[ 2012 July - October | 2012 March - June | 2011 November - February | 2011 July - October | 2011 March - June | 2010 November - February | 2010 July - October | 2010 March - June | 2009 November - February | 2009 July - October | 2009 March - June | 2008 November - February | 2008 July - October | 2008 March - June | 2007 November - February | 2007 July - October | 2007 March - June | 2006 November - February | 2006 July - October | 2006 March - June | 2005 November - February | 2005 July - October | 2005 March - June | 2004 November - February | 2004 July - October | 2004 March - June | 2003 November - February | 2003 July - October | 2003 March - June | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
US citizens: tell Obama, don't sell arms to Bahrain.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell the Department of Health and Human Services to
support availability of insurance to cover abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Activists trying to visit imprisoned Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng have been beaten by government thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree with Chen Guangcheng's cause. I support China's one-child policy, because in this limited planet, which we are already using beyond capacity, people cannot have a fundamental right to reproduce without limit. However, he is entitled to advocate his views without being imprisoned or beaten.
The Injustice Department has sabotaged a Guantanamo prisoner's case about his abuse in Lithuania, which collaborated in his torture, by refusing to give lawyers the document he signed to authorize them to represent him.
The CIA seized his own writings about how he was tortured in secret prisons, and classified them "secret operational documents".
Is this any better than Stalin?
India is examining Blackberry messages with RIM's help, but has to demonstrate that each investigation is authorized. However, the government wants to be able to look at any and all messages with no controls.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Syria continues shooting large numbers of protesters, and is getting increasingly isolated.
Some of the opposition have asked for a no-fly zone. I doubt that it makes sense to do this when military resistance is at this very low level.
In the US: protest in Washington DC on Nov 6 against the Keystone XL planet-roaster tar sands oil pipeline.
Report: South Dakota Removes Hundreds Of Native American Children From Their Homes, Collects Millions In Federal Funds.
The EPA official in charge of water resources advocates privatization of the water supply.
A progressive president would not appoint officials with such right-wing views.
When police testify in court under a false name, it may not be perjury, but it can easily lead them into perjury.
In the US, police frequently commit perjury even when they don't disguise their names.
Laws against abortion and birth control threaten the lives of women in many countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the E-TYRANNY bill. Also send email through this page.
The arbitrary US financial blockade against Wikileaks threatens all journalism. Not to mention all political dissidence.
Giles Fraser resigned from St Paul's Cathedral in protest against the idea of forcibly clearing protesters' tents.
US citizens: sign this petition to protect the shinnery oak and sagebrush lizard from oil companies.
The UK tried to stage a hasty and quiet mass deportation of refugees to Iraq, but it was blocked.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The radiation released by the Fukushima meltdowns was much more than the Japanese government estimated.
In the UK, support libel reform at Parliament on Nov 9.
The US Injustice Department wants permission to lie in response to Freedom of Information requests.
A Wikileaks cable shows how the US supports a businessman in Honduras with "war on drugs" funds although he seems to be connected with drug trafficking.
Is this war on drugs, or what?
Sudan is deporting Eritrean refugees back to Eritria, where they face terrible punishment.
The police in the Dominican Republic regularly torture prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Medicaid cuts proposed by right-wing politicians including Obama could have a harmful ripple effect on state governments.
Massey Energy's former security chief has been convicted of lying to the officials who were investigating the disaster that was caused by Massey's contempt for safety standards.
Defense lawyer Wilmouth is right that they should have prosecuted the executives responsible for the dangerous practices. Not instead, but in addition.
Activists have occupied the site of the Belo Monte dam to block construction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A court ruled that the dam was being constructed illegally, but that seems not to have prevented construction.
A company selling protected black coral has been fined over 4 million dollars.
This is the sort of thing that we need states for, and the reason why I am not an anarchist.
Meet the real parasites of the Internet: the US Congress.
Libya's former rebels acknowledge that Gaddafi was murdered, and say they will prosecute the killer if they can identify him.
The US has the duty to prosecute whoever decided to kill Osama Bin Laden, even if that person is President Obama. Just because Gaddafi and Bin Laden committed massive crimes, almost comparable to those of Dubya, is no excuse for their summary execution.
53 Gaddafi supporters were murdered in Sirte, apparently while prisoner.
US citizens: sign to protect the ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Reserve) from oil drilling.
Canadian officials crushed the prosecution of Bush for torture.
The world will miss out on the possible contributions of a billion young people, for failure to make the investment to educate them. And will fall into a poverty trap if it does not provide birth control to everyone.
We can thank the IMF for a lot of this.
Assange says WikiLeaks may have to cease operation due to the US payment blockade.
ACLU Sues Government to Find Out Secret Interpretation of Patriot Act.
Republican hypocrites say Obama has created many regulations, but in fact he has made fewer than Bush.
There is nothing particularly bad about regulations anyway — we need to regulate businesses more so they can't hurt us. This criticism of Obama is therefore really an attempt to spread the irrational idea that "regulations are bad".
The E-TYRANNY Act, just introduced in the House of Representatives, would create the Great Firewall of America.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Oakland Mayor Quan to condemn and investigate
the police attack on protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rally Nov 6 in DC against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Let Women Die bill. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
It seems that ex-minister Fox sold a lobbyist a meeting in exchange for cash to fund Werrity.
Fox clearly didn't do this because Werrity was such a good friend. It was all part of a scheme, and he too must have expected to gain somehow from it.
Scott Olsen, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, suffered a skull fracture as the police attacked the Occupy Oakland camp.
A former UK police infiltrator called for a full public inquiry, to lay bare the truth of these practices and expose the commanders' lies.
Turkey's president says that the effects of the quake must teach Turkey that shoddy construction is in effect murder.
China said it would increase the censorship of microblogging, since Chinese people have been clever about using it to talk about opposition to the government.
Women protested in Yemen, calling on their tribes to protect them from "the thugs".
I spoke too soon — not all the Bush forces will leave Iraq. The official troops will leave, but 5000 mercenaries will remain.
Wall Street will be proud of the Oakland police and mayor, for arresting everyone in the protest camp, then attacking later protests with tear gas.
The article lists the absurd excuses that they made up for their political intervention.
The UN (working for the US) brought cholera to Haiti. But the reason cholera has been able to spread there so much is that the US blocked Aristide's plans to provide clean water.
Scott Olsen, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, suffered a skull fracture as the police attacked the Occupy Oakland camp.
In my first posting about Steve Jobs, I misquoted Mayor Washington's words. According to this radio program, his exact words were:
When he says that he would hope that I would have all the good qualities of past mayors, there are no good qualities of past mayors to be had. None. None. None. None.
I did not mourn at the bier of the late mayor. I regret anyone dying. I have no regrets about him leaving.
I remembered two sentences ("I regret...leaving.") of what Washington said, but got the words wrong. The error did not alter the meaning, but accuracy requires this correction.
Overall, Washington's statement was harsher than mine. He criticized Mayor Daley as a person; I criticized Jobs' public activity. My feelings about Jobs as a person are not strong, since I barely knew him. The important thing about Jobs is what he directed Apple to do to those who are still living: to make general-purpose computers with digital handcuffs more controlling and unjust than ever before. He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is entirely forbidden. He even tried to make it illegal to install software not approved by Apple.
Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of making their controlling nature seem acceptable.
Jobs' death inspired a flood of articles lauding him for these very devices. That further increases their potential for harm, which is why now more than ever we must focus attention on it. We must not let secondary considerations about Apple or Jobs distract us from this threat until we have thwarted it.
Jobs also made it a personal crusade to attack
Android with software patents. In practice, Android is not entirely free
software, but it is a big step closer compared with the iPhone.
If Apple's guns hit Android, they could wipe out all possibility of
free software portable devices that are attractive to use. Jobs'
final legacy may be the patent
disaster we have warned about for 20 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Biotech companies are trying to get approval for GMOs in Europe by pretending this will help feed Africa.
You can see this is bullshit because they are talking about selling the crops to Europe — not eating them. It won't be poor hungry Africans that grow these GMO crops, but foreign-owned plantations being created now by chasing them off their land.
If poor Africans do try growing GMOs, they will need loans, and the result will be that they go broke and lose their land, as thousands of Indian farmers have done.
US citizens: tell the FCC not to give
a handout to the big phone
companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rebuke NPR for its one-sided
crackdown on political
opinions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It's about time Not Progressive Radio got some grief for pretending to be Liberal while really being right-wing.
Everyone: call on the Smithsonian to withdraw copyright claim on public domain images.
Syria's hospitals have become torture centers.
Police in the US asked Google to delete videos showing police brutality.
It must be real brutality or the police would not have cared.
UK police ordered 135 videos deleted in the first half of 2011.
I wonder what the "threat to national security" is. Does it reveal something about undercover police spies? If you know anything — if the cops deleted your video — please write to me.
I also wonder what law gives the police in the UK the power to carry out such censorship.
Right-wing prejudice calls protesters lazy if they don't stay at the protest full time. And also if they do.
Iraqis have given the US a clear message: Bush forces go home!
Ironically, this means that Bush succeeded in establishing a form of democracy in Iraq. Who'd 'a thunk it? Maybe with the Bush forces out Iraq can settle down.
Meanwhile, the US program to train Iraqi police seems to be a total boondoggle.
Everyone: support
American Crystal Sugar workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the bills that would make
new federal regulations effectively impossible.
Also sign the
petition in this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to oppose the Internet Blacklist bill, aka "PROTECT IP Act". Also send mail to your congresscritter through this page.
The concept of "intellectual property" distorts the US constition's idea of the purpose of copyright law. Any bill that uses that term is almost sure to be misguided and harmful, and the "PROTECT IP" bill is totally nasty.As your constituent I expect you to oppose this bill.
US citizens: sign this petition to cut fossil fuel subsidies and tax short-term speculation.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support extending
unemployment benefits.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on China to treat
Tibet with respect.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Javan rhino is one step closer to extinction — the population in Vietnam is gone, and only 50 remain in Java.
A "moderate Islamist" party seems to have won the election in Tunisia.
As Iraq shows, Islamist government can lead to a tyranny no better than what Tunisia recently escaped from. I hope in Tunisia's case that this party respects democracy and the rights of non-Muslims.
The Vatican calls for weakening the power of the banksters.
Uri Avnery: If all of Israel is drunk with emotion because one boy has been returned to his family, what about [doing the same to] 4000 families on the other side?
The UK sent Sami al-Saadi's whole family with him to Libya to be imprisoned separately by Gaddafi.
A US company made the software that Syria uses for censorship and surveillance of the Internet.
UK undercover police used long-term sexual relationships as cover for spying on political dissidents.
Demonstrable voter fraud in the US is rarer than being struck by lightning.
Nonetheless, Republicans cite this non-problem as an excuse for measures designed to stop a few percent of Democrats from voting.
Here's how it
looks
in practical effects.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than ever, with temperatures last year at a record high.
You have to think for a while to realize that "a 5-decade high" means an historic high (since the records only go back 5 decades).
If China recognizes the danger it is in, it may be more inclined to take action to prevent global heating.
The "green revolution" bought humanity a 40-year breathing space in which to stabilize its population. It has failed to use the chance. Our population is increasing and Earth's ability to support it is dwindling.
The ACLU has sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement for armed raids on people's homes without warrants, and arresting people on no grounds.
Did the thugs that beat up Peter Watts work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement? I think so.
The Deification of Steve Jobs is Apple's Greatest Marketing Triumph to Date.
The article is mistaken at the end, where it says that Jobs chose not to change the world. Apple's app store, which restricts even the user's choice of programs to install, is a substantial change for the worse.
Tens of thousands, perhaps 100,000, protested in Madrid against cuts in education.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Mayor of Melbourne sent police to attack protesters and remove their camp.
It is surely inconvenient to have protests going on, but it is shallow-minded to give that priority over the important issues of the protest.
The mayor's criticism of the protesters is invalid. If protesters had agreed to leave, it must be because he had threatened them. He did wrong in threatening them, and gains no moral legitimacy from whatever "agreement" he thus extracted.
There were protests across the UK against cuts in welfare for disabled people.
The UK is considering a two-level rule for libel accusations against web sites, which distinguishes between anonymous postings and postings with the author's name.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This would be an improvement compared with the UK's strict current libel rules. However, distinguishing between identified and anonymous comments might be a bad precedent.
Another concern is whether sites would need to verify the names that people give.
Massive protests in Greece turned violent as the government voted to cancel all collective bargaining agreements with workers,
Cancelling contracts is one of the consequences of bankruptcy. In effect, the Greek government is going bankrupt towards the workers and the people, but not towards the banksters. That's the reverse of the priorities it ought to have.
And this is not the end. The banksters will continue to make things worse in Greece until it eventually refuses to go along.
The people with helmets and gas masks, who began by attacking the peaceful union protest — were they protesters, or were they sent by the police? I don't know, but if they were real protesters, why would the attack other protesters?
Why the Food Movement Should Occupy Wall Street.
West Papuan independence campaigners held a meeting at which they declared independence.
Indonesian soldiers fired at the meeting and then arrested some of the participants.
Indonesia took over West Papua by force when the Dutch pulled out in the 1960s, and has ruled the area as a colonial power.
Canada seems to have won UK support for the use of its tar sands oil, against EU efforts to prevent catastrophe.
That point is at the end of the article.
The UK government is concealing the source of Werrity's funds.
Note how the Conservative Party is trying to separate itself from the behavior of its leader, Prime Minister Cameron.
The opposition is not letting the issue fade away.
The US military pays a hundred million a year to companies guilty of frauds against the US military. And that's just fraud that has been proved or admitted.
This is not likely to reduce fraud.
Nine Tibetans have set themselves on fire this year to protest Chinese oppression.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands protested in rural Italy against construction of a high-speed train line to France.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think that this train line is a very good thing. It can reduce damage to the environment, if it replaces car and air travel. So perhaps the opposition is just NIMBY.
On the other hand, there might be a real problem with specifics, such as the route. Governments often make such decisions with hardly an effort to study the alternatives.
The Libyan government forces now admit that Gaddafi was murdered shortly after he was captured.
They cite the probable US murder of Osama bin Laden as a precedent.
Bahrain is now holding civilian trials for medics accused of treating wounded protesters.
While this avoids the injustice of military trials, civilian trials in Bahrain may not be very fair either. Anyway, there is a basic injustice in the idea that treating a wounded person is a crime.
Another collapse at ancient Pompeii demonstrates that Berlusconi has done nothing to improve maintenance there.
Pompeii is the tip of the iceberg. Italy is full of old buildings that are falling into ruin because not enough is done to protect them.
Karzai's amazing declaration: if the US gets into war with Pakistan, he would side with Pakistan.
It is a strange way of declaring his independance, but it will probably work, at least in the short run — the US will go on keeping him in power anyway.
Bolivian President Morales has cancelled the planned highway and says he will permanently protect the reserve where it would have run.
The EU is investigating the possibility that a big pharma company paid to delay the introduction of a generic drug.
California has put a cap-and-trade CO2 emission system into effect.
The European Union's carbon-trading system has been subject to tremendous cheating, and appears to have achieved very little reduction in emissions. I fear it will be the same for California, but if they can avoid that and achieve a reduction, that will be good.
NPR had radio host Lisa Simeone fired from the show Soundprint because she was participating in the mass protests.
Perhaps this is what the new president of NPR means by "depoliticizing" the organization.
The US government plans to ask unemployed people to use Facebook.
Facebook is bad, of course. I've read that the main jobs sites in the US abuse personal data too. However, I have no reference to offer.
Even nonsense is considered news if it is from the Tea Party.
The comparison with the Progressive Budget demonstrates the right-wing bias of the mainstream media.
Sign the "Free Bieber" petition, against the bill that would impose a 5-year prison term for streaming any material without permission.
US citizens: tell the EPA to block the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UN has advanced a treaty to ban the export of toxic waste, which the rich countries often dump in poor countries.
However, the US, which rejects the treaty, will continue the stream of poison.
US citizens: sign this petition to extend unemployment insurance benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Since the Citizens United decision, millionaires have systematically begun buying elections.
North Carolina's state government has been totally wrapped up.
As demographers debate whether the human population in 2100 will be 10 billion or 15 billion, others warn that 7 billion are already loading the Earth beyond what it can sustain.
Those who predict a crisis of population decrease more than a hundred years from now are assuming that medicine will not, even in 100 or 200 years, greatly extend the average human life span. I think that is a rather unlikely assumption. I cannot assert life-extension is certain, but they are the ones assuming that the absence of life-extension is certain.
They want us to ignore urgently needed population limitation measures based on that absurd sense of certainty.
The FBI wants a new, secure internet for power plants and banks to use.
It might be a good idea to use this for power plants, but if you let the banks on, you can hardly trust its security.
First State Super bank was told by a client that its security was incompetent, and could be breached in 30 seconds. The bank sent the police after him.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
5 behemoth banks hold the US political system hostage.
Trying to block "adult" material (please don't call it "content") from children is ineffective, and harmful to them.
It is also a fundamental injustice to adults when applied in public access locations such as libraries.
Republicans are trying to fabricate accusations of conspiracy against Occupy Wall Street, and Democrats are trying to co-opt it.
I take exception with the article's identification of centrists such as Obama and the DCCC with "the left". MoveOn is really somewhat on the left.
The NYPD's serial pepper spray officer was punished with a fine of 10 days of vacation time.
That's a slap on the wrist. What punishment would you get if you had pepper sprayed him?
One graph summarizes how candidate Cain's tax plan would increase taxes for most people and cut them for the wealthy.
The US policies to support renewable energy are also, through their details, supporting special business interests or the affluent.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I see this as part of the general capture of our democracy by business interests and the affluent.
There are conflicting stories about how Gaddafi was killed.
They disagree even about whether he was shot in the head. This lends plausibility to the idea that he was murdered. The fact that his general Jabr was also killed after being captured gives further support to the idea.
Those who rose up against him had good reasons to fight him, and perhaps even hate him. But they should not have killed him when he was a prisoner.
Republicans claim to be "libertarians" while fighting to eliminate some of our freedoms.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US residents: tell Verizon you won't stand for ISPs that release your personal data to other companies.
Even if Verizon eliminates this recently added abuse, it won't make things OK. It practices punishment-by-disconnection, and it saves data about who its customers talk with, which enables the FBI to collect it all.
Still, it is important to push back when they try to make things even worse. So I signed.
Two "progressive" US congresscritters told Bahrain's main opposition party, in effect, that they support the oppressive government and will continue to do so.
A dangerous law in Louisiana bans selling second-hand goods for cash.
Arab dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen got their weapons from countries including the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US support for the Afghan military and police is illegal because of its systematic human rights violations, but the US government has ignored this so far.
If only we could make US government support for the Pentagon and the CIA obey the same rules, the US would greatly improve its human rights record.
Egypt's military rulers say they will keep control until the planned transition process is finished, which could mean more than another year. The US, which only reluctantly gave support to Egypt's democracy movement, supports this.
How the Austerity Class Rules Washington.
Its domination of the media plays a crucial role, and that is probably due to business ties between the media corporations and the billionaire vultures who profit from everyone else's suffering.
Student activists have occupied the administration at Michigan State University, to pressure it to close its large coal-fired power plant.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Striking miners in Peru started a hunger strike to pressure the state to intervene on their side. It has already done so to a certain extent.
The Libyan government says Gaddafi was killed in a crossfire after surrendering.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It isn't obviously false, but may not be true.
Bangkok faces an unstoppable flood. Global heating might play a role in this. If so, there will be worse floods in the coming decades.
How the UK government plans to "investigate" the Fox/Werrity scandal and not see what's really going on.
US citizens: support protection
for FDA whistleblowers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the FDA you want
GMO foods to be labeled.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to call for an
investigation
of
Clarence Thomas' ethics violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Syrian protesters say the government is
prosecuting doctors that
treat
protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Venezuela's opposition television station has been fined heavily for its coverage of a long uprising in a prison.
Although Globovision is the only national opposition television station, there are many opposition newspapers. However, this does not justify censorship of Globovision.
A leading opposition politician has been barred from holding public office administratively, without being sentenced or even charged.
Victims of Bush's torture will prosecute him in Canada thanks to his visit there.
The New York City police work hand in hand with the banksters to do surveillance of everyone in lower Manhattan.
The US Senate is considering a law that could have put Justin
Bieber in jail.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Alas, it would be too late to touch him. But it could get your children.
The fact that global heating has occurred, 1 degree C in the recent past, has been confirmed by another line of research.
Saudi Arabia has arrested the makers of a
video that criticized
poverty there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Brazilian judge ruled against a dam project that was designed without consulting the indigenous people that it would harm.
Amazon's browser offers faster browsing, at the price of
telling
Amazon
all about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I think it is foolish to trust companies' "privacy assurances", since it is hard to tell what they really do. Besides, under the U SAP AT RIOT Act, the FBI could collect the all the data every week. If all the data is deleted after two weeks, the FBI will get every last bit.
Everyone: rally Oct 29 to support the "robin hood"
tax on financial
transactions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating will force millions to migrate from areas of shortage into areas where they face disaster.
The GMOs companies offered famous people opportunities to give prestigious speeches and interviews, and to put their names on other people's writings, if they would promote GMOs.
It would be interesting to investigate which events they offered to give these people speaking slots in, because they must represent other corrupt ties.
Ron Paul wants to abolish the government departments
that aim to help
and protect people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A French court ordered ISPs to block access to a web site that shows incidents of police brutality.
I got further explanation that the specific reason is that the site also publishes the addresses of the culprits.
The Fox/Werrity corruption scandal seems to involve the center of the Tory party.
What isn't known is what these donors were told they were paying for.
A radar system is being developed that can see through concrete walls.
Under the anti-human-rights climate that gave us the "Patriot Act", I am concerned that police will be too ready use this to look into people's homes. We need a cheap system to put into our walls and windows to block such spying.
The UK's use of long-term police spies and disruptor in peaceful political activist groups has become a tremendous scandal after it was exposed that one of them lied on the witness stand about his real name.
The practice, overall, is an attack on democracy, but I don't find that one particular point bothersome. If they had found a way to avoid the need to put this spy on the stand, the harm would have been just as great.
The Basque terrorist group ETA has renounced violence.
I think that the question of whether the Basque country remains part of Spain or not is, in general, less important politically than whether it remains part of the European Union and the World Trade Organization.
The EU Parliament considered a proposal to require a censorship
"black box" on every computer.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This has been discussed in science fiction, but I have not heard of its being seriously proposed before.
The excuse is, of course, "child" pornography. It is the perfect excuse for tyranny, since an irrational fear of it has already been spread, and politicians fear to question any measure proposed to attack it.
Naomi Wolf relates how she was arrested for resisting the unjust and often arbitrary restrictions that New York City (like much of the US) has imposed to undermine the freedom of assembly.
A UK undercover police infiltrator may have spied on his fellow protesters' conversations with the lawyer representing them all.
The UK government plans secret hearings so that people like Binyam Mohamed cannot get an admission they were tortured.
Of course, the motive for this plan is to bow to the US government, whose evil deeds this plan would help to cover up.
Iran says that the supposed plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was funded by the Mujahideen-e Khalq,
the possibly terrorist opposition group that is seeking to get off the US government "terrorist" list.
I would not trust the Iranian government for this claim, any more than I would trust the US government for the claim that Iran's forces were behind it.
The accusation against the MEK has one point in its favor: that organization would have gained from the results of such an attack, if it were attributed instead to Iran. But that is not proof.
High-tech military surveillance equipment will be used by police against Americans.
Senator DeMint wants to ban use of the Internet for women to discuss abortion with their doctors.
It is unfortunate that NARAL's president spoke of Skype as if it were acceptable. If DeMint wanted to require its replacement with free software, I'd cheer.
ALEC, the right-wing legislative machine, wants to abolish paid sick days.
Illegal immigrants in the US, when detained, are subject to abuses that go as far as rape.
India must repeal the law that allows the army to arrest, imprison and kill civilians.
Gov. Perry's men in Texas are trying to change a scientific report to avoid mention of the expected effects of climate change.
Both houses of Congress want to require holding civilians in military prisons, and one wants to require military kangaroo courts too.
The State Department will "consider" Bahrain's investigation of its own human rights abuses before the planned arms sale.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
The State Department surely knows all about these abuses. In effect, it is saying it will take account of those abuses Bahrain's government is willing to acknowledge.
More pressure is called for.
PayPal froze $45,000 of community donations to the Diaspora project and refused to say why.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Later: after a lot of public pressure, PayPal said it would unfreeze the account. I have seen no details yet.
The German trojan surveillance program can collect data from 15 different applications.
I don't know about all of them, but I'd expect most of them are proprietary. This means either the interception capability was developed using reverse engineering or it was done with the cooperation of those companies.
10,000 protested in Kuwaiti to dismiss the corrupt prime minister.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US has objected to Chinese Internet filtering as an obstacle to trade. But only when it affects business profits.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It would be an ironic benefit if the WTO someday gets China to reduce its censorship, but it won't really be much to the WTO's credit. The US could achieve just as much simply by putting its remaining clout with China firmly behind human rights. And this could not outweigh the harm that the WTO has done.
A French company faces a legal investigation for selling Internet surveillance systems to Gaddafi's regime. These were used to find dissidents and torture them.
It appears that Sarkozy himself approved the sale.
The US and Europe had a cozy relationship with Gaddafi for most of the last decade. Once Gaddafi was willing to cease his former hostilities, there was a good case for making peace with him, despite his being a tyrant. But there are limits to how far a relationship with a tyrant should go, even if he is not also an enemy. This relationship went so far as to include torture; for instance, various countries sent prisoners to Libya for torture.
That is unacceptable.
People who criticize the NATO intervention in Libya should recognize that letting Gaddafi crush the rebellion would have resulted in more of the same cozy relationship. Thanks to the intervention, Libyans have a chance to set up a better government. Of course, it might go wrong and lead to a new tyranny — there is always that chance. There is no guaranteed recipe for good government, just as there is no guaranteed recipe for pulling down a tyranny. To wait for an opportunity that can't go wrong would be to wait forever.
For the same reason, people must try every plausible chance to destroy the empire of the megacorporations. Nobody knows a guaranteed method, so we must try whatever might work, until something does.
Gaddafi's regime was not the only one that does unjust surveillance. The US does it too.
The company's PR head is related to the French defense minister. This is not proof of corruption, but the idea that a desire for corrupt influence wasn't part of the reason for hiring that person strains credulity. Such a close relationship between a company and an official who has influence over the company's business ought to call for an automatic investigation.
Canada's plan B for exporting tar sands oil, a pipeline to British Colombia, faces such strong opposition that it probably can't be built.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, if the US blocks the Keystone XL pipeline, that oil won't be able to ensure a planet-wide catastrophe.
Congress is considering bringing back mandatory minimum sentences, overturning a Supreme Court decision against them.
Most of Congress is not interested in overturning the Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to secretly buy unlimited influence in elections.
Colombian union leaders fear that the ratification of the destructive treaty with the US may cause the world to forget about the continuing murders of unionists there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If the AFL-CIO campaigns only not to implement the treaty for a while, that would be weak. The campaign goal should be to cancel this treaty, along with all the other antidemocratic "free trade" treaties.
Iran has sentenced two movie directors to prison, and in addition banned one of them from talking with journalists or leaving the country for 20 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This reminds me of Israel's sentence against Mordecai Vanunu.
Nosferatu, the undead movie almost killed
by copyright law demonstrates the harm done by the Berne
Convention.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Federal Reserve forced to report which banks benefit from loan programs.
Swedish journalists chain themselves to a prison to protest against imprisonment of their colleagues in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The UN special rapporteur on torture has called for an end to solitary confinement except as a short term measure to protect a prisoner.
Uganda has arrested protest leaders, saying that protesting to bring down the government constitutes "treason".
How congresscritters voted on the let-women-die act, also known as Stupak on Steroids.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US killed Anwar al-Awlaki's son, who had run away from home to look for his father.
If you look at the Facebook page, use Tor from a browser with no cookies.
For the first time, a vaccine against malaria shows substantial effectiveness.
But it isn't clear yet whether the effect is enough, in practice, to make it useful.
Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit and around 500 Palestinian prisoners have been freed in a swap deal.
This has the potential to facilitate peace negotiations, but their success will depend on Israel's willingness to make necessary concessions.
According to Hamas, relaxing the siege of Gaza is part of the deal.
The State Department demonstrated the rigged nature of its decision about the Keystone XL pipeline by hiring an oil company subcontractor to run the hearings about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The contractor tried to rig the proceedings subtly so that they would appear honest.
The pipeline developers are spreading false claims that it will create many thousands of jobs. This article shows that the construction jobs will be much fewer; and in the long term, it will make only around 50 jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, even if it made thousands of jobs permanently, that could compensate for the catastrophe that would result from burning the tar sands oil.
Israel plans a new "settlement" at the edge of Jerusalem, which would create an added obstacle to possible peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
In economic terms, what justifies the Wall Street protesters' anger.
I think, however, that the reduction of democracy into a form of corporate control is a deeper reason to protest.
Protesters in San Francisco rebuilt their camp after a police raid.
The raid had an excuse, of course, but its apparent purpose was to suppress democracy.
Maikel Nabil Sanad would rather starve to death than be tried again by the Egyptian military for "insulting the army".
He refuses to apologize for his criticism, which he considers justified.
For the most part, I do not mourn the death of people I did not have a relationship with. The exceptions are heroes such as Sanad. I honor him now, and I will honor him if he dies.
Naomi Wolf was arrested at a protest against New York Governer Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo takes the side of the wealthy against tax increases.
The OAS's intervention in Haiti's presidential election was such as to make it more dishonest, not less so.
However, it was wrong to treat the election as legitimate at all, since the exclusion of the Fanmi Lavalas party made it fundamentally invalid.
US-imposed Haitian president Martelly wants to reverse Aristide's most durable achievement: abolishing the army.
After weeks of bloody fighting, Sirte is mostly destroyed.
There was probably no better way to take the city, but was it really necessary to take the city in a hurry? Sirte was encircled, so Gaddafi's forces could not get out and do harm elsewhere. Eventually they would have surrendered.
Law student Max Schrems has had the gumption and the knowledge to put Facebook in legal trouble for many violations of EU privacy and data protection law.
I fear Facebook will escape by playing its trump card: the idea that it is so important that states do not dare punish it in any effectively dissuasive way.
The campaign to repeal prohibition of marijuana in California.
The UN voted to reduce the size of its occupation force in Haiti, which was increased after the quake, but Haitians demand its complete removal.
The UK's National Health Service is suffering greatly under right-wing budget cuts.
It is still better than what 50 million Americans get for health care.
A UK state inquiry into the one-sided extradition treaty with the US concluded it's fine and dandy, and only wishes that the European Court of Justice would get out of the way.
Protesters plan to occupy a square next to the London Stock Exchange.
I support this protest, along with the many similar ones. However, I criticize the hyperbole of saying they will "occupy the London Stock Exchange" when the plan is to occupy a square. Let's not exaggerate.
This article demonstrates a general injustice: giving the public diminished rights in some streets and squares which are designated as "private". If it looks like a street, and the public are normally free to walk on it, they should enjoy the same rights there as in any other public street.
Syrian protests are drifting towards an armed revolution.
The city of Homs has kicked out Assad's forces, and other cities' protesters call on soldiers to defect.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Arbitration Fairness Act. Also send email through this page.
Facebook says that a user can't have Facebook's data about him, because it's a trade secret.
In the US: call on retailers not to stock tissue products from APP, which cuts down rainforests to make tree farms.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Canadians used a "trojan horse" to protest a treacherous trade treaty that their government is negotiating with the EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I have no inside information about the treaty's provisions, but the EU wouldn't consider a trade treaty that wasn't treacherous to democracy.
I would not trust the study's claims about how much economic growth such a treaty might result in, but it might cause some growth. However, it will also ensure such growth mainly benefits the wealthy, making it unhelpful to the rest of society. It is also likely to endanger the environment, public health, and the rights of all Internet users.
Thousands rallied for freedom of expression in Tunis
in response to another protest by Islamists in favor of religious censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A US drone fired at US troops, killing two of them.
In the fog of war, avoiding such mistakes is impossible. Every army tries, more or less, and the US armed forces put some care and study into the effort. But no army can entirely succeed at avoiding this.
What conclusion follows?
There are a lot more civilians in Afghanistan than there are US troops. And the civilians look a lot more like the Taliban than US troops do. We don't have enough data to know how often US troops will get mistaken for Taliban with the current (recently increased) rate of drone attacks, but suppose it is once every two years.
How often do civilians get mistaken for Taliban? Every week? Every day?
Those too are errors — frequent errors. However, they are much easier to cover up, so the US claims they don't happen. The US should own up to them.
Plankton near Fukushima show high levels of radioactive cesium.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
People don't eat this plankton, but fish do, and those fish might concentrate the cesium resulting in higher levels.
Police in Gainesville, Florida, arrested Ellas Anthony McDaniel, who is Bo Diddley's son, in Bo Diddley park, as he stood on a stone which carries the slogan, "freedom of speech".
I don't like the name "occupation" for these protests, because it is confusing. A government of occupation is what we already have, and what these protests are against.
Senator Sanders endorses the Wall Street protests.
Wendell Potter suggests Washington protesters direct their protests at the health insurance industry.
Gov. Perry wants spending cuts to balance the budget, but his men are prepared to give a gratuitous tax rebate to oil companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If Obama is not reelected, we face a new Bush era. And if he is reelected, the same is true.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Before Obama was elected, he told progressives, "Make me do it." Now that he is in office, his message is to get someone else to do it.
EPA whistle-blower Weston Wilson warns that the petroleum companies are trying to force the EPA to cover up the danger of fracking — as it has done twice before with those companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
How Rumsfeld created the war-logistics industry, which now has a business incentive to continue any and all wars.
Ethiopia's tyrannical government is handing out minority people's land to global agribusiness, and arresting the people when they object.
The UK government wants stronger police powers to stop riots. So far, no sign of a plan to stop corporate looting.
Nobelist Diamond: The U.S. has an unemployment crisis and a debt problem, but many people in Washington are behaving as if we have a debt crisis and an unemployment problem,
The officials that order these priorities wrong are not making a sincere mistake. They are engaging in class warfare.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
in favor of a financial transactions tax.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Also phone your congresscritter — a phone call carries more weight.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The UK government says it refuses to investigate the Atlantic Bridge "charity" which was central to the Fox/Werrity corruption scandal. What's more, it will change the rules to help hide any other similar cases of corruption.
Turning Occupation into Lasting Change.
Former minister Fox's sneaky associations contradict the Tory Party's claims to wish to protect the environment.
Of course, so do their policies.
