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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
The Republican platform in Texas involves censorship, attacks on homosexuals, and punishment of anything but vanilla sex.
Azerbaijan imprisons journalists and puts them in mental hospitals because of what they write.
Indian soldiers in Kashmir shoot random civilians, then claim they were Islamic militants, in order to get combat bonuses. This resembles what Colombia's army used to do.
Any system that gives soldiers bonuses for shooting people is likely result in such murders. Once they think of certain people as trash, they will proceed to think that it's good to kill any or all of them, and that's how they can reconcile the murder and the lies with their consciences.
Police in Toronto bottled up a group of protestors, plus lots of passersby and people trying to go home from work, attacked them, and squeezed them into a small area for 4 hours as a storm came down.
It is clear that the goal of this police action was to attack democracy. The Canadian government, like many others, regards the people as pawns to be used, and when they don't do as ordered, that is a nuisance to be put down.
We must never grant legitimacy to the dirty maneuvers that the police use to sabotage protests. Therefore, when Lisan was told "You should have left earlier", she should have replied, "Why should I have left at all? I had a right to be there, and I have a right to protest. Or are you claiming this is no longer a free country and we no longer have any rights? Are you being used to destroy our freedom?"
And when she was warned to stay away from protests for 24 hours, on pain of some unspecified punishment, she should have proposed immediately that everyone on the bus meet there the next morning. To fail to do so is to accept, in effect, that the police are entitled to order people arbitrarily to stay away from protests.
Undercover police in another protest were
caught on video trying to start violence.
Other protestors tried to
stop them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
As usual, the police force is now lying about this.
I am told that a different group of protestors managed to burn some police cars. I find it hard to say that was wrong, but it probably undermined the effect of the protests. Perhaps they were undercover policemen too.
The banksters' congressional representatives put loopholes into the banking reform bill that will give them many more years of taking crazy risks with the economy.
Israel plans to demolish 22 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem to make
an archeological park.
Since Israel almost never gives Palestinians permission to build in
Jerusalem, these families will be unable to move even if they get
compensation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
"Settlers" have seized and occupied two houses in the area, and Israeli
troops regularly
attack local residences
to protect the thieves.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Police in Oklahoma tazered a bedridden old woman, after stepping on her oxygen hose to make her pass out. That was after they had thrown her grandson on the floor and handcuffed him. He had called 911 worried that she wouldn't take her medicine.
I wonder if next the police will charge both of them with crimes. That's what police usually do after they go on a rampage against someone innocent.
That this happened to that particular man and his grandmother was random chance, but the fact that it happened at all was due to the system that the police follow (including their training).
Israel has 200
Palestinian prisoners
who have not been charged or tried.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Conservationists have succeeded in eradicating goats from one of the Galapagos islands, and reintroducing the tortoises which had been almost wiped out.
US citizens:
sign this petition
to Obama to reject imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A woman in Abu Dhabi has been sentenced to prison for telling the police that she was raped.
It is an injustice to punish victims of violence. It is also an injustice to punish people for having sex. These injustices reflect the basic cruelty and injustice of Islamic law.
Meanwhile, there is one aspect of this problem that everyone in the UAE can help to correct: the general condemnation of women that have sex. The way to change this is by saying you disagree with it.
The world faces risk of a long depression because of Hoover-style economic policies.
Here is
what Krugman wrote:
A crucial difference between now and 1932 is that then the Democrats
offered a real alternative, whereas now the Democratic Party is a milder version
of the Republican party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
We need to ask, What would FDR do?
Iran postponed further nuclear uranium negotiations to "punish" the UN.
What this shows is that Iran has no interest in reaching any agreement in the matter. In other words, the postponed negotiations will be a waste of time.
The fact that Iran is already enriching uranium beyond what is needed for nuclear reactors shows that its goal is to make nuclear weapons. It is probably impossible to prevent Iran from finishing the job.
I expect that Iran will be deterred from its using nuclear weapons by Israel's nuclear weapons, and that the main effect of Iranian nuclear weapons will be for propaganda effect, distracting fools in Iran from the tyranny their government exercises over them.
Amnesty International blasted Obama's
lousy record
on human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A new approach in aid to the poor is to give money directly to poor people.
According to this article, what was done in New York was not simply giving money to poor people, but rather rewarding those who carried out certain actions: in this case, making their children go to school. Education is important, but compulsory schools have serious problems (see Instead of Education by John Holt). I am not sure how much education a school can provide to children that don't want to be there, but maybe some of them decided to study.
Policies like this one, applied to schools that don't act like prisons but rather tell students to leave if they don't try to study, might result in a net improvement.
However, what poor countries need most is a lower birth rate. If we can stabilize the world's population at 8 billion instead of 9 billion, many species might survive instead of being destroyed, we might have less ultimate global warming, and poverty will go down. So I suggest combining this idea with the one described a few weeks ago, by giving poor people a certain amount in each year in which they do not have a child.
Toronto police arrested many "key activists" in
advance of protests
against the G20, without letting them call lawyers or even read the
warrants for their arrest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Paris plans to set up hydroelectric generators under bridges on the Seine to raise awareness of the need for renewable energy.
Water mills were placed under the bridges of Paris in the 13th century. The bridges made the current speed up, so this was a good place to put the mills.
A year after the coup in Tegucigolpe, political resistance to the "elected" regime continues despite many assassinations. Naturally, the US backs this criminal regime.
The dishonest tactics of global warming deniers are revealed: they seized on a minor flaw in the IPCC climate change report (pointing to the wrong reference), and "exposed" it as if it were a major failing.
Iraq's Ancient Ruins Face New Looting. It would not surprise me if corruption were part of the cause.
Bankster congressmen such as Barney Frank put strategic loopholes into the banking reform bill.
In a formal sense, the bill makes progress, since it tightens the regulations on the banks. But I think the loopholes will enable the banksters to minimize the effect (bad for them, good for us) of the bill.
A new Toronto law allows police to harass everyone for the sake of preventing protests against the G20 meeting.
Pakistan has begun systematic Internet filtering, for purposes of religious censorship.
Censorship is a threat to freedom, and we must not tolerate filtering of the Internet on any pretext whatsoever.
"The polluter pays" needs to be established as a rule for business world-wide, not just in the US.
However, the US government works actively to protect corporations from this (as shown by its actions in regard to Bhopal) because its first loyalty is to the biggest business. It goes along with public condemnation in situations like Big Polluter when the public condemnation is too strong for the government to resist. Then it goes back to bowing down to business when it thinks the public isn't looking any more.
Police in the UK monitor dissidents — even dissidents that don't engage in civil disobedience — calling them "extremists".
Protests over the electricity shortage are shaking the Iraqi government.
It is a change for the better, that Iraqis are focusing their ire on an issue that can unite them all.
ICANN is setting up a domain .xxx for pornography, playing into the hands of plans for censorship.
EU governments want to use ACTA for a harsh crackdown on Internet users.
Then they will say, "It is impossible to ever change this, because it is a treaty."
What it shows is that these governments are traitors; they represent the empire of the megacorporations. The people they supposedly serve and represent, they really regard as property.
A UK court limited handing over prisoners to the Afghan government so that they won't be tortured.
Wouldn't it be nice if the US government did as much to avoid torturing people?
Rwanda's government is moving towards tyranny, as opposition parties have been excluded from the coming election. A leading journalist was assassinated, apparently by the state.
4000 people protested in Egypt against a murder by the police.
Police naturally tend to commit acts of aggression and lie about them, whenever the political situation supports such activity. Compare for instance the beating and subsequent prosecution of Peter Watts by US border police. The Egyptian emergency law gives police even more immunity and support, so they can go further.
Israel has relaxed the siege of Gaza a little, but still bans many things like cocoa powder whose uses are for making food.
Karma Samdrup was sentenced to 15 years in prison in a verdict apparently written before the end of his "trial".
Peru's right-wing president has vetoed a law to give rural people control over mining and oil drilling in their territories.
Garcia serves the megacorporations through their agent in Washington. He signed a trade treaty with the US that allows foreign corporations to mine, destroy and pollute; then he required Obama's permission to make concessions to avoid civil war. When he says that all Peruvians should have the same rights, he means the rights to be despoiled all alike.
Maybe Peru's congress should modify the law to apply to urban areas as well. Why shouldn't city dwellers also have control over extraction in their localities?
Barney Frank, often thought of as a Liberal, is now working for the Banksters.
Conservatives warn that Obama's deadline for starting to withdraw troops from Afghanistan is foolish. They are right about that, as far as it goes. To set a date two years in advance for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was always absurd. It's like specifying that a straight line passes through three chosen points: usually there is no such line.
The surge in Iraq played little role in ending the fighting there and the idea makes little sense for Afghanistan. If there were any chance of winning the war, the deadline would indeed risk throwing it away.
But since there is no chance of winning, there is nothing to lose by withdrawing troops starting on some arbitrary date. How about 1 July 2010?
Citizens of Massachusetts: support sentencing reform, allowing parole and prison work and education programs for prisoners with mandatory sentences for drugs.
50 in Congress called on Obama not to approve a pipeline to bring oil from Canada where it would be made from tar sands. Making oil from tar sands produces a lot more greenhouse gas than just burning the oil. To use these tar sands is to refuse to divert the train off the track that goes over the cliff.
US citizens: Sign the ACLU's petition for a law requiring a court order for the police to look at your email, cell phone tracking records, etc.
Rangzieb Ahmed was sentenced to life in prison in the UK based on evidence that Pakistan wrung out of him by torture, at the UK's request. Now the UK government is trying to protect its torture policies from being judged in Ahmed's appeal.
Australia's Prime Minister Rudd proposed to tax mining companies more, so they drove him out of power.
I have no love for Rudd, who wanted to impose filtering on the Internet. (Maybe the new Prime Minister, Gillard, does too.) What is clear is that she's an opportunist who is willing to bow down to business. Australians were fools to be taken in by business threats.
The Torrey Canyon oil spill in 1967 should have taught the lesson: don't use dispersants! They are toxic, and make the toxic oil more dangerous to marine life.
Governments should charge market prices for water beyond the basic amount people need for living.
Some years ago, South Africa had a market fundamentalist policy of charging even for all water use, and cut many poor people off the water supply. That caused an outbreak of cholera.
It seems that South Africa has corrected that abuse. Market fundamentalism is crazy and cruel, but markets are useful for conservation when the policy is properly designed for that.
Many parts of the US have water shortages and are depleting acquifers. This is a track headed for disaster. Auctioning irrigation water could be the solution.
Pakistanis are angry at the Pakistani army and elite and at the
US. Workers have forced the government to reject an
IMF-imposed austerity
plan.
Some of the demands are impossible. For instance, maintaining
low electricity prices is hard to reconcile with ending shortages.
Part of the answer to "How can I feed my children" has to be "have
fewer children."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
With so much pesticide and monoculture in rural areas, the city has become the safest place for bees.
Keeping bees alive in cities is not enough; it will not enable them to pollinate crops. Agriculture has to be reformed so bees can survive outside cities.
After Israel attack the Gaza aid ships, most
mainstream media repeated
a series of Israeli lies, and rebroadcast Israel-supplied photos,
video and audio recordings. They were faked, doctored, or spurious.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Sign this petition to stop Obama from distorting and ruining a law that would enable corporate stockholders to limit CEO salaries.
A politician must have sold out totally to the rich to do what Obama is doing now. When I was young, we had a word for such politicians: "Republicans".
Indians condemn Obama's double standard, condemning Big Polluter while shielding Dow and Union Carbide from responsibility for killing tens of thousands of people in Bhopal.
Perhaps Obama considers that dying from poison gas is a kind of torturer, and he always protects US torturers.
Israeli Arab human rights defender Ameer Makhoul, now a political
prisoner, has been
imprisoned without charges and without access to a
lawyer. After 3 weeks he was permitted to have pen and paper and to
write this letter.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were not granted Israeli citizenship when Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, only "residency permits". Israel can cancel these permits for many reasons, such as if the person goes to work abroad, or to study in the US. Then these people are forbidden to live where they were born.
Drug lord Christopher Coke, whose gang fought gun battles with Jamaican police, was arrested by them as he headed to the US embassy to surrender for trial in the US. Apparently he is afraid that he will be killed while in custody in Jamaica.
The ACLU asked South Carolina not to erase records of voting machines, because of the suspicion they were used to rig the Democratic primary.
US citizens:
sign this petition to various US leaders to adopt a firm
plan to move the US away from oil and nonrenewable energy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the DISCLOSE act, which would make corporations take responsibility for their political ads.
You can also sign this petition, but phone calls carry more weight.
Obama sacked General McChrystal for insubordination, and replaced him with General Petraeus to show this means no change in strategy. However, the result is more public doubts about the strategy. It's true that Taliban rule over Afghanistan would be a disaster for women, but the Karzai regime is not much improvement. RAWA condems them both, and rejects the idea that outside intervention is justified for Afghan women's sake.
A Federal judge ruled that Obama'a moratorium on oil drilling was illegal. It turns out he owns stock in oil companies doing undersea drilling.
Sarah Palin asked for "divine intervention" to end the Big Pollution in the Gulf.
Whatever god was on duty must not like her, because the cover which was collecting half of the newly spilled oil developed trouble, and had to be pulled off.
The whaling negotiations reached no agreement.
A new agreement could have led to reduced hunting of whales, but if it had been drawn up with loopholes, it could have backfired. I think Japan wanted to make it backfire.
Everyone: BP is
preventing the rescue of sea turtles
in an endangered species so it can kill them and they won't be counted.
Sign this petition to allow rescue of the turtles. Burning the oil may be a
good idea, since the oil that is burnt won't pollute beaches and marches.
Whether it becomes substantially more toxic this way, I don't know. But they
can let someone rescue the turtles first.
More information
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
I hope the people on these boats are wearing gas masks.
A collossal statue of Jesus in Ohio was hit by lightening and totally destroyed.
The builders must have thought that a lightening rod was unnecessary since they counted on divine favor. Perhaps they made Zeus or Thor jealous.
Tibetan conservationist Karma Samdrup was tortured by his Chinese prison guards, with beatings, sleep deprivation and drugs.
Two factors causing decline of bees and butterflies are known: pesticides and destruction of wild habitat. So it is possible to take constructive action now in parallel with further research. In the US, replacing lawns with meadows or gardens will help. It is rare that a lawn is really needed.
The Democratic senate primary in South Carolina was apparently rigged. It was supposedly won by someone who was basically unknown and who did no campaigning. And there are more discrepancies. The defeated candidate, Rawls, will protest the result.
General McChrystal has more or less recognized that the current US strategy in Afghanistan is failing.
It is no surprise for me, since it never made sense to presume victory within one year. It's like sending firemen to a big fire and deciding in advance that they will have it under control in 3 hours.
I originally supported the invasion of Afghanistan because of the tyranny and fundamentalism of the Taliban. But some of the Taliban have mellowed, and Karzai's government is not much less bad. Negotiations are called for.
The idea of weakening the Taliban before the negotiations sounds logical. But the Taliban are a guerrilla force, not a state with an army, so what constitutes their strength is their ability to recruit, not their tactical situation. They don't care about casualties among their soldiers, or even among leaders, as long as they can recruit more. What areas they dominate is less vital for them than whether they can do damage.
The only thing that could truly weaken the Taliban is increased support among Afghans for the official government, but Karzai is not capable of inspiring such support. Afghans won't feel loyalty for Karzai, not in one year and not in ten years.
So the negotiations may as well start now.
The giant
Ixtoc oil spill
in 1979 off the Mexican coast was bigger than the current spill — so
far.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Oil from the Ixtoc spill is still present a short distance
under the surface
of beaches and marshes, and still harming sea life. If it is true that
most of the Ixtoc spill oil was collected, burnt, or dispersed, the total
contamination of the shore may already be greater from this spill than from the
Ixtoc spill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, calls for the US to restore the Gulf coast to what it was are futile. Nobody knows how to do that. Billionaire Polluter can compensate individuals for their specific losses, but there is no way it can make things right again.
Massachusetts citizens: contact your state senator to support the
resolution in favor of
a constitutional amendment
saying that the first amendment pertains to people, not corporations. You
can determine your state senator from
this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
If you carry a cell phone, it tells Big Brother where you are. Now Apple wants to hand out the information too.
Using the lever of "You have a choice, but unless you say yes, your old activities will stop working" is something that Apple has done before, with malicious "upgrades". Apple ostensibly doesn't force people to accept the new nasty thing; it just punishes them if they don't.
There are universities that follow the harmful practice of making their own materials available through iTunes. If you are at such a university you should organize with others to demand an end to the practice.
Iraqi police shot and killed protestors complaining about the inadequate electricity supply.
Everyone: sign this petition calling on India to hold Union Carbide responsible for negligence that killed 20,000 people in Bhopal.
Obama is completely opposed to justice for the victims of US torture, which is little different from being an advocate of torture.
Not surprising, given that Obama also continues US torture.
Brash Polluter presented itself as brave for taking risks of causing a catastrophe. But it did keep its investors in the dark about the specifics of these risks and dangers. The investors told it to do so.
The US supreme court ruled that offering human rights training to organizations officially labeled as "terrorist" is illegal.
These organizations must not be allowed to learn about human rights, because that would conflict with the "terrorist" picture that the government has applied to them (perhaps for political reasons).
However, the core injustice of this law consists of declaring groups "terrorist" without convicting them of a crime. This violates freedom of association.
"What Congress decided was when you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs." That is the theory behind the siege of Gaza, which shows it is wrong, and causes me to lose some regard for Elena Kagan.
Reportedly even giving them legal representation is illegal. Can that really be true?
The UK government rebuked an organizition for making proposals for a serious effort to save many lives endangered by junk food.
If heart attacks and strokes kill 150,000 people a year in the UK, and if 10% of those deaths can be prevented by eating better, that's 15,000 lives saved per year. In the US, with its larger population, I'd estimate 100,000 lives saved per year.
Compare the government attitude towards this tremendous danger with its attitude towards the far smaller danger of terrorist attack. Terrorists killed just under 3,000 people in the US in 2001, in attacks which have never been properly investigated, and we got a "Global War on Terror" that was an excuse to take away our freedom. Fat and salt have killed a million people in the US since then, but the US government is no more eager than the UK government to do anything about it. The reason is obvious: the "War on Terror" was an excuse to do what Bush (and Obama too) wanted to do, while the War on Fat would be "bad for business."
Burmese rebel armies sell drugs for export to buy arms to fight the dictators.
I thought that methamphetamine was commonly made near the people who are going to use it. I am surprised to read it is getting transported so far. I don't know enough about its effects to have an opinion about it, but it can't be as bad as a military dictatorship.
I wonder if they would stop selling the drugs if we simply give them arms they need. It might be too late for that; once an organization gets hooked on drugs, it has trouble getting off. If so, it would be a sad missed opportunity.
The posthumous publication of Li Peng's memoir about Tiananmen has been blocked through copyright law.
Copyright and censorship have been linked ever since the first English copyright law, around 1550. Its primary purpose was censorship.
A press report which criticized the IPCC's finding that 40% of the Amazon rain forest could be threatened by global warming has been retracted. The IPCC's conclusion was based on properly conducted science.
The Times Square bomber says he acted in retaliation because the US is "terrorizing the Muslim nations."
Retaliating by attacking civilians is a war crime, and no more acceptable when the victims are American then when they are Iraqi, Israeli, or Palestinian. But we must face the fact that US attacks against various countries will inspire retaliation. If we want the US to be safe from retaliation of various kinds, we should stop the US from fighting unjust wars.
Either the Ethiopian government has an astounding level of popular support, or it rigged the election.
Right-wing economic "experts" are trying to cut Social Security based on bogus excuses.
Brash Polluter had been informed of a flaw in its blowout preventer but went ahead anyway.
Greenpeace will back a deal to legitimize commercial whaling, provided the deal has strict conditions likely to bring about a decrease in the amount of whaling.
I have confidence in Greenpeace to insist on the right conditions. I therefore expect that Japan will reject any deal that Greenpeace would accept.
If US companies build new nuclear reactors, will they be safe?
When these companies tell us the risks of their nuclear plants will be insignificant, remember that Big Polluter said the same thing about its undersea oil well. Big Polluter lobbied for and obtained weak safety standards; then it asked for and was granted waivers not to follow them; then it cut lots of corners. Its response plan for an accident was bullshit.
I don't trust our government to stand up to the nuclear power industry any better than it stood up to the oil industry or the banksters. It has fully accepted the idea of obedience and subservience to big business, so it tends to "let industry regulate itself". Whatever level of safety these reactors might be capable of in principle, I won't trust US business to build them.
Amory Lovins showed that nuclear energy is neither necessary nor cost-effective.
The UK fired its special envoy to Afghanistan for not believing that the US and NATO can win a military victory there.
Colombia's President Horrible has been replaced by another right-winger.
Anyone who says favorable things about Horrible is not likely to try seriously to change his support for right-wing thugs (paramilitaries).
Donate to support Wikileaks.
Franco, dictator of Spain, gave Germany a list of Jews in Spain for future execution.
Franco ultimately didn't join World War II and didn't kill those Jews, but he killed thousands of Spaniards who were accused of political opposition. Franco's old supporters still have substantial power in Spain, and strive to bury the memory of his crimes and rehabilitate his dictatorship.
Israel has agreed in principle to partly relax the siege of Gaza. However, experience suggests Israel will come up with some sort of catch.
Pills
with RFIDs
could report over the internet what you take.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
It is scary that people don't react with disgust to such ideas.
The US is using the arrest of Private Manning to
scare people
away from
helping Wikileaks in any fashion. Daniel Ellsberg says he considers Manning
and Assange heroes, and I agree. The members of the US armed forces swear
to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Manning
has carried out his oath as a true patriot.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
He was tragically foolish to tell Adrian Lamo about it — he should never have told anyone. But that doesn't diminish the honor he deserves.
Big Polluter apparently lied to Congress as well as the public about the rate of spilling of petroleum.
This sort of cover-up behavior is par for the course with large companies that do things that endanger public health. The tobacco companies likewise covered up what they knew about the dangers of smoking tobacco.
Right-wing politicians who believe that budget cuts implement
a moral obligation to make people suffer
risk pushing Europe into a prolonged economic slump.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Not just fishermen: taxi drivers, electricians and club owners now want compensation because Big Polluter has destroyed their livelihoods.
This is the biggest disaster the US has ever seen, and it threatens to devastate a region spanning several states.
Meanwhile, the oil companies cause and risk similar disasters around the world, and repress local people who protest.
6 months before Bloody Sunday in Derry, the same British army unit killed 11 unarmed protestors in Belfast. Now the relatives of those victims call for a similar investigation, and say that the Army should have known something like this could happen in Derry because it should have investigated the first such incident.
Shooting people is what soldiers are trained to do. Putting soldiers into a political disagreement is very likely to result in shooting people who are not trying to fight. This is what has happened over and over in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Naomi Klein: It was in contempt for other human beings and for forces of nature that BP caused catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
After the comparatively minor disaster of the September 2001 attacks, Bush launched a "War on Terror". But the terrorists he attacked were just secondary enemies.
This really big disaster shows who our main enemies are: arrogant megacorporations that think they own our government, that give the people empty promises while they strip the world clean.
So where is the War on Big Business? We don't have one, because Obama is on their side rather than ours.
Uri Avnery: Israel's two supports — the US and Jews in other countries — are starting to turn away, and they will continue to do so unless Israel starts to value peace.
An oil company was convicted of grave safety failures that caused an oil depot explosion.
It is clear that trusting oil companies to obey safety standards is asking for disaster. Perhaps an elite corps of inspectors, who have the power to shut down any oil-related installation until it fixes its safety violations, might make them behave.
Japan is trying to buy votes in the International Whaling Commission, much as Microsoft bought votes in ISO to approve its phony "open" standard, OOXML.
Japan's eagerness for this deal convinces me it must be a change for the worse.
Israel is holding over a million dollars worth of personal property it took from the activists on the Gaza aid ships, and several activists say their stolen credit cards have been used.
Since Israel attacked these ships in international waters, I believe this theft constitutes piracy.
Sea Shepherd ships released 800 illegally caught bluefin tuna from fishermen's nets.
Here's an article by one of the Sea Shepherd crew.
I am against surveillance and tracking of individuals in general, but surveillance is appropriate for certain activities that expose the world to special risk. So I think every ship involved in large scale fishing should be required to carry a GPS tracker and video recorders, so compliance with fishing rules can be positively checked.
Meanwhile, fishing for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean should be banned so stocks can recover. The current policy courts disaster to avoid making some businesses uncomfortable.
Big Polluter's stockholders have sued, claiming the management defrauded them by falsifying an adequate safety record to inflate the stock price.
