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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
US citizens: call on Biden to appoint the USPS governors who will fire Postmaster DeJoy.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the Orwellian MAGA resolution about Jan 6.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to bar members of Congress, and their immediate family, from owning stock in companies that do business with the Pentagon.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to end disenfranchisement of ex-cons, nationwide.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
"A Trojan horse of legitimacy": Shell launches a "climate tech" startup advertising jobs in oil and gas.*
China proves that disincentives can achieve a substantial rate of population decrease.
Just Stop Oil is fielding a candidate for a seat in the UK Parliament as a rebuke to the cowardice of Starmer-Labour.
A refugee who was compelled by people smugglers to drive an overloaded boat has been convicted of manslaughter because some of them drowned, because supposedly the smugglers forced on him the "duty of care" — to have required qualifications, to refuse to allow too many passengers, to drive it safely, etc.
This is morally bullshit. A person who is forced to do a job can never deserve punishment on account of being unable to do it properly.
(satire) *New Study Finds Cavemen Had Trouble Sticking To Paleo Diet Without Frozen Meal Kits.*
The UK, and other countries, rightly resisted an attempt at a UN conference to declare that "nature" has rights.
This must be rejected because it is an incoherent idea. Exercising a right requires volition. "Nature" as such does not have volition. Neither does a species, an ecosystem, or a ship … or a corporation, for that matter.
Although many countries treat a corporation as a "person" and accord it rights, that policy is harmful. and we need to change it. In the US, we need to override the Corporations United decision which says that constitutional rights apply to corporations.
Laws to protect aspects of nature are a different issue. Those are coherent, and in general I support them. Indeed, I think we need to make some of these laws more strict and add more. But we can protect aspects of nature without confusing ourselves philosophically.
The rare harmful consequences of Covid-19 vaccines are being tracked with great care. A couple of side effects have been found to happen to 1 or 2 people in every million that has been vaccinated.
But if you have the bad luck to get one of these, you'll probably recover anyway. And you're more likely to get either of them after a real Covid-19 infection than after a vaccination.
*Progressives lambaste Biden over potential move to restrict asylum.*
Not everyone has ground for asylum, but rejecting people without a hearing is evidently unjust.
Trying to "compromise" with the Sabotage Party is futile. Their specific demands, ordered by the fascist saboteur, are meant only as trolling, and when he wants them to block government he can invent a new excuse at any moment.
Several European countries have now pulled out of the Energy charter Treaty.
Alas, this is not as beneficial as it might have been. Pre-existing foreign investments remain covered by the treaty for many years after a country leaves the treaty. What is really needed is something stronger: for the countries that belong to it to agree to an "update" which turns this part into a no-op.
(satire) *New Law Requires SNAP Recipients To Balance Food On Nose Until Receiving Command To Eat It.*
The UK's trial of 4-day work week was a success. 9/10 of the companies that started it a year ago are still using it.
The UK is systematically trying to prosecute the passengers that people smugglers force to drive boats.
*Embryo shipping services to halt business in Alabama after IVF ruling.*
That puts the Alabama IVF clinics that no longer dare to continue with the implantation of the frozen embryos that they are storing on patients' behalf into a quandary. There is no course of action that won't make them liable.
I expect it is not safe to be pregnant in Alabama either.
*[The insurrectionist] told the National Religious Broadcasters that "the greatest threat" to the US is "people from within our country".*
Nice of him to admit it.
The Alabama court ruling that every embryo is a "child" makes no sense in terms of biology and medicine, and is based on mistaking science fiction (artificial wombs) for reality.
When the judges grasp the reality, that none of those stored embryos can develop into a baby except by being implanted, I have a hunch they will conscript women to forcibly implant them into. Or maybe they will force the woman who made the eggs to suffer implantation of all of her stored embryos at once. These would seem like justice to people who don't care about human suffering.
But I doubt they could find any doctors willing to perform those procedures.
Emulators that pretend to be radio keys make stealing a car faster and easier than ever before.
*Revealed: car industry was warned keyless vehicles vulnerable to theft a decade ago.*
These cars are full of computers with nonfree software and little security. But the insecurity (like the surveillance) depends on their attempt to communicate by radio. If you deactivate the antennas, the car may be safe.
How difficult is that in practice? Does anyone collect information on converting connected cars into disconnected cars?
US citizens: call on the FTC to intervene in the bankruptcy case of Near Intelligence and stop it from ever again selling people's location data.
US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to block the Capital One / Discover merger.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect monarch butterflies.
US citizens: tell the executives of some insurance companies to stop insuring LNG export terminals.
*Antarctica sea ice reaches alarming low for third year in a row.*
The UK government is trying to eliminate a defense that climate defense protesters have used to convince juries to acquit them.
There is another defense that is valid for all climate defenders on trial for protesting: the necessity defense, for trying to prevent the bigger crime of ecocide.
The UNRWA says that, given the desperation for food of people in southern Gaza, they can't safely carry aid to northern Gaza.
The only place they can bring aid into Gaza is in the south, from Egypt, transporting a fraction of that insufficient aid across southern Gaza, meaning carrying it past injured and starving refugees, whose families will steal it.
As long as the aid is insufficient, and someone is going to starve, I suppose it makes no moral difference who draws the short straw, The real point is to bring in enough aid for everyone in Gaza.
The US could do that — it could land the aid on Gaza's shore by boat. It could land, each week, enough for everyone in Gaza for a week. Even Netanyahu would not dare attack the US aid force.
What it does require is boldness of spirit.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Lukashenko, tyrant of Belarus, is holding bogus elections. All the candidates he permitted to run are his supporters.
*Mexico City may be just months away from running of out water.* It has been emptying an aquifer and now the aquifer is almost empty. Global heating has put most of Mexico into a drought. Decades of population growth has also contributed to creating this crisis.
*[16000 miles of] abandoned pipelines could release [large amounts of mercury and lead] into North Sea, scientists warn.*
* At [Julian Assange's extradition hearing], lawyers posed the pivotal question: how can exposing crime and torture be worse than committing them?*
US citizens: call on the EPA to strengthen and finalize the Climate Pollution Rule.
US citizens: call on Biden to secure a ceasefire in Gaza to save lives in Rafah and beyond..
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on North Carolina Governor Cooper to make bridges or tunnels so endangered red wolves can cross highways without getting killed.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stop Politicians Profiting From War Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress not to start a war with Iran.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Florida Legislature to pass Rep. Dana Trabulsy's bill to limit book bans.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject "fiscal commissions" to cut programs that non-rich Americans depend on.
SCROTUS have expanded this; the targets now include many government programs that either benefit the non-rich or inconvenience the powerful.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Most US businesses are now required to report who effectively owns them. However, some big businesses won a special exception by expensive lobbying.
They include venture capital funds, hedge funds and private equity funds.
The UK's tax agency is following the path of the US IRS: investigating rich people less.
I conjecture that the reason is the same in both countries: the state has surrendered to the demands of the rich, who demand to be allowed not to pay their taxes.
How the mass media mislead Americans to think their children are in real danger of being kidnapped on the street.
Disentangling the wrong that racist prejudice does to people from the benefit that cultural mixing between racial groups gives to culture.
A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine, then went to live in Spain, has been murdered. I see little reason to doubt that Putin organized the killing.
* Lobbying firms work double-duty, representing political interests of victims and perpetrators of climate [disaster] in state capital.*
We must expect any one lobbying company to work for many clients. And normally that is not particularly scandalous. But continuation of global heating will destroy almost anything, and using the same lobbyist will help that lobbyist become better known and more influential with officials.
(satire) *Scientists Discover Birds Lied About Being Related To Dinosaurs.*
A UK minister, given the job of investigating whether British troops in Afghanistan committed war crimes, said he has found no evidence to deny it — and information suggesting that they did.
The UK economy is held back by a record number of workers who are disabled by long-term illness.
Two important causes are the Tory-beset NHS, so damaged that it cannot treat all the disabled workers so they can return to work, and long Covid.
Imprisoned Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova has not been heard from since a year ago.
Racist, crooked cop Derek Ridgewell went on framing man after man, as the thug department protected him. Then he was caught and convicted of thefts like those he had framed others for — but nothing was done to find all his victims and exonerate them.
China has crushed a thriving independent cinema movement. Many of the films have been preserved in an archive in the UK.
If Republicans take over the US, they will crush independent cinema here.
(satire) *God Admits Sending Great Flood Was Just Misguided Attempt To Impress Jodie Foster.*
The level of PM2.5 particulate air pollution in the US causes a large increase in cardiovascular disease. Even at the WHO-recommended (lower) concentration limit, the contribution to disease is significant.
It also seems to increase the rate of dementia.
As global heating continues, there could be more and larger wildfires. They create this pollution and spread it widely.
So, if my memory serves, does burning wood in a stove in your home.
Putin is persecuting right-wing Russians that criticized him. They used to be tolerated.
*NRA and Wayne LaPierre found liable in lawsuit over misspending of funds.*
A court decision has made in-vitro fertilization effectively illegal in Alabama, by ruling that the destruction of a frozen embryo constitutes "killing a child." As a result, to carry out IVF there is now too risky.
This is the sort of lunacy that religion leads to. And if this decision stands, it would be a short step further to rule that abortion is murder.
In addition, the world desperately needs to reduce the human population through humane means, so as to decrease the disaster that global heating is starting to produce. Discouraging IVF is a legitimate contribution to that. The good thing to do, if you want to raise a child, is to adopt one. That will not increase the world's population, and it will help someone who is otherwise likely to suffer.
Former president Hernández of Honduras is on trial in the US for accepting bribes from leaders of drug gangs.
His corruption was bad for Honduras, as corruption always is; but if the alternative was a destructive "War on Drugs", what he did may have been less harmful. But it would be better to legalize and tax the transshipment of drugs than to take bribes to look the other way.
*Twenty-five US universities face calls [by students, teachers and staff] to cancel Starbucks contracts [on account of its union-busting].*
Distinguishing support for Palestinians from support for terrorism is the mirror reflection of distinguishing condemnation of Israeli government actions from antisemitism. Lobbying for Israel's policies campaigns to erase both of those distinctions.
The Putin forces won a Pyrrhic victory when they captured Avdiivka. An extreme nationalist Russian revealed the figures, and was targeted with so much hostility that he shot himself.
If Putin conquers enough small parts of Ukraine with such a high rate of casualties, he will lose the war.
Two large US credit card companies want to merge.
The government should not permit this. The benefits of capitalism, when there are some, come from the existence of competition, but businesses keep seeking to eliminate that benefit.
Senator Warren thinks the same.
The US again vetoed a simple Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, saying that its own proposed resolution would have a better chance of making a cease fire happen.
I do not see what its advantage would be.
US citizens: call on state legislatures to take the lead in regulating guns.
US senators have proposed a bill that they say would "criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by [so-called] artificial intelligence." I agree with the goal, but a vagueness hides a dangerous detail in the bill.
I support criminalizing the making, publication and republication of nude deepfakes without the subject's permission. Any deepfake that misrepresents the subject's words or actions should get the same punishment. You have the right to claim someone said or did something, but creating fake evidence that falsely purports to prove that is the moral equivalent of perjury.
However, to criminalize "receiving" or simply holding on to a copy of such a deepfake is a broad threat to freedom.
This is not to say that there is anything redeeming about nude or disinformational deepfakes. Whatever you wish to say, it is wrong to say it that way. But they will be made, and people will receive them. What then?
To prohibit having a copy of an image or text — any image or text, no matter what it presents, no matter how disgusting we consider it — is an attack on history, journalism, and democratic politics. Ultimately, it becomes an attack on memory, creating the danger that governments will command people to forget. It becomes an attack on justice, since people will be ordered to destroy evidence of crimes they may wish to fight.
If we tolerate a law requiring people to forget one specific kind of material, that would invite more laws ordering people to forget other things as well. That road leads to tyranny (China is an example) and puts truth in danger.
It also opens the door to a kind of digital swatting. Once some texts or images (it doesn't matter which) are designated as criminal to possess, people could accuse you at random of having some. Then the digital SWAT team will seize all your computers and storage devices to check for them.
With a physical SWAT team of today, if you're still alive by the time it has ascertained that there was no need to break into your home, it will leave you in peace with the repair bills. Being raided by a digital SWAT team would be painful and dangerous too. They might find no forbidden deepfakes but they could copy your secrets. Worse, they could find something that you had been sent and did not remember to delete. They could find an email you had not noticed or with an attachment you had not tried to view, but you could not prove that. And supposing you could, would that exonerate you?
If Republicans get away with claiming to have won the next election, what sorts of documents or videos might they punish people for having?
We will all be safer, and democracy safer too, if we establish that no such law can be considered.
*US proposes UN [Security Council] resolution calling for temporary ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel not to attack Rafah.*
Step by small step, Biden is increasing the pressure on Israel. The small but painful US sanctions on certain Israelis may expand. I think he intends to ramp up the pressure until Israel stops the attacks.
That will be a good outcome, but if he doesn't speed it up, Israel's steadily mounting atrocities may truly amount to genocide before that happens.
US citizens: call on the US government to stop using single-use plastics.
Israeli attacks have effectively ruined the Nasser hospital, which was the largest hospital that was still functioning in Gaza last week.
Israel claims to have arrested "100 suspected HAMAS militants" in the hospital courtyard. This sounds impressive — we are supposed to assume that Israel must have had some specific reason to "suspect" each of those people, and therefore proves an enormous level of HAMAS infiltration.
More likely it means is that Israel found 100 men "of military age" there, and followed a policy of suspecting each of them on general principles.
*Dozens trapped [inside Nasser hospital without water, food or electricity] after Nasser hospital raid as G7 warns Israel over Rafah offensive.*
If the wrecker gets power next year, this article argues that the American Republic would collapse, followed by the current world order, the US economy, and efforts to curb global heating.
An FBI informant who gave the FBI incriminating testimony about Hunter Biden has been charged criminally with falsifying that testimony.
Right-wing billionaires could supply plenty of money to recruit liars to testify against Hunter Biden.
US citizens: Support the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.
US citizens: call on the United States to insist on a full investigation into accusations of military election rigging in Pakistan, before recognizing a new government there.
US citizens: call on the Senate to complete the investigation into the wrecker's foreign ill-gotten gains.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the proposal to label fentanyl dishonestly as a "chemical weapon" and charge people with "terrorism" for possession of it.
Laws must not lie. The illegal fentanyl trade has harmful effects — the usual effects of black-market sale of drugs.
Some of the people who buy fentanyl on the street buy it because their doctors won't prescribe them enough oxycodone to last the whole day. (Each pill works for 6 hours.) They are victims of the War on Pain Sufferers.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Israeli army showed reporters extensive tunnels under the UNRWA's main office in Gaza.
We cannot trust either HAMAS or Israel to tell the truth about events in Gaza, or about tunnels that exist there. But I think it must be true that these tunnels were built by HAMAS. I don't think Israel could have built tunnels 700 meters long in a few months in Gaza in the middle of the fighting. It could perhaps have set up a room full of electrical equipment supposedly connected to the tunnels, but I won't say those couldn't be the work of HAMAS.
I would expect that the construction of military facilities amidst UNRWA's facilities was a war crime committed by HAMAS. We already know HAMAS commits much worse violations of international humanitarian law.
It is plausible that the tunnels got their electricity from the UNRWA camp. Stealing electricity happens world-wide, but it is a minor issue compared to the war crimes in Gaza.
I don't think the UNRWA knew about these tunnels. I expect that HAMAS recruited some of the UNRWA staff and they ensured no one else learned of the existence of the tunnels. Israel has accused some of UNRWA's staff of serving HAMAS. That accusation is not proof as regards the guilt of specific individuals, but it is perfectly plausible that HAMAS infiltrated the staff of UNRWA. I expect Israel tried too but was not in a position to succeed very much.
This infiltration of UNRWA is no reason to cut the funding for the humanitarian aid it gives to Palestinians, and no excuse for continuing to subject hundreds of thousands in Gaza to death from hunger, thirst and disease.
Almost half the people privately enslaved in Britain nowadays were not trafficked from some other country. Rather, they are boys who were pressured by local criminals into supporting their crimes.
Germany is harshly silencing those who criticize Israel.
After Hitler's mass murder of Jews became public knowledge, Jews were compelled to confront the question: is it "never again" against us, or "never again" against anyone whatsoever? Humanitarian morality must choose the latter interpretation, and that is what I support.
Germany has, according to the article, adopted the narrow interpretation, according to which Israel cannot be criticized for predictably killing tens of thousands (and perhaps eventually more) of Palestinians in Gaza, and those who do criticize it are "anti-semitic".
*Tennessee advances bill to [imprison] people [for] helping minors obtain abortion.*
This demonstrates the fanaticism of the religious extremists that are determined to prevent abortion, whatever the cost (to those who are pregnant).
The bill says specifically anyone who "recruits, harbors, or transports a pregnant unemancipated minor" commits a crime. I wonder what it means, concretely, to "recruit" someone for an abortion. Does that ever really occur?
I also wonder what is covered by "transports". Does it include giving someone money, which she might use to buy a bus ticket?
Small farms in the US are having trouble, while large farms are bringing high profits. Congress is proposing to increase subsidies that are independent of size. That won't address the problem.
*Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history.* There is an old current in Jewish thought which stands up for anyone who is mistreated — including Palestinians mistreated by Jews. And another old current of deplatforming them.
Explanations for why Netanyahu clings so tightly to defeating HAMAS militarily even though the war is not going well, and why the US finds it so hard to stop this.
The fact that HAMAS is not dead even in occupied northern Gaza may help convince pertinent people that the idea of militarily eliminating HAMAS is an impossible dream.
The hottest January ever recorded has caused fire disaster in southern South America. Governments need to change many policies so as to prevent and discourage fires.
*Ill-judged tree planting in Africa threatens ecosystems, scientists warn.*
Projects to plant lots of trees have gone awry before. Sometimes the problem is simply that most of the trees die, having been planted in places where those species will not grow. In this case, it seems worse problems threaten.
*Plastic producers have known for 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.*
This could be the basis for big lawsuits against them.
*[The bullshitter] says mixing [up] Haley with Pelosi and Biden with Obama was tactic, not gaffe.*
One advantage of training your supporters not to accept truth from you is that you can get away with bullshit about your bullshit.
Why Pennsylvania coal miners moved to the right wing after the 1950s.
Yanis Varoufakis: *Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited "maxed out credit card" analogy?*
*Global awareness of women’s health being "hijacked by vested interests"* to sell quackery.
Rampant unrestrained capitalism does that in every area. Society needs a framework that doesn't elevate profit above all else.
States are banning the "captive audience meetings" in which businesses order workers to listen to anti-union propaganda.
The new president of Indonesia appears to be General Subianto, who served dictator Suharto and is accused of torture.
Australia's parliament has called for freeing Julian Assange.
*Global media freedom at risk as Julian Assange back in UK court facing possible extradition to USA.*
The US is the prime mover of imprisoning Assange, but the UK is responsible for its willingness to extradite people for acts of journalism. It is doing so under a treaty that the UK ratified but the US never did. It demonstrates the subservience of the UK.
The substance of the treaty is outrageous because it agrees to extradite to the US for actions that are not crimes under UK law. That discards a basic principle of extradition known as "dual criminality": that country A should not extradite a person to country C for an act that is a crime in country unless that act is also a crime in country A. This principle spares country A from becoming an accessory to country C's repression.
We used to envision the Soviet Union or China as playing the role of country C, but in this case the US plays that role.
*We have seen Assange’s plight in a UK prison, but extraditing him this week would be a disaster for us all.*
Suggesting that we stop treating the subject of cancer as a taboo or unmentionable. And stop comparing it to a "battle".
My cancer treatment never felt like a battle to me. It was sometimes annoying and hurt only occasionally. As for bearing up against cancer, that was easy after almost four years of practice in bearing up against cancellation.
*Leaked emails reveal organizers of leading science fiction and fantasy awards (the Hugo awards) [excluded] works of a "sensitive political nature"* to cater to Chinese censorship.
The World Science Fiction Society should change its rules so that Worldcon cannot be held in a country that would impose political censorship on books to be sold, discussed, shown or judged at the event. Teams bidding to hold a future Worldcon should have to sign and publish an affirmation to this effect.
I understand, of course, that bidders cannot take responsibility for stopping the sate from censoring Worldcon. But I think bidders in countries that impose political censorship would hesitate to sign such an affirmation, and that would achieve the goal of protecting Worldcon from being held in one.
*China, Russia and Cambodia top list of regimes targeting critics in exile.*
*The mysterious, violent and unsolved deaths of Putin's foes and critics.*
Robert Reich explains why "preaching to the choir" in politics is useful and worth while.
The Guardian has covered some modern Luddites, whose views are somewhat similar to my ideas -- on free software and neighboring issues.
Ms Crabapple even cited an FSF slogan!
If you know any of them, please tell per about fsf.org/tedx and gnu.org/philosophy. gnu.org/gnu/first-hackers-conference-1984.html could be useful to mention as well. And it never hurts to mention stallmansupport.org.
Reforestation in some US regions is keeping those regions from heating up.
Even more important, it is working against global heating -- though it isn't enough to overcome the greenhouse emissions of other parts of the world.
Arguing that Israel should release Marwan Barghouti from prison, so he could win free elections and lead Palestine in a secularist direction towards making peace with Israel. That is supposing Israel is willing to accept such a peace.
"Virtual hospital beds" can now monitor a patient's recovery while perse stays at home.
It sounds like a useful idea, for certain patients (not those who might need a rapid intervention if something goes wrong). Except that I suspect it is implemented in an unjust way, depending on nonfree software plus connection to the internet.
If that is the case, I'd have to refuse to allow it in my home.
It would be easy to implement such a monitoring system with free software. But I expect that the NHS never even thought about the issue.
US citizens: call on Senator Dick Durbin to subpoena Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo about their corrupting influence on Supreme Court justices.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject section 702 mass surveillance.
I read that one attempt to pass the bill was rejected, but not conclusively. There will be more attempts.
*Senior Pakistan official admits election rigging as protests grip country.*
*Ireland and Spain demand EU [review] Israel trade deal over rights obligations.*
*Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn* *Authors of study call for action to prevent possible collapse of region's ecosystems and climate impacts that would result.*
I don't think anyone can tell how long it will take for this disaster to be unstoppable. The question we face is one of how far to press our luck.
*Mississippi prison delayed [prisoner]'s cancer diagnosis until it was terminal, lawsuit says.*
I wish it were possible to get courts to intervene before it is too late.
The EPA is concealing the measurements of the amount of PFAS in plastic containers from he public, calling it a "trade secret".
In general, the US government gives businesses' desired for secrecy much more weight than it deserves. Trade secrecy is fundamentally antisocial. At the same time, compelling people to publish everything they know would be tyranny; therefore, when a business's secrecy about some specific thing does no particular harm, we should go along with it.
However, when trade secrecy collides with anything important for society or the public, trade secrecy must yield.
The verdict in the insurrectionist's fraud trial fined him 364 million dollars.
It was not a criminal trial on charges of fraud. If it were, he could have ended up in prison once found guilty.
*The "law-and-order" candidate is an adjudicated fraudster.*
He is already responding by escalating the super-big-lie.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and insist on clean funding bills that attach no new restrictions to government services. These bills need to be passed by March 1 to avoid shutdowns of parts of the government.
I think Democrats should stand by as SCROTUS shut down some large part of the government, rather than join with them in a compromise that would damage government programs and policies.
With courage we can defeat those disinformation-wielding saboteurs.
Some waste dumps occasionally release a large quantity of methane in a short time. Preventing more such leaks would take a substantial step towards avoiding global heating disaster. But the biggest problems are in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; it won't be easy to get them to spend money on this.
US citizens: call on Biden to cut Pentagon emissions and help save the planet.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
In 2023, Guber made a profit for the first time…by squeezing it out of the drivers. It's paying them less than peanuts, now.
Many reasons to refuse to do business with Guber.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the National Labor Relations Board from the musk-et's lawsuit designed to destroy its funding.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A relative of Herbert Hoover rebuked Biden for comparing the wrecker to Hoover.
I have a different criticism: comparing the wrecker to Hoover is an understatement.
Herbert Hoover was a Republican president who worshiped the Invisible Hand and therefore refused to take effective action to get the US out of depression. The many people made homeless by his inaction built shanty towns that they called "Hoovervilles".
But Hoover did not try to overthrow democracy. He was a plutocratist, not a fascist. He ran again for president, lost to FDR, and accepted defeat. Then FDR instituted the New Deal.
The wrecker, by contrast, is a fascist and is trying to eliminate democracy and rule of law in the US by turning democracy and the constitution into a sham to disguise a dictatorship.
Although Hoover did not try to overthrow democracy, other plutocratists did try, and asked recently retired General Smedley Butler to lead the coup for them. Butler surprised them by upholding the Constitution and testifying about their plot.
US citizens: Call on the Supreme Court to affirm that the insurrectionist is not above the law.
El Salvador's president Bukele was reelected despite the constitution's prohibition on reelecting any president.
He made El Salvador crime-free, by means of putting 75,000 people in prison without charges. A trial is an imperfect way to judge a person's guilt, but a non-trial is much worse. Surely many of them are not criminals. Will they ever be released?
(satire) Ohio Begins Executing Random People In Hopes They're Criminals.
An activist threatens to destroy some prized works of art if the UK does not free Julian Assange.
I support that goal, but I think that method is misguided and harmful because it uses the art works as hostages.
How so? It is not a threat against the owners of those art works. They have given him permission to destroy them for his protest, and legally that may be sufficient for him to avoid criminal charges. But the permission of the owner is not morally sufficient. These paintings are part of the heritage of humanity, and humanity too has a right to protect them.
More deeply, it is an error to take the construct of property rights for the sole and total basis for judgment of right and wrong. It is useful to have a concept of property, and useful to legally protect property to some extent. But destroying art works would also do wrong to the rest of us who do not own them. Including those of us who advocate freeing Assange.
The importance of these paintings to humanity is not a direct consequence of their market value. Rather, their market value reflects the idea that they are important.
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to keep mifepristone legal.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to vote to ban spraying neonicotinoid pesticides in wildlife refuges!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to end surprise medical bills in the next COVID-19 package.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The UK's foreign minister, former PM David Cameron, said that Israel must allow Gaza food and water or else it would violate international law. He also said that the UK will not support Israel in attacking Rafah.
Al Jazeera accuses Israel of specifically targeting a TV team at work in Gaza.
Old radio-controlled car locks are insecure, so Canada plans to ban digital radio analyzers
On those few occasions when I have driven cars with wireless locks, I have felt extremely uncomfortable with them — but not because of theft. It is because of pitfalls, such as the ease of walking off with the key while leaving the engine running for a friend to borrow the car. I'd feel safer with a key that must be in the lock for the car to run.
If Biden is serious about recognizing an independent Palestine alongside Israel, he could make Israel accept that by means of additional sanctions on people and businesses like the ones he has already made.
Those sanctions could be viewed as a warning shot at Netanyahu.
This would, in my view, be using sanctions for a worthy goal. However, it also shows the extent of arbitrary power that the US exercises in this way.
*National self-interest stymying global cooperation, a [poll of powerful people] finds.*
* The world has entered a new era marked by zero-sum thinking in which countries seek relative advantage through protectionism, self-interest and rejection of mutually beneficial cooperation…*
Zero-sum thinking is more foolish now than ever, as we are all threatened together by global heating disaster, and avoiding it requires efforts by all. But there will always be countries that are threatened more in the short term and others threatened less. If that becomes an excuse to refuse to pull together, the shortsighted foolish will doom themselves as well as their "rivals".
Before the Super Bowl had been played, Google and Microsoft bullshit generators fabricated statistics for the game.
Why do people insist on calling them "artificial intelligence"? "Artificial stupidity" would fit these bullshit generators better.
The wrecker threatened to dun NATO members for not paying enough by encouraging Putin to destroy them.
Other NATO members should contribute their share to he common defense, but being bullied by the US would feel more like a protection racket than like protection from Russia. Thus, the wrecker is seriously trying to wreck NATO while making it deniable.
Sycophantic Republicans go overboard in supporting everything the wrecker has said, and what they think he might perhaps say soon.
*The super-rich got that way through monopolies.*
I don't believe rich people inherently deserve to keep riches even if they have "earned" them. When they have done so, it is a point arguing that they deserve a bigger part rather than a smaller part, but does not imply that they deserve to keep all of it.
The system of trading and business is very useful, and eliminating it would be foolish, as the Soviet Union and China have at times demonstrated. It does not follow that we should bow down to the invisible hand and place business above the most important things, as Boeing and Pfizer do. We must have the strait jacket ready for when it goes nuts.
Millions of Americans are obsessed with a celebrity couple and tossing their money away on conditioning themselves to feel even more obsessed.
It's a trap — stay out!
*Columbia Scolds Students for "Unsanctioned" Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals.*
I heard the song, Daisy a Day, on an oldies radio station this week. I had never heard it before. It's sweet and sad, and I drifted with the feelings. But then, when I heard the line
I'll love you until the rivers run still.I was struck by despair, because that is now. The rivers are running still already!
The Mississippi and the Rhine were so dry last summer that they could no longer carry shipping. And the Panama Canal didn't have enough water supply to operate normally.
Many Britons are using license plates, copied from other cars, so that they can dump fines on someone else.
Even worse, various agencies punish the victim and close their eyes to evidence that they were victims of this.
That is a very British form of government screwup. I conjecture that it is caused by the combination of automation and outsourcing to private companies.
*[The insurrectionist] is too old and incited a coup. Biden is too old and mixes up names. America, how to choose?*
Otherwise put, which is worse — forgetting details or a Big Lie?
The insurrectionist's memory is not so good either.
Biden said, of Israel's atrocities in Gaza (my words), that "it's gotta stop".
He gradually gets closer to insisting, but it is not clear whether he means that the fighting has "gotta stop" or that fighting this intense has "gotta stop".
The Amoc ocean current cycle is close to running amok. It could happen any year. If it does, it could raise the height of the Atlantic Ocean by one extra meter in a few decades, as well as making northern Europe colder and drier and wiping out the Amazon rainforest.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote NO on unconditional aid to Israel.
You can also phone 1-833-STOP-WAR to convey the same message.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Youtube to stop profiting from global heating denialism.
(wordplay)
The page misuses the word "monetizing", which properly means "using something
as currency." I refuse to imitate that bad change in the English language, but I agree in
substance with the petition so I signed it.
The petition also use the term "content creators" to refers to the makers of videos that pretend global heating is unreal or not disastrous. The term fits in a way, since those videos are designed to make people content with seeing our world go down the tubes.
Civilization depends on people to refuse to be content with this. Please be a malcontent creator like me!
UK voters who consider Labour too right-wing, especially in its total support for Israel's war policy, are organizing to run candidates against Labour
They have concluded, as I have, that they cannot influence Starmer-Labour except by running against it. I expect they will influence Starmer-Labour's stand on Gaza. I hope they will also influence Starmer-Labour stand on plutocracy and the environment.
* China "threatens relatives in Tibet" to exert control over activists in exile.*
China threatens relatives of dissident Chinese overseas, too.
*US climate scientist Michael Mann wins $1m in defamation lawsuit* against right-wing denialists.
Tesla faces punishment for inadequate security on customer data. Since Tesla cars snoop so much on customers, the data that can leak is more than you might expect.
I recommend that before buying any car made in the last decade or so you investigate how to prevent it from phoning home with any data, prevent it from contacting cellular data networks (since they would track the car's location), and cut off its access to GPS (so it can't remember that for the next time it is serviced).
Europe's focus on data protection is a basic distraction. Data, once collected, will be abused. The key to privacy is preventing data collection.
*The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels — except for in three key sectors*: shipping, aviation and industry.
In addition, agriculture causes global heating due to deforestation, fertilizer and methane from cows.
Resistance is growing in Brisbane to the expense of stadium construction for the planned 2032 Olympic games there.
In general, government subsidies to big stadiums benefit various wealthy interests at the people's expense. The people of Brisbane got angry at this and may have caused cancellation of part of the plans.
Olympic games tend to cause nonfinancial kinds of harm, too — such as repression of street vendors, repression of people passing by, and lasting increments in surveillance.
*[One] US hospital treated 441 patients with severe injuries from border wall last year.* But that's just one sector of the wall.
*‘It would be devastating’: inside [the wrecker]’s plan to destroy the EPA.*
*California fast-food workers launch new union.* Bravo!
*Israel appears to be in breach of ICJ orders on Gaza, [UN special rapporteur] says.*
*Georgia police and FBI conduct Swat-style raids on "Cop City" activists' homes.*
Some of the targets have no links to any known crimes, and were not charged with crimes.
Thugs are carrying out repression fascist style, with the help of the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Will Biden not make these agencies stop?
*The world is waging war on its children, in an obscene mockery of international law.*
The article focuses on the short term harm which is occurring in a number of regions. But let's not ignore that it will get worse in the long term. The biggest attack against children is governments' tolerance for continuing global heating, manifested in the failure to firmly curb the planet roasters. This is likely to kill a large fraction of today's children in a few decades.
In the Netherlands, couples who are gravely ill can now have euthanasia together and die hand in hand.
I think the couple presented in the article as an example would have chosen to stay alive together if their medical problems had been adequately treatable.
A survey of women in one Australian state found that 2/5 suffer from chronic pain.
The main causes of this pain are affecting large numbers of people, so they should have high priority in medical research.
Some rich people say they will be proud to pay more taxes. By raising taxes on the rich, we will make patriotic millionaires glad and the greedy bastards unhappy. Both of the sides are good.
US citizens: call on Citibank to stop financing liquid natural gas.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote to ban polystyrene foam.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Arguing that the US must insist Netanyahu release Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti from prison, so he can challenge HAMAS for leadership of the Palestinians.
*Cyber-attacks by North Korea raked in $3bn to build nuclear weapons, UN monitors suspect.*
*For the past 15 years, the government has allowed Boeing to conduct its own inspections related to many manufacturing and safety issues.*
Government inspections generally exist for good reasons — reasons of safety. Getting permission to inspect their own work is a favorite route to corrupting the inspection system. It gives businesses a way to defeat the purpose of inspections.
Israel has besieged the al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis for 18 days. It ordered people to leave, but many wounded people were unable to leave and many medical personnel would not leave their patients.
220 Israelis have been jailed for expressing various views criticizing Israel' s bombardment and siege of Gaza.
I probably agree with some of them and disagree with others, but that question is, in each case, a side issue. I support their freedom of speech.
* Refugees [in Gaza] crammed into the border city [of Radah] face a terrifying choice: stay for the expected attack, or flee back north through a war zone.*
HAMAS has proposed a three step plan to make a truce, release all the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, with the aim being to agree on peace by the end of this.
This puts the hardest part at the end. Nonetheless, I find it promising, since it shows HAMAS is not opposed to ending the war.
I think the US should demand that Israel drop its opposition to ending that.
Ibrahim Hamed, a US citizen, called on Biden to rescue his mother, Samaher Esmail, also a US citizen, from the Israeli army, which took her prisoner recently in the West Bank.
There are no criminal charges against her. If there were, a trial could perhaps determine whether there are grounds to imprison her. But Israel often imprisons Palestinians for years without trying to justify it.
US citizens: call on your U.S. Senators and Representative to protect free speech on campus.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The head of UNRWA says he fired employees that Israel accused of aiding HAMAS without having evidence that they really did so.
The UK plans to make it a crime to wear a mask at a protest.
Always more repression in the UK.
*EU to take action against Hungary's "sovereignty" law.*
*This is the year of the climate election. Journalists should cover it that way.*
I've treated the slowly developing climate crisis as crucial since 2000 or before.
*Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry.*
He doesn't do this as often as we need, but he's a lot better than many politicians that are entirely plutocratist. I also appreciate his efforts to improve antitrust law and regulation of corporations, which I've commented on here.
His efforts to end Israel's chain of atrocities are not firm enough but they are better than most American politicians would dare do.
*American Base in Jordan Where Drone Killed 3 U.S. Troops Dogged by Inadequate Air Defenses.*
I expect that it would be cheaper, as well as wiser, to provide better defenses than to retaliate. A group of religious fanatics can't be deterred by retaliation or threats, but its weapons can be defeated like anyone else's.
Taylor Swift threatened to sue Jack Sweeney for posting public data about the movements of her private jet.
I would expect that any one rich person's private jet contributes too little to global heating to be worth a moral fuss for its own sake. But all the private jets do amount to a significant (though small) fraction, and a campaign calls on people to stop using them.
Keep in mind, when considering the excuse repeated in the article, that many "carbon offsets" are bogus and that the system of ill-checked "carbon offsets" is of substantial help to the planet roasters in deflecting justified public pressure for true decarbonization.
This is why I call for a carbon tax rather than "carbon trading".
*Italy's far-right government submits plan to decriminalize abuse of office.*
I'd expect right-wing plans to include abusing various offices. But it is alarming that they openly propose changes in the law so they can get away with that.
*Ugandan climate activists face charges after a month in maximum security jail.*
Thugs already brutalized them. Now they could be imprisoned for a year for a nonviolent protest.
The law being used to prosecute them was imposed by Britain when Uganda was a British colony. Ironically, Britain is on nonviolent climate defense protesters.
*Quitting smoking reduces cancer risk at any age, says study.*
*U.S. immigration authorities locked thousands of people in solitary confinement in 2023 as the United States continues to flout international human rights standards in its sprawling network of immigration detention facilities.*
Facebook and Instagram plan to label all images that were created with generative machine learning systems.
It is misleading to call generative machine learning "intelligence", but labeling its output is a good thing to do.
Groups that support Iran attacked US troops in Iraq. The US counterattacked, but that was probably futile.
I would expect that the attackers are religious fanatics and would be thrilled to be martyrs, so fighting them will tend to be ineffective unless the US army can destroy them. That would be quite difficult.
The US must refuse to be intimidated by them. If the US were to drop its support for Israel's fighting in Gaza to appease fanatics, that would only make the US seem weak.
However, for the US to insist on supporting Israel's fighting in Gaza in order to spite hostile fanatics would be childish.
The US should do the right thing in Gaza, and the right thing is to make Israel stop its war crimes.
*US court bans three weedkillers [based on dicamba] and finds EPA broke law in approval process.*
*Federal Court Halts Spraying of Monsanto’s Dicamba Pesticide Across Millions of Acres of Cotton, Soybeans.*
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%.
US citizens: call on the US Supreme Court to protect the abortion pill.
I usually don't post (or sign) petitions addressed to courts, because courts are likely to ignore public opinion about the judgment. But this time they might calculate they should heed it.
US citizens: call on President Biden and Secretary Granholm to reject all LNG projects.
The UK government has cut funding for universities to the point where many will have to shut down entirely, if they cease to get foreign students from wealthy families who pay heavy fees.
*[The saboteur-in-chief's] allies and advisers have hinted at a more methodical second term: driving forward fossil fuel production, sidelining scientists and overturning rules.*
*EU lays out plan to cut greenhouse emissions by 90% by 2040.*
Often you can detect these right-wing systematic liars by their constant pretensions to be telling the truth. Compare with the bullshitter, for instance.
*Repetition has blunted the art museum protests so much that the pumpkin soup assault on the Mona Lisa felt pathetic. More effective tactics are needed.*
The UK has a procedure for ministerial staff to raise complaints of mistreatment by ministers, but staff say that invoking it is so painful to use that it discourages anyone from filing complaints.