The opposition wants the investigation into corrupt financial links to continue.
US citizens:
tell the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
to
stop supporting candidates that vote in favor of the Republican War on
Women.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook has been sued for tracking users without their permission.
Bank of America refused to let two customers close their accounts because they participated earlier in a protest.
A similar event occurred at a Citibank office, complete with the false accusations you'd expect the banksters to make.
I suggest that the the lawyers associated with the movement sue these banks demanding closure of the accounts.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is raising money based on the Republican War on Women — and planning to spend it in support of Democratic congresscritters who took the Republican side.
The right wing of the Republican Party achieved so much power (with which it is now waging war against non-rich Americans and especially women) by actively opposing moderate candidates. Meanwhile, progressives have let them be sucked into supporting right-wing Democrats such as Obama. It is high time for that to change.
The last time the US had an economic crisis, the Republicans wanted to let it go on, but the Democratic Party offered to create jobs. The Democratic Party was voted in and governed for 20 years. But this option is not available today — today's Democratic Party is only marginally less bad than today's Republican Party.
CREDO Action's criticism of this is the first step of trying to change that. What use is having some Democrats in office if they act like Republicans?
Protesters in London, in the area where the banksters work, have been invited to camp in the yard of a cathedral.
Gays and transsexuals in Indonesia face persecution, as a harsh and bigoted form of Islam gains influence there.
Bradley Manning was not the only US prisoner held in conditions that amount to brainwashing. There may be 20,000 more. One of them is Tarek Mehanna.
The use of brainwashing on people accused but not tried raises the concern that its purpose is to extract false confessions, such as many of the US POWs held by North Korea gave after they were brainwashed.
Meanwhile, to accuse someone of terrorism for translating a book is a clear violation of freedom of the press. People have a right to say that terrorism is good, and we must respect that right even if we disagree with their views.
The Pentagon says that it won't be able to pass an audit in 2017.
Large amounts of payments cannot be accounted for
because the
documents
to justify them cannot be found.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Part of the cause of the problem is that the Pentagon's budget is large and growing. Big budget cuts will help correct that problem.
12 Most Absurd Laws Used to Stifle the Occupy Wall St. Movement
When protesters become numerous enough, they can massively defy these laws, and pack the jails until the police give up arresting them.
San Diego plans to build a water desalination plant in Mexico
to evade
California's environmental protections.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US will fully remove the Bush forces from Iraq.
Americans can thank those in the Iraqi government, such as the party of Muqtada al-Sadr, that refused to give the Bush forces the continued immunity from prosecution that Obama demanded.
Chinese are using local protests and even riots to demand correction of injustices, and sometimes it works.
The article says that "calls for pro-democracy demonstrations...received little public support", and appears to assert that Chinese people wouldn't support them, but we don't know this. Government censorship prevent a movement from getting started.
The US government is almost as callous towards the 99% as the Chinese government is. And Americans are learning to follow the example of the Chinese.
Protesters in Brooklyn
tried
to shut down a foreclusure auction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hooray!
Republicans in Congress
seek
to block EPA regulation of toxic coal
ash — a change which could kill many Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Every harmful thing that business asks for, it claims is to protect jobs. When you look closely, it is really a threat to close some plant. "If you won't let us pollute and endanger your life, we will shut the plant." Ok, shut it, should be our response.
But often that threat is a bluff. When it comes time to decide, they might clean up the plant rather than shut it. However, it costs them nothing to say, now, "We will shut the plant." Who knows, we might yield to the bluff.
When it comes to handling toxic coal ash, the threat is certainly a bluff. The companies that burn the coal will pay whatever it costs to dispose of the ash according to regulations. The only question is whether to make them dispose of it in a way that is safe for the public.
Obama's man was directly involved in negotiations to make major US ISPs impose censorship on their users.
Oct 15 protests spread around the world, with 10,000 in New York.
Gaddafi's cult of personality seems to be the reason why some of his soldiers continue fighting in Sirte. However, it seems that they also killed civilians who wouldn't join them.
As tens of thousands protested in Rome, some made violent attacks against banks, stores, cars, and police.
I don't approve of this violence, part of which seems to have been directed randomly. It was a self-defeating tactic for the protest movement, and it was also simply wrong.
The perpetrators may have done this to damage the protest. During the protests in Genoa in 2001, Italian police deployed armed provocateurs disguised as "anarchists", apparently to create an excuse to attack the real (nonviolent) protesters. Maybe they did this again in Rome.
But even if these were real dissidents rather than police stooges, we should not let their comparatively small wrong distract us from the giant wrongs done by the corporatocracy.
US citizens: call on Obama to veto a bill that
would make Guantanamo
permanent.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Boston Mayor Menino
to respect the right to
protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to Congress to
end the War on
Women.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to Obama
to free Bradley
Manning.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government's austerity program has caused unemployment, so few jobs are available. To distract attention from this, it proposed a new plan to help workers move if they find a job distant from home.
I can't tell whether the plan is good or bad, but it certainly fails to address the problem.
As 100,000 protested in Yemen for the ouster of President Saleh, his army shot 12 protesters dead.
Dubya's tax cuts, which the Republican Party demands to preserve, cost the US treasury $11 million per hour — $72 billion a year.
That is a large piece of the US deficit.
The US has arrested an Iranian for trying to pay to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, but some are skeptical about the accusation.
If Arbabsiar is guilty of trying to arrange the assassination, whether he was working for the Iranian goverment is another question. I would not put this past the Iranian goverment, but it is a valid point that it would have had little to gain from doing this. Is there proof that Arbabsiar had state support, other than his say-so? Maybe it was a false boast, or wishful thinking.
There was recently a factional conflict inside the Iranian state, and maybe there still is. Maybe some faction in the Iranian state tried to use Arbabsiar to make trouble for some other faction.
Maybe Arbabsiar set out to harm the Iranian state by getting it into a war, and having failed that, hopes to embarrass it. Or maybe someone with this goal was using Arbabsiar. The Iranian state richly deserves to be harmed, but not that way. The main effect of starting such a war would be to harm thousands or millions of people.
The Saudi monarchy is equally tyrannical, but assassinating its ambassadors won't make it better.
The Wall Street Journal paid companies a kickback to buy lots of copies so as to falsely increase circulation figures.
NATO has systematically exaggerated the effectiveness of its tactics against the Taliban — for instance, by calling lots of Taliban casualties "leaders"
Australia is on track to pass a tax on CO2 emissions.
Prime Minister Gillard is doing this even though it means the possible sacrifice of her political career. That is heroism.
If the tax is repealed, it won't achieve its goal. But it is better to try than to give up at the start. And perhaps it won't be repealed. Perhaps Australians will see they can live with it. Perhaps increased signs of global heating will show them it is necessary.
Ukraine's opposition leader was sentenced to prison after a questionable trial about a gas deal she signed with Russia.
The deal might have been bad, but as long as Ukraine does not repudiate the deal itself, it can hardly justify calling the deal criminal.
One paradoxical good result could flow from this trial: blocking the EU's "free trade" treaty, which I suspect would impose unjust laws to prevent and persecute sharing.
Witnesses blame Egyptian government forces for attacks against Egyptian Christians protesting violence against them.
If you get your email through a US commercial email service, the US government can collect information about it without ever showing you a search warrant.
The wealthiest countries have increased their subsidies for oil consumption.
A study finds that commercial web sites give visitors' personal data to large numbers of other sites.
My response to this is not to identify myself to web sites. I don't buy things over the Internet. In addition, my batch method of accessing web pages fetches the page I asked for, and not whatever else it points to.
Part of Alabama campaign against illegal immigrants is to cut off their water supply.
This persecutes citizens too, if they don't have a drivers' license. It effectively makes the license a mandatory identification card, which is inherently unjust.
People also fear that they will be picked up off the street and deported, leaving their children suddenly alone.
US citizens without drivers licenses could be deported too, if the police guess someplace to send them.
School buses in part of the US (I can't tell where) are checking students' fingerprints.
This is education for citizens of a tyranny.
The tram connecting Jerusalem with a settlement inside the West Bank is another tool used by Israel to make an independent Palestine impossible.
New York Night-Mayor Bloomberg tried to shut down the protest camp on the pretext of sanitation, but retreated in the fact of physical support from thousands of protesters.
The park's owner, Brookfield Properties, is a bankster company.
Was Zuccotti Park created by a private company, or was it a public park that was privatized?
Imprisoned Bahraini opposition leader Hassan Mesheima
faces
execution
through cancer.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
Exxon is trying to avoid paying for damage done by its big Alaska oil spill, damage that still persists, and the Department of "Justice" doesn't seem to care much.
The US deserves a president that would call for the most vigorous possible action against companies such as Exxon and BP, and who would support laws to hold them 100% liable for damage they do. Meaning not Obama!
The US will send 100 soldiers to help fight the Lord's Resistance Army.
This is long overdue.
The House of Representatives passed a law encouraging hospitals to let women die rather than perform abortions.
In typical hypocritical fashion, this is called the "Protect Life Act." In effect, it represents the Republican position that human life is sacred except after birth.
One member of Congress said this policy would have killed her.
There was a protest at the base where the US operates drones by remote control.
I am not against drone bombers per se; supposing there is a war, I don't think attacking enemy troops with drone bombers is worse than attacking them with artillery or manned bombers. What is disturbing about the US use of drones is that it uses them against people who are not clearly enemy troops, far from any battlefield. Attacking them with artillery or manned bombers would pose the same moral problem, but isn't often done, because it is not feasible.
The US Congress approved Obama's anti-democratic trade treaties.
This
list says how US senators and congresscritters voted.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Anyone that voted for these treaties is working to eliminate democracy piece by piece.
Canada should prosecute Bush for ordering torture.
Nasser bin Ghaith has been imprisoned in Abu Dhabi for "insulting the president".
He is boycotting the Bush-league trial that they have given him.
The article calls on the French Sorbonne university, which he is connected with, to condemn his imprisonment, which it has in cowardly fashion refused to do. When it does this, it should condemn French President Sarkozy for punishing French people for insulting him.
Ireland will investigate many aspects of how Facebook tracks its users.
Protests against corporatocracy are planned for 71 countries
on Oct 15.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
VeriSign withdrew its request for the power to censor several top level domains.
The ACLU sued to overturn a law requiring poor people to get drug tests when they apply for public assistance.
It should be illegal to demand drug tests of job applicants, too — even airline pilot applicants. The right thing to do is test them before every flight to verify they are not impaired in their level of awareness.
The independence of Southern Sudan
left
the South Kordofan region
under Sudanese repression.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
House Democrats presented a recommendation to the super committee: raise taxes.
This article does not say whether the recommendation accepts any cuts in areas outside the military. I would like to know.
Imprisoned Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad
has
been on hunger strike for 52 days.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Congressional Republicans passed a bill to block EPA regulations that would save 20,000 lives.
This is consistent with their general policy that human life is worth nothing after birth.
The UK's defense secretary Fox resigned due to evidence of a corrupt relationship with his friend Werrity.
Werrity posed as an official working for Fox, and seemed to be funded through "charities" that didn't do any visible charitable work.
Craig Murray says that the Mossad provided the money, and that the motive was to influence UK policy.
I speculate that Fox resigned so as to prevent an investigation that would have revealed more about the sources of funding.
Israeli intelligence routinely tortures prisoners, and even kills them occasionally, with total impunity.
Israeli "settlers" attacked Palestinian families who were harvesting their olive trees.
For once, Israeli soldiers acted to stop it: they took the bullies away and let the Palestinians harvest their trees.
For the first time, the Israeli government has arrested someone
for violence against Arabs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, these were Israeli Arabs. Violence (even arson) against Palestinians has never been punished.
Hamas is demanding high taxes in Gaza, provoking resistance from the
populace.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If not for Israel's siege, Hamas might lose power there.
The government of Israel is pushing hard to legitimize West Bank colonies built in violation of Israeli law, and even colonies built on private Palestinian land.
All these colonies are considered illegal by the world outside Israel.
Right-wing business flunkies
hope to stop the National Labor Relations
Board from protecting workers against business abuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Sandblasting jeans, done to make them look worn,
causes silicosis for
the workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Rich countries ought to ban the sale of sandblasted jeans, not just the sandblasting itself. But the WTO would probably call this a "barrier to trade". The WTO's purpose is to defend business profits against "protectionist" laws, such as laws to protect people's health and lives.
The WTO, and all "free trade" treaties that make it harder to do that, must be abolished.
Global heating has created Lake Imja in the Himalayas, which grows every year. Some day the water will send a disastrous flood downstream.
Irish are protesting to resist being made "the next Greece".
A large strike shut down transportation in France.
Israel and Hamas reached a prisoner-exchange deal.
If Hamas releases Gilad Shalit, he will be safe in Israel. The Palestinians that Israel releases may not be free for long: the Israeli army could rearrest them or kill them.
If it does not systematically do this, the deal may make it harder for Israel to say it is impossible to negotiate with Hamas.
US corn-for-ethanol is blamed for driving up world food prices.
The US must drop this policy, but that will only delay the problem. It will be difficult to grow enough food for the 9 billion people projected for 2050, and difficult even to find enough water for them, and meanwhile global heating will reduce production.
The shortage will make itself felt through prices that rise to the level where millions cannot afford food. The population may be limited at a smaller level by shortages — which means that having a baby will mean killing someone (very likely that baby, if the parents are poor; probably someone else, if the parents are not poor).
To avoid that horrible outcome, we need vigorous birth control programs, sufficient to keep the world's population short of the resource limit.
The European Union is planning another bank bailout.
It makes sense to use public money to keep banks from closing only if the state ensures that this does not represent a gift to the banksters. The state must require either shares, or repayment with market interest, in return for whatever it gives the banks.
Some sugar-free drinks and desserts contain acids that damage teeth.
The "rescuers" of Greece say they will keep it from immediate default in exchange for additional painful cuts — and they will come back for more cuts next year.
Greeks now plan to occupy government buildings. If they occupy Parliament quickly enough, they may prevent the current round of cuts from being passed, and force default now rather than later.
The longer it is postponed, the more cuts.
Paranoia about vaccines has become a substantial threat to health.
Europe is considering improvements in subsidies for farmers, such as to limit the amount of subsidy any farmer can receive. (Would this be a cap for the cap?)
The UK is right that there might be a danger that some farms would be "split up" among relatives without real change. But that is a problem to be solved, not a reason to give up.
An experiment shows that Reiki is merely a placebo.
A massage has more real effect.
Global heating will make concrete structures near the ocean fall apart much faster.
Peyman Aref was expelled from university, imprisoned for a year, then flogged, for "insulting" the president of Iran and talking with foreign reporters.
Neither of these activities should be a crime. All countries which have such laws, from Iran to France to Ecuador, must abolish them.
Automatic license plate recognition is being deployed in the US.
It is not systematic and ubiquitous, as in the UK, but if there are
enough recognizers the result could be the same.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo Accused Of Overcharging Military Veterans — with illegal hidden fees.
We need to break up large banks, that have so much influence that courts will look the other way when they commit foreclosure fraud , and eliminate mortgage-backed securities, so that the bank that made the loan retains the power to adjust it and give the home-owner more time.
Everyone: sign this petition against Virginia's
War on Women.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The
US executed Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial, or even a hearing.
Obama convinced courts to leave the issue in his hands
without question.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Obama regime's argument seems to be that al Qa'ida is an enemy army and al-Awlaki is effectively an officer in it, so killing him is a normal part of such a war.
That reason would be sufficient. What is questionable is to classify what al Qa'ida does as "war". That error led the US into responses that were self-defeating (as well as, in the case of Iraq, fundamentally unjust).
As for the fact that al-Awlaki was "hiding in a place where he could not be captured", lots of criminals do that. Is that a reason not to indict him and ask him to surrender for prosecution?
The G20 promised to eliminate global tax havens, but has done very little to reduce them.
Two more supposed grass-roots groups that AT&T has corrupted: Americans for Digital Equality and the Hispanic -Technology And Telecommunications Partnership.
This is in addition to GLAAD and the NAACP.
You can tell whether a group is run by sincere activists by their reaction to discovering such corruption. GLAAD's activists cleaned up the corruption and cleared the organization's name, but I never heard that they NAACP has done so.
Tell Amazon you object to the
China-style way it treats its US workers.
It is considerate of them to have an ambulance standing by for workers
that collapse, but that doesn't make it ok.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I replaced
it forces me to reconsider using Amazon for my online shopping.
with
I consider it a reason not to buy from Amazon.
since I refuse to buy from Amazon for other reasons anyway:
Greeks are again protesting the
constantly increasing austerity program,
demanding default instead of surrender.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
15 October 2011 (Paid To Fake News)
A right-wing billionaire is paying "journalists" to "mock and undermine" the Occupy Wall Street protests.
15 October 2011 (Official German Malware)
Several German states admitted using malware to spy on
people's computers unconstitutionally. The program can "plant
evidence" — I think that means, write files on the computer.
That suggests it amounts to a universal back door, like the one Microsoft
put in Windows.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
15 October 2011 (Profiteer Greed)
Bush gave business a temporary tax break on "foreign profits", which hurt the US treasury and did no good for the US economy. Now the same profiteers want it again.
15 October 2011 (Corporatocracy Case Study)
Corporatocracy in action; a case-study in government-business corruption.
15 October 2011 (Connecticut Apologizes)
Connecticut apologizes for Dubya.
Does anyone know if the apology sign is really there on the road?
15 October 2011 (UNICEF Condemns UK)
UNICEF condemned the UK for being too eager to imprison minors after the August riots.
However, the worst thing about the UK's conduct in the matter is that it pursues the small looters mercilessly, while winking at the big looters.
End looting in the UK — join UK Uncut.
15 October 2011 (Contractors Inefficient)
Increasing use of contractors in the US military is leading to less oversight and more vulnerability.
Although the supposed reason for this is to save money, it is probably more expensive.
15 October 2011 (CA Warrants Vetoed)
The governor of California vetoed a bill that would have required police to get a warrant before searching people's cell phones.
Apparently he did this as a political deal for the support of police in his election campaign. Shame, shame!
15 October 2011 (Urgent: Label GM Foods)
US citizens: sign this petition for labelling of genetically modified foods.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
15 October 2011 (UK Police Bully Man)
Police in the UK bullied a man for taking photos of his daughter in a shopping mall.
He has called for a boycott of the mall. That's a good response. However, he should know better than to post photos of his daughter on facebook.
Karzai's police and intelligence systematically torture their prisoners.
A right-wing agent provocateur admits leading the group that entered the Air and Space Museum, while most protesters remained outside following their original plan.
Should Labor Fight To Revive U.S. Manufacturing?
I disagree with the article on one point: it doesn't recognize the harm done by "free trade" treaties to all the countries that participate in them. These treaties systematically undermine democracy, so we must eliminate them to restore democracy. This does not imply "protectionism".
One need not be "protectionist" to wish for democracy in the US and Colombia, and therefore oppose the US=Colombia "free trade" treaty.
One need not be "protectionist" to support efforts to reduce smoking in the US and therefore call for elimination of the WTO.
Facebook tracks users that see 'like' buttons, even users who never visited facebook.com and never click on those buttons.
A grounded container ship is spreading oil on pristine New Zealand beaches.
Ships which contain enough oil to present a danger should not be allowed to travel within 20 miles of any land without positive control of their locations.
More doubts about the Arbabsiar plot. There is little evidence that the Iranian state was behind it, and it doesn't fit Iran's methods or interests.
Americans lean towards
favoring recognition of a Palestinian state.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the McGovern-Wyden resolution to block an arms sale to Bahrain.
Coca Cola Company is working together with the Koch brothers to impose unjust state laws.
There is already a worldwide boycott of Coca Cola Company.
If Iran had really tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, that would not be very different from what the US does.
Major UK ISPs will offer the option of blocking access to known porn sites.
In principle, I see no harm in this as an option. However, other articles warn that subscribers may be forced to prove their age to opt out of the blocking, and that means identifying yourself. That is an unjust requirement. In addition, public access sites might impose the same censorship.
Republicans want to make it a crime to plan, in the US, to use drugs lawfully in a foreign country.
Even professional advice about lawful activities could be prosecuted.
More on how much facebook tracks users.
US citizens: call on your senators to
say where they stand on medicare
and medicaid cuts.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters tried to enter the National Air and Space Museum to criticize its glorification of the military.
The residents of the Korean island of Jeju are using every peaceful method to restrict construction of a US/Korean naval base.
In Boston, rally in Boston Common at 1pm for peace and against social cuts.
Powerful resistance seems to be scuttling the Tories' plans to destroy the UK National Health Service.
NAFTA drove millions of Mexicans to migrate; Obama's free exploitation treaties would do likewise in other countries.
Everyone: call on the governor of Missouri to commute Reggie Clemons' death sentence; there was essentially no evidence and his trial was questionable.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your senators, don't pass a law to allow arbitrary detention of anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since Assad has crushed nonviolent protests in Syria by force, some in Syria are trying armed resistance.
I sympathize, but I don't see how they could possibly get anywhere.
1/3 of US veterans of the past decade think that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were "not worth fighting".
The conquest of Iraq was much worse than a misjudgment, but given the natural tendency of people who fought a war to resist the idea that it wasn't necessary and justified, it is remarkable that so many have overcome it.
Muslim fanatics in Egypt have attacked Christians and a church.
In February, the protest leaders and the Egyptian people clearly established a nonsectarian stand. They must reiterate this now.
The BBC says Iran is pressuring its Iranian employees in London by threatening their relatives in Iran.
This disgusting tactic was also used by the Bush forces in Iraq.
40,000 "drug rehabilitation patients" are forced to do hard labor in Vietnam, shelling cashews, with constant exposure to the toxic outer parts of the nut.
With 30 years of fighting, the Vietnamese replaced their overt French colonial rule with indirect colonization through a native satrap.
Boston police attacked and arrested 141 protesters for being in a park.
Bahrain has bowed to international pressure and granted a new trial to some (not all) the medical personnel imprisoned for treating wounded protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
The new trials will be civilian trials, but that doesn't guarantee they will be fair. In any case, the very idea of that it is a crime to give medical treatment to certain people is inherently evil.
Comparing the right-of-return issue for Palestinians with the comparable issue for Jews.
The proposed Italian law that would make Wikipedia impossible to run there is being used by Berlusconi to interfere with publishing evidence of corruption.
Alaskans condemn Obama's decision to allow undersea oil drilling there.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, support Donna Edwards' constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision.
You can also phone Rep. Edwards at 202-225-8699 and thank her.
This amendment would specifically allow laws to regulate political "speech" by corporations.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 1-800-718-1008 and insist on opposing the unfair trade treaties proposed with Korea, Panama, and Colombia. See http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=4956.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Each of these treaties is unfair to both countries involved, because it gives the advantage to corporations.
The US Congress blocked $200 million aid to the Palestinian Authority.
This can block humanitarian projects that the aid was meant for.
The Palestinian Authority has clearly decided not to bow to this pressure. It has already threatened to dissolve itself and deny Israel a buffer over its conduct of the occupation.
Cutting off its funds would push it towards carrying out that threat.
The Israeli education ministry arbitrarily ordered schools not to talk about riots in 2000 in which some Israeli Arabs were killed.
US citizens: sign this petition for an investigation of Justice Thomas' ethics violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to end the witch-hunt against Planned Parenthood.
How a few billionaires used the White House to profit by screwing poor sick Americans and poor countries.
And they want to do it again.
The latest austerity measures imposed on Greece have led to a general strike that shut down the entire government.
An Iranian actress has been sentenced to imprisonment plus flogging for appearing in a banned film.
Has the US considered developing drone aircraft that can drop leaflets?
Someone told me that the M129E1 could probably be carried by a drone.
Shell regularly paid the Nigerian army to crush protests against Shell.
United Steel Workers support Occupy Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
As we overload the oceans with CO2, not only will this kill much of the life in them, but the CO2 will start to come back out.
The full membership of UNESCO will vote on whether to admit Palestine as a member.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
Several countries signed the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement, which commits them to support media businesses against their citizens by banning devices that break digital handcuffs.
The other provisions that these companies have not got this time, they will come back for with another treaty.
Omar Khadr is being punished for shooting a US soldier in Afghanistan. Video footage suggests he was tortured in Guantanamo, and there is some evidence his confession was false.
Child soldiers are not supposed to be punished for war crimes, but supposed he had been older. It is not a crime for soldiers to shoot enemy soldiers — it is simply war. He should have been treated as a POW, not as a criminal.
I am not surprised that the government of Canada didn't care about the case. What's a mere Canadian citizen against the dictates of the US? What the Canadian government really cares about is selling tar sand oil and roasting our planet, because that's what business wants.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch rebuked the Obama regime for giving military aid to other regimes that use child soldiers.
The European Commission voted to designate Canadian tar sand oil as particularly dirty for its high production of CO2.
Burma's regime showed a small sign of willingness to hear the people's voice, by suspending the planned Myitsone dam project. But this does not mean the regime will allow dissent, or even that the dam won't be built.
Israeli police turned a blind eye to a pogrom carried out by right-wing rioters against Israeli and Palestinian protesters.
After the pogrom, the on-duty police informed the protesters that their protest had been arbitrarily banned.
I think the word "lynching" is not correct here, since it is normally limited to cases where a victim is murdered in cold blood. However, this does not invalidate the article's point.
One of the rioters has been identified as a police inspector.
Another pogrom burnt a mosque in Galilee.
This is part of a spreading threat of Jewish terrorism in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Naomi Klein points out that the Israeli elite profits greatly from the insecurity that results from not having peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Italian Wikipedia has taken its pages off line to warn Italians about a proposed law, being debated now, which would make Wikipedia's operation impossible in Italy.
The UK is investigating 100 incidents where UK troops in Afghanistan were accused of killing or wounding civilians.
In some of these incidents, the soldiers involved acted criminally, but most were simply bad luck for everyone involved. Such accidents are inevitable in a war, which is why launching a war is a crime in the absence of very strong justification.
Civilians fleeing Sirte say that the government forces are firing lots of rockets which are endangering civilians.
More info:
Since NATO's mission in Libya is to protect civilians, it ought to insist that the new government not endanger them.
Support the march on Wall Street or another occupation in another US city, or the "virtual occupation".
Republicans want to cut the budget of the Government Accounting Office, which reduces government waste.
I read an article recently which suggested that the way to understand government decisions is to replace "despite" with "because" (or "for the sake of"). I think that applies here too: Republicans want to eliminate this organization because it prevents waste.
After all, what is wasteful government spending? Excess payments to companies. Republicans represent those companies, so they are in favor of wasteful payments to those companies.
Dubya and Cheney set up a system of wasteful spending in Iraq to reward their cronies, and the system was general enough that others took advantage of it to drink from the same trough. This is another example of the same thing.
Furthermore, eliminating waste reduces the deficit, and that undercuts the arguments of Republicans for attacking benefits to poor Americans (which they want to do because they use it to get votes).. If a fairy gave the US $400 billion a year, they would need another tax cut for the rich to create a new the excuse for these cuts.
In fact, that is what Wisconsin Gov. Walker did this year: he cut taxes for the rich, created a deficit, then uses it to attack workers' rights.
The world financial system is in a disastrous loop of debt which nobody is in a position to fix.
Motel owners face the threat of confiscation because, over the years, a tiny fraction of their guests were arrested.
Russia and China vetoed UN sanctions against the Syrian dictatorship.
Israeli troops supposedly attack protests because Palestinian youths throw stones, but an Israeli soldier says that the troops usually shoot first.
The right to protest is respected more in Egypt and Spain than in New York.
The boycott of companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and colonization of the West Bank is hitting some companies hard, and they are moving their production.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Larry Lessig in support of the occupation of Wall Street.
A lawsuit by an Iraqi ex-prisoner has brought about a ruling banning the UK from putting hoods over prisoners' heads.
Bush ordered the US to put hoods over prisoners' heads. Has Obama changed this?
The government of South Africa refused to allow the Dalai Lama to make a private visit for Desmond Tutu's birthday party. It could only be sucking up to Chinese tyranny.
The Occupy Wall Street protest has inspired sister protests in several US cities, and are hoping to get 30 more soon.
A Libyan Jew, exiled by Gaddafi, returned to help the rebels. But his efforts to reopen the old synagogue have been met with threats of violence.
Ralph Nader is trying to organize a primary challenge to Obama. Hooray! Finally, we progressives will have a chance to show Obama how much we despise his right-wing policies.
The article refers to the myth that Nader was responsible for the election of Dubya. Dubya stole the 2000 election and the 2004 election.
Protesters are blocking the road to a nuclear construction site in the UK.
Great advances in efficiency of appliances are being nullified by the purchase of energy hogs such as plasma TV screens.
Tzipi Livni can now safely visit London, thanks to a change in UK law which gives ministers a political veto over prosecutions even when the crime cannot be denied.
With typical state hypocrisy, they say that this is to prevent the law from being "used for political purposes", when in fact the result is to authorize precisely that.
With the Lake Wobegon effect, large companies try to pay their executives more than most comparably-sized companies pay theirs.
Alabama's anti-Immigrant law, upheld by a US court, has scared illegal Immigrants into pulling 2000 children out of school. Some of those children are US citizens, but they can no longer get an education.
When illegal Immigrant women are too scared to get prenatal care for their children, the result will be US citizens with incurable birth defects.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Obama's American Jobs Act. Or use this page to send a message, but a phone call carries more weight.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here's information on the proposal.
I see only one point here that is specifically bad: that of new computer labs in schools, which I fear would teach dependence on proprietary software to America's children. However, this would be a small part of the plan, not enough reason to reject the whole thing.
A few other points might be of questionable effectiveness - some of the tax breaks for businesses.
Obama probably isn't serious about the issue either, but it is an opportunity for us anyway. The Republicans will oppose anything that helps American workers, but we may as well make them lose something for opposing it.
The lawsuit against Chevron shows companies that if they pollute, they may be made to pay.
Unfortunately there remain many examples where companies were able to avoid paying, such as Exxon for the still persisting damage from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
For the first time, there was a large ozone hole in the Arctic stratosphere like the one that happens every year in the Antarctic.
A proposed list of demands for the Wall Street protests.
The Keystone planet-roaster pipeline has a booster inside the State Department.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK says it has to cut support for the poor because it is out of money, so why does it hand out so much to the rich?
Tuvalu is running out of fresh water due to a lack of rain.
This might get worse with global heating, but not for long; in a decade or two, Tuvalu will be inundated frequently by storms and will no longer be inhabitable.
State Department admits its "Independent" tar sands pipeline review was paid for by TransCanada (the company that plans to build the pipeline).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands protested in Chicago to tax the rich instead of budget cuts.
US citizens: phone your representative and senators to support H. Res 365, to forgive student loans.
Lithuania is covering up for the Bush regime about how it participated in
the kidnaping-for-torture system.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Princeton University has adopted the "open access" publication policy, as I have urged universities to do since the 90s.
This policy may be marginally stronger than those of Harvard and MIT. It allows a professor to request a waiver, but are those waivers granted automatically, or does the university have the option to refuse, to make the publisher negotiate?
US citizens:
send a comment to the State Department opposing the
Keystone XL planet-broiler tar sands oil pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government says it supports global human rights, but not when the it has an interest in supporting a dictator.
The New York police
arrested people for no apparent reason during a recent
protest on Wall Street.
Was the reason a 4.6 million donation from J. P. Morgan?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Bribing a policeman is a crime; bribing the police department is not.
The current
US supreme court persistently favors corporations against
everyone else: customers, employees, stockholders, and whistleblowers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Big Oil Clings to Tax Breaks While
Hoarding Tens of Billions.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US appeals court upheld a bizarre, general patent on using information found in scientific literature.
Thousands protested in Portugal against austerity measures.
US employers are fraudulently describing employees as "independent contractors" to deprive them of pay and benefits.
Mike Daisey's one-man campaign to call attention to the suffering inflicted by Apple on the people who make its products.
Apple will probably try to diffuse the criticism with some sort of "corporate responsibility" pledge, which Chinese companies will then pretend to follow. It will be very hard to get Chinese factories to treat workers decently as long as the Chinese government is corrupt and won't enforce whatever laws they might have about labor conditions.
In effect, the responsibility for these abuses falls on the corporations that decided to move all the manufacturing from the US to China and on the subservient politicians that helped them do it.
Big Pharma companies test experimental drugs in poor countries where they don't bother to tell the subjects that they are participating in an experiment.
We should not allow these companies to run trials of their own drugs. That is an opening for corruption, and these companies, which assiduously research new ways to corrupt medicine, will take advantage of any opening they get. We already know that studies funded by drug companies are less likely to report any problem.
We should tax these companies and run studies which they have no connection with.
Earth Justice is suing for proper environmental impact consideration before opening a new coal mine in Montana.
A congressional committee allowed two witnesses into its hearing to describe the harm done by strip mining of coal, but ignored them.
The fact that political debate in the US is focused on debt and deficit reduction, which is not a real problem, demonstrates the banksters' power to dominate politics.
US citizens:
stand up against legalization of torture in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Kindle was a scheme for knowing what books are read
by the fools who use it. The new version, Kindle Fire,
will let Amazon track users' web browsing too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Stallman's Law: under corporatocracy, every advance in technology is an opportunity for corporations to reduce, in practice, the rights of human beings.
Everyone: call on the NYPD to investigate officer Bologna's violence rather that try to feed us the bologna that there could have been some justification for shooting pepper spray at helpless unagressive protesters.
How "social" computer games are subtly designed to get some vulnerable players hooked and paying lots of money.
The article is written in a style that is too clever gets in the way of its point, but the point is visible nonetheless.
Taxing the rich more should not be a means to continue paying for wars that shouldn't be contined at all.
We should end the wars and tax the rich more.
"Pinkwashing" means making questionable or expensive products seem good by linking them somehow with the cause of treating breast cancer. The foundation which started the practice is now selling a perfume with toxic contents.
The latest Republican looney lie: cutting the Pentagon budget would "force" the US to reinstate the draft.
The hypocrisy of Republicans is visible when they say military cuts would cost jobs, but disregard the loss of jobs that would result from the other cuts they advocate. Any given amount of spending creates fewer jobs when it is spent on the military.
The
UN found that violence in Afghanistan is up 40% over 2010.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is no way the US can "win" this war except by crushing the country. The sooner it pulls out, the less harm it will do.
Chilean police massively attacked the protesters.
They sprayed tear gas directly on the leader of the students, paralyzing her. She says that they sprayed her with a burning chemical too.
The protesters have called for a
general strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This article argues that the European Union is planning for the Greek state to become bankrupt.
Interestingly, it assumes that Greece will use the bankruptcy to shaft Greek workers rather than to cancel debt to banks. I won't say this is impossible but I don't see why it is a certainty.
