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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
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The new, more infectious variety of Covid-19 is probably already spreading in the US. That means that the precautions which were sufficient in the past to prevent an increase in cases will be insufficient from now on.
We will need stronger precautions, more firmly enforced.
China has jailed Hong Kong dissidents who tried to flee by boat, after a hasty purported trial.
What's so bad about Neera Tanden.
New cars collect a lot of data about the people inside the car, even aside from their use of the navigation system and phones. For instance, with the accelerometer it may be possible to reconstruct the car's trajectory, even if you disable the GPS.
The data can be used for solving nonpolitical crimes. They can also be used for repression. Laws about how the data can be used are ineffective for resisting repression. Drivers must have the option to disable these systems in their cars.
Argentina has legalized abortion.
I showed my support for this cause during my last visit to Argentina.
*Uganda opposition candidate Bobi Wine says he and team under arrest.*
Israel is vaccinating its citizens at the rate of 2% per day. At that rate, everyone can get both doses in under 4 months.
However, Israel has no plan to vaccinate the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, even though as occupying power it is responsible for protecting them.
Many union members voted for the wrecker, because he said he would oppose offshoring of work, provide funds for jobs, and so on. Now that he has proved that was bogus, maybe progressives can win their support.
Why the Democratic Party has become the US Conservative Party.
Progressives are a small but growing faction within it. Our choices are to vote for progressive Democrats, or the Green Party.
Biden could declare a deportation moratorium as an opportunity to straighten out the horrible things about the US immigration system.
I have a feeling that to change the sadistic culture of ICE it will be necessary to abolish ICE and set up a new agency with different personnel.
The Schengen zone has been very efficient at preventing Africans from getting in and staying there. The result is that they can only go by sea, and many die there.
I agree that the correct solution for this problem is for the powerful countries to stop messing up Africa to enrich the rich. However, Africans must play their part by reducing their population growth and stabilizing their population. (Every part of Earth must stabilize its population, then reduce it to a sustainable level by the one humane method — fewer births.)
A survey with Covid-19 antibody tests found that 5% of the people in Wuhan caught Covid-19. That is 500,000 people, ten times the number of acknowledged cases.
US citizens: call on senators to support Sanders in filibustering the military spending bill to demand passage of $2,000 stimulus payments to Americans.
*Why Senators Must Reject Avril Haines for [Director of National Intelligence].*
The Massachusetts legislature overrode Governor Baker's veto of a bill to reduce obstacles to abortion.
Those obstacles are in laws whose enforcement has been suspended due to the Roe v Wade decision. The bill has been considered now because of the danger that the right-wing extremist majority on the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade and make those laws spring back into enforcement.
Massachusetts abortion law continues to have a major flaw, though it will bite much less often than before. It protects pregnant girls under 16 from the trauma that an abortion sometimes causes, by imposing on them the unending life difficulties that having a baby at that age almost always causes. What in the world are those legislators thinking?
The younger a girl is, the more important it is that nothing hamper her access to an abortion.
Governor Baker is a "moderate" Republican. He does not champion outrageous changes for the worse. Rather, he tries to retard and reduce every change for the better that Massachusetts tries to make. I hope we get a better governor in 2022.
* The Biden Administration must take executive action to promote universal access to safe water for every person.*
Varoufakis: 2020 showed that capitalism — in the sense of a competitive market in which investors are compelled to try to outdo each other, and this makes more wealth — is dead. They no longer need to compete.
The article also presents several other crucial lessons.
In the 1890s, the US suffered from similar concentration of industry, but we had enough democracy to decide to eliminate it. The problem now is that the rich choose the officials, too.
*Calling Covid-19 Crisis a 'Wake-Up Call,' WHO Experts Warn Next Pandemic Could Be Even Worse.*
If it is worse, we won't have trouble convincing people to take precautions. Rather, the problem will be the danger to essential workers. That could cause collapse.
Georgia Republicans have closed some polling places (for early voting) in black neighborhoods but kept them all open in white neighborhoods.
It is impossible to convince a nonbiased person that this is not discriminatory. Republicans must be planning to argue that they can lawfully practice racist voter-suppression and no one can stop them.
There is no basis for federal prosecution of the thugs that killed Tamir Rice as he was holding an air rifle.
One article argues that there is enough proof that they lied and they could be prosecuted for that. I don't know whether that is so, but if it is, they definitely should be prosecuted for lying.
Another article says nothing about that point, but explains why the federal government could not prosecute them for the killing.
This is an instance of a repeating pattern in which white thugs shoot blacks after making erroneous snap judgments that they are a threat. Snap judgments are often erroneous, thus many of these blacks are killed for no legitimate reason. This amounts to an aspect of systemic racism — but it is hard to come up with a step in of making a snap judgment that could be defined as a crime. The whole process takes place inside a person's mind.
Defining some action that the thug is required carry out before shooting someone could slow down the snap judgment, thus providing an opportunity to think, and to decide not to shoot. It might also provide a basis for prosecuting a thug who fails to take that action. "Turn on your body camera and study the person and the scene until it clicks, which it does after three seconds" might be a suitable action to require.
The killing of Tamir Rice is an example of another recurrent pattern: losing a piece of crucial information in the dispatch process. I have an idea for how to make that dangerous problem less frequent.
Currently those pieces of crucial information are treated as miscellaneous details. When such a thing is dropped, it does not leave a gap — there is nothing to tell the thugs that they are missing something they needed to know.
Suppose any information suggesting "Person in question is probably not threatening or hurting anyone" were represented by use of a different dispatch code. This distinction could not be lost, because it is impossible to drop the dispatch code, and changing it would go against all habit.
This would not eliminate the tendency to misjudge based on unconscious racism, but could make it happen less often.
The UK can no longer block the EU from moving towards a federal democracy.
Nonetheless, it will be a big struggle to avoid enshrining the power of the Euro-zone banks to convert national disasters into perpetual national debt peonage.
The US could have arranged to make and distribute Covid-19 vaccine much faster, for an acceptable extra cost.
*Dr. James Phillips worked at Walter Reed hospital and condemned the spreader-in-chief for doing a publicity drive-by outside the hospital, because it endangered the other people with him in the vehicle. Immediately afterward he was fired, but since his job was subcontracted, it is not clear who fired him.*
As usual, subcontracting work causes a lack of accountability. We need laws to make subcontracting so expensive that businesses will only rarely use it.
The US has around 1600 highly polluted sites in the Superfund's National Priority List. Almost 1000 of them are vulnerable to leaking pollution into the environment in the case of extreme weather, making it urgent to clean them up.
The US should impose a tax on sale of any fossil fuel, to pay for faster cleanup
There is now a campaign to encourage the sharing of seeds in freedom.
As in the software field, the amoral term "open source" predominates, but the London Freedom Seed Bank talks about sharing "freedom seeds".
China has decided to split up Alibaba.
It seems to be easier for China to make such a decision than the US. That is a sign of too much deregulation of business in the US.
* By focusing more on battling inequality, new research shows, the United States could significantly improve American life expectancy.*
*Covid-19 Exposed the Urgency for a Right to Housing.*
Protesters continue demanding the that Marshall County, Alabama, remove a monument to the Confederacy (and the Confederate flag) from its court house.
The excuse a counterprotester offered for keeping the monument is not valid. US monuments to the Confederacy were put up long after the Civil War, as a political statement. This one says, "Marshall County supports racism and Jim Crow." If the county means that, it deserves reproach. If the county does not mean that, it should take down the monument (and flag) to stop saying that.
I think it is a mistake to bring John Marshall into the matter. He had nothing to do with putting up the monument.
What should we say about John Marshall?
Marshall established judicial review by the Supreme Court as a legal principle of the US government, ending previous dispute about the question. He also owned slaves.
The former was a great contribution to justice for the United States, indeed for the whole world. The latter was an instance of a widespread unjust practice. Slavery overall was a great evil, but Marshall's part in it was not of special importance.
When an evil practice is the usual way of life, to reject it is to be a hero, but failure to be a hero does not make one a monster. Those who particularly championed slavery deserve particular condemnation even today, but there is no reason to focus on slavery when judging Marshall.
That is also my view regarding other moral issues, including the issue of software freedom. Developing and promoting nonfree software is a widespread continuing injustice. I condemn those who have championed it. Because it is not a thing of the past, I press people to recognize that it is wrong, and I urge them to stop developing and stop using nonfree software. But because it is a widespread practice, I do not revile people or refuse to be friends with them just because they use nonfree software, or even because they are employed to develop nonfree software. I'd be going too far if I did that.
Meanwhile, to the extent that people resist nonfree software, I express appreciation for their resistance, even if it is just a little. Because that is a start.
Australia is set to increase its coal extraction in the coming decade.
The mine owners defend mining with willful blindness, such as, "This mine is a tiny fraction of the whole world's greenhouse gas emissions, so it is not a problem." By applying that argument to every mine, we would conclude that we should calm down and let fossil fuels cause a mass extinction and destroy civilization — which proves the argument is fallacious.
The article presents that argument without refuting it, but that is to be expected from a centrist medium such as CNN.
The border thugs' union acted as a political supporter of the bully.
*Koch Industries Is Top Corporate Donor to [Republican Congresscritters] Who Will Try to Overturn Democracy.*
Biden's nominee to manage federal spending, Neera Tanden, runs a "centrist" think tank that aims to please the corporations that fund it. His nominee to manage foreign policy, Antony Blinken, moves weapons through the revolving door.
An article about how Covid-19 spread so much in California tries to hold Governor Newsom responsible for everything — including the ill will of people who were angry about inconvenience, and the sabotage carried out by lunatic Republicans radicalized by the wrecker.
Those are not his fault.
The article tries to have it both ways by bemoaning the unpleasantness of measures to reduce the spread of Covid-19 even as it criticizes Newsom for not establishing enough of them.
I think that the state should have cracked down hard on officials and businesses that worked against sanitary measures. For instance, the state could have passed a law to allow removal and replacement of defiant sheriffs, and then immediately replaced every one of them.
* International convention to stop richer countries exporting contaminated material for recycling could mean a cleaner ocean in five years.*
*Fractures to [giant] Antarctic iceberg reduce risk to South Georgia wildlife.*
I continue to believe we should develop a way to break up a large icebergs so as to avoid that danger — unless it is inevitable that such a berg would fracture naturally.
Tony Chung, of Hong Kong, has been sentenced to 4 months in prison for throwing China's flag on the ground.
After that he will probably be sentenced to a much longer prison term for calling for Hong Kong's independence.
Authoritarians in the US used to punish people for burning the American flag, until the Supreme Court ruled that burning the flag is protected political speech and may not be criminalized.
A Hong Kong expat, who visited there, reports that people continue to find low-profile ways to resist.
I wonder whether these will amount to more than a pretend opposition.
Heavy rains into arms of the sea can reduce salinity; past a certain point, that makes dolphins' skin badly sick. This can lead to fatal infections.
Can we develop an ultrasound transmitter that will tell dolphins to flee to the open sea?
*Spain to keep registry of people who refuse Covid vaccine.*
That seems like a plan for harsh, secret retribution. It is one thing to check people, in certain situations, for proof that they have been vaccinated. It is another to check specifically for refusal.
Refusing vaccination is one thing, and misinforming patients is another.
*Shield some and let others carry on? This Covid theory is dangerous, and foolish.*
It also amounts to telling the more vulnerable people that they are effectively prisoners in solitary confinement until the pandemic is over.
*Judge orders Georgia counties to halt voter purge ahead of Senate runoff.*
Republicans grasp for every excuse to stop poor people from voting.
*Ro Khanna Applauds 19 House Democrats Who Joined Him in Voting No on Military Budget.*
I applaud them all too.
The drama queen signed the relief bill.
In the short term, this will help millions of Americans who are on the brink. In the long term, the copyright repression provisions will enable the copyright industry to ruin thousands of Americans every year and bully millions.
Whether this bill is good or bad, overall, I am unable to say.
By the way, I am aware that this drama queen is male. But it would be sexist to limit the term to females. I think that we should recognize drama queens regardless of their gender.
The seed business is highly concentrated, and its success with plant variety monopolies has eliminated most of the varieties farmers used to plant.
Funded efforts to produce new varieties are useful, but governments can fund that without restricting use of the results.
It's a shame that the campaigners have fixed their attention on the amoral term "open source" rather than on the free software movement.
*Biden accuses [the wrecker's] administration of obstructing his national security team.*
Sabotage Я Us, says the wrecker.
*Indian police charge army officer with killing three Kashmir civilians.*
There must have been hundreds of Kashmiris killed or maimed by Indian soldiers without justification. What puzzles me is that this killer went to so much effort to pretend.
England (not the whole UK) will prohibit supermarkets from putting fattening products at checkout isles to tempt undisciplined shoppers into buying them.
I am in favor of this. It won't stop you from buying those products if you really want to, but if your preference is not to buy them, this will help you stick to that.
Awards for the worst customer "service" nastiness in the UK.
Has anyone done this for the US?
There is a small but growing Covid-19 outbreak near Sydney. In its spread, unidentified people, probably with no symptoms, have played a significant role.
Could a contact-tracing app identify the unidentified intermediaries? It could, if it worked reliably. I've seen arguments the apps, knowing nothing but bluetooth-measured proximity, could not distinguish real transmission opportunities from large numbers of other pseudo-opportunities.
The worst 10 weather disasters of this year cost $150bn in insured damage. The total damage is much more. 400 billion? One can only guess.
This is just the beginning. By 2030 it may be several trillion a year. By 2050, the sum will be much larger, except that money will no longer be a meaningful measure of it, as the disasters will ruin people's lives.
Measuring damages in money is useful when society can repair them and the cost of said repair is small compared with overall economic activity. When the damage is enormous and irreparable, money ceases to measure it. If a farm's crops are lost one year, their value can be estimated. When the farm (along with thousands of others) must be abandoned because agriculture in that area is no longer viable, is it not so easy to estimate the cost to society of the resulting scarcity. If the shortfall of food can be filled by buying it on the world market, the cost of that can be determined. If it is impossible to purchase that food, what then is the cost of the resulting hunger? It has to be measured in lives.
The wrecker has made a rule that products made in Israeli colonies in Palestine's territory should be labeled as "made in Israel". This is clearly a step towards accepting Israel's annexation of the West Bank.
Will Biden have the courage to undo the unjust concessions that the wrecker made to Israel? I think he will find that too controversial.
Chinese are objecting to face recognition, and suing companies for imposing it.
Erdoğan is trying to crush out the strong-spirited opposition party HDP by arresting thousands of its members.
Some of the patients of the first Covid-19 wave are still suffering symptoms that make them unable to work, almost unable to get through daily activities.
When they can get a doctor's attention, no one knows what treatments to try.
The private US medical system can't cope with the chronic illnesses that Covid-19 will leave behind in many of the people who catch it.
It is also lousy at trying to prevent the chronic diseases that make people vulnerable to a bad case of Covid-19.
An oil-sheikh from Abu Dhabi bought a Jerusalem football team, sending right-wing extremist Israeli fans into fits, while reinvigorating the Israeli fans who oppose their bigotry.
How the wrecker prevented photos showing what US hospitals look like when they are overfull.
Facebook will move to the US a large amount of profit that it has kept in Ireland (and paid hardly any tax on).
It will pay insufficient tax on these profits in the US, too, but more than in Ireland.
The article uses the bogus term "intellectual property", which is always confusing and vague. The concrete referent in this case is not very concrete. It refers to artificial excuses that Facebook has created to make various parts of Facebook pay royalties to the part in Iceland. This is how Facebook moves its profits to Iceland where they are not taxed much if at all.
*Throughout history Britain’s ruling class has created crisis after crisis – just like now.*
*The Guardian view on Britain out of the EU: a treasure island for rentiers.*
Rep. Clyburn says his investigation has found evidence of a pressure campaign to undermine the CDC's public information about Covid-19.
This would have been part of the wrecker's effort to spread the sickness as much as possible.
Brian Murphy, official in charge of intelligence at the Department of Harshness and Sadism, testified he was told to lie and blame "Far Left groups" more than they deserved, and blame white supremacists less than they deserved, regarding violence in protests last summer.
He also said that Kirstjen Nielsen, who was the head of that department, falsified this in her testimony to Congress.
*New study links psychopathic tendencies to racial prejudice and right-wing authoritarianism.*
There is previous evidence for this relationship.
(satire) *5,000-Foot Ball Of Discarded Packaging Material Barrels Across Nation Consuming Everything In Path.*
*After Dismembering [Jamal Khashoggi], [Salafi] Arabia Goes on a PR Spree.*
US politics analyzed as a clash of two fantasies, disconnected from reality.
I think the article's statement that the conman only pretended to set up an authoritarian system is too strong. His systematic efforts to destroy all checks on his power and corrupt agencies to do his will did succeed to the point of overturning the election (not yet, at least), but when he fired inspectors general and suffered no punishment, and fired heads of departments until he got one that would do his dirty work, he made himself above the law.
Detroit is suing BLM protesters saying that protest is a "conspiracy".
Hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, coming from the north, died over the US southwest because they were undernourished for a long time.
Bolsonaro plans to build a road through a national park in Amazonia.
This will inevitably speed deforestation — and there is only a small way to go before the entire Amazon forest dies and becomes grasslands.
A Columbus thug shot Andre Hill, who was wielding a phone at the time. Hill died later that day. Hill was black, so racism may have played a role in the thug's haste to shoot.
The killer did not activate his body camera, but it saved a video anyway. The chief of the department excoriated the killer for wildly disregarding rules, and fired him.
What can be done to prevent other thugs from killing other (usually black) men? Prosecuting the killer is called for, if his action included a crime. But that doesn't seem to teach thugs much of a lesson.
Is it possible to use empathy teach the other cops not to be thugs? They could meet with Hill's relatives, to listen to them and empathize with their loss. Then the department could show them how the killer's unacceptable handling of the situation was to blame for that loss.
Does anyone know whether this approach is effective?
To carry out an autogolpe, officials would have to take steps which, legally, they don't have grounds to do. That won't necessarily stop them.
In November we saw Republican state officials almost unanimously refuses to throw the election. They willingly make elections unfair, but drew the line at disregarding the actual votes.
In January the matter will depend on Republican federal officials, many of them chosen specifically by the wrecker himself. Have they got enough loyalty to constitutional government to disobey him?
One of them will be the new acting attorney general.
With only 25 days to go, he may be able to avoid helping by stalling.
The Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans report that the US deportation thugs had a warrant to raid their aid supplies on Christmas Eve.
*Digital Watchdog Says Facebook Behind 'Intentional Decrease' in Traffic to Pro-Palestinian Pages.*
Republicans don't deserve to be "met in the middle."
They will deserve forgiveness when they apologize, if they demonstrate that is sincere.
Things Biden can do by executive order to reduce the oppression of the US justice system.
A black MD had a bad case of Covid-19 and had to fight to get proper treatment, even to get examined to see what Covid-19 her problems were. She posted, saying that black patients are often experience this.
Subsequently she was hospitalized for a couple of weeks, then died from Covid-19. The obvious question is whether she would have survived if given proper treatment in the earlier period. I have no way of guessing the answer, but it is obvious that when blacks systematically get worse treatment, some of them will die as a result.
*The IHRA censors Palestinians by design, not by accident.*
Some pro-occupation activists push the legal adoption of the IHRA's definition of antisemitism with the specific intention of shutting down Palestinians BDS campaign. They claim that even using the expression "Israeli apartheid" is "antisemitism".
That definition, which was designed for data analysis, is not suitable as a criterion for judging a statement as antisemitic or not.
Biden hesitates to believe he has the authority to cancel student debt without Congress.
I am not a lawyer; I am not the one to judge whether the president has the authority to do this. But lawyers argue for that, and if it is plausible, he should try it.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, will post very general reminders on fuel pumps that burning fossil fuels is dangerous.
Asking individuals to conserve is inadequate to address the problem; it takes the government to mobilize a country for changes such as are needed. It takes a lot more than the feeble efforts made under Obama, which have now been reversed by the wrecker.
However, these frequent reminders of the danger we live under may help bring about the necessary action.
Two years ago, there was an upsurge in use of less gentle-sounding terms such as "global heating", but media seem to have backed down. Not me!
Since 1990, US companies have found it easy to crush unions, so it is useful to teach Americans about the decades of struggle that led the labor movement to victory under the New Deal.
Will the US prosecute the conman when Biden becomes president?
I agree that failure to do so will confirm that presidents are above the law, and encourage a rerun.
However, in an era when Republicans will let a Republican president get away with any sort of corruption and undermining, being able to prosecute per afterward if there is an afterward is not enough protection for democracy.
DNA barcoding has revealed that what we thought was one species can be ten or more visually indistinguishable species. This means a lot more species that we're in the process of driving to extinction.
Covid-19 tests the solidarity and organization of a society.
Those that have organized well to protect the health of all have done well. Those like the US and UK, where those who dominate do not care about the rest, have suffered terrible infestations.
Prime Minister Ardern has moved the Labour Party of New Zealand to the right. She has done a good job of dealing with crises, but she is denying the party's purpose by not pushing to help the poor.
It's not as bad there as in the US. At least New Zealand has a national medical system.
Calling on Miguel Cardona, if he becomes Secretary of Education, to block facial recognition surveillance.
The conman pardoned someone who had taken in a billion dollars from Medicare fraud.
Perhaps seeing another conman punished tugs at his heartstrings.
Here is a good proposed first step towards protecting student privacy by preventing some sorts of software snooping.
What is missing?
Congress is considering a law to establish blanket copyright repression over the internet, and mandate copyright filters that will err on the side of censorship.
Many poor Americans live in "pharmacy deserts"; there is no pharmacy in walking distance. Being poor, they often don't have cars. Many of them have grave medical conditions — in the US medical system, that could be why you are poor.
Someday soon, when there's a Covid-19 vaccine available for the, they will have trouble getting vaccinated.
The wrecker could still try to mount an autogolpe to prevent the handover of power to a new president. He is setting up personnel to do it.
However, he is also making arrangements that assume he will be replaced on Jan 20. Maybe he has given up, or will give up, on the autogolpe.
Georgia is shutting early voting sites in some places where many blacks and hispanics live. It looks like voter suppression.
Germany has decided to consider the question further rather than attach missiles to its drones.
*The two parties don't even try anymore to forge a public consensus on what we need to spend on and what we should tax. Neither party seemingly assesses long-term spending needs, nor proposes a tax structure to align with those needs.*
The wrecker is still talking about starting a war against Iran during the remaining time he has the power to do so.
Varoufakis presents his diagnosis of the global economy and his suggestions for a better one.
Alas, he can't see a way it could be done. I can't either.
The US should base its thoughts about war on the self-inflicted disasters of Vietnam and Iraq, not on victory over Hitler.
*The Covid crisis has shown how privatisation corrodes democracy.*
*Not only has outsourcing failed citizens during the pandemic — it makes states less responsive and less accountable.*
Bogus Johnson got serious in the last three weeks and negotiated a trade deal with the EU in the nick of time.
This surprised me. His refusal to confront the disagreements led me to think he wanted the UK to exit with no deal. It is now clear that he did not really want that.
So why did he keep proposing impossible solutions and disregarding the importance of the problem? I don't know, but my guess is that until earlier this month he thought he could make the problem go away by refusing to acknowledge it. And he thought the EU negotiators were bluffers like him.
Here's what the Guardian says about this.
The SolarWinds crack gained access to companies that service infrastructure such as turbines. The crackers may be able to wreck machinery, much as the US did to Iran's uranium centrifuges some years ago.
No one in the US knows whether they are in a position to shut off, or wreck, critical infrastructure.
I've said for many years that we should not connect such thing to the internet.
*Democratic senators call on Biden to adopt measures to forbid some practices that nourish corruption.*
New York State has temporarily banned biometric surveillance of students in schools.
Biometric surveillance should be forbidden except for specific circumstances, and those exceptions should be strictly regulated.
Biden has named Bruce Reed, who wants to cut Social Security, to a White House position, deputy chief of staff.
I don't know whether that position will give Reed much of an opportunity to attack Social Security and other programs to help non-rich Americans, but that Biden would even consider such a person is bad.
Biden praised the stimulus bill as a "model" despite not doing enough to help non-rich Americans. Maybe that's what Biden means by "bipartisanship" — praise the right wing for not being as bad as one could imagine.
As usual, Sanders shows what our model should be.
*Number of Journalists Murdered in Retaliation for Their Work More Than Doubled in 2020.*
Videos show Boston thugs attacking BLM protesters and spewing hatred at them.
The hatred is important because it tends to preclude acting like a police office rather than a thug.
I wonder whether the people who started the "violent protests" were real protesters, or right-wing provocateurs. We know that right-wing provocateurs did this in Minneapolis.
The provocateurs succeeded in leading real protesters to go berserk, and that may have poisoned the public's perception of the protests.
I have no specific information, but we know that right-wing extremists communicate around the country and even internationally. If it was effective in Minneapolis, they would surely have tried it in other cities.
*Biden’s Drug Czar Must Be Someone Willing to Diverge From Our Country’s Failed Drug War.*
I think we should treat any addictive recreational drug as dangerous. For instance, taking enough alcohol to make you tipsy is risking that the habit will develop, gradually over years, into alcoholism. (This does not happen to everyone, but you don't know how it will affect you.) And don't touch an opioid at all unless it is for physical pain you can't bear.
Drugs cause real problems, but prohibition doesn't fix them; rather, it swaps them for worse problems. Prohibition of alcohol only built the Mafia, and prohibition of opioids makes them more dangerous.
We should to treat drug use problems as medical problems and give the people afflicted treatment, not imprisonment.
Restoring the soul of the Democratic Party — will it stand for anything?
The wrecker's last-minute rule will enable restaurants to cut the pay of their low-paid workers.
An off-duty Boston thug drove an official thug vehicle through a red light, into Anne-Marie Castor's car, totaling it and injuring her. The city has refused to pay for it, so she replaced it herself, but the result is that she can't afford food.
Will someone get these marauders off our streets?
*EU Ramps Up Fight Against Pollution With Ban on Plastic Waste Exports to Poorer Countries.*
Keeping the plastic waste in the EU does not directly reduce the harm the plastic does, but it will pressure the EU to adopt policies to generate less plastic waste.
Israel's "Nation State" law, which legislates discrimination against non-Jewish citizens (which includes most Arabs), is also being used to discriminate against non-orthodox Jews.
Right-wing extremist senators are pushing the wrecker to submit the Paris agreement and the non-nuclear deal with Iran to the Senate as treaties, the idea being that the Senate will reject them and then Biden would somehow be unable to reenter the US in them.
I am skeptical that this would deal a mortal blow to US participation in those agreements — simply because officially approving them is not crucial to making them effective.
What Iran wants is for the US to drop sanctions. If the president drops sanction against Iran, Iran will comply with its side of the deal. Whether the US continues in that policy is a political question, as the wrecker has already shown. So Biden can drop the sanctions, and Iran can limit its uranium enrichment, even if the deal is not official.
As for the Paris agreement, all it does is require the US to make a weak pledge to reduce emissions. Biden can do that even if the US can't officially rejoin the Paris agreement.
However, survival requires the US to do a lot more than that. So let's focus on getting a policy that meets the physical world criterion.
Children in India suffer from lead poisoning because of lead compounds used as coloring in the spices Indians use in everyday cooking.
Rep. Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is concerned that the conman is destroying White House records without the consultations that the law requires.
Thugs in South Carolina were searching for some teenage vandals at 4am and saw Jethro DeVane peek out the door of his house to see what the commotion was. A thug pointed a gun at his head and forced him to stand outside naked.
DeVane must be incredibly youthful for his 71 years, if the thug thought he was a teenager. Or maybe the darkness of his skin obscured the signs of age.
The UK tested 1/4 of the population of Liverpool with a cheap, quick, inaccurate Covid-19 test that misses a substantial fraction of the cases,
That test is not useful for demonstrating that someone is not infected — though the best tests do not guarantee that — but it is useful for finding many people who are infected. If the state takes appropriate action, such as quarantining them and paying their salaries for that period, it could greatly cut the spread of the disease.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and your senators to tell them to remove the copyright and trademark changes from the Covid-19 relief bill.
The wrecker's veto, while surely intended for manipulation, offers the chance to fix this. Let's seize the opportunity.
Why the copyright repression of the CASE Act is so bad.
Increasing the relief payments would also be a good thing, but if the wrecker were sincere about wanting that, he could have said so two weeks ago and got it with much less fuss.
Russia will block US social media companies that mark Russian government claims as dubious.
There is no way to prevent this. The only thing an honest company can do is stop doing business with Russia. A dishonest company will cede to Russia's pressure.
Of course, a similar situation exists in the US with regard to the bullshitter's bullshitter.
Prominent Turkish editor Can Dündar, driven into exile by absurd accusations of terrorism, has now been sentenced to a long prison term.
Fortunately Erdoğan is unable to imprison Dündar, but the prognosis for freedom in Turkey is not very good.
Puerto Rico's creditors for its unpayable debt are about to impose crushing, impossible taxes to pay the debt. This would leave almost everyone there in penury.
*The [Tories] are pitting the white working class against black people.*
That's the standard distraction of the plutocratist right wing.
*Pollution killed nearly 1.7m people in India in 2019 – study.*
That is on the order of 1/10 of the total annual deaths in India.
*With Covid mutating, it's clearer than ever why we must eliminate this virus.*
The idea of letting Covid-19 run rampant until it produced herd immunity was always nonsense — the US is demonstrating that it implies lots of deaths along the way. But now we see that it won't necessarily ever stop, if mutations produce strains that old immunity doesn't protect against.
This also shows that we can't protect the population of one country without protecting all countries. If one large population continues to have Sar-Cov-2 circulating in it, it will generate mutant varieties that will then spread world-wide.
Thus, we must make plans to vaccinate all populations and thus eradicate the virus everywhere.
*Delayed Covid vaccines for poor countries 'will leave Europe vulnerable for years'.*
US thugs get tremendous amounts of location surveillance data from phone companies, and now have special analysis software to understand the activities of many individuals.
A Pakistani human rights activist, living in exile in Canada, was found dead while taking a walk. It seems likely she was murdered.
Balochistan has a strange situation. Balochis are a distinct ethnic group and face persecution by the majority because they adhere to a different sect of Islam. Some of them started a violent independence movement, and the Pakistani state responds by violence against Balochis based on suspicion.
The murderer in chief pardoned Blackwater mercenaries for the massacre they committed in Iraq in 2007.
Congress has put copyright repression measures into the Covid relief bill.
I greatly regret that I did not hear about Fight for the Future's campaign until now. If I had, I would have supported it. Not that I expect that would have given us victory, but at least I would have done my part.
Copyright law is based on a balance, but not the one people usually cite (between interests of readers and interests of writers). That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the intended purpose of copyright.
The right balance is between the public's interest in promoting the making of new works, and the public's interest in using existing works.
Current copyright law is nowhere near giving the public the best results, because it is designed to maximize the income and power of the big companies that get most of the benefit of copyright. It is an unjust law that deserves to be spat on, and those companies deserve to be wiped out entirely.
The catch-all relief bill eliminates one repressive policy: denying aid to students based on criminal convictions.
Policies like that one compel anyone convicted once to endure a life of poverty or crime or both. If we want people to get out of crime, we must remove the artificial barriers that prevent it.
* The European court of human rights has ordered the immediate release of the prominent Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş from prison in Turkey.*
Calling on senators to vote against Biden's torture team, Avril Haines and Mike Morell.
*Does Biden Really Understand That Trickle-Down Economics Is a Cruel Hoax?* The US needs more public investment. That is what makes a country great. We can get the money by taxing the rich, or by expanding the money supply as far as the economy can use it.
Democratic primary voters, are you thinking of voting for a "moderate" center-right Democrat because the progressive that stands for Medicare for All is "not electable"? Yes they are. On the contrary, if corporate Democrats set an uninspiring agenda, that could give Republicans a big victory. It happened to Carter and Obama.
Laura Poitras tells the US that by prosecuting journalists like Assange under the Espionage Act, it threatens to prosecute other journalists, including her. As the article shows, that law is fundamentally unjust. We must change it to protect whistleblowers, and the journalists like Poitras that report their revelations.
(satire) *Russian [Crackers] Disappointed to Find U.S. Government Already Disabled.*
*House Democrats Subpoena HHS and CDC Chiefs Over Alleged Political Interference in Covid-19 Response.*
Progressive praise for some of Biden's economic advisor team.
(satire) *Humane Trap-And-Removal Program Sedates Tenants So They Unconscious During Eviction.*
US Government Architecture Should Not Aim to be Fine Art
The stimulus package that Congress just passed is too small to keep the economy going, too small to enable states to do their jobs.
Putin has given himself lifetime immunity from prosecution no matter what crimes he might commit. And his children, too.
Boy, wouldn't the conman love this!
*It's vital we act now to suppress the new coronavirus variant* — but is that still possible?
We know that this virus is not held back by borders. Since it is now found in Italy and Denmark — and a similar strain in South Africa — cutting off travel to Britain won't do the job. The UK and the EU and South Africa would need to cut off all travel to any other parts of the world, except under tightly controlled conditions. And that may not be enough either.
The crucial question is whether the current vaccines work against these mutant varieties. If they do, we can continue with vaccination plans and eventually wipe out all varieties of the virus.
But if the current vaccines are inadequate against this strain, then it is desperately important to limit its spread.
*When Is It Legal for My Kid To Walk Outside Without Me?* It depends on the state; some states impose a reign of terror on parents without a helicopter.
Rio de Janeiro's mayor, an ally of Bolsonaro, has been arrested for corruption.
Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, but the copyright on his writing is still screwing people today, 90 years later. This demonstrates the absurdity of the unjustified restrictions imposed by copyright as it exists today.
I say we should shorten copyright to 10 years from the work's date of publication. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-vs-community.html for a long explanation of why.
*The brazen killing of a mother and her son at close range by an off-duty officer has caused outrage in the Philippines and reignited calls for reform of the country’s [thug] force.*
This implicates president Do-dirty because he encourages and legitimizes wanton violence by thugs.
*How a string of failures by the British government helped Covid-19 to mutate.*
A string of successes by the saboteur in chief may be enabling it to mutate even more in the US even as you read this.
The Eritrean army, invading Tigray, seized and conscripted Eritrean refugees who had fled there.
Eritrea's conscription is basically condemnation to a life of servitude, which is why so many people have fled from there.
Video of the death of Muhammad Muhaymin Jr in 2017 shows that thugs killed him pretty much the way they killed George Floyd this year.
*Global food industry on course to drive rapid habitat loss.*
AOC: *"One major difference between GOP and Dems is that [Republicans] leverage their right flank to gain policy concessions and generate enthusiasm, while Dems lock their left flank in the basement [because] they think that will make Republicans be nicer to them."*
In addition, we see that the Democratic leadership adopted a fool's strategy to respond to Sen. Toomey's demand for a last-minute concession: namely, to insist on the deal already made. This led, unsurprisingly, to a "compromise" which was to give (in some rough sense) half the concession that was demanded. Democrats have done this foolish thing before.
If they were seriously ready to fight, they would have come back demanding a concession of equal importance in the other direction. Then the natural compromises would have been "both concessions" or "neither concession."
Biden should reject the dogma of trickle-down, now packaged as "to make life easier for everyone, make the rich richer first", and start investing their money in making our country better for everyone.
The more income you have, the more satisfied you tend to be with economic inequality.
The article makes the error of equating "your income" with "how much you earn." That is an error because, as we know, the rich mostly don't "earn" all their income — but they try to claim they do.
Navalny says he tricked one of the agents involved in poisoning him into explaining how it was done.
Here's a transcript of the call.
This is not necessarily the truth. For one thing, the agent could have been lying.
A cash benefits pilot program in Indonesia was observed to reduce deforestation in the areas where it was tried.
Academics that investigate connections between past slavery and existing UK institutions and fortunes are experiencing politicized attacks.
This is part and parcel of right-wing disinformation.
The pandemic has hastened the elimination of jobs and their replacement with low-paid precarious gig work which surveils and oppresses workers and customers alike. This report is about Australia but I expect it is similar in the US.
The real solution to this is a guaranteed income. However, we can help make work activity less precarious by rejecting the gig platforms.
The food delivery companies parasitize restaurants so much that it can drag them under. In Cambridge, Mass, I've seen signs on the street that urge people to pick up the take-out food they order, rather than asking using a gig platform to deliver it. The restaurant gets more money from the former than from the latter, even though the customer probably pays less. And if you pick up the order yourself, you can pay cash and avoid even more surveillance.
In a store, you can reject the self-checkout machines, as I do. In some stores, the self-checkout machines won't accept cash, which is another reason to refuse to use them. But even where the machines do accept cash, I refuse to use them because they should hire more humans instead.
If we use the self-checkout machines, they will reduce staffing. If we don't use the self-checkout machines, they will increase staffing. So I decided to be the first to refuse. You can be the second!
Mark Flessner, Chicago's head lawyer, resigned, and it seems to be related to the thugs' mistaken raid on Anjanette Young's house, in which they handcuffed her naked and wouldn't let her cover herself. (And wrecked the door of her house.)
The article does not specify why he resigned, but it looks like the city's lawyers were trying to prevent her at all costs from demonstrating what had happened to her, trying to thwart justice.
Even if the head lawyer did not specifically tell the other lawyers what to do about this case, it was his job to teach them what values and goals should guide their work for the city.
Maybe the feeling of responsibility for what the other lawyers did impelled him to resign. If so, that is very honorable by US standards.
Some things that Biden could do to make US elections more fair even if Republicans still hold the Senate.
Sweden's initial success in keeping Covid-19 down without banning activities has turned to failure, disappointing many US and British advocates of pursuing herd immunity.
However, Sweden never pursued herd immunity. Sweden tried to keep the spread slow without strict measures. To pursue herd immunity means trying to spread the disease faster (which is what the spreader cult does), and Sweden never did that.
Everyone: call on AT&T, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Uber to stop funding right-wing politicians, especially those opposed to abortion rights.
*Hospital CEOs Have Gotten Rich Cutting Staff and Supplies. Now They’re Not Ready for the Next Wave.*
Should the UK state that Iran is using Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as a hostage?
Taking hostages is a great crime, and it is a mistake to pay a ransom to free them. However, the money Iran demands would not be a ransom. The money is rightfully Iran's and was all along. So the UK should pay it. With luck Iran will then free the hostages.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulated phosphogypsum strictly because of its radioactive atoms, and prohibited using it to make roads. Now the Environmental Poisoning Agency wants to permit making radioactive roads.
Pfizer participated in the campaign to make the WTO impose patents worldwide, including patents on drugs. Now it cites that plutocatist coup as a "principle" that it would be unthinkable to reject.
My view is that we should eliminate patents entirely, and most especially eliminate them from medicine, agriculture and software.
The article has a confusion because it uses the term "intellectual property". That is a catch-all term for several unrelated laws (patent law being one), so sometimes the article is talking about patents and sometimes it is implicitly talking about other things as well.
The CIA has been directing and managing Afghan murder teams. The teams carry out various sorts of violence, including kidnapping, mutilation and murder. Sometimes they attack schools and kill the children.
For a Chinese "security" executive at Zoom, "security" meant the security of the Chinese regime. He reported on users to China, and snooped on meetings. If they discussed the Tien An Men Square massacre, he terminated the meetings and the participants' accounts, on the orders of China.
Zoom management responded to the scandal by promising that in the future Zoom would only cancel an account on China's command this way if the user is in China.
Other companies that help the Chinese government impose repression include Apple and Google.
Can we expect a big company to have the scruples to decline the invitation to gain access to the "Chinese market" by becoming part of the system of oppression?
No, we can't expect it. But we must demand it.
This was the work of a rogue employee, but what made it possible is that Zoom's design lets staff snoop on every conversation as it passes through the server without getting a search warrant.
Some Cuban dissidents get US backing and even support the wrecker. What they believe would be bad for Cuba just as it is bad for the US.
However, that doesn't excuse Cuba's imprisonment of them for saying what they think.
Not all Cuban dissidents support right-wing extremism. Oswaldo Payá did not. The Cuban government had him killed.
The IMF proposes using people's digital dossiers to calculate their credit scores — which would in effect convert them into social credit scores.
The corrupter has totally undermined the Hatch Act, which is supposed to prohibit most federal employees from taking partisan actions. Its enforcement depends on backing from the president.
*A homeless man sentenced to life in prison for a $20 marijuana sale is freed after 12 years.*
The war on drugs must have taken some very bad drugs 12 years ago.
The Tories have been squeezing the poor for a decade. No surprise that they want poor whites to blame their bad treatment on the poor blacks instead of the rich.
We've seen similar tactics in the US. It is the standard right-wing form of divide and rule.
Australia has a plan for additional subsidy for gas extraction.
It is dangerous to allow Visa and Mastercard to decide what you can pay for.
Recall that they blocked donations to Wikileaks. They were forced to back down because European law regulates them strictly, since that field has so little competition.
The EFF article explains why sex web sites — especially exploitative ones like Pornhub — offer a perfect opportunity to establish new systems of repression, which afterward will endanger the rights of anyone and everyone.
A hundred years ago, having your face photo circulated as a suspect could direct persecution at you — for instance, making it impossible to get a job.
Now it can cause you to be arrested randomly for walking down the street.
If stores use face recognition inside the store, they should not be allowed to use photos for matching against people in the store except for photos they have taken in that store, and photos of people convicted of theft and fraud.
1/5 of the people in prison in the US are infected with Covid-19.
The prison staff catch it and spread it in their communities.
The Mediterranean shore is expected to get too hot for holidays in the summer.
Republicans' plan for future elections: suppress voters harder.
People who mix marijuana with tobacco are risking becoming tobacco addicts.
It appears that Boeing and the FAA arranged to rig the tests to recertify the 737 MAX so as to assure get a positive outcome.
Is the US so corrupt that it can't honestly regulate product safety even in the most crucial and visible cases?
Florida governor DeSantis did everything possible to encourage spread of Covid-19, including distracting people from the danger, delaying reporting deaths, and making sure no one could be fined for not wearing a mask.
That last is something that Massachusetts's Republican governor is also doing. He is putting people in danger here.
*British government says UNICEF should be "ashamed" for feeding hungry children [in the UK].*
The Tories want those children to go hungry!
There remain more loopholes that Republican senators, with Pence, could use to sabotage the election if they are desperate enough.
We could end up on Jan 20 with a dispute about who is president.
"Civil forfeiture" is a system of punishment without trial that allows thug departments in the US to confiscate billions of dollars a year, in cash and goods.
The thugs claim we should tolerate this injustice on the grounds that it "reduces crime." We can reply that forfeiture might as well be crime. However, now we can also reply that it simply isn't true. That article presents evidence refuting the thugs' claim.
With hard work you can reduce the harm done by the products you buy as gifts, on the commercial purchasing holidays where people are told they must give lots of gifts.
But it isn't very hard to opt out of giving and receiving gifts, when you have no wish to do so other than nostalgia inculcated by millions of dollars of advertising, with the pretense that participating in the spending is going to make you happy.
A Guantanamo defense attorney calls on Biden to hold torturers accountable — including the bully himself.
States have filed yet another lawsuit against Google, about using the market power of Google Search to skew markets for other things.
These lawsuits may make Google change in ways that save people money. But only through luck could they reduce the great wrongs that Google commits:
This is no accident. Since the lawsuits are based on antitrust law, they can only target monopolistic behavior. The wrong of snooping on people is not inherently a matter of the size of the company; if a small company accumulates data about people, that is wrong too.
A UK court ruled that the government must give a foreigner who had been trafficked into the UK the right to work there.
Previously they could ask for permission to work, but would have to wait years for their cases to be considered. The government does not give the department that considers those applications enough funds to do the job faster; those who hate foreigners are pleased with the suffering that results.
The Rockefeller Foundation has pledged to divest its endowment from fossil fuels.
A special unit of thugs in the UK was investigated officially with a listening device. The thugs were found to be emitting racist, sexist and other kinds of hate in their private discussions, and it looks like they will be punished for this.
Planting a microphone is a legitimate way to investigate suspected official misconduct, when the recording authorized legally. What those thugs did is grave misconduct because the attitudes they taught each other that way will bias them in doing their job.
*Apple Suppressing Human Rights Critics* for China.
An Australian music festival is asking musicians to sign a contract not to do anything that would criticize the fossil fuel company that sponsors it.
It would be better to cancel it than to turn it into an instrument of ecocide and genocide.
The International Labor Organization has ordered countries to respect the treaties that give sailors the right to leave a ship to get medical care or to go home.
Volunteers find and stop fishing in the Po river delta, which is forbidden since the water is full of industrial pollution so the fish are not safe to eat.
*Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee urges Joe Biden to release CIA report* on Khashoggi's assassination.
Scientists say wood-burning stoves cause a lot of indoor pollution and should carry health warnings.
* Medicare and Medicaid are not independent sources of compassionate care, but rather parts of a larger system that condemns the sick and disabled to a life of devastating health and wealth disparities.*
Small improvements in that system won't enable people who are destitute to cope.
The Securities and Exchange Commission just voted to weaken an anti-corruption rule for oil companies.
Biden will have a chance to replace one of the commissioners in June and perhaps put back the old rule or an even stricter rule. But that depends on whether Republicans in the Senate have the power to block the appointment. Wikipedia does not tell me whether these appointments require Senate approval.
Calling on all news publishers to declare a climate emergency.
In the long term, it is a far bigger threat than Covid-19.
Study of the consequences of 50 years of tax cuts for the rich, in many countries, shows that they had exactly the effect you would naively expect: making the rich richer, while tramping down the poor by reducing the government aid they depend on.
In other words, it's dooH niboR at work.
And the Republicans have been making it worse for 4 years.
*Amazon's apparent embrace of plastic packaging is hindering its commitment to help the fight against [climate disaster].*
Reports say that Biden will nominate two climate champions for important posts.
However, Food and Water Watch warns that Gina McCarthy encouraged fracking when she was administrator of the EPA. Will she do that now as climate advisor?
*New York bans display of Confederate flag and other hate symbols on state grounds.*
It is a small step in the right direction.
*"Israel has the legal, moral, and humanitarian responsibility to vaccinate the Palestinian population, which lives in distress under its control."*
But Israel's right-wing government is not going to try any time soon.
Calling on Biden to reorient the Department of Labor to protect workers and increase their power.
Lloyd's of London will cease insuring new coal, tar sands, and Arctic oil investments.
However it will take 10 years to phase out coverage for existing facilities — and it won't cover all fossil fuels. It is a step forward, but not grounds for a celebration.
*Most Profitable US Companies Fired Workers, Enriched Shareholders During Pandemic.*
Rivest et al show that, while all online voting is deeply untrustworthy, adding a blockchain makes it even worse.
Alibaba has software designed to recognize from a person's face whether perse is a Uighur.
This will be used for various sorts of repression in China.
*Survey Shows Americans—Regardless of Partisan Affiliation—Don't Want Biden to Appoint a Corporate Cabinet.*
So if he does appoint one, we will know it is not in response to popular demand.
Rosamund Kissi-Debrah calls for a new law in the UK to reduce toxic air pollution, as a memorial to her daughter who was killed by that.
Why did it take seven years to investigate the cause of her death? I have a hunch it delayed by the lobbying of car and gas companies, which have great political influence on the Tories.
The measures that need to be taken are basically the same ones needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Basically, the UK now knows it has two reasons to carry out those measures. The question is whether the Tories will bow to those reasons and stop resisting.
I expect the US has the same problem. Would someone like to send me a reference?
*Atlantic City to auction off chance to blow up [the conman's] former casino, for charity.
AOC on the challenge of replacing Speaker Pelosi and the need to reduce the power of the leadership of the Democratic Party.
Awareness of how traumatic experiences can cause changes in bodily systems has created a pitfall: people can be held back in dealing with painful experiences by the belief that it is no use trying because trauma has damaged their brains in ways they can't overcome.
It turns out that making an adequate income without overwork enables a lot of people to recover from trauma.
*Ocasio-Cortez Warns Biden That War and Wall Street Appointees Are a 'Huge Reason We Got Trump'.*
The companies that supplied cladding for apartment buildings in the UK, and whose staff said it would burn, pretended after the fire to be shocked by the fatal fire.
*Study of 50 Years of Tax Cuts For Rich Confirms 'Trickle Down' Theory Is an Absolute Sham.*
Congress and a court ordered the USPS to hand over DeJoy's meeting schedule, but when it did, nearly every word in it had been redacted.
Buttigieg has little experience in the field of transportation, but he has the experience is most harmful in government today: experience in having transportation special interests fund his campaign.
Nine recommended simple progressive demands to help non-rich Americans.
I have to reject the last item, promoting "access" to "online learning". What today's "online learning" teaches is how to be a sucker.
Glyphosate is wiping out monarch butterflies by wiping out the milkweed that monarch caterpillars must eat.
However, the queue for endangered species protection is long, so monarchs must wait for protection. 47 species have gone extinct while waiting for protection.
In nearly every Arab country, people say that the poor have got poorer in the last decade since the Arab Spring.
This does not imply that the Arab Spring is crucially responsible for that change.
The NLRB concluded that Amazon illegally fired Gerald Bryson for protesting working conditions.
Amazon said it fired him for violating its "vulgar language" policy. Fuck you, Amazon!
I would start a boycott over this policy, but alas I can't — I'm boycotting Amazon for other reasons already.
*Pentagon Training Equates Whistleblower Chelsea Manning With Terrorists.*
Paul Alexander, appointed by the wrecker to work with the Department of Health, told officials of that department, "We want [Americans] infected." (for herd immunity, that was).
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to stop the line 3 pipeline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
An inquest in the UK ruled that a girl was killed by a high level of air pollution.
This may spur efforts to reduce pollution.
Repeated flooding is driving Bangladeshis out of their rural homes, to become urban poor.
Mexico has passed a new "security" law that would undermine cooperation between Mexican government agencies and the US Drug Enforcement Agency agents that operate in Mexico. Those agents would have to give all their information to Mexican agencies that would probably leak the information to the gangs.
If you think of the issue as how to fight the "War on Drugs", this change is foolish and self-defeating. But that war is itself foolish and self-defeating. Maybe Amlo is trying looking for an excuse to pull back from it.
If the US legalizes and strictly regulates sale of drugs, the Mexican drug gangs would lose a major source of their income. That could be more effective than the DEA will ever be.
Credit rating scores now control who can rent an apartment or get hired for a job, as well as who can get a loan. Other mysterious algorithms decide who gets welfare or medical treatment.
The root cause of many of these problems is the general US approach of being stingy towards the poor and suffering. The basic motivation for that is that the rich keep demanding a bigger share of everything.
Transparent and valid ways of evaluating people would be an improvement, but we can do better than that. For many of these purposes, we shouldn't evaluate people at all. We should help everyone who needs help.
With Medicare for All, everyone would get medical care, eliminating any need to judge people. If we had a policy of giving poor people housing, we wouldn't need to evaluate people for that either. With a guaranteed basic income, whether you can get a job would be less important.
And credit ratings should be used only for loans.
Why did Chicago thugs break the door of Ms Young's house, find her there naked, then handcuff her naked and refuse to give her a blanket to cover herself with?
The third step, handcuffing Ms Young without letting her put on any clothing, was an act of callous contempt, very likely reflecting ingrained racism. But the wrongs did not start there.
The first step, seeking to enter that house, reflected incompetence: they didn't bother to check that the person they were looking for lived next door. Disdain, perhaps racist, is surely part of why they did not bother.
The second step, breaking down that door, was due to excessive willingness to do harm violent. Even if they had chosen the right house, they shouldn't have done this. Owning an illegal gun doesn't mean a person is inclined to shoot if thugs use a megaphone to say "Police, open up!" Disdain, perhaps racist, may be part of why they did not bother.
Perhaps Chicago should do what Camden, New Jersey did: disband its hopelessly corrupt, violent and racist thug department and start a new one.
The Houthis have agreed to let the United Nations inspect an abandoned tanker filled with oil in 2021, but experts warn the ship may start leaking massive quantities of oil any day. That leak would kill the marine life in the Red Sea.
The UK proposes to move the Museum of Military Medicine to Cardiff, in Wales, and has received a surprising variety of objections.
Some of the objectors are using the issue for Welsh nationalism. I don't sympathize with Welsh nationalism so I am not impressed.
Some want to preserve the existing park with its full size. Would building it on a city block be better? The expense might be prohibitive, though.
*Why we need nonviolent citizen action — not street fighting with the Proud Boys — to protect the election results and democracy.*
*Rouhani to Biden: If US Comes Back to Nuclear Deal, So Will Iran.*
*Report Details 'Staggering' Number of Attacks on US Journalists, Press Freedoms in 2020.*
*How the Biden Administration Can Help Rejuvenate Journalism After Four Years of Carnage.*
A scientific team will study the giant Antarctic iceberg as it drifts towards South Georgia Island.
Given the sort of harm it may do if it grounds there, I wonder if there is a way to gently push the iceberg so as to direct it away from the island. Perhaps with large sails?
We have worked out how to do this with asteroids.
Republicans have cemented their gerrymandering power for another decade and maybe longer, by dominating state legislatures again.
The only way I can see to overcome this is to reform the Supreme Court.
A single mutation, called delta 69/70, has appeared in several strains of Covid-19, and makes each of them spread more easily. Perhaps this is part of the reason that Covid-19 is now increasing so fast in the US and Europe.
Each time a person gets infected, that is an opportunity for Covid-19 to mutate. If the world had cracked down on Covid-19 effectively, the way China, Taiwan, South Korea (initially), Australia and New Zealand did, the pandemic would already be over, the deaths would be few, the economic losses would be much less, and this mutation would never have occurred.
Facebook says that France and Russia targeted the voters of the Central African Republic with opposing disinformation campaigns.
The new stimulus bill has a subtle but large tax deduction for businesses that received PPP loans.
Perhaps it should be limited to 100k dollars per organization. That would save small businesses a big surprise tax bill but not give much to big businesses.
Bellingcat present's evidence that the FSB (successor of the KGB) poisoned Navalny after following him around since 2017.
Putin had to have approved these plans. Anyone who did such things in Russia without his approval would be fired immediately.
South Korea is very wise to impose restrictions to slow the increase of Covid-19 while the number of people infected is still small.
To delay, and allow the numbers to increase before acting, would not help anything.
UK medical journals say the UK must cancel plans to allow households to mix during Christmas. Those plans would overload the hospitals.
Half a million slaves are forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang, China.
Keep in mind that Uzbekistan also forces slaves to pick cotton, perhaps even more of them.
What Uzbekistan does is not an excuse for China, and what China does is not an excuse for Uzbekistan. Countries should refuse to buy cotton from those countries until they stop using forced labor.
*Restore UK woodland by letting trees plant themselves, says report.*
I have wondered for years why it is necessary to plant trees. Trees produce lots of seeds and have mechanisms to disperse them. Why isn't that enough?
This is a serious question. Since I am not an expert, I will not try to claim that there is no need to plant forests, but I think it is an important question why we do need that.
EFF: Youtube's automatic copyright filter has punished fair use to the point where people have learned not to even try it. In effect, it has taken that right away.
To fix this, we need to eliminate the relevant parts of the DMCA.
I wish they would not refer to works of art and communication as "content". That term disparages all such works.
*Facebook Gets Rich Off Of Ads That Rip Off Its Users.*
I must disagree with the first example, though: it is prudish to consider an ad harmful on account of showing adolescents dancing. Was there is something else bad about those ads that the article fails to explain?
Scientific research increasingly shows that fracking harms the health of people living nearby, especially children.
This is in addition to contributing greatly to short-term global heating due to leaks of methane.
Fracking is taking humanity to frack and fruin, so we need to stop it completely.
New York medics are paid less than a living wage, so Lauren Kwei models nude to make up the difference. Some old fashioned prudes found this scandalous and tried to ruin her life. AOC defends her, saying, "The Actual Scandalous Headline Is Medics Need Two Jobs to Survive."
Sad to say, the site on which she sells her photos practices an injustice on the customers: it requires nonfree Javascript to access it. I have not tried that site, but I know that it takes special effort to accept credit card payments over the net without sending nonfree JS, and I think only the Free Software Foundation does this.
Perhaps in a few years that site will accept Taler payments, and be accessible from the Free World.
The US has let business control its laws and institutions, and business could not profit by saving the people from Covid-19, so the US did not really try.
The result has been a disproportionate rate of fatalities per population, now reaching 300,000 people killed by Covid-19.
There may soon be a bipartisan relief bill that does not shield businesses from liability.
That is good news, because it means the bill will not do long-term legal harm. The only remaining question is how much good it does for the rich, and how much to the non-rich.
The bill does not provide aid to states, which need aid desperately to cover what some states have spent protecting the public from Covid-19. States cannot even afford to operate vaccination. But they can hold out till Jan 20 for that aid, and if the Georgia runoff elections go well, we can give states the aid then without shielding business from liability.
Regarding liability, businesses should be liable for failing to do what was possible. In April, when masks were in short supply, it would have been unfair to punish a business for not finding masks. Now that masks are available, businesses have no excuse for not providing masks, and likewise other PPE, enhanced air ventilation, and every other thing that ought to be done for worker's safety.
One thing that stores must do, for the safety of workers and customers alike, is make anyone leave immediately who has entered without a mask.
Big companies pay significant sums to "offset" their CO2 emissions by protecting trees from being cut down. Except that those trees were not going to be cut down. The fees are for greenwashing.
By contrast, projects that directly extract CO2 from the air are valid. But "offsets" meant to provide benefit in the future are chickens that might hatch some day.
Such "offsets" are used as a substitute for real cuts in emissions, and we should not trust them. Likewise, we should distrust commitments stated in terms of "net" emissions. We should demand commitments to reduce emissions.
*'Grossly Insufficient': ExxonMobil Lambasted Over Emissions Reduction Plan That Pledges No Reduction in Absolute Emissions.*
I think Exxon is counting the emissions from its own use of energy, and not the emissions that will result when the fossil fuels it extracts get burned by customers. If so, it is sidestepping the issue.
The Republican officials that stood up against democracy may not be scared only of losing the next election at the hands of conman's lunatic followers. It could be that their rich backers are trying to eliminate democracy, as they did when FDR was elected.
US cinema production is concentrated in the hands of a few companies controlled by billionaires whose main interests are other things.
Nothing can be made which harms those other interests.
(satire) *Amazon Worker Emerges From Holiday Overtime Shift To Find 3,000 Years Have Passed In Outside World.*
*If Democrats Want to Succeed, They Will Have to Implement Policies That Primarily Benefit the Working Class.*
Australia's prime minister is outraged that China has decided to buy coal from other nearby countries rather than from Australia.
The real outrage is that China continues to burn so much coal and is not working hard to cut down.
*Tiny Pacific nation of Palau detains 'illegal' Chinese fishing vessel.*
I see no reason to doubt Palau's accusation; fishing boats don't go anywhere so far from home except to fish there.
China is one of several countries that send large fishing fleets to denude the world's oceans of sea life. We need a world-wide fishing treaty that would prevent this.
Attorney General Barr has been, in effect, fired — apparently for refusing to endorse false accusations of massive fraudulent voting.
The fraud that really occurred was Republicans; massive fraudulent denial of the right to vote.
It is, interesting that a substantial fraction of Republicans that frequently practice by-hook-or-by-crook morality do still have limits of conscience.
* Plastic bags and flexible packaging are the deadliest plastic items in the ocean, killing wildlife including whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds around the globe.*
The US has removed Sudan from the sponsors-of-terror list.
The UK government is planning new permanent restrictions on protests. They have not yet what those restrictions will be, but democracy in the UK is undermined already and this will make things worse. The Tories are already trying out voter-ID to suppress the votes of poor people who are unlikely to vote Tory, and working on giving more power to thugs.
A new variant of Covid-19 seems to spread faster. That means stronger measures will be required to stop it from spreading.
The existence of that mutant variant is the result of letting Covid-19 spread to so many people. If we had taken adequate measures to stop the spread quickly at the outset, the mutation would not have occurred.
*Australian professor and son detained in Qatar for five months without charge.*
It's not impossible a priori that they committed a crime, but if Qatar can't say what it was, it must release them.
Individuals and companies are starting to break off dealings with Xinjiang and companies there.
That is a good start, but China's existing totalitarian oppression of Uygurs is likely to be followed by China's future totalitarian oppression in Taiwan, if we don't stop it. We had better take action now to stop that, so that it doesn't come to a shooting war.
Australia frequently deports asylum-seekers to countries where they are in danger, and many have been attacked afterward.
Australia has proposed a revision to its terrifying computer surveillance law.
I think the various kinds of warrants described in this article are acceptable in principle. That some do not require a judge's authorization is very dangerous.
The secrecy requirement — imprisonment for disclosing any information about a warrant — is a shield for the abuses which every system like this tends to generate.
The "assistance order" is extremely dangerous unless it has firm and clear limits about who can the ordered to assist, and what kinds of assistance can be demanded. Otherwise, what is to stop an agency from ordering you to put a back door into a program?
Statements about the usual "intended" usage scenarios of that power are meaningless if nothing stops the government from using it in other ways.
The officials that regulate mining in Australia's Northern Territory say they were pressured to skimp on environmental review so as to let mining proceed.
I have no proof, but I would expect that the mining companies knew that they were paying officials to cheat in their behalf.
A not-entirely-serious proposal to divide the US into two countries, the one where Republicans dominate and the one where Democrats dominate.
It could not be implemented in practice, for a host of reasons.
It looks like neither the House nor the Senate will support reversing the election and pretending that the wrecker won it. (To do that would require both houses of Congress to decide to.)
That is a good thing — but would it be good if Republicans tried and failed? It would make the hostility between the parties so visible that no one could deny that "bipartisanship" is a fantasy and "compromise" means surrender. If the Democrats win the Georgia Senate run-offs, that awareness might be what is needed to convince them to eliminate the filibuster and pass laws that Republicans don't like.
Proposals for modifying US agricultural policy to defend the climate.
I agree with the article in its criticism of "carbon markets" — which means, trading credits for emissions — but a tax on greenhouse gas emissions is a different story. Such a tax, with the tax rate scheduled by law to increase annually, will be totally predictable.
One thing not mentioned in the article is the need to discourage eating so much meat.
We should allow prisoners to vote.
In some parts of the US, systemic racism includes systematically imprisoning blacks. That, combined with barring prisoners from voting, has the effect of systematically suppressing blacks' votes.
A teacher says: *Low grades are not a sign of lazy students. Low grades are not a sign of unintelligent students. In my experience, low grades mean something is wrong.*
Republicans are pressing the wrecker to pardon Edward Snowden.
Meanwhile, Snowden asked him to pardon Julian Assange.
If he does either of them, I will rejoice at that. However, that won't outweigh in my judgement my condemnation of his attempt to set up a tyrannical state.
(satire) *Trump Orders Space Force to Discover Other Planets with Courts.*
Biden will probably resume transferring prisoners out of Guantanamo prison.
However, politicians have difficulty coming up with what to do about the 10 or so prisoners who are accused of specific terrorist crimes. They have difficulty because they don't follow the reasoning to its conclusion.
The conclusion is simple: release them. Those prisoners have been in prison for well over a decade, and they have been tortured. The torture of those prisoners was a grave crime committed by the United States. Holding them in prison without trial is another crime, which the US still continues. The US must stop committing this crime.
As for the claim that some of the prisoners are "too dangerous" to release, that is balderdash. There cannot be anything special that they could contribute to violent Islamist movements today. Some had important terrorist contacts, but those contacts are dead. Anything specific they knew 15 years ago is obsolete; anything general must be known to many other terrorists who are still at large.
