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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.
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 voter 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 y 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 denial of safety training to postal staff.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
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 order Free as in Freedom, 2nd edition, from the FSF shop.
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 stymieing 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.
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.
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 .*
*It’s easy to be dazzled by the super-rich, but don’t believe that
they’ll do the right thing.*
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.
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
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
US citizens: call on 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.
An international conference to improve protection and management of
the Southern Ocean failed because the Russian delegation seemed not to be
interested in the goal.
Ariel Bernstein participated as a soldier in Israel's 2014 ground
invasion of Gaza. What he learned is that such invasions are no path
towards peace or security — they are mere revenge.
Since then, he has worked for reconciliation and peace.
A few prominent magazine editors and executives have been fired or
pushed out for publicly criticizing Israel's actions towards
Palestinians. However, thousands are coming to their defense.
I don't entirely know, and don't necessarily agree with, their
specific positions. That isn't the point anyway. A free society
needs to offer room for people to disagree.
Unless someone is an enemy of democracy and human rights in the US,
and seriously wants to abolish them, we should accept per presence as
part of our society, and argue (if we wish) the points we disagree
about.
Clarence Thomas got a loan from a rich friend for $267k.
A few years later, before he had to repay any of it, the rich friend
forgave the debt. Thomas did not report any of this.
(satire) *New Law Requires Political Candidates To Disclose Fetishes
On All Campaign Materials.*
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.
Reduced rain in the Mississippi basin has caused tap water
disinfection in parts of Louisiana to leave toxic chemicals.
Protests and strikes against Amazon.com are planned for Nov 24.
Can anyone tell me where these plans are published?
Amazon wiped out enormous numbers of jobs through its anticompetitive
practices. That is one of many reasons to refuse to buy from that company.
Bandcamp was sold to a company that has no respect for the community
it served. Someone who appreciated the site laments this.
I might have appreciated Bandcamp too, if its unjust practices had
not excluded me from using it. To access music there required (1)
running nonfree JavaScript software and (2) identifying oneself to
make a payment.
I did not try to check whether Bandcamp also requires/required
agreeing to an antisocializing contract: that is, a commitment not to
share copies of the music with anyone else. It wasn't crucial for me
to know that, since I couldn't use the site anyway. But now I wonder
— does anyone know if Bandcamp demands a promise to be divided and
ruled?
This is an example of a situation I notice from time to time. Most
internet users spinelessly accept being the victim of widespread
unjust practices. As a result, when they really love a site, it is
quite likely that I will condemn the site for injustice to its users.
*Palestinians and Israelis are bound together in suffering. Seeking
to untangle this, as the UN has, should not be seen as making
excuses for HAMAS.*
Everyone: Object to the proposed UnitedHealth-Amedisys $3.3
billion mega-merger.
As tech companies add microphones to a wide range of products,
including refrigerators and motor vehicles, they also set up
transcription farms where human employees listen to what people
say to the devices and tweak the recognition algorithms.
California has suspended the permit for Cruise cars to operate without
a driver after a peculiar accident in which the car's computer reacted
unsafely.
I am glad that California agencies are watching out for the public's
physical safety from driverless cars. However, there is no sign that
they will adequately protect the privacy of people in the vicinity of
these cars. That includes the passengers who ride in driverless
taxis, and the passers-by whose faces are imaged by them and perhaps
subsequently subject to facial recognition.
Driverless cars should not be allowed to operate until they can operate
without contributing to the societal danger of massive surveillance.
*Tennessee voters reject mayoral candidate who refused to disavow neo-Nazis.*
This will encourage Republicans to hesitate before openly endorsing
prejudice and mass murder. That doesn't mean we are out of the woods:
not all will learn from this lesson, and those who do may employ
"dog whistles" instead. But it's a step forward anyway.
Governor DeMentis is trying to forcibly eliminate chapters of Students
for Justice in Palestine in Florida's state universities.
That is unconstitutional, but DeMentis has no respect for the US
Constitution.
I might very well disagree with those groups about what outcome would
constitute justice in Palestine. I advocate the two-states solution,
with one of those two states being a democratic Israel. This would
require Israel to return much of the land it has seized or annexed.
Perhaps those student groups advocate something else that I would
disagree with.
Whatever it is, they have the right to advocate it, whether DeMentis
likes it or not, and whether I like it not.
* Gaza’s already rudimentary water network has been obliterated, with
2.2 million residents trying to get by on three litres a day.*
Israel has imposed shortages of water on Palestinians in both Gaza
and the West Bank.
The shortages in the West Bank did not endanger human health and life
directly but they denied Palestinians the possibility of farming.
*Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save
planet.
Exclusive: Poll shows young people willing to make big lifestyle
changes but balk at smaller gestures.*
*Here’s what happens [in the US] when a for-profit company takes over
your local emergency room.*
The author is a doctor who worked in an ER that was taken over.
All emergency medicine should be run by the state — for-profit companies
should not be allowed in that field.
As the Tories have demonstrated, it is not guaranteed that a
government will keep medicine working well. Especially if it is a
government of Tories (plutocratists) that seek to destroy the public
system and replace it with a privatize system that is as horrible as
the US privatize medicine system.
But we also know that government scan do this job well, for decades.
Whereas we can be absolutely certain that for-profit companies will
ruin it.
Lubbock, Texas, is the latest county to pass a law to persecute people who
help others get an abortion.
This law employs a dodge designed to nullify the applicability of
constitutional rights: instead of prosecuting whoever committed an
"offense", it authorizes various people to sue that person as if
they had been somehow harmed by per, in the absence of any actual harm
to them. This amounts to a kind of private persecution.
In effect, the dodge creates a notional pretend "harm" which anyone
(even strangers) can then sue for.
If this dodge is allowed to stand, it would put all constitutional
rights in danger, because it would allow governments to declare
exceptions to them at will. If we want the idea of constitutional
rights to mean anything, we must make this dodge invalid in general.
A bipartisan group of congresscritters have written to two cabinet
ministers calling for dropping charged against Julian Assange.
Here's the text of the letter, so you can read it without running
nonfree Javascript code.
Dear President Biden,
As Members of Congress deeply committed to the principles of free speech
and freedom of the press, we write to strongly encourage your
Administration to withdraw the U.S. extradition request currently pending
against Australian publisher Julian Assange and halt all prosecutorial
proceedings against him as soon as possible.
Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, faces multiple charges under the
Espionage Act due to his role in publishing classified documents about the
U.S. State Department, Guantanamo Bay, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He
has been detained on remand in London since 2019 and is pending extradition
to the U.S., having lost his appeal of the extradition order in the courts
of the United Kingdom.
Deep concerns about this case have been repeatedly expressed by
international media outlets, human rights and press freedom advocates, and
Members of Congress, among others. To cite only a few of the commentaries,
in November 2022, *The New York Times*, *The Guardian*, *Le Monde*, *DER
SPEIGEL* and *El País* came together to express their grave concerns
about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and
publishing classified materials, arguing that “publishing is not a crime.”
In December 2022, a coalition of press freedom, civil liberties, and
international human rights organizations wrote to Attorney General Merrick
Garland urging
him to correct course and abandon the relentless pursuit of Mr. Assange in
order to protect the ability of journalists to report freely on the United
States without fear of retribution. U.S. elected officials have previously
called on the Administration to drop the charges against Mr. Assange,
including in April of this year when Members of the House argued
that "[e]very day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another
day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority
abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at
home.”
We believe the Department of Justice acted correctly in 2013, during your
vice-presidency, when it declined to pursue charges against
Mr. Assange for publishing the classified documents because it recognized
that the prosecution would set a dangerous precedent. We note that the 1917
Espionage Act was ostensibly intended to punish and imprison government
employees and contractors for providing or selling state secrets to enemy
governments, not to punish journalists and whistleblowers for attempting to
inform the public about serious issues that some U.S. government officials
might prefer to keep secret. We are aware that the Assange case has been cited
by officials of the People’s Republic of China
to claim that the U.S. is “hypocritical” when it comes to its purported
support for media freedom. We are also well aware that should the U.S.
extradition and prosecution go forward, there is a significant risk that
our bilateral relationship with Australia will be badly damaged.
It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary
evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government.
The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks
criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of
the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close
in as timely a manner as possible.
Sincerely,
(satire) *U.S. Warns A Gaza Ceasefire Would Only Benefit Humanity.*
A court decision has ordered an end to Republican gerrymandering in Georgia.
This will leave Republicans in control of the state, because they do
have more voters there, but will make a difference in the House of
Representatives. Also, it could deny Republicans a supermajority in
the state senate.
The European Commission semi-secretly bought ads on Ex-Twitter to pressure
officials to vote for the repressive plan to force encrypted messaging programs
to monitor and report the unencrypted messages.
This plan is called "chatcontrol".
EU voters, please pressure your MEPs to oppose chatcontrol!
Israel and its allies question the civilian casualty figures for Gaza,
claiming that HAMAS exaggerates the number of casualties caused by
Israel's bombardment of Gaza. Others argue for trusting those figures
on the grounds that there are ways to cross-check the details so that
falsifying the totals would not be feasible.
Does this question make a crucial difference? I don't think so. Even
if the number of Gazan civilians killed by Israel's bombardment were
only 4,000 instead of the 7,000 reported by the HAMAS-run Gaza medical
system, it would still be mass murder and a war crime.
The fact that HAMAS committed mass murder first doesn't excuse Israel
for committing mass murder second.
Deserters from the Putin forces, having found temporary refuge in Armenia,
speak out to encourage other soldiers in the Putin forces to desert as well.
They were helped by an organization dedicated to helping Putin
forces soldiers to desert.
It takes courage to escape from an army that boasts of being ready to
shoot anyone who retreats. Countries that support Ukraine should help
those who do escape from the Putin forces, so as to encourage more.
In this article, the list of evils that the VC foist on society is incomplete.
"Depending on computing done by programs that the users do not control"
is another evil, not mentioned in the article's list. It includes
inducing people to run nonfree programs
and inducing them to entrust their computing to company's servers.
People overlook this because they have not learned to recognize how it
(1) is unjust in itself and (2) makes the other recognized abuses
possible.
Scholastic, the main publisher of books (other than textbooks) for
students in the US, has reversed its decision to put books with
queer
characters into a separate catalog.
That decision was aimed at avoiding conflict with right-wing
censorship. Reversing the decision means Scholastic will confront the
censors head-on. That has a chance of damaging
SCROTUS, and since
SCROTUS
is dead set on wrecking democracy and religious freedom in the US, any damage to
SCROTUS has a chance of saving them.
The EU is drawing up a directive to restrict
"artificial intelligence".
I get the impression that this directive will also cover machine
learning systems. It may be a good thing for the directive to cover those
systems, although it is very bad to refer to them as
"intelligence".
The restrictions on facial recognition and emotional recognition are a
good start, but I expect they will not go far enough; that they will
allow those technologies to be used in ways that would circumvent and
defeat the supposed limitations.
The article suggests that AI may be used as an excuse to make
copyright more restrictive, over activities that have never been
restricted by copyright as long as human beings have done them.
US workers have become far more eager to organize, and far more ready
to strike. They are winning
substantial pay increases.
An Australian company aims to produce large quantities of hydrogen by
electrolysis.
hydrogen by
electrolysis.
The other part that's necessary is enough renewable electric generation
to run that much electrolysis.
The ACLU argues that the gag order placed on the corrupter in a civil
trial
about business fraud is too broad.
SCROTUS made one of their
most extreme
members speaker of the House. Mike Johnson is an election denialist,
a climate denialist, an abortion persecutor, and seeks to impose Christianity.
In addition, he also wants to make non-rich people poorer.
It looks like the democratic victory in Poland is for real — the
winning parties are
ready to form a coalition
and replace the right-wing religious authoritarian government.
Biden rebuked
the fanatical "settlers" that systematically inflict violent pogroms
on Palestinians in the West Bank, saying that they are "pouring gasoline on the fire."
Secretary General
Guterres rebuked Israel
for the bombardment and
blockade of Gaza, which he rightly compared to "collective punishment
of the Palestinian people".
Israel replied by falsely equating Guterres's support for
international law to "support for terrorism", in its standard way.
Its policy is to try to stop the rest of the world from recognizing,
and saying that "Condemning HAMAS for its terrorism does not require
us to condone the other war crimes, those that Israel is carrying
out."
Likewise, *Israel must stop
weaponizing the Holocaust.*
*Gaza hospitals
ceasing to function as water and fuel run out.*
Israel could, and is morally obliged to, let them get the humanitarian supplies
they need — and the rest of Gaza too.
Israel says it will
punish the UN
by barring UN staff from visiting Israel. This is in response to
Secretary General Guterres's mentioning Israel's long oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza.
This may provide Israel with the secondary coup of preventing UN staff
from meeting with anyone in Gaza or the West Bank. Egypt could let
them into Gaza; will it? Jordan has a bridge by which people can enter
the West Bank, but the western side is controlled by Israel and it
might block UN staff there too.
This step calls for international pressure on Israel.
* The wife, son, daughter and grandson of Wael al-Dahdouh, the [Al
Jazeera] bureau chief in Gaza, were
targeted at a relief camp,
outlet says.* This is one small fraction of an enormous war crime.
Al-Dahdouh asserts that Israel is systematically targeting civilians
who have fled — that this is not just a long series of coincidences.
*EU must cut carbon emissions
three times faster
to meet targets, [according to climate commissioner].*
*Earth’s
"vital signs"
worse than at any time in human history, scientists warn.*
*Fossil fuel firms
spent millions on US lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest bills.*
*Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points
that would drastically damage
our ability to cope
with disasters, UN researchers have warned.*
US citizens: Call for de-escalation and ceasefire
now in Gaza.
The answer to war crimes is not more war crimes.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to do everything it can to protect our freedom to
vote.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on your congresscritter
to support the International and American Seabed Protection Acts.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Construction of new houses generally
churns them out full of grave
flaws,
sometimes dangerous.
The problem starts with concentration of the industry into a few large
corporations, which (typically for large corporations) make greed
their watchword.
Whenever large corporations systematically harm the public, the state
should break them up.
Many buildings in the US are nominally owned by shell companies.
Tenants who want to complain about mistreatment can't report the
landlord's address, as required, because it is secret. The New York
State legislature has passed a bill requiring these shell companies to
hand over crucial information to the public, such as who owns them.
Billionaires are lobbying the governor,
whose progressive commitments
are rather weak, not to sign it.
I suggest approaching this with a somewhat different law: to require
every company that directly or indirectly owns a building to hand over
all the crucial information about its ownership. If an building-owning
company refuses to do this, the punishment should be seizure of
the building.
These billionaires and exploiters deserve no clemency or comfort
when they try to screw their tenants.
*Jewish and Arab Israelis [arrested],
fired from jobs and even attacked
for expressing sentiments
interpreted as pro-Hamas.*
Criticism of Israel and support for aspects of Palestinians' rights
have subtle gradations, and it is not unusual for annexationists and
supporters of Israel's occupation of Palestine to distort the views
of those that criticize them.
In the examples in the article, the distortions range
from subtle to gross and blatant.
We should stand with Israel against HAMAS and its terrorism. However,
we must not allow that to mean (or be taken to mean) that we support all
Israeli acts (even if violent or cruel) which according to Israel
are "directed against HAMAS."
Meanwhile, anyone who cares about Israel should now help stand for
human rights and democracy in Israel.
(satire)
*Biden Urges Americans
Not To Let Dangerous Online Rhetoric Humanize Palestinians.*
*Europe’s Largest News Aggregator Orders Editors to
Play Down
Palestinian Deaths.*
Israel would like to free HAMAS's hostages with a military raid, but
that is
next to impossible
so it seems Israel will have to negotiate
instead.
This might provide a route for stopping Israel's massive continuing
atrocities against the population
of Gaza.
Javier
Milei,
a candidate for Argentina's presidency who may yet win,
has been trying to underestimate the number of prisoners that the
military dictatorship murdered.
The fact that it was a murderous lying right-wing dictatorship is more
important than the precise number of political murders it carried out.
But why then bring up that number as an election issue? I can't see
any motive that isn't a bad one.
The insurrectionist's lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, who recently pled guilty,
can inculpate
the insurrectionist in two different criminal trials.
*50% of [US] Parents Won’t Let Their [10-year-old] Kids Go to Another
Aisle in Grocery.*
For Queensland climate defense protester Rob Keller, age 73, "The
worst-case scenario isn’t [3 years in] jail," he says. "The worst-case
scenario is climate breakdown."
Australian governments are escalating their repression in defense of
business activities that promise megadeaths. As Keller says, the
officials putting him on trial — and the fossil fuel businesses they
are protecting — are the criminals.
*Junior public servants allegedly made ‘hotties list’ that ranked female
colleagues, Senate hears.*
It is wrong to demand that human beings act as if they were sexless.
That men — or women — in an office are comparing their coworkers for
attractiveness is normal, even inevitable, and it treating it as a
monstrosity is the start of repression that will make life ugly.
More people in the UK are using cash payments. I urge people in Britain
to organize now to encourage the use of cash, and publicize all the
nasty treatment you can avoid that way.
The organization could also campaign for requirements for stores to
accept cash, and to situate an ATM in every settlement that is likely
to have a family with no car.
A British TV company now requires all staff to declare all their
sexual and romantic relationships, all "close" relationships, and all
friendships, and all roommate relationships.
This intolerable system of repression is the natural endpoint of the
ever-increasing repression of office romances. It was always heading
for this.
There are valid reasons for rules against office romances, but given
the harm that those rules do even when not carried to these absurd
extremes, the reasons are not strong enough to justify them.
Human beings need sexual relationships; human beings need love; human
beings need friendship. If your main social contact is through work,
where are you supposed to look for these things? Degrading yourself
by running nonfree software such a dating app or Grindr? Going to a
club (if you can look sharp enough to be allowed in) and getting
drunk?
We had better adapt our rules to those human needs.
An Australian city council has ceased its practice of Christian
prayers at meetings, in the name of separation of church and state.
In the US we have to keep fighting against religious fanatics
who try to impose their religion through government out
of disrespect for people whose religious views differ from theirs.
Mohammad Yasin, member of the British Parliament, was about to fly to Canada
as part of an official parliamentary visit, when he was stopped and questioned
because — get this — his name was "Mohammad".
Not only is it crazy to stop a passenger who is an MP for that reason.
It is crazy to stop any other passenger for that reason. If your
security believes that being named "Mohammad" is a rational reason to
suspect someone of anything, it is worse than incompetent.
Oops, we just lost New York and dozens of other coastal cities.
Their eventual flooding is inevitable as the West Antarctic ice shelf melts.
How long it will take for them to be inundated is not clear.
*Salman Rushdie: allow writers to create characters outside of their
own experience.*
*"If we’re in a world where only women can write about women and
only people from India can write about people from India and only
straight people can write about straight people … then that’s the
death of the art," the novelist said, according to the Times.* Or,
at the very least, it means no story can have both men and women in
it.
Government departments in the UK are using secret algorithms
(implemented by nonfree software) to decide how to treat people.
This is inherently unjust regardless of the details.
The mere fact that a decision was made this way should count
as grounds to invalidate it.
Biden is boasting about the new fossil gas export hub, that will
substantially boost global heating.
Migrant workers in Israel are often trapped, much like migrant workers
in the UAE. Now they can't afford to leave.
US citizens:
call on Biden to keep his promise
by decriminalizing marijuana.
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 push for a cease fire in Gaza and for
both sides to respect international humanitarian law
HAMAS has total contempt for international humanitarian law; for that,
we condemn it. However, this does not excuse Israel for imitating HAMAS
and sinking to that same level.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress to tell the SEC
to exercise its full
authority and protect investors from climate-related financial risks,
specifically by requiring each corporation to publish the amount of
greenhouse emissions expected from burning the fossil fuel that it expects
to sell.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit.
It brought the child poverty rate to historic lows, and can do so again.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A pitifully small number of aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza,
far from what is needed to save civilians' lives.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich more in various ways.
US citizens: call on Congress to make no cuts to family-supporting
programs.
US citizens: call on the House to reject any insurrectionist as
speaker.
US citizens: call for putting the wrecker in jail if he violates the gag
order, which was imposed by a court to protect others involved in the trial
from possible threats.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the School Lunch Debt
Cancellation Act, which would pay all student lunch debt and provide
meals for all school children henceforth.
*UK government keeping files on [some] teaching assistants and librarians’
[social media posts]* to keep records of criticism of its policies.*
It looks like an opposition candidate has
the potential
to beat President Maduro in Venezuela, if he permits a fair race.
What she says about the oil industry suggests a possibility that even
though she may respect human rights better than Maduro, her other
political views may lean towards neoliberalism and extractivism. There
isn't enough substance in the article for me to really tell.
