA has ordered chemical company Chemours to stop discharging high levels of [PFAS] into the Ohio River.*
Scientists Extract Human and Deer DNA from Paleolithic Pendant Found in Denisova Cave.
Research like this is possible because Russia has nothing like the NAGPRA law. If NAGPRA existed there, it would require "returning" ancient human bones and artifacts to someone or other, and we would not have had the chance to learn from them about the evolution of our species — for instance, we would not know that nearly all of us humans have Neanderthals among our ancestors.
As for the Denisovans, another strain of humans also known from things found in Denisova cave, we wouldn't know they existed at all.
The book _Frankenstein_ — not the movie — carries a warning about applying science without attention to what it means to be a human being.
To end global hunger, we need to stop treating food as a set of commodities for giant companies to corner the market on.
The coronation of Charles III was an occasion for repression such as one would have expected from an old-time monarch, if the monarch was lacking in regal magnanimity.
About 20 Just Stop Oil protesters were arrested for wearing t-shirts and carrying small flags, which they planned to respectively expose and wave. Another 20 antimonarchists were arrested for taking nonviolence training in another city.
In all, 52 protesters and would-be protesters were arrested. A minister said this was justified because the UK's show had to look good.
In my view, those arrests showed off what's bad and getting worse in the UK: uniformed thugs have been authorized to draw the boundaries of lawful and unlawful protest.
*US food pesticides contaminated with toxic [PFAS], testing finds.*
The pesticides may degrade and become harmless, but the PFAS accompanying them will not.
Vienna demonstrates that a city (or a country) can provide good quality social housing that working people and middle class people are content living on together.
Feral horses in Australia threaten the survival of six native species.
This will be a sensitive topic because many Australians love the feral horses. But the issue is very simple: feral horses in Australia are a dangerous intrusive species and it is important to keep their numbers down.
A Labour shadow minister gave representatives of two giant banks access to Parliament so they can lobby as they like.
It might help the party win the next election, but it does not help make that party honestly serve the country supposing it does win.
The editorial board of the journal Neuroimage resigned as a body in protest of how much Elsevier charges to publish a paper.
There should be a standard charge to the authors for publishing a paper, which research grants should cover; for authors that don't have such grants, the journal should waive the charge.
WHO declared an end to the "emergency" about Covid-19, but that really means only acknowledging that millions of people are not taking the well-known precautions.
We can prevent most Covid-19 infections by wearing masks, and prevent most cases of the flu as well.
(satire) *Federal Agents Intercept 500 Kilos Of Lifesaving Medication At U.S. Border.*
New York State has prohibited building new buildings to use fossil fuels.
The same law allocates funds to convert some old buildings to use electricity instead.
This will result in substantial reductions in fossil fuel use, provided the state builds enough renewable generating capacity to feed the resulting higher demand for electricity.
*EPA Confirms Bee-Killing Neonicotinoid Insecticides Threaten Extinction for More than 200 Endangered Species [aside from bees].*
The US Supreme Court canceled the execution of Richard Glossip, who seems to have had an exceedingly unfair trial.
Putin told Clinton in 2011 that he might attack Ukraine.
I wonder who Clinton told this to.
*Four "Proud Boys" Convicted of Seditious Conspiracy for Jan. 6 Attack.*
*Bernie Sanders unveils plan for $17-an-hour US minimum wage.*
*Billionaire Also Paid for Clarence Thomas' Grandnephew to Attend $74k/Year Private School.*
The mainstream media ignore nondisruptive protests, so protests against plans that amount to mass murder need to be disruptive enough to be heard.
The ACLU told the Senate about the danger of various bills that would "protect children" by snooping on the communications of all adults.
The ACLU opposes KOSA, too, because it would require even more data collection about every user to figure out who is a minor.
Pop music nowadays is sufficiently limited that almost any song could be seen as a take-off on many others. This led rapidly to charges of copyright infringement which could have turned the music industry into a mess of lawsuits.
Fortunately this threat was rejected for the moment.
Florida is about to prohibit teaching critical race theory for real, even in universities where it really might be taught.
It goes with other laws that censor education for many age levels.