*"Bitter Blow" to Biodiversity and Health as EU Pulls Proposed Pesticide Rule.*
Julian Assange's final hearing is Tuesday, February 20. A rally that day at noon is at the State House in Boston. We're hoping Rep Jim McGovern will send a statement to be read by his staff and are asking other big speakers, and will also want our regulars to speak. We'll do our best to get press there.
Furthermore in Boston, on Saturday, February 10, starting at 11:00 there will be a two-hour "postcard party" for asking each the 441 members of the US House of Representatives to sign onto H Res 934 to drop the charges against Assange.
*World "not prepared" for climate disasters after warmest ever January.*
Unprecedented disasters have just occurred in California (extreme rains) and the Valparaíso region (wildfires entering a major city).
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the US nursing home business. This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money, create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I've also proposed prohibiting private equity from buying up lots of rental housing.
Pakistan's government has democratic forms but the substance is military rule.
I have no way of knowing whether Imran Khan is guilty of those corruption charges. (I don't know the details of them.) I also don't know whether this is an instance of selective prosecution over something all politicians do. But the "un-Islamic marriage" charges clearly demonstrate that the Pakistani state is repressive and unjust.
That has, however, been true for a long time, because Pakistan sentences people to death for "blasphemy".
I urge everyone to stay away from Pakistan.
A UK court has ruled people cannot be fired for being anti-Zionist.
That policy is just: whether to be Zionist or anti-Zionist is a matter of political views, and people should not be fired for disagreeing about those.
Being antisemitic is a different matter: that is a form of bigotry, like antimuslimism or antiarabism. We must be careful to distinguish clearly between antisemitism and criticism of Israel or its actions.
I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
If misogynistic porn isn't bad enough, propaganda against masturbation goes one harmful step further.
I have a hunch that "masturbation abstinence" advice comes from the same people that campaign to prohibit abortion and birth control.
The London thug department arrested a homeless man for refusing to leave the tent where he was living. Then, viciously, the thugs stole and destroyed his tent and his other belongings.
The department has apologized and agreed to pay damages. That's better treatment than is normal for thugs. But even when they arrest someone for a valid reason, that does not excuse confiscating or destroying poor people's property when preserving it was possible.
Students at Northwestern University face criminal charges for publishing a parody of the school's student newspaper. It criticized the school's support for Israel and its atrocities in Gaza. They wrapped their parody around some of the copies of the newspaper they were parodying.
They are being prosecuted under an obscure law against "theft of advertising services". It prohibits inserting other material into newspapers. Does the law cover wrapping a different cover around the newspaper? In terms of advertising, that is very different.
More deeply, prosecuting people for expressing their political views in a parody is an attack on freedom of speech. No matter if it is offensive to someone -- since it is about a real political issue, we must recognize its redeeming social value whether we agree with it or not.
It seems clear that this is part of a campaign of persecution, in the US, Britain and parts of Europe, of people who publicly defend Palestinians rights.
I disagree with those people on a least one point. They call Israel's war in Gaza "genocide"; in my view, it has not reached that level yet, but it is heading that way. But that disagreement is not pertinent to the issues of raised by prosecuting them.
(Later): The prosecutors have dropped the charges.
Researchers say that the recommendation algorithms of "social media" platforms are "amplifying misogynistic [messages]."
This is because companies design them to get users addicted by amplifying whatever leads users to stay on the dis-service longer. I've proposed passing a law to disconnect recommendation engines from the platforms, and allow users to choose the recommendation engine to use with any given platform.
Please don't call works "content." Doing so disparages all works. The works which are misogynistic may all be disgusting and despicable on account of that, but equating works with "content" implies that all works -- whether misogynistic or not -- have no value except to keep a box full.
*Most Republicans aren't aware of [the insurrectionist]’s various [criminal accusations and lawsuits].*
Putin has launched intense persecution of gays in Russia.
US citizens: call on the SEC to propose again the Stock Buyback Disclosure Rule.
Stock buybacks used to be prohibited entirely, before a plutocratist change in the law. We should undo that change and prohibit them entirely once again. But this rule will be much better than no change.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
This would not do as much good as raising taxes generally on high incomes together with limiting the ability to shelter large amounts of wealth from taxation. We should continue to push for that as what we really want.
*A 100km-long curtain moored to the Amundsen Sea bed in Antarctica could
prevent catastrophic flooding elsewhere, say scientists.*
I can see things that might fail, but it may be worth a try.
Reportedly, former president Do-Dirty of the Philippines is advocating
secession of the large island, Mindanao.
Do-Dirty was elected for the fame he got by running a "war on drugs"
in which official thugs killed people on the street, then claimed they
were drug dealers. Some were really drug dealers and some were not.
Without putting them on trial, the thugs had no way of knowing.
The article makes the error of describing Mindanao as a "town". I am
not very confident about the rest of what it says, but I have no other
information.
Mississippi Republicans want to make it impossible to repeal abortion
restrictions through a vote by the public.
Much of what Putin says about Ukrainian prisoners is bullshit. Some
could be true, but we can't be sure of any of it on his say-so.
Putin's henchmen are bullying and brainwashing the kidnapped Ukrainian
children. Ukraine has the name of around 20,000 kidnapped children,
but there are probably much more.
There are strange variations in how Russians treat kidnapped children
and the Ukrainian relatives who search for them. I theorize that he
has not systematically informed all Russians of what he is trying to
do, and not given everyone orders to cooperate. The result seems to
be that individual Russians who deal with these children react
to events according to their views and values.
Forest fire has invaded the city of Viña del Mar, Chile, just north of
Valparaíso.
I asked a friend there if he is ok.
there is bipartisan support for a federal shield law to protect
journalists and their sources.
(satire) *NRA Narrows Search For New Leadership With Round Of Russian
Roulette.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then
right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser
such as lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Biden seems to have in mind a deal for diplomatic recognition of Palestine. But it faces many obstacles, and probable obstruction by Republicans
under orders from the wrecker is not the biggest of them.
I don't think the US can wait several months to stop supporting the
killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, not even to achieve
the hoped-for progress.
*Scientology-linked UK drug rehab left vulnerable people "traumatized".*
The asylum seekers in the UK, given housing only on a remote barge,
are living
in terrible conditions and say it is like a prison.
MPs told ministers, "We were disheartened to see some of the living
conditions on the Bibby Stockholm, with many individuals having to
share small, cramped cabins [originally designed for one person],
often with people [up to six] they do not know [some of whom spoke a
different language to them]."
One said told a reporter tat "We are concerned that housing asylum
claimants on Bibby Stockholm is leaving them in a claustrophobic
environment, isolated from external support, including legal advice,
and without important links to community, faith or family, potentially
for months on end."
Companies that write phony scientific papers for a fee have
infiltrated the editorial boards of "real" academic papers.
That led to 10,000 articles retracted last year.
Municipal surveillance cameras installed in Ukraine but produced in Russia
could be doing surveillance for the Putin forces
You can't trust a product with nonfree software..
British school inspectors used unreliable portable computers to take
notes when they interviewed school the personnel. A visit to a school
could last for some time, and if the computer crashed during a visit,
the notes already entered were lost and the inspector had to
reenter them from memory.
Careers could be wiped out because of the unreliability of reentering them.
Why did the people managing this believe that was acceptable?
Gauging that the US approval of Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds)
without trustworthy regulation makes them sucker bait.
I certainly will not but into them. I don't want to speculate; I want
safe investments that don't require being watched with an eagle-eye
every day or second-guessing everyone else.
Israel's siege and bombardment has made most Palestinians in Gaza want
to flee to Egypt.
That is what Israel wants -- to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians. And
the cruelty of its treatment of them seems designed to pressure them
to run.
To enable Israel to succeed in terrorizing Palestinians into fleeing
is not a just outcome. Israel should stop its reign of terror, and the US
should make sure that it does.
*Deadly, cheap and widespread: how Iran-supplied drones are changing the
nature of warfare.*
What makes them so dangerous to the US now is that the religious
fanatics that use them cannot be deterred by the expected losses from
a probable counterattack.
Small, cheap drones have destabilized warfare, but I don't think the
instability will last. Every country now needs a defense against
drone-bearing fanatics. I expect the US will have a cheap
counter-drone weapon a few years from now.
*Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under [existing law, the]
Telephone Consumer Protection Act.*
* [Governor] Abbott is using the same misguided legal arguments once
used by the Confederacy. Some of the supreme court is listening.*
A long interview with Bernie Sanders, about the insurrectionist's threat
to end
democracy in the US, and related issues.
*[Right-wing] activist
who led ouster of Harvard president linked to "scientific racism" journal.*
The
trade pluses and minuses
of taking Britain out of the EU add up to an enormous minus.
This is not to count all he suffering that the Tories have imposed on
Britain by restricting immigration, and the sadness of people who
cannot go to work or retire across that border.
I forecast that leaving the EU would be a disaster for Britain
if
the Tories were in charge, and that it might be beneficial if Labour were in charge. The
first one is what happened, and my forecast came true, and for the reasons I gave. A
plutocratist party would use all "opportunities" for dooH niboR. By contrast, it is clear
that Corbyn's preference to maintain a customs union with the EU would have avoided a big
part of the harm, and he would have encouraged foreign workers to come and keep the NHS
and other public services functioning.
As for Starmer Labour, he is almost as plutocratist as the Tories were
then, so that party would not reduce the harm much.
Thailand has forbidden campaigning to change the law that forbids
speaking of the monarch or the monarchy in a less than respectful way.
The coral reef heat damage warning system has added new levels of
warning that will be required by the higher ocean temperatures our
greenhouse emissions have brought about.
As the British state cuts funds to universities, it makes them turn
increasingly to wealthy foreign students, whose money keeps them afloat.
This is, of course, bad for British students. But that's the general
pattern: right-wing budget cuts are bad for nearly all the non-rich.
The cuts were started by the Tory party when it stood purely and
simply for dooH niboR (take from the poor and give to the rich).
Now that the Tory Party has moved towards the extreme right, it sees
this as an opportunity to knock down the non-rich and weaken them.
The Labour Party of the past would have offered to undo the cuts,
but now that it has become a center-right party it is not interested.
(Here's the latest example
of Labour's new alignment.)
Labour is also about to eliminate most of its planned investment in avoiding
environmental disaster
even as it courts business with deregulation.
A campaign based on what some call "ableism" condemns the plan by a
woman to play Richard III. Peculiarly, not because of a gender
difference, but because she is not "disabled".
Can a non-disabled 21th-century actor properly play a powerful but
physically disabled 15th-century noble? Can a disabled 21th-century
actor properly play a powerful non-disabled 15th-century noble? I
think we can only answer, "Maybe — try and we'll see."
This production raises a similar issue about gender: Can a
21th-century woman play a 15th-century male king? Is it reasonable
for her to try? Can a 21th-century man play a 15th-century reigning
queen? Is it reasonable for him to try? I think we can only answer,
"Maybe — try and we'll see."
Interestingly, the article does not even mention that question. It
accepts that a woman can play a male character. If society accepts
that, why object? Try it, and we'll judge your acting ability.
So why not do the same for disability?
The dispute may be based on confusion about the 15-th century facts.
Was Richard III "disabled" as we understand the term? I can't be
certain but it seems that he was not.
Whatever pain or inconvenience scoliosis caused him, it did not
interfere with his physical activities. He could ride a horse in
battle, wield a sword in battle, and lead an army to victory.
He impressed people through success in vigorous sports.
My conclusion is that he was not disabled in any practical sense.
I think that disabled actors will be better off if they are accepted
for playing any and all roles, rather than guaranteed all the disabled
characters' roles.
Alleging local business magnates illegally contributed indirectly to
the re-election campaign of NYC night-mayor Adams.
The reason to do this would be to buy support for their interests, and
that would not work unless Adams knew what policies he had to support
or block in order to earn those contributions.
The UK's decaying post office shows Americans what DeJoy is aiming to
achieve here.
*Paris residents set to vote on plan to triple parking charges for
SUVs.*
The extra parking charge would be good, since it would discourage
SUVs. But parking is only one of the areas in which SUVs do harm.
They make collisions more damaging to pedestrians and people in other
vehicles, and they increase pollution. The SUV penalty should be bigger
and apply everywhere.
Ohio is voting on a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering in
that state, by having an independent commission draw the electoral
districts.
Are socially harmful widespread practices caused by
market failure, or
by bad government
regulations? This article argues that "market failure" is usually caused by bad
regulations, and often that is true. But what causes those bad regulations, and why don't
we change them?
Why, for instance, doesn't the US regulate the emissions of SUVs and
pickup trucks
like cars?
Environmentalists have pressed for this, but they have been rebuffed by the US government.
That is lobbying at work. Any bad regulations in the market tends to
benefit some companies, and they will spend part of the benefits to
lobby to maintain the regulations that benefit them.
Most economic policy choices are not between a "free" market and a nonfree one.
A market requires rules;
the question is, which rules will it have? And how are they to be chosen?
In a democratic country, those rules are decided democratically. In a flawed democracy
such as the US, they are decided by contention between democracy and lobbying. Almost
every bad regulation is protected by lobbying, so fixing it requires a battle.
That's why I support election of progressive officials, such as Senator Sanders and
Representative Pressley, who will be eager to go against the lobbyists and fix the bad
regulations and laws.
Human Rights Watch reports that *human
rights are in decline globally
as leaders fail to uphold laws.*
How
Greta Thunberg was arrested
and charged with a crime for a nonviolent climate defense protest.
The thug that conveyed the threat to Ms Thunberg did so in a refined
way, avoiding verbal brutality. However, the substance of the demand
supported a policy that kills a substantial number of people now,
and will kill much larger numbers in the future. The message of
the protester at the trial was right on:
Canadian thugs arrested journalist Brandi Morin as she was covering their dismantling of a
homeless indigenous people's
camp.
Climate defenders were prosecuted for continuing a nonviolent protest
in London after being ordered to stop.
The case was dismissed on the grounds that the order was not communicated to them properly.
That was the right result, but the reason for it means that human rights are not safe in
the UK. In effect, this judge turned this case into a warning shot.
*European politicians weaken climate policies
amid farmer protests.*
It's much more comfortable in the short term not to bother preparing to keep climate
disaster small enough to survive it. But it is foolish in the long term.
Climate defenders called on the US Department of Agriculture
to take account of the contribution to global heating of
meat and dairy production.
George Monbiot: *In the UK and around the world, those who challenge
rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with
ever-more inventive penalties.*
*Why in the UK, can you now potentially receive a longer sentence for "public nuisance"
— non-violent civil disobedience — than for rape or manslaughter?*
Monbiot connects this to plutocracy.
See the recent Greta Thunberg example.
*One toilet for 500 people:
death and disease
as Palestinians flee to Rafah.*
*Unless Israel changes course, it
could be legally culpable
for mass starvation.*
So far, what Israel has done to Palestinian civilians in Gaza is
violent killing of many civilians, and imposing great privation. To
call it "genocide" is an exaggeration. But if Israel continues adding
to this crime, including by knowingly causing famine in Gaza, the crime
will grow to become genocide for real.
Israel's true friends must join Palestine's true friends in making Israel stop.
A Canadian man who sent many people suicide kits has been charged with many murders. Equating
facilitation of suicide
with murder is willful blindness.
The article obtusely refuses to entertain any doubt that providing means to commit suicide
constitutes murder. Even if the author believes that, does perse not recognize that it is
possible to disagree?
At the same time, it occurs to me that someone may have requested means to commit suicide,
not in order to commit suicide, but in order to murder someone else. Ideally, people who
want to commit suicide should be able to get the means from someone who would refuse to
provide them to someone like that.
Robert Reich explains how the bullshitter and Republicans
are trying to spread
chaos to discourage non-fascists from voting. After creating as
much real chaos as they can, they pretend there is even more of it,
hoping Americans will give up and not vote, or support a fascist
strong man.
I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive
candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to
vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of
winning.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the
American bumblebee as an endangered species.
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 special meal highlights well-known foods that are in danger of
becoming unavailable due to global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the assault Weapons ban.
In the US: Say you stand with union journalists in the face of illegal
firings.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate
Gov. Abbott's human rights abuses.
You can tell Labour is a plutocratist party when it gives higher
priority to satisfying the demands of bank CEOs than to achieving the
goals of the voters.
Some Israeli ministers call for restricting the already inadequate
humanitarian aid to Gaza, as a means of war.
*AOC says no one should be
‘tossed out of public discourse’
for accusing Israel of genocide.*
I disagree with that accusation — I've explained
the difference
between
genocide and a series of atrocities — but I agree completely with AOC's point.
As long as we tolerate people in public discourse despite their advocating the horrible
things that Republicans espouse (or, should we say, "rape"?) nowadays, it is absurd to
condemn a person totally for a disagreement over the level of condemnation Israel deserves
for killing 25,000 Palestinian civilians.
The Norfolk Southern megarailroad responded to the derailment in
East
Palestine, Ohio,
by increasing its lobbying expenditures to make sure Congress
does nothing to require it to hire enough workers to ensure safety.
The derailment, the toxic gas leak and the fire would not have
happened if the train had had
a full crew.
California is proposing an interesting approach towards
antisocial media platforms.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these
options should not be limited to minors — every user
should have this choice.
(Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them
like children and
retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's
addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it
yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices
on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or
none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not
only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the
right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And
collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
China seeks unceasingly to recruit spies in Taiwan.
Why should Taiwanese fight China? Not out of hatred for China the
country, but rather to protect freedom in Taiwan -- and someday,
perhaps, to bring it to China as well.
*[Tory] ministers plan to push cash-strapped English councils to sell
assets.*
The Tories cuts in support for local government now turn out to be
part of a two-part dooH niboR scheme. First, cut the aid to local
governments to the point that they can't do anything for the non-rich,
not even parks and public libraries, not even the most essential
(which they must do anyway). Then, compel them to make up the
shortfall by selling public buildings and land in a hurry, for less
than their market value, which is in effect a hand-out to the rich.
The two parts add up to dooH niboR as a whole: take from the poor, and
give to the rich.
A seabed mining company is using NAFTA to prevent Mexico from
protecting seabed ecosystems in the Gulf of California.
NAFTA is a business-supremacy treaty
and it contains an ISDS clause.
Businesses can use those against any government. I call them "I Sue
Democratic States" clauses because democratic states sometimes heed
popular demand to make regulations to stop business operations from
doing massive damage. This damage can be enormous -- it can include
global heating disaster, which may result in the collapse of
civilization -- so preventing it justifies war.
One of the few good things that the wrecker did as president, one of
the few cases in which he did what he said he would do, was replacing
NAFTA with a new version, which ISTR eliminated the ISDS clause.
I wonder, didn't that treaty eliminate this case? If not, why not?
Could a further revision of NAFTA succeed in abolishing all the
existing cases under that one treaty?
The EU has delayed a rule requiring each farm to set aside 4% of its
usable farmland for protection of wildlife and the soil.
It is safe to delay this, but in the long term such protection is
absolutely necessary to avoid disaster. I suggest phasing it in,
perhaps introducing the rule by increments of 0.5% each year. After 8
years of that, it will reach 4%, but by going slowly it will give
markets time to adjust.
Some investors in BP are demanding it cancel plans to ramp down fossil
fuel extraction, saying it could make more money pumping more.
A few decades from now, if we do not curb global heating, all that
wealth will disappear along with the framework in which it is
meaningful, But these fools don't look at the long term.
What this shows is that we must force the world to reduce fossil fuel
extraction at a planned pace. We must make sure the world does not fulfill
these short-sighted investors' expectations.
Thailand has arrested a Russian dissident rock band and threatens to
deport them to Russia, where Putin would imprison them.
The band was allowed to leave Thailand, so it is out of danger.
Understanding why nocturnal insects orbit lamps shows why light
pollution at night can wipe them out.
Fossil fuel companies were warned about the danger of global heating
in 1954, from research that they funded to track the level of CO2 in
the air.
The US should pay compensation for the civilian casualties of its
fighting in Somalia. And elsewhere, too.
*New Zealand to ban PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in cosmetics from 2026.*
Australia finds that car manufacturer are still publishing greatly
underestimated figures for pollution emissions.
The Tories are now considering imposing conscription on the UK because young
people don't want to join the army.
There is not much about the UK as it is misgoverned that would inspire
people to fight to defend it. The only argument I know of is,
"Government could be even worse."
Global heating is causing sea-level rise. The better-off people in
the prosperous parts of Miami (mostly whites) want to move west to
higher ground, into neighborhood now inhabited mainly by blacks.
To facilitate this, redevelopment projects tear down old housing projects
and build new housing, most of which is rented out for more than the old
inhabitants can afford.
Because of the extent of racism in the US, this phenomenon has a
racial tinge. The wealthier people who drive poor people out of
higher ground are more often white, and the poor people driven out
tend to be nonwhite.
But that detail is not what makes this an injustice. If the people
moving in were the same mix of races as those being driven out, only
richer, the injustice would be the same. A good society is not cruel
to anyone.
Governments ought to buy out every residence in what is or will be a
flood zone, and build new flood-safe rental housing for tenants to
move to. And help people move out of regions such as Florida, which
are going to be too hot and wet whether inundated or not. That is
what progressive officials would do -- while reducing the size of this
problem by vigorously curbing global heating.
*EU [proposes] force cosmetic companies to pay to reduce microplastic
pollution.*
This is just a first step, but it will get started on a path that the
world needs to follow much further.
*Israeli ministers attend conference calling for ‘voluntary migration’ of
Palestinians.*
I am sure any such migration would be no more "voluntary" than the use
of nonfree software today: done under pressure that is hard to resist.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to overturn the "Citizens" United decision.
Those corporations called their organization "Citizens United", but I have no reason to
endorse their distortion, so I call it the
Corporations United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
There are proposals to impose censorship on material being shared
digitally between individuals by means of requiring that computers
(including snoop phones) contain a specific nonfree program which
would check for forbidden communications before end-to-end encryption
goes to work. That system design is called "client-side scanning".
For me, the first argument against this is self-evident: nonfree
software is unjust and requiring any nonfree software is inexcusable.
The second argument is monitoring of people's private communications
is tyranny, and that once the system exists it will surely be used
to censor political views.
However, to persuade officials who don't care about those human rights
issues, neither the unjustice of nonfree software nor that of privacy
will suffice. Other arguments are needed.
Here are some practical arguments against
mandating client-side
scanning.
*The women suing Tennessee for being
denied abortions [which they
needed
for medical reasons].*
Vicious Republicans, shame on you!
Economist James Meadway integrates
awareness of global heating
and its effects and consequences into understanding of the economy.
When the climate was fairly stable, and fluctuations were temporary
("weather"), it may have worked to treat those as externalities.
They are small changes and can be modeled with perturbation theory.
But when global heating is taking every measurement off the charts,
to assume they are small perturbations is simply false.
*It's right to probe UNRWA's problems &mdash yet what would replace it? Its
critics have no answer.*
Swatting has extended to various right-wing US officials and
politicians.
Swatting is a dangerous form of violence, and its existence is a blot
on our society. It used to be focused on people hated by
right-wingers, and that often led the SWAT thugs (often right-wing
themselves) to shoot first without noting that there was nothing
wrong.
Now that the victims may be themselves right-wing, thugs may learn the
habit of considering there may be nothing actually wrong, before they
shoot anyone.
Proposing an international network of Green Cross organizations that
would help the people struck by climate disasters beyond the ability
of a national government to deal with.
Bernie Sanders: *The United States must make it clear to Netanyahu
that we will not provide another dollar to support his inhumane,
illegal war.*
I agree.
Delays have made the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant so expensive that
the main investor, EDF, looks to lose money on it.
Hinkley Point C should be canceled and the sunk costs written off.
Building nuclear power plants as a means of decarbonization is idiotic
because renewable electric generation and battery storage are much
cheaper and much faster to build. The decision to build that power
reactor has to have been influenced by illegitimate goals.
*How [defunct] Beloved Indie Blog "The Hairpin" Turned Into an AI
Clickbait Farm.* The article reports that some businesses are
systematically buying expired domain names of sites that were of value
once, and doing this to them.
The copyright on the articles formerly posted on that blog site did
not expire with the site's domain. What the site is described as
doing to some of those articles sounds like copyright infringement to
me. This article does not say who holds those copyrights, or how the
clickbait farmer could have found those old articles.
You may have heard that I advocate major relaxation of copyright law.
If the changes I propose there were carried out, that would not alter
the legal situation of this issue.
*Kagame's government [in Rwanda] targeted journalists who uncovered killings,
disappearances and torture linked to the regime.*
Many young Britons can't afford the education needed to get a good job.
A substantial number can't afford the costs of working, such as clothing
and commuting.
I suppose the latter will eventually compel employers to offer higher
wages. But the education problem won't solve itself that way.
The NSA gets Americans' location data without any sort of warrant
by buying it from data brokers.
The NSA kept this secret, and Senator Wyden had to block a
nomination to extract the admission that the NSA does this. I presume
he knew this for a fact, from secret sources he was allowed to see,
but in order to take action to stop the practice he needed something
he could lawfully cite.
The NSA currently says it "minimizes" such collection, which means
doing no more than it finds "necessary" for whatever goal it is
working on. How much is that? We don't know.
We do know there is danger that a year from now the US will have a
dictator nominally called "president", a dictator that cooperates with
Putin and whose supporters include state officials who seek to repress
abortion and women who get abortions. What will the NSA and other
government agencies do then, with the location data they can obtain?
Of course, we should do our best to make sure that the wrecker loses
to Biden again, and we should prepare to crush the coup that he
already encourages his followers to mount.
But this should also remind us that it is unacceptable for the systems
we use to keep track of our activities. The most sensitive personal data
is about details:
Hostile urban architecture, designed to eliminate all opportunities to
comfortably rest or pause, makes cities unpleasant for doing anything
other than rushing through to the next purchase or errand.
This fits perfectly with the spirit that criminalizes homelessness
and, in some US cities, spends far more to persecute homeless people
than it would cost to give them homes.
Governor DeMentis has one year left to attack freedom in Florida.
Citizens wonder what more they will lose.
How could people who want to make Britain just, kind and welcoming possibly
get past Starmer? This article suggests ways.
Oil and gas utilities, and electric utilities that use fossil fuels,
spend customer's payments on climate crisis denial. California is looking
at prohibiting this.
(satire) *Congress Reduces SNAP Benefits To One Free Treat On
Recipient's Birthday.*
Restrictions on abortion in the US are interfering with sex and with
forming sexual/romantic relationships.
However, it has encouraged more use of birth control, including condoms.
That is good -- but that good consequence does not justify the anxiety
and fear caused by banning abortion.
Americans (and everyone else):
get vaccinated for measles
(unless you've already had all the diseases it covers, or the vaccine).
Moscow now requires clinics to record the audio of
every meeting with
a patient.
A
Houthi attack
set an oil tanker on fire, just south of Yemen.
* UN court's ruling is
devastating for Israel
and awkward for [its] allies such as the UK and US, which belittled South Africa's case.*
The court did not label the crimes Israel has already committed as "genocide", but pointed
out properly that they head in a direction which, if continued, would amount to genocide.
And it ordered Israel to bring these crimes to a halt.
The US should help make sure it does so.
If this judgment is not heeded, how
can Putin ever be held
to account?*
Biden has ordered a reconsideration of the criteria for
approving
fossil gas export
terminals. As a consequence, several proposals are now on hold.
If this leads to stricter criteria, and to less construction of new export terminals, that
could be a significant step towards avoiding climate disaster. (Although nowhere near
enough by itself.)
*We
must start urgently talking
about the dangers of a second [insurrectionist bullshit] presidency.*
Congress was considering a deal which would trade military aid for Ukraine for restoring the
wrecker's
border wall and cruel treatment
if people crossing the border.
The articles I've seen do not explicitly say, but I think that the aid
for Ukraine would be temporary and the border repression would be permanent.
That alone makes it a deal for suckers. Never make a permanent concession in exchange for
a temporary one! If you accept that kind of deal, you're inherently at a disadvantage and
you will lose ground every year.
Israel accused 12 members
of the UNRWA staff of fighting for HAMAS or other terrorist groups. This is being used as
an excuse to cut off the aid to the Palestinians. Israel kept the information secret for
months until a time when it badly needed to distract public opinion from the war crimes
court's judgment
against Israel.
The UNRWA is a UN humanitarian aid agency, not intended as a police
force or peace keepers. It has 13,000 or so staff in Gaza,
99% of
whom are Palestinians from Gaza.
If 12 of them were fighting for HAMAS, that amounts to 0.1% of the
total staff. For a large organization in Gaza to have such a small
fraction of HAMAS fighters is doing pretty well at avoiding them.
*Famine in Gaza
is being made ‘inevitable’ says UN rapporteur. Countries defunding UNRWA, the main aid
distributor in Gaza, are accused of collectively punishing more than 2.2 million Palestinians.*
* António Guterres says loss of funding from US and [other countries],
[for humanitarian aid for Gaza], means aid into Gaza for whole of
this
month cannot be guaranteed.*
Governor Abbott of Texas has declared that he can disobey the federal
government in the name of Texas. He has also clearly echoed the
manifestos of the secessionists
of 1861.
The wrecker's supporters have been
preparing for rebellion
for over three years. They used violence on 6 Jan 2021, followed
shortly thereafter by threats of violence against senators and their
families. So I've been expecting an open confrontation sooner or later.
Better now than later!
The bullshitter's campaign strategy is to talk tough and defiant, giving the impression
that he is "stronger." Biden tends to try to avoid sharp confrontation, which plays into
the wrecker's hands.
Abbott's hint of secessionism gives Biden a chance to show that he is the stronger one.
For instance, he can federalize the Texas National Guard now, and order it to take down
the barbed wire it has helped place at the border.
That would provide an opportunity to discharge immediately any guard member who refuses to
obey that order. Showing that insurrectionists will not be tolerated will help keep the
guard loyal in any future rebellion, both by expelling the disloyal and by reminding the
loyal guard members of their duty to defend democracy against insurrection.
Ukraine builds
long-distance attack drones
and uses them to attack Russia's oil export terminals.
*Rampant Biden Administration Oil, Gas
Drilling Approvals Continue
to
Undermine U.S. Climate Commitments.*
No amount of renewable electric generation will avert global heating
disaster unless it leads to reducing total greenhouse gas emissions.
For civilization's survival,
that must be the goal.
Bird flu is infecting some chicken farms in the US. When a farm is
infected, it will infect nearly
all the chickens,
and the government requires killing all the chickens to hinder spread to other farms.
If that were the only way the virus can spread, this would be an effective way to stop the
spread. But it may be useless while wild birds continue to spread the virus.
I wonder, therefore: if we let those chickens live, would a few of them, resistant to the
virus, survive and recover? Would that lead to resistant breeds?
Apple has announced a
plan for allowing other app stores
for the iMonsters, and it seems likely to exclude free (libre) software.
The problem is that users will have to pay a fee, and it sounds like
the redistributor will have to collect that fee — but there is no way
to do that without using nonfree software and insisting that users run it.
That is not certain, though. Depending on details, the problem may exist or not.
The operating system of the iMonsters is
full of nonfree software
(which is, as usual, malware). That is unfortunate and unjust, but
it's Apple's doing, not ours. Distributing free software that can run
on iMonsters would not make us culpable for what Apple does. If Apple
charges the user money to install our free programs, Apple would be
culpable for that too, but again we would not be.
If Apple requires whoever redistributes the code to pay a fee and
collect it from the users, participation in that would be odious, and
perhaps (depending on details) financially prohibitive, but supposing
it is possible it would not be culpable for us. This culpability would
naturally fall on Apple, along with all the rest.
However, if collecting that fee from the users requires us to ask the
user to run nonfree software — for instance, the nonfree JavaScript
code sent by Stripe for payment — we would be culpable for that.
There is no getting around this.
Compare with the Android situation. The site f-droid.org uses
free/libre programs which you can download and install with free
software. The Android/Linux operating system includes nonfree
software, and even malware, but that is not f-droid's doing nor that
of the developers of the free programs distributed there.
Why hasn't the EU required Apple to permit an Fdroid-like distributor
for free/libre software for iMonsters? It is because the EU directive
is based on the concept of more "competition" and not on "freedom for
users." In the competition framing, all people need is "more choices",
never mind if all of the choices are unjust.
The military rulers of Burma have suffered major defeats; large
units have
surrendered.
In 2008, Israel
and Palestine came very close to agreeing on peace and mutual recognition. The deal they
almost accepted then could be modified into a deal for today.
The local toxic air pollution released by tar sands oil extraction has
been
underestimated by a large factor
because of a flaw in the system used to measure it.
The article misuses the concept of percent; as a result, I can't tell
for sure what the factor might be. As best I can tell, the
factor of underestimation ranges from 18 to 62, but I can't be sure.
A UK court ruled that
victims of trafficking and slavery
should be allowed to stay in the UK while their asylum claims were heard. Tory ministers
secretly decided to disregard that ruling.
To me it seems unjust to make
asylum seekers leave the country
they are asking for asylum in while their cases are decided. Especially by sending them
to a country which is unsafe (Rwanda) by means of a law saying that courts should
disregard that country's unsafeness.
A UK proposal for
taxing the wealthy
more heavily refers to family
with middle-class family incomes, equivalent to $85k per year, as "wealthy".
Using the word "wealthy" with such a low threshold surprises me, and I can
understand why people and families with such incomes conclude that "the
highest 10% of incomes" is too broad a filter to be defined as "wealthy".
US citizens:
call on Congress
not to make new tax cuts for the rich in 2024.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject the creation of a "fiscal commission",
since that is a scheme to cut Social Security and Medicare.
US citizens: support the End Child Poverty Act.
If you watch US TV news networks: call on them to stop inviting
election deniers on the air.
US citizens: call on Biden and Congress to Expand Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to stop Big Pharma from jacking up the price
of prescription drugs.
US citizens: call on Congress not to add permanent restrictions to the
right to seek asylum.
A permanent concession is too high a price to pay for a temporary
benefit.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to condition further military supplies
for Israel on respecting the human rights of Palestinians.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call for ending the death penalty.
Note that the wrecker wants to expand use of the death penalty. It
might seem appropriate, poetic justice even, to compromise by
authorizing the death penalty only for those convicted of trying to
overthrow democratic government, but I think that that would be
harmful in the long term — it would be responding to hatred with more
hatred.
*16 … humanitarian and human rights organizations call to stop arms
transfers to Israel [and to] Palestinian armed groups.*
They include Amnesty International, Oxfam and Save the Children, among others.
The FBI searched many people's deposit boxes in a single massive
operation, and seized valuables found. An appeals court ruled
that this was unconstitutional.
When the FBI applied to a lower court for a warrant, before the
massive search, it misled the court about what it planned to do.
The 2023 World Science Fiction Convention was held in China, and it is
clear that China imposed censorship on the Hugo awards.
The WSFS should either separate the Hugo awards from the Worldcon when the Worldcon is held in a country that imposes political censorship, or make a rule
to exclude those countries from holding the Worldcon.
US citizens:
call on Congress
not to give government subsidy to phony abortion clinics.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Propane companies are presenting that carbon-containing fuel as "renewable"
based on
a chain of exaggerations.
You can use it, if you are pro-pain, but that would not avoid the impending
destruction of civilization due to global heating effects.
*Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation
campaign on [Ex-Twitter].*
The campaign operated 50,000 fake accounts.
Anyone supporting Putin, who is known for repression inside Russia's
borders and wars of conquest outside them, is probably either an
intentional disinformationist, or someone persuaded by intentional
disinformationists.
Robert Reich: Ending the war in Gaza, and ending the oppression of the
occupation of Palestine, calls for moral clarity. The US called on
Israel to manifest that.
Biden should show that Palestinian lives matter to him by insisting
that Israel end the atrocities in Gaza.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate autobullshit-generated
voter suppression disinformation in New Hampshire.
Please don't refer to automated bullshit generators as "intelligence".
US citizens: Demand the Pentagon compensate civilians harmed in
US airstrikes.
Food products should notify customers of any changes in the recipe.
Interviews with Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the Israeli town of Lod.
I find it noteworthy that the Arab residents face repression and are
barred entirely from holding political rallies.
Invasive ants could wipe out the native ants that defend acacia trees
in east Africa. This could indirectly harm many other species, and indirectly
protect a few.
*Alexandre Ramagem ran Brazil’s intelligence agency under Bolsonaro,
allegedly using spyware to track political opponents.* Computers
have been seized from his home.
(satire) *Chick-Fil-A Announces They Will Only Serve Chickens
Conceived In Wedlock.*
How the UK government uses bogus arguments to justify extracting the maximum
possible fossil fuels.
We could call the arguments sleight of mind, since they are the
equivalent, for thoughts, of what sleight of hand is for physical
operations.
Allowing convictions by 10 votes out of the 12 jurors may have been
adopted in the UK as a way to facilitate repression of minorities.
In Tiningu, Pará, Brazil, outside farmers have bought land that includes the
area's springs, and now claim all the water belongs to them.
The EU has made significant reductions in CO2 emissions from fossil
fuels.
It's going in the right direction but we all need to do it, and faster,
if we are to avoid disaster.
An Australian local government council, about to vote on a proposed
event about Harry Potter, was told that each member had to sign a
nondisclosure agreement in order to receive information about the plans.
This violated government's democratic duty of transparency for the
public.
Businesses often demand, and get, secrecy pledges from businesses,
and often they apply to facts that affect possible issues for safety
of people and the environment.
*Thousands trapped in Gaza hospitals as Israeli troops encircle Khan Younis.*
And civilians can't easily get in or out of the three main hospitals.
*Devastating drought in Amazon result of climate crisis, study shows.*
The forest is close to the predicted transformation into a savannah,
which would mean most of the trees die and release their carbon
into the air.
*Biden administration reportedly pauses approval of "carbon mega bomb" gas
export hub.*
If this export terminal is built, it could speed up global heating to
the point that sea-level rise forces it to stop operating. That would
be ironic, but what we need is not an ironic self-defeat for some of
those working global disaster. Rather, we need to avoid that
disaster.
A Proud Boys member who joined in the Jan 6 insurrection, then planned
to try an insurrection in Portland, Oregon, has been sentenced to only
6 years in prison.
Given his unrepentant determination to support a fascist take-over of
the US that is a combination of massive crimes, he will be eager to
support a right-wing coup when he gets out. It would be wiser to give
him a sentence several times as long.
The most worrisome part is that if the bullshitter grabs power, he
will pardon violent supporters like this one, then use them in an
unofficial extralegal repression squad. That is the fascist way.
US citizens:
call on the BLM
to save the Gunnison sage-grouse.
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
nationwide strike against the president,
who calls himself "the madman," shut down much of Argentina.
In addition, tens of thousands protested. I wonder how many
he will arrest
under his new law.
Milei's supporters target feminist leaders and media figures with
threats of personal violence.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Women's Health Protection Act and Abortion Justice Act, to establish Abortion as a human right
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The UN court in The Hague told Israel
it must "take all measures
within its power"
to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention
of the genocide convention, and to prevent and punish the incitement
of genocide and facilitate the provision of "urgent basic services".
The court did not find Israel guilty of genocide, but seems to
consider Israel's conduct as leading in that direction, hence orders
to make sure it does not commit genocide.
I think that ruling is right for the facts of the situation: Israel's crimes include mass
killing of civilians, and potentially many more. That doesn't amount to genocide —
this far — but it is an enormous crime.
The court ordered
the bullshitter to
pay 83 million dollars
in damages for raping and then defaming E. Jean Carroll.
I can imagine the bullshitter riding on a broomstick and a stereotype
witch's hat while saying, "I'm the victim of a witch hunt!"