*New[ly published] Documents Show Exxon Executives Cast Doubt on
Climate Science to Protect Profits.*
According to the article, Exxon did this in 1988, 2008, 2012 and 2015.
*Scientists are examining how building and use of infrastructure relates
to the burden of illness [in a city].*
US citizens: call on Congress to support an immediate ceasefire in
Gaza, so as to stop the loss of life and allow humanitarian aid,
including medical attention, food, and water.
We should not forget that Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians
consists of more than just direct killing, occasionally of many
Palestinians at once, usually of a few at a time. The siege of Gaza
causes suffering and death every day,
and so too (in different ways)
does the gradual suffocation of Palestinians in the West Bank (while
"settlers" take their land).
When the FAO tried to publicize the role of cattle farming in global
heating, it was hit by an organized lobbying and bullying campaign.
Since then it has downplayed this crucial issue of civilization's
survival.
*Ex-officials at [FAO] say work on methane emissions was censored.*
*Impact of farming on climate crisis will be a key Cop topic — finally.*
This year's climate conference is permeated by planet roaster
influence, from the oil emir
that is its head to the planet roaster
companies that "sponsor" it and have tremendous influence.
I hope that it achieves some good despite that handicap.
*Amnesty International has documented unlawful Israeli attacks,
including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian
casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.*
Israel has damaged 1/3 of the housing in Gaza. It continues deliberately
bombing and destroying residential buildings.
The very old St Porphyrius Church, in which civilians were sheltering,
was damaged by a missile which hit a nearby building. Although the
missile killed some of them, at least nobody tried to attack the church.
In Israel, Arabs and Israelis now face censorship and punishment
if they oppose the war in Gaza.
Each time trumpet Republican Rep. Jordan held a vote on becoming speaker,
the number of Republicans voting against him increased. It is now clear
that the insurrectionists cannot elect a speaker.
That is something we can celebrate, but how can the House elect a
speaker? Since the speaker does not have to be a member of the House,
I suggest looking for a respected older leader, perhaps a retired
judge, who is known for more probity than partisanship, to seek support
among Democrats and Republicans.
The US claims that thousands of North Koreans, hiding their
identities, got jobs are remote workers for US companies, received pay
in dollars, and gave that pay to North Korea's missile development.
This could have boosted North Korea's missile development greatly.
*Amsterdam sex workers protest against plan to move red light district.*
Biden called on Israelis not to be "captured by rage" and to avoid
making "mistakes" like the US invasion of Iraq.
As an act by the US, the invasion of Iraq qualifies as a "mistake".
However, as an act by Dubya, it was an intentional crime of aggressive
war, carried out with calculation for the gain of some Americans.
*Pfizer Spikes Paxlovid Prices to 100 Times Cost of Production.*
CVS and Walgreens are making enormous profits, but still trying to
increase those profits by understaffing their pharmacies. That puts patients at risk of errors.
UK thugs knocked a black 13-year-old off his bicycle because he was
pointing a water pistol. His mother said the water pistol was "brightly colored", which
implied it did not look much like a real gun.
*Russia working to undermine trust in elections globally, US
intelligence says.*
*Flame retardant pollution
threatens wildlife on all continents, research finds.*
*"We're facing
another old enemy":
Rushdie warns against global authoritarianism [and specifically its US
form, the Republican Party].*
Lukashenko continues to pursue Belarusian
dissidents and journalists in exile.
**NYPD [thugs] Sued for Misconduct Cost City Millions in Settlements —
Then Get Promotions.*
As long as thugs can continue to dump the cost of their depredations
on their cities, those cities have two reasons to get rid of thugs
that cause them: to protect the city's funds, and to protect the
public from harm. Either one should be enough. So why doesn't
NYC do it? I suspect there is a systemic problem to be found.
(satire) *New TikTok Stunt Challenges Parents
To See How Fast
They Can Get Kids Taken Away By CPS.*
A large fraction of Jamaicans
grow
up speaking Jamaican creole,
and when they later go to school and have to use English without
having used it before, many fail. Jamaica is now considering
converting the schools to a bilingual curriculum designed to teach
children both languages.
It is well established
that a carefully designed bilingual curriculum is effective at
graduating students who can speak and write both languages — more
effective than dumping students precipitously into taking class using
a language they don't really know. Americans who want to make sure
immigrant Hispanic children
in the US become good in English should support bilingual education.
I suspect that the opposition many right-wing Americans display
towards this is a way of venting resentment at those children for
being present in the US, not a serious effort to help them learn English.
* Fatih Birol, The ED of the
International Energy Agency
said: "New large-scale fossil fuel projects not only carry major climate risks,
but also business and financial risks for the companies and their investors."*
In other words, those investors are making a big mistake even in
narrow terms of their own profit.
If they don't care about dooming civilization,
let's hope that they heed his advice. But they may not.
I suspect that "investment" in fossil fuels is driven to a large
extent by inside influence exercised by fuel barons who expect to
profit from getting institutions other people's money into the
companies the barons will profit from.
Now, before the election which Labour is likely to win, is when voters
would be wise to demand it reverse the choice of narrow spending limits
that will prevent fixing most of what's broken in Britain.
* Government backtracking on environmental promises is being driven by
politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN
biodiversity chief has said.*
*Stockholm to ban petrol and diesel cars from [city] centre from 2025.*
Only electric vehicles will be permitted there.
*The Achilles' Heel Of Propaganda — Julian Assange, Nick Cohen And
Russell Brand.*
This describes how the mainstream media, in unison, work to boost
sexual accusations against some people, and bury charges against
others, in each case with little regard to the truth.
I know a fair amount about the campaign to destroy Julian Assange for
his work as a journalist for Wikileaks, and I see how sex accusations
were faked and used as an excuse to prosecute him for journalism.
By contrast, I have barely heard of Nick Cohen and Russell Brand (the
famous British one), and know almost nothing about them. I do not
watch TV, I refuse to have a TV cable connection (it has DRM and it
snoops on what user watch — both of which I reject as injustice), and
I have hardly ever seen an article by Nick Cohen in the places I find
articles.
Just as the US forfeited the world's sympathy for the September 2001
terror attacks when it used them as an excuse to attack Iraq, Israel
can forfeit the world's sympathy for HAMAS's terrorism if it uses
that as an excuse for massive war crimes in Gaza.
*Why are some of the left celebrating the killings of Israeli Jews?*
When people bitterly condemn an injustice, for valid reasons, and are
stymied in trying to do anything to reduce it, that condemnation can
fester and develop into irrational hatred of the "side" that carries
out the injustice. In this way, condemnation of the many unjust
Israeli occupation policies that add up to oppression of Palestinians
(one form in the West Bank, another form in Gaza)
can develop into hatred of Israelis, even hatred of Jews in general.
I think that is what has happened. How sad it will be if those who
oppose injustice to Palestinians turn into irrational haters instead
of champions of justice. They will be unable to persuade people of
the validity of their cause if their cause is antisemitic hatred.
They could gain their goal only by deploying the bigger force and the
more powerful cruelty.
As Naomi Klein writes, by adopting antisemitism they will give violent
Zionists a justification to point to for their violence.
But worst of all, by letting their sense of justice morph into hatred
and celebration of death, they will move from the side of good to the
side of another kind of evil.
Just as we should not let condemnation of the occupation's injustice
against the Palestinians lead us to excuse murderous antisemitism, we
should also not let condemnation of HAMAS for its murderous
antisemitism blind us to injustices of the occupation of Palestine.
*New IEA Report gives President Biden sufficient justification to declare a
climate emergency.*
Texas rushed to execute Jedidiah Murphy without allowing time
to finish his appeals.
Texas law arbitrarily rules out DNA testing of the convict to call into
question a death sentence. In effect, it says, "Whether we kill you is not
important enough to justify checking the truth of conclusions on which
we based that decision."
*Court finds police in France often use racial profiling in identity
checks.*
This is no surprise — thugs do similar things in many countries
including the US and UK.
*Ferdinand Marcos Jr drops Philippines holiday marking toppling of
father.*
His father was a corrupt dictator who was toppled by massive protests.
It looks like this adds to Marcos Jr's campaign to cover up the truth
about that dictator.
The book Controlling Corruption, by Robert Klitgaard, describes in one
chapter the measures that Marcos Sr used to stamp out corruption in
the Philippine Customs Agency. In most of the government agencies,
Marcos encouraged agents to take bribes and give part of them to him.
But anyone practicing corruption in the customs agency was stealing
from Marcos and he did not like that. The book points out that the
measures in question were effective in the customs agency despite the
fact that the whole government around it was pervasively corrupt.
Pharma companies are suing the US government, claiming that a price
cap on a product constitutes "taking property".
That claim is something that right-wing economist that worship the
concept of property might believe, but clashes with the US legal tradition.
Alas, we can't count on the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court
to follow that tradition rather than bow to billionaires.
*Judge rules Texas's age-verification law violates First Amendment.*
If we had a standard system for verifying a user's age online
without identifying per, I would not object greatly to requiring this
for some sorts of publication. As far as I know, there is no such standard and
what sites would actually demand is to see government ID.
* First complete "scientific health check" shows most global systems
[are] beyond [the] stable range in which modern civilization emerged.*
Ex-Twitter has started requiring (in certain countries) every new user
to verify per phone numbers and a payment method.
The user is required to pay a trivial sum, but the surveillance
implied by the payment is more important than the payment itself.
House Republicans describe bullying intended to make them vote
for Jim Jordan for speaker. The bullying may have backfired.
TikTok and Instagram banned a lot of new coverage of the HAMAS-Israel
fighting and its effects, including the news site
mondoweiss.net.
Mondoweiss is led by Jews that call for justice
for Palestinians.
I've made links
to it on
stallman.org.
Some US politicians, including right-wing politicians, are calling for
bloody war
against Palestinians in general.
Right-wing extremists sometimes focus their hate on Muslims and
sometimes on Jews. I think that is a matter of simple tactics,
though: which target is most useful this week for promoting fascism?
*"Do not use our death to bring death": plea to Israel from
peace
activists' grieving families.*
*A real friend of Israel would be making it face up to
some uncomfortable
truths.*
Biden persuaded Israel and Egypt
to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza, passing through Egypt's Rafah crossing.
UK thugs
preemptively arrested founders of Just Stop Oil
for planning
a nonviolent protest in London.
The UK has been doing that for years.
The protest was at a meeting of fossil fuel executives and
politicians. One must suspect they were meeting to make plans
that stand a good chance of destroying civilization.
Greta Thunberg was arrested there and has been charged with the crime of blocking a doorway.
The UK government's commitment to protecting the planet roasters is
strong, and it appears ready to go to almost any lengths to defend
fossil fuel plans that are likely to cause the death of billions
later this century.
*Greta Thunberg arrested
at London oil summit protest. Climate activist taken away by Met
police after protesters denounce meeting of fossil fuel executives and ministers.*
*Fears grow people are dehydrating to death in Gaza as
clean water
runs out.*
The US has engaged in delicate diplomacy trying to
steer Israel
away from killing
tens or hundreds of thousands of Gazans. This may be doing some good,
though it is too early to be certain.
Biden is also
warning Netanyahu to refrain
from atrocities that he
may have in mind. That is a good effort.
*Israel
occupation of Gaza
would be "big mistake" says Biden.*
It looks like
the
democracy coalition has won the election in Poland. However, I
don't want to count this victory before it has hatched.
If it can assume government power, it will have a lot of work to do to
restore democratic institutions.
The EU rules and treaties can be used to eliminate authoritarian
government in a single member state, if only one member state has it;
but when two member states have it, they can
protect each other
and bring the treaty requirements to naught. In recent years, Poland
and Hungary protected each other's authoritarian institutions.
Returning Poland to democracy and human rights could have made an
opportunity to rescue Hungary too, but alas no — a far-right
extremist government just won the election in Slovakia. I suspect
Slovakia and Hungary will now protect each other from human rights.
Strategies
which enabled the campaign to restore democracy in Poland
to reach apparent success.
I am very glad that they dropped the cruel "make enough money or
starve" policies known as neoliberalism. Helping the poor and the suffering
is one of the essential purposes of the statep.
The subtleties of distinguishing
support for Palestinians
and their having a country from support for HAMAS and terrorism.
The distinctions proposed in this article are arguably valid.
For instance, "from the river to the sea" does not advocate
a free state of Palestine alongside Israel; rather, it advocates
giving the whole territory of Israel to Palestinians.
However, I do not have confidence in right-wing politicians to
come even close to applying these distinctions properly — they have
a history rather of weaponizing false accusations of antisemitism
against people such as Jeremy Corbyn and trying to impose
use of the badly designed IHRA criterion
for antisemitism.
In US states controlled by Republicans, people are considerably more likely to die young.
They die young from smoking, diabetes, heart attacks, car crashes,
and despair.
Republicans don't win these states' elections honestly.
They do it via gerrymandering
and voter suppression
as well as spending lots of billionaires' money
to distract voters.
Daniel Bernstein warns that NIST seems to be allowing the NSA to
weaken proposed standards for quantum-resistant encryption algorithms,
by miscalculating the vulnerability of candidates.
The NIST's reply is, basically, "You can't possibly believe we would
do that!" However, it seems to have done this in a previous
encryption standard.
*Covid deaths are on the rise again, so what happens? Mask-wearing in
hospitals is scrapped.*
That abandons people to the risk that a medical system ought to
use discipline to protect people from.
Even if your politicians are cowards, we can use courage to make each
other safe. A disciplined group can sometimes protect most of its
members from threats that individuals can't defend against. Covid-19
is one example. But there is another clearer and more vivid one.
In ancient and medieval times, infantry could protect themselves from
charging cavalry if they had pikes and knew how to stand firm with
them in a line. An individual infantryman was defenseless against
charging cavalry, but a close infantry line with pikes was stronger
than cavalry and could stand the horses off. They could save their
lives together by being firm and disciplined.
We are not likely ever to be in that situation, but it can teach
us how to resist Covid-19 together.
* Pro-democracy supporters who fled Hong Kong for Britain speak about
continued harassment, threats and physical attacks [by China's agents].*
The UN accuses the UAE of permitting Iranian agents to kidnap exiled dissident Jamshid Sharmahd from Dubai airport. Iran has announced plans
to execute him.
Human Rights Watch warns dissidents from other countries not to
transit through Dubai, because the UAE might jail them or worse.
I have no reason to think I am important enough that the UAE might
bother to harass me, but why take the chance? I never even consider
such flight itineraries. Not all the victims listed in
stay-away-countries.html for the UAE were famous.
If rejection for this reason hurts the business of Emirates airlines,
that by itself is a good thing.
Countries that support human rights should reject and denounce all
plans to hold important international conferences (for instance,
climate conferences)
in the UAE or other similar repressive countries.
The climate crisis (specifically floods, freezes and heatwaves)
threatens seed production in the US.
The weather no longer follows
the normal seasons.
An apparent Islamist fanatic, already under suspicion and monitored by
the state, murdered a teacher in a French high school. Macron took
advantage of the emotional reaction to the murder by calling for a
"ruthless" response.
I can't see how "ruthlessness", as such, would help prevent future
terrorist murders. It sounds like a way to stir up hatred against
Muslims.
A more strict system of surveillance, applied by
courts to people whose actions have justified it, might help.
* Justice department launches inquiry [into thugs of Trenton, NJ]
after "numerous reports" that Trenton officers conducted "stops and
arrests with no good reason."*
Brazil's congress accuses Bolsonaro of a willful coup attempt on Jan 8,
and calls for charging him with four crimes.
It seems that Australian prisoner Selesa Tafaifa was killed in an
Australian prison by putting a spit hood on her. It hampered her
breathing and caused a heart attack. An emergency medicine specialist
watched the video in court and explained what was happening to her at
each point.
Tory leaders are spreading disinformation about Labour's plans.
What else would you expect?
*21 species removed from US Endangered Species Act after going
extinct.*
It is not clear why more pedestrians are dying from car collisions now
in the US than before, but some people are certain of whet remedy they
want to impose.
Their argument is, "Whether or not it's a good solution,
it has to do some good, right?" They also say, "If it saves
even one life, it is worth doing." I don't think those are valid.
The right approach is to figure out what benefit various possible
changes would give, and then decide which change is best.
We know that the increasing number of SUVs increases casualties, and
that it increases greenhouse gas emissions which which increase
casualties from climate disaster. I suspect — though I have no basis
to be certain — that the most effective way to address all these
problems is to strongly discourage SUVs.
For instance, we could increase the fee to register an SUV
substantially each year. People would start selling their SUVs.
* Across the US, local governments, lobbyists and industry have spent
millions to get [wildfires' air] pollution excluded from the record.*
As wildfires become more frequent, the effects of this policy will
shift from disguising a rare unusual situation to misrepresenting the
usual state of affairs.
* [Vietnam's] NGO leaders and technical experts who helped secure
western aid for official shift to clean energy are being locked up
now that they are no longer needed.*
New article:
The Virgin of Emacs.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese is arriving in DC on
October 23, so that is
the time to
show support for Assange, and our national office is coordinating
people all over the country to do banner drops.
Albanese has told Biden before that he is not happy about the
prosecution of Assange and we understand that he will be pushing
harder this time, with 9 out of 10 Australians and 60 Australian
lawmakers now favoring dropping the charges.
*If someone killed my child I’d want bloody revenge. But I’d be wrong —
as is
the Israeli government.*
If I were in that situation, I would feel anger and grief, but grief
doesn't turn me directly to the goal of bloody revenge. I've suffered
from grief enough times (more often from rejection that from someone's
death, but it is nonetheless grief) that I have learned some
self-control in the situation.
Biden understands this. *Biden urges Israel not to be
"consumed by
rage"
as he reaffirms US support.*
He added, *The Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well, and
we mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives like the entire
world.*
This is the first time I have seen Biden do something that inspired my
admiration and support.
Don't worry, I will not start to support him when he endorses
plutocratist policies ;-{.
An explosion in the Baptist Hospital in Gaza has
killed at least 500
people,
Palestinians who were sheltering there.
HAMAS says that an Israel air attack caused the explosion.
Israel said that a Palestinian faction caused it by launching a
missile which misfired, but then later said that a Palestinian faction
fired several missiles at the hospital. I am skeptical of those
stories.
Experts analyzing the videos
say that it looks like a weapon malfunctioned. Maybe no one intended to bomb the hospital.
*US legal scholars urge Biden
to seek immediate ceasefire from Israel.
US citizens: call on Citibank to stop fueling the climate crisis.
US citizens: call on Senator Robert Menendez to resign now.
US citizens: call on Congress to once again prevent a government shutdown.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate NOT to confirm Republican nominee
Demetrios Kouzoukas as Medicare Trustee. He has a conflict of interest
involving a private company that hopes to profit from his decisions.
Thugs in London are wearing protest badges linked to white supremacism,
even while on duty.
Cops are, in general, entitled to freedom of speech, but not when what
they say implies prejudice that conflicts with carrying out the
responsibilities of their job: to protect the public without
prejudice.
*Palestinian voices "shut down" at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors.
Open letter rebukes LitProm decision to cancel award ceremony for
[author] Adania Shibli [on account of] "war started by Hamas".*
The increasing climate crisis causes almost 3 trillion dollars in damage
from 2000 to 2019 through worsened storms, floods and heatwaves.
*California's fast-food workers win fight for $20 hourly pay and
industry council.*
A right-wing provocation group attacked a professor at Arizona State University
after he taught a class on queer culture.
The university is investigating this as a hate crime.
*[The insurrectionist] is prohibited [by a court order] from making
public statements attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential
trial witnesses.*
A US marine who violated his oath to defend the Constitution has
received an interesting sentence for violating that oath by joining in
the Jan 6 insurrection.
* When rich people convince themselves that they’re rich because they’re
smart — instead of lucky and ruthless — they misapply their talents to
areas beyond their expertise.*
The article uses Ex-Twitter and Starlink as examples to show that we should
not allow companies to direct such systems however they wish, given that
more important things than private profit are at stake.
The Tories made convicts' probation centralized nationwide, then
privatized it. That drove the experienced workers to quit. The
Tories since undid the privatization, but that has not fixed the
problem.
Basically, reorganizing such activities based primarily on thinking about
"efficiency" (low cost of the activity) is foolish because how well the
activity does its job for society is more important.
* I covered the Rwandan genocide as a reporter. The language spilling out
of Israel is eerily familiar.*
Israel shelled a group of journalists reporting just
across
the border
in Lebanon.
Israel has
a history
of
attacking
the press
when it bombs Gaza.
The US attacked a press office in Baghdad
in one of the invasions of Iraq.
*You can condemn Hamas and name its actions as evil, even as you
support the Palestinians in their quest for a life free of occupation
and oppression. And
there should still be room
in your heart for a Jewish child whose last moments were filled with
unimaginable terror — the same terror his grandparents, and
their grandparents, thought they had escaped for ever.*
At some US colleges,
supporters of Palestinians and supporters of Jews
are accusing each other of bloodlust.