It is also interesting that Hayward promised to focus "like a laser" on safety, but responded to safety-related questions in Congress by saying "I know nothink, nothink." If that's how he handles what he focuses on, he is evidently incompetent.
Hayward tried to pass the blame to the company that made the blowout preventer. Even if it was partly to blame, that doesn't absolve BP of responsibility for its corner-cutting, both in the drilling itself and in preparedness to respond to a leak.
The UK deported Iraqi refugees who fear being killed. Iraqi and British guards beat them up to make them leave the plane in Baghdad.
Kyrgyzstan's interim president Rosa Otunbayeva pledges to rebuild the city of Osh and invited the ethnic Uzbek refugees to return. World powers did nothing to help end the outburst of fighting and ethnic cleansing, and if it was engineered by ex-president Bakiyev, he may strike again in another city.
Lawn fertilizer and pesticides poison birds, fish, and sometimes children, and their production contributes to global warming. Replacing them with gardens, trees, wild vegetation, or even rocks is an improvement.
Almost half the European Union's budget goes to subsidizing large landowners.
This policy harms small farms, as well as wasting public money.
Israel has made the expected small step to loosen the siege of Gaza, but critics have not been fooled.
Prosecutors claim they the Times Square bomber received funds from the Pakistani Taliban.
The US has attacked the Pakistani Taliban dozens of times with missiles from drones, and I think the attacks continue every week. If they tried to counterattack with the weapons available to them, that should not be shocking.
This doesn't mean however that they hate us implacably. If we withdraw the US troops from Afghanistan, and stop the attacks in Pakistan, they will probably cease to be interested in us.
Is that a reason to withdraw the troops? If we were fighting for something important there, this would be no reason to stop. It would be craven to abandon a cause so important that it could justify a war, merely because the enemy fights back.
But there is no such cause to fight for in Afghanistan, only a corrupt president who openly shows contempt for elections and inspires no loyalty.
Obama is persecuting government whistleblowers more than any president before, even Dubya. He does not want us to know the truth. The search for Julian Assange of Wikileaks is therefore very much a threat to all of us.
Hunger has returned to India, as the rich half (hand in hand with big business) effectively colonizes the poor half.
US citizens:
send a message
to Obama about getting the US off its petroleum habit. I added the
following two paragraphs as a personal message:
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
In practice it is impossible to stop the oil companies from passing along increased taxes to the public; but we should not wish to stop them, because higher prices will discourage use of oil, and we need that. We should increase taxes on all fuels that, when burnt, will release greenhouse gases.
Requiring new permit applications is not enough to make deep water drilling safe. Just as we require ships to take on pilots to navigate in certain congested waters, we should require deep drilling platforms to have pilots too. This means a government safety monitor must be on the platform (at the driller's expense) whenever certain operations are carried out, armed with the power to stop the drilling if he sees anything unsafe.
The NATO forces in Afghanistan have been unable to cope with attacks by IED. If it is impossible to win the war, that is not due to a single weapon. The weapon has its effect in a context. That context is that Afghans dislike the Taliban but corrupt Karzai inspires no loyalty.
Cleaning seabirds covered with oil is futile; nearly all will die soon anyway, and the handfull that don't die from the oil will have no place to go.
It might be worth cleaning birds of rare species so as to breed them in zoos. Maybe in 50 years they will be able to return to their former habitat.
A miner who told the press about dangerous conditions in a Massey mine (not the same one where workers had recently been killed) was fired just afterward. Massey has a history of unsafe practices; the accident in April was waiting to happen, and more will happen if there isn't a crackdown.
General Motors cars have built-in cell phones, and like many cell phones, they can be used for eavesdropping. A US appeals court ordered the FBI not to do this — only in certain states — for reasons based on the current design of the system.
I would not get a GM car if I were you. But then, maybe you carry a cell phone in your pocket which can also be used for eavesdropping. It has that feature because it has nonfree software in it: the phone company controls it, and you don't.
It is not just the police that can listen to you. Others can too.
Terrorists in Bangladesh tortured Gulam Mustafa, and threatened to kill his family "in a crossfire" if he didn't confess to their accusations against him.
These terrorists go by the name of "police". They accused Mustafa of planning terrorism in the UK, and it looks like they were acting for the UK government in torturing him.
Whether Mustafa was indeed planning crimes in the UK is impossible to determine from whatever he may have said under torture.
Meanwhile, doesn't it violate basic principles of justice to "freeze" (in effect confiscate with the possibility of return some day) a citizen's assets without convicting him of a crime?
Pakistan's intelligence agency denies having seats on the Taliban's board of directors, and Pakistan's government denies the president met with imprisoned Taliban leaders. However, if the reason Zardari doesn't meet with Taliban is that he has ceded control of Pakistan to the military, that is hardly an improvement.
If the Bush forces really do leave Iraq, they will leave behind toxic waste, in addition to the millions of refugees and government torture.
Homeopathy in the UK is on the run, as the evidence it is just a placebo becomes impossible to evade.
A whistleblower who calls himself "Mr Whale" says that most of the staff on the Japanese whaling fleet are there to steal and personally sell some of the whale meat.
Even nastier, the ships kill more whales than they admit, keeping the most salable parts and throwing away the rest of the whale carcasses.
Everyone: sign this petition against allowing a resumption of commercial whaling. Previously I read that the current proposal was meant to reduce whaling in exchange for legitimizing the reduced amount as commercial activity. That kind of compromise might have been a step forward. However, now that it seems Japan expects to increase whaling, I am sure the proposal was bad.
A Venezuelan journalist has been sentenced to prison for publishing an accusation against a public official.
I think these laws, which trample human rights and facilitate corruption, are old and predate Chavez' election; but if so, he still has the responsibility to eliminate them.
NASA says this year so far is
the hottest year on record.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
For the Big Pollution, as for the September 2001 attacks, the people trying to be help face danger from toxic fumes. We know that Big Polluter is mainly responsible for the disaster in the Gulf, although other companies might be responsible as well. We still don't know who was responsible for the September 2001 terrorist attacks — perhaps 20 Saudis, perhaps someone in the Bush regime, perhaps both, perhaps someone else, because Bush did not allow a real and honest investigation.
Afraid to return to their home countries and forbidden to stay in the UK, the homeless asylum seekers don't even dare beg. They eat what they can buy with their tiny Red Cross handouts.
Even if we could remove the excess greenhouse gas quickly, the already-warmed oceans would continue causing changed rainfall patterns (floods and droughts) for decades.
The UK government says it will refuse to subsidize new nuclear power plants. The other crucial question is, will it give an indirect subsidy by protecting them from liability or costs of handling the waste? Without some kind of large subsidy, nuclear power is totally uncompetitive and nobody will build it. Investments in renewable power and in energy efficiency are far more productive.
A blueprint for a zero-carbon-emissions Britain in 20 years involves substantial changes in agriculture, but life would be basically as now, without nuclear power.
Big Pollution is heading for Cuba as well as Florida. When the Cuban exiles in Florida and Cuba share a disaster, will they be able to become less hostile?
BP will put 20 billion dollars into a fund to pay damage claims.
I doubt this will be enough to cover the loss of decades of fishing, not to mention tourism.
Bill Gates cites copyright enforcement to justify Chinese censorship. Microsoft executives used to call us communists, but they are now clearly revealed as the ones who support communist-style dictatorship.
Bush took Maher Arar off a flight home to Canada and handed him over to Syria to be tortured. Obama told the courts to refuse to give him justice, and the Supreme Court agreed.
Until the US takes responsibility for its acts of brutality, it must be considered a rogue state.
International connections through the US only occasionally cause you to be tortured, but they are always a pain in the neck. I did this once and learned never to do it again. Why learn the hard way? Avoid connections through the US.
Don't volunteer to help in the cleanup in the Gulf unless you check that you have a proper breathing mask. It could cause you permanent lung damage,
The copyright industry has set up an "astroturf" or phony grass-roots campaign for an unjust Canadian copyright law. I think their strategy is to generate enough appearance of support for C-32, which cannot be provably and directly traced to them, so as to provide an excuse to the politicians who have been paid or bullied to support it. They will say, "The public seems divided on the issue, so why not do what the US demands?"
CDM Watch says that the system for trading carbon credits is being gamed by business and creates perverse incentives, failing in its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The right solution is to tax fuels that will release greenhouse gases.
One of the team that informed the public about a security flaw affecting the iBad has been arrested for drugs found by a police search. The police refused to state the reason for the search. I don't approve of selling cocaine (though prohibition makes things worse). But the specific concern here is that AT&T may have sent the police on a fishing expedition against him.
Iceland has adopted new laws to protect freedom of the press from foreign pressures for censorship.
In the US: sign this petition asking SuperPages and YellowPages to stop
listing
phony abortion clinics
(run by religious extremists to give false information) under "abortion
providers".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The latest estimate is that
35,000 to 60,000 barrels
of oil are gushing each day in the Gulf.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
HP is testing malicious functionality in printers.
HP says this program will be set up to respect privacy, but that cannot be true. Once HP has collected information about its customers, it won't throw that information away, and Big Brother (the US government) will be able to collect it without giving those customers a search warrant.
We must insist on printers that won't talk to anyone without our permission.
Normally, if a device is not a normally platform for installing software, and we don't install any software in it, we can ignore the question of whether it is implemented internally using software. But not when it can talk on the Internet on its own accord and implement malicious features. At that point, we must insist on only running free software inside it.
In the UK: attend the
conference on digital rights
on July 24.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Rwanda arrested the lawyer for the opposition presidential candidate, who had previously been imprisoned.
Israel has set up
a phony inquiry
into the attack on the Mavi Marmara. It's worse than biased — it's
not even allowed to investigate the important questions. Israel hopes
to pass this off as a real inquiry and thus neutralize international
pressure to have one.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel also hopes that
allowing jam, halvah, and shaving razors
into Gaza will satisfy international pressure to end the siege, without
any major change such as allowing people to rebuild their damaged homes. An
Italian journalist on a Gaza aid ship says Israel took his passport,
cameras, and credit card — and someone else then
used the credit card,
stealing his money.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Bullying Polluter lured cleanup helpers to
sign secrecy agreements
so that they could not tell the public what they see. But BP backed down
from this when challenged in court.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Adeeb Abu Rahma faces
criminal charges
from Israel for nonviolent protests against the annexation wall, which cut
him off from his land. Israel holds hundreds of other
Palestinians prisoner
without charges. Even if it's not as many as before, it is a violation of
anyone's human rights.
[References updated on 2018-04-02 because the old links were broken.]
Tell the Burmese dictators to free Aung San Suu Kyi.
Emily Henochowicz fell victim to the Israeli practice of attacking those
who protest or witness protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel responds to international criticism of its inhumane policies by becoming increasingly strident and intolerant of dissent.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
All the major oil companies had woefully inadequate plans for coping with disasters in the Gulf of Mexico. However, there are ways of containing an oil spill on the surface, and BP was not prepared to carry them out in a hurry. Its use of toxic dispersant may have made the damage worse.
The head of Israel's phony inquiry about its attack on the Mavi Marmara prejudged the conclusion before his appointment: certain people must not be found guilty.
I am surprised that their dishonesty is not better disguised.
Closing Big Polluter's escape routes, so it will
pay for the harm it has done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The brown pelicans of Louisiana were wiped out by DDT, then
reintroduced. Now a few survivors are being rescued,
covered with oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
If the oil reaches the Florida coast, will that result in extinction of the species?
Greece has made a big deal with China.
Big Polluter repeatedly cut corners in drilling, increasing the risk of the explosion which ultimately happened, in order to cut costs.
Companies generally tend to do this unless they are convinced they will very likely be caught and punished. Thus, when the prevailing attitude of government is to bow down to companies and let them have what they want, the result is danger.
The UN warns that food prices are likely to rise by 40%, partly due to the stupid practice of growing crops for fuel.
A UK inquiry concluded that soldiers in Northern Ireland shot civilians in 1972 without justification.
Furthermore, the soldiers are exposed as having lied to fabricate justifications.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators, calling on them to protect the Wall Street reform bill's strong derivatives provisions and close the derivatives enforcement loophole. Make sure to mention your name and address.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Three oil companies are accused of being involved in civil war and torture in Sudan.
Everyone:
The
Dongria Kondh
have lost most of their land, and their water is poisoned by an aluminum
mine, but it can get even worse. Sign
this petition
to halt the project.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A militia group attacked the Iraqi central bank to steal money.
Better-connected Iraqi militia groups have political connections, and can take money from the central bank without shooting.
The article does not say whether the robbers succeed in taking any of the funds. It should have been immediately obvious whether they had reached areas where substantial cash was stored.
Academics can support the cause of scientific freedom by deciding only to review articles for open-access journals.
It is important to be strict about the definition of "open access". The crucial point is publishing the articles under a license permitting redistribution of copies to the public.
97 percent of all the "flagrant" safety violations of oil companies in the US are by Big Polluter.
I wonder why BP has let hundreds of violations go on so long without fixing them. Is it because OSHA does not levy sufficiently heavy fines? Or is it that BP expects to use courts to delay paying them for so long they may as well be nothing?
A UK researcher says that Pakistan's intelligence agency actively supports the Taliban and Pakistan's president has meetings with them.
It was not Bush's "surge" that ended the Sunni-Shia fighting in Iraq, but rather the substantial completion of ethnic cleansing.
The UK limits junk food sales near schools.
Nicaragua's ban on abortion shows "chilling indifference" to the human rights of girls and women.
Don't be distracted by arguments about whether Big Polluter is a British company or an American company. The real issue (beyond punishing that company, and Halliburton, and all others responsible), is to reduce fossil fuel use.
To argue whether Big Polluter is a British company or an American company is irrelevant because the concept that such a company has a nationality is absurd. They don't think they belong to a country; they think every country belongs to them. It is up to us to teach them our countries are not for them to play with.
In other words, every large multinational company is a foreign company — no matter which country you are in.
Note that Big Polluter was totally responsible for failing to have the necessary equipment in place — in Louisiana, as in Alaska 20 years ago.
The Big Spill is a consequence of looking for oil in places that are ever more difficult to get at. The conclusion is, we need to move away from using oil.
For 10% of US fuel to be biofuel may not be a good thing. Biofuels made from crops that require water and fertilizer do not really improve matters; instead they cause starvation in other countries. If and when we can make fuel from plant waste or weeds, then biofuel will contribute to solving the problem.
Iranian journalist Saeed Kamali Dehghan describes leaving Iran with tapes of interviews with the family of Neda Soltani.
Bashir, the genocidal president of Sudan, is attacking Darfur again, holding the independence referendum for southern Sudan as a hostage against any international pressure.
Perversely, superstitions can help irrational people succeed at a task, even though they are totally false: they provide instruments for people to fool themselves.
I don't want to lie to myself even if I would get some practical benefit by doing so. Meanwhile, if something is important, I can keep trying even if I don't feel confident.
BP may scrap its dividend, recognizing it may need to pay that money in fines and damages. The idea of defending a multinational company on nationalistic grounds is absurd. The idea of giving it immunity for criminal negligence because some of its owners are pension funds is also absurd.
Project Prevention pays drug addicts to get sterilized, thus averting the birth of thousands of children who would be damaged by the conditions and circumstances of their birth. A fetus is not yet a human being, but it could develop into one. If a hypothetical person could have come into existence but doesn't, there is no possibility of violating that person's rights. Thus, avoidance of reproduction — whether by means of abortion, birth control, sterilization, or abstinence from sex — does not violate anyone's rights. However, causing a fetus to be born with birth defects or an addiction brings a person into existence and violates that person's rights.
This project ought to be funded by governments, both domestically and as foreign aid in poor countries. In a world being greatly damaged by human overpopulation, and where most people remain in poverty, saving the planet and ending poverty requires a lot of people to have fewer or no children. Thus, if we are ever invited to feel sorry for people for not having children, we should consider the alternative, and decline.
The US now estimates that the Big Spill is leaking up to 40,000 barrels of oil per day, which is 1.68 million gallons a day. This is one Exxon Valdez worth of oil every 13 days, more or less.
Uri Avnery poses questions for Israel about its siege of Gaza and its attack on the Gaza aid boats.
The most interesting question for me is how Israel can claim the waters off Gaza are its territorial waters while not claiming Gaza is Israeli territory.
A new international organization will be launched to protect biodiversity.
Egypt now allows some Palestinians to get out of Gaza.
This makes a real difference. Hundreds of people in Gaza have died in recent years because Israel would not let them leave to get medical care. Now they have the possibility of going to Egypt for this care. Many others were blocked from studying at universities in Europe.
However, it does not amount to freedom to leave Gaza, which is a human right for the people who live there.
Blanche Lincoln took one progressive step to defeat her primary challenge, but now she has gone back to her usual corporate flunky self.
Americans, if a corporate flunky seems to be getting a little better just before an election, don't believe it. Replace the flunky anyway.
Big Polluter's chemical dispersants drive the oil underwater where it is harder to see, and make workers sick. And it looks like BP will try to deny responsibility for the illnesses this has caused.
China has imprisoned Tibetans for exposing environmental crimes.
Poor countries criticize a draft treaty to block global warming, saying that they should be allowed to keep on increasing their CO2 output after 2020 even though the rich countries will have to make large cuts both before and after that year.
That position is the result of short-term thinking. It is correct to stop poor countries from continuing to increase their greenhouse gas emissions.
Maybe this deal requires too little sacrifice of the rich counties. If so, that is where it should be changed. If the poor countries cannot afford the cost of limiting their emissions, the rich countries must pay that cost.
A new, cheap and very small car will get 100 miles per gallon, if a factory is built to make it.
UK police beat up and permanently injured protestor Harvie Brown, then accused him of being the "ringleader" of "rioters". He was acquitted.
Will the police who attacked these protestors be punished for their crimes?
Bullying Polluter's obstruction of reporting on the Big Spill has got worse, and police often participate in the obstruction.
Spain has proposed that the EU demand an end to the siege of Gaza.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose Jay Rockefeller's bill, which would delay the EPA for years from regulating CO2 emissions.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Relief wells are not guaranteed to succeed in shutting the Big Pollution.
Call your congresscritter and senators to sign
Leahy and DeFazio's letter
to the Secretary of Agriculture, to maintain the
ban on GMO alfalfa.
If this is allowed, it will contaminate other alfalfa crops.
[References updated on 2018-04-02 because the old links were broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
9000 people have been killed or disappeared in Colombia for protesting against Big Polluter's assaults on the environment.
Mercenary companies in Afghanistan, paid to guard NATO convoys, are instead bribing the Taliban; sometimes even staging fake battles with Taliban cooperation. If the Afghan government and the Taliban are this close, maybe they can make peace.
Several European countries are deporting people to Iraq, where the danger they fled from still exists.
Although Obama now talks tough about BP, he continues protecting US companies that kill people (even thousands of them) abroad.
Two Bosnian Serb officers have been convicted of ordering genocide at Srebrenica.
The opposition in Iran has abandoned plans for protests on the anniversary of the election.
This reminds us that civil society has no way to resist a sufficiently brutal attack by a government determined to crush freedom.
US citizens:
sign this petition
to the conference committee to make the bank reform bill stronger.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A court ruled that UK police violated the human rights of thousands of people that they searched on the way to a protest.
Oil is piling up in marine wildlife sanctuaries, unimpeded by bungled protective and cleanup efforts. The birds and marine animals that don't die now will die in the coming months or years from the toxins.
This disaster was caused by a conspiracy of government and big oil companies. The oil companies convinced the US government to establish inadequate safety standards, and then convinced it not to enforce them. The relevant people in the government were either paid off somehow or convinced to worship the invisible hand.
Further back, the cause is the US's failure to use energy efficiently. That too is the result of government collusion with the oil companies ever since President Reagan.
We cannot survive the existence of companies big enough to gain effective control of government policy. We need to establish a climate in which government will not be seduced by the argument that letting companies do whatever they wish will benefit everyone through economic growth. That is just Reagan's "trickle-down economics" by another name.
Car accidents are heading for the main cause of death in poor countries, and car pollution in Southeast Asia has reached the point of harming health and agriculture.
Some senators in the conference committee are trying to weaken the banking reform bill in a sneaky and subtle way.
The US is working behind the scenes to protect Israel from a proper investigation of its attack on the Gaza aid ships.
The US has offered aid to rebuild schools in Gaza, but it is not clear how this can occur while Israel refuses to let in any building supplies.
If the US navy delivers building supplies, rebuilding could really get going.
The leaking BP well is possibly so broken-down by now that nothing could succeed in containing the spill.
The Supreme Court threatens to overturn Arizona's public campaign financing laws.
This would just about eliminate any hope for democracy in the US. If we cannot keep corporations' money out of politics, and cannot compensate for it, they will own the government totally.
I suppose that is what the right-wing corporate flunkies on the Supreme Court have in mind.
Terrorists can tie the US in knots by leaving "suspicious" bags in public places.
Or maybe the US is chasing its own tail now and terrorists are superfluous.
Europe, Russia and Australia are pushing a corrupt scheme for counting CO2 emissions from forests, so they can cut as much as they like and it won't be counted.
Activist Kenneth O`Keefe on the Mavi Marmara helped
disarm some Israeli soldiers,
but did not hurt them. Now Israel says he is a violent terrorist. European
Jewish activists will send
an aid boat
to Gaza.
[References updated on 2018-05-13 because the old links were broken.]
A member of the Israeli Parliament who was in the Gaza aid ships faces a
campaign to
revoke her parliamentary privileges.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of the "privilege to leave the country" reminds me of the Soviet Union, which denied many Jews the "privilege" of emigrating. Isn't the right to leave a country part of normal human rights?
Turkey has blocked access to many
Google services.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Some of these services should not be used, for ethical reasons — for instance, Google Docs and Google Translate are Software as a Service but there is nothing bad about the rest if you block the nonfree Javascript programs they try to install.
The UK government has tried to order judges not to review plans to deport refugees to Iraq.
To deport people to such a dangerous place is an outrage by itself. Not to mention that the UK helped make it so dangerous.
Sri Lanka's defense secretary, the brother of president Rajapaksa, threatened to execute defeated presidential candidate Fonseca for claiming said defense secretary ordered telling troops to commit war crimes.
Ironically, by making this threat, he demonstrated he would envision the sort of crime he was accused of.
I have no way of judging whether there is any valid substance to the accusations against Fonseca; but it hardly makes any difference after this.
Big Polluter says it has succeeded in collecting half, or perhaps more, of the oil gushing out of the spill.
In the process it has admitted that the spill rate is on the order of 20,000 barrels a day, much more than BP claimed before. This is significant because BP will be fined per barrel and has tried to deny the full amount of the oil.
I wonder if this might have been part of the motive for using a toxic dispersant: to hide the size of the spill.
US citizens: phone your senators calling on them to support offering abortions in military hospitals to women in the US military.
Or send email through
this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this petition to criticize the Democratic
congresscritters that supported the big ISPs against network
neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
BP's emergency "response" plan for an oil leak shows it was aware
of dangers
which it in fact ignored.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi refugees haunted by horrors they left behind.
Physicians for Human Rights accuses the US of performing medical experiments on prisoners without their consent.
The US has arrested someone for leaking the Collateral Murder video.
Israel proposes to investigate how it attacked the Mavi Marmara, without any international involvement.
I don't think we can rely on Israel to do this honestly.
Republicans have packed the Supreme Court with judges who strain
to favor business against people. Now Republicans are trying to block
the appointments of judges that won't do that.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Indian government is filming a large number of traditional yoga postures so that nobody can patent them.
In the wake of the Ethiopian intervention, Mogadishu is divided between battling factions that are all more or less fanatical Islamists.
One point that isn't made clear — and the previous articles I read did not say anything about it — is how Sharif Ahmed, formerly fighting against the US-backed Ethiopian army, became the head of a "government" which has US support. What happened to the previous "provisional government" that the US tried to impose despite its lack of domestic support?
Agribusiness lobbyists effectively took control of the UK's Food Safety Agency under the Clown regime.
Police and the US coast guard are helping Big Polluter block and control press access to areas affected by the oil spill.
Apparently Obama doesn't want people to feel how bad the spill is.
The US Chamber of Commerce pays for reports that claim the US has gained jobs due to "free trade" treaties. This conclusion is false, and the reports are full of errors.
I expect that the Chamber of Commerce is aware that the reports are false, but expects to make Americans believe them anyway by indirectly funding lots of TV ads.
There's no such thing as perfect safety, and we must reject the idea of making great sacrifices for a tiny amount of safety.
A friend who is helping to rescue birds in the Gulf of Mexico told me:
When they describe the smell on [TV] it doesn't come close to the horrible reality of the putrid hot tar odor in all directions. What would be a comforting ocean breeze carries the smell of a road being newly paved. I tried to sleep with my respirator on but had to switch to a bandanna as the other was too uncomfortable on my inflatable cot.