Speaking of which. if you are a cartoonist and you'd like to draw
cartoons for me occasionally as a volunteer, please write to me.
The cheater
(another name for the bullshitter) has
a history
of
refusing to pay
his debts.
Even debts to
contractors who did work for him.
I predict he will refuse to pay this
debt, and dare the court to do something. That fits his general strategy of daring courts
to stop him from acting as if he were above the law. His supporters admire whoever is
strong. Biden needs to deal with him in a way that demonstrates
the cheater's weakness.
Ralph Nader suggests
Democrats provoke the cheater to defeat himself,
Jujitsu style.
An eleventh-hour rally for Julian Assange will held today, Saturday,
Jan 27th, 11–12:30pm at Park St Station, on the Boston Common.
The Tories plan a massive expansion of extracting oil and fossil gas
from the North Sea, violating the commitment to phase out fossil fuels.
US courts have rejected a demand to equate Palestinians' rights with
"support for terrorism".
However. strong lobbying muscle is pressuring for private organizations
to make this false equation.
Workers at the California State University will go on strike on all 23
campuses, demanding a raise.
Keep in mind that the cause of inflation a year ago was not the raises
for some workers, it was intentional gouging that business did (and
still do) because they can get away with it.
And they could get away with it because of the insufficiency of
competition, which is due to the failure to properly enforce antitrust
law since Reagan's days.
Modi has celebrated the partial construction of a Hindu temple where
the Babri Masjid used to stand, treating it as a symbolic defeat of
Islam.
Former Indian governments tried to promote interreligious peace and
tolerance. No longer. Modi's party (BJP) has used religious hostility to boost its power, much as American fascists do. Now it
wants to make Hinduism the de facto official religion, and oppress
others.
In the past, some Muslim rulers repressed Buddhism generally, as did
some Hindu rulers. Some historians maintain that the Dalits of today
are the descendants of people who were Buddhists. In recent decades,
Dalits have faced forcible opposition from Hindu fanatics when they
try to hold ceremonies to convert to Buddhism.
Anti-vax propaganda and other factors are
spreading measles in
countries where it had become rare.
The WHO warns that measles occasionally causes lifelong disability, or death.
One of the factors is
difficulty in arranging for babies
to get vaccinated.
Fossil fuel companies' disinformation in US public schools.
With plentiful drones, neither Ukraine nor the Putin forces can
advance along the front. A breakthrough is impossible.
I am puzzled that the Putin forces don't attack again across the frontier.
HP's CEO admits that the company wants to make printing a "subscription".
I am concerned about malware in printers. That includes malware
inserted by third parties, and malware inserted by the printer
manufacturer. Any software designed to snoop on, restrict or
interfere with the user is malware.
One way to block malware from affecting anything outside the printer
is to put the printer on a separate ethernet which talks only to a
special computer which won't allow it to communicate with anything
else.
Election sabotage in New Hampshire: a deepfake audio call pretended to
be Biden telling people to stay home rather than vote for him in the
state's Democratic primary.
An earthquake destroyed roads near the Shika nuclear power plant in
Japan, trapping 400 people within the evacuation zone. Fortunately
the plant was idle and there was no leak.
Seeing Israel in the context of European settler colonialism:
it partly fits, and at the same time it doesn't.
The other colonial powers were looking mainly for profit and power,
not for survival against murderous persecution. Morally that changes
some things, but not everything: it does not entitle Zionists to
oppress Palestinians,
let alone to commit massive and repeated atrocities.
Keep in mind that colonization is not limited to European
countries. Ancient empires practiced colonization — Rome, for instance.
Nowadays, China is practicing settler colonialism in Tibet,
and Indonesia in its half of New Guinea.
India's treatment of Muslims under its system of
Hindu nationalism
is not "colonization' in a territorial sense, but it has
much in common.
Biden must press Israel to agree to recognize the state of Palestine
and end the occupation.
Since Netanyahu says that "The prime minister needs to be capable of
saying no to our friends," Biden must likewise be capable of saying no
to America's traditional friends.
St Louis thugs crashed a car into a gay bar, then bullied and arrested
the bar's owner. This while concealing video evidence of what happened.
Arguing for the unlimited right for anyone who is pregnant to have an
abortion, at no cost, — with no exceptions.
Future people, not yet born, are entitled to certain things in case
they are born: namely, a livable world to be born into, and a free and
compassionate society to be part of. But that does not impose an
obligation to bring someone into that world.
Germans are protesting against the new German fascist party, recently
revealed as such.
900 UK post office branch managers were accused and convicted of
stealing funds from the branch's accounts, the grounds being that
their records did not match what the Fujitsu software said. The
software's reports were incorrect because of bugs.
We now know that Fujitsu staff knew about these bugs at the time of he
prosecutions, and tried to inform the courts about them, but
management of the Post Office altered their witness statements.
Australia (and the rest of the world) are unprepared for the global
consequences of the changes global heating will cause in Antarctica.
And not putting much effect into figuring out what those changes or
their consequences will be.
Gaza civilians arrested by the Israeli army report torture.
Then they may be released far from their families with no way to
rejoin them.
Both the place they are released, and the place where the relatives
are, may be in danger of bombardment, and likewise the route between
them.
*Ohio Pastor Charged for Opening Church to Homeless People in
Freezing Weather.*
Hospitality to poor, homeless people is at the basis of Christianity.
I do not hold with Christianity in general, but I do admire that part
of it. Many Christians, by contrast, disdain that part.
People have noted the irony of seeing Christians worshiping an ancient
homeless refugee family and being so cruel to refugees and homeless
people today.
A US court further weakened the Voting Rights Act by ruling in favor
of a mass challenge of 36,000 voters, based on an algorithm with no
attempt to investigate those individual voters.
This is a practice right-wing parties use to suppress minority voters.
People whose lives are stressful may just give up. The purpose of the
Voting Rights Act, passed in the 1960s, was to block voter suppression,
but right-wing judges have ruled for weakened interpretations that negate
the law's purpose.
Republicans know that the only way they can win power in the US is by rigging the electoral system. Voter-suppression is one approach; gerrymandering
is the other.
Students at the University of Massachusetts held a sit-in strike
calling for
disassociation from manufactures of weapons
Israel uses in the occupation of Palestine. The university is prosecuting 57 protesters
for trespassing.
US citizens: call on Biden to
stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
from Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
*[Columbia University] students protesting Israel's bombardment of
Gaza reported being
sprayed with a chemical
that caused nausea and
headaches.*
Ironically, they may have been sprayed with a chemical used in Israel
against protesting Palestinians.
Protest organizers accused two former Israeli soldiers who are now students there.
US citizens: call on Congress to
restore the strength of the Voting
Rights Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your
state governor to protect bees
by expanding bee-friendly habitat.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass the Raise the Wage Act,
which will raise the US minimum wage.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*"No one should have more than [US$15 million]": the author of
An absolute limit on any person's wealth is roughly equivalent to a
100% marginal tax rate on income beyond a certain point. A 93% tax
rate would give similar results, and we know it is feasible and works. So I think
we should try that instead.
To fully implement that 93% marginal tax rate entails eliminating the deductions and
manipulations currently used by the rich to shelter much of their wealth and income from it.
US citizens: call on Congress to
tax the rich and expand Social Security
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Jamie Dimon,
CEO of the bank JP Morgan Chase,
has started to give
mendacious praise for the bullshitter's policies while president.
Evidently he doesn't mind joining in the bullshit in order to win the favor
of someone who may become dictator of the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Democracy for All amendment and
reverse the Corporations United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to
ban single-use plastics
to protect our environment and public health.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass Right-to-Repair legislation.
Fully effective Right-to-Repair legislation must require the software to be something
close to free.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Five examples of the UK’s crackdown on
climate protesters.*
Has Starmer said that Labour would end this repression, or defend the
climate enough to the protests unnecessary? I don't think so, but I'd like
to be reminded if I forgot.
*Tal Mitnick, 18, on going to
prison instead of joining
[the Israeli army].*
Burning wood indoors for cooking is a bad idea because the wood smoke
harms people's health. Projects to hand out wood-burning stoves in
poor countries are supported by "carbon offsets" which are
fraudulent
in the usual way.
I've heard of projects to give people inexpensive solar-powered
cookers. They don't cause any pollution; the users don't even need to
buy or cut wood.
The Cop28 climate conference failed to set a target for decarbonizing,
but it did set a target of
tripling nuclear generation.
The US is rushing to carry out.this plan.
Nuclear generation is more expensive and slower to build than renewable
generation, it pollutes at many levels, and it carries the risk of disaster.
We should not carry out that agreement -- we should build renewable generators
and batteries instead.
The Bureau of Land Management has proposed 22 million acres of public land
to designate for
solar power use.
This is 1% of the land area of the US. I think we can spare that much,
especially since civilization's survival depends on that.
Sports teams
bully cities
into paying for expensive new stadiums which the teams will get the profit from. Now they
sweeten the deal by promising to build housing too — but once the stadium is built,
the team may not carry them out.
Teams exert the pressure by making cities bid against each other for
which will have the team. I've proposed a law to stop businesses of
all kinds from making cities or states
bid on how much subsidy to
offer.
I am absolutely against spending municipal funds on enriching sports
team owners. There should be a federal law prohibiting this — any
assistance to the team should be a loan which must come first on the
team's list of creditors. The city can spend those loan payments on
housing if it wants to.
The law could require that all such loans be paid back at 150%.
German farmers are supporting the extreme right-wing after the center-left government reduced the subsidy on fossil fuels.
It made the usual mistake that governments make in how they do this:
they cut that subsidy and changed nothing else. The effect on farmers
was an immediate loss of income and they had no better alternative to
shift to.
The subsidy for fossil fuel must end. One way to end it without
crushing the farmers is to make the subsidy not depend on whether
they buy fossil fuel.
Then they will have an incentive to switch to a substitute — if and
when one exists. The government should actively make electric
tractors a reality.
Don't forget that farmers can no longer own a tractor — the manufacturer
designs them with proprietary software, which is malware: it snoops on
the farmer's actions and on data it measures about the farm, and it even has
a remote shut-off switch.
This ought to be illegal.
The UK has a military base on Cyprus, which it is using for attacks on
Houthi missile and drone launching facilities that it is using to
threaten shipping. Now some Cypriots demand an end to this cooperation.
They make two arguments. One is the reduction-ism that labels the
Houthis and their patron, Iran, as "good" because they act against
Israel. The other is using cowardice as the basic premise — "What if
Cyprus becomes a target?" They don't seem to notice the fundamental
contradiction between these two arguments.
Gaza or no Gaza, it is unacceptable to allow Houthis to menace the
whole world's economy when and as they see fit.
As a separate matter, governments including the US have a duty to
make Israel stop the bombardment and siege of Gaza. But we didn't
need the Houthis to teach us that.
We agree with then on that one point, but that doesn't change the fact
that they are violent and repressive religious fanatics who would
oppress us if they could.
Ralph Nader: *What If Our Society Valued Civics as It Does Entertainment?*
When private equity firms buy US hospitals, the hospitals become worse.
*The [private] equity firms cut corners, slash services, lay off
staff, lower quality of care, take on substantial debt, and reduce
charity care, leading to lower ratings and more medical errors, the
[two] reports collectively find.*
*Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds.*
*Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to
keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.*
The FBI concocted a fake plot and inveigled people into a fantasy of
planning terrorism. Those people were since known as the Newburgh
Four. Now they will be released from prison.
If they had really taken initiative to plan such attacks, they would
deserve prison sentences, but the FBI does the country no service by
protecting us from fantasy terrorism.
Employees at Spirit AeroSystems, a subcontractor that Boeing spun off,
accused the company of disregarding high levels of defects.
This attitude is common in US businesses, and it makes life painful.
We need to change the system that makes it profitable to run businesses
with this attitude.
Structural reasons why Boeing is doing badly in the safety field:
it's owned by banks and asset managers, its outsourcing is out of control,
and the US doesn't have laws to ensure workers' safety concerns are heeded.
A study has found that children learn to read better when they read on
paper.
A school that banned snoop-phones on campus found that this made
life and education much better. Most of the students agree.
Alas, they are still being tracked, and perhaps listened to, by the
non-"smart" portable phones that they carry. These phones are likewise
running nonfree software that the user can't change but others can.
Still, this is a big step forward. If you can take that big step, you
can probably take the smaller step that remains.
On the ethical issues of fictionalizing parts of a movie which claims
to present true events.
It is impossible to recount history with perfect accuracy, no matter
how hard you work. Even for recent history there are always things
which the best research cannot determine. For events further in the
past, there are often disagreements about how to interpret the primary
sources, and even major uncertainties. You may have to choose which
interpretation to dramatize. Whichever you choose, it may be mistaken
or only part of the truth. One can only do one's best.
But that doesn't excuse intentionally choosing not to do one's best.
I am deeply disappointed by gratuitous falsification of history simply
to make the plot "more exciting". When I learned that The Great
Escape was mostly fiction, I felt cheated by it. It presents a
notice which tries to acknowledge that parts are fiction, but phrased
misleadingly: the notice states that the way they dug and used the
tunnel were accurate, but did not explicitly say that most of the rest
was not.
Even in Midway, which is mostly accurate, some points have been
made erroneous -- and it would have been so easy to get them right.
*Fears grow for largest remaining hospital in Gaza as Israeli forces bombard
Khan Younis*, bombing sometimes very close to the hospital.
*As the election looms, we must be alert to [the insurrectionist's]
threats of vigilante justice.*
The insurrectionist has already bullied senators into voting not to
convict him of insurrection. Now his followers are threatening
judges. Next November he will surely launch his fanatics into bigger
violence. We must be ready to defeat it crushingly so that it cannot
try again.
The head of the Michigan Republican Party has been ousted by the state
committee after claiming to have won votes within the party that in
fact perse had lost.
Now, following the lead of their greatest inspiration, perse has
refused to honor the vote that ousted per, and the two fractions look
like fighting in court soon.
It is beautifully ironic for Republicans to get a taste of their own
medicine. I laugh at their predicament. Will they learn a lesson
from it? Will they recognize, in these events, a reason not to
support the bullshitter as candidate for president?
*How an Alabama utility wields influence by financing news broadcasting.*
A German minister accused the fascist-tinged far-right party of
secretly planning mass deportations if it gets power.
*AfD leader "wolf in sheep’s clothing," says German Social Democrats head.*
Google promised to delete location data about visits to abortion
clinics -- and some other places, too. But the changes are
only effective in a fraction of cases.
*Crime in the US is once again falling. Can we rethink policing?*
Oakland, California, is an exception. Oakland's Operation Ceasefire
cut the murder rate by almost half, during 2012-2017, but then it was
altered and made ineffective; the murder rate almost to the previous
level.
It worked by identifying gang members who were likely to get involved
in deadly fights, then -- rather than repressing them -- making
relationships with them to lead them away from that danger.
The HAMAS killers and kidnappers were
raving with hate
to a degree that they
raped and mutilated Israeli women, some in the process of killing them, and
perhaps also corpses of those they had already killed.
This demonstrates how humans can be lead to depravity that destroys
their reason and humanity. We see this happening to Israeli soldiers, too.
(satire) *Study Finds Children Of Divorce
Better Prepared For Life’s
Relentless Misery.*
The insurrectionist is intentionally obstructing his civil trial,
daring the judge to
order him to leave
the courtroom.
The judge understands that ordering him out of the courtroom is what he wants, and
therefore doesn't do it, but the result is that the insurrectionist comes across as more
powerful than the judge in the judge's own court. That surely serves his political
strategy
too.
*Manufacturers of 10 Drugs Slated for Medicare Price Negotiation Spent Billions More on
Buybacks, Dividends and Executive Compensation
than R&D.*
US drug companies have worked hard to
corrupt the system of studies
to measure the effects of approved and proposed medicines. They can do this
because the investigations get their funds from the drug companies.
Therefore, we should take those studies entirely away from companies. The government
should pay for these studies, getting funds from drug companies through taxes but denying
them any say about what will be tested or by whom.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has listed
Israel as tied with
Iran
for sixth place on the "worst jailers of journalists" list.
Fishing by dragging a net across the sea bottom does worse than
destroy habitat and ecosystems; it also
releases lots of CO2,
half of which gets into the atmosphere.
There was already a one sufficient reason to ban it. This is another.
A recording of a clear proposal to assassinate Rep. Nadler or
journalist Eric Swalwell was turned in to the Capitol Police. But it
isn't clear whether it is a real recording or a deepfake.
The clothing industry contributes significantly to greenhouse
emissions and to the waste society ultimately discards. How to reduce
these two burdens is not clear.
One thing which is not clear to me is how this accounting deals with
remaindered garments -- like the ones you can find in Marshalls. Are
they included in the "sold" category (after all, they do eventually
get sold by the company that ordered their production) or the "waste"
category? If these are considered "sold", how come any garments
remain as "waste"? Why aren't they all remaindered, and thus
eventually put in the hands of someone who will wear them?
Some fraction must be bizarre styles that hardly anyone wants to wear.
But it seems implausible to me that they would be a substantial
fraction of total production.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to sign the discharge
petition to bring HJ Res 25 to a vote. This is the resolution to
bring the Equal Rights Amendment into effect by recognizing the
ratifications that a sufficient number of states have already done.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Studies have found that workplace "wellness" programs fail to make
workers healthier or happier.
New EU advertising rule: *Products and services billed as climate
neutral, biodegradable or eco [(organic)] must provide proof, with
carbon schemes banned as evidence.*
*Georgia county to use program linked to election denier to flag
ineligible voters.*
Global heating's consequence, sea-level rise, will increase the arsenic
in Bangladesh's water.
This is the result of a series of chemical consequences.
*Serbian opposition leader says secret service tortured and threatened him.*
(satire) *[DeMentis] Going Door To Door To Beg Own Campaign Staff To
Vote For Him.*
AT&T in California has been cheating its customers, the public and the state
for over a decade. All the details are here.
The Tories have decided to build and run a "carbon capture and
storage" plant at the cost of 50 billion dollars, if fully
implemented.
"Carbon capture and storage", if it works, will reduce greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. We will need to do that in he future, once
we have cut greenhouse gas emissions, if we have damaged forests and
algae so much that they can't remove the excess CO2 we will have
emitted.
However, what we need now is to reduce the rate of increase down to
zero, and the money used for this absurdly expensive system could
achieve a lot more of that if spent on building renewable generation,
battery storage, and grid enhancement.
I suspect that the Tories' decision was intended to please those who
will get that money.
Boeing and its spin-off Spirit put *Profits And Payouts Over Passenger
Safety.* This article gives the history and details.
The US system of business is fundamentally broken, systematically
producing results that don't resemble what is said to make capitalism
beneficial. It is no longer "If we do a good job of XYZ, we will make
a lot of money"; rather, "Let's make more money by doing a bad job and
screwing our customers, our workers and the public."
*The far right infiltration [and even domination] of Israel's media is
blinding the public
to the truth about Gaza.*
There is a peace movement in Israel which demands to end Israel's
atrocities in Gaza, and an end to the fighting there. Fair access to
the media would help it succeed.
US citizens: call on states to stop funding fake abortion clinics.
US citizens: call on Democrats to stop spending money on advertising
in Ex-Twitter, since it mainly funds Musk.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Public Banking Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate DeJoy's coverups of
neglecting to protect postal workers from heat stroke.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Several countries in Latin America are tossing human rights on the
garbage pile in trying to defeat gangs by making war on them in parallel with
arbitrary imprisonment of suspects.
This war of repression looks like "the only way" for the government to
end gang violence, but that assumes the government will win the war —
and they don't seem to actually win. (The US government likewise
assumed it would eventually win in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it
never did.) The governments of El Salvador and Ecuador may not win
either. Haiti's government eventually surrendered to gang rule.
I don't know what these governments should do. Maybe it is hopeless.
But it seems to me that this war is an extension of the US "war on
drugs". If the US switches to a harm-reduction policy, with
decriminalization and treatment, it could reduce the profits that
keep gangs interested.
How conservatives in the US have for decades misrepresented Martin
Luther King Jr as being on their side, only color-blind.
The laws now being invoked against the insurrectionist grew out of the
response to violent southern racists, after the Civil War and during
the Civil Rights Movement.
*Elon Musk has become the world's biggest hypocrite on free speech.*
Data brokers collect lots of data about most people, including location data
that they get from snoop phones, apps for saps, and web sites and use machine
learning to identify patterns in that data and what the patterns mean.
The FTC is suing individual data brokers and making them agree not to
do these things in the future.
It is a brave effort, but when one company stops, another will pop up
to do the same thing. To make privacy secure. we need to require
products and services to be designed so that they don't tend to track
anyone.
Oil companies are arguing in court that the First Amendment prevents them
from being held liable for damages caused by misleading people.
The European Court of Human Rights found Lithuania guilty of allowing
the CIA to use one of its "black sites" to torture someone accused of
participating in the September 2011 terrorist attacks.
*Oxfam GB says aid cannot be delivered effectively [to Gaza]
while bombing continues and supplies are rejected.*
*Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson.*
That demonstrates the moral values of right-wing conspiracy thinkers
in a nutshell. They treat their country and its people as "the
enemy", and try to harm them both by any possible means.
A court case demands that Georgia stop using voting machines that
write the votes on ballots in a code that voters can't read if they try.
As explained here, devices like this create
the possibility of a centralized fraud that would be hard to detect.
This case is not about any specific allegation of actual rigging.
Republicans have used many efforts to rig US elections, including
gerrymandering and voter suppression, and are continuing to do so, but this case is not about those
methods. Facts suggested that a few
US elections were rigged
through
voting machines around 20 years ago, but there was no proof.
Fraud can be committed using paper ballots too, and that has been done
for centuries. However, a big fraud with paper ballots tends to be bulky
and thus hard to hide.
Chatbots seem to be good at giving a superficial imitation of the emotional
responses humans want from sweethearts.
The article discusses several potential dangers to society if many
people decide to have fake-intelligent sweethearts, but doesn't take
that far enough. Society could fragment increasingly into male and
female fractions, perhaps more than one of each. As a science fiction
fan, I am reminded of A World out of Time by Larry Niven, in which
the Boys and the Girls (each immortal) became separate groups and
fought a war.
The author, unaware of the issues raised by the free software
movement, omits the one we would think of first: each one of these
chatbots, if it isn't free software running on the user's own
computer, will be controlled by a company. Barring unforeseeable
major changes, those companies will profit by emotionally manipulating
the users they supposedly serve. They will program the servers, and
the apps for interacting with them, to make the customers obey the
company and serve its goal.
Calling chatbots "artificial intelligence" helps lull humans into
treating them like persons. That is why I decided never to do that,
and refer to them instead as "bullshit generators".
*The US isn’t the biggest power in the Middle East any more. Iran is.*
The fact that foolish US actions, and sometimes unjust US actions,
helped bring about this result does not make it a good thing. Iran is
a cruel, repressive state,
much like Russia
and China
which are its allies. We face, this time for real, an "axis of evil."
*Pro-Israel Effort to Smear [University of Pennsylvania] President
Started Well Before Oct. 7.*
The UK's subsidy for fuel for fishing boats endangers fish from two
directions at once.
Putin's official *accuses US of plan to meddle in its election.*
The first level of lie in this accusation is the assumption that Russia
is free enough that its elections could be influenced. With all the meddling
that Putin directs in Russian elections,
there is no space for anyone else to meddle.
Meanwhile, people who criticize Putin are likely to end up in prison.
This sort of lie is typical of right-wingers. Whatever accusation
could be validly made against them, they make it against their
critics, because the truth is of no significance to them.
*Florida school district pulls dictionaries for "sexual conduct" descriptions.*
They look for opportunities to be absurdly repressive as a way of
proving their loyalty to extremism. The sad thing is that progressives
go in for something similar — it is called "virtue signaling".
I resent being pressured to do anything for such reasons, so I often
resist such pressure, even for a cause I fully support. I may like
your way of stating these views, and follow you. But if I don't like
it, I will state our shared views in my own way.
You're entitled to do that too.
*The Ukraine war is no excuse for endless fossil fuel expansion.*
Destroying everyone on all sides does not constitute victory.
*Ex-Shin Bet director Ayalon calls on Israel to release intifada
leader [Marwan] Barghouti [and negotiate with him to recognize the
state of Palestine].*
*“We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, …
have hope.*
Be careful to avoid confusion about Palestinian leaders named
"Barghouti". There are other political leaders in the Barghouti
family, and they follow different approaches.
Due to big Tory cuts in support for local government, plus inflation,
1/5 of the local governments in England will go bankrupt in 2025.
Tories won't help avoid that, of course. Clearly that crisis is
something they desire. What could their motive be? They have
adjusted the fuse to make it explode after the next election; that
could be one purpose, but I think they must have another alongside
that.
It would be natural for the Labour Party to try to fix this, but that
would require spending money. Starmer understandably refuses to
borrow that money, but he won't do that because he has changed the
party into Tory Light.
A former leader of Labour said, "The Labour Party is a moral crusade
or it is nothing."
Starmer's choice is "nothing". How can Britain get itself a true
Labour Party, or something comparable?
I think it must start with Corbyn,
Ideally he should be joined by several progressive-minded
Jews, to demonstrate that this party may criticize Israel's actions,
but it will never tolerate antisemitism.
Missouri's governor is rushing to execute Marcellus Williams and
disregard the evidence that he was convicted unjustly. He was
convicted of murdering Felicia Picus using a knife. Later DNA was
found on the knife, and it certainly did not belong to Picus or
Williams.
It looks like the governor is trying to bring about something we could
call an "abortion of justice".
* Human Rights Watch warns [that the Taliban's] bar on women [as
teachers] means unqualified men now teach boys, fewer subjects are
taught and beatings [of students] are routine.*
*[Data show that] adopting rightwing policies "does not help
centre-left win votes."
Study of European electoral data suggests social democratic parties
alienate supporters by moving towards the political centre.*
I conjecture that parties do this to cede to pressure from the
rich. rather than pressure from the voters. Even if it did win more
votes, it would be wrong.
*World's First Trillionaire Just 10 Years Away as Richest Men Double
Their Wealth.*
Texas state thugs blocked US border patrol agents from approaching the
border to rescue some Mexicans who had drowned while trying to cross
the Rio Grande.
I find it strange that article reports, unquestioningly, that Texas
personnel could bar US border patrol agents from Shelby Park if the
former insist. I would expect the border patrol to arrest them
rather than heeding their objectives.
Two Iranian women journalists were jailed for not covering their heads;
then they were freed on appeal. They celebrated this by appearing in
public and not covering their heads, so now they face new charges.
They seem to be determined to show their rejection of these unjust
laws.
The US Senate rejected
Senator
Sanders's resolution
to investigate Israel for using US military aid for killing tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
This is bad news, because it means that Israel is likely to continue its policy of killing tens of thousands.
Thank you for trying, Bernie.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to pressure Israel to commit not to carry out colonization or depopulation in Gaza.
The words in the petition are not as clear and plain-spoken as that, but that is what they mean.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Russia illustrates the consequences of failure to maintain
separation
of church and state.
The Romanov dynasty converted the Russian Orthodox Church into an arm
of state power. The people who reject this change were called the
"old believers",
and were persecuted. Putin is continuing this practice.
An eleventh-hour rally for Julian Assange will be on an upcoming Saturday,
Jan 27th, 11–12:30pm at Park St Station, on the Boston Common.
US citizens:
call on the Senate
to support Senator Sanders' resolution
to direct the State Department to investigate Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
The question is whether Israel is using weapons from the US to commit war crimes.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Texas governor Abbott said he would like Texas to kill immigrants crossing the border,
if he could get away with it.
I'm sure most Republicans are more harmful to the US than most refugees. Does that
justify shooting them?
The latest step in the bullshitter's blackwhiting: calling people in prison for
joining in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol
"hostages".
In effect, he aims to make the Big Lie as big and false as possible. While denying he
incited for the Jan 6 insurrection, he is explicitly endorsing it now and preparing to
start another one.
If he succeeds in capturing full control of the US government, he will go full 1984,
punishing anyone who refuses to assent vigorously to his lies. The right-wing members of
the US Supreme Court will be reduced to his puppets, no longer free to trade their
decisions voluntarily for money.
Will they recognize that this year, in time to rule that he can't run for office?
*Wisconsin: far-right group bids to recall speaker [of the Wisconsin legislature] for
resisting [the insurrectionist's] big lie.*
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to restore the Network Neutrality rules that the wrecker eliminated.
*Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn.*
These tipping points are not easy to reverse -- if they tip, small
changes in the other direction would not tip them back. Perhaps large
changes could do that, but we would have to cool the Earth a lot
to achieve that.
Kelsey Carpenter had a miscarriage and was prosecuted for murder.
She spent almost two years in jail as the prosecution continued.
Eventually she was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
That was a partial defeat for her, not a victory, and it doesn't mean
that other women are safe from similar treatment.
*Ohio woman won’t be indicted for abuse of corpse after miscarriage, grand
jury decides.*
I'm glad that the grand jury, a body of citizens chosen at random, decided to
stop this persecution. But grand juries usually convict whoever they
are asked to convict.
We should not count on the next grand jury to save the next woman who
had a miscarriage. We should make it absolutely clear in the law.
*Water shortages disrupt the Plaquemines parish as millions of gallons
are used to construct Venture Global’s LNG terminal.*
(Humorous aside) It has also caused the encrustations on the teeth of
corpses in cemeteries, which made possible the plaque mining industry,
which gave that parish its name.*
Robert Reich: the insurrectionist has a strategy to dominate the
election: by making a big nuisance of himself all the time, he aims to
direct all attention to him, and that he hopes will people perceive
him as powerful and perceive Biden as weak.
Some people will vote for whoever seems strong. They'd vote for a
tyrannosaurus to threaten them. It seems that many Americans don't
have a clear focus for deciding their votes based on which candidate
will do the most good.
Ralph Nader lists five sources of possible destruction of humanity or
civilization.
Vienna has half-solved the problem of giving all residents affordable
and decent housing.
This puts it miles above all other prosperous cities in Europe or the US.
Republicans are pushing for further tax cuts for big business.
*[Olive] harvest rots as West Bank
farmers cut off
from trees.*
Because Starmer has clamped down
on any proposals for more than small changes
in the Labour Party, Britons who see that big change is needed see no proposals
from any party except the even-more-right-wing competitors of the Tories.
The right wing has shut the left completely out of British politics
with the help of Labour. Britain desperately needs a progressive
party such as Labour sometimes was.
Research finds that requiring workers to work in the office (rather
than from home)
does not make the company more profitable.
In other words, the companies have no objective reason, in business
terms, to make workers go to the office.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose H.J.Res 98, which would
cancel a regulation Biden's officials adopted to give some outsourced
workers more of the rights of employees.
That regulation is a change for the better, since it will reduce the
exploitation of American workers, so naturally plutocratist politicians are
being paid to oppose it. But they will hesitate to do so if they hear
from enough US voters.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Analyzing the legal case
of the accusation of genocide
brought by South Africa against Israel.
I do not know the law about genocide, as the author does, but I read
about what is happening in Gaza and I think I understand how to
characterize it. Killing 20,000 or more civilians out of a population
of 2.5 million is a series of atrocities, a crime, and it must stop.
However, calling it "genocide" is an exaggeration.
Some people think that exaggerative rhetoric is legitimate, that the
harsher-sounding condemnation is justified because it will be more
effective at putting an end to the atrocities. Why do I disagree?
In the snort run, it makes sides hate each other more and thus
interferes with deescalation.
*"It is a time of witch hunts in Israel":
teacher held in solitary confinement
for posting concern about Gaza deaths.*
He is accused of thoughtcrime: "intent to commit treason". In Israel, he is not the only one.
We have seen similar efforts in the US, for instance those using
university presidents as show victims.
The
US and UK bombed Yemen,
reportedly attacking Houthi "military facilities" (a vague term).
If these attacks make Houthi attacks on shipping hard or impossible, that could stop them.
Otherwise, I expect this retaliation to have little effect on the Houthis' actions.
Others
agree.
The Houthis knew the ways the US can attack them, and have surely figured in advance what their
anti-shipping war will cost them.
They say that their attacks will
"punish" the US for counterattacking
them, but they don't think of being counterattacked as punishment for
their own attacks. I don't think they evaluate the results of their
actions by comparing their victories with damage they take.
I don't think the Houthis' attacks on shipping will have much effect
on fighting in Gaza.
There are some who say that the US should pressure Israel to accept a
cease fire in Gaza instead of retaliating against Houthi attacks on shipping.
I agree with half of that — the US should pressure Israel to accept a cease fire in Gaza.
But not "instead of" anything. The reason to demand a cease fire in Gaza is that
Israel continues to kill
thousands
of Palestinian civilians, and that is a great crime.
That reason is so strong that no other reason is required.
By contrast, terrorist attacks against global shipping are not a reason to grant the attacker's
demands. A world order dominated by violent religious fanatics is no improvement over the
current world order.
As regards
repelling further such attacks,
the US needs a cheap anti-drone drone. It could be designed to collide with the attacking
drone, or tangle it in a net and bring it down. Since it would not need to carry a bomb, it
could be smaller and cheaper. These defensive drones could have other uses — for
instance, to deal with drones operating dangerously near airports.
*Study calculated that there was an 11% increase in mortality [when
patients used] hydroxychloroquine*, the "cure" that the bullshitter recommended
based on zero evidence.
Causality has not been established. It could be that the people who
followed the bullshitter's advice were a priori less capable of
resisting Covid-19.
Various officials involved in prosecuting or resisting the wrecker
have been swatted.
This confirms what we knew: he is the leader of a fascist movement
to overthrow democracy in the US.
US citizens: Tell Congress: No New Tax Cuts for the Rich in 2024.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop giving white phosphorus to Israel,
which uses it on civilians.
Biden has allocated $500 million in funding for chargers for EVs.
I wonder if any of them allow charging a car without identifying
yourself? I doubt it.
Slowly and steadily flying under the media, the establishment of total
surveillance in the US advances step by step.
This article complains that the world is not focusing outrage
especially on the women who were captured and then raped in Gaza by
HAMAS.
The rape of around 100 people would in ordinary circumstances stand
out as an major atrocity. However, in Gaza it happened alongside the
killing of 20,000 people and wounding of 60,000. That is an atrocity
800 times bigger, and it continues to grow.
The Jewish victims of HAMAS terrorism are not responsible for the
Israeli bombardment and siege, Neither are the Palestinian victims
of the Israeli bombardment responsible for the HAMAS terrorism.
Neither group deserved to be the victims of an atrocity.
These atrocities are both gravely morally culpable, but it is proper
to focus first on the far larger atrocity, especially if it continues
to happen.
*"Astounding" ocean temperatures in 2023 intensified extreme weather, data
shows.*
In 2020, the wrecker (while still president) told EU leaders that
the US would refuse to help defend Europe if it is attacked.
This is no surprise to me, since the only likely attacker is Russia,
and the wrecker considers himself to be allied with Putin rather than
with Europe.
*Rightwing Billionaires & [the wrecker] Want a Nation Where Everything is For
Sale.*
Where they will be allowed to disregard any law by paying a big enough bribe.
During the Jan 6 insurrection, a tweet appeared on the wrecker's
Ex-Twitter account saying "Stay peaceful." Turns out one of his staff
sent that on his own initiative; the wrecker had nothing to do with it.
Some Jewish students at Harvard have sued the university for
"tolerating" antisemitism.
The allegation could be true; antisemitism is found in many places,
and it may have been manifested at Harvard. However, it could also be
an instance of the frequent distortion which construes condemnation of
Israel's actions as "antisemitic", and erroneously equating support for
Palestinians rights with support for HAMAS.
There is also the question of whether respect for the constitutional
rights of the accused students requires some of the toleration that
the plaintiffs object to.
Robert Reich: *How the oligarchy shrank America’s middle class (Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 8).*
George Monbiot: *There are no savings from austerity and
privatisation, just a wholesale shifting of costs. The rich pay
less tax and the public service companies in which they own shares
make greater profits. The rest of us pick up the bill.*
He had been on a train run by a privatized train company, but the
train was stopped by extreme weather. The company found a clever way
of reducing discharging its legal duty to give the passengers
alternate transport to London: it gave them taxi vouchers, which most
of them couldn't use since few taxis were available.
The rest of the passengers just had to wait hours in the rain. The
company never had to actually pay those vouchers because the vouchers
were never used.
Clever and destructive!
California is giving cities and counties the power to regulate
driverless vehicles.
This is a step forward, but part of the benefit is that it will allow
cities and counties to ban them entirely.
Most criticism of driverless vehicles is because they cause various
sorts of local danger. That issue is properly treated as very
important, but we must not overlook the surveillance threat they pose.
No taxi company should be allowed to operate on the basis of
systematically identifying everyone that hires a ride -- there must
be a reasonable way to travel anonymously.
What a psychotherapist says to clients that are overcome with grief from
seeing global heating disaster doing major harm to the Earth.
FBI agents pretending to work for PISSI convinced a mentally disabled
teenager to fly to Syria or Afghanistan (it wasn't clear to him which
one) to join PISSI. As soon as he turned 18, they told him to head for
the airport, where they arrested him.
A competent person who was capable of actually doing these things
could be a real terrorist and a real threat. But that young man was
hardly capable of hurting anyone without being led on a leash to do
it. If the FBI had not set out to do just that, he would have been
harmless.
What strikes me as wrong is that the FBI is eager for the chance
to make headlines by setting traps for Walter Mitty terrorists,
which doesn't do much good against real terrorists.
Israeli border patrol thugs repeatedly drove over the body of a
wounded Palestinian who was lying helplessly in the street. Some of
the border patrol had shot him just before, but he may still have been
alive.
An Israeli peace supporter told me 20 years ago that the border patrol
were especially cruel towards Palestinians.
The insurrectionist former president threatens to start more
insurrections if his first insurrection is judged by courts to
bar him
from running
for president.
Members of a drug
gang seized a TV broadcaster
in Ecuador, terrorist-style, but surrendered when the police came in such large
numbers that the gangsters could not imagine defeating them.
Selling drugs is not the sort of cause that can inspire people to be willing to die for it.
*Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war [had already]
received most
[money]
from pro-Israel donors.*
The planet roasters are
citing the bombardment of Gaza
as a supposed reason to increase oil production.
I see the parallel. That increase in global heating would do to the
whole earth what Israel is doing to Gaza.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to shut down the Line 5 pipeline.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: phone your Congresscritter and say to fully fund the WIC
supplemental nutrition program (for young children and their mothers).
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A report on the tax systems of the 50 US states presents how most of
them tax the poor more heavily than the rich — but some are much
worse than others.
*The Guardian view on Bangladesh's phoney election: a bad day for
democracy.*
Global heating of the ocean is wiping out cod, from south to north.
The only way to avoid this is if (1) cod adapt to reproduce at a higher
temperature or (2) we keep the Atlantic Ocean cool.
US citizens: tell Congress that a vote for a "fiscal commission" is a
vote to cut Social Security and Medicare.
*Hong Kong to restructure primary education to make it more "patriotic."*
(satire) Since Florida governor DeMentis can't run for governor again
thus year and probably won't be a candidate for president, maybe he
will seek a post in Hong Kong's education redesign, which (aside from
superficial details) has a lot in common with his philosophy of
education.
*Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to
[atrocities, or even genocide,] in Gaza.*
Some instances of such incitement go so far as to call for genocide.
Other instances call for atrocities and killing that might or might
not reach the scale of genocide -- but would clearly be criminal
in the absence of specific justification.
The complainants point out that Israel's government hyperactively
prosecutes anything it can construe as support for HAMAS's violence,
while going to the opposite extreme in tolerating advocacy of
anti-Palestinian violence.