Both HAMAS and Israel are displaying plenty of bloodlust. To diminish
that, it behooves us to criticize the bloodlust of both sides and to
mourn the civilian victims (present and past) on both sides.
Netanyahu has silenced the soldiers' protest movement for democracy,
for the time being,
but his failure to prevent the HAMAS massacres has aroused widespread public hatred.
I hope that their justified rage against that failure does not
distract Israelis too long from
Netanyahu's deeper threat:
the authoritarianism he seeks to impose on their country.
Netanyahu speaks of wiping out HAMAS completely with a ground attack, but
that is futile.
Young people growing up in Gaza, the open-air prison, expect to be killed.
*Israeli airstrikes hit northern Gaza
as Palestinians try
to leave* (as Israel told them to).
This does not surprise me; many Israelis are as full of
terrorist-spirited hatred as HAMAS. That attitude will tend to lead
to ever-escalating violence on both sides.
*Analysis of aerial photos and social media posts confirms
attack on
road identified as safe
by Israeli army.*
The man Israel needs
now is Uri Avnery, but I don't know of anyone alive
like him.
I wish I did.
(satire) *Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using
Last Words
To Condemn Hamas.*
That page is mean as satire, but I am afraid there are Americans who
would say the same thing seriously.
*Netanyahu told 1.1 million Palestinians they had 24 hours to evacuate. What is that if not
ethnic cleansing?*
*Israel's response to this terror must be resolute. But it must remain consistent with
international law.*
Egypt accuses Israel of planning to push hundreds of thousands of Gazans
across the border into Egypt. Some ministers are actually
talking about it.
Egypt is stationing troops at the border
to block this. How troops would actually do that is not clear to me.
It is hard for me to grasp how the movement of Gazans into Egypt would
be importantly different from Egypt's taking over Gaza. And in either
case, I see a potential for fighting between HAMAS and Egypt — both
of which are oppressive governments, but in different ways.
*UN torture expert accuses private firms of making ever more cruel instruments*
and proposes a treaty to ban them.
*CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic.*
This coup put the repressive Shah on the throne. That later backfired
on the US when it led to the repressive (and initially murderous)
Islamic Revolution. You could say the US "got what it deserved" —
but that does not mean the outcome was just, since Iranians got what
they did not deserve and they are still stuck with it.
245 US military bases are polluting, or threatening to pollute, their
neighborhood with toxic PFAS.
The PFAS come from firefighting foam. I think people did not initially
realize that it was dangerous, perhaps because in the US there is no
requirement to test that before using a new substance.
The level of PFAS is not very high above the level considered acceptable.
Maybe this will not cause a much harm.
Most young Americans have been convinced that owning a gun makes you safer.
In fact, it is the other way around: owning a handgun makes you more likely
to be shot.
Indeed, the presence of a gun in the house makes you more likely
to be shot.
*Poorest countries should get $300bn a year from IMF to fight climate crisis,
says Joseph Stiglitz.*
*Threats to Germany’s climate campaigners fueled by politicians’ rhetoric, says [Luisa Neubauer, of Fridays for Future].*
*Under cover of a shoplifting panic, the Tories are pushing through a shocking
expansion of facial recognition.*
*Trend for bigger, heavier cars means more particles get released from
breaks, tires and road surfaces.*
This is in addition to using more energy (whether fossil fuel or electricity)
and causing more damage in collisions.
It is crucial to impose sufficient taxes on SUVs and other heavy cars
to reduce their sales to a much smaller level. We should deter people
from buying them unless they really need them.
One kind of use in which GPT-4 can actually qualify as "artificial
intelligence" is when it is used to figure out obscured or hard-to-read
words on a document.
If it does a certain kind of job well frequently, we can say that it
displays understanding of that limited field, which would be
intelligence.
As distinguished from the bullshit generation which ChatGPT does.
Describing the corruption Senator Menendez is accused of with Egypt, and the effects on Egyptian dissidents.
Pakistan's plans to deport Afghans include 700,000 who fled
persecution by the Taliban after those took over.
It is unconscionable not to give them asylum.
Was "Fountain", considered to be pioneering "conceptual art", really
made by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven rather than Marcel Duchamp?
Perhaps we should consider it a hack
rather than art. I contend that it has little artistic value but
does have some hack value.
The article does not excuse Duchamp of plagiarizing her work; rather
it suggests she invited him to present it as his. If they didn't
think of it as real art, they would not have felt competitive over
artistic credit for it.
I do not appreciate conceptual art. I don't want to reprise the
pointless argument about whether it "really is art", I only say that
I'd usually prefer to see a concept presented in clear words.
20 years ago, people on Dominica ate the numerous mountain chicken
frogs as their national dish. After the chytrid fungus and a big hurricane,
hardly any remain.
In Israel, swimming against the current of inter-ethnic hatred, there are
many initiatives for coexistence and cooperation, some of them new or growing
in reaction to the hatred.
I am sad that one of them operates using the digital dis-service
WhatsApp. If I were there, I could laud the spirit of it while
declining to participate or promote that actual activity because of
that techno-ethical issue.
There is also the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said for the specific goal of bringing the two
peoples together.
The moral questions about Israel and Palestine are complex at many levels.
Simplistic answers are inadequate. This is a good introduction to that
complexity.
One of many reasons we should not outsource government functions to private
companies is that they will tend to block the public's right to learn
how those functions are being administered. The outgoing information
commissioner of Scotland calls for making Freedom of Information laws
apply to those companies.
I agree with that as far as it goes, but I think that solution is
incomplete, because this is far from the only problem caused
by outsourcing. The real solution is to put an end to it.
*Louisiana school principal forced to apologize after punishing a student for dancing* (and failing to follow the rules of his church).
US citizens: phone your senators (especially Democrats) to oppose
the vague censorship bill called "Kids Online Safety Act". Republican
attorneys general could use it to intimidate web sites over any topics
that their states prohibit, including abortion and queerness.
I wince when I see the article refer to all web pages as "content", but
that unfortunate usage does not at all reduce the validity and importance of the article's point.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone Senator Schumer and call on him to prioritize
confirming Biden's judicial nominees. This process is dragging and
risks leaving vacancies that might be blocked or even filled by Republicans.
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.
US citizens: call on Biden to prevent further violence and safeguard
peoples' lives in Israel and Gaza.
US citizens: call on US Treasury not to mandate mass surveillance of
crypto.
Everyone: call on Coca Cola to offer refillable glass bottles in the
US and support laws requiring deposits on bottles.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security from proposed
right-wing cuts — yet again.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
One of the Colorado thugs involved in killing Elijah McClain has been
convicted of homicide.
HAMAS, as usual, has shown total contempt for the rules of war
with its massacres and hostage-taking.
Israel claims to be following the rules, but in practical terms is
violating them massively. Its attacks on hospitals and homes violate
them, and blockage of food and medicine,
are clear violations, and they could kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as the fighting
continues.
*No power, water or fuel to Gaza until hostages freed, says Israel minister.*
That makes it explicit. Isn't denying fuel to hospitals and water
to the whole population a war crime?
Preventing civilians from fleeing the battlefield may also be
a war crime. I don't know for certain but I expect so.
A pipeline carrying fossil gas from Estonia to Finland was recently
sabotaged. Finland hints that some other state did it.
I suspect that Russia did it, because having the pipeline out of
service clearly benefits Putin. For a similar reason, I suspected
that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was not done by
Putin.
* In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK,
authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the
passing of draconian new laws, the imposing of severe sentences for
non-violent protests and the labeling of activists as hooligans,
saboteurs or eco-terrorists.*
They seem to be confused about where the real threat comes from. The
protesters do not threaten to destroy civilization and cause a mass
extinction; that threat comes from the businesses that insist on
continuing to cause the danger and the politicians that refuse to stop
them.
If the politicians carried out their responsibility to make those
businesses stop roasting the Earth, the protesters wouldn't need to
undertake to campaign for them to do it.
When politicians call climate defense protesters "selfish", they are
saying the opposite of the truth, denying the danger that global
heating poses to all of us and the virtue of trying to save
civilization from disaster. In effect, they declare allegiance to
the planet-roaster side.
*How criminalization is being used to silence climate activists across the
world.*
*China has sentenced [Uyghur scholar] Rahile Dawut to life in prison
and would like the world to forget her. We must not.*
* Women seeking jobs as domestic workers in the UAE allege they are being
detained and abused in squalid accommodation, while recruiters sell
them over apps and social media platforms to household employers.*
Trafficking and enslavement of workers in many industries exists in
many countries, including in Europe,
but Arab countries on the Persian Gulf seem to protect
it especially strongly.
*Arab ministers urge Israel to resume talks on two-state solution.*
*Philip Morris lobbying to stop WHO ‘attack’ on vapes and similar products.*
Information in the article shows clearly that vapes are being marketed towards
children.
Some business executives want to start a blacklist of all the students
in Harvard student groups that signed their name to a letter that
supported HAMAS.
This would be adding evil to evil. The last thing we need in the US
is another massive blacklist campaign against freedom of speech.
The letter took an extreme position which entirely exculpated HAMAS
for massacres and kidnapping of hundreds of civilians. As you can see
in my recent political notes, I reject that view.
It is true that Israel confines millions of Palestinians to what can
be called open-air prisons,
but that doesn't excuse HAMAS's response.
In a situation with wrong on all sides, we need to be able to see the
various wrongs of various sides, and also to weigh them against each
other. Two great wrongs are not necessarily equivalent. Whether one
wrong overrides or justifies another is a subtle question and it
depends on details.
For instance, a crime such as Putin's invasion of Ukraine justifies
the violence of fighting back with war, which Ukraine is doing, but it
would not justify terrorism as a response. (Ukraine is not doing
that.)
Republicans in the House of Representatives are unable to agree on a
speaker.
Israeli soldiers in occupied Palestine, and fanatical "settlers" whose
goal is ethnic cleansing, have killed 51 Palestinians in the past week
and expelled everyone from small Palestinian villages.
This is terrorism, and it cannot rationally be presented as any sort
of defense against HAMAS.
*When the US Media Silences One Side's Suffering, Only More Death and
War Follow.*
We should mourn the Israelis killed by HAMAS. We should mourn the Gazans
bombed and shelled by Israel. We should mourn the Israelis killed by the
intifadas. We should mourn the Palestinians killed or merely oppressed
by the occupation. And we should make a peace agreement the goal.
Criminal prosecution and harassment of drug users are both cruel and
ineffective for reducing use of the dangerous drugs. San Francisco in
particular, and the rest of the US, should decriminalize the forbidden
drugs.
I warned that the stretchable term "sexual assault", which extends
from grave crimes such as rape through significant crimes such as
groping and down to no clear lower bound, could be stretched to
criminalize minor things, perhaps even stealing a kiss. Now this has
happened.
What next? Will a pat on the arm or a hug be criminalized? There is
no clear limit to how far this can go, when a group builds up enough
outrage to push it.
Israel warned Palestinians to flee a large part of Gaza before a
bigger attack, which might be carpet bombing or a ground attack. Civilians are
leaving their homes in terror.
Gaza being small, they don't have far to go. But there is no safe
place they can flee to in Gaza today. When the fighting is over, they will
probably have no homes to return to. Israeli bombers have already flattened
entire neighborhoods.
People in Gaza caught between evacuation order, HAMAS and bombs.
There is no way to move badly sick patients in hospitals, and no
guarantee those hospitals won't be bombed. The UNRWA is not
evaluating schools in Gaza; will Israel bomb them for revenge?
*Blinken urges Israel to avoid civilian deaths and set up safe zones in Gaza.*
That is at least a step in the right direction for the US.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to cosponsor the
OLIGARCH Act, which would establish a graduated wealth tax starting at
a household wealth 1000 times the median US household wealth.
As of 2019, according to Wikipedia, the median household wealth in the US was a little under $100,000.
Going by that figure, the tax would start at a household wealth of 100
million dollars.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The greater the fear [the corrupter] feels, the more sinister his
threats become.*
The article also asserts that anyone with the slightest scruple of
conscience who tries to obey orders from the corrupter eventually gets
an order that per conscience can't swallow, and the corrupter orders
his followers to cancel per. This is what happened to McCarthy after he
compromised to avoid a shutdown.
Robert Reich: the insurrectionist's current destabilization strategy
is to create chaos and make it appear that the US can't be governed
democratically. He hopes that people who defend democracy and human
rights will give up on them and let him take over.
This follows a line of development from Reagan's sabotage strategy of
trying to make Americans forget the great effectiveness of the New
Deal and the War on Poverty — government programs to help people who
needed help — and claiming that government was bizarrely a problem.
itself.
When Iran took the US embassy personnel hostage, President Carter
ordered a military rescue mission. The mission messed up before
any contact with the enemy, but Carter's decision was correct.
What did Reagan do? He made a deal with the hostage takers that they
would hold the hostages until after the election.
Then Reagan paid a ransom for the hostages.
Today's Republicans don't need to ransom hostages taken by foreign
enemies. Instead they take the hostages and demand the ransom.
Brazil's latest campaign to stop illegal deforestation: seizing
the cows that the deforesters are raising.
I expect it will be difficult for deforesters to resist this approach.
They can't hide or move the cows, and if they can't raise cows,
they can't profit from the deforestation (aside from places where
there is gold to filter).
I think some deforested areas are used to grow soybeans to be shipped
elsewhere and fed to cows. The soybean plants can't be hidden or
moved either. But it would be a shame to waste the current year's
harvest by destroying the plants. Perhaps the state can bring in
workers temporarily to harvest and remove the soybeans. This would
still be effective for deterring further deforestation because
the people who expected to profit will not profit.
Brazil should not limit this campaign to land designated as reserves for
indigenous groups. The whole world depends on keeping the Amazon forest going,
and we need to preserve as much of it as we can. Any parcel that can be
identified as having been illegally deforested should get this treatment.
If a neoliberal government did these things, it would push many
desperately poor Brazilians into hopeless poverty. But Lula rejects
neoliberalism; he is committed to helping them escape poverty in ways
that won't do harm.
*Tunisia detains cartoonist over drawings mocking prime minister.*
For a decade, Tunisia enjoyed hard-won human rights and democracy,
but the authoritarian president has abolished them completely.
Highlighting the fallacy in the seductive argument for "effective
altruism".
Actions such as fraud, and abuses that are not actual fraud but
neighboring to fraud, do have bad consequences: they undermine
society's reserves of rationality and trust, just as surely as the
corrupter and his followers do. The calculations of "effective
altruism" don't measure this harm so they cannot include it in
the conclusions.
In a previous political note, Oct. 4th I wrote:
How about election stealers and voter suppressors?
The point I intended was to show the conclusion that the fascist's own
logic would lead to about how to deal with criminals like him. I
expected it to be obvious that I disagreed with his attitude
towards shoplifters, but just in case, here I say so explicitly.
I disagree with fascist thinking. Neither shoplifters nor election
underminers deserve to be summarily killed. People don't deserve to
be killed for those crimes even if they have been convicted, because
the death penalty is unjust in itself.
What we should do to them is give them fair trials, and if we find them
guilty, punish them in accord with their actions.
Rigging or undermining an election is a far graver crime than
shoplifting. Also, we should excuse shoplifting when poor people are
stealing the necessities of life.
To put an end to shoplifting we
should correct its root cause: poverty. The government should help
everyone to have a decent life without stealing.
*The American dream has been sold and replaced with a Ponzi scheme
meant to benefit the investor class. […] The American education
system has become a way of forcing lower-class citizens into a form of
indentured servitude.*
The EU threatened to punish Ex-Twitter for disinformation about HAMAS.
*NYPD agrees to ‘significantly’ change how it handles protests in the city.*
Starmer continues to appeal to Tory voters by promising to keep taxes low.
This precludes obtaining the funds needed to fix Britain's giant problems.
The article presents this as asking Tory voters to switch to Labour,
but I'd describe it as switching the Labour party to Tory voters and ditching
many Labour voters.
Drought caused by global heating is helping sea water pollute ground
water and rivers in Louisiana, and ruin it for human use.
This problem will spread to other rivers and other coastal areas as global heating advances.
*Chairman Sanders Releases New Report Showing Major Nonprofit Hospital
Systems Exploiting Tax Breaks and Prioritizing CEO Pay Over Helping
Patients Afford Medical Care.*
Russia's internal "security" apparatus proposes to require all web
sites in Russia to store visitors' geolocations and "payment
information" to give to the state later.
It is not clear to me whether this would require all web sites to
collect
that information, or only require them to store it and hand
it over if they collect it.
In the US, large companies record this information if you ever
transmit it to a site which uses it. I don't want those companies to
get such data about me. Fortunately my free browser, IceCat, does not
know or send my geolocation, and using the Tor network prevents sites
from figuring out from my IP address.
As for payment information, most sites impose use of nonfree
JavaScript code in order to pay (fsf.org being a happy exception), and
I refuse to run that. For that reason, in addition to my privacy, I
never pay for anything over the internet. Never!
California is setting up an alert system to help find missing black women and
girls who may have been kidnaped or coerced.
The Sydney thug department wants to treat even potential participants
at a pro-Palestine rally as criminal suspects: searching them
arbitrarily and jailing people who refuse to show their papers.
Setting off flares on an outdoor stairway is not violence, neither
against persons nor against property. Neither is chanting slogans,
even odious slogans of bigotry such as antisemitism. We should
detest those slogans but not arrest people for them.
Sydney has also banned all marches in support of Gazans. Human rights
defender condemn this action.
I condemn HAMAS's terrorism. I condemn Israel's siege and killing in
Gaza also.
Note, I capitalize "HAMAS" because it is an acronym.
Most Gazans are now cut off from the Internet following Israel's air
attacks against communication facilities and the electric power grid.
Russia
failed to get enough votes
for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
This says the world has a little more moral commitment than I thought.
HAMAS carried out a massive terrorist attack on Israeli civilians
in areas neighboring Gaza,
killing at least 1000.
It also took over 100 hostages.
In revenge,
Israel bombed residential neighborhoods
of Gaza. It has not finished yet, and I expect it will kill many
thousands of Gazan civilians. The report I've seen is that at least
830 in Gaza have been killed by shelling which has hit a school a well as hospitals and homes.
In the past, Israel has always offered some sort of excuses after
killing unarmed Palestinian civilians, individually or massively. But
the excuses are often strained. Israel's attacks
have hit
press offices
and medical clinics,
as well as residences
too. Israeli
snipers have shot medics
attending protests.
I can't conclude that Israel's attacks on Gaza are really other than
larger terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, Israel has put Gaza under total siege, keeping out
food and medicine even as the hospitals are overwhelmed.
I expect that Netanyahu will use this
to force through the final blow against judicial independence in Israel.
Ex/Twitter's coverage of the conflict in Gaza is so full of
lies
and deepfakes
that it is hard to find anything that is truth.
I urge people to stop reading Ex/Twitter — to avoid wasting their
time, as a protest against what the Musk-rat is doing, and to reject the
nonfree app that Ex/Twitter says you have to use.
I tried recently to look at a specific tweet using Nitter, and it did
eventually work after a substantial delay.
The principal of a public school in Louisiana punished a student for
dancing at a party.
The punishment was grave
— it could hurt per academic future.
The principal admitted he was trying to impose his religion the student.
That is prima facie unjust, and unconstitutional to boot.
The fact that students paid for the party venue is a side issue,
because such imposition of religion would have been unjust even if
they had been dancing in the public school.
Governor Newsom vetoed the California
bill to prohibit
discrimination based on caste. He claimed that such discrimination was already prohibited by
California law, but a recent court decision found otherwise.
California passed a law requiring all data brokers to participate in
a state
"delete all my data"
program. The bill makes some exceptions (not listed in the article).
If you can tell me the specifics, I would appreciate it.
Also, I am not sure if it covers data brokers that keep data on
Californians but are not "in" California. If it does not cover
them, I tend to think it won't make a big difference.
*Extreme weather displaced 43m children in past six years,
UNICEF reports.*
The article says that 125 million people of all ages were displaced due to extreme weather events.
Ukraine's victories over Putin's navy has
reopened the grain export
sea route — but the flow rate is small now.
Putin has inspired a
global push for a system
of sanctioning and prosecuting war criminals.
A displaced Kurd from Azerbaijan comments on the
carefully stimulated
hatred
between Armenians and Azeris, and the falsehoods used to stimulated it.
Human rights campaigners have
no hope of excluding China
from getting a seat on the UN Human Rights Counsel, but they are trying
at least to reduce the number of votes it will get.