He asked me not to publish his name.
Israel seized the
Rachel Corrie
before it could reach Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery discusses a hypothetical book that might be called Exodus 2010.
After the US Supreme Court handed corporations control over politics by ruling they have the same freedom of speech as people, another court decided they have the same privacy rights as people.
I support efforts to counteract the Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate activity in political campaigns.
However, the idea of treating corporations as persons is absurd in general, and needs to be changed in general.
The Gaza aid ship activists were shot multiple times; witnesses report seeing people shot at close range in the head.
I could hardly blame activists for rushing soldiers that were shooting people and dropping them down a hatch. The claims that some of the protestors were threatening to use knives is somewhat more of a concern — if it is true.
An independent newspaper will operate in Zimbabwe for the first time in 7 years.
150 cameras were installed in one neighborhood just to track all the movements of Muslims' cars, lest some of them be terrorists.
It does not surprise me that the UK government lied to the local government about the purpose of this. Now the challenge is to get rid of this, and the other car-tracking cameras all across the UK.
An HBO movie about Neda Soltani has become very popular in Iran despite jamming and electric power cuts designed to stop people from getting it. Iran's government calls this propaganda, and that in some sense is true; but Iranians know the information in it is basically accurate — unlike their own government's totally bogus version.
One remaining aid ship is now heading for Gaza, defying Israeli threats.
The strict rules limiting sales at the World Cup in Cape Town have meant that neither condoms nor safe sex advice can be distributed there.
This is probably a side effect; the goal of these rules was to limit the commercial benefits to certain companies and exclude poor South Africans.
Christian fanatics have found a new basis for organizing: denying global warming. This is, in effect, the beginning of an alliance opposed to all rational knowledge and dedicated to the destruction of the Earth.
US citizens: tell textbook publishers to stand up to the lies and bigotry mandated in Texas.
US citizens: call on Congress to
end the tax preference
for managers of hedge funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US is protecting Israel in the UN from pressure for an international investigation of its attack on the Gaza aid ships.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings accused the US of giving the CIA a "license to kill" using drones.
I see two issues arising directly from using drones to attack people in the attempt to kill them. First, is it justified to try to kill them at all? Second, are drones an acceptable method?
The general answer to the first is it is acceptable to kill the soldiers of an enemy army, but not mere criminals; states must at least try to arrest them first. The Taliban in Pakistan falls in a gray area between the two.
As for the method, that's a matter of how many innocent bystanders are likely to be hit. Drones are not alone in killing bystanders; rockets fired from fighter planes do it too, as was shown by a number of Israeli "targeted killings", and artillery does it too. They can all be unacceptable.
In the long term, the issue of the "playstation mentality" that Alston raised could be very significant. If killing comes to feel like nothing at all, people may kill a lot more. Drones are not alone in having this effect; other high tech and remote weapons do the same. But drones may take it to a new level.
Scientists who advised stockpiling swine flu vaccine had been paid by drug companies.
Reports say that Israeli troops shot at Turkish activists who had lined up to block entry with their bodies.
If so, that was nonviolent resistance, and the Israeli soldiers responded to it with violence.
Food processing companies are running distraction campaigns to prevent anything from being done to reduce the salt in packaged foods.
Some of the activists that were on the Gaza aid ships are
Israeli Arabs.
Unlike the international activists, they remain in prison and face
prosecution. Israel tried to deliver some of the aid that was on the Gaza aid
ships, but not the construction supplies, which are urgently needed to rebuild
houses destroyed by Israel's attack. Hamas
rejected wheelchairs
demanding the construction supplies and freeing of those prisoners. Blocking delivery
of supplies to rebuild homes is inhumane. Blocking wheelchairs that are
available is also inhumane.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Christopher Monckton gives persuasive-sounding speeches claiming that the scientific evidence shows there is no global warming. Professor John Abraham tracked down the references cited by Monckton and found many of them to be misrepresentations. I wonder if the scientists who were misrepresented can sue Monckton for libel in the UK.
EU citizens: ask your MEPs not to sign (or to withdraw their names from) a letter advocating a new system of data retention for people's searches.
Israel sold a nuclear bomb trigger to South Africa in 1977.
Corrupt police are the main reason Afghans join the Taliban.
It is possible in principle for a corrupt and dishonest government to prevent corruption in the police force, but I doubt the Afghan government has the will to do so. It would have to pay them a lot more, and that would leave too little money for others to steal.
Big Polluter is planning to pay dividends of ten billion dollars to shareholders.
Perhaps the logic is, "pass the money along before the cops get you.'
Carefully controlled grazing can revive dying grasslands in Africa. Burning grass is not bad everywhere; in some places, such as Australia, plants are adapted to that. But Africa may be different.
I can hazard a generalization from this. Rapid technological progress implies that people do not have time to determine the long term consequences of the new methods they adopt. Many of them will therefore have harmful consequences, and they can build up to tremendous magnitude before people understand them.
Thus, rapid "progress" often is not really progress.
Arundhati Roy on 'War of People'.
Both BP and the US government neglected safety issues for the well that exploded.
The Gates Foundation supports GMOs for Africa.
The Taliban attacked Karzai's "Peace Jirga". The attack did not seriously disrupt the meeting, but shows that it has no chance of achieving much.
Israeli troops shot teargas cannisters directly at protestors' heads
and blinded Emily Henochowicz in one eye.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Gaza aid ship activist Dimitris Gielalis says Israeli troops hit a camerman on the eye with a rifle.
Activist Aris Papadokostopoulos says he saw Israeli captors beat up many prisoners from the ships.
Israel claims there is no need for aid to Gaza because it allows adequate supplies to cross the border. Compare those claims with the facts.
Humans
caused global cooling 13000 years ago by killing the mammoths
and other large animals.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
China has banned the use in court of evidence obtained through torture.
I don't know whether China's legal system has enough integrity to carry out this decision, but it is at least a step in the right direction. The US also has trouble carrying out this principle.
This year will have many hurricanes, and they will make the Big Pollution in the Gulf of Mexico do more damage. Perhaps we need to build a dam from Florida to Yucatan to keep the oil from polluting the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic.
Everyone: sign this petition for an independent investigation into Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza aid ships.
The government of Afghanistan has organized a conference about peace, but the Taliban are not invited, and the democratic opposition says it is a sham.
Bangladesh is torturing some terrorism suspects on behalf of the UK.
They might be guilty, but it is impossible to find out by torture.
Decommissioning bills have made the UK's nuclear power plants a lot more expensive than they were supposed to be.
Israel sabotaged two of the Gaza aid ships; they returned to Cyprus with similar unusual mechanical problems.
Americans have less
empathy and kindness
than 20 years ago. Relating this to the Internet
is conjecture; I don't think we can tell what the cause is. But the
consequences will clearly be harmful to everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Afghanistan is investigating many
aid groups
on suspicion that they are preaching Christianity, which is forbidden
there. I have no love for proselytizing Christians, but discriminating between
postures on religion violates human rights. It also violates human rights
treaties. The US has no business fighting to support a government in
Afghanistan unless it signs and follows these treaties.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Big Polluter has misled the US government about the spill in several ways.
Big Pollution has been unable to stop the oil spill by pumping in mud and golf balls. It could take two more months to stop the leak with relief wells (if they work).
The US is making contacts with Hamas, which suggests it would stop fighting Israel if Israel returns to its 1967 borders.
An insider's analysis of the failure of the Copenhagen talks.
Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza aid ships, killing and wounding the unarmed activists. Recent history suggests that the Israeli accounts of the events are likely to be lies. The Israeli army committed multiple atrocities in its attack on Gaza, then lied about them, obstructed investigations such as that of Judge Goldstone then tried to smear and threaten those who repeat the criticism. The activists knowingly risked their lives, in effect telling Israel, "You can keep Gaza in hunger over our dead bodies." But that doesn't make the activists responsible for the violence. The activists only tried to bring food, medicine and building supplies to the suffering people of Gaza; it was Israel that started the fight, and it cannot justify that.
Record high temperatures in India are killing people. Temperatures of 50 degrees C are forecast to come. Such high temperatures will become common in tropical areas due to global warming.
BP got special permission to use a kind of well casing that had a known risk of collapse.
BP had another big spill last week in Alaska, caused by skipping essential maintenance to save money. BP has hounded whistleblowers who tried to report its neglect of pipeline safety.
Republicans are using corporate money to stir up blind anger among citizens, so they can take power in order to serve the corporations.
Oil companies in Nigeria spill oil just about every day; the spills add up to around one Exxon Valdez per year. The oil poisons crops, fish and people, but corporate thugs attack them if the dare to protest. I agree that the executives together with all the staff personally responsible, including those in subcontractors, should be tried. If the oil companies block the trials, these companies should be declared "Wanted, dead or alive" and wiped out.
French journalist Baudouin Koenig and his sound assistant were
arrested in Indonesia
for filming a student protest in Wast Papua. Indonesia eventually allowed
Koenig to
remain in Indonesia
and continue interviews — but not in West Papua. West Papua was
taken over by Indonesia just as it was given independence by the preceding
Dutch colonial power. Since then, a large number of Javanese colonists have
moved there in a campaign to assure permanent control of the territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistani Taliban attacked a mosque of the heretical Ahmedi sect and killed 90 people. Even if we treat the Taliban as an aberration, the previous persecution of Ahmedis shows how Muslim countries despise religious freedom, and shows a vicious trait in Islam. Christians and Jews have also engaged in such persecutions over history.
The president of the Maldives calls for street action to focus the US on stopping global warming.
The Big Pollution in the Gulf, which has not been stopped yet, is turning into Big Poison: blowing fumes or droplets make people sick. I don't know how to reconcile the current news that the leak isn't shut off with the previous report that the flow had been stopped.
Arundhati Roy risked being shot on sight by the police to visit and interview the tribals who have armed themselves to resist the Indian police and soldiers who want to take their land.
The US backed a plan to eliminate nuclear weapons in the Middle East in order to unjam the nuclear nonprolifieration negotiations.
Half a million Iraqis (estimated) are living in illegal squatter camps. The number of these squatters is growing rapidly.
When Iraqi refugees return from other countries, many of them end up in these camps. I would guess that they returned because they ran out of money and the other countries did not allow them to work or to squat.
US citizens: phone Obama at 202-456-1111 and say, "A six-month delay in new offshore drilling is not enough. We need to stop it entirely."
You can, if you wish, inform MoveOn about your call via this page.
Massachusetts citizens: call Senator Kerry and tell him to stop defending a tax loophole for managers of hedge funds.
See
here
and
here.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Big Spill has been shut off, but it is not permanently shut.
Repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the US military towards gays was approved by the Senate armed forces commitee. I favor repeal of this bigoted policy (which has been used to punish servicewomen who complained about being raped). At the same time, it is hard for me to be enthusiastic about helping the US armed forces, given the typical uses of US power.
Jamaicans report that soldiers shot and killed unarmed men and teenagers, even taking them from houses where they had fled.
Israel will no longer ban Palestinians from highway 443 through the West Bank. Instead it will establish so many checkpoints (stopping Palestinians only) as to make it useless for them.
The biggest threat to strong banking reform is from Obama and the Federal Reserve.
Business Power in the form of Republican senators blocked an attempt to increase BP's liability for the Big Spill. I disagree with the article about taxing oil. This tax is good since it would reduce oil consumption. It is true that oil companies will pass it on to the consumer as much as they can, but they would do the same with any other costs. Meanwhile, if consumers respond by driving less, the companies won't succeed in passing on all the cost to them.
Gulf cost marshes are going to be poisoned for decades, judging by the experience of a big spill near Saudi Arabia.
In Pakistan, even those who advocate more flexible censorship are condemned by fanatics. Freedom of expression is something no one dares advocate.
Islamic countries such as Pakistan do not respect freedom of speech. They also do not respect religious freedom, since they prohibit anyone who was Muslim from converting to any other position (perhaps even including Atheism). These laws are fundamentally unjust and deserve the strongest condemnation.
The biggest banks, and credit card companies, have set up a phony consumer group to lobby Congress against part of the banking reform bill, and pretend to represent the public.
A deceptive supposed archeological project near Jerusalem, funded apparently by the Israeli government, is undermining Palestinian buildings, as its founders also try seizing these buildings.
Obama's "moratorium" on new offshore drilling projects was not what it sounded like.
Police in Poland
shot and killed
a market trader who tried to stop them from beating up another trader.
Then a further police attack started a riot.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Naturally the police won't be punished.
A secret Iraqi prison holds women prisoners, some used as hostages to be tortured to make their husbands confess.
Iran is to receive more sanctions as it continues pushing to develop nuclear weapons.
The proposed sanctions are justified, but I doubt they will achieve their aim. I don't think anything can achieve it, except perhaps to force Israel to the table to discuss its own nuclear disarmament.
1200 inhabitants of Sheikh Sa'ad are cut off from the world unless they walk down a steep hillside. One has already died because Israel did not let an ambulance come for him.
Some Italian supermarkets have
rejected groceries
from an Israeli company which fails to properly label goods made in
Israel's illegal "settlements."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The ruling party of Ethiopia, having exiled and imprisoned the opposition, appear to have rigged an election.
Mordecai Vanunu has been
jailed again,
for going on a date.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
BP will be fined in proportion to the amount of oil spilled. No wonder BP is trying to prevent independent estimation of the amount.
Dissent in Israel, which boasts of being "the only democracy in the Middle East", is facing increased persecution. Israel's principle investigative reporter, Uri Blau , has been driven into exile.
In Massachusetts: collect signatures for Jull Stein for governor. See jillstein.org.
Agriculture and Haiti's Long-Term Future:
An Analysis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign
this petition
to demand that BP make all its data available to scientists so that they
can estimate the true extent of the Big Spill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
China plans a major hydroelectric plant on the Tsangpo river.
While the US and Europe talk about reducing CO2 emissions, China is really doing something about it.
The dam would make it easy for China to extract more water from the river, but it could do that without a dam, and it could build the dam without extracting a lot of water. So it is possible to separate the issue of water rights from the issue of the dam.
The sediment that now flows to India and Bangladesh will collect above the dam, and it will have to be dredged out. I wonder if it will be possible to put the sediment into the river below the dam, so that India and Bangladesh can still receive it.
The new UK government has cancelled plans to expand London area airports. Environmental campaigners are cheering. It is clear that the expansion plans were just a deal by the B'liar/Clown regime.
The contrast between real change and Obama's small change could not be more stark.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to vote for the DISCLOSE Act which would regulate corporate spending on elections.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Facebook and other sites users give personal information to are not the only ones that collect it (and may give it out later).
We must use the Facebook scandal to build opposition to all systems of surveillance of the general public.
The Jamaican government is trying to capture Christopher Coke, accused drug trafficker, and it has come almost to war. I have no sympathy for Mr Coke, whose followers are not above using terror against bystanders. But this instance is part of a broader phenomenon: the War on Drugs, which systematically generates people like Mr Coke, and systematically encourages them to corrupt every government. If we don't end the War on Drugs, capturing this kingpin will only make another.
Corruption in the Afghan government makes flying unsafe.
You can track the progress of the
Gaza Freedom Flotilla,
which expects to arrive near Gaza on May 28. In case these relief ships
are attacked by Israel, they are
organizing protests
outside Israeli embassies around the world.
[References updated on 2018-04-02 because the old links were broken.]
A few Chinese investigative journalists report on corruption and disasters despite death threats and official opposition.
US citizens: tell the Secretary of the Interior to veto undersea oil drilling near Alaska.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign
this petition
demanding televized negotiations between the House and Senate about the
bank regulation bill. The Senate bill is not as strong as it ought to be, but
it is a step in the right direction. The point of this petition is not to
let the banksters ruin it at the last minute.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Iranian influence is helping Maliki keep power in Iraq.
Bush must love this.
The Church of Scientology in Turin kept records of sex secrets of people it considered enemies, including people who had left the church.
Iraqi officials say that nearly all the prisoners released by the Bush forces have become terrorists. They even have some prisoners who have confessed to this.
Confessions obtained by Iraqi police don't really prove anything since they are probably obtained by torture. But given the way the Sunnis who supported the Bush forces got treated, I would expect all of them to start fighting the regime.
It is sad, though, if they do this by killing civilians. A long-term civil war in Iraq, or campaigns of murder, may yet be Bush's legacy.
Elvis Costello
has cancelled a concert tour in Israel, rather than
appear to accept the occupation of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook users: Quit Facebook Day is May 31.
The Conservatives in the UK refuse to repeal the Dinosaur Economy Act. But if Britons keep fighting it, they may succeed in getting rid of it.
The article describes copyrights as "intellectual property", apparently quoting the media dinosaurs that demanded this law. They use that term to confuse people, and confuse is what it does. People who don't agree with them often use this propaganda term when talking about them and what they want, thinking that it is somehow cute or appropriate to quote them. That is a bad mistake, since it spreads their propaganda.
Americans: sign
this petition for Net Neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
More information about the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
This cites some large companies as supporters of Net Neutrality. Most of those companies do other nasty things, but I would not hold that against Net Neutrality.
Israel offered to sell nuclear missiles to South Africa in 1975.
The Israeli negotiator in charge of the deal is now the president of Israel.
The UK Labour party's new leadership candidates denounce the invasion of Iraq.
Is it possible that a few hookworms in the gut will protect against allergies and autoimmune disease ?
We cannot be sure whether this remedy really works without a proper double-blind experiment to test the claim. It is a shame that this experiment is not being done. To wait decades for the mechanism (if there is one) to be fully understood and for drugs to be developed is no substitute for testing this remedy now.
Imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi may be freed due to an international support campaign.
Uri Avnery: Do some Israelis feel uncomfortable unless the world is anti-Semitic?
Berusconi has proposed a law to limit police eavesdropping . Unless there is some subtle difference that I have missed, these conditions are much like the ones that applied traditionally in the US, before "national security" was used as an excuse for more snooping on citizens. The FBI found them sufficient to convict gangsters. It is ironic that the impetus comes from Berlusconi, given the bad things he has done; but our disgust for him is no reason to allow police to plant bugs without sufficient evidence of a crime.
Australia has imposed searches on laptops of travellers and demands they all declare whether they have "pornography". It will be hard for them even to know the answer. Worse, it is an opportunity for further government censorship.
Thick sheets of oil have polluted marshes in Louisiana where migratory birds stop and many sea animals breed or mature. This could drastically change the ecology of the whole Gulf of Mexico, perhaps permanently. If some bird species migrate only via that pathway, they might go extinct.
The goods and services obtained from nature must be included in economic calculations to show society why it needs to protect nature. The disastrous consequences of the Big Spill will bring this home to people.
The Senate's financial reform bill substantially limits the banks, but falls short of restoring all the protections that we used to have.
"How have we established this new primitive religion — with the markets cast as a bloodthirsty god?"
A cartoon shows Mohammad complaining to his therapist that "Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!"
Unlike the Danish cartoons, this is really funny. I also love the cartoonist's unapologetic response: "get over it".
Republican activists' accusations against ACORN were refuted, but they destroyed ACORN anyway. Now they have targeted the Greenlining Institute , which makes banks obey laws against excluding poor neighborhoods from lending.
The US Army is illegally paying private contractors as spies in Pakistan.
We heard about Israel's refusal to let Chomsky go to the West Bank,
because he is famous, but such refusals are
regular occurrences
and the government never says why.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The court order requiring the ministry to publish these policies has been ignored for 30 months.
A leading Israeli newspaper (normally not a supporter of peace) warns
this is part of
a
trend towards fascism
in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Israel rejected an offer to resume diplomatic relations with Qatar because of the condition: allow the reconstruction of Gaza.
The Rachel Corrie has departed from Ireland to bring aid to Gaza.
Israel says it will
block this ship
and the 7 others that plan to travel to Gaza this month.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel can stop the ships, but it will pay a price: incraased international awareness of the siege of Gaza.
Since Israel cannot face the Goldstone report about war crimes in Gaza,
Israel is trying to
discredit
him by saying he was a supporter of apartheid as a judge in the apartheid
period. Nelson Mandela showed his evaluation of Goldstone's service by
appointing him to the Supreme Court.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Fundamentalist "settlers" have
burned
Palestinian olive trees and mosques.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi police transported many Sunni prisoners in trucks with poor ventilation. Some of them died of suffocation , and their corpses showed evidence of torture. Some of the prisoners who died had been held for long periods based on no evidence.
The Palestinian Authority has prohibited sale of goods made in Israeli settlements. The settlers are outraged; "How dare they punish us for stealing their land? Israel should demand they buy from us!" The boycott of products of the settlements is already widely practiced in Europe, and has pressured major companies to move operations out of them.
The new UK government has decided to review whether to hand over accused cracker Gary McKinnon to the US for prosecution.
The article makes the common mistake of using the word "hacker" to mean "someone who breaks security". That is insulting to us hackers.
What really makes McKinnon's extradition an injustice is that it was done under a one-sided treaty with the US which bypasses the usual legal safeguards on extradition. Will the new UK government cancel this treaty?
Diane Abbot , the first black woman MP, seeks to lead the Labour Party and give support to civil liberties.
Prince William Sound has not recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill 20 years ago.
A Sa'udi woman fought back against a member of the religious police and gave him a thorough beating. This article assumes that the identity of that woman is known to the state, but it is not clear to me that she has been identified.
Global warming will cause the extinction of 20% of lizard species if it isn't stopped soon, because they will have to rest in the shade all day and and not eat. Polinating insects could have the same fate, which could be catastrophic.
A nun was
excommunicated
for saving a woman's life: she approved an abortion in a Catholic
hospital. Without the abortion, both the pregnant woman and the fetus would have
died. At 11 weeks of pregnancy, women in the US are allowed to have abortions
at will, if the state or the hospital has not made it impossible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition for Congress to remove the limits on oil companies' liability for oil spills.
Many perfumes contain secret ingredients that can make the user sick.
A South Korean ship was torpedoed in March by a North Korean submarine.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to sign the treaty that bans land mines.
US citizens: phone your senators calling on them to hold a vote on
Goodwin Liu
, nominated for a judgeship. And/or use this page to send a message but a
phone call carries more weight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The UK will eliminate ID cards and limit some other surveillance programs. However, there is no word about the surveillance of car travel. It is important for the UK to bring this up now. And there is no mention of repealing the laws that make it a crime to be suspected of terrorism.
In an attack on everyone's privacy rights, Sarkozy wants to ban wearing garments meant to hide one's face in public.
I sympathize with the goal of freeing Muslim women from the pressure to wear veils, but I don't think banning them is just. I also expect the measure to backfire, because the victims of that pressure will become afraid to leave home. They will become more, rather than less, isolated from the rest of society.
But the way this is phrased, its impact is not limited to Muslim women. It attacks the rights of everyone that may want to be anonymous on the street; for instance, while protesting. Just as terrorists and pornography are used as excuses for censorship, surveillance, and other repressive measures, Islamic veils are the excuse to ban any resistance to the total surveillance state.
An offshoot of the Yes Men made an announcement that Shell would clean up the oil pollution it has caused in Nigeria. Shell claims it is impossible to do this, but that is not true.
The Thai army attacked the protestors and seems to have crushed the protest. The human casualties reported seem few for such a large battle. However, I think democracy in Thailand is the other casualty. The current government cannot remain in power democratically and is unwilling to let go.
The UK's new energy minister rejects subsidizing new nuclear power plants. If Amory Lovins is right that they are totally uneconomical, this will kill them off.
Israel's refusal to consider nuclear disarmament threatens to wreck nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
Facebook has been blocked in Pakistan , ironically not for mistreatment of its users, but for allowing freedom of speech.
A protest is planned to pressure Facebook to respect users' privacy but I think the idea is hopeless. As explained here , Facebook's product is info about its users; its real customers are the companies that take advantage of that info. The pressure on Facebook to mistreat its users is greater than any possible pushback.
So just quit instead!
You know how to live without Facebook. You have done it already.
Obama continues Bush's unjust "military commissions" in Guantanamo, and has banned reporters from the "court" for publishing information they had already published before the "trial".
As the Big Spill grows, and fishing is banned in 1/5 of the Gulf of Mexico , the head of the MMS continues to defend increased undersea drilling. Under the current political system of Business Politics (BP), in which the oil companies use their power to keep the environmental standards weak and then procure a waiver so as not to follow them, we cannot allow any undersea drilling, just as we cannot allow construction of nuclear plants.
A gay couple in Malawi who came out publicly have been convicted of the crime of having sex. They face a possible 14 years in prison from bigotry.
US citizens: support the ACLU against the Arizona "show us your papers" law.