At most, the freed prisoners would constitute a few terrorist recruits on top of the other thousands. That would have no significant effect on the security of the US or anyone else.
The president should commute the prisoners' potential sentences to time served. Those who can find a place to go, should be allowed to go there. The US will have to house the rest, but not as prisoners.
It is normal practice now for companies to lie and cheat, even if it kills people.
We need not wonder why. It is because governments have ceased trying much to prevent this. Governments do less and less to check what businesses do, and less and less to punish the businesses and the personnel for cheating.
A proposal for laws to firm up the norms that guided the functioning of the US government, which the wrecker has broken.
I doubt Republicans will willingly allow this to be done, as long as the wrecker tells them not to. As with so many other things, it depends on defeating the wrecker conclusively.
*Classifying Houthis as terrorists will worsen famine in Yemen, Trump is warned.*
*Low-wage warehouse workers, many of whom are temporary, are demanding access to the vaccine.*
Here's an idea: require companies to pay for the vaccine for every worker. Maybe companies will decide it is better to give each worker more hours — something they generally want.
The thug that killed Casey Goodson Jr claims that Goodson pulled a gun on him. There is no evidence to support that claim, and I am skeptical of it.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez lists what she has achieved in two years in Congress. It is a substantial list.
Rep. Pascrell argues that the Republicans who supported the Texas lawsuit (to disregard the voters) made themselves ineligible to serve in Congress. "The text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States."
(satire) *‘The Onion’ Salutes The Courageous Legislators Determined To Overturn The Will Of Voters.*
*Question: How Should the Left Judge Biden's Success? Answer From a Leftist: 'How Many People Stop Going Hungry' Is One Good Way.*
Here's a letter I sent to the Boston Globe on Dec 6.
Dear Editor,
It wasn't Albert Einstein who said that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result," but it's a valid point. So when will Governor Baker change his ineffective response to the increase of Covid-19 in Massachusetts?
In early September, when it was around 200 cases a day and rising, he urged residents to take the same precautions we were taking. By early October we had 500 cases per day, so he did that again. By Election Day it had doubled, so he did the same thing plus one real change (ordering mask use outdoors). Now, with almost 5000 cases per day, he's back to the same old same old. By Christmas it could be 10,000 a day, then 20,000 after holiday spreading parties. It won't stop there.
Governor, whatever you're going to do then, would you please start it now? It may be unpleasant, but the sooner we start, the fewer weeks it must continue.
Sincerely,
Richard Stallman
*Israeli court rules that Nation State law calls for discrimination against Palestinian citizens [of Israel].*
Everyone: call on Pasco County to erase the database that is supposed to predict which students will be criminals.
Making predictions about young people tends to bring about the predicted outcome.
US citizens: call on Congress to block mining in the Chí’chil Biłdagoteel Historic District of Arizona.
US citizens: call on Congress to discard the "pay-as-you-go" rule, whose only purpose was to make sure suffering inflicted on the poor could not be reversed.
Massachusetts residents: call on your Mass legislators to pass the full original limits on policing and on face recognition.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE Act).
Republican fanatics are still plotting a coup. Some are asking swing states' legislators to set aside the actual votes and substitute Republican electors; others are trying to convince those congressional delegations to do likewise.
Republicans control those states' legislatures and congressional delegations via gerrymandering (cheating).
* Historians could mark 2020 as the moment when Republicans applied the same zeal they have used to attack democracy in advance of elections, through voter suppression and gerrymandering, to attacking democracy on the back end, by trying to deny and overturn the results.*
*UN secretary general urges all countries to declare climate emergencies.*
*EU leaders reach deal to cut emissions by at least 55% by end of decade.*
That comes in range of the sort of change, and speed, that we need.
A rich and influential Tory politician inherited the family riches which it got via slavery starting in the 1600s.
This is more than the statue of a slaveholder: the slaveholders' money, greatly increased over time, is working even today to promote inequality and suffering for poor blacks and poor whites in Britain.
Iran executed Ruhollah Zam for publishing criticism of officials, including the statements of protesters.
Farming macadamia nut trees in Australia endangers the wild macadamia nut trees and their genetic diversity. The wild species is now designated as vulnerable.
One of Assad's torturers faces prosecution in Germany.
*Children will die due to UK overseas aid cuts, pediatricians say.*
I am sure it is true. As children in the UK are dying due to years of Tory cuts in welfare benefits, with more to come. But the Tories have no choice — the plutocrats' demands cannot go unsatisfied.
Corbyn would have done something about this.
*The Biden team will be 'diverse'. That doesn't mean it will help struggling people.*
People who have experienced coping with racism, poverty, and other handicap will have an advantage in understanding how to help others cope with them — if they want to try. The problem with making identity (that is, a person's background) the main criterion is that it's easy to find plutocratists who have the desired background, but the wrong values and goals.
The wrecker is shifting his supporters, appointed by him to official positions, into "career" positions that the president is not supposed to be able to dismiss arbitrarily.
However, last month, the wrecker made an order authorizing agency heads to designate thousands of jobs as "fire (them) at will". If he can do that, Can Biden do the same to the wrecker's formerly political appointees?
The Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in which 19 other states asked it to set aside the votes of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Australia has freed five refugees from immigration prison, just before a court was going to make a decision that might rule Australia's policies illegal.
These five were able to sue because Australia transferred them from Manus or Nauru because they were ill. The rest of the prisoners that Australia put into prison on Manus or Nauru have no chance to start a court case.
Fanatical anti-maskers, by intimidating the families of members of the Boise health board, succeeded in canceling a meeting of the health board as it was considering a local mask requirement.
The local thug department asked the board members to interrupt their meeting in the name of "public safety". This is ironic because the mask requirement is the first step towards public safety.
The board, and the government behind it, must show it is strong enough that fanatics cannot force it to do the wrong thing. But I expect they will do the exact opposite.
A Turk who has seen several coup attempts in her country warns Americans that the wrecker's coup attempt was a serious threat. With Republican imposed minority rule as a permanent base, the next one may succeed.
*Biden will have White House disinfected after [the disease-spreader] leaves.*
It would not shock me if the disease-spreader were to smear infectious material in the White House specifically to make Biden and his team sick.
The Congressional Budget Office studied the costs of Medicare for All and determined that it could cover everyone and cost $650 billion less annually than the existing US medical system.
The National Family Farm Coalition describes good and bad things that Vilsack did to family farms. It does not see him as a monster, but says he had better commit to protecting farmers against agribusiness.
Why not choose someone who will hustle to resist agribusines?
Vilsack tried to pass useful reforms in 2010, but dawdled till after the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives.
The Sunrise Movement rebuked Biden for choosing Vilsack rather than the progressive Rep. Marcia Fudge who has focused on agriculture policy in her career.
We're glad to see @RepMarciaFudge in the cabinet, but she lobbied to be the Ag. secretary It's insulting that, instead of a progressive black woman, @JoeBiden & @Transition46 chose Vilsack, who covered up racial discrimination last time he had the job.(I quote that tweet without linking to it, because Twitter is shutting down the ability to view tweets without running nonfree JS code. I copied that tweet from an article that I decline to reference on account of its bigotry in writing "Black" and "white", but the tweet I've quoted states its main point.)
*White House chief of staff told FDA chief [that] vaccine must be authorized Friday or he needs to resign.*
The corrupter ordered the head of the FDA to do something the latter might have been about to do anyway. Indeed, he did approve the vaccine on Friday, but now we have to wonder whether he approved it based on his best judgment, or set that judgment aside to obey the order. Whatever he says, the doubt will remain, and with it doubt about whether the vaccine was indeed ready to approve.
I think that is something the corrupter wants. The corrupter will now be able to simultaneously claim credit for the vaccine and sow distrust for it. His own followers probably won't take the vaccine anyway, since they believe Covid-19 is a fantasy.
The corrupter played a vicious trick on commissioner Hahn with that threat, since he will appear to have made a cowardly surrender whether he actually did so or not. But there is a way he can demonstrate that his approval of the vaccine was not influenced by the threat: to resign right away! This would win him the admiration of sane Americans.
*'We Need to Get Off the Current Road to Hell,' Say Former UN Climate Leaders.*
Australia's PM took a step towards real greenhouse emissions reduction by agreeing not to present Kyoto treaty credits as "reductions".
This is still nowhere near enough to do Australia's share of what is needed to avoid global heating disaster.
The corrupter's string of executions is galvanizing opposition to the death penalty, which has not been very visible in the US for a decade or so.
China has arrested a Chinese journalist that works for Bloomberg News, supposedly for "endangering national security". That is a far-fetched claim, so I conclude the accusation has a political purpose.
*Canadian officer found guilty of assault for slamming black woman to floor.*
1000 prisoners have died in Egypt since the coup replaced Morsi with a military dictatorship.
They are not precisely comparable to Giulio Regeni's case, since he was not in prison when suppression agents killed him. But that is just a detail — the article's point is valid.
The article also covers other crimes of the Egyptian regime.
Australia's cruelty to refugees carries over to their children, who may be made stateless.
Republicans are determined to cease paying for sick leave for Americans, as the pandemic races on.
Compelling workers that deal with the public to work even when sick tends to spread the disease.
In a town in South Dakota where everyone believes in the Republican denial cult, the death of esteemed citizens of the town has convinced some to call for a mask requirement. But in order to pass a weak version of the ordinance, the town council had to endure a meeting in which anti-maskers coughed at them.
Wearing an ordinary mask will not prevent the masked councilors from catching Covid-19 from a maskless infected person. I hope the law they passed will enable them to keep unmasked people out of their meetings in the future.
The covidiots of that town have been swindled by a callous liar; they are victims, and deserve our pity. At the same time, they endanger anyone they come near. We must stop them from spreading their disease to those who don't want to catch it, and since the disease can cause lasting damage or death, force is justified for stopping them.
Some of them will die from their lunacy. May those deaths awaken the rest to the nature of the lies they have swallowed.
*How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens.*
(satire) *Aspiring Lobbyist Gets Foot In Door As State Senator.*
Biden is considering appointing (or has appointed) several people with close ties to Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple.
*Receiving Nobel Prize, World Food Programme Chief Warns 'We Are Losing Battle Against Hunger'.*
Calling on the West to recognize Israel's slow, calculated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from occupied Palestine.
One current target for expulsion is a neighborhood, Bab Hutta, near the center of old Jerusalem.
US citizens: call on Biden to renew the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel's road construction in Palestinian territory is designed as a step towards annexation.
*Tired and afraid, Palestinian [teens and preteens] report brutal IDF arrests.* *EU calls for probe into Palestinian teen's killing by Israel.*
Israel killed another Palestinian teenager a week ago.
Labeling the wrecker's main points as falsehoods, on Facebook and Twitter, has failed to prevent them from influencing his followers.
As often happens, the most harmful lies are in the presupposed premises, and refuting those requires pulling them out in the open so people can see what they are. A simple label that "this is not true" doesn't try to do that.
Biden named a planet-roaster congresscritter as "liaison" to environmentalists, but protests and lawsuits are persuading US banks to give up on some fossil fuel projects.
However, world-wide, planet-roaster projects are mostly not held back by this. Newly funded fossil fuel development plans would use up 3/4 of the carbon budget.
In Africa, China is offering lots of investment in planet-roaster projects.
China is regulating the practice ofprofiling users and charging some users more.
By contrast, the US and most other countries don't even think of preventing this abusive treatment.
I say, let's stop companies from collecting enough data about us that they could even think about trying to profile people.
Cory Doctorow updates the issue of the danger of letting companies control your computers.
In 2002 I rejected the propaganda term "trusted computing". Based on what it does, we should call it "treacherous computing".
A thug shot Casey Goodson, Jr., in the back as he was opening the door of his house. The family called 911 and when other thugs arrived, they treated the whole family as criminals.
It is surely not a coincidence that Goodson was black.
Without a witness or a video, we cannot prove anything about what the killer thug did. Those who believe thugs by default will believe whatever that thug says.
It could be that the thug mistook Goodson for someone else and fired immediately without verifying that snap judgment. I think that would be a crime if you or I did it. It should be a crime if a thug does it, but I don't know whether it is.
I waited before posting about this, hoping to get a clearer picture of what happened. I think this is as clear as it's going to get in the near term, so I am posting now.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Muslims that the FBI tried to bully into spying, by putting them on the no-fly list, can sue for damages.
I am elated by this rebuke to government bullying.
Banning someone from flying is a form of punishment by the government, and under the US constitution it should not be allowed except under "due process of law", which ought to mean a criminal trial.
(satire) *Facebook Announces Plan To Break Up U.S. Government Before It Becomes Too Powerful.*
Iran is willing to resume the nuclear deal if the US drops its sanctions and commits not to pulling out again.
Presuming that "all sanctions" means "all sanctions related to nuclear activities", that seems like a fair deal to me.
As for the expiration of the deal in 2025. I am sure the two countries can negotiate a deal to extend it.
Meanwhile, the European countries should recover their sovereignty over economic dealings with other countries, so that the US can no longer forcibly stop them.
Zhang Zhan, imprisoned for reporting on the Covid-19 situation in Wuhan, started a hunger strike and has been force fed — not Guantanamo-style, through the nose, but with a tube surgically inserted into her stomach.
The Sunrise Movement supports Deb Haaland for Secretary of the Interior. Since they do, I do too.
Italy has charged officials of Egyptian repression forces with murdering Giulio Regeni.
China took two Canadian visitors hostage after Canada arrested Mang Wanzhou, executive of Huawei, at the request of the US.
It is clear now that China's charges against those two Canadians were just excuses. The same might be true of the charges against Mang, or might not; I have no way of knowing.
Right-wing extremists are harassing and threatening officials, even election workers, claiming that their master won the election.
The EU's budget has been approved, including conditioning payments on a country's respect for the independence of the judiciary (which is a part of "rule of law").
Venezuela held legislative elections. Observers said they were free.
Guaidó's opposition faction boycotted the election, and the turnout was low, but not much lower than the US. It is partly because many Venezuelans have moved to other countries.
*Minneapolis switches $8m from police budget to violence prevention* and mental health teams.
That is under 5% of the entire thug department budget, but increasing the funding of those other programs may be helpful.
Bangladeshis have gone from exploitative work to no work, as the wasteful and unsustainable overproduction of clothing has collapsed (at least for the time being), and their ex-employers have stolen their wages.
Getting them their stolen wages would help only temporarily. Resuming the unsustainable production would not solve the problem for many years; as the population Bangladesh increases, increasing amounts of wasteful production would be required, and that increase could not continue.
Bangladesh needs to stabilize and reduce its population, by limiting births, so that the babies who do get born can survive, and climb out of poverty.
US citizens: call on Congress to make coronavirus vaccination gratis for all Americans.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to appoint a climate-oriented cabinet.
Azerbaijan tortured, even beheaded Armenian prisoners, including civilians. Armenia has done some of this, too.
Portland activists are blocking the eviction a family from its home of 65 years.
It is surely no coincidence that the family is black. But all the other residents have already been pushed out.
*Sustainable Farming Advocates Warn Biden That Vilsack 'A Very Bad Pick' for [Agriculture] Secretary.*
Progressives call him "Mr Monsanto" for his assistance to that company's GMOs. In addition to their biological effects, Bayer/Monsanto seeds spread patent pollution.
Aside from that Vilsack eliminated many safety regulations that we should bring back.
Rebekah Jones says that the seizure of her phone will enable Republican officials to find out which employees have been giving her Covid-19 statistics that the Republican governor wants to suppress.
*New EPA rule could [and was probably intended to] make it more difficult to limit air pollution.*
*A Criminal Justice To-Do List for the New Administration.*
If you are thinking of buying a holiday present from Amazon, look at the crushing treatment of workers that you'd be supporting.
Biden's choice to head the US "defense" department, Lloyd Austin, has only three flaws: he is a recently retired general for a post where a civilian ought to be, he is in the revolving door, and under Obama he tended to be pro-war.
He's not as bad as Flournoy, but that's not enough to qualify as good.
Georgia Republicans are trying to suppress minority voters by reducing the number of early voting sites in a county where many of them live.
The US and most US states have sued Facebook with the aim of making it separate off Instagram and WhatsApp.
This would somewhat increase competition and somewhat reduce Facebook's lobbying power, but it would not make the Facebook dis-service safe for democracy. Its business model of targeted advertising makes it dangerous and promotes snooping.
We should prohibit targeted advertising, but most of all we should prohibit systems that systematically collect data on people.
*Offshore Tax Havens 'Deep Wells of Profit' For Oil Giants, Report Shows.*
The New York State pension fund says it will end investment in fossil fuels. Alas, it set itself a deadline of 2040, which is too far away. It will do some divestment sooner, but it's not clear how much.
*'Severe Blow to Iraqi Torture Survivors': Despite Evidence of UK War Crimes, ICC Drops War Crimes Probe.*
The reason given was that the UK appears able to prosecute soldiers itself. Is it really going to do so?
Hamid Reza Shakib was imprisoned in Iran for campaigning for human rights. He escaped and went to Australia, which used Papua New Guinea to imprison him for asking for asylum. After years of cruel imprisonment, he now has received asylum in France.
Greta Thunberg: *'We are speeding in the wrong direction' on climate crisis.*
*Our global fire crisis is the sign of a dying biosphere. But we can take action.* If we can push away the dying hand of the businesses that profit from roasting our planet.
*Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report.*
One increase in surveillance that they may not mention is when countries encourage (or even order) people to stop paying cash. One way to defend your freedom is to insist on paying cash when you buy things — I always do.
Countries whose freedom ratings were reduced this year include the US, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Iraq, the Philippines and Slovenia.
Every market has rules, and society chooses the rules. When people advocate a "free market", what they mean is one with rules that favor the most powerful. In our times, that choice is a one for most people, and we don't have an obligation to accept it.
*Under Boris Johnson, corruption is taking hold in Britain.*
Corruption is not just starting to take hold. It was well established in 2013 in the choice of cladding for the apartment building that subsequently had a fatal fire. That was due to insufficient efforts by the state to verify the honesty of construction, which was due to a government that didn't consider this very important.
What is happening now is that corruption is practiced visibly and shamelessly by ministers.
*Human-made materials now outweigh Earth's entire biomass.*
We should not foolishly suppose that it is "sinful", but it is a sign that we have the ability to mess things up in yet another way.
In Xinjiang, reasons to put someone in prison include (1) being under 40 and (2) talking with relatives living outside China.
Switzerland allowed Chinese agents to enter secretly and interview Chinese citizens that Switzerland was considering deporting to China.
This can't help but work to the harm of Chinese dissidents who ask for asylum. No country should be interested in the Chinese government's opinion on such questions.
The US deportation thugs hardly tried to protect prisoners from Covid-19, and thus created hotspots in the prisons and the communities around the prisons.
In general, prisons have tended to spread Covid-19 to nearby communities. The guards get sick along with the prisoners, then take the virus home to their families.
The Supreme Court's right-wing majority declined an opportunity to throw the election to the bullshitter.
It looks like they have decided to respect the vote.
Cambridge University rejected a proposal to require people to respect all views of others. It decided that tolerating other people's views is enough — that is, to respect people's right to hold their views.
This is the correct policy. I could not possibly respect the views of Osama bin Laden, or a Republican today, or a pious religious believer, or a "centrist" Democrat, or a Communist, or a flat-earther, without being brainwashed. Likewise, you should not be required to respect my views.
Introduced Argentine tegu lizards are becoming a threat to other wildlife in Florida and Georgia.
There is a simple solution: catch them for skins and meat. People do that in Argentina.
After convincing people to protect each other by wearing masks proved to be so difficult, have we got any chance to make the changes needed to avoid deadly climate disaster 30 years from now?
Pompeo has tried to arbitrarily declare support for any sort of boycott against Israel to be "antisemitic."
That is bullshit, of course.
I support the boycott started by Gush Shalom, the Israeli campaign for peace between Israel and Palestine. This boycott targets products of Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory, whose existence violates UN treaties Israel has signed. According to Pompeo, I am supposedly antisemitic, and so was Uri Avnery, the great Israeli supporter of peace, who founded Gush Shalom and started that boycott.
Israel passed a law exposing anyone who advocated the boycott to lawsuits for unlimited damages, so people in Israel had to stop advocating the boycott. I in the US am safe from that law, so I continue.
*In 'Huge Victory for Polar Bears and Our Climate,' Court Rejects Trump Approval of Offshore Drilling Project in Arctic.*
I think he will find it difficult to get the policy to take effect before Biden cancels it.
The wrecker has built up bombing in Afghanistan. In 2019 there were over 700 civilian casualties.
The bully has started reorienting the US military away from the self-defeating "war on terror" and towards a possible war with China and/or Russia.
Ending the "war on terror" is a good thing, because terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and war is not an effective way to put an end to it. But what about the military's new orientation?
I think the US can easily avoid war with Russia, because Putin doesn't aim to rule the world. He has started local wars in battling over regional influence, and he stirs the pot further away, but he is willing to keep peace when the US is. The US foolishly and provocatively tried to extend NATO into the former Soviet Union right up to the borders of Russia; it should have been content to have a buffer zone. Buffer zones between powers make for peace between the powers. I think it is not too late for the US and Russia to use that approach.
It is true that Putin has corrupted and destroyed democracy in Russia and runs a corrupt and repressive regime, but war is not the way to deal with that.
It should be possible once again to agree with Russia on limiting nuclear weapons; Russia was amenable before. But it may be necessary now to include China in that system.
The confrontation with China is a more difficult problem. China is rapidly expanding its military and is set on capturing Taiwan, but unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan can't be captured except by war. I doubt China would stop after that — successful conquest tends to inspire more conquest.
We must not allow that, but what should we do to stop it? We want to avoid having to fight that war, but one aspect of avoiding a war is, as always, preparing to win it if it starts.
But that's not the only way to avoid a war, and increasing the size of the armed forces is not the principal way to make a nation strong. Nor is shooting the only form of war.
China has moved from preparations for economic warfare to overt economic aggression. The US needs to stop China from agrandizing itself this way.
That will be difficult, because China has been strengthening itself as an economic power for decades, even as the US has perverted its economy to weaken itself.
Poor, hungry, sick working people in debt for their education do not make a country strong — or great, for that matter. Private equity predators and outsourcing do not make productive industry. They are designed to make the rich richer.
It is paradoxical that in China, the state owns big business, whereas in the US, big business owns the state — amusing because they sound equivalent. They do have some things in common. Both lead to making people suffer and denying them political power, for example. But there is also a difference.
In China, the state reasserts control when necessary so that Chinese businesses make the country stronger. By contrast, the US submits when businesses impose policies that weaken the country. US capitalists strip-mine the ground they and we stand on. China does not allow its capitalists to do that.
The job we need Biden's economic team to do is more than just getting out of a downturn. It includes curing structural inequality.
The wrecker is trying to take away Social Security disability payments from hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans.
Right-wingers believe people who can't get enough money should suffer, even die. They would like to eliminate all social security benefits. But sometimes it is easier to reduce them step by step until nobody considers them important any more.
*On Way Out the Door, Trump EPA Rejects Tightening Deadly Soot Pollution Standards.*
Here's how they are working already to sell a world of total surveillance: every move you make will be controlled by the AI that runs your "smart neighborhood".
Biden rejected Michèle Flournoy to head the Pentagon and instead named a retired general, Lloyd Austin, who now works for the military-industrial complex.
Australia is increasing the practice of punishing people without convicting them.
Confiscation without trial is frequent in the US. Vague suspicion (usually related to drugs) is enough. For years we have campaigned to eliminate this practice.
Punishment without trial is unjust regardless of what the alleged crime might be. What's the hurry? Why can't they wait for a trial to decide whether that man is guilty?
Aside from that, this is one of a number of reasons why criminalizing the possession of some published work is a terrible threat to liberty. Various countries have criminalized works on various criteria, but it is dangerous regardless of the criteria. It provides an excuse to search people's computers at any time. What's more, it is easy to make someone guilty of this crime without per knowledge. It is common for your computer to contain image files that you did not ask for and never looked at. You may have a copy of a message even though you deleted it unread.
Biden has taken different positions on climate defense. We need to keep working to convince him to do more rather than less.
50 proposals for what he should do — many of which are clever and surprised me.
*As World Teeters on Brink [of unstoppable climate disaster], Over 250 Scientists and Scholars Warn of Full-Fledged 'Societal Collapse'.*
Electric cars need lithium batteries, and mining lithium causes environmental damage. But it won't be as bad as global heating.
I wonder if hydrogen fuel, instead of batteries, would avoid this problem.
Texas thugs raided the home of an old black couple and trashed their things. They did it by mistake.
The man died a few weeks later, perhaps from the stress.
Why so cruel? Racism, perhaps.
HSBC is freezing the bank accounts of Hong Kong people and institutions that gave support to the democracy movement.
Freezing people's accounts under the tyrannical laws of China is serving tyranny. HSBC should reimburse those depositors with funds in some other country.
HSBC can afford that cost, and should understand it as its punishment for obeying China.
Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, bullied many residents into selling their houses cheap for the nonexistent Foxconn factory.
Apparently the deal was constructed so that the town had to borrow a lot of money to build new roads, and now that Foxconn isn't doing anything, those roads are a stranded asset and the town won't get funds to repay.
Deals for governments to pay a company "to create jobs" are swindles. They should be entirely illegal.
Young organizers of the Labour Party, who supported Corbyn and are very concerned about global heating, say that Labour under Starmer is pulling back on its climate defense plans (which were comparable to the Green New Deal).
This is a reflection of Starmer's rejection of Corbyn, who is the only reason those voters ever supported Labour.
Anti-racist groups call on various product-rating organizations to stop mentioning the Amazon Ring surveillance camera because it imposes surveillance on the movements of people that may be persecuted for being in neighborhoods where racists think they should not go.
I agree, but I insist that surveilling middle-class white males is equally intolerable. And surveillance of dissidents, regardless of their demographics, threatens the free society.
The Yes Men announced, on behalf of the Bank of England, that it would refuse to buy bonds from fossil fuel companies. Too bad it isn't really so.
Bravo to the Yes Men. Remember when they sent a participant to a meeting of plutocratists to present a proposal to increase business efficiency by converting workers into property of their employers? Nobody was shocked by the idea.
"Centrists" are criticizing the wrecker for not putting the US ahead of other countries in the queue for a second batch of doses of Covid-19 vaccine.
Meanwhile, the wealthy countries generally are buying up the vaccine production for next year, leaving the poor countries to wait till 2022.
Instead of letting the Pharma companies (and their servants, the patent offices) set us against each other to squabble about which country will get vaccines first, let's turn our criticism on the system of monopolies that is limiting production and helping some companies to gouge.
Why there should not be patents on drugs or anything in medicine.
*Biden Should Revive the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.*
The new district attorney of Los Angeles County will no longer seek the death penalty, no longer try children as adults, no longer ask the court to make a sentence longer.
In addition, the new DA will not ask for cash bail, except for violent or serious felonies. To this, the thug union had a completely bullshit response.
The response presents us with a fantasy world in which (1) everyone who gets bail was charged with shooting a gun and (2) making people facing such charges pay bail is going to make them less dangerous.
It is bullshit because those are serious, violent felonies, so the DA's no-bail policy does not apply to them at all.
*Citing 'Historic Abuse' of Judicial Process, Over 1,500 Attorneys Call for Sanction of Trump Campaign's Legal Team* by state bar associations.
ALEC is lobbying Pennsylvania officials to disregard the voters and give the state's electoral votes to the wrecker.
A Republican official in Texas is directly asking the Supreme Court to make an arbitrary decision to give the election to the wrecker.
*The Great Reset is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.*
I looked at the Great Reset web page and saw a long list of disparate ideas, but I did not see anything clear to say what it was for. I read one article that had been recommended and it didn't seem to have a clear point.
So I spent no more time on it.
Indian farmers are on strike, demanding repeal of new farm laws that are said to help corporations dominate farmers.
Kejriwal, the highest local official of Delhi was prevented by national thugs from joining the protest.
I don't know any specifics about these laws, but his support suggests to me that the farmers have good reason.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter ASAP to oppose the CASE Act, which would set up a new court for quick and easy copyright repression against anyone who shares a copy of anything.
Please do NOT use their web service to make the call. Instead, call 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 or 888-335-3588 and ask for your representative.
Eritrean troops are fighting in Tigray against the TPLF and alongside the Ethiopian army.
Eritrean is famous for forcing all most men into slave labor; as a result, many Eritrean men flee into exile.
*Greenhouse gas emissions transforming the Arctic into 'an entirely different climate'.*
One common PFA chemical is associated with more severe cases of Covid-19.
Blacks tend to have more severe cases of Covid-19, on the average. Blacks also tend to have greater exposure to many toxic pollutants. It could be that blacks are more likely to have high levels of PFBA and that this explains the greater severity they experience on the average.
US citizens: call on Congress to include immediate payments for individuals in the stimulus bill.
US citizens: call on the District of Columbia bar association's Office of Disciplinary Counsel to investigate a Republican lawyer's call for violence.
Someone shot two children dead in a favela in Brazil. Witnesses say the killer was a uniformed thug.
It is not surprising that the murdered children are black. 2/3 of favela inhabitants are black. People live in favelas because they are poor.
When Florida started covering up Covid-19 data, Rebekah Jones refused to manipulate data and was fired. Since then she has been posting honest data. Now state thugs have raided her home, pointing guns, and seized her computers.
She says she will not give up.
Reference to past events.
Australia's proposals to increase surveillance powers are dangerous on many points.
The spy agency argues against a clear, simple rule, "To spy on an Australian in Australia, get a specific authorization," by citing edge cases and asking to be able to spy in those cases without asking for specific permission. The agency would stretch those edge cases wide; we know they cannot be trusted not to.
I wonder how often those edge cases really occur. Ten times a year? It would be no burden to ask for specific permission ten more times a year. But if the agency gets an exception in can interpret on its own, it could stretch that to cover thousands of cases a year.
Deregulation government spy agencies is as dangerous as deregulation in business.
A journalist investigated the complex web of companies through which data about his movements was collected via his phone and redistributed, ultimately reaching the US deportation thugs.
He concludes that the GDPR are not, in practice, doing much to prevent this sort of spying. Also that anonymization of the location dossier does hardly any good.
He warns that this sort of data can be dangerous "in the wrong hands". It is crucial to realize that there are no "right" hands. We must design systems so that they can't be used to snoop on people.
If this makes targeted advertising impossible, great!
Congress may soon abolish the tax-dodge of anonymously owned companies.
Criticism of Gina Raimondo's center-right record as governor of Rhode Island led her to decline a cabinet post as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
*Argentina Passes "Millionaire's Tax" to Fund Covid-19 Recovery.*
Iran says the US is using its money transfer sanctions to stop Iran from buying Covid-19 vaccine sold under the auspices of WTO.
(satire) *Man Catches Himself Scrolling Social Media While He Supposed To Be Masturbating.*
*Iran Sends Oil, Gas Flotilla to Venezuela. Will Trump Attack It to Sabotage Biden?*
Senator Purdue failed to show up at his debate, perhaps afraid of incriminating himself for insider stock trading.
For some years we had a law, the STOCK Act, that members of Congress could not trade stocks based on information they got as part of their duties. Then they voted to repeal it.
Each one who voted to repeal it manifested an intention to be corrupt.
Xavier Becerra supports Medicare for All in principle, but has promised he won't push for it if he becomes secretary of HHS.
Google fired AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru, who studies the effects of AI systems, after she refused to retract a paper when ordered to by management.
The paper draws negative conclusions about Google's textual machine learning.
Google claims there are flaws in her paper, but criticizing a scientist's research paper is a job for other scientists (mostly not from the same company), not for per managers.
I support the three demands made in the letter that defends her.
It may well be that Google's working environment manifests racism and sexism, which I disapprove of. But I don't think that is what this wrong is about. I don't think that Google made this demand because of her gender or her skin color.
Rather, it seems that Google is attempting to suppress the truth.
Iran has a penchant for accusing dual-nationals of spying, even the unlikeliest of them.
*Racism literally ages Black Americans faster, according to our 25-year study.*
*Twitter accused of censoring Salil Tripathi, Indian critic of Hindu nationalism.*
*A coalition of … civil rights, consumer advocacy, and labor organizations is demanding that Congress [not give] corporations immunity from coronavirus-related [liability lawsuits].*
Giuliani, who has tested positive for Covid-19, recklessly exposed Republican officials to Covid-19 in several states.
If some of them get sick, will it teach them to support wearing masks?
Water is now a Wall Street traded commodity. This is a sign of the extent to which water supplies have been privatized.
I don't see that the commodity trading will directly hurt people, but the privatization could mean that some people can't afford water to drink.
*Slovakia's mass Covid testing cut infection rate by 60%, researchers say.*
People who tested positive were ordered to quarantine and their wages were paid.
Let's do this in the US!
Nearly all Republicans in Congress claim that the wrecker won the presidential election.
The wrecker made noises about about trying to find out who the few exceptions are, as if he intended to punish them. Whether this was a serious intention, or just trolling, will be seen.
*Georgia runoff debate: senator Kelly Loeffler refuses three times to accept Biden victory.*
European countries have much better social aid systems than the US, but they don't cover everyone and all kinds of work.
Because most of the US criminalizes sex work, sex workers have suffered especially harshly from the pandemic. Recent increases in repression have made it harder for them to find customers. We should legalize sex work to help put an end to enslavement and trafficking of sex workers.
The foreign policy advisers that Biden have chosen have a history (under Obama) of trying to organize war against North Korea, presuming an alliance with South Korea and Japan. The idea of that alliance is absurd — and so is attacking a nuclear power. The tyranny of the Kim dynasty is a great injustice, but we cannot eliminate it militarily.
An official proposes to give UK community panels the power to monitor possibly dangerous interactions of cops with citizens, through their videos and documents.
This could be a great step forward in protecting people from thuggish actions. It is good that looking at the videos will be limited to certain situations where people could be hurt — not all the time as thugs walk around.
However, we still need to stop the state from looking at the videos made all the time.
Advertising companies churn out a series of neologisms. Their latest ones are ridiculous. But don't laugh too long — if they get you to use their terminology, they are warping your own thoughts. And if the other people you know start using those terms, they will pressure you to use them too.
That's why I've made lists of terms I urge people to reject:
Microsoft has made outlook.com block all emails from the site disroot.org and refuses to give a reason.
I know nothing else about disroot.org. If there are any valid complaints about it, I don't know what they are — but they are irrelevant. Even valid complaints cannot justify "We block you and won't say why."
I think that this is part of a tendency which results from the disappearance of the university and corporate mail servers that many people formerly used. This decrease in options has made the big email companies powerful, and thus arrogant.
We should either regulate those companies strictly or break them up.
*UK students plan the largest rent strike in 40 years.*
Space business is growing rapidly — and polluting low Earth orbit with unnecessary space junk that could ruin everything permanently.
We need governments to apply anti-pollution laws before they ruin everything.
Inside the White House, the wrecker's officials humored him, pretending that he had won the election. Those who couldn't fake it kept away — while still refusing to admit the truth.
*What the Green New Deal Can Learn from the New Deal,* especially in regard to what individual US states can do.
* "In a society fully committed to democracy, Congress would use this lame-duck period to impeach, convict, and disqualify Donald Trump from pursuing public office in the future, as the Constitution allows."*
That is clearly true, but our society comes nowhere near that. To remove the wrecker from office would would require the votes of Republicans. Today's Republicans value the wrecker more than their country; their commitment to truth is not enough to get them to recognize the outcome of the election.
*'You Alone Can Save His Life': Edward Snowden Urges Trump to Pardon Julian Assange.*
The conman does not hate Assange the way most politicians do (or pretend to do). He acts from interest or from whim, so he might do this. One may as well ask.
* Fears over [Cuban] state curbs on live shows lead to hunger strike, arrests and street standoff with government.*
Some progressive leaders state satisfaction with some of Biden's choices for high officials.
Robert Reich: *Joe Biden's economic team beats Trump's goon squad — but it faces a steep challenge.*
A proposal: allow members of the public to review thugs' body camera videos randomly.
I can see how this would do a lot of good, but it would also violate the privacy of everyone that cops momentarily look at. We need to limit what footage gets uploaded and saved, to make sure it includes violent encounters, and does not include most other things.
The US claims that directed pulsed radio waves injured diplomats' brains in Cuba and China.
It should not be hard to equip embassies, and diplomats' homes, with detectors.
Interviews with Kashmiris that were arrested for tweets. Some report torture.
When athletes on the playing field make a political statement, the fans have a right to respond with their own opinions. That means they have the right to cheer, or the right to boo.
If players stated their admiration of a right-wing extremist, would you boo them? I would. Therefore I defend the right to boo. We must defend the right of fans to express whatever views they wish to express, within the limits of what is possible in the situation.
Here are some ideas about how to build understanding and support for eliminating racism.
A crazed bar owner in Staten Island (the right-wing borough of New York City) continued serving customers indoors although that was forbidden. Cops arrested him for repeated violations, so he allegedly drove his car into a sheriff's deputy, injuring per.
We can't be sure that a report from cops is true, but I expect that videos will show for certain what he did.
*Poetry, the soul of Uighur culture, on verge of extinction in Xinjiang.*
Because China is extinguishing the poets.
The bully is eager to execute Lisa Montgomery before Biden gets a chance to perhaps commute her sentence to imprisonment; but what larger conclusions should we draw?
First of all, this reminds us that US trials are generally sloppy and often unfair, for the whole range of crimes. Defendants who are innocent usually plead guilty, because they have no hope of paying for a proper defense.
Second, we see that the US system of public health is horribly inadequate.
*Greta Thunberg Says Denmark's 30-Year Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Not Fast Enough.*
She's right, of course. We know from scientific modeling that we need to get rid of most greenhouse emissions by 2030. Denmark's decision to stop all exploration now is good; the rest of its plans are an improvement but still not good enough.
*Because She Was Wrong About Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, Daniel Ellsberg Joins Campaign Against Flournoy.*
Massachusetts residents: call on Governor Baker to sign the thug department reform bill.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass a resolution to block the arms sale to the UAE.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to cancel all federal student debt.
(satire) *CDC Introduces New Expedited Quarantine Period Of 3-5 Business Days For $29.99.* Act quickly, limited quantities only!
One good thing about the military spending bill that Congress is working on is that it would prohibit federal forces from patrolling American cities without identifying themselves.
Another good thing, which is why the wrecker threatens to veto it, is that it would require renaming of the US military bases named after traitors who fought for the Confederacy and to prolong slavery.
What the bill fails to do is cut military spending and redirect American productivity towards strengthening the American people (providing food, shelter, education and medical care), and making US industry less concentrated and thus more resilient.
Military strength is not the most crucial part of making a country that is great and strong.
Even the downtrodden can fall into narrow-minded localism. This article describes efforts by indigenous tribes in Minnesota to block a tar sands pipeline whose only use would be to increase oil extraction and hasten global climate disaster. But the article does not mention that danger — only the possibility of polluting the local rivers.
Polluting additional rivers is bad, but civilization could survive that. Civilization may not survive global heating disaster, and there is no room in the world's climate budget for more oil extraction anywhere in the world.
Whatever their motivation, I hope those tribes win their battle to block the pipeline, but presenting this as a purely local problem will fail to build awareness about the larger, global issue that threatens every one of us.
Sanders opposes the bipartisan Covid-19 relief plan because it fails to provide any immediate relief for Americans that need it.
Proposing a constitutional amendment to abolish forcing prisoners to work for little or no pay.
This practice continues in some US states, and it is still an incentive to put more people in prison. When you read about forced labor in Xinjiang, China, keep in mind that the evil exists here too.
Consolidation of US hospitals and medicine into fewer, bigger companies is causing big harm to US medical care, and Covid-19 makes the effects plain.
Food-delivery platforms learn what customers order from restaurants, then set up "ghost kitchens", phony "restaurants" that do only delivery, to put restaurants out of business. Now the grocery chain Kroger's is doing it too.
This could replace millions of not-very-good jobs with gig work for some and unemployment for the rest.
Bangladesh is taking Rohingya refugees to a low-lying island where they will drown sooner or later.
This is indeed inhumane, but calling it "short-sighted" presumes that Bangladesh's government of the fate it is condemning them to. That is impossible — flooding from storms and sea-level rise is a big concern in Bangladesh, and hardly anyone can be unaware of it.
A little-known government department finally provided some useful data about the children that the US separated from parents that can't be found.
Searching for those refugee children's parents is a good thing to do, but when the ACLU does this, it is mission creep. It should leave the job of aiding refugee children to charities whose mission is to aid children or aid refugees, and focus on its own mission: defending human rights in the US. If the ACLU ceases to focus on its mission, its mission will suffer, and that must not be!
Gina Raimondo did a lousy job of dealing with Covid-19 as governor of Rhode Island: she cut spending instead of helping people get well or not get sick. She should not be put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Opposing Mary Nichols as head of the EPA, because in California she was too ready to let businesses continue polluting the air where poor people live.
(satire) *William Barr Celebrates Holidays By Giving Lethal Injections To Those Less Fortunate.*
Adam Smith called for the owners of businesses to obey the moral rules of their religions. Today governments must impose moral rules on businesses.
*Corporations Paying Lawmakers to Outlaw Protest Is a Crime Against Democracy.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information, in this case about an attack that threatens the human rights of all members of my race — the human race — as part of a greater danger that threatens the lives of all the young members of the human race.
Online stores manipulate people very effectively into spending and regretting. Some people, with psychological problems, find it very hard to resist this.
Setting up a national state marketplace site which does not get funded by a share of what people pay would make it easy to fix this problem, as well as many others. It could allow people to specify spending limits for themselves, which the site would then enforce, even limits on various categories of products.
It could have clear rules set by law and official regulation. It could completely refuse to allow use of personal data for profiling. Even better, the site could offer anonymous payment through Taler and anonymous product pickup at post offices and elsewhere.
This system would eliminate the tax-dodging of Amazon and the lobbying power of Amazon.
*DACA program must reopen for new applications, judge rules.*
It has taken years to finish stopping what the bully tried to do to these immigrants. [pol note about when he started to damage DACA]
US courts have been systematically resistant to the conman's bogus claims of voter fraud.
The fraud that does occur in US elections is voter suppression.
The Covid-19 "stimulus" package gives companies immunity from liability if their workers die from Covid-19 in unsafe workplaces.
Shame on the plutocratist Democrats in the House who let this through.
Since the bill contains no immediate stimulus for working-class Americans, maybe it would be better to do nothing for now, and see what happens in the Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5. I wonder whether plutocratist Democratic senators will push for his immunity too.
A loophole in ethics rules for business consultants who are appointed to government offices allows them to conceal which clients paid them.
The danger of the revolving door is that officials will pre-sell corrupt decisions, so this loophole is exactly what corruption needs to hide.
Prisoners in deportation prison say they were punished for requesting Covid-19 tests.
I believe them — it is in character for the sadists of the US deportation thugs.
*Trump orders US to pull troops from Somalia.*
Even a megalomaniac liar occasionally does something good, even if his reasons are not good one. This is one of those exceptions.
*Urging Tens of Billions in Emergency Aid, Top UN Officials Warn 2021 Set to Be 'Catastrophic' for World's Poorest.*
*The Megamachine and the Roots of the Planetary Crisis.*
Millions of Indian farmers are protesting Modi's plutocratist farm policies.
*Sydney Mardi Gras members vote against banning police from 2021 parade.*
People in certain groups, some racial, some political, have real reason to fear patrolling thugs. But cops walking in a parade are not likely to attack anyone. Their floats are not tanks. The polarizing move that was demanded would not have helped to stop the violence of thugs; it would have vented hostility in a useless way.
It is much better to put that energy into campaigning to stop thugs' violence.
Scientists have concluded that an antioxidant used in vehicle tires is washing into the ocean and killing coho salmon.
Thugs in India often use torture to make accused people confess. Sometimes they kill people in jail. If the victim is a Dalit or in a low cast, there is hardly any fuss.
*Denmark to end new oil and gas exploration in North Sea.*
This is an example of what the whole world must do. When a company has found new reserves, it has made an investment towards extracting them, and will fight to do so. Extracting them means death, so we must fight to prevent that, and blocking the search is the easiest chance to do so.
(satire) *Concerns About Nuclear Iran Grow After Periodic Table Poster Spotted In Tehran High School.*
Sri Lanka has ordered cremation of corpses of people that die from Covid-19. Muslims and some Christians are outraged because their religions forbid cremation.
The main question here is whether there is an objective medical need to cremate those corpses. WHO says there isn't. If there is no need for the requirement, Sri Lanka should drop it. Governments should let people do as they wish when there is no need to interfere.
In general, when a requirement is medically important to protect the living, religion is no excuse for disobeying it.
Classifying athletes by sex is causing boundary line problems again.
They should give each athlete an individual handicap and eliminate the need for classifications.
AOC's "tax the rich" sweatshirt costs more because it is made by union workers in the US.
*Congress Stalls on Stimulus Checks for Families While Corporations Continue to Reap Millions from CARES Act.*
It is morphing into the SCARE Act.
After years of delay, the US is acting to protect endangered coral species in US waters.
Local measures will not succeed unless the US curbs ocean acidification.
The US has blocked imports of cotton from Xinjiang on the grounds that China is using forced labor to produce cotton there.
I support this decision, but it raises many ironies. I doubt that the conman objects to forced labor; surely he has seized an excuse to hurt China. I doubt the US will do much to punish Kazakhstan for forcing children to pick cotton.
The reason I support this is that weakening China is very important. We have seen that US world domination generates injustice. Chinese world domination would lead to total subjugation.
(satire) *White House Dishwasher Not Sure Why Trump Keeps Offering Him Pardon.*
Climate activists propose cabinet officials who will defend the climate.
Proposing a path for Biden to work for peace between Palestine and Israel.
The Jewish Forward reproaches the plan to appoint an advocate of ethnic cleansing to head Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust memorial.
*Two-Thirds of Americans Favor Raising Taxes on Incomes Over $400K.*
*Google Illegally Surveilled, Interrogated, and Fired Workers Who Tried to Organize, NLRB Says.*
Google used to have the slogan, "Don't be evil," but that was long ago. The company has since reconciled with evil.
*New Data Shows Income of Top 0.1% [increased by factor of 4.4] While That of Bottom 90% Stagnated, Over Past 40 Years.*
People have discovered that the Labour Party includes people who are bigoted against Muslims.
(Note: the term "Islamophobia" is incorrect because it is a form of bigotry, which is quite different from a phobia.)
Since prejudice against Muslims is widespread, it would be surprising indeed not to find it in the Labour Party. It has also been observed in the Tory Party. So why is the concern focused solely on the former?
Almost 200,000 voters in Georgia are suing to get back on the voter list after being unjustly purged, supposedly for moving house (but they had not in fact moved).
*The federal government owns 92 percent of all student debt owed in this country. Canceling it could provide a huge stimulus.*
It is a mistake to see this primary as an issue concerning race. Like many aspects of the US economy that make the poor struggle to live, student debt weighs on the average more on blacks than on whites, because racism tends to make blacks poorer on the average. But that is a side issue. The burden of unpayable student debt should be lifted from Americans regardless of their demographic classification.
*Biden Is the Perfect Figurehead for the Post-Trump National Security Establishment.*
The UN warns about the need for action to protect soils.
A restaurant now serves chicken burgers grown in a culture vat in its kitchen.
*Republicans are standing up to Trump. Unfortunately, it's too little, too late.*
We can admire them for turning and facing him when he attacks them, rather than cringing and obeying, but don't let this erase memory of all their previous wrongs.
Bats have other coronaviruses that can infect humans.
*Florida investigation finds governor misled public on Covid as cases rose.* He promoted anti-mask fanaticism while covering up the number of cases.
Residents of Massachusetts: call on Governor Baker to sign the bill relaxing some obstacles to abortion in Massachusetts.
UN human rights experts judge that France's new repression law, giving thugs more power as well as immunity from criticism of their crimes, is incompatible with human rights treaties.
The UK government demands that universities adopt the IHRA "definition" of antisemitism or face punishment. *[It] is confusing and divisive. Forcing its adoption will not help protect Jewish students and staff.*
It turns out that this definition was not even meant to be a set of rules. It was designed for classifying data for analysis.
I am sure the UK ministers are aware of the political side effect — to forbid activism against the occupation of Palestine. I suspect that this is the principal intent of the order, disguised conveniently as a plan to fight bigotry.
The Democratic Party's blacklist on campaign operatives that worked for progressive primary challenges seems to have backfired in an ironic way: with losses in the November election.
Ellen Brown: The Federal Reserve has failed to boost the economy. It lends to private banks, but they can't find very many businesses or individuals who want loans and could pay them back. Public banks can get away with a bigger risk level on each loan and still win through.
It seems to me that this is even more strongly an argument that we need more direct stimulus payment to individuals.
Arab academics and writers condemn antisemitism, then point out the distortion in the IRHA's definition for antisemitism and why that definition must be rejected.
*San Francisco to ban tobacco smoking in apartments.* Even if you live alone, you will be required to go out to the street to smoke, to protect you from second-hand smoke. Even if you have mobility problems and can't actually do it.
Tobacco is very dangerous, and it is important to encourage people to quit. But this rule is extreme.
Hundreds more products that contain PFAs have been identified.
(satire) *Trump Reduced To Filing Lawsuit To Overturn Single Ballot In Placerville, Idaho.*
American children are asking Santa Claus for things like beds and wheelchairs.
Sad thing is, instead of a Santa Claus, there are only Republicans.
Australian banks are shutting the accounts of remittance companies that send workers' money to countries that are considered terrorism-connected, such as Somalia. And they do this even when the government says the company is innocent of money laundering.
*ACLU Sues to Find Out How and Why Federal Agencies Are Accessing Americans' Cell Phone Location Data.*
The US Secretary of Agriculture has a lot of power, but since decades these officials have served the giant agribusinesses.
The US Senate is considering a new subsidy for nuclear power.
Only an enormous subsidy could make nuclear power viable, but a smaller subsidy could be enough keep reactors operating and suck funds from necessary development of renewable generation.
The government of New South Wales (Australia) held a consultation about managing water in the biggest river basin. Officials planned in advance how to prejudice the decision in favor of more irrigation and against preserving ecosystems.
The UK's policy of giving no extra welfare payments for more than two children is having a significant effect on how many children women have. The article gives no information for determining how many births were avoided this way.
It is very important for people to have fewer children. However, this welfare policy is unjust, since it punishes children. It can can stunt their physical and mental growth.
India has hundreds millions of paupers who can hardly get jobs they can live on, and it is working very hard to make more of them, by using robots to eliminate better jobs.
*Afghan government and Taliban agree on rules for peace talks.*
The author voices concern that the Taliban intend to take all of Afghanistan after the US pulls out. I expect that. And I expect it to impose a cruel, repressive theocracy. But that is less bad than continuing the war for decade after decade.
*'A Kind of Terrorism': Israeli Human Rights Groups Offer Harrowing Look at IDF Night Raids on Palestinian Homes.*
*Canada Is Now Paying the Price for Privatizing Its Vaccine Research and Production Lab.*
The Georgia senate races are like Biden vs Trump: center-right "moderate" Democrats on one side, vs extremist trumpery on the other.
I urge Georgia voters to vote for the Democrats, then publicly protest against them for not being progressive.
* Only 1% of the 3,000 supposedly protected areas in the Mediterranean ban fishing.*
*Goldman Sachs Log Exposes [Senator] David Perdue Stock Trading Claim as a Lie.*
*Insurance Companies Pressured To Not Support Oil Drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.*
Now that the big US banks have said they will not finance it, insurance companies are the next step.
Reporting on a pilot program to end rampant deforestation in a part of Borneo by involving and benefiting the inhabitants.
The pilot program covers an area around 1/4 that of Rhode Island — not large in absolute terms, but enough to prove something.
(satire) *Jeff Bezos announced the launch of new e-commerce site Bezylon Tuesday to undercut Amazon.*
Residents of the UK: tell the Competition and Markets Authority that it can make drivers more comfortable with electric cars by protecting their privacy.
Please tell the agency that you want to be assured that (1) the recharge station will collect absolutely no data from the car being recharged — especially not which car it is — and (2) that drivers will be able to pay with cash, anonymously.
You can say that electric cars must not bring with them an increase in surveillance of the public, because the UK already has to much of that.
Please spread the word to your friends, and post about the issue in whatever social media or forums it fits in.
Hong Kong protest organizers have been sentenced to prison for the crime of organizing protests.
*Photography campaign shows the grim aftermath of logging in Canada's fragile forests.*
One of Biden's advisers, Cynthia Hogan, *worked as a lead lobbyist for Apple as it helped push through President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cut.*
If Democrats ever control Congress, we must press them to reverse that tax cut, and some previous tax cuts. What use is a Democrat who chooses to get advice from someone who wants to do the opposite?
G20 countries are giving lots of "coronavirus recovery" funding to fossil fuel development. $230 billion worth. All of it is worse than wasted.
Right-wing Hungarian politicians had a "gay orgy" after enacting laws to deny rights to gays. They are now being attacked for hypocrisy because of this conflict between their personal actions and their politics.
They are indeed hypocritical, but it is a mistake to focus on that contradiction, because it is a side issue and distracts from the substantive issue. Would those laws be any less bad if these politicians practiced what they preach? Not at all.
Their laws are the wrong, so let's focus on that.
*UN secretary general: humanity faces climate 'suicide' without US rejoining Paris agreement.*
That statement is surely true. Avoiding suicide requires a lot more than the Paris agreement, but can serve a sign of intent.
*Dozens test positive for Covid after [250-person] swingers convention in New Orleans.*
To have a swinging meeting and avoid propagating Covid-19 must be very difficult — best to postpone the meeting until it is safe.
Why Canada responded to atrocities by its "special forces" by disbanding the unit.
Maybe they called that unit "special" as a euphemism for "bad behavioral problems."
*Female trafficking survivors in UK forced into unsafe housing.*
*Barack Obama criticizes 'Defund the Police' slogan. The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?*
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said, *"defund the police" was not about mere words but a "demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country."
Why see a conflict there? I think they are both right.
I support the substance of the campaign, articulated by Ilhan Omar. But I agree with Obama that that particular slogan is a bad way to campaign for it.
How about, "Replace the police"?
Piers Corbyn, the climate denialist and Covid-denialist brother of Jeremy Corbyn, has been convicted for protesting in London.
People have a right to protest if they follow the precautions so as not to transmit Covid-19. I cannot tell, from this article, whether Piers Corbyn followed them or not.
As a denialist, he might well have disregarded those precautions, in which case he deserves this conviction. But that raises the question, what would they have done if he had followed the precautions?
Does the UK recognize the right to protest, subject to sanitary precautions? Or does it prohibit all protest, in the name of sanitary precautions?
The wrecker is now stirring up his cultists to commit violence against Republican election officials that won't cheat for him.
*US justice department investigates alleged 'bribery for pardon' scheme.*
When states started to permit evictions, a big increase (a factor of 2) in Covid-19 infections followed.
*To End Impunity for 'Deliberate Destruction' of Planet, International Lawyers Drafting Plan to Criminalize Ecocide.*
*GOP silence on Trump's false election claims recalls McCarthy era.*
US human rights defenders have sought help in their goal from the UN's periodic human rights review.
With countries such as China in the UN Human Rights Council, I hope they won't do to these reviews what the wrecker did to human rights and justice in the US.
14 countries, some of them important in fishing, have signed a treaty to eliminate subsidies for fishing, and take other steps to use the ocean sustainably.
Many important fishing countries, including China, Iceland, the UK and the US, have not signed.
(satire) *Police Warn Onlookers Not To Enter Active Crime Scene Cover-Up.*
*Going "Back to Normal" Is Too Dangerous to Even Contemplate.*
The conman's latest con: raising funds to "combat election fraud" which will instead go to other purposes.
Ohio is passing a law to let the state government promote construction of "small" nuclear reactors.
These reactors are "small" only by comparison with the ones constructed so far, but they will be an absurd waste of money now that solar and wind power are so cheap. Furthermore, they will produce radioactive waste just like all other kinds. And if global heating leads to a much poorer civilization, no one will ever finish decontaminating them; sooner or later, the waste will simply leak.
*Enablers now extol potential Cabinet picks who've combined pushing for continuous war and hugely expensive new weapons systems with getting rich as dealmakers for the military-industrial complex.*
However, Biden's domestic policy choices are generally less completely plutocratist than Obama's were.
US citizens: call on Congress to support diplomacy with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Break up UK's big high street banks, say cross-party MPs.*
I agree. Big banks, like other big companies, have too much power, which they can use to exploit, or to lobby.
A leaked document indicates that China's reports on Covid-19 in the first few months were understatements, but perhaps more the result of bureaucratic rigidity than any plot to deceive.
*How restoring flood plains can help protect the climate.*
Queensland has made an ecocidal bet on increased coal and gas royalty revenue, and it is losing the bet.
*'Catastrophic' bushfire on Queensland's Fraser Island threatens ecological disaster.*
Australia needs support to stand against China's aggressive economic warfare.
The conflict started when Australia rejected Chinese mobile phone base equipment with nonfree software inside, as a security threat. In fact, all such equipment is a security threat. If Australia had taken that position, it would be confronting the whole threat and without singling out China.
*Trump’s border wall construction threatens survival of jaguars in the US.*
Climate mayhem will bring flooding. Affordable housing in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California will be especially vulnerable to flooding.
An Australian senate committee is trying to investigate government cheating, but can't get answers from the officials involved.
The Arecibo radio telescope collapsed completely.
China built a 500-meter fixed dish radio telescope in the past decade. Meanwhile, the US can't keep one operating. It makes a sad contrast. The causes are not practical. Rather, in the US all the money goes to the plutocrats and the military.
And it's not just radio telescopes that the US lacks the money to do. There are other things, even more important, which the US fails to do — for instance, giving poor people a decent life.
Well, at least the US has saved some of the cost of demolition :-{.
Bogus Johnson plans to take another step in the long slow process of transferring all political power in the UK to the hands of the prime minister.
The article gives the details of this step, but the overall process is more important than the details of one step or another.
*Transport Unions Say Rahm Emanuel Leading DOT Would Be a "Betrayal".*
Will Biden reinstate Obama's reported decision not to prosecute Assange for espionage?
Another question I wonder about: if indeed the US had no intention to prosecute Assange for espionage during those years, did the US intend to prosecute him in some other way? If so, what was it? There were indications that the US did plan to prosecute him, and that Sweden and the UK were fabricating excuses to get their hands on him, while Obama was president.
A bipartisan proposal might unlock Covid-19 relief funds in the Senate.
For the most part, this compromise has to be better than nothing. However, one provision is potentially extremely harmful: shielding businesses from liability for making workers work in conditions that expose them to Covid-19.
This could enable businesses to get away with gratuitously increasing the workers' risk.
*Wildflower meadows to line England's new roads in boost for biodiversity.*
Nice try, but it is far better to avoid building new roads than to build them and put meadows alongside them.
Italy plans to charge five Egyptian government agents with the murder of graduate student Giulio Regeni in Cairo.
Unsurprisingly, Egypt's repressive government says it has no idea who was responsible for the murder.
Regeni's studies involved interviewing people that were on bad terms with the state. [pol note about this point]
Biden nominated Neera Tanden for head of the Office of Management and Budget. She is the head of the "Center for American Progress", a plutocratist think-tank. We must expect plutocratist action from her.
*Monopolies have made America's Covid response worse.*
Lisbon has made use of the temporary end of tourism to convert many temporary rentals into long-term low-price residences.
Australian soldiers' crime against an inanimate object arouses incredible outrage — more so, it seems, than their crimes that hurt human victims, including torture and murder.
That bespeaks a taboo-based morality, according to which taboos are more important than people, so violating taboos is worse than killing people.
I hereby affirm that, when I am dead, I will not mind at all if someone takes some valueless part of my property and uses it as a cup. Or even my bones. After all, I won't need them any more.
However, I have willed my body to science, so do let the lab have first dibs.
Amnesty accuses Facebook and Youtube of helping Vietnam's political censorship.
Some of the prostitutes in the UK are enslaved. How to put a stop to that?
This article avoids the frequent prudish assumptions. It notes the existence of enslavement in the field of sex work but does not jump irrationally to the conclusion that all prostitution must be stamped out. So it confronts us with the challenge that really exists: to put an end to enslavement of sex workers.
The general long-term solution, I believe, is to make sure nobody is desperate enough to need to take a job offer that is too good to be true. But that is an enormous global challenge.
Treating this like kidnaping or wage theft in any other field, assuring women who might become prostitutes that they won't be penalized for that but that registering could enable them to be rescued, might help. Legalizing brothels provided they have registered the owners and managers, and frequently inspecting the operations of each one, might make it easier to find them, if the penalty for running an unregistered brothel is years in prison.
*Amazon deforestation surges to 12-year high under Bolsonaro.*
Facebook agreed to a scheme to pay newspapers for using some of their articles in a featured way.
While it is probably a good thing in a general sense for Facebook to pay some money to newspapers, this will enable Facebook to gain increased political influence while choosing which newspapers to support and which to ignore. I suspect that it is a change for the worse, overall.
One good thing about Biden: he advocates abolishing the death penalty in the US.
He also wants to legalize marijuana and eliminate privatized prisons and mandatory minimum sentences. I haven't checked every item in this long list, but the ones I have looked at seem good.
The European court of human rights decided to hear a lawsuit by young activists about the threat to their health and even their lives from allowing so much fossil fuel combustion. 33 European states must defend themselves from the claims.
Young people are the plaintiffs because they face the worst harm, if they live out their present-day natural life spans.
A pilot project in the UK will switch homes over to burning renewably produced hydrogen rather than natural gas (mainly methane).
Four French thugs who cruelly attacked and injured a Parisian man have been charged already, in less than one week.
On this score, France is miles above the US.
If you play Minecraft on an Xbox, can you tell me the answer to these questions?
* Which version are you using?
* Does it force you to save your own worlds only on Microsoft servers? Does it default to saving them on Microsoft servers?
* Can you play without without having anything to do with Microsoft servers?
* Can you export your data from Microsoft servers and take them to some other server?
* Can you play Minecraft solitaire without identifying yourself?
* Can you play Minecraft solitaire saving your data and worlds on a server hosted by you?
* Can you play Minecraft solitaire without using any a server?
Regardless of the answers, Minecraft is nonfree software. I urge you to switch to the free program Minetest and reclaim your freedom.
*Three-quarters of Australians back target of net zero by 2030, Guardian Essential poll shows.*
This gives me hope that the planet-roasters that have ruled Australia for many years may start losing elections.
*Austin Fusion Center Spied on Nonpolitical Cultural Events.*
I think their spying on political events is already outrageous. But there is no limit to the gatherings at which two would-be terrorists might get to know each other, so they think they need to spy on everything.
*The Economy Isn’t Working. That's Exactly the Plan.*
*Protecting Indigenous Languages Is Protecting Biodiversity.*
Craig Murray is facing pressure to censor Alexa by stopping it from quoting his criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine. Supposedly it represents antisemitism.
I do not support separating Scotland from the UK. The problems that Scotland faces come from the plutocratist government of the UK, and the right thing to do is fix that for the whole UK, not separate one piece from it. Besides, what Murray says about the SNP shows that an independent Scotland will tend to yield to plutocratist "normality".
There are also bad business-supremacy treaties that the UK has agreed to, but an independent Scotland would surely yield to pressure to sign the same treaties, so independence would do no good.