Only a few instances of voters blocked in the UK by lack of the new voter ID were actually counted, but since the system was not designed to count them, there could be more than it seems.
Some were denied the right to vote because they are immunocompromised and did not dare remove their masks in the polling place.
Erdoğan is passing a law that would imprison people for spreading news that Erdoğan calls "fake".
RMS will be giving talks in Switzerland about free software and digital injustice.
US citizens: call on the USPS Board of Governors to stop DeJoy's privatization plan and reverse its decision to slash rural letter carrier capacity.
*Ginni Thomas Took Secret Payments Ahead of Landmark Voting Rights Case.*
Mexico has made an agreement with the US to accept many non-Mexicans who are deported from the US.
*Sanders and Klobuchar Reintroduce Legislation to Cut [Medicare] Drug Prices in Half.*
(satire) *Anthropological Research Reveals Ancient Cultures Used Psychedelics To Increase Productivity Within Startup Companies.*
Andrew Malkinson has been in prison for 17 years for rape, because thugs concealed the evidence that should have shown he didn't do it.
It's amazing how often officials illegally conceal exculpatory evidence and succeed in bringing about an abortion of justice. (The word "miscarriage" is a mistaken metaphor because they happen by accident.) We read over and over of people who were convicted in the US as a result of such deception. These prosecutors have to know they are lying someone into prison or (in the US) into the death row. Why don't we put them in prison for this?
British Columbia (on Canada's west coast) is having floods, while neighboring Alberta is having wildfires.
The tar sands oil that Alberta exports is partly responsible for both.
Noam Chomsky criticizes large language models as useless — fundamentally, by the way they are designed — for advancing understanding of cognition. This is because cognition plays no part in them. They don't try to understand anything.
Machine-learning systems can do many practical tasks well — those tasks that don't inherently involve conceptual understanding of anything. They can be useful, for good purposes and bad purposes. At the same time, they can treat their users justly (if released as free software) or unjustly (if released as nonfree software or only as a "service")
But we should distinguish this from intelligence, and reserve the term artificial intelligence for artificial systems that can understand.
What we think of as tales of individual resilience are the tales of those that survived danger by chance, and assume it made them stronger.
The chance sets you on a good path may result in your learning to be good at something. But chance doesn't turn out good for everyone.
Two years ago, Belarus forced down an airliner crossing its territory so as to seize dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich and his (then? former?) girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Now Lukashenko has tentatively decided to keep him in prison for 8 years for the crime of journalism.
There is no reason to suppose Lukashenko would actually release him, 8 years from now. It might do to him what Israel has done to Mordechai Vanunu — keeping him effectively incommunicado indefinitely, and pretending it is has a purpose other than making him suffer.
Sapega was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
Canada persecutes people who help anyone commit suicide — even with advice.
Limited to only incomplete and bad advice, some people may survive, physically damaged, and compelled to return to life even worse than it was before.
Starmer has dropped the policy commitments he made when he ran for leadership of the Labour Party, and it seems he was planning all along to do so. Apparently, all Labour stands for with him in charge is winning power.
Most horribly, he has made sure that all new Labour MPs will be like him.
It's like the British equivalent of the "centrist" US Democrats, but worse. Imagine if the Democratic Party machinery had the official power to forbid progressive candidates from running in a primary. That's what Labour is now.
*[DeMentis] accused of favoring insurance-industry donors at residents’ expense.*
*EU aims to harmonize criminal laws across bloc to fight corruption.*
*Brazilian thugs are investigating Bolsonaro, accusing him of counterfeiting a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.*
This is bizarre, because Bolsonaro says he proudly refused to be vaccinated and never claimed otherwise.
He visited the US on a special head-of-state visa. Maybe heads of state are not asked to prove vaccination.
It is idiotic not to be vaccinated, unless you have some specific medical problem which contraindicates vaccination. Please don't believe the disinformation which cherry-picks occasional problems with this vaccine and exaggerates their significance, while minimizing the continued danger of catching Covid-19.
A study of 50 counties in California and New York found that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour had several good overall economic effects.