Reporters criticized the government of Kurdistan about
undermining freedom of the press.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your senators and tell them to reject Senator Murkowski's Dirty Air Act.
Also sign
this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A UK court ruled that two Pakistanis suspected of planning terrorism cannot be deported to Pakistan because they might be tortured by the government there. However, the court branded them as terrorists based on evidence they were not allowed to see, which could easily be worthless. And they face the threat of being placed under house arrest without a trial.
If there is evidence to suspect someone, that is grounds to search his house from time to time, read his mail, and so on. Under such circumstances he could not do much harm even if he tries.
Massachusetts citizens: phone your state representative in support of Rep Smizik's medical marijuana bill.
When the US kills many civilians in Pakistan, it must expect to inspire revenge attacks such as the attempted bombing in Times Square.
I don't think firing missiles from drones, rather than firing them from fighter-bombers or firing shells from howitzers, makes an inherently ethical difference. Any of these weapons can be used against an army, and any can be used to massacre civilians. What matters is whether they are accurately targeted at enemy belligerents, and whether this successfully protects civilians. The US argues that these drone attacks are legitimate war because they are aimed at specific belligerents, not at civilians. But is that really true?
The information in that article is not conclusive about that point. If drone attacks as of 2009 had killed 14 "terrorist" leaders (which we can take to mean leaders of an enemy army) and 700 civilians, were those civilians few compared with the combatants who were killed, or many?
Unless it is clear that most of those who are hit are belligerents, the US argument cannot be sustained. If what General McChrystal said about Afghanistan applies to these attacks too, that "none has proven to have been a real threat", it would seem the argument is invalid.
Faux News attacked Wikipedia for hosting "pornography", and Wikipedia's administrators reacted in panic with self-censorship.
Here is more information.
There's nothing wrong with sexually explicit images, whether they are for stimulation or information or whatever purpose. Wikipedia's purpose is to provide information, so any images which don't serve that purpose — sexually explicit or not — don't belong there. However, it would be a mistake to be overly strict in judging what serves the purpose of informing people.
Haitian farmers vow to burn Monsanto gift of seeds treated in toxic pesticides.
Pledge to
boycott BP
for at least three months.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
British Bush forces' torture practices defied repeated orders from generals.
Federal agents
arrested cameraman
George Donnelly who was filming a FIJA leafletting activity. He was held
overnight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
FIJA is the Fully Informed Juror's Association
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange faces cancellation of his passport.
The Thai government says it will order the army to attack the protestors. The protestors support Thaksin, who was elected several times and ousted each time by the elite. He seems to have the support of the Thai masses, but there are accusations of corruption against him, and he presided over campaigns of assassination against people accused of drug trafficking.
US citizens: sign
this petition
against some of the harmful parts of the Kerry/Lieberman energy bill.
Here's a
thorough explanation
of the bad provisions of that bill. It amounts to a big handout to nuclear
power, coal and oil.
[References updated on 2018-04-02 because the old links were broken.]
Reggie Clemons is on
death row
after a trial so full of errors that it was absurd.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese man was freed from prison after the man he confessed to murdering turned up alive.
Torture is an effective means of making people confess. If they are not guilty, that's no obstacle; they confess anyway. Since anyone might be falsely accused, government torture is dangerous to everyone.
That is why political leaders who conspire to torture must be prosecuted. Obama, when will you carry out the US's responsibility?
Israel barred Noam Chomsky from speaking in a Palestinian university.
Obama is continuing Bush's policy of using bogus trials for prisoners in Guantanamo.
In addition, he is trying to impose censorship of facts already published.
An Afghan prosecutor wants to arrest a US officer saying that a US-trained militia killed a police chief. Given the corruption of Afghanistan, I will not say this accusation is unbelievable. However, if the militia accused the police of persecuting it, I would not find that unbelievable either.
A French professor who was imprisoned in Iran for participating in a protest has been freed, but Iranians accused of protesting are still in prison (or still dead).
Obama is keeping up the pressure on Egypt to stop persecuting dissent.
Large underwater oil plumes in the Gulf of Mexico threaten to create new dead zones. The Gulf of Mexico already has a regular dead zone caused by agricultural fertilizer that flows into the sea.
The recount of
the Iraqi election
did not change the outcome, but Maliki seems to be trying to make an alliance
with al Sadr so as to remain in power. I have not seen further information about
Maliki's attempts to change the outcome by arresting and disqualifying the
elected MPs of Allawi's party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizes: phone your senators and ask where they stand on making banks
separate out their risky betting. There's more
information here
and the page invites you to report what each senator says.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Sign this petition to the US ambassador to Colombia to protect indigenous and union leaders from a new paramilitary gang. The old paramilitaries were sponsored by leading Colombian politicians. I would guess that these are too.
BP lobbied against stricter safety standards for undersea drilling.
The predatory Lord's Resistance Army, chased out of Uganda, now preys on several neighboring countries. A small amount of US help would enable the permanent defeat and elimination of the gang, but the US government never seems to have considered it. Perhaps because this gang is not Islamist.
Paramount, i.e. Viacom, demanded the deletion of a video that someone took with his own camera looking at the street outside his office. Viacom is one of the movie companies that are lobbying to take away your freedom. If you give these companies any money, you are paying them to attack you.
BP's drilling rig had a big gas explosion before April 20, and stopped it by pushing mud down the pipe. Then it decided to remove the mud for its convenience.
The head of BP says the big spill is small (compared with the total volume of the Gulf of Mexico).
This is pure distraction, because the volume of water is not important. What matters is how much oil will arrive on the coast and the sea bottom.
Then he says BP will fix the leak, and the only question is when. If it takes them till all the oil leaks out, the job will be easy.
Then he makes a comparison between a leaking oil well and an unexplained plane crash in the ocean. The plane crash killed only the crew and passengers; it did not poison the sea. If only the big spill were no worse than a plane crash.
Corporations claim the rights of persons. If BP were a real person, how would it be treated now?
Ivan Prado, organizer of the International Clown Festival in Spain, was going to Ramallah to organize a similar festival, but Israel deported him to Spain.
I suppose Israel wants to deprive the Palestinians of laughter as well as land and water.
Which senators are in the Bankster Party? Here's a list.
We should support primary challenges to those senators.
Making the Internet safe for free speech.
Ameer Makhoul, Israeli Arab human rights activist, was arrested and unofficially accused of knowing someone who knows someone who might be a terrorist.
He has
not been allowed to speak with a lawyer.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Here's an article written by Ameer Makhoul a few weeks before his
arrest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The article lists a history of Israeli repression against Arab politicians.
Several major US banks are being investigated on suspicion of corrupting and misleading credit rating companies.
Obama has unilaterally postponed the Iraq withdrawal timetable
which Bush unilaterally announced.
Congress is now ignored.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi resistance fighters that went over to the Bush side and fought al Qa'ida are now being hunted down by al Qa'ida, while getting only half-hearted support from Maliki's government.
The Thai army is heating up its attacks on the Thai protestors.
Genetically engineered BT cotton was supposed to protect the environment by reducing pesticide use, but instead it has become a sanctuary for pests that attack other nearby farms.
US citizens: send a message to the senate for
a strong energy bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the message I sent:
We need to promote renewable energy, not dangerous uranium and coal and petroleum. We should strengthen our laws for conservation, by adding a tax on carbon-containing fuel, not undermine existing measures such as the Clean Air Act and state laws.
Anything less is a surrender to BP (Business Politics).
Also sign this petition.
A courageous gay couple face 14 years imprisonment for holding a marriage ceremony in Malawi.
This illustrates Christian cruelty.
Judge Garzon, Spain's champion against dictators and terrorists, has been suspended for investigating the atrocities committed by Spain's dictator Franco.
For more information.
I am not surprised that Zapatero is trying to eliminate Spain's universal jurisdiction over atrocities. This is probably the result of US pressure. Obama must fear that he will be prosecuted for the disappearances carried out by his regime.
Indonesian police say they have uncovered an Islamist plot to assassinate the government and set up an Islamic state.
The accused plotters were arrested in Aceh, which was given the special privilege of establishing Sharia law, as part of a peace agreement that ended a long civil war. Sharia law does not respect basic human rights.
Aceh recently adopted a law censoring video and audio broadcasts which would prohibit anything that goes against Islamic values. The officials said this did not affect freedom of the press because 'the press means writing only".
Midwives have become illegal in New York City, almost offhandedly, and obstetricians are blocking moves to fix the problem.
Donate to
The Yes Men
.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
India's electronic voting machines are vulnerable to centralized fraud. Several years ago, I read that India's voting machines did not have computers in them, and I thought this might make them safer. So I was surprised to read, in this article, that they contain programmable microcontrollers. I wonder whether perhaps what I read years ago concerned a previous generation of machines.
100 Jewish Jerusalemites signed an open letter correcting Elie Wiesel's mistaken notion of the situation in Jerusalem. This response, and Yossi Sarid's, should persuade a reasonable person who reads them. But they don't have rich supporters to present the truth in ads in US newspapers.
A former CIA officer says in August 2002 he was told the US had already decided to invade Iraq. He also gave information about CIA torture practices, and evidence that Libby and others gave false testimony about the Valerie Plame leak.
Some Iraqi refugees are returning to their homes.
Explaining the hypocrisy of Republican objections to appointing Kagan to the Supreme Court.
Democratic senators have proposed a weak CO2 reduction bill .
Following their standard practice, Democrats made the bill weak in the hope of Republican support, then did not get any Republican support. If they were serious, they would propose a strong bill, and if the Republicans block it, the Democrats could say, "We tried to do the right thing; vote those Republicans out of office so we can succeed."
So why don't they? Some suggested that the Democrats are using the Republicans as an excuse to surrender to business.
How Israeli settlers harassed and attacked Palestinians during the past couple of months. (It is a
long list
.)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Some of these attacks remind me of stories of how Jews were attacked by anti-semites in Eastern Europe.
Bil'in protest organizer Abdullah Abu Rahma, imprisoned for 5 months in Israel without charges, has been put in solitary confinement for talking to journalists in the courtroom. He was accused of possession of weapons after he collected the spent shell casings of rounds fired by Israeli soldiers, as evidence.
Israel has repeatedly
arrested the organizers
of nonviolent Palestinian protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
A "conservation group" that the New York Times quoted, which minimized the importance of the Big Pollution spill, is really an oil industry group.
MI5 is working with Bangladeshi torturers.
Although the UK realized Paul Chambers had not meant to threaten anyone with his joke about a bomb in an airport, it prosecuted him because it could. A threat is a statement of an intention to harm someone, intended to cause fear or worry. Whether it is a threat is a matter of its real meaning, not its superficial form.
For instance, "It would be a shame if your building burned down" does not have the form of a threat. Superficially, it states a sentiment most of us would agree with. But we recognize that in certain contexts it might really be a threat. Contrariwise, "If you touch that cake before tonight I'll kill you" has the form of a threat, but you might say it to your friends knowing they will understand it is really not a threat.
Paul Chambers' tweet had the form of a threat, but everyone knows it wasn't really a threat. Even the prosecutors knew this. So why did they prosecute him? Anyone who read the news about Chambers' arrest would already think twice about saying such things on Twitter. Apparently the prosecutors were determined to make other Britons feel very threatened.
The banksters defeated
a senate amendment
to break up the largest banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Obama has given up criticizing Karzai over corruption, concluding it is useless.
I am sure such criticism is useless; Karzai is not going to give up his lucrative corruption over mere criticism.
He knows the US can't make him stop, so he just has to ignore the criticism. The only way to stop the corruption of the Karzai government is to take away Karzai's power; but the US can't do that, because it would puncture the idea that the Afghan government is sovereign and the US is only defending it.
Meanwhile, this article shows a tacit admission that training the Afghan police and army is not succeeding very well. They cannot even control Marja, which is an imaginary town in a rural area so they can hardly dream of controlling any place else.
The US may have to do what it did in Vietnam: declare that it is ok to leave, and let its toy government fall.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to protect the part of the banking reform bill requiring large banks to move their derivatives departments into separate subsidiaries which are not given Federal Reserve funds or FDIC insurance. Senator Judd Gregg and Senator Chambliss want to weaken it.
For more info.
Also say you support the Merkley-Levin amendment to stop proprietary trading.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the State Secrets Protection Act of 2009, which would limit the use of "state secrets" as an excuse to dismiss the lawsuits of people who have been tortured.
Also sign
this petition
but the phone call has more weight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign this petition
to Obama opposing imprisonment without trial. I replaced "indefinite detention" with "imprisonment without trial" in my message.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was made possible by arranging for Alaskan natives to sell their land cheap and become renters, then making commitments to Congress that have not been kept. This wasn't the first time that native land ownership was arranged so that they would lose their land.
The Obama gang continues rubber-stamping offshore drilling projects, waiving environmental reviews, even after the big spill.
What this shows is that the people running the Mineral Management Service are oil-company flunkies. They think their job is to give the oil companis what they want, not protect the public. Can anyone find out who appointed them and when?
Chicago police
attacked a peaceful march on May Day.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Taliban are preparing for lot of fighting in Kandahar, and threatening civilians too.
Civilians might be expected to resent the Taliban for this. I suspect their lack of respect for Karzai explains why they do not.
Miloshevic's atrocities in Kosovo have been confirmed by discovery of a mass grave in Serbia where corpses were hidden.
Allawi called on the Bush forces to prevent Maliki from overturning the results of the election.
Boycott BP!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
BP spent a lot of money to pretend it was something other than an oil company. It was not quite 100% Bull Poop.
BP gave millions to Obama and other politicians over the past few decades.
I wonder why Obama spokesmen say he did not get money from BP. Is the article's claim false, or are they lying, or are they quibbling about a technicality, or what?
The power of right-wing premier Merkel may be cut by a state vote in Germany soon.
The Greens will probably show more respect for human rights and less support for the power of every big business.
The EU is planning strict limits on hedge funds.
The "most powerful man in Kandahar" is President Karzai's brother Ahmed.
Ahmed Karzai gets his patronage power from his personal relationship with the president. Thus, his corruption is a reflection of the president's corruption. What's more, it is the nature of this government — that the president personally controls so much — that makes it pervasively corrupt. If he were to listen to someone else instead of his brother, it would only change the identity of the crony.
But this is surely no accident. Karzai gathered the power into his own hands so that he could be the center of corruption.
Greeks feel their country has been invaded and occupied by the IMF.
Increasing tax collection from the affluent could be a way to reduce the austerity. I wonder if the government could offer that as a kind of deal: get us more tax collection and we can reduce the austerity.
Dan Gillmor: FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future.
The Free World will increasingly need to reject computers designed to be controlled by Hollywood, and use computers which were not designed to restrict their users. But these are unusual computers, and that is a problem for people who want to install a free operating system on a machine that was not chosen with freedom in mind. They find that the devices in the machine won't run without proprietary software. Often this is because Hollywood has demanded it.
This problem contributes to the popularity of nonfree GNU/Linux distros that include the nonfree drivers and firmware for those machines, distros that weaken our community by corrupting many of its members.
The Hollywood movie companies base their arguments on a false premise: that they deserve to be able to profit. Since they have attacked our freedom, what they deserve is to lose everything and cease to exist.
Think of this, next time someone suggests you pay to watch a Hollywood movie. It's feeding your enemies. If your children are going to watch, it is bad for them too.
EU countries are
confiscating generic anti-HIV drugs made in India
and being sent to various poor countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
This article spreads confusion when it refers to patents as "intellectual property", using the terms interchangeably. (I am sure the author does not realize how harmful that term is as propaganda.)
The EU's attempt to confuse generic drugs with fake drugs is part of another propaganda campaign, which calls copying "counterfeiting". ACTA is an instance of that nastiness.
The governments which have confiscated the drugs are evidently more concerned with corporate profits than with human lives. Their actions as of this moment endanger people in poor countries, but I am sure they are just as glad to threaten the inhabitants of their own countries when they can get away with it.
Mexican paramilitaries (right-wing thugs) connected with the government of Oaxaca attacked a convoy of aid and human rights observers headed for the besieged town San Juan Copala.
Two were killed, and a journalist was shot and wounded.
Workers making iMoans are moaning from the effects of the toxic cleaning fluid they used.
I suppose Apple did not ask the factory to use that fluid. It just did not pay attention. With China's corruption, its censorship, and its general penchant for covering up abuses rather than correcting them, things like this will happen.
Since Apple produces in large quantities, it is in a position to check the factories and their manufacturing practices against global standards — if it makes the effort.
Perhaps the US should have a law holding the visible producer of a product — its "brand" — legally responsible for harm done by the manufacturing of the product and all parts made specially for that product or for that producer. These days, the "brand" gets the power but sheds the responsibility. With this law, it would have to take some responsibility too.
The Washington Post started a politics web site cosponsored by a shady coal industry front group.
Does this mean the site will be as "fair and balanced" as Faux News?
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to issue an executive order focusing more US government attention on human rights.
In the first line of the message, I delete the text, "Although we appreciate your public commitment to these principles," because (as previous notes show) Obama's level of commitment to human rights so far has been disappointing. But that is no reason not to ask for improvement.
Massachusetts citizens: sign the ACLU's petition directed at reducing mandatory minimum sentences, reestablishing parole, and reducing the penalization of ex-cons.
The lower house has no specific bill yet, so this campaign is stated in general terms.
For South Africa's football World Cup, Fifa makes every accredited media organization agree to give Fifa broad censorship powers.
Fifa would be able to ban a topic, and then all accredited media organizations would have to stay away from it.
India sentenced the surviving Mumbai terrorist to death, arguing that this would deter other terrorists. The person who argues that the death penalty will deter people from suicide missions is not thinking very hard. The death penalty doesn't even deter ordinary murderers. India should demonstrate its moral superiority, by using life imprisonment instead.
Albanians accusing fraud in last year's election have started
a hunger strike
to demand an investigation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A leaked audio recording from the last hours of Copenhagen negotiations shows China and India as opposing any strong measures to control greenhouse gas emissions.
White supremacists will be chagrined to learn that Neanderthal genes are found in all modern humans — except those of African descent.
BP's dispersant has made the oil so thin it goes under booms. So there is no way to protect vulnerable islands from the spill. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years, BP will argue, "All the wildlife is dead now, and by the time that oil is gone these islands and the current coast will be submerged, so let us drill without any precautions."
Greg Palast: BP has a policy of neglecting safety in order to save money. BP's negligence caused the disaster in Prince William Sound, and negligence caused the Gulf of Mexico leak to become a disaster too.
Various amendments could make the Senate's financial reform bill strong and effective, but they need public support.
South Africa's right-wing economic policies are spreading poverty and shortening life spans. The World Cup offers multinationals a great opportunity because scruffy local vendors are carefully kept away. The venue has been sanitized for foreign tourists by evicting the poor.
US citizens:
sign this petition
to Congress saying that prayer is not medical care.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans in Orange County, CA, are systematically registering voters as Republican whether they want it or not.
US citizens: support the DISCLOSE act which would require corporations to identify their political messages.
Craig Murray was fired as the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan for complaining that the CIA was providing dishonest
"intelligence" obtained through torture.
The UK government told him that it was ok to get intelligence using torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The US government says, "We don't have the capability to dive 5,000 feet [1,500 metres] below the surface to do a survey" of a leaking oil well. So why doesn't it have this capability? It seems irresponsible to leave this up to the oil companies. The US government have such equipment ready, in every coastal region where there are offshore wells, as a safety precaution. It should make the oil companies pay the cost of buying and maintaining the equipment, and employing its crew.
Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, reportedly admitted links with al Qa'ida and the Taliban. If this is the Taliban's retaliation, it would have been tantamount to a pinprick on an elephant — insignificant compared to all the murders that occur daily in the US, let alone all the other premature deaths. We do want the police to investigate such attacks, but we should give them no leeway from respecting the rights of citizens.
Karzai has proposed a plan for peace with the Taliban, or at least some of the Taliban. I tend to doubt that the Taliban leaders will find exile a desirable conclusion.
A woman in Italy has been fined for wearing a burka. Now her husband says he won't let her leave the house. I sympathize with the wish to liberate women from the burka, but this direct approach does more to vent hostility than to cure the problem.
It is no coincidence that the Italian law was aimed at repression of dissent. Laws requiring people to leave themselves always open to identification are a threat to everyone's rights.
Bita Ghaedi, likely to be murdered or even executed if she is forced to return to Iran, has won a temporary reprieve from deportation at the last minute. That such a clear candidate for asylum has to fight in court demonstrates the cruel absurdity of today's asylum policies.
Americans should not give up any freedom or privacy on account of a failed car-bombing. (Or even if there were a successful one.)
The UK may be sued for participating in use of chemical and radioactive weapons in the destruction of Falluja. The US is the main culprit for this atrocity, but only the UK can be sued because the US government totally rejects its responsibility. While this policy was started by Bush, who was also responsible for the attack itself, its continuation is Obama's fault.
3,000 prominent European Jews call for an end to the occupation of Palestine, saying that the only way for Israel to survive is to allow a "viable and sovereign" Palestinian state and make peace with it.
Greek protestors occupied the Acropolis. More importantly, they have called a general strike. Only an evil government puts the burden of national sacrifice mainly on the poorest. But that's what the EU stands for.
Afghanis increasingly favor negotiations with the Taliban. The main obstacle is Obama.
US citizens: tell your senators you want
no new offshore oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
While you're at it, you can also tell them not to limit the EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions, and not to limit the states' power to do so.
US citizens: phone your senators to support Sen. Sanders' amendment to audit the Federal Reserve Bank and see who it is giving money to.
Also sign
this petition,
but the phone call carries more weight. For two days: Also tell your senators to support the "Break up the banks" amendment of Senators Sherrod Brown and Ted Kaufman.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Here's
info
about why we must chop up the big banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Thai protestors have won the promise of an election in 6 months.
The head of Blackwater made
embarrassing admissions
in a speech to his fans.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
British fishing trawlers catch half as much fish as in 1889, despite working longer and having much more capable boats.
This is a measure of the damage done by overfishing.
Fanatical "settlers" attacked Palestinian villagers, so the police came and
arrested the villagers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
This page also describes other flagrant injustices.
Israel continues
imprisoning protestors
against the annexation wall. And shooting protestors in the head with tear gas canisters. The soldiers know what they're doing — you don't hit people in the head by accident. But Israel's army
lets them off the hook
with investigations as phony as the 9/11 Commission.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Atrocities against Dalits are a regular occurrence in India. In Mirchpur, the caste Hindus burned down Dalits' homes because the Dalits had begun to enforce their rights.
Ahmad Asfour received permission to leave Gaza and go to a hospital in Israel for major medical problems. But at the crossing, Israelis arrested him.
Now in prison,
he is being denied the medical care to save his life.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Right-wing thugs vandalized the house of
a liberal Israeli
rabbi with posters calling him a terrorist.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
In the mouth of a right-winger, "terrorism" is a curse word with no concrete meaning at all.
Declaring olive groves near Qalqiliya a "closed military zone" did not entirely prevent their Palestinian owners from growing and harvesting olives. So now the "settlers" have cut down the trees.
US citizens: join MoveOn meetings around the US to campaign to
reduce the political power of business.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Lots of sea turtles were found dead on Mississippi beaches, and the oil spill is suspected.
US citizens: submit a comment on the US Climate Action Report to counter the global warming denialists.
AT&T supports a US imposed website blacklist and government punishment of people who share. It is probably no coincidence that the US government is pushing for something similar in ACTA.
This is very dangerous. The US government tends to pass the laws businesses want (and pay for), so the main obstacle to tyrannical restrictions on the network are the businesses that object.
Everyone:
sign this petition
against admitting Israel to the OECD until it complies with the Goldstone recommendations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The film Lebanon gives a tank-soldier's eye view of in Israel's first invasion of Lebanon. The director is trying to expiate his guilt for killing someone (an enemy? a civilian?) with his tank gun. If you watch movies, it would be interesting to compare this with The Hurt Locker.
Mexicans planning to enter the US illegally say that they don't think Arizona's fascist law will stop them.
Greeks are beginning massive protests over austerity measures that crush workers and poor while sparing the rich.
The unexplained death of honeybee colonies is getting worse; in the US, one third of them died last winter.
Uri Avnery: extending Israel's construction on Palestinian land is fueled by corruption as well as ideology.
Shimer college democratically fought off a sneaky right-wing takeover attempt.
US citizens: call both your senators to support the Merkley amendment. It will eliminate a nasty provision in the Senate financial reform bill that would allow the US treasury to arbitrarily abolish state consumer protection laws for insurance. More info about this nasty provision is available in a pdf.
You can also send a message through this campaign but a phone call carries more weight.