PACs donated $83,000 to the members of the supercommittee during August alone.
A group of medical doctors asked New York State to study health implications before permitting fracking.
CIA's vaccine ruse in Pakistan has harmed vaccination efforts as well as relations between the US and the Pakistani people.
The phony vaccination scheme may have been wrong, but it is clearly not "treason"; accusing people based on exaggeration is just as wrong in Pakistan as in the US or anywhere else.
By making that accusation, Pakistan effectively says, "To attack bin Laden was to attack the Pakistani state." I hope Pakistan does not really wish to identify itself with a terrorist.
Ten thousand started protests in Portland, Oregon.
More information about the bill to
help Americans close bank accounts.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Although the US gained some jobs recently, they are not enough to keep up with population growth.
Sirte seems to be on the edge of falling to Libyan government forces.
I have to wonder why Gaddafi's men continue to fight, even though it is clear they will lose. Is it from discipline? I doubt they had so much of that. Loyalty to Gaddafi? Maybe, but I wonder why. Fear they will not be allowed to surrender? I hope that is not it. Tribal loyalty? If so, the government needs to do something to win the support of that tribe, or it will lead to some sort of problem later.
The UN is
investigating the murder of 16 journalists in Honduras since the
coup that probably occurred with US support.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Imprisoned Bahraini doctors rebuked the US for its weak concern for their rights.
As parts of the US run short of water, they need to take polluted water
and
clean it up.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It works, but it takes more energy — which brings us back to global heating.
Syria is attacking dissidents outside Syria by sending thugs to fight them and by torturing their relatives.
Measuring US media's disregard for the Wall Street protest, in its first week.
NPR's new president plans to "depoliticize" the service — which means, increase the right-wing bias.
NPR stands for Not Progressive, Really.
In rural Venezuela, the wealthy opponents of President Chavez murder with impunity.
European companies can buy "carbon credits" from plantations in Honduras that operate on land stolen from peasants.
Citizens of the EU: sign this petition to use public bailout money to help the people of Greece, not the banks.
Human Rights Watch (and many others) have called on Congress to block US arms sales to Bahrain.
India deports foreign journalists who try to cover its bloody occupation of Kashmir, or its cruel war against the tribals. Indian journalists get framed and imprisoned instead.
Banks Successfully Lobbied For Weaker Bailout Repayment Rules So They Could Pay Bonuses.
More information about this.
The latest Republican distraction: Wall Street protesters threaten poor bankers who are "Are Struggling To Make Ends Meet".
Th corporations which rule with their unjust power do have some employees. But what they do with their power, to transfer wealth to the rich, has destroyed millions of jobs and left millions more with lousy jobs. We need to eliminate that power. If the result is that some unproductive jobs disappear, that will be a minor offset to the overall benefit.
US companies are using face recognition and fingerprints to control workers.
A gigantic loophole allows US corporations to designate a low-tax country for their profits.
Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in Iran for representing dissidents in court.
This bogus trial was not as bad as what Obama does, sentencing people to execution by decree.
Small amounts of oil from the Big Spill had devastating effects on fish in marshes in Louisiana.
Internet services such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are making broad surveillance easy and cheap for governments around the world.
Many
federal agencies are systematically gagging their scientists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
James
Hansen says, "If we stay on with business as usual, the southern
U.S. will become almost uninhabitable."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Coal is very costly to society: the economic damage it does is worth
twice the price of the electricity generated.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US-sponsored Afghan Border Police have followed the US lead by practicing torture.
US citizens: send mail to your senators telling them to oppose the resolution to block the FCC's network neutrality rules.
Even better, phone them too.
The FCC's rules are not as strong as they should be, but they are much better than nothing, and nothing is the senators who are working for the telcos want us to have.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the bill to make it easy to move your money to a different bank.
Also sign this petition, but the phone call carries more weight.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support state-level
medical marijuana
legislation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on New York City officials
to respect the protesters'
rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: state your support for the Wall Street protests.
Chilean high school girls have occupied their school for 5 months.
Big US drug companies get away with illegal medical experiments because they are too big to sue.
The US needs to adopt policies that will make large companies split up.
Obama's "free trade" treaties include more financial deregulation (the opposite of what we need), and loss of jobs — but Obama is presenting them as a "jobs program"!
Republicans want to cut off the US government's investment in birth control for poor women, even though this change would increase the deficit.
It would also result in more abortions (slightly dangerous) and more births (more dangerous).
A conservative front group, "FreedomWorks" is trying to hijack public anger and protests and direct them on paths that support the banksters.
The Federal Reserve Bank has been trying to stimulate the economy, but it cannot do so very effectively. The right tool for this job is deficit spending, but Republicans won't allow that, and Obama has mostly embraced the Republican goal of deficit-cutting.
Sami al-Saadi is suing the UK government for colluding with Gaddafi to have him tortured.
Iran has blocked all VPNs, for the sake of censorship.
A movie industry executive says that unauthorized copying is not a big problem. What he really fears is the sort of monopoly that Apple has.
The term "piracy" is propaganda — please join me in refusing call people who share "pirates".
Turkey has imprisoned 500 protesting students using "anti-terror"
laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If a law is described as "anti-terror", that is plenty of reason to suspect it unjustly restricts citizens' freedom. This is because reacting to a sensational crime often leads legislators to switch off their better judgment.
Obama's decisions about who to assassinate are made by a secret panel of officials that releases no deliberations.
Whatever crimes Awlaki may have been involved in, and no matter what crimes he may have been planning, they don't justify execution without trial.
Transcanada is illegally carrying out preparations for the
Keystone
planet roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
More information.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Some in Congress say the pipeline's environmental impact
statement was
done improperly and disregarded important pollution risks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
But they do not raise the biggest issue, which is the extra contribution to global heating.
Egypt's military rules are accused of trying to delay the election of a civilian government.
Koch Industries either lied to the US Congress or lied to Canadian regulators.
Israeli Arabs went on strike, shutting down several towns, to protest in Beersheba against plans to kick 30,000 bedouin out of their homes.
New comic Beating up on Canada.
Anwar Al-Awlaqi has been assassinated at the orders of Obama, who seems to have won uncontested power to order US citizens killed.
The Supercommittee said it would conduct its meetings openly, but in fact makes most meeting an "exception" and holds them in secret.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Forest Company wanted to grow trees in Uganda as a carbon-offset scheme, so it violently chased out the people who lived on the land.
Growing trees as a carbon-offset scheme is bogus in the first place because the CO2 absorption is only forecast, not real.
How the US set up an indiscriminate killing machine in Afghanistan.
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
(I posted a follow-on : 27 October 2011 (Steve Jobs) )
100 protesters
against the planet-burning Keystone tar sand oil
pipeline were arrested in Toronto.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This article omits the reason why this pipeline must be stopped: because extracting and burning that oil will commit Earth to an amount of warming that is catastrophic.
The US pressured Haitian senators to approve as prime minister a man who has ties to the former dictatorship and is currently employed by Bill Clinton. (See the last paragraph.)
This is after imposing its choice of president on Haiti in a Burmese-style election.
The UK is forcing people to go through body scanners at train stations.
On seeing a photo I find it is just a metal detector, not a body scanner. Fortunately, therefore, it was a false alarm.
Israel's fanatical followers in the Republican Party openly avowed their support for Israel's annexation of the West Bank.
Annexation is what Israel has been gradually doing for a few decades. What we see here is the fading of shame about that goal. The rest of Boehner's statement is typical right-wing disconnect from reality.
Gov. Perry jumped in with more of the same disconnect, accusing Obama for motivating the Palestinian recognition bid by public statements giving them a sign of support.
The truth is exactly the opposite: Obama helped motivate the Palestinian recognition bid by privately demanding that they concede everything, even more slavishly than Dubya and Clinton did.
Greenpeace has pressured Mattel into
ceasing
to use paper made by
cutting down rainforests in Sumatra.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
After Palestinian prisoners started a hunger strike, Israeli police responded with violence.
Israeli Rabbis and government ministers that advocate racism against Arabs have created a climate in which others go one step further and commit pogroms against Arabs.
It looks like the New York police told protesters they could march on
the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge, then arrested them for doing so.
The New York Times recognized this,
then
mysteriously deleted it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Atlanta police chief firmly defends a policeman who repeatedly attacks people without even a shred of a rational motive.
Ossifer Hobbs says he thought victim Hoolihan was drunk. What difference would that have made? Supposing Hoolihan had passed out from alcohol, rather than due to a diabetic coma, would that have made it ok to brutalize and injure him while he was unconscious?
What this demonstrates is the need for an effective system for punishing uniformed thugs, which abound in the US and elsewhere. While few police ossifers engage in random irrational violence as Hobbs does, many commit violence when they feel provoked or offended — for instance, when citizens exercize their rights in ways that the police find distasteful.
New York state legislators want to reverse the First Amendment and declare freedom of speech a "privilege" to be granted when it suits them.
US mobile phone companies vary greatly in how long they keep information about their customers calls and messages — and in how much data they keep.
I expect that the FBI collects it all each month anyway.
Canada's ice shelves have shrunk by 50% in the past 6 years.
A torture dossier about Belarusian President Lukashenka will facilitate prosecution of him if he visits various other countries.
Is one prepared for Dubya?
When a market trader said he "dreams of another recession", some people assumed he was from the Yes Men. But he was serious!
Major unions will support the Wall Street protests.
The major US media bend over backwards to legitimize police violence
against protesters in Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition telling the FBI to come clean about how it uses the U SAP AT RIOT.
In the US: sign this petition calling on supermarkets
not to sell
Monsanto's GMO corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: make a clamor for peace on Oct 6.
Free Press has sued the FCC for the weakness of its net neutrality rules for mobile Internet providers.
I think their rules for non-mobile providers are too weak too.
The Palestinian Authority rejected returning to peace talks while Israel keeps building its colonies in the West Bank.
Such talks are useless because Israel demands all concessions and will make none.
Bahraini hospital staff have been sentenced to long prison terms for treating wounded protesters.
Has anyone read Captain Blood?
Trichloroethylene, an industrial chemical that contaminates water in large regions of the US, is more toxic than was previously believed.
Afraid to protest in the street, Algerian youth protest during football matches.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the senate
not to oppose network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
For even more effect, phone your senators' offices.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell your senators to end the death penalty.
Support Kentucky Attorney General Conway in not giving the banksters a deal where they won't be prosecuted.
In the UK: go to TESCO and write down the prices you see on the shelves.
US citizens: sign this pledge to work to abolish the death penalty.
My opposition to the death penalty is not based on the fact that the system is broken (though it is), or that it is expensive (though it is), or that it is discriminatory (though it is). For me, the reason is more simple: the death penalty eliminates any chance to correct a miscarriage of justice.
US citizens: sign this petition against software patents.
The petition has some flaws. For instance, it talks of the "software industry" as if its success were unquestionably a good thing, and it misuses the term "antitrust". I am not sure the president has the power to change this policy by himself, anyway. Despite that, the petition is worth signing as a way of showing the amount of public concern.
So I will sign it.
US citizens: Obama proposed to cut health benefits to extend the wars.
Tell him you don't like this.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Whatever Republicans propose to hurt the poor and sick, Obama supports it.
US citizens: help the campaign to stop the
Keystone XL
planet-broiler
oil pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: take action in your state
to end the death
penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Bolivia to stop the planned highway through an important nature preserve.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support reform
of the ECPA, the US privacy law about our electronic communications.
And sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Saving the rich and
losing the economy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court has been asked to consider the constitutionality of Obama's health insurance reform law.
The Taliban never considered Rabbani's Afghan High Peace Council a serious peace initiative.
That could explains why they assassinated him.
Pakistanis blame alliance with the US for the 355 suicide bombings in their country.
Since the US/Colombia Labor Action Plan started in April, 15 more union leaders have been murdered in Colombia.
Evidently it is ineffective.
General Motors retreated under pressure, and reversed its recent changes in the terms of service for the cellphone spy in its cars.
That means we blocked a bad development, but I hope you think that the very existence of a cell phone inside your car, to spy on you, is unacceptable.
Does anyone know how hard it is to disconnect the cell phone's power lead, in current GM models?
It's a Lie That Working Poor Don't Pay Taxes.
The nastiest part of this lie is the assumption that they should HAVE to pay taxes. Why should the state squeeze money out of people who can barely get by? It should be giving them help, not taxing them.
Ecuador is looking for 100 million euros this year in exchange for leaving a large oil deposit in the ground, but it has received only half that.
Bahrain: Pro-democracy activists convicted of
killing policemen
appear to have been framed.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A reporter reports on being arrested while trying to interview protesters on Wall Street.
Even passersby who took photos were arrested, in what seems to be a systematic assault on press coverage of police brutality.
Peter Van Buren was part of the US State Department's project to reconstruct Iraq. He reports that it was a pyramid scheme of fraud: nobody even tried to make sure their activities did real good, or could even potentially do so.
He is going to be fired by the State Department for the absurd offense of making a link to a published Wikileaks cable.
Reporter Lisa Romero says the major media's non-coverage of the Wall Street protests looks like a media blackout to her.
New York City police tore down posters telling citizens
their rights in dealing with the police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The "automatic" spending cuts that are supposed to happen if the supercommittee does not reach an agreement are not really automatic.
Nevada says, "Make a corporation here, and you can have it do almost anything, and you can't be sued."
Earth Overshoot Day, which was Sep 27 this year, marks the point of the year when humans have consumed a full year of Earth's natural capacity to replenish itself.
Our consumption for the rest of the year represents long-term degradation of the Earth.
Considering just the US, that point was probably reached months ago.
Chile's President Pinera agreed to
talks with the protesting
students.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
NYC police imprisoned nonviolent protesters in a net, then Officer Anthony Bologna sprayed some of them in the eyes with pepper spray.
Cory Doctorow says, parents who monitor their children all the time are teaching them not to value or defend their privacy. Instead we should encourage them to break surveillance.
The US Senate, in debating the internet censorship PIP Act, allowed its propents to set up an "educational" propaganda display in a Senate office building.
Saudi Arabia gave women the right to vote, but this does them little
good
since it doesn't give them other equal rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
There is not much that gets decided by elections in Saudi Arabia.
Why don't the deficit-cutters suggest a financial transaction tax? Because the supposed goal of deficit-cutting is an excuse to attack Social Security.
Congresscritters that want the
air we breath to endanger us.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Wikipedia sets an example of refusing to let Facebook spy on its users.
A military-style border with Mexico is causing military-style corruption and waste.
What mountaintop removal coal mining means
to the surroundings
—
to the rivers, to the land, to the people.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A US company specializes in Internet surveillance equipment used by untrustworthy regimes such as the US and Egypt.
Chomsky stated his support
for the Wall Street protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The police crackdown on Wall Street shows signs of spurring
resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Bolivian President Morales is losing support after trying to impose a highway project through a nature reserve.
Senators called on the FTC to stop GM from collecting data from former subscribers to their car-tracking service even after they cancel the service.
This is not enough. Such a "service" would be inexcusable even if it did not collect from former subscribers.
President Saleh returned to Yemen and faced new massive protests.
Corporate pressure groups are directly involved in Republican redistricting activities, which often hide their funding sources.
The US is planning to sell lots of weapons to Bahrain, rewarding its brutal king.
Two US hikers arrested by Iran at the border, and recently released, say that when they complained about their treatment, their captors responded, "This is not as bad as Guantanamo".
The IMF and World Bank have broken their promise not to drop the brunt of worldwide austerity programs on children and the poor. Their cuts in prenatal care can do lifelong damage.
Wesley Dutton and Greg Gonzales say they can't get any officials to
investigate their evidence of
official corruption near the Mexican
border.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
Instead, they have been threatened to make them shut up.
"Logging out" of Facebook does little to stop its
surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In particular, every page with a "like" button still knows who you are.
Police attacked protesters on Wall Street several times, and
posted
videos substantiate the protesters' claim that there was no
justification.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
ABC's headline was that the "protests turned violent", which falsely accuses the protesters of committing the violence.
Republicans in Wisconsin want to ban all use of fetal stem cells, even for making the vaccines that save thousands of lives every year.
Use of fetal stem cells does not involve an ethical trade-off; there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it. Likewise, using embryonic stem cells from embryos made for the purpose involves no trade-off. An embryo is not a person even if religious extremists pretend it is one.
The article bends over backwards to win over some of the opponents of abortion rights, even calling them "pro-life". I think that is a mistake: by doing that, we legitimize their unjust cause.
The UK government tries to demonize attempts to scientifically
understand what occurred in the UK riots,
although such an investigation into the 1960s US riots was very
useful.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
80 people were arrested at the protests in Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I am not sure what "cordoned off" means. Maybe the New York police have adopted the tactic known in the UK as "kettling".
Israelis uprooted 400 olive trees belonging to Palestinians.
Abu Mazen says the Palestinian Authority is considering terminating its own existence, which would force Israel to accept direct responsibility for the occupation of Palestine.
Republicans are trying to destroy the US Postal Service.
The world needs to spend less on arms. For instance, Greece could reduce its austerity if it stopped buying fighter jets.
Uri Avnery: Obama betrayed both the US and Israel by embracing lies about Palestine, and then received his pay from Netanyahu.
New York City set up massive and widespread surveillance of places
Moslems might go,
from mosques to restaurants, and labeled them as
suspect for reasons including political views.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
On the pretext of deporting "the worst of the worst" among immigrants who are criminals, Obama set up a program that deports thousands of immigrants (even legal immigrants) who are arrested for any reason.
The police say this program provides information "too vital to halt". You can always trust police to say that; you might as well make a policeman doll that says "This information is absolutely vital" when you push a button.
One of the few good things Obama has done was raise automobile fuel efficiency standards. The car dealers are now campaigning against, saying that cancelling these is their top priority.
With a govermnent that had even a shred of civic responsibility, we wouldn't need to give them even a thought.
An Iraqi opposition journalist was murdered, added to a long toll of journalists killed.
The United Arab Emirates has imprisoned people for "insulting officials", after Guantanamo-style bogus trials.
Republican congressional leaders demanded that the Federal Reserve let the US economy slide into depression.
Their strategy is to make people suffer, and blame the Democrats. The sad thing is, they won't be entirely wrong, because today's Democrats are such sellouts that they won't fight against this; and least of all Obama.
The oil companies, to gain permission for their planet-roasting Keystone XL pipeline, hired Clinton's former campaign official to influence her decisions.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If Clinton had an ounce of concern for our country, she would not meet with her former colleagues who have sold out to companies.
For the mainstream media, what "terrorism" is what others do; whatever the state does is automatically excluded from the category.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article goes too far by labeling all the UK's wars as "terrorism". The clearest error was applying that description to the war to recapture the Falkland Islands from the army sent by Argentine dictators to conquer them. Some other examples in that list may also be inappropriate.
However, these errors don't invalidate the overall conclusion of the page.
Afghanistan's chief peace negotiator was killed by a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban negotiator.
Whoever killed him apparently wanted to poison those negotiations. Who could that be? An extreme faction of the Taliban? Someone profiting from the fighting?
I wonder if the Taliban will punish whoever it was. It would be natural for them to want to.
The US is planning to develop autonomous killer robots.
Thanks to the deficit cutting plan, weapons contractors are fighting to cut your social security and medical benefits in order to avoid cuts to their income.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the 1968 student protests in France, told the Israeli youth movement that they cannot gain their domestic aims if they disregard the issue of the occupation.
A former US Army intelligence translator heard evidence of an explicit Army plan to attack international journalists.
The text of Abu Mazen's speech to the UN.
Hundreds of Israeli intellectuals stated their support for the move.
Uri Avnery's statement of support.
Although the Palestinian appeal to the UN will not end the occupation, it can make a difference in many ways.
The US Army has officially ended discrimination against homosexual soldiers.
The IMF and the World Bank are behind the global land grab that kicking millions of poor people off their land.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A few decades ago, many governments used to protect their people from foreign land purchases. Now we know why this has changed.
In strategic terms, al Qa'ida defeated the US.
Pages that contain Facebook "like" buttons enable Facebook to track visitors to those pages even if they don't use Facebook.
The ACLU has a different way of enabling users to click a Facebook "like" button, which avoids this problem. Its pages have a link called "like us on Facebook" that leads to a Facebook page where it is possible to push a "like" button for the ACLU. But if you don't follow that link, Facebook gets no information about your visit to the ACLU page.
Here's an example of the practice.
Obama's speech at the UN was a pledge of allegiance to Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree with the writer's position on Libya. The US had a cozy relationship with Gaddafi, and supported him when the rebellion first began. But when it was clear that the rebellion was serious and substantial, the US was effectively compelled to choose one side or the other. Should it have supported Gaddafi instead?
I also disagree in regard to Yemen. The article criticizes the US for not intervening there, but Yemen had no rebellion like that in Libya. To intervene in Yemen would have been more comparable to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Of the various Arab states that have had protest movements, the real shame for Obama is Bahrain. By endorsing the propaganda and justifying repression, he gives Bahrain's bloody monarch the same kind of support that he gives to Israel's extremists.
Law professors have asked the SEC to require corporations to disclose their political campaign spending.
This is a step in the right direction, but the only real solution is to abolish the idea that corporations are entitled to the rights of "persons".
Two Mexicans accused of "terrorism" for repeating reports of violence on Twitter were freed.
However, prosecuting people on a "lesser charge" is equally unjust even if it does less harm to them.
Meanwhile, the narco gangs seem to be also threatening Mexicans for reporting violence.
This means that people need to post these reports through anonymous accounts - which is another instance of how the "real name" policies of Facebook and Google+ are harmful.
The FCC endorsed a weak definition of network neutrality that amounts to network filtering under control of the state.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It also omits a crucial aspect of network neutrality: being able to connect to the network with software of your choice.
US night raids in Afghanistan now target non-combatants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
65% of Israelis say that if the UN recognizes Palestine as a state, Israel should accept the decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Gov. Perry's fantasy land, the increase in droughts, floods and fires are not the result of global heating. Rather, they have been sent by a sadistic god to punish America for tolerating homosexuality.
Perry did not say what the heat wave in Russia or floods in Australia were a punishment for. Perhaps those countries are outside his awareness.
A US appeals court ruled that people in Ecuador, suffering from the pollution spread by Chevron (formerly Texaco)'s oil extraction there, can collect their 18 billion dollars damages in the US.
Wikileaks cables show that Chevron lobbied Ecuador's President Correa to intervene in the court case against Chevron, working closely with the US embassy. Correa apparently did not do what they wanted.
Senators Wyden and Udall accused the "Justice" department of lying about how it uses the U SAP AT RIOT act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
An Ethiopian journalist had to flee into exile as the government demanded he reveal his sources, after he was mentioned in a Wikileaks cable.
It is unfortunate that the Wikileaks cables were released in unredacted form, but this is mostly the fault of others.
Ironically, the Obama regime is cracking down on whistleblowers while the UK regime is trying to use the Official Secrets Act (normally used in cases of espionage) to get similar data from Guardian reporters.
Troy Davis was executed; everyone that could have saved him refused to intervene. This has led to a resurgence of opposition to the death penalty in the US.
Obama refused to comment on the execution, saying, "it is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases".
But he didn't let that stop him from pronouncing Bradley Manning guilty before his trial.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to publicly recognize the protests in Wall Street.
What if the Tea Party Occupied Wall Street?
Of course, that's purely hypothetical. Why would the Tea Party ever want to occupy Wall Street? The Tea Party works for Wall Street.
Berlusconi's supporters have proposed a strict Internet censorship law which would also involve punishing people by disconnection when accused even once of violation.
Massachusetts citizens: tell the
state house, don't recriminalize
marijuana.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Phoning your state senator and representative is also a good idea, since phone calls carry more weight.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on the Attorney General of Delaware
to revoke Massey
Energy's charter.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition urging Palestine not to yield to Obama's pressure, and to go ahead with asking the UN for recognition as a state.
The Wall Street Occupation: A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power.
Fact-Checking The Fact-Checkers: The AP Releases Misleading Analysis Of Obama's Tax Plan.
Another reason to reject Obama's Free Exploitation Treaties: they are advocated by companies that have outsourced at least 18,000 jobs (or maybe much more) since 2001.
Whatever they want, they should not get.
The German Pirate Party got 9% of the vote in Berlin regional elections.
I am sure they can do some good there, but they cannot affect copyright or patent policy since that is national, not regional. I hope that regional election success does not distract the Pirate Party from the goal of copyright reform.
The Council of Europe appealed
to the State of Georgia for clemency
for Troy Davis.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It didn't do any good, because the State of Georgia will kill to avoid acknowledging a probable mistake. If only our governments were so stubborn towards the megacorporations that want to buy laws.
Tax Dodging Corporations Form Coalition To Call For Lower Corporate Taxes.
General Motors cars have built-in cell phones which General Motors can use to get lots of information about the car, including its location. General Motors can make a complete dossier of where someone drives.
Now General Motors has decided to collect all this data and sell it with no further warning.
It is not only General Motors that can collect this information. I suspect that under the PAT RIOT act, the FBI can collect it all from General Motors without a court order. Meanwhile, the cell phone company also collects and saves location information from that phone.
If you don't want them tracking you as you drive, you need to cut the power to that cell phone.
Pentagon contractors will use the influence they have purchased with campaign support to Democrats to make the supercommittee dump the whole burden on the poor instead.
Campaigning to revoke Massey Energy's corporate charter for its repeated illegal endangerment of people and the environment.
The world does little to help end cholera in Haiti, but at least
Haitians can now buy small
amounts of cholera insurance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
How oil and mining companies evade taxes by shifting their profits and losses between countries.
The EPA gave Shell permission for Arctic undersea drilling —
in terms
of air pollution caused by the drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
In narrow terms, this decision might be correct. The drilling should be blocked because of the danger of an oil spill that would be impossible to clean up.
Non-Islamist Syrian dissidents in exile launched a joint movement for a secular and non-racist Syria.
Chinese are talking about dangerous pollution
and protesting it
despite the government's strong censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is now legally possible to indict Rumsfeld in the US for the torture he authorized, torture which went far beyond waterboarding, if only a DA has the guts to prosecute.
The article reports that Rumsfeld and Dubya don't dare visit some countries because they would be arrested and tried. Also, it presents evidence that this torture was never intended to get true intelligence — its aim was brainwashing to get false confessions.
Yemen's suppression forces have shot dozens of protesters dead, and injured hundreds.
More of the Arctic is
without ice cover than ever before recorded.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Obama has taken a first step to reorganize regulation of undersea oil
drilling, but it won't suffice to resist
the tremendous pressure to
drill more.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Jersey seems to have covered up security flaws in voting machines rather than fix them.
Resisting corporate control over seeds is a part of the food movement.
Lloyds insurance company sued Saudi royals for funding the Sep 11 attacks .
A banker described Geithner as "our man in Washington", thus explaining why Obama put Geithner in his post: to appease and submit to the banksters.
Further, Obama's sudden recollection that he ought to try to create jobs is just a sham — he says this because he knows the program won't be passed.
As the Liberal Democrats vote on a position about the Digital Economy Act (punishment without trial for those accused of sharing), someone unidentified snuck a statement into their position paper saying that sharing is "theft" and endorsing prosecution of people who copy.
Hundreds of protesters are camped in a park near Wall Street.
An effective action needs a lot more than that.
Jimmy Carter gives support to UN recognition of Palestine.
A Wikileaks cable shows that Obama directly pressured Zapatero to escalate the War on Sharing in Spain.
This surely makes Obama responsible for the nasty Ley Sinde that provides for filtering the Internet and shutting domestic websites without a trial.
People of Spain, Obama and the US have attacked your country and damaged your freedom.
US special forces are active in almost 100 "unstable" countries ,and the effect of US military involvement is often to make them more unstable and more angry at the US.
US citizens: Tell House Democrats to vote against any supercommittee deal
that
cuts Medicare or Medicaid benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Call on the
Supercommittee to do no harm to US
employment.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The vote for Palestinian statehood will break US influence in the Middle East.
This article also contains an interesting commentary on Israel's right to exist and be recognized: it needs to specify what borders it claims in order for that to be judged.
Lawsuits by patent trolls do
80 billion dollars of damage per year,
of which very little goes to anyone associated with "inventing"
anything (even if these patents can be said to be about "inventions").
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Not all the trolls' victims get sued, so this is an underestimate of the damage.
Obama wants to give military aid to Uzbekistan despite its atrocioous human rights record.
Craig Murray thinks Obama's motive is to withdraw US military equipment from Afghanistan through Uzbekistan.
I don't see how help from Uzbekistan would make much difference. The only way to get the equipment out of Uzbekistan is by air, and it can be flown out of Afganistan directly too — unless Bagram air base has become a lot more dangerous lately.
But if this really is crucial for pulling the US troops out of Afghanistan, it might do more good than harm.
Wal-Mart's latest scheme for worming its way into cities is donating support for urban agriculture.
Although this farming project is a good thing in itself, allowing Wal-Mart to increase its power by supporting good things is, overall, a threat.
Right-wing extremists now accuse Obama of failing to give Israel's government 110% support, because he asked Netanyahu timidly for a settlement freeze.
Obama has paid the price for breaking this chain without actually doing it. Too bad he didn't do more.
The Afghan local police, which are the latest US scheme to try to have Afghanis maintain security in Afghanistan, are accused of human rights violations.
Palestinians have set up a rapid response news squad to document the frequent attacks and vandalism by Israeli "settlers".
What is the right word for this violence? Terrorism? Pogrom?
The inhabitants of these colonies plan marches into major Palestinian cities as a provocation.
However, some of the "settlers" have launched a campaign against such violence.
New York Night-Mayor Bloomberg warns that unemployment and poverty might lead to "riots", saying that this is what happened in Spain and Egypt.
What it ought to lead to is not riots but protests.
Be it noted that Bloomberg defamed Spanyards and Egyptians by calling their massive disciplined protests "riots".
US companies are keeping cash rather than hiring workers.
Thus, any proposal to create jobs through further corporate welfare are nonsense.
200 people in Ecuador have been charged with "terrorism" for opposing mining and dam construction projects — for instance, by blocking streets while protesting.
The article has a spelling error: it should say "sacred sites".
1/3 of Yemenis are now suffering from food shortage.
This is caused by the worldwide high price of food, which in turn is due to world population increase, speculation, and control of agriculture by megacorporations. However, Yemen suffers also from its aridity and its local population growth.
The Inter-American Court ruled in favor of Leopoldo López, who has been arbitrarily denied the right to run for office in Venezuela.
Tens of thousands protested in Japan to call for the end of nuclear power there.
A mob of Buddhists in Sri Lanka destroyed a mosque, demonstrating that each one of the world's major religions can be used to incite violence.
Sony will demand users of its gaming network agree not to engage in class-action lawsuits against Sony.
This is typical of Sony.
Obama has declared an 11th year of "national emergency".
I suppose they intend to continue this "emergency" without end, much as Egypt has done.
The Pentagon exerts substantial influence on the content of Hollywood movies, and now the CIA offers script suggestions.
Siemens has sworn off nuclear power construction and will now focus on renewable energy sources.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A campaign by Amnesty International pressured RBS to stop investing in cluster bombs, but the US still hasn't signed the treaty to ban them.
The US government, since Sep 2001, has encouraged the misguided idea that terrorism is mainly a Muslim phenomenon, resulting in broad attacks on the rights of American Muslims.
I am not sure it is mistaken to call Mohammed a "cult leader", but the term is equally applicable to Jesus.
The UK government is not satisfied with its direct threats to those
who share (the Digital Economy Act), so
it plans additional attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
These seem to be inspired by the US internet censorship bill.
Obama has endorsed Buffett's call for increased taxes on millionaires.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It is no surprise that the Republicans oppose it. The way our political system is supposed to work is that Democrats make them vote on it and they lose the next election as a punishment. But we haven't had many real Democrats in congress for a long time.
On the Mexico-Guatemala border, Migrants demand an end to the violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The violence against Guatemalans heading to the US is committed by Mexican organized crime and police (there seems not to be much difference between the two).
I don't have an overall solution to recommend for this problem, but I know of a few things that would probably help.
Legalizing the drug trade to the US in Mexico might help by reducing the income of the gangs.
Canceling NAFTA, which has boosted poverty in both countries, might help. A government in Guatemala committed to social welfare might improve life for people there and reduce the desire to go to the US to work.
Part of the cause of the migration is population growth. Strong programs of contraceptive aid in Mexico and Guatemala will therefore help in the long run, as will legalizing abortion. However, that alone would not be a full solution.
Cases of people poisoned by toxic substances used for fracking near their homes are mounting up across the US.
A long list of secondary economic reasons to reject the US government's new system to track all people authorized to work in the US.
This is in addition to the main reason: it's a Big Brother system.
Iranian student Somayeh Tohidlou was flogged for posting on the Internet.
It is a standard part of Islamic law, which is represents the ethical standards of 1400 years ago.
The UK government has cut down public assistance to the point that some Britons don't have enough to eat.
Rather than limit the austerity, let alone reduce it, the government will refer hungry and penniless Britons to food banks — but only for 9 days' worth of food. What are people supposed to do after that?
Americans have the right to record the official actions of the police in public, but we need to fight against the police that don't respect this right.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Camila Vallejo, leader of Chile's protesting students.
Gaddafi's men in Sirte say that NATO bombing killed 354 people in a residence and a hotel.
If this is true, I am sure it was not intended. It is impossible to avoid civilian casualties in a war. However, it raises the question of whether NATO ought to be attacking Sirte. It doesn't seem to fit into the UN-approved mission, and it inevitably endangers civilians.
Protesters in Yemen took over the principal university
to make it a
protest headquarters.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
However, many schools are shut because buildings are occupied by soldiers on one side or the other.
Booths in a big weapons trade show were found to be offering cluster bombs and torture devices.
The House Republicans reduced the American Jobs Act to a small set of tax cuts.
In Boston: see How to Start a Revolution on Sep 18.
Also sign this petition calling on Chatham County District Attorney Chisolm to oppose Troy Davis's execution.
US citizens: call on Rep. Issa to investigate News Corp for phone tapping etc.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
(It is a shame they call this "hacking", but the campaign needs our support anyway.)
Cheney's memoir maintains the false history presented by the Bush regime, while condemning everyone that didn't support the lie.
Even as megacorporations such as Monsanto have taken control of the majority of agriculture in the US, its opposition, the Food Movement, is growing around the world and resisting in many ways.
The scientists who found Nanothermite in the ruins of the World Trade Center face mainly ad-hominem attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign the call for an
ethics investigation of Rep. Darrell Issa.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US can increase jobs and protect the environment, if it resists the pressure and obfuscation of the fossil fuel industry.