US citizens: call on global leaders at the World Economic Forum to tax extreme wealth.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop Wall Street and big tech from
exploiting the housing crisis.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Facebook/Instagram, Ex-Twitter and YouTube to
protect their users and our democracy in 2024.
US citizens: call on Justice Thomas to Recuse himself from the case
about whether to disqualify the insurrectionist for his insurrection.
US citizens: call on the CFPB to apply the same rules to payment apps
that banks and credit cards are already subject to.
* In this imagined [Tory] reality, sharp-elbowed parents [of children
with disabilities] are handed ‘golden tickets’ for endless support.
Meanwhile, we battle for the bare minimum.*
*The Billionaire Next Door Driving Up Housing Costs for Everyone.*
Almost 3/4 of fishing ships turn off their tracking beacons while fishing.
Some of them are hiding the fact that they are fishing in protected waters.
Due to a fuel leak, the Peregrine moon lander won't be able to land.
I wonder if they could put it into an orbit from which a future
spacecraft could recover it and land it.
Three French thugs are on trial for beating and maiming a young black man
who was part of a group that they decided to stop and search.
2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, and came very close to 1.5°C of heating compared with before the mass use of fossil fuels.
As predicted, this level of heating has caused extreme weather
disasters around the world.
Bad as 2023 was, 2024 will be worse.
Israel fired rockets at a car, killing two al-Jazeera journalists in
it. Al-Jazeera accuses Israel of intentionally targeting them.
I wonder, how many people were in that car, and what were they doing?
The war in Gaza is killing civilians (Palestinian civilians, nowadays)
much faster than other recent wars. It has wrecked most of the
buildings and most of the hospitals. The schools that have not been wrecked
are sheltering people driven out of their homes.
The World Food Programme says that around 700,000 people are facing
catastrophic hunger, and that 577,000 of them are in Gaza. Evidently
food aid agencies are doing a great job of providing food to people
who otherwise would be starving — except in Gaza where Israel is
making it too hard.
Environmental harm affects bees, and it has reduced the production of honey.
The residents of Berchtesgaden, once Hitler's secondary home,
have decided to actively discourage visits by Nazis who use
it as a kind of shrine.
Emissions from the motor sector could have fallen by more than 30%
between 2010 and 2022 if vehicles had stayed the same size,*
if people had not switched to buying SUVs instead of regular size
cars.
*The reason for these cynical [Tory] power grabs: the weaker the
Tories become, the stronger they need to appear.*
Israel still claims it will totally eliminate HAMAS and free the
hostages it took, saying that this will require an additional year of
fighting.
I don't think it is possible to achieve both of those goals -- they
are essentially incompatible. Also, I wonder what fraction of the
Palestinian population of Gaza could remain alive after such fighting,
with the deadly hunger and thirst which Israel imposes there. I
expect it would be much less than 50%.
At some point soon, the US must say to Netanyahu, "We can't let you go
on this way."
*Artificial intelligence could supercharge threats to civil liberties, civil rights, and privacy.*
*Programs aimed at "situational awareness," like those run by many
parts of DHS or police departments preparing for public events, tend
to have few safeguards. They often veer into monitoring social and
political movements,*
When the authors say "Artificial Intelligence," that includes
degenerative systems such as bullshit generators. Spying uses them to
converse with people, pretending to be human beings.
Production of solar cells and efficient modern storage batteries are
growing enormously. Perhaps we can beat greenhouse gas emissions that
way.
Aside from generation of electricity, we must decarbonize other causes
of global heating, including transportation that uses fossil fuel, and
agriculture (including deforestation).
*Head of Britain's association of police chiefs says the police departments
there are "institutionally racist."*
That they acknowledge this is a step forward, but the thing is to change that.
US citizens: call on Congress to give us an enforceable Supreme Court code
of ethics.
China is using DNA profiling to help monitor Tibetans in Tibet.
A US company was selling the suppression forces DNA identification kits
which it was using to do this. It has ceased to sell them there.
It's obligatory to cease the sales, but that won't end the repression.
I wonder if Tibetans living in territory that China annexed around
1960, which is ostensibly not Tibet, are repressed as much as Tibetans
living in the regions still called Tibet.
The insurrectionist said that if he captures the Presidency this year
he will pardon the people who participated three years ago in the
insurrection he launched.
He is the enemy of democracy in the US and intends to destroy it.
The five truths [he] hopes you will forget about 6 January 2021.
He is a narcissist, and he gets pleasure when anyone says his name.
I've decided not to give him any that pleasure. That's the first step
in fighting him -- but not the last, or course.
Astronomers call for care in deciding where on the moon spacecraft
should land, lest they damage things or sites that should be saved for
more important uses, or use up scarce resources.
An oil company is trying to use the Energy Charter Treaty to eliminate
the EU's windfall profits tax.
The Energy Charter Treaty will kill millions of people if we let it.
Even war could be justified if it's necessary in order to eliminate
that treaty. But perhaps the threat of trade sanctions could suffice.
An organization that represent DRM interests is suing security researchers,
claiming that investigating their technology is copyright infringement.
This is part of the general tendency to make copyright more and more
oppressive.
The article's use of the propaganda term "intellectual property"
incorporates that tendency.
Can anyone tell me about a service similar to patreon except that it
doesn't require donors or recipients to run any nonfree software (not
even Javascript code)?
More evidence that the elections in Serbia were rigged.
A review of climate optimism: the valid points they make, and the side
that they brush over.
The EFF has endorsed "real privacy protections", but I have doubts
that their approach is strong enough to achieve the goal of protecting
privacy.
The basic philosophical flaw is that they don't recognize that real
privacy requires anonymity.
There are parking garages in the US and Europe which require the
motorist to enter the car's license plate number into a digital
system. Other parking garages take a photo of every car that enters,
or every car that leaves, which would imply recording the car's
license plate number.
When considering a proposed privacy protection law, we should
challenge it with this question: would it be absolutely forbidden for
the parking lot ever to make any of those license plate numbers
available to any government agency, except under direction of a
specific, narrow court order?
We we talk about deleting records to protect privacy, we must ask
about any backup systems that might hold these license plate numbers
past the time that the car has exited. Are they a security hole that
threatens motorists' privacy?
Of course, sending any of that data to a cloudy system which could
store a copy outside of the parking lot itself would totally destroy
the privacy of those motorists.
Massachusetts has established a toll collection system that saves data
about motorists' travel in order to bill them. Those operating the
system would argue that this is permitted because the system "needs"
to hold on to that data in order to collect the tolls. Given the
choice of that particular system of billing, retaining the data that
long would appear necessary.
If the law accepts such a weak standard of "the minimum necessary", it
won't protect privacy. A real standard of respect for privacy would
prohibit that system of billing. We know that it is possible to
collect tolls without recording who pays them. That being so, collecting
the identity of those who pass the toll station should be forbidden.
A Colorado thug has been sentenced to jail for killing Elijah McClain.
Israel's assassination (we assume Israel arranged it) of a HAMAS
leader-in-exile may provoke Hezbollah to escalate war with Israel.
I expect that Netanyahu's officials foresaw that result, and may have
sought it. The more enemies are actively fighting Israel, the more
Biden will find it hard to put any pressure on Israel to be less
bellicose.
*Americans living in their cars are finding refuge in "safe parking lots".*
It is better than nothing, but shamefully inadequate.
Next year's main climate conference will again be run by an oil
industry executive.
* The attempted US coup of 6 January 2021, never ended, according to a
watchdog report, since the same [allies of the wrecker] behind that
insurrection are now leading a sham impeachment effort against
[President] Biden.*
There are people in the UK that hate and revile people who wear masks
on trains and therefore help protect others from getting sick.
These people are doing the Putin's work. In the US, they are
helping Putin, and helping the wrecker too, by making Americans sicker
and weaker, increasing medical debt, and basically making society's
existing problems somewhat worse.
I always wear a good mask when indoors with other people, outside of
very special situations. When I am in a train or bus and someone else
is also wearing a mask, I often tell per I appreciate this: "Thank you
for wearing a mask." It is an easy and friendly way to encourage the
practice.
A carefully designed PR campaign would surely lead more people to wear
masks and thus help protect the public. I suggested this to the mayor
of Boston, when mask requirements were dropped, but I got no reply.
*Hotter, drier air in Europe "causing poor crops and greater wildfire
risk."*
This means irrigation is needed in places that didn't need it before.
But do they have the water available to do this?
Starmer reinforced his commitment to let the environment die rather
than borrow money to save it.
He is attacking a straw man, which is the idea of getting those funds
by borrowing. The real alternative, to get it by taxing the rich, he
does not even mention.
The only way to make Starmer Labour prioritize anyone but the rich
is to have a Green or Socialist party to keep mentioning it every day.
Investigating ways to collect PFAS from waste water (or drinking water) and
eventually destroy them.
*US Department of Justice sues Texas over new state immigration law
… allowing police to [arrest] people
suspected of crossing the US border without authorization.*
Musk is retaliating against the National Labor Relations Board (for
enforcing labor laws) by suing to abolish the National Labor Relations
Board.
I wish this were an exaggeration, but it's not. With our partisan
Supreme Court it might actually succeed.
Jimmy Lai's lawyers have accused China of torturing a former democracy
activist to make him confess to a so-called crime, and have asked the
UN special rapporteur on torture to take some sort of action.
I can easily believe that China did this, but I don't understand why
the article describes this as an "appeal" to the rapporteur. As far
as I know, neither that rapporteur nor the UN as a whole has any power
to overturn a Chinese court ruling. Chinese courts take their orders
from the Chinese state.
*[Putin] "attacked Ukraine with North Korea-supplied ballistic missiles."*
Russia makes its own ballistic missiles, and in principle doesn't need
to use North Korea's, but its production rate is insufficient. I suspect that
Putin's reason for using some now is only to show that he won't hesitate
to use them.
All CNN coverage of issues relating to Israel, including the war in Gaza,
requires approval of Israeli state censorship.
Naturally that censorship infuses articles with bias in favor of
Israel or its interests.
Here's the disclaimer that an "AI" bullshit generator ought to give
for every answer.
(Please don't call these bullshit generators "AI".
That leads people to suppose that they understand what they say.)
Terrorists set off bombs in Iran at a memorial for General Suleimani,
who was assassinated by the US at the wrecker's orders.
That assassination was meant to ensure the US and Iran would not
reestablish the non-nuclear deal.
the deal has not been reestablished, and the world is worse off for
that.
I am no admirer of General Suleimani, or the oppressive regime he
served,
and I would not have gone to a memorial for him. Nonetheless,
there is no justification for murdering people for attending a
memorial; to do so is terrorism.
I hope that the guilt for that act of terrorism does not belong to the
US or Israel. It is a relief to learn that Iran suspects PIS.
Israel appears to have assassinated a HAMAS leader who lives in exile
in Lebanon, and has hinted at the intention to do a lot more such.
I don't see anything wrong with this. HAMAS is a murderous terrorist
group, so killing its leaders (or its footsoldiers) is simply war.
I am skeptical that Israel could defeat HAMAS this way, but there is
nothing particularly evil about trying.
The moral issue about Israel's war against HAMAS is that it is killing
thousands of civilians in Gaza, and putting all the survivors in grave
danger. That's what Israel must stop.
The NLRB accused SpaceX of firing workers for criticizing Musk.
Statistical evidence of traffic stops in California shows evidence of
racial bias.
In effect, thugs expect disprivileged groups to be committing crimes
more often, but in fact that is not true.
This bias is a serious injustice. I wish the article did not display
its own bias by the 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. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider important -- and I label
them like this.
The wearing of body cameras by thugs in the US has mostly failed to
make them accountable for their violence, partly because thug
departments often edit the videos or conceal them entirely.
US medical insurance companies typically have official lists of the
clinics and doctors in their "network". These are often padded with
lots of fake entries, which give the false impression that they give
patients lots of choice.
Arguing that several coups in Africa are a real revolution against
neocolonialism.
I don't have enough knowledge of those countries to come to a
conclusion about this issue. However, it raises questions that the
article does not address.
For instance, all three of those countries are menaced by Islamist
rebels, some of which are basically predatory kidnappers. France was
supposedly going to help the governments suppress them, but that did
not succeed. How do the coup governments plan to deal with this?
What is their attitude towards Russian influence? Is this a
replacement of one foreign sponsor with another -- geopolitics still
at work?
Canada's forest fires this year burned 170.000 square miles, and
released as much additional CO2 as three years of Canada's normal rate
of emissions.
That is about 10% of the total boreal forest, which is around 1.8
million square miles. Worse, in coming years there will be less forest
to capture some CO2.
1/3 of Canada's forests have burned in the past 40 years, but until
recently the amount per year was small enough that they could grow
back. The accelerated rate of loss could make the loss permanent.
I think it is plausible that roughly all of Canada's forests will burn
in the next decade or two. The increase in the world's CO2 could be
impossible to overcome.
Morgan Trowland, sentenced to years in prison for a nonviolent Just
Stop Oil protest, used his time in prison to read philosophy and deepen
his understanding of the moral issues that led him to protest.
Israel's supreme court ruled that Netanyahu's law subordinating it to
parliament is invalid.
This blocked, for the moment, the fascist move of eliminating
judicial independence and judicial review.
*Israel and its allies must face facts: peace talks are the only way
forward, and they will have to include Hamas.*
I agree more or less with the views of this article.
However, I find in it a practice that is foolish and unilluminating:
that of labeling countries, by their international relations, as
"global south" and "global north." This makes a real physical
geographical distinction of little importance into a misleading
metaphor that tries to equate geography with politics. That
association would be profound if it were true, but being false, it
becomes an excuse for prejudice.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe says that
Serbia's recent election was rigged by the party in power.
*Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding to Israel. "While
we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we
must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly
disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,”
Sanders said.*
I agree fully. Israel's right to defend itself against HAMAS does not
justify a series of atrocities against Palestinian civilians.
This situation is sadly ironic, since Sanders, when he was young,
supported Israel to the point of going there to live in a kibbutz.
That was before Israel conquered the West Bank.
Billionaires hounded President Gay of Harvard into resigning.
In England, most complaints about the violence of thugs are
investigated by the thug department itself. Those investigations
generally conclude that the accused thug did no wrong. However, for
cases that are reinvestigated independently, 40% of them lead to
rejecting that conclusion and finding some degree of wrongdoing.
It seems to be that this calls for moving all such investigations outside
of the thug department.
We see a similar problem in the US.
*Why Voting Rights Act faces new wave of dire threats in 2024.*
People who worked as aides for the insurrectionist when he was president
warn that if re-elected he could "end US democracy as we know it."
Western Australia has banned commercial logging of native forests.
This will protect many threatened species, as well as the forests.
US citizens: call on Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza,
protect human rights, and stop giving U.S. bombs for use in war
crimes.
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the WIC supplemental
nutrition program.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep making the ultra-wealthy pay
their taxes -- by fully funding the IRS.
This is a crucial first step towards making the rich "pay their fair
share", but to achieve that requires much more than making them obey
existing tax law. We need to increase taxes for the rich: to reduce
their ability to shelter wealth from taxes, and higher tax brackets
for very high incomes. The highest bracket should be over 90%, as it
was in the 40s and 50s.
Since they have accumulated wealth to the point of distorting our
justice and democracy, we also need to tax great wealth.
"Journalism" in India has been reduced to constant support for Modi's
right-wing party. Channels that don't go along are driven down.
Analyzing Nikki Haley's careful refusal to say "slavery" in New
Hampshire. She was trying to bridge a political contradiction that is
too far to be bridged.
Former prison thug: *If you think jails are too soft and full of
hardened criminals, read this and think again.*
EPIC reports on how little we know about the "commercially available
information" about Americans that US government agencies buy.
The root of this problem is not that the US government buys the
commercially available information but that sensitive information
about people can be collected at all. The fourth amendment was
meant to limit investigation of people's things and activities, and
such limits are meaningful only if it can't be bypassed by asking a
business to pressure you to consent.
Recent autos offer a feature by which the driver can connect per
snoop-phone to the car. That feature snoops on the calls and texts and
give the data to the car manufacturer, and to the state.
A good privacy law would prohibit cars recording this data about the
users activities. But not just this data -- lots of other data too.
Israel will reduce its troops in Gaza and demobilize some who are
reservists. But this does not mean the mass murder will end any time soon.
Robert Reich: Biden needs to start visibly fighting the main enemies of
American working families: the billionaires and plutocratists.
There is a cancellation campaign against famous Chinese dissident
artist Ai Wei Wei, for a political tweet that criticize Zionist
influence on the US.
His response has been to defend freedom of speech, including the right
to express "incorrect" thoughts.
War over access to water is increasing globally, and so is use of denial
of water as a weapon. How can the world reduce this?
Our system for preventing atrocities, mostly set up after World War
II, is defied constantly, and the most powerful governments are unable
to make other countries obey. In some cases, Russia being just one
one, they are among the most guilty. That encourages the increase of
all kinds of atrocities.
So the real question is how to reshape international power competition
so that it is not advantageous to disregard that system, let alone
fight against it as Putin and Netanyahu are doing now.
Global heating is on track to cause various medical problems for
hundreds of millions more people in the next few decades.
Standing Together holds Arab-Jewish peace rallies in cities in Israel.
I think my wishes of benevolence
fit together with that campaign.
*World [is going far too slowly] on almost every policy required to
cut carbon emissions, research finds.*
A Cuban who fled to the US compares the insurrectionist with Castro.
The insurrectionist is far worse than Castro. Castro established
education and provided medical care for all, while eliminating hunger;
however, he also abolished vital human rights. Dissidents such as
Oswaldo Payá admired the good side of what Castro did, while standing
up to repression to change the bad side.
The insurrectionist, by contrast, has no wish to make life better
for Americans unless that serves him. He and his minions work against
education, against medicine, and for starvation.
*The 10 Worst Free-Range Parenting Stories of 2023.*
*Many hostages released by Hamas still being treated for trauma.
Head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv medical centre says hostages have
undergone worst abuse she has witnessed.* It sounds horrible.
HAMAS is a terrorist organization and some of its kidnappers vented all
their hatred against hostages. But that is not an excuse to hate all
Palestinians in Gaza and torture them,
Some of these kinds of torture have been practiced by other counties
such as China
and the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to save lives by insisting on a
ceasefire in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The UK plans to exile Dmitry Lima to Portugal, on account of a
sentence for nonviolent crimes. This despite the fact that he was
born in the UK and has never been outside the UK.
I wonder whether Portugal would admit him. Has it got legal grounds
to block the deportation?
Since his parents were/are Portuguese, I suppose he is or at least was
entitled to apply for Portuguese citizenship — but does he actually
have that citizenship? Would it be granted under these circumstances,
if he does apply? What if he (rationally) declines to apply for this
help in deporting him?
Perhaps this is simply yet another example of the UK state's lack of
capacity to implement its own rules reliably.
Online tracking dis-services, and tethered appliances, are trying to teach
customers to love Big Brother — by sending them summaries of what they did
during the year.
If you'd like a list summarizing the music, movies, food products or
humidifier hours you have used during the year, the free software you use
for this should be able to keep such lists — for your eyes only.
Meanwhile, join me in saying "Out, out, damned Spotify!" and never let
them know anything about you again.
A leader of the Hong Kong democracy movement accuses the UK of bending over
backwards to reject requests for asylum from refugees for Hong Kong.
The UK made a trade agreement with China recently. Since China is
rich and the UK is poor by comparison, it makes sense that the Tories
would suck up to China in this way.
However, it could simply be the an instance of the general
incompetence of UK bureaucracy in government and business.
Or a general lack of sense of proportion.
Nikki Haley, in a public meeting, persistently refused to recognize
slavery among the causes of the US Civil War.
Dissembling about this is a traditional part of defending the
Confederate side and deflecting criticism of its system of slavery
(and, later, segregation and discrimination).
Argentina's repressive new president has proposed a law of gross
repression: any protest rally of more than three people in a public
place would require applying for a permit in advance.
Some kinds of protests would be harshly punished, as in Hong Kong
Britain.
Some Israelis are horrified by what the army does, and refuse to be
drafted. One explains his decision here.
The last bank branch in the Peak District, an important English
tourism area, is closing.
Since it is a rural area and many people don't have cars, going to a
branch elsewhere will be difficult for them. It will be difficult for
businesses, too, to deposit cash and withdraw cash.
The UK has made hundreds of refugees live in a disused rural airbase
from which it is hard to get anywhere. One village is close enough
that they can walk to it. The people there worry that so many
refugees will cause problems for them.
Wethersfield's population is under 1,300. The number of refugees may
be half that. Their club is not designed for hundreds of guests at
once.
If the UK had placed the refugees in a less isolated and more urban
area, where hundreds of thousands live, they would hardly be
noticeable.
(satire) *Fisher-Price Smartphone Toy Teaches Children To Screen All
Calls Assuming It’s Debt Collectors.*
Too bad it doesn't teach that the snoop-phone could be listening all
the time.
Political decisions in the UK leave millions of inhabitants too poor
to afford healthful food -- and sometimes, too poor to afford any food
-- and this
is causing
an increase in obesity from eating mainly the cheap junk food.
These political decisions are part of what is known as "austerity" and
are taken by parties such as
the Tories
and Labour that refuse to increase taxes on the rich so as to help the
poor.
The US
is making
similar decisions under the control of Republicans in Congress.
Inheritance taxes
are paid
by the rich. or by those who are about to become rich. This makes
them one of the fairest kinds of tax, in a society that has let the
rich grab too much.
Strange that non-rich voters think they will someday have to pay it.
*We are witnessing a pandemic of inhumanity: to halt the spread, we
must cling to the law.* The laws of war and war crimes, that refers to.
Antarctica's climate is teetering on the edge of disaster:
*Study after study showed the breakdown of climate systems taking place
[decades] earlier than foreseen, with potentially catastrophic results.*
It's not just penguins that will be wiped out. It's the geography, too.
Rotifers eat microplastics, then cannot digest them, but split them up
into enormous numbers of much smaller nanoplastic particles.
The nanoplastic particles can get into smaller organisms, further down
the food chain, which means they go through more levels of
concentration before they reach the sea animals that we eat. If they are
harmful, which no one knows, that would make them more harmful.
It's a world-wide experiment being carried out on all humans and most other
animals, all at once.
*Complaints against
NYPD hit
11-year high under pro-police mayor Adams.* I expected something
like this, since he is an ex-thug and will tend to take the side of
thugs in a dispute.
The proponents of repressive
"broken
windows" policies for the thug department, which were applied in
the 90s in some US cities, took credit for a decrease in crime that
turned out to happen nationwide at that time, regardless of use of
those policies. It was caused by other factors, such as eliminating
lead from gasoline and other parts of the environment.
*A quarter of [Gaza's] population
could die
within a year due to outbreaks of disease caused by [the
bombardment and siege].*
That would be enough to convince me that the term "genocide" fits.
So would poisoning the groundwater with salt.
Israeli bombardment, and even direct gunfire, threaten those trying to
distribute food and water in Gaza.
The quantity that is getting through is nowhere near enough.
Tall waves hitting the California coast have overtopped sea walls and
cliffs, causing damage and injury.
To this effect of global heating (stronger storms) will be added another
expected effect, sea-level ruse.
Due to the expensive and inferior US medical system, life expectancy
for non-college-graduates has decreased every year since 2010.
That's because their income has decreased. As often happens, lower
life expectancy measures poverty. It is understandable that they are
dissatisfied and want a change.
Those who think of addressing this by voting for the Republican Party,
which wants to make the medical system even worse and block's Biden's
efforts to improve it, are being self-destructively foolish.
*New York college students who support
Palestine fear
post-9/11-style retaliation.* Except that now they also scan
through social media posts.
The difference between condemning HAMAS's actions and hating
Palestinians generally is conceptually clear enough, but if you forget
to pay attention to it you can easily drift across the line without
noticing. Likewise with the difference between Israel's actions and
hating Jews generally.
Even if you carefully keep these differences in mind, and carefully
represent them in your words, your enemies can unconsciously
misunderstand and accuse you of hatred. They can
even dishonestly
and intentionally make false accusations, blaming you for what your
associates have done, or
for things
that didn't happen at all.
A new form of romanticism is leading young people to reject
rationalism and science, as well as technology.
The specific forms of technology that the article mentions are
oppressive forms: online dis-services and nonfree software. There are
valid rational reasons to reject them -- but if you ignore those
reasons, and give way to a thoughtless reject, that will not lead you
to make good choices.
The person who told us to "listen to the scientists" was Greta
Thunberg, and she was talking specifically about climate scientists
and their modeling of coming global climate catastrophe. We know full
well who wants us not to listen to them, and spends millions of
dollars
to distract
us from them.
Science is not perfect, and individual scientific conclusions can be
wrong, But science, when practiced properly and honestly, is our best
tool for collectively finding and correcting each other's errors and
our own. To reject scientific thinking is not only foolish, it is
asking for trouble, even gigadeaths. It can amount to genocide
against the human race, and millions of other species too.
The danger of broader war in the Middle East is increasing, as Israel and Iran
are getting drawn toward more conflict, and even into direct conflict. The worst danger is that Netanyahu may want that result.
Some Republican candidates are trying to duck the question of abortion
rights, hoping to convince voters not to protect themselves by
defeating those candidates.
The exploitative practice of imposing debt on new workers coming from
abroad, often associated with Persian Gulf countries, is now being
perpetrated openly in the US.
* UN high commissioner for human rights says there is "rapid
deterioration" of [respect for Palestinians' human] rights in West
Bank.*
Israeli suppression forces have jailed thousands, venting hatred at
them physically in the process. Most of them were not charged with
any crime; Israel practices arbitrary imprisonment of Palestinians,
much as South Africa under apartheid practiced arbitrary imprisonment
of dissidents.
None of that is new. What is new is the great increase in number of victims.
How plutocratist politicians have redesigned US bankruptcy law over
decades so that mainly wealthy people can take advantage of
bankruptcy.
It takes cash to pay a lawyer to successfully declare bankruptcy.
Many Americans are too poor to hire the lawyer, so they can't do it.
How to help people who disagree have reasonable discussions about
the facts of racism and practical ways to reduce it.
If the Tories lose heavily in next year's election, the party could
be heavily influenced by the extreme right wing.
That would enable so-called "Labour" party to fully adopt the old
policies of the Tories, thus securing the lasting support of former
Tory voters.
As for the people who used to support Labour, will they find a chance to
organize a new party to stand for what Labour used to stand for?
Maine has tentatively removed the insurrectionist from the ballot for
the Republican presidential primary, pending court appeals.
A company makes a business of infiltrating and undermining protests
that aim to prevent future local and global disasters.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate DeJoy's disregard for
government rules designed to protect employees from the danger of
higher temperatures.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Israel has filled the West Bank with checkpoints that block Palestinians
from traveling around. In Huwara, Israel turned the main street into
an Israelis-only road. For Palestinians to cross it, they must go through
a checkpoint.
Going through a checkpoint is usually harassment, but it can be fatal.
Meanwhile, the army has closed all the stores in the main street.
It is good that the UK has ceased to put children 10 or 11 years old in
prison in the past 13 years, but calling them "very young children",
as this article does, will do them harm in many ways.
Children that age are old enough to do many things on their own, but
society has a tendency to treat them as helpless make them effectively
prisoners of adults. This leads them to grow up without learning how
to organize activities for themselves. The Free Range Kids
campaign pushes to change this.
Humans of age 10 and 11 are children, but "very young children" they
are not.
I've read that several European countries have set the age of criminal
responsibility at 14. I think that is a reasonable policy.
Michigan's supreme court ruled that the insurrectionist can stay on the
Republican primary ballot, on the grounds that the 14th amendment prohibition on his running for office does not apply to primary elections.
I can see a kind of logic in this, but it is fairer to resolve such
issues early so that a party can make sure to choose a candidate who
will be eligible for the office.
For Ukraine to defeat the Putin forces, Europe must increase its rate
of arms production. Otherwise it risks being threatened with invasion
by Putin, who would have at his disposal a higher rate of production
than the whole of Europe.
The author also points out that Ukraine needs to train its troops for longer
before sending them into battle. Without sufficient training, many of them
will die futile deaths. That benefits only Putin.
In 15 years, Uruguay has moved its electric generation almost
completely to renewables. In any year, renewables produce from 90% to
98% of the electricity.
Japanese car factories for various brands have been caught falsifying
the results of safety inspections for over 30 years, affecting perhaps
millions of cars.
*Food aid failing to reach Gaza residents despite "catastrophic"
hunger crisis.*
The insurrectionist's strategy is to convert all Republicans into his
cultists by pushing the body of them, step by step, into an extremist
fanatical servitude to him. Here is an example: a right-wing
extremist is getting cancelled because he has been reluctant in
endorsing the big lie (that the wrecker won the 2020 election).
The insurrectionist demands that all Republicans shout their loyalty
and obedience to the Great Leader!
Thoughtful speculation about how the war in Gaza will affect Ukraine,
Putin, US influence, and the world order after 2024.
Brittany Watts, of Ohio, had a miscarriage at home and disposed of the
nonviable fetus as people often do. Now she faces possible charges of
"abuse of a corpse".
The very idea of sentencing someone to prison for "abuse of a corpse"
is absurd, since whatever is done to a corpse can't injure any person.
Biden is planning to move marijuana to a lower level of restriction,
which will make it easier to operate retail marijuana businesses.
Modi's government has proposed a big redesign of laws covering television,
even television transmitted over the internet.
There are many questions that the article doesn't clearly answer.
Would this empower the state to censor all video that any site permits
visitors to download?
Who to compare the funniness of jokes.
The next Boston rally for Julian Assange will be at *Park St Station
starting at 2pm on Dec 31*. Once we're there, we may check out the
situation at City Hall, where the big public gathering and events will
be, and consider going there, or we may stay at Park Street and speak
to the people coming and going. These two places are just a few short
blocks apart.
Here are ways to contact the DoJ: write Merrick Garland, Attorney General
at the US Dept of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Wash, DC 20530-0001,
or call their comment line at +1-202-353-1555 x1.
Simple phone script here:
https://assangedefense.org/press-release/call-for-assanges-freedom/
US citizens: call on Congress to save America's oldest forests.
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.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: call on the Abobe CEO to stop selling fake images of the war
in Gaza, which others then republish while presenting them as the truth.
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself in the Colorado
case about whether the wrecker is eligible to run for office in the
US.
Everyone: call on Citibank to stop investing in new fossil
fuel projects.
International observers found the elections in Serbia to be rigged.
Now the government is arresting protesters.
* A Syrian refugee who secretly filmed Croatian border guards beating
his travel companions is to take [Croatia] to the European court of
human rights.*
Wives and mothers of soldiers in the Putin forces are demanding that Putin
let their men go home.
Putin would naturally think of repressing them, but he will realize
that repressing the wives and mothers of the soldiers in his army
could easily backfire.
Should the right to assistance in suicide apply to people don't have
grave physical medical problems?
Some forms of injury and disease, which are not terminal, can make
life painful and useless, potentially for decades. In those cases, I
say the answer is yes. But what about people whose only medical issue
is depression?
The article describes a real case of someone who applied for suicide
aid because perse had been "denied housing assistance". The article
is not explicit, but it this had left per homeless. Let's suppose so,
because that is an interesting case to think about.
If you wish to die rather than be homeless and live on the street,
what is the state's duty to you? The dispute presented here is
whether the state's duty is to compel you to keep living on the street
until random events change your situation, or to help you commit
suicide.
Each of those policies would lead to bad outcomes sometimes, so this
is a difficult choice between two imperfect policies. But that is
just one aspect of your situation, just one aspect of your
relationship with the state.
By considering more of the situation, we find a better answer: the
state's duty is to give you a decent place to live. The state should
offer that to everyone who is homeless, whether perse wishes to die or
not.
Maybe then you would want to live. If you still want to die, it would
not be due to homelessness.
(satire) *Parents Get Up Early To Place Santa Droppings Around Living
Room To Convince Children He Visited*
US citizens: call on Big Tech to Stop sharing abortion data
with government agencies.
Just asking the companies to stop is unlikely to suffice. We need
laws to stop them. To make the correction reliable, those must be
laws against collecting the data that could be used to persecute those
who have had abortions.
*Israeli airstrike kills Gaza aid worker and 70 of his extended
family, UN says.*
The article also describes the excuses that Israel presents for slowing the
flow of aid to an inadequate amount, which is causing terrible hunger.
A donations site in the US funnels money to right-wing groups in
Israel that participate in pogroms in Palestine and in seizing
Palestinians' land.
Some of this donation violates US laws, but the US government hardly
pays attention.
Israel's plan to flood HAMAS tunnels with sea water is likely to make
all Gaza's ground water undrinkable, and poison all the farms with salt.
It would not surprise me if that were the intention — a plan to force
just about everyone to leave Gaza, but in a deniable way, one that would
appear less culpable than forcing them at gunpoint or bombing everyone.
*Israeli campaign to kill Hamas leaders likely to backfire, say
earlier assassination targets.*
When the US tried this approach against various real or presumed
enemies, the attacks, whether successful or not, killed lots of other
people. This stirred up considerable hatred against the US. Israel
is already doing lots of things that stir up hatred, but it can surely
generate more if it does this.
Saudi Arabia, the US and UAE are all planning big increases in fossil
fuel extraction, enough to threaten disaster.
* UK forests are heading for "catastrophic ecosystem collapse" within
the next 50 years due to multiple threats [happening in parallel]
including disease, extreme weather and wildfires, researchers have
warned.*
Can anyone find comparable studies about parts of the US?
Oregon protesters defeated a proposed fossil gas pipeline, but the
intrusive surveillance installed to repress such protests remains in place.
*"Questions linger" after Connecticut cops shoot man dead in his bed.*
Once again, thugs assume that if it looks like there is danger, and
they can't be certain there isn't any, the only thing they can do is
shoot fast. That assumption is going to lead systematically to many
deaths.
What else could they have done? They could have pulled back from the
door. They could have used a mirror or a video camera to look at
Passmore through the doorway while remaining out of sight for him.
If thugs don't have such equipment nowadays, we could make sure they
have it in the future.
Cory Doctorow: when business demands we use "all the solutions at once"
for decarbonization, it's an excuse for "trying" the phony solutions that
won't really help decarbonize but will contribute to their profits.
Debunking the right-wing excuses for raiding Social Security.
If you are Chinese, you may be able to paddle your way to Taiwan's
territory, but there is zero chance Taiwan will give you asylum.
I find that very sad.
US citizens: call on Biden to push hard to renew the ceasefire in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on the Veterans' Administration to fix its
mistake — Buy back predatory loans from veterans forced into
foreclosure.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate state voter purges.
Rebecca Solnit: *The January 6 insurrection will have succeeded if
[the wrecker] is re-elected and he avoids accountability for the
crimes of his first term.*
India arrested an alleged Sikh separatist terrorist and tortured a
confession out of him. He has been in prison for six years with no
real evidence and no sign of a serious trial.
I do not support Sikh separatism, and certainly not terrorism, but people
accused of terrorism deserve fair trials.
A thorough analysis of the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that the
wrecker aided the Jan 6 insurrection and therefore is barred from
being a candidate for office.
A recording captured the wrecker's efforts to undermine the 2020
election of Michigan.
A powerful cardinal has been convicted of corruption in a Vatican court.
It looks like Pope Francis is really serious about reducing corruption
in the Catholic Church.
The workers who clean airplanes in US airports are paid little, and
overworked to the point of sometimes making them sick.
The US refrained from vetoing a Security Council resolution which is
one step short of demanding an end to the fighting in Gaza. It calls
for allowing massive deliveries of aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Biden is gradually moving towards the right thing.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is spreading as an epidemic among various deer
species in the US. It is carried by prions, like BSE (mad cow disease).
It spreads among wild deer because when deer die they leave prions
on the grass, where other deer will consume them. It may be able to
spread to humans, or to cattle.
The US deer population has ballooned in recent decades,
which enabled Lyme disease to infect a lot of humans.
Perhaps culling lots of deer would slow the spread of CWD.
*2023 was the year governments looked at the climate crisis — and
decided to persecute the activists.*
Privatization has wrecked the post office in Britain.
In the US, DeJoy is doing it. Yesterday, Dec 23, I received a letter
mailed from Vermont on Nov 29.
Rwandan dissidents in exile in Britain have been informed that
President Kagame's agents may be trying to kill them.
* The Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who killed Niani Finlayson, [who
had called 911 to report her ex was attacking her,] previously
killed another civilian under similar circumstances.*
We must suspect that the thug department is concealing the video of
the events because it would show that the thug's story is false.
They often lie about their role in crimes, and call it "testilying".
Human Rights Watch accused Facebook/Instagram of bias against support
for Palestinians, in its moderation of postings.
It said the company
fails to follow its rules and the result is systematic bias.
The company replied that it attempts to apply its rules
even-handedly but it is not straightforward to do so.
Since the combat in Gaza is asymmetrical, it is not surprising that
applying one set of rules to supporters of both sides, as
even-handedly as a human can be, could lead to a biased result.
For instance, Israel's massacres often result from systematic
carelessness. In one case, it led to Israeli troops killing three
escaped Israeli hostages. Surely the soldiers did not specifically
wish those hostages dead; but their "this has to be a trap" mindset
predisposed them to killing anyone who was in the wrong place at the
wrong time. The fog of war did the rest. All that would apply to
each of the 2 million Palestinian civilians, just as it would to the
occasional escaped hostage.
I can imagine that Facebook/Instagram moderators look at a video of
civilians killed by Israel's bombardment and calling that a
"massacre", and rejecting that claim as false on the grounds that
there was no sign of a specific intention to kill Palestinian
civilians at that moment. At what point does adoption of a policy
that leads to indiscriminate killing of civilians become tantamount to
a decision to kill civilians?
It is true that 1,000 examples of postings allegedly handled wrong is
a minuscule fraction of the postings that are made. On the other
hand, to check that many examples is a large task. Facebook/Instagram
has the money to check far more than that; Human Rights Watch does
not.
I have an idea for a way of evaluating whether the moderation system,
over all, is biased. First, randomly choose N instances of postings
accused of being unfair to Israel, and N instances of postings accused
of being unfair to Palestine. Then study what the moderation system
did with each one, and deduce from those examples what the real
moderation system does in actual practice. What are its real,
practical rules and real, practical criteria?
Those conclusions about how the moderation system actually works would
provide a basis to judge whether that system is fair in practice —
and provide specific recommendations to improve it, if not.
Salman Rushdie defends freedom of expression from the old censors of
the right wing, and the young censors of the left wing.
Reportedly the bullshitter's lawyers asked to delay one of his trials
because the people in the courtroom might catch Covid-19. The judge
offered them N95 masks, but they didn't take the danger seriously
enough to put masks on.
A court ruling heads towards the conclusion that simply training a
neural network on a work does not infringe copyright on that work.
That is surely the correct conclusion. A neural network is not a
representation of any of the works it was trained on.
Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount are considering a merger
that would further reduce competition in the streaming industry
and movie/TV production industry.
The US government should block them from merging, but that won't stop
them from being evil. Streaming dis-services are based on DRM and on
antisocializing their customers. They are evil already, and if they
merge they will become a more powerful evil.
Albertsons and Macy's uses facial recognition on customers, but this
article gives us little information on how.
We must reject the idea that businesses deserve the freedom to do
facial recognition on video images in and around their premises, or
the freedom to make videos and transmit them elsewhere, or regularly
save them for more than a few weeks, This supposed freedom conflicts with
the privacy that humans beings deserve,
and it facilitates the repression
than US cities and agencies are already eager to commit. These include
Atlanta
and Florida.