In places where the minimum wage had previously not been unusually high, right-wing economists would predict increased unemployment, but the study found that did not happen.
*If you care about press freedom, make some noise about Julian Assange.*
Accusing the right-wing Supreme Court of being ready to disregard both facts and the right-wing idea of how to interpret the Constitution, in order to hurt Americans with unpayable student loans.
* Republican states fighting Joe Biden’s plan falsely said they’d be financially impacted by the scheme, debt forgiveness group claims.*
*[Some specific] green investment funds pushing money into fossil fuel firms, research finds.*
Dozens of women who worked for the CIA have accused it of disregarding accusations of some sort of sexual pressure on them.
It is not clear to me what the bounds of the term "sexual assault" are. The term is so loose that it is inherently misleading. But whatever it includes, the CIA should have handled these accusations properly.
Senator Warren has called for the US Trade Representative to confirm he will oppose ISDS clauses in future trade treaties, as Biden promised.
This is the most salient requirement for making a trade treaty acceptable; but it by itself is not sufficient. There are other ways a treaty can give business an advantage over human beings and society, thus making it a business-supremacy treaty.
Michael Chong, a member of Canada's parliament who originally came from Hong Kong, accused Trudeau of doing nothing to stop a Chinese diplomat from acting to harass him, his family in Hong Kong, and other members of Canada's parliament.
Civil liberties activists called for governments to decide not to allow spy software such as Pegasus.
I wish getting rid of spy software were that easy, but I don't think it is. When programs have bugs, some people will exploit them as security holes, and just saying "That's prohibited" won't stop it.
Indeed, gangs do this and they are probably breaking a law by doing so, but that doesn't faze them — they break many other laws too.
The free press is under attack, by states and gangs, all around the world meanwhile, its old business model is gradually disappearing.
Repression is increasing globally and spreading to additional countries.
*Six Libyans face death penalty for converting to Christianity.*
Many countries that call themselves "Muslim" impose that religion on more or less everyone. This is an offense against the freedom of every citizen, including those who are currently Muslims and might want to change. They also punish people for criticizing the official religion ("blasphemy") — in some countries with execution.
Christian countries used to commit similar injustices, quite generally, until the 1500s when a few began to adopt limited freedom for a few Christian sects. The Dutch Republic permitted Judaism as well. The UK didn't officially permit Jews until the mid 1800s, although some lived there. It discriminated against Catholics until later.
Protests against Macron's arbitrary increase of the retirement age in France are continuing after months, and thugs have taken up arresting people for the traditional protest of banging on pots.
I'm sure it is true that the finances of retirement pensions in France have a problem that requires more funds. But why turn first to the poor to get them? Macron did that because he is a "centrist", which means "bowing to the rich and pretending that's what most people want."
The propaganda terms "centrist" and "moderate" can be compared with "Bolshevik", which was used by a minority to pretend to be the majority.
Georgia thugs outdid themselves in defying reality and stretching laws by arresting activists who were putting fliers on mailboxes. They gave the address of one of the thugs who was involved in killing protester Manuel Paez Terán in the forest which is to be cut down to build Cop City.
*The inquiry into [his] death has been marred by contradictory information released by officials.*
I hazard a guess that the thugs and judges involved in this are right-wing. Contempt for law, justice and truth is the hallmark of the right wing, and these look like examples of it.
Students in several European countries, plus Uganda, are holding occupations to demand an end to building fossil fuel facilities.
*Anti-monarchists [in the UK] receive "intimidatory" Home Office letter on new protest laws.*
Everyone: call on Costco to stop supersizing wasteful packaging.
Americans are suffering illness and death due to the level of disconnection from other people. The amount of direct contact with other people has been decreasing since the 1970s.
The essay "Bowling Alone" took note of this development in 1995, but it has continued since then.
By going to the store to buy things, you can have a little more social contact with a variety of people — and you can pay cash and resist surveillance capitalism.
Putin has cancelled national celebrations on the dishonest pretext that Ukraine would attack crowds of civilians. Perhaps he's really afraid that those crowds of civilians would show their opinion of him.
Various US states are regulating PFAS, since Republicans won't let the US government do it.