The UN occupying force must withdraw from Haiti promptly — not in years. The Haitian people demand this.
The supposedly transitional
military government in Egypt increased
Mubarak's
decades-old "emergency" powers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UK police are trying to force Guardian reporters to reveal the sources of the leak that blew the lid off the Murdoch phone tapping case.
Rep. Issa has passed many laws to help
his own businesses
and companies he owns stock in.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A panel set up by the UN Human Rights Council says that the siege of Gaza is a violation of human rights.
The WTO decided to punish the US for some food labeling policies — for instance, offering the option of "dolphin-safe" tuna — because they inconvenience some corporations.
It is a basic injustice to subordinate really important things to business, so the WTO must be destroyed.
In the US: protest Oct 6 against the continued war in Afghanistan, and the concomitant imposition of suffering in the US.
A statement of support from leaders of the Egyptian revolution.
In Bhutan, the state takes the goal of maximizing national happiness very seriously.
Republicans are trying to repeal only the good parts of Obama's health insurance reform law.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This would leave only the concessions that the insurance companies demanded.
The supercommittee started a meeting by listening to a report that the US will eventually need to decrease its deficit.
It's true in the long term that the US needs to spend less or tax more. (A comparison with other advanced countries shows that taxing more leads to a better society.) But in the short term what we need is deficit spending. To use the long-term deficit as an excuse for cuts now is Hooverism.
How curious that Kyl wants to aggressively search for fraud in Medicaid rather than in the Pentagon.
Here's Noam Chomsky's theory about why corporate interests want to destroy public programs such as Social Security (at the end of the page).
The ACLU warns that "jobs" are being used as the excuse for a bill to massively expand government surveillance of workers.
Dissidents in Saudi Arabia face imprisonment for advocating a constitutional monarchy.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians were left homeless when Israel demolished their houses without warning.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The ACLU won a preliminary victory against compulsory drug testing in a community college.
Instead of Attacking WikiLeaks, Fix What It Exposed.
How cutting military spending would boost jobs.
A huge palm oil plantation in Africa will threaten many rare species, even in the surrounding areas.
Palm oil needs to be banned, or at least the quantities imported need to be restricted. Of course, that requires defying the WTO, and the cowards and sellouts in Congress won't do that.
BP, Transocean and Halliburton all violated US safety regulations in the well that produced the big spill.
Everyone: send a message to Chicken of the Sea about bottom-trawling.
US citizens: sign this petition to forgive US student loans.
Everyone:
call
on the state of Georgia
not to execute Troy Davis.
Most of the witnesses who testified against him say they lied and
some say police intimidated them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The release of unredacted Wikileaks cables seems not to have endangered any of the people named in them.
It may have hampered US government activity in other countries, but that's a different issue, and it is as likely to be good as bad.
The town of Brookline, Massachusetts, has resisted the nationwide push to scan license plates and track all cars.
The US government loses money when it uses contractors instead of employees.
In other words, the push to use contractors is just a way for businesses to exploit the treasury.
ACLU: Lots of Americans who aren't doing anything wrong have reason to worry about FBI surveillance and fishing expeditions.
I support this campaign in general, but it is ironic that an activity in a campaign for privacy rights is done in a way that requires people to use Facebook. I hope you won't let this stop you from unfriending Facebook ASAP.
US-funded militias in Afghanistan are accused of human rights abuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hotfile is suing Warner Brothers for systematically and knowingly taking down files it doesn't hold the copyright on.
Yemen's president has accepted a power-sharing deal after months of protests.
Poverty in the US has increased for the third year in a row.
Bush caused this, but Obama has not fought hard against the Republicans who have sought to make it worse.
Cancelling NAFTA would reduce poverty in the US and in Mexico.
Who Will Occupy Wall Street on September 17?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition against bottom-trawling, which causes devastating damage to life at the bottom of the ocean.
US citizens: by Friday, tell the Dept of Health and Human Services
to
keep abortion insurance coverage simple.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Israel plans to punish Turkey by arming Kurds to attack Turkey, and also by encouraging international recognition of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.
The Kurdish guerrilla group PKK carries out armed attacks against Turkey. It has been labeled as "terrorist" by the US, but that was done without a trial so it might mean nothing. I don't know whether the PKK really is terrorist. That depends on what sort of targets it attacks — and I don't know the facts about it. It is clear that Turkey oppresses its Kurdish population but that doesn't necessarily mean armed resistance is the right response.
It is right to recognize the genocide of the Arm, but it is a misunderstanding to think that such recognition would hurt Turkey. It would annoy the Turkish government, but it would be good for Turkey.
Turkey's real friends will tell Turkey that it needs to recognize and apologize for its genocide in order to advance morally, just as real friends of the US will urge it to recognize and apologize for the killing of a million or so Iraqis.
The UK applied its infamous "control orders", effectively imprisonment or house arrest without trial, to exiled Libyan freedom fighters in order to please Gaddafi.
This demonstrates how it is unjust to declare organizations "terrorist" without a public trial, and unjust to punish people without convicting them of crimes.
Another "terrorist organization", the Jewish Defense League, is recruiting ex-soldiers to go to Israel's colonies in the West Bank during expected Palestinian protests .
The colonists often commit aggressions against Palestinians, and when they do, the police and soldiers defend them. It seems likely that these recruits will join in the aggression.
The JDL may be a group of thugs comparable to the KKK, but it is unjust to ban such organizations arbitrarily. The JDL should get a trial, just as the KKK did when [fill in the name of Morris Dees' organization] sued it for acts of violence in the US.
The violent colonists would not be so dangerous if the police and the army tried to stop them and protect their victims.
Obama plans to cut spending on the Afghan army and police by 50%.
It is easy to say "we will cut only the wasteful part of the spending", but making that distinction in reality is more difficult. These cuts will surely reduce the strength and morale of those forces.
Would that make any difference? Given how little the past spending has achieved, it is well to cut further losses. But the US should also admit that these troops will never be ready, that the war is lost, and it is time to pull out.
Amnesty International accused the Libyan rebels of committing war crimes.
The Serbian organization Otpor teaches the tools of nonviolent
resistance around the world, giving peoples the chance to figure out how to get rid of their dictators.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the rest of the supercommittee to ignore Kyl's
tantrum
and
cut the Pentagon budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Canada's right-wing government is again planning to impose a US-style prohibition on breaking digital handcuffs.
Canadians must not accept surrender to US imperialism as inevitable. Tell the empire to jump off the cliff by itself.
US citizens: sign the petition calling on the US not to veto the resolution for a Palestinian state.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Al Sadr told his followers to stop attacking the Bush forces for the time being, so they won't have an excuse to continue the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
50 airplanes in the US were attacked on Sep. 11 -- by police. Here's the story of one victim.
She should have got a lawyer before answering any police questions. She was lucky that the police sympathized with her, so they didn't fabricate accusations based on what she said, as they could have done.
America's millions of unemployed need to organize to change a society that has no use for them.
In Honduras, 15 journalists have been assassinated in 18 months.
After storms on the Gulf coast, oil from the Big
Spill washes up on the beaches.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli cabinet approved a plan to force some 20,000 bedouin to abandon their villages and move to authorized cities.
No bedouin were consulted in drawing up the plan.
CNN is collaborating openly with a Tea Party organization.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Its news in the US has had a right-wing bias for a long time.
The US continues stirring up hatred in Afghanistan because ending the war would require admitting that US soldiers died in vain.
Thus, more have to die in vain before they admit it.
Cesium from the Fukushima reactors can get into plants through the soil. This will have to be monitored for decades.
Greenpeace is pushing for a treaty to keep the Arctic off limits to exploitation by all countries.
Arctic oil is useless, because by the time we get around to burning it, we will have fried our planet; the remaining people will do fine using the renewable energy systems that are already operating,
Coral reefs, as known today, may be gone in as little as 30 or 40 years due to acidification caused by CO2.
This will wipe out thousands of species of animals, and eliminate the food supply of almost 300 million people.
As the US government has embraced the idea of "endless war", peace is considered unthinkable.
Companies as well as governments are starting to use drone aircraft for surveillance of citizens.
Companies hope to use the recession/depression to "reform" education to send more money in their direction, and they "hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon".
Today we commemorate the September 11 attacks, which killed
President Allende of Chile and installed Pinochet's murderous
military dictatorship. More than 3,000 dissidents were killed
or "disappeared" by the Pinochet regime. The USA operated a
destabilization campaign in Chile, and the September 11 attacks were part of
that campaign. Here's my
message of support for protesting
Chilean students.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Argentina: fight for the freedom to share and against the War on Sharing: participate in the contracumbre, Sep 15-17, in Mar del Plata.
US citizens: oppose the REINS act that
would make regulating business
even harder.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, support Obama's
jobs plan but reject
his attempt to cut Medicare and Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
How Rumsfeld got torture approved and overrode objections from officers.
The Legacy of 9/11: An Institutionalization of Terror at Home and Abroad.
A museum in Oakland, CA, cancelled a Palestinian children's art exhibit in response to pressure from pro-Israel groups.
The TSA is keeping the elephants away.
The UK intelligence agent who established a relationship with Gaddafi including torture, then went to work for BP to take advantage of the relationship.
Uruguay's president apologized for its troops' gang-rape of a Haitian,
and vowed to try the soldiers responsible — a refreshing difference
from
how the UN and US address crimes by the forces occupying Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US press is bending over backwards to treat Gov. Perry's lies about Social Security the benefit of a nonexistent doubt.
Hey dummy — when Bush sent prisoners to Libya, it wasn't in spite of Libya's torture, it was so they'd be tortured.
The Sad Legacy of Sept. 11: distorted by US politicians.
The Department of Homeland Insecurity has a broad and pervasive program of recruiting people to suspect Americans for anything unusual, and report them too.
It's much bigger and more dangerous than having our buses and trains tell people to have suspicions, dangerous though that is.
Iran has arrested hundreds of people protesting peacefully against the destruction of Lake Urmia.
This shows that the Iranian regime has become an out-and-out dictatorship like China. It can't bear dissent about any topic.
Speaking of which, China continues
imprisoning dissidents after absurd
"trials".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Gaddafi's men killed 18 prisoners — including one overheard criticizing Gaddafi — by suffocating them in a shipping container.
Their bodies have now been found.
Egyptians broke down a wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
Protesting at the embassy is logical, but attacking an embassy is a bad way to protest. This attack will also distract attention from the protests in Tahrir Square, which need the support of every Egyptian, and play into the hands of those who oppose the protests.
The military have tried 12,000 dissidents in military tribunals.
The US government is prosecuting a US resident for making a statement expressing a favorable view of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, calling this "providing support for a terrorist group".
This prosecution attacks the
freedom of speech of all Americans, but it is not the only one.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
His views, as quoted in the article, seem perfectly reasonable to me as regards US intervention in Iraq and Somalia (it was every patriotic Iraqi's duty to fight the Bush forces if he could), even though I don't think all the US interventions are similar issues. (Most Libyans are grateful for for the NATO intervention, and so were most Afghanis until Karzai's corruption and US preoccupation with occupying Iraq let the Taliban creep back in.)
US government agencies have recognized that the "war on drugs" has no effect on availability of drugs in the US.
If they seize 50% of drugs on the way in, the traffickers will just bring in twice as much as they need.
When a war is on drugs, it attacks people indiscriminately, and we are all likely to be its victims. Get this war off drugs!
Future Gaza aid ships leaving Turkey will have a Turkish naval escort.
Senator Kyl threatens to quit the supercommittee if cuts in military spending are even discussed,
If the Democrats on the supercommittee were progressives, they'd tell Kyl "We're going to insist on military cuts, so you might as well start looking for your replacement." But they aren't; they are party loyalists who do what they're told. I expect them to respond by giving Kyl what he demands, Obama-like, in the name of "compromise", because I suspect that the Democratic Party leadership will give in.
Why is the clothing of US brands so cheap? Because the women who sew it are worked so hard that they pass out.
This is what "free trade" means — wherever the jobs are, the workers will be treated badly.
Many cities, world-wide: protest on Sep 17 against the banks.
US citizens: phone to ask your congresscritter to co-sponsor the Iraq Accountability Act, which would stop Obama from keeping Bush forces troops in Iraq.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
As the US completes a decade of attacks on civil liberties, the media have gone from one-sided coverage to mostly none at all.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to replace the former Monsanto
chief
lobbyist as a high official of the FDA.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
After a TSA agent repeatedly stuck her fingers in Amy Alkon's vagina, Ms Alkon condemned this as sexual assault. The agent, far from being punished, sued Ms Alkon.
The WTO demonstrated its contempt for human life by ruling against a US law to discourage flavored cigarettes that are attractive to teenagers.
The cowardly US government will now presumably let the WTO nullify this law.
Kill the WTO before it kills you!
A speaker's bureau working for the Mujahideen-e Khalq is violating US law by providing "services" to a designated terrorist organization.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This law is unjust in two ways. First, because it covers services which are in no way criminal, and second, because organizations can be banned without a trial.
I do not think the US should support the Mujahideen-e Khalq to commit acts of war against Iran, but this law should be repealed.
Palestinians are quoting Obama to support their bid for UN recognition as a state.
Proof that the high gasoline prices of 2008 were caused by speculation by big banks.
I must point out, in this context, that gasoline prices need to be higher so as to convince people to rearrange their lives to drive less. However, the way to make gasoline prices higher is to use a predictable gasoline tax. Speculation doesn't help anyone except the speculators.
Three homosexual Iranians were executed for consensual gay sex.
35 California cities are ending their purchase of bottled water — and five US states have done likewise.
The motive is not just to save money while protecting the environment, but to encourage citizens to save money while protecting the environment.
Under Gov. Perry, Texas unemployment has increased — and many of the jobs are now below the poverty line.
People arrested in Vietnam for using drugs are kept in prison for years without any sort of trial, and tortured.
Police across the US continue harassing people for photography even though their bosses keep saying this is not the policy.
Brazil will start withdrawing its troops from occupying Haiti.
The minister's explanation of the reason refers to "democratic" elections, but the supposed president was effectively imposed by the US in a Burmese-style election.
The responsibility of the Nepalese troops for the cholera has been effectively proved, but the BBC invents doubt, just as others invent doubt about evolution or global heating.
The ACLU sued to block Florida from imposing drug tests on welfare applicants.
EU Bans
Genetically Modified-Contaminated Honey
from General Sale.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It's Time for a New and Real Populist Uprising
The war in Iraq is not over: Iraqis are still being killed.
Americans are becoming less willing to surrender freedom for "safety" from terrorists, and most Americans believe that Bush's wars made them less safe.
About Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping.
I disagree with the article's positions about Libya and Syria. In Libya there was no alternative to fighting, and in Syria it is not easy to intervene. I linked to the article anyway because this technique is useful for some cases.
In the UK, electric cars won't be cheaper than gasoline cars until 2030, according to current forecasts.
That means the gasoline tax needs to be increased.
Is the Obama Administration Putting
Corporate Profits Above Public Health?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
(Of course it is.)
A Wikileaks cable shows that Israel deliberately chose to repress peaceful Palestinian protests with military force.
It also demonstrates that the Palestinians are not waiting for a Gandhi. The Palestinian Gandhis are in jail.
Obama is feeling pressure to create some jobs.
The Republicans can block his efforts, but they can't stop him from trying and showing that the fault is theirs. Any real progressive, or even a real Democrat, would have done this immediately, and would not have needed so much pressure, or any pressure.
But Obama instead supports the Republican claims that the way to make more jobs is to endanger our health and cut spending.
Why Israel's siege of
Gaza does not satisfy international law.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli colonists from a "settlement" burnt a Palestinian mosque near Nablus as a reprisal for a government decision to block an unauthorized expansion of their colony.
In effect, they treat Palestinians as hostages.
Other settlers invaded a Palestinian village and threatened the inhabitants, demanding they leave their homes.
Then the Israeli troops arrived and supported the colonists against the inhabitants of the village.
Laws to reduce pollution
generate jobs, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA has concluded that the war in Afghanistan is stalemated.
But Petraeus does not like that conclusion.
US citizens: Tell CNN to give space to the progressive
opposition response
as it did to the Tea Party.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Abdul Hakim Belhaj asked for asylum in Britain and was told to come to London; then MI-6 arranged for the CIA to kidnap him and take him to Libya for torture.
Then Gaddafi's torturers pressured him to testify that various oppositionists were associated with al Qa'ida — presumably so they could "prove" that the US needed to support Gaddafi.
The rich that control Britain intend to turn land-use planning into a hollow shell , with a dozen excuses to prevent any project backed by money from being rejected.
Italians, protesting against il Ducino's hooverist austerity, warn that riots will follow within a year.
The Libyan rebels with NATO help created a large network of defectors and spies to take over Tripoli from Gaddafi.
Many of them started defecting months ago, but only became visible in the last two weeks. I predicted that stalemate would lead to this.
Noam Chomsky: 9/11 and the Imperial Mentality.
The lack of a substantial terrorist attack on the US for ten years shows that al Qa'ida is not in a position to do anything effective in the US.
The TSA plays just a small part in the reasons for this. It could be more reasonable and less rigid, and Americans would still be safe from al Qa'ida.
The biggest danger to America is therefore from our own government: sending Americans to die in unjust wars, squandering billions, cutting social programs, helping banks take away people's houses, crushing unions, bowing down to corporations by cancelling environmental protections, disregarding global heating. And oppressing us with tyrannical "security" measures and disregarding our rights.
Iranian agents appear to have cracked a Dutch HTTPS certificate issuer in order to spy on dissidents.
There is one part of this I am skeptical about: would such agents
leave signatures pointing to Iran? I would expect them not to.
However, what convinces me this is due to Iran is the
other evidence of faked certificates in use there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA pushed to increase drone attacks
for its own bureaucratic
motives.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Mexicans who reported on Twitter a rumor that there was a gang attack on a school are faced with prosecution.
The domain registrar for .uk proposes to
block domains on request from
the police.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Police say this will only be used in case of "serious crime", such as file sharing (!). They are getting quite clever at disguising their evil agenda.
Imagine if your landlord could kick you out on request from the police, or if your mail delivery could be cut off on request from the police.
Texas is being devoured by
wildfires after a long drought.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This will get much worse, thanks to people like Texas Gov. Perry.
The US has had 10 major weather disasters this year, and many other regions likewise.
The Republican Party has become
the anti-science party.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Or, shall we say, the Fantasy Party?
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "No anti-union
provisions in the FAA bill".
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
It appears MI-6 concealed its cooperation with Gaddafi's torturers from the parliamentary committee that is supposed to supervise it.
This refers to Gibson's investigation of torture, which was set up to be inadequate.
It appears that the San Francisco police unofficially helped Apple
agents search for a lost whyphone, making
nasty threats and violating
police rules.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Ireland proposes a law to require priests to tell the police if they hear a confession of sexual abuse of children.
I think this goes too far. The privilege of communications with certain sorts of advisors, and not solely religious ones, is important for society. Once word of this law gets around, most of those guilty will simply not tell priests about this. Or they will confess anonymously in a church in a city they don't live in.
Massachusetts plans
to track car travel
by scanning license plates
from cop cars.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
After a year of lying, the French government has been forced to admit spying on a journalist.
Meanwhile, another journalist has been threatened by allies of Sarkozy.
Hundreds of thousands protested against Yemen's president Saleh.
I wonder if the armed civilians who supported him are acting from conviction or were sent by the state, like the thugs who attacked Egypt's protesters.
The Chinese government took over two popular Beijing newspapers
to
censor them more thoroughly.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Over 15% of the Afghan army has deserted this year.
A gang-rape by UN "peacekeepers", recorded on video, may help kick them out of Haiti and end the US' occupation-by-proxy of that country.
In the UK, where unemployment is high, the government seeks to punish those who don't waste time looking for nonexistent opportunities.
Gaddafi's troops mostly gave up once they saw their side could not win, so the TNC is now in control of Tripoli and most of Libya. But it is made up of many factions. The crucial issue now is for them to resolve their disagreements peacefully.
A journal editor resigned, taking responsibility for the inadequate
peer review that allowed publication in the journal
of an invalid
paper attacking evidence for global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The peer review was flawed because it did not notice that the paper disregarded (rather than confronting and refuting) contrary evidence already published. If the paper had confronted this evidence, it is unlikely to have found valid counterarguments, but they would have been judged on their merits rather than presumed wrong.
Oil remaining from the Big Spill is regularly killing dolphins, and has
almost
eliminated the shrimp.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since the Coast Guard had trouble spotting a large new oil slick, that has appeared 15 miles away from the well that exploded, people wonder if that was an intentional coverup.
Maybe it was just incompetence. Or maybe it was that they had been ordered not to try very hard to find such things. The Obama regime has worked so hard to protect BP from the consequences of its actions, often by preventing those consequences from being observed and measured, that such suspicion is justified.
Widespread discomfort in the US with what we ought to learn from science has made intentional ignorance an effective campaign platform.
Because some Touaregs served as Gaddafi's mercenaries, many Libyans are threatening all Touaregs.
They should not worry so much about Gaddafi's former mercenaries. Now that he can't pay them, they will all abandon him.
Since Obama adopted and extended Bush's attacks on human rights, no major US party questions them. As a result, there is little debate about the issue any more.
A plan for cutting the deficit by eliminating
environmentally harmful
subsidies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Col. Morris Davis was chief prosecutor in the Guantanamo military kangaroo courts. He concluded they were fundamentally unjust, and resigned. The government is still trying to punish him and shut him up.
450,000 Israelis marched for social justice. In Haifa, they marched to oppose discrimination against Arabs.
What the new government of Libya must do now.
While Obama claims that the proposed free exploitation treaties with Colombia and Korea would increase US exports, its own figures predict the opposite.
In general, US export growth has been low wherever the US has a "free trade treaty".
This is important because it shows that these treaties backfire even in the terms of their proponents. But even if these treaties really did increase exports, that would not excuse their attack on democracy.
"Free trade treaties" are bad for everyone, except business owners .
Obama is echoing the US Chamber of Commerce's in complaining about overregulation, when the big danger is underregulation.
Underregulation brought us the financial crisis. Underregulation brought us mining disasters. Underregulation brought us the big spill.
Here are some small success stories of regulations.
These are to add to the tremendous safety improvements achieved by the FDA and EPA.
US citizens: tell Geithner
not to protect the big banks
from state prosecution
for their crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: join with Greenpeace to tell Obama
to enforce tigher ozone
standards and save lives.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: if your congresscritter signed the letter supporting the AT&T/T-mobile merger, call on him to withdraw support.
US citizens:
send your congresscritter a pink slip
saying to vote against Obama's free exploitation treaties
with Colombia, South Korea and Panama.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
An evil empire is attacking mountains in the US with massive bombing campaigns, and the US government does nothing to stop it.
That's because the US government has already surrendered to this empire.
The US has spent billions on "homeland security"
without thinking much
about what was needed.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Improving emergency response in general may well be useful, but is not the best way to put lots of Americans back to work.
Lake McConaughy sounds like a terrible vulnerability, and not just to terrorism. That dam could burst for some other reason. Thus, the response seems inadequate. What really needs to be done is to move the vital national resources so that they are not in danger of being flooded by a burst dam.
And speaking of flooded, how about protecting Manhattan from being flooded by sea-level rise due to global heating.
The Pentagon spends billions with such carelessness that it's no surprise that billions are wasted.
More details.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps it would be easier to make the Pentagon do real accounting and stop wasting money if its funding were greatly cut.
A report criticizes Ecuador's treatment of the media with several complaints, some of which are valid.
Correa's restrictions on combination between media companies and other companies are wise and necessary: the US corporate media present a fine example of the danger they address. I don't see a problem in requiring broadcast stations to broadcast public statements by the president one in a while. 150 hours over a period of more than 1500 days is 6 minutes per day — a small burden, and hardly an impediment to saying whatever they wish to say.
However, prosecuting people for criticizing the president is totally unjust. Ecuador must eliminate the law against that "crime".
The media regulatory council worries me. It would be tolerable if it applied only to broadcasting, as long as the council applies the rules honestly and nonpolitically. Applying it to all physical publication goes too far, and applying it to the Internet would be a disaster.
The US has a secret army that has held 1000 prisoners, some in brainwashing conditions.
It also operates as a death squad, targetting people (who might be enemy fighters or perhaps civilians with disapproved opinions) for killing.
The world-wide stampede for "anti-terror" laws has led to conviction of more than 35,000 people, many of whom were not really terrorists.
What the article does not mention is how these laws have eroded justice. For instance, in the UK, it is a crime to be suspected of terrorism. They don't say, "We are imprisoning you because we suspect you are planning to commit a crime." Instead, they say, "You have been convicted of the crime of being suspect."
In Chicago, join the protest against Obama's planned NAFTA for the Pacific.
The article explains why such a treaty is fundamentally bad. I suspect it will include attacks on computer users too, because all the megacorporations that Obama works for have to get something.
Uri Avnery warns that Israel may respond to massive Palestinian nonviolent protests by having snipers kill the leaders.
He says that this is what Israel did when Palestinians held massive nonviolent protests in 2000, and that Palestinian violence was a retaliation for this. If it happened once, it can happen again.
The Tories are trying to privatize the UK's National Health Service piece by piece.
A thousand protesters have been arrested at the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, but it seems Obama is firmly resolved to roast our planet.
It is pathetic to see how his former supporters reluctantly recognize that he was a false hope.
Perhaps some nation whose population will be massacred by global heating will attack the pipeline for self-protection before it is finished, much as Israel once attacked an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor.
Turkey will ask the International Court of Justice to rule on the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.
A blockade is an act of war. When Egypt blockaded the Israeli port of Eilat, Israel justifiably used its army to conquer the Sinai and thus end the blockade.
Libyan intelligence files suggest Bush sent 8 captives for Gaddafi to torture.
The UK's intelligence service had a very close relationship with Gaddafi, going so far as to send him information about Libyan dissidents in the UK.
Google detected attempts in Iran to make other servers pretend to be gmail, in an apparent attempt to spy on users.
I am sad to report that the Chrome browser that this was done with is nonfree software.
Apple turns a blind eye to environment in China.
The UN's Palmer commission was designed, not for truth or justice, but to smooth relations between Israel and Turkey.
It failed because Israel would not apologize for killing passengers on the Mavi Marmara
A Wikileaks cable proves that the US government was closely involved as the MPAA used an Australian front group to sue a major ISP.
There is evidence that Gaddafi did have many mercenaries who came from other African countries.
Glenn Greenwald analyzes the blame for the unredacted Wikileaks leak:
Wikileaks was insufficiently careful,
Guardian reporter David Leigh was
reckless, and Domscheit-Berg was destructive.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, he points out that any possible danger to US informers is a small matter compared with the atrocities revealed by the cables.
Wikileaks was planning to publish the entire dataset in November, giving the US a year to notify and protect its informers. The publication came about 10 weeks early, but the US probably has already managed to protect most of them.
A French judge reports testimony that the richest woman in France was seen handing over piles of cash to Sarkozy.
Obama chose to
prolong respiratory burdens for millions of Americans
to spare "regulatory burdens" for polluters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of "regulatory burdens" is just right-wing Republican spin; by adoptying the term, Obama shows his right-wing credentials.
The campaign to
remove the Mujahedin e Khalq from the US "terrorist
organization" list
admits that its goal is to launch military attacks
against Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is true that such attacks are not terrorism. What they are is war. In effect, these people want the US to go to war against Iran while pretending not to. Few will be fooled.
Atlas Mugged: how the cultists of the invisible hand undermine government then calls it ineffective.
Obama promised the CIA in 2008 (during the election campaign) he would continue Bush practices.
This is important because it shows that the Obama's disappointing retreats from his mildly progressive positions may have been planned in advance.
The UK police who claim that Smiley Culture stabbed himself to death as he was being arrested are being let off without a real investigation.
The US economy has stagnated, thanks to Republican cuts which Obama fails to oppose.
The DHS (Department of Harm and Sickness) is developing mobile x-ray scanner vans to x-ray crowds of people.
If this machine exposes you to a dangerous dose of x-rays, you won't even know it was aimed at you.
Sudan's air force is bombing civilians in Nuba indiscriminately.
US citizens: phone the White House, and say, "Don't build the Keystone
XL pipeline, because using tar sand oil is too dangerous for our
planet."
Also send a message through this page,
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
but the phone call will have more weight.
Phone -
Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461
US citizens: The House of Representatives is working on its own version of the Internet Blacklist bill. Phone your congresscritter and say you oppose it. Also use this page to send a message.
Keep in mind that a phone call has more effect.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the US: support Greenpeace pressuring
Chicken of the Sea to stop
using harmful fishing methods that endanger various species.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Sarkozy had the French secret service spy on a reporter investigating corruption in Sarkozy's funding.
Around the world, mining operations are trashing the environment and endangering the health of local inhabitants, who generally get no benefit.
The Libyan military commander of Tripoli says the CIA kidnaped him in Malaysia, tortured him in Thailand, then handed him over to Gaddafi for more torture.
The National Nurses Union (and other Americans) held protests in 21 states to call for a tax on stock transactions and other similar financial transactions.
We can't attribute specific storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves entirely to global heating, but we can estimate how much it increases the likelihood of such disasters.
That should be enough to show that it's worth a lot of money and a lot of trouble to keep CO2 out of the air.
Some scientists seek to cancel global heating by spraying tiny salt crystals into the upper atmosphere, from a balloon that holds up a pipeline.
As the article points out, generating a cooling effect is not sufficient to counteract the harm done by increased CO2 in the air. It could cancel out some of the heating, but won't protect shellfish and coral from death due to carbonic acid in the water.
The former head of the UK's intelligence agency condemned the idea of a "war on terror", because the September 2001 attacks were a crime, not an act of war.
Firemen who came to the burning World Trade Center site in New York suffer from a higher rate of cancer.
The Bush regime said the air was safe to breath.
A UN panel granted legitimacy to Israel's siege of Gaza and criticized the activists that try to bring aid there.
Nonetheless, the report also condemned Israel's apparent murder of
activists on the Mavi Marmara.
Turkey considered it Israel's deadline
to apologize for the deadly attack, and since there was no apology,
Turkey now threatens sanctions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The presence of Alvaro Horrible, ex-president of Colombia who has been linked to right-wing thugs and spying on political opponents means that the US had its man in the panel. The US probably told him to push to favor Israel.
The banksters will be sued for billions for defrauding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
I hope this bankrupts those banks. Then they need to be broken up into lots of smaller banks!
Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed 12,000 civilians.
That is a lot of deaths, but small compared with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. The organizations that carried out these bombings are responsible for their killings, but Bush is responsible for them too, since the war as a whole is his crime.
A cable leaked by Wikileaks validates charges that Bush forces troops handcuffed and then murdered an Iraqi family, then had their home bombed to try to destroy the evidence.
The Bush regime lied about it; the cable shows it lied. Obama, of course, wants us to ignore past crimes and "look forward, not backward". However, that only applies to those that the regime considers allies. Obama does not apply that motto to people who leak evidence of state crimes such as these.
How the government of the UAE acquired the power to fake https certificates and thus create sites that masquerade as other sites.
Face recognition software is being extended. Police can take iris scans with portable devices on the street
I don't see anything dangerous about technology that tries to recognize a person's age or sex, or to check an employee's alertness (though there are better ways to do that, such as special videogames). Tracking individuals is what's unjust.
Cheney's using the big lie tactic, claiming that the torture he approved was justified by imaginary benefits for the US.
Not that such benefits, even if real, can justify torture. A state that tortures deserves defeat.
Peru adopted a law that calls for consultations between mining companies and local communities.
However, the law is weak since it does not give the communities a veto. Peru deserves more than this.
Shown by Wikileaks: when some rich Haitians wanted the UN occupation troops to attack a slum full of unruly Aristide supporters, the US representative said to go ahead.
He also advised them to set up social programs afterward to help the poor, but they did not take that advice.
Thousands of blacks — Libyans and migrant workers — have
been
arrested in Tripoli on suspicion of being mercenaries for Gaddafi.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
At least they are not being killed.
The new government has a need and a right to hold anyone thought likely to fight for Gaddafi as a prisoner of war, but there is no need to assume that every foreign black was a mercenary. Besides, Gaddafi can no longer pay mercenaries, so any real mercenary will seek only to get out of Libya, not to fight. Why not let them leave?
US citizens: call on your senators to confirm Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Europe has run into economic stagnation.
This is no surprise given the austerity programs that right-wing governments have imposed. Any chance of recovery has been "hoovered" up.
How the unredacted Wikileaks cables got to be published.
Wikileaks was supposed to be 3 failures away from this disaster. Both Assange and Leigh made errors of carelessness, because each one removed one failure from that distance. Assange should have deleted that file, in case the password got to be known and someone found the file. Leigh should not have published the password, in case someone else found the file and got it from the server. Both reasoned, "It's ok to remove one failure from the three required for disaster because the other failures are so unlikely to happen." And that was careless.
But even given those two errors, the unredacted cables would not have leaked but for Domscheit-Berg's group and its attempts to harm Wikileaks. What they did was not an error. They are like people who accuse someone's house of being vulnerable to a fire and prove their claim by setting fire to it.
The article says this proves no leaker should trust Wikileaks, but Wikileaks has not revealed any leakers' identities. According to everyone connected with it, it never had that information. However, it does mean you can't have confidence Wikileaks will prevent publication of data that you want excluded from the leaked info.
An executive of Bechtel, and former official of the Bush regime, did PR for Gaddafi until a few weeks ago.
Republicans propose to destroy environmental protections (and
Americans' health) in the name of "creating jobs".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is just trickle-down. Eliminate regulations that protect Americans from abuse by businesses, and the businesses will have bigger profits. We are supposed to assume that bigger profits means hiring more Americans, but that's been false so many times we should never believe it.
Lake Erie is becoming a dead zone again, and the only way to save it is to limit the phosphate fertilizer used wastefully by the farmers
of the region.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is a worldwide scarcity of phosphate so it is a shame to waste it.
The attorney general of Hama resigned, accusing Assad's forces of killing 72 protesters in Hama's prison.
Israel planned an all-out attack on Gaza, and began attacking Hamas targets, as a "retaliation" for the small Eilat attack that Hamas didn't know about, plus missile launches that Hamas tried to stop.
Israel also arrested people associated with Hamas, including Palestinian parlamentarians, despite having no reason to associate them with the Eilat attack.
This illustrates Israel's general contempt for the idea of human rights where Palestinians are concerned.
The Chairman of the African Union accused the Libyan rebels of assuming Black migrant workers are Gaddafi's mercenaries.
Even real mercenaries must not be summarily shot once they surrender.