Dissident Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee has fled to Taiwan and operates a book store there. He warns that we must do more to defend Taiwan.
I think the US should recognize Taiwan and tell China, "We hope to maintain diplomatic relations with China also."
Switzerland considered a law to hold Swiss companies responsible for human rights and environmental crimes in other countries, but it failed to win in a majority of the cantons.
One real benefit from the UK's departure from the EU: ending the landowner subsidy.
100,000 people in Turkey are in jail facing charges of participating in the coup attempt several years ago.
The coup attempt was real and violent, and it is legitimate to try the people who participated in that. But it is impossible to have a secret plan with 100,000 participants. Most of the people accused must be innocent, one way or another.
The cost of decommissioning old nuclear power plants in the UK is ballooning, and it is going much more slowly that expected. This is partly because private companies are hired to do it and their executives are too busy padding their expense accounts to focus on doing the job.
Is the US handling this any better?
Planning to take 80 years, or even 40 years, to clean up a deactivated nuclear power plant is totally unrealistic if we do not stop global heating much sooner than that. After 40 years of unchecked global heating, neither the money nor the expertise will be available, as climate disaster will cause enormous problems (such as hunger) that will have to take priority. By 2080 I expect the technology needed will no longer be available, and warlords/kingpins may be fighting. Eventually the ocean will take many of the sites.
In a million years, the radioactive atoms will have mostly decayed and the results will be much less dangerous than they are now. The same may not be true for persistent chemicals such as neonicotinoids and PFAs.
What the UK needs to do is cancel the construction of Hinkley Point C, never mind the sunk costs, and give highest priority to cutting greenhouse gas levels.
China is working very hard to convince people that Sars-CoV-2 did not originate in China.
It is foolish to politicize the place of origin of the virus. This campaign by China is foolish, just as the bullshitter's castigation of China because the virus originated there is foolish.
What China did wrong was to deny for a time that it had detected Sars-CoV-2. But that did not last very long. Many other countries have done much worse things in dealing with Covid-91, including the US.
The UK covers up and disguises sales of arms to repressive states.
Ethiopia's army captured the capital of Tigray with hardly any resistance. I think that means Tigray's forces are switching to guerrilla tactics. This involves melting away when attacked by a large force, then making small concentrations to attack even smaller units.
Biden's team will find wreckage in many federal agencies. They should report what they find.
When the Tories reorganized welfare benefits, they put in an arbitrary maximum limit which is independent of how much a family needs. Now some families need more money to cope with the consequences of Covid-19, and they are supposed to be offered more — but they don't actually receive it because the limit kicks in.
Does protecting endangered ecosystems require a park that excludes humans? Or can indigenous humans help protect them?
I suspect that it depends on the economic pressures on the humans and whether their lifeways and population are stable. In other words, it may be possible for the humans to coexist with the endangered ecosystems, but that doesn't mean it will happen automatically regardless. We may have to help.
Around the world, for around a hundred years, fascist rulers and would-be rulers have been paying close attention to each others' techniques.
Tory politicians can break promises, lie, commit crimes, even engage in systematic corruption, and no one can do anything about it. Much like the conman, they can use their power to crush whoever might try.
London thugs arrested people arriving in London by train with equipment for protesting.
It is legitimate to prohibit people from meeting in public and transmitting Covid-19. It is not legitimate to prohibit protests.
Can you see how to reconcile these two principles? Of course you can; why can't the British government?
* The bad news [from Biden] for progressives is that there has not yet been a single person announced for an official post that the left can be enthusiastic about.*
France is passing laws that criminalize protests and prohibit posting images of thugs if one can see who they are. This prohibits, in particular, live-streaming of their violent actions.
None of this has is a cure for the disease of Islamist terrorism, but even if it were a cure, it would be worse than the disease.
Thousands protested against the restrictions on press freedom.
Prohibiting home-schooling is repressive, too.
A virtual book club in Taiwan invites people to participate using encryption via Jitsi, so Hong Kongers can join.
The WHO thinks that Covid-19 may have undone 20 years of progress in eliminating tuberculosis and malaria.
21 months in prison for throwing eggs at a Hong Kong thug building, on the grounds that it manifested an unfriendly attitude towards the state.
NPR insultingly equated Stacey Abrams's truthful complaint of election rigging with the bullshitter's lie.
It is true that both candidates had the right to demand a recount. But the two are not morally comparable.
(satire) *Satan Offering Black Friday Deal To Trade Only 50% Of Soul For Lifetime Of Riches.*
(satire) *South Dakota Unveils New ‘Come Die Here’ Tourism Campaign.*
Leaked 2019 documents detail how Amazon spies on environmentalists and workers' organizing.
This includes using predictive policing to infiltrate possible union hot-spots and smear or harass employees who are liable to speak up about those issues.
Advertising pumps up many forms of consumption that endanger civilization's survival, both specifically and in a deeper general way by convincing people to value purchases more than spending time with people.
Since in general advertising is manipulative, misleading and annoying, there is no reason to hesitate to reduce the amount of it.
US businesses are moving rapidly to replace human restaurant and hotel workers with robots.
This means that today's massive unemployment will not go away when Covid-19 does. Only socialist measures to support the unemployable can avoid making them homeless and hungry.
One way we can fight back is by refusing to use self-checkout sales machines. You can shout out, as I do, "Millions of Americans are out of work. Let's not let them replace humans with robots!"
Bruce Reed, who encouraged and helped Bill Clinton to inflict more suffering on the poor, is now being considered by Biden for a White House position where he would have plenty of influence to do more of the same.
Biden proudly announced that he considers the number of progressives he has chosen for his administration significant.
That is an exaggeration, but more important is the concentration of center-right plutocratist or militarist Democrats he has already chosen or is considering.
Some San Francisco thugs celebrated when a former thug murdered Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk.
A substantial number of people in the US are avoiding having children so as not to condemn them to climate mayhem. Some regret having had children.
The survey did not seek a representative sample, so no conclusions can be drawn about how many people feel this way, but this is an important change. Once you've avoided having children, your income will allow you to good for the world without getting paid for it. Make sure not to waste this.
The new leaders of Labour have chosen an authoritarian approach to the millions of Labour Party members who still support Corbyn: they are forbidden to talk about the subject.
It is not unusual to suppress discussion by stretching the definition of antisemitism, but this is the biggest stretch I have ever seen. We cannot act effectively against real antisemitism if we mislabel everything we dislike as "antisemitism".
*Analysis: shooting of [Iranian nuclear scientist] Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will do more harm to diplomacy than it does to Iran’s nuclear programme.*
The theory that Israel carried out the attack, and the wrecker approved it, seems valid to me. If Biden does not punish Israel for trying to push the US and Iran into war, he will show himself to be a weakling.
The wrecker is asking the Supreme Court, which he has stacked, to change the Pennsylvania election results on the fictitious grounds of fraud that did not happen.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the MORE act, which would legalize using marijuana.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Israeli draft refuser Hallel Rabin thanks people for messages of support.
Selling carbon offsets for carbon storage in farmland is a scam: it is not practical to measure how much carbon is really stored, and it could all be released at any moment.
The saboteur in chief made an executive order to allow agencies to remove civil service protection from employment positions at will. They could fire, or threaten to fire, anyone who won't lie when ordered to.
Scotland is keeping its schools' windows open for ventilation, which makes them so cold that students have to wear coats and warm clothes all day. Unfortunately, many families can't afford to buy those clothes.
Israel's almost trumpish treatment of asylum seekers.
Gush Shalom: Israel should allow heroic whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to go to Norway to live.
What Biden must do to have a chance of moving towards peace between Israel and Palestine.
The wrecker has removed many experienced advisors from the Defense Policy Board.
Why bother to do this, when Biden could reappoint them in two months? I fear it is so that he will not have to hear them try to be polite while explaining to him that bombing Iran would lead to disaster.
The Supreme Court ruled that local laws for curbing the spread of Covid-19 cannot restrict religious organizations more strictly than other, secular organizations. Based on that, it ruled New York State's restrictions on religious meetings unconstitutional.
The general policy seems legitimate to me. Although I don't respect the idea of faith, I believe in respecting people's right to practice their religions. This general decision is not the disaster some are painting it as.
However, the right-wing Supreme Court justices strained the facts badly to reach the conclusion that New York State's restrictions restrict churches more than secular establishments. The secular establishments that would have large numbers of people attend in a long session are closed entirely; churches are allowed to open.
I think New York State could redraft the restrictions so that they explicitly apply the same criteria to various kinds of establishments and result, in practice, in rules equivalent to the present ones. Maybe then the court would have to accept it — or else reveal that it is trifling with its duty.
Arguing that giant quasi-monopolies are systematically capable of crushing unions, at least under current US labor law.
Textbook companies in the US are using various dirty tricks to stop college students from buying used textbooks and saving money. This includes corrupting professors with bribes that carry big labels saying "This is not a bribe."
But it also includes other trickery, such as making textbooks change in trivial ways from year to year or from school to school. And, of course, making students subscribe to access to an unjust ebook, which typically has all the injustices of other commercial ebooks.
When people talk about "open educational resources," or "open" textbooks that are "free to download," we cannot tell right away whether they are free/libre or not. That's because the definition of that term accepts some nonfree licenses.
But I think these "open" textbooks are in fact free/libre. The law that funds their development requires a license like CC-BY, and they are developed by an organization called LibreTexts which seems to recommend only free software tools.
However, cannot verify this. I was unable to find anything on libretexts.org which spoke about the licensing of their textbooks. The front page talks about the practical benefits, the things naive people would appreciate, but says nothing about freedom.
Perhaps there is information present which I could not find. Some of the home page's navigation does not work without running some nonfree JS code. I will ask them.
Some WiFi hubs have back doors which can control not only the router but devices connected to it.
From the details in the article, I think the back door is in the router's administrative web server, so it would have nothing to do with the specific physical platform or where that was made.
The people who found the back door present arguments that it was made intentionally.
There are hubs that run free software. That gives the community a way to try to check for, and get rid of, malicious functionality like this.
The Tories are setting up a fund for investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, just three years after they eliminated the old one.
I think that was when Cameron was prime minister. Under his government, the Tories had an ideological policy of gradually eliminating investment in reducing global heating, even as as they pushed fracking. Apparently, they considered maximizing fossil fuel a priority comparable to reducing the income of poor people.
Virus-denialists in Arizona are delighted to hold an interstate soccer tournament with reportedly 500 teams, which would imply thousands of players.
Some of these benighted fools are so stubbornly loyal to the wrecker's lies that they adamantly deny the reality of Covid until their last words as they are dying of it. Why not bring together thousands of people for a kilospreader event?
The matches will be played outdoors, I expect, which reduces the danger of them. But unless those teams practice firm discipline, players will catch Covid-19 from teammates and locals. It would be a small number compared with the almost 200,000 persons per day that are getting infected in the US, but every little bit hurts.
Sicily asked Cuba to send doctors.
This year is a La Niña year, which makes Australia cooler, but global heating is stronger and could damage the Great Barrier Reef nonetheless.
Republicans are trying to continue the civil war, from the Confederate side.
*More than 3 billion people affected by water shortages, data shows.*
That is almost half current the human population. I wonder how much of human population growth is in areas with water shortages. I suspect it is more than half.
Thugs in Paris attacked a man who was walking to his office without a mask, and beat him bloody. Then they made false accusations against him.
Did they do this because he did not wear a mask? Or did they do this because he was black? I suppose it was the latter, since they called him racist insults too.
It was right for them to take quick action on seeing a person outside without a mask on. But the proper action was to give him a mask to put on immediately, and fine him. Perhaps arrest him if it was a repeat offense. Not to invade his studio and attack him and others.
I am glad to see that the authorities are not delaying the pursuit of these thugs. In the US it typically takes mass protests, over time, to get that far.
Article 24, which puts people in jeopardy if they expose thugs for their crimes, is very dangerous for human rights in France.
*EU to ban use of lead shot by wetland bird hunters.*
Lead is toxic to animals, just as to humans. It is good to stop putting lead into the environment.
*Climate crisis making autumn leaves fall earlier, study finds.*
Scientists had predicted that, with a longer growing season, trees would store more carbon Instead, they drop their leaves once they have stored enough energy to be ready for winter.
This means that predictions for how much carbon forests will store must be adjusted down, and predictions for disaster must be adjusted up.
The corrupter has pardoned his former agent, Michael Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about what he did for the corrupter.
This is a corrupt practice. I think we need to limit the president's power to pardon so that presidents cannot do this in the future.
Noam Chomsky: *Trump Has Revealed the Extreme Fragility of American Democracy.*
A call to break up the three principal US fund managers: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.
Us citizens: call on the New Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Biden not to put anyone in the OMB that prioritizes reducing the deficit.
A depression requires deficit spending.
Retail workers, called "heroes" by stingy employers, demand a raise in proportion to their employers' rising profits.
Immigrant rights defenders welcome Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's choice to head the Department of Harshness and Sadism.
If we are really fortunate, we will have to call the department some other name.
Egyptian freedom activist Alaa Abd El Fattah was imprisoned again a year ago because of protests that he did not participate in. He is now on hunger strike.
Copyright on recorded music nominally exists to benefit musicians, but streaming dis-services are redefining that benefit towards zero.
Meanwhile, the enforcement of copyright is getting nastier as the web is filled with W3C-endorsed DRM that we can't break.
Exxon's plans, from leaked internal documents, include increasing the extraction of fossil fuel.
In other words, the company is planning gigadeaths.
(satire) * President-elect Joe Biden confirmed Wednesday that he had received his first box of wadded-up napkins and greasy receipts comprising President Trump’s intelligence briefing.*
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected the proposed Pebble Mine.
This is a victory for wildlife and human life, but it isn't necessarily final. Moneyed interests can sue and appeal over and over.
The EPA reports that that 1,676 endangered species are likely to be harmed by glyphosate.
Senator Wyden told Biden not to nominate Mike Morell to head the CIA. Much like the wrecker's appointed head, Gina Haspel, Morell is associated with defending CIA torture.
Seattle has cut its thug department's budget by 18%.
It is important for the 9-1-1 response team to be outside the thug department, so that it will not have a default tendency to send a team of thugs when it gets a call saying that someone is in crisis and needs help. The presence of guns and gunmen can lead to shootings.
The wrecker followed a pattern set by Dubya: blatant disregard for thoughtful consideration of major dangers and decisions.
*[UK] immigration officials have been accused of using coercive tactics to gain access to people’s homes and businesses without search warrants.*
Mnuchin's final act of sabotage: lock away 450 billion in Covid-19 aid so that Biden would need congressional permission to spend it.
The obvious response for a president who really wants to aid Americans is to use this, and the general issue of aid, to make Republicans scream, and to campaign for the Jan 5 Georgia Senate run-offs. I predict that Biden will do this at most half-heartedly.
*Economists Call for $3 Trillion Covid Relief Package to Stop Nation's Descent Into Ruin.*
I wonder if the platinum-coin hack might make enable Biden to bypass the senate's objections to helping Americans. But I have a feeling he would rather moan about being blocked, than overcome the blockage.
George Monbiot contends that taking the UK out of the EU is a scheme for the "warlord" capitalists (who despise regulation and democracy both) to rip up the "housetrained" capitalists who have prospered together with those.
The warlords like to say that "freedom" means that they can use their wealth to do whatever they like, even decree penury or death for millions of people; that nothing stands in their way. Their supporters, the antisocialists, call themselves "libertarians", but they do not deserve that name.
There is no need to worry about catching Covid-19 from paper money.
It is theoretically possible, but many factors combine to make it an insignificant risk. You don't need to surrender your anonymity out of fear.
In the US, poverty brings spreading hunger.
Berlin has instituted strict rent control as rents were soaring.
The usual way to avoid discouraging new construction is to exempt it from rent control. The article seems to expect Berlin instead to construct lots of public housing.
The UK has seen an enormous increase in domestic violence, and it started before the pandemic.
*Iranian president upbeat about relations with Biden-led US.*
I am optimistic too. The US has done many unjust things to Iran, including engineering a coup against Mossadegh's elected government in 1954, and supporting the Shah's torture regime for decades after. Then there was supporting Iraq in invading Iran in the 1980s, and grueling sanctions in this century.
Iran has done some nasty things to the US, such as taking hostages in 1980 supporting the Lebanese hostage takers later that decade. But all in all Iran has suffered more in this exchange than the US. (Iran's government has often behaved repressively in Iran, but that doesn't come into this comparison.)
If Iran can forgive, the US should be able to forgive.
The cruel UK "hostile environment" policy of making unauthorized immigrants (and even those suing to claim they are authorized) into paupers has been ruled a violation of immigration law.
*Victoria's electric vehicle tax could reduce clean car use by 25% [in 2050], researcher says.*
The idea that petroleum-burning cars will still be sold in 2050 shows the total inadequacy of Australia's climate plans, and the absurd idea of this tax reflects the fundamental unwillingness to do what is needed.
French thugs broke up a refugees camp in an important square in Paris, and in the process attacked people with violence that outraged the minister in charge of police.
Bertelsmann, which includes one of the major recorded music empires, is buying publishing companies and will soon control 1/3 of the US book market.
In addition to the usual dangers of too few competitors with too much power and lobbying strength, concentration in book publishing facilitates censorship by bullying. Here's an example.
I don't need to agree with Peterson's book, or know what views it advocates, to consider it dangerous to a free society for bullies to be able to prevent the publication of a book because they don't like it.
No company should be allowed to have even 10% of the book publishing market. Or the book sales market (down with Amazon!). Perhaps 5% is the bigger than we should tolerate.
US citizens: call on the FCC not to bend rules for Faux News and the Murdoch family.
Loujain al-Hathloul, who campaigned in Salafi Arabia for women's right to drive and has been jailed almost three years, now faces some sort of charges of terrorism.
It turns out to be difficult to avoid buying soybeans grown on deforested land. I think the demand for soybeans is so high that any beans that are grown will be bought by someone.
The demand for soybeans is high because people are eating so much meat. Indeed, a large fraction of Americans eat so much meat that it is dangerous for their health. It also fuels global heating, through cattle-generated methane as well as through deforestation. Perhaps the real solution is to tax meat so much that people won't eat so much meat.
The conman's "infrastructure program" was meant as a give-away to business, but the US really does need to build and maintain its infrastructure. It should do so in a way that protects the environment and reduces global heating.
How Taiwan deals with the danger of misinformation and disinformation.
Ethiopia claims that informally organized gangs of Tigrayans massacred hundreds of local residents belonging to other Ethiopian ethnic groups. It also says that other local Tigrayans protected their neighbors from the massacre.
*[Boston's official thugs] whom the department found had stolen, committed fraud, attacked co-workers, or drew guns on their colleagues were allowed to quietly resign or retire without facing charges. [Thugs] who attacked family members, threatened civilians, and drunkenly crashed their cars remain on the force today.* In addition, [thugs] that were prosecuted for theft, and for lying to officials, got off easy.
If you think that, because you are a cop, you should not be punished for crimes, that means you are a thug, and a would-be police department needs you gone.
*Following Outcry, US Government Halts Deportations of Women Who Allege Medical Abuse in [deportation prison] — At Least for Now.*
Republicans may be setting up a permanent big-lie campaign that will claim that Biden stole the election.
As far as I know, the wrecker is not obsessed with eliminating any particular demographic group. This year he adopted a plan that would bring about the death of many blacks and Hispanics, but only instrumentally. However, aside from that, he is as evil as a Nazi.
*Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies — and Obama's Too.*
I agree with those goals, including the goal of diversity among students in public schools. Diversity in class contributes to education in a specific way: it can help students get used to knowing and relating to people of different backgrounds.
Alas, I don't see much hope Biden will choose to do anything better than Obama did it.
(satire) *Staff Slowly Introducing Biden To Oval-Shaped Rooms For Smoother Transition To White House.*
It has been proved that the London apartment building fire was caused by companies that knowingly disregarded building standards to made the building a firetrap. What follows from that?
I am sure people can think of more effective regulatory systems. The reason they are not in place in the UK is that the government has catered too much to business. Corbyn would have fixed that.
But I have two other recommendations that may shock the people who expect that business will always be above human beings.
Bernie Sanders: *How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key.*
Sanders asks the Democrats, "Which side are you on?" We must all ask each Democrat that question.
Sanders for President in 2024!
Qatar's thugs strip-searched passengers searching for the mother of an abandoned baby. It appears that the mother had flown out already, and that she was compelled to abandon the baby and flee, lest she be punished severely for sex outside of marriage.
But they seem to have found her and will now charge her with attempted murder.
You do not want to be in Qatar.
Lawyers that make false claims of electoral fraud in court are violating the standards of the court and should be punished.
*Australia's entire SAS regiment must be disbanded after Brereton report, expert says.*
This is the report about their murder of prisoners.
Singapore's strict repression is showing, as Jolovan Wham is facing criminal charges for a one-person "assembly".
The "assembly" lasted a few seconds during which he took a photo.
If one person can be an "assembly", then I must be assembling every minute even when I am home by myself. And you, too.
Administering the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is a difficult logistical challenge in the US, especially because of inadequate funding for public health.
Two "security" guards in Brazil beat a black man to death. One of them punched him while the other held him in place.
DeJoy, before becoming head of the USPS, had a business, and made a practice of laundering campaign contributions through the employees.
That is illegal. Will DeJoy be prosecuted?
The UK invites volunteers to help take care of asylum seekers imprisoned in a privatized old military base, and threatens to imprison the volunteers if they describe the resistance of the asylum seekers.
This is said to include hunger strikes and suicide attempts.
*The pernicious and lucrative aspects of military madness are personified in the favorite to be Biden’s Defense Secretary,* Michele Flournoy.
*The militarization of American society and the "thank-you-for-your-service" fetishization of American soldiers will continue to thrive.*
Americans who join the US military typically wish to serve their country. There are scenarios in which they might be called upon to do that. But what they are more often ordered to do is wreak suffering on some other country.
Rather than passing the buck to an imaginary deity to "protect our troops," the president ought to make sure not to endanger them for bad reasons.
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Biden to do better than Obama did in respecting freedom of the press.
Georgia's Republican officials propose to block new voters from registering before the Jan 5 runoff elections unless they have registered a car in Georgia.
(satire) *Coronavirus Optimistic New Mutation Will Be Widely Available To Public By Early Spring.*
The US should stop supporting Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara.
Biden has chosen a secretary of state who helped convince him to support the conquest of Iraq.
*Peace Groups Blast Biden's [head of US intelligence services] Pick [Avril Haines] Over Links to Drones, Torture, and Mass Surveillance.*
Warlike "centrist" Democrats think she's great. No wonder she supported the nomination of fellow torture-advocate Haspel to head the CIA. According to Wikipedia, she decided not to punish the CIA agents who had been caught cracking Senate computers to spy on senators.
Some of them seem to think she is a good choice because of her gender or reported hispanic ethnicity. Her Wikipedia page gives no sign of hispanic roots; perhaps they are distant. Surely those Democrats don't think that she would refrain from engineering coups in Latin America on their account. Or do they think they will encourage her to do so?
*High Drug Prices Could Result in Premature Deaths of More Than 1.1 Million Seniors [in the US] in Next Decade.*
*Fossil fuel companies received $110 billion in direct and indirect financial assistance during the coronavirus pandemic* — so far.
*Myanmar's genocide against Rohingya not over, says rights group.*
Food delivery bike-riders in Australia are not only stuck with precarious work and low pay. They are also getting killed in collisions with bigger vehicles.
I wonder if their low pay compels them to work when they are too tired to avoid the trucks.
*New York swingers club shut down for breaking coronavirus restrictions.*
I'm in favor of sex clubs, but only so long as they take care not to spread disease. If that is not feasible, they must close for now.
*UK government to subsidise onshore renewable energy projects.*
The UK did this 10 years ago. Then the previous Tory leaders created excuses to obstruct land-based wind power projects. It authorized the slightest bit of local opposition to block a wind farm, while making it impossible for local people to block fracking. To stop blocking land-based wind power projects is a step forward.
The GSA recognized Biden as "apparent" president elect and will start transition planning.
However, the wrecker will not stop trying to corrupt Republican legislators, despite having been thwarted in Michigan.
Salafi Arabia tortured Mohammed Al Faraj into confessing to several political crimes, and plans to execute him for those. Two injustices right there! But the world is focusing on the detail of whether he was 9 years old or 10 years old at the time of the first supposed crime.
* Drop in emissions this year is a ‘tiny blip’ in buildup of greenhouse gases, UN agency says.*
It is worrisome that Biden might consider appointing Ernest Moniz to any job that relates to energy or pollution. He lobbied for gas companies even as he was Obama's energy secretary.
US citizens: call on the next Attorney General to investigate voter suppression, vote tampering and intimidation.
Netanyahu the corrupt met secretly with Pompeo the fanatic and Crown Prince Bone Saw.
I would suppose they were planning to attack Iran — than is the desire they have in common.
*Extinction Rebellion [UK] launches campaign of financial disobedience.* This includes debt and tax strikes.
*The left is accused of authoritarianism — but it's the right that gets away with it.*
A survey of major investment funds finds they are planning to invest heavily in renewable energy but continue investing (infesting?) too much in fossil fuels.
A covidiot has been charged with assault for breathing on protesters with the idea that he might infect them with Covid-19.
I believe it is well-established that intentionally transmitting a dangerous disease to others is a crime. It certainly deserves to be.
The UK wrongly confiscated Ken Morgan's passport in 1994 after an intended brief visit to Jamaica, which forced him to stay in Jamaica until 2018. In that year he applied for UK citizenship, but it was denied because he had been away from the UK for so many years.
The fact that officials could make this decision shows the wrong premises with which they approach such decision in general.
By the way, this is an example of a mistake that Joseph Heller has pointed out: people apply the term "Catch 22" incorrectly to other situations. What officials did to Morgan was unjust, but does not have the unique special structure of Catch 22.
Over a period of decades, Norway has designed its economic rules to consider human beings important.
Many Americans are unable even to make a dent in their college loan debts. Of those who borrowed in 2009, over a quarter owe more now than they did at the start.
Eventually the lender concludes the loan is uncollectible and forgives it, but this counts as taxable income, which is taxed at a substantial rate and the poor victim can't possibly pay it.
The tax debt must be smaller than the school debt. It might also be easier to eliminate via bankruptcy, though I don't know.
The lender could reduce the resulting tax debt greatly by forgiving the debt a little every year — as if it were being repaid — because that way it would not put the borrower into a high tax bracket. But I wouldn't assume they care enough to do that.
In the past decade, several government reports have described what must be done to reduce the effects of systemic racism in the UK, but the recommendations have not been implemented and the problem keeps getting worse.
California state senator Wiener will campaign to decriminalize psychedelics in that state.
We saw in Vietnam how much harm is caused by fighting a war on drugs. Let's not have one in the US.
Churches in England are holding large meetings secretly.
This is very dangerous. Large religious gatherings have has caused important Covid-19 outbreaks in South Korea and elsewhere.
People interviewed claim that worship is "essential". That is clearly not so in general; many of us do without it. But if you feel a need to worship, you don't need to do it in a large gathering. You can worship individually with no risk of spreading disease.
Indeed, many pious hermits worshiped in solitude for years at a time.
In El Paso, so many people are dying from Covid-19 that the morgues are overflowing and the regular personnel can't cope.
They have to limit the CPR for each sick patient because the ICU staff can't cope either.
These are the predictable consequences of the spreader's policies and he is directly responsible for these deaths. If he had not adopted intentional spreading of the disease, most of them would never have caught Covid-19.
The United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia oppose the push for the WTO to waive patent restrictions and allow all countries to make and use Covid-19 vaccines without paying for the privilege.
It is worth reminding people that the WTO is the reason why most countries allow medicines to be patented. That was a scheme to enrich big pharma companies at the expense of people who can't afford monopolistic prices for drugs. This system represents a decision to kill millions of people, and is one of the reasons why we ought to abolish the WTO.
Covid-19 vaccine developers are keeping the techniques of making them secret and have the gall to criticize people for trying to get those secrets.
This information should be made available to every would-be vaccine manufacturer.
Both of these articles used the misleading term "intellectual property." The first uses it to mean patents. The second uses it to mean trade secrets. Patents and trade secrets are totally different and have nothing whatsoever in common.
The term lumps together patents with copyrights with trade secrets with trademarks, and some other things as well. These laws are totally different, so the term is sophisticated-sounding confusion.
When someone uses the term "intellectual property", understand it to mean, "I don't know what I am talking about."
*Sen. Perdue of Georgia Profited From Defense Contractor's Stock While Overseeing Naval Spending.*
Congress passed a law, the STOCK Act, criminalizing that kind of corruption, but then repealed it.
Government ministers in the UK used to have a strict code of responsibility. Whoever presided over a serious wrong or mistake was obliged to resign. Nowadays, they are too powerful to be held responsible for anything.
There have been targeted killings in Afghanistan, and — for a change — they are not being done with drones. *Biden's Silence on Ending the Drone Wars.*
Millions of Americans are expected to spread Covid-19 to their families this week. Don't be one of them!
New car-tracking vision systems don't just recognize license plate numbers. They also learn to recognize individual cars.
Housing associations are imposing this on the "owners" of houses. (I wouldn't buy a house in such a place myself.)
Surveillance like this should be absolutely forbidden.
I am also shocked by the idea of forbidding the "owners" to receive overnight visitors.
Biden should speak up to counter the wrecker's disinformation campaign which aims to develop his followers into a sabotage front.
We should honor the officials that have refused to lie for the corrupter.
With his fanatics, he can make that refusal a real trial of the official's integrity.
Nowadays every moment in a comedian's career carries a risk of being cancelled over who-knows-what.
The UK government has come to be totally callous about harm to "the little people" (those who are not wealthy enough to really matter).
Former French president Sarkozy is being prosecuted for corruption.
Vaccines made from messenger RNA are not likely to alter the genome of humans who take it, unlike DNA vaccines.
Oil companies know that their oil reserves are likely to become worthless, but they are racing to invest in additional extraction facilities, which will contribute to global heating before eventually becoming likewise worthless.
*Hailed as 'Heroes' During Pandemic, Retail Workers Stripped of Hazard Pay While Companies Rake in Massive Profits.*
*Democrats Must Commit Themselves to the Needs of Non-College Educated Workers.*
Supposing it is true that "the jobs are gone and are never coming back", who is responsible for that? Plutocratist politicians are. And who benefits from that? Mostly owners of stock. So the government has a responsibility to compensate the would-have-been workers from the wealth that the owners have gained.
Taxing them to pay for the work that the country needs would be admirable.
*At G20, Only India Is On Track to Meet Goals for Keeping Global Heating to 3.6° F.*
Note, however, that India has built a lot of coal-fired power plants in recent years ‐ which means it has a lot of new power plants to replace.
The UK stock market lobbies against proper taxation by pretending that a large fraction of shares are owned by working people's pensions. This is not true.
Guatemala's congress adopted a budget which cut education and medical care, which triggered protests that set parts of the congress building on fire.
On the Firing of Jeffrey Toobin, by Richard Stallman.
A feminist columnist recognizes that there are more important things about a proposed cabinet secretary than per gender. For instance, per political inclinations.
I've never been impressed by "firsts" in high-level positions. Having for the first time a woman as the secretary of this-or-that is not going to help the lives of very many women. What the official does may help them, or hurt them.
An increase in the minimum wage would help millions of American women who have hard lives today, along with millions of American men. A national medical system would also do that, especially if it covers abortions and reliable contraception.
The thug department of Pasco, Florida, secretly profiles all children based on personal data collected by their schools and other government agencies. It uses the profiles to estimate whether they are likely to end up as criminals. Such predictions tend to be self-fulfilling.
Victoria (a state in Australia) does something similar.
If we had a reliable and helpful form of intervention to help children avoid that fate, these profiles could be used to good effect. But we don't know of any way, so they tend to be used to do harm.
Progressive programs such as a higher minimum wage, a better welfare system, and a national medical system, could help a lot of children avoid becoming criminals, and it wouldn't be necessary to try to predict which children were personally in the most danger.
The good news is, Libya's cease-fire has lasted for a few weeks. The bad news is, more oil is being extracted there.
In the long term, fossil fuels will kill far, far more people than fighting in Libya. How many more will be killed due to extracting oil in Libya is imponderable.
It's not just official thugs that kill blacks. Private insecurity guards can do it too.
US nurses are burned out and some are suffering from PTSD. Some are going on strike.
Hospitals are raking in money — they can afford to pay their staff better.
*A Biden Administration Can Raise Wages and Give Workers More Power — If It Wants To.*
*From rewilding to forest schools, our attitude [in the UK] to nature is changing for the better.*
Will rewilding include eradicating intrusive plants such as rhododendrons and the poisonous giant hogweed?
Biden's transition team, advisors, and planned cabinet are full of people with connections to big, malicious tech companies and gig economy exploiters, including Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, and Microsoft.
Someone from a computer-selling company such as Dell as head of the EPA does not bode well either. Manufacture and disposal of computers make pollution and we need the EPA to regulate this carefully.
This is disappointing but not surprising. Biden's willingness to serve business was what supposedly made him "electable."
*On the Current Status of Trump's Coup Attempt — and Its Future.*
Many prisons in the US restrict what books prisoners can read. In some cases, they can only get books from one seller, which systematically gouges them and limits them to a small fraction of the books that exist.
The wrecker proposes a rule to forbid banks from refusing to lend to some field of industry for reasons other than profit.
If it is true that banks now recognize that fossil fuel development is an unprofitable investment, that is the occasion for a sigh of relief. However, we have been pushing for years for institutions to stop financing some destructive kinds of "industry" and we must not have the government forbid this.
Mwazulu Diyabanza goes into European museums, picks up African objects, and gives talks alleging that Europeans stole the objects. Perse has been charged with theft for doing this.
Perse describes per actions as "theft" but I am skeptical of that. It is clear that Mwazulu Diyabanza is not really stealing the objects, rather making theater about the idea of stealing them. Perse carries them around inside the museum, and discourses about them, but never tries to remove them. This violates the museum's rules, and maybe it violate some law as well, but it is not theft.
As for whether those objects were stolen in Africa, I have no opinion about that. It depends on details I don't know, and then there would be questions about which moral standard to apply. I don't know whether Mwazulu Diyabanza has thought deeply about these questions or jumped to a conclusion.
I'd like to see per comments and reasoning about the specific objects. If it is deep, there may be much in it to learn from.
The Tax Justice Network estimates that countries use $427bn a year in tax revenue due to moving money to tax havens.
The most important tax havens identified were the Cayman Islands (16.5%, $70bn); the UK (10%, $42bn); the Netherlands (8.5%, $36bn); Luxembourg (6.5%, $27bn) and the US (5.5%, $23bn).
Although according to modern monetary theory, the US, having a sovereign currency, can create money to stimulate the economy by spending it on whatever is needed, up to a point where the economy overheats. The US is nowhere near that now, since it is suffering a recession and unemployment.
*Half of Republicans say Biden won because of a 'rigged' election.*
Ivanka Trump had to move her children out of a private school because she and her husband would not follow the Covid-19 safety rules to avoid bringing the virus to the children and then into the school.
The wrecker has proposed a rule to require banks to lend impartially to all fields of business. This is intended to force them to lend to oil drilling in the Arctic.
The Sierra Club says that banks won't lend to that because they consider it too risky.
If awareness of coming climate disaster has made it clear that investing in new fossil fuel projects is unprofitable, that is reason for a sigh of relief. But this comes after years of trying to persuade investors and lenders to refuse to fund fossil fuel business even when it appeared profitable, for the sake of avoiding disaster. We must continue to do that.
The wrecker is trying to pressure state legislators to disregard the actual votes in their states and certify the wrecker as victor.
The majority of the these states' voters are Democrats, but Republicans hold control of the their legislatures through gerrymandering. That means that they are "reelected" each time by defying the voters. We can hope that they will stick at explicitly setting aside an election with zero real grounds, but it is a bad situation when our democracy depends on Republicans to have that much integrity.
South Australia was ultimately responsible for the need for the brief unnecessary lockdown, through its decision to guard a quarantine hotel using precarious subcontracted workers whose low pay compels them to take additional jobs.
The UK is investigating past thug infiltration of nonviolent campaigns for political causes, at the same time as it authorizes a lot more in the future.
Don't be angry at the officials of South Australia for acting rationally to curb Covid-19 based on the information they had. It's not their fault that it came from a patient who was lying.
*Better ventilation and universal mask-wearing are key to keeping the virus at bay [in schools], so children’s education can continue.*
12 million Americans stand to lose unemployment benefits early in 2021.
Automated monitoring of accessibility of many web sites from places around the world provides a way to measure censorship in many countries, daily. It shows that censorship is increasing in most of the world.
I suggest that part of the root cause of the increase in censorship is the misguided acceptance of the idea that sharing copies is "piracy" and the tendency of governments to facilitate DRM rather than making it a felony.
Censorship by governments makes some web sites inaccessible to people in some countries. At the same time, nonfree JavaScript code on some websites makes them inaccessible to the Free World. The former denies freedom directly to people in those countries. The latter invites everyone to sacrifice freedom to read them.
The conspirators that planned to murder Governor Whitmer are accused of planning another scheme: to seize the state capitol building and murder officials there.
Climate scientists say old global heating forecasts were too conservative; 1.5C of heating may be under a decade away, and the target of "net zero" greenhouse emissions by 2050 is insufficient.
I predicted this would happen, but not by trying to do climate modeling. I have no knowledge of how to do that, so I don't try. That is a job for climate scientists.
However, I know that scientists have not figured out all the pertinent relationships that ought to be in climate models, and that global heating is sure to have effects as yet unpredicted. It follows that, as things move further away from the old normal, changes are likely to cause more changes. When scientists don't know how change in A will affect B, they tend to try a linear relationship as a first approximation, and that works for small changes, but as they get bigger the linearity can break down.
So if we want to save civilization, we must plan for worse than the models predict. We must do more, and sooner, than the models say is needed.
I've explained before why "net zero" opens a pitfall: putting faith in risky offset schemes. Systems that remove CO2 from the air as they run are real contributions to reducing net emissions (but their cost must be compared with direct reductions in emissions); however, systems that one hopes will remove CO2 many years down the road (such as tree planting) are not reliable. We need to plant a lot of trees, to keep forests going, but we should not count their absorbed CO2 until they have absorbed it.
When scientists warn that 4C of warming is incompatible with an organized global community, it means that farming won't work very well and the remaining people will be fighting over what food and fresh water are available. We need to make sure things don't get that bad.
Alexander Hamilton was deeply involved in slavery.
Thai protesters used large inflatable rubber ducks as shields against water with a tinge of dissolved tear gas.
*Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota led to a Covid-19 outbreak in Minnesota, new report says.*
State governors may want to block roads for a time when a spreader event is going on in an adjoining state.
* We are witnessing a criminal tragedy as wealthy billionaires, sequestered in protective bubbles and private jets, are dispatching essential workers into the line of infection fire with inadequate shields and protections.*
A confused article speaks of grapes that carry end-user license agreements.
The confusion is to conflate patents with shrink-wrap licenses.
Plants can be covered by patents. If so, propagating them is patent infringement. But that has nothing to do with putting a label on a bag purporting to impose restrictions on the purchaser. From what I recall, that is not legally valid in the US, except for software.
Australian soldiers in Afghanistan stand accused of premeditated murder of civilians and prisoners in cold blood, and covering it up afterward.
Also competing for who could kill more civilians as they ran away. And torture for the fun of it. All based on evidence.
The fatal apartment building fire in London was caused by fraud and deceit, facilitated by deregulation, and promoted by plutocratist disdain for the lives of people who are not rich.
The first reaction of the organizations that owned other buildings with similar fire hazards was to dump the cost of retrofitting on the occupants of the flats, who couldn't possibly have paid it. I hope that these revelations (which surely apply to other buildings that use the same firetrap material) will put the burden onto organizations that are actually responsible.
*The 'market' won't save us from climate disaster. We must rethink our system.*
This is a well-known reason why markets give bad results in some cases. The costs that the product imposes on people other than the one who buys it are called "externalities."
Erin Brockovich: Biden has chosen for his EPA transition board someone who helped DuPont campaign for continued pollution with one of the toxic PFAs.
I write the "s" of "PFAs" in lower case because it is not an initial: it indicates the plural of "PFA."
What Labour proposes for curbing global heating is not much better than what the Tories say they will do.
*UK to support plans for new global treaty to 'turn tide' on plastic pollution.*
If it is easy for a pathogen to spread to other hosts, it tends to evolve to be more deadly to those its hosts.
Thus, covidiots are helping to make Covid-19 more likely to kill those who catch it.
* If Britain had a functioning democracy, Jeremy Corbyn would be leading a socialist party and Keir Starmer a centre-left one.*
The UK should investigate its soldiers' possible war crimes in Afghanistan, as Australia did.
So should the US, of course.
US citizens: call on Facebook and Twitter: No more election lies!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support Joaquin Castro for chair of the foreign affairs committee.
US citizens: call on Biden to push to put an end to racism, including systemic racism.
Bogus Johnson given the favored people who work under him, such as his ministers, exemptions from legal and ethical requirements.
*Call for tougher penalties in UK for possession of chemsex drugs.*
I think the world would be a better place if these drugs did not exist, but higher penalties will not achieve that.
*Chinese flower has evolved to be less visible to pickers.*
People find it difficult to spot the plants now. Alas, because the demand is for "medicine", the plants loss of attractiveness will not protect them.
A political consultant reports that most of his focus group supports the idea behind "Defund the Police", they oppose the slogan itself.
Biden is considering a budget-cutter for a crucial administrative position. At a time like this we need lots of deficit spending. By choosing him, Biden would be choosing not to rescue tens of millions of Americans.
Utah is considering a law that would help drivers that run down protesters construct a false excuse to get away with it.
*Jewish-Led Groups Condemn Pompeo for Declaring Boycott-Divestment Movement Anti-Semitic.*
Here is what I think about the issue.
Medea Benjamin recommends ten foreign policy actions for Biden to take to reduce war and tensions.
I don't know the details of US sanctions against North Korea and Syria, or what they are meant to do. I would want to know more before making any recommendation for what to do in those cases. I agree with the rest of her recommendations.
*Tyson Food Managers Accused of Betting on How Many of Their Workers Would Get Covid-19.*
In a narrow logical sense, such betting does not affect the employees. But it bespeaks a callousness towards the risk to the lives of the workers, who were in fact getting sick at the time.
Flea killer for pets, when put in the trash, reaches rivers and poisons water insects.
A good choice of treasury secretary could effectively defund the fossil fuel industry.
*Climate activists ramp up pressure on Biden with protest outside Democratic headquarters.*
A retired undercover UK thug reports snooping in the 1970s on a campaign for equal pay for women, gratis contraception and better child care.
It was not a total waste of time, as she supported the campaign to some extent.
(satire) *Light Therapy Lamp Opts To Burn Down House Rather Than Face Depressed Man Yet Again.*
(satire) *Biden Insists Lack Of Cooperation From Trump Administration Won’t Interfere With 4 Years Of Total Political Inaction.*
*Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Walmart, McDonald's, Other Large Corporations, GAO Finds.*
This would be perhaps acceptable if these corporations paid plenty of income tax (not payroll tax), enough to cover the costs of the shortfall in worker's wages plus what they ought to be paying otherwise.
But since that is not the case, we should raise the minimum wage and charge those companies more taxes.
We should stop using payroll taxes: companies' must not be able to reduce their tax bills by replacing human workers with robots or paying them less.
GitHub restored the youtube-dl repo after the EFF explained why youtube-dl does not infringe copyright or violate the Digital Monstrosity Copyright Act.
This was a good action, but it does not undo or cancel out the enormous harm that GitHub has done to the free software community by spreading bad licensing practices, nor alter the fact that some operations on its web site require running nonfree Javascript software.
Self-storage companies in New York City, which are unregulated, are pushing up the rents for people who lost their jobs and their apartments and put their possessions into storage. Unable to pay the hundreds, or thousands, of dollars demanded, they face the loss of irreplaceable keepsakes — of no value to anyone else.
The global Red Cross warns that climate mayhem will be much worse than Covid-19.
Covid-19 is unlikely to kill more than 100 million people around the world even if we do nothing to interfere — and we can, and will, save many of them. Climate disaster will be far worse, and it will keep on getting worse.
How to help defeat Republicans in the Jan 5 Georgia runoffs for its two senate seats.
Starmer has refused to readmit Corbyn as an MP of the Labour Party. His refusal declares a fight between his centrist wing (taking after B'liar, perhaps a little to the left of Bill Clinton) and Corbyn's wing of the party.
I expect Corbyn's supporters would rather make peace than fight. But I must suppose, from this action, that Starmer prefers a fight. I don't think that Corbyn's numerous supporters will give in.
More than Corbyn's own career is at stake. So I expect Corbyn to prepared to run again in his district, with or without Labour backing.
*Megaprojects risk pushing forests past tipping point.*
*Australian special forces involved in murder of 39 Afghan civilians, war crimes report alleges.*
Many people, not understanding why it is wrong, have responded to Covid-19 by buying more from Amazon.
We need laws to stop any company from mistreating workers and customers as Amazon does, but until we get them — as long as Amazon continues to do these things — we should not buy anything from Amazon.
When a friend want to get something for me, I say, "Please do not get it from Amazon!"
On climate issues, Australia is the worst of the G20.
This does not surprise me; Australia's government has been run by outright planet-roasters for many years, and the official opposition is not much better. Most Australians have allowed themselves to be bamboozled by the short-term issues of "jobs" and "the economy", and ignored their long-term survival.
The cause seems to be the power of a planet-roaster media baron, Murdoch.
I wonder if the great fires of last summer taught Australians anything.
Poland and Hungary vetoed the EU's Covid aid program to block a plan to require them to accept an independent judiciary.
Spain is giving legal protection to a lagoon, the Mar Menor, and allowing people to sue polluters on its behalf.
This seems to be a very good plan, but the article persistently says that the lagoon is now a "person."
I don't think that is what the law says. When the article describes the matter carefully, no such "person" is involved. That's good, because a lagoon is not a person.
The idea that to have any legal existence requires being a "person" is not only absurd, it has done terribly harm. Consider, for instance, the Corporations United decision in the United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are entitled to human rights. For humanity's survival and freedom we must take away the rights of fictitious "persons" — but the Mar Menor should remain protected.
*Covid has exposed the damage caused to families by a decade of austerity.*
This is about the UK, but the US has faced somewhat similar increasing hardship for the non-affluent, and there may be a lot of similarity.
98% of the coral in Florida's reefs is dead. Global heating and ocean acidification are largely responsible.
A certain level of CO2 in the air will make the oceans so acidic that coral will simply die. Nothing can save them in those circumstances. Many other organisms with shells will die, too.
Starmer has decided to reject Corbyn as a Labour MP, although he has been approved as a citizen member of the Labour Party.
In effect, Starmer has chosen a continuing fight with Corbyn and his supporters.
A wide variety of Republican accusations of voter fraud have been checked and found false.
Republicans do not check these accusations before publishing them because they figure that a false accusation is almost as effective as a true one.
Some US hospitals charge patients 18 times the cost of treatment. The average cost of hospital treatment for Covid-19 is $42,000, which most Americans cannot ever pay.
900 employees of the Mayo Clinic have caught Covid-19, most of them not while at work.
New Zealand's birth rate has fallen due to economic insecurity.
That is a good reason to postpone having children, if you are planning to have them. But should New Zealanders have them at all?
The population density of New Zealand is around 50 per square mile (5% that of Massachusetts). A large part of New Zealand's area is wild. Perhaps its population is already sustainable, or at least in the right order of magnitude. If so, New Zealand is a fortunate exception, since the global human population is far beyond sustainable.
*[Natural] gas won't fuel Australia's recovery or reduce emissions. The truth is gas is both too expensive and too dirty. We’ve known this for nearly a decade.*
*US Military Buys Location Data Harvested From Apps, Including One for Muslim Prayers.*
If the data is collected, it will be misused. We need laws to prevent systems from collecting such data.
It looks like Google biased its search engine to try to defeat a California ballot initiative that restricts companies' use of people's data.
This does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Google cheated. But on the preponderance of the evidence, I am convinced.
(satire) *Governors Call On [Michigan Governor] Gretchen Whitmer To Shut Down Their States So Residents Won’t Get Mad At Them.*
Several sheriffs in New York State say they will refuse to enforce the governor's order limiting the size of private gatherings.,
They say that it is unconstitutional to restrict who can enter, invited, into a home. I hope that is true in normal times, but I'd expect that there is an exception for emergency situations — and this is certainly an emergency.
Biden has named a Louisiana congresscritter who's in the fossil fuel business's pocket to a White House post.
I don't know what power or influence he would have in that post. It does not sound like he would be in charge of any environment-related decisions or actions. Perhaps this is less important than it looks. But I don't know that.
Contending that Biden could institute a national medical system by executive order due to the national emergency constituted by Covid-19.
We sorely need it. Some US hospitals charge patients 18 times the cost of treatment. The average cost of hospital treatment for Covid-19 is $42,000, which most Americans cannot ever pay.
Biden wants to let the wrecker get away with his crimes.
Since the wrecker commits crimes by choice, he certainly will make use of this undeserved immunity to cause further trouble, including perhaps winning in 2024, if Biden has done nothing about the problems caused by plutocracy.
If Biden thinks that being kind and gentle to the wrecker will win him any support from the wrecker's followers, he is fooling himself. The wrecker will tell his followers that this proves how powerful he is.
The wrecker's debts make him a threat to national security in the usual, narrow sense.
If we interpret "national security" in a broad sense, he has already mostly wrecked the "national security" of the United States.
Global heating is one of the main threats to most countries' security, including that of the US, and he has done everything to make it worse. Plutocracy and the poverty it causes makes the US less secure, and he has worked to make it worse. The hatred he has stirred up has also made the US less secure.
Convicting the wrecker, so as to put him in prison, would be a vital precaution to make him useless as a agent for the highest bidder among America's enemies, foreign or domestic.
The wrecker wants to sell oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden is inaugurated.
Biden has said he will not allow drilling there, and he might be able to cancel any leases that are sold. But seismic testing could start in January and could kill some polar bears.
I point out with sadness that killing some polar bears this winter may not change anything in the long term, given that we are pushing them to extinction (or pretty close to it) by eliminating the Arctic sea ice.
The wrecker asked officials about bombing Iran as a last-minute way of inflicting another war on Biden (and the United States).
The war would cause more difficulties for Iran, too, but the wrecker probably cares less about that.
Bombing Iran uranium refining facility would release a toxic fluorine compound which could kill thousands of civilians, perhaps tens of thousands. It could also pollute the source of 1/3 of Iran's water for farming and household use.
There is no way to compensate for such enormous damage.
In the US: boycott Amazon on Nov 27 and 30. Buy from local businesses instead.
Even better, do as I do when I buy: pay cash, and don't give your name. And you're not limited to those two days.
*White men swung to Biden. [The bullshitter] made gains with black and Latino voters. Why?*
The article does not try to answer that question, but it is very important.
*The [Republican] party is challenging the outcome of the election without any proof of fraud. Their degradation of democracy will reverberate for years to come.*
*The US right is skilled in voter suppression. And the Tories are learning fast.*
*Philadelphia city council apologizes for deadly 1985 Move bombing.*
Nauroze Anees, an foreign student in Australia, failed to comply with visa requirements because he had to care for his mate, then was refused a visa to care for his mate based on bureaucratic rigidity, and since then has been imprisoned for 4 years. He has now been freed, by a court decision.
A call to divest from 1,000 fossil fuel companies that impudently persist in building new fossil fuel infrastructure and reject the idea of making a "transition" to another way of doing business.
Glenn Greenwald has decided to resign from The Intercept because it has adopted a hard partisan line, and refused to let him publish anything which goes against that line.
It censored his work in despite of a contract agreeing not to do so.
India is imposing censorship on internet publication and communication. One thing we can be sure will not be censored is right-wing extremism.
PFAs in household items (and therefore in our bodies) may reduce the effectiveness of some Covid-19 vaccines in addition to causing liver damage and cancer.
The RNA vaccines which are not affected by PFAs pose an imponderable risk of possible genetic harm.
The Canadian government's national thug agency systematically understates how much it can spy on anyone in Canada.
It is especially interested in spying on protesters, who have experienced its brutality as well.
*Trump Demands Afghan Withdrawal and Washington Panics. But It’s Time To Leave, Now.*
It has been time to pull out of Afghanistan for many years.
The wrecker is firing officials for refusing to lie for him.
The danger is that other officials will lie, or support lies by not refuting them, rather than be fired, and that this will enable him to seize power or commit sabotage.
Protecting the sea bottom from destructive trawlers by putting large statues on the sea bottom in close proximity.
It's clever, and apparently effective, but it does not scale to the whole of the Mediterranean, let alone the oceans. I think states will have to start confiscating boats that carry trawling equipment.
The Department of Harshness and Sadism wants to collect iris scans, voice prints, and even DNA samples, from anyone that applies for residency or citizenship, and per sponsors as well.
Planet roasters are deeply involved in supporting the wrecker's efforts to seize power and set aside the election.
Extinction Rebellion held a rally in London at a remembrance event for the people killed in World War I — to remind us that global heating may kill more than 200 times as many. The mainstream media condemned it.
Starmer called it "bad taste." I suppose "good taste" means taking care not to do justice to the gravity of situation.
The Labour Party has unsuspended Corbyn.
Talia Lavin pioneers fighting back against right-wing racist extremists with some of their own medicine.
*As a minority, American Jews understand the dangers of authoritarians and nationalists. As a ruling group, Israeli Jews see them as logical allies.*
The US government has constructed an edifice of lies to negate the fourth amendment requirement for specific searches to be authorized by courts, an edifice that permits broad snooping on almost everyone.
*50 Years After the Start of the War on Drugs, Americans Have a Chance to Fix the Harm It Created.*
*The Federal Government Owns 92% of Student Debt. Will Biden Wipe It Out?*
If Democrats don't push to fix the injustices of the United States, the conmen, or another right-wing conman, could crush them in 2024.
The Republicans will use valid arguments combined with dishonest arguments, but both kinds will resonate unless the Democrats have a powerful appeal to many voters. Something more than "I'm not Trump."
*You Can't Eat Civility.* Or a bipartisan decision to put you out on the street.
Why the US has the electoral college, and what blocks getting rid of it.
Republicans have been rigging elections for over a century with various schemes to stop blacks (and sometimes hispanics) from voting.
When people investigate the reason Democrats did not take more Senate seats, they should consider the impact of voter suppression in those states.
*Georgia’s secretary of state says Lindsey Graham suggested he throw out legal ballots.*
Various Catholic, Jewish and Protestant organizations have now announced divestment from fossil fuels.
(satire) *Experts Confirm Virus Stockpile Large Enough To Prevent Any Covid Shortages This Winter.*
If you have any way of contacting The Onion, please ask them to make the images and audio recordings in their postings accessible without the user's running any nonfree JavaScript code.
You can use https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html to explain the issue, along with fsf.org/tedx (14 minute video).
The myth that US major media are "liberal" is believed in other countries as well as the US.
The major US media tend to to be center-right "centrists", but right-wing activists describe them as "liberal" so as to mislead people about where the center of public opinion is.
Speculations about how Alexei Navalny was poisoned, by precisely whom, and whether the intention was to kill him.
This article demonstrates the folly of measuring construction of renewable electric generation in proportion to what already exists.
Percentage is a useful way to measure a small fraction but misleading when used to describe a fraction close to or above 1. A ratio such as "250%" sounds impressive, but 250% of a small number is only a little larger.
Aside from that, I can't see how it fits the other figures. What here is 250% of what?
Furthermore, "gigawatts per year" is not is measure of energy, nor of "energy generating capacity". The amount of energy generated or work done per unit time is called "power" and it is measured in watts. I speculate that 23 gigawatts is the total maximum power output of Europe's existing offshore wind generators.
What can be said of the strategy in the leaked paper? It is inadequate. It proposes to add around 340 GW of wind and ocean generation by 2050, which could be a substantial amount, but 300GW would be built in the second and third decades. That is delaying too long!
US citizens: tell Biden: Don't Let Mitch McConnell Dictate Your Cabinet Choices.
US citizens: call on your state senator to pass the ROE Act's provisions.
*US and UK yet to show support for global treaty to tackle plastic pollution.*
Burning trash to generate energy increases greenhouse gas emissions when the trash includes plastics.
*[The cult leader]'s refusal to concede is no joke — it's a dangerous precedent.*
*The lesson [journalists] are constantly unlearning is that with Trump, things seem unthinkable until they are inevitable. And by then, it’s too late.*
*How war threatens Ethiopia's struggle against worst locust swarm in 25 years.*
*Only 17% Of Consumers Believe Personalized Ads Are Ethical, Survey Says.*
If you are not one of them, push back — stop being a used of Facebook! Don't be a zucker!
Bogus Johnson plans to spend 100 billion UKP on a Covid-19 testing scheme that scientists believe will fail to do any good.
*Texas televangelist who falsely linked pandemic to premarital sex dies of Covid-19.*
Hmm, maybe he was trying to atone for a life-long guilt about losing his virginity.
Eliminating Covid-19 calls for a reliable way for everyone to get highly effective face masks.
The guidance I have seen is difficult to apply. It is formulated in terms of determinations I do not know how to make.
Plutocratists are campaigning to let the conman and his corrupt officials go unpunished.
This is in the name of an unstated principle of plutocracy: laws are for you and me, not for the aristocrats.
The Green New Deal is crucial for the Democratic Party to stand for something that can inspire voters.
Republican state legislators have rejected the electoral college coup scheme.
I think that act of honesty seals the wrecker's defeat. However, he can still do various kinds of harm between now and Jan 20. In particular, by sabotaging the transition, he can cause a wide range of problems that could last a few months. He seems to hate the United States so much that he thinks that inflicting any little bit of damage is better than none.
*People plan to fly and drive more post-Covid [than they flew and drove before], climate poll shows.*
Renewable electric generation is growing ever faster. But not fast enough. If people are going to drive more, we need to make sure they are driving electric cars and that the electricity is not made from fossil fuels.
Undercover infiltrators in the opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.
US citizens: call for abolition of ICE, the US deportation thug agency.
US citizens: call on Biden to cancel the Line 3 oil pipeline.
The new version of MacOS — and therefore the new generation of Macs — informs Apple of every time the machine launches a program.
The Guardian press seems blissfully unaware of this spying. It even repeats Apple's claims to help users protect their privacy — but only some aspects of their privacy. Just as software developers have redefined "security" to mean "security against everyone but us", Apple is redefining "privacy" to mean "privacy from everyone but us."
People might want to post comments there (be civil about it!) or send letters to the editor. I am sure there are dozens of publications which could use the same sort of response.
Protesters take photos of thugs to identify those who commit violence against protesters using face recognition.
It is important for this to be lawful. That's why my proposal is to prohibit systematic collection of photos of people's faces, except under limited circumstances. Taking a photo occasionally must be permitted.
Biden hopes we will overlook the fact that two proposed cabinet ministers are plutocratists, because they are female. Hillary Clinton is female, too, and she endorsed the coup in Honduras.
Buttigieg, Brainard and Jones are center-right "moderates" too. As for Sally Yates, I don't know enough about her to have an opinion.
A US court has ruled that Chad Wolf is not lawfully head of the Department of Hatred and Sadism, so his order to suspend DACA protection was not valid.
Robert Reich: *Trump's refusal to concede is just the latest gambit to please Republican donors.*
I think it is intended to serve multiple tactical purposes.
*World poverty rising as rich nations call in debt amid Covid.*
The strength and intensity of this year's hurricanes, and amount of rainfall, is a symptom of global heating.
Hurricanes also gain intensity faster than before.
The hurricane flooding has destroyed crops, and this has driven 250,000 people to flee Honduras for the US. Except they usually can't get in.
This will get a lot worse in the next few decades.
Belarussian thugs arrested a beloved teacher while he was protesting. Next thing, he died of a brain injury.
He was attacked before his arrest, too, by people who may or may not have been official thugs.
Bogus Johnson is behaving like the king of the United Kingdom, and has just dismissed his favorite (Cummings), after previously overriding laws to protect him. Naturally the king does not disclose why he has sent a favorite away.
Glenn Greenwald describes the mainstream media effort to suppress and even condemn journalism about the Hunter Biden laptop leaks.
The laptop leaks story itself is not of high importance, in my view. Even if it proved corruption on president-elect Biden's part — which it does not — that corruption would be nothing compared with the corruption Trump displays daily. If I had intended to vote for Biden before reading this, this would not have changed my mind. He would still be the lesser evil. So I have ignored that story.
However, it is peculiar that so many news sites have ignored it.
George Monbiot: *If Americans are not polarised against plutocrats, they will be polarised against each other.… Obama’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable forces, to paper over the chasms, arguably gave Donald Trump his opening.*
Billionaire donors' money doesn't reliably bring mainstream Democrats victory but does reliably keep them useless.
The measures Governor Baker is taking in Massachusetts to curb the spread of Covid-19 do not seem sufficient to achieve that.
10 days ago, around 2000 new cases per day were detected in Massachusetts. Now it is up to 2500 per day. At the end of August it was around 200 per day. By December 5 it could be 5000 per day, after a boost from Thanksgiving.
How about expressing your feelings for your relatives by not having a gathering where any one can make everyone sick?
We have seen many countries follow the timid path of inadequate steps and constantly increasing infection rates, ending in a very strict lockdown. Why can't Massachusetts learn from others' mistakes? Taking somewhat strict measures sooner would avoid the need for very strict measures later.
Vermont has only half the case rate per capita of Massachusetts and is taking stronger measures.
Governor Whitmer of Michigan has cancelled permission to operate the Line 5 planet-roaster oil pipeline.
That is a good thing for Planet Earth. Unfortunately, the action was based only on preventing the (important) danger of an oil spill into Lake Michigan and not on the (far more important) certainty that burning the oil pushes us closer to global disaster.
(satire) *What [the wrecker] Hopes To Accomplish Before Leaving The White House.*
"Several dozen" Secret Service officers are infected with Covid-19 and a total of 130 are now isolating because of contact with infected officers. This is because they had to guard the disease spreader.
Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist, is trying to get a US court to tell him whether the US government has marked him for assassination.
A plan for revitalizing rural America starts with eliminating the power of giant companies that, as quasi-monopolies (or quasi-monopsonies), force farms to treat with them and thus drive the farmers into poverty.
*Just [as] after Watergate, post-Trump era requires reforms to hold presidents accountable.*
Due to global heating, and deforestation in Brazil, the giant Pantanal wetland in Argentina is drying out and burning.
*'We packed long underwear and never wore it': Arctic scientists shocked at warming.*
They brought a ship with ice-breaking capability, and didn't need to use that either.
The UK has been sending undercover infiltrators to get under the covers with protesters since the 1960s.
When Biden talks about "bipartisanship" and "cooperation", it means he is deciding not to rock the boat for the plutocrats.
*Biden Will Fail to Bring Back 'Normal' Politics. What’s Needed Now Is a Populism of the Left.*
Global Justice Now: *G20 Plan Is 'Thin Gruel for Debt Prisoners'.*
(satire) *N.Y. Jets Sued For Millions After Using Unlicensed Cheering Sounds From Other Teams.*
Lukashenko's latest cruelty: seizing the funds privately given to compensate protesters for injury or fines inflicted on them for protesting.
It is too late to avoid global disaster by ceasing to increase the level of greenhouse gases. Even with reducing emissions to net zero immediately, the temperature would continue to increase and tipping points would be reached.