*Victorian duck hunters urge parliament not to bow to "political correctness."*
I suggest that governments in Australia do more to encourage hunting of intrusive and introduced alien species, including foxes and cats.
The company Bytedance that owns and controls TikTok has a surveillance and censorship tool that has word lists that would catch discussions about political issues relating to China's repression.
It is not easy to determine what use the company makes of these lists. I wouldn't trust what the company says about that. (If the tool belonged to Facebook, I would not trust what it might say about that.)
*Senate Democrat Slammed for Pushing 'Unprecedented Giveaway' to Mining Industry.*
Mastodon has announced a plan to make the service easier to join.
On the practical level, attention to these issues can make Mastodon easier to use, and that is good. In practical terms, this work is worth doing.
On the level of values, the reference to Mastodon as a "product" made me worry for Mastodon's future. The values associated with making a "product", and all the other words typically used by businesses, are corrupting. They infuse a set of goals that are incompatible with respecting people.
A digital pet service that imitated a sweetheart or lover won users' hearts — then the company that ran it cut these simulated beloved from expressing affection.
The free software movement has something to say about it, and the author of the article gets it: "You can never have a safe emotional interaction with a thing or a person that is controlled by someone else."
Whether the author learned this from us, or thought of it on per own, it is good to see.
At the same time, a simulated friend that is entirely under your own control is not satisfactory, because whatever it says and does is your own fantasy. It is like a puppet.
Airbnb is destroying communities which many people like to visit, as many houses in them are now used as hotel rooms and there is not much in the way of housing to rent for all year.
I would never use Airbnb anyway, since you are required to (1) run nonfree software and (2) identify yourself to the company. I don't mind if the owner of the apartment or room knows who I am, but not a company!
Big US railroads gave paid sick leave to some unions, mainly the ones whose workers don't do the day-to-day operation of the trains. This is not adequate.
If railroads want their workers to work even when sick, they are trying to exploit those workers.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are trying to pass a bill to extend the debt ceiling and do nothing else.
They plan to do this using a discharge petition. To succeed, they need 5 Republicans to sign. They believe they can get them.
Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.
I would expect that the Republicans figure the oligarchs who fund them want to continue corrupting the Supreme Court.
*Internet freedom activists warn Congress that the EARN IT act would eliminate internet freedom.*
The stated goals of the EARN IT act seem proper to me, but the cost to freedom would be terrible, as adults would have to prove their identities to get accounts on platforms,
Another bill to protect "children" on the internet is called KOSA. The description of that bill seems to imply determining which users are "children" but doesn't say how this would be done. I fear the worst.
*Revealed: most of EU delegation to crucial fishing talks made up of fishery lobbyists.*
* Fast-rising fungal attacks on the world’s most important crops threaten the planet’s future food supply.*
* The impact of fungal disease is expected to worsen, the researchers say, as the climate crisis results in temperatures rising and fungal infections moving steadily polewards. Since the 1990s, fungal pathogens have been moving to higher latitudes at a rate of about 7km a year. Wheat stem rust infections, normally found in the tropics, have already been reported in England and Ireland.*
*Hot air: five climate myths pushed by the US beef industry.*
Everyone: call on the Carlyle Group to protect the planet by divesting from fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Secretary Austin not to leave [noncombatant] victims of drone strikes [uncompensated].
*The Democrats think [so-called] centrism will re-elect Biden. That’s a dangerous assumption.*
Currently they are planning to carefully manage the Democratic primary elections so as to prevent any progressive candidate from effectively challenging Biden.
When Democrats say "centrism", they mean siding with the rich and powerful against most Americans.
*Biden is still not doing nearly enough about the climate crisis.*
Evidence suggests that particles of plastic get into animals' brains (and that includes Homo sapiens), and that they can contribute to brain dysfunction.
Small private jets emit over 10 times as much pollution per passenger as commercial flights, yet they receive an indirect public subsidy.
This calls for a big increases in taxes on owning and using those jets. It would be just a start at ending the rich people's class war, but starting would be good.
Brazilian government forces describe fighting mining mafias.