Evidence that animals can have feelings should not make us rush to conclusions about what those feelings are. For instance, if some animals really do want privacy when mating, they might very plausibly care only about their own species, considering humans insignificant as long as we do not pose a threat.
If an animal does have feelings, that starts rather than ends the discussion of whether and when we ought to cater to those feelings. We don't believe we should cater to other humans' feelings in all cases; we have codes of when we ought to. These codes are based on putting ourselves in the other's place. Within one species, it is feasible more or less to do that. It becomes far more problematical with another species that we cannot talk with.
RAWA fights an underground battle for women's rights in Afghanistan. RAWA's integrity is demonstrated by its opposition to the Communist regime, to the warlords, to the Taliban, and to Karzai. All of them richly deserve it.
It is no surprise to me that some criticize RAWA for being "too radical" for standing by principles we all agree with, and call it "ineffective" even though it apparently achieves things no one else has been able to. Those are the standard criticisms to make against organizations that stand by their principles; the FSF receives them too.
Israeli troops
intentionally killed
a Palestinian by demolishing a house on top of him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
A worlds fair in Shanghai has become the occasion to attack human rights. The same was true of the Olympic games in Vancouver, but Canada did not go as far as China does.
The BBC made a cowardly apology for a comedian who criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestine. There was a small amount of validity in the criticism of his joke. By saying "an angry Jew" he added an element with shades of antisemitism. If he had said "an angry Israeli" he would have avoided it. However, I don't think this point is significant enough to call for an apology. It is just a suggestion.
Some forms of gonorrhea are becoming resistant to all the available antibiotics. While at one side, the bacteria are developing resistance to the antibiotics they encounter, at the other side the big pharma companies are not developing any new ones. No new antibiotics have been developed in a long time. A new antibiotic is not as profitable as a treatment which aleviates but doesn't cure a chronic condition. Liability factors also enter the issue.
The Boy Scouts protected pedophiles just like the Catholic Church. This seems to be a general phenomenon of institutional dynamics: the organization protects the people who work for it against accusations from the public they serve.
Greg Palast: the undeclared purpose of Arizona's "show us your papers" law is to stop poor Hispanic citizens from voting.
The oil spill from an undersea well near Louisiana has reached the coast, and could exceed the Exxon Valdes spill before it is shut off. Cleanup efforts are failing because the available methods don't work well.
Exxon never paid the damages levied against it for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It kept delaying for years and eventually got out of it. I wonder if BP will be able to do likewise. Meanwhile, the cleanup was not very effective; oil residue remained many years later, hidden under rocks. This specific disaster was an accident, but like most serious accidents, various acts of negligence paved the way for it. It seems that BP did not take all the usual precautions. However, offshore drilling inherently carries a risk, so it has to be recognized as dangerous. Obama wants to do more drilling, which means, more danger.
Agreed world targets for reducing the loss of biodiversity have not been met. The cause is probably a lack of the necessary efforts, since those would interfere with corporate profits.
If you have a Democratic senator, phone and say, "The Republicans don't support the climate bill anyway, so get rid of the foolish compromises put in for their sake. If you can't pass the bill, show Americans a bill worth fighting for. Take out the provisions that limit the EPA and the states."
US citizens: tell your state representative and governor (via the ACLU) that you oppose state laws like Arizona's that subjects people to arrest if they don't always carry their papers.
Corporate political campaigns focus on
pushing emotional buttons
with irrelevant points, and even outright lies — they have no scruples about what to say to gain their ends.
Sometimes they heavily advertise web sites that frame issues in ways that define a problem as only individuals' fault, shifting responsibility away from the companies and laws that systematically encourage the problems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign this petition
calling on the Attorney General to take action against Arizona's "show us your papers" law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Nebraska is trying to
overturn Roe v Wade
and shut down the US' last late-term abortion facility. Late-term abortions are lawful only under rather strict limits. I think only medical necessity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Human Rights Watch describes a secret Iraqi prison and how the prisoners were tortured. Maybe the US should invade Iraq to put an end to these practices. Oh, sorry, it already tried that.
The way the US uses drones to attack violates international law.
The music industry says: "Child pornography is great." It is great as the edge of the wedge, intentionally proposed in order to lead to other kinds of censorship.
Obama is getting his economic advice from Larry Summers, who under Clinton blocked regulation of risky new investment vehicles and thus caused the economic crisis. Chomsky's recent speech explained that the banksters have a lot of control over Obama. Maybe that is why his advisor is Summers. Perhaps an outpouring of public hostility to the banks will make some progress possible. On the other hand, if Obama really wanted to fix the problem, he could have fired up this public hostility and gained a victory with which to build deeper support than banks' money could have given him.
An Israeli peace activist is
on trial
for sitting in a Bedouin family's home when Israel sought to demolish it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel released a Palestinian prisoner (whose sentence was over), then
forcibly took him to Gaza,
while his family waited in the West Bank for his return. The reason this is so bad is that Israel prevents nearly all travel from Gaza. People cannot leave even for medical care. Hundreds of seriously ill Palestinians have been killed by
this policy,
which amounts to mass murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Reportedly
Netanyahu promised the US to stop construction in areas annexed to Jerusalem, but is encouraged to keep saying he didn't agree. If it's good enough for the Palestinians to start talks, I won't object.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of India:
oppose mandatory ID.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
UK citizens: contact your MP candidates for
the Open Rights Group
to get rid of the Digital Economy Bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Fair use contributes $4.7 trillion to the US GNP.
Someone seems to be attacking Afghan girls' schools with chemical weapons, but the Taliban says it isn't them.
Frontline interviewed a supporter of real, single-payer health reform and edited the interview to give the impression he was talking about a mere "public option". A similar thing happens to me when the media affixes the label "open source" to me or my work.
Stop Too Big To Fail is a front group that pretends to advocate financial reform but actually wants to sabotage it.
Republican fundraising junk mail pretends to be official US census forms.
"If the spill does hit the beaches along the Gulf, it will shut down everything." Will our courageous president reverse his support for more oil drilling, more coal mining, and more nuclear power?
The war against the Taliban continues in Pakistan. A Taliban leader who was reported killed appears to be still alive. In a guerrilla movement, no one leader is crucial. The US killed the previous leader last August; that did not affect the Taliban much. If it did kill this leader, that would not affect the Taliban much either.
The lies Bush used to launch a war of conquest have been exposed, but Bush and those who supported these lies have yet to be punished.
I disagree partly with the article's interpretation of Roosevelt's actions in 1941. While the Japanese attack was not in fact a surprise, it was a real attack and Japan intended it as a surprise. The policy that "provoked" this attack consisted of economic sanctions against a country already involved in a war of aggression and conquest. See also.
That side issue doesn't invalidate the main point.
The Burmese dictators are relabeling themselves as civilians so that they can't be called a "military dictatorship". Then they can get elected in a rigged election.
The UK police killed a protestor in 1979, and hid for 30 years the results of an investigation that ascertained policemen had killed him. I am not surprised that other policemen lied to cover up what happened. That is typical gang behavior. The comrades of the policeman who attacked Peter Watts lied too.
Noam Chomsky applies the political lessons of the 1930s to the US today. One interesting point is how the banksters ordered Obama to say nice things about them.
US citizens: if you have a Republican senator, call to say, "Bring the financial reform bill up for a vote." And
sign this
to call on the CEO of Goldman Sachs to call of the filibuster by the senators that the banks have bought.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Peter Watts received a suspended sentence for the crime of being beaten by US border police.
It is good that Watts won't immediately go to prison. (I am not sure how long the judge can maintain the threat to send him to prison later.) But this is not justice. Justice would be to put the border guards on trial, apologize to Watts, and change the law. Until this is achieved, we should keep the pressure on — for instance, more signs like "Unprovoked Beatings Ahead". The basic question here is whether the US should be a country of servile people, who jump to obey the orders of authorities, or the land of the free. The law under which Watts was convicted calls for the former. If Americans do not want to be servile, they should refuse, when on juries, to convict anyone of a crime for not hurrying to obey.
A large boycott of Arizona is being organized to protest its harsh law to control illegal immigration.
I do not oppose the US laws that require permission for immigration. (Instead I oppose the US policies that impoverish other countries and drive their inhabitants to emigrate.) However, allowing police to stop anyone and demand proof of citizenship, or proof of whatever, is dangerous to everyone who is lawfully in the US.
Slavoj Žižek: How Hollywood Hides The Horrors Of War.
The effort to humanize occupation soldiers contrasts with the tendency to dehumanize the conquered people, a tendency that led to the wanton slaughter of many Iraqis.
US citizens: Support the Conflict Minerals Trade Act.
Drug companies are trying to convince women they have a medical problem if they feel little sexual desire.
The discussion of this issue is handicaped by the presupposition thet all experience is divided into "disease", which should be cured, and "normal", which people are supposed to accept. This is an artificial choice between two extremes.
Let's accept that "normal" female sexuality includes a wide range of levels of desire, including zero. So there is no reason for any woman to feel there is "something wrong with her" on account of how much or little she wants sex.
With the judgmentalism removed, what remains? Personal preferences only. If you wish you had more sex drive — or less — and a pill can do it for you safely, why not take it?
A former Bush regime official testified that
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld
knew that hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo were innocent.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
An example demonstrates a crucial danger in storing your data in a commercial server: you lose legal rights.
I have no sympathy for spammers, but I'm more worried about abuse of government power than about spam. Just look at the pol notes of recent years and you'll see lots of things done by the US government that are far worse.
North Carolina is trying to get Amazon's list of who bought what.
Amazon is doing the right thing on this occasion, but we cannot be sure it will always try. We also cannot be sure it will win, because the legal protections for Amazon's list are weak. If someone whispered you are a terrorist, I am sure the FBI would find a way around them.
It is not acceptable to depend on Amazon for this, or on anyone else. We should buy our books only with anonymous payments.
The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake — it was a con.
Proper regulation means keeping the system so simple that cons cannot be hidden. Competing with other countries to deregulate industry, in this field or any field, is a recipe for disaster.
A lawyer comments on the US lawsuit against Goldman Sachs.
Belligerents, tyrants and even genociders have learned to appropriate humanitarian aid towards their own ends, even manipulate them to achieve their war aims.
I don't have any simple solution to suggest, but let's recall that many of these conflicts are fueled by business. Many of Africa's recent wars are funded by selling minerals for manufacturing and jewelry. The businesses involved use influence on servile states (such as the US) to achieve their ends (this is visible in Haiti).
Thus, one way to attack this problem is to fight against the power of business. Support parties and politicians that are ready to adopt needed measures regardless of corporate profits.
A UK brainstorming team suggested branding a line of condoms after the pope.
I think it is a great idea.
Supporters of Franco are trying to unseat the Spanish judge who has tried to prosecute the murderers that worked for Franco.
The former Kyrgyz president's PR man was arrested for money laundering for the ex president, and was denied medical treatment and contact with a lawyer.
I have no way of judging the accusation of money laundering against him. Doing private PR work for the government or the president should arguably be illegal, but it probably wasn't. But whether or not he is guilty of a crime, the suspect should receive medical care and should be able to meet with a lawyer
Crime is booming in Iraq, including kidnaping for ransom and for trafficking people and organs.
Can any Iraqis feel grateful to the US for this "liberation"?
The Afghan secret police regularly torture prisoners, and the UK government hands prisoners over to them, "trusting" them not to torture the prisoners.
The Economist cast doubt on today's long copyright term.
Uri Avnery: the Israeli right wing, increasingly dominant in Israel, openly attacks those that stand for peace, reviling them as "traitors", "enemy agents", "destroyers of the fatherland". These terms remind him of the rage propaganda of the Nazis, whose effects he experienced before fleeing Germany.
Greece has asked for an IMF bailout, and the IMF typically demands that the burden fall entirely on the poor and middle class, so this is going to mean a further explosion of protest.
I bet the Greek government is planning new repressive measures now.
The problem is real, and cannot simply be ignored. However, justice requires solving it by putting the burden on the rich, not mainly on the poor and working class.
Afghanistan's population is dependent on making opium for heroin, so as long as the US tries to end it and the Taliban supports it, the Taliban cannot lose.
I don't believe anything can stop heroin production in Afghanistan other than reducing world demand for heroin. The only civilized way to do that is the way the Netherlands has done it: by letting registered addicts get their fix in a doctor's office.
US citizens: sign this petition for strong regulation of banks and finance companies.
Ezili Danto, formerly the Haitian offical in charge of coordinating aid, writes about how the aid state uses the poor as an excuse while keeping them down. You'll need to follow that link, indicate you're not a spammer, then view the message from April 16, 2010. You can also reload this link after you "indicate you're not a spammer" to go straight to the page.
Carbon-offset schemes are often either fraudulent or unreliable. They direct the public's good will into useless activities.
The effective way to reduce carbon emissions is to tax them.
Young Burmese use music to resist the dictatorship despite very strict censorship.
The shutdown of commercial flights in Europe was a disaster caused by regulatory overcaution: small jets kept flying the whole time, with no problems at all, but the regulators didn't care. The only way to fully avoid risk is to be dead.
To deal with many other real but small dangers, governments propose to reduce our freedom, even down to zero. This time they got a bigger outcry, because they caused billions of dollars in economic damage instead of damaging our freedom. The regulators will surely reconsider this issue.
This example shows that if we gave a similar outcry about attacks on our freedom, we could make them reconsider those too.
Microsoft is trying to push Hotmail users into using other services, and revealing
private information
about their previous communications in the process.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition for a criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs' for betting against its own service.
9/10 of Iraqi former prisoners have
psychological illnesses
afterward, and 4/5 of the children are doing badly in school.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness bill. Here is a summary of the bill.
US citizens: sign this petition against expanding a US Marine base on Okinawa which would destroy a coral reef and wipe out the last population of dugong (a marine mammal) in Japan.
Part of the "grass-roots" tea party movement is actually funded and directed by Republican operatives.
The US Chamber of Commerce is using a badly conducted poll to present a false appearance of public opposition to regulating the banksters.
The US government has paid over a trillion dollars to mortgage companies, but only 90 million to save citizens from losing their homes.
We can estimate that the US government represents big business about 10,000 times as much as the citizens. Which means most politicians are on the side of business and against the citizens.
US citizens: tell Obama to
stop pressing for a ban
on labeling genetically modified foods.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
How computerized
"high frequency trading"
gives certain financial companies an unfair advantage in the stock exchange.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The name-calling in the article is somewhat overblown, but it does give a clear explanation of how this works and why it is harmful.
Protest the banksters in Wall Street on April 29 at 3:30pm.
A secret Iraqi military unit reporting directly to President Maliki has been holding hundreds of Sunni men in
a special prison
and torturing many of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Oklahoma is trying new ways to harass women who get abortions.
The bill to publish information about women who get abortions is dishonest in that it is designed to violate their privacy while pretending to respect it.
Formaldehyde has been established as toxic, but a Republican business operative in the Senate wants to stop the EPA from protecting people from it.
Brazilian indigenous people threaten war to stop a dam that would flood their lands.
The IMF proposes two new taxes on financial activities. This may be a good idea, but I am skeptical about a tax on banks' "profits" because they can twist the accounting so as to disguise the profits. A tax on transactions would prevent that.
A new book analyzes how extreme economic and social inequality is propagated in the wealthy countries which are most unequal. Society and government act in directions that excuse and maintain the inequality.
The book is specifically about the UK, but I expect much of what it says must apply to the US as well.
A global warming denialist won a lawsuit for the publication of a large data base of measurements. These scientific data should be published. Professor Baillie's objections are based on selfishness, not science. Scientific conclusions and analyses must be independently tested; that is the only way we can eventually rely on them.
The fact that the plaintiff in this case is a denialist means he may try to confuse the issue with misguided analysis, but practicing secrecy is the wrong response.
A lunatic cleric in Iran says that women's sexuality is responsible for earthquakes. Perhaps he heard someone say "I felt the earth move" and took it literally.
Copying Is Not Theft
— by Nina Paley and Connie Champagne.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese artist's work was removed from an exhibition for criticizing the president. Not in China, but in France.
Darryl Durr faces execution, and the State of Ohio has blocked DNA tests that could prove he was falsely convicted 22 years ago. This shows a government which will murder people to avoid admitting a mistake. Unfortunately many governments are like that. The US government plans to send Peter Watts to jail for 2 years to avoid admitting that its border bullies commited violence for no reason.
The Yes Men crashed a Dow Chemical greenwashing "Run for Water"
event with hoax
"Dow spokesmen".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A broad range of German human rights organizations, unions, and consumer organizations have condemned Europe's Internet data retention policy as a threat to human rights.
A Philadelphia school spied on many of students through laptop cameras, not just a few, and has no excuse to offer. If the software in a computer isn't free/libre software, that means someone else controls it — so you can never tell when it is transmitting photos of you, or transmitting audio recordings of you.
And since cellular phones are computers, this applies to them too.
Egypt's pressure for
nuclear disarmament in the Middle East
is starting to get support from major powers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
This would put pressure on Israel to disarm, and might convince Iran to forego nuclear weapons.
Israeli "settlers" who have occupied a Palestinian home near Jerusalem tried to
frame one of the international supporters
for attacking the settlers with gas. Fortunately there was clear proof
that the accusation was false. Soldiers arrested international
solidarity workers who accompany Palestinians trying to farm their
fields.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The solidarity workers serve as witnesses in case "settlers" attack
the Palestinians. The soldiers arrested them because they
want no witnesses to the attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Blau wrote an article before Israel's attack on Gaza which was censored in an unusual way, and remains censored a year after the attack. This creates suspicion is that the article revealed plans to commit war crimes. That the standard military censorship process had already passed the article is more evidence that the motive for censoring it was not about revealing legitimate military secrets but rather illegitimate ones.
The threat to prosecute Israel's best investigative journalist and the pressure to close Haaretz mean that fascism in Israel is inches away from putting an end to criticism of the government. If that occurs, the "only democracy in the Middle East" will be no more of a democracy than Iran is.
I hope that the editors of Haaretz will not allow a submissive newspaper to be published under that proud name.
If Uri Blau continues to face prosecution for whistleblowing if he ever returns to Israel, I think his best option will be to apply for political asylum as a persecuted journalist.
Israel seized water pumps, cutting off water supply to a Palestinian village. For decades, Israel has taken the water resources of the West Bank away from Palestinians. When an Israel official says "they get water from us", he is talking about water sources that Israel took from them.
Pervasive and increasingly
overt racist propaganda
is pushing most Israelis toward right-wing parties. However, the majority still would like to end the occupation of Palestine (or most of it, at least).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
A new "unprovoked beatings ahead" sign warns people not to cross the US border into Canada.
Way to go, Kai! I would have written a more forceful condemnation of the bullies at the border, but that's just a detail — the important thing is that he has started real action to push back against them.
I hope to hear of more such signs in the future, not just at this border crossing but at any and all of them, until US pardons Peter Watts and puts the border gangsters on trial.
For the story of how the US border guards attacked Peter Watts, see here.
The organization
J Street
fails to seriously oppose Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, and criticizes efforts to do so as "anti-Israel".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
This, I think, is the statement by J Street. This doesn't directly call any organization "anti-Israel" but does describe the Berkeley ASUC resolution in that way.
Here's the UC Berkeley ASUC resolution: This text shows that J Street's criticism misrepresented the resolution. It boycotts only companies that support Israel's violence towards and occupation of Palestine. It is not in any way against Israel in general.
Human Rights Watch accused Iraq's Bush-installed government of restricting journalism and endangering journalists.
Mugabe made a speech calling for reconciliation in Zimbabwe, but the MDC says it is phony — he is encouranging increased violence and intimidation of the opposition.
NATO has more or less acknowledged that the biggest problem in Afghanistan is the corruption of Karzai's government.
To recognize the problem is a necessary step towards solving it, but doesn't guarantee a solution exists. NATO and the US were unable to stop Karzai from obviously rigging the last election, so can it do anything to reduce his corruption?
An Italian charity providing medical care in Afghanistan says
some of its doctors have been arrested.
There was a news report that some Italian doctors were accused of an assassination plot, but Karzai's government has refused to give Emergency any information about the prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Italian doctors and most of the clinic staff have been released, but the clinic remains closed.
Big Content's war on democracy.
I wrote about this in 1997.
Uri Avnery: both Israelis and Palestinians have given up hope for peace, but Obama might be able to convince both peoples that it is worth a try.
The Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the coast of Africa, accumulates would-be illegal immigrants that cannot be deported and in practice cannot leave. It is clearly wrong for border guards to shoot to kill. There are many nonlethal means they could use to arrest people trying to cross the wall. But aside from that, I don't have any simple recommendation for this sad situation.
I don't believe that everyone in the world has a right to move to Europe, or the US for that matter. I have no sympathy for the Bangladeshis that paid smugglers to help them illegally enter Europe and were cheated, and even less for the fools who continued to pay more to those who had cheated them. However, the force that drives them and other would be immigrants to go to Melilla is the poverty of their own countries.
A major cause of poverty is rapid population growth. The responsibility for this is shared — between the local people (particulary the men, who typically have the power) that want to have many children, and the wealthy countries that don't give enough contraceptive aid.
Another cause is corruption, which is rooted in local culture, though often exacerbated by foreign companies.
However, the poverty of Africa, and even Bangladesh, is partly due to an economic system that the rest of the world has set up. We have a responsibility to stop sucking the wealth out of those countries, and stop the increasing concentration of wealth in the world.
Police in Kyrgyzstan used "unauthorized copies of software" as an excuse to shut down a TV station which was broadcasting news about protestors.
I was disappointed that the article uses the propaganda terms "pirated" and "Intellectual Property". The latter term is so misleading that even quoting a name in which it appears spreads confusion if you don't deconstruct the term. See here for more information.
Also, to say that "software piracy" is a "legitimate problem" whitewashes the real problem: proprietary software which forbid redistribution.
Brazil used unauthorized copies of software as an excuse in the 90s to arrest activists of the landless rural workers' movement. In that case, the copies really were unauthorized, but that didn't alter the effect. To protect themselves, they moved to GNU/Linux. Everyone else should do that too.
The West Virginia mine disaster that killed 29 miners was no accident. After years of safety violations and union-busting by Massey Energy Company, something like this was bound to happen.
Massey also spent millions to change the West Virginia Supreme Court.
Poor Haitians' anger at the elite and the ineffective government is close to leading to violence.
US citizens: tell Obama not to consider sexual orientation when
choosing a Supreme Court justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to support strong financial reform. Shrink the 'too big to fail' banks, regulate derivatives tightly, and create a strong independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
You can also send an email through www.BanksterUSA.org, but a phone call has more effect.
Colombia's supreme court blocked President Horrible's referendum to
allow him to run for president again, saying it had been
passed
dishonestly and invalidly through the legislature.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A Spanish judge accused Venezuela of arranging links between ETA, the Basque terrorist group, and the FARC, the Colombian guerrilla group turned organized crime gang.
I have no sympathy for the FARC, but we must not let them be used to distract us from the worst terrorists in Colombia. Those are the paramilitary thugs supported by President Alvaro Horrible, and the regular army troops who murder civilians at random and dress the corpses in FARC uniforms to claim a bounty. The US calls FARC terrorists, while supporting Horrible and his terrorists.
Spain, by contrast, is a real democracy and not a terrorist state, which makes the violent separatism of ETA totally inexcusable.
So it is very disappointing to see a credible accusation that Chavez's government is mixed up with these groups. President Horrible accused Chavez of supporting the FARC, but he is too dishonest for his accusations to carry weight. A Spanish judge cannot be thus dismissed. This is not yet proof, but it must be considered seriously.
The powerful, when guilty of murder or of destruction of the environment, may face prosecution when they travel.
There is plenty of evidence that the Catholic Church protected pedophile priests from prosecution. What I have read so far does not convince me that the current Pope was directly, personally involved in it. He refused to grant a pedophile priest's request to leave the priesthood, but that doesn't imply protecting him from prosecution (which did happen) or allowing him to work with children in the future (though that too seems to have happened).
The biggest obstacle to the practice of prosecuting official crimes against humanity or the ecosystem is US opposition. The Bush regime pushed hard to oppose this (since many of its officials are candidates for such prosecution). Bush made many countries protect US soldiers from prosecution in the ICC.
Iceland has thoroughly investigated its bank crisis and produced a report showing how various bank executives, stockholders, government regulators and political leaders were culpable.
It would be nice to see such an honest investigation in the US, but I don't expect it, because the banks remain alive and in control.
Alma Llenera: With the melody of Alma Llanera
Laurie Penny: Campaigns to protect girls from "sexualisation" assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women.
It is possible to let people develop sexuality at their own pace, provided we do not interpret that as meaning they develop without social influence. Society will inevitably have some effect. Since sex is basically enjoyable and good, it's better for society to encourage people to have sex than to discourage it.