Other international institutions are likewise structured based on the
assumptions that governments that disrespect human rights wholesale
(not just occasionally in practice, as the US does) will not come to
dominate the institutions. But when they do, it is like a Republican
gerrymander — it is almost impossible to end their unjust influence.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Jared Kushner's
connections to Salafi Arabia.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to phase out fossil fuel extraction on
federal lands and waters.
US citizens: call on Congress to extend and improve SNAP in the 2023
Farm Bill.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
New Zealand's reaction to Covid-19, closing the border, seems to have
reduced its death rate to just 20% of the US death rate in that period.
Republican Extremist Gaetz seems to agree with progressive leader Ro
Khanna about some reforms to Congress and the US government.
I agree with the author that term limits for Congress are a foolish
idea and that term limits for the Supreme Court require a
constitutional amendment. I support the other three.
Is it wort while negotiating a deal like this with a sabotage-minded
Republican? He may not stick to any good deal long enough to get it
enacted and through9ugh the Senate. And it would be hard to cooperate
with him on one issue while he demands to abolish other programs that
poor Americans depend on for their survival.
However, if he can learn to tone himself down enough to cooperate
successfully, it could be a good thing.
The US Supreme Court is recognized by most Americans as a problem for
Americans' rights and democracy — a broken limb of our system of
government.
Stadiums that Greece built for the 2004 Olympic games are now unsafe
due to lack of maintenance,
which was caused by financial crisis imposed by the Euro-banks
together with the rules of the Euro zone that condemn countries to disaster by limiting deficit spending
even when that is the way to avoid disaster.
Greece under financial attack couldn't find the funds to save
thousands of citizens from death,
and certainly not for maintaining mere stadiums.
September's temperatures were 1.8°C above preindustrial temperatures.
For that month, the Earth reached a level of heat that implies
almost certain disaster.
Because that level of heat isn't permanent yet, there is still hope of
avoiding disaster. People are installing solar and wind generation
very fast, but now we need to stop all new fossil fuel development
(Hello, USA! Hello, China!) and speed up decarbonization as much as
possible before 2030.
*Biden Ignores Public Interest In Push For Record Methane Gas Exports and
Fracking.*
Of course, Republicans want to do worse — but that doesn't make this ok.
*Denver city council members propose $300m medical debt relief plan
for residents.*
The article also explains how the primarily private US medical system
systematically puts people into debt.
What we really need is a proper national medical system that would
treat everyone who is ill and never put anyone in debt. However,
actions like these are a step forward.
Nobelist Angus Deaton on inequality: "The war on poverty has become a
war on the poor."
He aims to revitalize attention to the suffering caused by an economic
system that rewards predators.
I think "has been replaced by" would state it more accurately than
"has become". The change was intentional.
The IMF's managing director warns central banks to stop trying to
"beat inflation" with high interest rates.
Pakistan says it will deport an estimated 1.7m Afghans who don't have
official permission to be in Pakistan.
The announcement says that the 1.4m Afghans with official permission
to live in Pakistan can stay. However, the Taliban oppress all women
and all girls, and a large set of men (those who had relationships
with the former government agencies or any western institutions).
Do all of the Afghans in those categories living in Pakistan have
official refugee papers? I would expect Pakistan's criteria for
granting asylum are narrower than that, perhaps much narrower.
The historical background of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
To save the spotted owl requires killing other owl species that
compete with it.
I don't feel sentimental about this. Since there is no automatic
"balance of nature" that maintains itself, keeping things in balance
and protecting species requires intervention. Therefore let us
intervene — to protect all the existing species from extinction.
The Tories now plan to restrict private installation of solar panels.
Plutocracy politicians have shown a pattern of doing this, citing
various reasons.
A US example: paying electricity customers for delivering their excess
solar electricity to the grid makes sense only if the grid can
transmit that power to someone else who wants it; but transmitting
increasing amounts of power that way requires upgrades to the grid.
Plutocratist politicians dismiss the idea of spending to upgrade the
grid, preferring that we spend over and over on burning extra fossil
fuels and destroying civilization.
I suspect that these politicians' real motive is some sort of past or
future reward from the fossil fuel companies.
George Orwell's advice on protecting freedom:
“Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right
invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe
half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long
run. …. We have become too civilized to grasp the
obvious.
For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and
to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often
the lesser evil."
Orwell learned this by joining in the war against fascism in Spain,
back when no other government would support the Spanish Republic
against the rebellious fascist military.
The article is full of interesting remarks on other topics. One is
how to draw the line between satire used to provoke violence and
oppression and satire that rebukes it.
The article points out that the organizers of genocide in Rwanda used humor to
convey messages of hatred and murder, to deadly effect. American
fascists likewise often foment violence, even murder, with messages
that have the superficial form of jokes.
A Labour MP warns that Starmer's policies of low taxes for the rich
will cause disillusionment for Labour supporters.
They see that the only hope from Labour would be that Starmer
doesn't really mean the policies he states so clearly.
I know a Labour supporter who is planning not to vote in the coming
election because perse sees no party to vote for.
UK legislators have started a campaign against real time facial recognition.
As China demonstrates, it puts human rights in danger.
After-the-fact recognition is also a threat to human rights.
As a famous science fiction story pointed out, the past continues
until infinitesimally close to the present; the ability to "watch the past"
approaches, as a limit, the ability to "watch the present".
Right-wing fanatics
in New York state have been impersonating state
officials to intimidate Democratic voters.
Right-wing fanatics eagerly seek ways to intimidate those who oppose
them. If real officials want to reassure bona fide voters that they
are safe, they should do more than just order them to "cease and desist".
Limiting the response to that looks like going soft on a criminal gang.
The state should vigorously prosecute right-wing election fraudsters whatever their methods.
The antidemocratic government of Poland is employing all the tools of
fascism to defeat a last-ditch attempt to defeat fascism in the Polish
election and
return the country
to democratic government and human rights.
Ex-Twitter now shows
ads that don't
identify themselves as ads, and don't say who is doing the advertising.
Musk seems determined to adopt for Ex-Twitter every nasty thing
that users have criticized web sites for.
*Police chief who led raid of small Kansas newspaper
put on
suspension.*
*Untruths [that is, bullshit] spouted by chatbots ended up on the web — and Microsoft's Bing
search engine served them up
as facts.*
A poet visited Svalbard
and found that the retreat of the ice was so blatant that one couldn't miss it.
*[A study by the Refugee Council charity] suggests asylum claims by
three out of four crossing Channel [are valid and] would be granted.*
If this is correct, Tory claims that most are "economic migrants" are false.
Right-wing politicians often do this: they try to put the
disadvantaged in the wrong, and don't hesitate to do so falsely.
*US student held in Dubai for weeks for tapping security officer’s arm.*
I am disappointed that Ukrainians are reacting to Putin's invasion
by hating Russians and characteristics of Russians.
A few weeks after the invasion, I urged Ukrainians to direct their
anger at Putin and his crimes, not at Russia and Russians.
Ecologists warn that monoculture tree plantations endanger native
wildlife while doing little good against global heating.
This is especially the case when the trees planted are an intrusive
species to begin with.
Negative consequences reported include drying out ecosystems, acidifying soils,
crowding out native plants and turbocharging wildfires.
Australia's latest climate plan would allow some coal mines to increase
their coal-burning emissions until 2030 and profit from it.
The Labor government is still much better than the previous constantly
dishonest right-wing government,
and much better than the US on climate issues,
but we can't help being very disappointed by its occasional egregious attacks
on hope for the future.
Correcting common myths about cancer.
As for homeopathy, that is such an absurd idea it can't possibly do anything.
It is quackery with dilutions of grandeur.
The Hollywood writers-studios contract has interesting rules to permit
some uses of large language models but not allow them to replace writers.
I hope that they give good results — but we still should not call
those models "AI", because whatever their output says you had better
not believe it is true.
Chatgpt is an injustice because it is software that is not released
for users, not even as an executable. So it is even more restrictive
than a nonfree program. We call that "Service as a Software
Substitute".
Comparing the marketing of gambling with the marketing of tobacco.
Both can get people hooked on habits that can can prove dangerous.
I am opposed to prohibition of tobacco, and opposed to prohibition of
gambling, but that doesn't mean we should allow them to be the object
of planned advertising and marketing.
Freeing Indian coffee plantation workers from debt slavery.
*What will happen [to migrants] if the "right to shelter" law is
rolled back in New York City?*
*UK government asks UAE for assurances over free speech at Cop28
summit.*
This point is valid and would be crucial, but the Cop28 climate
summit is so corrupted already
that I can't see any hope for it.
Some Americans who want to renounce US citizenship are suing because the
government demands they pay over $2000 for the bureaucratic act.
To impose a fee for renouncing citizenship is, in effect, an attempt
to block renunciation, and that is unjust. The US government should
simply absorb any costs of the updating of records.
*US student safety not improved by surveillance technology such as
cameras and facial recognition software, research shows.*
Keep in mind that many of the edtech "tools" that students and teachers
are compelled to use are also surveillance technology
even though surveillance is not their ostensible purpose.
(I suspect it is a substantial part of businesses' purpose
in selling those products and dis-services.)
Surveillance that is a "byproduct" is just as wrong as surveillance
"on purpose."
UK ministers want to put everyone in the UK into a facial recognition
database that can be searched instantly.
This would be ideal for finding shoplifters, protesters, journalists,
whistleblowers, and anyone else the state wants to catch.
Global heating is ruining alpaca farming in Peru.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject HR 5239, whose purpose is
simply to prevent the protection of critically endangered Rice's whales.
To sign without running
nonfree JavaScript
code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on Congress
to increase critical aid programs that save people's lives.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on all US states
to join the FTC's enforcement case
against Amazon for its abuse of near-monopoly.
Amazon
is guilty of many other injustices, and together they convince me
to boycott the company totally. I ask people, when buying anything for me,
not to get it from Amazon.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the End Solitary Confinement Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call on Costco
to stop using Citibank for its credit card.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Raise the Wage Act, to raise the US minimum wage.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
to finalize the draft rule to exclude medical debt from credit reports.
*Gambling and crypto lobbyists [and TikTok]
pay £3k to sit alongside
Tory ministers.*
Biden has endorsed building the border wall that the bullshitter ordered,
and has declared a number of
exceptions to federal law protections
for wildlife to unblock the project.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinista party has banned the opposition party
from entering the coming
local elections. So it will run unopposed.
The hatefulness and dishonest of lunatic Republicans is illustrated by
the interim speaker's demand that Rep. Pelosi vacate a secondary
office
immediately if not sooner, while she is away
at Senator
Feinstein's funeral.
The conveniently located extra office, traditionally a perk for former
speakers, is not terribly important and neither is its withdrawal. A
person who was not foaming at the mouth with hate might have given
Pelosi a few extra days to move. Someone who was not hateful might
not have brought it up at all.
I wonder how the interim speaker was appointed. I suppose it was not
officially a hate contest, but unofficially it might have been.
* At least 20 members [of various governing boards] at California
public universities
have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry.*
Several Florida thugs beat up
Le'Keian Woods
and maimed him, then placed criminal charges on him. Video suggests
the thugs are the ones who should be in jail.
*South Sudan ‘attacking’ journalists and activists who
criticize the state.*
Two giant agricultural trading companies, Cargill and ADM,
successfully campaigned
to prevent a treaty
that would stop sales of
soybeans grown on deforested land.
That enabled deforestation to continue at high speed. This deforestation
has brought the Amazon rainforest close to a tipping point which could
destroy that forest and this destroy civilization.
This was when Bolsonaro was president of Brazil. I would guess that he
also worked to prevent that agreement. Lula has decreased deforestation,
but an international agreement would decrease it a lot more.
The former saboteur-in-chief has been accused of giving US military
secrets to an Australian billionaire
after leaving office.
I expect that this was a crime, and he ought to be prosecuted for it.
You will know that there are situations in which I think it is
legitimate, even morally imperative, for whistleblowers to inform the
public about certain kinds of government secrets, sometimes military
secrets. Namely, those that involve grave wrongdoing (sometimes even
war crimes) that the public needs to know about — for instance,
crimes that Wikileaks revealed.
What the corrupter did here was unlike that on every dimension, He
told one person privately, not the public. The secrets he told were
of military importance but did not concert crimes that the public has
a duty to be concerned with.
Workers at Kaiser Permanente are on strike,
demanding wage increases
and the hiring of more staff so that the current workers won't be overloaded.
*UN report urges
global end to fossil fuel exploration by 2030.*
*Brazil expels
illegal settlers
from indigenous lands in Amazon.*
In many cases, illegal settlers drove indigenous people off their lands
by force, and not very long ago. Restitution is simply and clearly appropriate.
US citizens:
call on Walmart
to take bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides off its shelves.
US citizens:
Tell the Biden Administration to stand firm
against corporation lobbyists, and tax billion dollar corporations.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to oppose all
bills that would weaken or break up the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB).
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Rep. McCarthy
was desperate to be Speaker of the House, so in January
he accepted conditions that put him at the mercy of the lunatic
Republican fringe. Now they have forced him out of the position.
The lunatics forced a vote, in which they and the Democrats declined
to vote for McCarthy. That denied him the majority he needed to
remain speaker.
Most Republicans voted for a deal
with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. But the lunatics won't
support any Republican as speaker who would agree to such compromises.
It seems to me that the Republicans who are willing to compromise
should compromise with the Democrats and elect a speaker who will
support such compromises. However, I expect that even the
most right-wing of so-called
"centrist"
Democrats won't be acceptable to them.
A few Republicans broke with the bulk of them and advocated a
compromise to allow the government to continue operating. I wonder if
it would be possible to make a deal in which one of them and one of
the Democrats alternate speakership, perhaps week by week.
One lunatic plans to nominate the corrupter for
Speaker of the House.
I fear he may win, if enough Republicans don't dare refuse to vote
for him. He won't be willing to do the actual work involved, so
his occupation of that office could paralyze the House entirely.
That may be exactly what he wants.
Scientists have predicted a tipping point that will dry up the
South
American monsoon
and eliminate most of the Amazon rain forest. It could decrease the rainfall by 30%.
Several measurements show signs of approaching the tipping point.
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to restore net neutrality.
The FCC's version
of network neutrality is too little, but it is better than nothing,
US citizens:
call on Congress
to increase — not cut — IRS funding.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Governor Newsom has chosen a replacement for Senator Feinstein, but
she is not a progressive champion.
Here is criticism
of some of her actions.
It is too bad that identity politics — a person's demographic
classification — exercises people so much that it can distract public
opinion from where an official stands on the issues that perse can
help decide.
The UK government is tracking the
posts of education experts
in order
to cancel events they were invited to.
They don't like it
one bit.
Australia is still sending boat people to Nauru for
semipermanent
imprisonment
in a place
where the press are excluded.
* [Bolivian ex-president] Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and former defense
minister agree to pay for 2003 violence in which 60 protesters were
killed [by the Bolivian military].*
This was the outcome of a lawsuit in US court by the victims.
It has proved very hard to identify accused Nazi war criminals well
enough to convict them of participation in the Holocaust.
Things may be different for today's war crimes — it seems that there
is far more data nowadays to identify Putin-forces war criminals.
Why taxing inheritance is vital for a good society.
This note has been replaced by this one.
Some Azeris attack Armenians living near the border between the
two countries. The latter fear Azerbaijan will conquer more land,
DeMentis's ally Christopher Rufo hints at support for white supremacism.
This is no surprise to me. The US fascist movement has made
supporting white supremacism normal, along with antisemitism,
antimuslimism, as well as fascist political violence.
The European boycott of Russian fossil fuel exports has greatly cut
Russia's sales and income.
I expected Russia to sell to its new friends, India and China, all it wished
to sell. It seems that is not possible, but I don't know why.
Artists and actors are recognizing the disparaging nature of the term
"content".
And "creator", too, when it is stretched to included all sorts of
participation in making works of authorship.
I have condemned these terms since 2002.
Denmark is revising its dictionary of Danish to achieve more gender equality
by coining words to balance out points of inequality.
I support this, because the goal is a good one and there is no wrong in it.
Contrast this with the demand made in Spain to delete antisemitic word
definitions from the official dictionary. Using those words expresses
bigotry, and those who use them deserve criticism for that. But
hiding their existence by deleting them from the dictionary is
dishonesty about facts.
Slowing down climate defense action will result in increased heat and
increased damage, even if it still reaches "net zero" by 2050.
*Approving new oil and gas fields only
increased the already large amount of reserves that will have to be
kept in the ground if global heating limits are to be reached.*
But what's the point of developing more reserves if it doesn't
lead to extracting a larger quantity? Obviously the planet roasters
will extract more, meaning they are lying if they claim they won't.
The Tory
Party is suffering
disaster among its supporters.
If only there were a party that supported democracy, human rights, and
partial socialism that they could vote for.
McCarthy allowed a
stopgap funding resolution
to be voted on; most Democrats and most Republicans voted for it. The
only harmful part was that it aids Putin (and global fascism) by
denying funds for Ukraine's defense.
Supposed "advanced recycling" for plastics seems to use more energy
and release more toxic waste than making new plastic.
The Tories' approval of a giant new oilfield, which will be paid
for 90% by state funds, totally trashes the idea of decarbonization.
And Starmer-Labour supports it too.
The FBI discovered a right-wing extremist Satanic cult that entraps
children as young as 8 and adolescents as old as 17, making them
make videos of porn or self-wounding. The leader faces trial.
These deeds are horrible. If the FBI caught a gang which does that,
it has done good service. At the same time, I must recall that the
FBI has a history of leading hapless helpless, mentally weak people to
go through motions of fantasy terrorism, for which they face real
trial and real imprisonment. I wish I could be sure that the FBI has caught
a real abuser rather than manufacturing one.
*Swiss glaciers lose 10% of their volume in two years.*
This effect is not in itself a disaster, but it is a sign
that disasters will be coming rapidly from now on.
An experiment found that when homeless people received more aid money,
they spent that money mainly on important things that they needed.
Covid vaccine disinformation, believed by many members of the public,
has dissuaded many Americans from using those vaccines to protect
themselves. The distrust has spread to dog vaccines, so
many Americans leave their dogs vulnerable to disease by not
vaccinating them either.
The breakup of the super-continent Pangaea 55 million years ago
released large amounts of methane that caused 5C of global heating.
Many species went extinct.
The old and damaged Line 5 pipeline crosses the Great Lakes,
and if it breaks it could pollute the drinking water for
a substantial part of North America's population.
The danger of pollution from any rupture of the Line 5 pipeline is
very important, and may be a reason to shut down that pipeline and
remove it. By contrast, what a religion says about the lake is of
anthropological interest.
Robert Reich describes Republicans' government shutdowns decades
ago that happened while he was working for the US government.
We have imagined "contextual advertising" as a simple system that
sited advertisements based on the subject matter of what users are
looking at. In fact, these systems make sophisticated use of whatever
other data it can get about a user.
The conclusion I reach is that we should require systems not to be
able to get any other data about individuals and not to require people
to non nonfree software.
The Uber example is telling. Uber places ads based on where someone
is traveling to. It can do that because it runs nonfree software (a
cr&helip;app) in the customer's computer. It also uses whatever it
knows about that particular customer (whom it has identified on each
trip).
We should not allow companies to require (or pressure) customers to
use systems that make them vulnerable to tracking. Privacy is a human
right, and businesses are not entitled to human rights. So it is
justified to regulate business practices simply to prevent businesses
from deducing too much about humans.
We often see, in reality, efforts to limit all sorts of aid to those
who are "truly needy".
A Republican-dominated school district in North Carolina tried to ban
schools from participating in the American Library Association's annual
Banned Books Week, but backed down in response to press coverage.
Lionfish, with
toxic barbs,
are taking over the reefs of the Caribbean
and nearby marine areas, and wiping out most other species.
Some fishermen now mainly catch lionfish, but it is hard to do that
without getting stung.
Is it possible to design a trap that would open a door to a large
chamber, then squeeze the water out leaving only the lionfish in the
trap?
Are there any ideas for biological control? It is hard to make
sure that those systems don't get out of hand.
*Antarctic sea ice shrinks to
lowest annual maximum
level on record.*
Global heating
has eliminated most of the salmon population in northern Japan this
year, and that has eliminated most bear cubs born there this year.
*Investigation [of four Louisiana thugs] triggered by lawsuits
alleging abuse
and sexual humiliation of people taken to unmarked torture
warehouse.*
A UK thinktank published a report overestimating the cost of achieving
"net zero" which was "full of errors that even a schoolboy would be
embarrassed about." This should have been no surprise given that the
thinktank — or should we call it a "drunktank" — hired a global
heating denialist to prepare the report.
The article refers to him as a "climate skeptic", but that PR term is
used to excuse climate denialism. A real skeptic applies rationality
to check claimed conclusions. Clearly that denialist did not aim to
qualify as a real skeptic.
AI programs (real or pretend) often implement racial bias. California
is considering a law that attempts to stop this — by identity
politics!