This disaster could include 9 feet of sea level rise in this century (and further rise subsequently).
We need to go beyond net zero so as to draw down the CO2 level.
Past estimates of the amount of CO2 various natural systems can take out of the air and sea may not be valid in the future, and perhaps not even today; damage to these systems has and will reduce what they can do.
When migrants cross the English Channel to England, the government moves them immediately into crowded (thus dangerous) jails without dealing with their serious injuries.
The UK's deportation of asylum seekers could be stopped because it violates the stated policy.
*Brazil: congresswoman and friend of slain politician Marielle Franco flees following death threats.*
US citizens: call on Congress to block a proposed arms sale to the UAE.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
One of the Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia, Raphael Warnock, is being hit with false accusations of antisemitism.
It's because he has criticized Israel's occupation policies, particularly in the Palestinian town of Hebron, where a commercial neighborhood has been shut down so that a few fanatical "settlers" can live in it.
*Democratic Officials Lied About Role in Alex Morse Smear.*
The smear turned out to be nothing but hot air, dressed up to look bad, but it was enough to destroy Morse's chances.
Amana plans to make a tiny microwave oven for cooking one mushroom. It will be called the Amanita.
The wrecker's changes have spiked the possibility of negotiating a two-state peace between Israel and Palestine, and Biden is unlikely to go to the great effort that would be required to reverse the changes.
In the 1970s, a serial killer killed 13 women in northern England. The cops couldn't find him because they didn't respect information from women — including the survivors who had seen and heard him. The thugs were so steeped in sexist prejudice that they displayed it at every turn.
Australian renewable energy megaprojects now planned will provide enormous amounts of usable energy. 14GW will go into making ammonia for export, which on arrival will be converted into clean liquid hydrogen fuel.
Burning liquid hydrogen produces only one chemical, water.
The conman's supporters are pressuring at every level to interfere with states' certification of Biden's state-level victories.
Here are arguments that even if Republican state legislatures are dishonest won't be able to succeed at overturning the results.
I won't be surprised if the wrecker's supporters resort eventually to guns, assuming (or even having received assurances) that the US government will do nothing to stop them.
*New Documents Reveal ICE and Private Prison Contractor Exacerbates a COVID Outbreak at Immigration Detention Center.*
Viet Nam has imprisoned journalist Pham Doan Trang, who often reports on wrongdoing by the "authorities" and has been violently attacked for it.
(satire) *Pfizer Announces First Batch Of Coronavirus Vaccine Will Be Collector’s Edition Limited To 2,000 Doses.*
Florida's Republican governor proposes laws to allow killing protesters on various pretexts.
UK companies are asking for subsidy to develop and build rather large "mini" nuclear power plants, which would perhaps be cheaper than the insanely expensive large nuclear power plants, and would create a few thousand jobs.
The article ignores the question of how these "mini" nuclear power plants would compare, in cost and jobs, with renewable energy. Since renewable energy has become so cheap lately, I would expect them to be superior even without figuring in the problem of dealing with the nuclear waste.
I wonder why the Guardian was blind on this point.
UK thugs spied on antiwar activist Tariq Ali, when he opposed the Vietnam war and when he opposed the conquest of Iraq, and maybe some of the time between.
The surveillance was extreme. *At one point, police reported to MI5 that Ali had collaborated on a book about the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky with a cartoonist. The confidential report noted the name of the cartoonist’s girlfriend, along with her occupation, her address and friends.*
*The sixth mass extinction is happening faster than expected. Scientists say it's our fault.*
Australia has started making welfare payments, in some localities, via a debit card that limits what they can buy, and tracks them too. This was supposed to reduce their spending on drugs and gambling — but investigation shows it failed to do that.
The money spent by US governments on unemployment payments circulates and keeps millions of jobs going. But the unemployment payments will expire in December.
Lies like the bullshitter's lies, told in Germany after World War I, paved the way for Hitler to seize power. The US is not immune.
If Democrats don't want this to happen, they had better ameliorate the life of American masses.
MiniFree is once again selling Libreboot laptops; see retrofreedom.com.
(satire) *Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama’s Personal Health Insurance Policy.*
*Scorching Tucson bucks US trend to put climate justice at centre of plans.*
"Investing in long-neglected urban communities" sounds gentrification to me. That won't reduce urban sprawl, it will only shuffle poorer people further out. To reduce sprawl means increasing population density. Can they build denser housing in those neighborhoods and run more buses to them?
Prisoner Bounchan Keola went from fighting a wildfire, to a hospital, to deportation prison in two weeks.
People who were brought to the US as children and raised here should have US citizenship, and exile should not be used as a punishment no matter what the crime.
After curator Gary Garrels said he would not refuse to consider art made by white men, some employees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art condemned his "white supremacist language" and bullied him into resigning.
Garrels made a big effort to collect work by people other than white males. (I think that was a good thing to do; the museum aims to represent the world of modern art, not focus on white men.) So he is not a white supremacist at all. But he used a term "reverse discrimination", that white supremacists have used when arguing against affirmative action. For those bullies, using a term they disapprove of is equivalent to actually being a white supremacist.
Contrast this with what I say when someone describes me as "the father of open source" or refers to the GNU operating system as "Linux". I do not demand that perse change per way of speaking, let alone demand that perse be fired. Instead, I calmly explain why it is an error and ask per to correct it.
Their petition (on a site that I never link to because it requires nonfree software) accused Garrels of using "violent language". They do not explain that they have given "violence" a nonstandard definition, namely "not supporting their ideas of how to end racism."
That makes the accusation disingenuous. People who don't know exactly what Garrels said, and don't know about this nonstandard definition, may suppose he was nasty and belligerent, and be misled into misjudging him.
Kwame Anthony Appiah Demolishes the Concept of "Cultural Appropriation".
The wrecker is proceeding with trying to seize power.
The Democrats do not seem to be trying to fight the coup that Republican-dominated state legislators are already trying to launch.
The approach of spreading the idea that Biden has won and cannot be stopped is worth trying. It may create a viscosity that the Republican fanatics would find difficult to push through. But if they are fanatical enough not to let that daunt them, it can't actually stop them.
In the UK, the National Trust owns and preserves many historic mansions. Now it is pointing out how slavery or profits from slavery figured in their history. Right-wingers don't like this.
Adding Australia to the list of countries that believe their soldiers would never commit a war crime, but are not right about that.
Black cops in Columbus, Ohio, face racism including death threats from some white cops.
*How the GOP keeps cheating its way into power—and may get away with it again in 2020.*
Internal FBI documents show that agents have been allowed to praise or condemn presidents and candidates, with one exception: agents have been punished for criticizing the wrecker.
*Dalai Lama calls for urgent climate action.*
One of Biden's transition team was a corporate lobbyist who worked for DuPont to lobby the EPA that the chemical, PFOA, was not toxic enough to consider regulating.
The deportation thugs deported six women who accused a deportation prison of performing unnecessary operations on women. Some of the operations were hysterectomies; I don't know whether all of them were hysterectomies.
New high-tech surveillance and biometric tracking are being tried on immigrants and refugees.
The Democratic Party this year went for white middle-class supporters and left behind the working class. What does it mean when raising the minimum wage wins and Democrats lose?
Signs of fakery in the supposed Hunter Biden - China dossier.
There is no evidence of voter fraud in the US election, but plenty of fraudulent claims that there was.
*From Police Violence at Home to Killing Civilians in Unending Wars Abroad, US Faces Human Rights Reckoning at UN.*
*Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says.*
Undercover thugs infiltrating various political movements operated by pretending to love women participants, and won their love by pretending to be devoted and caring — until the day they suddenly disappeared.
*Suspend Patents on Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine, Say Campaigners.*
That should apply to any Covid-19 treatment, indeed, any medicine. Patents tend to kill patients.
What about this particular vaccine? Although things look positive, it is not yet certain that this vaccine is safe. That question is not just a matter of recording what side effects it has in the short term. It would be the first RNA vaccine ever deployed, and there is a fundamental doubt about what effects it might have.
*Will the Biden Team Be Warmongers or Peacemakers?*
Jonathan Cook: The Equalities Commission's report on the Labour Party under Corbyn rejected the accusations that the party had systemic antisemitism. The media, and Starmer, are misrepresenting it.
Naomi Klein: *It’s fair to say that Biden was not safe at all, as we always knew. Not safe for the planet, not safe for the people on the front lines of police violence, not safe for the millions upon millions of people who are seeking asylum, but also not even safe as a candidate.*
*Digital Rights Advocates Warn [the wrecker's] FCC Nominee — Who Backs Plan to Censor the Internet — Is 'Even Worse Than Ajit Pai'.*
*Destroying Palestinian Jerusalem, One Institution at a Time.*
*Two documentaries reveal how the U.S.'s pro-Israel coalition swung to the far right — endangering American Jews in the process.*
(satire) *Brian Kemp Unveils Specially Trained Hogs That Can Root Out Voter Fraud.*
Maher al-Akhras has ended his hunger strike and Israel has agreed to release him at the end of his current term of imprisonment without charges or trial.
(satire) *Scrambling Vatican Quickly Establishes Child Molestation As New Sacrament.*
Canada is lobbying Biden intensely in favor of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
*The outgoing president has two ‘election defense funds’ –- but the small print shows donations will go towards paying off [campaign] debt.*
Once again, The Guardian reports pressure to increase taxes on low-pollution vehicles to "make up for" the decrease in revenue due to decreased use of fossil fuels.
In the past, I pointed out that this would address a small problem by perpetuating a bigger one. This time, for the first time, the Guardian says so too.
Biden said, a week before election day, that he would announce before election day where he stood regarding expanding the Supreme Court.
As far as I can tell, he never made any such announcement.
The issue will be moot if the Democrats do not win the Georgia runoffs in January. But that would mean a bigger disaster, as Senate Republicans will block all the laws necessary to help the non-rich in America.
It will also block efforts to prevent global climate disaster.
*There's a massive risk that Biden becomes a failed president unable to appoint any judges or enact any progressive policies.*
Biden was not enthusiastic about many progressive policies anyway, but we might have been able to pressure him to pass the needed laws. But not if it is blocked by obstacles beyond his control.
This means that much of the damage Republicans have done -- or might do before Jan 20 -- will be impossible to reverse. Regulatory changes could be reversed, one decision at a time. But even that will be impeded if Republicans block appointments of heads of agencies, and why wouldn't they do that?
Americans have a foolish tendency to judge a president's achevements on an absolute scale. A president who is thwarted by an opposition which holds a majority of the Senate is described as "failed", as if that were per own fault.
"Ethical investment" funds often provide good returns, but there is a catch.
"Ethical" companies are typically judged based on mainstream ideas of what is, and what isn't, ethical. Around 20 years ago I invstigated an ethical investment fund and found that its principal stock holding was Microsoft. And that made sense. Microsoft treated its employees well, and did not produce physical pollution. Microsoft must have seemed quite ethical, if one disregarded the injustice of nonfree software, and the issue of having a near-monopoly.
Farming large numbers mink, or civets, or other animals that can catch human respiratory diseases, risks making pandemics more deadly. We must take precautions.
If Biden fails to push to give non-rich Americans a better life, the Democratic Party will become even weaker.
The next right-wing authoritarian might be more competent at ruling, and more vicious, than the bullshitter has been.
Amazon faces prosecution in Europe for keeping track of other companies' sales through Amazon's platform and using that to compete with them.
Fines won't be enough to make Amazon stop this unless the fines are billions of dollars.
Trumpets in the US government are digging foxholes to do damage during the transition or to make it hard for Biden to replace them.
*In 2019, at least 760,739 people in America were spied upon pursuant to judicial orders allegedly based upon probable cause of crime and were neither charged nor informed of the spying.*
The bullshitter's election lawsuits: why they are bullshit.
Since Biden won the election, he has forgotten many of the progressive secondary points of his Covid-19 plan: paying for treatment, paying people to stay home and quarantine, and support for gig workers, renters and small businesses.
*And the severe downgrading of his Covid plan shows Biden embracing the Obama playbook: meet the Republicans 75% of the way when you start negotiating, with the expectation that the final deal will move even more in their direction.*
The people of Bolivia had to use a campaign of protests to assure they would have an election this year, and that it would be fair.
Denmark has decided not to kill all the minks after all. There may be no more need.
Barr has asked federal prosecutors to create evidence for accusations of a conflagration of Democratic election rigging by blowing a lot of smoke.
The real problems of election rigging were various forms of voter suppression carried out by Republicans.
Faux News and other Murdoch outlets have made a blatant switch from supporting the conman to supporting the kinder, gentler plutocratist.
For me, this highlights the amount of power that these organs of plutocracy exercise, and the harm that that power has done. It is not fortuitous that they have a plutocratist president-elect to cooperate with, instead of Sanders who might have acted to reduce their power.
Republican plutocratists are giving advice to "mainstream" Democratic plutocratists about allying to reject progressives.
This is just one superficial aspect of the plutocratic system in which the "mainstream" Democrats have participated since Bill Clinton's day.
Releasing preliminary data on the safety or effectiveness of a new drug is a bad idea; it replaces careful testing with manipulation.
The manifesto, Privacy And Digital Rights For All, is pretty good. It would make a significant step forward, because it specifically calls for limiting the collection and transfer of data, not solely its use.
One weakness is that it calls for a "data protection" agency. The term "data protection" presumes that data gets collected and the goal is to prevent others — "the wrong people" — from getting access to it. That idea is inadequate because the business or agency which collected the data is probably also "the wrong people", which is why the goal needs to be preventing collection of the data.
Another weakness is that it does not mention the idea of requiring systems to permit anonymity — for instance, to require services (including ride-for-hire and recharging electric cars) and digitally-controlled appliances to allow anonymous use.
The companies that manufactured and sold aluminum-covered polyethylene insulation for buildings knew it was a fire hazard and covered it up.
I hope the exposure of this giant, deadly fraud changes the decisions to impose the cost of replacing that insulation on the people who bought the condos — because it rendered their homes unsalable as well as unsafe, and the cost of the repair will bankrupt them.
The article does not go into detail about the involvement regulators in the affair, but it is clear that (at least) they were not sufficiently firm. I have a hunch that the Tories cut the budget and regulation of building seemed like a spending item that the state could do without.
(satire) *Media Glad It Can Finally End Half-Assed Charade Of Trying To Understand American Populace.*
*'Many Workers Will Suffer': Days After Election, Trump Quietly Freezes Wages of [legal temporary immigrant] Farm Laborers.*
James Clyburn: *‘defund the police’ slogan may have hurt Democrats at polls.*
I know he was right about the slogan "Burn, baby, burn!" I was repelled by that, and naturally so, because I could only interpret it as a call for wanton destruction. If it was intended to mean something else, I can't see it.
"Defund the police" (which I support) does not appear violent. However, it does lend itself to misinterpretation and Clyburn may be right that that was harmful.
Perhaps "Replace the police" would be a better slogan. I think it more clearly expresses the goal which is actually sought.
*As long as the Democrats shy away from the redistributive action needed to tackle glaring inequalities in a country where the gap between richest and poorest has more than doubled in the past two decades, there will be an opening for the Trumpist right to present itself as the solution to a broken system – the alternative to Biden and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell.*
There are two paths that appear to lead out of the centrist pit: the honest path (someone like Sanders) and the lying path (someone like the wrecker).
Careless Republicans — perhaps intentionally careless — seized on various errors and confusions to claim 14,000 dead people voted in Michigan. However, investigating 50 of those cases found that each of them either was still alive, or did not vote.
It is not feasible to investigate so many cases carefully, so Republicans didn't try.
Republican state officials overlook the same sorts of issues when "purging" people from voting lists.
Countries are trying to make their economies "recover" from Covid-19 by "investing" in fossil fuel use.
Those "investments" are really giveaways, since it would be disaster to keep using them for their expected span of usage.
A proposed French law would criminalize publishing photos of thugs under conditions that would threaten anyone who documents their violence.
If you are French, please contact your député !
Foreign students in Australia, with no work and with universities shut, were desperate for an income, and were pushed into farm work under illegal conditions including taking their passports.
*World is running out of time on climate, experts warn.*
Paramilitary gangs in Colombia force young teenagers to join them, and even children.
Why use the euphemism "recruitment" to describe conscription? It seems absurd.
The Tories are directing the UK into the worst possible trade outcome come January, gaining none of the possible benefits and suffering all of the possible damage.
Since the Tories cannot help but understand the effects of the planned "race to the bottom", I conclude that their intention is to eliminate the UK's safety standards without even a quid-pro-quo.
They cannot help but understand that they are headed for exiting the EU with no trade agreement, This is the extremely painful outcome that Bogus Johnson promised to avoid.
Could it be that the Tories are in fact working for multinational companies against the UK?
The US is deporting political refugees to Cameroon. Some of the people deported a month ago seem to have disappeared, but that will not deter the US from sending more.
Legally, political refugees should not be deported, but deportation thugs torture them until they waive their rights.
Rebecca Solnit: *Victory is only the prelude. What happens now is up to us.*
It won't be easy to make Biden do anything that displeases the plutocrats. Their power now is much stronger than it was in 1992.
If the Democrats don't win the two Georgia senate runoffs, Biden will find it difficult to pass any laws to improve matters even if he tries. Thus, trying to help win those two elections is a crucial prelude to trying to get Biden to reject ruinous compromises.
Arguing that few if any other Republicans could succeed at bullshitting the way the wrecker did.
* Biden and Democrats in Congress now have an opportunity to win a generation’s long-term loyalty, but only if they deliver the big changes young Americans demand.*
Looking at the question from the other side: how a somewhat different repressive populist could win by catering economically to working-class Americans, if the Democrats fail to do so.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what plutocrats don't want Biden to do. And their pundits are already saying that Biden must compromise with Senator McConnell, since the Republicans may still control the Senate
A compromise between the center-right and the extreme right will not deliver any of the country's needs, neither short-term needs nor long-term needs.
Keir Starmer says he wants to be the UK's Biden, not aiming to make the major changes to turn off plutocracy.
You would never guess from his talk that millions of Americans voted for Biden while holding their noses.
"Centrists" always talk about seeking to "unify the country", which progressives hear as "shut up and watch as I keep plutocracy in place."
*Republicans back [bullshitters'] challenge to Biden election victory.*
There is hardly any argument one could make against requesting a recount. To challenge irregularities in court is legitimate, but doing so in a system of courts that Republicans have packed with partisan judges has the potential to become a coup.
The danger he will stir up violence to influence the electoral system still exists.
A description of political events in Ethiopia, which may be leading to a civil war. I can't summarize them simply.
Indeed, heavy fighting has broken out, and Ethiopia has cut off communication between Tigray and the rest of the world.
*EU bank supports projects linked to human rights violations, NGOs claim.*
*Australia's government agencies increasingly refusing environment-related FOIs, audit finds.*
The people of small Wagina Island in the Solomons have defeated a plan to build a mine that would have taken up half the island and made life very difficult on the rest.
*Covid set to cause 400,000 surge in TB deaths as medics diverted.*
Kamala Harris's victory speech focuses on identity politics.
I agree it is good that the US can elect a black woman to a post that may lead to becoming president. But I see no sign of an intention to do anything to make things better than they were in 2016, and maybe not even merely no worse.
Biden's victory speech does say a little about important long term goals beyond dealing with Covid-19, including defending the climate. But all it offers to poor people is "a fair shot", a chance at a good life.
As Europe falls into a fight about censorship of "blasphemy", neither the Islamists nor Macron nor other governments are consistently on the side of freedom of speech.
Yanis Varoufakis: *Hoping for a return to normal after Trump? That's the last thing we need.*
Varoufakis lays it out completely clearly, how the wrecker took advantage of non-rich Americans' justified anger at being shafted by plutocracy. If by 2024 the "centrist" politicians won't give them a fair share, and block Sanders, they could chose another bullshitter.
Not Trump, though — he will probably be in state prison.
Everyone: call on NYC District Attorney Cy Vance to drop charges against arrested protesters.
Lukashenko has orchestrated a propaganda campaign drawing on the heroism of the underground that fought German occupation. The opposition has turned it around. It seems that Lukashenko fits the role of fascist very well.
A war remembrance event experienced as "an exercise in collective amnesia."
*Loyal [bullshitter] outlets cry betrayal after [not Faux enough] News calls election for Biden.*
(satire) *Donald Trump Jr. Refuses To Step Down From Post Of President’s Oldest Son.*
(satire) *‘You Have Disappointed Me,’ Trump Tells Room Full Of Supporters While Strapping On Gas Mask.*
FAIR reports on how the media are disregarding the wrecker's efforts to steal the election by getting courts to discard the postal ballots which changed the outcomes in several states.
On the other hand, it could be that denying him attention is creating a public mindset in which court decisions for him would outrage the public. This could inhibit the Supreme Court from doing that.
A study found that psilocybin was helpful to many people suffering from depression — more effective than approved antidepressants.
Even if the wrecker does not seize power, he could lawfully wreck a lot more things before January 20.
Not to mention the exponential spread of Covid-19, almost unhindered while the wrecker has its back.
Ocasio-Cortez Notes: Every Democrat [in Congress] Who Backed Medicare for All Won Reelection in 2020.
However, some of those who didn't support it were defeated.
She also points out that support for Biden from Republicans seems to have done little good for him.
To anyone who was unhappy with the Republican dooH niboR policies before the wrecker came along, their support for Biden only suggests he's as bad as we thought.
Ralph Nader: The Democratic Party is not interested in learning from its overall disappointing outcome this year, because the lesson it would have to learn is to start standing for non-rich Americans.
Naomi Klein: *We were told Joe Biden was the 'safe choice'. Why did he barely scrape through?*
(satire) *Jubilant Reaction To Trump Defeat Quickly Soured By News Of Biden Win.*
(satire) *Following Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, a crying Eric Trump reportedly asked his father Friday if they were poor now.*
Environmental activists say that Bolsonaro arranged a phony Potemkin tour showing selected healthy parts of the Amazon forest.
*Why Democrats lost Latino voters along Texas border.* It starts with taking them mostly for granted, but it isn't just that.
The attitudes reported are so disparate that I can't see any specific concrete lesson to be learned from this, except perhaps to nominate a candidate that excites people rather than a lesser-evil.
Republicans exploit flaws in the US electoral system every time to "win" Congress and the presidency, or at least come close. We need to fix those flaws for good and all.
*U.S. Military Responsible for Widespread PFAS Pollution in Japan.*
Four more states have legalized marijuana for adult use.
I wonder why right-wing politicians put so much effort into continuing prohibition. Is it that they need marijuana as a monster to "protect" people from? Is it associated with sex, and therefore crying out for repression?
*Millions of Americans have risen up and said: democracy won't die on our watch.*
However, survival of civilization, and of millions of poor Americans, depends on not merely having Democracy, but on stopping the plutocrats from outmaneuvering us, so we can use it to do what is needed. This year, we lost that battle.
Biden has won enough electoral votes to be elected president.
That means he will be elected unless the wrecker can sabotage the system. Which means that the wrecker will soon do all he can to encourage violence.
Faux News and other Murdoch publications are calling on the wrecker to concede defeat rather than sabotage the system.
I don't think they will convince him to do so willingly, but their influence may thwart him by persuading Republican state legislators to refuse to participate.
A Finnish zoo gave monkeys control buttons to request various kinds of recorded sound tracks. Their preference was traffic noise.
Adani mining accidentally renamed its Australian subsidiary to a word meaning "crooked, villainous, depraved."
The company denied that the renaming was because the name "Adani" had recently developed negative associations, saying that the negative associations had existed for a long time.
Someone found a video of a photographer from WXYZ transporting equipment in a box on a wagon, and claimed (based on no evidence) that he was transporting fake ballots.
A news faker can generate dozens of fake instances of "fraud" every day, creating a miasma of dishonesty even if there isn't any real dishonesty. People who are convinced this way, when they see a refutation of one accusation, may respond, "One of those instances was debunked, but there are plenty more," without remembering the specifics, so there is no effective way to refute the rootless accusation.
Camden, New Jersey, disbanded its violent and ineffective thug department and founded a new one with a different attitude.
This eliminated the old union contracts that gave thugs impunity for doing bad work, and even crimes.
The EPA reports that the pesticide atrazine is likely to harm over 1000 endangered species.
This conclusion was reached under guidelines that required the EPA to disregard some scenarios of possible harm. So the number is likely to be an underestimate.
(satire) *Trump Files Lawsuit In Pennsylvania Alleging Election Officials Totally Disregarding His Feelings.* (satire) *Panicked Trump Agrees To Zoom Debate.*
If food production follows its current trajectory of development, that alone will bust the carbon budget.
A high-ranking New York City thug is accused of publishing a wide variety of bigotry under a pseudonym.
It's not a crime to make prejudiced statements, but if a cop does so, it implies perse can't do per job in an unbiased way.
* Scotland Yard has apologized after journalists and photographers covering an anti-lockdown protest were told to leave and threatened with arrest.*
Almost 3/4 of Americans want government-run medical care. The challenge is to replace the "centrist" Democrats with people closer to the real political center.
* It’s not enough to be anti-Trump. Socialists are showing you can win elections by standing for something.*
Centrist Democrats are already attacking the progressives in Congress whose unceasing campaigning helped Biden win.
Progressives' help will be needed to win the crucial Georgia senate runoff elections in January.
*Nonwhite Voters Are Not Immune to the Appeal of Right-Wing Populism.*
There will be rallies again on Nov 7 to resist the wrecker's attempts to set aside the election. Alas, once again the information necessary to participate is hidden behind nonfree software.
A progressive candidate defeated the incumbent district attorney of Los Angeles, who had protected killer thugs.
Two supporters of QAnonsense were arrested in Philadelphia near a vote-counting center for carrying illegal firearms, including a rifle without a serial number.
The bullshitter's campaign is filing many lawsuits against vote-counting procedures. Experts say they are frivolous and he has little chance of winning them. So why do do this?
I have two hypotheses:
An analysis of Macron's attempt to integrate Muslim French people into France's insistence on secularity above any religion.
*UN urges resumption of mass measles and polio vaccinations.*
*"One of the reasons to try and keep the number of cases down as low as possible [in humans and animals], is to reduce the genetic diversity of the virus."*
In other words, letting the virus run rampant, as the wrecker decided to do, is making potential vaccines less effective.
*When [the bullshitter] is peddling outrageous lies, where is the line between reporting and enabling?*
My answer, for around four years, is: cover what he does, and don't be distracted by what he says. There is no reason to quote his lies, and in most cases no reason to talk about them except occasionally to show what sort of attack on truth he is launching.
The writer seems to argue that the existence of millions of Americans who believe his lies makes them somehow more worthy of press coverage. I disagree. The writer also think it makes a difference that a typical lie says something his followers already believe, rather than "inventing" it. That's because it was invented by previous lies, not by the latest one. Same difference.
The existence of his supporters is an important fact, and covering that fact is valid, but does not require quoting him.
A Toronto thug was sentenced to prison for beating a black man with a pipe and bursting one of his eyes.
Some prominent Republicans privately disapprove of the wrecker's campaign to shed distrust on the counting of votes, but they don't have the courage to oppose it publicly.
A few did speak up.
The part of the process where massive cheating occurs is before a person's ballot gets into the ballot box. That's when Republican voter suppression occurs.
As Kushner discourages eviction protection with one hand, he prepares evictions with the other.
Thugs in Minneapolis besieged and arrested a thousand or more nonviolent protesters. Whereas New York City thugs beat up protesters while other thugs looked on and laughed.
Biden will have no chance of returning the US to "normal", even aside from Covid-19.
But then, the "normal" state of affairs for the past few decades has been getting worse and worse. Since the late 90s, the US government has been dominated by big companies and rich people, plus the special interests in any given area. This has been getting worse ever since and I don't think Biden would try to fix it anyway.
Thus, one crucial political battle will be between the plutocratists that want that old "normal" back, the progressives who want something better, and the death cult Republicans want to go berserk.
The UK is taking its greenhouse gas commitments seriously, and is planning to increase measures to achieve them.
Moving to electric cars is a good thing to do, though burning hydrogen made sustainably would also be good. However, if there is a plan to move to cars that take a new kind of fuel, it is imperative to make it possible to buy that fuel anonymously.
*NHS England has far fewer hospital beds than it used to and is short of around 100,000 staff.*
Tory cuts started out as purported efficiency measures and morphed into "Let's squeeze the non-rich Britons some more." However, a service that runs without spare capacity in normal times, even if it does a good job then, will be overloaded as soon as there is an emergency.
In Hong Kong, the Chinese tyranny invites people to inform on each other anonymously.
The US did invite informers in Afghanistan, and people fabricated crimes to obtain private revenge. Some of the victims spent many years in Guantanamo.
An icebreaker left a time capsule in the ice at the North Pole in 2018. This year it floated out and was found in Ireland.
In recent years the Arctic ice cap has been getting much thinner. This is probably a consequence of that.
The election outcome has refuted the arguments that Biden has a better chance of winning than Sanders.
In Florida, the referendum to increase the minimum wage won as Biden lost. Biden was not too progressive, he was insufficiently progressive.
The EU has just gained the power to punish an authoritarian national government without unanimous approval from all the rest.
This means the EU will be able to bring pressure on Poland and Hungary to restore the independence and authority of the national courts. However, I am not sure such pressure will be sufficient to achieve that goal. Once people are caught up in a spell of hatred, they tend to react defensively to criticism of that spell.
San Francisco has voted for additional taxes on tech companies and CEOs.
Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian village, making 73 residents homeless.
Israel uses many excuses for ethnic cleansing. Declaring land a "closed military zone" is one of the standard excuses.
The wrecker called on the Supreme Court to end the counting of ballots, giving no reason why it should.
I linked to an inaccurate report claiming that a large number of postal ballots went undelivered on election day. The USPS says they were delivered specially to election commissions, skipping the usual delivery scan step.
The University of London has yielded to a campaign and will end the practice of outsourcing cleaning to a contractor.
It should be illegal for large organizations (for which cleaning requires many full-time employees) to use a contractor as intermediary. And likewise for other occupations
*FBI Investigates Robocalls Aimed at Suppressing [Democrats'] Turnout as State Officials Pledge Vigilance Against Attacks on Voting Rights.*
*Teens who spend more time in extracurricular activities and less time in front of screens have better mental health, study finds.*
If Biden is allowed to become president, he can easily bring the US back into the Paris climate agreement.
Republicans in the Senate, however, will go to the mat to make sure th US not carry out its pledge to reduce emissions.
The US has a long history of rigging elections.
(satire) *Passed California Ballot Measure Allows Uber, Lyft To Categorize Workers As Car Parts.*
The wives of UK undercover thugs who used phony romantic relationships to infiltrate various leftist political movements are now complaining that those relationships constituted "infidelity" towards them.
I cannot understand their feeling of loss because it is based on an idea of possessiveness that seems totally wrong to me.
If a woman who loves me starts to love someone else, I worry that she might lose interest in me. But once I know she still loves me, I wish her happiness from her other relationship, and I can be happy for her happiness, along with her love for me.
But even if she stops loving me, I still wish her happiness even though I am bereft.
The Democratic Party's attempt to win votes from Republicans has mostly failed.
This effort started with nominating a largely right-wing "centrist", Biden, and continued with inviting Republicans to speak at the Democratic convention about how close Biden was to a Republican. This tended to discourage the people who need something better than a Republican.
As for the Lincoln Project, there was no harm in trying that, and it may have done some little good. But not very much.
*Let’s face it: The democracy that Donald Trump dropped on the floor suffered a great deal from the experience. It’s going to take more than an election to put it right.*
* Turns out, the so-called shining city on a hill is, instead, a black hole where hope, optimism, reason and the future go to die.*
Research finds correlation between activity levels of brain regions and general political attitudes.
The UK's criminalization of "hate speech" — simple expression of views — has an exception for discussions taking place in someone's home. But now Parliament is considering a plan to eliminate that exception.
They mean well, but this is getting dangerously like China, or Belarus. If protesters don't start out hating someone, they can be led to do so.
This change was buried where people might not notice it, and that displays ill will. Furthermore, the proponents ask people to take it on trust that this extended prohibition won't be exercised to the full extent. Why trust them? Should you trust Bogus Johnson and his crew to have a power and not use it?
Talking about "decarbonisation" creates a pitfall: an opportunity for nuclear power companies to replace the carbon pollution with radioactive heavy element pollution.
All the arguments for nuclear power that couldn't be crushingly refuted a few years ago have been crushingly refuted today. The world should cancel all nuclear power plant projects immediately and spend the money on efficient methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — methods that don't have a risk of suddenly turning into a very expensive mess that people don't entirely know how to clean up.
Research suggests that 15% of all Covid-19 deaths were co-caused by air pollution (combined with Covid-19).
This could be one of the reasons why blacks are more likely to die when infected by Covid-19: because the neighborhoods they live in, and have grown up in, have had more air pollution all along.
*Four-week cancer treatment delay raises death risk by 10% –- study.*
Now that hospitals are overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases because of disease-spreading policies, people with cancer will start dying avoidable deaths, and the wrecker and his death cult will be responsible.
*International observers say US elections 'tarnished' by Trump and uncertainty.*
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have agreed to work together to stop Chinese overfishing in their waters.
The wrecker is suing to prematurely stop the counting of ballots in some states.
I don't think this is merely an attempt to influence public opinion, because that alone could not change defeat into victory, and the wrecker knows this. I suspect he is trying to give Barrett and company an opportunity to make an insane, non-sequitur ruling to throw the election.
Everyone: call on officials in various states to count every vote. Republicans are trying to stop the count in Detroit by menacing the people doing the work.
Many kinds of things can cause a mailed ballot to get lost or thrown away. And hundreds of thousands are lost or thrown away each time.
*Prosecutors in Brazil file embezzlement charges against Jair Bolsonaro's son.*
I'm not surprised that people who smear at honesty turn out to have been dishonest.
*Terrawatch: dust is speeding up melting of Himalayan snow.*
And human activities make more dust.
UK thugs infiltrated protests against the Vietnam War, and many other political causes.
* Barr said that mainly leftwing groups were infiltrated "as well as groups campaigning for social, environmental or other change" such as anti-nuclear causes. He also said trade unionists and groups opposing racism were spied on. Far-right groups were also infiltrated.*
*"The information reported by these undercover police officers was extensive. It covered the activities of the groups in question, and their members. It also extended to the groups and individuals with whom they came into contact, including elected representatives. Reporting covered not only the political or campaigning activities of those concerned but other aspects of their personal lives."*
(satire) *Woman Hopes She Did Enough Worrying To Help Biden Campaign.*
Leaving some of your data under the cloudy control of a company puts you in danger of losing it at any time for cloudy reasons.
How Facebook's measure of popularity of a posting tends to promote thoughtless extremism.
A law passed in some states to conceal the names of victims of crimes is being used to cover up the identity of violent thugs.
*Don't be fooled: the delays in the US election result mean our system is working.*
Well, the vote-counting part is working.
Oregonians voted to stop trying and punishing people for possession of small amounts of any drugs.
It is not quite accurate to describe this as "decriminalizing" drugs, but in practice it should work out that way.
Most of the people who break Covid-19 distancing rules need help to comply with them, not rebukes and punishments.
[Organizations of] UK health professions call for climate tax on meat.
Democrats, it is no use nominating "moderate" (right-wing) candidates and hoping to get many Republicans' votes.
Democrats that don't support progressive views will encounter the downside of progressive views (being attacked for them) anyway, but they won't get the upside.
Californians voted to allow Uber and Lyft to continue exploiting their drivers. The companies threatened to stop operating in the state unless they were allowed to do that.
Those who voted for Prop 22 were voting to get cheap rides by exploiting their drivers. That attitude towards low-paid workers results in a country that is cruel and full of hardship.
Civil war is about to break out in Tigray, a part of Ethiopia.
If secessionist sentiment in Tigray is that strong, maybe that state should have a referendum over possible independence. Is there any moral reason why it should be part of Ethiopia?
*Stop blowing up bombs on sea floor, say whale campaigners.*
Hong Kong reported Choy Yuk-ling has been arrested under the 2020 "security" law for a 2019 report on violence by Hong Kong thugs a year ago.
In the 1700s, the UK used to pass laws that criminalized past actions. They were known as "ex post facto laws", and in condemnation of that practice, the US constitution explicitly prohibits them.
People with long-term Covid-19 disability need to rest in order to recover. But the Tory hostile environment for working class people who are sick does not allow them rest.
*Covid has exposed the decade-long lie that benefits are a lifestyle choice.*
In the UK and the US, both run by cruel right-wing regimes, welfare benefits are so meager that it is a struggle to survive on them. And if anything goes seriously wrong, you're destitute.
*Ugandan singer Bobi Wine arrested after confirmation as election candidate.*
The UK plans to prohibit protests in the name of Covid-19.
People should be allowed to protest if they wear masks and keep their distance.
That applies to Australia, too. Thugs in Melbourne arrested 400 protesters because anything more than a small protest is prohibited.
The article fails to clarify whether they were arrested for refusing to take sanitation precautions, or for protesting. Morally, that makes all the difference.
Based on the signs that the protesters are reported to have carried, I get the impression that they were covidiots. Very likely they refused to wear masks and refused to keep distance from each other. That means spreading disease. Arresting people for that — whether protesting or not — would be legitimate. Arresting people for protesting would be tyranny.
Poland's right-wing government has backed off on plans to tighten restrictions on abortion.
*Italian doctors urge tougher restrictions fearing 'tsunami' on hospitals.*
Spotify will invite musicians to compete for publicity by cutting their tiny share of the company's income.
Let's spit out Spotify! We need a system where people can easily and anonymously donate to musicians; GNU Taler can be the base for that.
And we should share copies of music, regardless of what anyone says. In order to share a copy, you need to have a copy. That is another reason to refuse to listen via Spotify, or any other streaming dis-service.
The Tories' ideology of privatizing government activities is replacing skilled public health professionals with untrained 18-year-olds. The UK allows paying them a lower wage, but have no idea how to do their jobs.
With this approach, failure is built into every plan.
At 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day, the US will have 36 million new cases per year. That is about 1/9 of the population. If herd immunity requires 70% of the population to catch the disease, that will take 6 years.
If the rate of infection increases to half a million per day, we might reach herd immunity by the end of 2021. However, at that rate, most people that get a bad case are likely to die, because most of them won't be able to get hospital treatment (the hospitals will be overloaded).
The way to regain a normal life soon is the way that Taiwan, New Zealand and parts of Australia have used: jump on the virus hard and drive the numbers down, then use old-fashioned contact tracing followed by isolating those who may be infected to mop up the rest. This method is known to work, and it can work in just a few months.
It is true that the US is not an island, but that makes less difference than people think. The number of people that enter the US without permission is minuscule by Covid-19 standards, and most of them surrender promptly to federal agents, which makes it possible to test them and quarantine them.
On finding and trying the people who organized the Rwandan genocide.
A US court ordered the USPS to carry out specific special measures to deliver all the ballots on time.
I wonder whether DeJoy found some last-minute form of sabotage to carry out, so as to negate that order. Republicans love defying courts that try to stop their sabotage.
The wrecker thinks of Covid-19 as an opportunity to get rid of around two million Americans, whom he will subsequently define as "losers" because they died.
A US appeals court allowed a lawsuit by a thug who was injured by a thrown rock to sue the organizer of the protest, although the protest was not supposed to be violent. The Supreme Court reversed that decision.
The idea of punishing protest organizers for something at the protest that they didn't do reminds me of the Haymarket martyrs, who were executed for having organized a rally at which some unidentified person set off a bomb.
Up to 30 million Americans will soon be evicted unless governments protect them.
100 years ago, whites in Occee, Florida, massacred 30 to 50 blacks because some of them dared try to vote.
Don't trust temporary discounts offered by online stores. If they delay delivery, and the discount ends in the mean time, they will charge you the undiscounted price.
The article is about the UK. I don't know for a fact that this practice is common in other countries, but I expect it to occur in the US because its consumer protection tends to be weak.
Many Indians work in the US tech industry, but Dalits are a small minority and the other Indians discriminate against them constantly.
*Greta Thunberg Hears Your Excuses. She Is Not Impressed.*
The movement to protect the voters' decision must insist on nonviolence. Any violence by the protesters will give the wrecker's armed and violent supporters an opportunity.
Any apparent violence by protesters might very likely to be a false-flag attack by provocateurs. We've seen several of those year at Black Lives Matter protests. Establishing a disciplined practice of nonviolence, following the 1960s and 1970s example, will make it easier to expose the false-flag attacks, and that will help resist them and help deter them.
Democracy is threatened in the US and globally, and will still be threatened next year regardless of the election outcome. But the cause is not lost.
The conman's multiple conflicting disinformation campaigns are designed to confuse politics and truth so much that people can't see how to unite in opposition.
(satire) *… anti-jacket demonstrators reportedly held a rally at Burlington Coat Factory Monday to protest what they called the *liberal cold weather conspiracy."*
*Treat artificial light like others forms of pollution, say scientists.*
They harm a wide variety of species and this damages ecosystems.
*Kentucky state [thug] training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors.*
If we want police officers rather than thugs, we should not teach them to think of themselves as "warriors". That was the basic mistake in this training; no matter who they quoted, it would be wrong.
The US deportation thugs are planning to deport a crucial witness about their practice of forced sterilization.
Even worse, since they have never seriously considered whether she is a US citizen. Which it appears she is.
Republicans are still working on voter suppression, hoping the partisan judges they appointed will invalidate mail-in ballots because of postal delays that they engineered.
They have filed over 40 state cases that aim to interfere with voting.
One was an attempt to invalidate Texas drive-through voting. It failed.
The judges that Republicans appointed in the last 4 years have in general acted to impede voting.
I don't know what you call this. I call it a conspiracy to attack the election, and future elections as well. A government that is not democratic makes itself illegitimate.
Covidiots in many European countries are protesting against measures to put an end to Covid-19, in two fundamentally different ways.
This article describes demands for aid and demands to spread disease. It does distinguish the two goals, but still treats them as part of one larger issue. That is a mistake. Those two reactions to the same situation are totally different in moral terms.
When people have lost their income and demand aid, their cause is just, and the government should provide it. However, to do this the government may need to pull out of the Euro, or it fall into the sort of disaster that crushed Greece for most of the past decade.
However, the people that demand to disregard precautions are demanding to infect other people, some of whom will be killed or permanently disabled. They are disease spreaders, and they belong in prison. It would be most appropriate to put them, together, in a prison which the guards do not enter. That way they can spread coronavirus to each other without endangering anyone else.
*It's not just Trump — to much of the world, the US is a bully whoever is in charge.*
Biden won't change this much, but Sanders would have.
*The [Bully's] War on Dissent Is Using Trumped-Up Federal Charges.*
Powerful people are blocking journalism by threatening libel lawsuits in England against journalists investigating them.
*Tanzanian opposition figures arrested after disputed election.*
The residents of Brixton (near London) have fought a series of projects to gentrify their neighborhood. The latest project which they oppose is a 20-story skyscraper.
I conjecture that this project was planned before 2020, in a world in which there appeared to be great need for additional housing space in London, even if only to buy as an investment and leave empty.
Covid-19 has eliminate that appearance; an enormous amount of office space will be vacant. Surely some of that can be converted to housing, especially with some flexibility in building codes. Then there would be a sufficiency of residential space and of business space, and building additional tall buildings would make no sense at all.
*Even if [the wrecker] loses the election, the US isn't going to heal any time soon.* We will have a substantial minority of right-wing extremists and potential terrorists. I think we will have to defeat them, not ignore them.
At the same time, we will need progressive policies to give non-rich Americans a much better life. But people wrapped in insanity may not even notice.
Young Americans, and even not so young, are thoroughly aware of the climate crisis and confront the older generations of their families.
More about Slovakia's mass testing for Covid-19.
* Lockdowns affecting entire populations is a price countries pay for failing to ensure people with coronavirus and their contacts self-isolate, according to an expert from the World Health Organization.*
Some suggestions for avoiding redistributing misinformation.
The article refers to postings as "content". Please join me in refusing to do that.
Bogus Johnson delayed rather than take strong measures to stop Covid-19 transmission in the UK, and as a result the country needs to take those strong measures for a longer period.
Putting this off is like putting off a visit to the dentist: foolish and self-defeating. Except that when you postpone your dental treatment, you're the only one who it hurts. When you postpone antitransmission measures, it hurts the whole country.
One cause of the UK's failure to fend off Covid-19 was that Tories had underfunded the NHS for years, worse each year than the previous. Taiwan and New Zealand took very strong measures for a sufficient time, and now they don't have the disease at all.
*Scholars warn of collapse of democracy as Trump v Biden election looms.*
The thugs who shot Walter Wallace Jr did not have an urgent reason to shoot. They could have waited to see if they could handle the situation without shooting. They could even have stopped after one shot.
And why in the world, when the city got a call about having a mental crisis, did it send thugs without tasers?
With "Defund the Police", the city would have been able to send people trained and equipped to handle such a crisis without hurting anyone. That is why I support that campaign.
Three jailed Thai protest leaders were released on a court order, then thugs attacked them and seem to have caused them substantial injury.
Presenting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Now that many Americans are unable to pay their debts, or even their rent, the Consumer Financial Punishment Bureau authorized additional harassment by debt collectors.
Don't interpret "the new normal" as "the new acceptable."
Members of the wrecker's death cult are not organizing solely to intimidate voters. They attacked Biden's campaign bus. In response, Biden's campaign cancelled campaign events.
I don't think it is wise to cancel an event for bullies, because that gives the bullies a victory. They will boast of every success in cancelling something or someone, to recruit more bullies. (Later: indeed, that's what they are doing.)
It is a grave mistake to let arrogant fascist bullies get a victory to boast of.
In part of India, the roots of living trees are shaped into durable bridges.
The story of Sun Yi, the Chinese political prisoner who hid tiny notes in the products he was forced to manufacture.
*How Internet-connected voter check-in devices can create election chaos.*
The bully has systematically used the US deportation thugs to retaliate for political activism on behalf of immigrants.
North Carolina thugs sprayed pepper spray at a get-out-the-vote march, supposedly because the protesters blocked a street, but they seem to have been rather quick to escalate.
* Our country is breaking down, we have no effective leadership, and we’re lagging behind other rich countries. The left needs to provide an answer.*
Melting ice around the world offers a windfall for archaeologists, although it is a harbinger of disaster.
Investigating the origin of funded voter intimidation in Minnesota.
*'Red mirage': the 'insidious' scenario if Trump declares an early victory.*
A British functionary in charge of trying to make homeless people fit the strictly narrow categories of aid for the homeless says that this system is fundamentally broken.
The NYU's investigation of Facebook ads has its participants use a browser add-on that incidentally reports other people's personal data when it appears on the participant's screen. Arguably, Facebook is legally bound to try to stop its use.
Facebook may not have the legal power to stop it, and we must hope it does not get that power, because this research is vitally important. Unless, that is, new laws compel Facebook to hand over its preference algorithm (in every version) for investigation.
The experimenters are morally bound to inform participants that the browser add-on will show the experimenters other Facebook useds' personal information they Facebook shows them. That raises another legal/moral question: is it legal, and is it moral, for a participant X to knowingly hand over per Facebook "friends"' data to the experimenters?
IANAL, but I think it is legal, because X has no obligation of secrecy to per Facebook friends. I think it is moral, provided X informs all per Facebook friends that perse will do this, and gives them a chance to avoid showing their data to X.
However, if they are wise, they will be more hesitant to show their data to Facebook than to show it to X and the experimenters. Which means they should stop being zuckers — stop being used by Facebook.
Bogus Johnson wanted to reopen businesses and help them make money, never mind that they would spread Covid-19. Now, as a result, the UK is experiencing a catastrophic spread, like the spring only perhaps worse, and a strict lockdown is following.
The UK should have done that in September, and it would be over now.
Senators tore into Facebook and Google for making themselves the main distributors for the work of US local newspapers, and taking all the revenue for themselves.
The article is weakened by the use of confused concepts such as "intellectual property" and "consuming" news.
It is correct in criticizing those companies, but it doesn't seem to consider that their data collection ought to be banned outright.
Americans: start wearing masks now or face sharp lockdowns soon.
*… without a "seismic shift" in how world governments approach the treatment of wildlife, land conservation, and public health, the planet could be entering an "era of pandemics.*
A Philadelphia woman drove into the wrong street, wrong because thugs were kettling protesters at the end of the block. One thug told her to turn around, but as she did so, other thugs broke her car windows, grabbed her very young son, beat her up, then posted a photo of her son to claim they were protecting him.
I suppose it is not a coincidence that she is black.
We must demand prosecution of the thugs that did these mad things. It's not enough to prosecute them solely for murder.
**How Decades of Corporate-Friendly Farm Policies Wrecked Rural America — And Paved the Way for [the conman].*
This story described how it killed first the author's stepfather, then her mother, as the bully told Americans that Covid-19 can't hurt anyone except a few losers.
The mother caught it from the stepfather, who caught it from people who were treating him for an injury, and they probably caught it indirectly from people who spread it because they believed what the bully told them.
*Under Trump, Households Making $30 Million Nine Times Less Likely to Face IRS Audit Than Working Poor Making Less Than $25,000.*
*Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez Unveil Bill to Foster Creation of Public Banks Across US.*
I think it may take a lot of public pressure to make the "centrist" right-wing Democrats support this.
*New Analysis Shows [global heating] Is Making It Harder to Vote.*
These events happen occasionally, not every day, but they can affect many voters each time.
Urging New Mexico to make gas wells reduce their methane leaks.
*Unions Representing Hundreds of Thousands of Workers Prepare for General Strike If Trump Subverts Election Results.*
(satire) *More Souls Deferring Entrance To Heaven For A Year To Backpack Through Spirit Realm.*
(satire) A closer look at the nation’s 50 worst states.
An NGO has recommended that Europe cancel the planned gas pipeline from the Aegean Sea.
I've recommended for a year that the way to settle the dispute between Cyprus and Turkey about which one will get the chance to profit from destroying civilization through the extraction of this gas is to insist on leaving it in the ground.
Likewise for other similar disputes.
*millions of American diabetics struggle to afford insulin.*
Colorado's high forests, which never got hot enough to burn, are burning very hot. One fire has been burning since August.
The average western fire season has extended more than two months since the 1970s. Global heating has gone 1C already and it will probably go at least another 1C; how long will the fire season be then?
Qatar says that strip-searching women passengers to see if one had just given birth was illegal.
I am surprised to learn that the baby was and is alive. I got the impression from the first article that it was dead.
However, I don't think this justifies desperately trying to find the mother. I expect that being a single mother in Qatar leads to persecution, such as no longer occurs in western countries. Is there any safe place in Qatar for a mother to anonymously leave a baby that she cannot keep or acknowledge?
*Federal Prosecutors Engaged in Unprecedented Push to Jail Protesters Before Trial.*
Protests designed to bring down a tyrant have often failed in recent decades. One additional example, not mentioned in the article, was in Nicaragua.
There are, however, cases where they have succeeded. And other examples where protests have thwarted a coup that tried to overthrow an elected government.
Black Lives Matter protests have already influenced laws in parts of the US, and their enforcement (by election of progressive prosecutors). So far this change covers only small areas, but with time they will achieve more. Also, this is one area where they may be successful at the federal level if Democrats win control of the US government.
In 1953, the UK overthrew the recently elected government of Guyana, supposedly a self-governing colony at the time, and imposed a state of repression comparable to Kashmir today.
The idea of extracting Guyana's oil may excite dangerous rivalries, but the most dangerous thing would be to burn that oil. The universal answer to all questions about what to do with untapped oil reserves is, "Leave them in the ground."
Glenn Greenwald quit The Intercept after it would not publish an article that criticized Biden.
The editor denies the accusation, but I believe Greenwald. There is plenty to criticize about Biden, and Greenwald is surely accustomed to editing of his work; he can tell the difference between changes to make the piece better and changes to suppress his ideas.
Greenwald knows that Biden looks good only in contrast to the wrecker. I hope Biden replaces the wrecker, but if he does, we will find him even more "moderate" (i.e., generally unsympathetic to necessary reforms) than Obama was.
I hope that Greenwald will find a new visible place to publish.
US citizens: call on Facebook to shut down disinformation and calls for violence.
US citizens: call on House and Senate committees to block a big sale of US combat jets to the UAE.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Massachusetts Governor Baker has nominated one more former prosecutor to be the new chief justice of Massachusetts' supreme court.
The nominee is black and female. So is Kamala Harris, another former prosecutor, and her harshness towards defendants and convicts is one of the things I don't support about her. (She is also, like Biden, not progressive.) I hope this new judge in Massachusetts is not like Harris.
Unless you're a campaign manager, stop reading polls! And stop worrying about things that might affect campaign strategy!
Reading those things wastes your time and makes you worry uselessly, because you have no decisions to make which depend on them.
What is worth thinking about in regard to the US election?
It may be useful to think about those topics because they may help you take action. Anything else election-related is just a distraction — so you may as well do some other useful thing instead.
In the past, you could usually tell who won any race at some point in the evening. I used to stay up waiting for this, like most Americans. Then I realized that I had no need to rush to find out the answer. The result, whether good or (more often) bad, would be the same in the morning, Finding out earlier would not enable me to do any more good.
So I decided to ignore the results on election day and read about them later.
Slovakia plans to test all citizens over age 10 for Covid-19.
It seems foolish to omit non-citizens and children. They could propagate Covid-19 past the effort and thus negate it.
Introduced peacocks, no longer checked by introduced mammalian predators, are becoming a big problem in New Zealand.
Hong Kong thugs arrested Tony Chung as he tried to ask the US consulate to shelter him, and charged him with political opposition.
The reason Chung could not simply leave Hong Kong is that the government had taken his passport and accused him of advocating independence for Hong Kong.
A number of others also facing political charges tried to leave Hong Kong in a boat, but China caught the boat.
Preston Kulkarni, running for Congress in Houston, has stated support for the RSS, a violent anti-non-Hindu hate group in India.
People should pressure Kulkarni and the Democratic Party hard about this, but despite his connection to a hate group, he is clearly the lesser evil this year. After all, his opponent is a member of a violent domestic hate group called the Republican Party.
Missouri voters passed a ballot initiative against gerrymandering. Now Republicans are pushing another ballot initiative which would reverse that one, and reduce the voting power of some minorities.
They hoped they could mislead the voters into passing it.
In the US, recessions typically start when there is a Republican president.
Poland is seeing large protests for abortion rights every day.
The last protest had 100,000 people.
Poland's latest attack on abortion rights affects women whose fetuses are dead or so damaged that they cannot be born alive. For Polish Catholics, granting the fetus one more day of non-consciousness is worth any amount of human grief caused.
Right-wing nasties organized for violent attacks against protesters, which they consider legitimate because the protesters are not fetuses. ;-{.
Adani, which wants to build more coal mines in Australia, used private investigators to study the private life of an anti-mine activist, and his wife, and his preteen daughter.
I suppose they were looking for some irrelevant scandal to distract public attention from the death that comes out of every coal mine every day.
The president of the US has been given enormous decree powers to use in an "emergency." Various officials have warned that this could be dangerous some day.
"Some day" could very well be in December or January, if the wrecker wants to prevent Biden's inauguration.
CIA sources say that the mysterious brain damage which has struct many US agents and officials could be caused by a microwave beam weapon.
If that is the case, wearing a simple grid of wires around the head could block the waves, and attaching a recording thermometer might provide as way to detect the attack. Purpose-built detectors might give more information about the waves.
In San Francisco, over 11 million square feet of office space is now vacant.
We need to convert that space into small residence for poor people to live in. They could have a microwave and a fridge each, rather than a real kitchen. This would enable all the homeless people of San Francisco to have a safe place to live and practice physical distancing. The rest of the space could be made into studio apartments and offered for rent at amounts working people can actually afford.
It shouldn't take much payment to the building owners to get them to accept, since otherwise they are likely to get nothing. Also, unused space should pay a higher real estate tax.
Delta Airlines has put 460 people on a list it won't sell tickets to because they have refused to wear masks while on board,
Refusal to wear masks spreads coronavirus, and the continued refusal of many Americans to wear masks will probably kill hundreds of thousands more. It is good that some organizations take firm steps to make sure people wear masks. Now stores and buses should start protecting their staff and customers.
It took just two days for right-wing Texas provocateur Ivan Hunter to bring his rifle to Minneapolis and start a false-flag attack on the thugs.
When Republicans found out that Americans dying from Covid-19, if they were not old, were likely to be black, they quickly made it their priority to "reopen the economy".
*Documents Reveal WH Officials Tried to Use $250 Million in Taxpayer Money on Covid Ad Campaign to Boost [wrecker's] Reelection.*
This sort of corruption is so frequent that it is hardly even news. What is significant is that our government has no ability to do anything to punish or prevent such corruption. What was supposed to restrain it was an expectation that the voters would punish corruption when they found it. The wrecker has destroyed that expectation, first for small corrupt acts, then for bigger and bigger ones.
The US claims its regime-change interventions are meant to promote democracy, but they tend to have the opposite result. Bolivia shows that the challenge for democracy is to overcome these US operations.
(satire)
*The Onion’s State-By-State Election Guide.
A closer look at the nation’s
50
worst states.*
Two members of the grand jury that considered indicting the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor say that the case was presented in a strange way, so that it was only at the end that they found out they were not going to be asked to vote on charging the thugs with killing Ms Taylor. The jurors were shocked by that.
Usually, they report, cases are presented to the grand jury by first stating what charges are to be considered. This case and only this case was handled differently.
I do get the impression that the prosecutor wanted to shield the thugs and pretend not to have done so.
Republicans have expanded the supreme courts of Arizona and Georgia in recent years. In Iowa they politicized the selection of judges.
*Overturning the Affordable Care Act Could Result in 68,000 Deaths.*
Racism of the London cops: two brothers, who are black, are suing because they have been searched on the street 25 times.
China had an outbreak of Covid-19 in a factory which uses Uighurs in forced labor.
I would not consider 180 people a "large" outbreak, though. Not by US standards. But there is every likelihood that more people are infected in the region now.
*Nearly 1,000 instances of police brutality [and other injustices by thugs] recorded in US anti-racism protests.*
Belarusian dictator Lukachenko had several important political prisoners brought to one room, then went there and talked to them for hours. He also occasionally listened.
*The greatest tragedy of England's second wave is that it wasn't inevitable.*
Bogus Johnson made the decisions, and he made them badly.
A very large bank that operates in Australia and New Zealand has announced a policy on coal mining and burning coal for heat or power. Existing debtors with heavy involvement in coal will have to make plans to change.
The extreme planet roaster party is calling for a boycott of that bank.
*Despite Court Ruling and Drift Concerns, EPA Approves Use of Dicamba Products on Soybeans and Cotton for Five Years.*
The London thug department was investigated in regard to stopping people to search them with no specific evidence of a crime, and told to change its practices to do that less.
Ralph Nader proposes an informal 14-day waiting period after election day, during which candidates should neither claim victory nor concede defeat.
I am not sure it is a good idea.
To fully defeat fascist trumpery, we need to punish of the crimes of today's fascists. "Going easy" on the leaders of criminal movements doesn't help defeat them.
The Principles for Student Data Privacy and Equity are good, as far as they go.
However, they are not strict in standing up to a pressure to let companies get their paws on students' classroom or medical data when the pressure is because "This is the modern way, and all the other schools are doing this."
If the principles say you can't use Zoom or Microsoft Teams or anything comparable, they will be adequately strong.
(satire) *… new parents Lindsey Conway and Michael Rhodes reportedly freaked out Tuesday upon learning that babies can often live up to 100 years. …Why don’t they tell you all this before you bring them home?*
*Polling Shows 82% of [US] Voters Believe 100% Clean Power Should Be Primary US Energy Goal.*
Over 70% support switching to 100% renewable electric generation by 2035. That's starting to approach the kind of intensity that may avoid global disaster.
The wrecker's maskless virus-spreading rallies are substantially effective: half of them have been followed by local increases in Covid-19 infection.
Poor people in the US often don't vote. They may be demoralized and cynical about the political system, or think that not voting is a protest.
There is a lot to be cynical about in the US political system, but the only way to make it better is through the system itself.
(satire) *Lines Come To Standstill Outside Wisconsin Polls After State’s Official Voting Pen Rolls Under Vending Machine.*
*From simple location-tracking apps to buttons that measure biometrics, college campuses have amped up surveillance in response to Covid-19.*
The article lacks a sharp conception for judging whether these systems are just or unjust and necessary or unnecessary, and for separating those characteristics from painfulness.
The conditions Vassar students had to sign up to must be very painful, and I might have taken a year off rather than accept them. But they are not unjust and may well be necessary to open the campus safely.
The PathCheck app's actions, assuming that the article describes them fully and accurately, seem to be legitimate provided the college makes proper commitments not to let any company or other organization handle any of the data nor to save it nor use it for anything else. But the fact that it is a nonfree app running in a mobile phone makes it unacceptable.
I'd apply the same criteria to reporting one's symptoms daily. That is ok, provided one doesn't have to do it via a portable phone or a nonfree program, and the school won't let any other organization handle the data, or save it for long.
(satire) *Following over two decades of incarceration, Louisiana Penitentiary inmate Reggie Clark, a man falsely imprisoned for 24 years, was finally granted permission Wednesday to serve out the remainder of his sentence in the prison’s new Wrongly Accused Wing.*
*Doing Nothing About Climate Emergency Could Cost More Than All the Wealth in the World.*
That indicates the calculation is meaningless. Because if we're talking about the total destruction of humanity and a lot more, it is impossible and unnecessary to measure that in economic terms.
Which supports the point that the article is making: it is idiotic to say that avoiding total disaster is "too expensive". And foolish to ask, "If we save the world, will I still have a job?"
The bully's hatchet man in charge of Voice of America has officially eliminated its editorial independence, making it the Voice of the US President.
Studying the challenge of a global Green New Deal: how to structure it, how to fund it, and what won't help (nationalization and GDP-reduction).
One flaw of the study is that it adopts the targets of the Paris Treaty, which are too little and too late. But I expect that the overall conclusions will be the same with stronger targets.
*South Korea vows to go carbon neutral by 2050 to fight climate emergency.*
This has the two usual flaws: a pledge about 2050 makes it easy to postpone action until 2030, and "carbon-neutral" invites reliance on offsets that amount to self-deception.
*The world's banks [which are heavily funding extinction] must start to value nature and stop paying for its destruction.*
Two Philadelphia cops shot and killed a black man, Walter Wallace Jr. But it does not seem that they rushed to kill.
He walked towards two cops while carrying a knife. They did not shoot immediately; they shouted at him to drop the knife. This is not a fabricated excuse; the article says it was visible on video.
The article does not say how far he was from them when they shot. Perhaps they didn't need to shoot. Perhaps they could have used a taser instead of a gun. Perhaps they could have tackled him and grabbed the knife, or talked him down. Perhaps medical personnel could have talked him down.
I think the death was probably avoidable, but that doesn't mean those cops had no grounds to shoot.
St Augustine, Florida, floods frequently and can expect almost a meter of sea-level rise by 2060.
I think it would be wiser to move the city's landmarks to high ground, even though that may be in Georgia.
Right-wing cult leaders deal with weakness by scapegoating someone in the name of some religious cult. In Poland, the targets are women that are carrying dead fetuses.