*Surveillance Britain: where police are quietly trying to access 50m
photos for one mass lineup.*
Women's tears, and perhaps all humans' tears, contain a sort of pheromone
that reduces aggression.
I think this is the first time that the existence of a human pheromone
has been demonstrated.
*The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused the Israeli
military of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza amid
the highest death toll of media workers in any recent conflict.*
Global heating has effectively damaged the capacity of the Panama
Canal by reducing the amount of water available to operate its locks.
A former baby that was photographed nude for an album cover at the age
of 4 months is now suing for "sexual exploitation".
There was nothing remotely sexual in the image that was published.
On the risks of asking a bullshit generator which examples you should
cite in a report to a court.
Let's reserve the term "AI" for systems that know the intended meaning
of what they say.
*Root and branch reform: [since] carbon markets aren't working, how do
we save our forests?*
I think that all these methods require a bigger stick, to succeed,
than people today envision arming them with.
Indigenous campaigners, human rights defenders and climate activists
say they have been threatened and intimidated at UN climate events
including Cop28, in an effort to silence them.
A federal agency cited federal trade sanctions to prohibit inviting
certain people to speak at an event in the US. A lawsuit argues that
this is unconstitutional censorship.
I agree -- trade sanctions against foreign interests are legitimate
but must not be an excuse for censorship.
The US will prosecute an Indian for allegedly organizing a plan to kill
Sikh separatists living in the US.
Government programs to increase the number of trees should focus on
how many trees survive, not just the first step which is planting them.
US citizens: call on the Judicial Conference that we need real judicial
ethics reform now.
US citizens: call on Congress to make paid sick leave available to all
workers.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to protect people from corporate medical
insurance greed.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Can anyone tell me how to find a Searx instance I can use? The one I
formerly used seemed to work ok although I had LibreJS active, but it
does not seem to exist any more.
*Is the US going to approve the single biggest fossil-fuel expansion
on earth?*
In addition to the enshittification
of individual web sites, the
general practice of online sales is suffering collective
enshittification as described here.
The European Union will start taking fingerprints and "facial scans"
of all visitors.
Can anyone tell me what a "facial scan" is, and how it differs from an
ordinary photograph?
I have refused to go to countries that demand fingerprints. Refusing
to visit Europe is too big a sacrifice for me, so I will yield in that
one case.
That does not mean I will yield to similar demands from other
countries. If there is one defensive position you can't hold, that is
no reason to surrender them all! I will continue to refuse to visit
the other countries that demand fingerprints, such as Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Argentina, unless I can bypass the
system.
Of course, I will also not visit China.
I think this will help block the tendency to gouge patients, but I
suspect that putting an end to that tendency will require deeper
changes — for instance, breaking up the large corporate chains and
excluding for-profit business from treatment of patients.
British playwrights, actors and directors wrote to Israel calling for release
of the members of the Jenin Freedom Theater. who were jailed a week ago.
My comments
on the Palestinian boycott-divestment-sanctions
policy.
*[Scientists estimate that around] 12% of [bird species] have died
out as result of human activity in past 120,000 years*
That is around 1400 species extinct.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter
to support
H Res 934, which calls for dropping the charges against Julian
Assange.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Some flowers have been found evolving to self-pollinate,
apparently because humans have wiped out many pollinators.
*The Colorado Supreme Court ruled … that Donald Trump is
disqualified from appearing on the Colorado presidential primary and
general election ballot.*
What will the US Supreme Court, in the grip of partisan
and corrupt
justices, finally decide about this?
This decision affecting Colorado will probably not affect the
outcome in the Electoral College. I wonder whether any red states
will disqualify him.
Robert Reich: The wrecker acts in ways that suggest dementia.
The press ignores this.
US citizens: call on Congress to remove Section 702 surveillance
reauthorization from the NDAA and instead advance the bipartisan Protect
Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act.
US citizens: call on the senate: NO mass deportations, NO family
separation.
Argentina's new right-wing president is planning to repress protests cruelly.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to oppose
right-wing demands for massive deportations without hearings, and even
rejection of all immigration.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Two-state solution would mean relocating 200,000 settlers,*
according to an Israeli lawyer advising the UK foreign minister
who is working toward that solution.
Israel established these "settlements", in knowing violation of the
treaties covering military occupation, expressly to prevent
establishment of a State of Palestine. We must not allow this to
determine the borders of Palestine for the future. It is acceptable
if some of the "settlements", complete with current Israeli
inhabitants, end up inside Palestine.
The crucial idea is to agree on an acceptable ultimate outcome, then
use temporary allowances to make it feasible to reach that outcome
after time.
There is no legitimate way to make them all move in a short time.
(The method Israel is using in Gaza is not legitimate there or
anywhere.) Fortunately, there is no need to aim for that goal.
Making those lands and buildings part of the State of Palestine does
not require emptying them of inhabitants in a hurry. The crucial
thing for creating the state is to establish Palestinian sovereignty
and jurisdiction over that territory.
In Israel, I was told that a large fraction of the Israelis who moved
to the "settlements" did so to save money. (Apparently inhabiting the
settlements was subsidized, just as their construction was.) Those
Israelis are not fanatics and would move out if that becomes
advantageous.
Palestine could allow Israeli citizens to reside there while paying
rent, which Palestine would not subsidize for them. I am sure it
would appreciate the income from this.
Israel would be compelled by voters to subsidize the rent paid to
Palestine, but for financial reasons would wish to reduce the rate of
flow of this money. So it would hasten to build new housing within
the agreed-on borders of Israel, enabling Israelis to move out of
Palestine.
As for the violent fanatics among the "settlers", Palestine's cops
(trained to be less brutal than Israel's Border Patrol) would identify
them and deport them to Israel, and they would not get visas to
reenter.
DeJoy is continuing with cost-cutting measures that will reduce post
office jobs and slow mail delivery, even locally.
DeJoy has been at work for years, and the results show. I recently
received a bill due Dec 5, which was probably mailed around Nov 28,
and I should have received it on Nov 30 or so. The bill arrived on
Dec 14.
I don't have a time machine, and I am not going to scurry in fear of
being called "late". I pay these bills in cash, and I will pay this
bill that way, next time I go to that neighborhood -- just as I
normally do.
Bernie Sanders is leading the Senate to demand a report from the State
Department on whether Israel is heeding the rules of war.
The wave of support for diversity initiatives that was triggered by
the reaction to the murder of George Floyd is fading, so next year
the right wing will try to get rid of them.
AI programs that can accurately summarize the purport of conversations
could create automated mass spying to go with automated mass surveillance.
Unless we criminalize the practice.
I have to point out that Schneier engages in a socially obligatory
exaggeration when he says that "there’s no reasonable way for us to opt
out of" all the surveillance systems. Knowing the surveillance they
do, and the nonfree software they impose, I never opted in to them.
That doesn't invalidate his conclusions, because most people do find
it unthinkable to reject those systems as I reject them.
*West Bank: Israel opens [criminal investigation] after videos
appear to show troops shooting Palestinians at close range.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass federal legislation to
tackle rampant voter suppression.
Israel bombed the Farhana school twice in one day. The second time, the drone
killed a journalist who had come to cover the results of the first bomb.
Civilians who had had to flee their homes were taking shelter in the school.
The wrecker is pushing hard to endorse white supremacist rhetoric which reminds me of Nazism.
Speculation on why so many members of elites believe in medical
quackery.
Homeopathy is quackery with dilutions of grandeur.
Everyone: call on Canada and the US reject logging of primary forests
to burn for generating electricity.
US citizens: call on Congress to reform bankruptcy law so that company
owners who are liable due to negligence can't get off the hook through
the bankruptcy of the company.
CVS, Kroger and Rite Aid pharmacies allow pharmacy staff to hand over
customers’ medical records to officials, without a warrant.
These records can show, for instance, whether you had an abortion,
even in another state. Prosecutors can get the data in their own state,
or in some other state which gives customers weaker legal protections.
Even if a company insisted on a warrant before handing over your data,
that is not sufficient to uphold your rights, because a warrant for
the company is not the same thing as a warrant for you.
If a warrant demands you hand over your data, you will know about it
and you can challenge its validity in court. If a company receives a
warrant to hand over your data, the company could challenge the
warrant's validity, but a company whose main goal is wealth is not
likely to care. It would hand over your data and not tell you.
The connections between eugenics, natalism and white nationalism are
becoming concrete and detectable through an event which brings them together.
*Chile votes to reject new conservative constitution which threatened
rights of women.*
Three hostages escaped from HAMAS, only to be killed by Israeli
soldiers who repeatedly refused to believe their various efforts to
communicate that they were escaped hostages.
It is clear that the Israeli army is so suspicious of traps that it
has, in effect, decided to kill anyone who appears in the wrong place
and ask questions later.
Many Israelis are very angry at the government over this, and some
protesters are calling for negotiation with HAMAS.
This could provide an opportunity to push Netanyahu out of power
so that he can be convicted of corruption and imprisoned.
Then there will be the problem of what to do about right-wing
terrorists who systematically harass and attack Palestinians
in their homes, as the state thugs do nothing to protect the latter.
Israel owes Palestine the land and buildings that these "settlers"
live on and in. Returning those to Palestine will deprive the
"settlers" of the platform with which they use violence to boost
racism.
The bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed around 19,000
Palestinians whose death has been counted. Subtract a few thousand
who were HAMAS fighters, and add a few thousand specific individuals
(surely mostly civilians) known to have been trapped under the rubble
of bombarded buildings,
and we get a rough estimate of 20,000
Palestinians civilians killed. By continuing the war in the same
fashion, Israel is sure to kill thousands more civilians. Those who
are dying of cold, hunger and disease are also being killed by
Israel's war -- any siege is an act of war.
Israel cannot justify killing thousands more civilians by military
goals.
* Experts say wood-burning [in a home stove] is not cheaper or truly
renewable and constitutes a major health risk.*
Electric power plants that burn wood chips have similar problems.
*Government [of Australia] joins more than a dozen countries to say
settlers are "terrorizing" Palestinians in "unacceptable" violence.*
Thank you Australia for recognizing this.
*American citizens have been at the forefront of the rise of settler
violence in the occupied territories, and the ongoing ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians from their land, but as US passport holders
they cannot be barred from [going to the US].*
It seems to me that these crimes call for a response that goes beyond
barring them from returning to the US. That response by itself won't
have much effect on them. Can the US prosecute them for violent
hatred and violations of human rights, committed outside the US?
Some British supermarkets charge over 10% more to anonymous customers.
A spokesman claims that one of them protects personal data "incredibly
carefully", but apparently that is not true all the time, because
of the time it is selling that very data to third parties.
It should be illegal for a store to charge different prices to
customers depending on whether they identify themselves and/or hand
over demanded personal data.
*Just Stop Oil activist jailed for six months [by the UK for
participating in an inconvenient but peaceful protest.]*
Other protesters demanded a trial and were exonerated by the jury.
It seems that pleading guilty is a mistake.
The ACLU is defending the NRA against government campaigns to extralegally
intimidate banks into refusing it as a customer. The same case
will defend many other sorts of organizations from harassment based on
political views.
(satire) *Toyota Reveals That Any Babies Conceived In Backseats Of
Their Cars Belong To Them Now.*
China is putting former Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai on
trial for supporting democracy (they describe it in different terms).
After he is convicted, he will probably spend the rest of his life in
prison.
China would probably claim those statements are false -- that it is
"Hong Kong's" courts, not China's, that the charges are undermining
order and national security, Those are typical lies of repressive
tyrannies such as China.
Calling on Biden to push Netanyahu out of power in Israel
so that Israel can accept reasonable terms for peace in Gaza.
*[At least 40%] of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in
Gaza since October 7 have been unguided, otherwise known as "dumb
bombs."*
When bombing in Gaza, to hit some Palestinian civilians does not
require great precision.
*AI doomsday warnings a distraction from the danger it already poses,*
such as the recommendation engines of antisocial media platforms that
encourage the spread of disinformation and hatred.
*You can't fight the Republican party's "big lie" [that the wrecker
really won the 2020 election] with facts alone.*
The new records set by global heating (and its consequences) this year
are frightening.
Various US states have found legal pretexts to persecute 61 women for
giving themselves abortions or helping with them. Many have suffered
lasting harm as a result.
Yanis Varoufakis claims that capitalism has given way to a form of
platform feudalism, where the dominant powers are the companies that
charge rent for transactions passing through digital platforms that
most people consider impossible to avoid.
It is not in fact impossible -- I almost never touch any of them --
but avoiding them does require an effort. I am able to stand firm in
this effort because I hate the wrongs they impose on individuals
(nonfree software and tracking each person) even more than their
wealth and power.
Most people don't appreciate the injustice of that nonfree software or the tracking of everyone
so they can't draw strength and resilience from that source.
If you want to discuss Varoufakis's interesting political theory, I
suggest not adopting the term "cloud" that he so often uses. That is a
marketing term designed to distract the mind from the one-user-at-a-time
wrong that these companies' sites do to each user.
Pity the poor fools who think that what Europe needs is "its own Apple
or Google". One of each of those is too many. And pity even more the
Europeans, if that quest for home-grown European feudal lords is a
success.
Hot weather has made a normally harmless Pasteurella species start killing elephants in Africa, and antelopes in central Asia.It was never observed to cause disease before.
It could happen to other species of mammals, including perhaps our own.
High levels of particulate air pollution significantly increases the danger of
getting type 2 diabetes.
The pollution of Delhi may more than double that probability.
In the decade after 2010, many countries experienced leaderless
horizontal protests,- some of them very large. But hardly any gained
anything for democracy or justice, or whatever causes had motivated
the protests.
Some were co-opted by right-wing forces that were organized. Others
suffered from having no leaders that could negotiate to accept
concessions from the state.
President Rousseff of Brazil, a leftist who had been tortured by the
same military thugs that were bashing mass protesters in Sao Paulo,
watched the protests on TV trying to figure out what the protesters
wanted -- so she could do that for them. But there was no answer to
be had, because they were not organized enough to have agreed on
anything specific. She could only guess.
The article explains how organized right-wing extremists put the blame
on her, and that eventually led to making Bolsonaro president.
*[Former EPA employee] Karen McCormack says regulators at [that]
environmental agency are discouraged from speaking up about
dangerous chemicals.*
She said *that she believed the EPA was not
fulfilling its mission to protect the public from harmful chemicals.*
One example is the weedkiller, paraquat.
* Senator [Sanders] introduces resolution to investigate "humanitarian
cataclysm … being done with American bombs and money".*
Everyone: call on clothing manufacturers to phase out fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on your senators to support the Plastic Pellet Free
Waters Act, which would prohibit release of plastic "nurdles" into US
waterways.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to refer Leonard Leo to the Justice
Department for contempt of Congress.
US citizens: state that politicians shouldn't make our medical
decisions.
Everyone: Tell the Adobe CEO to stop selling generated images of war.
George Monbiot reports on the billions of dollars that the enormous
meat industry can spend on sowing irrational attachment to eating far
too much meat — and the forms of attachment we see around us.
He reports on how the UN Food and Agriculture organization has been captured
by the meat industry, and how Cop28 was blocked from even proposing that
we eat less meat.
The amount of meat we eat in the US and many other wealthy countries
is too much, because it is bad for the ecosphere's health and bad for
each human's health.
Meat production does harm to the ecosphere first by deforestation to
make more farmland to grow feed for animals, then by fertilizer runoff
from those farms. then through the waste that the animals produce.
All these harms are massive in scale because the quantities or meat
produced are massive.
* [Supreme court] to rule on scope of "obstruction of an official proceeding"
charge after lower-court judge dismissed three cases.*
Congress ended funding for research into gun violence after a research
project showed that families with a gun in the home were more likely
to have someone killed with a gun.
* Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon
can park billions [of dollars] in real estate and other assets [in the US].*
The city that employed the thugs that killed already-handcuffed Mario
Gonzalez will pay his family 11 million dollars, but will the thugs be
punished?
Until the killers themselves face punishment, they will expect to get away
with their crimes.
*European court of human rights finds that Polish abortion
legislation breached a pregnant woman’s right to privacy and family
life, after her foetus was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome.*
HAMAS operatives have been charged with planning to attack Jewish
institutions in Europe.
The House of Representatives voted to extend section 702 of the PAT RIOT Act
for four months.
That section authorizes massive surveillance.
I don't know whether the Senate has passed a similar bill.
In any case, the battle is not over.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the End Hedge Fund
Control of American Homes Act. This would ban hedge funds from owning
single-family homes, and require them to sell to families at least 10%
of the single-family homes they currently own, each year, so that
after 10 years they will no longer own any.
It seems to be that ownership of too many such houses by any owner,
whether human or corporate, should also be prohibited.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Yao Hui Charles Yeo, a persecuted human rights defender who fled
Singapore to ask for asylum in the UK, says he would rather live or
die on the streets, than live in the barge in isolated Portland where
one of the people sent there has already committed suicide.
The barge's official name is Bibby Stockholm, but Hostile Environment
might be a more fitting name. It is not exactly a prison, and the
people made to live there can leave when they wish, but they have to
go through an airport-style search plus a body search each time.
They also say that there is not enough food at meals for all of them.
*[Putin forces'] strikes on Kyiv damage children's hospital and leave
more than 50 injured.*
Sea foam at the Belgian and Dutch cost has concentrations of PFAS
that make swallowing it potentially dangerous.
Pressure from Australians in the Labor Party convinced the government
to call for an end to the fighting in Gaza.
US citizens: call on all 50 states to mail a mail-in ballot to each eligible
voter.
Cop28 ended with a global agreement to stop using fossil fuels, but
without specific enforcement requirements suitable to ensure progress
towards that goal.
*Summit president [al-Jaber] hails "historic package to accelerate
climate action", but critics decry "litany of loopholes" in final
text.*
Some climate scientists have called its weakness a disaster.
This gives UAE oil emir al-Jaber an excuse to claim to have achieved
great theoretical progress while in practice continuing to sell as
much oil as he can pump.
Argentina has eliminated subsidies for fossil fuel, along with other
measures to reduce government expenditure.
Cutting subsidies for fossil fuels is essential for many reasons, but
to avoid causing immediate hardship for people of low income, this
needs to be accompanied by increased support for people and families
of low income. This increase must not depend on actual fossil fuel
consumption! Therefore it will compensate for the increased cost of
fossil fuels without reducing their price.
Abascal, the leader of Spain's far-right party, went to Argentina to
congratulate the new right-wing president Milei, and there in an
interview indirectly compared Prime Minister Sánchez of Spain to a
dictator, by hinting that Spain would someday wish to kill him as
Italians killed the fascist dictator Mussolini.
His statement was typical right-wing bullshit, accusing left-wing
leaders of the very wrongs that right-wing leaders are visibly doing.
Their tactics are the road to fascist dictatorship.
What worries me is the idea of prosecuting the statement as
"incitement to violence." The statement in question predicts a desire
for violence, but doesn't actually urge violence.
It's clear that Abascal's statement was meant to encourage right-wing
hatred that his party is based on, and clear that such hatred
sometimes spills out as physical violence. Abascal surely knows this.
But I am still afraid that criminalizing such statements will become a
form of repression. Compare this with the widespread state-supported
effort to cast the protests against Israel's lightly veiled mass
murder in Gaza as "support for terrorism". Protesters in the UK have
been threatened with prosecution for "glorifying terrorism"
based on statements in support of Palestinians.
That is directly comparable to the prosecution of Abascal.
It is also an exaggeration comparable to Abascal's own exaggeration.
(A controversial coalition agreement is not tantamount to becoming a
dictator.)
Such exaggeration always deserves a rebuke, but criminalizing it is a
threat to freedom of speech. That path leads to oppressive
practices such as these, found in Thailand.
* A group of countries including Australia, the US, UK, Canada and Japan
have said they will "not be a co-signatory" to "death certificates" for
small island states, and have demanded a stronger agreement at the
COP28 summit to deal with fossil fuels and address the climate
crisis.*
At least that is pushing in the right direction. But it seems to late to
lead to a better agreement this year.
This inadequate agreement was prepared by the UAE, which appears to be
using its power in precisely the sort of sabotage we all expected.
Some US university presidents were asked by a congressional committee
to explain why they did not punish students for stating antisemitic
views. They explained that they were defending freedom of speech,
which courts have ruled does apply to college students. That includes
the right to express any views whatsoever.
They are now facing waves of hatred for respecting the US Constitution.
Subsequently the president of U Penn did resign.
The article does not report why she yielded to this pressure.
It appears that opposition to antisemitism, opposition which I join
in, is being twisted into an excuse to shut down criticism of Israel's
war crimes.
Those are two different issues; condemnation of Israel's war crimes
does not logically entail any opinion about Jews, just as condemnation
of HAMAS's war crimes does not logically entail any opinion about
Palestinians. I condemn Israel's war crimes without endorsing
antisemitism and without condemning the existence of Israel. I also
condemn HAMAS's war crimes without prejudice against Palestinians or
Muslims.
The word "intifada" means "uprising". Palestinians have used
different methods for uprising against the occupation, some of which
involved violence. The occupation itself uses violence too.
Describing Palestine as stretching "from the river to the sea" does
not embody antisemitism as such, but it does imply the disappearance
of Israel. I oppose that goal, and therefore criticize that phrase,
but I respect the freedom of speech of those who disagree with me on
this issue.
Many right-wing extremists reject outright the idea that the same
moral rules apply to them and to the rest of us. Rep. Stefanik, a
right-wing extremist, supports a fascist US presidential contender,
the wrecker, who publicly welcomes support from antisemites and even Nazis.
*{One] quarter of world’s freshwater fish [species] at risk of extinction,
according to assessment.*
The dictator of Nicaragua has reached a level of irrational
persecution worthy of Stalin or Caligula. Dictator Ortega (or was it
his wife?) accused the director of the Miss Nicaragua beauty contest
of treason and then arrested her husband and son, all because
the contest winner turned out to have participated in a protest
against the ruling couple in 2018.
The EU has agreed on strict rules on real time surveillance by biometric
recognition.
These rules seem pretty good to me — they will allow what society needs,
but not much more.
It is not clear to me whether any of these limits apply to searching
the millions of hours of stored video footage, which increasingly
cover every public place. To preserve justice and privacy, that must
be subject to he same rules.
And rules must apply to all private entities that collect or
accumulate such data. If they cover public entities only,
it will be easy to bypass them.
The rules to limit using algorithms to discriminate between
individuals seem to be a big step in the right direction. I can't
tell from this article whether they go far enough; maybe only experience
with the system that has just been enacted will tell us that.
Almost 1/3 of all Americans now have medical debt, as most medical
insurance plans push more and more of the cost onto the patient.
European countries' medical systems have been getting worse, too. A
French friend told me that the medical system there is much stingier
now — but it still beats the US by a large margin, even though it
costs less.
I suspect that is due to the fact that the US operates mostly
in medical insurance run by private companies, and most of them
are unscrupulously greedy.
It is feasible for the world to triple renewable electric generation
by 2030, with effort.
"Project Veritas", the right-wing whistleblower which used misleading edited
videos to attack progressive organizations, is floundering.
What Britain's government needs to learn in order to deal honestly,
rationally and effectively with the next pandemic.
*Fossil fuel phase-out [alone] will "not avert climate breakdown
without protections for nature."*
That means protecting *carbon sinks such as forests and wetlands.*
Biden made a rule that *all arms transfers to foreign governments be
subject to rigorous and continual examination of the recipient’s
record on the Geneva conventions and other global norms for
conducting warfare.* But, in order to overlook the mass killing of
civilians in Gaza, he is not following the rule in Israel's case.
A study found that the reason why UK cops use tasers more often against
blacks than against whites (it's a fact that they do so) is because
they perceive a black as more threatening than a white would be.
Another cause is that they think of a taser as a way to "make people
obey."
Republicans in Congress, investigating Hunter Biden, demand that he testify
privately. He says that he will testify only if it is public.
Feral cats, and pets as well. kill hundreds of threatened species.
US citizens: Stop the next bank bailout -- support the Federal Reserve's
proposal to increase large bank capital requirements.
US citizens: support the Inclusive Democracy Act to allow all
present and former convicts to vote.
The Taliban have more or less put an end to opium production
in Afghanistan.
They did this before 2001, also -- because it is part of their
religion.
This doesn't mean that there is no more heroin production. Rather,
growing opium has moved to Burma. With so much money to be made, it
will be produced somewhere. This is why prohibition is generally
ineffective.
Everyone: Insist that opposing the policies of Israel's government is
_not_ antisemitic.
US citizens: Help eliminate extreme power for corporations from
U.S. trade deals.
US citizens: Tell Congress that a vote for a "fiscal commission" is
a vote to cut Social Security and Medicare.
A group of right-wing conspiracy believers face charges in Germany for a plan
to attack Parliament and overthrow the government.
After it was tried in the US, it could be tried anywhere.
It appears that Canada treats giving someone a supply of poison
suitable for suicide, which perse then uses for suicide, as
"murder".
This is morally dishonest. Enabling someone to commit suicide
is not killing, not if the person made the decision perself to do it.
That article veils so much of the facts that is hard to tell what
actually happened. I have a suspicion that the writer, or the editor
of The Guardian, was desperate to avoid showing that the concept of
"murder" did not fit the events.
Another article gives a little more of the picture.
Biden has amplified verbal criticism of Israel for the bombardment of
Gaza. Still no real pressure, though, and that's what it will take
to end the atrocities.
*Congress Is Pushing Revolutionary Research on Psychedelic Treatments
for the Military.*
The UK has made a few more exceptions to its policy of permanently exiling
people who went to Syria to fight for PISSI, and the children they had there.
Kate Cox left Texas to get an abortion. *The Texas supreme court ruled
that she cannot terminate her non-viable pregnancy there, despite
risks to her life and future fertility.*
*Kate Cox begged Texas to let her end a dangerous pregnancy. She won’t
be the last.* For antiabortion fanatics, making their dogma prevail justifies
causing any actual suffering to actual human beings.
The supreme court's ruling eliminated the immediate issue of whether
the attorney general could prosecute doctors for obeying the lower
court's order. But the dangerous effect will linger even though this
case does not.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada have called for a cease fire in Gaza.
The US should join in.
Teaching children to cower in fear of extremely unlikely dangers does
them lasting harm.
*"Megayachts" are environmentally indefensible. The world must ban them.*
I agree, but we should recognize that these vessels are a symptom of
concentration of wealth. And not the most dangerous symptom, either,
Their influence over politics endangers democracy. To fully fix this
problem, we need to eliminate the possibility of possessing billions
of dollars.
Taxing wealth would be one way to do that.
Israel is reportedly unwilling to consider another temporary truce
unless it kills the highest leaders of HAMAS and gets proof they are dead.
Biden has reportedly acquiesced to this and will not even try to pressure
Israel to stop its murderous bombardments.
*UN organizers allow[ed] [160] groups that have obstructed fossil
fuel regulations and other climate action to attend [COP28], watchdog
finds.*
*Middle-class fear of green policies fuels rise of far right,
Colombia’s Petro warns.*
A multinational online gambling site lobbied against the New York
State law that prohibited marketing deceptively, or to young people
and gambling addicts.
You can download Free as in Freedom, 2nd edition, from the FSF.
Hong Kong dissident Agnes Chow, now living in Canada is still afraid of
attacks by Chinese overseas agents
who make threats in various other countries
against those who criticize China's repression.
*[The current minister's] planned cuts will mean the death of public
services. The lives of Britain’s most vulnerable people are on the
line.*
Argentina's new president puts extraction above all else.
London voters chose a system of voting for mayor which allowed each
voter an element of ranked choice. Now the Tories, in control of the
national government, have eliminated that.
President Maduro of Venezuela appears to be planning to seize a region
of neighboring Guyana in order to extract oil and gas there.
This territorial dispute is not new. 20 years ago, maps of Venezuela
made by the state showed that region as a part of Venezuela. What is
new is the intent to seize it by force. Chávez never showed any sign
of doing that; indeed, the UN was considering the issue of which country
that region should be part of.
As in any dispute between countries about which one(s) will get to
extract how much of the fossil fuels in a given region, the right
answer is "Nobody will extract it! Leave it in the ground!"
*[UK] Labour steps
up criticism
of "intolerable" killings in Gaza.*
Boosterism about possible inventions for removing CO2 from the air
are seeds for HUD -- hope, uncertainty and doubt.
No one knows whether those schemes will work well enough to make a
difference to the climate crisis, but PR campaigns can make them look
like almost a sure thing. The danger is that people will accept this
HUD are an excuse not to take firm measures now to drastically cut
fossil fuel use.
A few years from now, when the supposed miracle remedies turn out to
have achieved little, they will at least have achieved a few more
years of burning fossil fuels at full speed. Which I think is what the
planet roasters are aiming for.
*Local elections officials inundated with records requests by rightwing
activists.*
Pre-emptively publishing the things that can be published is a good approach.
*Closed-door meeting thwarts bid to let Atlanta residents vote on Cop
City.*
*[US] Private Prison Firms Set To Cash In On Immigrant Surveillance Boom.*
Robert Reich debunks the myth that an ideal "free market" would
exist in the absence of government. Each market is based on rules,
and in the absence of a government to make the rules, the rules are
determined by the power of the strongest.
*The so-called “free market” is a myth that prevents us from
examining [frequent, small] rule changes and asking whom they
serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not want
such an examination and who don’t want the public to understand how
power is exercised and by whom.*
How Kissinger stretched rational Realpolitik into irrational amorality.
He did not appreciate the long-term importance of supranational
aspects of our world: respect for human rights, respect for the rules
of war, respect for truth, and protecting the ecosphere in which we
all live.
(satire) *Israel Assures It Doing Everything Possible To Minimize Civilians.*
US citizens: call on Congress to fund continued aid to parents and
children (WIC).
Former plantations in Texas, turned into museums, have censored their
bookstores to remove books that discuss the slavery once practiced at
those plantations.
People in Gaza are starting to freeze as well as starve. Many do not
have warm clothes to put on, as they have only what they could carry when
driven from their homes by bombing or threats of bombing.
The FBI got training for years from the Israeli army, learning how to treat
Americans the way the Israeli army treats Palestinians.
Right-wing extremists have been pushing for years for a constitutional
convention that would rewrite the constitution at will to eliminate many
human rights. Now ALEC is trying to make the last push.
I have given to Common Cause to help fund opposition to this.
US citizens: support the "Billionaires Income Tax".
The Texas attorney general demands doctors and hospitals disregard the
court order that authorizes giving Kate Cox an abortion to remove her
nonviable fetus.
He also threatens to fabricate excuses to persecute people involved
in running those hospitals.
His intimidation campaign displays contempt for the laws he has sworn
to enforce. Not just twisting them, but tying them in knots.
Activists say that governments are giving up on trying to stop mass
atrocities.
Power-bloc rivalries get in the way, as each side in a local dispute
tends to get sponsorship from some power bloc.
I wonder if power blocs can make deals -- "We'll do X to help end the
mass murder in country A if you'll do Y to help end the mass murder in
country B."
Proposing a plan to move the US rapidly away from fossil fuel electric
generation without presuming the federal government will actively help.
Australia is in danger of being pushed into being unable to use cash.
What is the use of resisting China if you fall into Chinese-style
surveillance? Australians, defend your freedom and anonymity by
firmly insisting on paying cash.
US citizens: support Common Cause's legal effort to disqualify
the wrecker as a candidate for president in 2024.
US citizens: call on Congress to force the Pentagon to pass an audit.
It looks like the US will once again veto a UN security council resolution
calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Please phone the White House to support the goal of a full cease-fire.
If you phone, please spread the word! White
House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD)
+1-202-456-6213
Powerful countries and blocs, including the US, are stymying and
undermining efforts towards agreeing to
reduce use of fossil fuels.
*At least 475 carbon-capture
lobbyists attending Cop28.*
Whether it will do much to reduce global heating is dubious, but it
will certainly help them keep selling a larger amount of fossil fuels.
*What happens if the 1.5C target for
global heating is missed?*
A survey found that US neighborhoods now gentrifying had a 30% higher
rate of gun violence, and those that gentrified in 2014-2019 had a 60%
higher rate.
In each case, they are compared with neighborhoods that have not been
gentrifying during the time period.
There is no information about how gentrification relates to the the
higher rate of violence.
Special scientific sites on the Moon are in danger of being messed up
by commercial activity,
which is currently unregulated in the US.
let alone internationally.
The UK has a new means of discouraging refugees: those waiting for a
decision on their asylum requests (this takes years)
are now left
homeless.
Instead of paying to give them places to stay, the state is
paying Rwanda
to accept them.
The British Trade Union Council says it will defend any worker who
is
prosecuted for striking.
That is good, but the tactic that sometimes wins, against a government
that won't go so far as to kill thousands of nonviolent resisters, is
to pack the jails.
US citizens: call on Facebook/Instagram to stop showing fossil fuel ads.
Several UK banks are trying to almost-force their customers into
receiving statements only digitally.
The pressure being imposed is unconscionable.
It might be useful for customers to respond by telling your bank that
if it doesn't reverse this policy you will switch to
NAME-OF-OTHER-BANK, after verifying that the other bank is in fact
better.
The Tories plan to override human rights laws that prohibit storing
asylum seekers in Rwanda.
Big US banks are lobbying hard for Congress to let them take foolish risks.
They are sure they will be bailed out at the public expense of their
unwise risks get them in trouble.
*Paris mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution.*
("Air pollution" here includes the kind that makes the ecosphere sick as well
as the kinds that make millions of humans individually sick.)
Discouraging SUVs will also reduce the total deaths and injuries from
collisions.
This increase will not apply to residents of Paris, which seems to me
a big omission. What every nation with a lot of cars needs is a
nationwide policies to discourage the purchase of larger vehicles.
The EU has basically agreed to an enormous program to reduce the
amount of greenhouse emissions from buildings.
If the wrecker becomes president again, he will prosecute or sue media
organizations that criticize him truthfully.
*Biden’s rhetoric toward the Netanyahu government is toughening. But
critics say his words aren’t backed up by the threat of action.*
I agree with those critics. Netanyahu's mass murder in Gaza has continued
for weeks. Biden must insist that it stop.
Denmark is passing a law to privilege religion by making it a crime
to burn, cut or dirty a religious scripture.
This is a surrender to bullying by people who demand we all bow down to
their religion.
*It’s easy to be dazzled by the super-rich, but don’t believe that
they’ll do the right thing.*
Or that their ideas of what is good for people in general are better
than those of a person who cares more about people in general.
I would suggest that on certain issues — for instance, climate
defense, and reducing the inequality of wealth — they are almost
certain to do evil, when it comes to their businesses.
Spending time with one of the Tyre Extinguishers, who remind owners of
SUVs what damage they do by buying and using an SUV.
*The Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and the UK-based
Global Legal Action Network have applied for a judicial review
of the [UK] government's export licenses for the sale of British weapons
capable of being used in Israel’s action in Gaza.*
New ideas for how to discourage high-carbon-intensity products in favor
of less dangerous products.
*Texas judge rules woman with non-viable pregnancy can have an abortion.*
The Tory strangulation of Britain's National Health Service
is achieving its effect: millions of Britons are now limited
to private medical treatment.
Often they cannot afford that, so they are without medical treatment at all.
I've asserted before that this was the Tories' goal.
In the past, one could hope Labour would fix this. But Starmer
refuses to tax the rich,
and without more funds he will be unable to
fix it.
A court ordered Georgia Republicans to create another majority-black
election district, and they did, but they cheated: they made a new one
by taking apart an old one.
After 100 years of hostility since the end of the war between them,
Greece and Turkey have made a friendship agreement in an effort to
end the hostility.
Biden is thinking of legally imposing a lower price on insulin. Sanders calls for going well beyond that, including reducing prices for other drugs whose
development was funded by public funds.
I agree, but we need more than that. We must prevent patents from
being a tool to impose unconscionable prices on drugs sold in the US
or elsewhere. The thorough way would be to eliminate patents from
medicine.
The Revolving Door Project reports that the head of the Commodities
Future Trading Commission, Rostin Behnam, is considering resigning
early to work for business.
This raises the concern that his new employer might be paying him off
for subtle past corruption or paying to use of his influence for
subtle future corruption.
*We need power to prescribe climate policy, IPCC scientists say.*
This approach would be morally legitimate, but I tend to think that
it would not work in practice -- governments will not grant scientists
that sort of power until they are ready to carry out the measures that the
know conscientious scientists would have to establish.
Activists in various political causes have noticed that e-books give
distributors of books power to snoop on readers and power to censor
books they disapprove of.
Their campaign does not recognize that these dangers come out of the
DMCA, making them reasons to demand repeal of the DMCA, and that the
only effective and lasting way to eliminate the dangers is to repeal
the DMCA.
An Israeli tank fired several shells at a group of journalists in Lebanon,
killing one and injuring six more.
There was no fighting nearby and the Israeli army could not have been
unaware of the journalists.
US citizens: call on your state education board to oppose school
voucher programs and protect our public education system.
US citizens: call on Biden to get the Gaza ceasefire renewed.
US citizens: sign to say, instead of investing in war and policing,
let's invest in our communities' needs.
US citizens: call on TV news networks to stop giving the fascist a
free pass.
Global heating effects are destroying artifacts that have been preserved
in British bogs for hundreds or thousands of years.
These include handwritten letters and documents from Roman times.
*A second [wrecker] term [as president] will be far more autocratic
than the first. He’s telling us.*
*[UK thugs] make 630 arrests of climate protesters in London in one month.*
Some of them were kept in jail for days.
The true supporters of the planet roasters will arrest any number of
people to keep the oil and profits flowing. As more people recognize the
deadliness of the path we are on, the repression required will increase.
*Warning: the UK government’s hydrogen plan isn’t green at all, it’s
another oil industry swindle.*
They keep bringing back the same swindles, rearranged in each country.
*Palestinians in Khan Younis report relentless bombing. People are
not even safe in Rafah as Israeli bombardment spreads across the south
of the Gaza Strip, and living conditions are described as desperate.*
*20 people killed in airstrikes that hit two homes in Rafah, a town IDF
told Palestinians to flee to.*
*Liz Cheney mulls third-party run to block [the wrecker's] victory.*
*Without Reform to Federal Oil and Gas Drilling Requirements,
U.S. Taxpayers Could Face a Nearly $18B Clean-Up Bill.*
The decision to count only drilling on federal lands omits a large part of
the oil drilling, but the fossil companies are clever at skipping out on
their future responsibilities.
Ultimately the public will have to pay for
much of that cleanup too.
But full cleanup is not always feasible. The oil from the Big Spill
is still present on beaches on the US Gulf Coast, and still slowly
poisons wildlife, although it does not attract attention by killing
massive numbers of animals at once.
These costs of cleanup are just a tiny fraction of the cost of the
additional disasters that burning the petroleum will cause.
But this
fraction is easy to prevent, so we would be fools not to do so.
There are now real treatments for cystic fibrosis -- but so expensive that
most people even in wealthy countries cannot benefit from them.
It is self-defeating to encourage development of new and better drugs
with a system that tells patients to drop dead. We should abolish
patents on medicines and fund the research with public funds instead.
The UN says that Israel's bombardment and attacks in Gaza make it
impossible to do anything to protect civilians there.