Identity politics is not a real solution to any problem. What's more,
the problem of bias in algorithms is subtle. It is a mistake to
assume that people know how to avoid it or even detect it as a
consequence of their demographic background.
What California (and all polities) ought to do is require all software
used to make decisions about individual people to be free software and
its source code published, That way the public will be able to study
whether its behavior is biased.
A UK thug has been charged with murder for shooting a man dead
who was unarmed and caught in his car, which was blocked in and
could not move. So the thugs that carry guns went on a sort of
strike.
A former head of a thug department rebukes the demand of thugs
to be above the law.
*Young climate activists staged sit-down protests outside the offices
of every member of Labour’s shadow cabinet on Friday, calling on
the party to take a tougher line on the proposed new Rosebank
oilfield and back a comprehensive Green New Deal.*
*Oil Change International: Biden’s offshore drilling plan is
a massive
giveaway to polluters just days after president skips United
Nations summit on ending fossil fuels.*
How the Republican's
secret commission
to cut Social Security and Medicare would work.
*Disaster recovery projects stall nationwide
as FEMA
runs out of money.*
This is because it is compelled to prepare for the government shutdown.
Tory minister Suella Braverman stated in an interview that
child-grooming gangs in the UK were mainly made up of
Pakistani-British. The newspaper was forced to apologize for
publishing this, since it turns out those gangs are mostly whites.
Braverman is Indian-British. Since India and Pakistan have been
persistent enemies since the partition which divided them in 1947. I
suppose she seized an opportunity to spread hate against Pakistan.
You can hardly trust a Tory.
*Whether or not Suella Braverman becomes the next Tory leader, her
extreme [and usually cruel] ideas rule the party.*
Senator Feinstein, a "centrist" (somewhat right-wing) Democrat,
has died.
Her death, as such, is regrettable; no human being deserves to die.
However, her departure from the Senate is good for America and the
world, because it will enable California's Governor Newsom to replace
her soon with a progressive Democrat.
AI pattern recognizers are effective at getting a good chance of recognizing
many significant phenomena.
Fraudulent welfare claims
is one of them.
But humans accused of any sort of wrongdoing deserve a real investigation.
It is inherently unjust to punish someone because a program reported perse's actions "resemble crime."
We must keep in mind that the UK's welfare system is designed to be cruel; it reduces
unemployed
and disabled
people to a point where they
can't actually get by, and imposes impossible requirements. Whatever system
of enforcement
of those requirements the state happens to use is a means
to a horrible end.
*[Injustice] Thomas Secretly Participated
in Koch Network Donor Events.*
*Labour conference rule changes
could stop members debating issues like Brexit.*
Starmer is determined not to allow the Labour Party to be in any way
a vehicle to focus public opinion on major public issues. Only the small
questions Starmer will tolerate are going to be in order.
Starmer has already assured that advocates of bigger changes can't run for MP
or even local offices
in the Labour Party.
Allegedly re-elected
President Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe
has arrested a number of opposition politicians. Others were kidnapped
and tortured. Some of their lawyers have been, too.
There were doubts about Mnangagwa's first alleged election
too.
The bullshitter is now claiming he supports working people and their
unions. As usual, that is more bullshit.
Here are facts
about his career of opposition to unions.
Some Republicans at an auto workers'
rally for the corrupter
were true devotees of his. They carried signs claiming to be
auto workers or union members which were lies.
Global heating and its effects are making marmots' violent, dangerous
lives even more violent and dangerous.
Whether they will adapt or be wiped out is not clear.
In the 20th century there was a long battle between car drivers and
pedestrians about who streets were really for.
*Big European insurers "underwrite 30% of US coal despite net zero pledges".*
Does that conflict with their pledges? How could we know?
Formulating emission reduction plans in terms
of "net zero" makes it easy to fudge such things, so let's
not give them that loophole.
*Insurance Giants Deeply Involved in Underwriting U.S. Coal,
Undermining Public "Net-Zero" Commitments.*
Formulating these plans in terms of "net zero" makes them easier to
undermine. If we made these plans in terms of reducing the total use
of fossil fuel being extracted, or the total amount being burned,
it would be harder for anything to to sneakily undermine them.
*Despite climate promises, insurance companies are still covering coal.*
Due to global heating effects, Europe's olive oil harvest has been badly
damaged and its own production is exhausted for this year.
Richard Stallman will give some talks in Frankfurt, Germany:
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject secret commissions designed to decide to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Also phone your representative to convey the same message.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The Armenian government of Nagorno-Karabakh has announced
it will dissolve
at the end of this year. Over half the Armenians there have already fled.
I suppose the rest will flee soon.
This is how ethnic cleansing operates. Azerbaijan, which is a
dictatorship and does not take human rights seriously, doesn't need an
official policy saying "No Armenians allowed."
However, in the years when Armenians ruled the Azeri areas of
Nagorno-Karabakh, ISTR that the Azeri population mostly fled
from some of those areas.
New pun: Le Concours Pyrenéen
The Tories have
rigged elections
in Britain much as Republicans have
done so in the US — with voter suppression and gerrymandering.
A Thai free speech activist has been sentenced to 4 years in prison
for
damaging the king's reputation
with some of his remarks.
This shows how repressive Thai law is.
*September 11 defendant declared unfit for trial
after panel finds CIA
abuse
rendered him psychotic.*
Richard Stallman will give a talk
on September 30th in Prague, Czech Republic, at Charles University (Univerzita Karlova) at 14:00h.
The event is organized by The Faculty of Educational Studies
(Pedagogická fakulta), Free Digital Society members. It ends at 16:30.
The Armenian
inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh
are fleeing after Azerbaijan's conquest.
Striking auto workers now see that
Biden supports them and the fascist
despises them.
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to adopt a stronger limit for pollution from trucks.
The Tory minister in charge of the hostile environment in Britain
calls for rejecting
the European convention on human rights.
Julian Assange's perfunctory final hearing is expected very soon.
Extraditing him raises issues of violating the European convention on
human rights.
Will the UK follow its obligations under the treaty, or
use the occasion, Putin-like, to display contempt for it?
The corrupter has been found guilty of fraud for tremendously
exaggerating
the value of his businesses
in order to get deals.
The judge canceled his business certificates in New York State.
Large fines follow.
*Trump is a real estate "genius" only in a "fantasy world".*
*[The] Conman […] tells GOP to shut down the government to
stop
his criminal trials
(which it won't).*
US citizens:
call on ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, CNN, and affiliates:
Stop platforming the fascist leader.
*It’s a lie promoted by the right [wing] that state help saps
people
of their drive.*
Plutocrats want working-class people to have to try desperately to
find a job, so that they will
take a subservient attitude
towards their so-called "betters".
US citizens:
call on members of Congress
to co-sponsor the Israeli Democracy Resolution.
I am not forgetting
about the injustice of the occupation of Palestine,
but the fight to prevent Israel from being taken by fascism is in a crucial stage now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and convey this message.
My name is NAME, I am your constituent. Please reject any budget that
slashes Medicaid, and publicly oppose any plan to create a closed-door
commission to cut Social Security and Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on Citibank and BofA
to stop funding JBS Foods, because of its deforestation.
US citizens:
call on the Bureau of Land Management
to protect the Western Arctic from oil drilling.
* Reality TV show contestants are more like unpaid interns than
Hollywood stars.*
Exploitation of interns occurs in many fields of business.
But let's not forget that enabling the most capable young people
get the best jobs is only part of what is needed for a good society.
We need to enable everyone to have a decent life — which means,
the less capable don't get so much less than the more skilled.
Likewise, social mobility is not as important as giving everyone a
decent life. Social mobility is one of the ways the wealthy try to
convince most of society to settle for a chance of getting rich
rather than demanding a decent life.
The FDA warned pharma companies to stop lying about which drugs
are covered by their patents.
The patent system is basically a scheme to give big companies power
over markets. In the area of medicine, they enable pharma companies
to make medicines so expensive that most people who need them, even in
a "rich" country (one with a comparatively large fraction of rich
people), cannot afford them.
The companies argue for this power based on the expense of developing
and then testing the drugs. Indeed, those are expensive, and we can't
just wish those expenses away. But the development expenses are often
paid for by the government (as they should be) and yet the government
allows the company to seize the profit for itself. As for the
testing, giving pharma companies control over testing of medicines
enables them to corrupt it.
We should most definitely remove testing of the effects
of medicines from their hands.
Disney has yielded to right-wing culture wars and plans to be s silent
about issues such as gay rights and racial equality.
Since the right-wing extremists will surely continue fighting to impose their
views on everyone, this is a setback for society.
Please keep in mind that Disney's commercial activities are fully based on
injustice: DRM,
identifying all customers,
and antisocializing contracts which demand users commit not to share copies,
Sharing is good and should be lawful.
Thus, the only modern copy of a Disney movie or TV program that does
not do you injustice is an unauthorized copy.
Michigan has raised the minimum age for marriage to 18, protested by
Republicans.
This change may be for the better. Marriage is a difficult
responsibility, nowadays more than ever.
However, referring to teenagers under 18 as "children" is propaganda
for treating them as helpless and "protecting" them from any agency,
even in activities and relationships far less difficult than marriage.
Lauren Weinstein: Chinese-style surveillance of everyone, in the UK.
The UK has gone heavily for surveillance. It has tracked all car
travel using license-plate recognition cameras since around 15 years
ago.
Yascha Mounk: *Should we borrow from other cultures? Of course we
should, just as we always have.*
The article explains how "cultural appropriation" has been applied to
situations in which real wrong was done — but the real wrong was
something else, and that concept was an invalid explanation of it.
*Instead of condemning appropriation, we should seek to build a society
in which members of every group are valued equally – and all are free
to draw inspiration from the cultures of their compatriots.*
To do that is a big challenge; but it will be a little less difficult
if we stop thinking that inequality and prejudice can be part of the solution.
See also Kwame Anthony Appiah's brilliant analysis.
Students and parents are organizing to defy Governor DeMentis's school
censorship.
Britons rallied to support rejoining the EU.
I predicted that leaving the EU could be beneficial if Corbyn were in charge
but would be disastrous with Tories in charge.
Rejoining the EU would be beneficial for Britain if plutocratists such
as Tories or Starmer-Labour will be in charge.
*The inheritance tax debate we should really be having [in the UK]?
Whether to set it at 100%.*
That goes for other countries too.
I don't see a need for inheritance tax on the rich to be quite so
high. Surely 90% of large fortunes is enough to collect as taxes.
Calling for stronger pipeline safety rules in the US.
If the pipeline carries fossil fuel, we must include in its safety
risks not only the risk of a leak, but also the risk that the fuel
will not leak and instead be delivered and burnt as intended.
Proposing to reshape education systems to better fit a world with an
internet.
The author's misguided perspective can be seen fro the fact
that he thinks that the number of startup companies (and thus billionaires)
measures success. But his points about education may be valid nonetheless.
But they may not remain valid. By 2060 there may be no internet,
because globalized manufacturing may have been wiped out by climate
disaster. We may need old methods of education once again.
Robert Reich: Biden is now the first President of the United States to
march in a union picket line.
Next he should oppose the dooH niboR policies that, since 1980, have
systematically transferred Americans' wealth from the non-rich to the
rich.
I marched in a union picket line before Biden did, but I was only
president of the Free Software Foundation, not president of a
potentially great country.
The UK's third major party, the Liberal Democrats, has joined the
other two in pledging not to increase taxes on rich people.
All three have now sworn not to do the only thing that would make it
possible to fix "broken Britain": bring more money into the treasury
from the people who can afford to pay it.
*How can you really get to know a person? Ask to see [per] loyalty cards.*
If I showed you mine, you'd get to know me well enough. I have only
one — from a chain which let me have it without my giving any
personal data. That is why I judge it is acceptable to use.
The Boston subways and buses would let me pay a reduced rate
because of my age, but then it would associate all my travel with
my name and personal data. No thanks!
if you asked to see what store apps I use, the answer would be even
more revealing: none at all. I refuse to carry a snoop-phone, so I
can't use phone apps. Anyway, I don't want to, since all those apps
are nonfree programs,
which means they are not worthy of trust. So I don't trust them to run on my computers.
One way the world can unlock the finance needed to stop global heating,
*Key Countries Responsible for the Climate Crisis Fail to Answer Call to
Phase Out Fossil Fuels.*
*Revealed: how Russia deliberately targeted Kherson’s hospitals.*
* American Library Association notes efforts to ban titles have spread
beyond school libraries to those open to general public.*
*White House boosts fossil fuels while speaking to the urgency of
climate threat.*
A witness claims that Bolsonaro discussed a coup with the
heads of the
Brazilian army, navy and air force,
after losing the election last year.
They may all face trial for this. I hope so!
Russia has been
hit badly in the budget
by difficulty in exporting petroleum.
*Sanders and AOC Unveil Resolution to Apologize for US Role in Chile
Coup,
Declassify Secret Docs.*
I support this. The US government intentionally did a great wrong
to Chile, which caused suffering of murder and torture while Pinochet was in power,
followed by the suffering of plutocratist rule
more or less ever since. That calls for a solemn apology.
*How
unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California.*
India is gaining prestige from an impressive mission to the Moon,
built by workers who
did not get their salaries.
Many US conservative who do not give total obedience to the
spirit-breaker hate him for his practice of sneering at
wounded combat
veterans.
Even in the case of US wars that it should never have started, it is wrong to do that,
*Eliminate malaria
once and for all or it will come back stronger, UN warned.*
SCROTUS want
to override
all state laws that prohibit cruelty to farm animals, and some that protect the health of farm animals too.
CAIR, a civil rights group for the rights of Muslims in the US, has
sued the US government for maintaining a
"terrorist watch list"
which it uses to harass Muslims.
To have a watch list to keep track of the actions of people suspected
of planning terrorism is legitimate if it is used in honestly.
However, the US has used this watch list to pressure Muslims with no
terrorist involvement into becoming informers and snooping regularly
on their friends and families.
Furthermore, the US does not just "watch" the people on the list.
It regularly harasses them as well.
The French right-wing extremist Marine Le Pen, and 23 other members of
her party, face
prosecutors' request for criminal charges
for redirecting some EU funds to the party staff.
Azerbaijan with its oil-funded arms has taken military control of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Now the question
is whether it will force the Armenians out — either now or later.
Armenians have a millennium of history of Muslim conquerors seizing
some of its territory and perhaps expelling them or killing them. It
doesn't necessarily have to happen now.
Sometimes the conquerors tolerate Christians — Islam has a
tradition of tolerating Christians and Jews — but the tolerance can come and go.
When tolerated, they are second-class citizens. Furthermore, they can
be punished for violating unjust religious demands, such as the law
against blasphemy, Azerbaijan's dictator may not be interested in
doing that, but they are not fans of human rights.
The coming UN climate conference is pervasively corrupt. UAE oil
company executives are
working with the event's management team.
This is just what we would have expected the UAE emir in charge of the event
to do, looking at the matter with the most jaundiced possible eye.
*[The UK prime minister]'s anti-green stance exposes his reckless
dishonesty. His fate is what matters,
the planet can go hang.*
(satire) *Every American Exchanged For Iranian Population In First
Successful Citizen Swap Deal.*
Part of Australia requires women prisoners to undergo strip searches
to see doctors or their families.
The prisoners respond to this practice by avoiding medical and
family visits.
Rebecca Solnit explains why many women who have been raped or abused
do not report it to the law. It takes a lot of courage to face the
multiple punishments they are likely to receive for making the report.
* The Australian government is “missing half the equation” in acting on
the climate crisis by backing a shift to renewable energy but having no
plan to get out of fossil fuels, according to an author of a new
scientific review.*
*European governments shrinking railways in favour of road-building, report
finds.*
Biden has launched a program to employ 20,000 young adult Americans
to work on climate defense and fire prevention.
Sierra Club gives more information.
However, Biden is simultaneously failing to do the most important things
for climate defense. *Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, leaders of two biggest carbon emitters, among
those not attending the [UN climate] summit in New York.*
China has launched a campaign demanding the British Museum return all
"cultural relics acquired through improper channels" to China. Its
supposed star example is a recent pot that the museum bought from the
potter who made it.
There are plenty of examples of stolen art that museums should return.
But often these conclusions are reached by anachronistically applying
standards for recent times to a world that that didn't have these
standards and which these standards did not fit. To decide which
standards to judge an old event by calls for careful thought.
US and Brazil warn that powerful oligarchs in Guatemala might hold a coup
to stop Guatemala's president-elect from taking power.
The UK questioned a British journalist at an airport, claiming he was
suspected of "terrorism", and confiscated his phone and laptop.
He was suspected for his positive coverage of Rojava, the Kurdish
state in Syria that stands for equality and unusual systems of democracy.
Rojava was an unofficial ally of the US during the fight against
PISSI.
The most horrible thing about this law, and similar British law,
is that the crime is not actual terrorism or whatever. It is
being suspected of terrorism or whatever.
It is punishment on suspicion, with the bogus excuse that
being suspected is itself a crime.
Japan's summer is extending far longer than usual,
surely due to global heating.
People around the world must wake up to start envisioning what this
will do to their lives after a couple more decades of getting worse.
The UK is again pressuring Facebook and its allied messaging features
to delay end-to-end encryption until they snoop for the state.
I sympathize with the goal of protecting children from pressure for sex, but
snooping is the foundation of tyranny,
and that threatens everyone.
I would never use Facebook, because (1)
it requires running nonfree
software,
which never deserves users' trust, and (2) Facebook itself does lots of snooping.
George Monbiot explains how lobbies convince the public to vote to keep
the level of disease-causing pollution high.
When extremist Republican Senator Tim Scott threatened to fire workers
for striking, he violated US labor law. He was urging for auto workers
to be treated this way, but he is an employer himself, and he can't
treat workers that way.
So the UAW has filed a complaint against him.
Keeping a dog should require a license, and to get the license you
should have to pass a test in how to teach a tog to be friendly rather
than aggressive.
There could be alternate tests for training guard dogs, where the
trainer would have to demonstrate ability to train a guard dog so that
it will keep its actions within the bounds of what is acceptable for
such dogs.
Google's search algorithm chose a generated fake image rather than the
real photo of Tank Man as the response to a search for "tank man".
Google manually corrected this, but it shows the error-prone nature of
its system as operating.
US citizens:
call on the judge
in the Google antitrust trial to provide a live video feed. It is a
matter of showing that the public interest is sufficient to justify it.
US citizens:
call on the CFPB
to stop forced arbitration now.
The Tories have
dropped the commitments
for decarbonization they adopted some years ago.
It is a standard Tory pattern
to make a commitment in response to public pressure backed by valid
reasons, go slowly, drop it a few years later when conditions make it convenient.
Thus they pretend to address national problems but don't really do so.
A UK minister said that Britain must give up on decarbonization
rather than achieve it by
"bankrupting the British people."
This choice is the result of a policy that will ensure suffering
for most British people: the refusal to tax the rich.
Britain has many grave problems, all caused by a lack of public spending. Schools,
the NHS,
housing for the non-rich,
public transit, as well as avoiding global heating disaster.
Ceasing the policy of providing more and more of national
income to the rich and the wealthy is necessary for all of them.
Corbyn would do this; Tories and Starmer-Labour have surrendered
to the rich and therefore can't do much about these problems.
I reject the term "net zero" for the way to formulate the goal of
curbing greenhouse emissions. It provides an excuse to accept
continuing emissions that might well be underestimated.
The Brazilian supreme court rejected a
right-wing attempt to deny
indigenous groups' claims to ancestral lands from which they had
already been kicked out before 1988.
1988 is not long ago. I think this decision is correct when an
indigenous group was kicked out a few decades before 1988. But I
worry that it could extend too far: it could result in evicting
non-indigenous farmers from land that they have farmed for
generations, replacing one wave of dispossessed with another.
Situations like that call for compromise.
I wonder what other limits there are in the law regarding how many
decades it takes for non-indigenous farmers' title to be valid.
Illegal gold miners
should never get valid title.
Canada reports
evidence directly tying Indian diplomats
to the murder of Sikh separatist living in Canada under asylum.
*Wildfires turn Canada’s
vast forests from carbon sink
into super-emitter.* This year's emissions amount to three times Canada's
usual annual emissions, and the fires are not finished yet.
Further global heating is sure to increase the emissions from burning
forest in further years — until it is all burned up. This is the
sort of tipping point
that can cause unstoppable disaster.
The article describes precautions that might be able to reduce the fires in future years.
House Speaker McCarthy, in thrall to Republican lunatic extremists who
are willing to sabotage anything and everything to foil
any helpful
government policies
they can get their hands on, is desperately trying to remain in the
office of speaker by obeying their impossible demands.