One of Obama's major campaign activists was arrested protesting the Keyhole XL pipeline.
If Obama had any independence left, he would have cancelled this pipeline. His silence demonstrates is that he has bound himself over to the megacorporations, and cannot disobey them even to maintain his political base.
A decent man would have chosen to go down fighting rather than help the enemy. If you resist, there is even a chance that you win.
Austerity in the UK has caused a big rise in homelessness, and 630,000 families are reduced to living in one room.
The Tory party is planning legislation to make it worse.
US citizens: tell Obama to support contraception as part of health
insurance, and not allow more exceptions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Report: Muslim Americans Are Incredibly Normal.
Fortunately, there's a point on which they don't resemble US Christians: US Muslims don't threaten us with theocracy.
Social justice in Israel cannot be only for Jews; it includes ending the occupation.
The Pentagon spending that keeps increasing is not justified by any strategic plan, so claims that it shouldn't be cut are meaningles
Israeli troops grabbed the manager of the Jenin
Freedom Theater after
forcing him to take off his clothes on the street in front of it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Then they ransacked the home of the theater's watchman after beating him up. And then they fired guns at the angry unarmed youths who were retaliating for the previous assaults by throwing stones.
A video proves charges that Israel arrests Palestinian children and bullies/brainwashes them into incriminating people in their villages.
Israeli troops attacked nonviolent Palestinian protests all across the West Bank.
Israel's army plans to shoot Palestinian protesters if they approach Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
This demonstrates Israel's illegal intention to annex parts of Palestine.
The Israeli government just decided to expand one of these colonies, calling it "compensation" to a few of the settlers.
The team asked by the UN to investigate the origin of the cholera in Haiti declined to test whether came from Nepal (as already alleged), and therefore discovered nothing pertinent.
The professor who led the team had a massive conflict of interest which might explain why.
Companies that knowingly transported CIA prisoners have been revealed and are now likely to be sued on behalf of the victims.
Specific reasons why the US-Panama Free Exploitation Treaty is harmful.
This is in addition to the general reasons why all such treaties are harmful and undermine democracy.
One benefit of Obama's health insurance reform law is that it requires companies to describe their insurance plans clearly and in a standard format that facilitates comparison. But they are using bogus arguments to try to destroy that requirement.
Plastic bag companies edited California's textbooks to make them more positive about throwaway plastic bags.
Bahrain hired a PR agency to attack Doctors Without Borders, and some of the agency's executives quit.
Whether and how Anna Hazare is connected with the Hindu extremist BJP is not clear. This article argues that the BJP supports the same anti-corruption campaign that Hazare supports, perhaps partly for its own purposes.
Pakistan's censors have banned VPNs
There are already other reasons why I refuse to go to Pakistan (for instance, the laws against blasphemy), so this is just one more. What I fear that once one country dares sabotage the net this way, others will too.
Google must recognize that "you're not forced to use G+" is not an all purpose excuse for mistreating people, and heed the complaints of the public.
Don't use an Internet service that demands your "real name"!
Police interrogated passenger Vance Gilbert for reading a book about antique airplanes while he was seated in an airplane.
Mr. Gilbert, you did only one thing that wasn't proper: you felt humiliated when they harassed you. Every American should be aware that police threaten (and attack) innocent people. The trouble they caused was their fault, not yours. You as well as the other passengers ought to be angry at the flight crew, and the police, for supposing that reading a book (it's irrelevant which book) might even possibly be grounds to pull a passenger off an airplane.
The Chairman of the African Union accused the Libyan rebels of assuming Black migrant workers are Gaddafi's mercenaries.
Even real mercenaries must not be summarily shot once they surrender.
One of Obama's major campaign activists was arrested protesting the Keyhole XL pipeline.
If Obama had any independence left, he would have cancelled this pipeline. His silence demonstrates is that he has bound himself over to the megacorporations, and cannot disobey them even to maintain his political base.
A decent man would have chosen to go down fighting rather than help the enemy. If you resist, there is even a chance that you win.
Mexico's president suggested that the US should legalize drugs, without daring however to say it explicitly.
Austerity in the UK has caused a big rise in homelessness, and 630,000 families are reduced to living in one room.
The Tory party is planning legislation to make it worse.
As a perhaps unintended consequence of Domscheit-Berg's sabotage of Wikileaks, a large collection of US cables has leaked without the Wikileaks redaction to remove names of individuals.
The person Snorrason who is quoted as blaming this on Wikileaks itself is one of Domscheit-Berg's associates.
Ten Reasons to Move Cheney's Book to the Crime Section.
A letter proves that in October 2002, Bush and B'liar had already agreed to attack Iraq without UN support.
Defeating neo-Nazis by laughing at them: the stork that wrote Mein Krampf (my cramp).
An Iranian opposition group says that opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has been held in total isolation for 42 days in an attempt to brainwash him to confess some sort of crimes.
A retired general says that the deficit-reduction agreement is an opportunity to reduce excessive and increasing military spending that harms national security.
This is because a country's military strength is only one aspect of its security. Wounding its people to keep the army going is in the long term a path to weakness.
One issue he did not mention is that use of the military can harm a country. The unjust war of aggression in Iraq has damaged the US, though less than it damaged Iraq. The quagmired war in Afghanistan may not have made Afghanistan much worse than it was 10 years ago, but has not made it much better either, and it has damaged US security.
Libyan rebel fighters seem to have carried out bloody reprisals against Gaddafi's supporters in Tripoli.
Just because they fought and replaced a brutal dictator does not mean they should act like him.
Karzai leaked information about talks between the
US and the Taliban,
effectively blocking the talks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: organize meetings with
your congresscritter to say, "Jobs
not cuts".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama to
investigate Bush and Cheney for authorizing
torture of prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: if your senator or congresscritter is in the supercommittee, go to his office and say he should work for the people, not for business.
You could also say, "Jobs not cuts. Tax the rich and end the war, and avoid cuts."
Spanish police attacked harmless protesters and journalists at the protest against the expense of the pope's visit.
Ai Weiwei has published an article about incommunicado imprisonment in China.
The government of Thailand is on a rampage, imprisoning people for "insulting the king".
In practice, any criticism of the monarchy is treated as an "insult".
The mere idea of such punishment is unjust, regardless of how the details are handled.
Matt Taibbi explains how the SEC protected the banks it was supposed to regulate.
He also explains how New York Attorney General Schneiderman wants to prosecute banks' fraud, and how the corrupt Obama regime is trying to stop him.
If a candidate does not recognize truth of evolution, that
is a sign of wilfull ignorance which is likely to affect his actions in other areas too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If a candidate advocates free software, that is a diagnostic for a resistance to being bought by megacorporations.
Thugs (probably working for Assad) attacked Syria's top cartoonist and broke his hands.
Auditing the Federal Reserve system revealed secret bailouts amounting to 16 trillion dollars.
It also revealed that the Federal Reserve has allowed its directors to maintain financial conflicts of interest, owning parts of banks that are being bailed out.Architectural treasures in Libya are being looted from museums and caves.
If NATO indeed bombed Leptis Magna, it has some explaining to do. Why didn't it have procedures in place to prevent that? Will they never learn?.Bahrain's king
promised civil trials to arrested protesters, and to give back jobs to protesters who were fired. He also forgave them for the crime of insulting
him, which should
not be a crime at all.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There was no real evidence that Iran was behind the protests in Bahrain; that was just government spin, meant to cut support for the democracy movement.
Hundreds of workers collapsed at Cambodian sweatshop making clothes for H&M. Maybe some toxic gas was involved.
A US appeals court ruled that filming police officers at work is protected under the First Amendment.
This court's jurisdiction covers Massachusetts and some other states. Massachusetts was one of several states which had laws against recording conversations without getting permission and tried to use them to ban such recordings.
Homeless people in many US cities face barriers to access to toilets and water to drink..
In the US: join the "National Nurses" campaign on Sep 1 to push for a stock transaction tax.
"Child" pornography is being used as an excuse to threaten all American internet users' privacy.
The term "child pornography" is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution.
Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so. In the Internet, enforcement of censorship puts other rights in danger.
Please support demandprogress.org's campaign against this bill.
The Indian government has promised to adopt a strong anticorruption law, and Anna Hazare suspended his hunger strike.
People have criticized Hazare in various ways. It is true that he is connected with the BJP, the Hindu extremist party. Dalits have condemned his movement as "upper caste", and maybe they are right. Still, it is good to cut down on corruption.
Researchers argue that world food prices exceeding a certain level tend to cause riots, that this may have triggered the Arab Spring to occur this year.
They also predict that, starting in a few years, food prices will exceed the riot level all the time.
Local people have sabotaged Shell's oil export pipelines in Nigeria after Shell fired the pipeline guards rather than give them a raise.
It is possible that this amounts to a sort of protection racket, if the guard companies encouraged the sabotage. That would be unjust, but it's a smaller injustice than the massive damage Shell has done to the people of those areas of Nigeria.
However, this form of sabotage adds to the damage suffered by them.
Eagles' Don Henley: EFF, Google "aid and abet" criminals.
Someone found me his concert program, which includes LA, Santa bara and Saratoga CA in September. Would anyone like to organize protests at them?
Shaker Aamer has been in prison in Guantanamo for almost 10 years.
Despite being "cleared for release" in 2007, the US continues
to keep him imprisoned without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Aamer is a witness to torture of other prisoners, which went as far as killing some.
The UK government gave evidence about him to the US, evidence that
might prove his "confession" was extracted by torture, but on the
condition that Aamer's lawyers not get access to it. Aamer's UK lawyers won a case in a UK court to get his lawyers access to this evidence, but it does him no good since the US refuses to allow him justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
76 congresscritters signed a letter to support the AT&T/T-mobile merger, repeating AT&T claims that have already been debunked.
Here's their letter, and here is the list of these congresscritters.
If one of them is yours, please phone and say, "Shame on you." Otherwise, phone and say, "Don't do that."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US has killed yet another al Qa'ida leader, and presents this as a significant victory.
I don't expect this to have much effect on al Qa'ida. The specific group that was headed by Osama bin Laden has done little for years beyond make plans. The substance of al Qa'ida is an ideology rather than a centralized organization, and as such, it cannot defeated by attacking its leaders.
The tie-in toys for Disney "Cars" are made in a Chinese sweatshop by child laborers.
You can't determine that fact by looking at the toys themselves, but their other flaw is obvious: they are a media tie-in. Giving kids such toys is media manipulation, and it teaches them to find such manipulation acceptable. It is better to teach your kids to resist. This resistance will help them become good human beings instead of good sheep.
The UK spends more on subsidies for films that promote smoking than on efforts to discourage smoking.
This is what you get when governments buy into the idea that the way to serve the public is to give handouts to business.
The manufacturer of Listerine tried to discourage awareness that such mouthwashes can cause cancer of the mouth.
Uri Avnery celebrates the Libyan people's victory over Gaddafi, and explains why NATO's assistance was morally obligatory.
He also argues for an obligation to intervene against Assad in Syria. I would agree, if Syria had a viable armed rebellion as Libya did. (The Libyan rebels could not have defeated Gaddafi without help, but the point is that they held substantial territory on their own for long enough to receive support.)
The Syrians don't have a rebellion, they have a nonviolent protest movement, and that can't be aided by outside military force.
Since Obama has the sole authority to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House protests at which hundreds continue to be arrested will show whether he is capable of refusing to be the flunky of the oil companies.
Everyone: call on Cisco to ask China to stop persecuting activists for suing Cisco.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating has melted so much Arctic ice that it was possible to row a boat to the north magnetic pole.
China is building many nuclear reactors from an old design, and political influence appears to be involved in purchasing decisions.
The UK finance minister calls tax evasion "morally repugnant". However, he shows no intention to change the laws that allow many multinational corporations to pay no tax in the UK.
So what's the moral difference? Is making lots of money and paying no tax only immoral when it happens to be illegal?
Ron Paul attracts support from Progressives for his oppposition to wars in Asia and the War on Drugs. Unfortunately he also opposes Social Security, Civil Rights and abortion rights.
I am still not sure he is worse than Obama.
Charles Monnett, the US government scientist who discovered drowning polar bears, has been unsuspended — but not returned to his old job.
A retired senior police officer was accused of organizing the murder
of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI has a system called eGuardian that keeps track of suspicious activities such as photography and taking notes in public. Plus once in a rare while a criminal. The ACLU is trying to find out how they use it.
The State Department's "final" environmental review of the
tar sands oil pipeline is missing crucial topics.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters in Chile call for far-reaching reform.
The recession that may never end provides an opportunity for cooperatives.
China plans to officially legislate its practice of imprisoning dissidents for months without telling their families what happened to them.
This unjust Chinese law would carry no more ethical significance than the law that set up Guantanamo military kangaroo courts.
Chilean police shot and killed a student in the midst of a massive
protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA is censoring a book by a critic, banning him from stating things
that are already public knowledge, just to hamper criticism. This is part of a general Obama practice of defending even the
nastiest government practices.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Spain will adopt a constitutional limit on deficit spending, in effect denying itself the one remedy for a recession.
States should pay down the national debt in good times, so they can use deficit spending when it is needed: in bad times.
Obama plans to eliminate some "unnecessary" government regulations, at least one of which protects public health.
US union leaders asked Congress to investigate how Colombia's government
used US aid to attack unions there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
All "free trade" treaties undermine democracy, and this one also attacks the idea of justice in by imposing in Colombia a policy of punishing Internet users merely accused of sharing.
France refuses to sign a UN declaration on human rights and the Internet because Sarkozy insists that copyright is just as important as human rights.
The article confusingly refers to copyright as "intellectual property", a term that spreads confusion whenever it is used.
It is not known who organized the attack near Eilat last week; Israel retaliated by attacking the usual suspects.
US citizens: tell Obama
to stop protecting the banksters
as New York Atty General Schneiderman investigates their mortgage fraud
against the public.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I added, "If we don't put some of the banksters in jail for this, they will start again as soon as our backs are turned."
The European Cybercrime Treaty offers many countries an excuse for
dangerous secret surveillance of their citizens. Australia and Canada
propose to be next.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Libyan rebels are preparing to attack Sirte with captured heavy weapons, while NATO attacks Gaddafi's bases there.
Craig Murray points out that this NATO attack is not necessary to protect civilians, and rather endangers the civilians there.
While the rebels understandably would like to capture Sirte, is that enough reason to attack a city whose population supports Gaddafi? Simply encircling it on the land side and encouraging unarmed people to leave the city is likely to be enough, now that Gaddafi has no chance to win.
Why Brazil organized the UN occupation of Haiti, and why it may be
planning to pull out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
How to Avoid Bush's Iraq Mistakes in Libya.
Now that Chinese dissidents who are suing Cisco for making censorship/surveillance equipment for China, the police are trying to intimidate them into drop the case.
This article says that shortages of oil and usable fresh water, and soil degradation, will make soon it necessary to move to move to organic farming in a big way.
This could be a way to increase employment, but it won't be easy: most Americans know nothing about farming, and it isn't easy to learn if you are not young.
If the US wants to cut the deficit over 10 years, it only needs to follow the existing laws.
Corruption and brutality prevail in the Afghan police, whose officers rape and murder with impunity.
This reflects the general corruption of Karzai's regime, so more time and money are not likely to change it.
Bernie Sanders proposes to eliminate the regressive cap on the Social Security payroll tax.
Wikileaks cables show that the US government regarded the UN "peacekeeping" occupation of Haiti as crucial for US interests there.
In addition to introducing cholera there, these troops helped, by their mere presence, in the imposition of the Burmese-style rigged election.
Governor Perry tried to collude with a Swiss bank to let investors buy life insurance policies on the state's teachers' lives.
250 protesters have been arrested at the White House, opposing Obama's
oil pipeline designed to use Canada's heavily polluting tar sands oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Protests are planned in Ottawa too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
South Africa's new chief justice considers homosexuality a disease, and tends to go easy on abuse of women.
South Africa has been cursed by bad presidents after Mandela. If you are reading this, you could probably do better.
Young bankers are unhappy with their pay, what with 100-hour work weeks.
Perhaps the banks will need to hire twice as many people and ask them to work only 50 hours a week.
Walmart is trying to buy influence in Boston by giving money to local charities, in order to overcome political opposition to its opening a store there.
Anyone influenced by this is a fool, but there are lots of such fools. For instance, there are people at MIT CSAIL who admire Bill Gates because he gave money and got their part of the building named "Gates". As if this were more important than the harm Microsoft continues to do.
People should think of these "donations" as lobbying activities. They will probably stop if Walmart's lobbying campaign succeeds.
Glyphosate does not kill "Roundup Ready" GM crops, it does kill
beneficial fungi, reducing their yield to no more than non-GM crops.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
France will increase taxes on the rich, along with cuts that are likely to increase the recession.
Gaddafi's snipers still control some parts of Tripoli, and are firing inaccurate missiles at Misrata from another city. They cannot hope to win a war that way. It is pure viciousness.
If Qatari troops were present involved in taking Tripoli, that would be the sort of help that the rebels should have got in March.
The FBI has thousands of informers in mosques in the US, many of them blackmailed, trying to lure in would-be terrorists. Often it seems they manufacture the "terrorism", preying on confused people who would never have made a real plan on their own.
Apropos of Anna Hazare's protest fast, 4 MPs in India were arrested for selling their votes.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who stole many as yet unpublished leaked documents from Wikileaks in 2010, has destroyed many or all of them.
Thanks to his betrayal, we will not get to see the US no-fly list.
The Chaos Computer Club has expelled him for trying to use their name to promote his own nebulous substitute for Wikileaks.
Here is a discussion of the implications of his actions.
Since a year ago, we have seen many people and organizations make accusations against Wikileaks. Domscheit-Berg's accusations, coming as they did from an insider, sounded very bad. But now we see that he cannot be trusted and his accusations should not be believed. There are reports he is cooperating with the FBI. Perhaps his sabotage of Wikileaks' operations and his accusations were all part of that "cooperation".
California approved use of toxic methyl iodide as a pesticide. Farm workers are scared.
In 1994, Mitt Romney argued for abortion rights. His argument remains valid although he ceases to heed it.
The Koch brothers have campaigned against security precautions for chemical plants, arguing that terrorism is not such a big danger and doesn't justify causing so much trouble for business.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
That argument is not valid about a chemical plant which could poison thousands of people, but it is valid for the much smaller problems that other possible terrorist attacks could cause.
The same argument applies much That is right — so when will this same principle be applied to the measures that cause trouble for us?
Harsh state laws that attack illegal immigrants seem to have chased most illegal immigrants away from some states, leading to collapse of certain businesses.
Some aspects of these laws are specially cruel, but the basic point of not allowing illegal immigrants to remain does not seem wrong to me. Convincing US citizens to do the jobs formerly done by illegal immigrants may require increasing the wages and improving working conditions. It may also require job training, which I doubt these states have provided.
15% of Americans now get food stamps. Many are employed part time and can't live on that.
Many companies prefer to hire more part-time employees just so as not to pay them benefits such as health care. A national health system would eliminate this perverse incentive.
Governor Perry published a book last year which condemned Social Security as unconstitutional.
Student Paul Donnachie in Scotland was convicted of the crime of insulting and defacing (but only notionally) an Israeli student's Israeli flag. He also called Israel a "terrorist state" and called the other student a "terrorist".
Donnachie needs to learn that he does no good for the cause of peace by being crude. However, what he said about Israel is simple truth. Israel has committed acts which perfectly fit the usual definition of terrorism: for instance, the bombing of civilians in Gaza with the aim of making them drop their support for Hamas. Violence against civilians for a political purpose.
There is no reason to believe that the Israeli student Reitblat is personally a terrorist, so Donnachie owes him an apology for that. However, to punish mere insult as a crime violates the basic human right of freedom of speech.
A study predicts increased CO2 emissions from northern soils, so global heating will cause more global heating.
Hamas harasses and arrests political activists in Gaza.
Hamas also blocks Palestinians from leaving Gaza to study — ironically, just what Israel used to do to them.
The price of gold has risen 70% this year, but the countries where it is mined get little benefit because foreign businesses keep it.
Some reasons people stay with abusive lovers.
A US judge ruled that police need a warrant to get cell phone location data.
Other judges have made different rulings, so I expect the Supreme Court will make the real decision.
Did Obama Order Tar Sands Protesters Jailed?
Exposed: Shell's poor safety record for oil drilling in the UK.
New Zealand is considering signing a treaty that requires political censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This treaty is an injustice. Freedom of speech must be defended even when it involves statements we despise.
If New Zealand wants to cooperate with other countries against organized crime, it can take the other proposed steps without signing the treaty.
A Halliburton executive publicly drank some of Halliburton's current
fracking fluid as a stunt.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I call it a stunt because it proves nothing significant about fracking and safety. Even supposing that fluid is safe, next month Halliburton could switch to something else, which isn't. And it says nothing about other companies.
If a law required all companies to use a fracking fluid that is safe for humans and other species, and that wouldn't pollute wells, and to get approval of the ingredients to prove it, that would be more than a stunt.
The rogue terror groups in Gaza acceded to Hamas' cease fire with Israel, under Egyptian pressure.
Now the challenge is to undo the distractive effect of these attacks, which gave Netanyahu a chance to make security the main issue.
Why there is no need to cut Social Security.
Divisions among the rebels in Libya will make establishment of a new government difficult.
A crucial difference between Libya and Afghanistan is that the US set up Karzai's "government" and is thus fully responsible for it, including its corruption. The Libyan rebels' shaky government was not set up by NATO even if NATO help create the opportunity for it to exist, and NATO must avoid getting drawn into a role in setting one up.
Horrible things may happen if Libyans do this badly, but Afghanistan shows that horrible things could happen if NATO gets involved.
Colombia's former president, Alvaro Horrible (that sounds much like "Uribe" in Spanish, and is more accurate) used US funds to spy on and smear political opponents, dissidents, and Supreme Court judges.
Democracy in Colombia is hardly "thriving" — in fact, it is planning a law to punish Internet users on mere accusation of copyright infringement, in obedience to US demands.
The US and Afghanistan are planning a deal to keep US troops there (and the war going) until 2024.
The megacorporations that want special tax breaks on their foreign profits "to create jobs" refuse to say how many jobs they have in the US, and how many in other countries.
But it seems they have cut almost 3 million US jobs in the past decade. So it seems unlikely that they will go in the opposite direction.
The one kind of tax change that really would help jobs in the US is to establish a national health care system. The current system of paying for health care through employment discourages employing people in the US.
US citizens: sign
to say you agree with Warren Buffett
that taxes on rich people should be increased.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition urging This American Life to make its show about software patents available in a format that isn't patented.
100 were arrested protesting our right-wing president's tar sand oil pipeline, and many were jailed to discourage further protests.
The special "safety conditions" that the company agreed to are minor and insignificant, or just repeat what the law requires.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The arrested protesters say, We need company in jail!
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The credit rating agencies that rate countries' debts have a conflict of interest, says a former executive.
US citizens: call on Obama to pressure Iceland to stop killing endangered fin whales.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dominique Strauss-Kahn may run for President of France if the rape charges are dropped.
There may be doubts about whether he raped a chambermaid, but we know he is guilty of unspeakable acts in his role as head of the IMF.
Some towns near Fukushima will be uninhabitable for decades.
A state in Germany has banned the Facebook "like" button for the surveillance it does.
Facebook "like" buttons track users even if they are not logged in on Facebook..
The private prison operator CCA turned a prison sentence into a death sentence by denying medical care to a prisoner who had a heart attack. But this is just the worst example of CCA's cruelty. So the ACLU wants CCA's contract cancelled.
2,000 corpses have been found in unmarked graves in Kashmir, apparently Kashmiris secretly killed by India.
India promised to give Kashmir a referendum about whether to be part of India, but never carried it out.
Calling on the FDA to ban antibacterial soap that does no good and can indirectly do harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of scared Mexicans have had RFIDs implanted on the belief that this can help track them if they are kidnapped.
There are just two problems: 1. RFIDs only track you when you go near an antenna, and 2. the kidnappers would cut it out of you anyway.
Our Brave New Marketing World.
I don't have a frequent-purchaser card from any retail store, but I do sometimes use the numbers of other people.
Uri Avnery: The Palestinian attack in the Negev was the miracle Netanyahu was waiting for: now he can use "security" to distract attention from all criticism.
His conclusion: campaigning for other social issues cannot ignore the issue of peace with Palestine.
Parts of Tripoli have risen up against Gaddafi as the rebel troops outside close in.
I am sure the rebels will move as fast as they can; but as they advance into into the city, Gaddafi will have lots of opportunities to slow them down. I fear that his troops will crush the uprisings. Given their propensity to randomly shell civilian areas, I think they'd be glad to kill these anti-Gaddafi Libyans even if there is no hope they can win.
There needs to be a way for them to surrender instead — and provisions need to be made to heal the conflict with the tribes that have been Gaddafi's supporters.
The Pope's visit to Madrid was spoiled by a storm.
I would have said it was a "sign from God", if I thought there was one.
South Africa seizes the children of Zimbabwean women who are caught begging.
I don't believe that countries are obliged to admit any number of poor migrants. BUt these are not ordinary migrants. They are refugees from Mugabes tyranny, which is supported by South Africa.
Meahwhile, nothing can excuse telling these women to "get a job" when there are no jobs and they have no papers, or "find a decent house" when they are destitute, or demanding they pay to take a class. (Whose idea was that fee? The IMF's?) If South Africa wants to have a policy of taking the children of destitute refugees, it should come out and say so, not set up a catch-22 for them.
I also wonder what conditions these children are being kept in. I have a feeling that institutions for poor children in South Africa are also not very good conditions to bring up a child. Are they better than standing with mom at an intersection to beg?
Ohio's right-wing governor Kasich attacked state workers' bargaining rights, but progressives have set up a referendum which he now fears he will lose.
The US is poisoning troops and civilians in Afghanistan by burning waste indiscriminately.
The same was done in Iraq (and maybe still is).
A Greenland glacier is melting at record pace.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Don't buy property within a few meters of sea level.
Drugs are present in all rivers and lakes, and they cause medical problems for fish and shellfish.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many political activists in Egypt face charges of "insulting the military".
People have a human right to insult anyone and anything; any state that puts people on trial for doing so, convicts itself.
The US military is going overboard to push Christianity on soldiers, and spending hundreds of millions to do it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The result is to make non-Christian soldiers feel pressure to convert.
Mountaintop removal coal mining poisons the oldest soil in the world, killing sensitive species, and does not even provide the jobs that are promised.
Scientists researching chronic fatigue syndrome receive death threats.
Climate scientist Jason Box will risk arrest to protest the plans for the tar sands oil pipeline from Canada, along with one to two thousand others.
Texas Governor Perry claims Texas has done better on employment than most of the US. Texas' unemployment rate is 8.2; the US as a whole is a little over 9.
Vietnam has sentenced human rights defenders to years in prison for peaceful political advocacy.
An Argentine government commission ordered all ISPs to block access to a site that has published leaked government emails.
A dangerous trend: many employers are using Facebook for recruiting.
I fear this will develop into an unofficial requirement for many people to use Facebook on pain of not getting hired.
Obama really loves secret military operations, and has given them dangerous autonomy.
Two former Guantanamo prisoners, who released without charges, were then imprisoned on their return to Tajikistan after a trial that was even worse than a Guantanamo trial.
Arizona wants to prohibit nonprofits (such as shelters for battered women) from even discussing abortion. The ACLU is fighting back.
More instances where the US military tortured prisoners by making them feel they were drowning.
Two prisoners were really drowned.
A French businessman says he will pay the fines for all women fined for wearing burqas.
That is good, but what about those of us who are men, or who are not Muslims? The right to cover one's face in public should not be limited to women, or to those with religious motivations. If face recognition cameras are set up in the streets, covering your face will be the only way to resist total surveillance.
Perhaps this response will lead to reconsideration of these laws.
Judging Obama by the advisers he kept, and the ones he sacked.
Syrian dissidents are planning to meet in Istanbul to form a unified front.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Of the 145 protesters in a Fortnum & Mason store, 30 are being prosecuted — the ones that had leaflets.
By choosing to prosecute these protesters, instead of making Fortnum & Mason pay taxes as they demanded, the UK government shows that it values the budget deficit as an excuse to make poor people suffer.
By treating possession of leaflets — proof of a political role — as an "aggravating" factor, it shows that the real defendent here is the idea of protest, and reaffirm that "aggravated trespass" is just an excuse to prosecute protesters.
A Palestinian TV show that satirized officials has been banned by the Palestinian Authority.
The PA now has an opportunity to demonstrate its readiness to respect human rights, by cancelling this decision.
The Libyan rebels have taken Zawiya, cutting off Tripoli from the rest of Libya and cutting off its supply of gasoline.
Tripoli is now cut off in all directions. I hope that the rebels will not cut off food to Tripoli's civilians.
However, tribal divisions are a problem for the rebels.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Even after Jamaica's debt was restructured, over half of national income goes to paying the debt, hurting education, health and housing.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which was introduced by UN "peacekeeper" troops, could be ended if proper efforts were made: but they are not being made.
Amnesty International calls on Egypt to drop charges against an activist for his Twitter comments.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The SEC regularly discards the results of investigations that don't lead to prosecution. This protects the suspects — executives and corporations.
Governor Perry followed a sensible Keynesian policy of deficit spending to create jobs in Texas.
Thus, his condemnation of government spending is hypocritical.
Adel Al-Gazzar was held unjustly in Guantanamo, then released. When he got home to Egypt, Mubarak's regime imprisoned him.
US citizens: call on the Supercommittee to cut military spending, not social spending.
US citizens: Tell Congresscritters
stop hiding from the public
behind paid-attendence private meetings.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Americans:
support
the 10th anniversary campaign
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
for a thorough and
honest investigation of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Only a proper and uncorrupted investigation can establish who was responsible and who wasn't.
US citizens: call
on the DOE to make its fracking regulations strong.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
When companies want to conceal things, they typically claim they need to keep secrets from their competitors. Even if that is indeed one of their motives, there is no reason to grant it any validity in an issue of public safety or health. When those are at stake, or any issue more important than the profit of any one company, businesses should be required to reveal any information that the public needs.
However, I think this reason is a front. If all the companies in a certain field were required to publish certain information, each company would gain something and lose something. If he can see your secrets, that is compensated by the fact that you can see his secrets. Once each company knows all, they would all become more efficient. Why would they object strenuously to this?
My theory is that what they really want is to keep their dangerous practices secret from the public, but they can't admit that, so they talk about keeping secrets from each other, and politicians whose support has been procured in some other way can cite this as their public reason.
Canadians: sign this petition to oppose the increased police spy powers that the government wants.
The government plans to give the police people's Internet and cell phone data tracking without a warrant.
The fact that it plans to slip this into a big "omnibus" bill displays its contempt for the citizens.
A Massachusetts citizen who made a video of a policeman beating a prisoner with a flashlight (and calling him racial insults) is now threatened with prosecution for recording it.
Chinese political prisoners are suing Cisco for supplying equipment that helped China censor them.
In London, with over a million security cameras, one crime got solved each year per thousand cameras.
US citizens: Tell Senator Reid to support Sander's bill to increase taxes on millionaires.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US hospitals and medical insurance companies are locked in a twisted battle over prices and reimbursements.
The solution to this is lear: a single-payer system as in Canada or England. Those systems work fine, except when right-wing governments try to sabotage them, and even then they are still better than the US system.
India's government backed down and gave Anna Hazare permission to hold a hunger strike for 15 days.
I suppose that if he isn't ready to stop in 15 days, they will be compelled to extend the permission, or else play out the same hand that they lost last time. However, what's really important is ending the corruption. That is a hard fight, but the support that Hazare has gained through his arrest may help.
An executive of Goldman Sachs changed his name and went to work for Rep. Issa, blocking regulations that might reduce the company's profits.
5000 protested in Spain against the public funds spent on the pope's visit.
Palestinian infiltrators attacked a bus as well as military targets near Eilat. Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza.
I have no way to evaluate whether the people attacked in Gaza had any relation to the attack, or whether they were combatants. What does the "Popular Resistance Committee" do?
The US and several European leaders called on Assad to resign.
Sometimes NATO bombs in Libya kill civilians, and US media cover it up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
These incidents are not culpable — such things are unavoidable even with good will. But that is no excuse for denying they occurred.
A UK man paralyzed except for his eyes is suing for the right to be helped to die.
700 people have been imprisoned for the riots in the UK.
How many bankster have been imprisoned for looting billions? None.
The London riots prove CCTV is useless for deterring street crime.
Maybe CCTV can be used to identify large numbers of rioters and prosecute them. But that is the wrong thing to do, since it seeks to bottle up the pressure that other unjust government policies create.
If CCTV can identify the banksters and bring them to justice, then it might be of some use.
Texas Governor Perry blocked disabled veterans from voting.
Pakistan's military demands the US get authorization for drone attacks in Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, it seems to be unable to gain US compliance with this demand.
Physicians for Human Rights has evidence that doctors and other medical personnel in Guantanamo disregarded signs of torture of prisoners under their care.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
South Koreans are suing Apple for putting a surveillance feature in the spyPhone.
Everyone: call on Brazil's president Rousseff to veto a law that would ruin Brazil's forest production.
Paul Graham: Technological progress regularly converts appealing things into addictive things, so the world gets more addictive.
A medium-size oil spill in the North Sea highlights the increased danger of oil platforms that are still operating decades after they were put in place.
Merkel and Sarkozy proposed strict economic controls on euro-zone countries including a requirement for balanced budget every year.
This is fiscal insanity since it would mean no way to stimulate the economy in bad times such as these.
If sustainability of the economy were included in debt ratings, the US would have been downgraded years ago.
A skeptical treatment of the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.
I can't evaluate most of his claims myself.
Murdoch's News Corporation hounded whistleblower Robert Emmel into bankruptcy by suing him for all sorts of things. It lost the lawsuits but ruined his life.
Omar Awadh Omar claims UK intelligence agents and FBI agents beat him up after kidnapping him in Kenya and taking him illegally to Uganda.
After millions of Indians supported his anti-corruption campaign, Anna Hazare refused to be released from jail, and launched his hunger strike there.
US citizens: tell Obama: enough cuts, the US needs jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US should imitate Europe — on democracy, on the environment, and on social programs.
The Righthaven lawsuit mill has to pay $34,000 in defense lawyers' costs for frivolous suit, won by the defense based on fair use.
US citizens: tell Obama to oppose the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the FCC not to allow cell phone system shutoffs as a means of sabotaging protests.
Homeopathic Thuggery: a big homeopathy corporation has threatened a blogger who pointed out that its "Oscillococcinum" product has no active ingredient.