* Dual Haitian-American citizen attended meetings in south Florida and
Haiti ahead of the assassination [of Haiti's president] and faces
life imprisonment.*
*Texas woman files emergency lawsuit to terminate her non-viable pregnancy.*
(satire) *Horse Without Health Insurance Unable To Afford Being Shot
In The Head.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then
right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser
such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
(satire) *Company Wellness Seminar Teaches Mindful Acceptance Of Pay Cuts.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then
right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser
such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
*White House warns it is ‘out of money and nearly out of time’ to aid
Ukraine.*
America's right-wing extremists have come to the rescue of Russia's
right-wing extremists, and I fear they will continue their alliance
in an attempt to subjugate the US completely.
*Joan Donovan says [her funding from Harvard] was cut off for
criticizing [Meta-Facebook] when university was receiving $500m
from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.*
Israeli intelligence had copious information about HAMAS's plans for
the attack, but dismissed it all as an impossible fantasy.
This has no effect on moral questions. Not on judging the war crimes
(murder and hostage-taking)
that were committed in that attack (and
planned in writing).
Nor on the war crimes of Israel's response, the siege and bombardment.
It appears that the proposed UK law about who can access porn sites
will require all visitors to identify themselves, or run nonfree
software which is likely to snoop on them.
The intended purpose of that law is to prevent minors from accessing
porn sites. To exclude everyone under 18 is unreasonably strict.
They try to justify this by referring to all minors as "children".
Even a person of age 17 is a "child" according to them.
To exclude only children -- real children -- from porn sites might be
ok in principle. But how to determine whether a given user is under
the specified age? The methods mentioned in the article either
directly require a user to identify perself, or indirectly require per
to make perself vulnerable to being identified.
"Contacting your mobile network provider to allow your phone to access
[porn]" would seem to permit only access through devices that are
untrustworthy: mobile phones, communicating through a cellular
network).
Regarding "Facial age estimation technology", one question is, will
that glimpse of your face enable identifying you by facial recognition?
Another question is, how will they make sure it is operating on a
real-time image of your own face rather than someone else's? I
suspect that will depend on locked-down nonfree software, simply
because I don't see how else it could work.
I don't have a concrete idea of what a "digital identity wallet" would
do, but I have a hunch that only locked-down nonfree software will be
accepted.
If you know more about those last two approaches, and if you can tell
whether they can be made to work without unjust surveillance or unjust
nonfree software, I would appreciate your telling me about them.
GNU Taler can be used for age verification in a way that does not
permit web sites to identify the user, and does not require nonfree
software.
US citizens: call on the Interior Department to refuse to approve seismic
blasting in northern Alaska.
In addition to preventing the harm to wildlife that the blasting
itself would do, it would impede the extraction of additional fossil
fuels from that region.
US citizens: call on Biden to
pressure HAMAS
and Israel to accept a cease fire.
*Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached record levels again
in 2023, as experts warned that the projected rate of warming had not
improved over the past two years.*
*Leading News Outlets Are Doing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Greenwashing.*
*Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic –- with a
clear aim.
The strategy goes well beyond defeating an opponent: it seeks to
destroy key infrastructure and the economy, with many civilian
casualties.*
Australia has stepped up the investigation of accusations of corruption
against federal functionaries.
Bravo, Australia!
France is on the way to banning disposable vapes.
I support this measure. For a given intensity of use, vaping
nicotine may be less dangerous than smoking tobacco, but it seems
to spread addiction among masses of people.
Danish unions are supporting Swedish unions that are demanding
recognition from Tesla.
Imagine what workers could achieve if US unions could do this with
European unions.
The UAW is aiming to reach the jumping-off point for that
by organizing the remaining US car manufacturers.
Archaeologists at Cambridge University have reconstructed the
"biographies" of hundreds of the city's ordinary medieval residents by
examining their skeletons in detail.*
Such research would be impossible in the US, due to the law NAGPRA
which declares that any indigenous religion or nationalism trumps
science and history.
Indigenous people are entitled to the same rights as anyone else,
including to practice their religions, but it does not follow that the
wishes suggested by their religions should be our commands.
The Israeli army is using a computer system to choose which houses to
bomb in Gaza.
The opacity provided by the magic word "AI" provides plenty of
opportunity to paint the system as trying to avoid collateral damage,
while tuning it so that such efforts are cursory and predictably
inadequate. We could equally well describe it as accepting a
considerable risk of killing civilians.
The input to the system includes a list of houses in which some
inhabitant is suspected of being a HAMAS fighter. That is a recipe
for blowing up lots of houses, in which probably no HAMAS fighter is
in residence during the bombardment, and killing tens or hundreds of
thousands of relatives or bystanders.
The evidence that PFOA causes cancer in humans is mounting up.
So is the amount of PFOA in our environment, since we keep making more
and it accumulates without degrading.
*Airstrikes leave no safe place for Palestinians in southern Gaza.*
*Greenhouse gas emissions soar -– with China, US and India most at fault.*
Robert Reich: today's billionaires are undermining the sense that we
are all "in it together" so that making society better off tends to
help us all. The result is the disintegration of society.
Arguing about a "free market" for businesses is a distraction from the
question of whether our markets are fair to the non-rich.
Amazon locks in customers by getting them to pay in advance for "free
shipping". Then it makes sellers raise their prices so they can pay
to "qualify for prime", and to do that, they have to charge even higher
prices in any other store.
*Before neoliberalism can destroy our lives, it must first convince us
that we are all disconnected. "There is no such thing as society,"
isn't just an empty slogan: it's a weapon for dismantling the
democratically accountable structures that can stand against
industrial tyrants.*
Lately neoliberalism has suffered some setbacks in the US from citizens
in solidarity, with partial US government support for us.
Enshittification of the important network services was also the
consequence of US government acceptance of monopolies, which had
continued since Reagan established it and Clinton endorsed it.
Blocking new mergers and some of the nasty actions of monopolies is
necessary but not sufficient. We need to restore the competition that
we used to have, by breaking up the monopolies.
My tax
system for multinational companies is designed to pressure them to
break themselves up.
In Cop28, the US
is supporting
the weak voluntary system for carbon reduction. We need to speed
this up, and mandatory reductions will do that.
The problems caused by extracting resources for electric vehicles will
be tiny compared with the problems caused by extracting resources for
cars that burn fuel.
If the wrecker becomes president again in 2025, that would postpone
his trial for trying to steal the 2020 election until he ceases
to be president.
That could mean, until he dies, since he would surely block any fair election
if he gets that much power again.
Israel's "new" military approach to attacking southern Gaza is not all
that different from the way it attacked northern Gaza.
Examining heavy damage done to 10 hospitals in Gaza, mostly done by
Israeli bombardment.
High levels of air pollution in Rome have been related to high levels
of some mental disorders.
Studying the history of racism through art donated to Cambridge
University.
An Australian official calls for changes in "national security" laws
that permitted an accused official to be secretly prosecuted, secretly
convicted and secretly kept in jail, based on evidence that was kept
secret from him and his lawyers.
Meta-Facebook is suing to wipe out the Federal Trade Commission.
With our current Supreme Court, dominated by right-wing members
some of whom are corrupt and have personal interests in the decision,
that is not guaranteed to fail.
How Ex-Rep Santos responded when confronted about some of his lies.
Two Tory ministers successively disregarded a court decision that
foreigners who had been trafficked into the UK were entitled to stay
there. Those ministers simply did not give them permission to stay.
*Extreme weather could [temporarily] shut down one in 12 hospitals
worldwide, report warns.*
Reportedly Israel is defying US pressure to avoid killing massive numbers
of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel's plans to attack HAMAS are based on the assumption that
killing its leaders will destroy the organization.
This approach to a guerrilla organization with popular support
basically never works.
HAMAS hopes that Israel will lose the war by being unable to wipe out
HAMAS, while committing more and more atrocities. That could happen.
Israel would be wiser to refrain by choice from massacring
Palestinians, based on recognizing the moral (and legal) obligation to
do so.
*Iran "using Gaza conflict as cover" for execution of 127 people since
war began.*
The oil emir who is president of Cop28 has proposed voluntary pledges
to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Climate defense activists have denounced
this as insufficient and demand commitments for reductions.
Activists are using nonviolent obstruction to block deep sea mining.
The deep sea has ecosystems, and mining can wipe them out.
Honduras has accused someone of organizing the murder of Berta
Cáceres. He was an executive of the company building the dam that she
organized protests against.
*US outlines measures to cut methane emissions by 80% in next 15
years.*
A kiosk using a laser could check people's heartbeats and detect some sorts
of illnesses
Then it could send the information to various commercial partners
of the company that installed the kiosk.
I don't think that approach is trustworthy. It is better to have this
medical device in a clinic, since the clinic would have at least a
minimal obligation to protect your privacy.
Countries seem to have ceased being willing to pander to China in
order to obtain the loan of a few pandas to a zoo.
China used to be able to get substantial concessions in exchange for
the loan of pandas.
*In countries that criminalise gay sex, HIV infection rates are higher
and access to lifesaving drugs and services are denied.*
US citizens: To avoid another bank bailout, support the Federal
Reserve's proposal to increase capital requirements on large banks.
*US to impose visa bans on Israeli extremist "settlers" for violence
against Palestinians.*
Bravo -- those people are terrorists.
*Republican George Santos expelled from Congress in bipartisan vote.*
Santos is a crook and lied to his constituents. In and of itself, his
expulsion is a good thing, and he deserved it. But I worry that
this willingness to expel representatives who have not committed a
crime might make it easier to expel representatives such as Rashida
Tlaib for honestly standing for unusual views.
In a powerful victory for climate campaigners, the Brussels court of
appeal ordered Belgium to cut its planet-heating pollution by at
least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030.*
*Just like oil and gas businesses, and petro-states, carbon-intensive
industries including meat will fight to keep on polluting.*
*Felicity Huffman says she paid to have her daughter’s college
testing scores raised because she felt pressed to give her child “a
chance at a future”* -- instead of someone else's child.
That's a selfish person's response to a painful imposed competition.
Another response is possible: to join together to campaign for a
society that gives everyone a chance at a future.
Rwanda's judicial system is not independent, and therefore does not
try to do justice. It does what "president" orders. So it can hardly
be trusted to protect the rights of people seeking asylum in Britain
(or anywhere).
It might, quite the contrary, try to win favors from a UK government
by making refugees disappear before their asylum cases are heard.
Handing over the Falkland Islands (and their inhabitants) to
Argentina's ambition would be abetting colonialists.
Don't be led astray by the fashionable term "global south" -- we must
not judge the morality of an action by whether the country committing
it this time is on the "historical victims" list.
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to dismiss Moore v. United
States.
Supreme Court members Roberts and Alito own stock in companies that could
win around 30 billion dollars from a decision they will soon participate in.
There were apparent falsehoods in the claims made in the case.
*Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are facing formal complaints
over their sustainable flight claims after being accused of misleading
potential customers about the environmental credentials of aviation.*
When Tracy McCarter's estranged husband came to attack her, and fell
onto the knife she was pointing at him to keep him away, there was
evidence to prove she had not intentionally stabbed him. But a thug
claimed she had said so. Then the prosecutor subpoenaed her email,
did not inform her, and did not share the evidence with her defense.
Australia is considering approving large fossil fuel projects that
could emit 10 times Australia's remaining greenhouse emissions budget.
Many Australian industries are emitting just as in 2003.
The Labor government was a big step om from the previous right-wing
government that would tell basically any lie to wreck Earth as a place
to live. But it is still surprisingly bad compared with what
civilization needs to survive.
New EPA rules will require replacement of all lead water pipes in the US.
This is worth doing because lead in childrens' drinking water
permanently reduces their intelligence.
The UK is proposing to investigate supermarkets' practice of charging more
to customers that won't help track them.
Instead of investigating them, the right thing to do is prohibit
stores from charging more if they don't identify themselves.
The article cites "defenses" for stores "right" to pressure people to
help stores track them, but those are irrelevant because tracking
people is doing wrong to them. Buying anonymously does not do wrong
to a seller; it is everyone's right.
Hackers tricked ChatGPT into outputting personal data contained in its
training materials.
If it were intelligent, it would have noticed this and hushed up. To
refer to these language models as "artificial intelligence" misleads
the public,
so please don't.
Robert de Niro was giving a speech, reading from a text he had
prepared, and discovered that parts of it, condemning the fascist and
right-wing disinformationists, had been deleted.
He condemned Apple for demanding the deletion.
The attempt failed to trick him -- he read the deleted part from
another copy of his text.
Some US medical insurance plans are removing drugs from the list they
cover, without warning. The result is that many people suddenly have
to pay a lot more for prescription medicines.
The UN agency that feeds and houses Palestinian refugees in Gaza
warns that an Israeli attack on the south could send a million people
fleeing with nowhere to go.
*"A biodiversity catastrophe": how the world could look in 2050 –- unless we
act now.*
The causes include global heating, deforestation, invasive species,
and depletion of natural resources.
*10 ways
the climate
crisis and nature loss are linked.*
Most of the companies that have "sponsored" the Cop28 climate
conference have not made commitments to reduce their own greenhouse
emissions in accord with the UN science-based targets.
This leads to the suspicion that their motives for associating with
the event do not include reducing greenhouse emissions.
Gaza is not getting enough aid to meet even basic emergency needs, the
UN has warned, and the population is so ravaged by hunger, bombing and
the lack of clean water that deaths from disease could outstrip those
from war.*
An EU court ruled that offices can limit the wearing of religious
symbols by the staff, in order to maintain an air of religious
neutrality.
I think that is a reasonable policy.
The court decision tried to allow some flexibility but block arbitrary
discrimination, but I think it did not entirely succeed at the latter.
To close the door on arbitrary bias, the court's decision should have
included a requirement that any distinctions made between some
religious symbols and others must give equal treatment to all symbols
that are equal as regards how prominent and visible they are.
It makes sense to distinguish between large religious symbols that
everyone in the office can't help noticing and tiny ones that might
even be under a garment. Thus, it is legitimate to regulate religious
headgear more strictly than pendants or bracelets. But the law should
require that all kinds of religious headgear be treated alike,
regardless of which religion they represent.
A veil is a different kind of issue. Inside an office, it is
reasonable to require that the staff show their faces. However, for a
government to require people on the street to expose their faces to
facial recognition cameras is a step along the path that leads to
Chinese-style repression.
The right to cover one's face in public should be a human right for
everyone.
*Who will shine a light on the atrocities in Gaza if all the
journalists are wiped out?*
I wonder if journalists in Gaza have the same chance of being killed
as ordinary civilians, or a higher chance? Either one is possible.
How many journalists are there in Gaza?
In theory, journalists could be safer than other civilians, but I
don't see how that could be possible.
*Employees at facility in Kentucky allege Amazon is retaliating against
them as they push for union representation.*
US citizens: phone (202) 224-3121 three times, once to ask for your
representative in Congress, then once for each of your two senators,
and say to each one something like this:
The temporary cease-fire in Gaza has not enabled humanitarian aid to
enter in sufficient quantity for the civilians of Gaza, nor permitted aid
workers and machines to enter to remove rubble of collapsed buildings.
Reportedly Israel has been brought to agree not to repeat in southern
Gaza some of the enormous war crimes it committed in northern Gaza.
But how could it avoid that, if it does fight HAMAS in the south?
George Monbiot conjectures why billionaires mostly oppose efforts to
save the world from climate mayhem, even those billionaires whose
investments are not in fossil fuels.
*Air pollution from fossil fuels "kills 5 million people a year"
[according to a study].*
An Indian agent in the US tried to hire a hitman to kill a Sikh
separatist who was living in the US. The hitman was an undercover
cop, who turned him in, and now he is on trial.
Australia put refugees in deportation prison for many years because of
minor charges.
Australia's new plan is to treat them as dangerous
criminals, although they never were dangerous.
It appears that the wish to deport them was vindictive
rather than necessary.
The International
Day Against DRM is Dec 9 -- do something to call for the
abolition of Digital Restrictions Management.
The Australian Capital Territory plans to punish jurors if they try
to learn anything on their own about the case under trial.
What this suggests to me is a plan to make damned sure that
whistleblowers get the sort of trial that makes jurors ashamed
afterward of voting to convict.
An international agreement about developing "artificial intelligence"
to be "safe by design" strikes me as alarmingly unsafe.
I fear that the plan presumes that AI systems will never be released
as free software -- that the software will be available only in the
form of servers controlled by some company or other, running software
that the users cannot ever obtain copies of, let alone change.
Using a server controlled by someone else to do your own computing
(which we call SaaSS, Service as a Software Substitute)
is never safe -- it is even more unsafe than running a nonfree
program.
But the people who negotiated this agreement have no concept
of that issue.
If what I hear is correct, machine-learning AI systems have already
been used to disrupt democracy. I refer to the recommendation
algorithms that many platforms use to decide what to show each user.
Reportedly these operate by machine learning and are designed to learn
how to make the platform's useds want to stay on the platform longer.
These platforms have promoted the spread of disinformation, which has
had the effect of helping violent extremists spread hatred.
US citizens: call on Congress to abolish the tipped minimum wage.
This means that waiters would receive the same minimum wage as other
workers, and tipping would not be de rigueur.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to halt massive
CO2-emitting project -- the largest LNG export project ever
considered.
Binance and its CEO pled guilty to disregarding financial rules,
such that money was sent to Iran and Syria, to ransomware, and various
other criminals.
However, the large fine will not necessarily make this change.
At the very least, Binance (and each of its divisions even if sold to
some other company) should be required to have an independent
compliance monitor forever, and these monitors should be paid directly
by the federal government (not by Binance) using money that Binance
will pay each year as a fine. That will make it hard for Binance to
exert improper influence over them.
*US university presidents to testify before Congress over claims of
antisemitic protests on campuses.*
Antisemitism is a vicious attitude, just like antimuslimism, racism
and sexism. However, the right to express those attitudes is part
of freedom of speech.
Many countries other than the US have prohibited expression of those
attitudes. Whether that reduces them is not at all clear, but it certainly
infringes on freedom of speech.
Michigan has adopted strong requirements for renewable electricity
generation, requiring all electric generation to be carbon-free by
2040.
Musk toured a Kibbutz in Israel that was attacked by HAMAS, to observe
the damage HAMAS did. In response, HAMAS invited Musk to tour a city
in Gaza to observer the damage that the Israeli army did.
It seems fair for a prestigious observer to observe the damage done by
Israel to Palestinians as well as the damage done by HAMAS to
Israelis.
Due to sea-level rise, salt water increasingly flows up the Chao
Phraya, Thailand's main river, spoiling the fields that some day it
will inundate.
The salt is also causing centuries-old temple murals to fade.
At least it is possible to protect some of those temples by
moving them to high ground. But it is not feasible to move thousands
of square miles of fields to higher ground.
Students at Monarch high school, near Miami, planned to strike on Tuesday
in support of their principal and some other staff, who were punished for
allowing trans students to participate in sports.
Reportedly the US is demanding that Israel respect and preserve
civilian lives if it starts fighting in Gaza again.
*Meta (Facebook) designed platforms to get children addicted, court
documents allege.*
*Antisemites supporting Israel is weird. Jewish support of them is even
weirder.* But that's what's happening with the wrecker and the muskrat.
The UAE planned to use the Cop28 climate conference as a sales
platform for its own oil and gas exports.
In other words, putting an oil emir in charge of reducing use of
fossil fuels led him to do all the worst things we imagined.
*HAMAS cannot continue to rule Gaza, says EU foreign affairs chief.*
The world would be a better place if Gaza were not ruled by HAMAS, but
I think that there is no practical and acceptable way to bring that
about, except by committing a far bigger crime against humanity than
those HAMAS has committed.
The Palestinian Authority, undermined and weakened by Israel, would
not be able to win support in Gaza,
and wisely won't agree to try,
unless the situation for Palestinians becomes much less oppressive.
Israel helped strengthen HAMAS in the 1980s as a way of weakening the PA.
*[Salafi] Arabia is driving a huge global investment plan to create demand
for its oil and gas in developing countries, an undercover
investigation has revealed.*
*London surgeon [Prof Ghassan Abu-Sittah] says he saw "massacre
unfold" while working in Gaza hospitals, and claims destruction of
Palestinian health system was an Israeli objective.*
He says that he recognized burns caused by white phosphorus, having
learned during a previous bombardment of Gaza what they look like.
The next Boston rally for Julian Assange will be Monday, December 11
at 1pm-2:30 on the Boston Common, near the main entrance to Park St
Station.
Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha was arrested by the Israeli army at
a checkpoint on his way to leave Gaza, but he has been released with
only a beating.
The Israeli army should explain why it physically attacks men who it arrests
solely for being men.
Bernie Sanders called for the US to condition military aid to Israel
on ending its "almost total warfare against the Palestinian people."
* Sanders’ demands include a post-war commitment by Israel to pursue
"broad peace talks for a two-state solution" as well as to ensure
displaced Gazans are able to return to their homes and that Israel will
not reoccupy or continue its blockade of the enclave.*
Bravo, Bernie!
*Wisconsin supreme court to hear high-stakes case challenging
[gerrymandered] legislative maps.*
*Political attack on human rights is a "dangerous" assault on UK democracy,
says HRW director.*
*She says that government actions regarding asylum seekers, climate
activists and pro-Palestine protesters are starting to "look very much
like authoritarianism."*
An Australian coal magnate applied for environmental approval for a
proposed coal-fired generating plant, saying he would make it "carbon-neutral" by sweeping emissions under various different rugs.
What's amazing is that the environmental regulator refused to look for
an excuse to be fooled. Instead it did what was obviously right, and
denied approval.
Israel and HAMAS have agreed on a 4-day cease fire with release of
hostages and prisoners.
Pressure from Biden joined with pressure from relatives of hostages
to make Netanyahu agree to a temporary cease fire deal.
*The Gaza truce is a ray of hope in the darkness.* Either side could
snuff it out, but perhaps pressure can keep it going.
It is good that pressure to recover hostages led to this step towards
peace, and away from continued larger war crimes, but in general it is
unwise for any government to prioritize the freeing of some hostages
above larger issues.
When there is a war, there are always much bigger issues at stake
than hostages or prisoners of war. Any country at war faces bigger issues.
Some of these issues will be moral duties, while others will be vital
national interests. If I were a hostage, I would as a patriot not want
my government to distract itself from either of those for the side issue
of ransoming hostages such as me.
Nowadays 28 million Americans are often short of food.
39 million face food insecurity at some time in the year.
Hunger in the US is one of the key goals of the Republican Party,
along with low wages. It was suggested that the real goal
is to make working people desperate, so that they will suck
up to rich people.
How is a disabled chef supposed to work from home?
No one has any idea — the Food Transfer Protocol that we discussed in
the 1970s was only a joke.
*Israel-Hamas war opens up German debate over meaning of "Never again".*
The debate between "Never again against us Jews" and "Never again
against anyone" has existed among Jews for decades — perhaps, I
suspect, since Israel in 1967 captured territory whose population was
mostly Arab. I see this as a question of who one has learned to
empathize with and uphold rights for.
Here is the letter that represents the "Never again against anyone" position.
Thomas Piketty calls for progressive carbon taxes, as well as banning
private jets and "oversize vehicles" (SUVs?).
I think this alone would not cut emissions enough, but it would establish
a new public awareness that we must take decarbonization seriously.
The Netherlands has designated a PFA called "GenX" a hazardous, so it
can't be disposed of there. So it is paying a subsidiary of DuPont to
import GenX "waste" into the US and do something or other with it in
North Carolina. However, people there fear it will be leak, or leak
slowly after being dumped in of "deep wells", so they convinced the EPA
to block the shipment.
Banning PFAS is the first crucial step towards ending that form of
pollution, but we will still need to find a safe way to dispose of the
stocks of PFAS that already exist.
Pakistan is holding for ransom some 45,000 Afghan exiles to whom the
UK and US want to give asylum, charging $830 to allow each of those
exiles to leave Pakistan.
That puts Pakistan in the amazing self-contradictory position of demanding
they leave and blocking them from leaving.
The only other case of demanding ransoms for people to leave was when
the Soviet Union agreed to allow Jews to emigrate, and charged a
ransom for each "exit visa".
Do the US and UK give Pakistan any foreign aid? It would be natural
to threaten to deduct these exit ransoms from that aid.
The UK is replacing all copper-wire phone lines with digital
connections that won't function during a power outage. This is asking
for trouble for people outside the "usual case" that everyone is
supposed to fit into.
That includes people like me, who don't have a mobile phone.
The US has more or less done the same, so copper-wire phone lines are
now quite expensive. When I moved here I couldn't afford that, so I
had to accept a phone connection that depends on local AC power. I
obtained a UPS, a gift from a friend who didn't need it any more. But
it can only keep the phone connection running for a few hours.
* Peter Carey tells inquiry he was asked by Accounting Standards Board
to omit details [from a report criticizing actions of consultant
companies PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and EY] because partners from PwC,
KPMG, Deloitte and EY sat on the board.*
The smoke that came from big wildfires in Canada this year slowed the
maturation (now) of corn crops in parts of the northern US.
This illustrates how one problem caused indirectly by global heating
can cause another problem, which is therefore also caused indirectly
by global heating.
We don't know about all those potential causal relationships, so we
cannot predict their effects. Therefore, climate forecasts do not
include those effects. But generally any big change in the overall
environment tends to create abnormal environments for various systems.
Since nearly every system is adapted to its environment — by some
combination of evolution and human design — an abnormality in that
environment tends to harm some systems. In other words, most
surprises are bad.
This is why I generally expect the real course of future
climate-related events to be somewhat worse, usually, than what
scientists will have forecast based on known effects.
The concept of "stalemate" is based on a presumption that each side's
resources are limited. Ukraine can defeat the Putin forces given more
supplies.
An extreme heat wave in Madagascar during October would have been
*"virtually impossible" without human-caused global heating.*
Enslavement of workers applies to a broad range of fields of work —
even including carrying out internet scams.
I'm concerned that some countries will prosecute the slaves for the
crimes they were forced to commit.
It is a mistake to associate the injustice of enslavement of workers
with specific fields of work. I've read about many areas
and there are surely more.
This article contains an example of the tendency to undermine the word
"survivor". This happens when people apply it to experiences which
are painful, maybe also harmful, but unlikely to kill their victims.
This is an exaggeration; in a few decades time, it won't achieve its
goal any more, as survivor will have come to mean no more than
"victim".
The cruelty that slaves experience is horrible in reality; there is no
need to exaggerate it by calling the victims "survivors".
An Australian state already imposes an enormous fine for "trespassing"
on a farm, and is planning to double it. This seems to be meant as a
kind of ag-gag law.
Export controls are not fully effective in denying Russia access to
advanced components to put into its drones.
*Palestinians describe fleeing northern Gaza.*
*Israel told us to move to south Gaza. Then it said it would bomb the south
too. So where do we go now?*
Australian whistleblower David McBride explains why his conscience
insisted he tell the news media secrets about war crimes in
Afghanistan, once the army itself chose not to investigate them
seriously.
Israel asserts that all the Palestinian prisoners that Israel offered
to release are terrorists, but most of them were never put on trial
for any alleged crime. They were jailed arbitrarily.
Fossil gas companies in Canada are drilling more new wells now that
they expect the Trans Mountain Pipeline to be finished soon.
In the long term, global heating is the main threat to the national
security of every country. What's the use of maintaining a large army
if you don't use it to make other countries stop drilling?
*EU laws to protect press freedom in jeopardy, campaigners claim.*
A refugee fled China to South Korea, on a high-tech variant of a boat,
and South Korea may deport him instead of giving him asylum.
Douglas Rushkoff: Today's richest billionaires are not richer than
their counterparts of 120 years ago, but they think of themselves as
above civil society, not part of it.
They believe that *with enough money, one can escape the harms created
by earning money in that way. … with enough genius and
technology, they can rise above the plane of mere mortals&ellip;*
In addition to the list of 15,000 Palestinians known to have been
killed by Israel's attacks, there is another list of 6,000
Palestinians who were buried under rubble of collapsed buildings.
They were almost certainly killed by that, but that is not proof, so
they are usually not included in the "number of those killed".
The report that northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble, that there
is nothing to return to there except the possibility of digging up
corpses of relatives, suggests that the Israeli government intended to
achieve permanent ethnic cleansing by demolishing all structures so
there is no way for a million people to live there even with aid.
Will it continue by doing the same to southern Gaza? Is this a plan
to drive the whole population of Gaza into Egypt as re-refugees?
The UK is trying to sell its democracy for a tiny economic boost,
by signing up to the Trance-Pacific Partnership. This is a business-supremacy treaty that contains an ISDS clause
that allows businesses to demand "compensation" over any laws or policies
that arguably cause them to have lower profits than they might have had.
The article reports that the economic boost is likely to be even
tinier than was previously forecast, but that side issue is nothing
compared to the suffering and injustice that handing foreign
businesses increased power over the country will cause.
When such clauses block the measures needed to cut down greenhouse
emissions, as in the case of the Energy Charter Treaty, they are
likely to cause megadeaths or even gigadeaths. A war could easily be
less deadly than obeying the treaty, so threatening war against any
countries that stand in the way of canceling the treaty could be the
moral choice.
It makes logical sense to put heavy taxes on using private jets, and
on flying in expensive (large) seats.
However, Piketty's suggestion makes economic sense, but it is unjust
because it requires total surveillance of everyone's carbon emissions.
Taxes are compatible with a free society; higher tax rates for the
wealthy are also compatible. But total surveillance destroys freedom.
Australia's government has proposed a large additional investment in
renewable generation, and batteries.
This will be a big step forward provided Australia takes advantage of
it to reduces its extraction and use of fossil fuels.
It has become urgent to halt further development of fossil fuel
extraction.
Sinn Fein leaders are suing many of those that publish about them,
including news organizations and political opponents.
Thru Dec 3: In London, join Together for Humanity's vigil for those
who have been killed in Gaza.
*US thwarts plot to kill Sikh separatist and issues diplomatic warning
to India.*
The news site Jezebel was killed by AI systems designed to funnel
advertising money to sites that are safe because they avoid
controversy.
The same systems may deny ads to Ex-Twitter now that it presents Nazi
material, but any benefit of reducing income to Ex-Twitter will
not compensate for the loss of news coverage.
Comment reconnaître un joli-laid?
*Former Yugoslavia countries must face past horrors or risk return to
conflict, Council of Europe official says.*
Non-"organic" commercial baby food in the US still contains
pesticides, but it shows up somewhat less often than it did in 1995,
and some very toxic pesticides no longer appear.
That shows some progress.
The article gives no information about the levels of these pesticides,
but the level is crucial. If the levels found this year are
considerably less than the levels found in 1995, that would be
substantial progress.
*[PM2.5 particulate air pollution from] US coal power plants killed at
least 460,000 people in past 20 years.*
The OpenAI board has not explained the somersaults in that organization,
but this article explains that its structure was ripe for trouble.
This article reports that the infighting was a battle between the
board, which tried to carry out the organization's nonprofit mission,
and Sam Altman, who had set up a for-profit LLC nominally under
OpenAI's control and wanted to use it for large profit.
Most of the staff of the LLC supported Altman, and so did Microsoft,
and this could make it appear that Altman was defying unjust power.
But it seems to be exactly the opposite.
Here's another pertinent article.
Although the name of the organization has "AI" in it, I still maintain
that GPT4 and ChatGPT do not qualify for the term "artificial
intelligence" since they do not know or understand what their output
purports to talk about.
Their software is very tightly restricted -- it is not released as
free software, nor even as nonfree software. People can use it,
but only as SaaSS.
Accusing Ex-Twitter of displaying ads for major companies
on tweets of bizarre disinformation.
It is disappointing that the article caters to Musk by omitting the
name "Twitter" and calling the company exclusively by the name that Musk
wants people to use. Must they cater to someone like him?
When ChatGPT is asked to generate letters of recommendation, it
reproduces gender bias.
This does not surprise me. LLMs work by reproducing patterns that are
typical in the material it was trained with). These systems do not
understand any of the patterns, so they would not be able to avoid
reproducing those that embody bias.
This is why I refuse to refer to those systems as "artificial
intelligence."
Scientists demonstrated use of GPT-4 to create a fake medical data set,
purporting to compare the outcomes of various types of medical
procedures -- which were not really carried out.
I do not describe GPT-4 as "artificial intelligence" because I reserve
that term for systems that really know or understand something. These
"generative" models can imitate the form of real writing or data, but
the output is not based on any knowledge or understanding of the
subject matter supposedly being described.
Harvard Law Review solicited and then killed an article arguing that
Israel's bombing of Gaza fits the official definition of "genocide".
Insiders report that the editors, who are 104 in number, voted to kill
the article because they were afraid of likely retaliation against
them in their careers otherwise.
Academic freedom includes the freedom to argue for either side of that
question. Threats to intimidate scholars for arguing it are an attack
on academic freedom, and therefore an attack on the United States and
on freedom in it.
Tories, practicing neoliberalism, have starved many vital state
activities. Adding up the shortfalls suggests that around 70 billion
UKP per year would be needed to fix things up in a reasonable time.
That doesn't count the cost of decarbonizing. Dependence on fossil
fuels was not introduced since Thatcher by Tories, since it already
existed, but Britain must nonetheless do its share to fix that.
The easy and natural way to get this money is by taxing the rich.
Easy, that is, if the rich can't prevent the state from trying. Any
other way would cause real difficulties.
Comparing the rate of killing of civilians in Gaza with the rate in
Bosnia, Syria and Yemen shows that the rate of killing in Gaza, when
measured as fraction of population killed per unit time, is on the
order of 50 times faster in Gaza.
Being opposed to sexism, I see no significance in whether a person killed
was male or female. People have the right to life regardless of sex,
and regardless of gender.
I suspect that figures about the number of "children" killed really
count the number of minors killed -- which would be much larger, since
many minors are adolescents, not children. But if these figures
really do count only children, that would place tighter limits on what
fraction of those killed could be HAMAS fighters. Some minors will be
combatants, but hardly ever will a child be a combatant.
The wrecker has learned from problems encountered in his first term as
president. If he gets to try again, he will move immediately to
convert US government institutions into tools for the repression of
anyone he considers an enemy.
Lake Titicaca is suffering from a prolonged drought which has made it
shrink in inconvenient ways.
*Billionaires are lining up to fund [the fascist]'s anti-democratic
agenda. … The more disturbing [his] public proclamations
become, the more US plutocrats seem to want him to win.*
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to uphold laws that forbid
domestic abusers from owning guns.
US citizens: call on Congress to give us an enforceable Supreme Court code
of ethics.
US citizens: call on your senators to support the REDUCE Act.
This would add a tax to production of non-recycled plastic in order to
decrease the amount of throw-away plastic.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to cancel permits for new fossil gas export
facilities.
US citizens: call on Biden to appoint Rep. Brenda Lawrence and Sarah
Anderson to the USPS Board of Governors, in order to replace
Postmaster DeJoy
A UN report finds that the Putin forces committed "willful killing,
torture, rape and other sexual violence, and the deportation of
children to the Russian Federation" in Ukraine.
*[US] Railroad companies have penalized workers for taking the time to
make needed repairs and created a culture in which supervisors
threaten and fire the very people hired to keep trains running
safely. Regulators say they can’t stop this intimidation.*
* Long sentences handed to two Just Stop Oil protesters for scaling
[a] bridge over the Thames are a potential breach of international
law and risk silencing public concerns about the environment*
— UN special rapporteur for "climate change"
and human rights.
For UK Tories, the point of science is to make profitable export
businesses.
I wonder if Starmer would be any different. My guess is no.
Milei as president of Argentina would be no "libertarian."
Quite the contrary, he wants to prohibit abortion again.
In the US a few years ago, the people who call themselves "libertarian"
sought above all to stop the government from aiding the non-rich.
I concluded that they were, first and foremast, antisocialists.
However, I hear that many of them have taken up right-wing conspiracy
theories and anti-vax. Perhaps they are no longer worth distinguishing
from the right-wing in general.
When the Supreme Court justices modified the ethics rules for other
federal judges to write an ethics code for themselves, they sabotaged
it at several levels, intentionally ripping it full of holes.
Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha, who won an American Book Award, was
on the way to Rafah with his family so they could go to Egypt and then
to the US. He did not make it to Egypt — the Israeli army arrested
him, along with hundreds of other men who were all fleeing south
along with their families.
Senator Manchin, who has been undermining the Democratic Party from
within, said he will not run again for the senate.
Maybe he plans to be the
figurehead of the "No Labels" party,
which calls itself "centrist" but is funded by billionaires that also fund Republicans.
Media Matters reports that Ex-Twitter shows ads for big companies in close relation to Nazi postings. Several companies have responded by ceasing
to buy ads on Ex-Twitter.
That article displays what it asserts are examples of that practice.
The Musk-ox said he would sue Media Matters out of existence.
Presuming the evidence presented is true — and it is inconceivable
that Media Matters would present false examples — I don't see what
grounds Ex-Twitter could have for a valid suit. But maybe the idea in
the Musk-mellon's head is to run Media Matters into the ground
with legal expenses before it can get a decision.
He also called the companies which stopped advertising "oppressors".
That is clearly true in the case of Apple.
It is an oppressor through the nonfree software
and SaaSS
it controls, and the surveillance
it carries out on millions. However, Musk is no better,
as the Tesla car does similarly nasty surveillance.
Why does he insult them? Clearly Musk is not trying to win their
business back. I don't think he ever wanted Twitter to make money for
him. I think he wants to use Ex-Twitter to build up a fascist
following like the one that the insurrectionist has.
Maybe they will then have their armies fight it out, much as Julius
Caesar and Pompeius Magnus fought over who would be emperor of Rome.
Our mission will be to defeat them both.
Falsifying facts in a movie that purports to show history is deception,
and wrong.
I am always very disappointed when I recognize, or learn later, that
some detail of a historical movie has been altered for entertainment
purposes.
*How can I, as a leftwing Jew, show support for both Palestinians and
Israelis?*
*World facing "hellish" 3°C of climate heating, UN warns before Cop28.*
That's twice the amount of global heating that the ecosphere has
experienced so far, but I expect it will more than double the harmful
consequences. The Earth's system's are chaotic, and each small
increment of heating can cause occasional disasters in various parts
of them. Before we get to 3°C, I expect most of us will starve.
The Republicans continued funding for most parts of the US government
until Feb 2, but certain departments' funding will end on Jan 19.
This will give them an opportunity to threaten to shut down those
departments and not the rest of the government. But why those
particular departments?
My theory is that shutting those departments would harm a lot of
non-rich Americans, but without much blowback from rich people whose
support they depend on.
We will see in January the rest of the hostage-takers' strategy.
Bernie Sanders: *People should not die because of their income or
where they were born. We must have the courage to stand up to the
pharmaceutical industry.*
I advocate a radical solution that would really do the job: eliminate
patents on medicines, and have the state run and pay for clinical
trials so that drug companies cannot corrupt them.
This way their argument that only patents can provide the
expense will be gone.
ALEC, the plutocratist and right-wing group that lobbies US state
legislatures, is taking a break from attacking Americans' freedom and
well-being, and now lobbying for state resolutions to support Israel's
war in Gaza.
US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to Stop Big Tech
from taking over the auto industry (through "connected cars").
The actions this advocates would be a step forward, but nowhere near
enough.
We should prohibit systematic tracking of the location or
movements of any vehicle or vehicles that can lawfully be used on
public streets, except when authorized by a search warrant that must
specify the vehicles to be tracked, the geographical of such tracking,
and the period of time within which it may be done.
US citizens: call on Biden to demand the Israeli government ban the use
of white phosphorus (except for generating fog).
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Biden to commit
to 100% renewable energy as the target for COP28.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
If AI leads to decreased demand for labor in the future, a universal
basic income could reduce the resulting problems.