The result of this is that he is losing what little shreds of honor
and political respect remain to him. How foolish that is. If he
resigns now and consigns the lunatics to hell, he may be unable to
remain as speaker but he will salvage some respectability.
The lunatics of SCROTUS will look for another Republican willing to
dangle on their strings to be a puppet "speaker". But the rest of the
Republicans might decide to make a deal with Democrats on a bipartisan
House leadership that would adopt compromise policies. I expect that
sooner or later they will decide to climb out of the lunatics' vice.
Logging companies clear-cut Canadian forests in the 1980s, and
replaced them with
a monoculture of highly flammable black spruce.
Those appear to have been the cause of many of the unquenchable giant wildfires of this year.
Putin's spy service directly tracks the ride service Yango.
Everyone who gets a ride on Yango
will be tracked and reported immediately. That includes clients in
Israel and Europe as well as in Russia.
It is unjust for a ride service to identify you!
Boycott GUber!
How one oil industry agent set up
a web of pretend "grass roots"
groups
to make a lot of noise and thus give hesitant California
legislators an excuse to water down a new oil regulation.
The agent responds with misleading words, such as claiming that these
organizations are "real". They probably are "real" in the sense of
really being legally registered, but they are not really what they
claim to be. Then he insists that their arguments are "valid", which
is no indication that they are valid.
*Iran and its agents appear to be orchestrating a
Europe-wide campaign
of harassment, surveillance, kidnap plots and death threats targeting
political activists who are protesting against the regime.*
US citizens:
call on the DOJ to investigate
attacks on Stop Cop City activists.
The wrecker is using criminal indictments
as a campaign strategy.
His supporters hate government, justice and democracy so much
that he can turn them against any honest manifestation of them.
Chief inspector: *I warned ministers about our
disgraceful
UK detention centres. Their solution? Stop the inspections.*
France is accused of trampling freedom of the press for arresting
investigative journalist Ariane Lavrilleux, who reported on leaked
documents alleging
French intelligence targeted civilians in Egypt.
She has been arrested.
France is becoming ever more repressive. Long-distance buses now
require passengers' names, just like long-distance trains; next year,
all trains that travel from city to city will impose the same demand.
It is becoming difficult to pay for the Paris Metro with cash.
Pervasive tracking and surveillance is
the foundation for pervasive
repression.
Working from home makes it possible to
save over 50%
of one's greenhouse gas emissions, by avoiding commuting, but achieving that
much savings requires taking significant steps to make your activities around home greener.
We should not forget that most employers demand use of unjust
technology that people should never tolerate. Starting with things like
Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams,
Google Docs,
and lots of imposed
employer-operated spyware.
Spain has permitted speaking to Parliament in
Basque, Catalan and
Galician,
in addition to as Castilian (what is known as Spanish outside Spain).
Those three have long been official languages for people to use in Spain.
It may feel like a great victory to the activists of those ethnic
groups to have gained this added prestige for their languages. In
practically terms, though, that right is useless because exercising it
is self defeating: if you speak to Parliament in one of those other
languages, you ensure that most of Parliament will not understand you.
A campaign
is raising funds to support whistleblower David McBride,
who revealed war crimes by Australia's military.
This July in the US was the hottest month ever, and it caused
unprecedented damage
to US food production, covering land and sea.
Richard Stallman will
be speaking
at the GNU 40th anniversary event in Switzerland on
September 27.
Celebration and Free/Libre Software Developer meeting in Biel/Bienne
40 years ago the GNU Project — to develop the GNU operating system —
was launched and gave birth to the Free Software movement, and Free
Software has since become the cornerstone of modern computing. The
GNU Project is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with a
hacker
meeting at the Volkshaus in Biel/Bienne, which will feature
presentations about various GNU packages, Free Software philosophy,
and the development process.
Australian elected officials are putting pressure on the US to
drop charges against Julian Assange.
Robert Reich: *Strikes aren’t bad for the US economy.
They’re the best
thing that could happen.*
Previous waves of strikes gave America the large middle class that has now
been mostly eliminated by the power of the rich.
Modi is accused
of a series of assassinations of Sikh separatists.
I do not support that separatist cause, and it is legitimate for Indian
leaders to oppose it. But not by assassination of exiles.
Is Modi taking after Putin as well as after the bullshitter?
The Putin forces have
kidnapped over 18,000
Ukrainian children from occupied areas and sent them to Russia. Some of them have been
taken to Belarus by Lukashenko's agents.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject Republican plans to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Rich people do not have a "right" to keep all the money they alter our laws to direct to them!
If you are invited to phone your representative, that is an effective
thing to do. But you don't need to do this by texting from a
snoop-phone. You can simply phone 202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Azerbaijan
heavily attacked
the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
US citizens: call on Congress to renew funding for child care before
it expires on September 30.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to stay firm against
corporate lobbyists,
and tax billion-dollar corporations.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
California sued Google
for keeping track
of location history even when a user had specified not to do so.
In the settlement, Google committed to being more "transparent" about what
it was doing with location data. The article does not say that it
committed to giving users the option for not storing location data
that it will truly obey.
The usual practice when
governments regulate with snooping
disservices
is to assume that "transparency" (as part of asking for "consent") is
sufficient to make any sort of snooping legitimate.
Given that many users find that other aspects of
their lives practically compel them to use the disservice, they
don't really have the choice not to "consent". Making the
request for consent "transparent" does nothing to fix that.
*The One Million Tibetan Children in China’s Boarding Schools.*
They are being taught Chinese culture and separated from Tibetan
culture. Tibet is being abolished.
Many other countries have done this to minority groups, including the
US, UK, Canada and France, to mention only those I recall at this
moment.
Some manufacturers of medical equipment are trying to impose
conditions on how the purchaser uses it — "use for execution
prohibited." They are trying to propagate this to indirect purchasers
too.
I oppose the death penalty. However, these manufacturers are claiming
the outrageous general power to control those who buy their products.
Use that power to ban use for execution, they could use it to ban
anything else too. Imagine "Use of this cable for copying audio and
video works without explicit authorization from copyright holders is
prohibited."
We must not tolerate the attempt to impose such power just because it
is being applied today to aid a cause we support.
Parents in the US are tracking their children up through ever-higher
ages. Now some college students are being tracked.
This article describes the harm that does.
A large UK union will spend some money on publicly promoting a few
specific policy issues, instead of giving it to Labour.
Not all of these policies are good. One of them is to continue
developing more offshore oilfields, to extract oil that the world
cannot safely burn or make into more plastic.
I am in favor of a well-managed green transition, but trying to demand
it by overdrawing the carbon budget is environmental terrorism.
I can't see a reason why it would be beneficial overall to subsidize
steel production rather than import it. Does that have any purpose
except competition for the votes of steel workers?
Trudeau accuses Indian agents of murdering a Sikh separatist leader in Canada.
I do not see a reason to support that separatist cause, but assassinating
exiles is not justified.
Robert Reich: *Why labor activism is good for America.*
For several years, the UK Labour government ordered reductions in the
amount of salt added to certain foods. In 2014, the new government
ended that, and levels of salt increased. This has been tied to
24,000 additional deaths.
Since we get accustomed to whatever level of salt we consume,
there is no loss in reducing that across the board.
How quitting Facebook and Ex-Twitter enabled
one user
to change for the better his approach to life.
Australia needs to replace the old coal-powered electric generators.
The
right-wing wants to build small nuclear power plants,
but they would cost over 17 times as much as solar power, 9 times as much as wind power.
Clearly the lobbying for small nuclear plants does not aim to serve
the public good. It is an attempt by companies to profit by wasting
public funds. That was pretty clear already, but this strengthens the case.
Solar power
satellites are being considered
seriously by the EU.
The L5 society's 1980 plan was to build large ones using material from
the Moon. Launching that from the Moon's shallower gravity well would
be far cheaper than launching that from Earth.
*California sues
[five giant] oil companies claiming they [deceptively downplayed] the risk of fossil fuels.*
Despite the cease fire
of the Tigray region's forces with Ethiopia, the atrocities continue
there, committed by other ethnic Ethiopian militias and the Eritrean army.
Expensive plans to protect Rockaway in NYC from
future hurricanes
may not be
effective.
The article explains that efforts to estimate the probability of a
another similar disaster were bogus or confused. Meanwhile, science
has advanced since the 2000s. We should make a more plausible
estimate of that probability, based on acceleration of global heating,
then increase it for our continued incomplete knowledge.
Then we should make another such estimate assuming that proposed flood
protection plans have been implemented. We can judge whether those
plans are worth implementing based on how much they decrease the
disaster likelihood.
If even after flood protection it is likely that another disaster will
happen within 50 years, the federal government should buy out the
properties there, and declare it a protected zone. Let it become
beach, or wetlands. We had better be spending that money on
decarbonization, which protects the whole world, not on short-term
protection of each area by itself.
Using bullshit generators to generate letters of recommendation,
letters of complaint, or letters of pressure, paradoxically makes
them count for less.
Ex-Twitter has stopped labeling paid ads at all, for some users.
The non-nuclear deal with Iran calls for lifting certain sanctions in
October 2023. However, France, Germany and the UK say that Iran's
violations are significant and they won't do it.
Iran could come back into compliance if it decided to.
It might do this if the US offers a return to the deal
in exchange.
*We need radical change in economic policy, not just a change of government.*
This goes for the US as well as the UK.
Students have convinced New York University to divest from fossil fuels.
Going by the article, the criteria will be fairly strict. Many
organizations have "divested from fossil fuels", but it covered only
some of the ways of investing in fossil fuels, leaving plenty of room
to do so.
A study has found that "carbon offsets" as certified by Verra are
misleading and ineffective.
A right-wing extremist is likely to be elected mayor of a city in
Germany. He has condemned the activities to remind Germans of the
evil of the Holocaust.
I don't see in the article that he endorses antisemitism, but I think
the AfD party is heading in a direction which will get there soon.
Another politician in that party is being tried for using a Nazi slogan.
I abhor censorship of anything, even Nazism, because censorship opens
the door to tyranny. However, so does Nazism, and more generally
fascism. I am not sure which is the bigger danger.
The government of Victoria got advice about tobacco policies from the
PR company KPMG which has a long association with tobacco companies.
This was, in effect, giving those companies special influence over
the policies meant to protect the public from their addictive,
disease-causing product.
*New[ly released old] Documents Show Exxon Executives Cast Doubt on
Climate Science to Protect Profits.*
* ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science
even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between
fossil fuel emissions and [global heating].*
In 2008, Exxon said it would stop supporting climate-denialist groups
but it continued to support influential individual climate-denialists.
Wisconsin's gerrymandered state senate gives Republicans a 2-1
supermajority. They just voted to fire the state's chief election
administrator — in line with conspiracy disinformation, but really
for having unwelcome integrity.
*The Guardian view on planetary boundaries: the Earth has limits and
governments must act on them.*
Florida governor DeMentis *contradicted [his] own abortion law to
claim woman will not be criminalized.*
However, the text clearly admits of prosecuting the woman who has
an abortion.
This is the common Republican tactic of trying to have it both ways.
*I work in a supermarket and see how desperate some shoplifters are. My heart
goes out to them.*
The same worker also sees professional thieves, and addicts who steal
to buy an addictive drug. Those have always existed, but what's changed
is that now there are many desperate thieves stealing necessities of life.
After Mangosuthu Buthelezi's death, South African officials are
covering up his career of running a movement to serve the apartheid
government and repress for it.
Use of the IHRA criterion for antisemitism has led to 40 cases of
accusations by universities against specific people and groups, of
which 38 have been dismissed.
The Starbucks workers' union is considering calling for a consumer
boycott.
Why wait? You can start boycotting now. I would, except that I never
buy from Starbucks anyway — its products don't appeal to me.
The Polish government has funded development of a test to determine
whether someone has taken mifepristone and misoprostol.
And now it is using this test to determine whether specific people
have had abortions.
Some right-wing US politicians are looking forward to the same thing.
A Seattle thug was recorded expressing derision for a woman who was
killed by another thug who was driving dangerously fast to deal with
an incident.
The derision did not injure anyone, but it shows he has the wrong
attitude towards members of the public and is not fit to be a police
officer.
Starmer has adopted one of Corbyn's ideas about trade with the EU,
at least partially.
Corbyn said he would try to form a customs union with the EU.
*Tens of thousands in NYC march against fossil fuels as AOC hails powerful
message.*
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the crowd must become ‘too big and too
radical to ignore” as Biden came under fire for oil projects.*
I agree. Having separate rallies on different dates* in various cities
makes a smaller impression with the same number of people.
When people are motivated enough for hundreds of thousands to rally in
Washington DC, that will be impossible to ignore.
* The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil
and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of
climate leadership,*
I suspect these figures are skewed by not including increases in coal
mining. China is building new coal-fired generators at a prodigious
rate and must be planning a comparable increase in the rate of coal
mining. Whether the US or China comes out worse overall when all
kinds of fossil fuel are counted, I don't know, but they must both be
very bad.
*World Bank spent billions of dollars backing fossil fuels in
2022, study finds.*
Direct air capture of CO2, though only rudimentary, is absolutely necessary
for curbing global heating — as long as our reductions in emissions
remain hopelessly inadequate.
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, and the news site Rappler, have been
found innocent of President Do-Dirty's tax fraud charges.
People suspected those charges were fabricated.
They still face other charges that are explicitly political.
Under years of Tory rule, dooH niboR has evolved from neoliberalism to
right-wing populism that drives down the meager incomes of the
non-wealthy.
*China concerns drive historic upgrade in US-Vietnam relations.*
Some time after 2000 I learned that Vietnam had given the US a
military base. I assumed this was support against Vietnam's enemy,
China. China has been Vietnam's principal enemy ever since China
first conquered Vietnam, about two thousand years ago. Since Vietnam
conclusively won independence, about a thousand years ago, it has
always had to watch out for China.
This is increase in relations is obviously good strategy against the
broader Chinese threat. What makes me sad is that this is one more
dictatorship that the US supports, added to a long list.
(satire) *Instacart Valuation Crashes As Americans Realize They Can Do
Some Things For Themselves.*
Every "service" that requires each customer to identify perself is an
injustice simply for that. So I am glad to see any of them lose
demand, whatever the reason. However, shopping delivery services are
especially important to abolish, since their success threatens to
eliminate supermarkets and make life harder for those of us
who want to buy anonymously.
Crown Prince Bone Saw has put several dissidents in prison, and
sentenced one to death after a parody of a trial, for posting
criticism of the prince and other members of the royal family.
That regime is comparable in its evil to China, though some details
differ.
The Tories are dropping, step by step, their plans to separate UK regulations
and inspections from EU standards.
It is not clear that they will alter the policy changes that hurt
individuals, such as the plans to discard EU human rights requirements
or the burdens of not being EU citizen. Ultimately, they care about
British businesses, not Britons.
120,000 people in Britain died in 2022 while on NHS waiting lists.
That is double that died while waiting in 2017/2018.
The cause of this is simple: bad policies imposed by the government.
Especially the policy of refusing to tax the rich so as to raise
enough funds to do the NHS job right and thoroughly.
I would have suggested voting for Labour, except now Labour is committed
to be just as bad.
A study found that some substances from marijuana are useful medicines,
but that aside from that young people (including teenagers and a little
older) and those who are pregnant should not take it.
A white family in New Mexico was rushing to bring their badly injured
dog to a vet, when some thugs stopped them and (for no reason at all)
decided they were threatening someone somehow.
The thugs made some get out of the car and pointed guns at them, as
they did nothing but say, "Our dog's gonna die."
The article does not say how many minutes the thugs delayed this
trip to the veterinarian, so we can't try to guess whether the dog
might have survived without their intervention.
Another commentator pointed out that it is rare for whites to get this
horrible treatment, but blacks learn that for them it is standard.
This instance clearly illustrates how thugs can perceive threats and
defiance where there are none at all.
UK thugs are delighted with the idea of identifying "suspects" by
facial recognition in all sorts of footage of crowds.
These "suspects" may very well be protesters charged
with grave crimes that are disguises for "causing inconveniencing with
a protest" — or "damaging corporations' profits with a protest."
UK supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and citrus
fruits ran short this year due to unnatural extreme weather caused
by global heating.
The danger is predicted to extend to bananas, grapes, avocados,
cashews, cocoa, peas, canned tuna and tea.
I expect this problem to be global, more or less.
* US news organizations have turned Biden’s age into a scandal and
continue to cover Trump as an entertaining side show.
With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways.*
* From the Sargasso Sea to the Costa Rica thermal dome, scientists are
identifying key diversity hotspots to safeguard under a new UN treaty.*
The UK is facing another wave of Covid-19 from the multi-mutation
Pirola variant.
Reducing the harm calls for wearing masks, but the government is too timid to promote them.
The situation is similar in the US.
I wear masks by choice, to protect myself and others. So can you.
Amazon has used its near-monopoly power to
force e-magazines
out of operation or under its exclusive monopoly.
This is clearly an injustice. However, the article does not take
notice of the context — based totally on injustice, because these
magazines were distributed for the Amazon Swindle.
Amazon identified each reader — an injustice — and, I
suspect made them sign contracts not to share copies — another
injustice. They
may have had DRM
— also an injustice.
Within this unjust context, Amazon's treatment of those magazines was wrong.
But the injustice of the Amazon Swindle
is a far bigger wrong.
A letter proves
that Pope Pius XII received information in December
1942 from a close associate about mass murder of Jews by the German regime.
This refutes the claim that he could not be sure that Hitler was carrying out mass murder.
I can't dispute the point that the pope, living in the middle of Rome,
which at that time was the capital of Hitler's ally Mussolini, could not overtly oppose Hitler.
Brazil has
sentenced the first of hundreds
of Bolsonaro supporters who attacked the government ministries on Jan 8 this year.
*Voter ID in England led to
racial and disability discrimination,
report finds.*
This is what people predicted and criticized
in advance, and surely
what the Tories sought.
The Tories may be considering relaxing their voter-ID scheme somewhat,
but not in a way that would reduce the
suppression of younger voters
that the plan was designed to achieve.
Russian journalist
Elena Kostyuchenko
went to Ukraine to cover Putin's
invasion for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, but stayed after
Putin closed it down. Then she learned that there was an order out to
kill her.
She got sick, with an unidentifiable illness, and doctors eventually
concluded she had been poisoned by Putinite agents.
As her writing describes, it is not just a few heroes that Putin tries
to crush. It is also hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians that the
Putin forces have conquered, then shot, kidnapped,
brainwashed or tortured.
Alabama is trying to prosecute anyone that helps a
woman travel
for an abortion for "criminal conspiracy". Texas and Idaho also have
laws to punish helping a woman get out of the state for an abortion.
These laws are designed for repressive terror.
They show what fascist Christians
stand for, and what they deserve.
British
unions will complain formally
to the International Labor Organization about the Tories' new
restrictions on strikes, which violate UN rules.
Sweden is moving strongly back to
teaching school on paper.
The main aim is to help children learn better, but it also provides
an opportunity to free them from
the grip of online disservices.
*Libya’s floods are result of
climate crisis meeting a failed state.*
In
Maricopa
county, and many others
where fascists have organized, they are
bombarding election officials with more public records requests than they can
answer, accusing officials of hiding some nonexistent conspiracy
(the sort of thing that only fascists actually do), and frightening capable
election officials into quitting.
The danger for democracy is that their replacements will be fascists.
Fascists know that they won't be persecuted.
Instead of the rule of law, fascists practice the rule of lie.
* Poverty [in the US] increased sharply in 2022 due to safety net
cutbacks and inflation shock.*
Bernie Sanders: *The United Auto Workers may soon strike.
Every
American
should support them.*
I agree, but I am not sure how to do that.
The report that Musk deactivated Ukraine's use of Starlink near Crimea
just as Ukraine was sending attack drones there has been found to be a
confusion. What actually happened was that
he had never authorized
Ukraine to use Starlink in that region. Ukraine asked for this for
that attack, and he said no.
I won't call that treachery or any dirty names. However, I disagree
with his decision.
Fortunately, Ukraine has developed other ways to attack Russian ships,
in port and at sea.
It is incorrect, however, to say that supporting Ukraine's attack
would have been "escalation". Ukraine's intended attack on Putin's
ships would have been small compared to Putin's invasion of Ukraine,
and those ships had already been involved in attacking Ukraine.
Attacking them in their bases — as Ukraine has sometimes done since
in other ways — is simply continuing the war Putin started.
Datasets for journalists
censured by Ex-Twitter and Reddit
block the posting of links to the Distributed Denial of Secrets web site.
Russia and Indonesia block the site entirely. Indonesia blocked it
after it posted the secrets of a big company that mines coal and deals
in palm oil. One must suspect it of deforestation.
Starlink has become controversial on account of Musk's repeated surprise
blockages to Ukraine, but all big tech companies have the same sort
of
dangerous world political power
even if they have not used it yet.