What seems thoroughly harmful is the effect of bullying, and more generally, peer pressure with its threat of rejection. I was immune to that, perhaps because I considered rejection inevitable, but what it does to other people (even adults) seems to be totally twisted. I wonder if there is any way to break its influence on most people.
The House and Senate versions of banking reform are both weak.
Here's a summary of what's wrong with each of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Agribusiness is campaigning in favor of using corn for ethanol fuel, a practice which was responsible for worldwide hunger.
Here's the report of an activist from Hyderbad in a group that visited nearby villages, to encourage and help Dalits claim equal rights.
The FCIC is supposed to investigate the causes of the financial crisis, but it is doing an incompetent job.
I have to wonder if it was intended as a whitewash.
The EnergyStar program, which rates appliances for efficient use of electricity, is so weak in rules and enforcement that there is no telling whether its ratings are valid.
US citizens: Sign
this petition to Congress to reduce tax breaks on companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese factory that makes Microsoft products (and many others) treats its workers much worse than animals, and teaches them how to participate in the coverup of what it's doind.
It seems Microsoft closes its eyes to these violations of its "code of conduct", which apparently is meant more to give a positive impression than to avoid the abuses.
The fact that people work in this factory voluntarily (and that they can leave when they choose) reflects the great poverty of most of China. It is good that the fectory allows people to quit, but that is no excuse for permitting working conditions as found there. If the workers were paid decent wages, the products would cost a little more, but they would still be made, and workers would still be hired to make them. However, the owners of Microsoft and the other "manufacturers" that use these factories would not get so much money.
It used to be that workers could form unions to demand better pay and working conditions. I am sure Microsoft is happy to have moved the production to a country which doesn't allow that. That's what the WTO was meant for.
Corporations have clever strategies to present themselves as "socially responsible" while continuing practices that harm people or the environment.
Asia Pulp and Paper is cutting down virgin forests in Sumatra and selling them as "ecologically sustainable" paper.
It's not clear whether this constitutes cheating; it could be that the rules are so weak that this operation really does qualify.
Science writer Simon Singh's legal victory over the Chiropractic organization, which sued him for libel, leaves him with major legal expenses.
A UK detention center for immigrants let a prisoner die of a heart attack, refusing to call a doctor.
Privatized prisons are always going to skimp on something; it is more profitable that way.
In Bolivia, you can now get the real thing: Coca Colla.
The boycott of Coca Cola company does not apply to Coca Colla.
This reference says that Coca Cola did originally include some coca extract.
Whether that is the same as containing cocaine, I am not sure.
Nawal El Saadawi has fought against sexism in Egypt for a whole lifetime and still won't give up.
Members of the 1960s Indonesian women's movement, some of them former political prisoners of Suharto, demand to clear their names of political charges brought against them decades ago.
"We fired on buses full of civilians" -- Bush forces veterans are haunted by the frequent atrocities they committed and saw.
Individual soldiers who knowingly committed war crimes cannot evade responsibility by citing their orders, but those who gave the orders, such as Bush, are the ones most important to put on trial.
Those soldiers cannot shift the blame entirely onto the situation they found themselves in, but the responsibility for creating that situation falls on those who launched the war.
The British Bush forces sent two prisoners to Afghanistan, then refused to confirm their identities to family and lawyers, on the pretext it was protecting their privacy.
Refusing to confirm the identity of prisoners not only violates treaties, it is utterly despicable and worthy of a tyrant such as Stalin.
Of course, the US just as guilty in this case.
The FBI has taken action against plundering archeological sites in Utah.
Sacking artifacts from archeological sites destroys the record of the past. Only a professional investigation can recover the information that the sites contain.
Whether or not the police might have achieved more by acting more gently, I cannot say, but action was definitely needed.
Mugabe's history of tyranny goes back to the first Zimbabwe elections of 1980.
Goldman Sachs has been charged with fraud, for setting up a investment scheme, betting it would fail, and filling it with the most risky mortgages.
A UN report accuses Musharraf of conniving at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
NPR presents Monsanto ads that whitewash genetically modified crops and falsely suggest that they help solve the problem of world hunger.
I stopped giving to NPR in the 90s when I noted the presence of advertisements. NPR is noncommercial, but that no longer means no commercials.
The cost of the armed forces and wars are now over half the US federal budget, and the fraction is increasing.
US citizens: sign
this petition to close tax loopholes and make
profitable corporations pay more (or at least some) income tax.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama to appoint a Supreme Court justice who will defend abortion rights.
Blackwater's former president and other former employees face charges of having illegal weapons.
Iraq Vets: Coverage of Atrocities Is Too Little, Too Late.
An independent inquiry concludes the Climatic Researcher Unit scientists acted honestly and were basically right in their science. Although this rejects the accusations of the corporate-funded denialists, they don't have to care. They have succeeded in misleading millions of people to disbelieve global warming. Billions will probably suffer the resulting damage.
How the mass media propagandize Americans about Afghanistan.
A full interview with Josh Stieber, a Bush forces soldier in the unit whose troops callously shot Iraqi civilians and journalists, who later became a conscientious objector after he couldn't reconcile considering all Iraqis enemis with the idea that he was liberating them.
UK citizens: demand that MPs defend your privacy as much they defend their own, and scrap the ID cards.
US citizens: call on Obama to appoint a Supreme Court justice who will stand up for citizens against the power of corporations.
The Islamist extremists in Somalia have banned music on the radio.
If the radio stations of the "government" and the UN are the only ones with some music, they might gain some popularity from this. If so, it would be the first time the "government" ever had any. What the US achieved by having the Ethiopian army intervene in Somalia was to replace peace under the Islamic Courts Movement with war and the danger of something more extreme.
When EU officials met in Barcelona to announce new attacks on the freedom of Internet users, they encountered a massive opposition event and did not dare announce the plan.
US citizens: Tell Senator Kerry not to sell out the Clean Air Act.
Millions of Mexicans have resisted a government demand to identify themselves as owners of a mobile phone.
The drug dealers of Mexico are a real threat to society there, but a total surveillance society is not an acceptable response. The way to solve this problem is through legalization of drugs, at least of their transport through Mexico.
As the Vatican faces demand to end celibacy for priests, it tried to scapegoat homosexuality as the reason for priestly pedophilia.
The Israeli "security" forces
regularly burgle dissidents' homes, rather than get a search
warrant.
Anat Kam says she copied secret Israeli Army documents
because they documented war crimes.
A Dalit who converted to Buddhism explains
how caste prejudice works today and how conversion is a partial
response.
Pakistan's army killed 71 Pakistani civilians by mistake, but refuses
to admit it happened.
Pakistan's army never admits killing civilians. That's even worse
than the US army, which often denies having killed civilians but does
sometimes finally admit it when proof is presented.
If the information given in this article is accurate, these civilians
were killed by accident. It is impossible to totally avoid such
accidents. Therefore, when they happen, the army has to admit them
and apologize humbly. It also has to try to find ways to reduce such
accidents in the future. If it does this, the people may put up with
some level of civilian casualties if they support the war aims.
A commission in Canada's parliament is preparing to
label criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
That labeling would be false and should be rejected. But I do not
see how it would lead to censorship of such criticism, unless Canada
either has or will adopt censorship of antisemitic views. If so, that
would be an injustice much bigger than this issue. Even bigoted views
that we despise must not be censored. I support activities to reduce
bigotry, but not through censorship.
A group of Canadians are in Italy to accuse the Catholic Church of
the murder of thousands
of indigenous children in Canada.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
California's marijuana growers want it to remain illegal to keep the price up.
A former Bush forces soldier confirms that the gratuitous killing of civilians visible in the recent Wikileaks video was commonplace.
A
secret Israeli database
says 3/4 of "settlements" (i.e., colonies) have done construction without permits, and many built on private Palestinian land. All of these colonies violate the treaties that prohibit seizing land in conquered countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US troops in Afghanistan shot some women and
dug the bullets out of their bodies
in order to lie about what happened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is claiming the power to arrest or exile Palestinians just for not having an Israeli permit to live in their territory.
Avoiding the use of nuclear weapons
requires abolishing nuclear weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Although the article mentions this point only briefly, eliminating enriched uranium, and nuclear fission power, is also important for nuclear nonproliferation.
Thai protests in favor of exiled Thaksin Shinawatra are heating up and the government is losing support in Bangkok.
Shinawatra won democratic elections several times, retaining support despite corruption and despite operating death squads. So I am not happy with either side in this dispute.
Uri Avnery: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is staking everything on Washington's willingness to accept a nonviolent approach to recognition for a Palestinian state and peace with Israel.
7 million Iraqis, over 20% of the population, live on under 2 dollars a day This is mostly thanks to the conquest and occupation of their country, but I think Iraq has a high rate of population growth, which also contributes to poverty.
US citizens: sign this petition to support the Student Non-Discrimination Act (HR 4530). Also phone your congresscritter; a phone call carries more weight.
Kyrgyzstan's President Bakiyev sold off nearly all the state's assets at low prices to his family's cronies. Kyrgyzstan should seize the former state assets that are physically in the country, such as the telephone company, and tell the new "owners" they can try to collect from Bakiyev.
Constance McMillen was allowed to bring her girlfriend to the prom, but it turned out to be
a separate-but-equal prom
for a few students rejected by the rest of the senior class. These actions show the other students to be prize bigots. However, let's not get caught up in the idea that these parties are important. There are many opportunities for bigotry in private life, parties with no connection to a public school. Bigotry in those events cannot be addressed by legislation or lawsuits, only by greater maturity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The US government has targeted Anwar al-Awlaki for
"capture or killing".
This could mean that the US will try to arrest him, trying to achieve this without harming him. If there is evidence he is part of a group that is sneakily arranging murder far away, that is grounds to charge and arrest him. But has he been indicted?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Arresting him should be feasible. Such a group is not a combat unit and isn't trained to fight like one. Police can arrest the whole group, without hurting them unless they resist.
However, this announcement could also mean that the US might decide to kill him with no attempt to arrest him. Even if he is guilty of planning murder, but he has a right to a trial, not summary execution based on an administrative order. And what if he isn't guilty? Accusations are often mistaken.
Israeli and US targeted assassinations have repeatedly shown that they are likely to kill many family members and bystanders. A missile doesn't give any warning; it doesn't offer the other people in the house or the street a chance to leave. The US is risking committing a worse atrocity than anything Awlaki is suspected of.
A US court abolished all regulation of ISPs, so they can now impose any requirements or limitations whatsoever on customers.
UK citizens: don't vote for any MP that voted for the Digital Economy Bill. They chose the record companies' side and not yours.
The major US media fall prey easily to false information from the Pentagon.
In the UK high gasoline prices are leading people to drive less. This is unpleasant, but it helps avoid a disaster.
Bailed-out banks are repaying comparatively small amounts of money, and the media are touting this to present the bailout as profitable.
The UK government adopted blockage of web sites, and punishment by disconnection of people that share files. This shows that both the Labour and Conservative parties serve business against the citizens.
Rep. Duncan says,
abolish the US Air Marshal service
because it accomplishes nothing. With four arrests per year, it has made around 40 arrests in the past decade. If one of those arrests prevented the destruction of an airplane, it might justify the cost. But I recall hearing that the air marshalls ever played a crucial role in preventing such an attack.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The US government has no intention to prosecute the Bush forces soldiers who shot civilians and journalists for no reason. The US government says its rules do not permit gratuitous killing, but these rules are worth nothing if it winks at soldiers who flagrantly ignore them.
Karzai and the US government are openly condemning each other. This situation is full of irony. The US is trying to make the Afghan government stop being corrupt and stop making the elections a joke, so the Afghan people will respect it. But if the US achieves this by taking control, it will mean that the government is a puppet, not a democray, and they won't respect it.
In South Vietnam, the US replaced several governments through military coups, but that never resulted in a government anyone could respect. Now Afghanistan is in the same spot. I think the US government sees this and has no idea where to go from here.
Faux News is trying to present Sarah Palin as a journalist, by giving her a show with interviews that were done by others years ago.
US citizens, support the Shareholder Protection Act which would let shareholders (including pension funds) vote on whether corporations can spend money on political campaigns.
Two British soldiers were convicted of beating a prisoner in Afghanistan, but they were sentenced only to discharge from the army.
China has broken the spirit of human rights activist Gao Zhisheng, reportedly through torture. Some of his quoted words lead me to suspect China also threatened his family.
The people came onto the streets to fight the government of Kyrgyzstan, after the government had opposition leaders arrested. Over 50 protestors were killed, but they seem to have won the battle. I am concerned that Obama will try to put the president back in power so as to keep using the airport. The US supports compliant dictators in many countries, and might be glad to support one more.
Haiti's Prime Minister refuses to talk about who will get the benefits from Haiti's oil, but apparently it won't be Haiti's poor.
Australia's government has catered to foreign coal exporters' profits rather than protect the Great Barrier Reef from oil spills.
A short-term solution is to block the Douglas Shoal physically so that ships will never try to cross it again. But if we don't reduce CO2 emissions, the whole reef will die in a few decades from the acidification of the ocean. What's needed in the long term is to put a heavy tax on coal, and thus decrease the amount of CO2 emissions.
In the US: tell textbook publishers
not to impose Texas' right-wing lies in textbooks for other states.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
A
report from a protestor arrested at a union march in Venezuela.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Wikileaks has published a video showing how US soldiers in a helicopter shooting Iraqi civilians and journalists, then shooting the ambulance that came to pick them up.
The US government lied persistently about what happened there, despite having the video as proof.
This is what happens when an army of occupation faces resistance. The soldiers, or at least many of them, consider the occupied people less than human. They kill civilians for their sport, then lie to make it seem justified. The commanders repeat the lies, perhaps after giving advice about what to say. The civilian government presents the lies as justification for the occupation.
The soldiers who killed these civilians should be tried for murder. Everyone responsible for covering up the crimes should be tried as an accessory. But those are secondary to a much larger crime.
The worst culprits responsible are Bush and all those who helped him launch the invasion of Iraq, based on lies. Murder like this, probably repeated thousands of times, was contained in the orders that Bush gave. Those responsible should be tried for crimes against the peace, as were the Nazis who launched the invasion of Poland.
Thank you, Wikileaks, for thwarting the effort to cover up these crimes.
Bush's conquest has made life in Iraq more unjust as well as more dangerous.
The article has a final note about how Egypt is crushing dissidents and making a mockery of the coming election.
President Ford
authorized warrantless wiretapping
in 1974. I wonder whether this was constitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Almost a year after the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka, 75,000 Tamils with no connection to the LTTE are still in prison camps. I wonder what it takes for villages to be declared "cleared". If it is a matter of clearing them of mines, that does take time, but why keep people in prison until their villages are safe? Is there any information about what the Sri Lankan government says it means to "clear" a village, or about what it is really doing?
China refused Bob Dylan permission to play concerts. I link to this because the criticism of Björk is an example of a common phenomenon in which those who don't self-censor are criticized for "making trouble" for others. The censorship of Dylan is not Björk's fault, it is China's fault.
Uri Avnery: The leaders of Israel know that future Iranian nuclear weapons are not a big threat to Israel, but they use the supposed threat as an excuse and distraction.
The Sunni militias that Bush supported to oppose al Qa'ida now face arrest from the Iraqi government and assassination in their beds by someone. The killers might be al Qa'ida, but it occurs to me that they also might be Shi'ite militias. I see no real evidence in this article about their identities.
The US bank bailout totals over 4 trillion dollars; most of it was provided secretly to the banks.
A judge ruled that NSA wiretapping of a US charity without a warrant
was illegal.
However, there needs to be a way to enforce this even when the government doesn't unwittingly admit the crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
As the recent airplane bombing attempt shows, the weakness of our defense against non-state-sponsored terrorism is not in the ability to collect information; it's in the ability to use the information already being collected.
The Torture Report researches and reports on US torture practices.
The Open Rights Group served "disconnection notices" to political parties and lobbying groups.
US citizens:
sign this petition
calling in Obama to stop invoking "state secrets" to deny justice to the victims of illegal NSA wiretapping. I suggest adding something to the effect that this applies to ALL such cases, and the US must not try to sabotage them by hiding evidence of spying and then saying "You can't prove we did."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Code Pink fooled journalists with a hoax press release in the name of AIPAC condemning the Israeli construction of "settlements" in Palestinian territory. One result is that AIPAC was forced to say it supports this land grab. A statement from Code Pink about this and other actions at AIPAC's meeting.
Iceland is considering a suite of laws to protect freedom of the press in practice, not just in theory.
The
planning
for rebuilding Haiti must include the Haitians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi government waited till just after the election to cut food aid to the public.
Having imprisoned the opposition presidential candidate, Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa has left no room for defeat in the legislative elections. After editor Lasantha Wickramatunga was assassinated, his posthumous editorial blamed Rajapaksa for organizing the murder.
An oscillating magnetic field applied to a certain part of the brain interferes with moral judgments based on figuring other people's intentions.
An Israeli whistleblower/journalist faces a trial for treason, which the media are forbidden to report on, while another journalist has fled into exile. These journalists revealed how the army carried out assassinations in defiance of a court order. The Israeli government, rather than prosecuting the perpetrators of these crimes, seeks to crush the people who revealed them.
It is common for governments to use twisted excuses to crush people who expose government crimes. Consider, for instance, the Pentagon Papers case in the US, which also involved publication of leaks of government documents which showed horrible government crimes.
Consider also the case of the Japanese Greenpeace activists, who face prosecution in Japan because they intercepted stolen whale meat and handed it in to the authorities.
Peter Bethune of Sea Shepherd faces more than 30 years in prison for his nonviolent attempt to perform a symbolic arrest of a whaling captain.
The US refuses to
certify Bolivia's cooperation
in the "War on Drugs" based on arbitrary standards that come down to politics: Colombia is a US client state and Bolivia refuses to be one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
I mostly agree with this article's recommendation about dealing with drugs. However, for addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin, another option is to let addicts get their drugs legally from doctors but not legalize general public sale. This can be more effective at reducing the use of these drugs.
A description of Russian atrocities in Ingushetia. Whether they were the reason for the Moscow subway bombings, or just a handy excuse, it is clear that years of Russian atrocities created the motivation for them.
If we do not believe that Russian atrocities in Chechnya and vicinity justify suicide bombings, we must not passively accept Russia's argument that these suicide bombings justify the far larger Russian atrocities that will surely follow.
Simon Singh's appelate victory is not the end of the story. He still faces several more years before a possible victory in his libel suit. He explains why libel reform is still urgently needed in the UK.
The government of India, in a tyrannical move, plans to take the fingerprints of everyone (except the Maoist rebels).
Everyone: sign
this petition calling on India not to relieve companies
of responsibility for causing nuclear accidens.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Why should companies get the upside, while dumping the downside on the public?
A rational drugs policy requires politicians who can resist the irrational demand to "do something" in order to consider thoughtfully what policy would be best for the people affected.
Many organizations are campaigning to for strengthened privacy protection for Internet and phone users in the US.
I support this, but I doubt it will be enough. Police have a long history of breaking such laws, and a long history of infiltrating and sabotaging dissident groups and protests.
The article makes the mistake of talking about "the cloud". That term encourages confused thinking so we should make an effort not to use it.
A UK science writer who denied the effectiveness of chiropractic for a broad range of medical problems, and then was sued for libel, has won an appeal.
Nonetheless, the UK's libel law remains a disaster and needs reform.
Africa remains in poverty because tax-evading corporations suck out billions of dollars every year.
US citizens: Tell Obama,
"Say no to more offshore oil drilling.
We need clean energy."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Increasing the burning of fossil fuels is a move in the wrong direction.
Movie companies are suing tens of thousands of Americans for file sharing,
and
many more lawsuits are likely to follow.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
How about a boycott of the companies that are behind these lawsuits?
Cape Town is building an expensive shiny new face the soccer World Cup. To do so, it is evicting the poor and sending them to conditions worse than under apartheid.
Big sports events such as the World Cup and the Olympics are big business. They typically get funding from business-subservient governments, which justify the subsidy by claiming the event will bring money into the region. But the money benefits certain businesses only, and the rest of the inhabitants have to pay for the trouble.
Every city's inhabitants should resist any plan to hold a major sports event there.
The LibDems in UK parliament said they will try to block the hasty passage of the unjust Digital Economy Bill.
They are doing the right thing, which the other parties are not. But they missed a chance to be courageous by failing to condemn the bill's substance as well as the haste.
The governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam and
Zimbabwe have all tried to interfere with Wikileaks, and now the US
government is
attacking Wikileaks at multiple levels.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans are being pilloried for accusing Democrats of making back-room deals in the health insurance bill. The Democrats made a number of nasty back-room deals — with Republican legislators, in a futile and idiotic attempt to gain their support. And then, when Republicans did not keep their side of the deal, the Democrats stuck by their side. What a shame.
There was another back-room deal, with the big pharma companies, granting them privileges in exchange for not lobbying against the bill.
Hollywood has begun making the occupation of Iraq look good by portraying Bush forces soldiers as heros. The Bush forces were taken from the US military, as well as from companies such as Blackwater, and sent to carry out an unjust war of conquest. Although many Americans criticized the war once it started going badly, they mostly continued to "support the troops", and thus bought into the fiction that these occupation troops, as they killed and tortured civilians, were "serving their country".
Of course, my point is not Pinkerton's point. He is a hawk; he lauds unjust wars of conquest and lauds Hollywood for supporting them. I condemn them both.
This article says that Pinkerton misrepresented the films he is talking about.See also Slavoj Žižek's article about The Hurt Locker as distraction.
This myth undermined the anti-war movement and continues to do so. Here's
an explanation of how.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Koch Industries has paid 48 million dollars to organizations for global warming denial and disinformation.
China executes thousands of people every year — or is it tens of thousands?
Mohamed el Baradei warns that western support for repressive Arab regimes leads Arabs to think that Islamic extremism is the only way to end the repression.
Egypt is very repressive; many Egyptian journalists and bloggers have been arrested for opposing the government. Is it really possible for anyone to challenge Mubarak in an election? Perhaps Baradei hopes at least to focus world attention on the lack of democracy in Egypt.
Belgium is moving to ban people from covering their faces in public.
While I feel little sympathy towards the use of the burqa, religious motives are not the only reason to hide one's face. Protestors may not want the police to know who they are; this law will harm the political rights of everyone in Belgium.
Beyond that, hiding one's face is the only way to be anonymous in a society filled with face recognition cameras. The burqa, a detestable symbol of subjection, provides a convenient excuse to expose everyone to total surveillance. Big Brother would love this law.
Will dark sunglasses be illegal too?
US citizens: call your your congresscritter to support HR 4790 which would give shareholders a veto over corporations' political campaign expenditures. Also sign this petition.
This law is not enough, but it is a good step to take among other steps.
An investigation faulted the Climate Research Unit for not publishing all its data, but says there is no flaw in its scientific work.
In the UK, police are punished for hurting dogs, but not for hurting citizens.
Suicide bombings in the Moscow subways have been attributed to independence campaigns of Chechnya or neighboring regions. It would be a mistake to focus solely on these crimes and disregard the equally horrible crimes committed by Russia in suppressing resistance in Chechnya.
Maliki's government plans to bar 6 of the just-elected members of parliament, which would effectively reverse the results of the election.
Everyone:
support the ad campaign
against the UK's proposed Digital Economy Bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Yes Men
spoofed Canada
before the Copenhagen meeting with an announcement that Canada would cease to oppose efforts to limit global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
MPs called for revision of the procedures for approving arms sales to Israel after concluding that Israel must have used British arms to attack Gaza.
Google has directed world criticism towards Australia's internet censorship plans. It is unjust for governments to block public access to any sort of published material.
The exiled Chagossians have objected to the proposed Chagos islands marine reserve as another obstacle to their return. I am in favor of this marine reserve provided adequate and clear provisions are made in advance for the islanders to fish using sustainable methods when they return.
The Pentagon is blocking a second autopsy for one of the Guantanamo prisoners who supposedly committed suicide but may actually have been killed by torture.
Israeli soldiers shot two teenagers plowing a field near Nablus. Last week soldiers shot boys in a village, and the government maintains they didn't fire any shots. Is it plausible that boys would try to stab a soldier who is with a group of soldiers? Of course not. It's a lie, meant to be believed by people who want an excuse to believe.
Seven years after the conquest of Iraq, what has it achieved?
Peter Watts has been convicted of a felony. His crime: asking a customs officer "What is the problem?", after the officer had punched him in the face. I hope Mr. Watts will steadfastly refuse to admit that he did anything wrong. He will be under pressure to do so, but that would grant his oppressors a victory that they cannot get in any other way.