The most powerful potential US military adversary, China, has one aircraft carrier that belonged to Ukraine in the 90s. Does the US need 11 carrier groups? Does it need an army that could fight all the world's other armies put together?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Maybe there is a reason for that. Maybe the Washington power elite is planning to do something so horrible that the whole rest of the world would want to attack. Broiling our planet, perhaps?
Richard Clarke, who was Bush's Director for Counterterrorism, accused George Tenet (then CIA Director) of concealing crucial information from him in August 2001 about people subsequently accused in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The only motive I can imagine for him to conceal this is if Bush or Cheney had ordered him to conceal that information; and the only plausible motive for that is if they were somehow complicit in the attacks.
This is not proof. There might be some other explanation that doesn't suggest itself to me. But this is enough reason to have a new investigation — a thorough and honest one this time. (Bush's investigation was hamstrung and corrupted.) That is why I signed the ae911truth.org petition for a new investigation.
Fannie Mae, a semi-government mortgage lender, has been pushing banks to foreclose rather than give borrowers some slack.
Tropical bird diseases are spreading north due to global heating.
The ACLU is suing to block a Kansas law that bans health insurance from covering abortions.
I am an ACLU member. Are you?
Just maybe the US will turn away from subsidizing ethanol made from corn.
Using a subsidized farm crop to make fuel means it gets grown instead of food, and that drives food prices up. Meanwhile, growing this corn is not very efficient, so it doesn't do much to reduce global heating.
A GM corn variety specialized to make ethanol production more efficient threatens to ruin corn grown for food.
It is lunacy to do genetic engineering in a plant whose pollen spreads far on the wind.
US citizens: support measures to protect manatees from being killed by speedboats.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
So many get killed this way that it puts the species at risk of extinction.
Senator Leahy wants to end US aid to certain Israeli military units which have a habit of harming innocent Palestinian civilians.
In the US: tell Obama, block the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai has still not figured out how to deal with the vote-rigging in the Afghan parliamentary election last September.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, he rigged his own re-election too.
Gaza is turning to organic agriculture to cope with the siege.
Massive fraud by banks: 92% of foreclosures in New York City lack proper documents.
Watching TV may lead to earlier death. Or perhaps people watch TV because of something else that causes a tendency to die earlier.
If sitting a lot leads to earlier death, I hope that my working 10 hours a day on the computer doesn't have the same effect. Unlike TV, which I more or less do without, the work I do on the computer is important, and I would not want to leave it undone.
India has arrested Anna Hazare, and 1300 supporters, to stop him from starting a hunger strike as a protest against corruption.
If someone can show me a site for coordinating resistance to this act of tyranny, I would appreciate it.
Amnesty International says that the government of Malawi is planning to shoot protesters tomorrow.
Journalists and human rights advocates have met with violent repression there recently.
A News of the World reporter's letter says that the paper's editor and senior reporters approved the illegal phone tapping, and shows that Rupert Murdoch gave misleading evidence to Parliament.
Proposing that we shun violent entertainment.
I avoid violent video, not as a boycott but, rather because I don't like the feeling it gives me.
In 10 years, the US has spent around 11 trillion dollars on "national security". Did that make Americans any safer?
If it were established that this spending did make Americans safer overall, some parts of it might be exceptions. For instance, I am sure that the conquest and occupation of Iraq had the opposite effect.
But even if it were possible to make Americans safer through a war of conquest and occupation, that would not make it legitimate.
US citizens: tell congressional leaders they should insist that the members of the deficit-cutting committee stop accepting funds from military contractors, and publish details of any meetings with those contractors' representatives.
The EFF says that BART violated two federal laws by shutting off cell phone service in stations.
An al-Jazeera journalist who went home to Palestine on vacation was arrested a week ago and remains in Israeli prison.
Israel pressures many Palestinians to turn informer. And if they have no truthful accusations to report, they can report false accusations.
Israel approved another large block of construction in a colony in the West Bank.
However this has no effect on peace talks, because Israel's years of construction of these colonies had already killed them.
100 Irish occupied Shell's pipeline construction site in Rossport, Ireland.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Four protesters were violently injured by Shell's private and public police.
Explanation of why Shell's pipeline is dangerous, and the local reaction.
China praises the UK for endorsing political Internet censorship.
BPing the Arctic: How Shell's Dangerous Drilling Is Being Fast-Tracked.
Israel says it will build over 4000 more apartments in areas it calls East Jerusalem.
These are presumably in territory captured in 1967 that Israel has relabeled as "Jerusalem".
Protecting forests on Lombok, Indonesia.
The UK says it has asked intelligence codebreakers to help decrypt Blackberry messages of possible rioters.
The article is mistaken about a crucial fact: aside from special "enterprise" systems which the rioters generally did not have, RIM can decrypt these messages, and the police can subpoena the decrypted messages from RIM.
The police know this. So why would they ask code-breakers to go to work on these messages? The only plausible motive I can see is to avoid the need to show cause for subpoenas — and that is contempt of justice. Either that, or this is just PR, following the general strategy of using the riots to distract attention from the banksters' much bigger looting, and far more numerous killings by the police.
Israeli soldiers arrested the site director and chairman of the Freedom Theater in Jenin.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The main UK banks still invest in cluster bombs even though the UK has signed the treaty to ban them.
Warren Buffett asks why "shared sacrifices" don't include him and other super-rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
New Zealand's Parliament passed a law to punish Internet users for file-sharing. Parliament could easily be fined for this.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Chase Bank is offering some people $1000 to accept a credit card and spend $500 of their own money through it.
How the Koch brothers bought an election so as to bring back segregation.
The police in Long Beach say that photography and "taking notes" are suspicious behavior just like trying to get samples of infection diseases.
After BART cut off phone service in its stations to sabotage a protest, it has gone further and banned protests, assemblies, and all "expressive activities" in them.
You can complain to the FCC about this.
Thousands protested at a toxic factory in Dalian, China, and the state said it would move the plant away.
Bachmann opposes extending unemployment coverage, to keep taxes low for corporations.
A teenager reports on brainwashing in a Christian camp.
UK citizens: sign this petition against government interference with public communication.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Texas Governor Perry collected 17 million dollars in campaign funds from people he appointed to public office, and 6 million from people he appointed as regents of Texas universities.
Those are just two of the items in this list of his misdeeds.
Gaddafi's forces are losing ground on three fronts.
This may be partly due to the destruction of many tanks and other heavy weapons, but I suspect the main reason is that his soldiers have lost heart.
Wood, charcoal and edible mushrooms in Japan are affected by radioactive contamination, joining straw and animals that ate it.
The Bureau of Investigation has counted up casualties from US drone attacks in Pakistan, and found some 2900 — almost 50% more than the US acknowledges. Some 380 were civilians, and 160 were children.
In particular, the US claim that no civilians have been killed in 2011 is false.
Mitt Romney says, "Corporations are people."
Studies find wealthy Americans show less empathy, less compassion, and less awareness of other people's feelings than working Americans.
The War on Drugs is fueling murders of Women in parts of Latin America.
What else would you expect from a war that's on drugs?
The US commission on fracking recommended stricter regulation.
This is despite having been filled with people with financial ties to the companies that do fracking.
The commission did not address the question of whether fracking ought to be allowed.
Republicans are pushing for school vouchers in 30 states.
American voters have nearly always rejected school vouchers, and unless it has changed recently, public opinion opposes it. Republicans get away with this and many other policies that Americans don't like because the mainstream media distract attention from them.
China is having trouble clamping the lid on microblogging, as some citizens use it to resist oppression.
Chinese demand is fueling elephant poaching in Africa.
Families face eviction in the UK because a child is accused of participating in riots.
If large numbers of downtrodden people are evicted, they should unite on the streets to resist — for instance, to block evictions, and punish the big looters in the banks.
Someone in the UK should start an "Old Labour" party that will firmly defend the rights of the non-rich as the Labour party once did.
Genetically engineered tobacco plants produce HIV medicine.
This is an example of genetic engineering I think is basically good and safe.
US citizens: tell the Department of Health and Human Services that insurance coverage for contraception must apply to all employers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Respecting religious freedom for everyone means that the employees decide, not that employers decide.
Of course, if we had a sensible and efficient national health system, the employer wouldn't be involved in it so this issue would not even arise.
Texas Governor Perry, a likely 2012 Republican candidate, is a religious lunatic and a global heating denier.
From what I've seen of Obama, he will not dare confront Perry's lunacy in a clear and forceful way.
Two former mercenaries in Iraq say they were imprisoned and tortured by the US military for reporting their employer's crimes to the FBI.
We knew there was lots of corruption in Iraq; Cheney set the tone for it. This shows the corruption used torture to protect itself. It also shows that torture was a systematic machine, greased and ready to be applied to anyone including heroic and patriotic Americans.
The existence of a torture machine threatens everyone and everything. Once it is running, its victims can't be limited to Iraqi rebels (not to say torturing them is excusable, but some such as Obama may not care about them).
I wonder who stopped the FBI from investigating and prosecuting. Surely it would have wanted to protect its informants. Only someone very high up could have stopped it. Cheney, perhaps?
The Afghan government is still not fit to take over Bagram prison.
Given the pervasive corruption of the Karzai regime, starting from Karzai himself, I doubt it ever can be fit.
Offshore windmill farms are good for wildlife.
The London police seem to have killed over 300 prisoners in the past decade, but the mainstream media say they suffer from too much restraint.
The government uses the minor looters in the streets to distract attention from the big-time looters in the banks and boardrooms.
Al Jazeera's whistleblower site has corrected some of its problems, but still requires impossible commitments.
President Ouattara's troops are committing atrocities against former Gbagbo supporters.
A US-built model village in Afghanistan, now abandoned, shows how US aid programs waste money and benefit only some businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Google+'s "real name" policy puts business ambition over user's rights and safetly.
South Korea will relax a rule requiring major web sites to demand user's state ID numbers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
They really ought to get rid of national ID cards.
AT&T accidentally leaked a report showing that its pretended excuses for buying T-mobile are bogus.
Everyone: call for EU sanctions against Syrian oil.
In the US: support the striking Verizon workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The company tried to impose cuts on the workers despite massive profits.
6 Pakistani soldiers were convicted of killing an unarmed prisoner.
They should all be sentenced to life in prison, but not execution, because execution is barbaric.
The crucial thing for Pakistan is to properly investigate such crimes when there isn't video to prove them.
Oil companies say the world has oil for 40 years at current rates, but a group of scientists who formerly worked for oil companies say that peak oil is just about upon us.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Countries such as the US, that failed to adopt policies to shift away from fossil fuels since 35 years ago, will be hit strongly by this.
One response will be to substitute coal, and natural gas obtained by fracking. But these increase the contribution to global heating, so they are a smooth path down to death valley.
The Wisconsin recall elections removed 2 out of 6 Republican senators who were challenged — enough to hamper Walker.
Mexican police frequently plant evidence as an excuse for searching people's homes, and torture people into confessing to possess them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's proposed new law not only declares Arabs second-class citizens, it also imposes Jewish law. This means theocracy instead of democracy.
Arctic ice is disappearing 4 times faster than the IPCC report said in 2007.
The richest Americans are rapidly increasing their incomes and wealth. Many of them used the financial crisis to do it.
LinkedIn has abandoned the practice of user's photos in ads, due to criticism from users and regulators.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This victory shows that enough pressure from users can make Facebook stop it too.
I intentionally did not use these companies' spin terminology to describe this practice. Their spin terminology makes it sound like this is a way to help users connect rather than what it is: exploitation of them.
San Francisco police shut down cell phone service in BART stations to prevent people from organizing a protest.
Vietnam has imprisoned a dissident blogger.
Can anyone tell me what the penname Phan Kien Quoc means? "Quoc" (in a certain tone) means "country", and my guess is that this name makes some sort of patriotic comment.
Forensic experts in the trial of Guatemalan soldiers who massacred civilians have received death threats since the trial ended.
This show that Guatemala has not yet escaped from the menace of murderous soldiers like the ones just convicted. That menace will get worse if the right-wing ex-military candidate wins the election.
A classical musician alleges that copyright collecting societies' inflexible policies are a major obstacle to the success of art music new enough to be copyrighted.
Wang Lihong faces 5 years in prison in China, after a manifestly unfair trial, for "assembling a crowd to block traffic". In other words, a nonviolent protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's committee to study fracking was told to presume it can be done safely, and not to investigate whether that is true. Then it was packed with people who get money from companies that do fracking.
We need leaders who can dare tell any company to take a flying leap. To restore democracy, lots of companies are going to have to do this. Anyone who hesitates too long before giving that command can't possibly do the job.
Exxon Seeks Legal Immunity For Corporate-Sponsored Torture.
Contrasting Anarchism with the disorder: an Anarchist take on the UK riots.
I sympathize with Anarchism, and I like to see parts and aspects of society work well through mutual aid, but I think we need a state so we can tax the rich and restrain their power. (That's what democracy means.)
French Farmer Advertises Against Advertising.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It is probably helpful, but doesn't solve problem.
Execution by lethal injection pretends to be painless but is actually quite a messy business.
However, the main reasons to eliminate the death penalty are (1) it ends investigations to clear the name of someone wrongly convicted, and (2) it cheapens human life.
Global heating has stopped for the past decade because the short-term cooling from increased sulfur emissions have masked the long-term heating effect of CO2.
This effect can't last — we will soon feel the effect of the CO2 we have already poured into the atmosphere, and the additional CO2 we continue to emit.
Meanwhile, global heating deniers get treated as serious scientists by the BBC because it misapplies its requirement to be impartial.
That requirement ought to be applied to political issues, not to science.
In Bahrain, the state's repression forces have blockaded Pearl Square to pre-empt protests there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I won't call them "security forces". Security for the people is not what they are working for now.
Obama has continued increasing military spending. If there is no budget deal, the default reductions of the debt-ceiling agreement would reduce military spending to the level of 2007. It would still be a lot higher than during the Cold War.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If we are to have cuts, we should cut the military more than that. Military spending produces fewer jobs than other government spending, so we should take all the cuts from the military.
To do even better, we could cut the military further, and increase social spending, all within the unwise requirements of the debt ceiling deal. If we do this enough, we could stimulate the economy, which is what it needs.
59% of Americans want to remove all US troops from Afghanistan within a year.
The mainstream media have mostly stopped talking about the war.
Maybe that means the government would like Americans not to think about it so they won't push harder to end it.
The UK government proposes to follow China by censoring messages sent on the Internet.
Dangerously, the Labour Party supports the plan.
Others warn that restricting communication without trial tramples the freedom of speech.
I do not sympathize with gangs whose main purpose is to steal goods whose lack won't kill them, or with racists that murder from bigotry. But any new police powers, if created, will be used against meaningful political dissent as well.
The UK riots reflect the existence of an underclass which has no opportunity and sees that the police hate it. The UK must focus on removing the pressure which led to the riots, not on how to bottle it up better. These fires will burn themselves out, but running society for the wealthy few will keep starting new ones.
Canada's right-wing government is trying to authorize warrantless digital spying, and buried it in a larger bill hoping to avoid attention.
The ACLU is suing to stop the practice of jailing people who can't pay fines because they are destitute.
Everyone: Support Amnesty International — call on the Chinese government to investigate the arrest and torture of human rights defender Mao Hengfeng.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Rep. Lee's bill to remove all Bush forces from Iraq this year. Also send mail using this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
When You Play the Plurocrats' Game, They Win: On Civility and Half Measures.
Right-wing extremists are winning, and they didn't do it through civility. They don't deserve any civility.
There were protests across India against GMO agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think that "Quit India Day" used to be the date of protests against British rule. They are quite right to recognize that patented seeds are another kind of colonization.
See also this article.
The London riots are the result of a system of great inequality, leaving large parts of society with no opportunity to escape squalor, together with a history of hundreds of unpunished killings by police.
Obama announced standards for fuel efficiency for trucks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This seems to be one area where Obama really does something good. I wonder how long it will take before the Tea Party attacks it. If they are against making lightbulbs more efficient, it would only be natural for them to take the same stand for cars and trucks, and everything else.
US environmental organizations have sued to block the NRC from licensing any reactors, saying its standards are dangerously lax.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Japanese citizens organized to map radiation levels since the government doesn't bother to.
Panama Trade Deal Would Undercut Efforts To Get Rich Americans To Pay Taxes.
Hundreds of thousands protested against Chile's right-wing president. Then a few started violence, which is a side issue.
UK rioters rammed and killed three British Asians with a car, apparently as an act of bigotry.
These riots seem to consist mostly of looting local businesses, reminding me of the riots in Watts in the 1960s. There is nothing ethical, let alone heroic, in these explosions. However, it would be folly to ignore the causes, which have to do with government policies.
ACLU: balance the budget by reducing imprisonment.
China accused Ai Weiwei of tax evasion after interrogating him 50 times about dissident activities.
If a European country (such as Germany) defaults, poor countries might feel bolder about defaulting.
France may be the next target of European austerity program.
The main good that the EU has done for most people who live in it is in improved social programs, and the misguided response of budget cutting is being seized as an opportunity to wipe that all out.
Ralph Nader: Time to Cap the Tea Kettle — Throwing America Overboard.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A sworn enemy of the EPA is on the budget-cut congressional "supercommittee".
Economic Crisis or Nonviolent Opportunity?
I think the term "collapse" is an exaggeration, at least at the preesent time, but some of these ideas could be useful.
US citizens: sign the Contract for the American Dream.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
UNESCO condemned the NATO attack on a Libyan government TV station.
Moktada Al-Sadr warns the US to remove the Bush forces from Iraq on schedule, or face attacks.
Maliki is negotiating to keep some Bush forces in Iraq, knowing he will never get it through Parliament anyway.
A secret US military force of 60,000 troops operates in 70 countries. In some of them, it operates as a death squad.
Businesses are lobbying to block the EPA from regulating toxic chromium ions in drinking water.
Chomsky: Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault — What's Next?
The corporations that pollute our water supplies are setting up phony efforts to present themselves as the providers of water.
Assad ignored pressure from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, and continued the military attack on Syria's nonviolent protesters.
Piers Morgan, as editor of the London Mirror, published fabricated accusations against Greg Palast to undermine his exposé of Labour Party corruption.
US Expands Its Presence in Mexico, Ramping Up Drug War.
I wonder when they will begin drone strikes.
The execution of an Indonesian worker in Saudi Arabia has spread a wave of revulsion against the rigid and cruel Saudi version of Islam.
Iranian activists warn that removing the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the "terrorist organization" list would anger all Iranians.
The inclusion of any organization in this list should not be an administrative decision which carries a message about policy. It should be decided only by a trial.
Barney Frank firmly refuted NPS's right-wing spin about budget cuts.
In the US: rally on September 15
in favor of recognizing Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops continue to delay ambulances taking injured Palestinians to hospitals.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians in Nabi Saleh, where a weekly protest is held, report that Israeli soldiers are firing randomly in the town.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
If you watch the Youtube video, be sure to watch in HTML5. Don't install Flash Player in your page — it is nonfree software with malicious features.
Israeli school textbooks teach racism towards Arabs, says an Israeli professor of education.
Israel is preparing to make democracy subordinate to religion.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The UNRWA says that there is a clear link between expansion of Israeli colonies in the West Bank and demolition of Palestinian structures.
The Israeli army destroyed 3 Palestinian wells near the Jordan River in order to give the water to Israeli agricultural colonies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
That area is part of "Area C", the area in which the Israeli army maintains total control. The UN has documented the persistent systematic oppression of Palestinians in area C, designed to make them move away.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians are squeezed with water shortages all around the West Bank, since Israel has taken 90% of the area's water resources.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
When I was in Ramallah, I saw that the Palestinian buildings all had large water tanks because water was available every third day — or less.
Bahrain repression is getting worse.
A group of Spanish priests joined with Secular Europe to oppose a plan to spend over 80 million dollars in public money for a papal visit to Madrid.
The London riots are the result of poverty with no opportunity. All it took was a spark to set off the rage.
Rioting turned out to be the only way these young people could get any attention to the lives they were subject to.
The police deserve this rage, and so does the state which practices Hooverlike authority during a depression, but the rioters attack others who just happen to be at hand. That's wrong and will cause suffering to innocents.
Michelle Bachmann supports family values, so she voted twice against increased parental leave.
Iraq is entitled to compensation from the US for the destruction caused by Bush's invasion.
The Bush family should have to give all its wealth and possessions as the first installment of this compensation.
Everyone:
sign
this petition
calling on countries friendly to Syria
to pressure Syria to end repression.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If Obama approves the Keystone XL tar sand oil pipeline, that will be the biggest contributor to growth in Canada's carbon emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors doing housecalls keep their patients healthier, and even reduce medical care costs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
While Obama opposes a lawsuit to block Medicaid cuts in Washington, Congressional Democrats support it.
The problem is, Obama has made a deal with health insurance companies but he has not made any deal with the American people.
Obama didn't want to protect the US from the cuts of Republican knives, he just wanted the appearance of not having a choice.
The International Labor Organization voted for a convention to give domestic workers basic labor rights.
However, there remains the job of implementing this in the countries of the world, and even in the US there will be opposition.
Obama has changed very little about US overseas military activity compared with Bush.
Germany's interior minister is using the Oslo massacre as an excuse to attack anonymity on the Internet.
Thus one right-wing attack leads to another.
Businesses are trying to bully Germany into continuing to use nuclear power.
Converting to renewable energy is a necessity. What would these countries do if there were a Fukushima-like disaster near their factories? Of course, they would demand to place the costs on others and not them, but even after achieving that it would hurt their production. When companies demand short-term goals override long-term needs, that makes them enemies of society.
These companies deserve to be picketed in other countries.
Meanwhile, the fact that companies can do this illustrates the damage that "free trade" treaties do.
Opposition legislators shut down India's parliament in a protest against corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The BJP is a Hindu religious extremist party. The ruling Congress Party was once lead by Nehru, but now has no philosophy except to please international business.
IRS Buckled To GOP Pressure On Secret Donations, Lawyer Says.
In Valley Where SEALs Died, U.S. Raids Boost Taliban Support.
Several Arab countries including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia withdrew their ambassadors to Syria in response to Syria's assault on protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is the right thing to do, but it is ironic given that Bahrain is treating its protesters in much the same way as Syria.
Rumsfeld says there was no waterboarding at Guantanamo, but victim testimony shows similar sorts of torture were used.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq has paid millions in speaking fees to former US officials. Any relationship whatsoever with that organization is supposed to be a crime, since that organization is on the "terrorist" list, but the US seems ready to accept excuses in this case.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq may well deserve the label of "terrorist", but it was never given a trial to prove it should be in this list. That is one injustice. And even if it is proved to be a terrorist organization, punishing any and all contact with it is too much.
In the future, the US will label all organizations as "terrorist", and punish those associated with any organization if and when it wishes to.
A mercenary translator in the Bush forces is suing Rumsfeld for having him tortured. Obama tried to protect Rumsfeld, but a judge allowed the suit to proceed.
Everyone: call on Illinois to free several men convicted of murders that DNA now shows were committed by other people.
These men were coerced, tricked or bullied into false confessions as teenagers, and the officials now would rather keep them in prison despite their almost certain innocence.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the bills to make
police need a court order to get cell phone location data. Also send
mail using
this
web page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Despite the lies you will hear from the establishment, the US soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan did die in vain.
"In vain" is not adequate to describe those who are killed in Iraq. They died doing harm.
An Atheist and rationalist form of Christianity is developing in the Netherlands.
Major US ISPs made a deal with Hollywood to abuse their customers. The EFF has suggestions for a way to make the deal somewhat less abusive.
I don't criticize the EFF for pushing to ameliorate some details of the deal less bad. Hollywood will resist all these suggestions, but it doesn't hurt to try.
What would hurt is to let these details distract us from the basic evil of this deal, regardless of excuses. Censorship is evil, and making it a little less bad does not make it acceptable. We must get rid of this deal.
I wonder if a state could ban ISPs from acting in accord with this deal. That is something worth pushing for.
The article lists "intellectual property" as a "related issue", but it isn't an issue at all. It is a confused way of mixing up many unrelated laws, and gives a misleading idea of each one of them.
The "government" of Somalia now has control over Mogadishu, the main city and past capital, after a military campaign by the foreign troops that keep it in power.
The foreign troops that gained territory in Mogadishu should not be called "peacekeepers" — that is blackwhiting (see 1984). They are a foreign intervention that aims to impose a foreign-backed "government" which has hardly any popular support among the people it now tries to rule.
I don't know how much popular support al Shabaab has, but it can't be less.
America will need people who are not for sale.
12 million people are at risk of dying from hunger in Ethiopia, Somalia and nearby countries.
Shell's oil spills in Nigeria have made areas uninhabitable; in other areas, people still live but their only income is from stolen oil.
A US court supported US government domain seizures, ignoring the usual first amendment law.
The IMF has attacked Greece's public medical care system; many poor people can't afford the new fees, and hospitals are often out of supplies.
However, it is worse in the US where around 15% of the population is uninsured and many more have to choose between medicine and food.
ALEC lobbies for lax regulations of oil drilling — no wonder BP is the main donor for its annual meeting.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Governor Walker cut public health and addiction reduction funding, then rejected federal grants that would have made up for some of the cuts.
This demonstrates that the state deficit (which he created with a tax cut)
was just his excuse to do what he wants to do: make poor people suffer or die.
Governor Walker passed a law requiring voters to show state ID, then closed several ID offices to make it hard for poor people to vote. But he was compelled to reopen them, and even extend their hours.
If you haven't yet signed the petition calling on the Attorney General to block all these voter suppression laws, please sign.
Ralph Nader is working to encourage a progressive opponent to challenge Obama for the 2012 Democratic nomination.
German police say that full body scanners are useless because they give a tremendous rate of false alarms.
In the US: participate in a "Jobs not Cuts" rally.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
China demanded that the US cut spending, even its already inadequate social spending, to reduce its debt.
What kind of Communists are those, eh? Of course, China's social spending is even less than the US's.
US citizens: tell Congress to fund regulation to protect people from business, not subsidies for businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the UK, a political motive for a minor offense is now treated as making it worse. That threatens democracy.
Uri Avnery expects that the cost-of-living protesters in Israel will recognize that the cause that makes their life impossible is the occupation.
A protest in London, accusing the police of a gratuitous killing and lying about it, turned into a riot.
To change the unjust system, people must get very angry, then control that anger and focus it on winning their demands. Egyptians have set a great example, which Londoners must learn from.
The NRC's plan for stricter nuclear power plant safety standards are an improvement, but fail to address the danger of the "pools" where used fuel rods are stored.
The minister who pushed for the UK's punishment-upon-accusation copyright law had made up his mind before the sham public consultation about it. That was a sham.
Why banning anonymity on the Internet would be a big injustice.
"Real name" policies endanger those who are unprivileged or vulnerable. Many of them use pseudonyms on Facebook, too, but Facebook does not know.
How Rupert Murdoch has harmed society overall.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Haiti's senate rejected the president's 2nd pick for prime minister.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Since President Martelly was imposed by a Burmese-style election,
There is no reason for anyone to cooperate with him. Worse, he seems to propose nasty right-wingers.
The US keeps 20,000 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement, which is inhumane and must stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If you have a cell phone, it is the snitch in your pocket.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This is why I don't have one.
Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin asserted, without proof, that the Oslo massacre was carried out by al Qa'ida. When this proved false, she insisted she was right in spirit anyway. She was criticized for this.
The paper's ombudsman defended her, and said her critics (who called for accurate and factual reporting) were no different from right-wing hate-mongers.
US citizens: take action against Obama's proposed free exploitation treaties with Korea, Panama and Colombia.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
All the free trade treaties attack democracy in every country that participates in them.
The WIPO Broadcasting Treaty threat returns from the grave.
The article misleads by using the term "intellectual property" to describe what this treaty would do. If you think that tells you something about the treaty, it means you have have been misled by confusion of that term.
The US Secretary of Defense says that modest cuts in US military spending would be "doomsday", but can't give any reasons for it.
US military spending is six times that of China, Iran and North Korea put together.
It is also known that US military spending exceeds all the rest of the world's military spending.
Taliban express willingness to negotiate about US/NATO withdrawal.
Oil companies are apparently using fake Twitter accounts to present an appearance of public support for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
Call your congresscritter and push back!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-244-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If the US subsidized small farms instead of agribusiness, it would make tens of thousands of jobs and improve Americans' health.
Turkey's internet filter plan has been delayed until November.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The government says the delay is for technical reasons, but strong opposition might still kill the plan.
Students are protesting Chile's right-wing government and harsh social policies.
The New York Times doesn't dare call right-wing false "history" false — not even the extremist claim idea that Hitler was gay and that Nazism was created by gays.
Five police were convicted of covering up the killing of refugees fleeing New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
Protest in Washington DC against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
James Hansen and other scientists published an open letter calling on Obama to block the pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here is their letter.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Since we can't safely burn this oil, we don't need it.
Tens of thousands protested in Syria after the army attacked peaceful protests in Hama.
Protesters at BP's New Orleans office dumped oil just recently taken off Mississippi beaches, to remind Americans that the oil is not gone and neither is the damage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US government, which tried all along to downplay the big spill, gave permission for offshore drilling in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is foolish to drill for oil in such dangerous places, because available reserves of fossil fuels are so large that we cannot dare burn them all.
US citizens: call on the US not to veto UN recognition of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Jewish Voice for Peace explains why it supports this campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Help get out the vote for Wisconsin recall elections on August 9 and August 16.
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was punished for alleging within the state that the UK had a policy that permitted collaberation with torture. His claim has been vindicated by the documents just recently reported.
Now he asks whether the head of the UK's supposed torture investigation had seen this policy while claiming it did not exist.
The Mexican marines are disappearing people suspected of participating in drug gangs.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
75 years ago, Dr. Ambedkar published the text of a speech he had been denied permission to present: Annihilation of Caste.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2024-04-25 because the old link was broken.]
The task still remains to be done.
The CIA insisted on a drone attack in Pakistan, ignoring the Ambassador to Pakistan, and created lasting hostiliy.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
The US has spent as much on ICBM defence as it spent on going to the moon, but there is no evidence that the system could work at all.
The greedy Kook brothers have teamed up with religious extremists to sabotage voting in Wisconsin through disinformation.
Republicans claim that their victory in the debt ceiling crisis they created is a precedent for future harsh cuts in social spending.
The secret UK torture policy document permitted intelligence services to work with other countries that were committing torture.
The ACLU is asking various US states and cities to disclose their procedures for getting people's cell phone location data.
This is part of why I won't carry a cell phone at all. Another reason is that many of them can listen and transmit the conversations in their vicinity.
ACLU Director Romero debated former Bush regime officials who were responsible for torture, surveillance, and imprisonment without trial.
The usual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was at almost record size this year.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
And another dead zone, almost as large, has been discovered.
US citizens: send a message to Clinton saying don't approve the Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sand oil from Canada.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the "PROTECT IP" act. Also use this page to send email.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Shell Oil disregarded its own supposed standards in dumping oil in Nigeria, and cleaning up the contamination will cost a billion dollars.
95 congresspeople signed a letter calling on Obama to withdraw all troops from Iraq this year.
How US representatives voted on the debt ceiling budget cuts deal.
US citizens: call on the USDA to adopt firm rules to protect small farms from predatory practices by large agribusiness.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Four Guatemalan officers have been sentenced to life in prison (effectively) for a massacre of civilians.
If the right wing takes power, such massacres may again become standard practice in Guatemala.
The debt ceiling deal creates an opportunity to cut nuclear weapons.
The Bahraini suppression forces raided the office of Doctors Without Borders and took away a staff member. They have got no word of him since.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US supports the Bahraini regime's repression.
Around 80% of American Jews and likewise American Muslims support the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
5 reasons why Congress must use tax increases, not just spending cuts, if it is going to cut the deficit.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Cutting the deficit now is stupid and harmful economic policy, and aside from discussing which way is better or worse, we should continue to condemn politicians who voted that decision and demand that they change it.
US citizens: phone your senators via (202) 244-3121 to say they should oppose provisions in H.R. 1540 that would make imprisonment without trial the permanent policy of the US. They should close the Guantanamo prison, end the practice of imprisonment without trial in the US, and give every prisoner a real trial (not a military kangaroo court) or release him.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Japan's nuclear regulatory agency asked a nuclear plant operating company to pack a public meeting with supporters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Super-wealthy CEOs have accused Obama of "class warfare".
The ultimate joke is that Obama is a center-right politician who would hardly do anything controversial. This is the standard right-wing tactic of condemning a position a little less right-wing "Liberal" to distract from real Liberal positions.
The US rich have been fighting a class war against most Americans for years. Americans need to fight back: tax the rich and their businesses, and break up those businesses, and terminate the unfair treaties they have imposed.
Greece is being forced to sell off massive state assets in a hurry, which implies selling them for far below their value.
Greece should insist on renationalizing later any properties that were sold below a reasonable price, or that are important to the country's well-being.
ALEC has convinced several states to oppose EPA regulation of CO2 emissions, claiming that the global heating is good.
The UK government has acknowledged that copyright law today is too restrictive.
Blizzards, tornadoes, continent-wide heat waves... the weather is not crazy, it is doing what climate scientists predicted. Just a little sooner than they predicted.
The Security Council condemned Syria's bombardment of Hama, but without sanctions.
Google says there could be 250,000 patented ideas implemented in one smart phone.
I estimated in 2004 that there might be 100,000 patented ideas implemented in GNU/Linux. Dan Ravisher found 286 patented ideas in Linux, and a magazine estimated Linux was .25 percent of the GNU/Linux system at that time; multiplying 300 by 400 gives 120,000.
Since this is just an estimate, it is clearer to present it as 100,000 and avoid an impression of any greater precision.
US physicians spend nearly 4 times more on health insurance administrative costs than Canadian doctors.
The article suggests a technical solution, as the authors choose not to focus on the real issue that Canada has an efficient single-payer system where the US has wasteful and greedy insurance companies.
The US experienced extreme weather this year that fits the effects that global heating is expected to have, but the mainstream media tried to avoid the connection.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the US government to crack down on banking practices that prey on the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UK census promised Britons that their information would never be disclosed, but disregarded legal doubts about whether police or spies can demand copies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Texas Governor Perry is feeling the heat for planning an event with religious extremists.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In India: call on PM. Singh to block a bill that would encourage genetically modified seeds.
US citizens: call on the government to freeze Pentagon spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi protesters demanding human rights and democracy were beaten by the police of the "democratic" regime established by the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli "settlers" attacked Palestinians who were caring for their sheep, and gravely injured an international visitor.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
A German regulator says that Facebook's face recognition is illegal.
Just as Bush I showed Iran that hostage taking works, Obama has shown the Republicans that hostage taking works for them too.