(satire) *Yevgeny Prigozhin Leads
Army Of 25,000 Undead
Toward Kremlin.*
The Philadelphia thugs
that killed Eddie Irizarry
lied to create an excuse, and the police chief said so and told a
different story which nonetheless gave them an excuse. The cops
refused to release to videos that ought to have proved it was true.
But now a video has appeared which shows that too was all lies. They
had no grounds at all for violence.
Intuit claims that TurboTax is "free", but it has never been libre.
A judge has ruled
that it isn't gratis either, and ordered the company
to stop saying it is "free".
That they exchange money for using it is what most people are worked up about,
but the fact that users can't use it while keeping their freedom is what's truly important.
*Six [Mississippi thugs] known as the "Goon Squad" plead guilty to
torturing two [black] men,
using a sex toy on them and shooting one of them [almost killing him].*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I
denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that
practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider
important — and I label them like this.
(satire) *Study: More Americans Buying AR-15s To Defend Selves From
Toddlers Who Found Their Guns.*
Immigrants who helped Florida repair after previous hurricanes are afraid
to go there now, due to DeMentis's
law to promote deportation.
I wonder whether farms will have trouble finding workers for the harvest this year.
*Protests in Israel
as supreme court hears
challenge to judicial curbs.*
Richard Stallman will give a talk,
"Free Software And Your Freedom",
in the Czech Republic in Prague on Oct 1. That will be at this year's
"Hackers Congress
Paralelni Polis" 2023,
September 29 – October 1, at the La Fabrika Theater.
Australian uniformed thugs worked very hard to come up with evidence
to convict Jason Roberts of killing two thugs.
There wasn't enough real evidence, so they had to fake it.
Australia fines drivers, even cancels their driving licenses, if
occasionally a passenger does not wear a seat belt.
This is are a system of collective responsibility: "Hey you! Monitor
those others near you, or we will punish you!" This attitude towards
people is an injustice in general.
Since 1975 I have made a practice of wearing my seat belt. for safety,
whether driving or riding as a passenger. But there is one exception:
when I need to sleep. I have never found a way to sleep with a seat
belt rubbing on my shoulder — it changes my posture. If I am
compelled to wear the seat belt because the driver has been
conscripted into forcing me, I will not be able to sleep and I may get
sick.
So I regard that system as an injustice.
If the system permitted me to wear the lap belt but not the shoulder
belt, I would certainly do that, since the lap belt does not stop
me from sleeping. But nowadays they don't support that mode of use.
*Rishi Sunak hopes for warm welcome at G20 as India’s "son-in-law".*
This warm welcome would be a business-supremacy treaty that did not
disadvantage British plutocrats too much compared with Indian plutocrats.
What we see, therefore, is a less rich oligarch sucking up to a richer
oligarch.
Most Democratic voters would rather that Biden step aside in 2024,
but few can name a candidate they would prefer.
I would certainly prefer Bernie Sanders.
Biden is a strange mixture. He has done a number of things that
surprised me for how progressive they were. And he has partly
achieved other progressive programs to the extent progressives could
get them through Congress. On the other hand, he keeps handing planet
roasters and other plutocrats gratuitous victories.
Urging western tourism companies to stop selling package travel
through Xinjiang
into areas where Uyghurs are being brainwashed.
It may be romantically exciting to imagine visiting Xinjiang and
pulling back the curtain or deception, but the Chinese who operate the
curtain are skilled experts whereas you would be encountering it for
the first time. Whatever move you try, they would surely have
training and experience at countering.
It is wiser to leave that sort of thing to people who are themselves experts.
(satire) *Court Upholds Congressional Map That Sealed Black Voters In
Impenetrable Cube/*
Mexico could provide a place where US citizens in abortion-banning
southern states could get abortions.
The ironic result would be that the main group of people in those
states who could not go to Mexico for an abortion would be the
unauthorized immigrants. Republican racists would tear their hair out
to see their own abortion bans speeding the "great replacement".
Imagine a campaign calling for Texas to allow non-citizens to get
abortions also. "Way to go, Republicans — protect every possible
anchor baby!"
Even better, US government could directly help the non-US-citizens get
abortions. It could make an arrangement with Mexico to set up border
abortion clinics on the Mexico side, which would be federal facilities
so they would be lawful right away,
and allow anyone to cross the
border from the US directly into an abortion clinic and then return,
regardless of passport or immigration status. However, only
authorized personnel would be allowed to enter the clinic from Mexico.
To make sure there is no unfairness towards Mexicans, each of these
transborder abortion clinics would be accompanied by another abortion
clinic that serves people coming from Mexico.
The arrangement could also explicitly permit royalty-free importation
of mifepristone and any other medicines purchased in these clinics.
What I don't know is whether it is possible to do this without getting
the approval of the Senate, which might be blocked by overt and covert
Republicans.
In practical terms, hot weather tends to kill people when it reaches
the point where humans must take conscious precautions to survive it.
That is well before the point of what I have called "fatal weather"
which is where nothing short of air conditioning will suffice.
Weather deadly by that lower standard has been observed in various
places in recent years.
*Covid's back, you say? As disabled and vulnerable people know all too
well, it never went away.*
What happened, rather is that governments gave up trying to protect the public
to cave to the people who preferred to pretend Covid was gone. This is the case
in the US and Europe, with variations in details between countries.
British business barons are flocking to invest in the Labour Party.
The indictment of protesters against Cop City for "racketeering"
threatens freedom of the press as well as freedom to protest.
British unions have decided to defy the Tories' new anti-strike laws.
Undercover federal thugs shot and maimed a man in a wheelchair who had
come to the aid of his brother, whom the thugs were attacking. They
did not identify themselves as cops until after.
People should not be killed or maimed for coming to the aid, with or
without a gun, of someone being attacked by unknown strangers.
The fact that this victim was homeless doesn't alter the issue.
Neither does the fact that he already needed a wheelchair for some
other reasons. Those are misfortunes, and a better organized society
would spare people the first of the two, but if the thugs had done the
same thing to a fit and healthy home-owner it would have been equally
unjust.
*We Must Remember the 9/11 War Lies.*
*We can’t afford to let these lies go down the memory hole, like we have the other wars we were lied into.*
I disagree with Hartmann about ending the war in Afghanistan. I
supported the war in Afghanistan, for the sake of democracy and
women's rights there, when it looked like we could win that war. But
it became clear that the army we supported could never defeat the
Taliban.
Queensland cops caught sharing a thuggish attitude of bigotry will not
be punished.
The state has a duty not to allow this. Sneering at people with
insulting words cannot be a crime, since it is part of freedom of
speech. But people who hold an office such as "police officer", which
includes special powers over everyone else and special authorization
for violence, have a duty to treat the public without bias. If they
engage in bigotry, they are not fit for the office. If they promote
bigotry among the other officers, they undermine the proper respect
for society among the whole body of officers.
*Dozens of leading Palestinian intellectuals, artists and other public
figures have published an open letter condemning antisemitic
comments made by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.*
Bravo! Palestinians have plenty of reason to hate Israel's occupation
policies;
that they speak up to distinguish that from (and reject) antisemitism
is an admirable example.
If they can do this, surely the supporters of Israel's occupation
policies
can do likewise.
The Republicans' "investigation" of Biden, intended to find grounds
for impeachment, appears to be just "blow smoke and exaggerate it."
Chilean musicians protested Pinochet's dictatorship through underground
performances, often closed down by the regime's thugs.
Some protest musicians are blind — mutilated by thugs.
*Ginni Thomas and rightwing activists exploited supreme court ruling — report.*
Egypt is converting parks and open squares in Cairo into unwelcoming
zones that are easy to police.
Republicans in Texas have passed many laws for repression of all sorts of
people
they wish to persecute.
One of these laws allow the state to rig elections in Houston, the
state's biggest city, if Republicans claim there was an "irregularity"
in the election.
Another is meant to force trans adolescents to go through puberty the
way they do not want to. Forcing people to undergo irreversible
biological changes is gratuitous cruelty.
Another law will enable state officials to force prosecution of abortions.
Other Republican laws
are nasty in spirit
but can be blunted with effort. For instance, young people can defeat censorship of
school libraries
by buying books and sharing them. Prohibition of drag shows
can be overcome by sharing videos.
As for prohibition of participation of trans-people in sports, that
may lead to disappointment, but people need to distinguish between the
important things in life and the side issues. People can get obsessed
with sports, but we should not take that to mean sports matter.
Calling on the US to publish its role in
organizing the overthrow
of President Allende of Chile.
The dictator Pinochet, despite being dead, is exerting a growing
influence in Chile in favor of fascism, much as the fascist-in-chief
is doing in the US.
*Chile president
[Boric] gives staunch defense of democracy,
50 years after Pinochet coup.*
An interview with Rep. Greg Casar,
progressive Hispanic and first term in Congress, about his visit to
various countries in South America and how the US can begin supporting
and favorizing democracy there instead of supporting right-wing oligarchs.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to enact ethics standards for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Richard Stallman will speak, along with other GNU contributors, on Sep
27 as part of the GNU 40th anniversary celebration
in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.
The page does not describe live streaming, but we understand it
will happen.
Sep 17: Join the climate defense rally in New York City.
Sep 20: In Boston, join the Extinction Rebellion rally
US citizens: call on the US govt to say what it is now doing in Yemen.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to protect access to
Medicaid.
US citizens: call on the mainstream media to end their racist and
sexist attacks against Georgia DA Fani Willis, who is prosecuting the
insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to stay firm against
corporate lobbyists: tax billion dollar corporations.
Everyone: call on Chick-fil-A to stop using polystyrene
foam cups.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to protect Medicaid
access for poor Americans.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Governor Abbott's inhumane
border policies.
US citizens: Support the "Unhoused" Bill of Rights.
I dislike the new affectation, the word "unhoused", which appears in
the name of that bill. I am glad I have a home to live in, and I wish
we made sure that everybody could have one, so I support this plan to
help the homeless. But I will not call people "housed" or "unhoused".
*Global push for commitment to phase out fossil
fuels gathers pace
ahead of Cop28.*
If this succeeds, it will be an important preparatory step towards
avoiding global disaster.
Some progress has been made at the G20 meeting, but it
did not reach
a phase out.
The leader of the Australian Green Party calls for protests against
government policies that cater to
fossil fuels and deforestation.
*The arch-fascist vows to lock up political
enemies if he returns to White
House.*
In the insane world view he promotes, there is no difference between
arbitrary political imprisonment and charging someone with a crime.
He said the reason is that "they are doing it to us," but that is more
bullshit: he demanded the same thing in 2016, and there was no move
then to charge him with a crime.
(satire) *Mediterranean Tourists Go On Incredible
Refugee-Watching Tour.*
In 2021, 16 countries pledged to stop their international investments
in fossil fuel, Most of them kept the pledge.
The US, Germany and Italy
did not.
"Smart" devices typically collect more data about their useds than is required
to implement their features.
As usual, for "smart" read "snoop". Instead of getting a "smart device",
be smart yourself — and reject them.
A former head of Israel's highly respected intelligence agency set off
a stir by acknowledging that Israel has imposed an apartheid system on
the Palestinians.
A province of Pakistan has made it a crime for parents to stop their
children from being vaccinated for polio and other dangerous diseases.
This is meant to overcome the disinformation that threatens to undo
the almost-completed global eradication of polio, and protection from
measles and more.
The EU's Digital Markets Act will or would ban, for some
large tech companies, some of the worst abuses that they commit
using the power over users that they get from non-free software.
It is a good try, but what users really need is free software.
(satire) *New U.S. Army Recruitment Ad Touts Military As Great
Alternative To Starving On Streets.*
*Senate Finally Confirms 5th FCC Commissioner After
[Republican-imposed] Vacancy of More Than 2.5 Years.*
One of the insurrectionist's henchmen refused to provide evidence or
testimony to the Jan 6 insurrection committee. He has been convicted
of contempt of Congress, and may be sentenced to prison.
Will he now be ordered to hand over the dope? I would expect that the
committee can no longer receive it, since the Republicans now control
the House of Representatives. Justice may have won this skirmish, but
the Republicans may have won this battle.
I would be glad to see well-informed comment on these follow-on issues.
Fish around the world are generally getting smaller. Within a given
species, the population tends to be smaller than before. Within an ecosystem,
larger species tend to be replaced with smaller species.
The article asserts that this is the consequence of what it calls the
"Anthropocene" period, but I call the "Obscene" period.
Comments on France's ban of the abaya in schools, from several points
of view.
*Antarctica warming much faster than models predicted.*
This suggest the rising sea will come for you sooner than previously
predicted.
New York City is considering a law to save migrating birds from
colliding with illuminated glass towers.
The Labour Party is receiving donations at the highest rate ever, now
that plutocrats are donating to it.
I think they recognize that it is now almost as plutocratist as the
Tories, but more competent.
There is a campaign to demand removal of certain antisemitic word
meanings from the Real Academia Española's dictionary of Spanish.
This campaign is foolish and harmful. Yes, those meanings are
antisemitic; they express bigotry. Yes, their existence comes out of
a long tradition of antisemitism in Spain — naturally it does.
People should not those meanings, or any other way to express bigotry.
But that is a separate matter from what words the dictionary should
define. To use those meanings endorses bigotry, but citing them
in a dictionary does not.
A dictionary should contain all sorts of words and meanings, including
those that you or I disapprove of — and if the meaning expresses
bigotry, the dictionary should say so. That is part of the
dictionary's mission: to document the language fully.
You can't stop bigots from using prejudiced insults by omitting them
from the dictionary — that is not where they learn those words. But
if they are omitted from the dictionary, we who have not grown up in a
milieu of antisemitic hispanophones could not find out what they mean
when we want to know.
To start trying to cleanse language by denying or hiding the existence
of words and meanings whose usage we condemn is to open dictionaries
to culture wars. Then the most powerful political forces will
weaponize them. They might be censored by racists, antisemites and
Nazis, and sooner than you think. Instead of legitimizing censorship
of dictionaries, we had better fight now to protect dictionaries'
freedom to fully document language as it is used,
I looked in my copy of the Real Academia dictionary; it does not have
the definition of "judío" that the campaign condemns. It is the 1992
edition; perhaps that definition was added subsequently.
The US immigration system uses heuristic (and thus unreliable)
computerized translators. Their mistakes put refugees' rights in
jeopardy.
British undercover thugs continue the practice of maintaining
intimate relationships under false names while keeping their lovers
in the dark.
But it may be rather different now.
One woman found out about hers in 2020 after 19 years. She was not
involved in whatever group or activity he was infiltrating, and he
reportedly wasn't directed to get involved with her. He may have been
breaking the rules.
After many years he ceased to be in the thug department but continued
the relationship under the same false name. I guess he saw no way to
tell her the truth, so he was trapped in his own lie.
She and her families are trapped in the secret too.
(satire) *Self-Driving Tesla Regurgitates Pedestrian To Feed Offspring.*
Organizations that campaign against hate are now campaigning against Musk
and his use of Ex-Twitter to attack those organizations.
We have to conclude that Must is a fascist and suspect that he bought
Twitter to use it for hate.
Modi boasts about "India's democracy" while covering up India's spreading
repression of Muslims
(and other non-Hindus including Dalits).
Other countries support the false front in order to do business with India.
Car manufacturers tell purchasers that they intend to collect wide
varieties of personal data. Most say they will sell the data and use
it against the purchaser.
I can see why the company would like to get information about the
owner's sex life and politics. What I don't see is how they can make
the car get that sort of information for them, Perhaps they hope to
trade car data with other snooping companies for that data.
The important conclusion of this information is that these companies don't
respect you. That leads to the question: how can you stop them from getting
data about you. That requires at least a little skill — perhaps enough
to find and disconnect the car's antennas.
China is considering a vague law to prohibit anything That "Hurts The
Country's Feelings".
Since countries do not actually feel anything, the only way that
phrase can be interpreted is as a metaphor, so it can be stretched to
prohibit almost anything. I suppose that's the purpose of it.
Modi has walled off poor neighborhoods of Delhi and
shut all business
in them,
so that India will look shiny to visiting foreign dignitaries.
Although Muslims, Christians and Dalits are the usual targets of his contempt,
any poor person can be a target when that is convenient for him.
*Mexico's
supreme court decriminalizes abortion
across country.*
*Watchdog group sues to
remove "insurrectionist" [candidate] from 2024
ballot*
in Colorado.
The Georgia special grand jury suggested charges against Senator
Lindsey Graham and some other prominent Republicans,
for supporting the insurrectionist's efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
The UK parliament passed laws a few years ago to require registration of
the effective ("beneficial") owner of foreign-owned properties,
but left a loophole
that defeats the system: when the nominal owner is a trust, it can still
conceal the identity of the effective owner.
This is plutocratism at work.
UK enforcement of the registration rules is so lax that
secret owners
are in no danger
of being punished or hassled.
This applies to ordinary tax evaders as well as Russian oligarchs
subject to sanctions because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The Tories have backed down,
for the moment, on plans to scan users' digital communications, but
the requirement is still in the law they are about to pass.
Perhaps they plan to make another try in a year or two.
*Texas Energy Grid
Paid Bitcoin Miner $31.7 Million
to Stop Working Amid Heatwave.*
One sign of US plutocracy is the idea that
companies should be paid every time
they do what the public needs,
rather than be taxed or fined when they do not do it.
The poor are punished; the rich get rewarded.
*Deadly humid
heatwaves to spread rapidly
as climate warms — study.*
This refers to what I have called "fatal weather."
Ralph Nader: as second-order unnatural disasters (caused by the
effects of the first-order unnatural disasters) spread death and
suffering around the world,
we must join to crush the power of the
corporations
that make sure these disasters keep happening.
Nader believes the time is ripe for a left-right coalition to do this,
but I think one of the purposes of right-wing disinformation is to ensure
most right-wing people, in various countries, are so absorbed with fantasy
problems that they can't focus on real problems.
Big banks are financing US coal power plants,
despite a supposed commitment
to stop,
by lending instead to their parent companies.
The effort to stop lending and insurance for fossil fuel projects is a
backup plan, which we try because we can't get Congress to do what
really needs to be done: prohibit some of those projects and tax the
rest so much that some will be canceled. If it worked, it would be a victory.
*UN warns world
will miss climate targets unless fossil fuels phased out.*
*US "university" [calling itself PragerU] spreads climate lies and
receives
millions from rightwing donors.*
Prager you too!
Biden is canceling the fossil fuel leases
that the wrecker signed for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Private equity is investing
in causing climate disasters, and profiting from the work to clean them up.
African countries are compelled to choose
between coping with global heating effects, fighting poverty and paying debts.
I suppose the greenhouse emission rate of African countries is small enough
that reducing those countries' emissions is not urgent.
(satire)
*FanDuel Promo Offers Complimentary $100 Bet
To First-Time Gambling Hotline Callers.*
The UK has been greatly exercised by the conviction of a nurse for
murdering 16 babies in a hospital. Of course, we must prosecute
murder; but the 170,000 excess deaths in Britain 2022 ought to be a
10,000 times bigger public concern.
Some thousands of these deaths were caused by Covid-19 but not
attributed to it.
Some were caused by insufficient funding of the NHS,
which the two main plutocratist parties (Tory
and Starmer-Labour)
have committed to continuing because they refuse to tax the rich even to save thousands of lives,
Users report that Microsoft has installed popups that tell users not to use
Chrome.
That is entirely valid advice. Chrome is nonfree software, which
implies it imposes unjust control over the user (see fsf.org/tedx).
It also has has malicious functionalities.
What I wonder is, does Microsoft single out Google's malware, or does it
also warn about malware from Apple, Microsoft and other countries?
*Climate crisis could contribute to a global food shortage by 2050, US
special envoy on food security warns.*
Do you want to have a child now that might starve at age 30?
I think it is more humane to avoid that.
Starmer is underscoring that he's with the political values of Tony B'liar.
It is very rare that "opposites attract" in romantic couples.
Modi has arbitrarily kicked two news organizations off the internet,
and has arbitrarily had one evicted from its offices.
The EU is coming to think that there are now too many wolves in Europe.
That could well be true.
I do not consider wolves sacred, and I have no wish to maximize their
numbers. Rather, I want to see ecosystems healthy and extinctions
avoided. That entails keeping wild populations well away from zero.
Paying prisoners 23 cents an hour to work for private businesses
is supposedly justified to teach them job skills so they can get jobs
after release. Except that nobody will hire them no matter how well they
do the job.
*Twitter accused of helping [Salafi] Arabia commit human rights abuses.
*Lawsuit says network discloses user data at request of Saudi
authorities at much higher rate than for US, UK and Canada.*
*Former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack.*
He was one of the ringleaders, so he deserves this sentence,
But the fascist leader who they meant to install in power deserves
an even longer sentence.