*100 out of [the total of] 229 [UK local government] councils have used or are using automated decision-making programmes, many without consulting at all with the public on their use.*
*Eight people have been charged with conspiring to work on behalf of China’s government in a plot to coerce a Chinese family in the US to return to their home country to face charges.*
If the charges were real corruption, supported by real evidence, and if China gave accused people fair trials, I hope the US government would extradite the suspects when asked. But it seems that the case is political.
Repressive Islamic rulers are revealing their agenda of world-wide censorship.
The sad thing is that they have inflamed the fanaticism of their followers to the point that these ravings win them more support at home. (The wrecker in the US is similar to them.) But it is totally wrong to appease them with any significant concession.
Rather, we need to teach people to recognize that Islamic rule tramples the human rights of everyone, Muslim or not.
The Supreme Court ordered Wisconsin to stop counting postal votes at the end of Tuesday, so Democrats are wisely calling on voters to drop them off rather than mail them.
Amazon has a special store for selling "eco-friendly products".
This is sadly ironic, because buying them via Amazon is not eco-friendly. And that's in addition to all the way Amazon harms society.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to avoid endangering the southern resident orcas.
Counting recent burials shows Yemen has a massive outbreak of Covid-19.
If the US had stopped intervening, and let the Houthis win the civil war, Yemen would have no trouble now getting ventilators, medicines and medical-quality masks for doctors.
Qatar thugs took all the women off a plane waiting to fly to Sydney and strip-searched them, trying to determine if any of them was the mother of a newborn found dead in the airport.
More women were taken off other flights, to other countries.
Why was Qatar trying so hard to find the mother? I speculate that the purpose was to punish her; right-wing religious extremists often like to punish women.
An experiment captured juvenile ambon damselfish and fed microplastics to some of them and not to others. Then it released them in various areas of the Great Barrier Reef.
The ones that ate microplastics took more risks, and those released in degraded parts of the reef were all eaten within 72 hours.
One of the scientists says that this is because after the fish eat what feels like enough, part of what they ate was microplastics, and the part that was food was not sufficient. This kind of problem results from having large quantities of microplastics.
A few years from now, we can expect the whole reef to be degraded, and fish species that microplastics make careless could go extinct. Their extinction will be due to a combination of human actions: those that cause global heating, together with the making of plastic that we can't recycle.
US citizens: call on the Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse any order by the wrecker to interfere with the election.
*A Well-Armed and Unpatriotic Far Right.*
Studying the factors that will aid or hamper the US in resisting a Republican effort to steal the election.
I implore Protect the Results to set up and advertise a way for people to receive instructions after November e without having to run any nonfree software (including nonfree JavaScript code on web sites). One way is to use Telegram. The organization most likely does not read this site, so if you have any way to communicate with it, please pass along and support this request. You might also offer to do the work of setting it up, if you know how.
The US should require everyone to wear as mask while in public places.
There are people who, for medical reasons, cannot wear masks. The law must permit them to do what their health requires. However, it should require people with a non-obvious disability that precludes their wearing masks to carry and show a doctor's note to demonstrate that, in order not to be fined.
Poll watchers in the US must follow strict rules. You can't just show up and say, "I want to watch, so let me in."
*College students make a last-ditch effort to make Election Day an academic holiday.*
I am in favor of this.
*UK mobile phone firms to be banned from selling locked handsets.*
This doesn't alter the basic injustices of mobile phones — that the phone network tracks them and they can be converted into listening devices — so it would not convince me to carry one. But it does eliminate one common secondary nastiness.
*Despite CDC Moratorium—and With Help From White House—Corporate Landlords Have Gone on Eviction Spree.*
I think we should have a law putting a real-estate tax on corporations owning more than a few rental houses, or more than a few apartment buildings, and likewise on the corporations that own them, etc.
Iran's UN ambassador: *"The eight violent wars that the United States initiated or joined since 2001, under the rubric of war on terror, have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, countless broken societies and families… and unprecedented extremism."*
I would guess that these include Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran has also intervened to some extent in those countries during this period. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran intervened much less violently than the US. In Syria, Iran intervened more strongly and violently than the US. In Yemen, Iran intervened by proxy, which the US ls also doing, but the US carried out direct bombings before that.
If Democrats win the election, and if the Republicans that have seized the Supreme Court don't impose a Republican victory, the Democrats must legislate to undo the dirty court tricks.
Increasing the size of the court would do the job, but decreasing it might be even better. Imagine reducing the court to six judges, based on seniority: all three of the wrecker's appointees would be pushed off.
The constitution says that they remain federal judges for life. But they can be judges in lower courts.
The same method could be used to remove many of the wrecker-appointed judges from federal appeals courts.
Most jails in the US use one of five companies to provide medical "care" to prisoners, and those companies do a measurably bad job.
These companies are successful because they charge less, and they reduce costs by cutting corners — for instance, by being slow to approve permitting a prisoner to be seen by a professional. This is the standard problem with privatizing all or part of a public activity.
Therefore, I suggest that contracting a public function to a private activity should be forbidden by law if the activity involves doing things specifically for, or to, individual members of the public.
The fraction of people in the UK displaying antibodies to Covid-19 has declined by 25% in three months.
This could mean that those people have lost their immunity, but that is not certain. The article explains the details.
*I was Corbyn's chief of staff. We acted decisively to remove Labour antisemites.*
I believe her, because Corbyn is the one person in UK politics that I know is honest and committed to justice. We know that plutocratists in the Labour Party fought tooth and nail to prevent him from winning an election with a progressive program. We know that Jewish supporters of Corbyn rejected the claim that he tolerated antisemitism, while many of those that claimed he did had opposed him before, for other reasons.
History suggests that we Americans can thwart a coup, if we are prepared to declare it a coup and oppose it before it can dig in.
The wrecker's chief of staff said, "We're not going to control the pandemic."
You might interpret this as a frank statement of a hands-off policy of letting the virus spread however it may. But that would be a mistake. The wrecker's actual policy is to spread Covid-19 as much as possible, and the statement was therefore a lie.
*More than 70 science journalists [31]have signed an open letter warning that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's [32]close ties to the fossil fuel industry and [33]refusal to publicly acknowledge the established science behind human-caused [global heating] make her an enabler of "the ecological crisis of our times."*
The Republicans, bent on sabotaging the election, rushed her onto the Supreme Court on Monday. Their haste to do this before election day demonstrates that their intention is for the Supreme Court to throw the election.
A progressive woman writes to a neighbor that voted for the conman in 2016, but with whom she has some values in common, looking for a meeting of the minds.
Carbon capture and storage at significant scale may actually be practical now.
It is not guaranteed that scaling it up to this extent will work without a hitch. If it does, it will help avoid global disaster. However, if these two projects succeed in burying 27 million tons of CO2 per year, that will be a small fraction of the total annual UK emissions, which amount to around 450 million tons per year.
Consolidation in the meat industry enabled giant, Chinese-owned Smithfield to use its market power to whipsaw its smaller giant competitor, Maxwell Foods, into bankruptcy.
Each bankruptcy is likely to lead to an acquisition which will increase the consolidation and make the situation worse.
We need to make the big companies spit up into many smaller companies, in this field and all fields.
Sea-level rise is eliminating beaches that used to be economic hubs for tourism.
It will get worse and worse unless we stop our greenhouse emissions quickly. But don't attach substantive importance to the Paris treaty, which the wrecker is symbolically withdrawing the US from; it was never more than symbolic itself, since it was undermined in advance by planet roasters.
The Tory Party is fighting desperately against public demand to give lunch gratis to children whose families are poor.
One minister said that this refusal is a matter of principle. Which principle, I wonder? [Irony] Perhaps the principle of stinginess? Or maybe it is, "Each family must sink or swim on its own — no helping others!" Or maybe, "Never help the poor! If the government helps a poor person once. people will expect the government to give the poor help every time they need it."[/irony]
*'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find.*
This could be a disastrous tipping point.
(satire) *Armenia, Azerbaijan Announce They Will Only Agree To Ceasefire That Allows Them To Still Shoot Missiles At Each Other.*
An NYU research project asks useds of Facebook to volunteer to run a special browser extension so they can report data about the ads Facebook shows them. Facebook has demanded NYU stop this research on the grounds that it constitutes forbidden "bulk data collection".
*The researchers discovered that numerous political advertisers were violating Facebook's disclosure rules, yet the company has been letting it happen.* People speculate that that's why Facebook wants to shut down this research.
Scientists at GM and Ford knew in the 1970s that their cars and trucks were contributing to dangerous global heating. Despite this knowledge, they campaigned against efforts to shift the Earth off that path.
(satire) *Veterans Affairs Secretary Struggling To Profit Off Of Underfunded Department.*
Utah will run out of intensive care capacity in a week or two. At that point, hospitals will have to choose which patients to treat and which to give up on.
People who glibly talk about herd immunity as a "solution" are opting for this. When the wrecker decided to spread Covid-19, he decided to make this happen.
(satire) *This is obviously a bittersweet moment since we've had such a wonderful longstanding relationship with the moon, but we’re all just really excited to see what it gets up to with a powerhouse planet like Jupiter in its corner.*
Verkada makes face-recognition camera surveillance systems. The employees at work are subject to this surveillance themselves. A few male employees used the system to watch attractive women and chat to each other about them.
Verkada reacted firmly to make sure nothing like that will happen again in that company, at least not for a few years. But the company will continue its efforts to convert society into a place where you are always being watched, and you don't even know by whom.
*The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.*
Chileans have voted to replace Pinochet's constitution. The process of drafting a new constitution will be contentious.
Throwing rechargeable batteries into ordinary trash can start fires.
*How Covid-19 laws are being used to silence garment workers in Burma.*
Australia is also gratuitously repressing protests with Covid-19 as the excuse, and so is the UK.
Population declines for insectivorous birds in the Amazon hint at a big drop in the insect population, even far from civilization.
This could be very dangerous.
Islamist bullying's veiled threat to France: refusing to yield to censorship demands is "unwise".
People have a right to practice their religions, or other cultural practices, but that does not convey the right to gag criticism, satire or mockery of those practices.
It can be painful to stand up against bullies, but what is truly unwise is to yield to them. Vive la France ! A bas la répression Islamiste !
A British librarian swells with pride at the increased provision of freedom-corroding ebooks to readers.
Isn't it a pity that they are not aware that they are helping to subjugate people. That is true for most librarians in the US, too.
You can help educate them by bringing up this issue when offered an ebook "loan" — and then say, "Rather than accept the injustice of a commercial ebook, I'll wait till I can borrow a physical copy."
Bravo to France for standing firm against bullying from some Muslim governments that demand France censor using criteria they would impose.
The murdered teacher was not, as it happens, endorsing the controversial cartoons' mocking of Mohammed; he said explicitly that they were examples for a discussion of freedom of speech. To murder people for mockery would be an outrage, but he was murdered for disobedience to would-be tyranny. He deserves the medal he was posthumously given.
France is not entirely consistent in its defense of freedom of speech. It prohibits stating certain opinions on some historical questions, such as whether Turkey carried out a genocide of the Armenians. Since I am not in France, I can freely say that I believe it did. But people in France, whatever their views on the question, cannot speak freely about it.
Even though the view permitted by France agrees with the view I freely hold, I follow the late Hrant Dink in rebuking France for prohibiting views that disagree with his view (which is also mine). France ought to repeal that law.
France's censorship also includes criminalizing insults against officials (even mild ones). That too is wrong.
These flaws do not detract from the exemplary importance of France's resistance to the decades-long global Islamist censorship bullying campaign. You don't need to be perfect to be a hero for a good cause.
You also don't have to try to threaten or bully others to be a good Muslim, or at least so say millions of Muslims.
If you dislike statements that criticize or mock certain views, you don't have to make them, or look at them. But anyone that tries to impose censorship on people, or countries, is fighting against everyone's freedom.
In the end, the tyranny of "you may not offend us" is hardly different from any other tyranny.
Amartya Sen reports on India's practice of arbitrarily labeling people as "terrorists" and putting them in prison without trial. Ironically, people who are committed to Gandhian nonviolent resistance are especially likely to be called "terrorists".
Sen eplains that authoritarian governments tend to equate "anti-government" with "anti-national".
Pope Francis is setting a bad example on one issue, by holding maskless meetings.
I agree that he should set a good example by insisting that everyone wear masks.
*European support for [right-wing "populist"] beliefs falls, YouGov survey suggests.*
Let's not forget that the original populists campaigned to increase people's democratic control over government, which had important achievements.
Let's reclaim that word for its original meaning.
*Colorado Voters Could Be First to Pass Paid Family Leave by Ballot Measure.*
The state will pay the worker on leave, so people who have been compelled to be "independent contractors" won't be left out.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor AOC's bill to ban use of tear gas in peacetime.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Nestle to give some US water sources back to the public.
US citizens: join a "protect the results" rally on Nov 4, the day after election day. The aim is to demonstrate that the American people will not tolerate discarding the results of the election.
The official protest organizing site doesn't let visitors find the places and times of rallies without running nonfree Javascript code. But this page presents all the necessary information without any Javascript. It is in alphabetical order by two-letter state code; within each state, events are listed in numeric order by zip code.
The page initially contained some "virtual events." There is no way to participate in those in the Free World, so I hope they will be deleted.
To understand why this issue is important, watch this 14-minute video about the injustice of nonfree software, then read this article about how that issue applies to Javascript code sent by web sites.
I would like to ask the protest organizers to fix their site so as not to require Javascript, which can be done simply by making a link to the page that I have linked to, but I know of no way to contact them. If you can contact them, please ask them to take a look at this and to make their site freedom-accessible — next time, at least.
The Drug Policy Alliance presents its framework for decriminalization of possession of drugs.
*[The US] Postal Service Quietly Awards $5 Million Contract to DeJoy's Former Company.*
*The corporate criminal element has infused NPR with millions of dollars of donations.* And it shows.
I got fed up with NPR in the 1990s when I repeatedly heard one of All Things Considered's main commentators attack Bill Clinton from the right.
(satire) *local undecided voter Jeff McNealy reportedly crouched inside a concrete drain pipe Thursday and remained completely silent as he waited for a convoy of political analysts and reporters to pass by on the road above.*
Proposing a salary cap for executives.
This is more complicated than it seems, because executives get paid through bonuses and stock options, and through jacking up the stock price on the shares they own. A serious scheme needs to deal with all of those.
Is a salary cap better than a 90% tax bracket?
There is still a tendency in major US newspapers to hide from recognizing the ouster of President Morales, a year ago, as a coup.
That may relate to support for the coup from powerful elements in the US — whoever got the OAS to make a hasty and flawed claim of election fraud. This was done so well that at first I didn't realize it was false.
Then I saw an article which explained the election system and results and showed there was no fraud.
*Big tech accused of avoiding $2.8bn in tax to poorest countries.*
That is in addition to the far larger amount of tax cheating that they do to countries full of billionaire wealth, such as the US. All of these countries suffer from a lack of funds for governments to use for important purposes.
The laws that stop Americans from escaping unpayable student debts don't cover the 9% or so which are uninsured predatory high-interest private loans, and these are especially likely to wreck Americans' lives.
The conman's deal with Foxconn to "create jobs" in Wisconsin was a con from the beginning.
Nigerians are protesting to demand justice against a special thug squad that has "turned into banditry."
*Sanctions punished the Sudanese people, not their rulers. The US extracting compensation is one more hypocritical act.*
It reminds me of the indemnity that Haiti had to pay to France for its independence. Placing sanctions on a country is not the same thing as a claim to rule a country as a colony, but the resemblance is there nonetheless.
Protesters in Belarus are not giving up, and say that their next step is a national strike.
Amnesty International criticizes governments for blocking a proposal in the World Trade Organization to waive patents on treatment for Covid-19. The governments which opposed it are evidently under the power of plutocracy.
Approving that proposal would have been a step forward, but the WTO's patent rules are unjust all the time — for poor countries especially, but ultimately for all countries.
The parts of the TRIPES agreement (Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science) concerning copyrights and patents ought to be abolished.
The wrecker's latest slogan:
Make America a Grave Again.
The Tories want to take away people's right to challenge bureaucrats' decisions by going to court.
That way, a bureaucrat could shaft you illegally and you'd be screwed.
If Democrats win, they should quickly rebalance the Senate by splitting the populous states.
Dare I suggest merging some of the states of low population?
50 countries have signed the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons, making the treaty officially valid.
Portland antiracist/antifascist protesters have asked a court to declare the city in contempt for disregarding a court order not to use various sometimes-maiming weapons against the protesters.
*Documents: Powerful Pro-Pesticide Groups Shaped U.S. Push to Weaken International Oversight of Medically Important Antibiotics.*
Use of antibiotics in agriculture breeds resistance to antibiotics, which has the potential to kill millions of people. Resistant bacteria may kill you or me.
But what do pesticide companies care? There will still be plenty of people who want food to eat.
*Universal Mask-Wearing [in the US] Would Save Nearly 130,000 Lives by Spring 2021, Study Finds.*
It appears that trans women do not ever harass anyone in women's bathrooms, but there are several cases where trans women (and cis women erroneously taken for trans) have been harassed or even attacked by people who object to their presence in women's bathrooms.
Thugs equipped with dogs are especially dangerous to people they encounter, especially people who are black and male. Once a dog attacks, it can easily maim.
*Armed men outside St. Petersburg polling place said [the wrecker's] campaign hired them.*
The official campaign organization claims not to have hired them. It might be lying, as usual. Or perhaps that is true in a narrow sense, if they were hired by one of his unofficial campaign organizations.
US schools and companies setting up totalitarian tracking systems already.
Students are already organizing to fight them. Fight hard — this will make the difference between freedoms and tyranny.
Faux News and the New York Post are owned by the same plutocratist supporters of extremists, and they work together.
*New York Post Insiders Slag ‘Very Flimsy’ Hunter Biden Stories.*
Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU, warns that the ACLU today has retreated from its defense of free speech for all views. This leaves a gap in the defense of freedom, just as plutocratists are even more powerful and ready to exploit that gap.
The US should provide good medical care to everyone, including the poor. I advocate a universal national medical system, recently often called "Medicare for all." I don't praise Obama's weak system much, but it is better than nothing, so I am glad that lawyers work to defend it. But it should not be the ACLU that does that legal work; some other organization that focuses on the rights of poor people to government aid should do that.
The ACLU's defense of Obama's medical insurance program is an instance of what I call "unionality" — where an organization that was set up to focus on one particular cause starts to support various other causes because the same people tend to support them. If you judge by the short term, it may seem great to have additional organizations supporting all the causes you favor. In the long term, it risks alienating the supporters of one cause who disagree with the other causes.
The article contains a powerful presentation of why anyone who wishes to change an unjust system needs freedom of speech, and would be a fool not to defend it to the utmost.
(satire) *Trump Threatens To Leak Debate Video Online If Moderator Keeps Asking Unfair Questions.*
(satire) *Miffed Biden Warns Trump’s Undignified Behavior Could Cost Him Cabinet Post.*
*Constitutional Law Experts Endorse Democrats' Bill to Create 18-Year Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices.*
In the long term, this might be an improvement, but I like better the ideas for making appointments non-partisan.
*Only a Reckoning With the Disastrous Legacy of the So-called 'War on Terror' Can Heal the United States.*
The domestic political dysfunction mentioned in the article is, I contend, plutocracy and its consequences — and the imperialist militarism of the past 20 years is one of those consequences.
An international meeting intended to reduce greenhouse emissions from ships is considering rules so weak that they would do harm (by pretending that the issue was being addressed).
On the factors that cause blacks in Chicago to be more likely to catch Covid-19 than whites, and more likely to die from it once they get it.
Sri Lanka's president is changing the constitution to give the president power over all activities of the government.
*Half a million Americans could die of Covid by end of February, study forecasts.*
If Biden wins the presidency, I suppose he will try to curb the spread of Covid-19, but it would take till the end of February for this to have much effect.
*Trump to Seniors: Drop Dead.*
Young Thais demand freedom of speech, even the freedom to criticize the monarch. In their protests, they defy extreme repressive threats such as life in prison for some kinds of nonviolent protests.
*10 Years After Iraq War Logs, It's Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers.*
*Trump Sets Up Pharma Billionaires for Coronavirus Payday.*
Fikile Ntshangase, an activist campaigning against extension of a coal mine in South Africa, was assassinated by a team of four killers.
The company Dataminr tries to scan all posted tweets to find anything suggestive of possible violent intent, and report it to the thugs.
Contrary to its name, the company doesn't seem to do this by data mining. Instead it hires a lot of people to make off-the-cuff judgments, which naturally reflect racist presuppositions and generate biased results. (I call this phenomenon BIBO, for "Bias In, Bias Out.")
Identifying "gang members" by questionable criteria has a long and horrible history in California prisons.
Poland has almost completely banned abortions.
Right-wing extremists have basically taken over the country.
*Thousands join Poland protests against strict abortion laws.*
Better antitrust enforcement creates an economic stimulus.
Big banks siphon billions out of US states and cities by underwriting their bonds. The Federal Reserve could eliminate this drain by lending to the states and cities directly.
Proctorio is using a lawsuit to silence someone who criticized its software. The company claims that its training videos are "confidential information".
This dispute doesn't even the deepest issue here: that the software is nonfree, which is itself an injustice, and that it snoops on the student who runs it. It is sad to see people treat that as normal and surrender to it.
*How Workers Can Help Defeat a Trump Coup.*
The RIAA, which represents the unjust power of the three big record companies, has made Github delete the source of youtube-dl.
They won't be able to wipe it out, though.
I think this takedown notice was invalid, because youtube-dl is not mainly used to do forbidden copying. It downloads things that are publicly available on youtube, and the benefit it provides is to do that without running the unjust nonfree software that youtube tries to send to the user's browser.
Thousands of conspiracy cultists marched in London, trying to make each other sick and endangering passersby as well by not wearing masks.
I would sympathize to some extent with their objections to rigid lockdown rules, but they made it clear that we cannot trust them to exercise good judgment to avoid spreading disease.
Here's an example of the absurd rigidity with which the UK handles the matter of avoiding transmission.
*‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority ‐ UK study.*
*Why the Republican Party Wants to Destroy Labor Unions.*
*We spent $2 trillion to keep Americans afloat in the pandemic. Putting a similar amount toward the climate crisis could be even more pragmatic.*
*Biden is Finally Talking About Fossil Fuels — That's a Good Thing.*
The bully's latest act of sabotage: claiming the power to arbitrarily fire many federal employees — in effect forcing them to participate in any sort of injustice or else quit.
*New York's Strand bookstore appeals for help.*
I visit the Strand every time I go to New York City. But it may be a long time before I got here again. Wherever you live, please do not buy from Amazon. If you want to order a book, go to a local physical bookstore to do it.
A local physical bookstore may even allow you to pay cash in advance anonymously and take away a receipt to claim it later. I did this in August in the Boston area.
*Small increases in air pollution linked to rise in depression, finds study.*
Half a million Sunnis in Iraq are still forced to live in refugee camps.
*Countries who kept their response to the pandemic in-house have fared much better.*
*What Bolivia Can Teach the United States About Democracy.*
I wonder if Bolivia can prosecute Elon Musk and other people in the US for backing the coup. Even if we expect that Bolivia will never be able to bring him to justice, this could teach the world a useful lesson.
*Media Outlets Owned by Billionaires Very Quick to Tell Readers Taxing the Rich Is Bad Idea.*
Taxing the rich better must include changes in how transfer of ownership, trusts, etc., affects the taxes to be paid.
Oregon voters: support Measure 110, which will decriminalize all drugs.
Biden said he would "transition from the oil industry", then later said he didn't mean it.
Since Massachusetts is not a swing state, I voted for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
2/3 of the terrorist attacks and plots this year were by right-wing extremists.
A right-wing extremist has just been charged with travelling to Minneapolis to carry out a false-flag attack, burning a thug department building.
He is not the first right-wing provocateur to be charged over violence at Black Lives Matter protests this summer. I wonder if we will find that provocateurs were chiefly responsible for the violence. They fooled a lot of people, including me.
(satire) *Trump Campaign Reminds Supporters To Make Voting Intimidation Plan.*
*'Stop Financing Climate-Wrecking Companies': Campaigners Light Earth on Fire Outside European Central Bank HQ.*
RSF: Thugs have arrested TV reporters and fired rubber-coated steel bullets at them, showing not the slightest bit of shame over these crimes.
Suing the bully and other officials for illegal voter intimidation.
The bully is considering budget cuts for medical programs in cities, because people there don't support him.
A bill to protect US ocean areas from many causes of damage, and rebuild damaged ecosystems.
Boston thugs felt annoyed by the antifascist woman who squeezed a little rubber piggy towards them. They tried to get her fired, by suggesting people boycott her employer because of her.
They pusillanimously asserted that they were not calling for a boycott, merely suggesting the possibility of not buying from there because of her. The difference is too subtle for me.
Then the thugs found out she had not worked there for years. Oops.
*Here's How Meatpacking Corporations Could Protect Workers From COVID-19—and What They're Doing Instead.*
We should not allow so much concentration in that industry, or any other industry.
(satire) *… local psychic Rosemary Shanley confirmed Thursday she was already sick of James Randi’s specter haunting her place of business and ragging on her from the afterlife.*
(satire) *… local farmer’s child Owen Morrison, 10, was reportedly forced Thursday to slaughter a pumpkin he had spent all season caring for.*
The Supreme Court decided for voter suppression when it blocked polling places in Alabama from collecting ballots from people waiting near the door in their cars.
This voter-suppression measure originated from state officials who ordered that no county in Alabama could do this. A lower court blocked the order; the Supreme Court reinstated it.
This will affect white voters as well as black voters. However, the Republican Party is now a mad cult, so Republican voters may refuse to believe that there is any danger.
Taiwan's civic platform, g0v, is effective at helping the people make important policy decisions. It helps people come to agreement.
The software it runs on is free/libre.
(satire) *Dr. Ron Craig informed patient Tom Stossel Wednesday that the weird lump that appeared on his neck in July was in fact nothing he can afford to worry about.*
The DEA proposes to eliminate the crime caused by prohibition of drugs by more vigorous enforcement of the prohibition of drugs. Some drugs degrade and damage whoever uses them, and should not exist, but trying to wipe them out by repression causes more harm than the drugs themselves.
This, by the way, is the reason I do not advocate simple blanket prohibition of nonfree software. It is corrupting, harmful and subjugating, and should not exist — but trying to enforce prohibition of attractive things which are harmful tends to amount to repression.
The Australian state of Victoria will investigate employers with a view to punishing those that if they fail to help employees avoid catching Covid-19.
If the state really does this, it will be an admirable contrast with all the governments that allow employers to pressure their workers to spread disease.
*California must cut San Quentin prison population amid pandemic, court rules.*
The first organized anti-fascists fought in Spain.
Indigenous workers in Western Australia worked for wages, but Western Australia kept their wages, so it was effectively slavery.
Americans could save up to $321bn in energy costs by switching to renewable energy, including for cars and heating buildings. Plus trillions from all the unnatural disasters that this will avoid.
However, it is not the case that we can do with a smaller electrical grid just by installing rooftop solar on all buildings. Houses will still need the grid for times when the region is dark or cloudy.
The numskull is considering labeling Amnesty, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch as "antisemitic" because they have criticized Israel's occupation of Palestine. If the numskull does this, it will be so absurd that only his hard-core supporters will believe it.
Please, numskull, do it! These bogus accusations, which have typically been made against individuals and weak, obscure organizations, will cease to be plausible and will become risible instead.
Please, everyone, don't campaign to stop this. Let him fall into his own trap first, and then criticize.
And let's limit accusations of antisemitism to people and organizations that spread hatred of Jews.
US deportation thugs *'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'.*
*Glitter is an environmental abomination. It's time to stop using it.*
We should do this with a comprehensive law designed to cut down the production of plastic objects that cannot be feasibly recycled or broken down.
It's almost November and the Arctic Ocean has not started to freeze!
* Campaigners are seeking to use the UK’s Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions against Turkish prosecutors and officials responsible for arresting and imprisoning thousands of lawyers.*
A House bill proposes a step in defunding the police: federal funding for "mental health first responder units."
They would handle some 9-1-1 calls so that people who are upset, but not dangerous, don't have to face armed thugs who might get triggered and pull the trigger.
*Press Worries About a Fracking Ban’s 'Risk' to Democrats—Not Fracking's Threat to Planet.*
*The US Spends More Than $80 Billion a Year Incarcerating 2.3 Million People.* Most of them could simply be released.
Many of them are in jail awaiting trial, and they entitled to vote, but the system won't give them a way to vote.
Congress can, and should, pass a law cancelling all federal government acts and appointments made under the conman, with a specific list of exceptions of course.
This would get rid of all the extremist judges that the conman appointed, without the need to impeach each one on specific grounds.
*[The conman] had us thinking mainstream Republicans were moderate. How naive.*
*Pope Francis Signals 'Historic' Shift for Catholic Church, Publicly Supporting Civil Unions for Same-Sex Couples.*
If only he would endorse abortion and birth control, I would have little quarrel with the Catholic Church. (Though that would not constitute evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity.)
Google will provide AI to the US border thugs for total surveillance, tracking and identification around the US border with Mexico.
I have a hunch that this total tracking won't remain limited to areas close to the border. The US government, together with companies such as Anduril, must be itching to apply it to the whole US territory.
*Pakistani Shias live in terror* — they may be lynched or executed by the majority Sunnis.
*Even if Biden wins US election, time is running out to save Iran nuclear deal.*
*Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier source.*
He claims that the bully's falsehoods wiped out his career and put his life in danger.
*Croatian police accused of 'sickening' assaults on migrants on Balkans trail.*
George Monbiot: *Bypassing the NHS and handing crucial services to corporate executives has led to the catastrophic failure of test and trace [in the UK].*
A Republican official in Florida sent voters a confusing letter designed to discourage them from voting.
Analyzing the reasons for the Bolivian Socialist Party's victory, and the challenges it must face now.
*Anglo American sued over alleged mass lead poisoning of children in Zambia.*
Three years ago, obeying the orders of the bully, the US rushed to deport parents of 1030 children, without bothering to ask how to find them again. The children remained in the US. Since then, the ACLU has been trying to find their parents, but it has found parents of only 465 of the children. That's the Department of Hatred and Sadism for you.
Some of those parents may have been killed — after all, they were fleeing from the danger of violence. Perhaps, as they died, they were glad that they had sent their children to a place of safety.
But is it really a place of safety? Will the US let them stay and become citizens? Or will it deport them when they get older to a country they don't remember?
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has sued the acting king of Salafi Arabia and 28 henchmen in US court.
The goal is to "compel US agencies and officials to disclose new information about what happened to Khashoggi."
The European Parliament continued its system of payments to farm owners with only weak requirements to make farms clean up their treatment of the environment.
The fatal fire in a large London public housing building was caused by bad design choices, secretly and illegally made by the Tory-run local council, which was aiming to save money at all costs.
The council was trying so hard to save money because of squash-the-poor Tory policies.
Austerity kills in many ways, but usually it kills people one by one and there is no inquiry into the specific causes.
The owners of a Venezuelan oil tanker have kept it near the coast since Feb 2019 waiting for the US to let them pump the oil out. If it leaks, it could kill a large part of the Caribbean Sea.
Facebook bent over backwards for right-wing sites, relaxing its rules against misinformation and thus implementing right-wing bias.
Right-wing extremists have learned to lie without a qualm. That includes telling the lie that media are biased against them, as a cynical means of pressuring media to shift to bias for them.
The EU will operate drones in the Mediterranean searching for refugees in boats.
When the drone spots a boat full of people, it won't have guns to shoot them with, but what will European countries do to them?
(satire) *New Stimulus Bill Would Require All Americans To Mail Government $1,200 Check.*
252 million years ago, *the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set off a chain of events that successively extinguished almost all life in the seas.*
That rise of CO2, caused by a supervolcano in Siberia, was not terribly fast. We are now increasing the CO2 level 14 times as fast.
The article does not state an estimate for the peak atmospheric CO2 level in the end-Permian. Can anyone find an estimate for that? It would be interesting to compare that with where we are heading.
(satire) *Jason Momoa, star of the forthcoming Aquaman 2, told reporters Monday he and the film’s producers had brought in a scene double to help execute a particularly challenging facial expression required of his character.*
The wrecker simultaneously acted to spread Covid-19 and cover up how it was spreading.
During the Assange hearing, Craig Murray and Wikileaks found that Twitter and Facebook blocked their posts from reaching most of their followers.
Those sites did not inform Murray or Wikileaks, nor the people who posted about them, nor their followers, that their messages were reaching hardly any of those followers.
As regards Hunter Biden and Ukraine, there may be something fishy there, but if so it is minor compared with the plutocratist acts Biden is likely to commit overtly (and lawfully) if he wins, which in turn are less dangerous than the wrecker's practice of seizing every opportunity to corrupt and ruin.
Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) says that Facebook searches for "Move to Amend" gets a warning that the search is associated with QAnonsense. Move to Amend advocates a constitutional amendment to reverse the "Citizens United" decision.
A QAnonsense spreader smeared some museums in Berlin, and then someone smeared oil on antiquities and art in the museums.
I encourage you to visit the Pergamon Museum if you ever have the chance.
Environmentalists are suing the Department of Hatred and Sadism for harming human health and polluting the environment with tear gas.
One of the Breonna Taylor grand jurors has accused the attorney general of lying about what he said to the grand jury. He did not offer them the chance to indict for her killing.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
Vietnam appears to have prevented a second wave of Covid-19 while protecting the economy too.
*How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules.*
How Google used its quasi-monopoly power against Yelp.
It is ironic that Yelp itself is using its market power to help GrubHub cheat restaurants.
We should not try to understand this in terms of "good companies" and "bad companies". Rather, we need to prevent any companies from using their market power to get bigger. More generally, we need to make large companies split up so as to greatly increase the number of competitors in every field.
Prisoners in the UK are suffering greatly from not seeing their families or their counselors.
Bad though it is, having Covid-19 spread through the prison and into the surrounding community would be worse.
The US indictment of crackers working for the Russian spy agency GRU shows that the US is deeply monitoring their activities.
It also shows that the group's attacks have caused people to suffer and perhaps even die, in Ukraine and maybe Pennsylvania.
A wildly foolish overreaction: the New Yorker has "suspended" writer Jeffrey Toobin and is "investigating" him for masturbating while thinking his camera was turned off.
Hey, New Yorker, instead of "investigating" this mistake as if it were a crime, you should have your meetings with Mumble (freedom-respecting software which does only audio) rather than with proprietary Zoom.
A new initiative in the UK demands legalization of cocaine and ecstasy with controlled sale in pharmacies.
This would eliminate the dangers that result from black market sale: unexpected overdoses, and mixture with unknown other drugs. It would reduce drug-fueled gangsterism by taking away its most regular customers.
I am surprised and cheered to see that the former president of Colombia, Santos, is campaigning for legalization of cocaine. Prohibition of cocaine has been devastating for Colombia.
Russia has built a literal cathedral of militaristic nationalism.
A special thug unit in the UK is being formally investigated for engaging in gross collective racism and sexism in its office.
To make such talk a crime would be repressive, but we cannot let such attitudes fester among cops; they will certainly translate it into their exercise of their power.
How the US turned in 1940 to a foreign policy of trying to dominate the world, how Biden will probably ramp it up, and why the US continues it despite ever worse results.
Finally, insight about what romantic-sexual desire is like for many men.
*One of the therapists she quotes in her book, Daring Greatly, asserts, “I guess the secret is that sex is terrifying for most men.”*
(satire) *Man Hasn’t Heard Or Read Single True Thing In 6 Years.*
*At 47, I discovered I am autistic — suddenly so many things made sense.*
The EPA has adopted the airline industry's proposal for how to make air travel emit less CO2. Which means, hardly any pressure. Instead it should make requirements for reduced emissions, and convert the whole airline fleet to electric power by 2045.
*Ending Corporate Impunity Is at the Heart of a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Global Recovery.*
The largest dairy company in France is accused of dumping waste into rivers, thus killing fish and harming other species.
*US removes Sudan from terrorism blacklist in return for $335m.*
If Sudan was involved in the terrorist attack in 1998, it ought to be penalized. However, Sudan is desperately poor and needs aid. For that country to pay so much money to the US will be a great burden.
So I think a different penalty would be morally superior. For instance, leaving some of its oil in the ground.
If the conman does not hold on to the presidency, he faces lots of legal trouble.
This article does not include possible criminal charges for crimes while in office, including obstruction of justice (which Mueller found the evidence for).
I expect he will have Air Force One drop him off on Jan 18 or so in a country he expects to will him from US justice.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to push to repeal the authorization for use of military force.
It won't hurt to say this by phone, too.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
*David Hume was a complex man. Erasing his name is too simplistic a gesture.*
Australia is moving to give its spy agency the power to interrogate journalists and activists under very loose conditions. Journalists could be ordered to disclose confidential sources. Activists could be interrogated if they cooperate with any foreign allies.
Experience shows that such repression will be used mainly against those who report on or oppose the actions of the powerful.
The UK announced that Russia carried out digital sabotage of the 2018 Olympic Games and its sponsors, and was planning sabotage of the 2020 games (which did not take place, since they were postponed).
Please do not use the word "hackers" to mean "people who attack computer security." That gives people an erroneous negative impression of us hackers.
*How the oil industry made us doubt climate change.*
Ironically, the term "climate change" was encouraged so the public would not recognize that it refers to something dangerous.
Chinese diplomats in Fiji attacked a Taiwanese official, causing a head injury.
I theorize that this is a probe to see how much aggression the world will let China get away with. Fiji will probably let China get away with this, as China has bought its submission.
I think it is important for powerful countries to recognize Taiwan as an independent country — but not as the legitimate government of China — and tell China that it can either have diplomatic relations noneless, or do without.
*Revealed: chaining, beatings and torture inside Sudan's Islamic schools.*
There is a history of policies of such cruelty in Christian schools in Europe and North America.
*Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services.*
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Attorney General Barr.
The idea is that even though we know the Senate will not remove Barr from office, the impeachment will hamper the Senate from confirming Judge Barrett for the Supreme Court.
After signing, you can follow up by phoning your congresscritter.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Socialist Party won a landslide in Bolivia's election.
*Bottle-fed babies swallow millions of microplastics a day, study finds.*
We don't know whether microplastics hurt humans, and it may take years to gather the data to determine this. But it is unlikely they do any good, and it would be wise to avoid them.
*Lung cancer cases could be mistaken for Covid.* Some have been, and people can die from the delay in diagnosing the cancer.
France is investigating 50 Islamist organizations on the suspicion that they promote hatred and violence.
People who were prisoners in North Korea describe violent torture including rape, used to force confessions.
One of the reasons the US must eradicate its own torture is so that it can speak with moral authority when condemning torture by North Korea and other countries.
The US has not taken steps adequate to ensure that the CIA doesn't torture prisoners in the future. On the contrary, appointing Gina Haspel to head it was an indirect but clear endorsement of torture.
*With Zuck's Blessing, Facebook Quietly Stymied Traffic to Left-Leaning News Outlets.*
The sites that suffered were not very leftist. One example cited was Mother Jones.
*Wichita man arrested for threatening to kidnap, kill mayor over mask mandate.*
Some of the kooks who would murder because of hatred for masks are also nuts enough to say so. But we cannot expect that to protect us from all of them. We need to stop officials from inciting violence.
The company that makes James Bond films gets millions in subsidies from the UK and pays no tax in the UK, since the profit from the films is all assigned to other companies in other countries.
If the UK wants to pay, in normal times, for people to do work, why not pay them to do work that the public needs, such as medical care for the NHS and home assistance for people who are sick or handicapped?
Under my global progressive tax scheme, those companies would be treated as one entity for computing its tax rate, and the UK part would pay that rate on its gross income.
When people return products to Amazon, in many cases Amazon doesn't bother to unpack them and put them on the shelf. It puts them in the trash.
Wikimedia calls on museums to digitize their collections and to allow the digital works, when not restricted by private copyrights, to be freely shared.
Those that are restricted by private copyrights should be shared too, because forbidden sharing is better than no sharing.
*To Stop an Electoral Coup, Study What Went Wrong in the 2000 Florida Recount.*
Keep in mind that the only reason this recount was necessary is because the Republicans had cheated massively through voter suppression, as revealed by Greg Palast.
Covid-19 has provided an opportunity and excuse for many countries to attack traditional human rights on the Internet.
This is in addition to the subjugating effect of pushing people to use nonfree software.
Various crimes the conman could be prosecuted for, if he can't retain his grip on the presidency.
People are working hard to protect coral reefs from the danger of the current level of global heating.
Will this help the long-term survival of coral? It can, if we curb global heating before it goes much further. However, breeding heat-tolerance into corals would have to be done to every species and variety if it is to protect them all.
If we keep increasing the CO2 level, that will eventually kill all corals due to ocean acidification.
The failure of the UK's handling of Covid-19 is due to its disregard for poor people, who live many to a house and cannot self-isolate nor stay home from work.
*Alarming new data shows the UK was the 'sick man' of Europe even before Covid.* This is caused by greater economic inequality.
India has accused an old man of terrorism for helping poor people organize nonviolent resistance against mining companies.
It happens that the man is a Catholic priest, so Catholics are protesting his arrest.
Jailing opposition leaders has become standard practice for India's repressive right-wing government.
John Pilger: *The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange. Whose Side Are You On?*
I note that he published this on his own site. Apparently there is no newspaper which would touch it.
*In the age of Covid, sanctions against ‘rogue states’ just spread the misery.*
*Hong Kong protester 'Grandma Wong’: I was held in mainland China for 14 months.*
*The freedom to offend is a priceless commodity.*
No group should have the right to silence those who disagree with it, criticize it. or oppose it.
*[In Alaska], mountains are collapsing as the permafrost that holds them together melts, threatening tsunamis if they fall into the sea.*
There would be no time to evacuate the town of Whittier if a nearby slope slides into the ocean.
* Tax authorities find it easier to audit earned income tax credit, which disproportionately affects poor communities of color, than to target billionaires.*
The question is, what's the purpose of income tax audits? Is it to treat poor people almost like criminals, or is it to recover millions from rich cheaters?
*How the idea of overthrowing the [US] government became mainstream [among the right-wing].*
They see guns as giving them power over everyone else, and it led them into a power trip.
EFF: *Orders from the Top: The EU’s Timetable for Dismantling End-to-End Encryption.*
The plan could include prohibiting the use of free software to encrypt, or prohibiting computers that can run solely free software.
A fanatical French Muslim murdered a teacher who had presented in class a cartoon mocking Muhammad, as an example in a discussion of freedom of speech.
In response, teachers vow to teach "difficult subjects" and encourage students' "critical spirit".
Imagine if that were in the US: the student would claim that showing him the cartoon was "violence" and demand firing the teacher.
A strict lock-down has nearly finished eliminating Covid-19 in Victoria (a state of Australia), and Melbourne is starting to relax its isolation rules.
Australia is in a position to eradicate Covid-19 and keep it out, if it proceeds carefully and continues a high rate of testing.
Arguing that Victoria could have eliminated Covid-19 in 6 weeks with a more strict lockdown.
That conclusion is from modeling, and we don't have enough real experience with Covid-19 to be sure of the conclusions. But if they are valid, I think that strict restrictions for 6 weeks would be better than 4 weeks of dithering followed by 10 weeks of increasing strictness.
However, we shouldn't criticize Victoria's officials too much. Perhaps they could have done better, but they did get the job done while so many countries are messing it up.
*With the president’s re-election in doubt, cabinet departments are scrambling to finish dozens of new rules.*
Wisconsin has a high level of Covid-19, but the wrecker plans to increase it with an anti-mask campaign rally.
Salafi Arabia is escalating its war in Yemen at the same time that food aid for that country is decreasing.
*Dianne Feinstein Was Harder on Preteen Climate Activists Than She Was on Amy Coney Barrett.*
This shows the convergence between Democratic plutocratists and Republican plutocratists. I hope we get Feinstein out of the Senate soon.
Many major US store chains lobby to imprison shoplifters and keep them in prison for longer.
The UK is investigating charges that banks are committing "industrial-scale forgery" for fraudulent foreclosures.
Why wouldn't they? Billionaire banks got away with it in the US 10 years ago because Obama protected them from charges. Why wouldn't British banks try it too?
I hope that the UK shows more courage than Obama did. I hope it convicts individual banksters and puts them in prison for this.
In the US, blacks were more likely to have their homes stolen in this way than whites. That was due to the injustice of racism, one effect of which is to make blacks poorer in general than whites.
I condemn racism, for that aspect as well as others. But this matter is not about racism. The criminal banksters didn't know the victims, or what race they were. The victims were just names on a list to them. Their employers had nothing to do with making the loans to those homeowners, years before — they had bought the loans en masse.
I do not condemn the banks' giant fraud because many victims were black. I condemn it because it was an enormous crime against millions of innocent poor people. Many of them, whether black or white or other, couldn't replace what was taken from them.
The banks got away with the crime through corruption at the highest level, and that is why I keep referring to it, even 10 years later.
A UN report accuses President Maduro of Venezuela of knowingly presiding over murder and torture.
I would not put it past him.
The new prosecutor of Portland, Oregon, said he will ignore the minor charges such as "interference with a police officer" that thugs like to make to harass protesters.
In revenge, the thugs are making even more such accusations.
Releasing species from another region into the wild is ecological sabotage.
*Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests bring Lagos to standstill.*
Since the white supremacist attack in Charleston, around 100 public symbols of the Confederacy have been taken down. Over 1700 remain in place.
Calling on Senate Democrats to replace Feinstein as the leader of their contingent in the Judiciary. She pals around with the Republicans and acts to support them.
The commander of an Indonesian military unit whose mission was repression and atrocities is now the minister of the military. He has been banned from the US for 20 years, but the sadist has invited him to visit.
Biden's choice for Secretary of the Treasury is a plutocratist. We cannot expect him to do the most important things we need, such as helping to reduce fossil fuel use.
The USPS, responding to a lawsuit, agreed to reverse DeJoy's sabotage of mail delivery.
I wonder whether they will get it all fixed in the 18 days before the election. This job includes installing sorting machines where sorting machines were removed — but they destroyed the old sorting machines. The USPS could easily fail to acquire replacements, especially if DeJoy gives orders designed to cause failure.
The US has sentenced protesters against nuclear weapons to years in prison for the symbolic "damage" that they did on a missile base.
I wonder what could possibly justify keeping them jailed for years awaiting trial. There was no chance they would fail to show up for the trial, if physically capable of doing so. It would have been right and proper to release them in their own recognizance.
Plutcratist economists call unemployment "creative destruction."
In the 80s and 90s, plutcratist politicians said the solution for unemployment in the US was to teach Americans to be "more entrepreneurial". Kudlow is saying the same thing in different words. What they disregard is that starting a business typically requires an investment of capital, that investment is a gamble, and you shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Most people in the US can't even scrape together 400 dollars for an emergency; they can't afford to invest in the risk of starting a business.
Starting a business with a good chance of success also requires knowing all aspects of that business. Most people don't have suitable knowledge. And success for the business requires superiority or unmet demand.
The same Kudlow told the public in February that the novel coronavirus was no problem, while telling rich Republicans that no one knew how dangerous it was.
*As Big Oil Ups Donations to Dems, Biden Says Banning Fossil Fuels Within Next Decade 'Not Possible'.*
The FCC proposes to regulate what social (or antisocial) communication platforms can publish.
The FCC is obeying the orders of the wrecker. Some of those platforms do great harm, but the wrecker benefits from that harm, so I expect the FCC under his domination to try to aggravate the problems. However, I would not trust Biden on this issue either — nor any politician, except one with a very strong commitment to freedom of speech.
Twitter has retreated from a rule blocking people from pointing at published material that was obtained by cracking computer systems.
Please do not refer to that practice as "hacking." That insults us hackers. Please call it "cracking."
The policy Twitter has dropped was very dangerous. Even though the material about Hunter Biden in that NY Post article was neither new nor significant, in other cases the information may be very important.
*China ambassador makes veiled threat to Hong Kong-based Canadians.*
This confirms that China is intentionally using visitors as hostages.
The CDC ordered a ban on evictions until Dec 31, but the wrecker is reinterpreting it so as to help landlords chase people out sooner.
This is not necessarily motivated by a desire to kick people when they are down. Its motive might instead be to increase the spread of Covid-19; we know he wants to do that.
Russia, increasing its level of sexual repression, is trying to arrest single men who used surrogate mothers to have children, based on presuming that they are homosexual.
The government claims it is illegal for homosexual men to use surrogate mothers, although there is no such law.
*Thirty-year failure to tackle preventable disease fueling global Covid pandemic.* Said disease includes *high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and obesity, all risk factors for Covid-19.*
How to fix the problem of homelessness; how to have a universal basic income without wasting a large part on people who are well-off.
Trying to teach homeless people to use their money more wisely does not usually enable them to find and keep housing, but giving them homes often enables them to use their money more wisely.
With a well-designed progressive income tax, rich people will return as taxes a large part of their universal basic income.
The Democratic Party in many cities and neighborhoods is led by local bosses that are "crass, thin-skinned, and nepotistic," but promise to take care of their supporters' needs.
With this standard of comparison, their supporters did not find the bullshitter outrageous.
Governments are not doing enough to avoid a rebound in greenhouse gas emissions if and when we eliminate Covid-19.
(satire) *Liberal Man Worried Biden Victory Would Immediately Reignite Discussions About Having Kids.*
He doesn't need to worry. Even if we did our utmost to reduce the coming climate disaster, it would not be a kindness to give birth to someone these days.
Ideally the human population should be considerably smaller, so that we can protect nature without having to live in poverty. So if you are thinking of having no children, please go ahead!
*Sen. Warren Slams Disney for 28,000 Fired Workers Amid Stock Buyback Spree.*
The IMF urges wealthy countries to borrow to support people hurt or unemployed by Covid-19, but it imposes crushing conditions on other countries that also need to support people.
The Taliban are besieging some Afghan government forces in Lashkar Gah, and they have mined the road out of the city. Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped there.
Several suggestions for how to make appointments to the US supreme court less partisan and less contentious.
Mexico's top military official during 2012-2018 has been arrested in the US and charged with corruption with a drug syndicate during that time.
Prohibition of drugs tend to have this result.
A meeting of Republican heavyweights to discuss voter suppression was recorded. Someone said, "Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor."
US journalists are doing little to cover the idea of the Green New Deal. Most Americans only see that Republicans say it is bad, and Biden seems to agree, so Republicans attack him for not rejecting it hard enough.
*Biden has recently stated that under his leadership he would end U.S. support for Saudi military intervention in Yemen, a move supported by Congress, and reassess the current close U.S.-Saudi relationship.*
That would be a real change for the better.
US citizens: call on secretaries of state of all states not to allow private "security" heavies at polling places.
California voters: reject Proposition 22, the bow-down-to-Guber exception.
If we win on this, and eventually Uber accepts the requirement to pay its workers better, that will not make Uber (or Lyft) acceptable — it won't change their injustice to their customers. Nor the food delivery gig companies.
*Pro-democracy advocates are organizing more than 170 events [on Nov 4] in anticipation of President Donald Trump illegitimately declaring victory in the Nov. 3 election.* That's a good idea, but they have messed up the web site where they publish the details: it depends on nonfree Javascript code, and it is totally inaccessible in the Free World. I can't see even one word of the contents of their site, only a message saying "Enable Javascript." No way!
It is a shame that I can't (without sacrificing my freedom and principles) find an event near me, and neither can you, nor can I in good conscience post an urgent note asking everyone to look at the site and find an event to join.
This time, we have considerable notice — 18 days to go before Nov 4. Maybe this is enough time to correct the deficiency, rather than merely bemoan it.
If you are a skilled web developer, and you have a web site where you can make a page without Javascript, and run an hourly cron job on the net, please try it. See if you can scrape the data from their site and make a simple HTML file listing all the events, sorted in some natural way. Put that that page on your site, with a brief introduction saying what these events are for.
Then please email me about it, and I will post a reference to your curved mirror.
Senator Lindsey Graham asked for campaign donations in an interview while in the judiciary committee's meeting room. It is illegal to do that.
An experiment found that "eco" glitter, after ending up in a river, harms plants just like ordinary glitter.
We need to regulate plastic in a way that will eliminate most microplastics. Probably anything like glitter should be prohibited entirely.
Comparing the two simultaneous interviews of Biden and the wrecker.
NBC did wrong to hold the wrecker's interview at the same time that Biden's town hall had already been announced for. We can see that the wrecker's goal was to prevent his supporters from hearing Biden.
The article puts this backward, suggesting (though not actually asserting) that the wrecker's program was scheduled first and Biden's was then run alongside it.
However, it appears that the wrecker's interviewer pressed him hard for answers, and and didn't accept his usual wandering evasions.
So he came off looking very bad.
I did not watch either of them, because I did not need to. I know enough about the two candidates and I've made up my mind about how to vote, so reading these articles was enough information for me.
My recommendation is: in a swing state, vote for Biden; otherwise, vote for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
*Eyewitnesses have said that [thugs] did not identify themselves before opening fire on Michael Reinoehl while he was in his car.* It appears that they shot as soon as they had identified him.
In other words, they were supposed to arrest him, but it looks like they murdered him instead.
Reinoehl acknowledged he had shot and killed a right-wing protester, but claimed that he did so in self-defense. He was entitled have trial to present his case.
More info about the killing.
The wrecker boasted about this killing.
*'Look for Power in the Shadows': Watch Sheldon Whitehouse Shine Light on 'Dark Money Operation' Behind GOP Supreme Court Takeover.*
Various lasting debilities affect around 2% of the people who get Covid-19.
It follows that if we let the virus run rampant through the US and infect around 70% of the population, so that herd immunity stops it, we will have about 5 million newly disabled Americans. That's in addition to the 2 million or so who would die.
That's what the wrecker is now in favor of.
It could be more than 5 million.
Given the possibility of being infected twice, once with each of the two principal strains of the virus, it's conceivable that each one would spread until 70% of Americans have had it. So we might end up with a 10 million newly disabled Americans.
In the identified cases of reinfection, the second infection was more grave. Perhaps that is a real phenomenon. Or perhaps it is an artifact of the way this is studied: I suspect the analysis to detect reinfection is done only on patients that need to be hospitalized.
The push to let the virus run rampant is a fake scientific controversy bankrolled by rich people.
Thus it is comparable to the planet roaster's campaign to generate fake controversy about human-caused global heating, and fake doubt about whether tobacco kills.
Demand for efficiency has "crushed the humanity" out of the activity and profession of taking care of someone else.
I have a feeling that the use of "to care" to mean an action rather than an attitude is part of that change.
The district attorney of Los Angeles faces a challenge from a candidate who has learned to push for less imprisonment of minor criminals, and more prosecution of thugs.
The incumbent seems like another Kamala Harris, pushing for being harsher on criminals rather than on rebuilding peace in society.
Governor Cuomo is trying hard to wipe out New York State's Working Families Party.
The EU has placed personal sanctions on some of Putin's cronies for poisoning Alexei Navalny.
Australia's electoral and political system could use some changes.
Ohio is doing voter suppression by having too few polling places in cities. Cities are where people are likely to vote Democratic.
When buildings have been shut for a long time, deadly legionella bacteria can multiply in the water pipes.
YouTube will ban contradicting WHO's recommendations about vaccination.
Anti-vax fantasies, when presented as fact, threaten people's lives. It is useful to do something to weaken the conspiracies that make and spread them. However, censorship is dangerous too.
It would be better to avoid promoting such material when people don't explicitly ask for it. For instance, to label each one with "anti-vax", and not recommend anything with that label, nor find it in searches unless "anti-vax" is one of the search terms.
Sicilian Giuseppe Piraino responded to a mafia demand for money by showing the mafioso photos of murdered judges — then showing the recording to the state, and getting 20 mafiosi arrested and charged.
*Ugandan security forces raid campaign office of opposition leader Bobi Wine.*
Massive rewilding and land restoration would absorb a lot of the CO2 that we are adding to the atmosphere, in a natural way.
Perhaps this could be done a more effective method of offsetting emissions.
*Greener play areas boost children’s immune systems, research finds.*
The effect is visible after just a month.
The thugs that searched the apartment where Breonna Taylor lay dying did not try to save her.
The article does not say whether they were the same ones that killed her. Either way, it shows the callous disregard of thugs for human life.
European countries are trying to deal with an increase in Covid-19 by putting off increasing their distancing measures.
The idea of "apply firm measures if the fraction of people newly infected rises above a certain amount" is a mistake. The time to apply firm measures is whenever the fraction of people newly infected is rising. That is the time to apply measures that are sure to drive R down below 1, and drive the number of people infected down to a low level. Delaying the firm measures will require firmer measures, for a longer period.
After that, it is possible to return to the status quo ante provided contact tracing and isolation are stronger than before.
New Zealand is having a referendum to approve a very limited right to help in dying. I urge people to vote yes.
However, the limitations don't make sense. People undergoing unbearable suffering which is sure to end within 6 months will be allowed this right, but those whose suffering might continue for decades will be required to keep suffering.
The Thai government has prohibited protests, arrested leaders, and increased censorship.
Barrett's testimony implies that she thinks all people can simply choose their sexual orientation.
I don't investigate all the associations and attitudes of an organization before I give a talk for it. I don't have time. (Indeed, I expect, when I give a talk for a university, that it is doing some harmful things that I publicly condemn, such as developing nonfree software, obtaining software patents, and teaching that it is wrong to share copies of published works.)
So I think it is possible that Barrett did not know about those specific positions of the ADF when she gave talks for its fellowship program.
But it is also possible that she knew them and agreed with them, and is now covering it up.
*Barrett's Confirmation to the Supreme Court "Would Be a Catastrophe for the Climate."*
Los Angeles County thugs attacked then arrested reporter Josie Huang as she was reporting outside a hospital. Then they gave a reason which was an obvious lie and brought charges against her.
I've heard that the charges against Ms Huang have been dropped, but there is no sign of an investigation of the attack on her.
Individual rewilders release locally lost species to try to preserve them, and occasionally it works. But usually it does not.
It seems that the conclusion is that what we really need is government support for restoring damaged nature.
*Human rights defenders sue German parliament over anti-BDS resolution.*
The resolution equates boycotting Israeli companies with boycotting Jews — in effect equating criticism of Israel's occupation practices with antisemitism.
The Israeli government pushes to establish that those two are the same, as a weapon against those who criticize the crimes of the occupation. Meanwhile, its leaders are friends with people who really are antisemitic.
I support the existence of Israel, and I condemn antisemitism. However, Palestinians have rights too, like everyone else, and Israel must respect their rights.
The first head of the Black Police Association of London said that governments made the London thug department less racist, but this stopped in 2016 and racism is coming back.
(satire) *NASA officials announced Tuesday that the Hubble Space Telescope had recently given scientists the rare opportunity to observe a pair of galaxies mating.*
A giant international monopoly of privatized water is being formed.
Privatization of water for residential use should not be allowed.
*Calls grow for radical reform of Chile's national police force. The Carabineros face 8,500 allegations of human rights abuses in the past year.*
Canada's last ice shelf broke up and disappeared.
*Great Barrier Reef corals have more than halved in past 25 years, study shows.*
*University of Sydney law professor arrested while watching student protest.*
He sent his students to watch, because they were studying law and protest. It appears that the thugs went semi-berserk, thinking "Wheee, lots of people we can beat up!"
"Smart" meters in Australia will enable the company to report when users turn certain appliances on or off by noticing momentary increases or decreases in total current used.
For "smart", read "snoop".
The worst thing is that people will have no choice about having their homes connected to these meters.
Snooping meters should be restricted by law about how fine grained their reports can be. I contend that informing the customer of per moment-by-moment current use, plus telling the electric utility the moment-by-moment current use of a block or neighborhood, is enough data.
The Supreme Court, now with right-wing bias, has allowed the wrecker to undermine the census count by stopping it early.
Galveston thugs tied a leash to a homeless man and pulled him from horseback.
This is not only humiliating, it is dangerous. It can be hard to keep up with horses, so the person being pulled can easily fall and be dragged. That can cause all sorts of injuries.
The Rio Tinto mining company signed contracts with Australian indigenous groups, paying them money but demanding they remain silent about possible destruction of their ancient sites by mining. When some found out that a site was likely to be destroyed, they dared not complain to the government for fear of losing that income.
This confirms my view that these sites should have absolute protected status. No one should have the power to allow their destruction.
Twitter suspended apparently fake accounts which claimed to belong to people that were black and planned to vote for the wrecker.
Israeli combat drones that were battle-tested by bombing Gaza may be bought by the UK and used to track (and kill?) asylum seekers in the channel.
A French museum had to defer plans for an exhibit about Mongol emperor Genghis Khan because China demanded that the exhibit not use the words "Mongol", "Empire" or "Genghis Khan".
Now that China has started a long-term plan to assimilate Mongols that live in China, it apparently would like to make the rest of the world forget that Mongols are ethnically different from Han Chinese. That will be difficult to entirely accomplish, since the rest of the world is well aware of the Mongol empire. Russia and the Middle East were conquered by it and they remember.
Right-wing sites pressure Facebook into bending its rules against hate and disinformation for them. An employee who collected a list of instances was fired for this.
Five things Facebook should do to avoid encouraging election violence.
Queensland (part of Australia) could convert completely to renewable generation in 15 years, generating around 10,000 permanent jobs.
Gideon Spiro writes of the looking of Arabs' houses and the looting of Jews' houses.
Israel has imprisoned Maher al-Akhras without charges, and his response is a hunger strike.
Imprisoning people without charges is a fundamental injustice, so Israel should free him immediately, or else state the charges against him so he can have a trial.
Naomi Klein: *I fear Trump will exploit his COVID infection to further destabilize the election.*
Prominent academics warn that the IHRA "definition" of antisemitism lends itself to repression and censorship of defense of Palestinians' rights.
Even the author of that criterion warns it should not be used this way.
Proposing to confront Covid-19 with a form of partial shutdown of society, with firm enforcement of the rules.
The cameras proposed here threaten oppression, but if the purpose of the system is simply and only to measure how many people are in a place and in general what they are doing, it could be designed not to identify people. Then it would be safe.
Virginia's voter registration site crashed shortly before the deadline because a cable was cut.
The same thing happened in 2016. Do you think this was an accident? Once may have been; twice is not likely. It looks like sabotage to me.
(satire) *"For just $3 per shipment, Amazon users who are outwardly critical of our company can have their packages delivered in a blank cardboard box without any logos or branding so they’ll never get called out for being hypocritical."*
After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per county.
I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really have.
That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd.
*Social Security's Cost of Living Adjustment Is Inadequate. Democrats Have a Plan to Fix That.*
*New Analysis Finds Barrett Sides Against Consumers, Immigrants, Workers, and More.*
Barrett is willing to consider letting the wrecker unilaterally delay the election. That would be quite a stretch to the US Constitution, and shows that she is prepared to go to great lengths to help the wrecker seize unconstitutional power.
*IMF warns emissions policies 'grossly insufficient' and urges green recovery.*
It is noteworthy that an organization which in general serves plutocracy says this. It seems that the planet roasters have lost out to other interests in one important contest.
*USDA and Meatpacking Industry Collaborated to Undermine Covid-19 Response, Documents Show.*
I don't know whether that was illegal, but it is corruption.
US border thugs deport large numbers of people to the small Mexican border town of Sasabe, perhaps because they know it cannot process so many immigrants that fast and has no place for them to stay.
This sadism is typical of the US border thugs.
*Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $330bn, study finds.*
That is much less than one would expect. Just $33 billion a year would be peanuts for the US government.