While Mr. Watts says he does not criticize the jury, I think he is mistaken. Being on a jury does not excuse people from moral responsibility for their actions. It does not entitle then to plead "I was only obeying orders (from the judge)" if they rubber-stamp an injustice in progress. The reason we need juries is so that can protect people accused based on obviously unjust grounds. The jurors that convicted Peter Watts were derelict in their duty and should be ashamed of themselves.
But what is really needed is to change the law which gives every customs officer the power to imprison people for asking them questions.
I think it would be useful for a campaign to call on Obama to pardon Peter Watts, and to demand a change in this law. It could also warn people to stay away from the US lest they meet the same treatment. I think this campaign would have an excellent chance of contributing in the long term to a change in the law, and some change of gaining Watts a pardon.
The natural place to carry out this campaign would be in science fiction fandom, where there may be fans of Watts' writing, as well as many people who would be incensed at the US government's conduct regardless of who the victim was.
But I cannot organize this campaign as I would wish to, because the free software movement takes up all my capacity. Would anyone else like to organize this campaign? Can anyone suggests contacts in fandom to whom I could suggest it?
The
NGOs in Haiti
amount to a privileged class that the US uses to rule Haiti and keep the poor people down.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree with one point in that article: I would not advocate giving the aid money to the Haitian state. I doubt it is capable of running the recovery effort, and I expect it is just as corrupt as the worst NGOs. But that doesn't invalidate the overall point of the article. There are NGOs that are not corrupt, and they can be identified.
In the UK: email your MP again, saying to vote against the Digital Economy Bill if it includes web blocking or disconnection for people who share. And explain what
this article
says about how they are being misled to think the vote won't include anything "controversial". Here's
more information.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Just one Bush forces soldier
will stand trial
for the killing of 24 helpless, unarmed Iraqi civilians who had the bad luck to be present in the neighborhood where a bomb went off. This soldier probably really believes he did nothing wrong, because he had dehumanized the Iraqis and saw their lives as worth very little.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support Amnesty International
in calling for an independent commission to investigate US torture, and a criminal investigation to prosecute the perpetrators.
For more information.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The US wants a weak global warming treaty even as other countries are prepared for a stronger one. If Obama was honestly seeking Republican support for this bill, he doesn't learn fast. He should have learned from the health care reform battle that this is self-defeating. If he proceeds now with a "bipartisan" approach, that will mean he is either unable to learn, or perhaps (as some suggest) really on the Republicans' side.
The US military have acknowledged that it is useless to fight the Taliban unless Karzai's government improves. This is one of the lessons of the Vietnam War: a government which inspires no loyalty cannot win a war no matter how much US help it gets.
The willingness to talk about the issue is a necessary precondition to doing anything about it. According to The Real War by Jonathan Schell, US officials recognized that the South Vietnamese government was incompetent to do anything, but kept up the public pretence that things were going fine.
However, recognizing the disappointing truth does not imply there is a way to change it. I don't know if there is any way to bring about a non-corrupt government in Afghanistan.
A committee of the UK parliament recognized that there is no such thing as a "special relationship" between the UK and the US. Disclosures over the past year have made it clear that B'liar was so subservient to Bush that the word "poodle" fits. The UK must recognize this too, in order to change it.
Right-wingers in Israel are calling Obama a "disaster" because he objects to constructing colonies in areas Israel calls East Jerusalem. Such exaggeration is a frequent right-wing tactic: to exaggerate how much their opponents disagree with them, in order to make them seem really bad. Consider, for instance, how Republicans call Obama a Liberal.
If mere criticism of a land-grab is a "disaster", I wonder what they will say if the US ever exerts real pressure for Israel to stop the land grab. They will have run out of extreme words.
Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, has been contacted after a year of being incommunicado, but he didn't dare say where he was.
High-speed copiers are computers, and store copies of the documents they copy. Others might get access to them.
The full text of a draft of the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement (ACTA) has been leaked.
ACTA is pervasively bad because it is based on the twisted concept of "intellectual property". As this article shows, ACTA's first decision is to treat copyright law, patent law, trademark law, and several other laws together as if they were part of a single issue. That's a fundamental mistake so naturally it leads to a bad treaty.
The Clown regime demands that its drug science advisors reach scientific conclusions in accord with the policy the regime has in mind. It appears mephedrone turns its users temporarily into morons. For me, that is sufficient reason not to use it.
As for the risk of serious harm, whether that is a large risk for teenagers (comparable to driving, for instance) or a small risk is not yet known. Either way, prohibition is likely to do more harm than good. If mephedrone is more dangerous than MDMA, it would be wiser to make MDMA available once again.
The Clown regime wants the power to secretly open people's mail without court orders.
Maliki has decided to reverse the election results by arresting elected MPs from Allawi's party before they are formally seated.
The head of the IPCC accused right-wing politicians of persecuting climate scientists to sabotage research.
A border incident on the frontier of Gaza caused casualties on both sides. The article mentions that Palestinians have fired some rockets in the last few weeks. It doesn't mention that Israeli troops have killed Palestinians in Gaza on a number of occasions too.
Uri Avnery is optimistic that Obama will require Israel's government to end its settlement construction and start on the path towards peace. I am not so optimistic. From this beginning, to reach a point where Israeli policy is conducive to peace means crossing many obstacles, and the Israeli right wing will resist at each one. And even with good will on both sides, making an agreement won't be easy. Still, this is a good beginning.
The push for "three strikes" policies in the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement seems to come from the US.
An EU proposal to censor Internet access, Chinese style, supposedly to "protect children from abuse", has met opposition from a group of survivors of child sexual abuse.
Allawi's secular party got the most votes in Iraq's election, but not enough to govern by itself.
A court ruled that plans to expand Heathrow airport must be reconsidered in the light of the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After Democrats in Congress were subjected to threatening violence, a Republican in Congress strained to claim he too was attacked.
Iceland has banned strip clubs, under the influence of feminism gone awry. If the article's description is accurate, this law also bans commercial production of movies with nudity. I think this law is wrong, and the reasons given in this article are clearly not a justification for it.
If many strippers in Iceland are foreigners, it is legitimate for Iceland to bar foreigners from working in those jobs in order to make more work for Icelanders. Either Icelanders would do the work, or the clubs would close for lack of staff. Perhaps the clubs would have to improve the pay and/or working conditions for strippers in order to attract applicants.
That would be good, but it isn't what Iceland has done. If after this the strippers are not "happy in their work", perhaps it is proper to pass a law to help them. (I am not a supporter of laissez-faire economics.) However, what law would really help them? That depends on why they dislike it, and why they do that job despite disliking it.
Are some stripping because they are drug addicts? That's better than stealing because they are drug addicts. I don't think there is any reliable way to treat drug addiction, but I don't think unemployment is one of the recommend methods. Is it that their other options are worse? For instance, being broke? If so, the way to help them is not to ban stripping and force them into worse options, but rather to improve their other options.
Is it that they don't make enough to live on unless they do lap dances, and they don't like doing them? Requiring the clubs to pay strippers better, and other regulations, could eliminate that pressure. It is wrong to ban prostitution, but there is no reason why strippers should be pressured into also being prostitutes.
I think these supposed reasons are excuses, and the real reason is an irrational prejudice.
As regards whether prostitution is empowering or degrading to the prostitute, that depends on the conditions. Working on the street under the domination of a pimp is surely degrading. Being an independent courtesan is empowering compared with working at MacDonalds, and more honest than selling cars. In an ideal world, perhaps there would be no MacDonalds and no cars, but I don't see a reason to try to eliminate courtesans.
B'liar works for
a multinational oil company
that profits from the results of the conquest of Iraq. So do many other political figures including Ross Perot and General Abizaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Internet filtering in schools
blocks access to educational materials.
While that article focuses on blockage of the educational materials that prudes would admit, porn is also very important for education. Blocking adolescents' access to porn, or keeping them ignorant of sex in any way, is likely to stunt their emotional growth and make them vulnerable to mistakes that can hurt them badly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement includes an organization to effectively supersede WIPO and the WTO in ramping up copyright enforcement. The governments which work for business against their own citizens have a pattern of creating a new international organization for the purpose whenever the existing ones are checked by public opposition. For instance, when the World "Intellectual Property" Organization ceased to be the most convenient tool for ever-increasing copyright and patent powers, the rich countries put requirements about the same laws into the World Trade Organization, using trade pressure on other unrelated issues to bully sell-out governments of other countries into accepting restrictions on their citizens.
But the poor countries allied a few years ago to block further tightening of WTO requirements. So Bush (and now Obama) to seek to create a new and pliable international body in which to do their dirty work.
In 2009, before the election in Aceh, the Indonesian military's commandos assassinated leaders of a party calling for independence of Aceh. Now Obama is considering resuming military aid for those commandos.
Abnormal high temperatures combined with water-losing tree plantations have led to drought in a large part of China.
A specific part of the brain plays a necessary role in making moral judgments based on people's intentions.
US citizens:
sign this petition
for a federal law against discrimination against gays.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the Democratic Party to
stop supporting anti-abortion
candidates.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Greg Palast reports: Before "progressive" congressman Eric Massa resigned, he got in bed with a vulture capitalist fund that wants to convert the US into its collection agent. It is vicious when the US government attacks poor countries, but it is not a rare event. (See today's note about the US and Aristide.) Indeed, it's a major part of the US Trade Representative's job. The corruption goes deeper than an individual congresscritter here and a senator there; it is fundamental to the system, as long as business has political power.
The US and President Aristide: how it organized a coup, returned him to power with conditions that crippled reform, then organized another coup.
The Chinese government can censor web pages from outside the country, but it is struggling to keep the lid on 400 million Chinese who want more freedom and justice.
The Clown regime is trying to fudge the meaning of "complicity in torture" to evade past and future responsibility, so MPs demand an independent investigation.
US citizens:
sign this petition
asking the senate to pass legislation to reduce global warming emissions. I dispute what that page says about the health care law. Having the medical policy decisions dominated by the insurance companies, and by the pharmaceutical companies which got a favorable deal at the beginning, is no change, and the details of the bill change less than one might have hoped.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
However, none of that concerns the petition itself, so I decided to sign it and I hope you will too.
Senator Dodd pushed his weak banking bill out of committee. This will make it very hard to pass a bill that will weaken the power of the banksters.
Canada has joined the UK and the US in organizing witch hunts against photographers, but it warns against artists too. The fuss about photographers in transport stations is mostly foolish, but not 100%. There's a place in some airports where taking photos is a real concern.
The US and Russia are ready to take a small step in reducing nuclear arsenals.
In Europe: join the opposition to the EU ministers of "culture" and their conspiracy with culture as an industry. The physical activities are in Barcelona, but you can participate from anywhere.
Constance McMillen won in court; her school cannot cancel the prom to punish her and her girlfriend. This is not the end of bigotry in our society, so I hope this won't be the end of her career in fighting it.
The UK has given police the power to enter people's homes to take down anti-Olympics posters.
Protestors in Vancouver faced censorship too.
No country is so free that its citizens can take for granted they are safe from tyranny.
Bill Clinton acknowledged that his decision to send cheap US rice to Haiti
destroyed Haiti's agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
For the moment, the US should give Haiti as much food as people need. However, next time Haiti's farmers are in a position to plant rice, the US should adopt policies to show them they will be able to sell their crops.
Michael Moore tells more about the flaws of the health care law. For instance, an insurance company will still be able to terminate your coverage when you need an expensive operation. It will cost them, but not as much as the operation would have.
Moore also says his disappointment with Obama. I can say "I told you so", but I'd be happier if Obama had proved me wrong.
Congressman Kucinich explains
how he decided to vote for the health care law despite
disapproving of its basic method.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Tell Nestle to stop supporting deforestation in Indonesia.
Indian dissident Binayak Sen, who criticized the Indian government's war against the tribals whose land contains valuable minerals, has been imprisoned on charges of helping them.
Google's founder Brin presents censorship as a trade barrier in asking the US to act against censorship.
Ten years ago people like me accused the US government of caring more about trade barriers than human rights. Now this has gone from an accusation to a presupposition. Such a government is ipso facto amoral.
Haitian NGOs criticized an international donors' conference about how to reconstruct Haiti which allowed essentially no participation by Haitians.
Angered by the weekly nonviolent protests, the Israeli army declared the Palestinian villages of Bil'in and Ni'ilin "closed military zones". This did not scare the Palestinians or their Israeli supporters.
Amnesty International calls for an
independent investigation into the UK's collusion with torture
by other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
UK citizens: support the campaign against DRM at the BBC.
Uri Avnery: General Petraeus, by pointing out how Israel's rejection of peace with Palestine endangers Americans. The article is mistaken in treating all American Jews as supporters of AIPAC and the Israeli right wing. A large fraction, perhaps a majority, criticize Israel's policy and want Israel to make peace with Palestine.
Arundhati Roy reports on meeting with the tribals that are resisting all the might of the Indian government that wants to crush them for corporate mining.
Even before the quake, the
US repression of Haiti
was ongoing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
UK citizens:
Sign this petition
to MP Harriet Harman saying to give the disgusting Digital Economy Bill full debate.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai is negotiating with an important militia of Islamic extremists that is allied with the Taliban. I think this is a positive development. Hekmatyar's extremism is cruel and unjust to women, and his participation in the Afghan government would be a disaster for them; but the existing Afghan government is a disaster for them already, and I do not see that it's sufficiently better than Hekmatyar to justify continuing a war.
Google has defied the Chinese government by routing searches in China to uncensored servers in Hong Kong. Even though China censors access to these servers, this is a step forward because (1) Google is no longer complicit and (2) people can see the censorship is imposed by the Chinese government. The complaints from that government indicate that the change has hit the target.
The only part I do not see is how this relates to the Chinese cracking attacks on Google. But never mind that — it is the right thing to do anyway.
Three cheers for Constance McMillen, who is insisting on the right to wear a tuxedo with her girlfriend at the high school prom. I admire Ms McMillen because she is campaigning against official endorsement for bigotry. She didn't choose which manifestation to campaign against; rather, it popped up in her life, and gave her the option to resist or cave in.
But let us recognize that this issue is important because bigotry against gays is a major injustice — and avoid the mistake of thinking that the importance comes from the high school prom.
The prom is one of the things that people artificially hype themselves into caring excessively about, the way many care more about their weddings than about what their marriages will be like. The prom is an opportunity to show off your popularity, if you have some, or to fail conspicuously. It is natural that those who expect to do well at this game would enjoy the chance. It is also an opportunity to dress up, if you like doing that. Those conditions could make it an enjoyable occasion, but they are no grounds for the fuss people make.
Instead of feeding this hype, we should gently point out that there are more important things in life. If you expect to enjoy the prom, go and enjoy it. If you encounter bigotry there, resist it there. But don't treat it as an important part of your life.
Clinton denounced Israeli settlement construction in a speech to the Israeli hawks' lobby, AIPAC. I am impressed. There couldn't be a clearer way to tell that lobby that the US government is not its puppet.
It seems that Obama has decided not to let the issue drop again, and will continue criticizing the Israeli government for its colonization of Palestinian territory. If so, this could be the beginning (though just the beginning) of what it will take to make Israel make peace.
Thousands of Russians came on the street to protest bad government.
Putin has made serious electoral opposition impossible at the presidential level, and he was quite popular a couple of years ago.
The proposed Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement would include a permanent organization to change the rules imposed on us.
Dalits in an Indian village organized and won permission to visit the temple, the hotel, and the barber shop.
But then the caste Hindus
locked the temple against them
and the police attacked them.
[References updated on 2018-04-02 because the old links were broken.]
Under the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are lots of methane. If part of the ice sheet melts away, it will release its methane into the atmosphere, causing a burst of global warming that could melt more of the ice sheet.
If the water under the ice sheet begins flowing faster, that too will increase the methane release.
Human activity is making the Earth's temperature slowly. It looks like we could arrest this rise later if we don't do it now. But sooner or later the rise will trigger a positive feedback loop (this one or another) that will push the Earth to disaster, and we don't know how far away it is. Should we push our luck?
Wal-Mart fires employees for lawfully using medical marijuana,
then tries to
deny them unemployment benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Callous cruelty towards its workers is typical of Wal-Mart and has been ever since it started. If you want to reward and promote that, buy from Wal-Mart.
The influence of the mass media is such that there are people who now follow the "jedi" religion.
US residents: tell textbook manufacturers to resist the Texas demands for right-wing rewriting of US history.
For background.
The UN's former special representative to Afghanistan believes that Pakistan intentionally arrested the Taliban leaders that were willing to consider peace.
Correcting common misunderstandings about Buddhism.
Bibi Aisha husband's family cut off her nose and ears because, by running away from their abuse, she made them feel ashamed.
They deserve to be ashamed. A war against the Taliban for women's rights would be a just war, if we were really fighting it — but we are not. As this article shows, Karzai is not a lot better than the Taliban in regard to women's rights. (Remember the law that forbade Shi'ite married women from various activities without their husbands permission?)
Meanwhile, have you noted how the US political right wing behaves similarly? They attack people who report the US's crimes of violence, saying that they shouldn't make the US look bad.
UK citizens: use this page to write to your MP and demand a full
debate on the "Digital Economy Bill" that the record companies
want to impose on Britain.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The UK is working on guidelines for its agents so that they won't collude in torture, but Clown just broke his promise to publish them.
Detroit plans to turn many nearly-empty neighborhoods into farmland.
The plan is good overall, but I think it is unjust and unnecessary to force people to move. If there are just a few occupied houses in a block, they can make the rest of the block farmland even while people remain in those. There are other places in the US which have a similarly low density of houses, and the inhabitants are happy to have it that way.
If it is too expensive to provide city services to the few remaining houses in a neighborhood, Detroit should de-annex the area, making it into unincorporated land.
The UK police planted informers in progressive protest organizations for many years starting in the mid-90s.
That they infiltrated the G20 protest in London does not surprise me. Recall the statement that someone arrested in at the massive protest in Genoa saw phony "anarchist protestors" armed with sticks getting out of a police vehicle.
An exhaustive study of a week's output of 10 Australian newspapers found that 55% of the stories were planted by PR campaigns.
The Clown regime is trying to "sidestep democracy" by rushing through parliament its law to escalate the War on Sharing (including Internet censorship requested by the record companies). 7 years ago B'liar was in excessive haste to launch another unjust war.
The copyright industry is starting to regret its propaganda term "pirate".
Since I recognized it as propaganda, I have rejected it, preferring terms such as "unauthorized copying" and "forbidden sharing". However, the Pirate Parties are trying a different tack, turning it into a badge of defiance like "Yankee". Maybe this is partly responsible for making the term less appealing as propaganda.
I don't think the propaganda term is dead or ineffective yet, so I will keep on rejecting it. However, for those who want to try to turn it around, it's possible to do that while refusing to use it in ways that help enemy propaganda. Those are when you are talking about unauthorized copies or the people who make them, in the middle of a discussion in which you do not give the terms a positive association.
Journalists caught 10 MPs offering to sell influence in the British government.
The pope says he's sorry about sexual abuse of children by priests all across Europe, but tries to lay the blame on the secular society to avoid any consequences to his church.
The association between supposedly celibate priests and supposedly forbidden sexual practices is nothing new. I have a recording of a Basque folk song in which a woman fends off the advances of a priest. Perhaps what has changed is that priests no longer have sufficient impunity to impose on adults.
The Lib Dems have voted to
officialy condemn the unjust law that the record companies want
to impose on the UK.
The Maoists in Nepal won an election have learned the lessons of the
evils of the Communist states, and from Buddhism. After they won the
election, and the army and oligarchs refused to let them govern, they
are
trying to win power nonviolently using their massive political
support.
I wonder what the Maoists propose to do about Kathmandu's smog
problem. The obvious solution is to ban private cars in the city, and
set up lots of buses and a fixed number of taxis, and I'd expect the
Maoists to advocate this; do they? And what do the inhabitants think
of the idea?
The fact that the US labels Nepal's elected Maoist government as
"terrorist" reflects the dishonest nature of that labelling practice.
The US pins the label on whatever groups it dislikes, whether they are
really terrorists or not. When they aren't, the label is a lie.
Such lies are easy for the US because the designation of "terrorist
group" is made by administrative decision, without the need to charge
and convict anyone of a crime. The state uses this power with a
curious selectivity: Islamic charities are
banned after requesting and scrupulously following government advice
about how to operate, but highly dangerous organizations such as large
banks and insurance companies are left untouched.
Regardless of how honestly or wisely the government uses this power,
The power's existence contravenes a basic human right: freedom of
association. This is sufficient by itself to condemn the US
government as tyranny.
New Zealand has
set up Internet filtering, blocking a secret list of
sites, which some ISPs have imposed on their customers.
Internet users in New Zealand should switch to the ISPs that refuse
to support filtering, even if this means extra expense and trouble.
This is not just a way of escaping government injustice, it is a way
of resisting it.
In the Iraqi election, Maliki's Iranian-style arbitrary banning of
many candidates undermined his pretense to be nonsectarian. The
result is
a split parliament in which no party dominates.
I wonder if Allawi and al-Sadr can make an alliance. Al-Sadr, though
clearly representing Shi'ites, in 2004 tried to restrain the drift to
civil war for the sake of the unity of Iraq.
France is considering
legalizing brothels, with strong public support.
Israel backed down to US pressure and privately
postponed one program of settlement construction in areas annexed
to East Jerusalem.
This concession is not enough to make progress towards peace possible.
That would require a long-term halt to construction of settlements in
the West Bank, not just the current short-period freeze. What is
potentially significant is is that it shows that Obama can stand up to
the Israeli government and make it back down. If he does it a few
more times, he might create a situation where peace is possible.
Short-term thinking
blocked protection of bluefin tuna.
The overfishing industry, which avoided being devastated now through a
ban international trade in bluefin tuna, will face similar devastation
in a few years when it can hardly find any tuna to catch.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass a law (approved by the House)
requiring factories to switch to the safest feasible process, to
avoid dangerous chemicals.
Here's background on the bill.
The government spares no expense to have TSA goons harass travelers
because it can point to that harassment and say, "See how we protect
you." If half of what they do is for show, they can pretend it protects us.
Measures like this, that would protect us without harassing us, appeal
to the government less. If we are not harassed, how would we know how
safe we are?
With preemptive war and assassination as acknowledged policies, we can
imagine the havoc the US will wreak with
superdrones now being developed.
I take issue with one small point: the use of drones in Afghanistan
against Taliban fighters may be lawful under international law, since
the US troops are there with permission of the Afghan government and
are fighting an armed rebellion. The same might be true in Yemen. I
don't know what to think about Somalia, which has no effective
government
because the US had Ethiopia destroy the one that did exist.
However, I don't think this invalidates the overall conclusions.
Rea Dol
established her school in a former prison with no help from
the international NGOs that supposedly exist to fund such activities.
Now that the school building is ruined, she cannot get tents to hold
classes in. The US is supposed to be providing aid — why is it
hard to bring in enough tents?
The US
plans to "rebuild" Haiti with sweatshops that will pay even
less than sweatshops in other countries. Haitians have already gone
on strike against sweatshops, and the UN "peacekeepers" crushed the
strike.
Other countries need to recognize that the free exploitation treaties
that the US offers them are intended to keep them poor and struggling,
and say, "Even if other countries let you do this, we will not." Even
better, they should sign treaties binding each other to reject these
offers.
Texas voted that school textbooks
should praise Joe McCarthy and say less about Thomas Jefferson
— and that's just the beginning.
Since Texas buys a lot of textbooks, these changes may affect other
schools too.
Kucinich says he
will vote for the health care bill.
Despite my respect for Kucinich, and my agreement with him on what
really ought to be done (a national health system), I might not agree
with his decision. For me, it depends on whether the bill to be
passed includes a public option. This article does not explicitly
say, but I think the answer is no, and that means the bill is a change
for the worse.
US citizens: phone your senator saying,
"Break up the banks so they are not 'too big to fail'."
Here's more info on what's good and what's bad in the Senate bill.
For-profit schools in the US
charge a lot of money and may not deliver what they hint that
the student will get.
Chris Floyd: the "War on Terror" is a system, and its purpose —
to the extent it has one — is to
concentrate power for those who gain power from it.
Unlike Mr Floyd, I am not a pacifist. There is a war in Afghanistan;
that the US military try to kill Taliban does not seem outrageous to
me, though given the nature of Karzai, continuing the war seems
futile. However, whether the CIA should join in the fighting is a
different question.
Starbucks set up an official-looking site to
disinform the public about World Water Day.
Do you really want to buy from Starbucks?
The UK is considering a radical limitation on trash; among other things,
discarding food in the trash would be prohibited.