*The climate crises harms [human] health. Diseases will spread faster and
further, and kill more people, as the effects of record heat,
floods, drought and storms escalates.*
*Nikki Haley Says Anonymous Social Media Posts Are a "National Security
Threat," Demands All Users Verify Identity.*
Right-wing disinformation and hate are the main "national security
threat" in antisocial media platforms, but Republicans have become
experts at spreading those messages under their own names and avoiding
punishment or obstacles. I guess Haley thinks this new censorship requirement will hit only progressives.
*The news has become intolerable and inhumane. Democracy’s vital
feedback mechanism is broken.*
It helps, I find, to read news articles rather than watching video.
With text, it is easier to stay calm while finding out what happened.
Then you can react emotionally to what you have learned, rather than whatever
image someone shows you.
Another advantage is that you can read words faster than you can hear
someone speak them.
Jeremy Corbyn was reluctant to call HAMAS a terrorist group, but now has
publicly recognized that it is one.
I'm glad, because it means that he and I are more or less in
agreement now. I was disappointed that he disagreed with me on this
point. However, I still supported him rather than Starmer. The UK
government is not in charge of either HAMAS or Israel, but it is in
charge of whether to make poor people in the UK suffer for the sake of
the rich. Starmer refuses to tax the rich to reverse their
multi-decade neoliberal wealth grab. Corbyn wants to do that.
I've already contrasted HAMAS and the Israel.
Both are committing war crimes, but they are not similar, not mirror images of each other.
It is not that simple.
*Groups increasingly use defamation law to ward off US election subversion.*
*Half of children in poorer countries have lead poisoning, says
study.*
The number of people that die from lead poisoning fails to measure the
harm it does. Lead exposure damages a child's brain and leads to
lower intelligence. The US suffered a decades-long crime wave
at the hands of the young men who, due to lead exposure as children, were not
smart enough to recognize that crime would lead to consequences that
would ruin their lives.
*Europe will never discourage African migration while it funds the
corruption that drives it.*
*US supreme court allows delay in redrawing Louisiana map that dilutes Black
voters’ power.*
That means that Louisiana's congressional delegation elected in 2024
will be gerrymandered in favor of Republicans.
Republicans only "win" elections nationally with the help of cheating:
gerrymandering
and voter-suppression.
The Israeli army forced doctors and patients to evacuate al-Shifa
hospital.
Aside from 32 babies that will be taken to Egyptian hospitals,
there is nowhere safe for them to go. I expect the number of
Palestinians killed in Gaza far exceeds 12,000. I would not be
surprised if it were double or triple that.
* The US is warming faster than the global average and its people are
suffering … a disaster every three weeks costing at least $1bn.*
The Italian government is funding an exhibit to promote Lord of the
Rings, which has been adopted by right-wing extremists in Italy.
*Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses.*
Amazon already destroyed a large fraction of US jobs in retail by
driving competing other stores out of business. The jobs that remain
in Amazon warehouses, which often lead to injury and illness,
are few by comparison.
*EU agrees to ban exports of waste plastic to poor countries.*
Poor countries, desperate for foreign currency, often agree to accept
large quantities of waste, which there is no safe way to dispose of
so they have to keep it forever.
A right-wing supporter of the murderous 1970s military dictatorship was elected
president in Argentina. I fear for that country.
Direct air capture of CO2 is useful in principle. But since it takes
a lot of energy, would it reduce atmospheric CO2 more than reducing
fossil fuel generation by that same amount of energy?
Israel has published a video showing a fortified tunnel under al-Shifa
hospital which it asserts was made by HAMAS.
If this is true, as it may be, HAMAS may have violated the rules of
war by building that tunnel. Using the tunnel for fighting would
surely have violated them.
That would not however imply open season on patients and doctors in
al-Shifa for the Israeli army.
Australia is rushing to make new policies for ex-convicts who are
foreigners that it is impossible to legally deport.
But they seem to be based on confusion of purpose.
The imprisonment policy that the court rejected was used ex-convicts
who would be deported if that were allowable. However, they have been
mixed with policies that seem to be directed at a possible threat to
the community posed by the convict.
Each of those two purposes calls for its own response; mixing them up
is a mistake.
For making sure the state can find the ex-convict in case deporting
per ever becomes an option, keeping track of per movements is
justified and should be sufficient.
As for protecting the community from a possible threat posed by the
ex-convict, whatever Australia does with Australian ex-convicts is
presumably adequate (or Australia should change that policy). So it
should be adequate for non-Australian criminals too.
I presume that Australia makes these decisions for specific
ex-convicts based on what crime each committed. For instance, if the
crime was bank robbery or embezzling, there is probably no need to
care whether the criminal goes near a school.
If Australian courts accept a certain restriction for a certain
category ex-convicts when they are Australians, I expect it will
accept the same restriction for the same category of foreign
ex-convicts.
400 or so people came to Atlanta for a nonviolent protest against Cop
City. They held a nonviolence training first. They brought gas masks
because they expected the thugs to attack them with violence.
That's exactly what the thugs did. They started attacking as soon as the protesters came close.
The thugs also attacked press.
The thug department seems to be run by Putin. Is it perhaps run by a
follower of a supporter of Putin? That would be, a follower of the
insurrectionist -- a Republican.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the legal obstacles that
make abortions hard to get even when they are not prohibited.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to protect democracy by banning racist
gerrymandering.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on state officials to keep the insurrectionist off
the ballot for the next election — for engaging in insurrection.
*Alabama [prison thug] accused of encouraging prisoners to murder organizer of
[prison] strikes.*
They did not actually try to kill that organizer, it seems.
But he is in considerable danger of violence from the thugs.
Australia's equivalent of Chelsea Manning, who revealed war crimes by
soldiers in Afghanistan, was forbidden to state his defense or enter
documents in evidence. He responded by pleading guilty to three of
the five charges.
I don't quite understand why he responded that way, but the article
does not say what happened to the other two charges. Was this a sort
of plea bargain? That would make sense.
In any case, he has boosted the campaign for changing the law so that
whistleblowers like him will bot be prosecuted.
Jonathan Freedland: Neither HAMAS nor Netanyahu (and his government)
is willing to contemplate peace. The only way to have peace in
Israel/Palestine is to get rid of both of them.
Freedland thinks Israel can eliminate HAMAS, and says that various
other powers expect this, but I don't think that is possible. An
underground guerrilla movement is almost impossible to eradicate as
long as new supporters want to join. I do not think that Israel
should be allowed to commit enormous war crimes in the name of
attempting to do that.
Republicans in a Texas school committee rejected some textbooks for
teaching about global heating.
Rich right-wingers anonymously donated $134 million to political
campaigns in 2022.
Texas is about to make it a crime, under state law, to cross the
border from Mexico without papers. Also, thugs will be allowed arrest
anyone on vague suspicion of having entered Texas by crossing the
border without papers.
We know that they will make that judgment based on racial profiling.
Since immigration is normally a federal matter, it is not clear states
are allowed to make laws about it. But we cannot trust today's
Supreme Court to insist on that.
But even if it does, that decision will probably take months, during
which thugs will eagerly arrest anyone who looks or sounds foreign.
*School Strike 4 Climate: Australian students skip classes en masse to
call for action.*
I wish the web site for climate actions permitted access without running
nonfree software. If it did, I could post a link to it, and I could
even join actions sometimes myself.
* Seafood companies and retailers threaten to boycott north-east
Atlantic [mackerel] catch after two-decade failure to agree sustainable
quotas.*
*[A new EU] directive punishes [the] most serious cases of
environmental damage, including habitat loss and illegal logging.*
The state of Georgia is concealing the evidence about the thugs that
shot a protester who was in the forest near Cop City.
Since state officials give no valid reason for doing this, we are
entitled to suspect the worst: that Georgia is covering up a felony
committed by the thugs.
The Ideological Subversion of Biology.
It contains this quotation from Ernst Mayr:
I agree with Mayr, as do the authors of the paper. I advocate equal
rights for all humans, though we should and do impose practical tests
of ability and knowledge for specific activities such as driving a
motor vehicle and practicing medicine. As for facts, about individual
humans or about biology and medicine, we can ascertain them by
observation and by scientific inquiry, and we should respect the facts
we find.
The judge in the insurrectionist's criminal case for misuse of secret
documents is allowing a lot of slippage in the trial.
*Here are seven ways that Judge Mehta is allowing Google to hide the Google
antitrust trial.*
* Billions of dollars in public pension fund money flow to private
equity–owned firms that union-bust, violate labor laws, and put
workers’ safety at risk.*
*Elon Musk agrees with tweet accusing Jews of "hatred against whites".*
There's no way of understanding that as anything other than
antisemitism.
Even leftist Jews, who advocate an end to the occupation of Palestine,
feel in danger from the surge of antisemitism that is stimulated by
present condemnation of Israel's occupation policies and war crimes.
It takes some moral maturity to separate (1) Israel's treatment of
Palestinians from (2) Jews as such from (3) Israel's existence as a
haven for them. It's the same moral maturity that we need in order to
separate (1) HAMAS from (2) Palestinians.
We all need to develop and activate this maturity, now more than ever.
*UK environment secretary took donation from funder of climate
[denialist] thinktank.*
"Climate skeptic" is what global heating denialists like to call
themselves, so that they sound respectable. As soon as I saw that
term, I suspected they were denialists. But before asserting that
they are, I verified that the article actually says so.
*IDF evidence so far falls well short of al-Shifa hospital's being Hamas HQ.*
Thus, Israel has not demonstrated sufficient grounds to designate
al-Shifa hospital as a "military objective" and attack it. The attack remains
a war crime.
But not as big a war crime as starving the population of Gaza. *Gaza
faces "immediate possibility" of starvation as disease spreads, UN
[World Food Program] says.*
(satire) *Only Sex Education In Country Now Just Pressing Ear To
Shared Wall To Hear Noises From Next Door.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then
right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser
such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
Ohio Republicans plan to increase subsidize the "crisis pregnancy
centers" that use trickery to lead women away from getting abortions.
They use trickery to fool women into consulting them, rather than
consulting a real abortion clinic as those women set out to do. And
once that first trickery gives them an opportunity, they use trickery
to convince women not to get abortions.
Then they use trickery to deny their use of trickery.
I call the proposal a "subsidy" because it seems to go beyond making
private donations to those disinformationists deductible.
The article says that several states subsidize this disinformation --
all of them Republican-controlled, I presume. The Republican slogan
should be Disinformation Я Us.
Surveillance advertising's data collection makes people vulnerable fraud.
Doctorow says we should ban surveillance advertising. I say we should
ban the surveillance, period. Regardless of what the surveiller's
motivation is, collecting personal data in a database harms people.
For instance, suppose the data is not used for advertising but is used
to set what you pay for medical insurance. If the data collected from
a fitbit includes where you are -- and it can hardly fail to do so
-- that is a grave attack on your privacy.
The UK Supreme Court recognized that Rwanda proved untrustworthy
when it allowed Israel to park asylum-seekers there.
*Tech companies are pushing the idea that the only way to make AI safe
is to leave them in control. Trusting them could lead to disaster.*
The author doesn't fully appreciate to what extent this is true.
The only way they would not be in control is if they release
the software and make it libre -- so we change it for ourselves.
*Israel drops leaflets warning people to flee southern Gaza towns.*
Most people in Gaza have had little food and water for weeks. How are
they supposed to be capable of walking for miles, carrying or dragging
the possessions they have saved? And where could they find other
shelter?
Even if they were provided with the wherewithal to move, to order
thousands of civilians to move or be bombarded is, as I understand it,
a war crime which nothing can possibly excuse.
*UCS Study Finds US Can Reap Significant Economic, Health Benefits
from Meeting Climate Goals.*
Protesters intentionally destroyed fancy windows in the headquarters
of HSBC to protest its funding climate destruction. They were charged
and tried, and the jury ruled to acquit them.
It seems the jury accepted the protesters' argument that they were
trying to prevent a much graver crime.
Since the British supreme court has ruled that Rwanda is not a safe
place to deport inconvenient foreigners, the Tories are trying to rush through
a law to declare it "safe".
*Lawsuit Highlights Why Meat Has Been Overpriced [in the US] for 40 Years.*
It is good to increase the price of meat, so that people will eat less
of it (and live longer) and we will produce less of it (and reduce
global heating and deforestation). But the extra should go to taxes,
not profits.
According to Cory Doctorow, corporations push diversity programs as a
way of convincing workers that *their grievances are best addressed by
trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways –-
and not by forming a union.*
I made the article link above it tells us something important about
fighting unjust business power, and secondarily racism too.
Ironically, that article embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing
"black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both
words or neither one.) I denounce all forms of bigotry, and I don't
want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling
it out. Here I am doing that.
Landlords that hide their names and addresses behind anonymous
corporations find that a convenient way to get away with illegal
harassment and eviction.
The obvious solution is to make it a felony to register such a
corporation as the owner of a rental property, and punish it with
confiscation of the property. There is no reason for leniency in
stopping abuse of power.
US citizens: affirm that we, the public, oppose Republican aims to cut Social Security, including raising the retirement age.
US citizens: call on Congress to overturn the Corporations United decision.
The organization called itself "Citizens United", but it represented
the "rights" of corporations to try to buy elections, so I think the name
"Corporations United" is more accurate.
US citizens: call on Congress to push for a cease fire in Gaza.
The war in Gaza and the war in Ukraine are both wars, but they are not
morally parallel. Putin attacked Ukraine; Ukraine is fighting to
recapture what Putin has taken, while he orders every war crime he can
think of. We should help Ukraine win.
Not so in Gaza. Both sides have made war crimes their policy; both
deserve considerable reproach; neither size deserves our full support.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on all US state legislatures to choose fair,
independent redistricting in every state.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a real Supreme Court code for
conduct.
It should also cover all the sorts of corruption we have seen.
Alas, that is not in the petition, but it is worth signing anyway.
US citizens: call on senators Schumer and Durbin not to reauthorize
warrantless mass surveillance by the NSA and FBI.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for "humanitarian
pauses" in Gaza that would last for days, enough for aid to
effectively reach people.
Short truces lasting days are not equivalent to a permanent cease
fire, but they would head in that direction. Supposing Israel does
them at all.
The US abstained, but unless it pressures Israel to heed this resolution,
Israel may ignore it.
56 Labour MPs voted to demand a cease-fire in Gaza. but Starmer was
unmoved.
George Monbiot: *We owe it to humanity to see the rules of war are
observed — no matter how tough a test the Israel-HAMAS conflict
proves.*
An FAA panel has made recommendations for how to prevent the "near miss"
almost-collisions between airplanes.
*10 Years of Study Shows Overpaid CEOs Underperform.*
That is an interesting irony, but even if those CEOs with super-high
salaries provided benefits worth those salaries, it would still be
unfair to society for management to get such a high fraction of the
company's income.
*US and China’s joint climate plan leaves key questions unanswered.*
Using carbon capture to capture the emissions that will result from 6
years of the UAE's oil exports would take centuries.
That "solution" is a distraction, nothing more.
Global heating is making Mongolia dry, and wiping out the grass that
Mongols' traditional herding way of life is based on.
The UAE has ambitious plans to expand its oil and fossil gas extraction.
Cameron, returning to the UK cabinet, is suspected of having conflicts
of interest due to working for companies, or even for other countries.
Record heat this year, caused by global heating, caused an outbreak
of dengue fever in Jamaica.
Coming soon to a city or village near you?
An IRS audit of Microsoft found that it owes $29 billion dollars
in back taxes.
*The IRS rejected Microsoft’s attempts to channel profits to a small
factory in Puerto Rico that burned Windows software onto CDs.*
Cory Doctorow: *Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29
billion.*
*"Tax avoidance" (which is [supposedly] legal) isn't a separate
phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly
veiled euphemism for it:… The tax-avoidance strategies revealed
in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it
slide [until Biden fixed it].*
UK policies designed to discourage sweetened sodas seem to have improved
the health of children's' teeth.
Arguing that trying to preserve "heirloom" plant varieties unchanged
conflicts with the need for crops to adapt to handle the extreme
weather that global heating exacerbates every year.
The author perhaps does not know that, among science-fiction fans and
writers, "sci-fi" is a term of disparagement that we applied to movies
because they give priority to special effects and visual
impressiveness rather than to the events in the story.
George Santos's lies: *from serious to mundane to bizarre.*
*the U.S. Department of Energy-led framework [for monitoring methane
release] will not require producers to make or keep pledges to reduce
their overall production of oil and gas and, as a result, will be
weaponized by the fossil fuel industry to justify increased
production.*
The article describes other flaws too.
The US Supreme Court has adopted a code of ethics, but is it any good?
People are criticizing this code on the grounds that they don't trust
the right-wing justices to heed it. That is a valid point, but under
public pressure they might heed it. That leads to a second question:
supposing they do heed this code, is it adequate?
For instance, what does it say about the situation where a justice has
received gifts from a rich person and then a case arises in which the
giver has interests at stake, or political views? If it doesn't call
for recusal in that situation, then it winks at corruption.
Report from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza: around 2500 people remain
there, and Israeli troops that surround it shoot when people try to
enter or leave.
Patients in intensive care are likely to die because there is no
electricity. The hospital also has no food and no water, so other
patients may die too.
Milei, the right-wing candidate for president of Argentina alienated
military veterans by confirming his adoration for Margaret Thatcher,
the Tory prime minister.
Thatcher sent a fleet to liberate the Falkland Islands from the
Argentine military dictatorship. (That's the same dictatorship
that tortured Argentines who were on the left, then murdered them
by dropping them into the ocean from airplanes.)
Liberating the Falklands, whose population is of English descent, was
the only good thing Thatcher did that I know of. That had the
indirect result of restoring democracy in Argentina. Aside from that,
her actions were to break unions, reward greed and crush the poor. I
would guess that those things are what Milei admires her for. He also
admires Bolsonaro and the insurrectionist, according to Wikipedia.
*Companies that make political donations are more than twice as likely
to win government contracts and should be banned from working with
departments for an entire electoral cycle, according to a key
transparency group.*
I second that. Preventing what is effectively a form of corruption is
important.
A counterargument is that those who award contracts may have no idea
of recent donations to political parties. My response to that is, yes
but so what? Preventing what is effectively a form of corruption is
important. Making it safe for businesses to donate to political
parties is basically harmful.
Indeed, it would be better to prohibit such donations outright.
* [the Tory] plan to ban the glorifying of terrorism risks
criminalizing "supporters of the suffragettes, Nelson Mandela, or even
the crowd at Murrayfield belting out Flower of Scotland".*
The idea of trying to prohibit any opinions one finds odious leads
invariably to tyranny, though the path that goes there may be crooked.
That includes prohibition of a hostile attitude to some ethnic or
religious group, no matter which group it may be.
Putting the century-long conflict between Israel and Palestine into a
historical context along with European racism and antisemitism.
It should be noted that the Jews who lived under Islamic kingdoms did
not enjoy equal rights. All Jews there, along with all Christians
there, were officially designated as inferior to Muslims. They were
never allowed to forget this. I expect that is part of the reason
some of them chose to emigrate to Israel.
Since "biodegradable" plastic doesn't biodegrade in nature, and since
it is not feasible to clean all the microplastics out of the ocean, we
must redesign our production and use of plastics to avoid filling
nature with them.
An indigenous local police force fights gold mining in Ecuador's
rainforest.
They use modern drones to discover the miners and to record video to
prove in court that they were mining.
Orbán has established an Un-Hungarian Activities commission to
investigate and pressure human rights groups and journalistic
organizations that get foreign support.
It will also investigate foreign support to political parties. That
does not seem dangerous to me, because it seems proper to me to
prohibit foreign donations to political parties.
Japan's whaling is very heavily subsidized.
The subsidy amounts to twice the commercial revenue
from sale of whale meat.
I wonder why the Japanese government spends so much money on an
activity whose main product is disapproval from the rest of the world.
*[The insurrectionist's] Veterans-Day speech mirrors Hitler's
statements almost word for word.*
I doubt this was a coincidence — I think the insurrectionist was given
specific advice by Nazis.
*In denying that Trump sounds like a Nazi, his spokesman sounds a lot
like … Goebbels.*
Australian legislators are rushing to pass a law to partly reverse the
court decision against holding non-Australian criminals in deportation
prison for life simply because it is impossible to deport them.
There are crimes that justify keeping the culprit in prison for life.
Such a sentence could be carried out, when imposed, for criminals
whether they are Australians or not.
But whether the criminal is kept in prison for life must not depend on
whether the culprit is an Australian citizen. If the culprit of a
certain crime, being an Australian citizen, would eventually be
released (perhaps paroled), a non-Australian culprit should be
released from prison just the same (and possibly then deported).
Nadya Tolokonnikova, formerly of Pussy Riot, went to Indiana and sang
God Save Abortion.
* Rain and cold in Gaza will lead to further increase in waterborne
diseases, bacterial infections and diarrhea in children, says
WHO.*
*Woman who fled [Salafi Arabia] with daughter wins court battle to stay in US.*
She faced the risk of being executed if she went to Salafi Arabia as
that country's court demanded.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject GOP attempts to cut IRS
funding.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress: No war crimes in our names or with our
tax dollars.
Israel has a right to defend itself from HAMAS, but not a right to
commit massive war crimes against Palestinians in general,
and it cannot excuse them by ordering Palestinians to "Leave
northern Gaza or else be considered `terrorists'."
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Australians are learning to recognize the importance of not letting
pet cats roam outdoors and kill wildlife.
The issue is somewhat different in Europe and Africa, since wildcats
(from which domesticated cats were bred) have been present there since
before humans. To some extent, the ecosystem is adapted to their
existence. However, that adaptation depends partly on the presence of
larger predators that limit the number of wildcats.
*[Many] US supporters of Israel and Palestine fail to admit
suffering of other side.*
They become *so entrenched in [their]
views that to give an inch, even to acknowledge someone else’s
suffering, feels like a betrayal [of the side one supports].*
I do not want to try to compare the gravity of HAMAS's war crimes
with the gravity of Israel's war crimes. But we can easily see that
Israel commits fresh war crimes every day, while HAMAS does not.
It's not that HAMAS has reformed or learned anything about the
morality of killing or seizing civilians. It is simply that the
current tactical situation offers HAMAS no opportunities to commit its
forms of war crimes. It is nonetheless true that the newly committed
war crimes are committed by Israel. Therefore, in regard to putting
an end to the war crimes, we must focus on Israel's continuing war
crimes, which It cannot excuse by citing the crimes of its enemies,
"Retaliation" and "deterrence" are not excuses for war crimes.
Australia is putting its counterpart to Chelsea Manning on trial for
leaking secret information about Australian soldiers' covered-up war
crimes in Afghanistan.
When a non-citizen commits a serious crime in Australia, after per
prison sentence, Australia's practice is to keep per in deportation
prison until deportation actually occurs — which was meant not to be
very long. But what if someone is impossible to deport? In practice
this resulted in a sentence of life in prison.
A court ruled that Australia must release those people
if actual deportation can't happen in the foreseeable future.
This is just, and safe. Citizens who commit the same crimes are not
sentenced to life in prison. If it's not too dangerous to release the
citizens who commit these crimes, why should it be more dangerous to
release non-citizens who commit them (when deporting them is impossible).
Negotiations are proceeding for a global treaty to reduce total plastic
production.
*Across the globe, compassion for migrants has given way to cruel,
performative politics.*
A thoughtful analysis of what's wrong about the "From the river to the
sea" chant.
The BBC is funded by a fee imposed on everyone who watches television
in the UK. This is rightly criticized as a regressive funding scheme
since rich and poor pay the same amount.
Usually "climate change" is a euphemism for climate disaster, but in
one special case, the tradition of haiku poetry, the mere fact of
change in climate
is a disaster in itself regardless of the details.
Perhaps future haiku poets could use the contrast between real
seasonal weather patterns (of that time) and the haiku traditions of
seasonal weather patterns to illuminate something about human beings.
(Indeed, it is
already happening.)
A pilot program for stop-and-search in England (1) displays racial
bias and (2) does not reduce violence.
This is no surprise, but it does show that stop-and-search is an injustice
now as it was before.
I made the above link to an article because it tells us something
important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a
collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against.
I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of
bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting
it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of
articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid
goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or
not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I
concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the
link. But the second goal also should not be neglected — hence this
note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
China has recently increased investment in renewable electricity, and its
greenhouse emissions could fall starting next year.
This is a relief and a good example for the world. The rest of the
world needs to overcome the power of the planet roasters so we can
make other countries do likewise.
We should not overgeneralize. China remains an expansionist
repressive dictatorship; there is no sign of a change in that.
*Drivers for Amazon unionized, were fired and are now picketing around US.*
This illustrates how outsourcing of workers facilitates mistreating
them.
We need laws to limit outsourcing, or perhaps instead to make the ultimate
beneficial employer (to borrow a term from the field of wealth-hiding)
responsible for respecting workers' rights notwithstanding the outsourcing.
Philippine Senator de Lima, jailed for investigating President
Do-Dirty's murderous "war on drugs", has been released from jail.
She was never actually convicted on any of the charges, but spent six years
in jail anyway.
The UK's Minister of Cruelty has been dismissed and replaced.
The new minister is a Tory too, and may be expected to be more or
less cruel, but won't necessarily base his career on showing how cruel
he can be.
Tories persistently attack the right to protest in the UK, by giving the thug departments ever more powers to criminalize protests.
*White faces generated by [generative learning models] are more
convincing than [real] photos, finds survey.*
Does the capability to generate very credible unreal faces count as
knowing or understanding something? If it does, I would have to say
this system qualifies as "artificial intelligence". But I don't think
it does.
US citizens: Stand for defense of the right to get and use
contraception.
On the danger of "flash droughts", which can lead to a destructive wildfire
before government agencies wake up and try to prevent that.
Republican-controlled states are attacking public-sector workers right
to have effective unions.
Colombia has introduced an extra tax on ultra-processed foods.
Attacking Israeli troops are closing in on al-Shifa hospital in
Gaza, *where it is said more than 50,000 people may have taken
shelter.*
Israel has already bombed or shelled near the hospital and even on
its grounds. That is likely to kill thousands of civilians. It is
surely a war crime.
The army is also bombarding buildings in a nearby refugee camp. It
says the buildings were used by HAMAS. Does that mean there are no
civilians in or near them. Israel arbitrarily declared any civilians
in northern Gaza are ipso facto "terrorists". If that could make it
legitimate to bombard them with artillery or air attacks, humanitarian
law would be a pushover.
*As its counteroffensive stalls, Ukraine signals readiness for a long war.*
A two-state agreement in Israel/Palestine cannot happen if Israel
insists on its "security" demands for Gaza or on its history of
annexation in the West Bank.
*[The insurrectionist] suggests he would use FBI to go after political
rivals if elected in 2024.*
Hilary Clinton warns that the insurrectionist, if he makes himself president,
would eliminate further elections, much as Hitler did. We can be sure of this,
because he tells us his hostile intentions himself.
*Garment workers in Bangladesh say their pay is so low that they
have to steal to feed their children.
One jaw of the vice they are in is that the businesses pay them too
little. The other jaw of the vice is that they have had children
that they cannot afford to raise -- and they expect to go on having
children regardless of whether they can afford to raise them.
To have a lasting solution for this problem, both need to change. The
businesses must pay the workers a living wage, and the workers must
limit their reproduction to the amount they can provide for.
Artificial Intelligence, put in charge of banking, could cause a
economic crash. The AIs could invent new types of financial
instruments that humans can't understand how to regulate properly, and
their use could lead to a crash.
That should not be surprising, since human bankers already did just that, and
the crash came in 2007.
It seems to me that the crucial cause of that crash was the
deregulation that allowed banks to invent and use dangerous new
financial instruments. The lesson we should draw is never to
deregulate them. Neither human nor nonhuman intelligences can cause a
crash by means of incomprehensible innovative financial instruments if
inventing and using innovative financial instruments is strictly
punished.
Proposing to give Gaza to Egypt and give the West Bank to Jordan, as a
path to peace.
Would Palestinians accept being ruled by Egypt (a brutal military
dictatorship) and Jordan (a monarchy with a limited amount of
democracy and without freedom of expression)?
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor-Greene unite in push to free
Julian Assange.*
It is ironic that elected officials from the two ends of the political
spectrum have joined to defend Assange, and freedom of the press.
However, their letter might influence Biden more if some elected
officials from the middle joined in.
The ruling party in Bangladesh has jailed 10,000 supporters of the
opposition party.
Robert Reich theorizes why Biden does not get credit for the good things
he has done: when he speaks, he focuses on substantial points rather
than emotional impact.
I agree that Biden has done some good things for the US economy, for
clean energy, and for the well-being of poor Americans, and that the
public does not give him the credit those actions deserve. At the
same time, he has done quite a few bad things to set against those
good things.
Thus, while Biden's record puts him miles above any Republican,
it also puts him disappointingly far below a progressive Democrat.
*Lloyd’s of London insurers dominate underwriting of fossil fuel
projects, study shows.*
*Rwanda accused [by Human Rights Watch of broad campaign of repression
against dissidents, [even dissidents in exile].*
A study reports that private equity and hedge funds have eliminated at
least 1.3 million retail jobs in the US in the past decade.
They have also reduced competition in retail. Competition among the
big middlemen is how capitalism sometimes benefits to producers and
consumers; if that competition is lost, capitalism becomes sheer
exploitation.
*UN hunger expert: US must recognize "right to food" to fix broken system.*
These days, the US always produces enough food for everyone to have
something to eat. If anyone can't obtain food, it is due to
right-wing politics that advocates behavior modification by denial of
food.
In 10, 20 or 30 years, when no-longer-natural disasters are even more frequent
and harvests are often lost, that may no longer be the case. Insufficiency
of food will arrive sooner or later if we keep making things worse.
We can deduce that establishing a human right to food implies a human
right to a stable climate and a stable environment — including a
stable chemical environment. Continued use of neonicotinoid
pesticides,
for example, would make future violation of the right to
food probable, and therefore have to be forbidden.
A new French law tries to make "influencers" acknowledge when their
publications are actually paid ads.
This law seems like a step forward, but in my view the mere intent to
act as an influencer is wrong in spirit. If the goal of a
presentation is to get me to buy a product, that alone will make me
think of it as a trap — so why look at it?
* Each recorded fatal Israeli airstrike on Gaza since 7 October has
caused an average of 10.1 civilian deaths, a monitoring group has
said, amid warnings that reported civilian casualty figures are
likely to be an underestimate..*
* [New EU] Legislation will set targets to restore 20% of EU land and seas by
2030, and 90% of degraded habitats by 2050.*
This is amazingly ambitious. I am impressed.
A campaign of posturing about Israelis kidnapped by HAMAS and held hostage
is viewed by supporters of one side or the other as partisan.
This tendency to close one's eyes to the suffering of people on the
other side is the main obstacle to peace. If people on each side
assume, "If they aren't crushed, we must be crushed," they tend to
reject any plan other than to crush the other side. Often they do
this without recognizing they rejected anything.
Often they do this by dehumanizing everyone "on the other side",
they crush all but the worst part of themselves.
The Anti-Defamation League lists peace rallies by Jews in its database
of "antisemitism", and calls them "anti-Israel".
This equates calling on Israel to cease war crimes with seeking
to destroy Israel. Meanwhile, a Republican elected official
called for genocide of the Palestinians.
Perhaps this should not be a surprise, since we know that the
Republican Party now includes Nazis.
The same sort of extremist thinking can be seen on the Palestinian side
in the young men that "want to be martyred".
They have dehumanized themselves, and often others too. HAMAS
supporters care nothing about committing war crimes.
Israeli soldiers surrounding the al-Shifa hospital are firing at anyone
inside they see moving.
*As false war information spreads on [Ex-Twitter], Musk promotes
unvetted accounts.*
* Research shows birds with small alterations to one gene are highly
resistant to avian flu.*
They are not totally resistant, but maybe could lead with further
research to a variety that would be,
I think sort of genetic engineering would be beneficial, in and of itself.
But if it is patented, it could put all chicken farming, for practical
purposes, under the control and power of the patent holder.
We should
not allow such patents.
*McDonald's and Amazon's ties to alleged labor trafficking: five key
takeaways.*
The UK post office declared all old stamps unusable and replaced them with
new stamps carrying bar codes. People who follow the recommended procedure
for exchanging the valid but unusable old stamps are often told they
were "used or fake", or sent too few.
It seems that society has got in the habit of imposing incompetent service
and declaring it satisfactory.
[Australia's foreign minister] Penny Wong says, "steps towards
ceasefire" in Israel-Hamas war "cannot be one-sided."
Actually, it's just the opposite: if you are committing war crimes, it
behooves you to stop — regardless of what your enemies are doing.
Neither Israel nor HAMAS can justify continuing crimes on the grounds
that "our enemy is committing crimes and/or fighting us."
Now that Ohio citizens have voted to amend Ohio's constitution to
protect the right to have an abortion, anti-abortion Republican
legislators are looking for ways to undermine it.
I wonder, how gerrymandered is Ohio? Would fair districting and
protecting every citizen';s right to vote remove Republicans from
power there?
An Israeli diplomat and others tried to pressure Bard College to cancel
a course that would compare the occupation of the West Bank to apartheid.
Eminent opponents of apartheid, including Desmond Tutu,
have remarked on his similarity.
The IHRA criterion for antisemitism has been criticized for drawing this line
in the wrong place.
*Human-caused heating behind extreme droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran, study
finds.
[Such] droughts … used to happen once
every 250 years but now expected once a decade.*
*Oil and gas production in Texas is spewing out double the rate of
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, than in the more regulated state of
New Mexico, new satellite data shared with the Guardian shows,
prompting calls for tougher curbs of “super-emitter” sites that risk
tipping the world into climate breakdown.*
When Australia's "drug sniffer" dogs indicate sniffing drugs, 75% of the time
the following search does not find any drugs.
* Nine of 12 members of the [congressional committee] charged with
avoiding nuclear conflict have financial ties to [military]
contractors.*
Around 25% of invertebrate species are estimated to be at risk of
extinction in the mass extinction that humans are bringing about.
This includes important pollinators. The loss of pollinators will cause
problems for the growth of food.
US citizens: call on the Department of Energy to reject any proposed
new LNG facilities.
US citizens: Insist that the clean economy must be unionized.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Justice for All Act.
It would extend nondiscrimination law to cover sex, sexual orientation, gender
identity, and various characteristics linked with race or sex
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to implement automatic voter
registration nationwide.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the White House to set a national strategy for freight
electrification alongside a strong heavy-duty vehicle rule.
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.
Apple reportedly had objections to what Jon Stewart said in his video
program — it canceled the show after he had criticized China, and something the article describes as "AI".
(It could be that what he criticized was actually large language
models, which may be an important issue but are not "intelligence".)
We should protect the media from censorship by commercial interests by
not allowing companies that make or sell other products to be involved
in the business of making or distributing audio or video programs.
I expect that Apple does much worse things than this in its distribution
of video programs. For instance, I suspect it requires viewers to
run nonfree software with DRM, compels them to identify themselves,
and imposes an immoral "antisocializing" contract where you promise
not to share a copy with anyone else.
(Not coincidentally, this resembles the bad things that commercial e-books do.)
My response to any disservice which asks me to accept of those forms
of mistreatment is to invite it to jump in the lake.
(satire) *Supreme Court Rules Anyone Who Had Abortion Under Roe Must
Be Re-Impregnated.*
(satire) *Biden Campaign Downplays Importance Of Winning Election.*
Japan continues catching whales, even though one of the targeted species
seems to have decreasing population.
A Japanese friend speculates that Japanese whaling is subsidized somehow,
since not many people seem to buy whale meat.
Google says that it will use its remote attestation system ("Web
Environment Integrity") only in the most oppressive scenario: as DRM.
Making Google drop the rest of the plan is a tactical advance, but it
is not victory. Google still plans to prevent playing "embedded
video" through an application that users can trust. Why could users
trust that application? Precisely because Google could not trust it
to impose Google's control over the users.
As long as companies have a way to control whether we use applications
that we have modified, we are not safe! Our goal should be to
prohibit the sale or distribution of computer systems that allow
remote servers to do remote attestation of the software you choose to
run on your computer to talk to them with.
Minnesota's supreme court ruled that the time to rule on whether the
insurrectionist is qualified to run for president will be when the
Republican Party nominates him for the general election — not before
the primary.
The Putin forces have proudly announced that they are enlisting
Ukrainian PoWs to fight against Ukraine.
There is no easy way to determine whether any part of this story is
true. Perhaps the Ukrainian PoWs were forced to agree to this.
Perhaps they are not really Ukrainian PoWs. Perhaps they are not
really Ukrainian. Perhaps they are not really soldiers. The only way
to find out what, if anything, in this claim is the truth is to get
other evidence.
*Uyghur film-maker claims he was tortured by [state thugs] in China.*
Abortion rights were at stake in several state-level elections in the
US this week, and abortion rights defeated the Republicans in each
one.
Almost 60% of Americans support abortion rights, and that support is
firm. In 2024 ten or more states are likely to have votes about
abortion rights, and abortion rights will probably win each of them.
This could defeat the Republicans in their bid to establish a fascist
system in the US.
Pacific Islands demand that Australia cease its subsidies to fossil
fuels.
They know these subsidies are working to inundate them (except for the
volcanoes),
Congenital syphilis in the US increased by a factor of 10 from 2012 to
2022. This measures the disorganization and inadequacy of the US
medical system, which fails to notice and treat these infections.
*California to require big firms to reveal carbon emissions in first law of
its kind.*
This will apply to all large companies doing business in California,
so the whole US will get the benefit, and in many cases the rest of
the world as well.
HAMAS succeeded (for some hours) with its attack on Oct 7 as a result
of discipline, attention, and planning at many levels.
What strikes me is that this resembles what I read about how Israel
won the Six-Day War. But it seems that Israel has ceased to pay
careful attention, and thus made itself vulnerable.
I suspect that this reflects a kind of contempt for Palestinians.
A government inquiry accused elite British troops in Afghanistan
of shooting young Afghan men while they were in asleep in bed,
and of making a practice of "executing Afghan males of fighting age".
*Robert F Kennedy Jr's siblings condemn his "perilous" presidential campaign.*
Georgia has stretched its RICO law into repression of "Cop City" protesters.
When the federal RICO law was first adopted, and used against the
Mafia (which was its stated purpose), I read about it and concluded it
created a danger of repression because its criteria were too lax.
They were not designed to carefully allow prosecution only of
organized crime gangs, while protecting other activities such as
protest campaigns.
When a criminal law carries long sentences and can be stretched to
cover protest campaigns, it will be used against protest campaigns --
in other words, for repression. That is now happening. The danger of
the RICO laws is real.
A just society needs to punish extortion and protect protests.
How will we fix RICO laws to draw a line carefully between them?
The corrupter's "testimony" in his civil trial for business fraud
gives few pertinent facts, because it focuses on venting contempt for
the judge, the attorney general, and the idea that he should be judged
according to the laws that apply to everyone else.
With this approach he managed to "win" one presidential election, and
is trying to steal the subsequent one. Naturally he persists in it.
Judge Engoron threatened to cut off his testimony if he persists in
giving no pertinent information.
*Biden faces calls not to seek re-election as shock poll rattles
senior Democrats.*
Big Oil's methods of crushing protests against pollution projects
include SLAPP lawsuits and laws to criminalize many kinds of protests.
The companies also procure the overzealous support from thug departments,
whose staff tend to be right-wing.