The main difference between these mines and the mines and wells in the US is that the latter have bought the support of the government.
California still officially has a death penalty, but it is eliminating the soul-crushing "death row".
Clarence Thomas's vote in the Citizens United case boosted his billionaire benefactor's political power.
Labour is now competing with Tories to help middle-class people buy houses and disregarding the poor who can no longer afford to rent anywhere.
US citizens: call on Senator Feinstein to resign.
I have been disappointed with Feinstein for years because she is a so-called "centrist" (that is, plutocratist) Democrat. However. the reason there is a campaign for her to resign now is that her illness and consequent inability to vote in the senate is blocking Biden's judicial appointments. If she resigns, the governor of California will appoint another Democrat who will be physically well and able to vote.
Everyone: call on Google to stop collecting search and location data for abortion seekers.
Google's collection of such data about users is an injustice regardless of what they are searching for.
There is a proxy called LibreX which accesses Google search for you, but you can connect to it via Tor and not run the JS code it sends.
In the US: call on cable companies to stop paying extra to carry Faux News.
A previous petition called on cable companies to remove Faux from their standard list of channels. I signed that, but it doesn't affect me personally. Cable companies use DRM, and monitor what the user watches. For those reasons, I refuse to be a cable subscriber.
Australia's government is considering making the Nazi salute illegal.
Prohibiting expressions of hateful views will not stop people from communicating them, but it will undermine the defense of freedom of speech.
*Tucker Carlson has lost his job — but the far right has won the BATTLE for the mainstream.*
The Tories are not very good at carrying through a plan to the end. But they are already planning repression against anyone enraged about being arbitrarily disenfranchised through voter ID cards.
A survey of policy changes in European countries and which groups of people like or dislike them. In general, changes are more likely to be liked by the rich than by other people.
*Warren Says First Republic Collapse Shows Deregulation Boosted 'Too Big to Fail' Banks.*
US citizens: call on negotiators to prioritize working people & the planet in the "Indo-Pacific Trade Deal."
This deal would be a business-supremacy treaty, and almost certain would harm our freedom more or less. They give big companies additional power to do harm to the rest of society. Soon we will need to campaign to kill the treaty. Let's get ready now!
US citizens: call on U.S. pharmacies to provide abortion care to customers.
US citizens: call on Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop censoring teachers, students, and journalists.
Everyone: call on Trader Joe's to stop union-busting.
A Just Stop Oil protester has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for climbing a bridge and dropping a banner. Prison officials have threatened to make his prison term extra painful if he talks with reporters.
The Tories are passing additional repressive laws to crush the "selfish" protesters whose protests cause momentary annoyances. Just imagine how annoying agricultural failure will be for everyone!
47 Republicans blocked the Senate from approving the Equal Rights Amendment.
*Pandemic and Climate Crisis Usher In a New Age of Inequality.*
Demands from music copyright holders are pressing to stretch the scope of copyright, making the writing of lawful pop songs very difficult.
Overeager thugs arrested people for the most minor and peaceful of protests on the occasion of the proclamation of Charles III as king of the UK.
Paul Powlesland was threatened with arrest for holding up a blank piece of paper, inviting comparisons with China.
Meanwhile, the UK is rapidly passing laws to repress any sort of protest that inconveniences anyone.
*Climate Campaigners Stage Blockade at White House Correspondents Dinner.*
Being only 2/3 planet roaster is not good enough.
Asserting that the fighting in Sudan is a fight between proxies of rich Middle-Eastern powers over control of Sudan's resources.
I have a hunch that some of those powers are gangs rather than states.
Reportedly Libyan General Haftar is allied with one side in Sudan, the militia that is fighting against the Sudanese army, and they are backed by the United Arab Emirates and by Russia.
But I see no info about which powers back the Sudanese army.
Each note starts with a date and a brief topic in parentheses. That
text is also a link to that note.
For instance, if the note
starts with "31 July 2022 (Inflation)" then you can link to it with
"https://www.stallman.org/notes/2022-may-aug.html#31_July_2022_(Inflation)".
Return to Richard Stallman's home page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2023 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire page are permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