*Cyprus scraps 'golden passport' scheme after politicians caught in undercover sting.*
A Thai student leads a protest movement demanding reduction of the power of the king.
Fracking releases radioactive polonium into the air.
A proposed law in Germany is causing consternation because it uses feminine word endings throughout instead of the usual masculine endings.
Any doubts about the meaning and legitimacy of this draft text could be resolved easily by adding a note saying that "In this law, words with feminine endings that refer to human beings include all humans, whether female or not."
Has the Labour Party still got a conscience? Will it vote against a bill to permit infiltrating undercover thugs to commit crimes without limit, even murder?
*Facebook greatest source of Covid-19 disinformation, journalists say.*
*Koch-Funded Legal Group Pushes to Allow Mass Evictions During Pandemic.*
The greatest danger of putting Barrett on the Supreme Court is that it could adopt that philosophy — that "civil liberties" means there cannot be any limit on the power to evict tenants.
*Extinction Rebellion is showing Britain what real democracy could look like.* Big business gets to demand change in government policies at any moment, whereas the people get to do so only at intervals of years.
One of the reasons for Extinction Rebellion effectiveness is that it is absolutely, totally nonviolent (though its protests are sometimes disruptive).
*China still allowing use of pangolin scales in traditional medicine.*
China is not egregious in failing to adequately protect endangered species. Many countries, perhaps most, fall short on that dimension.
State infiltrators are bad when they infiltrate peaceful dissident groups. However, infiltrating real terrorist groups is legitimate and can be very effective for stopping terrorism. Here is an example.
JCB, which sells construction equipment, is under legal pressure for selling tractors to an Israeli company and not taking steps to prevent their use in forcible demolition of Palestinian homes.
The US increased the size of the Supreme Court before, and for good reasons.
* Biden must call on federal workers to ignore illegal orders and faithfully serve the Constitution.*
Announcing a new political article, "The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police"
The bully still has a few weeks to provoke Iran into war. The provocations are already killing Iranian civilians.
Academics call for universities to join to protect their students from persecution by China over criticism of China in their classes and academic work.
Students are afraid of being imprisoned if and when they go to China, even over what is said by others in the same class. To get the US to imprison you for what you publish, you have to do something heroic, such as exposing secret crimes.
China, by contrast, will imprison people merely for criticizing China, or even for nothing at all if they are useful as hostages.
(satire) *several reports indicated Monday that the idea of the total collapse of democracy was so horrifying that America decided it hadn’t happened yet.*
(satire) *Judge Amy Coney Barrett promised Monday that her Catholic faith’s tenets of generosity and humanity would not interfere with her duty on the court to crush the nation’s poorest and most downtrodden citizens.*
*Trump desperately needs to avoid another withering exposure that another debate would cement. That is why, true to the coward that he is, he’s hiding from it.*
An additional advantage of public banks is that governments could directly make them stop investing in fossil fuels.
For the other reasons public entities should put their money in public banks, see here.
General Atomics has developed spy drones that can track everyone in a substantial area — such as a big city — at once. The initial application for them was for war, but now it is making thinly veiled attempts to fly them over American cities.
Jesse Jackson: *Myths and Lies About Poverty.*
I take issue with Jackson on one point: most Americans do support the laws that would eliminate most poverty. But plutocats have used (and created) flaws in our democracy to keep control of our government and defeat candidates such as Sanders that stand for the policies most Americans support.
CEPR: The US Census Bureau underestimates poverty in the US because it uses too low a value for the poverty line, one that doesn't relate to today's life.
Here's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced a Republican congresscritter that first insulted her on the capital steps, then tried to claim that we shouldn't blame him for that because he has daughters.
I was so moved by her strength and dignity that I found a recording to listen to via invidious. Her speech is even more impressive as spoken word.
* To make experimental antibodies [for Covid-19] affordable will cost billions. If they are shown to work, it will be money well spent.*
Rafał Gaweł, who was prosecuted in Poland for journalism, has won asylum in Norway.
*WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'.*
The reasons he cites are the simple, evident reasons that we can all see if we look.
*California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans.*
Setting up an unauthorized ballot drop-off box is electoral fraud and I hope those Republicans get punished.
Scientific advisers warned the UK government three weeks ago that it was time to take strong measures to avoid a "large epidemic".
Either the ministers are timid and weak, or they are playing a game of trumpery.
China has cut off its importation of Australian coal. It will presumably burn Chinese coal instead.
This could teach Australia to invest in something less damaging than coal mining. But I fear that the Australian government will be so desperate for China to resume buying coal that it will break and bow down to China. That would be very bad for freedom in the world.
The Australian government has a few oppressive policies — towards immigrants, towards software developers. Towards whistleblowers that reveal its dishonesty and crimes. However, in general it is much better than China.
In regard to global heating, to the first order this makes no difference. Australian coal and Chinese coal are both very damaging.
*People in Gaza sifting through rubbish for food, UN head says.*
Senate Democrats have failed us by not going to the mat to block confirmation of Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice.
The hearings are useless. Democrats could show she shot someone on Fifth Avenue and the Republicans would still confirm her, just as they confirmed Kavanaugh.
With her, the court will find it easy to use some excuse to set aside the election and make the wrecker president again.
*Judges' politics absolutely sway how they decide cases. I crunched the numbers.*
President Xi is showing the people who served as his puppet government in Hong Kong just how unimportant they are to him.
China is luring Chinese people to adopt the official state payment app, which is even more Big Brotherish than the private payment apps they mostly use now.
Protect your country from going down that path — insist on paying for products and transportation with cash, anonymously.
*This is my message to the western world — your civilisation is killing life on Earth.*
It is a justified rebuke to civilization, but limiting it to "western" is not fair. Civilization is global; civilization in Asia is involved too.
*[One] fifth of nations at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds.*
The UAE punishes foreign workers that get pregnant, and their children, with homelessness and starvation, and the children with denial of education. This punishment lasts for an indefinite term; it could be years.
Many religions support injustice to women.
*Covid coughing link 'may be stopping people with lung cancer coming forward'.*
The delay in detecting and treating lung cancer can be fatal.
The UK's National Health Service has also caused delays in testing for and treating cancer, by being slow. People are dying from that. Covid-19 made this a lot worse, but it was starting before.
The NHS did a pretty good job, given the inadequate funding that governments gave it. However, plutocratist governments have cut its funds step by step over many years. Under those conditions, it will become less and less effective — but don't blame the NHS for that.
A right-wing protester in Denver attacked a journalist's bodyguard, first with a punch, then with pepper spray. The bodyguard shot him dead. I am concerned by the fact that the bodyguard was arrested for defending himself.
The anti-distancing activist who attacked a journalist in Brooklyn faces criminal charges for doing that.
* Rainforests face unprecedented fires, yet BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard have consistently voted in favor of deforestation.*
*New Zealand Becomes First Country in the World To Require Financial Sector To Report on Climate Risks.*
*Anthony Fauci criticises Donald Trump for using his words out of context.* The bullshitter's campaign made it appear that Fauci was endorsing some bullshit.
The wrecker may try to seize power after the US election. How can Americans stop him? Here are methods that succeeded for blocking coups in several other countries.
(satire) *… members of a local white nationalist militia stated Friday they were stretched to the limit trying to attack everyone the president wants them to.*
Georgia kicked over 310,000 voters off the registration list on the grounds that they had moved. Supposedly it did this based on data from the USPS. Greg Palast's team checked properly with the USPS and found out that 197,000 of them should not have been deleted.
This is an example of voter suppression. The current governor of Georgia stole the election in 2018 by voter suppression like this.
*Amazon bullies partners and vendors, says antitrust subcommittee.*
*Facebook is a social network monopoly that buys, copies or kills competitors, antitrust committee finds.*
*Costa Rica Holds Anti-IMF Protests for Tenth Day in a Row.*
There is a campaign for the UK to block China from having a seat in the UN Human Rights Council.
The very idea of China's presence in that group illustrates the fact that it has been taken over by the enemies of human rights.
*New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and Punishes Critics.*
*Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites.*
I suppose this will go through two appeals and reach the Supreme Court. I wonder what it will say.
*Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland.*
Some protesters were sick for a long time after being attacked in this way.
Farming salmon on a large scale, as today, causes a number of ecological dangers, and can also incubate diseases as well as parasites.
*How Charles Koch Is Buying Credibility With Academic Investments.*
Pasco, Florida, tries to prevent crime by persistently harassing people thought to be possible future criminals until they move out of town.
The US response to Covid-19 has been driven by various wrong intuitions so that it has been purely planned.
The article does not mention that the wrecker and Republicans intentionally undermined the effort so he could use the disease for his reelection. (I think we did not yet have proof of that when it was written.) However, I don't think that invalidates the article. The Republicans took advantage of these erroneous tendencies, and they are still doing so.
1/5 of the high-ranking officers of the New York Thug Department have substantiated patterns of injustice to the public. Substantiated to the department's satisfaction, that is. The department works hard to cover them up.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
The CDC wanted to order people to use masks in public transportation, but the wrecker's political officials blocked it.
If our state and local officials were on our side and getting good advice, all trying to do the best thing to protect people from Covid-19 and bring it to an end, it might be better for these decisions to be made locally. Alas, led by the wrecker, many of them are on the virus's side, and this decision helped them spread it.
UK thugs display a pattern of violence and bodily harm against anti-fracking and anti-HS2 protesters.
The head of the Somerville, Massachusetts, thug union now faces criminal charges for pepper-spraying a person who was handcuffed.
It appears that the most thuggish of thugs feel drawn to becoming officials of the unions that protect thuggishness.
The saboteur is sabotaging science by forbidding research using fetal cells culture.
Dubya did the same thing. In the 2000s, a friend of mine hoped that research would find a way to prevent his developing blindness. Due to Dubya's policy, that research was not done. Now he is completely blind.
A fetus is not a baby, and a culture of human cells is not a human being. There is absolutely nothing wrong (barring unusual circumstances) with an abortion, and absolutely nothing wrong with using fetal cells (or their cultures) for research (medical or otherwise). When anyone acts less than proud of using the results of such research, we should speak up and say, "Be proud!"
*Despite Trump's 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs' Bluster, the Rust Belt Is Still Reeling from Plant Closures.*
Covid-19 transmission has been rising in the Czech Republic since August, and has reached the point where it will overload the medical system.
This demonstrates yet again that trying to trim the settings in the rules is a mistake. Once transmission starts accelerating, you must take firm action without delay. You're only safe if the number of new cases is decreasing.
Even a weak target for greenhouse emissions reduction can create many jobs and a booming economy.
It could slow down disaster, and pave the way for stronger steps.
See which candidates have pledged to amend the Constitution to reject the idea that corporations are entitled to human rights.
I was disappointed to see that not one candidate in my state has endorsed it.
A sunken British slave ship, of great archaeological interest, is being destroyed by unrestricted trawling.
A few dissident scientists purport to be arguing for letting Covid-19 spread to produce herd immunity. Superficial news coverage makes it look like a serious scientific dispute, but their position is not clear enough to make sense. And its supposedly scientific supporters are not all real scientists.
In other fields, such "skepticism" has been funded by businesses with something to gain by creating a false impression of uncertainty. There is no shortage of businesses that might want to create the appearance of doubt about whether we should try to wipe out Covid-19. And there are rich supporters of the conman who might do this.
I wonder if someone who knows how to investigate could check for such connections.
The British practice of raising large numbers of birds to release them for wealthy people to shoot is causing ecological damage; stricter laws are needed.
Political officials alter the CDC's weekly reports for political purposes. They are pushing the head of the CDC to modify old reports too.
Dr. Rick Bright resigned from the National Institute of Health after he was sidelined for insisting on doing what was scientifically and medically called for.
*'Catastrophic Failure to Tackle Inequality' Left World Unprepared for Pandemic.*
New political article: An Extinction Rebellion activist comments about the London police by Clark Killick
US citizens: call on the Department of Agriculture to keep the Roadless Rule for the Tongass National forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to have no vote on any nomination to fill Justice Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat until the winner of this election is inaugurated.
Everyone: Donate now to save Europe from Software Patents, says FFII.
If you are German, contact your representative in the Bundestag to oppose the "unitary patent".
*Facebook Profited From Climate [Dis]information Even After Vowing to Fight It, Report Shows.*
These ads were not mere errors, they were intentional deception. Thus I call them "disinformation".
(satire) *… millions of Americans worried that they weren’t appealing enough to land any potential commander in chief who didn’t constantly lie, steal, and cheat on them by having secret relations with numerous other countries."
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: the US should not allow any one person to have the power to launch a nuclear attack unilaterally.
Interesting article: *Binary Oppositions and the Hard Hard Problem of Solidarity.*
Republicans are sending armed white supremacists to "monitor" polling places and try to intimidate blacks other marginalized people from voting.
Their supposed excuse for the intimidation is to discourage fraud in voting, but even if there were fraud, they would be unable to stop it. (satire) Wisconsin Reports Zero Evidence Of Voter Fraud In Ballots They’ve Thrown Out So Far.
Bianca Williams rebukes the investigation of the incident where she was stopped by thugs, because it will consider only whether they treated her courteously, not whether they fabricated a disguise of a reason.
How people in New York City stopped a pipeline for fracked gas.
*Warning Fundamental Rights and American Lives at Stake, 5,000+ Lawyers Urge Senate to Reject Barrett.*
They wrote, "Rushing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett will cause irreparable damage to the public's faith in the Supreme Court, the rule of law, and our democracy."
(satire) *… the South Carolina Election Commission announced Friday that urban polling places would feature large plexiglass barriers around the entire building.*
(satire) *Frisky Housewife Lets Revealing Robe Slip After Opening Door To Amazon Delivery Drone.*
Guidelines and examples for resisting coups carried out by heads of government that refused to leave after losing an election.
It is clear that the would-be tyrant intentionally incited violence including the planned plot to kidnap or assassinate Governor Whitmer of Michigan.
What I don't know is whether there is any way to hold him legally responsible — with criminal charges. I don't know where the line is for incitement of violence or other crimes this might possibly be.
The cult leader is almost certainly still infected with coronavirus, but he is holding rallies at which he will surely not wear a mask.
From a rational perspective, this may seem crazy, but I think it makes sense psychologically, He inviting cult members to demonstrate their loyalty and faith in him by letting him expose them to coronavirus.
Next year there will be interviews with adults in the prime of their lives who suffer persistent medical problems stemming from this display of faith.
Senator Lee, a Republican, declared his opposition to democracy.
He refuses to clarify who he thinks should rule, but I think the answer would be "billionaires and Republicans."
Pence, in the debate, repeated the wrecker's veiled threat to seize power if they cannot pretend to have won.
I say "pretend" because their voter-suppression efforts will be included in the count.
*India's tea workers strike as government fails to deliver wage increase.*
The plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Governor Whitmer has been planned since June.
Barrett, as a judge, has been happy to seize on technicalities to send asylum seekers back to danger.
A plan to require houses to be built with electric sockets to aid in replacing gas stoves with electric stoves in the future, and for recharging cars in the garage, is facing a big fight from gas companies.
Some people who have "recovered" from Covid-19 experience crippling "brain fog".
Amnesty International reports that over 220 activists for human, environmental, and land rights have been murdered in Colombia this year.
The government is right-wing, thus allied to the paramilitaries, who are surely responsible for most of the murdering.
*Portland: [thugs] targeted medics [at Black Lives Matter protests] with teargas and projectiles, report finds.*
Thugs also kept ambulances away from the injured people at the protest. This is what Israeli soldiers do to injured Palestinians, and on a number of occasions has resulted in their death.
The city thugs were bad, and the federal thugs were even worse. They should all be prosecuted.
Julian Assange's extradition hearing demonstrated that the US and UK governments will break any rule and tell any lie to get Assange.
The article recounts how his supporters' computers were stolen, as well as how his basic rights as a person accused were violated.
This follows a legal campaign in which procedures and laws were trashed again and again, and which demonstrated that the Swedish state was only using the original charges against Assange as an excuse, and had no interest in seriously investigating them.
If Assange is thinking of suicide, I do not think that represents any sort of mental derangement on his part. Under Assange's circumstances, suicide would be a rational act, an act of courage, avoiding a fate worse than death.
A few days ago I said that no one ever really deserves to die. If you are facing a fate worse than death, what you really deserve is to avoid it and live. But if that is impossible, I still hope that you avoid it.
Covid-19 has unmasked what the Republican Party stands for.
This statement in the article includes an erroneous presupposition.
Similarly, Trumpism adapts the traditional Republican attachment to individual freedom and mutates it into a darker, Darwinian belief that the strong individual can and should do whatever they like, and to hell with the "suckers and losers" who might suffer as a result.
The latter is what the Republican Party has really stood for since decades ago, but it tried to disguise that stand until recently.
A letter supposedly signed by scientists that urged the UK to let Covid-19 spread and aim for herd immunity seems to be at least partly a hoax.
That "solution" would mean lots of people die or develop lasting organ damage.
The UK is (reluctantly) using government spending to preserve most jobs and the workers who have them, even if there is currently no work for them to do.
*Covid drug given to Trump developed using cells derived from aborted fetus.*
There is nothing wrong with that — fetuses are not human beings. But the bullshitter will need to excuse himself to the Christian extremists that support him.
I suppose he will plead hypocrisy again: "Never mind that I never live by your principles; you know I have no conscience."
Describing some of the crimes the conman could be prosecuted for, if he can't hold on to the presidency.
The US proposes a deal to support the subjection of Palestinians in exchange for the subjection of Western Sahara.
Two injustices at once — no wonder the bully loves it.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price as the latter was trying to break up a fight between other people.
Even the head of the Federal Reserve acknowledges that the US economy needs stimulus.
Only Republicans deny it.
Hasidic Jews in New York City held a violent anti-mask protest and attacked a journalist who was doing nothing but making a video. One of them recognized him and knew he might criticize them later in his writing.
To those who shouted "Jewish Lives Matter," I agree — they do. So protect other Jewish lives (and non-Jewish lives) by wearing masks!
The bully plans to impose sanctions on the rest of Iran's banks and money transfer systems with the aim of preventing Iran from buying medicine and other products for humanitarian needs.
*The bulk of the chaos [of the wrecker's antigovernance] is simply America the Terrible emerging from the shadows: our real history suddenly visible.*
(satire) *… local terrorist group benefactor Ahmad al-Yasin was reportedly disappointed to learn Thursday that most of his donations go to covering administrative costs. "… these funds should go toward suicide vests and stocking up on AK-47s …."*
A House subcommittee calls for new laws to reduce the market power of the big tech companies.
Feral pigs are overrunning the US and causing a lot of damage. The problem is difficult because letting individuals hunt them makes them more wary.
*[The bully's] Directives Restricting Discussion of Race, Discrimination Are Censorship.*
They are very broad, and could restrict teaching in public schools, even universities that receive federal funds.
(satire) *Vice President Mike Pence appeared to instinctively address his responses to Sen. Kamala Harris’ husband during Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate.*
Meanwhile, Harris demonstrated yet again her weakness on confronting the danger of global heating.
A lawyer warns that parents who accept distance learning from a public school may be construed by courts as giving the school officials permission to look through the computer's camera at any time during school hours, and report whatever they see.
Unlike many other injustices of distance learning, this possible injustice does not depend on having malware in the computer. But malware can potentiate it.
* Human Rights Watch report accuses [Bolivia's] administration … of overseeing legal offensive against people linked to Morales*, the president expelled by the coup in 2019.
To construe launching a nonviolent protest as "terrorism" is tyranny, and reveals the nature of the coup-installed government.
Evo Morales Tells Jacobin: We’re Still Fighting the Multinationals Who Drove the Coup.
Last month was the hottest September ever recorded, as California found out, to its peril.
I've read that 2020 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded. But this record will not last many years.
*‘Successful’ People Are Misery Super-Spreaders.*
*'On the Level of Guantánamo': Oklahoma Jail Guards Accused of Torturing Inmates With 'Baby Shark' Song.*
The idea of torture by repeatedly playing a childish song seems like a joke. Indeed, it was a joke, in the movie One, Two, Three (1961).
But that headline is misleading. Shackling prisoners to a wall for hours is real torture, music or no music.
*[UK] Data watchdog finds [education] ministry broke GDPR by mishandling national database for [all pupils in] England.*
It is interesting to see that in some cases the GDPR can prohibit construction of a database. Now we will see whether it can in practice get rid of the prohibited database.
Perhaps in January the GDPR will cease to have any force in the UK, as its commitment to follow EU directives will cease then.
*Activists Sue San Francisco for Wide-Ranging Surveillance of Black-Led Protests Against Police Violence.*
Michael Mann reports that the last ten years of climate research give us a basis for hope: it takes only five years for a reduction in CO2 emissions to result in a reduction in global heating.
So we still have a chance to avoid global heating disaster, if we start promptly and work hard.
*EU parliament votes for 60% greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2030.*
This is starting to be in the range of what is really necessary.
*Chase Climate Pledge 'Shows the Power of Relentless Environmental Activism' But 'Not Aggressive Enough'.*
*As climate catastrophes worsen the insecurity of the white so-called middle class will only intensify as well, and for good reason. As it does an even greater number of white folks will choose from a fascist movement that speaks to their loss of power and invites them to reclaim it (from the wrong people) by force, or a Black Lives Matter movement that literally ignores their existence. Which will they choose?*
I'm going to oppose fascism (a form of illiberal plutocracy) no matter what, just as I am going to oppose racism no matter what. The violence of thugs against blacks is vicious, so I will oppose that no matter what. This is because of my adherence in a universal standard of justice, one that has nothing to do with identity.
I hope that those who campaign against those forms of evil will recognize the need for a universal standard of justice. Without that, their campaigns will undermine their own moral foundation as well as their chances to win general support.
The inspector general of the Department of Justice reports that Attorney General Sessions and his deputy were directly behind the decisions to prosecute every unauthorized immigrant and separate families. They pressured subordinate officials to do this.
(satire) *White House Staff Heartbroken By Sight Of Weak Trump Struggling To Yell Racial Slurs At TV.*
*Thousands of people given emergency shelter [in the UK] at start of pandemic are now being evicted.*
Ironically, this is happening just as Covid-19 is spreading again and it is cold outside — like the situation that motivated giving them housing earlier this year.
(satire) *…a division of confused U.S. Army Corps of Engineers members were reportedly trying Wednesday to figure out what the big blue cable connected to the country does.*
*Climate denial ads on Facebook seen by millions, report finds.*
Golden Dawn organized a quasimilitary militia and carried out crimes of violence for 20 years before it was prosecuted. Why did the Greek state take so long to prosecute it?
*Fed Lending Saved Corporate America. It Could Do the Same for Cities and States.*
The Dutch Rijksmuseum is thinking about returning objects that were collected over a century ago from territory that is now Indonesia. What does it mean to "return" those objects?
Consider the diamond mentioned in the article, which the Dutch took from the Sultan of Banjarmasin. If the Netherlands ought to return that, to whom should it be returned? Today's Republic of Indonesia has nothing to do with that diamond's history; it succeeded the Netherlands as the sovereign power for most of Borneo but not directly from the Sultan's government. It makes no sense to "return" the diamond to the republic. The sultan of Banjarmasin would hardly have demanded the return of his diamond to a polity based on Java unless it was ruled by his descendants.
The diamond could be returned to the sultan's last heir (who might that be?), but is there really a moral obligation to do that?
The diamond may be worth a lot of money, but I'd expect it has less non-monitary value than other objects in the museum. Each one raises the questions, "Was this stolen?" and "If so, from whom?" and "Who is the heir today of that person or entity?"
The FBI shut down a real right-wing terrorist plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
I hope that after January we can prosecute the extremist that encouraged this plot.
Everyone: call on Attorney General Becerra to hold Amazon accountable for its abuses of its workers in California.
Relatives of people who died from Covid-19 feel intensley offended by the bully's contempt for the deceased.
The New England Journal of Medicine called for voting out the bully, for the "recklessly squandered lives" of people who died from Covid-19 due to his crazy policies.
US citizens: call on the US Forest Service to reject proposed new regulations to facilitate extracting fossil fuels from public lands.
General Milley and other top US generals are in quarantine in case the spreader in chief transmitted coronavirus to them.
Facebook is banning most sorts of presentations of QAnonsense.
The Boston thug department protects its thugs, even from the district attorney. It drags its feet on handing over information about thugs that have been accused of violence.
She is threatening (though not with an aggressive tone) to use a subpoena to get the information.
*[The corrupter]’s Barrett Nomination Another Step Toward Christian Fascism.*
The "prosperity gospel" is a perversion of Christianity. (Don't the gospels quote Jesus as saying, "Sell all thou hast and give to the poor"?) Just as the middle ages twisted Christianity into the divine right of kings, plutocracy has twisted it into the divine right of billionaires.
Israel's thug chief: Protesting is now illegal so we will continue breaking up protests, even violently.
Morally, the situation is clear. People have a right to protest, so they should be allowed to protest as long as they wear masks and keep well apart. But Israel does not have a written constitution that could be used to argue legally that the law must not violate people's constitutional rights.
Deputy Chief Tingirides has set up very successful community policing in Watts, in Los Angeles.
All thug departments should do what Tingirides is doing in Watts, but that does not conflict with the goal of defunding. What that means is to transfer funds to an agency set up to respond to many kinds of 9-1-1 calls by sending people trained for counseling rather than confronting criminals.
Don't make the mistake of choosing politicians for their physical strength or the mistake of imagining that recovering from an infection is a test of physical strength.
The leaders of the Greek right-wing hatred party Golden Dawn have been convicted of participating in a criminal gang.
Bogus Johnson is trying to take the effective legislative power away from Parliament and give it to people under the Prime Minister's command.
The US deportation thugs admit that they acted illegally by deporting Cesar Marroquín while he was waiting for an immigration hearing. But that may not enable him to get back.
Intensification of agriculture is pushing global heating.
Thinning some forests in Australia led to worse fires.
It is possible that this was due to other effects of the machines used to do the thinning.
* The Chinese-backed gold, silver and copper mine [in Papua New Guinea] risks catastrophic environmental destruction, [UN] special rapporteurs argue.*
Exxon plans to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 17%, as of 2025.
That is a plan for mass murder.
Two British PISSI recruits tortured captives using techniques borrowed from US torture, including waterboarding and "stress positions".
We warned that US torture would inspire revenge torture.
*William Hanage, professor of epidemiology at Harvard, likens the [herd immunity] strategy to protecting antiques in a house fire by putting them all in one room, standing guard with a fire extinguisher, but simultaneously fanning the flames [in the rest of the house].*
The Save Our Seas Act proposes funds to encourage research on removing plastic waste from the sea, and on ways to recycle it. It can be seen as an effort to avoid doing anything to reduce the production of plastic objects that are difficult to recycle.
Two Republican disinformation operatives face criminal charges of trying to intimidate voters with frightening lies.
The Los Angeles thug department makes massive use of face recognition. It tries to weasel out of this by saying it does not have a face recognition system. Which is true, strictly speaking, but does not change anything.
It is a strategic mistake to argue based on the absence of some photos from the database. Their most obvious reply would be, "So let us put everyone in it; then it will be unbiased." That is the opposite of what we want; we want limitations on who they can include in that database, and which captured faces they can search it for.
(satire) *Trump Supporters Fighting Over Used Tissues President Tossed From SUV.*
*[The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic.*
Calling on US hotels to stop serving as deportation prisons. Keeping people in hotels as prisons has facilitated deporting them quickly and denying them their right to a hearing.
*Peace Groups Blockade Creech Air Force Base to Protest 'Illegal and Inhumane Remote Killing' by US Drones.*
The district attorney who asked for prosecution of the thug that killed Breonna Taylor lied about what happened in the grand jury. Recordings show he never asked the grand jury to consider murder charges.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany recklessly endangered reporters' lives by refusing to wear a mask while talking to them.
When she got infected, she did not know right away. In general, you don't know you are infected until some days after you start spreading virus — or perhaps you never find out. This is why you should always protect others by wearing a mask. Her failure to do so was reckless.
Surely the superspreader had told her to follow his example, but that is no excuse.
(satire) *John Bolton was reportedly seething with jealousy Tuesday that President Trump got to become a real-life living, breathing biological weapon.*
90 people work doing housekeeping jobs in the White House. At least two of them have contracted coronavirus, and were told to hush it up.
It is not a safe place to work.
The use of low-paid throw-away migrant labor in agriculture has spread around the world. Covid-19 has made many of them suffer more, but it will do nothing to improve the way agricultural workers are treated.
Giving them better treatment, including better pay, will make food more expensive. But that will be a good thing, if the wealthy countries support poor people better. It will make agricultural jobs good enough that citizens will work in them, and make farming more profitable in poor countries so that not so many people will be desperate to migrate for work.
Columbia University students voted for divesting from companies that are involved in Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Israel is planning to build an additional 4,400 housing units on Palestinian territory.
*Israeli prison ban on phone calls risks ‘breaking spirits’ of Palestinian minors.*
*Hamas, Fatah agree to hold elections in the coming months.*
Palestinians have been weakened by this disunity, but given the different conditions in parts of Palestine (in the West Bank, military occupation; in Gaza, siege) it is difficult for one government to govern both properly.
*Poll Shows Small Business Owners Support Multinational Tax Transparency.*
I don't think that small business owners should be more important than the rest of us, but they have plenty of opportunities to get screwed by big businesses they are compelled to deal with.
The California Resources Corporation owns almost 18,000 oil wells in California. Most of them are exhausted and must be plugged, for safety's sake. The corporation is broke, so it will cost the state almost a billion dollars to plug these wells.
I have a hunch that this corporation did not own the wells when they were profitable. I have a hunch it did not exist then. My hunch is that profitable oil companies sold off subsidiaries programmed for bankruptcy making them the owners of these wells, and those subsidiaries became the California Resources Corporation.
We know that a big coal company did this to escape its pension obligation to workers. The owners kept their wealth, and the workers were thrown back on Social Security. Which Republicans are now planning to destroy. If a coal company could do it, oil companies could do it.
Whether or not this is an instance of that form of cheating, it illustrates the tendency of businesses to run off with "profits" made by dumping debt on the public.
Remember this next time a rich person says, "I made this (all by myself)."
*Americans showed [the contemptuous leader] compassion. He repaid us with contempt.*
Even I showed some compassion to him personally, though without letting this override my greater duties as an American and as a human being.
A pediatrician asks why thugs should get qualified immunity when they injure people, and not doctors.
*More and more people are being excluded from British democracy in a creeping apartheid.*
A German court is considering the case against Assad and his government for use of sarin.
I have doubts about whether Assad used Sarin. I would not put it past him; he did plenty of killing, and plenty of torture of prisoners. I suppose he would not have had scruples about using nerve gas.
But I can't see why he would have used it only twice. Using poison gas even once, one assumes the full odium of having used poison gas, but gain little military advantage. Since he does not seem to be insane, why would he pay so much for so little?
In addition, Seymour Hirsh said that there was no sarin attack in Khan Sheikhun.
This is a doubt, not a certainty. I am not in a position to reach any conclusion about this. Meanwhile, it makes no difference to what I think of Assad. He is guilty of plenty of other crimes.
Pope Francis has spoken against neoliberal trickle-down politics.
Will this lead Biden to reconsider his rejection of Medicare for All?
Protesters won the annulment of the evidently rigged Kyrgyzstan election.
*Labour is staying neutral as the [Tory] government sanctions state violence against its citizens.* This includes violence up to and including rape or murder.
People who work in the White House are angry with the wrecker for not warning them he was transmitting virus and doing nothing to protect them or reduce the spread.
Got Covid-19? [The conman] wants bleach for others and the best treatment for himself.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price. When Jonathan was tased, he started twitching and the thug interpreted this as a threat.
The Department of Harshness and Sadism wants its documents of abuses to be classified as "temporary", which means they will be destroyed in a few years.
The wrecker has done broad harm to science in the US, and to public respect for scientists. Some kinds of damage could take a long time to repair.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sponsor H.R. 2529, a bill to continue the New START arms limitation treaty with Russia.
The UK is considering a massive investment to generate all residential electricity by wind power.
Examples like these can get the rest of the world moving. The return on this investment, in terms of towns and farms not flooded, could be enormous.
*Tesla Can Detect Aftermarket Hacks Designed to Defeat EV Performance Paywalls.*
In general, it is the car owner's right to make changes in the car, and manufacturers should not be allowed to implement measures to interfere. Devices, including cars, should not require subscriptions and should not record where the car goes.
But there is an exception: measures to reduce pollution. These are vital for public health — air pollution causes a lot of sickness and death — and "defeat devices" installed by car owners are just as dangerous as defeat devices installed by manufacturers.
My solution would be to put those systems into separate computers whose software cannot be changed by any digital activity. If the manufacturer can't change it, it is ok that the owner can't.
The Supreme Court accepted a lower court decision that a clerk who refused to register a same-sex marriage can be sued.
I think the concern showed by Thomas and Alito exaggerates the situation. Few jobs require taking actions specifically related to a same-sex marriage. If you don't want to do that part of the job, you can let someone else have the job.
AT&T has replaced tens of thousands of experienced union workers with subcontracted temps, chosen for cheapness. They obviously can't have the same level of skill, and the results cause damage, even danger.
A company called "Arise" outsources customer service for other companies to gig workers, and treats them as badly as one would expect.
A study estimates that there are 14 million tons of small pieces of plastic on the ocean floor.
*[The bullshitter's] Appointee to VOA Reporters: Criticizing [the bullshitter] Is a Conflict of Interest.*
*Clean Electricity Plan Would Free US Economy of Carbon Dependence in 15 Years.* It would also create millions of good jobs in the US.
Indonesia has found in Covid-19 the opportunity to sell out big to business, undermining many environmental protections and workers' rights. Workers are organizing a strike and a protest.
Our problems are the result of letting business have too much clout already. We cannot correct them by giving business more clout.
*As Covid-Positive GOP Politicians Enjoy Healthcare They 'Would Deny Others,' Coronavirus Pandemic Again Makes Case for Medicare for All.*
Faux News teaches its cultists to speak and think in a different language with a different way of thinking. Its words are drawn from English, but speakers of ordinary English can't communicate with them.
The bullshitter has been the biggest single source of misinformation about Covid-19.
I think the term "disinformation" fits better than "misinformation."
The US Senate is blocking the IMF from giving (for once, not lending) aid to many poor countries to deal with Covid-19.
Syria is suffering from food shortages, and has rationed give-aways of bread.
Many opioid treatment centers in the US are turning away patients for reasons related to Covid-19.
European countries keep slowly increasing their anti-transmission measures, but too slowly to get in front of Covid-19, so it keeps on increasing.
Australia and New Zealand got it right: they took strong steps and drove the case numbers way down. I expect that the timid governments will end up with a much longer period of lockdown.
Cops (not extremely thuggish, it seems) broke up an 18-person vigil for Julian Assange, then apparently knocked on Craig Murray's hotel room door at night to ask when he was leaving.
The fires in California this year have burned over 4% of California's territory, and the fire season is far from over.
In a decade or two, most years will be like this year, and a few will be worse. I have a feeling that life in California will be difficult, and farming even more so.
Twitter has all of a sudden decided not to allow tweets to wish for someone's death. Will that apply to everyone?
The nihilist's behavior does more than ruin debates. It makes the idea of a debate an absurdity.
However, US presidential debates have not been sincere confrontations of ideas for a long time. Since only the two major parties are included, we always got soft right wing vs hard right wing.
Video game simulated airplanes emit real CO2, due to data centers and network transmission. The programmed obsolescence of game platforms also damages the environment.
It is never difficult for me to decide not to play a video game. I simply remember that the game is nonfree software, and the idea of running it makes me shudder.
*Tens of Millions in PPP Loans Went to Corporate Polluters After Companies Were Fined $52 Million, Analysis Shows.*
The Tories plan to find new ways to turn off the right of asylum.
One of the causes of the repeated legal claims from asylum seekers in the UK is that agents keep disregarding the law and the government's policies, and deporting people in despite of their rights.
Surely this is not an accident. If the minister in charge taught her department not to take shortcuts, not to deport people illegally, they would not have the need or the valid grounds to make these claims.
The nonviolent "Medicaid army" is rallying around the US to demand medical care for everyone.
Can anyone tell me of a site where people can find the locations of these rallies, without having to run nonfree Javascript code? I would like to post it, and maybe I can go to one.
To call violent right-wing extremists "vigilantes" understates their actions and their danger.
Proposing reforms to the administration of US elections.
Pointing out that a meritocracy is not a good society for most people.
"Meritocracy" encourages people to compete to climb the ladder, but ascending one rung pushes another down one. If you have to be above average to win a decent life, half the people won't get one. What we really should aim to do is to bring the runs closer together and pull the whole ladder up. We need to reverse the concentration of wealth.
There is a role in a well-organized society for judging people by comparing how well they would do a certain job. We want to put the best people in charge of important decisions. But what does it mean to be "best"? It's not just a matter of ability — making good decisions requires good values, too.
We have seen the bad results of choosing managers solely for ability to succeed. When Boeing ceased to be run by people with a career commitment to making safe planes, and was instead run by people with a career commitment to success, it started covering up possible problems rather than fixing them. When medical insurance companies and hospital companies started to be run by people who didn't have decades of commitment to doing medicine, they made it their goal to get more profit for less medicine.
The word "merit" is not the way to express what we should seek. We should call this something else. "Menschness"?
Antisocial media, and especially Facebook, host intense misogyny.
The article's explicit point is valid and important, but (I expect) not really news to readers of stallman.org. You know how nasty antisocial media get, and that generally females receive more hostility there than males.
My main reason for citing this article is to highlight a campaign to change our use of language: the article describes verbal abuse as "violence".
The insults and threats described are nasty, and they can hurt. But they are not "violence" (though threatening violence is but one step away from doing it). To stretch "violence" to include verbal abuse is an abuse of language, and a dangerous one.
The frontier between words and violence is an important barrier to escalation of fights. Respect for this line helps people restrain themselves from moving from verbal attacks to punches or shots. It is not always effective, but if we weaken it by redefining "violence" to include mere words, we will learn the hard way how important that restraint was. Erasing the border will lead to more censorship on the one hand, and more physical attacks on the other.
Hatred can be expressed through words, and through physical acts. We can condemn both without erasing the distinction.
There is a lot of hatred on Facebook, and a lot of disinformation, and a lot of manipulation. Why so much? As I gather, it is because Facebook's business model gives Facebook an incentive to promote these things. It designs its algorithm to maximize "engagement" and the algorithm promotes various kinds of harmful postings because they achieve that goal.
Facebook is under pressure to curb the hatred, but if its profits depend on pushing hatred (along with disinformation and manipulation), its efforts to reduce them are likely to change little.
Rather than trying to fix these problems by imposing various kinds of censorship, I think we should forcibly change Facebook's algorithm, and its business model. Businesses are not entitled to human rights, and regulating business models is not unjust like censorship.
The Interior Department stopped buying drones a year ago, for concern that China will spy through them. Now the US does not have enough drones for fighting wildfires.
There is danger that China will spy through Chinese-made drones, just as there is danger that companies and other government will spy through drones made elsewhere. But I don't think China will learn many important secrets from looking at wildfires.
The first step to making sure that a drone can't be used to spy (by some party other than its owner) is to make sure that the software in it is free, and is being checked by people for quality and honesty.
If you know Jolie O'Dell, would you please tell her that when I phone her number I get "This number is no longer in service"? Please ask her to send me email to get back in touch.
Android in the EU offers users a limited selection of default search engines, which got onto the list by bidding in an auction. As a result, DuckDuckGo did not make it into the list.
I have no way of seeing what search engines do appear. Is there any that we think does not track users?
*Amnesty specializes in hard truths. No wonder Modi froze it out of India.*
What worries me is that the advance of tyranny in so many countries will dilute the strength of efforts to hold tyrants accountable, which are being weakened by disunity and by conversions to tyranny.
US citizens: phone your senators again at 1-844-335-4855 and implore them to do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
The cheater pressured his closest associates and big financial sponsors to risk infection by meeting with him when he had reason to know Hope Hicks might have infected him.
Will any of them learn a lesson about him from this?
People that work in the White House are worried, too.
Will the cheater's hospitalization hinder the malfunctioning of government? Let's hope so. Nothing causes more malfunction than having the cheater actively intervening ;-!.
A book reports that the defeat of Hitler is owed partially to homosexual members of the British parliament, who frequented Berlin because of its loose sexual life. They saw Hitler's repression in 1934, and began teaching others how bad he was.
The bullshitter's ghostwriter says that the bullshitter must be devastated now that people know he isn't as rich as he pretended to be.
The idea that he sought to embody the poor person's idea of what it means to be rich makes sense to me. I have a feeling that he was trying to prove that he was a success, to himself above all.
"Cancel culture" can be found in various political camps. One target is anyone that advocates the human rights of Palestinians or the end of Israel's occupation/siege of Palestine.
To be clear, Israel occupies the West Bank and besieges Gaza.
Prisoners are being held longer in the UK because to obtain release they have to participate in rehabilitation activities, and those activities are not available due to Covid-19.
Ironically, keeping them in prison tends to increase the spread of Covid-19.
The US government has worked out an agreement for the bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma that lets the individuals that own it off the hook.
*With Focus on Assange, Belmarsh Tribunal Puts 'US War Crimes on Trial'.*
This is a private activity, modeled after the Russell Tribunal in 1966.
There were protests on Oct 2 against various banks that fund fossil fuels.
The US government sent surveillance planes and snipers to George Floyd's funeral.
Sony has got a patent on the obvious idea that a computer system (specifically, a game console) might use a camera to recognize all users, so no one needs to explicitly log in.
This patent would give Sony a basis to sue any other company that implements this idea. It does not necessarily mean that Sony itself will implement this idea, or even that it knows how to implement it reliably, but perhaps it will.
Would you want every Sony-made game console to be able to recognize you using biometrics? I would not.
On the other hand, given a game console powered by free software, I might be willing to give my friend's console some biometrics to recognize me by. But I'd want to be sure that they wouldn't be usable for recognizing me when I pass by a camera in the street, and that might be difficult to implement.
"Tips" to Doordash and Amazon food delivery workers go to the company rather than to the worker, they cancel out the whole of the worker's base pay.
The article seems to err in equating this to tipping of waiters. They are not the same system. Yes, the waiter's base pay is below minimum wage — but the restaurant does not claw back that base pay when the waiter gets a tip, as Doordash and Amazon do.
Joseph Stiglitz: *How the Republican party threatens the US republic.*
The violence of Chilean thugs against protesters reached the point of throwing a teenager protester off a bridge.
The protester survived, but that was only luck.
Polish expat Wojciech Sadurski is facing criminal prosecution for accusing the Polish ruling party and national broadcaster for supporting right-wing extremists.
To prosecute people for saying things like that (whether true or not) is tyranny. The fact that this prosecution is occurring proves the injustice of the Polish government.
The sad thing is that it is not alone. President Sarkozy of France prosecuted several people for insulting him.
*Indigenous Activists Target Liberty Mutual's Boston Headquarters Demanding They Stop Insuring Tar Sands Projects.*
Getting oil by mining tar sands is an especially bad form of fossil fuel; its emissions are higher than most others. The world should not only stop investing that, it should shut that down immediately.
Torres Strait Islanders have complained to the UN that Australia is endangering their way of life by failing to curb global heating. Their islands are in danger of flooding, and eventually permanent inundation.
That damage lies in the the future, but Australia's current actions are causing it, and they must be changed now. Of course, Australia is not solely responsible for global heating, but its part can be identified and measured.
*Investors Extracted $400 Million From a Hospital Chain That Sometimes Couldn’t Pay for Medical Supplies or Gas for Ambulances.*
This is an example of how the US economic system's encouragement of predatory businesses. I think there should not be any for-profit hospitals.
Should we wish Trump, the bullshitter, a speedy recovery?
All else being equal, I do. But I think it is more important to wish my country a speedy recovery from the influence of the bullshitter.
I do not wish him to die. No person deserves to die, and the death of any person is always something to regret. I would not rejoice that he is dead.
However, I would rejoice that he can do no more damage.
Industrialization is destroying the mangroves of Kutch, in India, and with them the unique breed of camels that swim around them.
China has made the production of molecular hydrogen using electrolysis so cheap that the oil companies' dream of production hydrogen by burning fossil fuels is already obsolete.
*A judge has granted the request of an anonymous juror in the [Breonna Taylor] case that their Grand Jury proceedings be made public.*
After studying the transcript, lawyers will be able to tell us whether the prosecutor tried properly to secure other indictments.
A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns.
*'Strong Start' But 'Not the End of the Road,' Says Greenpeace as Biden Vows to Bar Fossil Fuel Leaders From Transition Team.*
*First-Ever Analysis Reveals How America's Top 100 Law Firms Are 'Accelerating the Climate Crisis'.* The study gives a grade to each of those law firms based on the work it has done.
A Texas sheriff has been charged with destroying video evidence showing how thugs tased Javier Ambler to death.
From now on, New York City will fine people up to a thousand dollars if they refuse to accept a gratis mask and wear it.
The article says "aggressively", but I think that starting with the offer makes it a rather kind and gentle manner of enforcement: "Please let us help you do what is needed to stamp out disease."
The 1880s counterpart to today's Amazon was the railroads: a monopoly of intermediation which could exploit producers and end-users. One of the anti-monopoly parties had this song.
Cory Doctorow: we should break up monopolies in lots of fields.
And not only those involved in digital activities. Many fields are too concentrated now in the US: some that come to my mind instantly include pesticides, seeds, meat, pharmacies, book publishing, and airlines.
Every area needs to have many competitors, or become a regulated monopoly and perhaps not for profit.
My tax scheme could be part of the solution.
*Australia's offshore asylum centres have been a cruel disaster. They must not be replicated by the UK.*
Some Maori activists
Maori have common interests, and in a democratic state such as New Zealand there are well-established ways to pursue those interests. One is to have a political party, and indeed the author is part of one. New Zealand's governmental system enables smaller parties to have some influence, rather than next to zero influence as in the US.
However, a separate parliament — which implies separate laws — for a subset of people that live dispersed around New Zealand would be conflict with the principle that everyone is equal under the law.
The article cites the UK as an example to follow. I contend it is exactly the opposite.
I gather that people considered the UK too centralized. Setting up regional administrations and devolving some powers to them was perhaps a wise idea. However, doing this based on the historical "nations" that were merged three centuries years ago to form the United Kingdom was utterly foolish: each of those "nations" now has an influential secessionist party.
Meanwhile, people in England (meaning most of the UK's population) got none of the benefit of decentralization, because the UK did not set up a national administration for England. In effect, the UK acted to boost separatism while remaining, for the most part, too centralized.
I suggest that the right way for the UK to decentralize would be to divide its whole territory into a workable number of smaller regions, perhaps roughly one million people in each, avoid aligning them with old historical grudges, then devolve the same powers to each of them.
The next target of Chinese imperialism is Taiwan.
*Covid-19 has legitimized once-radical ideas in UK, say Green leaders.*
Ivanka Trump is now caught in a financial scandal that may be criminal.
Please don't use the term "first daughter."
The bullshitter was close enough to Biden during the debate to possibly infect him. His family members were present, without masks, trying hard to infect other people in the audience.
More about this danger.
Such events should invite people in the audience to ask the staff for help in dealing with others near them not wearing masks, to tell them to put on masks or move away.
The governor of Wisconsin begged the disease-spreader to please not come there for a disease-spreading event.
Now perhaps he won't.
What are the implications of this event for the campaign? Whatever happens, the bullshitter will lie about it and try to turn it to his advantage.
Exiles from Salafi Arabia have started a party calling for democracy there.
Russian critical journalist Irina Slavina burnt herself to death after state agents seized her computers.
I wonder why she could not face life after that. Was it simply that one more act of harassment was more than she could bear? Were there things on the computers that were going to enable the state to ruin other people's lives?
It seems that coronavirus was not intimidated by the bullshitter. He got infected despite all his boasts that he would not. He has probably infected many of his cronies. He could have avoided that by wearing a mask.
Will his supporters feel honored to have received a virus from their leader?
More about the Syrian mercenaries sent by Turkey to fight against Armenia. It seems they were told they would be guards, and were surprised to find that their job was fighting a war.
*[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.*
The governor of Texas ordered counties to reduce the number of places to drop off ballots.
This is a new method, but it continues the Republican pattern of voter suppression. If you can't win honestly, cheat, is their motto.
If Republicans were loyal to the idea of democracy, they would not seek to stop people who disagree with them from voting. Their use of voter suppression demonstrates that they are opposed to the basic ideas of the United States.
*Huge Victory for Ocean Defenders as Seismic Blasting Halted in Atlantic.*
It seems there is no quick way to authorize the activity, and by the time such a thing could be tried, we may have a better chance of rejecting them.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor the CIVIL Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
(satire) *[the bullshitter] stoked fears surrounding crime Tuesday by having … Mike Pompeo disguise himself as a cat burglar and rob him on the debate stage. "Oh no, look, it’s a violent Antifa thug sent here by Joe Biden to rob me!"*
*As a Result of ACLU Litigation, Trump Administration Ends Policy Prohibiting Immigrant Minors From Accessing Abortion.*
New Jersey has increased taxes on people and businesses with incomes over a million dollars a year.
It is a small step, but it's a start!
Amy Barrett's legal philosophy, to apply her religion to every decision, disqualifies her from being on the Supreme Court.
Cambridge University has agreed to divest fully from fossil fuels.
The easiest part of the divestment will be done this year, another part by 2025. The divestment will be completed by 2030.
Divestment is an important step, but there are limits to what it can achieve. We need laws to turn off the fossil fuel industry.
The Federal Reserve has bought $355 million in bonds of fossil fuel companies since March.
The DHS handed out PR instructions telling its representatives to take a sympathetic line towards the right-wing Kenosha killer, and towards the right-wing extremist group "Patriot Prayer".
Has the Department of Harshness and Sadism morphed into the Department of Hatred Support?
* So long as U.S. leaders continue to coddle the Saudis, it’s difficult not to ask who is more evil—the maniacal Saudi crown prince or the mendacious Western governments and business people who support him?*
The UK is considering a new standard for "biodegradable plastic" which requires that they don't result in microplastic grains.
A brief life of Paul Stephenson, a hero of desegregation in the UK and the US.
The redirection of UK medicine to treating Covid-19 instead of other diseases will end up having caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths from cancer due to failure to treat it early.
I expect there were many more deaths due to failure to treat other diseases.
The way to avoid this is to stay ahead of Covid-19 with measures strong enough to keep the infection rate going down. R approximately 1 is like a pencil balanced on its point — it won't stay at 1.
Nathan Law, in exile from Hong Kong, cannot contact his relatives at all, since China would seize the opportunity to pressure him by punishing them.
I don't see any hope for Hong Kong; I think China will turn it into a hell that terrifies people into suppressing their thoughts until they forget how to think them. However, crushing Hong Kong is one step on a path of conquest and tyranny, and the more the response to that crushing sets China back, the less harm China will be able to do.
The "bread" in Subways' sandwiches cannot qualify for a tax exemption in Ireland, because it has too much added sugar.
That added sugar is not good for people. I wonder if Subway will reduce the sugar to qualify for the tax exemption. I wonder if other countries should adopt a similar legal policy.
*By kicking Amnesty out, India is betraying its founding ideals.*
*Signalling to his base, as he did referring to the Proud Boys on Tuesday, the [wrecker] is following a playbook from 1930s Germany.*
An FBI memo warns about violent right-wing extremist violence, perhaps after the election.
US companies evade regulations on toxic PFAs by switching to newer chemicals that are probably just as bad, but have not been studied yet.
It was obvious that faster processing and less inspection would make meat plants more dangerous. And it has.
Human rights lawyers that make reports to help the International Criminal Court are threatened by sanctions that the US placed on anyone "providing support".
Since that threat is unconstitutional, they have gone to court asking for a ruling that the sanctions don't apply to them.
It will take months to vaccinate everyone against Covid-19, once a good vaccine is available. Only after massively vaccinating people will we find out how effective the vaccine is, for various groups.
The UK has imposed lockdowns in 16 cities, but in most of them Covid-19 has continued to increase, because people are not carrying out the rules.
A cloud of new issues that surround the new instance of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
I think it is quite plausible that Erdoğan will have Turkish planes attack Armenia.
If Assange is convicted, he would be sent to the ADX Florence prison for solitary confinement for the rest of his life. A former warden of that prison describes it as "a fate worse than death."
Perhaps El Chapo requires special security measures, so that his henchmen cannot bust him loose. Perhaps also some of the al-Qa'ida prisoners. But most of the prisoners listed in the article do not belong to a gang and there is no special danger they would escape, no need and no justification to destroy them this way.
Global heating affects nights worse than days. Many people won't be able to sleep.
Tepco has been found liable for failing to take steps to keep the Fukushima nuclear plants safe from tsunamis.
California is considering paying reparations to descendants of past slaves.
I think the US government should do this; and the states that had segregation laws ("Jim Crow") should pay reparations to the descendants of blacks who lived in those states.
On the inhibiting effects of knowing someone is always watching.
The USPS stopped updating its list of people's known addresses in August. This will interfere with states' voting records.
The UK government is drawing inspiration from Australia's horrible treatment of refugees.
(satire) *Stunned Pundits Criticize Trump For Refusing To Denounce His Base.*
The US government is going to great lengths to prevent an independent medical examination of torture victim Mohammed al-Qahtani.
*40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction.*
The way to save some of those is to curb global heating and protect more areas of land and sea.
US technology companies may already be helping China repress Hong Kongers, or anyone talking about Hong Kong.
You cannot trust technology companies that operate in Hong Kong, or in China.
How Ghana licked Covid-19: its president did a proper job of leading the country, focusing on the crucial goals.
In other words, a country does not need to be rich or advanced to do this; it is enough to have a competent leader that focuses seriously on the task at hand, and that people trust. Alas, many countries don't have one.
*America's year of fire and tempests means climate crisis just got very real.*
George Monbiot: *[Bogus] Johnson's pledges on the environment are [bogus]. Worse is how cynical they are.*
The Guardian is trying to excuse having leaked the password to decrypt the file of encrypted unredacted US cables.
Wikileaks published unredacted US cables because various governments and agencies were about to get the password to decrypt the encrypted file. A Guardian reporter had published the decryption password in a Guardian book.
Assange concluded it was better to publish the cables than for them to be available only privately to those in the know.
Just recently the Guardian has started seriously covering the Assange hearings.
Meanwhile, here are two more days of Craig Murray's thorough coverage.
With the wrecker determined to grab the coming election by hook or by crook, we could end up on Jan 20 with no acknowledged decision.
Trans people in Panama faced big difficulties when the country restricted which days each person could be on the street according to the sex listed on per national ID card.
I wonder who was allowed to go outdoors on Sundays? Only intersex people?
This is, by the way, one more reason that national ID cards are an injustice.
The bullshitter's campaign in 2016 used Facebook ads to discourage blacks from voting. Facebook should show the public precisely what it did to achieve that.
Using advertisements to discourage some group from voting is, in spirit, an attack on democracy. It is not as bad as outright voter suppression, but it is bad.
Israel is neglecting Arab citizens in dealing with Covid-19, so the disease is spreading in Arab areas.
Israel permits overt housing discrimination against Arabs.
Amazon's warehouse robots impose a high pace of work on the humans that still work there. Apparently Amazon has cut their numbers too far.
*Human Rights Watch Details NYPD Attack on Peaceful Protesters.*
It was a Black Lives Matter protest on June 4. The thugs encircled the protesters to force them to remain till after the curfew, at which point the thugs attacked them systematically.
EU unions call for investigation of Amazon's plans to increase surveillance of its workers.
Turkey is signing up Syrian opposition fighters as mercenaries to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia.
Why would they want to do that? Purely for the money? Because Armenians are "infidels"?
(satire) *… top GOP leaders argued Monday that giving President Donald Trump a second term would be a Christian act of charity for a poor, elderly man.* And help him stay out of prison.
The US imports a large amount of products made from wild-caught bats and rodents. Catching them and handling them creates a danger of new diseases, and so does shipping them to the US.
*Analysis Shows Nearly 80% of US Household Wealth Owned by Millionaires and Billionaires.*
Yanis Varoufakis proposes an alternative to a wealth tax that would achieve the same purpose.
*Environmental Protections Could Be in Danger with Trump’s SCOTUS Pick.*
*Progressives Warn Barrett's Right-Wing Ideology and Past Rulings Signal She Could Intentionally 'Make the Country a More Unjust Place'.*
Investigating the complexities of Yitzhak Rabin's politics towards Palestinians.
(satire) *California Firefighters Massage 2.5 Million Gallons Of Moisturizer Into Forests To Prevent Dryness.*
RSF calls on Oregon to drop criminal charges against reporter April Ehrlich, for interviewing homeless fire refugees being kicked out of a park.
The thugs wanted to keep her outside where she couldn't talk with them.
The cheater poses in public to make Christians think he is one of them, while privately regarding them as useful suckers.
I too think of them as fools, but unlike the cheater, I respect them by honestly showing them my disapproval and opposition.
A court order tells the Census to continue for another month as originally planned, but the Saboteur of Commerce said he will defy the order.
This looks like another step in the wrecker's campaign to disarm all legal restraint on what he does.
104 drivers have driven cars into Black Lives Matter protesters since May 25. Some of them were terrorist attacks, and 39 drivers face criminal charges.
Some right-wing fanatics escaped prosecution by claiming they were afraid of the protesters they had driven into the middle of.
DeJoy said that he had the deactivated mail sorting machines disassembled — apparently to make sure they could not be put back in service in the event a court ordered it.
He also said that the parts were put into other machines, but this seems to have been false.
However, some staff have disobeyed and kept machines working, and in general continued doing their jobs well.
It is a mistake to run the Post Office as a business. We should define it as a national service and think about what more it can do.
*The Economic Benefits of a Public US Postal Service.*
Giuliani owns a company that has no employees, but got a federal PPP loan which it is allowed to use only for paying employees. Was this a crime?
If we have an honest Justice Department some day, it should investigate. Putting that arrogant liar in prison for this and other crimes would be a little justice.
Many banks cover up their bad debts, with the tacit approval of government regulators. Some conceal so much in the way of bad debts that their net worth is negative but they don't let on.
West Virginia's Republican governor is a billionaire but his companies keep getting sued for nonpayment of debts.
The companies often lose or settle the debts — $140 million so far — but sometimes they still refuse to pay.
Even worse, officials that he appointed as governor have reduced the fines his companies owe for environmental violations. That is corruption.
It demonstrates the plutocratic attitude: the country, the people, and the Earth are here to be exploited.
In the UK, a few scientists claim that it is safe to let Covid-19 infect nearly everyone. They do this with interpretations and arguments that are not necessarily wrong, but are strained. The right-wing press exaggerates the importance of their dissent.
It seems that group disregards entirely the danger of long-term injury, even to young people. Because of this, allowing lots of people to be infected, even people who are unlikely to die, would be a big mistake.
If transmission-limiting measures are taken soon, the hospitals will not fill up with people sick with Covid-19, and normal treatment of other diseases can continue.
The US government has contrived to keep most international election observers away, just when we need them more than ever.
Australian rules for approving fossil fuel plants are designed to rush the approval and provide excuses for disregarding harm that is likely to result.
An interview with a woman who has been stalked for 11 years by a violent ex-lover.
There are many situations where there are a few ways to respond, and each one may succeed, do nothing, or backfire, and there is no way to predict. You can choose to roll the dice, spin the wheel, or guess which number is in the envelope. Good advice might tell you which gamble gives you the best odds, but you can't avoid gambling, except by giving up. Whether to threaten an abusive ex may be one of these situations.
If you lose, you can always agonize about the fact that you might have won if you had chosen a different source of randomness to bet on. But the choice you made also might have won. It is useless to agonize about or criticize the choice of gamble. The best you can do is choose the best odds and go ahead.
To come up with a better plan could do a lot of good.
I wonder if it might make sense to sentence stalkers to carry digital trackers to detect whether they approach places where their victims go. It is unjust to do this to people in general, but it would be acceptable as a punishment for stalking.
An EU requirement for countries to respect and implement rule of law is blocking the release of EU funds to Hungary for coping with Covid-19. A compromise is being considered to release the funds.
I am glad to see that the European Parliament is standing firm for that requirement. However, perhaps it is right to make an exception for the medical emergency. Surely other funds, used for things that are not desperately urgent, would offer a good opportunity to pressure Órban, perhaps even a bigger one.
Modi has forced Amnesty International out of India by freezing its bank account.
It's not unusual for the UK and US to deport people to countries they were too young to remember, and where they know no one. But it is especially cruel to deport Osime Brown, who is autistic, and won't be able to survive in Jamaica on his own,
A person who was brought to a country as a child has the right to live there.
The UK may authorize minorities in China to use British courts to sue China for repression.
In Thailand, you can be imprisoned for posting a negative review.
That is because defamation is a crime there, rather than a civil dispute. That is fundamentally unjust.
I have read that some US states make defamation a crime, but those crimes seem to rarely if ever be prosecuted.
*Many fossil fuel workers like me want to transition to renewables — but we need support.*
An FBI report from 2006 warned that right wing extremists would try to infiltrate US thug departments.
We know that a large fraction of thugs are right-wing extremists. Whether this is the result of active infiltration, I don't know, but I don't think it matters much.
Amazon is deploying a system for palm recognition.
As the article says, this is much better than other forms of biometric authentication. Another advantage is that people don't constantly leave palmprints wherever they go, as they leave fingerprints.
I have wondered whether the inside of the elbow might be a good choice.
A report on the status of inequality, in the US and internationally. With Javascript disabled, it looks a little weird, but I'm told that the information is all accessible.
The "Proud Boys" in Portland were few but violent; they attacked three journalists while thugs did nothing to stop them. However, thugs did attack BLM and antifascist protesters, as well as journalists.
China's pledge to limit and reduce fossil fuel use will ruin Australia's fossil fuel export business. This is because China will use its own coal rather than buy from Australia.
The sad thing is, China may do this by building new coal mines. The decrease in Australia's extraction may not be a decrease in coal burning for the world as a whole.
*What to Do When the World Is on Fire.* Government policies should encourage localized and diversified agriculture, using methods that improve the land and retain water, should replace the encouragement of monocultures controlled by megacorporations.
I don't want to live on a farm; I would feel isolated and bored there. But many people would really love to do this, if government policies encouraged hiring intelligent workers rather than buying "intelligent" tractors with proprietary software and DRM.
* Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Is an Enemy of Workers.* Indeed, she supports businesses against individuals in general.
(satire) *… the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly contacted Apple Monday to demand its assistance in opening an iPhone 11’s packaging.*
National Nurses United reports on inadequate tracking of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the US. These errors lead to bad response.
The wrecker has divided America, and his supporters think of us as evil rebels.
What makes this so devastatingly dangerous is that he has taught his supporters to reject the idea of following moral rules that ought to limit their conduct. Because they imagine we are evil, they believe that any violence, any lie, is justified.
People of such amorality are not fit to have any role in government.
The conman's tax affairs illustrate that the US has made it easy for rich "businessmen" to divert money out of a business as an excuse to say it made no profit and owes no tax.
*Until there's a Covid vaccine, we need to focus on treating longer-term health consequences.* In particular, hyperinflammation, which injures organs.
Palantir says it will not support governments that abuse human rights abroad. The word "abroad" is necessary because Palantir supports the US deportation thugs.
Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, was overheard condemning one of the bullshitter's advisers, saying that "Everything he says is false". The adviser in question was Scott Atlas.