I am in favor of recycling what can be recycled, but I don't see how
composting is either feasible or useful for people living in
apartments in the city. And from the little I know about composting,
not all food waste can be composted.
There is an
irrational clamor to ban mephedrone in the UK because
it has been linked with a handful of deaths, even though it is not
yet clear whether that was a coincidence.
Even if there is a small danger in using mephedrone, is that a reason
to ban it? Is it more dangerous than alpinism? Perhaps that too
should be banned. Is it more dangerous, for teens, than driving a
car?
Some Muslims have been accused of
conspiring to murder cartoonist Lars Vilks
after taking offense at a cartoon. I have often felt offended by criticism of my views, but people have a right to criticize and even insult ideas they disagree with, so I learned to live with it and Muslims must learn it too. Nothing that people do or say is entitled to immunity from criticism — not even the Church of Emacs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
An executive whistleblower at Lehman Brothers was laid off a month after telling the accountant about dishonest practices.
Everyone: sign the petition for libel reform in the UK.
Utah has made it a crime for a woman to intentionally cause a miscarriage. Since there would rarely be clear evidence of intention, this means persecution of any woman who has a miscarriage in Utah and that the public does not like.
Colonel Nicholas Mercer
tried
to prevent the torture of prisoners in Iraq, starting shortly after the Bush forces' invasion, but his commanders silenced him and threatened to punish him.
Another article
has some additional information.
[Second reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Clinton acknowledged that the onus is on Israel to make concessions for peace. This is a big step forward in US policy. If the US follows up on it with due pressure, it could lead to peace.
A Chinese local government, which arrested people on the way to get medical tests, tried to excuse the injustice by saying it thought they were planning a protest. Although China continues to call itself "Communist", this sort of collusion between government and business, combined with disrespect for human rights, is more accurately known as Fascism. Fascism occurs in many countries, including the US, but the authorities are usually ashamed if people find out. In China their are often totally brazen about it.
A report from
the protest at Sheikh Jarrah
in Jerusalem. For
background.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI is using Facebook to find criminals. I don't see anything wrong with this, as far as the article describes it, as long as the crimes are real wrongs. Only a stupid criminal would publish information on Facebook, but real criminals (as distinguished from those in detective fiction) are often stupid.
It starts becoming worrysome when this is applied also to absurd "crimes", such as running web sites about the animal rights movement, that really represent the denial of human rights. And when it is applied to investigating dissident groups so as to sabotage their actions. We can hardly count on the FBI's respect for democracy to hold it back from such things.
The UK has proposed large wave and tide power generators. The one step between the construction of sea and wind power facilities and a reduction in carbon emissions is to reduce the generation of electricity by burning coal and oil. This is why the plans to build new coal-powered plants are worrysome.
Palestinians
keep struggling
to build homes, schools and wells in large areas of the West Bank where Israel has forbidden all development.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli colonists in the West Bank did not like having Masab Rabai near their settlement, herding his sheep on his land, so
they called soldiers who arrested him and tortured him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Now that people around the world have started to pay attention to what human rights groups in Israel say about the violation of Palestinians' human rights, the Israeli government is
attacking these groups at every level:
from calling them terrorists, to cutting off foreign funding, to making all members register with the government, to blocking their supporters from visiting Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Wikileaks has posted a
plan made by the Bush regime
plan in 2008 to attack Wikileaks by punishing or harming its informants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Protestors have taken over Bangkok on behalf of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was convicted of corruption. Although Thaksin is the clear choice of Thai democracy, there are grave charges against him. I have no way of judging the corruption charges against Thaksin; it would not surprise me if they were valid, and it would not surprise me if they were a frame-up. I also don't know whether Thaksin authorized the death squads. If he is guilty, it means a dilemma for Thais who support both democracy and justice. Somehow they have to strengthen other parties that support both the common people's economic well-being and human rights.
The US is preparing to remove most of the Bush forces from Iraq. However, some 50,000 "non-combat" troops will remain, and some of them are really combat troops labeled as non-combat troops. But even aside from troops, the Iraqi government will remain more or less under US control, and its oil industry will be controlled by multinational oil companies.
Everyone in the US: Rachel Corrie's parent say: call the White House at 202-456-1111 to say that envoy George Mitchell should visit Gaza, and the US should immediately provide humanitarian aid and building materials to Gaza. Then go
here
to report your call.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
China
condemns the US for violating human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
These criticisms seem generally accuratem, although I cannot check each and every statement.
Of course, China violates human rights even more; many previous notes here document that. But that is no excuse for the US violations.
Israel's insult to Biden, by announcing construction plans in a part of the West Bank that Israel claims to have annexed, is increasing tension with the US government.
What makes these construction plans bad is that they are part of a continuing plan to cement the annexation of part of the West Bank. The insult of announcing the plans just after Biden's visit is a minor detail, in ethical terms. But if the insult creates an opportunity for increased US pressure to stop settlement construction, it could have good effects.
Ireland's principal bishop is accused of pressuring the victims of sexual abuse by priests to promise to keep silent.
Tigers in India are rapidly vanishing due to poaching, while the officials responsible for protecting them show no energy to try to stop it.
I am glad this article mentions overpopulation as a cause. Usually that factor is ignored.
After Hurricane Katrina, when the authorities were more interested in arresting people than saving them, Abdulrahman Zeitoun saved 10 stranded people with his boat. For this he was arrested and accused of being a terrorist.
Pro-government Georgian TV broadcast a hoax report of a Russian invasion, apparently to boost support for President Saakashvili who started the war in 2008 by attacking Russia.
Opposition accuses Maliki's party of
rigging the Iraqi election.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
McCarthyism 2.0: US right wing leaders call defense lawyers "Al Qa'eda"
and say that
"social justice" is a code word for Communism and Nazism.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city, is slowly falling under the influence of the Taliban.
Racial profiling is ineffective for catching violent Islamist extremists.
It might be a little more effective for catching violent Christian extremists in the US; perhaps they are all WASPs. Or maybe they aren't.
Humans are causing extinction of species at 100 to 1000 times the natural rate of extinction — far faster than new species evolve.
Karl Rove says he is "proud" of waterboarding.
In addition to the vicious idea that this torture can be justified, he repeats the lie that it was a success.
Compare them with the information in this article.
It shows that torture, whether the acute physical kind that Bush loved or the slow mental kind (brainwashing) that Obama approves, causes lasting mental illness.
It also reports that torture tends to corrupt the victim's memories. Thus, even if the victim is a real terrorist, not one mistakenly accused, and even if he has crucial information, and even supposing torture makes him give that information rather than a false confession, what he says still can't be trusted.
Torture works great for extracting confessions, as long as you don't care whether they are true or false.
People who flee to the UK after being tortured in their home countries are almost always imprisoned there, then refused asylum.
Israel arrests Palestinian children as young as 12, and forces them to sign confessions they cannot read.
The city of Mountain View "protected" elderly Loretta Pangrac from the danger of her unrepairable leaky roof by demolishing her house and billing her for it. Perhaps it is true that Ms Pangrac might have been killed by collapse of part of her house, and then the city could have been sued. But she is not out of danger now. If she cannot afford another place to live, she could die from sleeping under no roof at all. But the city would not be liable if she dies that way. Thus, the city has not protected her, only itself.
A house which is dangerous to live in is a real problem — unlike disconnecting your refrigerator — and something has to be done about it. If it could not be repaired, it would have to be demolished, some day. But why the rush? Surely some temporary makeshift could have made it safe enough for Ms Pangrac to continue living there for her remaining years. Then they could demolish it.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "Ask Speaker Pelosi to include a public option in the House health care bill."
Cigarette companies are trying hard to encourage smoking in poor countries; they have sued in Uruguay to block pictorial warnings of the danger of tobacco.
US citizens: phone your senators in support of strong regulations on banks and other companies that lend to the public.
The food industry has learned to design foods that make people eat (and therefore buy) more, leading to spreading obesity.
Some Democrats who mistook Obama for a progressive are recognizing his nature.
Big beverage companies are using distraction campaigns to sabotage efforts to impose a tax to discourage consumption of sugar-filled beverages in schools. I doubt that selling smaller portion of soda would directly reduce the amount students drink. They might just as likely buy more portions. A larger number of smaller portions might cost more; this price increase could reduce consumption just as a tax would. But the money would go to the companies instead of to the public treasury. Maybe schools should stop selling sugary drinks.
The vaunted US offensive in the "city of Marja" was a P.R. deception to impress Americans; the city which was supposedly liberated from the Taliban is not a city at all.
The US calls for protecting polar bears from hunting, since global warming and melting Arctic ice is likely to cause their numbers to crash. The goal is valid, but these measures can hardly suffice to protect polar bears if we destroy their habitat. What we need to do is cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK bill to defeat vulture funds was blocked through a strange parliamentary maneuver. I don't understand how this maneuver worked, or why they cannot bring the bill to a vote again.
When Israel slapped Biden's face by announcing settlement construction in Jerusalem suburbs that it wants to annex, just after his visit, the timing was only partly an accident.
The EU will support a ban on international sales of bluefin tuna, so the species can recover. I am all in favor of better management of the fish stocks, but experience shows that we must not presume the management will improve. We also must not presume that an attempt at better management will succeed in increasing fish stocks. A ban on international sales may not even be enough; consider the cod of the Grand Banks, which have not recovered despite more than a decade of incomplete protection. It would be safer to ban all catching of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, then apply better management. If stocks increase, fishing could resume.
Un-american extremists such as Liz Cheney are attacking the US government for providing lawyers to people accused of terrorism. I guess Cheney and friends would prefer a system which simply declares people guilty, as Stalin used to do.
European companies are saving up large amounts of carbon emission credits, bought from countries where nobody needed them, so that they can avoid any real emissions reduction under possible future treaties. This is a well-known flaw in the "cap and trade" approach to CO2 emissions: it is too easy to game that system. (Likewise, most "carbon-neutral" business schemes are bogus.) It is much better to put a tax on all emissions. If this is done in an intelligent way (for instance, tax the sale of fuel rather than the burning of the fuel), it would be easy to collect and hard to evade.
The US Chamber of Commerce launders money for businesses, buying "issue" ads while concealing who paid for them.
A bankrupcy examiner says that Lehman Brothers executives misrepresented the firm's balance as it was bought out, and the accountanting firm, Ernst & Young, supported the deception despite warning from a whistleblower. The health of the financial system depends on punishing those responsible severely, especially the accounting firm. Everyone involved there should not be allowed to practice accounting any more.
In Kansas City, everyone who isn't poor has abandoned the public schools, and now half of them have to be closed to save expense. Consolidating the schools is not a bad thing; why waste money keeping open more schools than are needed? But there remains the deeper issue remains how to fund public schools. Many have argued that funding schools from local taxes leads to bad education in areas where people are poor.
A girl wanted to go to the prom with her girlfriend, so the school canceled the prom. The school is trying to manipulate the other students into blaming this girl for the school's decision. "The authorities" commonly use this trick. The response is to explain the trick so students learn not to fall for it.
US citizens:
sign this petition
calling on Obama to name the Democratic senators that no longer support the public option.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian Authority is adopting a law
forbidding Palestinians from working
in the Israeli colonies in the West Bank. This boycott, entirely nonviolent, is an obvious step, but it will require real sacrifice.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Burma's dictators say they have annulled Aung San Suu Kyi's election as president. Their "law" cannot change the truth, which is that her prior election as president annuls any authority they claim to have.
The UN official in charge of Burma's human rights record called for investigation of the dictators for crimes against humanity.
Theory: congressional Democrats planned all along to pass a bad health care bill.
The theory as stated
has a flaw: it assumes that Democratic legislators planned to be voted out of office. I expect most of them can be bought, more or less, but I doubt they would sell their careers. Nonetheless, it is useful to look in these directions for a theory.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Republican Party's message to its supporters, which presents centrist Democrats as Batman's enemies, is based on a big lie: that these Democrats are "socialists".
Christine Stevens may lose her home because she disconnected her electricity and lived without a refrigerator. We need laws about the quality of housing offered for sale or rent, to protect the public from mistreatment. But if you live in your own house, as long as it isn't dangerous to others, they have no business telling you it isn't good enough.
The European Parliament
voted nearly unanimously
to oppose ACTA. This is a victory, but not a complete victory over ACTA. The European Parliament has limited power.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
It is too bad this article uses the propaganda term "piracy" to refer to forbidden sharing of copies.
A
growing protest campaign
opposes Israel's evictions of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has put 30% of Gaza's farmland off limits to the inhabitants, but people there are
engaged in nonviolent protest
too. Nonviolent protests also continue in West Bank towns including Bil'in.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
So the
Israeli government demands
that the Palestinian Authority repress these protests, threatening reprisals if it does not. This clearly shows that Israel is opposed to human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
A Sea Shepherd protestor who boarded a Japanese whaling ship, to conduct a symbolic arrest of its captain, faces charges carrying 3 years in prison. Meanwhile Japanese anti-whaling activists who found whale meat that had been stolen by whaling ship crew, and showed it to the authorities as evidence of that theft, still face trial for "stealing" the meat.
Massachusetts citizens: call Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo, and State Rep. Sanchez, co chair of the Joint Committee on Public Health, and Senate President Teresa Murray, to support HB 2160, the medical marijuana bill. For more info, see mpp.org.
The Burmese generals have invented a legalistic excuse to force Aung San Suu Kyi out of the National League for Democracy.
This illustrates the principle that laws deserve only the respect they earn.
Phishing attacks to get at people's bank accounts are mushrooming. Viruses could also be set up to get people's bank account information. I think the wisest thing to do is avoid online banking.
The UK protested privately to the US about Bush's torture policies, when it found out about them. It made sense to try a private protest as the first step. However, when that protest achieved nothing, the UK went on with its "special relationship" with the torturer. That cannot be excused.
The EU is talking about restricting credit default swaps. This is the right direction to go; any solution to the problem caused by financial speculators must work by interfering with what they can do.
Wikileaks is looking for donations.
Atheist students are offering to trade pornography for religious "holy" books, saying that the latter are more smutty. I like the idea, I just wish they wouldn't endorse the position that pornography is in general bad.
China has
arrested lots of Tibetans
to make sure there cannot be a protest. China is not the only government which preemptively sabotages protest.
Iran
has done this often in the past year and
the UK
has done it too. The European Union has
closed borders
to stop Europeans from coming to protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Israel showed its contempt for the US by announcing big extension plan for "settlements" in the West Bank, just after Biden visited Israel.
Israel calls this "East Jerusalem", but that shouldn't disguise the reality.
Americans who organized to provide support to people who want to commit suicide have been arrested. It appears all they gave was advice and logistical arrangements.
It appears that these people are still ambulatory and don't need physical assistance to kill themselves. But they want help with preparations, and moral support.
There are many kinds of suffering which make us say "I'd rather die" when we think about them. Not all of them are fatal in the short term. When these things happen, many of the victims decide they'd rather live after all. But some don't, and they should not be perversely forced to go on suffering — especially if that is forever.
US citizens: sign the ACLU's petition telling Obama to give Guantanamo fair trials instead of military kangaroo courts.
Most of the US troops are withdrawing from Haiti, but thousands remain.
Even a few thousand troops could effectively maintain military control over Haiti's weak government,
Berlusconi's latest viciousness: cowardly harassment of the family of Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered by Russian agents.
European countries are punishing the big banks that caused the financial crisis by excluding them from bond sales.
Any punishment for these banks is good news, but this is not enough. They must be split up into pieces that are considerably smaller.
Lots of Iraqis are voting.
This article makes the election sound like a great success, but the article fails to mention that hundreds of candidates were banned from running. That's not democracy.
Uri Avnery: Israel identifies dubious "holy sites" a an excuse for driving Arabs out of the neighborhood.
Nuclear power plants are found to cause danger to their workers and the people in the surrounding areas.
Renewable energy generation, and increases in the efficiency of using energy, are cheaper as well as safer. As Amory Lovins showed, spending money on building new nuclear plants will mean less reduction in carbon emissions than spending the same money on renewables and efficiency.
Contrasting the attractive fantasy of the movie Avatar with the ugly but real resistance of the Dongria Kondh people to their oppressors.
The CIA's version of waterboarding
used doctors and medical technology to take the victim even closer
to death and still force him to stay alive.
Some victims gave up and tried to let themselves drown.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
If you read this article you will see how cruel the US government is.
39 people who entered the CIA's secret prisons were never heard of again. We they tortured to death? Shot? Are they still prisoners? If the US does not say, that means it has disappeared them. This puts the US in the same class with the murderous generals of Argentina.
General Varela is now in prison. Bush and Cheney ought to be in prison, along with everyone else who participated in the US torture system.
39 people who entered the CIA's secret prisons were never heard of again. Were they tortured to death? Shot? Are they still prisoners? If the US does not say, that means it has disappeared them. This puts the US in the same class with the murderous generals of Argentina.
General Varela is now in prison. Bush and Cheney ought to be in prison, along with everyone else who participated in the US torture system.
Mountain gorillas may survive poachers but their habitat will soon be attacked by humans cutting trees to make charcoal.
This is a consequence of human overpopulation. Where humans are destroying the forest for fuel, they are heading for disaster; cutting down the forest, while it extinguishes gorillas and many other species of wildlife, can at best postpone the disastr a few years, and will make it bigger when it happens. Sooner or later people will have to live with the energy resources they have. The sooner they have to start, the less harm they will do.
Greek workers
plan another general strike about increased taxes and reductions
in income.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The deficit-reducing measures described in this article are all regressive: the burden falls hardest on the poor. Shouldn't the rich bear the same share of the burden, or more? The loss of a given fraction of of income hurts the poor more than it hurts the rich, so the same share of the burden means that the rich would lose a larger fraction of their income.
If the public rejection is strong enough, maybe Papandreou will decide to shift tax to the rich. Or maybe some other party prepared to do so will present itself.
The UK is in the process of blocking vulture funds from their courts; will the US do the same? Liberia should make it a crime to try to collect for a Vulture fund; then its agents could seize the perpetrators anywhere in the world as the US does with suspected terrorists. But, unlike the US, it should give them fair trials.
The Iraqi government
refuses to give reasons
for disqualifying hundreds of candidates in the current election, and says the UN asked it to conceal them. This is no better than Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Several Icelandic banks collapsed in 2008; foreign governments are making threats to pressure Iceland's people to assume the cost, but they seem to refuse to give in. IMF loans come with conditions that put the burden mainly on the poor. To accept one is the problem, not the solution.
German email data retention law was
ruled unconstitutional
in its present form. It is not clear how much less bad the replacement will be.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
On Tuesday, March 9, insurance company CEOs are meeting in Washington DC to plot how to make health care reform even worse. There will be a protest. The march starts at Dupont Circle at: 11:00 A.M. and goes to the Ritz Carlton. I think you can find more info somewhere here.
Women in Falluja are warned not to have children because birth defects are so common there. But the Iraqi government doesn't want this to be studied.
Kevin reports on how
a mall security guard
called him a pedophile as he was taking a photo of his son in the mall, and then called the police on him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign the ACLU's petition for reform of some of the dangerous aspects of the U SAP AT RIOT act.
Many women are terrified of giving birth. I can't see why anyone wouldn't be terrified of something so painful.
Since population growth exacerbates many world problems, if a woman (or a man) is afraid to have children, the best response is help in avoiding it.
Right-wing extremism has become much stronger in the US with help from "tea party" tax protestors. These extremists are right that the US government has attacked our freedom. Bush launched the attack, with the U SAP AT RIOT act, torture, military tribunals, systematic spying, Guantanamo and Bagram prison, but the right-wing extremists don't blame Bush. Instead they blame Obama, who merely supports and continues the evils Bush began.
I suspect that right-wing organizations with lots of money are playing both sides of the game. They supported Bush, and now they mislead the extremists about who to blame.
Scientific criticism of the Climatic Research Unit by the Institite of Physics seems to have been the work of a man whose business does consulting for oil companies.
Contrasting America's pretense of morality with China's out-and-out greed. Is it better to be an unabashedly greedy bully, or to be a greedy bully that pretends to give moral lessons? I think it's a toss-up between lousy and lousy.
UK citizens: support the Open Rights Group in fighting the Digital Evil Bill. This bill has been made even worse; it now includes forced blockage of web sites as part of the War on Sharing.
In Chile,
soldiers protected food in supermarkets from "looters" who were hungry, and shot water cannon at people who needed water to drink. Older roads in Chile survived the earthquake, but newer ones made by private contractors were built badly to save money, so they collapsed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The spying-industrial complex is spreading FUD about "cyberwar" to excuse redesigning the Internet into a system of control.
The article ironically supports a similar FUD campaign by using the propaganda term "piracy" to refer to forbidden sharing. Perhaps the author did not recognize that as propaganda. Also, it was not nice to us hackers to use the term "hacker" to refer to someone who breaks security.
Hamas, like Israel, denies its war crimes with twisted logic.
US citizens: oppose the expansion of commercial whaling.
US citizens: phone your representative to support the Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act, which would ban use of mercenaries such as Blackwater.
You can also sign
this petition, but a phone call carries more weight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Climate scientists receive enormous amounts of hate mail when their names become known.
Israeli soldiers
persistently attack Palestinians making video recordings of the
army's attacks on civilians, and even though the army acknowledges
that these recordings are lawful, it does nothing to punish the
soldiers that attack.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to support repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards gays in the military.
(I have declined to support some actions for this particular cause because they invited people to praise the US military for "serving their country". They could potentially do so if the US were attacked, but in reality they more often invade other countries. Recent examples include Haiti and Iraq.)
Blackwater has a new alias, Paravant, for doing the same bad things.
US citizens: use this page to tell Obama not to let the Republicans limit medical malpractice claims as part of health care "reform".
I suggest also saying that the Republicans have got too much already and that health care reform without a public option is a change for the worse.
TV "news" shows in the US feature commentators who are paid by corporations to promote certain policies and don't admit it.
Coca Cola Company has been
sued by its workers in Guatemala
for repeated practices of murder, rape, and torture. This is more reason to
join the boycott
of all Coca Cola Company products.
[First reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
World pressure has made Israel suspend a plan to
demolish 22 Palestinian homes
in Jerusalem. Here's more information on (I think)
the same demolition plan.
This does not mean demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem has been stopped. This suspension applies to just one project.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, Israel continues demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza, along with trees and wells.
The US pointedly declined to support the UK against Argentina's demands to for control over the Falkland Islands, This is, apparently, the UK's reward for its slavish "special relationship" in which B'liar had to launch a war of aggression when the US told him to. Apparently the relationship was special only from one side.
Clinton says she wants the UK and Argentina to "talk", but that is wrong advice. The inhabitants of the Falkland islands don't want to be ruled by Argentina, and Argentina has no right to impose its power on them. There is nothing to talk about.
The Israeli Army is
tracking Israeli participants
in Palestinian nonviolent protests and stopping them from reaching the protest area. Interference with freedom of assembly is common among states that are democratic in form but not in substance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Excess CO2 in the ocean is dissolving coral reefs. By 2100 they are likely to all be gone. This by itself would be a mass extinction. It would also be disastrous for many fish populations, if we have not already destroyed them, and would cause a food crisis for humans.
A mall security guard threatened a man for taking pictures of his child who was riding on a toy train. Note how the security guard magnified his power to threaten the public by telling a policeman a distorted version of what had occurred.
At the investigation into the leaked Climatic Research Unit emails, Philip Jones says the accusations against him are false and that the facts will show this. It definitely should be standard scientific practice to show the software source code used to analyze the data. Not just in climate research, but always.
The
nonviolent Palestinian resistance movement
is spreading even though troops threaten the participants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
The Liberian president urges the UK to take action against vulture funds.
Many Iraqis openly
sell their votes,
because they are desperately poor and don't believe it matters who wins the election. President al Maliki is accused of
buying votes with guns.
It is not unusual for political parties in Iraq to hand out guns. In the recent past, most political parties had militias; as far as I know, they still do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
Global warming is changing the composition of soil in the UK.
The "Defense" department broke the law 800 times by spying on Americans illegally — including antiwar groups and Planned Parenthood.
UK citizens:
sign this petition
calling on the UK to publish the draft text of ACTA.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
EU citizens: Help the European Parliament oppose ACTA.
The UK plans to
outlaw open wifi networks
in order to conscript everyone into the copyright police. People should keep their wifi networks without passwords specifically to refuse to serve in the army of the copyright empire.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
CCTV cameras are being sold as a way of preventing crime, but outside of certain special locations, they fail to achieve that goal.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans police shot unarmed people. Then they conspired to lie about what happened. Police attacks against the populace during and after Hurricane Katrina were widespread and organized.
The
nonviolent protests in Bil'in
are going strong after years despite attacks by the Israeli police.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to
support a strong climate
protection bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-02 because the old link was broken.]
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