*Australia's export of fossil fuels is like selling drugs to "maintain"
lifestyle, former [state head fire official] says.*
This is so obvious that when officials who are not stupid don't see it
we must conclude they are determined not to see. Sometimes the
not-see party can be almost as dangerous as the Nazi party.
Starmer-Labour plans to join the Tories in deregulating housing
construction that would release toxic pollution into rivers.
*France planning to ban disposable vapes in effort to combat smoking.*
American fanatical Christians spent a lot of money to help extremist
Christianity take over African countries.
Musk is is threatening journalists on Ex-Twitter if they look
into his antisemitism.
Is painting slogans on a wall, that are meant to criticize China's
repression, "art"?
Is painting the regime's own statement, aiming for people to recognize
their ironic contradiction with its actions, an effective mode of
criticism?
In my view, the answers are "no" and "it's chancy".
I am all for condemning China's repressive dictatorship, as a
political act; but in order to qualify as art it needs to present
its meaning in a subtle, unobvious way. That's the part that could be
art. However, merely intending a text as irony fails to do that. It
doesn't present the meaning in a subtle way, because the subtlety is
not in the work itself; rather, the artist hopes that it will come up
in the viewer's minds only.
As for the effectiveness, it seems that many of the public did not notice
the irony and mistook the quotation from the regime for support — and they
responded by painting over it with non-ironic condemnation of the regime,
thinking that the artist disagreed with them.
You could say that the condemnation manifested itself by ricochet.
Maybe that is a kind of success. Maybe.
It seems to me that this art student's heart was in the right place
politically, but his artwork calls for an F as art.
Australia supports Catholic hospitals with public funds
while they turn away women who need abortions.
One way to finesse this problem would be to set up an organizationally
separate facility for abortions, physically next to the religious
hospital but not under church funding or control.
*Payday Lenders Gave Millions to Republican Group That Backed Supreme
Court Suit to Annihilate CFPB.*
Robert Reich's father set an example by standing up to antisemitic
bullies who tried to make him sell his house.
(satire) *New Community Health Program Teaches Low-Income Americans To
Ignore Symptoms.*
US citizens: call on your senators to eliminate subsidies for fossil
fuel.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Tuberville to stop sabotaging the US military
in an effort to sabotage abortion.
US citizens: call on businesses that advertise to stop
funding election misinformation through their advertising.
In January 2020, Wuhan doctors knew that a new disease was spreading fast.
China ordered them to conceal this bad news.
In my view, whether this outburst was due to a lab leak or to contact
with wild animals was a secondary detail, since neither one would
have been culpable. The secrecy about facts was culpable.
(satire) *Rudy Giuliani Puts Himself Up For Adoption* to a rich family that
could pay his legal fees.
The idea of choosing officials by lot, as ancient Athens chose some officials,
may be interesting.
But the officials chosen this way were usually members of a panel. No
one of them had a large amount of power individually. That reduces
the possible downside from random choice.
Also, the system assumes that these officials would be chosen from people
who would be basically civic-minded. In the US today, many of the potential
lottery choices would be fascists inclined to use their positions to threaten
sabotage. We could not expect that to work.
Two Ohio thugs noted a woman leaving a store and reportedly shoplifting,
and instead of arranging to arrest her, they shot her dead.
If she had stolen something necessary for her life, or for her
children's life, I would have said that the poor have a right to steal
necessities like that. But that point was not applicable if she was
stealing alcoholic drinks. She did not have a right to steal
alcoholic drinks.
But that does not mean it was a grave crime either.
Meanwhile, even though her petty theft was apparently unjustified, it was no
justification for killing her.
I disagree with the article's assumption: that we non-pregnant members
of society are less worthy of rights that are those members who are
pregnant. Reproducing is not a special virtue, especially now in the
days when overpopulation
is likely to kill enough people to reduce the
population drastically through suffering.
But that detail doesn't affect the overall moral conclusion much.
Pregnant or not, mother or not, the thugs killed that woman because
they saw an opportunity, and that morally makes them murderers.
The judge in a Guantanamo "military tribunal" ruled that sticking food up
a prisoner's colon was nothing but torture — and that this torture invalidates
his testimony.
These "military tribunals" are meant to pass for valid trials without
meeting the criteria. Thanks to Judge Acosta, they are a little
closer to being treated as real trials.
A study by the US Treasury finds that unions are very good for
non-rich Americans overall.
The US airforce is testing versions of future AI-controlled armed drones
to be used in air combat alongside human fighter pilots.
I hope the article errs in saying that this AI is similar to the
erroneously labeled "AI" that operates today's bullshit generator
language models, because if that is accurate we have no telling who it
might fire at.
One of the dangers of AI-controlled devices that can do things with
real physical effects — even if not armed — is that it may make
clever inventions that could be fatal in ways that the AI would not
understand, and that no human would be asked to check. This AI is
already demonstrating that sort of creativity which is also potential
danger. I recommend reading the book The Two Faces of Tomorrow, by
James Hogan. See libgen.rs.
A founder of DeepMind says that AI programs will be good friends and
counselors for human beings.
Is your idea of a good friend and counselor one that reports on
everything about you to manipulative large companies and governments
too? Not mine!
It is interesting that the interviewer presumes that AI-driven cars
will be "autonomous" and that they will drive better than the ones
humans drive. They are not at all autonomous — they depend on
internet connections — and San Francisco already knows how badly they
mess up in driving.
Perhaps they will drive well someday, when they understand as much
about driving as humans do. But that is beyond today's technology.
The UK's ministry of surveillance and tracking pushed to permit
massive deployment of facial recognition cameras around Britain.
An appeals court judge who ruled especially harshly against
mifepristone has corrupt links, through gifts to his wife, with the anti-abortion organization that pushed the case.
Clarence Thomas's personal corruption
sets a corrupt example through all of right-wing US judges.
The UK government will warn London cops that evictions by London landlords
are likely to be illegal, and perhaps even criminal.
Cops have been told to refuse to support the eviction, and arrest landlords
who try certain illegal methods.
Hooray!
Firefighters are suing to prevent the UK government from putting any refugees
in the isolated barge in Portland, claiming it is a firetrap.
*The NLRB has brought 100 cases against [Starbucks] over anti-union
activities — but it cannot punish the company.*
Monitors from African countries said that the election in Zimbabwe was not free and fair. Thee candidate who supposedly "lost" said it was rigged.
The previous one was not honest either.
The Republican-dominated states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina
have been gravely damaged by a hurricane.
Much of the damage is caused by the Republican opposition
to curbing global heating.
Home insurance has already been mostly discontinued in Florida.
Now I expect similar developments in more states.
Environmental degradation, caused by global heating and other harm to
wild ecosystems, is bringing humans in contact with more animal diseases.
Some of them can spread to large numbers of humans.
Planet roasters in Australia are spreading distorted economic figures
to derail the country's conversion to renewable power.
They will stop to nothing to continue funding for fossil fuels and nuclear
generation, at the expense of the country and the world.
Republican fanatics are being sentenced to prison for violent threats against
election workers who might have the temerity to do their jobs honestly.
*The dirty secret behind Tory "crime week": their policies ruined
policing.*
I thought that a Tory "crime week" would be when plutocratist politicians
go all-out for corruption ;-}.
Bad mistake: *Ex-Tory MP apologises for ancestors' links to slavery.*
You should never apologize for things others have done for which you
are not responsible.
Aside from that, what she did was proper. She acknowledged the
ancestors' actions, which had been unknown to her until a historian
dug them up in old records, and she denounced them. That is the right
thing for anyone to do who has as little responsibility for those
actions as she has.
It is horrible that people have made death threats against her for
things someone else did long ago. Advocating Tory policies entails
moral responsibility for them (though not for slavery hundreds of
years ago), but it doesn't justify threats of violence.
*North Carolina judge [who was] investigated for saying racial bias exists [has] filed
lawsuit.*
Right-wing racists will go to any lengths to censor awareness of racism
and other right-wing oppression.
*Judge Invested in Big Pharma Shouldn't Try Case on Big Pharma Profiteering.*
Vivek Ramaswamy claims he is the only Republican presidential candidate
that isn't bought. It is not clear whether he is bought, or cheating,
or buying, or buying the publicity.
It may bot matter, because either way he is a right-wing hater.
* Researchers [in Canada] find homeless people more likely to spend
lump sum on housing and food and not ‘temptation goods’ such as
alcohol.*
This study looked at homeless people who were not addicts. The
scientists assumed that addicts may be exceptions.
Investigating 272 blacks who were forced into slavery by the richest
Catholics of Maryland, and sooner or later sold to fund the founding
of Georgetown College.
Georgetown college became part of Washington DC when that was carved
out of Maryland.
*The Tories let [British finance] run out of control. Now Labour plans
to repeat their mistakes.*
Amazon has published guides to identifying mushrooms which were
written by language models that have no intelligence and could lead
people to poison themselves.
Please do not refer to such bullshit-generator systems as "artificial intelligence"!
Joseph Stiglitz: making US democracy function again requires economic
reforms that decrease economic inequality.
Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida, muses on the implications
of an ocean so hot that people can no longer safely do that.
*Florida judge strikes down
[DeMentis]-backed voting map as unconstitutional.*
Of course, he designed it for racist purposes.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I
denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that
practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider
particularly important — and I label them like this.
DeMentis removed state attorney Monique Worrell just before she
could prosecute
a corruption fraud ring among sheriff's deputies.
His objection to her was that she tried to prosecute the most
dangerous of the real criminals — the ones who wear badges.
The Marion thugs raided the Marion County Record and seized its
computers, without grounds to do so under the journalism shield law.
The publisher has said
the paper was investigating
the thug chief for past wrongdoing and that his aim was to derail that investigation.
I've seen this issue develop for weeks, but this is the first time I
saw a clear description of the rights and wrongs of it. Without that,
I could not usefully post about this.
*Invasive species
cost humans $423bn each year
and threaten world's [bio]diversity.*
The right-wing
prime minister of Italy has sued
a singer for calling her "fascist" and "racist" on stage.
I expect that he was right, but I don't have proof to cite. I wish I
had something to cite to demonstrate the truth of his accusation.
Criminal prosecution for defamation is inherently unjust.
US citizens:
call on Democrats
to keep campaigning on abortion rights.
US citizens:
call on the Biden administration
to stand firm against corporate lobbyists and tax billion-dollar corporations.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Venezuela is accused of punishing people horribly based on only a hint of
evidence they were guilty of anything.
It is as bad when Maduro does this as it was when Dubya did this to
prisoners in black sites and Guantanamo, and in various massacres in
Iraq.
Some environmentalists contend that building nuclear power plants
is useful for curbing global heating.
I think they have been taken in.
The article does not make it clear whether they are disputing about
existing nuclear reactors or building new one. But that distinction
is crucial.
A nuclear reactor takes many years to build and is very expensive. If
the aim is to curb global heating, that is an ineffective method.
A nuclear reactor is also vulnerable in wartime. It is, in effect, a
pre-exploded nuclear bomb, as regards fallout. Installing one more is
making extra vulnerability. At the end of its life, it will require
expensive and slow decommissioning.
However, for an existing reactor, the price of construction has
already been paid, the construction time has already elapsed, the
fallout is already there, and the cost of decommissioning is already
going to have to be paid. If you can ensure that the reactor is
maintained so that it won't fail, maybe it is better to keep it running.
The US has a history of letting flaws and damage slide.
An indigenous group in Australia demands payment for mining of dirt
that contains iron ore. Why? Because they consider it sacred
and feel very attached to it.
Nobody is entitled to more rights than others based on per religious
thoughts. Whatever per origin, whether indigenous or immigrant, and
no matter what religion person might practice, the answer has to be
the same: your religious ideas (if any) and practices (if lawful) are
your choice, but they don't entitle you to dominate others.
The decision ought to be based on other factors. What are they?
This case does not involve any ancient art that would be a treasure of
humanity's past and call for preservation.
But these factors clearly apply:
(satire) *Cop Annoyed At Assumption That All Police Officers Are As
Bad As Him.*
(satire) *Convicted Felons Give [the corrupter] Advice For Going To Prison.*
Global heating is enabling formerly tropical tiger mosquitoes to spread into
northern Europe, bringing formerly tropical diseases with them.
When will we learn to defeat the plutocrats that lobby and
propagandize to make so many problems worse?
Republicans in Congress are pushing for the US to invade Mexico,
and want to pass laws to make this easy.
Biden won't do what they wish, but the ruiner would do it if he is
elected again.
A bitcoin miner in Pennsylvania is controversially burning waste coal
and discarded tires to generate electricity. This pollutes the air
but cleans land. Is that practice wise or not?
It should be noted that only some kinds of cryptocurrency (notably
Bitcoin) use the "proof of work" method that entails using lots of
electric power. There are other methods.
If burning waste coal to generate electric power is acceptable, it
doesn't have to be used for cryptocurrency. It could replace other
forms of generation. Thus, the crucial question is whether that
method makes more/worse pollution or less/milder pollution. I don't
know enough to judge the answer to that.
The US versus the planet roasters, as they become ever more obdurately
opposed to civilization's survival.
*President Biden: Don't Give Wall Street Control of Our Public Water Systems.*
Biden flip-flops between opposition to plutocracy and abject surrender
to plutocracy.
Many UK universities and organizations are sponsored by, or buy from,
organizations participating in the systematic brainwashing of the
Uyghurs.
Covid-19 is still dangerous, and infection rates are increasing.
Governments
are neglecting it.
"Co-living" is a gentrified,
luxury-pushing commercial version
of the co-housing movement.
The
FBI now holds 21 million
people's DNA profiles, and is rapidly collecting more.
This could be aiming, in the long term, for a collection covering all Americans.
Burning Man has changed, over the decades, from a reunion of hippies
to a rich people's gathering where some fly in on private jets. So
environmentalists
protested by blocking the road.
They call on Burning Man to stop permitting private jets, as well as a few
excessive forms of consumption of fossil fuels and single-use plastics.
It's sad how so many billionaires
(and the far more numerous decibillionaires) distort our society.
If Burning Man agrees to these demands, some decibillionaires might stay away.
A San Francisco
city commissioner organized a "doom loop"
tour to highlight the city's problems. It received a lot of media attention
so he felt compelled to cancel it, and then resign.
It turned out he is an executive in a real-estate company. Naturally
he would perceive civic issues in terms of profit in the real estate
market. Not the best sort of person to appoint to a municipal office
in a city where high rents are devastating low-wage workers, as well
as many niche businesses that would employ them. San Francisco
has a real housing crisis and saying things are just fine will not help.
San Francisco needs to find a way to let people use the abandoned
office buildings and stores as housing — fast! Even if it means
relaxing or substituting, for these conversions, some codes that apply
specifically to residential buildings. In this case, the perfect is
the enemy of the good.
*Climate crisis to create
"acute" challenges
for Australia’s economy, incoming [Royal Bank of Australia] governor says.*
Robert Reich: *Biden is turning
away from free trade
— and that’s a great thing.*
*[Business-supremacy treaties] have brought cheaper goods. They’ve
also destroyed millions of US jobs and caused US wages to stagnate.*
They have done similar harm to other countries.
And the ISDS clauses
have blocked efforts to curb global heating and protect the environment,
public health and the general standard of living. And then there is the
oil investment treaty.
Depending on online disservices to make
your records or published works
available over time is asking to lose.
The only thing you can trust is to have your own copy on your own equipment,
and to keep multiple encrypted copies on various backup services that commit
to keep them for you unless a disaster happens.
*France to
ban girls from wearing abayas
in state schools.* Abayas are long dresses worn by many Muslim girls.
I was astounded to see kameez in the list of Muslim "sectarian"
clothing. In India, lots of urban women (not necessarily Muslim) wear
the salwar-kameez combination.
This gives me an idea for restoring laïcité without any ban: recruit
couturiers to develop abayas as a fashion, for any and all women
regardless of religion. If that style of dress catches on, you won't
be able to determine a schoolgirl's religion from her abaya.
*Bavaria’s deputy leader faces accusations over antisemitic
pamphlet*
published 35 years ago
when he was 17 years old. At the time, he was determined to be the author of it.
From the descriptions in the article, the pamphlet repeatedly mocked
the holocaust, and that's undeniably antisemitic. But people's views
often change from age 17 to age 52. He may not be antisemitic today.
As an official, in recent years, he has endorsed various far-right
views. Even if he has dropped antisemitism, those other statements
are enough to make him a bad person to have as an official.
NHS doctors are now led to work in a gig economy system,
without
lasting relationships with patients
or other personnel.
Labour has a plan to change this by applying
financial incentives and
disincentives
to doctors. The insistence on making this change "cost neutral" forces the
decision to make the disincentives equal the incentives. But we know
the NHS personnel need raises.
Labour is screwing itself with its decision to bow down to the rich by not taxing them more.
*Bernie Sanders urges left to back Biden
to stop "very dangerous" Trump.*
I would urge people to vote for Biden rather than the insurrectionist.
China is trying to erase the Tibetan culture and Tibetans as an ethnic
group, with
forced assimilation.
Alan Singer: *Trump
Insanity on the Right*
A scientist who has studied emperor penguins for a career expects
them to be
extinct in our lifetime,
due to global heating.
The
loss of sea ice
is endangering polar bears in some regions of the Arctic,
but in other regions they have adapted to the changes … so far.
Whether the species will survive this century somewhere is not clear.
Since we don't know exactly what changes will result from global heating,
we can't assert with certainty that it will be wiped out. But we also
cannot assert it will survive.
We can be sure that more heating makes more chance of extinction.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to reconfirm Gwynne
Wilcox to another term on the National Labor Relations Board.
Republicans are trying to block her reappointment so that the board
will not have quorum and will be unable to do its vital work.
Please call as soon as possible — her reconfirmation will be voted
on next week.
I saw an online messaging campaign for this, but sending a message to
a member of Congress does not allow ordinary email. It requires using
a web form that demands execution of nonfree JavaScript code. For
moral reasons I do not use that form, or recommend it to the public.
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
and https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.
It is a grave wrong for any government activity to require the public
to run nonfree software co communicate with it.
I discovered this problem several years ago, and since then have always
asked people to use phone calls to communicate with members of Congress.
But I don't recall that I explained the reason before.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*[Large global] consultancy firm used
"power maps" of Australian
officials
to help win government contracts.*
*Iceland allows whaling to resume in
"massive step backwards".*
*Canada issues travel advisory for LGBTQ+ residents
visiting US.*
*Former member of Belarus "hit squad"
to stand trial
over disappearances [presumed ordered by Lukashenko].*
*When a British politician discusses “tough choices”, [person] invariably
[reveals] whose side [perse is] really on. A tough choice tends to involve
emptying the pockets of those with little, or slashing a service
ordinary citizens depend on.*
In any country, the plutocratist politicians are the ones that do
this. Labour's string of "tough choices" shows it has become a
plutocratist party. The Tories, formerly the reasonable-sounding
plutocratist, party, has become the incompetent nutso party, and
Starmer has moved Labour into the Tories' old spot. Now Labour is
competing
with the Tories
for breaking promises to correct horrible problems. The most recent
Labour pledge to be dropped is the wealth tax.
In the US, plutocratist, politicians since Reagan have allowed
dooH niboR
to transfer ever more of the working people's previous share of national income to the rich.
Progressive proposals to return some of that to the
non-rich always provoke squeals of exaggerated pain from the rich,
claiming that that would be unfair and intolerable. The politicians
who heed them do so because they are plutocratist. Clinton, the first
plutocratist, Democratic president since a century ago, continued on that
path, and so did Dubya and Obama.
Biden has made efforts to help the non-rich.
I expected another Obama but I was favorably surprised. He would have done more but
plutocratists, in Congress (including some Democrats)
blocked him.
*Biden says
white supremacy has no place in US
after Florida killings.* That shows some moral leadership.
Nonetheless, he is no Bernie Sanders.
However, one difference between political parties in the US and
political parties in Britain is that a US party does not have veto
power over candidates for federal office. The voters choose them.
That is why we see increasing numbers of progressive Democrats elected
to Congress. We can, by supporting them, convert the Democratic Party
step by step into a progressive party again.
Britons can't do that any more in the Labour Party. Starmer's strict
measures to exclude non-plutocratists
from
running as Labour candidates
block that completely, so there is no hope down the Labour path any more.
Compare today's Labour leadership with the leaders that
set up the National Health Service
and made it work. What a shame.
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)
James P. McGovern Thomas Massie
Member of Congress Member of Congress
What I learned about gender and language from talking about the Virgin
of Emacs, and how I made use of that in practice.
*[The fascist] calls for store robbers to be shot.*
See talks for more info.
À Lourdes, tous les pères sont maltraités par leur fils aínés.
Ils ont donc organisé le Concours Pyrenéen.
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