The ransom that was paid.
Here's what's bad about Obama's budget deal with the Republicans — and a few ways it could have been worse.
The budget deal between Obama and the Republicans will force further cuts in state programs to help the poor.
The only good thing in the deal is that it creates a possible opportunity to cut military spending.
But we need to fight to make that happen. The nearly unstoppable bipartisan committee in charge of further cuts could do just about anything.
There is no guarantee it won't cut Social Security.
Israel's response to Palestinian nonviolence threatens Israeli democracy.
Many Israelis are in the streets protesting the high cost of living. They mostly don't talk about the fact this is due to the tremendous subsidy given to the colonies in the West Bank. 2 billion shekels of annual subsidy is over half a billion dollars.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the demolition of an "illegal" settlement after 5 years of delay.
I put "illegal" in quotes because all the settlements violate treaties about the treatment of conquered peoples. The "illegal" settlements are illegal under Israeli law also. But the government supports them too.
Why the US is unable to avoid financially supporting the Taliban.
The rise in global food prices is mainly due to biofuel subsidies.
In Boston: rally to demand an investigation of whether Faux News and other Murdoch media used phone tapping or other illegal methods of investigation.
By criminalising dissent we put democracy in peril.
Robots are cheap enough to replace even Chinese sweatshop workers.
Craig Murray warned in 2007 that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won and that the "government" is just a bunch of drug traffickers.
How many more years of "good progress" that leads nowhere will it take before we pull the plug on it?
Organized crime is driving species to extinction, and little resources are devoted to preventing this.
Perhaps it would be useful to run commercials in China explaining that viagra is far more effective than tiger parts.
Lethal radiation levels have been found in some spots in the Fukushima reactors.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US medical insurance companies are booming because they have raised premiums while delivering less care.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops entered Qalandia in Palestine and caused a riot, then shot at random and killed two bystanders.
The term "refugee camp" might give the wrong idea of Qalandia. The refugees have been there for over 60 years; the camp is now an urban neighborhood full of medium-size apartment buildings.
A woman's life was ruined and her husband was deported after a false accusation of theft by a guard in Wal-Mart.
That false accusation would only have caused a brief annoyance if it had not been followed by repeated violations of the couple's rights. Suing Wal-Mart is appropriate, but while that might teach the store a lesson about making false accusations, it won't teach the "justice" system anything about handling them.
American parents have become hysterical over mostly imaginary dangers to children — such as when people photograph them in public places such as parks and malls.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thus paranoia is now being exploited to impose surveillance on US Internet usage.
Libyan rebels captured Zlitan, from which Gaddafi's forces were bombarding Misrata.
Media Malpractice: how mainstream media misreported the debt ceiling debate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Tens of thousands protested again in Bahrain.
Syrian protesters called for international pressure against the tyranny there.
The Libyan rebels attacked the Islamist militia that killed General Younis.
Roundup-ready GMO foods are being defeated by mutant weeds that resist Roundup.
The article is mistaken about one thing. What stimulates the evolution of Roundup-resistant weeds is not the presence of GMO genes in crops, but the use of Roundup. To stop the process, it would be enough to stop using Roundup. It would not be necessary to eliminate those genes where they have spread to other fields.
Reform-minded thinkers in the UK call for a "public jury" to take power away from the greedy elites.
In the site known as Ayodhya, reportedly where Rama was born, Hindu fanatics destroyed the centuries-old Babri mosque some years ago, claiming that Babur destroyed a Hindu temple to build it. Now a study claims the previous structure was actually a Buddhist study hall (vihar) and was destroyed by Hindu fanatics almost 2000 years ago.
The article refers to that Muslim conquerer as "Babar", but it's usually written "Babur", and I think it is preferable to avoid confusion with the better-known-elephant Babar.
Greeks are protesting against austerity by refusing to pay.
Who's Grabbing Africa's Land? U.S. Speculators, Including Universities.
It is not too late to grab this land back from foreign purchasers. The dispossessed peasants can do it if they take up arms.
The UK will require all drivers' license applicants to say yes or no to donating their organs.
This will avoid a shortage of organs due to people who didn't confront the issue enough to answer.
Secular and Islamist Egyptians are showing some strain, but agreed to unite for secular political demands.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Eritrea's government is suspected of covering up a major famine.
General Younis in Libya was killed by an Islamist militia that is part of the rebels.
South Carolina Governor Haley, who signed a bill to require voters to show government ID, offered to drive poor voters to the DMV office so they could get ID to vote with — but ducked out when a voter really asked for such help.
Please don't use Flash Player to watch the video — it is proprietary software and has features to surveil and restrict the user. The text of the page says enough.
Sea Shepherd is being sued by illegal tuna fishers after freeing tuna which are being fished to extinction. Its main boat might be lost.
More about the suspension of US government scientist Charles Monnett, who has not been told the accusations against him.
How Germany plans to phase out nuclear power soon and reduce its carbon emissions too.
Syrian tanks attacked protesters in 4 cities, trying to pre-empt the possibility that Ramadan might strengthen the protests.
Murdoch's men got lots of information by tapping phones and cracking computers, but they can get even more by looking at what users of MySpace give them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
And so can anyone else that runs a social network site that you use. And it's especially bad if you give your real name.
In the US, mining companies get away with murder while environmental defenders go to prison.
A Dutch band visiting Palestine was tear-gassed during a performance by Israeli troops.
The USDA deleted a report summarizing research on how farming fuels antibiotics resistance, and banned its author from talking to the public about the matter.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This is another demonstration of how big business controls our government. We must take that power away, and smash big business so it can't threaten our freedom and lives any more.
The debate about the debt ceiling pseudo-crisis is nonsense because it is based on six fundamental lies.
The US appeals court for patent issues ruled that natural human genes are patentable, accepting the biotech industry's excuse.
In the US: protest
Tuesday at noon at offices of Republican officials for their
insistance on hurting the poor to help the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your governor
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
to stay away from Texas Gov. Perry's
prayer meeting with right-wing extremists.
In several recent decisions, the US Supreme Court has twisted the law to give businesses the effective power to trample mere humans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Europe's new anti-semitism is reaching the violent stage, egged on by a broad right-wing hate campaign, and it reminds Uri Avnery of the wave that led to Nazism.
Everyone: sign Amnesty International's petition opposing the planned law in Saudi Arabia to ciminalize dissidents.
Obama has made a deal with auto companies to increase fuel efficiency standards gradually over 14 years.
This seems to be a real achievement.
It seems that Murdoch's business is associated with cracking people's computers as well as listening to their phones.
Wikileaks cables show how the US worked with Canada, France and the UN to remove Aristide from Haiti and later oppose his return.
The Obama regime continued this policy, contrary to what it told the public.
Cables also demonstrate US and other countries' support for a nondemocratic election.
Israel has demolished the Bedouin town of al-Araqib 28 times in the past year, planning to plant a forest over it, and now is suing the villagers for the costs of demolition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose HR 1981, the data retention bill. Also send a message through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Obama's right-wing plan to win the "center"?
Several secretive right-wing groups have spent millions to redirect national debate towards the unimportant goal of reducing deficits and away from what people really need.
A progressive president could have counteracted the campaign, if we had one.
A firefox add-on warns you if you visit a site that is part of Murdoch's empire.
There is evidence that environmental pollutant chemicals are causing obesity in humans and even in animals.
Everyone: rebuke the racist school in Arkansas that denied a Black student the chance to be valedictorian, and discourages Blacks from studying in the first place.
A senate committee is voting on extended warrantless wiretapping authority, while the public is distracted by the debt-ceiling pseudocrisis. The votes will be secret for 3 weeks, but each senator can say how he voted.
US citizens, if your senator is named in this file, ask him how he voted.
Guatemala's next president is likely to be a former general accused of crimes against human rights.
If Guatemaltecos wants security, they must not hand power to the right-wing, which would be capable of killing a lot more than 6000 people a year.
Starbucks faces labor actions in Chile and the US.
Public wifi spaces in Beijing have been nearly eliminated by government identification requirements.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Breivik the Norwegian killer is insane, then so are Bush and Obama.
A British Muslim who called for murder of MPs who voted for war in Iraq has been sentenced to at least 12 years in prison.
It is legitimate to punish people who call for the murder of others. The politicians who voted to invade and conquer Iraq should not be murdered. They are entitled to a fair trial. If convicted of the crime of aggressive war, they should be imprisoned for life, not executed, because the death penalty is barbaric.
However, the conviction for "collecting documents" is just an excuse to punish people for what they are presumed to be thinking.
The US economy has hardly grown at all in 2011, due to Republican-imposed austerity policies.
The US government refused to tell us whether it tracks Americans through their cell phones without warrants.
If phone companies keep these records, they will be available to the police on some conditions. Whatever the conditions may be, I think that's enough reason not to carry one.
Republicans want to make it harder to close a tax loophole than to cut Social Security benefits.
A Republican senator proposed substantial cuts in military spending.
The Taliban are willing to agree to peace, and break off with al Qa'ida, in exchange for a firm US commitment to leave Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose Rep. Grimm's attempt to make it hard to blow the whistle on crimes by banks and financial companies. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Libyan rebels' military commander, a former Gaddafi minister, was killed in cloudy circumstances, and this seems to have sparked off factional fighting in Benghazi.
The article says that an Iranian general has taken unofficial control over Iraq's politics.
If it is true, it would be poetic justice for Bush and his war of conquest. Whether it is any good for Iraqis, I suppose it depends on what Iran does with this power.
However, I am not sure the report should be believed, simply because it says nothing about Muqtada al-Sadr, who is very powerful in Iraq. Although he is a Shi'ite, his power base is Iraq; I have doubts he would want to be a puppet for Iran's rulers. I could always be wrong, but the article doesn't address this and that makes me doubt.
US citizens: take action against Obama's NAFTA-like unfair-trade treaties.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A court ordered a British ISP to block access to a site with links to unauthorized copies of movies, using the same system previously used to block access to "child pornography".
This is why the copyright industry pushed for censorship of "child pornography".
Our society tends to overreact to any perceived danger to "our little babies" (even if they are teenagers), and this provides an easy route to manipulate society into dangerous and unjust practices, such as censorship.
Tea Party To America: If We Can't Have You, No One Will.
Citizen action in the US has made a dent in the adoption of new unfair trade treaties being harder. But this is not yet victory.
Defending democracy in the US would be easier if Obama were its friend instead of its enemy.
US citizens: call on Obama to honor Americans who opposed the practice of torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistan represses Balochi separatism with torture and murder.
Two senators face an uphill battle just to make US spies admit that they have stretched the U SAP AT RIOT act to do even more spying on us than it was supposed to permit.
As Norway rejects using the massacre as an excuse to attack citizens' freedom, it follows the ideals on which the US was founded.
These are ideals which the US has abandoned.
Two 14-year-olds were put on the sex offender list for life after a prank.
In the paranoid climate of the US, only a fool would (1) have children or (2) have any dealings with children.
A TV company, Newport, used a bogus copyright threat to try to censor information about covert consolidation of news with other TV channels.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A record company executive was fired after he noted that file-sharers were also its best customers.
A bill requiring ISP data retention in the US is advancing in Congress.
This is a dangerous expansion of government power and it will cause other problems in addition to increased government surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This bill goes in the wrong direction. The US government already does have too much surveillance power. What we need now is to reduce it, not add more.
Thus, the ACLU calls for drastic reforms to reduce government secrecy.
US law should stop companies from providing technological support to repression abroad.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps this law should apply to repression in the US too.
The US government scientist who first warned that global heating threatens polar bears has been suspended and accused of some sort of misconduct.
People suspect this is meant to cover Obama's plans to authorize dangerous undersea oil drilling.
Everyone: call on India, Brazil and South Africa to pressure Syria to acknowledge whatever has happened to the 3000 people who have been disappeared in recent months.
The US also disappears people. I would like to support a similar campaign against that.
As the US military counts days to the elimination of its prejudice against gays, it maintains an unconstitutional prejudice against atheists.
Iranian democracy supporters say that a foreign military attack would be a disaster.
Senator Manchin makes millions from coal mining. No wonder he protects coal mining and blocks efforts to reduce global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
By contrast, Senator Franken is campaigning to block the merger of AT&T and T-mobile.
Calling on Obama to honor Americans who have opposed torture.
Obama continues to authorize some forms of torture.
US citizens: call on Obama to protect federal whistleblowers, and pardon the ones he has prosecute.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
Wells Fargo Bank is being sued for predatory lending discrimination against US Blacks.
Governments in Africa are eliminating clinic fees for pregnant women, which were imposed by the IMF.
Canada's government, at the highest level, blocked Fisheries Dept. scientist Kristi Miller from talking to the press about her discovery, which shed light on the mysterious death of salmon on the Pacific coast.
In some years, up to 95% of salmon returning to spawn die mysteriously. Miller found evidence that a virus (as yet unidentified) is at work.
The article also explains how global heating might be responsible for this, and could be responsible for the spread of other salmon parasites too.
Raquel Nelson was convicted of homicide for crossing the street with her child, who was hit by a drunk driver.
Why prosecute someone like that? It could be part of the Republicans' war on women.
US citizens: tell Atty General Holder to block Republican state laws that require IDs for voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Obama were a Liberal we wouldn't have to pressure him to protect the voting rights of minorities.
The EPA has wimped out and published non-binding "guidelines" for mountaintop-removal coal mining, which won't protect ecosystems or public health.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Here's info on evidence linking mountaintop-removal mining with double the rate of cancer and with 1.5 times the rate of birth defects.
A summary of the medical case against mountaintop-removal coal mining.
An Israeli peace advocate compares the two boycott movements: Gush Shalom's boycott of products of the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, and the broad PACBI boycott of Israeli institutions.
He notes that the latter boycott, which I agreed to follow in my recent visit to Palestine and Israel, effectively rejects the whole Israeli peace camp. That is why I think that boycott is too broad. I support Gush Shalom and its boycott.
The Palestinian organizers of the broader boycott have indeed given up on nearly all of the Israeli left. They have concluded that trying to work with the Israeli left is useless, because it failed before. I can't deny that it failed, but I disagree with the view that Israeli support for justice for Palestinians is irrelevant.
The Republican budget cuts plan is class warfare. It would cause disastrous decrease in programs that help the poor to survive.
A study suggests that children subject to corporal punishment in school become worse at decision-making than children not punished that way.
This one study isn't enough to prove the conclusion
Press reaction to the Oslo massacre shows that "terrorism" has no meaning for the US and its mainstream media except as a stick to beat Muslims with.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The broadest sensible definition of "terrorism" is "violence against civilians in general, used as a political tactic." By that definition, the massacre is terrorism but just barely. It was aimed at a specific political party rather than at Norwegians in general.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, support Rep. McGovern's campaign to close the School of the Americas (or whatever they call it this year).
The School of the Americas has taught torture and repression for several decades to the enforcers of many US-supported tyrants in Latin America.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Obama is working to promote growing genetically engineered crops in wildlife refuges.
State assets stolen by despots: World Bank report details daunting obstacles to recovery.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for blocking an illegal oil and gas auction that Bush had set up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans demand a balanced budget constitutional amendment, but only when they can't pass the laws they wish.
GOP Leaders Voted For Three Of The Biggest Debt Drivers, Costing $3.4 Trillion
The prescription drugs plan did a job that needs to be done, but it's a job that other developed countries do far more cheaply because they stand up to business more.
Raquel Gutierrez: Why is the US so afraid of me?
Armed Israeli "settlers" burnt Palestinians' olive trees, and the Israeli army intervened to prevent local firemen from putting out the fire.
The government destroys Palestinians' trees too. It plans to demolish a well used to water 4000 date palms near Jericho.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli civil society is pushing back at the prohibition of boycotts.
Israel sent ten ships and boats to capture a boat with 16 unarmed people trying to reach Gaza.
Prisoners from Gaza (in many cases imprisoned without trial) have not been allowed visits from their families for many years.
Israel has effectively admitted that the recent tear gassing of the village Nabi Saleh was a collective punishment, not defense.
Boehner's plan to damage Social Security and Medicare would create more poverty than any law in recent US history.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to sign the Lee/Jones letter calling on Obama to remove all the Bush forces from Iraq this year.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Right-wing European politicians are trying to use the Oslo massacre as an excuse for more Internet surveillance.
That would be folly — governments are potentially far more dangerous terrorists than an isolated person.
Oklahoma's noncompoop governor says, "Pray for rain".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It might work if they pray to the Green Party.
The UK government reneged on its commitment to remove innocent people's DNA from government files.
Ralph Nader's comments on the US debt ceiling issue.
Walmart, Target and Macy's, among others, don't care that they are selling products made in factories where workers are more or less tortured, and even raped by management.
Protesters from all over Spain have converged on Madrid.
Governor Walker legislated that voters must show state IDs, then closed many ID offices so poor people can't get IDs.
Jamaica, being driven into poverty by debt, has been suggested as an example for Greece to follow.
Argentina would be a better model.
The Libyan rebels have agreed that Gaddafi can stay in Libya.
US funds for freight trucking in Afghanistan have gone to the Taliban.
And the companies involved keep getting contracts.
A range of US mainstream media assumed that the Oslo bomber was an Islamist extremist. And when they found out he wasn't, they continued trying to spin this to blame Islamist extremists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Assad seems to say that Syria will allow opposition parties, but it hard to take this seriously while killing of protesters continues.
China is trying to discourage press coverage of the high-speed train crash.
Dow Chemical will get away with massive ground poisoning because the victims were not allowed to make a class-action lawsuit.
My Doctor's Office Asked me to Lie
In the US: participate in a mass occupation of Wall Street starting September 17.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition telling Democrats in Congress to stand firm against cuts in Social Security, etc.
Big company CEOs got a 23% raise last year, but the US minimum wage buys less than in 1956.
Most jobs pay more than minimum wage; but many jobs have wages calibrated against the minimum wage. As the minimum wage goes down, their pay goes down too.
The US crisis is not about debt. What it needs is to raise the empathy ceiling.
To continue growth in energy usage at the same rate as in recent centuries, in 1400 years we would need to use the entire output of the Sun.
Growth in energy usage will be compelled to stop long before that point.
If US corporations were persons, would we judge their actions as patriotic?
Google deleted a large number of accounts to enforce its requirement that Google+ users give their real names. For some users, this means deletion of all their accounts.
You should never give your real identity to such services.
The scientific study of people who are inclined to become the dogmatic soldiers of authoritarian leaders, and the others who take advantage of them.
Norway will meet terror with more democracy, not less.
Protesters in Egypt were attacked by armed thugs, who must have been sent by some arm of the state.
The WWF has a certification program for timber, meant to show the timber was obtained without destroying the environment, but critics say the rules are so lax that it does not work.
Meanwhile, if only 19% of the world's timber is certified, it is not clear this does any good.
Executives and an editor of An Ecuadorian newspaper were sentenced to prison, and impossible fines, for libel against the president.
It is fundamentally unjust to prosecute libel as a crime. I am very disappointed that this is being done by someone I admired.
Are poor people poor because they make decisions badly, or do they make decisions badly because they are poor? Right-wingers say it's the former, but there is evidence it's the latter.
Some experiments suggest that the mental faculty of making decisions carefully (cognitive control) gets temporarily fatigued each time it is used. For poor people, many small daily decisions require this faculty, so it is fatigued much of the time.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Norweigan terrorist that killed around 100 people in Oslo was a right-wing extremist with neo-Nazi ties.
The right-wing press (including Murdoch's London paper, the Sun) tried to claim it was an Islamic terrorist.
The Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to companies in recent years.
Mexican police are kidnapping people off the street and disappearing them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Obama regime claims that drone attacks in Pakistan have not killed civilians, disregarding children known to have been killed.
Wikileaks cables show that the US demanded total obedience from the president it installed in Haiti after kidnapping Aristide.
UK police told Uncut protesters they would not be arrested if they left the store where they were protesting. The police were lying: they already planned to arrest the protesters anyway.
You can't trust the word of a policeman.
The judge appointed to investigate Murdoch's newspapers' phone tapping has personal links to Murdoch.
Craig Murray believes he was chosen specifically to undermine the job he is tasked with, and so was the judge in charge of the inquiry into UK collusion in torture.
US citizens: meet at your congresscritter's local office (see http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/congress/) at noon on July 26 and say, "Just increase the debt ceiling."
The idea of putting human genes into monkeys and producing an animal a little more similar to humans distresses some people.
It is very unlikely such experiments would result in an animal with mental characteristics that would make it count as human. If so, it would deserve certain rights in accord with those characteristics. Provided we respect those rights, what is there to be upset about? People produce children with random combinations of genes every day.
Congress is considering a sleazy change in FCC rules to let mobile phone companies buy parts of the TV spectrum, forbidding use for WiFi.
Saudi Arabia has proposed a law that would jail dissidents by labeling them as terrorists, and authorize warrantless wiretapping, imprisonment without trial and trials that don't follow standards of justice.
More information about what this law would prohibit.
Too bad the US sets the bad example of doing all of those things.
The prosecutors of Casey Anthony withheld exculpatory information and knowingly lied in court.
This may not have affected the verdict, since she was acquitted of the murder charge, and this evidence might not be relevant to the lesser charges she was convicted of. But if there is no conviction to overturn as a consequence, what will teach these prosecutors and others not to lie in court again? Next time they might succeed in framing someone.
To prevent that, we need to punish them, but how? Can they be disbarred for this?
After protests in Malawi, the government struck back against journalists who covered the protests.
US citizens: tell Congress to block changes to the Endangered Species Act that would block new listings of species.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: sign this petition in support of recognition of Palestine as an independent state.
In the US, the very rich pay a lower tax rate because they don't need to work.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Corporate profits in the US are booming but they are not hiring anyone in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs to increase corporation taxes and use the money to give people jobs. Obama knew this two years ago. Now, however, he has accepted the Republican goal of "deficit cutting".
Dissidents in Gambia are threatened with execution for "treason" which consisted of handing out t-shirts that criticize the government.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Haitian families previously left homeless by the earthquake have been evicted from their refugee camp.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Climate change will "exponentially" increase the scale of natural disasters -- so when are we going to take this threat seriously?
If we wait until 130-degree temperatures are common in the summer, it will be too late to prevent things from getting even worse.
In protests in Malawi against state corruption, dozens have been killed and hundreds arrested.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Russia, a prominent opposition figure's wife is apparently being framed.
Removing the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the "terrorist organizations" list could deligitimize the Iranian opposition, by lending credibility to the regime's claim that the opposition is a tool of the US.
The very existence of a list of groups that have been declared as "terrorist" without a trial threatens freedom of association. That is a separate issue, but closely related to this issue.
The multi-level game of bluff in Israel's threats to attack Iran.
Business flunkies in Congress want to legalize bribery by weakening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of drinking 8 glasses a day of water is medically bogus and promoted by water companies.
In some areas, allowing cows to graze in a natural way grass restores ecological diversity and puts carbon into the soil.
Global heating will shrink many European rivers in the summer.
Not only will rain reduce, but meltwater from glaciers won't be available either.
The movie companies that shut down the sharing site kino.to, then insulted and threatened its users, wanted to prove how much money they had "lost" (more correctly, not gained) because of the site's operation. They buried the results because they suggest that it tended to increase their income.
The Sierra Club is trying to turn off coal burning in the US for public health.
Coal companies do not like being criticized. They threaten to punish the University of Wyoming for a sculpture that links the burning of coal, through global heating, to the infestation that is destroying most of the pine forests.
The coal companies say the university should show "gratitude" for its funds, but since when does gratitude include keeping silent about a practice that endangers our world?
The State Department has obstructed government oversight of its mercenary army in Iraq.
Don't trust the vague claims that food companies make about benefits of "probiotic" bacteria.
It's not impossible for certain bacteria to provide health benefits, but that doesn't mean these products do you any good.
A new euro-rescue system will offer Greece the chance to shed around 20% of its debt.
It is important to establish the principle that creditors lose when they push a country to poverty — and when they make foolish loans. However, 20% may not be enough to let Greeks out of debt slavery.
The UK has convinced the main payment companies to participate in a scheme for extrajudicial punishment of web sites accused of unauthorized commercial redistribution.
I don't oppose the application of copyright to commercial redistribution (except for practical use works, since those ought to be free). However, extrajudicial punishment of anything whatsoever is a threat to basic principles of justice.
Study of Earth's past climate shows that doubling the CO2 in the air is likely to result in 3 degrees C of global heating in a few centuries, due to "fast feedbacks". (At least half of that will occur in the next few decades.) This could easily cause sea level to rise 50 to 80 feet.
In the longer term, due to slow feedbacks, the temperature would rise even more.
Hundreds of thousands protested in the main cities of Syria.
Even killing protesters has not crushed them.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress to support the creation of a Palestinian state when the issue is brought to the UN.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Retired CIA agent Robert Baer says that an interviewer misrepresented him; that he never intended to say that an Israeli attack on Iran was a certainty — only that there are suggestive danger signs.
Human actions are never a certainty. Look how many times Obama says he is opposed to something, then "compromises in" when Republicans firmly insist on it.
Greg Palast: make the Republicans pay the debts they contracted under Bush.
Greg Maxwell posted 18,000 old scientific articles on JSTOR as an act of defiance against the parasites that restrict access to science.
Now it's the US' turn to have a fatal heatwave.
This is a tiny taste of what it will be like in 40 years, if we don't cut greenhouse gas emissions in this decade.
Everyone: State your support for Aaron Swartz.
US citizens: tell the government that US health care plans should cover contraception at no charge, as preventative medicine.
The US is trying to extradite people accused of sharing for trial in the US.
This is possible in the UK because of its unjust extradition treaty with the US, which abolished the usual safeguards on extradition. I am not sure the US can get away with this anywhere but in the UK. This is another reason why the UK must cancel its unjust extradition treaty with the US.
This article uses terminology I think is unadvisable. For instance, it refers to music as "content" and it uses the enemy's propoganda term "piracy" to refer to unauthorized copying. The latter is an especially harmful mistake since it legitimizes the War on Sharing in principle, so that only its methods can still be criticized.
The US has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, and employing prisoners for tiny wages is a great gift to business.
Now that free workers have to compete with prison labor, that keeps wages down in the US. Business must appreciate that too.
The usefulness of prisoners for business means that business promotes, and partly pays for, imprisonment. This encourages the state to imprison more people. It amounts to a predatory system, imprisoning people because it can.
Everyone: call on the security council to take action on Syrian torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Power plants on the great lakes devastate the fish stocks there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Pelican Bay prisoners have ended their hunger strike in exchange for some small alleviation of the cruel conditions, like those Bradley Manning had to suffer.
That strikes me as mainly a defeat.
The trash vortex in the North Pacific is now twice as large as the continental US, and may hold 100 million tons of plastic.
The Bush regime blanked out 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report. There is evidence that this was to hide evidence tying some Saudi princes to the attack.
US citizens: call on the US government to cut off funds to the clinic owned by Rep. Bachmann and her husband, which tries to convert gays into straights through prayer.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Doesn't Bachmann oppose government spending such as Medicaid? It seems rather hypocritical of her to accept so much funds from a program she opposes.
Tens of thousands of people from poor countries do low wage jobs for US mercenary companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many of them were shanghaied and trafficked.
Loss of Arctic sea ice is killing polar bear cubs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Aaron Swartz has been charged with many federal crimes for downloading many articles from JSTOR.
The only wrongdoers here are JSTOR and the journals it hosts. They ought to make the articles available to the general public, with freedom to redistribute. And if they don't do this voluntarily, society should impose it.
The Colombian congress has elected a leader tied to the paramilitary thugs and to ex-president Alvaro Horrible.
US media persistently cover up the civilian deaths caused by Bush's occupation of Iraq. They pretend it was only "tens of thousands".
130 Republicans now in Congress were happy to raise the debt ceiling when Bush asked.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Resistance to antidemocratic "free trade" treaties is building in the US and in South Korea.
US aid to Afghanistan flows corruptly out of the country.
Unlike Obama and the Republicrats, the American people want to raise taxes and cut military spending.
Wal-Mart is America's chief corporate poverty creator, according to the SEIU union.
Striking workers at Cepcolsa Petroleo in Colombia were crushed by the army.
Cairn Oil got an injunction to ban Greenpeace protesters from posting photos of their sit-in.
Dissidents in the United Arab Emirates are on trial for "insulting officials".
To make that a crime is inexcusable tyranny in itself.
California prison guards say the inmates' hunger strike is a gang operation, but they refuse to allow the press to see for themselves. The idea that any prisoner could be coerced by other prisoners in a prison where the inmates are in solitary confinement for 22.5 hours a day seems ridiculous to me.
The judges who reversed the convictions of UK anti-coal protesters say that undercover police infiltrator Mark Kennedy operated as an "agent provocateur" and that his mere deployment by the police might constitute entrapment. Why does Kennedy deny he acted as an agent provocateur? Perhaps it is a question of semantics. The term "agent provocateur" normally refers to someone who cynically tries to lure dissidents into actions that would hurt their cause. Perhaps Kennedy had come to sympathize with them enough that he wasn't seeking to hurt them, and didn't expect them to be prosecuted once he supplied his exculpatory evidence. They were in fact prosecuted because the prosecutors withheld that evidence from the defense.
Spain's "indignant ones" are supported by 80% of the population.
Eyewitnesses to Syrian massacre: "Earlier in the week we had been told not to go to pick up the wounded.... Anyone who tried was shot, his body falling on top of the other victims." Many countries have tried to prevent treatment of people their forces have wounded. I recall reading that Israel did this in Gaza, and that
the US did this in Iraq.
Apple has proposed a disgusting idea: building cameras so they respond automatically to commands to switch them off. Apple also patented the idea, and the article confuses the patent with the idea itself, but they are not the same. Software patents are always a danger to programmers, but what's really scary about this idea is to envision doing it. If there were a signal that could shut off cameras, cops in countries from the US to Syria would broadcast that signal when they attack protesters. Of course, people would prefer cameras that don't respond to the signal, and this suggests someone has in mind to force cameras to implement it. Nonfree software can impose whatever restrictions its developer's heart desires. It is only a small step from today's Digital Restrictions Management, that restricts what you can do with images you get from others, to future features that would restrict what you can do with images you make.
Wikileaks shows that the US, under Obama, killed an attempt by Haiti to increase the minimum wage. Shame on you, Obama.
The constitutionality of Obama's health care law, specifically its requirement to buy health insurance, is likely to be considered by the Supreme Court. If it rejects this, it would have to reject the entire law. This law has some beneficial provisions but overall it was a sellout to insurance and the drug companies. It ought to be completely replaced with a single-payer plan. Whether court invalidation of this law is likely to lead there, I can't begin to guess, so I will leave such tactical speculation to others.
Internet Privacy
(in German).
Everyone: ask Elizabeth Warren to run for the senate in Massachusetts.
Everyone: tell US Airways it is not acceptable to kick someone off a flight for having sagging pants. I sometimes have sagging pants when I board a flight. That's because sometimes the "security" guards put me in jail by making me remove my belt. Then I am in jail for the whole trip and can't put my belt back on.
Annual US worker production has increased by 2 trillion dollars since 1972, but workers got only 10% of that. The rest went to the rich. Moreover, since the rich are better at avoiding or evading taxes, the result is a US deficit.
Australia will adopt a carbon tax, and reduce other taxes on non-rich so that it doesn't hurt them.
Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to a complex system of military rule. People are effectively compelled to confess to alleged crimes by keeping them in prison until they do.
If you want to protect children on the Internet, forget about so-called "child porn." The real danger is from insecurity — in their feelings, and in their mobile phones.
The US arrested two people, accusing them of working secretly as agents for the government of Pakistan. If a law requires the US and the American public to know the underlying source of information and identity of those attempting to influence US policy and laws — when they work for a foreign government — then we should apply the same policy to the larger, wealthier and more dangerous threats to our democracy: multinational corporations.
Several possible members of Anonymous have been arrested. Anonymous became famous last December when it organized distributed denial-of-service attacks against the web sites of companies that participated in the US government's distributed denial-of-service attack against Wikileaks.
Playing football often causes terrible brain damage, and the effects get worse years later.
A new party has been launched in Honduras to oppose coup-installed president Lobo.
Libyan rebels have refused to negotiate with Gaddafi.
Progressives in Congress are calling for a trillion dollars in arms cuts.
Peace Now has endorsed the boycott of products of the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, defying the law banning said boycott in Israel.
Americans for Peace Now have followed suit. With an important US Jewish organization going directly against Israel's fascist law, this has the potential to break the power of the Israeli right-wing lobby in the US.
Iran has attacked bases in Northern Iraq operated by a Kurdish group that Iran calls "terrorists".
This is comparable to US drone attacks in various countries.
Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman has labeled the Israeli volunteers who provide gratis legal assistance to Palestinians as "terrorists".
Salvadoreans campaign to ban gold mining, so as to protect the river they get water from.
40% of US corn production is now used inefficiently to make biofuel, pushing up food prices. This is wasteful because it takes so much energy and water to grow the corn that it doesn't save much.
20 UK anti-coal protesters won their appeals against an convinction because of the police infiltrator's testimony that wasn't shown to the defense.
The Libyan rebels are racist, and have chased Libyan Blacks out of their homes, threatening to massacre them.
Instead of austerity, Greece could cut its weapons spending. But the US and Germany won't permit this.
ALEC is Milton Friedman's Little Shop of Horrors.
Crucial questions to ask Murdoch about his personal involvement in his company's phone tapping.
The NSA is doing research to identify dissidents through an artificial intelligence system that would look at mountains of personal information obtained through digital surveillance.
The mainstream US media are helping to cover up and legitimize the secret prison that the "government" of Somalia runs for the CIA.
The Arms Trade Treaty now being negotiated may omit anti-riot weapons.
Maliki is desperate to keep the US military in Iraq, so he may settle for mercenary "trainers".
The House of Representatives voted actively to protect secret corporate political campaign spending — specifically to block Obama from spending any money to limit it. The banksters have richly rewarded their bought congresscritters who harassed Elizabeth Warren.
Under Obama, the White House remains a science-free zone where marijuana is concerned.
Everyone: sign this petition telling world leaders, cut nuclear weapons, not things people need.
Ai Weiwei was not physically tortured, but he was subjected to prison conditions reminiscent of Bradley Manning's prison conditions. In addition, his wife was used as a hostage to make him confess financial crimes he did not commit.
Rais Bhuiyan, who was shot by white supremacist Mark Strohman in a racist rampage, is campaigning for Strohman not to be executed. Bhuiyan's heart is as big as Strohman's was small. But Texas Governor Perry, who resembles Strohman in having a strong desire to kill when he can get away with it, is refusing to listen.