*Global health and environmental costs of food industry are $10tn a year – UN
*[The food industry's] "price tag" of non-communicable diseases,
malnutrition, poverty and harm to planet is 10% of global GDP, says UN
food agency.*
These costs are not all the same in kind. It might be possible to
entirely avoid the noncommercial diseases caused by harmful diets, as
well as malnutrition and poverty, at no cost by improving some aspects
of social organization.
However, diseases caused by byproducts of food production, and "harm
to planet", are a different kind of matter. We could surely reduce
those, but we cannot assume a priori that reducing them to zero is
possible.
Many US hospitals try to collect medical debt by suing patients to claim
part of the value of their homes.
It is perfectly logical, in an economy which values profit for the rich
over the lives of everyone else.
Note how Belk's medical insurance required him to go back to the
hospital company that had sued him before. It did not cover treatment
anywhere else. That is a common nastiness of private medical
insurance in the US. A national medical system would not do that. It
also would not put patients into debt for failure to be rich.
Berry Creek was a village of fairly poor people, which was burnt up by
a violent wildfire. Hardly anyone there had insurance, so now they
don't have houses either.
There is also no longer a gas station or an elementary school.
This looks like what low-income Americans can expect in the age of
climate disaster.
Socialist policies to help poor people hit with disasters will help
for a while. As long as the rich have plenty, taxing them will make
it possible to spare poor people from being crushed by disaster costs.
But some day society as a whole won't be able to afford the cost of
recovering from disasters, no matter how we redistribute that cost.
There will be no remedy then.
What we should have done was acted to prevent things from getting that
bad. However, the planet roasters had the political power and stopped
society from doing this.
Sacramento thugs stopped an 8-year-old passenger in a car, and his
mother who was driving the car, at gunpoint. She was terrified they
would shoot him.
It turns out they had mistaken the boy for someone else who was older
and accused of serious crimes. Everyone makes mistakes, but this kind
of mistake creates a danger of killing someone.
I speculate that the fact that the boy and his mother are black made
incorrect recognition more likely, and led the thugs to react with
fear and suspicion that could have been deadly.
Nearly all schools in England avoid teaching history of the Middle East, for
fear of accusations of bias.
German Jews published this petition accusing the German government of
banning almost any public indication of support for Palestinians,
and almost any public criticism of Israel's violence in Gaza.
China has published a plan to reduce methane emissions, but without
quantitative commitments.
I would very much like to see how experts in the field evaluate that plan.
*Rise in antisemitism "brings Germans back to most horrific times."*
*More than 1 million UK children experienced destitution last year, study
finds.
*The Tories have created a new poverty — one so deep and vicious it requires
Victorian vocabulary.*
I think the arrogant rich feel that poor people have it too good if
they don't face destitution.
The question, for Britain's near future, is whether Labour will agree
to tax the rich enough to have the funds to reverse all the aspects of
this newly imposed poverty.
The London thug chief stood firm for freedom of expression,
resisting pressure from Tory politicians who demanded he ban
a march to express support for Palestine.
Anti-semitism is a big danger, and prejudice is never a good thing.
But when governments try to protect people from anti-semitism, they
can turn into a danger to freedom of expression if they push the
boundary too far.
The FBI reports that violent crime decreased in 2022, with in
particular a 6% decrease for murder.
However, hate crimes increased. Also, property crimes increased.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and your two senators
and tell them to reject SCROTUS's latest plans to ruin the CFPB:
US citizens:
call on Congress
to stand with workers and pass the PRO Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Gaza Ceasefire resolution.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Call for
fast conversion to renewable energy
so as to reduce global heating disaster.
The petition lists sensible specific goals, but also a simplistic
slogan which is exaggerated. I think the sensible specific goals are the petition's real point.
US diplomats at the State Department filed an
internal "dissent"
memo criticizing the US diplomatic stance on the war in Gaza. The memo called for the US
to call for a cease fire and criticize Israel's actions which constitute war crimes.
Israeli officials have
explicitly stated that they plan
mass murder, mass hunger, mass thirst and mass sickness in Gaza. And annexation.
None of those is a part of legitimate self-defense against HAMAS.
*The two-state solution has been a diplomatic failure, [thus far]. It's
also still the best
answer we’ve got.*
*UN-run shelters in Gaza are so crowded that it is
impossible to
count the people
needing food, water, medicine and other basics, administrators say.*
*500 Jewish New Yorkers
take over Statue of Liberty demanding a ceasefire.*
*Protesters [organized by
Jewish Voice for Peace]
stage sit-in demanding ceasefire in Gaza at Statue of Liberty.*
A
rebel alliance in Burma
has made substantial military progress
against the military rulers.
The military rulers get support from China, which makes western
sanctions against them ineffective. But they have failed to satisfy
China's demand to crack down on swindling and cheating of Chinese by
people in Burma. The rebels say they will do it. If they can win
China's cooperation, the military government might fall.
I do wonder whether China can corrupt the rebels, so that their
victory would not make things much better.
Prisons in the US increasingly
censor the books and magazines
mailed to prisoners, often for trivial reasons.
They often don't bother to tell the prisoners what they have have blocked or why.
*Israel’s
attempt to destroy Hamas
will breed more radicalization, UN expert says.*
*US chemical industry
likely spent $110m trying to thwart PFAS legislation, study finds.*
*Is it too much to ask people to view
Palestinians as humans?
Apparently so [with some people].*
*Minnesota supreme court
to hear case challenging [the insurrectionist]'s 2024 eligibility.*
*It's
Time to Exit ISDS:
200+ Labor, Environment, and Other Civil Society Groups Urge Biden to Eliminate Extreme Corporate Powers From Existing Trade Pacts.*
A ISDS clause, which I describe as standing for
"I Sue Democratic States",
subjugates all the signatory countries to the power of businesses
located in the other signatory countries.
The insurrectionist in the US, and Putin in Russia, attack Truth in
the same way. However, Putin adds censorship to disinformation
and uses the two together.
Unionized drivers in NYC compelled Guber and Lyft to pay benefits that they
owed the drivers under state law, including sick pay.
I celebrate this victory for the drivers, but remember that both of
those companies continue exploiting drivers in large parts of the US,
and in other countries. And that's not to mention their injustice to
the customers: making them run nonfree software, and identify
themselves to be tracked.
* [UK] Government officials have drawn up deeply controversial
proposals to broaden the definition of extremism to include anyone
who “undermines” the [UK]’s institutions and its values.*
If this is applied to protesters, it would be a tool for repression.
However, it might do some good if applied to Tories. Would Bogus
Johnson qualify as "undermining", perhaps? How about various current
Tory ministers?
The Australian government uses an American company which keeps a big
database to search and track the movements of cell phones in Australia.
The company builds its phone locations database by buying location
data accumulated by various apps. I'd say it should be a crime for
apps to report the phone's location. But that won't be enough to stop
the snooping.
If the software on the phone were free/libre, the users could make sure
the apps can't get the location.
*Greens threaten Brisbane landlords with huge [tax] rises if they
increase rents .*
Senator Tuberville is blocking all reassignments of generals in the US
military, as a blackmail campaign demanding that the military stop helping
servicewomen travel to get an abortion.
This is the Republican Way: take hostages, whatever you can grab, and
threaten them in order to impose (1) your prejudices and (2) your
power on the whole US.
The new speaker of the House is following the same approach, but he has a bigger hostage — the operation of most of the US government — and is making a bigger demand — to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Both are following the general principles of the Republican Party.
That party has tried to rig elections for decades;
the insurrectionist has led it to try to steal elections after the
fact as well.
*Compassion, not cruelty, is the answer to rough sleeping — we have
the proof in Milton Keynes.*
China is charging penalties to many poor countries that can't
pay back what China lent them a few years ago.
This makes me think of what the US, and the IMF, have done to poor countries.
Will China be worse, or better, as a creditor?
*Cruise Knew Its Self-Driving Cars Had Problems Recognizing Children —
and Kept Them on the Streets.*
I expect that the technology for driverless cars will eventually be
perfected so that it drives properly. Especially if governments don't
permit them to drive on the street until that is achieved.
But that doesn't imply that these cars will not be designed to injure
people in ways other than flaws in driving — such as snooping,
tracking, and seizing people.
Some British would-be parents can't afford the fee to maintain and store
fertilized embryos they have made.
It is unfair to lure patients into paying many thousands for fertility
treatments only to find that additional junk fees make their purchase a
waste. These services should quote a full, inclusive price at the
outset, so that patients won't start unless they can afford to finish.
Perhaps that full price should include the cost of gestating the
embryos and raising the resulting child. That way, a patient won't start
to pay the price unless she can count on being able to get to the end.
The UK government is groping for an excuse to ban a march in London in support of Palestine and Palestinians.
Instead of overtly banning the march, the justice minister called on
the organizers to cede to the recommendation of the cops, whose
recommendation is (naturally) to cancel it. The difference is so subtle
that I don't see it makes any difference.
The reason given is that the route of the march goes near a memorial
to Britons who died in World War I, where others will meet on that day
for mourning. However, it seems that the march stays two miles away
from that place.
Trudeau is talking about chickening out on the proposed tax on heating oil,
which is meant to lead Canada away from using fossil fuel for heating.
People need help in paying for heating their homes, but canceling tax
incentives to avoid destroying civilization is the wrong way to do it.
A better way is to give people a subsidy to help them pay the cot of
heating.
The crucial point is that people should be allowed to use the subsidy
for anything. So if they make heating cheaper, they can use some of that
money for other things.
That subsidy system will help poor people afford heating, but still
give them (and everyone else) an incentive to invest in doing the job
more efficiently.
*EU poised to water down new car pollution rules after industry
lobbying.*
James Hansen
says that scientists have hitherto underestimated the
Earth's climate sensitivity, so global heating in coming years will
exceed the current predictions of climate models.
In particular, we will reach 1.5°C of heating in a few years
and 2°C of heating by 2050.
Rashida Tlaib
accuses Biden of supporting
"the genocide of the Palestinian people."
I think that is somewhat of an exaggeration — Israel is indeed committing
mass murder of noncombatants
Palestinians, but that is not the same thing as genocide.
The difference is clear enough, but even though I disagree with Tlaib
on this point, I still support her politically.
Labour makes a
commitment to push
for a Palestinian state.
Privately, Israeli officials recognize that
there is no obvious way
Israel can destroy HAMAS. And no obvious way to free the hostages except to trade for them.
*Polluted water supplies and salty groundwater are making people [in
Gaza] ill, with UN warning of threat of
child deaths from dehydration.*
Difficulties
that must be
overcome to set up two states in Israel/Palestine.
One big obstacle is HAMAS. Another is the Israeli violent nationalist/racist right wing.
Netanyahu says that as long as HAMAS continues to hold over 200 hostages,
he
will continue
holding over 2 million hostages (the population of Gaza).
Meanwhile, he will continue the attacks that kill some of both groups of hostages.
*Pleas to end the suffering in Gaza are growing louder, but
neither side
actually wants a ceasefire.*
In Gaza, both sides are committing war crimes. Even if they both
prefer to continue them, the rest of the world should insist they
stop. Israel, in particular, can fight HAMAS if it wants to
but only if it avoids committing war crimes.
Note how this situation differs from the war in Ukraine. Putin orders
the Putin forces to commit unceasing war crimes, but Ukraine doesn't
retaliate in kind. Putin is committing aggression but Ukraine is not.
Thus, Ukraine is entitled to keep fighting to recover the territory
that the Putin forces have seized, but the Putin forces are not
entitled to continue their war of aggression or their war crimes.
*Continued support for Ukraine will
cost the west less
than letting Putin win.*
*Bernie Sanders calls for end to Israeli [air] strikes and killing of
thousands [of Gazans].*
He explicitly said that aid for Israel should be conditioned on ending
the bombardments that kill civilians.
HAMAS and Israel have given themselves over to heartless vengeance;
Palestinians and Israelis
should instead aim
for the wisdom to bring
about justice.
The author follows Aeschylus by using the Greek Furies to stand for
heartless vengeance, and Athena to stand for wisdom and justice. But
I think that where Israelis that serve vengeance get that idea is from
the Hebrew Bible, which describes acts of genocide without a qualm.
*Iranian mother jailed for 13 years after denouncing death of son shot
at protest.*
Chinese people are using the funeral of former leader Li Keqiang as an
opportunity to express dissatisfaction with Chairman Xi.
At the start of 2020 the UK government had no plans and no
preparations for how it would deal with a respiratory epidemic. But
this was but one example of a general systematic incompetence.
Just about every part of the system that would be stressed by
Covid-19, or needed to deal with Covid-19, was in tatters. But that
was not coincidence. It resulted from a general inability to
rationally address public needs and spend the needed funds to do it.
Labour won't be able to do better unless it is prepared to spend
enough to make the NHS work well and likewise other services needed
for dealing with an epidemic. To do that, it needs money to spend.
It needs to make the rich pay their fair share in taxes.
Scientists have recorded that chimps climb hills to observe the
numbers and location of rival groups of chimps.
(satire) *Amazon Fires Employee Who Tested Positive For Having Food In
Their System.*
(satire) *Tyson Files For Bankruptcy After Dang Coyote Gets Into Coop Again.*
Pesticide lobbies are pushing a federal law to prohibit lawsuits by the public
against pesticide companies alleging they were poisoned by toxic pesticides.
A French museum exhibit about Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
rejected cooperation with China on account of the censorship and
propaganda demands China made. It has now gone ahead with the
cooperation of Mongolia instead of China.
The UK's official government science advisors could tell ministers that their
plans for dealing with Covid-19 were absurd, but they were not allowed to tell
the public this — and they were used to give an air of scientific legitimacy
to the absurd plans.
I think that science officials in the US are more independent than in
the UK, and that this problem is less here. But it must have been
difficult for an official who is in principle allowed to state per own
views to the public to disagree publicly with the bully when that last
was president.
A new LNG export facility for Canada's Pacific coast is predicted to
endanger humpback whales with the number of collisions that they would
suffer with ships transporting the fossil gas.
This is not to mention that exporting the gas would drive us faster
into climate disaster, when what we need to do is put the engines into
"full reverse".
Disney has a plan to remake Snow White with drastic changes to give it
a woke moral.
I have no particular esteem or attachment for the story of Snow White.
I am sure I saw the old Disney cartoon once when I was a child but I doubt
I would ever watch it again. If it disappeared, I would not miss it.
But it makes no sense to alter an old story in the drastic way that
appears to be proposed (assuming it is a real plan, not trolling).
Projects to confront real issues, by situating them in old stories
that disregarded them, can result in interesting reading. But this
project does nothing like that. It would restage Snow White in a
totally unrealistic woke world of the past, one that wasn't even
imagined back then.
The book, Catherine Called Birdy, was a bit of a stretch for
plausibility for a young noblewoman in the 13th century, but not
utterly unimaginable, and that made it fun. The movie made from that
book went far beyond credibility — it became propaganda to inculcate
an openly defiant form of feminism, an attitude that exists today but
was not even imagined back then.
Indeed, the only reason I can see for someone to want to stage Snow
White in a woke world that never existed is the goal that all
stories (for children, at least) must support a certain ideological
position. That project seems like brainwashing to me.
The article I linked to participates in the campaign to eliminate each
word that means a person with certain characteristics or in a certain
role, and replace it with a phrase that contains the word "people"
together with modifiers.
The motivations for some of these proposed changes to English are
well-meaning, but I doubt that they would improve society in the ways
that their proponents claim. Meanwhile, they would mutilate English.
I've decided not to go along with this campaign. I will continue
using the nouns.
New imitation "vintage clothing" is being made and sold. Is there
anything wrong with this?
In my opinion, there is nothing bad about it. If people want clothing in
a style that was made a few decades ago, why shouldn't people get it?
Pretending that newly made similar clothes are old is a false
pretense, but that matters only if the people buying those old-styled
clothes make a fuss about whether they are "genuine old". Why should
that matter to anyone? There is no reason to pay attention to it.
Some people may try to profit because other people pay inordinate
attention to the difference between "genuine old" clothes and new
imitations, but is no reason to care whether they succeed in profiting
from that.
Arguing that interviews with job candidates obtain nearly no real
information about the candidates — rather they act as a Rorschach test
for the interviewers, while giving them an opportunity for them to
convert their biases into an appearance of real information.
People like me, who reject SaaSS
and therefore will not use today's language
model generative systems, will however be put to a real test on which we
don't have a chance to cheat.
A Briton has been put on the sex offender list for
dressing up in all-covering black costume with a full-face mask
and lying down to "writhe" on the ground.
The court ordered him not to own such a costume, and not to own a mask
that covers even part of the face, on pain of imprisonment. Does this
sentence him to Covid-19?
This decision seems to say that the bounds of crime are defined by
other people's imagination. It cannot be just to imprison anyone on
grounds that other people can so easily twist.
Simply being put on the sex offender list might directly render the
convicted man unemployed and/or homeless.
If any model's skin color could be altered at will in photos,
would that be unfair to non-white models, or would it eliminate
one of the sources and mechanisms of prejudice?
I don't know the answer, but I think it is a question that calls for
an answer supported by careful thought, evidence, and reasons.
The Tory minister in charge of how homeless people are treated
claims that homelessness is a "choice".
That is not true in Britain today — the forms of state aid and
support that helped prevent homelessness have been cut so much that
many people are destitute.
*Politicians who delay climate action must live with consequences,
says [doctor in charge of environmental health at WHO].*
It should not come as a surprise that this is so, but it is good to
see it stated openly.
*Integrated [and bilingual] Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem wins award
for overcoming adversity.*
US citizens: Support stricter US laws against employing minors
in dangerous jobs.
These laws are generally called "child labor laws", but they cover 17-year-olds
and they are certain not children. So that name is misleading. I support the
substance of these laws, despite the misleading name.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop corporate profiteering off of
Covid treatments by guaranteeing access to all Americans.
Everyone: call on NBC to drop the Republican primary debate — don't
partner with the right-wing site Rumble.
Starmer is driving voters away from Labour.
*Almost 40% think Australia should dump US alliance if [the wrecker] returns as
president, poll finds.*
An alliance with a US ruled by a right-wing autocrat would be much
like an alliance with Russia under Putin — stomach-turning.
*Banks [in the US, Europe and China] pumped more than $150bn in to
companies running "carbon bomb" projects in 2022.*
The UK government asserts that "jihad" means support for terrorism,
but the cops disagree and refused to arrest people for chanting "jihad".
What does "jihad" mean? I do not speak Arabic, but I've heard it
defined as "struggle" and just as broad as that English word. It could
refer to any struggle, even that of studying hard for a good grade,
even a struggle within oneself.
Historically, one struggle for which that word was used was the
continuing attempt of Islam to conquer the world and convert or
subjugate all non-Muslims. A person who chants "jihad" with this
meaning in a country that respects religious freedom is threatening a
religious war — much as Republicans in the US do in the name of
Christianity.
The early Muslims openly proclaimed that violent goal. However, in
more recent times, many groups of Muslims have reinterpreted that goal
peacefully or rejected it outright. Meanwhile, I as a scientific
Atheist leaning towards secular humanism defend the right not to
endorse any religion.
The word has also been used to refer to the struggle to end the
Israeli occupation of Palestine. Some interpret this as aiming for an
independent Palestine alongside Israel, while others interpret it as
aiming to eliminate Israel and take over its territory, a goal I do
not support.
As I'm told, "jihad" in this general context could mean fighting, or
it could mean nonviolent protests such as Palestinians in the West
Bank took up in the 2000s. Which one it means would depend on
subtleties of context which I, as a non-Arabic-speaker, do not try to
grasp.
Should people be arrested at a protest for chanting, "Struggle,
struggle, struggle"? I don't think so, not even if they say it in
Arabic.
* [Bogus Johnson] had said his party felt [SARS-Cov-2] virus was "nature's
way of dealing with old people."*
The documentary Pay or Die describes the campaign to make insulin
affordable in the US.
The campaign passed a law in Minnesota to provide inexpensive
insulin to some of the people who need it. The article is not clear;
in particular, I can't tell whether the law prevents the usual gouging
or only has the state subsidize the gouging.
If we are thinking about how to broader problem of providing all
Americans with the medical treatment they need, that detail makes a
big difference.
Malaysia will require concerts by foreign musicians to have a "kill switch"
to shut off the performance instantly if they violate censorship rules.
Chinese people made use of Halloween costumes to allude to criticism
of the state, which they are forbidden to present in more direct ways.
*Extinction Rebellion co-founder [convicted] of breaking window at HS2
protest.*
For me, to be "guilty" and to be "convicted" are not the same thing at
all. The former is a moral question and the latter is a judicial
question. The article describes the result of a trial in which the
accused was forbidden to explain the issue at stake.
The issue at stake was whether to build the high-speed train line HS2.
I have never been convinced that building it was a mistake.
I have never seen a convincing explanation of why high-speed train lines
were not useful in Britain given how useful they are in France and Spain.
*In 2023 we've seen climate destruction in real time, yet rich countries are
poised to do little at Cop28.*
The US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee consists of 20 people.
9 of them have links to agribusiness, pharma companies and other companies
whose products that committee will recommend for or against,
I'd expect the members of that committee need to come from academic
research. I'd also expect that the same companies sponsor nearly all
the research, so that there is hardly anyone qualified to be on the
panel who is not under their influence.
The Ohio secretary of state, who is an anti-abortion crusader, did
"voter list maintenance" just before the election and cancelled the
registrations of 26,000 people.
What a shame it will be if this enables them to defeat the abortion
rights referendum.
Republicans are also spreading false information about the referendum.
Some of it is easy to ignore, since it is labeled as coming from
Republicans. But Republican voters who support abortion rights (many do)
might be influenced by it.
Cheating is the Republican Party's standard method of "winning" an election.
A Republican scoundrel like this one will feel no embarrassment when exposed
for cheating. The only thing they care about is when a court thwarts them.
Sea lice have overwhelmed an Icelandic fish farm, infesting a million fish,
which had to be slaughtered right away.
Scarlett Johansson has sued over use of a transformed image of her,
generated by software.
The article calls the software "AI", but I think that is a mistaken
way to describe it. I expect it was a "generative" language model,
and what they do should not be called "intelligence".
On the substantive issue, I agree with Ms Johansson. The software did
not merely analyze the style of that image; it went on to make a
modified version of the image itself, which was then published. That
is something we would agree is "using her image".
*10 reasons to fight cashless contagion.*
US citizens:
call on Biden
to hold medical insurance companies accountable for their practices in
Medicare Advantage, including predatory marketing tactics, treatment
denials, shrinking networks, and over-billing Medicare by billions of dollars.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject secret commissions intended to cut Social Security and Medicare.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Congressional progressives say
proposed $14.3bn [military aid to
Israel]
breaches 1997 Leahy act as assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians.*
Drought in the Amazon no-longer-rain-forest has
reduced the Rio Negro
to a trickle.
This endangers the human inhabitants. I expect it endangers the animals and plants, too. Humans are more
adaptable than most species, but the way they adapt to disappearance of their niches can be awfully destructive.
Arguing that a long-term peace between Israel and Palestine requires
defeating the extremists
on each side, whose reciprocal violence helps the other side's extremists stay in power.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
reject Elliot Abrams
as an advisor for US diplomacy.
Considering the sort of advice he has given in the past, it is a mistake
to suggest anyone listen to him now.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Analyzing
the Israeli attack
on the Jabalia refugee camp, which killed at least 195 noncombatants who were sheltering there.
The article compares what Israel says about the attack with other facts observed afterwards.
Bernie Sanders: beyond immediate humanitarian aid, Palestinians need
a
political solution
that gives them democracy in their own state.
Contrast this with SCROTUS's efforts to
prohibit humanitarian aid to Gaza
in the name of hatred for HAMAS.
*The Guardian view on Gaza after the war: there must be
a plan for the
future
of Palestinians.*
US citizens:
call on Congress
to ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks, by passing the ETHICS Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Wellness … presents collective social ills as
problems for the
individual to solve
through some alchemy of consumer behavior.* Some will benefit, by chance or the placebo effect;
meanwhile, the main effect is distractive.
Australia's rail freight industry group calls for measures to shift
freight back to trains,
from trucks, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the other damage
that truck traffic does (to roads, and to lungs).
That could be wise — but the group snuck in a call to increase
efficiency by eliminating some safety precautions. I hope Australians
are aware of what such corner-cutting caused in the US — for
example, the disastrous
derailment in East Palestine
and the workers who have to
fight for sick leave.
If trucks get an unfair advantage from not being charged for their
environmental cost, adding charges or taxes should be a fine way of
moving freight back to trains. Investment in track and facilities are
legitimate methods, too. But the safety of the public and train
workers should not be treated as mere capital to invest.
Pakistan is systematically deporting Afghans that lack visas, even
people
who face repression
if sent back to Afghanistan.
There is no excuse for deporting people to where they face repression.
Arguing that Gaza's civilians urgently need
a cessation of fighting,
regardless of what it is called and how it is described.
The difference between a "cease fire" and a "humanitarian pause (in
fighting)" may not be the deep gulf that it appears.
Presumably a "cease fire" is intended to be permanent while a "pause"
is not. But there have been dozens of ceasefires between Israel and
HAMAS in Gaza, and each one did end. HAMAS broke some of them, and
Israel broke others. Conversely, a cease fire which wasn't explicitly
designated as permanent could nonetheless be extended, as the article
points out.
I do not mean to say that the difference is nothing at all. If a
"pause" is agreed to last for a week (say), the sides would probably
resume fighting after that week. By contrast, a cease fire with no
scheduled end might last for months — many of them did in the past.
So the details of a truce do matter, but not in an all-or-nothing way.
The crucial point is that in practice there is no way Israel could
eliminate HAMAS from Gaza, except by eliminating Palestinians from
Gaza — and that would be an enormous war crime that nothing could
excuse. Israel cannot achieve the "victory" it says it is aiming for.
As for HAMAS's war crimes on Oct 7,
they were based on surprise. It lacks the power to commit more crimes
now. Therefore, Israel has no opportunity to prevent further HAMAS
war crimes by fighting HAMAS now. It can kill some HAMAS fighters for
revenge, but only by killing far more Palestinian civilians. The
sooner Israel stops its bombardment and siege, the less its war crimes will be.
*Australia’s new UN counter-terror chief fears
world repeating ‘same
mistakes’
of the past in Israel-Gaza conflict: … [namely, trying
to] counter terrorism with military might.*
This is more wisdom than we expect to find in
government responses to terrorism.
The usual mistakes come out of political pressure, the
demand to "strike the enemy" even if it is counterproductive to do so.
Reporters Without Borders has concluded that
Israel intentionally attacked
press vehicles in Lebanon,
killing and injuring
some of the reporters.
War crimes that HAMAS and Israel seem to have committed,
according to the UN.
HAMAS, as a terrorist organization, makes no effort to disguise
its war crimes as anything but war crimes. That makes it easy
to be certain that that's what they are.
Israel presents supposed excuses which surely can't be valid, but the
UN won't state the conclusion as a certainty without an investigation.
UNRWA, which provides humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza
and the West Bank, says that a cease fire is essential to save the
civilians there, who are all in danger from
the siege
imposed by Israel.
Robert Reich
refutes several simplistic, foolish and very wrong things
people have said to him about the fighting in Gaza.
Advice on how to
protect yourself
from the damaging influence of images of war and injury.
The suggestions in the article seem good to me, but my basic advice is
to view articles about the war in Gaza as text only, using a
non-graphical browser. That way you can block all video and images of the violence.
The text is sufficient for finding out what has happened, and it won't
hammer your psyche as images would.
Please don't speak of "consuming" news.
Here's why not.
New research shows that deforestation of a region raises its temperature
more than was previously estimated.
Outsourcing loses again! Air Canada outsources wheelchair services,
at least in Las Vegas, so it told a disabled passenger he had to drag himself
off the plane without one.
Fortunately his wife knew how to carry his legs while he used his arms.
A US government decision to increase prosecution of corporations for their
crimes failed to result in many more prosecutions.
The world has failed to act to keep global heating from exceeding
1.5°C. Now it is basically too late.
How did we miss our chance? Governments have fought determinedly to
oppose all efforts to save the world as we know it. And they are
still doing so.
*[London thug department] arrests more than 60 climate activists at
Just Stop Oil protest.* Their nonviolent protest consisted of walking slowly.
A newly elected far-right German legislator turns out to be literally
a Nazi, but hides it from all but close supporters.
China repeatedly rams resupply ships sent by the Philippines to its
base on Second Thomas Shoal, hoping to compel the Philippines to
abandon that base.
DeMentis claims that chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine
have "linked themselves to HAMAS" and therefore are promoting terrorism.
He said that this justifies prohibiting them.
If they have indeed done so, that conclusion could follow.
They might also be committing a crime by supporting HAMAS.
But do they really do that?
The quotations from Students for Justice in Palestine seem to be
ambiguously on the borderline. The group called HAMAS's terrorist
acts "part of the resistance", which asserts legitimacy for them.
That is a moral reason to refuse to support that group.
But the information in this article does not show the group as saying
it is is "part of HAMAS".
Belarus has convicted three protest musicians of various crimes
including "discrediting Belarus" and "insulting the president".
What truly discredits Belarus is declaring those things to be crimes.
An Australian court has invalidated the law that authorized a minister
to cancel the citizenship of people convicted of terrorism.
A free country can punish people for crimes, but exile should never be
used as a punishment.
The right-wing law previously invalidated, that allowed cancellation
of citizenship for a dual citizen based purely on suspicion, was even
more unjust than this one. It was unacceptable in two different ways:
punishment using exile, and punishment without proving a crime.
*Finnish neo-Nazis used 3D printer to make guns in preparation for "race war".*
Home-made guns are now a serious danger. I think it is valid to
criminalize possessing one.
However, the British approach of making it a crime to have
a copy of plans for 3D-printing is an injustice.
To make the mere possession of a copy of something — whatever it
might be — is an injustice because it puts everyone in danger of
being set up for prosecution.
Russia has arrested some Putin forces soldiers and charged them with murdering
a Ukrainian family in the occupied territory.
This does not come close to showing that Putin will apply proper standards
of justice to the Putin forces, but at least it is a step in that direction.
Mass extinctions come from collapse of Earth's ecosystems and
geological systems. They shift into a new configuration in which most
species don't fit, and the result is global disaster.
The accelerated heating and local disasters we have recently seen
suggest we are coming closer to such a global disaster. Enormous
systems, including the Arctic sea ice, the circulation of the Southern
Ocean, and rainfall in the Amazon Forest, are showing large changes.
Earth's governments, most of them in thrall to selfish billionaires,
have been nearly useless for trying to save Earth's life.
The idea of recycling most plastic that is discarded has been promoted
for decades by plastic manufacturers to convince us to ignore waste
plastic that winds up in rivers, soil, and the ocean.
The next step in this campaign is to cite "advanced recycling",
which is still hypothetical.
Some climate scientists claim that global heating has accelerated
recently, because we have reduced sulfur pollution that cools the
atmosphere but have not reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Others say more
years of observation are needed to check this.
But we can still probably prevent total disaster — depending on where
the tipping points are — if we take the strong action that actually reduces
greenhouse gas emissions.
Planet-roasters struggle unceasingly to prevent such strong action.
China has prosecuted 3000 people for protesting for democracy in Hong Kong.
Israel has cut off
internet, cellular and landline
communication with Gaza. This was followed soon after by an increase in bombardment. One
must suspect that the cutoff was imposed was to keep the world in
the dark about the casualties caused by the increased bombardment.
*Furniture for firewood, radios for news:
Israel’s siege
throws life in Gaza back decades.*
*UN general assembly
calls for "immediate, durable humanitarian
truce" [in Gaza].* Only 14 countries voted against the resolution, one of them being the US.
The US should have voted for that resolution.
The US is right to recognize Israel's right to self-defend against
HAMAS — but there are limits to what constitutes "self-defense". It
does not include unlimited bombardment of civilians in Gaza. It does
not include denying civilians access to food, water, medicine and the
fuel necessary to distribute those. It does not include cutting them
off from communication.
There is no conflict between recognizing Israel's right of
self-defense, properly understood, and calling for a truce. The US should do both.
The US
Senate unanimously condemned
"pro-HAMAS student groups".
I endorse the condemnation of any groups that support HAMAS. HAMAS is a terror group.
But I have to wonder if the statements of the student groups in
question were actually pro-HAMAS. They may have been pro-Palestinian.
They may have been anti-Israel, or just anti-occupation.
A report says that
the US asked Qatar
to reduce Al Jazeera's coverage of Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Covering stories such as the killing of Gaza bureau chief Wael
al-Dahdouh's family
seems to be inspiring condemnation of Israel's apparent war crimes.
Perhaps Israel should cease committing more of them. It could declare
a cease-fire and allow in all the food, water, medicines and fuel that Gazans need.
It is not justifiable to hold everyone in Gaza hostage to demand
the surrender of HAMAS — and it won't even work.
*This isn’t a contest of heroes and villains — but two peoples in deep pain,
fated to share the same land.*
*The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said
10 of the 50 bakeries
[in Gaza] it supplies with flour, helping to lower the soaring cost of
bread, have been hit in airstrikes.*
It appears that either the Israeli air force is specifically targeting
food facilities or it has destroyed 1/5 of the civilian buildings in Gaza.
*US House Republicans plan to give Israel $14.3bn
by cutting IRS
funds.*
The funds that the IRS has been allocated are for carrying out the war
against ripoffs by billionaires. That is a crucial priority for the
US.
By contrast, I am skeptical that Israel requires those billions simply
to defend itself against HAMAS. The ground attack in Gaza is not
necessary, not defense, and not compatible with the requirement to protect civilians
Large numbers of American Jews held protests against
Israel's
bombardment of Gaza,
led by Jewish Voice for Peace.
I generally support the positions of Jewish Voice for Peace, and I
think I would be a member of it if not for one thing: the organization
speaks for its members as being Jews by religion, not only by
ethnicity and culture. That excludes me, because I am proud to say I
am an Atheist, on fundamental scientific grounds. I wish the
organization's stance were consistent with my being a member.
The UAW has won
concessions from the Big 3
automobile manufacturers.
(satire) *Israel Warns Gaza
Still Harboring
Hundreds Of Doctors.*
Violent Israeli fanatics, hell-bent on expelling Palestinians from
West Bank land,
have escalated their violence. They now break into
homes, beat people up, and steal things.
Apparently the fanatics think that it is valid to take revenge for
HAMAS terrorism on any available Palestinian — a fundamentally racist attitude.
This is an addition to the fanatics' long-established practice of
stealing agricultural land
to drive Palestinians out. And, in some places, shooting
at Palestinians' homes to make them impossible to live in.
On the meanings of the phrase,
"From the river to the sea".
Some common uses of the phrase imply the elimination of Israel.
The actual words that MP Andy McDonald used do not imply that. To me,
they seem to advocate having just one state in that region, a state of
Israel-Palestine. That idea is not outrageous in principle, though I
don't see how it could work, so I still advocate two states.
I think the Labour Party did wrong
to treat him so harshly.
*As Gaza crumbles, those speaking up for innocent Palestinians are
being
silenced and sacked.*
This article asserts that McDonald was in fact advocating two states.
It would be interesting to see the full text of his remarks.
*Israeli airstrikes have destroyed apartment blocks and killed dozens
of people at a refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Israeli military
said it had targeted the camp
to kill [one
Hamas commander].*
Killing one real enemy does not excuse converting a large number of
civilians into "collateral damage". Not when Israel does it, and not
when the US does it.
Refuting false reports
of atrocities by HAMAS and Israel.
*Recent US union contract gains [have happened]
against a backdrop
of decades of union decline, worsening wealth inequality and broken labor laws.*
*Top UN official in New York
resigns over "genocide" of Palestinian civilians.*
Israel has definitely committed mass murder of civilians, but I think "genocide" is an
exaggeration for what has happened thus far. If Netanyahu's plans are fully carried out, maybe
they will qualify as genocide, or perhaps ethnic cleansing if a million Gazans are forced to
flee to Egypt.
US citizens: call on the USGS to protect pollinators by tracking
pesticides.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
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the text appear.
US citizens: call on justices Alito, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Thomas to
recuse themselves from Moore v. U.S.
US citizens: tell Biden that humanitarian aid for Gaza must include
fuel.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Clarence Thomas.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
In the US: call on state legislators to support overdose prevention
centers.
US citizens: call on Congress to deny Egypt the "security" assistance
that it seems to have bribed Senator Menendez to get.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: Support Jeanie Ward-Waller's complaint about Caltrans for
widening a highway without environmental review, counter to the stated
state policy to stop giving priority to car travel.
In the US: urge US universities to divest from fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban its members from owning or
trading individual stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*France faces court action over widespread use of racial profiling.
Rights groups hope to bring end to discrimination they say has gone
unaddressed by successive governments.*
Timothy Garton Ash: *Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must
prepare for President Trump 2.0.*
I do not consider Biden too old to be president. I can't understand why
people attach so much importance to age.
I judge candidates by what they stand for and what they do. Biden has
positively surprised me with the half of his policies that have been
progressive. That was a surprise because I expected him to be mostly
plutocratist. To find the glass actually half full was good news.
I can't understand why any American who wants to continue democracy
could support the fascist. But apparently some can.
Proposing that Australia limit the level of salt in certain kinds of
prepared foods, since the high level of salt in some of them could
be responsible for hundreds of deaths per year.
There is no proposal to forbid people from eating too much salt.
Rather, the intention is to alter a system that tends to lead many
people to eat too much salt without realizing it.
A few drivers report that electric cars behave bizarrely on rare occasions.
I wonder if these problems could have been caused by a cracker who
broke the security in the car's computers and sent them remote
commands to do these things. If a computer system is (1) connected to
networks and (2) flexible enough that almost any function could be
activated by commands coming over the network, there is probably a way
for cracking to bring about the results described in the article.
The UK biometrics and surveillance commissioner says that
the UK is becoming an "omni-surveillance" society.
This is what happens when people allow government or commercial
surveillance to advance without fighting it at every step.
Governments and businesses are persistent; defeating their surveillance
once doesn't mean they are down.
*Taxation is not a "burden".* It is a means to a decent society, and
when properly spent, makes everyone better off except billionaires.
Here are some of the things we need that require taxation.
We are close to the tipping point at which the melting of Greenland
will become
irreversible.
The melting of part of Antarctica is already
irreversible.
Fossil fuel corporations are most responsible for the climate crisis,
and we will continue to hold them to account no matter what the state
throws at us. We have to, because nothing is worse than losing
everything.
The charge against her was later dropped on a technicality,
but the threat to repress future protests remains active.
We must put an end to tracking and collection of people's sensitive
activity data except based on specific warrants to authorize such
collection.
I’m a constituent, and I’m calling to ask [name of official] to
publicly speak out against the so-called fiscal commission. Social
Security and Medicare are popular and vital programs to our nation’s
economic security. Any changes to those programs should be handled
through regular order, not behind closed doors. Voters want to see
Social Security expanded, not cut!
The latter include
Equality [of rights] in spite of evident non-identity is a somewhat
sophisticated concept and requires a moral stature of which many
individuals seem to be incapable. They rather deny human variability
and equate equality with identity. Or they claim that the human
species is exceptional in the organic world in that only morphological
characters are controlled by genes and all other traits of the mind or
character are due to “conditioning” or other non-genetic factors. … An
ideology based on such obviously wrong premises can only lead to
disaster. Its championship of human equality is based on a claim of
identity. As soon as it is proved that the latter does not exist, the
support of equality [of rights] is likewise lost. (Mayr 1963)
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