He may be misleading the bullshitter as well as the public. However, getting bullshit as advice from advisers he chose cannot excuse the corrupter's campaign of bullshit.
I hope that the training of radiologists is not so narrow that they escape learning basic medical facts about infectious diseases and epidemics. However, no amount of education can overcome a determined partisan intention to expose bullshit.
(satire) *Biden Removes ‘Defeating Trump’ From Platform To Avoid Alienating Swing Voters.*
Adani, the company that wants to construct a giant coal mine in Australia, is prosecuting an activist for doing what Julian Assange did: asking for leaks about the plans. Now the company apparently wants to go further and prosecute the people who did what Glenn Greenwald did: prosecute the journalists who received the leaks from the activist.
Oxford University's measures to protect students studying about China from repression by China: they submit their homework anonymously, and recording those classes is forbidden.
The precise extent and depth of this anonymity are not clear in the article. If it means that their teachers don't know their real identities, that is surprising but may be necessary — I won't argue with it.
If it means simply that their identities are not associated with their work in some corporation's cloudy data base that the school uses, all students deserve that kind of anonymity, on general principles. Don't dox anyone to a company.
The prohibition on recording classes seems to be necessary in this case, but it has the unfortunate effect of blocking the one way you can fully participate in a Zoom class without running Zoom: find someone willing to make a recording of it, one way or another, and watch that video (either in real time, or later). (You can participate in audio by phoning in.)
This could still be done if your friend sets up a webcam on another computer pointing at the screen, and transmits a stream to your machine. But that is extra hard since webcams are expensive these days.
Decades ago, some Chinese swam to freedom in Hong Kong. Now the tyranny they escaped from has recaptured them.
I read that the UK agreed to try to stop refugees from arriving in Hong Kong so that Chine would not invade. It would have been impossible to defend Hong Kong militarily against a Chinese invasion.
On spreading hope for ultimately replacing the system of rule by the rich.
How broad is the repression of China's Hong Kong national security law?
Argentines are pressuring the president to keep his pledge to legalize abortion.
Greece is being crushed by debt, but it is spending a lot of money on arms to beat Turkey for the chance to extract some undersea gas.
Whichever country wins will win the chance to help destroy civilization. Meanwhile, even if this doesn't result in a war, the arms will kill destitute Greeks.
It is legitimate to criticize judicial nominees for their religion, if they seem likely to impose it on the rest of us.
If the cheater did not break the law in paying so little tax, does that mean he did not do anything wrong?
The article explains why that conclusion does not follow. But it seems to accept the widespread idea that people are not to blame for mistreating others when the rules permit it.
That is where I disagree. If person P takes advantage of a flaw in the system to do injustice, the system is at fault and P is at fault as well.
Ai Weiwei carried out a solitary protest in front of the court house where Assange's hearing ie being held. He was doing what every journalist ought to be doing.
Daniel Ellsberg, famed leaker of the Pentagon Papers that showed the dishonesty of the US about fighting the Vietnam War, testified that Assange asked the US government to help redact the leaked documents so there would be no risk anyone working for the US would be endangered, but the US government refused to help, so as to be able to accuse Assange of endangering them.
The pope has gone silent on criticizing China, apparently in exchange for a say in appointment of Catholic bishops there.
Pompeo has no moral authority, but I think he is right on this one. Of course, the injustices that the pope should criticize include many committed by other countries, and they include the USA.
*No, Officials Can NOT Strip Search Kids Just Because Their Mom Let Them Wait Briefly in the Car.*
*I was kidnapped by [thugs] for nine hours for being a Black Lives Matter protester.*
*Trump sold voters on the folly that he's a successful businessman. That's a con.*
I am not surprised. He would not have fought so long and hard to conceal his tax returns if it were not going to embarrass him badly.
*"A bad businessman or a tax cheat – probably both", say accountants.*
The heating of upper levels of the ocean is making hurricanes stronger and interfering with vertical mixing of the water. It also causes a positive feedback by confining further heating to the surface level.
To what extent should businesses be able to order stars not to wear clothing that supports political causes?
Political rights cannot discriminate between one political view and another. Where and when BLM slogans are permitted, so are right-wing slogans.
Craig Murray's coverage of three more sessions of the Assange extradition hearing.
Armed fascist demonstrators invade Portland every day and confront antifascist and BLM protesters, occasionally committing violence against them, against reporters, and against bystanders. The thugs tend to let them do it.
Food delivery app companies are parasites; the commissions they charge to restaurants are draining the restaurants dry.
They wantonly disregard laws to limit their commissions.
The authoritarian UK government has ordered schools not to use any materials from organizations that advocate eliminating capitalism.
This means that schools can't teach about the history of labor organizing and the Labour Party.
Already prohibited is anything produced by an organization that "endorses illegal activity." I suppose that rules out showing people anything written by Extinction Rebellion. Although that organization is nonviolent, its protests do include violating laws in minor ways. Also anything that says you should share copies of published works, disregarding any unjust laws or anti-socializing contracts that say you can't.
The Farm System Reform Act would break the dominion of Big Ag over small farms.
When Colorado thugs arrested Vanessa Peoples, dislocating her shoulder and tying her up so that she had trouble breathing, they shone a light on of a massive system of oppression, nominally called "child protection".
There really are parents who mistreat their children grossly, and the "child protection"service does sometimes protect children from real dangers. But it tends to be too officious about small mistakes or confusions, doing harm and spreading terror.
They demand a standard of attentiveness that a middle-class housewife might aspire to, from parents who don't have either the money or the time to try. The effective way to improve matters in those families is to give them more money, but right-wing authoritarians are only interested in punishing. More than half of black US families get investigated by these services.
Bringing thugs (many of whom are racist) into the family situation puts people in many kinds of danger, including the danger of getting a criminal record, which can ruin your chance for a lawful career and increase the poverty your children live in.
The same thing happens when thugs are stationed in schools — minor incidents become opportunities to initiate someone's criminal record.
*There are increasing numbers of experiences putting collaborative methods for hope and dialogue into practice.*
In small towns in Sweden there are stores with no staff. They are very convenient for the people who live nearby, because they don't recognize the danger of requiring them to log in using a national ID number to buy anything.
Vending machines that accept cash in varying amounts are not unusual. It would not be hard to make these stores accept cash, too. There should be a legal requirement that people not have to identify themselves to buy in a store.
The corrupter will have to pay $400 million in loans within the next few years, and he may not have that much. No wonder his palm is always open for gifts.
* France, Germany and UK among more than 60 countries promising to put wildlife and climate at heart of post-Covid recovery plans.*
*Surge in illegal drift nets threatens endangered species.*
Ralph Nader: *To Democratic Voters — Up Your Demands; To Trump Voters — See How He Didn’t Deliver for You.*
UK ministers have mostly replaced Parliament as the author of the law, and are imposing absurd and useless punishments connected with Covid-19. This has given right-wing antisocialists the opportunity to pose as defenders of liberty.
Advice for how to help QAnon believers get out of the QAnonsense.
The thug that shot Jacob Blake offers an explanation.
Unconscious racism often manifests by leading someone to jump to the worst possible conclusion, and take it as absolutely certain. If the thug is telling the truth about what he thought at the time — something we cannot be sure of — this could be the explanation for it.
I don't think it justifies shooting Blake.
*The American public wants less war. Can Joe Biden deliver?*
Mueller failed to use all the means at his disposal to investigate the possible crimes committed by the corrupter. And then Barr sabotaged the awareness of what Mueller had found.
About the difficulty of enforcing the rather lax mask requirement of Key West, and dealing with covidiots.
The people who don't wear a mask, and say "It's my business if I take a risk," evidently don't understand that their mask is needed to protect others. Other people's masks protect you; your mask is to protect them.
Perhaps it would be useful to have a massive publicity campaign about that.
Many employers are using nonfree software, including videoconference software, to surveil and monitor staff working at home.
The feature that lets someone check whether you are "active" is a malicious feature. With free software, you could fix it to say you are active.
We see also how connecting to one of those cloudy dis-service can be a way for an employer to monitor you.
There is a controversy over whether and how a museum should display the art of Philip Guston, which depicted people in KKK robes to relate their evil to everyday life activities.
The danger is not only that people might miss the irony the artist intended. It is also that right-wing conspiracy fabricators might intentionally try to misrepresent it or build QAnonsense around it.
Islamic Relief will argue in the Israeli Supreme Court to refute false accusations that it is a terrorist group.
*Activists protest ban on distributing food to migrants in Calais.*
It is unconscionable to try to eliminate inconvenient poor people by denying them food.
The few giant meat-processing companies in the US want Congress to give them immunity for working conditions that encourage the spread of Covid-19. The corrupter has already told OSHA to support the businesses rather than the workers.
To shut down the meat plants until they could run with safe procedures would have caused a disaster. But the government could have made them, could still make them, heavily liable for failure to protect the workers in all feasible ways, while helping to increase what is feasible.
Food delivery companies have many ways of preying on the restaurants they offer "services" to.
Cory Doctorow: many major gig economy companies are con games, funded by Salafi Arabia.
They are designed to grow very large over a period many years, but always losing money. *Then, Softbank exits with an IPO that offloads the money-losing company on suckers who think its longevity means there must be a 'path to profitability.'* The way the investors profit is that the IPO brings in more than their investments.
Nuclear weapons are still a threat to the survival of civilization.
New England has been hit by drought and heat.
Wildfires (small compared with California's) have continued rather that ceasing in June. Cranberry plants are failing to produce cranberries. Streams are running empty.
The reforming district attorney for Boston and some neighboring cities has published a list of cops in the zone who have been specifically accused of being thugs.
It will be harder for them to succeed by testilying.
Advocates of regenerative agriculture claim that it could absorb all of humanity's CO2 emissions.
I don't have the basis to judge claims about regenerative agriculture. I can't tell whether they are valid, because I don't know any ground truth from which I can deduce anything in that area. And I don't know of any unbiased entities I could have confidence in. Are any farms succeeding in business using these techniques?
Is it possible to set up a regenerative agriculture emissions compensation scheme? How would it measure up, in terms of costs per ton of CO2 absorbed, against investments in increased energy efficiency? Can the benefit of improved or protected topsoil be quantified?
It would be good to spell out the claim that is being made. What are the claimed benefits, and what are the costs? For instance, the claim could be, "This is a better method of agriculture and farms should make the investment to switch now." Or it could be, "This system or agriculture can't compete today because it would require more farm labor, but we must adopt it for civilization to survive." The difference is fundamental.
To follow Sweden in curbing Covid-19 requires imitating Sweden's very strong and effective welfare system.
Australia's government has proposed a plan for reducing greenhouse emissions, but it depends on making carbon capture and storage far more efficient than it ever has been.
No matter what your age or condition, Covid-19 can cause you lasting damage that can be incapacitating. The damage can last at least six months, we now know. Six months from now, we may know it can last a year. There is no reason to assume it will ever get better.
*From [the wrecker] to Bolsonaro, reactionary leaders are invoking a communism that no longer exists as a [dishonest] way of attacking the left.*
Today's left isn't Communist anyway, but liars don't care about the truth of anything.
The mainstream press shows little interest in the prosecution of Julian Assange even though success could pave the way for prosecuting other publishers.
The up-to-1200-dollars stimulus checks enabled 7% more Americans to handle a surprise medical expense. Even that small amount did real help.
The USPS chief of logistics, in July, made a presentation to local chiefs pressing them to implement the service cuts.
Although DeJoy was not in that meeting, various vice presidents were, so it is clear he did this with DeJoy's own support.
Many rural hospitals in the US, which now face a lot of Covid-19 cases, are in danger of going broke.
Students are organizing petitions against the intrusive exam-monitoring systems imposed by many universities.
If you launch a petition at your university, please make sure to give people a way to sign the petition without having to run any nonfree software, and that includes JavaScript software sent by a web site. You can invite people to send email to add their names.
I suggest it is unwise to focus on issues of effective discrimination against subsets of students. Why so? It's not that these problems don't matter — they do. What makes them weak focuses is that the developers of the systems can probably fix them, resulting in a system that mistreats students in those subsets only as much as it mistreats everyone else.
Another mistake to avoid is to weaken your demands as a "compromise" before you state them. Start the negotiations with what you really want.
By demanding a real solution for the problem, you can build a stronger movement. You can agree to a compromise later — but it will be, explicitly, only a partial victory. So it won't make your movement scatter.
(satire) *Reporter Presses Biden On Lack Of Own Plan To Trigger Widespread Violence.*
Ro Khanna proposes a bill for term limits in the Supreme Court. After a justice's term ends, perse would remain a judge and move to lower courts.
(satire) *"Anyone questioning what President Trump will do on election night or afterwards is participating in a very dangerous effort to get Americans to mistrust the basic tenets of this country's autocracy," said Sean Hannity on his broadcast.*
It's a shame Justice Ginsburg did not retire last time Democrats controlled the Senate and the presidency.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts legislators to pass the ROE act.
This would get rid of old laws restricting abortion rights, which have been unenforced due to Roe v Wade. It would also in general increase abortion rights.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to shut down the Senate to stop Republicans from picking Justice Ginsburg's successor.
(satire) *In an effort to restore the rule of law, Attorney General Bill Barr declared Ipswich Middle School an anarchist jurisdiction Friday after finding a circle-A symbol scrawled on a notebook cover.*
Rep. Jayapal is leading the fight against the PAT RIOT Act's massive surveillance.
Howard Zinn said, who is on the Supreme Court is not as important as what the American people demand.
But I don't think we should relax and stop trying to block the wrecker's choice.
On September 25 there were over 3,200 climate strike events.
I wrote to the organizers to ask them to make it possible to find the events without running nonfree software. That would be an easy change to make. I hope that I will be able to participate in the future.
What is the use of a virtual protest, though? The idea of a protest rally is to show the public and the news media where people stand. If only the participants can see the rally, it doesn't seem to do anything.
David Attenborough's Witness Statement shows us the destruction we have done to Earth's ecosphere, then tells us what we need to do to save what is left.
WHO: if we don't take effective collective action to curb the spread of Covid-19, there could be 2 million deaths from Covid-19 before a vaccine starts to slow it.
Postal ballots in Pennsylvania require two different envelopes, one inside the other. If the voter omits the inner envelope, per vote won't be counted. This could reject tens of thousands of ballots.
It is another reason to do early voting, not vote by mail.
A Republican senator proposed a bill to require all postal ballots to be counted in just 48 hours.
This surely won't be enacted — and I doubt it is constitutional — but it illustrates the "win by hook or by crook" attitude of Republicans.
*As Trump Sows Chaos, Democrats Urged to Increase Push for In-Person Voting—Early If Possible.*
What would the US military do if the wrecker orders it to suppress "rebellion" based on "fake news"?
For generals to resign if ordered to overthrow constitutional government would save their own individual honor, but it would not save constitutional government. Rather, the first one in line who hasn't got enough honor to resign would commit the crime. Their duty would be to preserve constitutional government, not step aside.
*How the Protests Upended Portland's Mayoral Race* for the better.
Birdlife International gave the Taiwanese bird conservation group a political ultimatum, following China's orders.
The US and other countries could conceivably pass laws requiring organizations to accept cooperation with Taiwan if they do is with China, on fair conditions. If China tries to bully these organizations by refusing, the organizations will be required to say, "That's your choice, China, but it's a shame you see it that way."
Lebanese are going hungry because imported food is now far more expensive. Some are turning to farming.
China is systematically destroying mosques in Xinjiang, by the thousands, including sites that are a thousand years old.
US thugs treat indigenous people with the same arrogance that they show to blacks.
US lawyers do not contest that Rep. Rohrabacher offered Assange a pardon if he would reveal information about sources of a leak. He refused.
Assange did say that the leaked DNC emails were not obtained by cracking.
The UK's Covid-19 contact tracing app asks users to scan a QR code when they enter certain places.
I suspect that scanning the QR code immediately informs the state where the phone is located at that moment. That is a violation of people's privacy.
The Google/Apple contact detection protects privacy pretty well, though I am not an expert on it. I'd be willing to use that, if it did not require a mobile phone.
Italy has an approach I think is better, both for finding all cases and for respecting privacy: simply test all the acquaintances of anyone that catches Covid-19, and don't worry about whether they saw each other recently.
The grand jury did not indict any of the thugs involved in killing Breonna Taylor for that killing. Naturally this triggered protests in many cities.
The decision not to charge the thugs may have been imposed by law. I saw an article, a couple of months ago, which explained that the thugs could legally claim self-defense, and it would have been impossible to convict them.
I did not link to that article because it ended with antisocialist views about right and wrong, which I did not want to link to, and because I did not know if its claims about the legalities were valid. But the outcome suggests that they were.
Since we condemn the outcome, we need to consider this question: at what point did the thugs commit an act that they deserve to be punished for?
I believe that point was when they broke into the house without announcing who they were. When cops act like burglars, they invite the residents to shoot; but if the residents do so, they are the ones that are likely to get killed, as happened this time.
The outcome we want is that innocent people don't risk death. One way to get that outcome is to make cops identify themselves as cops before entering, with no exceptions. Criminals might fight with or without the announcement, but the announcement will inform innocent residents not to.
It is not enough to set a policy against no-knock breakins. It should be a crime for thugs to do that, so we can indeed punish them when they do.
We could allow the cops to send unarmed robots to enter the house, given a warrant. If robots get shot, it is no great loss, and they would not try to shoot back.
*Labour's target should be the Tory party, not Johnson's credibility.*
Chad is planning to build oil wells near Lake Chad.
The shore of Lake Chad belongs to four countries, all of which will be harmed when the oil pollutes the lake. Meanwhile, the greenhouse emissions from burning the oil will harm the whole world. We cannot afford to extract all the oil from existing wells, so any new well is at best wasted expense, and at worst an assurance of doom.
*The federal government has still not set limits for PFAS compounds, and some allege that could be because it is a polluter of them itself*.
Chicago has obdurately refused to reform its extremely cruel thug department.
Chen Qiushi, who reported on China's measures to deal with Covid-19, disappeared on Feb 10. It appears he has been a prisoner ever since.
China continues building prisons for Uighurs — 380 have been discovered so far. Some are adjacent to factories.
Some ancient Uighur neighborhoods in Xinjiang are now empty of people. All the inhabitants have been moved, perhaps to those prisons.
Covid-19 is surging in France, filling hospitals with people who are badly sick and forcing the postponement of operations people need for other reasons.
The only way to stop the surge is with distancing, but selfish people are angry at the unpleasantness of this.
The British government may (if I understand this article correctly) be thinking of repealing the GDPR in the UK.
The GDPR are greatly inadequate but they do some good. This would be a change for the worse, and indicates the intent to let companies such as Facebook and Google snoop on Britons more and manipulate them more.
Medical effect studies need to keep track of outcomes for men and for women separately. Some drugs work well for one and badly for the other.
Experiments will determine how long coronavirus can survive and be infectious in small droplets that float in the air.
An Argentine member of Congress was forced to resign for a trifle: he engaged in sexplay with his lover and did not realize his camera was on.
Can't those people distinguish between causing embarrassment and really doing wrong?
*Dozens of Asian [i.e., of Indian ancestry] lawyers [in the UK] say they have been mistaken for defendants.*
Such a mistake can hurt feelings but does not do real damage. However, it is a sign of racial stereotyping that must have other bad effects.
*Facebook's former director of monetization (sic) says Facebook intentionally made its product as addictive as cigarettes.*
The term "monetization" encourages the attitude which leads people to act this way. Let's shun it.
*Volkswagen to pay compensation for collaborating with Brazil’s [1964-85] dictatorship.*
*Senator Bernie Sanders has called for an independent election commission to stop Donald Trump defying the will of the people and plunging the US into a constitutional crisis.*
Doordash has a scheme where it discounts pizza for customers but pays the restaurant full price. (This is a scheme to mislead and trap restaurant owners for the long term.)
One restaurant owner started ordering pizzas from his own restaurant via Doordash, and making money from Doordash on each one.
*Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine parts and body armor.*
Arizona thugs told a dog to bite Alfredo Saldivar because he "hesitated" before obeying a command to stand up.
To dispute whether he really hesitated is a distraction. The point is, even if he did, that is no excuse for such dangerous escalation.
To avoid a future "climate lockdown" where drastic measures are imposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we need to use non-drastic measures now to achieve faster reductions.
Neve Gordon: Facebook is being pressured to tag criticism of Israel automatically as "anti-Semitism."
The change Facebook recently made, which recognizes the claiming that Jews secretly rule the world as anti-Semitism, is correct. That conspiracy theory is antisemitic, and it is not criticism of Israel's occupation and colonization of Palestine.
Big oil companies are giving a public impression of starting to change away from fossil fuels, but the change is pretty small so far.
Here's the detailed report.
*If Trump Fills RBG’s Seat, the Court’s Legitimacy Will Be in Crisis.*
What Biden would need to do to reverse the wrecker's sabotage of US environmental policies.
The article says it it would take two years to undo environmental deregulation, handling each regulation separately, and this would face opposition from extractivist companies. I have another idea.
Those channels are specified by laws. It should be possible to pass a law reverting a specified set of regulations to their status as of January 2017. The old regulations that would go back into effect were approved through the official legal process, so it would be hard to challenge them. The process could be finished in a few months.
This would require eliminating the filibuster.
The wrecker is still at it, now eliminating protection for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
*Facebook Ad Ban on Premature Election Victory Ads Is Yet Another Hollow Gesture.* Because it won't cover premature election victory announcements.
*Trudeau pledges tax on 'extreme wealth inequality' to fund Covid spending plan.*
If he really does this, it would be a great example.
Sanders and other US legislators called on the Organization of American States to investigate how it came to publish false accusations against Bolivia's President Morales.
Bad news for America: Senator Feinstein wants to allow Republicans to block all progressive legislation, even if the Democrats win a majority in the Senate.
It is logical that a plucratist legislator would want to help the right-wing extremist party to block progressive legislation.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-335-4855 and implore them to do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
California will study whether the Joshua tree needs legal protection from being wiped out by global heating.
* Dozens of women have been convicted for manslaughter, homicide and aggravated homicide after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies since El Salvador introduced a total ban on abortion in 1998.*
*White House 'pressured official to say John Bolton book was security risk'.*
It's another example of how the wrecker corrupts every government activity.
The US Chamber of Commerce has found 23 Democrats in Congress sufficiently plutocratist to endorse their election campaigns.
Some large US corporations have learned to talk about concern for "stakeholders" other than their owners and executives, but it's only talk.
In the UK, teenagers (not "children" as the article says) are being recruited to violent right-wing extremism via internet communications.
In this year's presidential debates, the danger of global heating disaster may hardly be discussed.
If there is a question about this issue, it is likely to use the vague, neutral term "climate change" which invites candidates to miss the point.
*The Federal Reserve bond purchasing program meant to prevent workers from losing their jobs amid the Covid-19 pandemic instead bolstered companies who laid off more than one million workers while paying massive dividends to shareholders.*
Climate activists call for defeat of the Congressional Democrats' inadequate energy bill.
The article says that passing that bill would by a "Pyrrhic" victory, which is incorrect use of the word. "Pyrrhic" describes a victory won at such a great cost that you can't afford to win another. (King Pyrrhos of Epirus said that about his victory over Rome.) This bill would be, rather, a dummy victory.
The oil companies' conservation plans are also drastically inadequate.
Ecuador's treacherous president Moreno is trying to rig the 2021 election by stopping Correa and his supporters from running.
(satire) *… the National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed Monday that the Earth is dating the Moon.*
The bully continually incites violence against reporters but pretends not to be doing so.
Remember how in 2016 a Republican candidate apologized for punching a reporter, but the bully praised it anyway?
Governor Newsom ordered that all vehicles sold in California after 2035 make zero greenhouse gas emissions, but he failed to take real steps to reduce oil and gas extraction in the state.
*Trump Keeps Telling Us How He and Republicans Plan to Steal This Election. Can we stop him and save our republic before it's too late?*
Is "steal" the correct word? The final step would use a loophole in the Constitution, and that a such would not be stealing it. But the first step is a fraudulent accusation of fraud, and I think that would justify the word "steal".
Why are Republicans in control of all the swing states' legislatures? Some of those states now vote majority Democrat, but gerrymandering has prevented the voters from electing legislators that reflect their views.
*Perspectives on a riven nation from a worried military spouse.*
18 years in prison for criticizing Xi.
*Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies.*
*Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show.*
We all suspected this, but we could not be sure. Now we know that the bully's supporters are a criminal gang.
I have not had time to keep up with Craig Murray's coverage of Julian Assange's extradition hearings, so here are the links.
After 2C of global heating, Antarctic ice melt would raise sea level 2.7 meters.
That would be in addition to the effects of melting in Greenland and the expansion of the ocean due to its own heating. I don't know what the total would be.
French journalists unite to back Charlie Hebdo and the freedom to blaspheme.
(satire) *Earth reportedly expressed hope Tuesday that a weird burning sensation was nothing serious.*
(satire) *… Xi Jinping jailed Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang Tuesday for failing to use the sandwich method of constructive criticism when condemning him.*
Amnesty International rebukes the UK for denying it access to monitor Assange's extradition hearing.
If it were not for Craig Murray's coverage, the hearing would be effectively secret. This is what we expect from outright tyrannies such as China, but apparently the UK is approaching the same level of decay.
The developers of the Pebble Mine in Alaska pretend it will be 5 square miles, which is merely large, but what they say in private is that it will be enormous.
*If Report Proven, ACLU Says Federal Agents Tapping Phones of Protesters Would Be 'Outrageous' Constitutional Violation.*
Hong Kong's puppet government has derecognized most journalists, as a preparatory step for repression.
Remember this if politicians in your country try to impose rules about who is a journalist and who is not. For instance, if they claim that Julian Assange is not a journalist.
*The QAnon orphans: people who have lost loved ones to conspiracy theories.*
Cults like these used to be run as businesses: Scientology, and the Moonies. As far as I know, there is no one business profiting off QAnon. But with so many credulous people, I'm sure there are people with plans to profit off exploiting them in a tight, cult-like way.
(satire) *As the Democratic presidential nominee ramped up his in-person efforts to get out the vote, members of the Joe Biden campaign reportedly went door-to-door Tuesday in the JPMorgan Chase headquarters.*
Medea Benjamin: reports say that Biden will choose, to run the Pentagon, the architect of the US policy of military intimidation around the world.
Biden is proving to be every bit as bad as we expected last spring. I expect he will put money into the military rather than saving poor Americans from total misery. *Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with US.*
This is the road to victory! Make sure Facebook leaves Europe, and the US, and then everywhere else.
* Coronavirus inflicts American deaths equivalent to a 9/11 every few days, but [the wrecker] and his allies seem blithely unconcerned.*
Republicans don't care if other people die, but in 2001 they had a chance to gain by making a fuss about some Americans who died. Whereas today they have a chance to gain by pretending it isn't happening.
*Greenpeace says [the EU] must get a grip on reducing greenhouse gases from livestock or risk missing Paris agreement targets.*
Austin, Texas, voted to cut the thug department's budget. Texas Governor Abbott threatens to cut Austin's taxes as a punishment for this, and put the city's thug department under the control of the lawless and cruel state thug department.
The article starts by describing how the state thugs attacked Lauren Mestas. Her car had slogans such as FUCK THESE RACIST POLICE, and "all cops are bastards." A thug was so offended by this that he believed he was entitled to bring many thugs to point guns at her, then force her out of the car, which they ruined ‐ demonstrating that at least Texas state cops are bastards.
China has made a glaringly insufficient pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2060.
The cheater hopes courts will stop states from counting valid postal ballots that arrive after election day.
By itself, this is merely unfair. But when combined with DeJoy's efforts to delay mail, it adds up to sabotage.
*Ocasio-Cortez Demands Democrats Use 'Every Procedural Tool Available' to Stop Trump From Filling RBG Vacancy.*
I completely agree.
Covid-19 has made adjunct professors even more likely to be junct. They also fear losing their medical insurance, although many of them already have none. If they get sick, they can be fired rather than treated.
They would not have that danger if the US had a national medical system. In general, a national medical system can encourage hiring workers because the state can fund their medical treatment by taxing profits rather than taxing employment.
Matthew Carney recounts more of the Chinese psychological game of cat and mouse, threatening him and his family.
You may have a mission to do in China which is so important that you take the risk of being thrown in prison for political reasons. But don't bring your family with you!
*Calls for Major Reforms After Leaked Docs Detail How Big Banks Help Criminals and Oligarchs Launder Their 'Dirty Cash'.*
The CDC posted notice that Covid-19 can be spread via aerosols. Then, a few days later, it deleted that notice.
Can anyone find the evidence about spread via aerosols?
*The Climate Emergency Isn't Just a Crisis, It's a Crime.* The fossil fuel companies are the mobsters that organized the crime.
Clean energy makes more jobs than dirty energy, but "creating jobs" is used as an excuse for subsidizing the latter.
A heavily subsidized Shell plant is an example of this.
I have to point out, though, that employment is a secondary consideration when the survival of civilization and the ecosphere is at stake. What would be the sense in paying people to poison our future, even if it did make lots of jobs?
It would be better to create jobs by paying them to move a big pile of gravel from one lot to another, with shovels. At least that work wouldn't do any harm.
*AT&T, Coca Cola, Disney, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Uber all target female consumers and promote women-friendly work environments, yet they bankroll candidates who actively work against women’s rights.*
*We need to create a new framework for health security.*
Republicans put a lot of effort, 10 years ago, into winning control of state legislatures so they could gerrymander subsequent elections. Democrats need to win them back.
Bogus Johnson has tuned the distancing rules for the UK, hoping this will stop the rapid growth in Covid-19 cases.
Experience with him suggests that he has no solid basis to think that it will do so. I don't have a solid basis to think it won't, but since tuning has been insufficient in many other places, I predict it will be insufficient this time too.
Bloomberg is paying the fines for 31,000 Florida ex-cons so that they will be able to vote this year.
It should not be forgotten that the Florida election was not actually close. It appeared to be so after Republicans disenfranchised around 50,000 voters, chosen systematically in a way that ensured most of them would be black and therefore probably Democrats.
Australian thugs found a man drunk and asleep, so they pepper-sprayed and tased him to wake him up. Then they made false charges against him. So far, so usual. Except that he was a famous professional rugby player and there is a video of what they did to him.
The thug commissioner seems to have a great capacity to sympathize with thugs, but insufficient sympathy for everyone else. I was surprised that his list of ways to deal with the situation did not include having four people pick him up, each holding one limb. That doesn't generally hurt, and he might have stayed asleep.
*A third of my country (Bangladesh) was just underwater. The world must act on climate.*
*Gig Economy Company Launches (a company like) Uber, but for Evicting People.*
Many upper-caste Indian engineers have moved to the US. Alas, they have brought caste prejudice with them.
The Indian I admire most is Dr Ambedkar, who was the leader of the Dalits. I urge people to read a biography of him. The one I read was Ambedkar — Toward an Enlightened India, by Gail Omvedt.
Please do not buy this (or anything) from Amazon!
At the end of his life, Ambedkar developed a rationalist form of Buddhism which he called Navayana.
Jai Bhim!
*'It smells bad, it tastes bad': how Americans stopped trusting their water.*
A woman in the UK was fired from her job at a school for posting, elsewhere, a statement disapproving of same-sex marriage.
I disagree with her views, but we must respect her right to state them. Her employer should have to respect that, too.
As it happens, she made the statement based on her religion, but that should make no difference. An Atheist should also have the same right to state those views, or other views, as a religious believer.
The State Policy Network aims at *crushing unions, promoting fossil fuels and undermining climate science, eliminating regulations and cutting taxes, privatizing education, stopping Medicaid expansion, and hiding the identities of political donors.* Now we know 100 of its funders.
It would be useful to develop a consumer boycott list based on this information.
Cyprus blocked the EU from putting sanctions on Belarus, using the issue as a pawn.
Cyprus demands the EU take its side in the dispute about which country will get to extract fossil fuel from the Mediterranean Sea and convert it into planet-roasting greenhouse gas. It seems that the EU does not recognize that it must never be done. Why not?
There are many low-lying coastal cities in Turkey, which will be inundated by global heating. I don't think Turks want them to be flooded. Don't they realize?
*'Landmark moment': 156 countries agree to Covid vaccine allocation deal.* People who are particularly vulnerable, due to their conditions or their work, will get priority. In the US, rich people will be first.
Alexei Navalny demands Russia return the clothes he was wearing when he was poisoned, as evidence.
BP has confirmed that half the world's known oil reserves will never be used and are worthless. This article speculates about political consequences.
The article also talks about reviving carbon capture, but that technology was only hypothetical. If it is ever made to work, let's do it, but don't pretend it is available technology.
The plan to make hydrogen from methane is misguided. Methane wells leak lots of methane. Transporting methane leaks too. To add to that, making hydrogen from natural gas releases CO2! That is a bad way to make hydrogen.
As for the idea that there is something wasteful about using green electricity to make hydrogen, that would make sense if we were hitting a limit on supply of solar and wind energy. The real limit is how much of those facilities we build, and we can ramp that up.
Meanwhile, how come Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are still fighting about possible oil reserves under the sea? Have they not grasped this news? Or is there something not known to me, nor described in the article, which makes those new undersea reserves worth something despite all the other known reserves that won't be used?
*Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers.* The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant, so that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.
The global fight against monopolies and tax havens is picking up.
The article also reminds us that the fight against excessive market concentration is not limited to blocking mergers and breaking up large companies. Though we need to do a lot of that, and my tax proposal can help.
*Affirming Jim Crow, Israeli Parliament Votes Down Bill Guaranteeing Equality for Palestinian-Israelis.*
Right-wing scapegoating parties are doing very well against plutocratist parties, since plutocratists around the world have crushed and silenced the left.
*Republicans Aren't Hypocrites.* To be a hypocrite, you have to stand for principles.
According to this article, Republicans are cynics that don't care about any political positions, except as ways to give their supporters enemies to win victories over.
Friday school climate strikes are starting again.
In 2018, China threatened to imprison Australian journalist Matthew Carney, and his wife, and their teenage daughter — separately — for a fabricated visa crime, for offending China with his reporting on repression.
Carney kept silent about this until now for the safety of other Australian journalists.
Both the US and China have imprisoned whole families, often separating children and teenagers from their parents. I don't know which country does this more often. There are not very many foreign journalists in China but there are millions of Uighurs.
Another similarity is that both countries do this as part of a campaign to attack truth.
But the US does not do this to foreign journalists. It is trying to imprison Julian Assange, which is evil, but it is not trying to imprison his mate and their children.
*I'm 18 and can already see my Alaska community changed forever by climate change.*
*Meet the doomers: why some young US voters have given up hope on climate.*
I agree with their estimation of our future. But they are wrong to give up the fight because of the situation.
They are right that avoiding disaster calls for big national efforts which current governments refuse to do. (I call them "planet roasters" because of that refusal.) And it is too late to fully avoid the disaster.
But it is not too late to avoid part of the disaster. If 20% of species go extinct, instead of 50%, that will be a great conservation achievement. If heating kills 8 billion people in this century rather that 11 billion, that will mean saving 3 billion human lives.
Whatever we achieve in preservation of democracy and human rights will also make a lasting difference, if civilization survives.
Fortunately, some of the young people are not giving up.
Whatever universities do by 2030, or by 2050, will not make a big difference directly. But pressuring universities into rapid action can lead to broader actions that are bigger.
*Immigrant rights groups urge New York senators to block Iris Lan’s nomination to serve as a federal judge in the southern district.*
I hope they can do so, but Republicans have already disregarded that traditional Senate practice.
Australia's laws give mining companies great license to destroy ancient sites with their mines. One might think they were designed to do that.
I am not persuaded by the "sacred site" argument, because no religion deserves special deference from people who are not its adherents. Every church is someone's "sacred site", but that should not protect all churches from eminent domain and demolition. (For the same reason, I do not call priests "father".) What we owe to other people's religions, in general, is to respect people's right to practice their religions.
What is special about these sites is not that someone's religion calls them "sacred," but that they are irreplaceable relics from humanity's past. That applies to some churches and other religious buildings and objects, too. Typically those are already protected, except that sometimes fanatical religion attacks them.
The QAnon fantasy enables right-wing believers to feel they are protecting innocent children. Alas, the protect those children from a fantasy danger which distracts people from the real source of real sexual abuse.
The QAnon fantasy resembles a cancer in the body of knowledge. Just as cancer cells have become disconnected from the rules and needs of the body they are supposed to be part of, QAnonsense beliefs are disconnected from the body of real knowledge and real society's real needs. Whatever variant appeals more to the susceptible, will spread.
This jamming together of conspiracies reminds me of a great work of fiction from the 1970s: the Illuminatus trilogy. It presents a fictional world in which every well-known conspiracy theory of the day is posited as true, and weaves them together by inventing connections that are literally consistent but shockingly implausible.
For instance, three assassins had separately gone to Dallas to shoot President Kennedy, and the agent who was there to save Kennedy — John Dillinger — decided he couldn't possibly stop all three, except by shooting Kennedy before they did. Completely preposterous, but it wasn't meant to be believed.
What was delightful absurdity as fiction in Illuminatus becomes a dangerous delusion when taken seriously by the credulous.
On the testimony of two expert witnesses in Assange's hearing.
Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who defends the rights of people faced with torture and assassination by the US government and campaigns against those activities, testified about cases that had been helped Wikileaks releases, and about how US trials about publication of secrets really work, and explained that the indictment included a charge of "conspiracy" for which everything Wikileaks released, which had come from Manning, would be pertinent.
One thing that amazed me was his assertion that Obama had decided not to prosecute Assange. This amazed me because Obama certainly did not call off the teams that were keeping him bottled up in the Ecuadorian embassy. It has been thoroughly established that Sweden and the UK were manipulating the Swedish charges rather than trying honestly to pursue them.
Mark Feldstein, an expert on journalistic practices, testified about how journalists ask source for leaks of secrets and how they protect the leakers. He said that the things Assange is accused of doing were standard practice.
The witnesses had prepared based on the old indictment and have been denied a chance to study the new one carefully, as described in a previous report.
UK cops report that they have learned how to shut down the gangs that sell cocaine and heroin outside cities.
I congratulate them, because cocaine and heroin are dangerous, but this focus on the punitive approach can't ever stop the sale of those drugs. As the article recognizes, someone else will always show up to sell them.
What will make those drugs nearly disappear is to adopt a more intelligent approach — the one that works in the Netherlands and in Portugal.
This approach is for the national medical system to let addicts register, then give them drugs of reliable purity to use, and safe places to use them. When the main buyers are not buying from private sellers, most of the market will disappear, and so will the private selling.
*World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam.*
However, I disagree with the recommendations. Instead of "using the carbon budget for the best," we must use as little of it as possible.
When we speak of the carbon budget, we are making an estimate of how much more emissions we can make before a certain level of disaster. We don't know exactly how much, and more emissions means a worse disaster. It is valid to say, "If we emit considerably more than the carbon budget, we will make life horrible." It is not valid to say, "If we emit a little less than the carbon budget, we will be ok."
If we could be certain, absolutely certain, that we had done enough to avoid disaster, perhaps at that point we could switch to the goal of helping the poor.
But since disaster is already starting, it is pretty clear we have already failed to do enough. So we must do the most we can.
*The climate crisis will sweep away my country if the world doesn't keep its promises.*
What we have to do for the people of many regions that are threatened — many of whom are among the poorest 50% — is cut emissions ASAP.
Activists doxed 1,000 Belarusian thugs.
We don't know from the information in the article whether they are hackers. We also don't know whether they are crackers — we don't know whether they had to break computer security to get the data.
But I can say with certainty that they struck a good blow against Lukashenko's tyranny.
Doxing someone is like a kind of violence. Ordinarily, it is bad to do violence to others, but there are situations where it is justified. When the thugs are carrying out violent repression of dissidents, it is justified for dissidents to respond with counter-violence.
It may or may not be a good tactic. In this case, because doxing is a warning rather than actual physical harm, I think it is a good tactic.
Walmart and Amazon supported the campaign of a candidate who promotes the QAnon fantasy.
(satire) *U.S. officials told reporters Thursday they were hurt that Saudi Arabia would try to develop its own nuclear weapon rather than just asking nicely for one from America.*
California hires lots of prisoners to help fight wildfires. But it is hard for ex-prisoners to get a job to do this: fire departments exclude them because of their prison record.
Advice to BP (Billionaire Polluters) if it is serious about transitioning to green energy.
Many oil companies are going bankrupt, and the rest face a dim future. We can count on them to try to extract every last dollar from their operations, leaving nothing to pay for the sealing of their wells.
We need to pass laws to collect a substantial well-sealing tax which will go into a fund to seal old wells.
Ralph Nader: *Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control to Corporations?*
I disagree with Nader on one point. The problem with giving personal information to companies is not that they get it without paying. It is that they get it at all. Simply having the data and using them gives them power over people. So don't be distracted by the proposals to make them pay for the data, one way or another; they don't go far enough.
Most of the US is in the zones to be affected by climate disaster, one way or another. If you don't get fires, or water shortage, you get hurricanes or torrential rains. Here's a map.
Lori Loughlin will serve her prison sentence in a prison near her new home. The prison has many educational programs, including creative skills and job skills.
All prisons should offer such lessons. That is called "rehabilitation" — a concept American prisons used to practice, but forgot about under Reagan's spirit of cruelty.
Lori Loughlin does not need to learn a new trade, but many prisoners do, and it can be the opportunity to change from a life of crime to a life as a good citizen.
Is it silly to teach arts, including music? Some prisoners can make an emotional contact with an art and see that there is something in life other than what you can get for yourself.
What bothers me is not that Ms Loughlin's prison has these things. It is that so many prisons don't.
It would be fair to make wealthy prisoners pay for participating in these programs — but that is dangerous, because it might lead to charging poor prisoners for participating in them. That we must not do!
Democrats and progressives are pressuring Republicans not to try to replace Justice Ginsburg this year.
It may be possible to succeed. Several Republican senators now running for reelection are reported not to want to vote on this.
The issue of replacing Justice Ginsburg is boosting support for Democrats in senate races.
I am concerned that what Schumer and other Democrats are now saying — "Appoint another justice now and we will expand the Supreme Court" — might be interpreted as promising the converse: "Don't appoint another justice now, and we won't expand the Supreme Court." That worries me, because we need to expand the Supreme Court. We should do this to cancel Gorsuch and Kavanaugh; we should do this to reverse plutocratist decisions made before them, including the Corporations United decision and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act and the decision that applied "religious freedom" co companies.
*Making a demon of JK Rowling is a wretched sport, born of misogyny and resentment.*
I continue to rebuke Rowling for her unjust lawsuit against people who bought one of her books, and since them I have refused on principle to buy any of her books. But I do not hate her. She does not deserve to be vilified based on distortions of what she said.
Bogus Johnson is proposing to create three new obstacles against prosecuting UK soldiers for war crimes including torture.
Fortunately the International Criminal Court will be able to prosecute them if the British government does not try.
No army is immune to the temptation to vent anger through war crimes. If a country protects its own soldiers from charges, it in effect encourages war crimes. The world is full of bad examples; the UK has been a good example until now.
*A Biden victory cannot bring normal back.*
Even if it could, that would hardly be desirable except in contrast to the present. The old "normal" was pretty bad for most Americans, and climate mayhem is making it rapidly worse.
The article uses the non-US definition of "liberalism", meaning deregulation of business. In the US, "liberalism" is the term we have used for many decades for the agenda now more often called "progressive".
Medical care for all has been a liberal program since the New Deal. Likewise workers' rights, and support for the poor. By the 1960s it included racial equality. By the 70s, it included women's equality, gay rights, and eliminating pollution.
Why, I wonder, does anyone think to define the term "liberal" to refer to self-styled "centrists" such as right-wing Democrats?
Lukashenko's thugs are now trying mass arrests of protesting women.
Everyone: call on Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul to investigate attacks by thugs on BLM protesters.
Everyone: call on California Governor Newsom to end oil drilling in that state.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the MORE Act.
US citizens: call on the Department of Housing and Urban Development not to allow discrimination against trans people.
The UK government has replaced promotion of the most capable with promotion of the most politically loyal.
Michael Young, in The Rise of the Meritocracy, was perceptive. He saw that if society offered enough social mobility for capable people to get out of the working class won their own, that would leave the remaining workers with no one capable enough to organize them to stand up for their rights.
We must educate and promote capable people anyway, because the alternative is to let the incapable run things — but we must somehow prevent this from resulting in telling the less "meritorious" to suffer low pay and a life of hardship.
*Brazilian wetlands fires started by humans and worsened by drought.*
The people who set the fires are criminals who wanted to replace the wetlands with cattle ranching. Due to the drought, the large Pantanal wetland is not wet now.
*Covid is Widening Educational Inequalities for Children Around the World.*
California could protect its buildings from fire with requirements for careful precautions.
More frequent fires outside the cities might result in less intense fires.
Japan's red pine forests are endangered, and with them the prized matsutake mushroom.
*In 2016, the Alexandria, Kentucky, police chief talked the city into hiring a social worker — and four years on, the current chief sees the program as indispensable.*
Warning Latin America not to end lockdowns too soon.
The US, and then Europe, have shown that this is likely to mean a new outbreak of Covid-19.
England has been trying to restrain the spread of Covid-19 with local restrictions, and being rather rigid about them, but it is not working.
I think the country needs nationwide measures. However, they don't need to be absolutely rigid. The UK's approach strikes me like measuring the distance between two people and fining them if is only 198 cm instead of 200 cm.
The US deportation thugs extend their medical neglect for prisoners from the prisons to the deportation flights.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency (formerly Environmental Protection Agency) races to demolish environmental protections.
Republicans are fighting on every level to keep the world moving steadily to a deadly 7C if heating.
Rebecca Solnit: Climate change, Covid – our hearts ache. But a new era is possible. We can do it.
*Thousands gather in Thailand for anti-government protest.*
Using AI recognition systems on body cameras could be a powerful system for teaching thugs to be less brutal. However, it could also be a powerful system for repression of everyone that comes into range of the camera.
To make body cameras serve and protect the people, rather than repress the people, we need to make sure that they capture video and audio when they should, and not when they shouldn't. I've made a technical proposal for part of that, but we also need proper laws about publishing the videos.
As for the idea that live monitoring of the video could enable a deescalation specialist to intervene and prevent a killing, that might have saved George Floyd. But many killings by thugs occur when thugs react without taking even a second to think. There would be no time to intervene, either. Meanwhile, the live transmission would imply transmitting the video all the time, which is wrong because most of the time the video should not be saved at all.
Congressional Democrats call for investigation of Barr for politicizing his office as Attorney General.
I don't know if this can have much effect. The bully has already placed his officials are above the law by showing that he will fire any inspector general that tries to investigate their crimes.
The smoke from wildfires, when breathed by pregnant women, causes lasting harm to their fetuses in later life.
In some US states, women could be prosecuted for breathing the smoke. Perhaps millions of women would commit this "crime".
One could imagine prosecuting oil companies too, but the right-wing officials in those states don't want to go after oil companies, only women.
Alexei Navalny is making a good recovery.
However, one thing makes me worry that his brain has been injured: a perverse inclination to use Instagram. ;-{.
We don't know where the climate system's tipping points are, but if one tips, it could tip others. Or it could block others.
It's like playing a pinball game with Earth as the ball.
Biden seems to have no presencial campaign organization in Michigan.
I wonder if this is because rational people are scared to go there, and especially scared to approach lots of strangers there.
Meanwhile, the wrecker has taught his followers a delusion of invulnerability. They don't feel inhibitions about meeting people on the street to reinforce their rejection of masks.
In effect, the wrecker has found a way to arrange that Republicans can do real canvassing and campaigning, while his rational opponents know it is not safe.
*Coronavirus Depression Spike Suggests Social Media Is No Substitute For Real Life.*
Thus, if you refuse to use Zoom, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook, you can do without them.
A US court has ordered reversal of DeJoy's postal sabotage.
(satire) *White House Vows To Have Something To Stick Into Your Arm By October.*
New York State agreed to a court settlement which protects the rights of voters that sent in postal ballots against unjust rejection of their ballots.
Which states have not done this?
The bullshitter wants to turn US history teaching into one-sided patriotic propaganda.
To a large extent, that's what US history teaching has tended to be: justifying actions of the US in conflict with other countries, and the winners in domestic disputes, with the exception of the Civil War: the supporters of the Confederacy perversely gained the upper hand about reconstruction.
However, it wasn't totally one-sided in the 60s. You could see that the indigenous people were cheated. Slavery was condemned.
We see a similar practice of propaganda history in China.
(satire) *Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing ‘1946 Commission’ To Teach How America Started At President’s Birth.*
*50 reasons the bully's administration is bad for workers.*
(satire) *With 30% of the U.S. electorate currently stumbling through the streets in pursuit of their ballots and shouting, ‘Wait, come back!’ we fear this sudden, powerful gale has overwhelmed our electoral system.*
US citizens: call on UPS, Humana, and Ford to stop supporting the Louisville thug department.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject Chad Wolf as head of the Department of Harshness and Sadism. He is too apt for harshness and sadism to be entrusted with official authority over it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
Julian Assange's hearing has resumed, and Craig Murray is covering it as before. I was unable to post these before because I was overloaded writing a long article.
Murray reports that Keir Starmer, the tame new head of the Labour Party, condemns Extinction Rebellion as a threat to the free press for blocking right-wing newspaper trucks one morning, but says nothing when the free press is truly threatened.
In the first day of the resumed hearing, Assange saw for the first time the totally new charges, which his lawyers saw only in the past few weeks and had been unable to show him in prison. They had a discussion about them and asked for an adjournment to gather evidence. The judge refused this.
The defense will not be allowed to call witnesses except the ones it chose for the old charges.
This continues what we have seen all along: the rules of justice twisted over and over to assure a politically pre-decided outcome. This is not as obvious a show trial as the ones Stalin held, but it is substantively similar.
Organizations such as Amnesty and Reporters without Borders had to fight for a chance to view the hearing, so strong were the efforts to prevent public monitoring of the treacherous proceedings.
Salafi Arabia has possible large uranium deposits. Now that fission power is effectively obsolete, the only reason the country would be interested is to make nuclear weapons.
It would be natural to propose a nuclear disarmament treaty for Salafi Arabia and Iran — and perhaps Israel too.
*Only an honest conversation about the Corbyn era will help us learn from it.*
When Hong Kong was a British colony, Britain did not respect freedom of speech there. Now that it is a Chinese colony, it is China that doesn't respect freedom of speech there, but it finds the old British law against "sedition" handy for jailing dissidents.
*Dear America, we too have seen red skies in Australia and we can tell you what happens next.*
It is not too late to bring about a small disaster instead of the big one humanity is heading for.
(satire) *Apple announced Wednesday that its new smart watch would feature a rabbit-ear antenna capable of picking up five or more television channels in the area where a user lives.*
Scotland will use solar electricity to generate hydrogen as fuel for vehicles.
One convenient thing is that it doesn't matter that there are times when there is no light to make hydrogen with. If you make hydrogen at a high rate when there is light, you have enough for the rest of the time too.
*The shift to online schooling is running roughshod over children's privacy rules and rights,* which were inadequate to start with.
The article is concerned that wealthier schools will choose systems that "protect" privacy "better" whereas impecunious schools will have to use systems that protect privacy less. That would be a real danger, if some of these systems did protect privacy.
In practice, none of these systems give much protection. Whatever data a company collects is already on the road to being misused. The only effective protection for privacy is not to put the data in a database.
Greg Palast: Republicans may be planning to refuse to certify the elections in some states, using uncounted postal ballots as an excuse. Use early voting instead of postal voting.
That is what I did for the Massachusetts primary on Sept 1, and that is what I plan to do for the general election too.
Some US cities have plans to use the recovery from the Covid-19 depression to reduce local greenhouse emissions.
Every little bit helps, but we need more than local improvements to avoid most of the climate disaster.
China forced 2.6 million "surplus workers" in Xinjiang to move long distances. The critical attention to what it does there is making the government uncomfortable.
China is moving to giant multistory pig farms, isolated from the outside, so as to stop transmission of diseases.
The CDC published the weak recommendations for who should get a Covid-19 test over the objections of its scientists.
*Wilderness the size of Mexico lost worldwide in just 13 years.*
*Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia.*
The minister in charge of Papua New Guinea's thugs says that they are corrupt from the top down, and that they drive out any honest employees.
The House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting discrimination against pregnant workers, and requiring employers to make reasonable accommodations so a pregnant worker can keep working.
There is no chance that the Republicans who control the Senate will agree to this, but passing the bill is useful as political pressure.
How the oil-and-plastic companies have organized world-wide to block efforts to reduce plastic pollution.
This is yet another facet of the harm done by plutocratic rule.
Belarus protesters are pulling the masks off thugs to identify them. This seems to dissuade them from violence.
It is an interesting reversal, to use face recognition against the servants if a tyrant. I think it is justified in that situation,
This suggests to me that the thugs of Belarus are just barely clinging to obedience to Lukashenko, and that at any moment they could snap.
*Taiwan calls for global coalition against China's aggression as US official flies in.*
I think it would be interesting for several important countries to open diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and let China break relations or keep relations, however it wishes. After a few years, I believe, China would decide that it needs the diplomatic relations more than it needs to show aggression against Taiwan.
Parents: call for prohibition of facial recognition in schools.
Everyone: boycott Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorians and Steven Donziger.
US citizens: call on Congress to end weapons sales to Salafi Arabia.
Tree species in the US northeast are moving north under the pressure of global heating.
Israel has discovered how to make occupation of Palestine profitable.
Indian thugs in Kashmir arrested a man, then tortured him and killed him. (Of coure, they deny this.) This triggered protests, much as it does in the US.
It appears that the repression of Kashmir in general is not as severe as it was some months ago: the internet is not shut off all the time any more, only sometimes.
* Extension on Firefox browser will allow users to record information about videos recommended by [youtube].* The aim is to figure out why youtube's recommendation algorithm recommends noisome videos.
The US military-industrial complex proposes to build 60 additional naval ships, because a navy that China could catch up with in decades is not considered sufficient. That does not seem logical to me.
China's approach to taking over the South China Sea is to build airfields on small islands and reefs. Ships are much more vulnerable than those airfields. It seems to me that the US would find it more effective, as well as cheaper, to help its regional allies build more such airfields.
Barr asked US attorneys to charge protesters with "sedition" — a charge that would almost always be bullshit.
A whistleblower reports that a privatized immigration prison carried out hysterectomies by force against prisoners.
One of the reasons we must abolish privatized prisons is that it is harder to hold them accountable for any sort of cruel, degrading, injurious or even fatal conduct. Even when people have been convicted of a crime — which these prisoners mostly have not been — that does not excuse such treatment of them.
A dissident journalist in Turkey is being prosecuted for mocking medieval Ottoman sultans.
I doubt the statement that they were from the 13th century, since the first Ottoman prince, Osman, did not become the ruler of a principality until 1299. It is more likely that they were from the 14th or 15th centuries.
It should not be a crime to insult a deceased person, or a living person — or anyone or anything. Such laws are repressive.
*US corporations file for bankruptcy and lay off workers. Why do execs still get bonuses?*
The OECD calls for government spending without tax increases, to reduce the Covid-19 depression and help unemployed people.
Deficit spending can be made possible by government borrowing, but also by creating more currency in accord with Modern Monetary Theory, except for countries trapped in the Euro-zone
I think it is safe to tax billionaires a lot more since they got such a windfall this year.
Big US news media accept lots of money from corporations to sponsor "news events" that present slanted news.
The US government is pretending that sanctions against Iran, ended by virtue of US rejection of the non-nuclear deal, will come back into force on Sep 20. This could be meant as an excuse for the wrecker to launch a war to "enforce the sanctions", to manipulate the election.
Will Iran's rulers have the self-discipline to refrain from retaliation until after November 3 so as to refuse to help the wrecker?
*People want a fairer, greener Britain after Covid, inquiry reveals.*
I wish they had voted for the leader who really stood for this: Corbyn.
A UK thug called for making it a crime to go limp when arrested.
It makes me think of Israel fining Palestinians for not demolishing their own houses.
*America has millions of people in poverty because Americans choose not to demand the policies that would lift them out of poverty.*
For the US, global heating is a big threat to national security. What does that make the planet-roasters? And the wrecker?
Of course, global heating is a threat to the national security of many other countries. Some are sure to be destroyed entirely by it.
It is a mistake for a political party to adopt policies following the polls.
Of course, it is even worse to adopt policies following the rich people's donations as "centrist" Democrats do. A party must have values and come to conclusions.
Malaysia may force prisoners to harvest palm oil which will be exported for use in our food.
The wrecker said that Covid-19 could be stopped by 'herd mentality'. He sure tries to inculcate a herd mentality into his followers; if that could stop Covid-19, we would see less infection, rather than more, in places he holds rallies.
The wrecker's campaign to build a wall has covered only a fraction of the border with Mexico, but that was enough to wreck Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It can never be restored.
Women state their feelings about being childfree (or, in a few cases, about having children).
Ai Weiwei explains China's strategy, and how the US and the west are too messed up to cope with it.
Netanyahu stated that Israeli thugs murdered a Palestinian, then falsely called him a "terrorist" to justify the murder. He went so far as to apologize to the victim's family.
Netanyahu is, as a general matter, an unprincipled corrupt greedy bastard. The article suggests that he made these true admissions about the murder as a way to deny his share of the responsibility.
The beginnings of climate disaster will make many parts of the US worse places to live. Over time, half the population will be affected. Millions will need to move, but to where?
The government should not pay so people can bullheadedly remain in land that is becoming uninhabitable, but it should help the people who become trapped in houses that are becoming unsalable, enabling them to move elsewhere.
The exploding price of a planned nuclear power plant in the UK has made the manufacturer cancel it.
However, the UK has promised unbounded subsidy to the builder of its first new nuclear power plant, so that one won't be cancelled by expense. But cancelled it must be, to free up funds to build wind farms instead.
*Research shows "respectful, non-judgmental conversations are able to move voters where many other tactics have failed."*
Lowering real US wages since 1975 has taken trillion dollars from non-rich Americans since then, giving them to rich Americans.
Each year, dooH niboR takes 2.5 trillion more.
*UN Biodiversity Report Urges 8 Transitions Needed to Restore Essential Ecosystems Impacted by Humanity.*
*Dalits bear brunt of India's 'endemic' sexual violence crisis.* Upper caste men use brutal rape to maintain their domination of the Dalits.
Oil companies (which are also plastic companies) have worked hard for decades to make the public think that used plastic products would be recycled if we handed them in, knowing this was not true, so that we would buy and discard plastic without hesitation.
Most of what we hand in goes into landfill because recycling it is not feasible.
Did they know, decades ago, that plastic products would damage wild animals and ecosystems?
Perhaps not. (It would be interesting to investigate what they knew about this and when.) In any case, we know it now. We must reduce drastically the amount of plastic waste that does not in fact get recycled, so we do not leave our planet full of toxin dispensers.
Physicians for Human Rights calls for banning the use of rubber-coated hard bullets against protesters, citing 115 instances of protesters that suffered grave head wounds from them.
It is against the rules to fire those bullets at people's heads, but it is clear that they often do it anyway. Perhaps some of them were firing wildly. Others, I suppose, hit protesters' heads intentionally. Many thugs are right-wing extremists, and if they see opportunities to maim protesters and not be punished, they may go for it eagerly.
Orbán is moving to take control of the last radio station and last theater in Hungary which are independent of state power.
*Millions in Britain have struggled for years. Only in a pandemic are they seen.*
I have a hunch that, for Bogus Johnson, starving the poor is not an ideological commitment, merely a consequence of enriching the rich.
*World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature — UN report.*
Ideas for a circular economy of plastics.
Bogus Johnson pretends to be negotiating a larger deal with the EU while cheating on last year's smaller deal.
12 Hong Kongers tried to separate themselves from China in a boat, but Chinese forces caught them and China will prosecute them — perhaps for "separatism" — in a bogus trial.
The very idea of stopping citizens from leaving a country is a form of tyranny which Communist governments were well known for. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union charged a ransom giving a Jew permission to emigrate. In earlier decades, it was very difficult for anyone to get permission to leave the Soviet Empire. Since 2000, millions of Chinese were allowed to travel for tourism. but I would guess that China never completely dropped the practice of forbidding some people from leaving.
Billionaire Polluters say that demand for fossil fuels will not increase. What is not certain is when it will start to decrease.
That detail is tremendously important. Bigger fires are coming soon to a forest near you, and if you'd prefer to have them only a little bigger rather than much bigger, you'd be wise to help make sure the demand declines fast.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences' commits to working to undo the effects of its past participation in racism.
The academy's present leaders are not guilty for actions that happened before they were born, but the responsibility to undo the continuing effects of those actions falls to them nonetheless.
This is the same reasoning which led me to conclude, in 2014, that the United States, acting for today's Americans, should pay compensation to the descendants of those who were denied equal legal rights under the systems of slavery and segregation.
(satire) *… NYPD police officer Tom Sloane reportedly shut off his body camera early Monday morning out of respect for his dying victim.* *The NYPD added that it seemed exploitative to publicize the man’s death because that would be what people remembered about him, so the department was refraining from releasing any details about the incident to respect his privacy.*
The ACLU and other organizations called on Congress not to extend surveillance powers by slipping that into a rider in a continuing resolution or other "must-pass" uncontroversial bill.
The wrecker is still actively spreading Covid-19 to his death cult, and now we have proof that he is knowingly lying to them when he denies the danger.
Don't be distracted into disputes about when Bob Woodward really ought to have published this fact. It is a side issue, and it is being raised as a distraction. I see no reason to assume his news would have had more impact in May or July than it has now.
*A Thank You Letter From Coronavirus to My Enablers in the United States.*
This is not from The Onion.
The saboteur in chief has appointed a global heating denialist to the management team at NOAA, in charge of climate research there.
One of the practices used to shelter denialists is calling them "skeptics". CNN's article does this, but please don't repeat that practice. To be a skeptic means that one is not convinced and wants to do more investigation to determine what is happening. By contrast, Legatos is denying what is well established. He is no "skeptic", he is a denialist.
In general, skepticism is a wise and useful attitude towards claims until they are demonstrated, but it can be carried too far. For instance, there are times when skepticism about an approaching danger must be set aside. When it is time to join the bucket brigade to put out a fire, objecting that there is no proof this fire can spread is not an acceptable excuse for refusing to help put it out.
A nurse working a privatized immigration prison describes how the management disregard Covid-19, gratuitously allowing it to spread to prisoners and staff.
The EU has decided to undermine its own 2030 emissions-cutting targets by counting estimated carbon sinks against the emissions.
This is the same error as trying to plan in terms of "net" emissions (emissions minus absorptions). Any future greenhouse gas absorption is conjectural. Trees won't remove CO2 from the air if they burn up.
There were pogroms against Muslims in Delhi in February, led by ruling party, which has now decided to scapegoat a Muslim activist who spoke against violence, along with other opposition figures.
See previous information about the pogroms.
*Fanatical Israeli "settler" who killed Palestinian family sentenced to life [imprisonment].*
This is news because often Israelis who murder Palestinians get a slap on the wrist.
*Northern hemisphere breaks record for hottest ever summer.*
*Sanders Blasts AstraZeneca for Raising Drug Prices Despite $1.2 Billion From Taxpayers for Covid-19 Vaccine.*
A giant consortium of investors has demanded companies get on course to achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050.