Yemen has returned to mostly peaceful protests against the regime of President Saleh.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has firmly endorsed network neutrality, condemning "three strikes" disconnection laws.
The UK's prosecutors have repeatedly withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers. This is not unusual in the US, too, but isn't often treated as a scandal because the victims are often poor.
It looks like the attempt to renegotiate the WTO treaty may fail. I hope they do fail, since any change that would be agreed on by today's business-subservient major states would surely be more bad than good. If indeed Obama blocks that, maybe there is a little good in Obama after all. But he can hardly claim much credit for this as long as he promotes other treaties that surrender power to business, such as those with Korea, Colombia and Panama.
Another Afghan warlord and drug runner who supported Karzai has been assassinated by the Taliban, leading to questions of whether Karzai's government can stand at all. The Taliban have fighters willing to take on suicide missions. Karzai and NATO have not.
Georgia's opposition and newspapers accuse the government of torturing news photographers into false confessions of spying. These photographers took photos of protesters who had been attacked and injured by police.
Iran is executing large numbers of people secretly, probably after meaningless trials or no trials.
House Votes for Dirtier Water and More Dirty Energy.
Human Rights Watch says that Bahrain has arrested 70 medical personnel and has sentenced 48 of them after Guantanamo-style kangaroo courts.
An Israeli general called for action to stop the "Jewish terror" of settlers against Palestinians, and said that a particular yeshiva is spurring this terror on. This yeshiva can be compared to the madrasses that spread Islamist extremism.
A retired CIA agent says that Israel is planning to attack Iran by September and that the Pentagon is already planning to join in. Neocons are trying to rehabilitate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, which carried out terrorism in Iran in the 80s. The agent later said the interviewer misrepresented him.
One man, Noor Behram, photographs the remains of people killed by US drone attacks in Waziristan. He estimates 10 civilians are killed for each Taliban fighter.
Argentina is prosecuting the officers who tortured and murdered. When will the US do this?
The Shabab militia in Somalia is functioning effectively as a branch of al Qa'ida and seeks to attack outside Somalia. The Shabab militia exists because the US organized an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu to destroy the Islamic Courts government, which was the first government to control Somalia since Siad Barre in 1992. Its strict form of Islamic law must have oppressed women, but at least it offered an end to warlordism, and it did not seek to fight anyone outside Somalia. The presence of piracy and al Qa'ida in Somalia is the result of the US intervention. The US should have left the Islamic Courts alone.
Faux News built a special spy facility, the "brain room", to get people's personal information including their phone call records.
The Yellowstone oil spill shows that running tar sands oil through pipelines creates a special danger of spills.
Even if the pipelines are safe, extracting tha oil contributes greatly to global heating.
The carbon bubble: billions have been invested in petroleum reserves whose use as fuel would cause certain disaster.
Secret UN reports say that Sudan is massacring the Nuba people.
Supplies of phosphate rock, necessary as a fertilizer, are becoming limited. Phosphate is used wastefully: much drains into the sea and produces dead zones.
Global heating is manifest on Mt Everest, as well as in the swelling glacial meltwater lakes that burst and flood villages below.
Thousands of Israelis and Arabs marched in Jerusalem to support Palestinian independence.
Neocons call the Gaza aid sailors "supporters of terrorism", frustrated that Israel's government has given itself a black eye by stopping them.
Texas Governor Perry asked people to pray for rain, but it seems nobody listened to the prayers.
GOP Dogma on Taxes, Spending and Revenue vs. the Facts.
Republicans' attempt to bring back inefficient incandescent light bulbs was defeated, but they won't give up. I wonder when they will start fighting against building codes. Shouldn't you be free to build a building that will fall down if there is an earthquake? The market will convince landlords to tear down and replace such buildings — if something reminds buyers and renters to think about the issue. Unless there is a housing shortage.
Progressives hope to occupy Wall Street on September 17th to demand restoring democracy and an end to corporatocracy.
New York City faces a threat to its water supply from fracking near its water tunnels.
Under Obama it's business as usual for mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US psychiatrists, bought by the drug companies, are prescribing antipsychotic medicines to a wide range of Americans.
News of the CIA's spying under the guise of a vaccination drive has stimulated a campaign for people in Pakistan to refuse vaccination. Such campaigns are deadly. The suspicion of vaccination described in the article is part of the general lunacy associated with religion, and religion bears the principle blame for it. Nonetheless, it is valid to argue that activities likely to trigger that lunatic suspicion are harmful.
Israel is planning further political discriminatory laws, amounting to partisan, biased control over democratic activity.
Obama's proposed budget deal is extremely right-wing. The idea of cutting spending during a recession is Hoover-style absurdity.
Washington Post: Japan's economy is "threatened" by the government's practice of carefully verifying the safety of nuclear power plants before restarting them.
Republicans want to deregulate mountaintop removal coal mining, and say this is to "protect jobs", but these mines create few jobs.
Many Iranian women's rights activists have been imprisoned.
Lawyers for victims of drone attacks and their relatives will seek the arrest of a retired CIA manager for trial in Pakistan for his role in approving the attacks.
Proposing a replacement for the Kyoto treaty: giving each country a carbon emission quota in proportion to its population, then letting rich countries buy quota from poor countries. If the quotas are based on the 2010 population instead of the future population, that would give each country an incentive to reduce population growth.
How to rescue the Arab Spring?
US citizens: sign this petition
to regulate fracking tightly.
Medical insurance companies will get a windfall of $200 billion from Obamacare, thanks to the absence of the public option which they killed.
A journalist in Honduras that opposed the coup against former president Zelaya has been assassinated.
The repeated killings of journalists and other opposition leaders shows that Honduran state remains oppressive.
Maliki's private military unit runs a secret torture prison. The Iraqi Parliament and the Justice Ministry ordered the prison closed, with no effect. I hope that Iraq achieves a true democracy with human rights some day, but what it has now seems like a step backwards from Saddam Hussein.
The US is investigating a CIA officer whose unauthorized abuse resulted in the death of a prisoner.
This investigation is proper, but they are not investigating the larger crimes that Bush ordered.
An ill-advised law is being promoted as a response to the acquittal of Casey Anthony. It would require parents to report a missing child within 24 hours on pain of imprisonment.
This law could definitely do harm. If a child runs away from home, a parent might very well regard escalating immediately to the police as crude and harmful to their relationship. I think that scenario is likely to be far more common than murders such as Casey Anthony was accused of. The U SAP AT RIOT act is another example of a harmful hasty legal reaction.
Human Rights Watch accused the Libyan rebels of vandalizing homes, stores and medical clinics in their recent advance in Western Libya.
Removing the top predators from an ecosystem can have disastrous effects on the whole system.
The elected officials debating how much to cut funds for the old and sick are all rich.
The Audacity of "Free Trade" Agreements: Obama's attack against American workers and unemployed.
The war in Afghanistan is now deadlier than ever for civilians. An article on a site I won't link to said that the Afghan parliament is talking about impeaching Karzai. But I can't see how they could find anyone to replace him with. Is there any honest politician in the Afghan government? Fighting to prop the government up is futile.
Gush Shalom petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn the boycott ban law.
The US will prod Guatemala to carry out the provisions of CAFTA that are meant to protect unions. CAFTA has not done Guatemala's union organizers any good. It is only good for corporations. Don't be taken in by Obama's show of caring about workers. If he gets the further unjust treaties he wants, he won't bother any more about enforcement.
Everyone:
sign this petition
calling on the Burmese Army to release
its political prisoners.
In the US: join the Week of Action,
July 16-22, against antidemocratic
"free trade" treaties.
Here's
more about why they are bad.
US citizens:
tell Attorney General Holder
US citizens: help expose ALEC,
the shadowy organization of businesses
to rewrite state laws to help them against us.
US citizens: sign this petition
to rebuke Rep. Ryan for voting for
handouts to oil companies while profiting from the same companies.
High fructose corn syrup contains mercury — enough to be dangerous.
Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that soldiers accused of torturing and killing civilians must be tried in civilian courts. Military courts have tended to defend murderous soldiers.
Medecins sans Frontieres condemned the US fake vaccination program in Pakistan for stimulating suspicion of other vaccination efforts.
Prisoners from Gaddafi's army say its morale is crumbling. Gaddafi will hang on as long as he can, since he has nothing to gain by surrendering. But that is not the case for his followers.
1700 prisoners in California are on hunger strike about inhumane conditions that amount to torture.
Soil microbes add positive feedback to global heating.
In the US: participate in event
to tell TIAA-CREF it must confront the
pressure to divest from companies that profit from the occupation of
Palestine.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, sign Senator Whitehouse's
resolution rejecting cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
As asthma rates in the US increase, the cost of an inhaler has gone from 5 dollars to 60 dollars due to patents.
Senators asked the Department of Justice to push against state laws designed to impede voting, which might be unconstitutional.
Republicans target legal aid for the poor. Why help those poor people protect their legal rights? The ones violating them are probably rich, and Republicans want the rich to be able to get away with that.
The government-encouraged conspiracy between US ISPs and the copyright industry seems to aim to put an end to open WiFi networks in the US. In other words, they want to conscript every internet subscriber into acting as a copyright enforcer. To attack sharing is to attack everyone. That is what the US government is now doing. Americans' goal should be to make the attack fail to achieve its aim. One way to do so is to keep your WiFi network with no key. The ISP may eventually bother you about it, but you can expect to forestall it once by saying, "I had no key on my WiFi network." Wait till they actually threaten to do something and not just complain. With any luck, by the time the ISP bothers you a second time, enough to matter, some of your room-mates will have changed, and you can drop the service and someone else can subscribe instead. Another good response, that will also save you money, is to disconnect your broadband service. If you don't do file sharing, a slower connection will be good enough. Tell the ISP you have dropped your service because of their unjust agreement with Hollywood.
Facebook has a habit of handing over personal data to the police without ever informing the people whose data it is. Investigations into crimes such as arson justify search warrants and subpoenas. But the people whose data is searched should be entitled to a notification, and a chance to try to quash the subpoenas in court.
As part of the Republican War on Health, the House of Representatives voted for the Dirty Water Act.
A government report confirms that the EPA, under the Bush regime, disregarded its scientific data when deciding not to regulate perchlorate pollution.
An analyst says Greece will be forced to default, one way or another, and the euro countries have no plan to cope with that.
Why is the most wasteful government agency (the military) not part of the deficit discussion? The simple answer is: because politicians are not really interested in the deficit. Republicans want to cut spending that helps most Americans because they want to transfer wealth from most Americans to the rich, and especially to business. They mention the deficit only to achieve this aim.
As health insurance companies put the squeeze on Americans, many are tied to corporate jobs and cannot start their own businesses.
Attaching medical care to employment is harmful to Americans in two ways. It is directly harmful for workers because they lose coverage if unemployed. It is indirectly harmful because it acts as an incentive for business to reduce employment. A national health care system, funded by taxes not based on the number of employees, would encourage employment as well as avoid wasteful administrative cost.
An investigation into sexual abuse of children by priests in Ireland said the Vatican was "entirely unhelpful", and accused an Irish bishop who worked in the Vatican of playing a central role in covering up the abuse.
Thousands of women are raped and murdered every year in Pakistan for a twisted patriarchal idea of "honor".
(Saving 79 billion gallons per year) Environment America, together with several senators, have proposed a plan to reduce US dependencies on imported oil, through energy efficiency. This plan would save 79 billion gallons per year, over 1/4 of the current annual consumption of 291 billion gallons. Republicans won't support it, because on this issue they are working for the oil companies. They only talk about "energy independence" when it is a question of encouraging oil drilling in the US.
Humans Rights Watch reminds Obama that the US has a responsibility to investigate Bush and other officials for ordering torture. If the US fails to do this, other countries will have the duty to do it. Japanese soldiers were executed after World War II for waterboarding prisoners. Capital punishment is an injustice, so they should have got life imprisonment. Bush, who has confessed his guilt, deserves the same. Obama ended the use of waterboarding, but continues many other forms of torture. He too ought to be investigated.
In the current situation, this would eliminate a recurring hostage for the Republicans, which would be a change for the better. However, in the long term it seems like a bad idea to increase the president's power.
This means Chinese companies could offer uncensored browsing proxies to the residents of countries with filtered Internet access, such as Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and the US.
If this war were necessary, and if victory were possible, this setback would not be a reason to give up. However, the article explains why victory is impossible: the "Afghan government" is regarded as a bunch of racketeers because that's what it is. Ahmed Wali Karzai was one of the biggest racketeers.
The proposed prime minister of Haiti, Bernard Gousse, presided as minister over state killings; a Haitian organization has petitioned for him to be tried for them.
Colombian union leaders visited the US to campaign against "free trade". All the "free trade" treaties are daggers stuck into democracy. International trade benefits everyone as long as it does not give business any political power, but "free trade" treaties are designed precisely to do that harm.
A member of a Guatemalan army death squad was deported to Guatemala for trial.
Juan Mendez, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture, rebuked the US for denying him unmonitored access to Bradley Manning.
Manning's imprisonment conditions for most of a year amounted to torture. Many other prisoners in the US are held in similar conditions. The US continues imprisonment without trial, not only in Guantanamo but also in Somalia, in a secret prison where the prisoners cannot have lawyers and are held in conditions that amount to brainwashing. That article also explains how the "Somali government" set up by the US extends the area of Mogadishu it controls by bombing neighborhoods into rubble. Maybe someday it will control all the present-day area of Mogadishu, but the inhabitants will have perforce extended the city elsewhere, unless they have been killed.
One of the Gaza aid ships is on the sea headed for Gaza.
Spanish activists blocked from sailing started a hunger strike demanding the release of their ship.
US citizens: tell the FCC to block covert media consolidation.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say Congress should investigate illegal wiretapping by Murdoch's News Corp. Also send a message through this page.
Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Faux News called for jailing the people who grabbed and leaked Palin's email, but they don't seem to be concerned when sister publications in Murdoch's News Corp did the same thing to lots of people.
I think the perpetrators in both cases merit prosecution. Will Murdoch's crackers be prosecuted?
In the wake of a salmonella outbreak caused by eggs, the main US egg producers have asked for a law requiring better treatment of hens in egg farms.
Obama has effectively rejected the Democratic Party by presenting himself as a "mediator" between the parties. I don't think the people who associated Obama with "change" had cuts in social security in mind. They should tell him to run for the Republican nomination next year.
Republicans are against any and all energy conservation measures — even replacing incandescent lightbulbs with efficient flourescent bulbs.
Gaddafi has proposed to negotiate giving up power in Libya.
Thousands of Israelis have vowed to participate in the boycott of products of the settlements.
US anti-terrorist laws have blocked humanitarian aid to Somalia. This is, in effect, using hunger as a weapon against regions in which groups labeled "terrorist" operate, somewhat like the siege of Gaza. These laws do not prohibit aid to terrorists. They prohibit aid to groups labeled by the US as terrorists. Are the Somalian groups that oppose the US-imposed "government" really terrorists? I don't know.
UK police investigated and infiltrated women's suffragists the way they now investigate and infiltrate environmentalists.
Sign this petition to the House of Representatives to reject Obama's deal and protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Obama is a Republican in Democrat's clothing. In the 1970s we had a name for people with his politics: "right-wing extremist". The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588
The US gives very little funding to defeat antibiotic-resistant pathogens, even though they kill more people than AIDS does. More research would be useful, but the first step to take against drug resistance is to stop feeding antibiotics regularly to farm animals.
What the Taliban didn't destroy, a Chinese mine will crush. I'm sure it is possible to mine nearly all of that copper while preserving the antiquities.
The CIA set up a phony free vaccination program to find Osama bin Laden's children in Pakistan. I am not sure whether this operation was good or bad, in principle. However, it was wrong to give children in Nawa Sher just one dose of vaccine when three are needed. Their families may think that their children have been properly vaccinated.
Israel adopted the law banning the advocacy of a boycott of the settlements, thus formally abolishing freedom of speech.
Italy's Choice:
Sharing or Censorship
(in Italian)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
to oppose various states'
show-me-your-papers laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A dangerous plan to build a road through the Serengeti has reduced — inside the Serengeti it won't be paved.
This averts the danger of immediate disaster for wildlife, but does bring that disaster a step closer.
Israel lied in the US hearing into the killing of protester Rachel Corrie, according to her father, who says he has obtained evidence proving this.
Obama's new secretary of "defense" repeated the Bush lie that the
conquest and occupation of Iraq was a response to the September 2001
attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Obama is trying to push Maliki to
let some of the Bush forces remain
in Iraq permanently.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, Americans must demand an end to this unjust and disastrous occupation.
Israel used Facebook to find the names of activists who planned to visit Palestine as an expression of support, so as to stop many of them from getting on their flights to Israel.
However, according to this article, many of these visitors were permitted to enter Israel.
Israeli police arrested a few Israeli leftist protesters who had come to the airport with signs, but did not arrest any of the right-wing thugs who beat them up.
Meanwhile, the police described the visitors who were denied entry as "hooligans".
The Collateral Murder video shows the results of an illegal order, according to a soldier who was there. If Bradley Manning leaked this video, he acted based on recognizing the need to fight these crimes.
The News of the World, the first newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, practiced illegal phone tapping on many people, paying police to help.
Why haven't the people accused of doing this been charged with the crime? There seems to be a long-term dishonest relationship between the newspaper staff and the police who would be the ones to arrest them.
How fear of "child porn" is promoted, worldwide, as an excuse to block file sharing.
For instance, it was used by the RIAA to set up the US Internet filtering scheme.
I've explained elsewhere that the term "child porn" is dishonest (most recently: here, here and here).
As the first article shows, censorship does not really address the real problem of child sexual abuse — apparently because it isn't really meant as one.
US citizens: tell the US Senate to reject military detention of US citizens.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Apple's mail service silently censors the mail people send.
As the corporate empire and the IMF leave governments with decreased power, politicians become mere entertainers and voting becomes useless.
A senate meeting concerned with new antidemocratic trade treaties was blocked by Republicans, who boycotted it because the treaties are not sufficiently nasty.
We can't count on this to save us.
A plea to release John Walker Lindh from prison.
The arid forest of the Chaco is being cut down by to be converted to farms.
To grow grain in an area where soldiers died for lack of water is going to require massive amounts of irrigation. In effect, Saudi Arabia's shortage of water is spreading to South America.
The inadequacy of US oil pipeline regulation was demonstrated by its failure to avoid a large spill into the Yellowstone river.
More on the UK's phony inquiry into torture of prisoners.
Thanks to human climate alteration, the teeming mackerel in a bay in Wales have been entirely replaced by jellyfish.
Thousands protested in Malaysia for clean and fair elections.
The state has arrested hundreds of protesters and organizers; some of them face years of imprisonment, which demonstrates that Malaysia is a tyranny.
The UK with its "aggravated trespass" excuse to imprison protesters is following the same path.
Five out of eight species of tuna are threatened with extinction due to overfishing.
Obama's
"remedy" for the educational harm done by underfunding and social
inequality is to test children more.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US government refused to recognize the medical value of marijuana.
Help get out the vote for real Democrats to defeat the phony Democrats in the Wisconsin recall primary.
Unemployment in the US increased, as few new jobs were created.
The reason is obvious: Republican budget cutting. Obama said two years ago that he would stimulate the economy, but he has not strongly opposed the budget cutting; he has even adopted a budget-cutting commission, granting that foolish goal legitimacy. Either he's a weakling, or a fool, or he never gave a damn.
The last one seems most likely to me.
Michele Bachmann opposes freedom of speech, as well as many other parts of the US Constitution.
New oil drilling off Australia will threaten a marine reserve with rare and endangered sea life.
We can't trust what oil companies say about safety. They always say, "We maintain the highest safety standards," and that statement is worth exactly nothing.
The only way underwater drilling can be safe is if the drillers are monitored like prisoners on a chain gang — and if the inspectors care as little about the company's profit as the guards care about the prisoners' comfort.
Bradley Manning, American Hero.
The government of Bangladesh has done nothing to protect women from being tortured to death when they arouse the ire of religious fanatics.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Israel blocked some 300 foreign visitors-protesters from entering to visit Palestine and express nonviolent support, calling them "pro-Palestinian radicals".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Calling them "radicals" is a typical example of the lie that is told every day about anyone who criticizes Israeli policy. They surely are pro-Palestinian, but that does not mean they are against Israel.
The European court of human rights ruled that the UK is liable for the killing and imprisonment without trial of Iraqi civilians, and must address the cases brought by the victims and their relatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Privately run prisons in the US are a nexus for many kinds of corruption, which extends to corrupting judges and legislators to get more people imprisoned.
When they deny prisoners medical care, the results are (predictably) occasionally fatal.
DuPont's bad maintenance killed a worker in a chemical plant.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There are two separate issues here: DuPont's decision not to use a slightly safer but more expensive process, and its failure to properly maintain the equipment it used.
I concur with the former decision. It is not cost-efficient to spend 2 million dollars (or perhaps more) to prevent a probable 14 deaths over a period of 10,000 years, if that's what it would really do. 2 million dollars could save hundreds of thousands of lives if spent efficiently, for instance food and medicine for poor people.
However, having chosen to continue with the existing plant, DuPont had the responsibility to maintain it properly. The fact that someone died in the plant a mere 23 years after the report projected 14 deaths in 10,000 years suggests that the true danger level of the plant as actually operated by DuPont is a lot higher than that.
Perhaps the safer process would be cheaper than proper maintenance over time for the existing plant.
Portugal celebrates 10 years of decriminalization of drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I support decriminalization, but some drugs should go further than that. Marijuana, which is not as dangerous as tobacco or alcohol, should be legal like tobacco and alcohol.
Chomsky says that the Guardian article which said he condemned Chavez was a misrepresentation of his views.
The full transcript of the Guardian's interview with Chomsky sustains his claims. Chomsky criticized some Venezuelan government policies, while praising others.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Here is the article in question.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to increase taxes on the rich.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Drivers crossing the Mexican border run the risk of having drugs planted on them.
I hope this is a big success. My only (small) criticisms are linguistic: they wrote "it's" where they meant "its" (think "his, her, its" — no apostrophe in any of them), and they used the deprecating term "content" to talk about their own film.
The Obama regime is using navy ships as secret prisons for illegal interrogation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Houtan Kian, Iranian lawyer, has been tortured in prison for 9 months because he spoke with the foreign press about his client, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Iran is an "Islamic republic" in the same way that the Soviet Union was a "socialist republic": as a guise for tyranny.
Half a year after Congress formally repealed "Don't ask, don't tell", the policy was actually stopped by a court order.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Human rights organizations have denounced the UK torture inquiry as a whitewash, and boycotted it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Scott Walker has replaced union workers with prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This fits into a systematic decades-long right-wing assault on the standard of living of most Americans. With more poverty, they will have more crime, put more Americans in prison, and cut wages more, to make more poverty.
Egyptian courts granted bail to police accused of killing protesters.
Meanwhile, activists get imprisoned without trial and without access to lawyers.
One
boat in the Gaza aid fleet managed to escape Greece and is heading
for Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I heard this joke.
A school teacher, a Tea Partier, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, then looks at the Tea Partier and says, "Watch out for that teacher — she wants a piece of your cookie!"
UK police besieged student protesters as young as 11; now some of them will sue.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, vote to cut off
funding for the war in Afghatistan and the occupation of Iraq. Also use
this page to send an email, but a phone call counts more.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Normal temperatures in the US have increased 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the 1970s.
Move to Amend is a movement to eliminate the idea that corporations are persons.
A former CIA interrogator, who now wonders whether he was a torturer,
reports
on a secret CIA prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Keeping people in secret prisons is itself a violation of the rights of prisoners, totally aside from the way they are treated.
Cisco
will sell China networking equipment for 500,000 surveillance
cameras in just one city.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Drug companies are telling people that their headaches are a sign of "progressive depression" that will get worse unless they take new, expensive antidepressants.
The oil wells in the North Sea have significant oil spills at the rate of one per week.
And that is just the ones that the oil companies choose to report.
Stupidity has become the norm in Australia, as the majority have been led to short-sightedly reject the carbon tax needed to prevent growing disasters.
I don't think that this happened through a natural phenomenon. I suspect that the businesses that don't want to pay the carbon tax have funded manipulation of public opinion on this issue. We know that prominent global heating deniers have been funded by oil companies.
UK Uncut protesters face charges of "aggravated trespass".
The offense of "aggravated trespass" in the UK is simply an excuse to punish protesters that don't break any other laws.
The Icelandic company DataCell, which collected money to forward to Wikileaks, will sue Visa and Mastercard for cutting off payments to DataCell.
The lawsuit is based on European competition law, applicable because Visa and Mastercard have nearly all the market for such payments.
Oil companies won't admit that global heating is going to continue but they are preparing to cope with its consequences.
Global Patronage: This describes the Global Patronage system of supporting artists on the Internet. Francis Muguet and I were working on it together at the time of his death in September 2009. He sent me a draft for version 1.2.1, and I responded with this modified version which I call 1.3. The principal change was to describe correctly what sort of function would be used to calculate the shares of the non-attributed funds. I did not expect him to have any objections, but he died before responding. (French Translation)
Kettling Wikileaks: the Anonymous protests are the Internet equivalent of protests on the street. (Spanish Translation and Norwegian Translation)
Internet
Sharing License in Brazil.
Internet taxa de
licença para o compartilhamento (Portuguese version).
Spanish translation.
Also see compartilhamentolegal.org.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans have passed 900 laws to obstruct the right to an abortion.
Microsoft Joins with Chinese Search Giant Baidu to Provide Censored Search.
Saudi women were arrested for protesting to demand that their imprisoned relatives be given fair trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It is a shame that the US sets an example of imprisonment without charge, giving comfort to every dictator in the world.
Syrian troops violently reimposed control over the city of Hama.
One of the Gaza aid ships tried to escape Greece but was caught and borded by soldiers, acting on orders from irresistible "economic forces".
We now have confirmation that the Greek government has effectively surrendered and is taking orders from someone. I would guess it is the US.
North Koreans are starving; is there a way to feed them?
Food given to the state will certainly go first to the army, which is somewhat hungry, and only trickle-down will reach the civilians who are starving. This not only supports the evil state, it also fails to do the job of feeding them.
Will the North Korean state agree to let food be delivered in some other way, if that's the only offer?
The People's Budget corresponds to what Americans say they want.
So why don't Americans elect progressive politicians who will support this? Perhaps because they have been distracted by Christian bigotry and fear of terrorists.
US policies to keep unemployment high are precisely what business wants.
Israel says Turkey, Greece and Cyprus are all intentionally blocking the Gaza aid ships.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs a declaration of independence — from Israel.
'We the People' or 'I the Person'?
Chomsky did call, as reported, for the release of Judge Afiuni from prison.
Here's what I said about Judge Afiuni some months ago.
Residents of France: tell Sarkozy to withdraw the Internet censorship decree.
Standard & Poor's is bullying the European Union by declaring it would choose to regard the EU's plan to avoid a Greek default as being itself a default.
Europe compelled Greece to adopt an austerity package by offering this bailout. Now that the Greek government has passed the austerity package, the bailout plan will be withdrawn. Will this be a bait-and-switch to make the Greek government heap more austerity on Greeks?
Netanyahu exploited the Greek financial crisis to buy the Greek government's support in blocking the Gaza aid ships.
Greek protesters should add this to their list of reasons to condemn their government.
Several US states have passed Internet censorship bills, which courts keep striking down.
Italians: oppose Italy's new Internet censorship law.
Egypt's transitional military government still puts protesters on trial in military courts.
Global heating is likely to melt polar ice faster than was previously expected.
Some "drug trials" are really just marketing exercises, designed by pharmaceutical companies to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug by recruiting them as "investigators".
Several right-wing Israeli rabbis endorsed a book that encourages killing Arab children.
This is the mirror image of the extremist Islamist view that endorses suicide bombings of civilians.
In Israel, expressing such views is apparently a crime, and the rabbis were (after a long delay) questioned by the police. I think it is wrong to prohibit expression of abstract political views. What Israel needs to do is not the prosecution of the people that express such views, but rather the end of public support now given to the movements that tend to produce them.
Obama has returned to Bush's policy of attacking state-authorized medical marijuana distributors and growers.
A court overturned South Dakota's attempt to make abortion impossible through arbitrary restrictions.
A Kansas law with the same purpose has been temporarily blocked.
The US can't afford to continue without universal health care.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians accuse Israel of deliberately acting to divert and degrade Gaza's water.
The US Attorney General dropped 100 investigations into torture of prisoners by the CIA.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
BP has bought control over scientific assessment of the effects of the Big Spill, and is using this to prematurely declare areas as clean.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Minnesota will shut down, as Republican legislators insist on cutting aid to poor people while the Democratic governor insists on taxing the rich instead.
The leaders of the SGAE, the Spanish organization that gets money from a special tax on blank disks, faces a criminal investigation into diversion of funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The SGAE lobbies for cruel laws against sharing. ¡Abajo la SGAE!
Citizens of New York State call on Governor Cuomo to continue the moratorium on fracking.
The Greek government treacherously banned the Gaza aid ships from leaving port.
I wonder if there is a connection between this and the Greek government's foreign-imposed attack on its own citizens.
Peasants in Kenya have been deprived of their land and water for a biofuel agribusiness, and now must drink water full of poisons.
Biofuel is a self-defeating practice unless it is made from weeds.
Pension funds are fueling the land grab in Africa with lots of ordinary people's pension money.
The people who own the pensions might be able to stop this, but withdrawing one category of investor from buying the grabbed land is not enough to stop the land grab.
Haitian NGO leaders demand that the UN troops do the work to end the cholera epidemic that they caused.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit will have to make its data available to other researchers.
This lawsuit resulted from the leaked emails, which were falsely portrayed by global heating denialists as showing dishonesty.
However, it is true that they kept their raw data secret, and that is not good for science.
The article uses the term "intellectual property", which here (as nearly always) causes gratuitous confusion because it can mean so many different things. I think that here it means "trade secrets", but most of the time it means other things. This term has no place in thoughtful discussion, so please join me in totally avoiding its use.
Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage
The UK government attempt to minimize the Fukushima disaster shows how close the government is to the nuclear industry.
It also shows that one can't trust anything that the UK government says about nuclear power. The same goes for Obama, of course.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Massey thoroughly, and hold the executives responsible for lying about safety problems and causing a fatal mine disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The World Health Organization suppresses research about the effects of radiation and radioactive fallout, following an agreement made with the IAEA.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Cedrick Perkins, a bystander when Miami police killed Raymond Herisse, will sue the police for recklessly shooting him.
When Herisse was driving wildly, he was an immediate threat to people's lives. I don't know whether this changed when he stopped the car. I can't say it was wrong to shoot him dead — there may have been a valid reason. But shooting him with a crowd of bystanders behind him is hardly a way to protect public safety.
I hope the employers don't respond by imposing the same requirement on male employees.
Wal-Mart's fruits and vegetables come from Martori Farms, which uses prison labor in the most cruel conditions (sometimes deadly).
Another reason to refuse to buy from Wal-Mart.
Use of prison labor by companies should be prohibited.
Global heating is triggering leakage of a tremendous store of methane under the Arctic Ocean, which is so big it would cause catastrophic warming all by itself if a substantial fraction escaped.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Goldman Sachs has billions in profits, thanks to the US taxpayers, but sees no reason not to move its jobs outside the US.
This is not an American company, it is a stateless marauding brigand.
Egyptian police fought with protesters who criticized the interim government.
An international conference has endorsed plans to conscript ISPs as copyright police.
US citizens: sign this petition to reject the Colombia "free trade" treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Republican Rep. Issa was buying Goldman Sachs bonds while he defended the bank's interests in Congress.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republican presidential candidates vie for the support of a bloodthirsty bigot who wants to abolish religious freedom in the US and impose Christianity as the states religion.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for an end to production of C-17 transport planes, which outgoing defense secretary Gates says are not needed. Many in congress want to spend money on these planes for the sake of companies in their districts.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Barbara Lee's amendment to require withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Many organizations have joined Putin's All-Russia People's Front without asking their members.
This should be compared with the policies of AARP, and GLAAD's support for the AT&T/T-mobile merger (which GLAAD retracted).
Millions of Africans are losing their land through "voluntary" sales that in fact they were coerced into.
Rather than slinking off to die separately, they should unite and fight. The worst that will happen is that they die as heroes — and they might discourage further land grabbing, or even win.
Shell companies created by the thousands in the US conceal their owners and can disguise complex webs of fraud.
Belarusians held another wordless protest, defying Lukashenko.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This keeps the hatred for him alive, but I wonder what can enable it to go beyond that.
Bangladesh objects to the idea of being compensated for the damage of global heating with loans which it would later struggle to repay.
5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment.
In effect, the development of the US into a police state is continuing, but it only attacks a few people, not most Americans.
US medical insurance companies are using bait-and-switch, pressuring customers to move from HMO plans into high-deductible plans, then increasing the deductibles and the premiums astronomically.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If the US law requiring people to buy health insurance survives the Supreme Court, they may still have trouble finding doctors willing to treat them.
A single-payer national health care system is the only solution.
US citizens: tell Obama to stand firm against Republican demands for raising the debt ceiling.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Once in a while, when enough people demand it, Obama does what he ought to do.
Palestinians from Dir Kadis have held several protests against expansion of an Israeli colony on land confiscated from their village in the 1980s.
Genetic testing of wood can detect illegal logging.
Amnesty International doubts the accusations that Gaddafi order troops to use rape massively.
I didn't give any credence to these accusations until I read that the ICC did. They are very clearly the sort of thing that is used to manipulate public opinion. So my views about Libya were never based on them.
Since 2009, 88% of income growth went to corporate profits and just 1% to wages.
This is partly due to the high level of unemployment, partly due to decades of campaigns to weaken unions, and partly due to globalization which was engineered through antidemocratic international institutions such as the WTO.
Jellyfish in the sea caused a UK nuclear plant to shut down.
Even though this did not cause immediate danger, it did make the plant unable to deliver electricity. Since one effect of overfishing and other human abuse of the ocean is an increase in jellyfish, this is going to make nuclear power plants less efficient over the next few decades.
The UK government ordered a PR campaign to convince people that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was not important.
Germany has voted to eliminate nuclear power by 2022.
Global heating has caused big ecological changes at the poles.
In the Antarctic, water-filled salps grow instead of krill, resulting in little food that penguins and seals can eat.
In the Arctic, the time of phytoplankton blooms has shifted almost two months earlier, so whales and birds arrive too late and find little to eat.
It will only get worse.
The EU will consider a directive to restrict highly polluting fossil fuel sources, such as fracking.
Return to Richard Stallman's home page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2011 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