The firmness is admirable, but they need to demand more. 2050 is too late a target, and measuring by "net" emissions tends to underestimate emissions.
Ronnie Long was convicted of rape in 1976 because prosecutors manipulated evidence and hid evidence.
Nonetheless, he is being held in prison to await a new trial, which could take a months or years.
An invalid conviction is no grounds to imprison someone, so invalidation of a conviction should invalidate the sentence too.
Right-wing bullshitters in Oregon are fabricating claims that "antifa" arsonists started the fires, then in imitation of the bullshitter, denying that that is what they said.
For them, self-contradiction is a tool.
Rwanda is not giving dissident Paul Rusesabagina a fair trial on charges of terrorism.
Mardin Arvin: *Australians complain about weeks in quarantine. I've been in [Australia's immigration prisons] for almost eight years.*
A car with cameras looking in all directions could in principle avoid all collisions.
It could also give the state, or Clearview AI, a chance to identify all other cars and people it passes near. We must make sure that only highly processed data gets out of the video processor.
Proper preparedness for future pandemics could be achieved at the cost of around 5 dollars per person per year, estimates Gro Harlem Brundtland.
GitHub ironically offers a path for freedom of speech across the great firewall of China. China can't control it and can't afford to block it.
*Sanders Delivers Message to Lawmakers Who Claim US Can't Afford Green New Deal: Climate Catastrophe Is 'Much More Expensive'.*
Biden now talks about "meeting and defeating the onrushing climate crisis."
Acknowledging the magnitude of climate mayhem is a change for the better, but not the same as proposing an adequate plan.
The Seattle thug department demanded various news organizations hand over their videos of protests in a massive and indiscriminate way. As of a month ago, they obtained a delay.
Can anyone find out what has happened since?
Whistleblower Christopher Pyle, starting with an article in 1970, reported on how the US Army was systematically tracking Americans' civic engagement — not limited to actual dissent — and won the political support to shut it down completely.
He was able to do this because Americans at the time recognized the danger of tracking and surveillance. Legislators recognized it because they came from a people that recognized it.
It's up to us to lead the development of a people that detests tracking and surveillance. Otherwise the people and legislators of the future will fail to shut down the dangerous systems of the future.
Tesla persistently harasses and cheats workers.
A court ordered the USPS not to send out "helpful" mass mailings to Colorado voters that contain misinformation about voting in Colorado.
Campaigning for a posthumous pardon for 2500 women executed for witchcraft in Scotland.
This cruel form of scapegoating continues to this day in Africa.
Thugs in Melbourne arrested peaceful protesters (though some of them threw fruit), saying that protest is forbidden.
The hell you say, Australia! A government which forbids protest is tyranny.
Not that repression is unusual in Australia, the country which paid Nauru to hold Australia's immigration prison and then to abolish freedom of the press so that journalists could not reach the prison.
As long as the protesters wore masks and maintained distance, they were entitled to protest.
Defending their right to protest does not mean I support their protest. Some of them reportedly are QAnon fantasists. That fantasy, which mutates as fast as HIV-1, is too incoherent to support a serious inquiry of whether "it" is true, because "it" would be different next week. I wish they were displaying their steadfastness for a good cause.
The US railroad industry has its own fusion center, with an information track leading straight to various government departments that can repress potential protesters. It can target even people that only criticize for investigation, and thugs might subsequently forget that they are only writing.
Reporter Justin Mikulka was painted as a criminal by association because what he wrote might inspire protests which could perhaps be illegal.
The "fusion centers" facilitate repression, so if we don't get rid of them, we must stop them from being used for repression.
*Morality has been stripped from public life. Here’s a four-step plan to revive it.*
Peter Strzok insists that the wrecker is working for Russia.
The wrecker's henchman, Roger Stone, said that the wrecker should put his opponents in prison if he can't make them pretend he has won the election.
Stone is a loyal henchman and would not have said this without encouragement from the wrecker himself.
I say "pretend to have won" because Republicans stole the 2016 presidential election, as well as the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
An appearance of "victory" for the wrecker is probably going to be fake. To be sure, millions of Americans will really vote for him, but they won't be enough to make an honest victory without the cheating.
The US has colonized Haiti (unofficially) for 105 years. In effect, it still does.
It is useful to recall that four years ago YouTube's recommendation algorithm recommended pro-bullshitter videos far more often than pro-Clinton videos.
This does not prove that the algorithm was intentionally designed for that result. Perhaps they were; but we know that right-wingers have learned how to manipulate recommendation algorithms; perhaps these results are a reflection of that. We know that they do not reflect a majority preference for the bullshitter, since he lost the popular vote.
Google's response amounts to, "Do not try to judge our actions without the full information that we won't let you have."
The Australian Green Party will support making Facebook and Google pay to redistribute journalistic articles if the plan is extended to cover more sources of journalism.
I am very much in favor of this, as I expect that it will pry loose those companies' influence over what news people access.
There are some sorts of works that I believe should be free. But that doesn't apply to news articles. I think individuals such as you and me should be free to redistribute exact copies, but I don't think that companies such as Google and Facebook are entitled to that right. Thus, I see nothing immoral about such a tax. It is a pragmatic question and nothing more.
*Rather than rebuild the social fabric of his country during the coronavirus-driven economic slump, Narendra Modi has chosen to play identity politics.*
Modi is a hater-divider-scapegoater, in the same mold as the bully in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil.
*Belarus: 100,000 join rally against Lukashenko on eve of Putin showdown.*
Portland's ban on business use of face recognition covers business premises which offer goods or services to the public.
I don't think this has any effect on Clearview AI, which is unfortunate since that is face recognition's most dangerous face.
A neighbor saw thugs shoot and kill Michael Forest Reinoehl without calling on him to surrender or identifying themselves as thugs.
Those acts add up to murder. We need an investigation to determined what happened, though we must distrust the testimony of thugs as usual.
54% of Americans households with incomes under $100,000 have suffered serious economic hardship since March.
Dr Fauci says life will not be back to normal until a year from now, even if a vaccine is ready early next year.
Only after many people receive the vaccine can we start to determine how long its effect lasts.
Indigenous Australians demand rules giving them the power to block destruction of ancient indigenous people's sites.
If their demands are granted, they will probably preserve most of these ancient sites, and that is good. But not necessarily all of them. The "traditional owners" of a site would have the power to permit destroying it, and sometimes they would do so.
These archaeological sites are important records of human history, all the more important because few other sites are so old. The most important thing to do with them is study them, and that should take precedence over all other use. No one, capitalist or indigenous, should be allowed to destroy them.
If they indigenous groups agree to protect the sites and cooperate with carefully planned scientific investigation, I would support giving them full authority over all other aspects of use of these sites.
(satire) *… residents of a small town in western Wisconsin expressed relief Friday that all of their beloved local businesses had been forced to close down long before Covid-19 struck.*
Everyone: call on corporations to stop supporting "police foundations".
US citizens: call on Twitch to disallow US military recruiting.
Recruiting on Twitch is tantamount to aiming recruiting at children, even if the military does not acknowledge that.
The Court of Appeals of the DC circuit continues doing its utmost to deny all legal recourse to the prisoners in Guantanamo.
The US owes each prisoner either a fair trial or release from prison. If the US cannot do so, because by torturing them it eliminated the possibility of a fair trial, the US should release them and then think about avoiding such a foolish actions in the future.
Arguments about expediency cannot override those rights — but I think they lead to the opposite conclusion. Freeing the prisoners would end a practice that motivates some people to hate the US.
(satire) *… Public Schools encouraged students without internet access Friday to attend remotely by peering through the home windows of wealthier classmates.*
There is an extra level of irony here that the authors are not aware of. Zoom is proprietary malware, and it surveils the users. You can protect yourself by not actually running Zoom or being seen by it in a camera. I have suggested finding a classmate who will record the video presentation, perhaps by pointing another camera at it, and send you the recording as a file. Looking through per window would also do the job, thought it would be less convenient.
*"One can draw a direct line between the [wrecker's] use of paramilitary forces to suppress protest domestically, and the tendency of security forces [sic] in foreign countries to violently suppress their own citizenry — security forces that for years have been backed, funded, trained, and armed by the United States government."*
Meanwhile, the wrecker threatens to crush protesting Americans who might disbelieve the claim, that he will surely make, to have won the election.
If asked to send help because someone is having a mental crisis, the last people you should send are cops. When they don't understand, their solution is "shoot".
Stress, including being confronted by armed thugs, can make people with mental disabilities lose their capacity to understand what others are saying to them. In thug-think, that means "resisting arrest, shoot!"
People who condemned anti-racist gestures by pro sports players cited various details as objectionable, but now those excuses have been stripped away. What those people object to is criticizing racism.
*Our national and state policies [about Edtech] are designed to subsidize profit-seeking from education.*
*The Tragedy of the Singular ‘They’.*
The author is mistaken to despair. No one can force him to use singular "they", and no one can force me, or you either.
For my own views, and the solution I have adopted, see "Better Genderless Pronouns in English."
14 states have sued to make the USPS reverse DeJoy's mail-delaying policy changes.
*Colorado … filed a federal lawsuit against DeJoy for sending out mailers containing information that could mislead and disenfranchise voters.*
Republicans have spread disinformation about voting for many years, but in the past they usually were limited to doing so in private capacity.
The wrecker's stooges have been editing their own spin into the CDC's weekly report on the status of public health and diseases.
*Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters.*
And this is just the beginning of it. To imagine life in 20 years, imagine that the worst we have seen happens in normal years, and the worst years are far, far worse disasters.
Most Democrats are not advocating the sort of measures that could stop the problem from getting even worse than that.
*We need to reclaim populism from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing history.*
There are large fires in Oregon; people are evacuating from places near Portland. 1/10 of the state's population has evacuated.
That region is famous for having lots of rain. That the climate has dried up enough for it to have forest fires is shocking.
Thugs in Bogotá have run amok. First they killed Javier Ordóñez by tasing him repeatedly while they were holding him down. This inspired protests in many cities, and the thugs attacked the protesters.
Republican judges in the 11th circuit federal appeals court approved Florida Republicans' scheme to block around 700,000 ex-cons from voting.
The Supreme Court might reverse this, but if it does not, I urge those people to to move to a state where their votes can do some good.
*Most wildfire coverage on American TV news (85%) fails to mention link to climate crisis.*
But that's not as bad as it was in August.
Maduro announced Venezuela's capture of a US marine with arms and money, claimed to be spying on two oil refineries.
Portland, Oregon, has banned use of face recognition by businesses.
I think this is the first such law in the US, and perhaps in the world.
Since the article quotes people as relating this to racial discrimination, I wish to comment on that.
Racial discrimination is wrong, and tracking people is wrong, but it is a mistake to relate the two issues too much. If you think that tracking people is wrong specifically because it enables discrimination, that means you are missing the threat of tracking in itself: that it is the base for repression.
To avert repression, we need to ban tracking regardless of whether it is used for discrimination.
(satire) *… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reportedly ordered Thursday to incinerate hundreds of screaming, boil-riddled test subjects before widely releasing the vaccine.*
I'm looking for a volunteer cartoonist to draw a few cartoons per year. Please send me email if you want to do this for me.
The wrecker continues ordering policy changes to undermine Americans' safety: legal, economic and physical.
Delaware has sued 31 fossil fuel companies plus the American Petroleum Institute for the predicted damage that will result from the greenhouse gas emissions they have already made.
All the oil companies' money can't compensate for the damage that their products are doing, but massive lawsuits against them can help defeat them and take away their power continue.
*Another Four Years of Trump Might Kill Off Remaining Hope Saving Planet From Climate Destruction.*
Sad to say, four years of Biden might have the same result.
Connecticut's public campaign funding system (for state offices) has been a big success. It has reduced the influence of big money.
Massachusetts adopted a similar system decades ago by initiative petition, but the legislators repealed it. We voted for the public funding system again by initiative petition, and the legislators repealed it again. Why anyone voted to reelect any legislator who had eliminated the system, I cannot comprehend, but people did.
*With World Closing in on Paris Warming Limit, UN Report Makes Case for 'Transformational Action' to Remake Global Economy.*
The predicted climate disaster is already starting. What should we do?
The article's title is a gross understatement. The California megafires are not our "wakeup call". They are our "The meeting is already starting and you're still in bed???" call. If this were a job, humanity would be fired.
I wonder why the understated term "climate change" is becoming fashionable again.
Florida's Republican government proposes to build 300 miles of unneeded toll highways through vulnerable ecosystems so that people can burn more fossil fuels.
The plan will succeed in providing income to construction companies, filling the air with more CO2, and provide an excuse to leave poor people without food, housing or medical care.
This is the epitome of Republican Party philosophy.
Uber and Lyft have put a referendum on the ballot in California to define their drivers a new legal status combining the worst aspects of being an employee with the worst aspects of independent contracting.
The article also describes other deceptive tricks that they are using. This is in addition to making customers identify themselves and run nonfree software,
A Salvadorean army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for ordering the political murder of five Spanish priests.
*Trump can't exclude undocumented immigrants from census, judges rule.*
But if his efforts have scared them into not answering, nothing can undo that.
Right-wing bullshitters spread the bullshit that Oregon's forest fires were set by Antifascist activists, so others are calling 9-1-1 with false reports about this.
A friend suggested to me that we should say "Antifascist" rather than "Antifa", because the latter looks like a name that could refer to anything and many people don't know it is short for "Antifascist".
A considerable number of children that catch Covid-19 develop heart problems that may last life-long.
I cannot tell from the article what fraction of children that catch Covid-19 go on to develop MIS-C. I don't think their sample was random. But whatever the fraction is, this is a good reason to try to keep children from catching it.
*A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a COVID-19 Antibody Test. It Cost his insurance company $10,984.*
The materials for the test cost 8 dollars. The labor? Surely not more than $100.
In 1905, an exposé convinced the US public to demand better safety standards in meat processing plants. This plus unions give the workers good pay and safe practices. Now, after a 50-year lobbying campaign, the companies have eliminated both.
Transferring a few thousand troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan is easy to do and would be easy to reverse; it is not a step on a path to ending the US interventions there.
A Republican senator's staffer told a constituent with cancer that buying medical coverage is just like buying a shirt — if you can't afford it, tough on you.
That is the way the US medical system operates, and it shows why we need a national medical system that won't charge people for medical treatment.
*Numerous high-ranking Trump administration officials in the U.S. Department of the Interior are connected to right-wing anti-environmental think tanks and legal groups funded by corporate interests and wealthy individuals seeking to privatize public lands.*
*Warning of More Pandemics to Come, Public Health Experts Urge Collective Examination of What it Means to Live in 'Harmony with Nature'.*
Most terrorists would hesitate before releasing a disease that was likely to kill their own side as well as the enemy. But bats, unknowingly spreading a virus that can affect humans, won't be held back by any sort of conscious consideration.
The head of Social Security Works says that the wrecker really could single-handedly destroy Social Security if he is reelected.
Unless 2/3 of the House and the Senate pass a law to override or compensate for his actions.
California voters: vote no on prop 22, the Uber exploitation exception.
Human Rights Watch: *Social media platforms are taking down online content they consider terrorist, violently extremist, or hateful in a way that prevents its potential use to investigate serious crimes, including war crimes.*
The THRIVE resolution states support for something similar to the Green New Deal.
Can anyone show me how it compares with previous forms of the Green New Deal? In particular, it could be only a part of the Green New Deal proposal. However, it could also be bigger.
Greedy US medical insurance companies are exploiting loopholes, even maybe-loopholes, to charge for Covid-19 tests.
*'Falling through the cracks' isn't the exception in the US — it's a fundamental feature of the system.*
*The most dangerous phase of the US Covid-19 crisis may be yet to come.*
It should be pointed out that the "bipartisanship" of the "CARES" Act gave some help to poor and unemployed Americans, but a lot more help to big companies that ought to pay more tax. That was saving poor people for the short term and screwing them for the long term.
The Chief Justice of Massachusetts ordered a study of patterns of sentencing, and it found clear evidence of racial bias. Since the study controlled for other pertinent variables, there is no doubt about the conclusion: sentencing in Massachusetts is subject to systemic racism.
That the study was ordered by the state's highest judge gives me hope it will lead to considered action to reduce the injustice.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
The USPS governing board is 100% satisfied with DeJoy, both his sabotage of the USPS and the fund-raising crimes he committed before in support of Republicans.
What they are saying is that they are loyal members of the bullshit party.
South Australia will ban many kinds of single-use plastic items.
This is good, but it is crucial to take action on fishing nets discarded at sea. One idea would be to charge a large deposit for them when selling them. Large enough that no fishing boat operator would dream of failing to turn in a ruined net.
The Tories plan to lick Covid-19 by applying hypothetical testing technology which they will try to develop.
Meanwhile, the Tory minister in charge tells asymptomatic people they cannot have a test. Doesn't he know that asymptomatic people can transmit Covid-19?
A few years ago the Tories said, as they eliminated incentives to install home solar power, that they would lick global heating with hypothetical carbon capture technology. That technology still has not been developed, and people rarely talk about it any more.
I think carbon capture and storage was a distraction technique — and it seems to have been successful, since we still are not taking adequate measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
*Australia's untapped gas reserves could unleash three year's worth of global emissions.*
There is no room in the carbon budget for any additional fossil fuel facilities.
Globally, populations of vertebrates have dropped 2/3 since 1970.
Populations of insects have also dropped drastically, but they are not covered by this study.
What it adds up to is that we are ruining nature.
The FBI strains to entrap lonely men into planning to meet imaginary women who have given contradictory ideas about their age.
A few years ago it was targeting "terrorists" who had to be persuaded to agree to participate in a fictitious plan of violence they could never have arranged on their own.
What these two schemes have in common is that they are opportunities to pretend to protect people from dangers that are entirely imaginary.
*Boris Johnson's 'oven-ready' Brexit had a secret footnote: we'll rehash it later.*
It is clear now that Bogus Johnson was lying to everyone all along about his plans for taking the UK out of the EU.
Now that the Irish Republic has thrown off the legal dominion of Catholic sexual repression, there is no reason for Northern Ireland not to join the Irish Republic. That would eliminate the insoluble problems that Northern Ireland causes for UK-EU trade relations.
*Maria Kolesnikova (Belarus opposition leader) says she was told she would be leaving country ‘alive or in bits’.*
However, they were not in fact ready to go so far; she defied them and they did not kill her.
Global heating disaster has turned life in California into fear and sickness. No one can escape the harm.
Bogus Johnson has made it clear he wants the UK to exit the EU with no agreement.
This explains why there has been very little progress towards a deal: he was only pretending to seek a deal. This was an enormous lie to Britons, from a man with a history of lying.
Greenhouse gas emissions have returned to the level before Covid-19.
*'Catastrophe' warning as thousands left homeless by Lesbos refugee camp fire.*
Saint Louis, former capital of Senegal, is being lost rapidly to rising sea levels.
Tories wanted to pass town laws to fine people for sleeping in doorways.
It is bad to have people sleeping in doorways that people will need to go through. But why would anyone do that? Lack of any better shelter, I'd expect. The town should provide poor people with decent places to sleep, places that will not be bad for others, or for them. How about if they can also spend the day in their homes?
However, Tories are in favor of government handouts to make sure somewhat wealthy people lose no luxuries due to the economic crisis.
*The wrecker knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to "play it down", according to interviews recorded by Bob Woodward.*
*British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across the world.*
I think as-yet-undiscovered mechanisms will tend to encourage the movement towards thermal equilibrium rather than retard it. If you live in a low-lying city, and you are young, don't expect it to remain.
*Trumpet preventing Fauci from discussing Covid children risk.*
Brian Murphy accuses the trumpets running the DHS of ordering him to fabricate intelligence, and suppress other intelligence, so as to mislead the public. Eventually they demoted him for refusing, and he has filed a whistleblower complaint denouncing them.
I believe he is sincere, because filing a complaint is a serious matter.
I am curious what his job title was — the article does not say.
In general, I agree that China is a bigger threat to world freedom than Russia. Whether that means Xi threatens the US election more than Putin, I have no idea. But it is clear that rich Americans threaten the US election more than any foreign country. However, those are all side issues for this. What we see is that the corrupter is corrupting US government agencies, and the trumpets who run them are lying to congress. They should go to prison for that.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate officials' violation of the Hatch Act.
*New Zealand [and other countries too] must cast off its worries about government debt in its Covid recovery.*
Modern monetary theory teaches that a country can increase its money supply and spend the newly created money without causing harm, provided the economy can absorb the additional currency. I think that means, in effect, provided it won't overload the productive capacity in the long term. New Zealand and other countries with their own currencies have this solution available too,
Poor Euro zone! Those countries will be crushed by the disaster of the vicious cycle of budget cuts that cause more budget cuts, required by Euro-zone rules.
The president of the UK Police Superintendents’ Association described the injustice of policing towards nonwhites as a national emergency.
The US has a long way to go before something comparable could occur.
(satire) *Equifax assured her that a recent drop in her credit score was unrelated to anything. “While your credit score is significantly lower now, we just want to you to keep in mind that you had absolutely no control over it.”*
B'tselem: Israeli soldiers planted explosive booby traps at places where the children of the Palestinian town of Kufr Qaddum often play, and where people gather for their weekly nonviolent protests.
This is perhaps the most shocking form of Israeli violence against protesters, but soldiers have attacked protesters many times occasionally kill them.
An Israeli soldier shot two Palestinians, a few minutes apart, for no reason. The second one died, and — amazingly — the soldier was actually prosecuted and sentenced to three months in jail. Plus three months of community service.
Israel's failure to prosecute most Israelis that kill Palestinians means that the International Criminal Court has an opportunity to do so.
It would be awfully ironic if the wrecker won the election for real by saying he would implement a national medical system.
It would be even more ironic when, after election day, he turned against the idea again. That is just like him.
(satire) *hellip;aliens pointedly avoiding METI transmissions confirmed Wednesday that they really thought Earth’s scientists would’ve taken the hint by now.*
(satire) *…the Lord God Almighty confirmed Wednesday that He had selected a new class of interns for the fall.*
The Federal Reserve is the wrong tool to help America out of a recession.
China accuses Australia of interrogating Chinese journalists and telling them to hush it up.
China is hardly hesitant to lie or distort, but this could be true. Australia does things like that, such as the secret prosecution of a whistleblower and the law that threatens every free software developer in the world.
Queensland, Australia, has passed a law requiring Catholic priests to testify about what they learn in confessions about sexual abuse of minors by priests.
The aim is laudable, but I doubt this law will actually produce much evidence.
This reminds me of the US court ruling that seized the recordings made by an American project that had interviewed former IRA terrorists and promised to keep the recordings secret for a long time. Until after their death, I think. Without that promise, they would not have made recordings.
The effect of this ruling was to set aside the premise and obtain the evidence from that one set of terrorists, but also to bar any similar future projects about other violent disputes. Instead of learning what happened, at some future time, we won't learn it ever. In the long term, I think we are worse off.
It appears Chairman Xi has decided to cease allowing foreign reporters in China. Concealing dirty secrets that the reporters might get wind of is more important than the benefit of cooperating with foreign press.
It might be interesting to set up a treaty imposing tariffs on the exports the countries that repress the foreign press.
*Covid risks making [UK] society more unequal than since early Victorian times.*
Tory cuts to the NHS and other programs that give poor people a decent life began the process.
Bolivia's pseudo-coup-installed government found an excuse to stop Evo Morales from running for the senate: they have driven him into exile.
Lukashenko is arresting all the opposition leaders he can get his hands on.
Berlusconi has a severe case of Covid-19.
I hope the right-wingers in Italy that despise wearing masks learn something from this.
Companies are selling car owners devices to modify their cars to be more powerful and emit more pollution.
*Thousands displaced by the [big 2018 California] fire have not returned to the communities devastated by it. It’s a scenario that will repeat as fire risk intensifies.*
If I lived in California with a forest nearby, I'd be looking to move away. I wouldn't wait for a fire to burn my house.
*Climate crisis could displace 1.2bn people by 2050, report warns.*
A UK government inquiry recommended measures to protect against future fires in high-rise apartment buildings. The Tories have refused to adopt them.
Australia's opposition leader has made a commitment to exporting green electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Two soldiers from the Burmese army recorded confessions of carrying out mass killings of Rohingya, under orders.
The wrecker has told the "Justice Department" to make the US take up the liability for damages, as well as defense costs in E Jean Carroll's lawsuit accusing him of raping her.
*Why Does [the wrecker] Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized Testing [of students]?*
I think it is a rational decision. He desires the election chaos that spreading Covid-19 could bring. Cancelling standardized tests won't create chaos at all, let alone chaos that he can profit from.
Some pharma companies have pledged not to ask for approval of a vaccine without success in a phase 3 blind trial, even though the wrecker wants them to.
The US has sunk from the First World to become the first Fourth World country.
(satire) *… inhabitants of a rural Kenyan village confirmed Tuesday that they were waiting for a group of eager but unskilled American volunteers to leave so they could rebuild their school correctly.*
*Citing 'Criminal Exposure' in Straw-Donor Scheme and Possible Perjury, House Announces Investigation Into DeJoy.*
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally indirectly led to 260,000 cases of Covid-19, which is likely to include at least hundreds of deaths.
Gratuitous foolish disease spreading on subsequent occasions must have contributed.
The World Bank rates every country on the "ease of doing business", which turns out to mean the "ease of big foreign companies' muscling in."
13% of deaths in the EU are caused by environmental pollution.
It could be worse in the US, where the environmental standards are weaker and enforcement is not very good either.
Covid-19 is intensifying famines in many parts of the world. The UN predicts that around 265 million people will be on the brink of statement by the end of this year.
Everyone: call on Samsung to stop participating in coal power construction.
Everyone: call on Rochester officials to (1) prosecute the thugs that killed Daniel Prude, and (2) stop sending thugs to "help" people having mental breakdowns.
Hundreds of Australian scientists say that the government and businesses are gagging them when they try to warn about coming damage to the environment, and altering their writing, effectively putting lies in their mouths.
The Rochester thug department chief and his deputy have resigned.
That's progress, but their replacements must act, with the city's firm support, to curb the violence and lies of thugs. This would be a good time to shift jobs other than confronting real criminals to other departments.
Air pollution has a high cost to society.
It would make sense, in a democratic society, to take big steps to reduce pollution.
California's megafires have burned over 3100 square miles, which is more than 2% of California's land area. And the fire season still has months to run.
20 years from now, the average year will be like this year. A bad year will be far worse.
In 2006, the US government had evidence to prosecute Purdue Pharma, but it did not. We don't know why not.
Two Australian journalists in China were barred from leaving until they answered questions about a third Australian journalist who is in some sort of jail and being investigated for charges of journalism.
Governments that are highly repressive and secretive tend to be quick to equate asking nosy questions with spying. Of course, asking nosy questions is the job of a good journalist,
The US government has been becoming more repressive and secretive in recent decades, and we see the effects of that in the prosecution of Julian Assange.
Remote school does not protect children from the school-to-prison pipeline. Colorado school officials suspended a child for playing with a nerf gun (a harmless toy which does not look like a real gun) while visible on camera, then sent a thug to his house.
It's not that the officials are unable to tell the difference between a real gun and a nerf gun. It's not that they can't tell the difference between having a gun near you and seeing one on TV. It is much worse than that: they have been convinced that it is their job to ignore the difference.
This is much worse, because it can become far more widespread. We can expect that not more than a handful of school officials would lose track of the difference between reality and a picture; but if someone teaches them to ignore the difference, they could all do it!
The article presents this as a matter of racism. The child is black, and the parents assume the officials acted insanely because of that. Perhaps they did, but the article does not present evidence for that. Maybe they would have been insanely cruel to any child, regardless of race.
Let's hope these parents sue the pants off them, so they and other school officials will learn not to do this to any child, ever.
The UK's thug minister vows to protect Britons from Extinction Rebellion.
Who will protect Britons from extinction?
Thugs in Salt Lake City answered a 9-1-1 call from a woman who said her unarmed 13-year-old son was uncontrollably upset. They treated him as if he were an armed and dangerous gangster.
The shots did not kill him, but after those injuries he may wish they had.
This is a precise example of the reason behind "Defund the police". The city should have sent an unarmed team of calmers and deescalaters, not thugs.
*'Horrifically Catastrophic': Report Finds So-Called US War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People.*
On the other hand, it might be as few as 37 million people — which is still a global calamity.
*Rise in carbon capture as global warming speeds growth of forests would be negated by earlier deaths, say scientists.*
I wonder if we could counteract that by cutting down those trees while they are large, then somehow preserving the wood from decay. But that is a far-fetched idea, and if it doesn't work, we must stop letting companies distract us with "carbon offsets" and "net carbon emissions" and accept no substitute for less emission.
Is publishing a book denouncing the conman enough repentance to forgive Michael Cohen for decades of serving him?
*The pandemic is an opportunity to reconsider what makes a good life.*
The Tibetan Policy and Support Act would have the US officially reject and punish China's intended attempt to appoint the next Dalai Lama.
*The Real 'Hoax' in America Is Record Wall Street Profits as Nation's Jobless Millions Cannot Afford Rent.*
Rage is building. But Republicans fool the enraged public into directing their rage against masks and disease-prevention precautions, instead of the proper targets: the plutocrats and the politicians that serve them.
The fossil fuel industry, deadly in the long term, is unprofitable overall even in the short term.
However, the big fossil fuel companies are not hurting enough to shut down. If they are not making profits in the way we were taught to think of business as making profits, I suspect they are running something we would consider a scam if we knew about it.
The UK barred Amnesty International and other human rights groups from monitoring Julian Assange's extradition hearing.
The UK government now believes it can get away with all sorts of repression and anti democratic behavior. I hope it is mistaken.
Jacob Blake describes his life as constant pain. Every movement hurts.
I hope it gets less painful as his wounds heal.
Americans, pay attention to the PRO Act, which would help workers unionize.
The remake of Mulan was filmed partly in Xinjiang with the help of a Chinese government agency that also runs brainwashing camps.
It may seem advantageous that US commercial culture production sells well in China, but it gives the Chinese government influence over what American companies say or show to the rest of the world about China.
Postmaster Dejoy faces investigation in North Carolina for the crime of passing campaign contributions through intermediaries.
The wrecker cannot pardon him from state charges and his flunky in charge of the "Justice Department" cannot call off the investigation.
However, I don't see how this investigation could make Dejoy undo the harm he has done to mail delivery. I doubt he could even be charged before election day.
Firing him would not help either, because he is not an individual criminal loner. He is part of a shameless political machine. If he were gone, the wrecker would put in another hatchet man to finish the job.
A former Salvadorean minister is now on trial in Spain for ordering the murder of six Spanish priests during the country's war of repression.
Landlords will install Alexa listening devices and claim that entitles them to a higher rent.
I think the crucial question is whether the tenants can physically disconnect it.
Alexa for Residential will help people (including landlords) snoop on each other.
How about passing laws that forbid landlords from requiring tenants to tolerate microphones or cameras inside the property they rent?
Requiring tenants to use an "online portal" (which is likely to require running nonfree Javascript software and could make tenants sign away their rights) should be forbidden as well.
Assange's lawyers charge that the US replaced the indictment trying to disguise the invalidity of the extradition request. They also complain about being denied the opportunity to meet with their client.
*Hong Kong shocked by violent police arrest of 12-year-old girl.*
That's what thugs do when they perceive the people as enemies. We see it in the US too.
Australia's extractivist government plans to reduce environmental protections to permit more mining. Conservationists ask UNESCO to object since the change would imperil world heritage sites.
China has been working for 80 years to do away with Tibetan culture.
The methods developed in repression of the Uighurs may now be used to sinicize Tibetans. It's making me sinical about China's intentions ;-}.
It is true that Tibet was a feudal society in 1950. But ending feudalism did not have to be followed by assimilation, and forced inclusion in an even worse system of government. China could have ended the feudalism and left Tibetans mostly alone, and come out admired.
A Tennessee thug faces criminal charges for attacking Andrew Golden, who was making a video of a traffic stop from a safe distance.
The thug should be charged with reckless endangerment for breathing, maskless, in Golden's face with no justification.
The bully backed off on his plan to close the newspaper Stars and Stripes.
Matt Taibbi: To understand the bullshitter, think if him as a salesman who sells the experience of being sold to. Just what he says he is selling makes no difference to him.
The Democratic Party can't make a serious response because it has no serious response to America's problems, and its attempts to respond play into the bullshitter's hands.
I am no expert, but I think we should ignore his outrageous verbal provocations, and focus on the real harm he does, and the good we can do.
Everyone: support the decentralized month of solidarity with Assange, Whistleblowers and Press Freedom.
Car companies are spreading FUD to try to defeat the Massachusetts right to repair initiative.
The truly dangerous data predators are the car companies themselves. But you can block them, and anyone else that wants to track your car, by converting it into a disconnected car. Disconnect (or cover with metal foil) its cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If warranty considerations would preclude turning off the antennas, get a car that's out of warranty.
And do vote for the right-to-repair initiative if you live in Massachusetts. Next step: require cars to let the owner control what data to collect and/or make available to anyone.
Ultimately, the computers in the car that can communicate sensitive data, or allow installation of different versions of software, should run exclusively free software and the owner should be able to install modified versions.
The reason the US can't set up enough Covid-19 testing is bad organization of its medical system. Other countries have done an excellent job of this, using techniques that the US could employ if were willing to make the necessary organizational changes,
Hedge fund and private equity "investments" turn out to be rip-offs for the investors.
What private equity "invests" in is trashing companies and jobs. If our government were not under the thumb of the billionaires that run these "investments", we would prohibit them.
Erdoğan is trying to bring back Turkish imperialism as well as Islamism.
It is a danger, but mainly in the long term. One exception: the discovery of large natural gas reserves is always terrifying, because someone might extract them and burn them. We can hope that international tensions will keep the gas in the ground, but it would more reliable to sign an agreement to that effect.
Thugs in Los Angeles county kill around 45 people a year, and they're on track to do it again this year.
Often they shoot people for running away, which means implies that the victims were not threatening them and there was no need to shoot them.
I'm in favor of defunding the sheriff's department. There is little chance of reforming the brutal culture of such an organization while keeping the same personnel. LA county needs some sort of law enforcement, but it should be restructured. Perhaps one department to enforce traffic codes and that's all, and another to respond when people need practical or medical help. A smaller police department could be called only to deal with dangerous crime.
It seems more efficient to have the same personnel do all sorts of jobs, but it is asking for trouble.
About Michael Reinoehl, armed Black Lives Matter protester who killed one of a violent right-wing group that attacked a protest.
We can't take for granted that the statements by cops are accurate. Did he really pull a gun when cops tried to arrest him? It is the sort of thing thugs frequently fabricate, but it might be true. He may have committed "suicide by cop".
I believe Reinoehl's statement that his intention on various circumstances was to protect people, but I won't take for granted that the specifics he states are accurate. Was Danielson trying to stab a BLM protester? IANAL, but I suppose that would have made killing him justifiable.
I hope that we find out the truth.
Clearview AI argues, stretching the idea of freedom of expression, that it includes the right to make a database of photos of millions of people and systematically recognize people against it. This article argues the contrary.
The US is being crushed by the decision to prioritize creditors (particularly large, powerful creditors) over the rest of society. We need a debt jubilee.
A prosecutor in Louisville offered Breonna Taylor's ex, accused of drug trafficking, a plea deal in which he would say that she was involved in the transaction.
Now the prosecutor argues that since the offer was made during negotiations, and was not the final plea deal offer, we should imagine that it never happened.
The icebreaker Polarstern had a very quick and easy trip to the North Pole, Terrifyingly easy. The Arctic ice has lost 75% of its volume in the past 30 years.
Arguing that Facebook deliberately promotes right wing extremism because it would benefit from a Republican victory.
The US bombing of Libya in 2011 caused a disaster that has harmed many countries in North Africa.
Putting the residents in each community in charge of building new, dense housing can defuse the conflicts about it.
Most prisoners' families say that US prisoners do not have access to soap, disinfectant, and other things they need to stop the spread of coronavirus.
One other thing they don't have enough of is space to stay away from each other.
Stiglitz urges states to raises taxes on the rich ASAP so as to avoid terrible budget cuts.
When the wrecker called on his supporters to try to vote twice, which is a felony, he committed the felony of incitement.
Michael Cohen's book says that the conman is guilty of the same crimes as he.
Your employer's "spiritual consultant" will try to teach you to find deep meaning in your meaningless job.
The Tories want to impose a digital biometric ID system on everyone in the UK. This would be a gratuitous increment in tyranny.
*15 Years After Hurricane Katrina, It’s Time to Demilitarize Disaster Relief.*
Ralph Nader challenges the Democratic Party to take steps to go beyond being "not the Republicans".
A study predicts that strict wearing of masks could save 120,000 lives in the US in the rest of this year.
I'm doing my part. I hope you are too.
The Democratic Party calls for more protection of nature, but does not talk about giving nature "rights".
I am in favor of more legal protections of nature — more, I expect, than the Democratic Party advocates, However, it does not make sense to attribute "rights" to anything that doesn't have a will with which to decide how to exercise them.
Rather than describe legal protections of nature using a blatant absurdity, we should describe them as what they are: protections for something we consider important.
"Centrist" Democrats made a big fuss when the Republican former governor of Michigan endorsed Biden.
For me, it shows how close Biden is to being a pre-conman Republican.
One way to convince the wrecker to accept defeat could be to convince Putin to offer him asylum in Russia. But once he is gone, we will still need to restore democratic elections.
The article describes three changes: eliminating the electoral college, ending voter suppression and gerrymandering, and breaking through the two-party system that gives us the choice of moderate right wing vs extreme right wing.
The author proposes that the peoples of other countries dominated by the US should have some say in the US government. I agree there is a problem to be fixed, but I don't think the US government can play, simultaneously, the two roles of most-of-the-world government and government of one country.
Sanders states what the US needs to do to prepare in advance to confront the wrecker if he tries to deny or disregard the election result.
The problem is, these preparation steps are a wish, not a plan. In states controlled by Republicans, they have a history of voter suppression. They won't do what needs to be done. The mainstream media may not want to help. Facebook may have made a deal with the wrecker. That leaves only step 4 which can be carried out by people (Congressional Democrats) that probably want to do it.
FAIR: The Washington Post paired frequent right-wing violence against BLM with barely any violence by BLM supporters to construct a false equivalence.
Extinction Rebellion rejects the charge that its one-day blockade of several right-wing British newspapers, all owned by one company, was "an attack on the free press." Basically, a press dominated by one company which covers up the most important information is effectively not a free press to begin with.
Facebook has banned political ads for the week before election day. That has a good side, but it includes the ads by state election officials which tell people where and how to vote.
Facebook could run those announcements gratis; then they would not be ads.
Once again, a ship that picked up migrants in the Mediterranean is being barred from all ports and is getting low on food and water.
Having cops in a school harms students in the UK, just as it does in the US.
The bully has repeatedly expressed his contempt for US soldiers that died in wars. Now he wants to punish a journalist who reported this.
About the US soldiers that died or were injured in Iraq, the bully is half right. They were duped — by Dubya. He started the war >based on lies. All the US military personnel that Dubya hijacked to make the Bush forces were duped, and Dubya is guilty of an enormous crime, against them and against Iraqis.
They deserve condolences for that, not contempt. They wanted to serve their country — it is not their fault that Dubya lied to them about what they would be doing.
The bully has contempt for them because he is heartless. He lives by duping people; to excuse this, he believes that anyone who is duped deserves to be duped.
Now he has mad veterans, many of who supported him, very angry.
*Navalny poisoning forces Merkel's party to ask: how do we hit back at Putin?*
Here's a suggestion: switch to renewable energy as fast as possible. It's vitally necessary anyway, and it will eliminate demand for Russia's key exports (fossil fuels).
UK thugs arrested over 500 Extinction Rebellion protesters in London.
The excuse in many cases was Covid-19. Of course, protesters must take care not to spread Covid-19, but did they really fail to do that? I expect Extinction Rebellion to be very careful about health.
One of their protests was blocking delivery of Murdoch's right-wing denialist almost-monopoly newspapers.
This has been labeled an "attack on the free press". If they kept it up for a long time, I would agree, but they did it for just one day.
Australia has been rapidly building renewable electric generation and large batteries for storage. However, it is not encouraging any new investment.
I wonder if this is due to the current planet-roaster government which came in a few years ago.
China arrests foreigners as hostages.
The bully is trying to put an end to any antiracism training that presents the idea that the United States or any race or ethnicity is "inherently racist or evil."
I would object to training people in those ideas, but does that ever happen? A priori, it seems unlikely.
It is undeniably true that racism systematically gives whites a certain advantage over blacks in our society. It is the converse of the disadvantage that racism systematically imposes on blacks. To recognize this does not assert that whites are evil.
Republicans are sending disinformation about Democratic candidates including fake images, along with applications for postal ballots.
The bully's henchman has found a strained excuse to shut down Stars and Stripes, an editorially-independent newspaper for military personnel and others.
This is going to anger veterans, just when they are angry at being called "losers" and "suckers."
(satire) *Pope Maintains Divine Buzz By Microdosing Eucharist Throughout Day.*
*Greta Thunberg: don't dump climate crisis on children to fix.*
(satire) *"Tell everyone who will listen that it wasn’t coronavirus that killed me—it was asthma, and high cholesterol, and blood pressure!" the dying Trump supporter reportedly told the hospital staff between gasps for breath*
Conspiracy-theorists held a protest in Melbourne, and did not wear masks.
They are entitled to the right to protest, even in an idiotic cause. They are not entitled to the right to spread disease. For intentionally doing that, they deserved to be arrested.
*93% of [Black Lives Matter] demonstrations have involved no serious harm to people or property.*
The 7% exceptions play into right-wing hands. Nearly all the protesters know what to do. Can they organize to lead the rest?
Justice is coming slowly for Cherry Groce, paralyzed by a shot by a London thug, but at least it may teach someone how to avoid doing this to someone else.
*Britain's obsession with school uniform reinforces social divisions.*
Perhaps it is something more sinister than an innocent obsession.
The US is still failing to manage Coronavirus properly and therefore the disease is likely to remain at high levels into the winter.
You can help retail workers remain employed by rejecting on-line orders and delivery. A job in a store is a better job than a gig-economy job delivering packages.
Rochester thugs suffocated Daniel Prude by putting a hood over his face and pushing it into the ground. Then they lied about it.
I can understand the need for the spit hood, but there was no need to shove his face down. And no possible excuse for lying.
I think the chief of the thug department deserves to be fired if he asserted those lies were valid.
People protested peacefully about the killing, and the thugs attacked them violently for no apparent reason.
Palantir, the great repression-planning company, plans to go public.
Republicans are suing many states to try to stop them from sending out large numbers of postal ballots.
Even if they lose the lawsuits, they will delay sending out the ballots. With that on one side and post office sabotage on the other, they can cause ballots not to be counted.
In Illinois, vote for the graduated income tax.
*For Years, Journalists Cheered Assange’s Abuse. Now They’ve Paved His Path To a US Gulag.*
(satire) *… streaming service Spotify reportedly celebrated Thursday the platform’s 100th dollar given to artists.*
Oil companies are hoping that increased production of plastics will make up for decreased combustion of fossil fuels. Alas, it seems that life can't tolerate plastics.
Thugs went to arrest the man accused of killing a right-wing extremist protester in Portland, but they shot him dead instead.
I have to suspect they killed him by choice.
Varoufakis has proposed a system to replace today's capitalism. It still uses markets for goods and services, but workers are always co-owners as every enterprise is a cooperative.
I don't understand how the levies on countries for having an imbalance of trade or payments would function. If this is meant to pressure countries not to have imbalances, what could they do to avoid them?
I am also worried by the idea that people would make all their payments using central bank accounts — because that implies tracking, which is dangerous. And I am not convinced that the 5% flat tax on business income would bring in enough funds for the state to do its many jobs.
Perhaps I would see these are not real problems if I understood better. Perhaps some details could be changed. In any case, it is an interesting area to explore.
One of the planet-roasting policies that the US has maintained for decades is allowing oil and gas extractors to pay only a small amount for what they extract. That was always bad. But the wrecker has cut down the payments to nearly zero for hundreds of wells.
Seven UN special rapporteurs say, *Hong Kong security law 'may break international laws'.* It conflicts with treaties that China has signed.
This can have an effect on China but only if other countries condition some decisions on this.
I would expect that the lawless behavior of uniformed US thugs violates some treaties. And what about Guantanamo. and wars of aggression? Not that one country's wrongs excuse another country's wrongs — but would be easier to enforce the treaties if breaking them were unusual and unaccepted.
*I'm a freelance writer. A Russian media operation targeted and used me.* The site PeaceData offered to pay him for a weekly column.
*Greystone Nursing Homes, Whose Executives Gave $800,000 to Trump, Are Epicenters of Covid-19 Deaths.*
Businesses that pay off officials expect something specific in return. Perhaps in this case it is permission to cut corners on safety.
Tories have pushed reopening so hard that Covid-19 is increasing. Now some parts of England are running out of coronavirus tests.
An Australian warns Britain about engaging Australian buffoon Tony Abbott as trade negotiator.
I think Abbott could do worse than fail, though. He would be excellent at giving the conman whatever he wants, and lauding it. Johnson makes mistakes, but I think he knows what Abbott will do, and that is what he wants.
I wish I had confidence that Biden would protect the US (and the UK) from that bad business-supremacy treaty but Obama would not.
Iran is holding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe hostage to collect a valid debt from the UK.
It is wrong to hold people as hostages, but the UK should have paid this debt willingly.
In 2009, a Buffalo police officer jumped on a thug's back to stop him from choking someone. She was fired, and lost her pension while one year from retirement.
Now she is suing to demand her pension.
A Republican congresscritter who fanatically defends the right to carry guns says he would shoot any blacks that carry guns at a protest.
Does this mean he advocates the right to carry guns only for whites?
Does he now believe that guns should be prohibited at demonstrations? I'm in favor of that, as long as it applies to everyone.
*Joe Biden, Don’t Let Donald Trump Run as the Antiwar Candidate!*
Inducing people to try to vote twice is a felony in North Carolina, but the basic principle of trumpery is that supporters of the wrecker can disregard any law.
Foreign workers in Dubai who have lost their jobs are being left to starve.
The recently announced policy change would allow foreign workers to quit their jobs, and get new work or depart. That is a good thing, but it does not help those who can't find new work, and can't afford to depart.
The UK does something similar to unauthorized foreign workers: they have to beg for food and shelter.
An appeals court has ruled that the collection of phone records about all Americans was illegal.
This is but one of many systems of surveillance that Snowden revealed to us. That is why we need to repeal that part of PAT RIOT act.
Prosecutors increasingly pursue the surviving perpetrators of the international terrorist plot known as Operation Condor, a conspiracy of dictators in South America that operated with the support of the US.
*Undercover journalist Valentin Gendrot describes culture where [French thugs] act with impunity.* He joined a thug department and reported on the violence and lies he witnessed.
What an interesting reversal it is for thugs to be the target of an undercover investigation. We need more of these.
The wrecker urged voters in North Carolina to submit a postal ballot and then vote in person.
The voting system ought to detect such attempts and block the double voting. That does not mean it is good for thousands of people to test it in this way. Especially if Republican officials might be tempted to let whites get two votes.
The repressive regime in the UK has not officially banned peaceful protest, but is hemming it in with laws that make it very difficult.
*Portuguese children sue 33 countries over [causing global heating].*
France plans a substantial effort to reduce greenhouse emissions by investing in bicycle riding.
This, however, can't possibly do enough.
Wild elephants in Africa are dying by the hundreds. Scientists are trying to figure out the cause.
*Arizona university prevents potential Covid outbreak by testing feces.*
Various US government agencies are scurrying to complete acts of environmental sabotage by Jan 20, in case the saboteur in chief loses reelection.
Oportun lends to poor people, initially on fairly reasonable terms; but if something goes wrong (such as unemployment), it demands high interest. They can get caught and never get out.
Companies like this are bottom feeders. If people are lucky, these companies can help them squeak by. If they are unlucky, they get caught. But the real cause of the problem is the low income many Americans get, and the high cost of everything medical.
The US trade treaty with Jordan led to a big increase in clothing production there, but didn't do much to reduce the cruelty to workers there.
As a general solution, I suggest that importing countries pass laws requiring the label on an article of clothing carry the name of the company that actually made the article. This could help hold that company accountable, and it will make buyers more aware of how the production system operates.
California is being hit by giant fires and coronavirus quarantines at the same time. Even in cities, thousands of people are evacuating.
If global heating proceeds unabated, I envision that in 2050 there will be 20 or 30 regional disasters like this each year in the US, and no place will be safe. We must take drastic measures now.
The dishonest sex smear defeated Alex Morse; plutocratist Rep. Neal will probably his megacorporations for one more term.
Consumer Reports found that the College Board web site gives data to many surveillance capitalism companies when students sign up on its web site.
Some 12,000 additional people died in the UK in March and April from causes unrelated to Covid-19.
This seems to be because they couldn't go to a hospital for treatment. This reinforces the importance of taking measures to keep the infection rate low.
ACLU of Georgia and Greg Palast: *…the State had likely removed in 2019 the voter registrations of nearly 200,000 Georgia citizens on the grounds that they had moved from the address on their voter registration application. However, none of these citizens had moved,…*
Markey's victory speech: "There is no time for compromise on the existential threat to our time. We must pass a Green New Deal... The time to be timid is past. The age of incremental-ism is over. Now is our moment to think big, to build big, to be big. This is what this election is all about."
He is right — so how are we going overcome the opposition of Biden, Pelosi, and so on.
Official thugs and white vigilantes (unofficial thugs) tend to support each other because they mostly share the same ideology: maintaining a social order which incorporates racism and plutocracy.
Congress has subpoenaed various documents from DeJoy including his calendar of meetings, which he has concealed so far.
Around a million primary election ballots were mailed to voters within a week of the election, meaning they very likely arrived too late to be sent back and counted.
This is not a matter of artificial mail delays in the USPS, but if it happens again in November, the consequences will add to the consequences of those delays.
Amazon advertised for staff to interfere with union organizing.
Amazon later said that ad was posted "in error", which probably means the hiring was supposed to be done quietly. Amazon has long made a practice of monitoring staff's discussions about unionization.
The US is still carrying out bombing in Somalia, to fight al-Shaabab, but now it blames all civilian casualties on the enemy.
It is worth reminding people that al-Shaabab was created when Ethiopia intervened, on behalf of the US, to destroy the "Islamic courts" government that had established peace in Somalia. Somalia has not known peace since then.
The city of Hoboken has sued Exxon for the damages of the predicted consequences of global heating. In the case of Hoboken, the damages will be due to inundation of much of the city.
Amnesty International condemns US sanctions against the staff of the International Criminal Court.
The corrupter is fairly consistent about one thing: protecting the crooks that are working for him.
Extinction Rebellion has launched a series of protests in London and Manchester, to remind the UK that the part of the disaster we can still avoid gets smaller with each year of insufficient action.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
If you call, please spread the word!
Black Lives Matter protesters are being charged with felonies for minor property damage, under laws intended for shutting down street gangs.
One way to help the poor is to compel charitable foundations to spend more than the current legal minimum on serving their purposes.
As for dodge-assisting funds (my term for them), these function as a scheme for rich people to buy what they want and dodge taxes on the money. We should abolish them outright. However, while they do exist, this change would not make them any worse.
If Biden wants to lead a moral renewal of the US, he should start by apologizing for its wars.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
The wrecker blocked circulation of an intelligence warning that Russia was going to spread rumors that Biden was mentally ill.
Facebook threatens to ban real news rather than pay a tax to Australia for carrying it.
One response for Australia would be to ban Facebook entirely. That would get rid of a lot of problems.
*Asphalt roads make city air pollution worse in summer, study finds.*
The Tories' campaign to undermine the NHS has gone so far that private medicine could push it into a death spiral.
The deaths would be those of Britons who can't afford private treatment.
* In more and more races, the GOP doesn’t have broad enough appeal to fairly produce an election majority, so it has resorted to rigging the system so a minority prevails.*
People beg for help on the internet because the government fails to carry out its responsibilities.
Shame on the government.
California’s Circular Economy & Plastic Pollution Reduction Act was narrowly defeated in the state assembly.
* Pointing the finger in the wrong direction (at foolish individuals) excuses those in power for failing to support people to stay at home.*
*Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus.*
*Iranians tortured and jailed after mass protests, Amnesty report says.*
*Alexei Navalny poisoned with Novichok, says German government.*
The Kremlin will say us that anyone in Russia can get novichoks from the nearest pest control company. But it must have wanted us to know that this poisoning was carried out by the Russian state.
Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health, calls on Americans to disregard the CDC's new perverse non-testing guidelines.
Influential progressive groups call on Biden to exclude fossil fuel representatives, in his campaign now and from his government later.
The absence of such people would not guarantee good policies, but their presence would enable them to impose bad ones.
400 edtech companies have signed a "student privacy pledge", but they suffer no penalty when they violate it.
Aside from the lack of enforcement, the pledge itself is too weak. It excludes only a limited subset of the possible misuses of student data. The right way to handle most student data is never to let any organization other than the school get its hands on the data.
There are a few special circumstances in which student data needs to be held by an organization outside the school itself. Standardized tests are one of these. In those circumstances, the proper pledge is, "We pledge not to keep any copy of the student's data other than name, address, identification number and overall test results. We pledge not to allow any use of these data, except that specific schools by the student can verify the test results."
Another special case is for plagiarism checking. The school should never reveal to such a site anything about the student who wrote the paper being checked — not even that the same student wrote some other previous paper. The school should invent a new "student name" for each paper and only the school should know which student that corresponds to.
(satire) *[invented name] expressed worry Tuesday that Donald Trump retweeting him would undermine his credibility as a conspiracy theorist.*
Progressives have launched the New People's Party.
If it is to succeed, they will need to change the name. But I wonder, what is the advantage of this party over the Green Party?
*Republicans are flooding the internet with deceptive videos and Big Tech isn't keeping up.*
(satire) *the FDA reportedly promised Tuesday to fast-track a cure for the side effects of the fast-tracked Covid-19 vaccine.*
Jacob Blake's father organized a counter-meeting, voting drive, and block party to counter the wrecker's meeting elsewhere in Kenosha.
Pope Francis has denounced the practice of consuming resources faster than the natural world can replace them, and called for urgent climate defense action.
If mainly Democratic voters vote by mail, the wrecker could get a misleading apparent lead if the mail-in ballots are counted later.
Everyone: tell Gilead: Your publicly-funded COVID-19 treatment must be gratis.
This argument is not the best one to use, because it only works some of the time. Should a company be allowed to gouge on medical treatments merely because it did not use public funds? I don't think so.
US citizens: call on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to Stop the sale of Ancestry to Blackstone
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
The wrecker has cut off the US from international cooperation in developing vaccines for Covid-19. This might have no real effect, but it could also cut off Americans from use of foreign-developed vaccines.
That could be very unfortunate for Americans if the best vaccine is one of those. We may not be able to get honest information about how much a US vaccine has been tested or what the results of the testing are, now that the wrecker has corrupted the CDC and FDA.
Or, if the best vaccine is American, it could deny people in other countries the protection of that vaccine.
The one thing it cannot do is good.
Arguing that gold mining is of zero benefit to society. Since it does poison the environment, there is no reason not to prohibit it entirely.
Prohibition would be fairly easy to enforce against large mines. There is also small-scale mining, which would be hard to prevent. But it might do much less environmental harm.
In one study, painting some wind turbine blades black avoid most of the bird deaths.
The corrupter makes the Secret Service pay his companies in order to protect him.
California might in theory be able to prevent disastrous megafires if it did enough controlled burns.
But is that even remotely possible? 20 million acres is 31,000 square miles, around 1/5 of the area of California. It is more than half of the forested area. I don't think so much controlled burn could ever be done.
Zuckerberg said that Apple's app store is monopolistic and harmful to people who talk with iPhones.
He's absolutely right about Apple. By contrast, Facebook is monopolistic and harmful to talk with Facebook.
Having classes outdoors could be a benefit for lower grades, as well as tending to prevent anyone from catching Covid-19.
China is starting a gradual plan to force Mongols to shift from speaking Mongolian to speaking Mandarin.
Cows spread diarrhea-causing E coli to salad farms, and the US is not doing much to keep the salad leaves safe.
The wrecker's triumph: thugs and right-wing extremist militias are now allied and supported by the right-wing media.
Cities whose thug departments are permeated with right-wing extremists may need to abolish those departments and start new ones, so as to have no right-wing extremists among their police.
Qatar will end the practice of tying each foreign worker to a single employer. This has the potential to reduce the horrible exploitation of foreign workers there.
Correction: The article I linked to about dictionary.com appears to have been erroneous, or else I misunderstood it. It treats the words "Black" and "White" in a parallel way, so I have no criticism.
Thugs in Phoenix pressed Roniah Trotter face down on the sidewalk, which was so hot that it gave her second-degree burns.
Naturally the thugs said it was she who attacked them. But the biggest villains in this story are fossil fuel companies. I suspect it will not be feasible to keep living in the Phoenix region for many more decades. It will be too dangerous, and when the aquifer is exhausted there will be no water.
It is too late to avoid global heating disaster, but we can still make it more or make it less — and civilization's future depends on which one we do.
LA thugs shot and killed Dijon Kizzee for running away after riding a bicycle while black.
The details of their story might be true, but we cannot assume they are true unless we find some independent confirmation. The unsupported word of any number of thugs — if they have had a chance to coordinate their stories — is not credible testimony.
The proposed US-Kenya business-supremacy treaty would make Kenya eliminate its policies that are designed to reduce plastic pollution.
We must expect it will do other bad things too, as they generally do.
I wish I could expect Biden to be better than the corrupter on these issues, but I expect him to be worse than Obama.
* Researchers in China saw big reductions in organisms [in soil] that play a crucial role in recycling carbon and nitrogen*, due to microplastics in the soil.
Right-wing UK pressure groups are trying to remove decision-making from elected officials in Parliament and move it to assistants appointed by the Prime Minister.
President Kagame of Rwanda, who does not allow opposition, has arrested Rusesabagina, a heroic genocide-resister who subsequently became a heroic opposition leader.
His family says Rusesabagina was arrested in Dubai; he would never have gone willingly to Rwanda.
After the defeat of Sanders, and the plutocratist Democrats' rejection of his progressive policies, where is hope to end US government cruelty?
We face an election which either a lousy right-wing candidate or a perverse crook will win. We must continue the fight to overcome the plutocratist Democrats. There are a few, such as Pelosi, that will still run against progressive Democrats in November. Campaign for those progressives now. As for all the rest, let's start now to support replacing them the next time they run for reelection.
* Only one in 10 of the world’s electric utility companies are prioritizing investment in clean renewable energy over growing their capacity of fossil fuel power plants.*
People are criticizing Whole Foods for not allowing staff to wear "Black Lives Matter" slogans while at work.
I think it is legitimate for a store to restrict political messaging by its staff while at work. Would you insist that a store permit employees to wear white-supremacist messages? So I think it is legitimate for a store to say that its staff can't present any political messages while on duty.
However, it seems valid to argue that if Whole Foods really supports anti-racist campaigns, it should show that support by offering staff masks they can wear, saying "Whole Foods supports Black Lives Matter."
*Research Reveals Ancient Peat Bogs Burning and Unprecedented Emissions From 2020 Arctic Fires.*
This is a positive feedback that I expect was not taken into account in climate models. It means things will get worse, and faster, than they predict.
Private documents from the saboteur in chief's Covid-19 task force show that when he said it would disappear, he knew the opposite was true.
Hurricane Laura in Louisiana knocked out water supplies and electricity, so people are without air conditioning in the middle of a dangerous heat wave. It also set a chemical plant on fire, and the chlorine gas can cause a lung problem that makes Covid-19 more deadly.
Global heating contributed to the hurricane and the heat wave.
James Brown voted 568 times — according to Kris Kobach.
Actually it was hundreds of different James Browns, each voting once.
*Our richest corporations are much to blame for the free-market "winner take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to survive without adequate health care and life savings.*
We don't need to base our argument for taxing big business more on its benefit from government-funded research. Everyone in society has the duty to contribute to society, so the rich must not be able to exempt their income from taxation by passing it through corporations.
The disease-spreader has chosen an advisor that wants to let Covid-18 burn through the US population, killing whoever it happens to kill.
That's the real meaning of "aiming for herd immunity".
We should keep in mind, if he orders the FDA to approve an incompletely tested vaccine, that he is eager for Covid-19 to kill us and always ready to lie.
Hamas (Gaza) and Israel have agreed on a truce, and perhaps more — Israel is supposed to alleviate the blockade of Gaza.
*Researchers found "nice, generous" people advanced at work just as much as bullies.*
Maybe this is yet another example where each person who succeeds jumps to the conclusion that success depends on per own characteristics, while in fact it is just chance at work.
Experts object to the term "climate refugee", but I think their arguments are valid only for short term — before climate disaster gets bad enough to make regions uninhabitable.
Imagine if it became impossible to live in California, due to fire, smoke, and the failure of agriculture. That's the sort of massive disaster that "climate refugee" goes with.
*Thomas Piketty refuses to censor latest book for sale in China.*
Theists sometimes challenge me to prove there are no gods. I can't do that, but I can show that god-based theories of the universe can't explain anything, so they aren't even wrong.
Amazon and IBM are buying from Chinese companies that make systems used for repression of Uighurs.
*Ban US cotton imports from Xinjiang, say human rights campaigners.*
The bully urged right-wing extremists to protest in Portland, where they got into fights with local anti-racist protesters. One right-wing protester was shot dead. We don't know who shot him.
*Sudan government agrees to peace deal with five rebel groups.*
*Australia’s big polluters [have been] required to offset just 1.2% of greenhouse gas emissions.*
However, even if they were required to offset 100% of the greenhouse gas emissions, that might do little good, since many schemes for "offsetting" emissions are of questionable effectiveness. In effect, schemes for industries to "offset" emissions are a way to avoid being made to actually reduce emissions.
*N.Y.C. Tenants Say They Were Tricked Into Appearing in R.N.C. Video.*
How a large high school is getting ready to receive students and reduce Covid-19 transmission.
President Moreno is planning to allow the IMF to put dooH niboR in charge of Ecuador.
This is to please foreign creditors.
The idea that the IMF would ever help a country it lends to is, alas, folly. That's what it was initially intended for, but its mission, since the 1980s if not earlier, was to impoverish the poor.
*Covid vaccine rush could make pandemic worse, say scientists.*
If people use a vaccine that is not very effective, they could start taking foolish risks, imagining that the vaccine protected them. This would play into the hands of the Republicans who wish to spread the disease. The wrecker could pretend to be protecting us while achieving the opposite.
The long-term effect might be to encourage distrust for all vaccines, including those that have been thoroughly tested.
People in Belarus felt they could ignore politics and live under the regime. Now they no longer consider that safe.
*Michael Moore warns that Donald Trump is on course to repeat 2016 win.*
Germany has been very successful in integrating a large number of refugees.
The British Museum is starting to acknowledge the slave-owning past of its founder.
*Public transit faces 'death spiral' without $32bn injection from Congress.*
Extinction Rebellion proposes a citizens’ assembly designed to feed proposals to Parliament. Any proposal that gets 80% support in the assembly, Parliament would be required to vote on.
Protesters marched again in Minsk despite Lukashenko's threats.
The wrecker has stopped intelligence official from testifying to Congress about threats to election security.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass the Delivering for America Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
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